“I am truly sorry, my kinsmen in the flesh, that you, who have always considered yourselves the elder and chosen branches of the family of the world, should have been passed over; and that the Gentiles, whom you have always looked upon as the younger, should be now preferred.  But God is just—­He will not sanction unrighteousness in any.  Nor will he allow any choice of his to continue persons in favour, longer than, after much long suffering, he finds them deserving his support.  You are acquainted with your own history.  The Almighty, as you know, undoubtedly distinguished the posterity of Abraham, but he was not partial to them alike.  Did he not reject Ishmael the scoffer, though he was the eldest son of Abraham, and countenance Isaac, who was the younger?  Did he not pass over Esau the eldest son of Isaac, who had sold his birth-right, and prefer Jacob?  Did he not set aside Reuben, Simeon, and Levi, the three eldest sons of Jacob, who were guilty of incest, treachery, and murder, and choose that the Messiah should come from Judah, who was but the fourth?  But if, in these instances, he did not respect eldership, why do you expect that he will not pass you over for the Gentiles, if ye continue in unbelief?”

“But so true it is, that he will not support any whom he may have chosen, longer than they continue to deserve it, that he will not even continue his countenance to the Gentiles, though he has now preferred them, if by any misconduct they should become insensible of his favours. [99] For I may compare both you and them to an Olive-Tree.  If some of you, who are the elder, or natural branches, should be broken off, and the Gentiles, being a wild Olive-Tree, should be grafted in among you, and with you partake of the root and fatness of the Olive-Tree, it would not become them to boast against you the branches:  for if they boast, they do not bear the root, but the root them.  Perhaps, however, they might say, that you, the branches, were broken off, that they might be grafted in.  Well, but it was wholly on account of unbelief that you were broken off, and it was wholly by faith that they themselves were taken in.  But it becomes them not to be high-minded, but to fear.  For if God spared not you, the natural branches, let them take heed, lest he also spare not them.”

[Footnote 99:  Rom. 11. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.]

“Moreover, my kinsmen in the flesh, I must tell you, that you have not only no right to complain, because the Gentiles have been preferred, but that you would have no right to complain, even if you were to become the objects of God’s vengeance.  You cannot forget, in the history of your own nation, the example of Pharaoh:  you are acquainted with his obstinacy and disobedience.  You know that he stifled his convictions from day to day.  You know that, by stifling these, or by resisting God’s Holy Spirit, he became daily more hardened; and that by allowing himself to become daily more hardened,