God hardens Pharaoh’s heart only after all the earlier plagues have been sent. Pharaoh had hardened his own heart before. God hardens no man’s heart who has not first hardened it himself. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 140—“Jehovah is never said to harden the heart of a good man, or of one who is set to do righteousness. It is always those who are bent on evil whom God hardens. Pharaoh hardens his own heart before the Lord is said to harden it. Nature is God, and it is the nature of human beings to harden when they resist softening influences.” The Watchman, Dec. 5, 1901:11—“God decreed to Pharaoh what Pharaoh had chosen for himself. Persistence in certain inclinations and volitions awakens within the body and soul forces which are not under the control of the will, and which drive the man on in the way he has chosen. After a time nature hardens the hearts of men to do evil.”
(_d_) Determinative,—God determines the bounds reached by the evil passions of his creatures, and the measure of their effects. Since moral evil is a germ capable of indefinite expansion, God’s determining the measure of its growth does not alter its character or involve God’s complicity with the perverse wills which cherish it.
_Job 1:12_—“_And Jehovah said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thy hand_”; _2:6_—“_Behold, he is in thy hand; only spare his life_”; _Ps. 124:2_—“_If it had not been Jehovah who was on our side, when men rose up against us; Then had they swallowed us up alive_”; _1 Cor. 10:13_—“_will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that ye may be able to endure it_”; _2 Thess. 2:7_—“_For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work; only there is one that restraineth now, until he be taken out of the way_”; _Rev. 20:2, 3_—“_And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years._”
Pepper, Outlines of Syst. Theol., 76—The union of God’s will and man’s will is “such that, while in one view all can be ascribed to God, in another all can be ascribed to the creature. But how God and the creature are united in operation is doubtless known and knowable only to God. A very dim analogy is furnished in the union of the soul and body in men. The hand retains its own physical laws, yet is obedient to the human will. This theory recognizes the veracity of consciousness in its witness to personal freedom, and yet the completeness of God’s control of both the bad and the good. Free beings are ruled, but are ruled as free and in their freedom. The freedom is not sacrificed to the control. The two coëxist, each in its integrity. Any doctrine which does not allow this is false to Scripture and destructive of religion.”