You will, in the end, make out by these tropes, that God had pity on the children of Israel when he carried them away into Assyria and Babylon. For it was there that he chastised his offenders; it was there that he invited them to repentance by afflictions. On the other hand, when he brought them back and delivered them, he did not pity, but hardened them — that is, by his leniency and pity, he occasioned their being hardened. Thus, sending Christ the Saviour into the world should not be called an act of mercy in God, but an act of hardening; since by this mercy he has given men an occasion to harden themselves. On the other hand, in having laid Jerusalem waste, and having destroyed 478 the Jews to this very day, he shows mercy towards them; inasmuch as he chastises them for their sin, and invites them to repentance. In carrying his saints to heaven at the day of judgment, he will not perform an act of mercy but of induration. 479 For he will give them an opportunity to abuse his goodness. In thrusting the wicked into hell, he will show mercy, because it will be chastising the sinner. I ask you, whoever heard of such compassions and wraths of God as these?
Say that good men are made better by the forbearance, as well as by the severity of God. Still, when we speak of good and bad men promiscuously, these tropes will turn the mercy of God into wrath, and his wrath into mercy, by a most perverse use of speech. For they call it wrath when God is conferring benefits; and they call it pity when he is inflicting judgments. Now, if God is said to harden, when he is conferring benefits and bearing with evil; 480 and He is said to have mercy when he is afflicting and chastising, then why is he said to have hardened Pharaoh rather than the children of Israel, or even the whole world? Did he not confer benefits upon the children of Israel? Does he not confer benefits upon the whole world? Does he not bear with the wicked? Does he not send his rain on the evil and the good?
Why is he said to have had compassion on the children of Israel, rather than upon Pharaoh? Did he not afflict the children of Israel, in Egypt and in the desert? 481 I grant that some abuse God’s wrath and goodness, and others rightly use it. But you define hardening as ‘God’s indulging the wicked with forbearance and kindness.’ ‘God’s having compassion,’ as not indulging, but visiting and cutting short. So far as God is concerned, therefore, he hardens by perpetual kindness; he shows mercy by perpetual severity. 482
SECT. 6. Erasmus’ trope makes nonsense of Moses, and leaves the knot tied.
But this is the best of all, that ‘God is said to harden, when he indulges sinners with forbearance, and to pity, when he visits and afflicts, inviting to repentance by severity.’ What did God omit, I ask, by afflicting, chastising, and calling Pharaoh to repentance? Do we not number ten plagues as inflicted in that land? If your definition stands good — that, ‘to have mercy is to immediately chastise and call the sinner’ — then assuredly God had mercy on Pharaoh. Why then does God not say, ‘I will have mercy on Pharaoh,’ instead of saying, ‘I will harden Pharaoh’s heart?’ For when he is in the very act of pitying him — that is, as you would have it, of afflicting and chastising him — he says, ‘I will harden him;’ that is, as you would have it, ‘I will do him good, and bear with him.’ What can be more monstrous to hear than this? What has now become of your tropes, your Origen, your Jerome, and your most approved doctors, whom the solitary individual, Luther, is rash enough to contradict? But it is the foolishness of the flesh which compels you to speak this way — sporting as she does with the words of God, which she cannot believe were spoken in earnest.
The text itself, therefore, as written by Moses, proves incontrovertibly that these tropes are mere inventions and of no worth in this place. And it proves something very different and far greater is meant by the words, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart” — over and above the bestowal of benefits, together with affliction and correction. For we cannot deny that both these expedients were tried in Pharaoh’s case, with the greatest care and pains.
For what wrath and correction could be more urgent than that which he was called to endure, while stricken with so many signs and plagues that even Moses himself testifies the like were never seen! No, even Pharaoh himself was moved by them more than once, as though he repented — though he was not moved to purpose, 483 nor abidingly. At the same time, what forbearance and kindness could be more abundant than that which so readily took away his plagues, so often forgave his sin, 484 so often restored his blessings, and so often removed his calamities? Each sort of dispensation, however, is unavailing. The Lord still says, ‘I will harden Pharaoh’s heart,’ You see, then, that even if your hardening and your mercy (that is, your glosses and tropes) were admitted in their highest degree, use, and exemplification — such as they are exhibited to us in Pharaoh — there still remains an act of hardening; and the hardening of which Moses speaks must be of one sort, and what you are dreaming of must be another.
SECT. 7. Necessity still remains, and you do not clear God.
But since I am fighting with men of fiction and with ghosts, let me also be allowed to conjure up my ghost and imagine what is impossible: that the trope which Diatribe sees in her dream is really used in this passage. Thus I may see how she evades being compelled to affirm that we do everything by God’s will alone, and by a necessity that is laid upon us; and I may also see how she excuses God from being the author 485 and blameworthy cause of our induration.
If it is true that God is said to harden us, when he bears with us through an exercise of his leniency, and does not quickly punish us, then each of the two following principles still remains.
First, man nevertheless necessarily serves sin. For, when it has been granted that Freewill cannot will anything good (and such a Freewill is what Diatribe has undertaken to prove), it is made no better by the forbearance of a long-suffering God, but is necessarily made worse, unless through the mercy of God, the Spirit is added to it. So that, all things still happen by necessity; as it respects us.
Secondly, God seems to be as cruel in bearing with men out of leniency, as he is thought to be through our representation that he hardens in the exercise of that inscrutable will of his. 486 For, since he sees that Freewill can will nothing good, and is made worse by his leniency in bearing with us, this very leniency presents him in the cruelest form, as one who is delighted with our calamities. For he could heal them if he would; and he could avoid bearing with us if he would; or rather, he could not bear with us, unless it were his will to do so. For who could compel him to do so, against His will? If that will therefore remains, without which nothing happens in the world; and if it is granted that Freewill can will nothing good — then all that is said to excuse God, and to accuse Freewill, is said to no purpose. For Freewill is always saying,
‘I cannot, and God will not: what can I do? Let him show me mercy, truly, by afflicting me; I am never the better for it, but must be made worse, unless he gives me the Spirit. This he does not give, which he would give, if it were his will to do so. It is certain, therefore, that he does not will to give it.’ 487
SECT. 8. Diatribe’s similes of sun and rain are rejected.
Nor are the similes which she adduces at all to the purpose when she says,
‘As mud is hardened by the self-same sun which melts wax; and as the cultivated ground produces fruit by means of the self-same shower from which the untilled ground sends forth thorns; even so, by the self-same forbearance of God, some are hardened and others converted.’
We do not divide Freewill into two different sorts, making one to be mud and the other wax; nor one to be cultivated ground, and the other neglected ground. But we speak of one sort of Freewill, which is equally impotent in all men, and which in these comparisons is nothing but the mud, nothing but the untilled ground, seeing that it cannot will good. Nor does Paul say that God, in his role as the potter, makes one vessel to honour and another to dishonour, out of a different lump of clay; but
