2. The first thing to be observed and admired, is the mutual relation subsisting between the different parts of created nature. Thus the heavens generate rains, dews, winds, and cooling breezes in the air; and then send them down to us. So the earth produces its fruits in the air; and they bud, blossom, and ripen, and are nourished by the air, without which they would quickly languish and die.

3. Among the productions of the watery element, are the rivers. In one place springs up the Rhine, in another the Danube; here is the Elbe, there the Nile. As from one bough of a great and fruitful tree, spring many little branches, and much fruit; so one great branch of the world of waters, as the Rhine or the Danube, is connected with rivulets, lakes, and fountains, which all flow into it.

4. As for the living creatures that [pg 447] arise from the sea, they are without number, God having blessed it with so great fruitfulness, both for its vast extent, and the use and benefit of mankind, that out of this vast repository there arise, at certain seasons, prodigious quantities of fish, varying in their kinds every month. For such is the nature of sea-fish, that they are not to be caught except at certain seasons.

5. And here it is observable, that the sea and all its productions, have their proper order, time, and motion, appointed to them by God. So in the heavens, the stars have their stated times, regular order, motion, rising, and setting. The earth at certain seasons produces different fruits and vegetables; and, in that sense, is in perpetual motion, and never rests until it has brought forth all its fruits. So likewise the sea has its laws of motion, flux and reflux, and produces all its fruits at such appointed seasons as may best serve the use and benefit of man.

6. Let us now take a survey of the wonderful power and wisdom of God in the sea, and inquire what spiritual inferences may be drawn from it. “Who hath shut up the sea with doors,” saith God to Job, “when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb? When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, and brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed? Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?” Job 38:8-11, 16. In these words, God points out the great and dreadful ocean as an obscure image and resemblance of his unsearchable and incomprehensible power. For it is a very surprising miracle, that God should by his word alone, as with bars and doors, inclose the sea so strongly, that it should not be able to overflow its bounds. No less wonderful is its ebbing and flowing; so that the sea, being, as it were, conscious and mindful of the divine command, so soon as it touches the earth, seems to fly back and retire in a fright, as at the presence of God himself, like Jordan and the Red Sea. Josh. 3:16; Ps. 114:3. “He gathereth the waters of the sea together, as a heap; he layeth up the deep in storehouses.” Ps. 33:7.

7. God tells Job, that he has “made the clouds to be the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it” (Job 38:9); which plainly appears, when its waves roll and toss themselves up to the clouds, that, as it were, receive them into their embraces, and cover them with darkness and horror, so that they seem to be blended with each other. Then appear the mighty wonders of God, which a man cannot behold without fear and astonishment, as it is described in Psalm 107:25, etc.

8. To this work of the fifth day, belongs also that passage of the Psalmist: “So is this great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts. There go the ships; there is that leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein.” Ps. 104:25, 26.

9. As for the greatness of the sea, who can but admire the power of God, which, notwithstanding that so much water flows into the sea every day, and has, from the beginning, yet suffers not its waters to exceed their appointed quantity? And though its waves sometimes rage and swell, and lift themselves like mountains; yet are [pg 448] they quickly put at rest, and settled within their proper bounds. These are clear demonstrations of the mighty power of God.

10. Here too we may not improperly speak of the islands. Who can behold, without wonder, several large and populous countries, and entire kingdoms, lying in the midst of the sea, as if they had been planted there? Who can tell on what foundations they are built, and what it is that keeps them immovable in the midst of violent storms and tempests? Some of them, encompassed with vast rocks growing out of the sea, seem to be built and founded on them. Upon the whole, their fruitfulness, tillage, and the occasion and manner of their being peopled, are what we may rather admire than understand. So that the sea is as populous as the earth. For as the earth is much less than the sea, it is probable that God would not suffer the greatest part of the globe to be uninhabited, and therefore he planted it with islands: so that none of the miracles and blessings which he works in the sea, might escape the observation of mankind. Therefore, to these islanders also did he send the Gospel of truth, by his holy Apostles, “shaking both the sea and the dry land, after the Desire of all nations was come.” Hag. 2:6, 7.

11. No less wonderful is the vast multitude of creatures that inhabit the sea; for some affirm that there is as great abundance and variety of them in the sea, as on the land. Who can behold without astonishment, prodigious shoals of fish rising from the depths of the sea, like a flock of sheep, and offering themselves to the use and necessities of mankind? So that the sea is a great storehouse of God, out of which he feeds the greatest part of mankind, and out of which, too, he produces many other excellent works, such as pearls, amber, and coral.