Here is Charles Hodge showing that perhaps the Exodus story regarding God's hardening of Pharoah must have been cut out of Hodge's Bible:
"The decretive will of God concerns his purposes, and relates to the futurition of events. The preceptive will relates to the rule of duty for his rational creatures. He decrees whatever he purposes to effect or to permit. He prescribes, according to his own will, what his creatures should do, or abstain from doing. The decretive and preceptive will of God can never be in conflict. God never decrees to do, or to cause others to do, what He forbids. He may, as we see He does, decree to permit what He forbids. He permits men to sin, although sin is forbidden. This is more scholastically expressed by the theologians by saying, A positive decretive will cannot consist with a negative preceptive will; i.e., God cannot decree to make men sin. But a negative decretive will may consist with an affirmative preceptive will; e.g., God may command men to repent and believe, and yet, for wise reasons, abstain from giving them repentance.
The distinction between voluntas beneplaciti et signi, as those terms are commonly used, is the same as that between the decretive and preceptive will of God. The one referring to his decrees, founded on his good pleasure; the other to his commands, founded on what He approves or disapproves.
By the secret will of God, is meant his purposes, as still hidden in his own mind; by his revealed will, his precepts and his purposes, as far as they are made known to his creatures" (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Volume 1, pp. 403-404; underlining mine--CD).
