creating; but it is not to this that the apostle refers. The word translated power (Covσía) is quite a different word from that which means power (dúvaμs) in the sense of force or ability to do. Calvin's word in his French commentary is puissance. But the apostle's word brings out the idea of authority, prerogative, right. The apostle means that God possesses the right to fashion, out of the same human lump, one vessel to honour, and another to dishonour. In virtue of His high position as the Monarch of the universe, God has -in the estimation of the apostle-authority thus to act. He has a right to do with His own as He pleases. He is self-authorised. It is within the range of His rights to make, if He chooses, a distinction in human destinies. If the apostle's view may be accepted, God is not under obligation to confer equal honour, or equal dishonour, upon all the children of men, without distinction or exception. He will be doing no wrong although He make a difference, and fashion on His wheel one human being with high aptitudes and aims, and another with lowlier qualifications fitting for some humbler sphere.

But now we note, in the second place, that we are not to look upon God's prerogative or right to fashion either to honour or to dishonour as utterly unconditional. True indeed the prerogative of the literal potter over his literal clay may, so far as his relations to his fellow men are

concerned, be absolute. He may do with it what he pleases, even although the thing which he pleases may be ridiculous, absurd, injurious to himself, and ultimately ruinous to the success of his affairs. He may, if he chooses, by adding capriciously foreign admixtures and inappropriate ingredients, spoil his clay for all but ignoble vessels; or he may stupidly attempt to make fine vessels out of coarse clay. He may misshape his vessels, if he chooses, and as he chooses. He may mar them all while they are in his hands, if he pleases; or, if he prefer it, he may wait till the whole batch are fashioned, and dried, and hardened in the kiln, and then he may take an iron rod, if he pleases, and dash them into shivers. If the clay be his own, and the wheel be his own, and the time be his own, and the rod be his own, he may act as absurdly as he pleases with his vessels. He has an absolute prerogative over his clay, a right to do with it as he pleases, provided he do no injury, by his freaks, to men round about him.

But then in the third place, this absolute right of the human potter is not fitted to shield him from the free, unsparing criticism of his fellow men. They may not indeed interfere between him and his clay, and say, "No; this won't be permitted. You are ill-using your clay. We won't allow it." They may not feel at liberty, or be at liberty, to act thus. But certainly they

would be at perfect liberty to say of the man, what Jonathan Edwards said of the devil, "that he is one of the greatest fools and blockheads in the world." ("Miscellaneous Observations." Works, edit. 1839, vol. ii., p. 612.)

It should be noted in the fourth place, that while, in some important respects, men in their relation to God are like the clay on the potter's wheel, they are not like clay in all respects; and in particular, they are unlike it in this very special respect, that they are possessed of rights. All men indeed are little, feeble, and dependent. But still they have rights; and he who denies that they have is a slanderer, witting or unwitting, at once of men's real nature and of God's real character. Man has a right, for instance, to be treated with justice. He is wronged if he be treated unjustly. He has a right to be furnished with ability to do his duty, if he is to be held responsible for not doing it. He would be wronged if this ability were withheld from him. Man has a right to have the gate of heaven opened wide before him, or at least held ajar for him, if he is to be blamed for not entering in. Both God and men have rights because they are moral beings, possessed at once of intelligence and of freedom of will. Man must have some power of formative self-control "unto honour," if he is to be blamed for being fashioned into a vessel "unto dishonour."

All this being the case, it is obvious that God's prerogative over the human clay is not utterly unconditional. His right to do with it as He pleases is, by His own benevolent arrangement, modified and limited by the rights which He has conferred on His human creatures. He has not reserved to Himself the right to do wrong. The idea of such a reservation is infinitely absurd and blasphemous.

It cannot be the case then, that God has reserved to Himself the right to deal maliciously, or cruelly, or tyrannically, with His poor feeble human creatures. If human creatures are to be held by Him as responsible for the shape which their character assumes, then something or other is due to them as the basis of their accountability. That is, they are, as contradistinguished from mere clay, in possession of rights; and thus, by the very existence of their rights, God's own rights are not utterly unconditioned. He has Himself conditioned them by conferring rights on His human creatures.

All this being the case, we now note, in the fifth place, that it would be a mistake to quote this statement of the apostle in support of the doctrine of unconditional reprobation. We cannot indeed entirely object to the idea of reprobation. There are beings that need to be reprobated. There are human beings who deserve universal reprobation, and who therefore deserve

Divine reprobation. Neither can we object to the idea of future retribution, and of such future retribution as cannot be thought of but with the most tremulous solemnity and awe. But we ask liberty to object to the idea of absolutely unconditional reprobation, or such reprobation as is absolutely unprovoked and undeserved.

It is right indeed to magnify the sovereignty of God. But it should not be forgotten that there is more in the circle of divinity than sovereignty. There is justice too; there is righteousness; there is holiness; there is graciousness, goodness, wisdom, mercy, love. It would be a strange inversion of theology to hold in abeyance these, the moral contents of the character of God, for the purpose of making infinite room for the one relationship of sovereignty. Such inversion of theology would be akin, in philosophic monstrosity, to the wild political aphorism of a former age, that monarchs reigned by Divine right, and could do no wrong.

But what then, in the sixth place, was the apostle's aim in proposing his query, "Hath not the potter power over the clay, to make, out of the same lump, one vessel to honour and another to dishonour?" Why should he be solicitous to show that God has the right to turn some of the human race into a condition of dishonour, even as He has the right to turn others on His wheel into a state of glory, honour, and bliss?

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