And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.
Ver. 7. God sent me before you.] He it is that by a powerful providence orders all the disorders of the world, by a certain counsel, to his own ends, and at length to his own glory. The hands that nailed Christ to the cross were "wicked hands." Act 2:23 And Judas was sent to "his own place," for being "guide to them that took Jesus." Act 1:16 And yet they did no more than what "God's hand and counsel determined before to be done" Act 4:28 for his glory, and the salvation of his elect. This Pliny derides as a strange doctrine, a but Plato hammers at it, when he saith, that God doth always φεωμετρειν. Indeed he doth all, in number, weight, and measure, as the wise man saith. He alters the property of his people's afflictions, and by an almighty alchemy turns dross to gold, &c. As a skilful apothecary, he makes of a poisoness viper a wholesome antidote.
a Irridendum vero curam agere rerum humanarum illud quicquid est summum. - Plin., lib. ii. cap. 7.