some use or other and also the secret vertue that is betwixt the Loadstone and the two Polar points the Artick and the Antartick which keeps the Mariners Card most firm and stable in all his Navigations and courses that hee steers and shapes if this art were not lawful I will give you now in a few particulars a Praelibamen or taste of those various uses and singular benefits that mankinde generally hath of and by the Seas 1. All the Nations of the world have this benefit by the Seas They yield them an easy quick and speedy passage or transportation to and fro by which every place or part in the world partakes of what one another enjoys Hereby are earthly blessings transmitted unto one another Esau's earthly portion or blessing was the fatness of the Earth plenty of corn wine and oyle c. Gen. 27.39 and these good things that are in the world some in one part and some in another are carried into those parts that are wanting and destitute of them Now speed is a great advantage in all businesses for quick dispatch of things What one says of the heavenly bodies I may in one sense as well say of the Art of Navigation Heavenly bodies do convey their sweet influences non qua calidae sed qua velocis motus England thou art happy that thou art an Island and at a great distance from the cruelty of the dark corners of the Earth And wee know that all Nations are carefull to keep up and maintain their Stationary post both in England France Spain Italy Turky Germany and the rest of them to that end the Nations may bee quickly informed in all secular occurrences or all assaults by the breaking in of forein powers And of the same use are the Seas upon which and through which do our shipping and the shipping in all Nations fly upon their canvas wings and are by good winds in a little time carried unto the furthest ports in the world and when fraughted if weather favour as speedily returned 2. They quell the rage of the hottest Element and are very useful and instrumental to keep sublunary mansions from being converted into cinders and ashes 3. They part Nations from one another If all the world were in one continent it is more than probable that sin which has brought in such an hurtfull Principle into the minds of men that there would bee nothing but a daily killing slaughtering and murthering of one another Now God might if hee had pleased have laid all the whole world in one continent and not separated one Nation from another as hee has done What intrudeing is there upon one anothers borders what fireing of Towns what burning of Villages what slaughtering at their pleasure is there evermore amongst those that are in one Continent would it not bee thus every where were there not a Sea betwixt them to part them from pulling one another by the throat And hee might have given commission to the great waters to have lain upon the back of the world and not in the heart of it as they doe but the Lords unsearchable and incomprehensible Wisdom has contrived all things for the good and conveniency of mankind blessed and ever blessed bee his holy name Does not the great infinite and wonderful Wisdom of God appear in this in that hee hath divided and taken the world and broken it into many pieces for one people to live in one place and another people in another of it Look but into some great continents in the world where there be several Kings Princes Dukes and Emperours and they are never at quiet but in a perpetual hostility and enmity one against the other witness France and Spain the Turk and the Persian and divers other parts in the world 4. The ebbing and flowing of the Seas are of marvellous use and benefit unto all the Haven-towns in all Nations whatsoever whether East or West North or South far or near by this ships come in with the flood and goe out with the ebbe Gen. 41.13 Zebulun that dwelt at the Haven of the Sea found the benefit of the fluxes and the re-fluxes of the Seas by which their ships came in and by which they went out How useful is the flowing What this ebbing and flowing of the Seas it as to the natural causes of it none knows the supernatural every one can tell Some fictitiously attribute it unto an Angel whose office is as it was in the Pool of Bethesda to move the waters to and fro Other some have these guesses at it that there are certain subterranean or under Sea-fires that give the Seas their motion One calls the ebbing and flowing of the Sea Arcanum naturae magnum natures great secret Contra rationem nemo sobrius Contra Scripturam nemo Christianus Contra Ecclesiam nemo pacificus They that are wise may see both reason and Scripture in the proof of the point and re-flowing of the Seas both to London in the Thames and Hull in Humber besides many other ports and places in this Land and Nation where ships are continually comming in and going out Some attribute the flowings and the re-flowings of the Seas which is a most wonderful thing to the various effects of the divers appearances of the Moon and this is not improbable not unlikely for experience teacheth us that according to the courses of the Moon tides they are both ordered and altered from whence wee may positively conclude that the waters have their attraction from the Moon And indeed it is the judgement of the best Philosophers that the Moon by her operation sets the Sea the worlds great wonder on ebbing and flowing Aristotle because hee could not find out the natural cause of the Seas flowing and ebbing told the Sea that if hee could not comprehend the reason of it the Sea should comprehend him and out of grief immediately hee threw himself into the Sea Others again think that the final cause of the Seas motion was ordained by God for the purging and preserving of the waters as the aire has its purgings by and from the winds which are as brooms and besoms to sweep away all the contagious vapours and infectious savours that climb up into it Standing waters wee know are apt to putrify corrupt and stink if it were not for sweet springs that feed them but what are small Rivulets that are extracted and strained waters through the veins of the Earth though out of all the Nations in the world to the great and wide Sea they are but as the drop of a bucket or a mole-hill to a Mountain 5. The Sea affords all mankind this great singular and publique benefit in respect it yields them such an innumerable variety of all sorts and kinds of Fish both great and small which is a great supply to many Towns Cities and Countries both in the Eastern Western Northern and Southern parts of the world And of these are killed infinitely every
