Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

Note VIII. 353
men, is that of one finally saved to another finally con
demned; but it is no less clear that the Apostle uses them
as types of these two respective classes, and that the
argument of the passage has reference to man s eternal
end, good or bad ; for glory and destruction cannot
mean only higher and lower spiritual advantages.
Archbishop Whately indeed raises an ingenious objec
tion to the predestinarian interpretation of the image of
the potter and the clay, and remarks, We are in His
hands, say these predestinarians, as clay in the potters ,
" who hath power of the same lump to make one vessel to
honour and another to dishonour," not observing in their
party eagerness to seize an easy apparent confirmation of
their system, that this similitude, as far as it goes, rather
makes against them, since the potter never makes any
vessel for the express purpose of being broken and destroyed.
This comparison accordingly agrees much better with the
view here taken. The potter according to his arbitrary
choice makes of the same lump one vessel to honour and
another to dishonour i.e. some to nobler and others to
meaner uses, but all to some use none with a ; design
that it should be cast away and dashed in pieces. Even
so the Almighty, of His own arbitrary choice, causes some
to be born to wealth or rank, others to poverty or
obscurity, some in a heathen, and others in a Christian
country ; the advantages and privileges bestowed on each
are various. Essay 3, On Election. But to extract thus
an argument from the general nature of an image used in
Scripture is to forget that Scripture, in making use of
images, only adopts them in such respects as it uses them,
such respects as answer the particular purpose in hand ;
it does not necessarily adopt the whole image.
have to do with, then, is not the image itself,
What we
but the
image as used by Scripture. Now, it is true that a potter
never makes a vessel for destruction ; but some vessels are
certainly in this passage spoken
of as fitted to destruc
<
tion, others as prepared unto glory;
of which destruc
tion and glory the cause is plainly put further back than
their own personal conduct, viz. in a certain Divire love
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