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Few things are easier than to perceive, to extol the goodness of God, the bounty of Providence, the beauties of nature, when all things go well, when our health, our spirits, our circumstances, conspire to fill our hearts with gladness, and our tongues with praise. This is easy, this is delightful, None but they who are sunk in sensuality, sottishness, and stupefaction, or whose understandings are dissipated by frivolous pursuits; none but the most giddy and insensible can be destitute of these sentiments. But this is not the trial, or the proof. It is in the chambers of sickness; under the stroke of affliction; amidst the pinchings of want, the groans of pain, the pressures of infirmity; in grief, in misfortune; through gloom and horror — that it will be seen, whether we hold fast our hope, our confidence, our trust in God; whether this hope and confidence be able to produce in us resignation, acquiescence, and submission. And as those dispositions, perhaps from the comparative perfection of our moral nature, could not have been exercised in a world of unmixed gratification, so neither would they have found their proper office or object in a state of strict and evident retribution — that is, in which we had no sufferings to submit to but what were evidently and manifestly the punishment of our sins. A mere submission to punishment, evidently and plainly such, would not have constituted — at least, would very imperfectly have constituted — the disposition which we speak of — the true resignation of a Christian.

(Paley.)

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KJV: Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

WEB: Be subject therefore to God. But resist the devil, and he will flee from you.