Meadows Vineyards flourishing Pastures upon which hee looks a while with great delight and on he goes again and meets with fruitfull Orchards green Forrests sweet Rivers with silver streams and behaves himself as before and at length he meets with Desarts hard wayes rough and unpleasant soul and overgrown with Bryars and Thorns here he is intangled for a time to stay labouring and sweating with grief to get out of them and after our he neither remembers his toyl nor the objects that he saw yet doth many of them learn out of it and from the creature that there is a God God upbraided Israel for their stupidity and will hee excuse you think you they had before them the Oxe and the Ass which were creatures that they might have learned wisdome enough out of Isa 1.3 The Oxe knoweth his owner and the Ass his Masters crib but Israel doth not know my people doth not consider The word consider comes of con and sydus and so signifies say some not one bare simple stella but a multitude of stars intimating that it is not a bare transient aspect or flash but an abiding and dwelling upon a thing that is to bee pondered and considered of as a Bee will stick upon the flower till shee extract honey out of it God complains again in Jer. 8.7 The Stork in the Heaven knoweth her appointed times and the Turtle and the Crane and the Swallow observe the time of their coming but my people know not the judgement of the Lord. God puts an En ecce exprobrantis upon them for their Caecity and inobservantness of the works of God And will not the Lord say to you one day that go down into the Seas and see his creatures and store-houses that are both in the waters and on the land viz. Fish in the Sea Beasts of the field and Fowls of the air c. that in respect you have made no soul-profiting uses of them they shall bee bitter and tart aggravations of your future condemnation Oh lament lament your blindness and inexcusable stupidity that you can look upon the wonderful works of God and go so boldly and undauntedly and unaffectedly amongst them without wondring at the wisdome of God and reading of Divinity lectures out of them Can you look upon the Leviathan when hee playeth in the Seas or upon the Trunked Behemoth when hee feedeth upon the land and not stand admiring and blessing of the Creator of them Can you look upon the many and strange kinde of Fishes that bee in the Seas of creatures that bee on the land and Fowls that bee in the air and not bee affected and drawn out with new love new fear and new obedience to serve your good God Ah Sea-men Sea-men I will deal plainly with you If I should see the Lord feeding of Sparrows and cloathing Lilies I should bee both stupid and faithless if I learned not that his providence were the same over mee both to cloath mee and to feed mee If that I should look upon the Heavens and see nothing in them but that they are beyond my reach the Horse and the Mâ—â—e would see that as well as I. May not many Sea-men bee painted as the Egyptians were wont to set out an inconsiderate man by To set such an one out in his colours they pictured him with a Globe of the earth before him and his looking-glass behinde him What Solomon sayes in Prou. 17.24 I shall say unto those that travel Wisdome is before him that hath understanding but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth If that thou seest nothing in the earth but a place to walk in or to take thy rest on the Beasts of the earth and Fowls of the air sees that as well as thou If thou canst see nothing in the Sea to admire God for but a place to swim and sail ships in the fowls that daily sit upon the floods see that as well as thou If thou seest nothing in the Bee and Bird but that they are winged other creatures see that as well as thou doest though not to admire them how they sail thorow the vast sea of air that when the Bee is out in the flowry field shee should bee able to steer directly homewards again to her hive and the Bird when abroad to her nest though at never so a geat a distance What shall I say If thou seest nothing in gorgeous apparel but pride the proud Peacock sees that as well as thee Laudatus paevo extendit pennas If of all thy meat and drink that thou livest upon thou knowest nothing but the pleasure and the sweetness that is in them unto thy taste the Hog and the Swine have as great a portion as thou hast If of hearing seeing smelling tasting feeling bee all the delight that thou canst finde in the works of God the dumb creatures do far excel thee in this and thy heart is little better than the heart of a Beast 2 Vse of Exhortation If it bee thus that you that go in the Seas have the fullest and greatest aspect of the Lords works and wonders both in the Sea and Land suffer mee but to leave two things with you and I will pray unto my good God that they may bee profitable unto you and do some good upon you Oculi idcirco dati sunt corpori ut per eos intutamur creaturam ac per hujusmodi mirabilem harmoniam agnoscamus â—pificem 1. Labour for a conscientious eye There is an eye in the world that makes not a little conscience of that glorious sight and Chrystalline humour that God hath put into it for to behold his works with all What a large Book is the Earth that the eye ranges over and how large a Volume is the Sea thorow which you sail certainly you might learn more than you do and bee better scholars in Christs School than you are They that live pind up in one Nation or Country are far from the view of the Creation for they stand but as a man that comes to some great Earl's or Knight's house and stands in the Court now unless hee be invited in hee sees not the sumptuous rooms and places that bee within it onely at a distance hee sees a little of the outward superstructure but they that go into the Sea from Country to Country they see the riches of the Earth the beauties wealth honours and strength of Nations and Kingdoms and truly let mee say thus much that they that see all these things and learn nothing out of them as incentives to love and fear their God Creatio Mundi Scriptura Dei. Vniversus mundus Deus explicatus The whole Creation is nothing else but Gods excellent hand-writing or the Sacred Scripture of the Most high The Heavens the Earth and the waters are his three large Volumes or the three great leaves in which all the creatures are contained and the creatures themselves are as so many
