The Institution of Christian Religion

but to enlarge or to set out his mercy by this circumstance, for y• even to unbelievers their prayers are not denied: & then the more to prick forward his true worshippers to pray, when they see that profane wailings sometime want not their effect. Yet there is no cause why the faith full should swerve from the law laid upon them by God, or should envy the unbelievers, as though they had gotten some great gain, when they have obtained their desire.¹ After this manner we have said, that the lord was bowed with the repentance of Ahab, that he might show by this example how easy he is to entreat toward his elect, when true turning is brought to appease him. Therefore in the psalm he blameth the Jews,² that they having by experience proved him so easy to grant their prayers, yet within a little after returned to the stubbornness of their nature. Which also plainly appeareth by the history of the Judges: namely that so oft as they wept, although their tears were deceitful▪ yet they were delivered out of the hands or their enemies. As therefore the lord indifferently bringeth forth his sun upon the good & the evil: so doth he also not despise their weepings, whose cause is righteous & their miseries worthy of help. In the mean time he no more heareth these to salvation, than herein ministereth food to the despisers of his goodness. The question seemeth to be somewhat harder of Abraham & Samuel:³ of whom the one being warranted by no word of god, prayed for the Sodomites: the other against a manifest forbidding prayed for ⟨image 301⟩Saul.⁴ Likewise is i• of Jeremiah, which prayed that the city might not be destroyed. For though their requests were denied, yet it seemeth hard to take faith from them. Butte this solution shall (as I trust) satisfy sober readers: that they being instructed with the general principles, whereby God commandeth them to be merciful even also to the unworthy, were not altogether without faith, although in a special case their opinion deceived them.