ished abroad in all the earth. So then he hath mercy on
whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth.

Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he still find fault? For who
withstandeth his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest
against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why
didst thou make me thus? Or hath not the potter a right over the clay,
from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honour, and another
unto dishonour? What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make
his power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath
fitted unto destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his
glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory, _even_
us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the
Gentiles? As he saith also in Hosea,

I will call that my people, which was not my people;
And her beloved, which was not beloved.
And it shall be, _that_ in the place where it was said
unto them, Ye are not my people,
There shall they be called sons of the living God.

And Isaiah crieth concerning Israel, If the number of the children of
Israel be as the sand of the sea, it is the {37} remnant that shall be
saved: for the Lord will execute _his_ word upon the earth, finishing
it and cutting it short. And, as Isaiah hath said before,

Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed,
We had become as Sodom, and had been made like
unto Gomorrah.

What has been already said will have been enough to guard against the
main sources of mistake in reading this section. St. Paul might have
much to say about God's righteousness in general, and large ways of
vindicating it. But here he holds fast to the single aspect of
righteousness according to which it means that God has been true to the
original principles of His covenant. The God who chose Abraham and
Moses is the God who is now, and rightly on His own declared principles
of government, rejecting the greater part of the people of Abraham and
Moses. This--faithfulness to His own declared principles--is what St.
Paul here means by His righteousness. And as it was God's declared
principle to retain His own liberty to show mercy on men according to
His free will, inside or outside the chosen people, so on the other
hand He retained His liberty to exhibit His judgement of hardening
according to His will inside or outside the chosen people. He who
brought Pharao