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 my ship and they theirs, I have them and they have thee, why are we yet no nearer land? As soon as thy Son's disciple had taken him into the ship, _immediately the ship was at the land whither they went_.[280] Why have not they and I this dispatch? Every thing is immediately done, which is done when thou wouldst have it done. Thy purpose terminates every action, and what was done before that is undone yet. Shall that slacken my hope? thy prophet from thee hath forbidden it. _It is good that a man should both hope, and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord._[281] Thou puttest off many judgments till the last day, and many pass this life without any; and shall not I endure the putting off thy mercy for a day? And yet, O my God, thou puttest me not to that, for the assurance of future mercy is present mercy. But what is my assurance now? what is my seal? It is