An Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations

But what hath this to do with the eternal election of God by the which he hath elected some to lief everlasting,¹ whom our Apostle calleth vessels of mercy, and hath left others in their own corruption and perpetual condemnation. And so I say because that Jeremiah entreateth one thing, that is a temporal punishment and the mutation which shortly should follow in Jerusalem, a•d the Apostle entreateth an other as before is said, the one can be no exposition to the other. but rather the Apostle hath respect, or at least alludeth to the saying of Isaiah, which thus speaketh: Woe to be to him that striveth with his maker, the vessel of clay with the Potter of clay,² Shall the clay say to his potter: what makest thou: In which words (as before we have more largely spoken) the Prophet, and the Apostle following his phrase, represseth the pride of man, who compared to God is much more inferior to his majesty, than clay compared to the Potter. For God hath created and made man when he was not, which thing the ⟨p. 145⟩Potter did not to the clay, of which he maketh the diversity of pots. and therefore of right hath God more power over man, then hath the potter over clay. This I doubt not to be the mind of the holy Ghost, in both the places. In which similitude, is further to be considered, that as the Potter doeth no injury to the clay, what form soever he giveth it (for the matter and substance of it,³ he doeth not change) so doeth not God wrong to the very reprobate, whom he prepareth to be vessels of wrath. for that are they of nature. Where that ye say, that it is not the meaning of this place, that God without all just causes doeth make any man to destruction: none of us doeth hold the contrary for we affirm that the causes of reprobation are most just, but yet we say, that they are incomprehensible to man.

But what hath this to do with the eternall election of God by the which he hath elected som to lief euerlastīg,¹ whom our Apostle calleth vessels of mercie, and hath left others in their own corruption and perpetuall condemnation. And so I say because that Ieremie intreateth one thing, that is a temporall punishment and the mutatiō which shortly should folowe in Ierusalem, ad the Apostle intreath an other as before is said, the one can be no exposition to the other. but rather the Apostle hath respect, or at least alludeth to the saing of Isaiah, which thus speaketh: Wo to be to him that striueth with his maker, the vessel of clay with the Potter of clay,