He allows his prophets and apostles to be expelled and murdered... He allows His Christians to suffer want, trouble, and misfortune in the world. He acts as He did in the days of His flesh, when John the Baptist had to lose his head for the sake of a desperate harlot, while He, the Savior and Helper, said nothing about it, departed thence in a ship and withdrew into the solitude of the wilderness... Hence the prophet Isaiah correctly says of God: 'Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself...' For in the kingdom of faith God wants to be small, but in the future kingdom of sight He will not be small but great. Then He will show that He saw the misery of His people and heard their crying and had a will that inclined to help them...(Luther ?).
The things which God wishes to be hidden are not to be examined; and the things which He has made manifest are not to be rejected, lest we as ingrates be improperly curious toward the former and damnably ungrateful for the latter (Ambrose, De Vocatione Gentium, Bk. 17).
Gerhard, Locus 7.21 (the Latin is sweet)* *Ambrose, De vocat. gent., bk. 1, ch. 7: “We should not investigate the things which God wanted to keep secret, but we must not deny what He has made manifest, lest being unlawfully curious about the former we are found damnably ungrateful of the latter.”
Now, although all the minds of men and of angels stand in wonderment in admiration of this mystery, that God has begotten a Son and that the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier, proceeds from the Father and the Son, yet we must concur in this, because, as has already been said so many times, we must believe concerning God as He has revealed Himself. The heathen wander about in their hearts seeking a god according to their own speculations; but the church knows the eternal and almighty God, our Creator, as He has revealed Himself. Although we cannot probe this mystery to the depths, yet in this life God has willed that there be at least a beginning of knowledge of this subject and that our worship be distinguished from the worship of false gods. He has given in His Word a revelation by sure testimonies. In this Word, like a fetus who draws nourishment in the womb of the mother through the umbilical cord and the organs of reproduction, we sit enclosed, drawing our knowledge of God and of life from the Word of God, so that we may worship Him as He has revealed Himself. (Melanchthon, Loci Theologici, Vol. 1 Chap 2).