Footnote 486: Acts xvi. 6-10. Footnote 487: Isaiah viii. 16, &c. Footnote 488: Isaiah liii. 1. Footnote 489: John i. 12. Footnote 490: John i. 13. Footnote 491: Titus i. 1. Footnote 492: John vi. 46. Footnote 493: John vi. 39, 40. Footnote 494: John x. 4, 5. Footnote 495: John x. 29. Footnote 496: John x. 26. Footnote 497: Rom. ix. 13. Footnote 498: Rom. ix. 11. Footnote 499: Rom. ix. 18. CHAPTER XXIII. A REFUTATION OF THE CALUMNIES GENERALLY, BUT UNJUSTLY, URGED AGAINST THIS DOCTRINE. When the human mind hears these things, its petulance breaks all restraint, and it discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet. Many, indeed, as if they wished to avert odium from God, admit election in such a way as to deny that any one is reprobated. But this is puerile and absurd, because election itself could not exist without being opposed to reprobation. God is said to separate those whom he adopts to salvation. To say that others obtain by chance, or acquire by their own efforts, that which election alone confers on a few, will be worse than absurd. Whom God passes by, therefore, he reprobates, and from no other cause than his determination to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his children. And the petulance of men is intolerable, if it refuses to be restrained by the word of God, which treats of his incomprehensible counsel, adored by angels themselves. But now we have heard that hardening proceeds from the Divine power and will, as much as mercy. Unlike the persons I have mentioned, Paul never strives to excuse God by false allegations; he only declares that it is unlawful for a thing formed to quarrel with its maker.[500] Now, how will those, who admit not that any are reprobated by God, evade this declaration of Christ: “Every plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up?”[501] Upon all whom our heavenly Father has not deigned to plant as sacred trees in his garden, they hear destruction plainly denounced. If they deny this to be a sign of reprobation, there is nothing so clear as to be capable of proof to such persons. But if they cease not their clamour, let the sobriety of faith be satisfied with this admonition of Paul, that there is no cause for quarrelling with God, if, on the one hand, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, he endures, “with much long-suffering, the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction;” and on the other, makes “known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, whom he had afore prepared unto glory.”[502] Let the reader observe that, to preclude every pretext for murmurs and censures, Paul ascribes supreme dominion to the wrath and power of God; because it is unreasonable for those deep judgments, which absorb all our faculties, to be called in question by us. It is a