night and so consequently is able at his pleasure to make it stormy or calm comfortable or dreadful It is the counsel of the Wise man and I present it to you for I know none stand more need of it than your selves Prov. 23.17 Bee thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long None knows what may happen unto them before the Sun goes down 4. If you would prepare for storms take fast hold on God by the hand of faith before they come and also when they come Job 13.15 Though hee stay mee yet will I trust in him Though hee should bring tempest after tempest upon thee let not thy hold go but take as fast hold of him as ever wrestling Jacob did upon his God and thou wilt finde both safety and comfort enough 5. Would you know now Sailors why the Lord sends many storms upon you And would you know also what Gods ends and aims are in storms I will give you in a few grounds to those preceding ones that I presented unto you and the first will bee this 1. That Gods aim in stormy winds is not alwayes for destruction but sometimes for trial Matth. 8.25 Gold is often thrown into the fire but what is the Goldsmiths end in so doing not that it should bee consumed but fined 2. God sits by his blowing blasts I know not whether it would bee worse or no that the heavens should alwayes look upon us with one face or ever varying for as continuall change of weather causes uncertainty of health so a permanent settledness of one season causeth the certainty of distempers perpetual moysture dissolves us perpetual heat evaporates or inflames us cold stupifies us and drought obstructs and withers us and stormy winds that are sent out upon the Seas you sit not more carefully by to hand in your Top-gallant Sails or Top-sails when winds blow high and fresh than hee doth sit by the winds to keep them from destroying of you The Goldsmith sits not more carefully by that precious metal to watch its first melting than hee doth by the winds lest that they should wrong your vessels This God doth for those that fear him in the Seas 3. Storms come for improvement God would have the grace of faith and of patience exercised Matth. 8.25 2. It will not bee amiss if that you that are the Great Statesmen of our land prepare for storms It is true you are out of the wind-blowing Sea blasts whilst on land but your gallant and sumptuous warlike Sea-boats are in them oftentimes at Sea Well all that I shall say unto your Honours is this Prepare to meet ill news and sad and dismal accidents to befall them now and then that comes in an hour that usually falls not out in an hundred And grant that ships bee cast away It was a brave minde that Antisthenes was of when hee desired nothing else in all the world to make his life either comfortable or happy with but the spirit of Socrates which was of that temper that it could cheerfully bear the saddest tydings that ever came or the greatest evills that ever befell man or that any other fatal Omen do befall them hee that trusteth in the Lord shall not bee moved at it Psal 112.7 Hee shall not bee afraid of evil tydings his heart is fixed trusting in the Lord. 3. It will not bee out of my way to give the great Merchants of our land the same advertisement to prepare for storms Gentlemen It is with your ships at Sea if but without Convoyes as it was with Aesops Geese and Cranes that were feeding in one Pasture altogether Venatoribus autem visis understand Pyrats the Cranes being light bodied volatiles betook themselves to their wings and would not stay to answer the reckoning but the Geese that were heavy bodied Sailors capti fuerunt were taken and knocked in the head by the Hunters The best Sailor escapes when the slowest falls into the Pyrats hands Great losses come upon you many times and how will you take and entertain the sad news that shall and oftentimes doth come to your ears of one ship lost in the North another in the South may bee one in the East and another in the West if you bee not prepared for this news it will bee too heavy a triall for you to bear When you send out your ships prepare for the worst and expect not alwayes the best and I will assure you that what ever contingencies befall you they will bee the more comportable for your spirits I have great ventures at Sea some in one bottome and some in another some in the Eastern parts of the world other some in the Western some in the Northern and some in the Southern and if the Lord will bee pleased to return them in safety I shall bee very thankful unto my God and if not I will pray for patience and strength to submit to his will As soon as ever the Souldier hath intelligence of the enemies advancing towards him hee prepares for the battel at the sound of Trumpet and the beat of Drum and on goes his best arms and armour for his defence and safeguard and the like provisions should you make in my apprehensions for the ships that you have out in perilous Seas But to proceed to the next words of counsel that I would present unto our Sea-men it will bee shortly this 3. And lastly Bear storms stoutly when dangerous and perilous sinking and shipwracking storms and tempests are upon you bear them couragiously with patience silence and without all murmuring or repining and without all passion choler distemper or any other unquietness of spirit or thinking hardly of the Lord. When David was under affliction wee hear no more of him but this Psal 39.9 I was dumb I opened not my mouth because thou didst it Plutarch in a consolatory Epistle to his good wife on the death of a child amongst many other arguments sent her this Wee must alwayes think well of what the gods do And will not you Sea-men think well of the Lord when it goes either ill or well with you at any time Vlysses encouraged his companions thus when in a raging storm upon the Sea 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Sirs saith he Wee are not now to learn what sorrows are When ill news came to Eli how did he bear it 1 Sam. 3.18 And hee said It is the Lord let him do what seemeth him good Paul and Silas were so far from murmuring and repining that they were very cheerful when in the Dungeon and Philpot and his fellows when in the Cole-house and the many Martyrs when in the flames It was a gallant speech of Stilpo that great Philosopher when King Demetrius had sacked that famous City of Megaera to the very foundation hee asked the Philosopher what losses hee had sustained none at all quoth hee for war can make no spoyl of vertue Jewel when banished comforted himself with this
