LET. LETTER XIV. P." "Unbelievers affirm, that "a juft God could not punish "Pharaoh for an hardness of heart, of "which he himself (God) was evi"dently the caufe." When we meet with an affertion apparently contrary to all the truth and equity in the world, it is but common juftice to any writer, human or divine, to fuppofe, that we miftake his meaning, and that the expreffion employed to convey it is it is capable of an interpretation different from that which may at first present itself. We cannot, for a moment, imagine, that XIV. that God fecretly influences a man's LET. will, or fuggefts any wicked ftubborn refolution to his mind, and then punishes him for it. We are therefore to confider, by what other means, not incompatible with his nature and attributes, he may be faid, in a certain fenfe, and without impropriety, to harden a man's heart. The There are many ways by which we may conceive this effect to be wrought, without running into the abfurdity and impiety abovementioned. heart may be hardened by thofe very refpites, miracles, and mercies, intended to foften it; for if they do not foften it, they will harden it- God is fometimes faid to do that which he permits to be done by others, in the way of judgement and punishment; as when his people rejected his own O righteous LET. righteous laws, he is faid to have XIV. given them" the idolatrous ones of their heathen neighbours, "statutes "that were not good"-The heart may be hardened by his withdrawing that grace it has long resisted; men may be given up to a reprobate mind; as they would not fee when they poffeffed the faculty of fight, the ufe of that faculty may be taken from them, and they may be abandoned to blindness. But all this is judicial, and fuppofes previous voluntary wickednefs, which it is defigned to punish. The cafe of Pharaoh is exactly that of the Jews. God is faid to have "blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts." But how? As it is here reprefented? Would he do this to his own people? Was HE the cause of their rejecting their Meffiah; Or does he can he― intend intend to SAY that he was fo? Let LET. us hear no more of this, for the fake of common fenfe and common honefty, if fuch things are yet left among us. But it is afferted, that when the objection is urged by unbelievers, we (Chriftians) ufually answer, that "the potter has power over the clay, "to fashion it as he lifts; " to which the infidels in the gayety of their hearts triumphantly reply, that "if the clay "in the hands of the potter were ca"pable of happiness and mifery, ac cording to the fashion impreffed on "it, the potter must be malevolent "and cruel, who can give the pre"ference to inflicting pain instead of happiness." The fimilitude of the potter is employed by St. Paul: but it does not XIV. XIV. LET. ftand exactly in his writings, as it does in the pamphlet before us. By him it is adduced in proof of one fingle point only, that when men are become finners, and obftinate finners, God has a right of dealing with them according to his pleasure, and as may best answer the purposes of his difpenfations, respecting others, as well as themselves. The comparison is first used by God himfelf (Jer. xvIII.) and applied to the power by him exercised of deftroying or preferving an offending people, as they fhould either continue in fin, or repent and amend. It is applied precifely in the fame manner by St. Paul, (Rom. ix.) to fhew (as appears by the verfes immediately following) that God might, without injustice, deal with the Jews, as he had before dealt with an har dened |