lity. His opponent is the Jew, who holds that God had so
tied His hands and lost His liberty in choosing Israel once for all for
His elect people, that every child of Abraham can at all times claim
the privileges of his election for no other reason than because of his
{10} genealogy. Such a doctrine of election does indeed destroy all
real moral responsibility in the subject of it, and all freedom of
moral choice in God. St. Paul, on the other hand, asserts that God
remains free and absolute to elect and to reject, irrespective of all
questions of race, where He will and as He will. The absolute reason
of God's selections, the reason why certain races and individuals are
chosen for special privileges and as special instruments of the divine
purpose, lies in a region into which we cannot penetrate. But because
God has shown us His moral character and requirement, we can know how,
and how only, we may hope to retain any position which God has given
us; it is by exhibiting moral correspondence with His purpose--that is
faith--or malleability under His hand.

This is a doctrine then which lays upon 'the elect,' at any particular
moment, the moral responsibility of correspondence with a divine
purpose. In a word, St. Paul asserts divine sovereignty in such a
sense as vindicates instead of destroying moral responsibility, while
his opponent is claiming for Israel a sort of freedom from being
interfered with, which would really destroy their moral responsibility
altogether. {11} Thus, as has already been pointed out[5], nothing can
well be more important than to keep clearly in mind, here as elsewhere,
_with whom_ St. Paul is arguing.

4. It is worth while remarking, before we apply ourselves to St.
Paul's argument in detail, that it is essentially 'apologetic': it is a
justification of God in view of certain felt difficulties: and it is an
argument _ad hominem_, that is an argument with certain people on their
own assumptions, the sort of argument which takes the form of saying,
'you at least have no right on your own principles to urge such and
such difficulties.' Now we are bound to recognize how very important
at all periods this _ad hominem_ appeal is: how very important it is to
get men to see what their own principles really involve. A great part
of the evil of the world comes through people not thinking out what
they really mean and believe. But on the other hand, this sort of
argument, which proceeds upon