Certain sermons, first preached, and after published at several times, by M. Thomas Gataker…Certaine sermons, first preached, and after published at severall times, by M. Thomas Gataker…

And^g because Pharaoh saith, The River is mine own; ^hTherefore, saith God, will I dry up the River. For the better understanding whereof, and of some other the like passages in the Prophet, I shall tell you that, that (it may be) will seem very strange to many of you, and yet to some here present peradventure as well known as to my self. There is some Country in the World where it never raineth all the year long.ⁱ Of some it is by some reported without certainty or truth. But it is certainly so in Egypt: and even Moses himself intimateth as much, where^k he saith that the Land of Canaan was therein unlike it.^l It never raineth there ordinarily from one end of the year to the other; And^m it is recorded therefore as a strange miracle, a thing never the like heard of, that some once in such a Kings reign it so did. But to make amends for that defect, and supply the want of it, once a year at a certain time the Riverⁿ Shichor or Nilus ^ooverfloweth all the low land, and so both filleth their Ponds and Cisterns, and watereth their grounds for them; and^p if it fall short, it produceth a dearth; if it stay over-long it delayeth seed-time, and so causeth a late Harvest. Now in regard hereof, because in Greece they had no such River that overflowed their land, but their grounds were watered with Rain from Heaven,^q the Egyptians used in mockery to tell the Greeks, that if God should forget to rain, they might chance to starve for it. They thought the rain was of God, but