PART [1. How loved and Esau hated.] First, these words, vers. 11,-"Being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil,"-upon which the whole weight Jacob was of his argument doth depend, have no reference at all to those words, vers. 13, "Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated;" for those words were first uttered by the prophet Mal. i. 2,[3.] Malachi, many ages after Jacob and Esau were dead; and intended of the posterity of Esau, who were not redeemed from captivity, as the Israelites were: but they are referred to those other words, vers. 12, "The elder shall serve the Gen. xxv. younger;" which indeed were spoken before Jacob or Esau were born. And though those words of Malachi had been used of Jacob and Esau before they were born, yet it had advantaged his cause nothing; for "hatred" in that text doth not signify any reprobation to the flames of Hell, much less the execution of that decree, or the actual imposition [Gen.i. 31.] of punishment, nor any act contrary to love. "God saw 23. vers. 30. all that He made, and it was very good." Goodness itself cannot hate that which is good. But 'hatred' there signifies comparative hatred, or a less degree of love, or at the most a negation of love. As Gen. xxix. 31,-" When the Lord saw that Leah was hated;"-we may not conclude thence, that Jacob hated his wife. The precedent verse doth fully expound the sense; "Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah." So Matt. vi. 24,-" No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other." So Luke xiv. 26,-" If any man hate not his father and mother," &c., " he cannot be My disMatt. x. 37. ciple." St. Matthew tells us the sense of it;-" He that loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me." Secondly, those words, vers. 15,-"I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,"-do prove no more but this, that the preferring of Jacob before Esau, and of the Christians before the Jews, was not a debt from God, either to the one or to the other, but a work of mercy. And what of this? All men confess, that God's mercies do exceed man's deserts; but God's punishments do never exceed man's misdeeds. As we see in the parable of the labourers ;-" Friend, I do thee no wrong; did not I agree with thee for a penny?.. Is it not lawful for me to do with mine own as I will? Is thy eye evil, because I am good?" Acts of mercy are free, but acts of justice are due. 2. [Of the freedom of God's mercy.] Matt. xx. [13, 15.] I. conse That which follows, vers. 17, comes something nearer the DISCOURSE cause; "The Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, For this same 3. [In what purpose I have raised thee up" (that is, I have made thee a sense God's king, or I have preserved thee), "that I might shew My glory is either the power in thee." But this particle-"that"-doth not always end or the signify the main end of an action, but sometimes only a con- quence of man's sin.] sequent of it. As Matt. ii. [14,] 15;-"He departed into Egypt, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet, 'Out of Egypt have I called My son;"" without doubt Joseph's aim or end of his journey was not to fulfil prophecies, but to save the life of the Child; yet, because the fulfilling of the prophecy was a consequent of Joseph's journey, he saith, "that it might be fulfilled." So here,-"I have raised thee up, that I might shew My power." Again, though it should be granted, that this particle-"that"-did denote the intention of God to destroy Pharaoh in the Red Sea, yet it was not the antecedent intention of God, which evermore respects the good and benefit of the creature, but God's consequent intention upon the prevision of Pharaoh's obstinacy,that since he would not glorify God in obeying His word, he should glorify God [in] undergoing His judgments. Hitherto we find no eternal punishments, nor no temporal punishments, without just deserts. sense God harden It follows, vers. 18, "Whom He will He hardeneth." In- 4. [In what deed hardness of heart is the greatest judgment that God is said to lays upon a sinner in this life, worse than all the plagues of men's Egypt. But how doth God harden the heart? Not by a hearts.] natural influence of any evil act or habit into the will, nor by inducing the will with persuasive motives to obstinacy and rebellion; for "God tempteth no man, but every man is James i. 13, tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed." » [14.] Then God is said to harden the heart three ways.-1. First, negatively, and not positively; "not by imparting wickedness, but by not imparting grace:" as the sun, descending to the tropic of Capricorn, is said with us to be the cause of winter, that is, not by imparting cold, but by not imparting heat. q ["Nec obdurat Deus impartiendo malitiam sed non impartiendo misericordiam." Aug., Epist. cxiii, Ad Sixtum, c. 3. 84; Op. tom. ii. p. 719. D. Respondeo, ex communi sanctorum Patrum sententiâ, Deum non esse caus sam excæcationis et indurationis posi- III. PART It is an act of mercy in God to give His grace freely, but to detain it is no act of injustice. So the Apostle opposeth 'hardening" to "shewing of mercy." To harden is as much as not to shew mercy'.