Jeremiah 18:10

"At the end I will speak against a nation or also against a kingdom." It will seem that "the end" is said simply. But it is said in this way. In the "I will speak against a nation or a kingdom," the "end" is of this sort: "I will raze" is said to the former nation as the "end"; to the second nation, "I will build you up." And again, "I will uproot" is said to the former ones, and "I will plant" to the second. Is it, then, that because the "end" has been spoken, the end must come to pass? God, though he does not repent, is said in Scripture to repent. And let us attend to the wording, that if we are able to give a defense of how these things are said, we may accept the account. "At the end I will speak," he says, "against a nation or against a kingdom, to remove them and to destroy them; and if that nation should turn from their evils of which I spoke against it, then I will repent concerning the evils which I purposed to do to them. And at the end I will speak concerning a nation or a kingdom, to be built up and to be planted, and they shall do wicked things before me, so as not to hear my voice, and I will repent concerning the good things which I said I would do to them." Concerning the repentance of God we are required to give a defense; for it seems to be a thing to be censured and unworthy — not only of God but even of the wise man — to repent. For I do not conceive of a wise man repenting; but the one who repents, so far as the customary use of the word goes, repents over not having deliberated well. But God, being foreknower of the things to come, cannot deliberate ill and, on account of this, repent. How, then, has the Scripture introduced him saying "I will repent" — not yet do I speak of what is said in the Books of Kingdoms in the "I repent that I anointed Saul as king," and what is said of him generally: "and repenting over the evils." But see what we are taught concerning God generally. In one place, "God is not as a man, to be torn apart, nor as a son of man, to be threatened," and we learn through this wording that God is not as a man; but through another, which says that God is as a man: "that the Lord your God disciplined you, as if a man should discipline his son," and again, "he bore with the ways of his son as a man does." So then, when the Scriptures speak of God theologically in himself and do not interweave his economy with human…