Jeremiah 18:6

What do you mean, Paul? Am I to be subject to God in the same way the clay is to the potter? Yes, Paul says. For the distance between God and man is as great as the distance between the potter and the clay. Rather the distance is not merely as great but much greater. The potter and the clay are of one and the same substance. It is just as Job said: "I admit it as for those who dwell in houses of clay, because we are ourselves formed from the same clay." If a man seems more beautiful to look upon than clay, this difference was not produced by a change of nature but by the wisdom of the craftsman. Why? Because you are no different from the clay. If you refuse to believe this, let the coffins and the cremation urn convince you. And you will know that this is the truth if you have gone to visit the tombs of your ancestors. Therefore, there is no difference between the clay and the potter.

When, therefore, God speaks of an irremediable calamity, he does not say vessels of the potter, but an earthen vessel; when, for instance, he wished to teach the prophet and the Jews that he delivered up the city to an irremediable calamity, he bade him take an earthen wine-vessel, and crush it before all the people, and say, "Thus shall this city be destroyed, be broken in pieces." But when he wishes to hold out good hopes to them, he brings the prophet to a pottery, and does not show him an earthen vessel, but shows him a vessel of clay, which was in the hands of the potter, falling to the ground: and brings him to it saying, "If this potter has taken up and remodelled his vessel which has fallen, shall I not much rather be able to restore you when you have fallen?" It is possible therefore for God not only to restore those who are made of clay, through the laver of regeneration, but to bring back again to their original state, on their careful repentance, those who have received the power of the Spirit, and have lapsed.

Whatever is discerned by the eyes arrives to the judgment and understanding of the soul through every other sense, through hearing, smelling, tasting and touching, but is retained even more so by the mind. Thus, the prophet was commanded to go to the potter's house and there to hear the instructions of the Lord.

(Chapter XVIII — Verses 1-6) The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord, saying: Arise, and go down to the potter's house, and there you shall hear my words. So I went down to the potter's house, and behold, he was working on a wheel (or stones). And the vessel that he was making of clay with his hands was spoiled in his hands; so he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to him to do.

The prophet Jeremiah addresses the Jews in these words: "And I went down to the potter's house. Behold, he made a work on the stones. The vessel that he made in his hands was broken. Again he made another vessel, as it pleased him to make it. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 'Cannot I do to you as this potter, O house of Israel? Behold, you are like the clay of the potter in my hands.' " For I call your attention to this, that, as I said, after human transgression the great Hand was not content to leave as a trophy of victory its own work, debased by the evil one, who wickedly injured it from motives of envy, but moistened and reduced it to clay, as a potter breaks up a vessel, that by the remodeling of it all the blemishes and bruises in it may disappear, and it may be made afresh faultless and pleasing.