[I love it when I see that the Reformers had a sense of humor. Notice the pun played on Pighius' name? He's a "pig" or "hog" who tries to root up the "words of the apostle" :) You'll notice that Calvin refers to the Roman Catholic Church as a "stinking sty of swine"!]
And yet Pighius,
by a senseless cavil, as by a hog's snout, tries to root up these words
of the apostle with all their positive plainness of meaning. He replies
that the election of grace here means that Jacob had merited no such
thing beforehand. But since the apostle commends this electing grace
of God on the very ground that while the one was elected, the other
was rejected, the vain fiction of Pighius concerning universal grace
falls to the ground at once. . . .
. . . he should have me a seconder of his grave admonition, if he would shew to his readers, as the Church, a sheepfold of Christ, and not a stinking sty of swine!
-- John Calvin, Calvin's Calvinism....
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The apostle places before us the two sons of Isaac,
who, when begotten together in the secret and sacred womb of nature,
as in a temple of God, as it were, were nevertheless, while in the womb
together, separated by the oracular word of God to an entirely different
destiny. Now the apostle assigns the cause of this difference (which
otherwise might have been sought in the merits of the lives of these
two children) to the hidden counsel of God: "That the counsel of
God might stand." We here distinctly learn that it was determined
of God to choose one only out of these two children. And yet Pighius,
by a senseless cavil, as by a hog's snout, tries to root up these words
of the apostle with all their positive plainness of meaning. He replies
that the election of grace here means that Jacob had merited no such
thing beforehand. But since the apostle commends this electing grace
of God on the very ground that while the one was elected, the other
was rejected, the vain fiction of Pighius concerning universal grace
falls to the ground at once. The apostle does not here simply say that
Jacob was appointed heir of life, that the election of God might stand,
but that his brother being rejected, his brother's birthright was conferred
on him. I am fully aware of what some other dogs here bark out,
and what are the murmurings of many ignorant persons, that the testimonies
of the apostle which we have cited do not treat of eternal life,
nor of eternal destruction, at all. But if such objectors held
the true principles of theology in any degree (which ought to be well
known by all Christian men), they would express their sentiments with
a little less confidence and insolence. For the answer of God to Rebecca's
complaint was designed to shew her that the issue of the struggling
which she felt in her womb would be that the blessing of God and the
covenant of eternal life would rest with the younger. And what did the
struggling itself signify, but that both the children could not
be heirs of the covenant at the same time, which covenant had already,
by the secret council of God, been decreed for the one?
****
And not
only this (saith the apostle), but when Rebecca also had conceived by
one (embrace), even by our father Isaac (for the children being not
yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of
God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that
calleth), it was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As
it is written. Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated" (Rom.
ix. 10).
Pighius would slide away under the excuse that this
is one of the most difficult places of Scripture. And suppose I concede
this; I do not thereby acknowledge that his impious barking is to be
endured, when he boastingly asserts that it is a labyrinth in which
no straight way can be found. What! are we to suppose that the Holy
Spirit, speaking by the mouth of the apostle, went out of His way or
lost Himself, so as to lead us aside and beyond what it is useful or
proper for us to know?
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Our very modest (!) opponent adds, "This is one of the
portions of Scripture which unlearned and unstable persons corrupt to
their own destruction." Now this is the very fact which, by the
plainest proof, he forces us to declare concerning himself, so lawlessly
does he twist and pervert the whole context of the Apostle Paul. And
when he exhorts his readers to hold themselves obedient to the Church,
in the interpretation of all such difficult passages of Scripture, he
should have me a seconder of his grave admonition, if he would shew
to his readers, as the Church, a sheepfold of Christ, and not a stinking
sty of swine! For which is Pighius' Church but that vortex, formed of
the congregated mass of all iniquities, and ever filling, but not yet
full, of every kind of error?
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