An exposition with practical observations continued upon the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, fortieth, forty-first, and forty-second,…

Secondly, That he can make the most harmless and hurtless creatures to hurt us. How powerful is God, who can crush the strongest man on earth by the weakest of his creatures! There was much of God in it, that some of his people of old, through faith, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant (being 'tis like before, of a fearful spirit) in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens (Heb. 11.33, 34.) And is there not much of God in it, when any sort of creatures weak, and inconsiderable in themselves, are armed by him to conflict with and get the victory over his strongest and proudest enemies!

Fourthly, Note; God can make a time of trouble terrible.

He hath a reserve of snow and hail in his treasury against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war. As God can make a day of trouble comfortable to his servants; he can be a hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, and as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land (Isa. 32.2.) All which metaphors signify one and the same thing, that Christ will be comfortable to his people either immediately or by provision of means in the most troublesome times, there intended by wind and tempest, by a dry place and a weary land. And that he had been all this to his in such a day, the same prophet assures us (chap. 25.4.) Thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall. The History of the taking of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, set down by Jeremiah, tells us, that he was fully heard and answered, when he p•ayed (chap. 17.17.) Be not thou a terror to me: thou art my hope in the day of evil. Jeremiah found the Lord very favourable to him, and giving him favour in the eyes of the enemy, when