They who â—oe really call upon the Name of the Lord in dreadful storms and dangers do acknowledge him to be omniscient one who knows best of all their wants and necessities 2. They acknowledge God to bee Omnipotent and one who is able to supply all their wants in their greatest straights that ever they are surrounded with 3. They acknowledge him to bee an all-good and one who is very merciful and bountiful and upon these considerations any one may take encouragment to pray That the Sea-man commonly makes the Observ 8 Lord many serious and solemn vows and protestations in the time of calamity I have read of some Mariners that vowed wonderful largely when their ship lives were at the stake what they would do for their God whom they served they told him if ever they got to shoar alive they would sacrifice a Candle to him that should have as much tallow in it as the main-mast was in length and substance but when got safe to Land they forgot their vow and one of them being more religious than the rest begun to tell them of it and to prompt them to itâ— push quoth the Sailors we are now at Land and onâ— small candle of eight in the pound will serve the turn which afterwards hee never performs Then they cry c. As if David should have said in time of danger they will both protest and vow nay and almost swear too that they will turn gratious and pretious souls but when the storm is over their vows are all forgotten and they are at their swearing again Jonah 1.16 Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a Sacrifice unto the Lord and made vows It seems that this is a very common thing amongst them Plato had perswaded Alcibiades to live justly and honestly in the world during the whole course of his life and when hee protested and vowed to him that he would do so I pray God said Socrates that hee would once begin So our Sailors make large vows in dreadful storms when the ship is upon Sands or when shee is leaky and half full of water and they tell God very largely what paenitents and what religious people they will bee if hee will but graunt them their lives but I may say unto them pray God they would once begin there is not a people under the heavens that are slower to good and that have a less skill in good than they are they are couzen Germans to Seneca's Semper victuri and I pray God that they hit on it before they dye Sailors are like Nebucadnezzar's image in storms whose head was all of pure gold the arms of silver the thighs of brass the legs of earth and clay They are gold and silver in storms but at Land and in calms meer dross and brass It is with Sailors in storms as it was with Israel at that dreadful time of Gods descending out of the heavens upon Mount Sinai Deut. 5.27 Go thou near and hear all that the Lord our God shall say and speak thou unto us all and wee will hear it and do it Here was a large protestation you will say Well vers 29. carries sad tidings in it Oh that there were such an heart in them that they would fear mee and keep all my Commandments alwaies that it might bee well with them and with their children for ever The Sea-mans large promise to his God in a storm is like to false fire to a great Peece which dischargeth a rich expectation with a bad report Siquidem vovens non solvens quid nisi pejero Bern. Hee that vows in storms and does not perform his vows when delivered out of them forswears himself before the Lord. If there were but such an heart in Sailors as they pretend to have when in storms I am confident that no people under the heavens would outstrip them in piety That the Sea-man never takes up the Observ 9 duty of Prayer but when hee sees himself involved in an unlikely estate and condition of his ever recovery Then they cry This was an unsavory saying of one of the Sailors to the rest of his companions when labouring under a most dolorous storm My lads bee of good cheer I will go take a turn at prayer both for you and for my self for I am very confident that the Lord will hear mee because I am nâ— common beggar I used prayer as little as any man in the world I have observed it that at such times when wee have been thrown on Sands and when our sails have been rent in pieces by the violence of storm even as one would tear careless paper and linnen that then they have prayed Jonah 1.5 Then the Mariners were affraid and cryed every man unto his God You should never have heard those Sailors at Prayer that Jonah was amongst if that their lives had not been in that dreadful jeopardy It was a graceless saying of one Sailor when in a most inevitable danger that hee had never used any prayer for seaven years together but hee was now fallen into that distress that hee must bee forced to do that which hee neither liked nor never used to do Sailors are not unlike to Agrippa's Dormouse that would not nor could not bee awaked till shee was thrown into the boyling Copper and then the kettle rang with her dolorous Sonnets Ego uror Ego uror Alass I burn I burn It is danger makes many in the Sea go to prayer and not grace conscience or the fear of God The Sailors life is not unlike to Herman Biswick's of whom it is said that it was his judgment that the world was eternal and that there was neither Angels nor Devils Heaven nor Hell nor future life but that the souls of men perished with their bodies And if our Sea-men hold but of this strain they may live as they please But grant they doe not their prayerless lives tell us that the thoughts of Hell and the thoughts of God and of another world is not in their minds they have not another place in their eye but only this present world One of the sadest things that my soul has mourned for and at whilst in the Sea was my serious consideration of the many Vessels that go in the great deeps that neither do nor never did and I fear never will take up the work of prayer Prayer at Sea is like to a poor Beggar or Traveller on Land who goes from Town to Town and from Country to Country but is never invited in or taken notice of by any strangers and travellers we usually say meet but with cold entertainment Oh the many ships both in the States Ah that I should be forced to say that of the ships that go in the Seas which the Lord complained of once in the sons daughters of men Rom. 1.29 Being filled with all unrighteousness wickedness covetousness maliciousness full of envy murther debate deceit malignity whisperers
