“Secondly, this objection contained ver. 19, to which the apostle answers ver. 20, is not made in the person of Esau or Pharaoh, as T. H. supposeth, but of the unbelieving Jews, who thought much at that grace and favour which God was pleased to vouchsafe unto the Gentiles, to acknowledge them for his people, which honour they would have appropriated to the posterity of Abraham. And the apostle’s answer is not only drawn from the sovereign dominion of God, to impart his grace to whom he pleaseth, as hath been shewed already, but also from the obstinacy and proper fault of the Jews, as appeareth verse 22: _What if God, willing_ (that is, by a consequent will) _to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endureth with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction_. They acted, God endured; they were tolerated by God, but fitted to destruction by themselves; for their much wrong-doing, here is God’s _much long-suffering_. And more plainly, verse 31, 32: _Israel hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law._ This reason is set down yet more emphatically in the next chapter (Rom. x. 3): _They_ (that is, the Israelites) _being ignorant of God’s righteousness_, (that is, by faith in Christ), _and going about to establish their own righteousness_, (that is, by the works of the law), _have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God_. And yet most expressly (chap. xi. 20): _Because of unbelief they were broken off, but thou standest by faith_. Neither was there any precedent binding decree of God, to necessitate them to unbelief, and consequently to punishment. It was in their own power by their concurrence with God’s grace to prevent these judgments, and to recover their former estate; verse 23: _If they_ (that is, the unbelieving Jews) _abide not still in unbelief they shall be grafted in_. The crown and the sword are immovable, (to use St. Anselm’s comparison), but it is we that move and change places. Sometimes the Jews were under the crown, and the Gentiles under the sword; sometimes the Jews under the sword, and the Gentiles under the crown.