It was spoken by Moses a little before His death, to establish the people in God’s merciful providence.  For in the same chapter, and in certain others that go before, He reckons the great travail and divers dangers with the extreme necessities that they had sustained in the desert the space of forty years, and yet, notwithstanding how constant God had been in keeping and performing His promise, for throughout all perils He had conducted them to the sight and borders of the promised land.  And so this Scripture more directly answers to the temptation of Satan; for thus does Satan reason, as before is said, “Thou art in poverty and hast no provision to sustain thy life.  Therefore God takes no regard nor care of Thee, as He doth over His chosen children.”  Christ Jesus answered:  “Thy argument is false and vain; for poverty or necessity precludes not the providence or care of God; which is easy to be proved by the people of God, Israel, who, in the desert, oftentimes lacked things necessary to the sustenance of life, and for lack of the same they grudged and murmured; yet the Lord never cast away the providence and care of them, but according to the word that He had once pronounced, to wit, that they were His peculiar people; and according to the promise made to Abraham, and to them before their departure from Egypt, He still remained their conductor and guide, till He placed them in peaceable possession of the land of Canaan, their great infirmities and manifold transgressions notwithstanding.”

Thus are we taught, I say, by Christ Jesus, to repulse Satan and his assaults by the Word of God, and to apply the examples of His mercies, which He has shown to others before us, to our own souls in the hour of temptation, and in the time of our trouble.  For what God doth to one at any time, the same appertains to all that depend upon God and His promises.  And, therefore, however we are assaulted by Satan, our adversary, within the Word of God is armor and weapons sufficient.  The chief craft of Satan is to trouble those that begin to decline from his obedience, and to declare themselves enemies to iniquity, with divers assaults, the design whereof is always the same; that is, to put variance betwixt them and God into their conscience, that they should not repose and rest themselves in His assured promises.  And to persuade this, he uses and invents divers arguments.  Sometimes he calls the sins of their youth, and which they have committed in the time of blindness, to their remembrance; very often he objects their unthankfulness toward God and present imperfections.  By sickness, poverty, tribulations in their household, or by persecution, he can allege that God is angry, and regard them not.  Or by the spiritual cross which few feel and fewer understand the utility and profit of, he would drive God’s children to desperation, and by infinite means more, he goeth about seeking, like a roaring lion, to undermine and destroy our faith.  But it is impossible for him to prevail against us unless