From this same creation of man also we may learn, what the real power of free will is, of which our adversaries boast so much. We have indeed in a certain sense a free will, in those things which are put under us. For we are by the command of God appointed lords of the fishes of the sea, of the fowls of heaven and of the beasts of the field. These we kill when we please. We enjoy the food, and other blessings they supply. But in the things pertaining unto God, which are above us and not put under us, man has no free-will at all. But he is in reality as clay in the hand of the potter. He is placed under the mere power of God, passively and not actively. In this our real position we choose nothing, we do nothing. On the contrary we are chosen, we are prepared, we are regenerated; we receive only; as the prophet Isaiah saith, "Thou art our potter; we are thy clay," Is. 64:8. But here a lawful and holy inquiry of a new description may be made. As Moses speaks of the creation of man here in a new phraseology, "And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground;" and as he did not use the same form of expression above, when the other living creatures were created, so he here mentions a further distinction in man which is not said of any other animate creature: "And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." This Moses does not say in reference to any of the beasts, though all beasts, as well as man, have the breath of life in their nostrils. We may here therefore sacredly inquire first, why it is that Moses is here led to speak thus. And secondly, why it is recorded in this place concerning man only, that God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul," when all animals throughout the whole Scripture are called "living creatures." The divine expressions recorded by Moses above are, "Let the earth bring forth every living creature after his kind." But here the phraseology is altogether changed, "And man became a living soul." These were the things that, doubtless, moved the patriarchs, the holy fathers and prophets of old, to examine diligently passages of this description in order to discover what these singular forms of speech might signify, being assured that the sacred historian intended by them something peculiar and great and especially worthy of knowledge.