2. Rom. ix. 21.
POLITICAL WRITINGS 15
Thus it happens (but not without God's providence) that some are endowed with kingdoms and others made subject to kings.
B. The City of Man from Cain to Romulus
the two first parents of the human race, Cain was the first-bom, and he belonged to the city of men; after him was bora Abel, who belonged to the city of God. For as in the individual the truth of the apostle's statement is discerned,
"that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual," ^ whence it comes to pass that each man, being derived from a condemned stock, is first of all bora of Adam evil and caraal, and becomes good and spiritual only afterwards, when he is grafted into
Christ by regeneration: so was it in the human race as a whole. When these two cities began to run their course by a series of deaths and births, the citizen of this world was the first-born, and after him the stranger in this world, the citizen of the city of God, predestinated by grace, elected by grace, by grace a stranger below, and by grace a citizen above. By grace—for so far as regards himself he is sprung from the same mass, all of which is condemned in its origin; but God, hke a potter
(for this comparison is introduced by the apostle judiciously, and not without thought), of the same lump made one vessel to honour, another to dishonour.^ But first the vessel to dishonour was made, and after it another to honour. For in each individual, as I have already said, there is first of all that which is reprobate, that from which we a. City of God, XV, 1.
1. I. Cor. XV. 46.
2. Rom. ix. 21.