A Guide to Grand-Jury Men

Acknowledge God's hand upon us in afflictions.

...befalls them to be God's hand—even though they know the Devil and his devilish instruments have their hands in it. Job, in his trouble, said, "The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away" (Job 1:21) original: "Iob 1.12." The author cites verse 12, but the famous phrase "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away" is found in Job 1:21.. He called his terrors the "terrors of God" (Job 6:4), and he said that God scared him with dreams and terrified him with visions (Job 7:14). Joseph, in his troubles—even in his brothers' unnatural dealings—saw the Lord’s hand there (Genesis 45:5, 7), and said it was not they, but the Lord, who sent him into Egypt. Indeed, the Church in her great calamities, although she saw the instruments and felt their wrath, yet she said that God had done these things (Lamentations 1:15 and 2:1, 7). And this acknowledgment is sometimes even in the mouths of magicians original: "Witches." The author refers to Exodus 8:19, where Pharaoh’s magicians (often called "wise men" or "sorcerers" in early modern English) recognize the plague of gnats as divine., confessing that the evil befalling them and others is the very "finger of God" (Exodus 8:19). And