Montesquieu

“ God often falls short of a perfection which would make Him very imperfect: He is His own law. Thus, although God is all-powerful, He can neither break His promises, nor deceive men. Often too, His importance is not subjective, but objective ”

“ According to metaphysical principles, it is impossible that God should foresee such things as depend upon the determination of free causes; because that which has not happened does not exist, and consequently, cannot be known; for nothing, having no properties, cannot be perceived: God cannot read a will which does not exist, nor discern in the mind what it does not contain, for, until the mind is made up, the thing determined on is not in it.
The mind is the author of its determination ”

“ Let me employ a comparison in a matter which transcends all comparisons:-A monarch, ignorant of what his ambassador will do in an important affair, if he wishes to know, has only to command him to conduct the negotiation in such or such an manner, and he will be certain that the thing will happen as he planned. ”

“ The western poets tell how a painter 1, wishing to make a likeness of the goddess of beauty, gathered together the most beautiful Greek women, and, having taken from each that grace in which she most excelled, combined their selective charms into a picture of the loveliest of the goddesses. ”

“ They have tabulated all of the various perfections which man is capable of possessing and of imagining, and with these they have clad the idea of God, not thinking that these attributes are often contradictory, and, being mutually destructive, cannot subsist in the same individual. ”