st ordained in this sea, in
sickness, thy ship is thy physician. _Thou hast made a way in the sea,
and a safe path in the waters, showing that thou canst save from all
dangers, yea, though a man went to sea without art_:[271] yet, where I
find all that, I find this added; _nevertheless thou wouldst not, that
the work of thy wisdom should be idle_.[272] Thou canst save without
means, but thou hast told no man that thou wilt; thou hast told every
man that thou wilt not.[273] When the centurion believed the master of
the ship more than St. Paul, they were all opened to a great danger;
this was a preferring of thy means before thee, the author of the means:
but, my God, though thou beest every where: I have no promise of
appearing to me but in thy ship, thy blessed Son preached out of a
ship:[274] the means is preaching, he did that; and the ship was a type
of the church, he did it there. Thou gavest St. Paul the lives of all
them that sailed with him;[275] if they had not been in the ship with
him, the gift had not extended to them. _As soon as thy Son was come out
of the ship, immediately there met him, out of the tombs, a man with an
unclean spirit, and no man could hold him, no not with chains._[276] Thy
Son needed no use of means; yet there we apprehend the danger to us, if
we leave the ship, the means, in this case the physician. But as they
are ships to us in those seas, so is there a ship to them too in which
they are to stay. Give me leave, O my God, to assist myself with such a
construction of these words of thy servant Paul to the centurion, when
the mariners would have left the ship, _Except these abide in the ship,
you cannot be safe_:[277] except they who are our ships, the physicians,
abide in that which is theirs, and our ship, the truth, and the sincere
and religious worship of thee and thy gospel, we cannot promise
ourselves so good safety; for though we have our ship, the physician, he
hath not his ship, religion; and means are not means but in their
concatenation, as they depend and are chained together. _The ships are
great_, says thy apostle, _but a helm turns them_;[278] the men are
learned, but their religion turns their labours to good, and therefore
it was a heavy curse when _the third part of the ships perished_:[279]
it is a heavy case where either all religion, or true religion, should
forsake many of these ships whom thou hast sent to convey us over these
seas. But, O my God, my God, since I have