tyrannical power, has he manifestly assisted the victims of unrighteous oppression, though they have been beating the air with supplications to an unknown God! And one of the Psalmists clearly teaches that some prayers are not ineffectual, which nevertheless do not penetrate into heaven by faith.[330] For he collects those prayers which necessity naturally extorts from unbelievers as well as from believers, but to which the event shows God to be propitious. Does he by such condescension testify that they are acceptable to him? No; he designs to amplify or illustrate his mercy by this circumstance, that even the requests of unbelievers are not refused; and likewise to stimulate his true worshippers to greater diligence in prayer, while they see that even the lamentations of the profane are not unattended with advantage. Yet there is no reason why believers should deviate from the rule given them by God, or envy unbelievers, as though they had made some great acquisition when they have obtained the object of their wishes. In this manner we have said that the Lord was moved by the hypocritical penitence of Ahab, in order to prove by this example how ready he is to grant the prayers of his own elect, when they seek reconciliation with him by true conversion. Therefore in the Psalms he expostulates with the Jews, because, after having experienced his propitiousness to their prayers, they had almost immediately returned to their native perverseness.[331] It is evident, also, from the history of the Judges, that whenever they wept, though their tears were hypocritical, yet they were delivered from the hands of their enemies. As the Lord, therefore, “maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good,”[332] promiscuously, so he despises not the lamentations of those whose cause is just, and whose afflictions deserve relief. At the same time his attention to them is no more connected with salvation, than his furnishing food to the despisers of his goodness. The question relative to Abraham and Samuel is attended with more difficulty; the former of whom prayed for the inhabitants of Sodom without any Divine direction, and the latter for Saul even contrary to a plain prohibition.[333] The same is the case of Jeremiah, who deprecated the destruction of the city.[334] For though they suffered a repulse, yet it seems harsh to deny them to have been under the influence of faith. But the modest reader will, I hope, be satisfied with this solution; that mindful of the general principles by which God enjoins them to be merciful even to the unworthy, they were not entirely destitute of faith, though in a particular instance their opinion may have disappointed them. Augustine has somewhere this judicious observation: “How do the saints pray in faith, when they implore of God that which is contrary to his decrees? It is because they pray according to his will, not that hidden and immutable will, but that with which he inspires them, that he may hear