OF THE PLAGUE.

earth, so that His people, by the memory of these prodigies, would never despair of God's power, and the reprobate would see their own perpetual destruction under the invincible hand of the Lord. And if there were natural causes for these things to happen, then surely they also existed when the staff of Moses is suddenly changed into a serpent, and again suddenly into a staff, and when the staff of Aaron is not only changed into a serpent, but also devours the serpents which the Egyptian magicians had made. Nor should it be referred any less among natural causes that the hand of Moses becomes leprous and is immediately restored. What has nature ever wrought that is similar to these deeds? Or why do we say that nature did this by the intervention of its own causes, when nature has barely experienced anything at which it is more stunned, and is compelled to acknowledge being held like a horse by a bridle by a superior power. If this holds, all things must be referred to the account of nature, such that no place is left for miracles, and for those works which God performs whether the order of nature is spurned or left behind: and it must be said that the hand of Jeroboam withered by natural causes, that Miriam the sister of Moses, Gehazi, and King Uzziah were made lepers by natural causes, that the chasm of the earth which swallowed Dathan, Abiram, and Korah was natural, contrary to what Moses was saying, that they would die by a new kind of death, that the sea stood suspended like two walls naturally for the passing Jews, and finally that all those things by which He terrifies the impious and comforts His own are natural, so that He may demonstrate His omnipotence in both. What compels us to search everywhere for causes placed in nature?