Another text quoted in favor of absolute predestination _ante praevisa merita_, is Acts XIII, 48: “As many as were ordained (_praeordinati_, τεταγμένοι) to life everlasting, believed.” Here, we are told, predestination to eternal life is given as the motive why many believed. But the text really says nothing at all about predestination. Τεταγμένοι is not synonymous with προτεταγμένοι or προωρισμένοι. The more probable explanation is the following: As many believed as were disposed to receive the faith. It is wellnigh impossible to assume that all who received the faith at that time were predestined, while those that refused to be converted were without exception reprobates. But even if _praeordinati_ were synonymous with _praedestinati_, the text would merely say that certain predestined souls embraced the faith, without affording any clue as to the relation between conversion and predestination. The ninth chapter of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans is the main reliance of the advocates of absolute predestinationism, though the passage is unfit to serve as a _locus classicus_ because of its obscurity. Let us examine a few of the verses most frequently quoted. Rom. IX, 13: “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated,” is alleged to prove the absolute predestination of Jacob and the negative reprobation of Esau. But many theologians hold that Esau was saved, and, besides, the Apostle is not dealing with predestination to glory, but with Jacob’s vocation to be the progenitor of the Messias. Esau, who was not an Israelite but an Idumaean, was simply passed over in this choice (_odio habere __ minus diligere_; cfr. Matth. X, 37). If the passage is interpreted typically, it should be done in harmony with the context, that is to say, as referring to the gratuity of grace, not to predestination. The same may be said of Rom. IX, 16 and 18: “It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.... He hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth.”(611) The strongest text alleged by the advocates of absolute predestination is Rom. IX, 20 sq.: “O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why hast thou made me thus? Or hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?” Here the Apostle really seems to have thought of predestination. But the simile must not be pressed, lest we arrive at the Calvinistic blasphemy that God positively predestined some men to heaven and others to hell. The _tertium comparationis_ is not the act of the Divine Artificer, but the willingness of man to yield his will to God like clay in the hands of a potter.