So Was The Red Sea Impossible For The Israelites To Pass
Through, The Hills And Rocks Lay So On The One Side, And Their Enemies
Compassed Them On The Other.
So was it impossible that the walls of
Jericho should fall down, being neither undermined nor yet rammed at
with engines, nor yet any man's wisdom, policy, or help, set or put
thereunto.
Such impossibilities can our God make possible. He that
held the lion's jaws from rending Daniel asunder, yea, or yet from once
touching him to his hurt, cannot He hold the roaring cannons of this
hellish force? He that kept the fire's rage in the hot burning oven
from the three children that praised His name, cannot He keep the
fire's flaming blasts from among His elect?
Now is the road fraught with lusty soldiers, labourers, and mariners,
who are fain to stand to their tackling, in setting to every man his
hand, some to the carrying in of victuals, some munitions, some oars,
and some one thing some another, but most are keeping their enemy from
the wall of the road. But to be short, there was no time misspent, no
man idle, nor any man's labour ill-bestowed or in vain. So that in
short time this galley was ready trimmed up. Whereinto every man
leaped in all haste, hoisting up the sails lustily, yielding themselves
to His mercy and grace, in Whose hands is both wind and weather.
Now is this galley a-float, and out of the shelter of the road; now
have the two castles full power upon the galley; now is there no remedy
but to sink. How can it be avoided? The cannons let fly from both
sides, and the galley is even in the middest and between them both.
What man can devise to save it? There is no man but would think it
must needs be sunk.
There was not one of them that feared the shot which went thundering
round about their ears, nor yet were once scarred or touched with five
and forty shot which came from the castles. Here did God hold forth
His buckler, He shieldeth now this galley, and hath tried their faith
to the uttermost. Now cometh His special help; yea, even when man
thinks them past all help, then cometh He Himself down from Heaven with
His mighty power, then is His present remedy most ready. For they sail
away, being not once touched by the glance of a shot, and are quickly
out of the Turkish cannons' reach. Then might they see them coming
down by heaps to the water's side, in companies like unto swarms of
bees, making show to come after them with galleys, bustling themselves
to dress up the galleys, which would be a swift piece of work for them
to do, for that they had neither oars, masts, sails, nor anything else
ready in any galley. But yet they are carrying into them, some into
one galley, and some into another, so that, being such a confusion
amongst them, without any certain guide, it were a thing impossible to
overtake the Christians; beside that, there was no man that would take
charge of a galley, the weather was so rough, and there was such an
amazedness amongst them.
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