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288 THE HISTORY OF HERESIES,
blinds them :
"
Excecat Dcus deserendo non adjuvando"(30).
is one thing to harden and blind men, but quite another thing to
permit them, as God does, for just reasons, to become blind and
obstinate. We give the same answer to that saying of St. Peter to
the Jews, when he reproached them for putting Christ to death :
"
This same being, delivered up by the determinate counsel and
foreknowledge of God, you, by the hands of wicked men, have
crucified and slain" (Acts, ii, 23). When they say, therefore,
that it was by the counsel of God that the Jews put our Saviour
to death, we answer, that God, indeed, decreed the death of
Christ, for the salvation of the world, but he merely permitted
the sin of the Jews.
67. Calvin objects,
in the second place, these expressions of
" For when the children were
the Apostle (Rom. ix, 11, &c.) :
not yet born, nor had done any good or evil (that the purpose of
God according to election might stand), not of works, but of him
that calleth, it was said to her : The elder shall serve the younger.
As it is written : Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated."
And then he quotes, further on in the same : chapter
" So then
it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God
"
that showeth And :
mercy." again Therefore, he hath mercy
on whom he will and whom he will he hardeneth." ; And,
finally :
" Hath
not the potter power over the clay, of the same
lump, to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dis
honour ?" I cannot, understand, however, how these passages
favour Calvin s doctrines. The text of St. Paul says,
"
Jacob I
have loved, but Esau I have hated," after first having said that
they had not yet done any good or evil. How, then, could God
hate Esau before he had done anything wicked? St. Augus-
" God did not hate Esau as a man, but as a
tin (31) answers :
sinner. No one can deny that it does not depend on our will,
but on the goodness of God, to obtain the Divine Mercy, and
that God leaves some sinners hardened in their sins, and makes
them vessels of dishonour, and uses mercy towards others, and
makes them vessels of honour. No sinner can glorify himself, if
God uses mercy towards him, nor complain of the Almighty, if
he does not give him the same Grace as he gives to others.
(30) Idem, Tract, in Joan. (31) St. Angus. Ep. 194, ad Sixtum.
It