even as others did with their Hecatombs but did he prosper afterwards Dionisius was the great ringleader of that jovial crew that went against Proserpinas Temple in Locris which they both robbed and spoyled and in the head of that wretched company he made this out-braving speech Videcis ne amici quam bona navigatio abist is Diis sacrilegis tribuatur See you not my friends what a fortunate Navigation the gods have vouchsafed us in this our sacriledge but did hee ever prosper after Object 3 Mee thinks I hear many Sailors saying unto mee Good Sir There bee many ships that use frequent prayer according to the States Articles of War yet suffer shrewdly and also come to dreadful ruines I even when others go free and clear Ans I will not deny now but that such ships may suffer sadly yet not Gods sore anger many miseries may befall those ships that have good godly and religious people in them that are not the effects of Gods fury were not the Disciples of Christ soundly tossed in a storm and also the Apostle Paul Act. 27.41 And falling into a place where two Seas met they ran the ship a ground and the forepart stuck fast and remained unmoveable but the hinder part was broken with the violence of the waves And yet for all this God loved Paul never the less That trembling hearts in the time when Observ 10 Gods judgements are abroad upon the face of the great deeps are more acceptable unto the Lord than hard and flinty hearts are Matth. 14.26 But streightway Jesus spake unto them saying Bee of good chear it is I bee not afraid Psal 147.11 The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him Most Sea-men in the time of their greatest dangers are both void of fear tears and grace for I have observed that they are so inured and bet up to storms and wars that dangers are no dangers to them and storms no storms to them which are indeed no other than the visible tokens of Gods displeasure Are not many Sea-men Sigismund-like who was the young King of Hungary when hearing of the great Turks coming against him proudly said What need we fear the Turks who need not at all fear the falling of the heavens which if they should fall we were able with our spears and halberes to hold them up from falling upon us Sailors say what need we fear the Seas or the winds our ships are strong enough An humbler spirit would better become you but if I know any thing let mee tell them thus much that that frame of heart is not lovely in the eyes of God Jer. 5.22 Fear yee not mee saith the Lord will yee not tremble at my presence You may conclude upon it that God loves not not likes not such a judgement-out-braving temper The greatest plague that could bee seen in Pharaoh was his hardness of heart under all those judgements that God sent upon him and Egypt Sea-men God will not nay I dare tell you of it that hee likes not of you Observ 11 That the generality of the Sea-men are a very holy praying pious religious and precious kinde of people Then they cry c. Under favour I am but telling you of the Sea-mans piety as it was the Hebrews custome to give those that were vile and abominable good names and titles to make them the more despicable and contemptible When they would set out a whorish woman in the defamatoriest dress that they could devise they would call her a sanctified woman and so when they had a minde to set out wicked and prophane men and that unto the life Nautae plurimum in tempestate Deum advocant quem non crederent esse in caelis The Sea-man will call upon God in a storm and when out of it he lives as if he would tell the world that he beleeves that there is neither a God in heaven nor a Devil in hell What a many invocations be there amongst Sailors in time of storms what various devotions and general recourse to their prayers and how many absurdities are committed amongst them confessing themselves one to another others in a loud voyce making confession of their sins stretching out their throats towards heaven as if God were either deaf or thick of hearing they would call them holy men to that very end they might render them the more odious Alas Alas I may better say of the generality of Sea-men even that which was said of Basilides that great Russian Emperour who refused the celestial globe of gold wherein the cunning Artificer as it were in emulation of the Lord had curiously framed the model of heaven so that nothing was wanting of the number of the spheres or of the life and motion that was sent unto him as a very rare present and out of good affection from the German Emperour but his answer was I do not mean to busy my self in the contemplation of Heaven Is not this the Sailors resolution and also all their piety That bold and graceless wretches are Observ 12 made to quake and tremble in Tempestuous storms Then they cry c. Belshazzars mettal melts in the fiery furnace of a rugged storm Dan. 5. Tells us They that said but in now What I swim not in the Sea its air I tread At evey step I feel my lofty and advanced head To knock out a star in Heaven Sing another tune Those that out-faced the heavens and out-braved the stars and neither feared God nor man are now at their wits end Deut. 28.67 Would God it were morning for the fear of thine heart which thou shalt fear and for the sight of thine eyes which thou shalt see that hee was impudently hardy to profess defiance against the God of Heaven by the prophanation of his holy Vessels and also by other external and visible testimonies of his enmity and despight but as soon as hee saw his doom written upon the wall down fell the high-hoysed proud vanting flag of his spirit It is at these times with the Sailors especially when the ship is leaky or upon and near to the Rocks and Sands that lye in the Seas as it was with that great worldly Roy or Monarch Dan. 5.6 Then the Kings countenance was changed and his thoughts troubled him so that the joynts of his loyns were loosed and his knees smot one against another Now are the Sailors countenances as pale as clouts and their hearts as feeble and as full of fear as ever they can hold Now is it with them as it is said in Deut. 28.66 And thy life shall hang in doubt before thee and thou shalt fear day and night and shalt have none assurance of thy life The hearts of wicked men are as much down in storms as the Cucko's is at the going away of the Summer of whom Naturalists tell us that before they betake themselves to their winter-quarters they express their loth to depart by their faultering and doubling of
