Eternity and Time - Stephen Charnock (Puritan Quote)

Eternity is a perpetual duration which hath neither beginning nor end; time hath both. Those things we say are in time that have beginning grow up by degrees, have succession of parts; eternity is contrary to time and is therefore a permanent and immutable state, a perfect possession of life without any variation. It comprehends in itself all years, all ages, all periods of ages; it never begins; it endures after every duration of time and never ceases; it doth as much outrun time as it went before the beginning of it. Time supposes something before it, but there can be nothing before eternity; it were not then eternity. Time hath a continual succession; the former time passes away and another succeeds; the last year is not this year, nor this year the next. We must conceive of eternity contrary to the notion of time; as the nature of time consists in the succession of parts, so the nature of eternity in an infinite, immutable duration. Eternity and time differ as the sea and rivers. The sea never changes place and is always one water, but the rivers glide along and are swallowed up in the sea. So is time by eternity.

- Stephen Charnock in Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God on the Puritan Hard Drive