God so delights in thus baffling the pride of men, that Asa uses it as an argument to move God to deliver him in the strait he was in, when Zerah the Ethiopian came against him with a great multitude, when he was but a small point and centre in the midst of a wide circumference: 2 Chron. 14.11, 'Lord it is nothing with thee to help with many or with few.' Herby God sets off his own power, and evidenceth his superintendent care of his people. It was more signally the arm of God for Moses to confound Pharaoh with his lice and frogs, than if he had beaten him in a plain field with his six hundred thousand Israelites.
In the salvation of the soul. Our Saviour himself, though God, the great redeemer of the world, was so mean in the eyes of the world that he called himself 'a worm, and no man,'Ps 22.6, He picks out many times the most unlikely persons to accomplish the greatest purposes for men's souls .He lodgeth the treasures of wisdom in vessels of earth; he chose not the cedars of Lebanon, but the shrubs of the valley; not the learned Pharisees of Jerusalem, but the poor men of Galilee: 'Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, he has ordained praise to himself.'
The apostles' breeding was not capable of ennobling their minds, and fitting them for such great actions as Christ employed them in. But after he had new moulded them and inflamed their spirits, he made them of fishermen, greater conquerors of the world, than the most magnified grandees could pretend to.
Thus salvation is wrought by a crucified Christ: and that God who made the world by wisdom, would save it by the foolishness of preaching. And make Paul, the least of the apostles as he terms himself, more successful than those had been instructed at the feet of Christ. Works, volume 1 page 21,22
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