any thing from God for prayer That the strength of the strongest faith Observ 15 in the hearts of Gods people in stormy and tempestuous Seas proves both small and little enough at those times when Gods help is delayed Then they cry c. Mat. 8.25 And his disciples came to him and awoke him saying Lord save us wee perish Psal 119.120 My flesh trembleth for fear of thee and I am affraid of thy Judgment Observ 16 Hee that would have the Lords help in a storm let him bid adiew to all confidence in the strength of ships and in the deepest wit of men Then they cry c. Psal 108.12 Give us help from trouble for vain is the help of man This is a good conclusion and the onely way to engage your God to take care of you when neither man will nor can stand by you to help you That Sea-men seek not the Lord so earnestly Observ 17 in tempestuous storms Does not many Sailors say to prayer when the storm is once over what Felix said to Paul Go thy way for this time when I have a convenient season I will send for thee Sea-men never pray but when the Sea crosses them and is ready to run them down by the board I am affraid that many Sea-men pray against sin as if they were of Austins mind malebam expleri quam extingui we had rather serve our corruptions than have God to grant our petitions How can you expect to be heard in time of danger when that you pray against sin as if you wished that God might not hear you but they have need of stirring up to seek him earnestlier Then they cry c. Jonah 1.6 The ship-master came unto him and said unto him what meanest thou Oh sleeper arise call upon thy God if so bee that God will think upon us that wee perish not I am affraid that there is these two ill properties in many a Sea-mans prayer at such times as these 1. That they flow from and out of a constrained heart 2. That they flow also from a divided heart 1. From a constrained heart Prayer comes from their hearts as fire out of a flint or as blood out of the nose that comes not spontaneously but wringingly Pii non trahuntur ad Tribunal Dei sed sponte accedunt Good souls are not drawn and haled before God in prayer but go freely and delightfully before the Lord. Psal 119.108 Accept I beseech thee the free-will Offerings of my mouth 2. From a divided heart Their hearts are not integral and entire in prayer Whereas the prayer of a gratious soul flows from the heart as naturally as water out of the fountaine or hony out of the comb Psal 119.10 With my whole heart I have sought thee 1. Sailors come not to God often 2. And with God they take no delight Observ 18 to stay long The Sea-man now appears in fits as if really looking towards God and good and by and by when out of danger hee casts off all again no Polypus nor Camaelion hath more coulours than the Sailor has changings You would think that some Sea-men in dreadful storms had directly set their hearts upon God and good and that they were really pitched upon him but when out of storms all presently breaks and falls unto the ground again That the worst and very vilest of men in the time of affliction and inevitable distress are forced to seek and sue unto the Lord for help Then they cry c. They that never practised prayer before but spoke as unkindly unto it as Pharaoh did unto Moses Get thee from mee and see my face no more now are constrained to call upon the Lord. Psal 78.34 When hee slew them then they sought him and they returned and enquired early after God Sailors cry hard that the storm may cease and bee allayed for it is the wind and the Sea that is all their trouble they cry not to God that sin may bee pardoned and mortified in them which raised the storm sin and the Devil has quiet entertainment amongst them 1. Reason Because nature it self is professly cross unto all trouble danger disquiet and vexation it is tired therewith and so willingly would have ease And upon this account I fear many cry unto God in storms even because the Lord has summoned in and called off those former comforts of calmness peaceableness and quietness that they had in the Sea 2. Reason Because all the means that can bee used in time of storms are but helpless without Gods help and therefore are they forced to fly unto God because all their helps have an invalidity in them Those prayers that are running out from mens mouths by force in the time of storms are never good Forced and constrained prayer is both commonly false and also of no esteem or accompt with God because men care for no more if they can but have their lives and ships it is not the living of an holy life afterwards that they beg for neither is or should much confidence bee imposed in them God loves prayer in the times of peace and when prayer comes out of love to God and to the duty hee likes it well else not Observ 19 That the dolefullest miseries that can befal mâ—n that go in the Seas or the extreamest dangers that they may ever bee surrounded withal if but laid forth before God in prayer are good arguments of hope that God will in his good time help them Then they cry c. Observ 20 That the dreadful dangers that Sea-men are in when in storms should make them sensible of their sin and of Gods just displeasure against them for the same Then they cry c. Jonah 1.7 Let us cast lots that wee may know for whose cause this evil is upon us Observ 21 That the estate of Sea-men may bee such at some times as God will