The names of first or last derogate from it (God's mercy), for first and last are but rags of time, and his mercy hath no relation to time, no limitation in time, it is not the first nor the last but eternal, everlasting. Let the devil make me so far desperate as to conceive a time when there was no mercy, and he hath made me so far an atheist as to conceive a time when there was no God: if I despoil him of his mercy, any one minute, and say, Now God hath no mercy, for that minute I discontinue his very Godhead, and his being . . . As long as there hath been love, and God is love, there hath been mercy.
John Donne: Sermons.
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