For who believes that because Isaac
is said to have had the preference of Ishmael, and Jacob of Esau, that
therefore Ishmael and Esau, who were quite as great princes in their
times as Isaac and Jacob, were to be doomed to eternal misery? Who
believes that this preference, and the Apostle alludes to no other, ever
related to the salvation of souls? Or rather, that it did not wholly
relate to the circumstance, that the descendants of Isaac and Jacob were
to preserve the church of God in the midst of the Heathen nations, and
that the Messiah was to come from their own line, instead of that of
their elder brethren. Rejection or reprobation too, in the sense in
which it is generally used by the advocates for the doctrine, is
contrary, in a second point of view, in the opinion of the Quakers, to
the sense of the comparison or simile made by the Apostle on this
occasion. For when a Potter makes two sorts of vessels, or such as are
mean and such as are fine and splendid, he makes them for their
respective uses. But he never makes the meaner sort for the purpose of
dashing them to pieces.
The doctrine therefore in dispute, if viewed as a doctrine of general
import, only means, in the opinion of the Quakers, that the Almighty has
a right to dispose of his spiritual favours as he pleases, and that he
has given accordingly different measures of his spirit to different
people: but that, in doing this, he does not exclude others from an
opportunity of salvation or a right to life.
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