lend no further succour and deliverance to it Then they cry c. They may well cry indeed Remember may the Lord say If you hear of any ships cast away at any time in any part of the Seas you may conclude that the Sailors were swearing drinking cursing at that time for had they been praying fasting humbling of themselves and calling upon their God their ships might have lived in the storm their lives also been spared the time was that I heard your cries your tears and prayers and has pittied you when your ships has been thrown upon Sands and I have taken care to keep them off from splitting upon the Rocks many and many a time but you have turned all these gratious deliverances of mine into wantonness therefore will I deliver you no more Jer. 5.7 How shall I pardon thee for this Isa 1.24 Ah I will ease mee of mine adversaries and avenge mee of mine enemies I am afraid that Sea-men are a burthen unto the Lord and that hee sends many of them packing to hell when hee sends them
before deliverance hath come Masts have broke upon your heads Sails have rent Cables broke and Anchors come home The Patient earnestly desires such and such things under his distemper but the Physitian wants nor will to give them him but resolves to give them him so soon as hee is fit and therefore makes him stay till hee hath purged for till hee bee made fit for it and for such a cordial and such a medicine it may prove very hurtful for him Ships half filled with water or by stress of weather thrown upon sands Psal 107.43 Who so is wise will observe these things 4. Mind how God Sounds the deeps for you in calm and serene weather when you are boldly sailing on in the Seas with a great deal of confidence and security that your depths of water are sufficient to swim your ponderous ships in that even then Qui scrutantur saepe marinas aranas nihil potest illudere They that will but sound the Seas carefully in dubious places cannot bee deceived but they that are overcome with laziness to throw the Lead over-board may quickly for ought I know run the ship on ground at such times God has struck some in the ship with a great fear putting it into their hearts that they were in great danger whereupon they have called for the Lead and made inquiry into the Sea and water has scarce been found to keep up the ship from the very bottom Who so is wise will observe these things 5. Mind how the Lord goes before you sounding of your depths in the darkest foggiest and mistiest weather that you are surprised withall when you are going on with strong confidence that there is no danger even contra improvisum omnem ictum then are you in very great peril It is with Sailors in black dark and foggy weather as the Poet tells us of Virg. Eclog. 3. Dic quibus in lymphis eris mihi magnâ—s Apollo Tres pateat coeli spatium non amplius ulnas There it little of the heavens to bee seen in the Seas at these times The fire that came down from Heaven upon the Altar was miraculous yet when it was kindled they kept it in with wood Sea-men let your deliverances never starve for keeping warm upon your hearts for having neither the benefit of the Sun nor of the Moon nor of the Stars you are so dreadfully bewildred that you know not how near you are to any Land nor how such and such sand-banks bear off you nor what course to shape and steer then does the Lord direct you and when you are near to Sands hee gives some or other amongst you secret and impulsory hints and warnings to make an examination of your depths by which you are many and many a time preserved Who so is wise will observe these things 6. Minde how God informs you when you are not aware of many in-Sea-lying sand-banks which are visible and obvious enough to a seeing and a watchful eye that is but careful to cast about for the preventing of danger yet when you have mindlessly been running on without either wit or fear holding a direct course upon them it has pleased the Lord to put it into the heart of one or other to look out of the ship It was a good saying of one at Sea when espyed a breach and making report of it the Mariners within said that they could not beleeve it and withall asked him where it was Ne quaeramus ubi sit sed quomodo illam fugiamus Let us not make inquiry where it is but let us strive how to avoid it who has cast his eye this way and that way and quickly observed the breaches that the waters make upon the sands by which means they have brought the ship with all the speed that ever in them lay upon the stayes and so gone cleer Who so is wise will observe these things 7. Minde how God directs you in your Navigations when you are not advised of those many in-Sea-lying Rocks that bee up and down in the great Ocean both North and West and South and East Ah how near have you come to these with your ships The Butterfly in the fable asked the Owle how hee should deal with fire which had singed her wings her counsel was this be sure thou never come so near it again nor as much as ever come within the sight of the smoak of it Your are prudent and want not the skil of applying of it many and many a time before you have been aware of them and when you have been steering upon a direct line to the hazzad of both your ships and lives upon them God has providentially put some or other upon the looking out who have seen the Seas breaking over them in most dreadful froth and presently have made report thereof by which means the ship has been stopped and altered in her course Ah Sea-men surely the Lord has a great care of you Who so is wise will observe these things 8. Mind how God does miraculously many times in misty and foggy weather when you are nearer to Land than you do estimate your selves to be One was lost when nearer Land than he was aware of but quoth the Ship-master It is but a fog-bank there is no danger when they came neer unto it it proved the white clifs of the Land there the ship perished in the storm All are not so favoured even pull by the obumbrated curtains that are drawn over the face of the deeps by which providential dispensation you have a cleer vision of the white clifts of the Land and thereby alter your course upon the sight of danger whereas otherwise you might have perished sundry times if God had not haled up the foggy curtains of the air and let you see that