-2. Secondly, God is said to harden the 671 heart occasionally and not causally; by doing good, which incorrigible sinners make an occasion of growing worse and worse, and doing evil: as a master, by often correcting an untoward scholar, doth accidentally and occasionally harden his heart, and render him more obdurate, insomuch as he grows even to despise the rod; or as an indulgent parent by his patience and gentleness doth encourage an obstinate son to become more rebellious. So, whether we look upon God's frequent judgments upon Pharaoh, or God's iterated favours in removing and withdrawing those judgments upon Pharaoh's request, both of them in their several kinds were occasions of hardening Pharaoh's heart, the one making him more presumptuous, the other more desperately rebellious. So that which was good in it, was God's; that which was evil, was Pharaoh's. God gave the occasion, but Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration. This is clearly confirmed, Exod. viii. 15,-" When Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart;"-and Exod. ix. 34,"When Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunders were ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart, he and his servants." So Psalm cv. 25,-" He turned their hearts, so that they hated His people, and dealt subtilly with them;" that is, God blessed the children of Israel, whereupon the Egyptians did take occasion to hate them; as is plain, Exod. i. verses 7, 8, 9, 10. So God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and Pharaoh hardened his own heart. God hardened it by not shewing mercy to Pharaoh, as He did to Nebuchadnezzar, who was as great a sinner as he; or God hardened it occasionally: but still Pharaoh was the true cause of his own obduration, by determining his own will to evil, and confirming himself in his obstinacy. So are all Ps. xcv. 8. presumptuous sinners. "Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, as in the day of temptation in the wilderness." -3. Thirdly, God is said to harden the heart permissively, but [Dan. iv. 34-37] ["Obduratio Dei est nolle misereri." Aug., De Divers. Quæst. Ad Simplicianum, lib. i. qu. 2. § 15; Op. tom. vi. p. 96. E.] 1. not operatively, nor effectively; as he who only lets loose a DISCOURSE greyhound out of the slip, is said to hound him at the hare. Will you see plainly what St. Paul intends by "hardening?" Read vers. 22;-"What if God, willing to shew His wrath and to make His power known" (that is, by a consequent will, which in order of nature follows the prevision of sin), "endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction; and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy," &c. There is much difference between "enduring" and impelling, or inciting, "the vessels of wrath." He saith of "the vessels of mercy," that God "prepared them unto glory;" but of "the [Rom. ix. vessels of wrath," he saith only, that they were "fitted to destruction," that is, not by God, but by themselves. St. Paul saith, that God doth "endure the vessels of wrath with much long-suffering." T. H. saith, that God wills and effects by the second causes all their actions, good and bad; that He necessitateth them, and determineth them irresistibly to do those acts which He condemneth as evil, and for which He punisheth them. If doing willingly, and "enduring," if "much long-suffering" and necessitating, imply not a contrariety one to another, "reddat mihi minam Diogenes"-let him that taught me logic "give me my money again"." 23.] real differ "tween an and a per But T. H. saith, that this distinction between the operative [There is a and permissive will of God, and that other between the ence beaction and the irregularity, do " dazzle his understanding." operative Though he can find no difference between these two, yet missive others do. St. Paul himself did: Acts xiii. 18, " About the will.] time of forty years suffered He their manners in the wilderness;" and Acts xiv. 16, "Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways:"-T. H. would make "suffering" to be inciting, "their manners" to be God's manners, "their ways" to be God's ways:-and Acts xvii. 30, "The times of this ignorance God winked at;"-it was never heard that one was said to "wink" or connive at that which was his own act :-and 1 Cor. x. 13, "God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are III. PART able;"-to tempt is the devil's act, therefore he is called the Tempter; God tempts no man to sin, but He suffers them to be tempted; and so suffers, that He could hinder Satan, if He would; but by T. H. his doctrine, to tempt to sin, and to suffer one to be tempted to sin when it is in his power to hinder it, is all one; and so he transforms God (I write it with horror) into the devil, and makes tempting to be God's own work, and the devil to be but His instrument:-and in that noted place, Rom. ii. 4, [5], "Despisest thou the riches of His goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance, but 672 after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God;"-here are as many convincing arguments in this one text against the opinion of T. H. almost as there are words; here we learn, that God is "rich in goodness," and will not punish His creatures for that which is His own act; secondly, that He "suffers" and "forbears sinners long," and doth not snatch them away by sudden death as they deserve; thirdly, that the reason of God's forbearance is to bring men to repentance;' fourthly, that "hardness" of heart and "impenitency" is not causally from God, but from ourselves; fifthly, that it is not the insufficient proposal of the means of their conversion on God's part, which is the cause of men's perdition, but their own contempt and 'despising' of these means; sixthly, that punishment is not an act of absolute dominion, but an act of "righteous judgment," whereby God renders to every man according to his own deeds, "wrath" to them and only to them who "treasure up wrath unto themselves," and "eternal life" to those who "continue patiently in welldoing." If they deserve such punishment, who only neglect the goodness and long-suffering of God, what do they who utterly deny it, and make God's doing and His suffering to be all one? I do beseech T. H. to consider, what a degree of wilfulness it is, out of one obscure text wholly misunderstood, to contradict the clear current of the whole Scripture. Of 1 Pet. iii. the same mind with St. Paul was St. Peter:-" The longsuffering of God waited once in the days of Noah ;" and, "Account that the long-suffering of the Lord is salvation." 20. 2 Pet. iii. 15. |