if you ran any neerer death would bee the conclude of that undertaking Who so is wise will observe these things 9. Minde how frequently I and what tender care the Lord has of you in the Seas by his often hushing of the winds when they are up in roaring and rampiant hostility against you at such times when you are irrecoverably run upon Sands and cannot get your ships off them again if the Lord did not thus appear for those that go in the deeps who are I fear very slow in the seeing and also in the acknowledging of this singular mercy many an hundred sail had been split to pieces at this day which have been at time and times preserved Do not you often see this favour undeservedly to bee bestowed upon you Theseus was never better guided by Ariadnes's threâ— which shee tyed at the entrance of Daedalus's labyrinth than those ships that fear the Lord are guided by their God from Rocks Shoars and Sands in the great and wide Seas May I not say of this frequent experienced mercy that the eyes of the Lord are as swift as the very shoots or flashes of Lightning
a Kings heart Oh praise the Lord. Sirs you usually pay people in forein parts for your Anchorage in their Harbours for your Pilotage into them for boyage in the Seas and lightage upon land and will you return nothing unto your God You are the Lords Tenants you sit on very great Rents and great Rents you have to pay surely you had need to bee stirring do what you can you will dye in Gods debt Now thankfulness stands not in words and complements if you would express your thankfulness unto God Sirs then do thus 1. Labour to come out of all your storms and Sea-dangers as Job did out of his affliction Job 23.10 When hee hath tried mee I shall come forth as gold It would bee a brave thing that every Sailor that goes into the Furnace of a fiery stormy and raging Sea Beleeve it Sirs God looks for it at your hands What is said of the statue of Juno in the holy City near to Euphrates in Assyria that it will evermore look towards one let them sit where they will in her Temple shee stares full upon them and if you go by shee follows with her eye the same shall I say of the Lord go where you will on Sea or Land the Lords eye follows you should come out of it as gold doth out of the fire when they come on land Ah who would not but take a turn at Sea then to bee purified from their dross 2. Offer unto God the ransome of your lives as the Law runs Exod. 31. leave some seal or pawn of thankfulness behinde you The Gracians paint Jupiter in their Temples with his hands full of thunderbolts Sirs be afraid of unthankfulness Heathens after a ship-wrack a storm or a fit of sickness will offer something or other to their gods for every preservation That thanksgiving is to bee suspected that lyes in nothing but words Give God your hearts hee gives you his mercies Give God your lives hee gave you them when you were in danger 3. Let God have soul-thankfulness from you if wee receive but any benefit or special kindness from our friends our hearts acknowledge it and our tongues confess it Sirs Do what you can you will dye in Gods debt and wee cannot bee at quiet till wee some way or other requite it 4. Let God also have mouth-thankfulness from you let your tongues walk apace and speak at the highest rate you can to the praise of God Psal 124.2 3. If it had not been the Lord who was on our side then had the Seas at such and such a time swallowed us up and at another time drowned us 5. Let God have life-thankfulness from you this God had of and from David in full measure Psal 145.2 Every day will I bless thee and I will praise thy name for ever and ever I have known that those that have undertaken to buy and redeem poor captives out of a Turkish bondage slavery they have vowed to bee their servants all the dayes of their lives A certain Jew when travelling over a deep River in the night where the bridge was broken down saving onely that there was one narrow plank laid over to foot it on he rid very safely over and being asked the next day how he got over he knew nothing and going back through the peoples intreaty swounded away and dyed at the consideration of his deliverance Ah Sirs will not you be Gods servants all the daies of your lives who has delivered you so often out of storms and raging Seas and inevitable dangers 6. Let mee intreat you to look back upon mercy and then tell mee if you can bee unthankful Act. 27.1 And when they were escaped then they knew that the Island was called Melita They viewed their mercy on every side 7. Compare your selves with others others have been denied to be delivered and lye ship and men in the bottome of the Sea and you and your ships are still floating and swimming whilst others are drowned 8. Are not others that have tasted of your deliverances in the Seas often and many a time blessing and thanking of God both in private and publick and will you bee unthankful 9. Bee resolute for the duty of thanksgiving unto God 10. Consider what thou hadst been and where thou hadst been if mercy had not prevented Psal 89.48 and an hand been reached out of heaven as it were to have helped thee 11. Certainly if thou wert but changed from the state of a sinner thou wouldest bee oftner in the thanking of thy God than thou art 12. Were but our Sea-men a generation of people that were much and often in godly sorrows Now if you will not bee thankful unto the Lord for all your deliverances take heed lest hee say Judg 10.13 Wherefore I will deliver you no more they would bee oftner in their thanksgivings unto the Lord. 13. Were but those that use the Seas filled with divine relishes of Gospel graces they would bee thanking of their God oftner than they are He that is the fullest of the spirit of grace is the onely fittest man to bee thankful unto God 14. Were but those that use the Seas much in minding of the mercies and deliverances of the Lord bestowed upon them they would bee a far thankfuller people than they are I have read of one that was in very great debt and yet notwithstanding that he slept as well as if hee had had the greatest estate that could bee to pay it with a great Gentleman in the Country observing it desired him that hee would bee pleased to sell him his bed Ah Sirs you are much in debt to God Psal 5.15 I will sing unto the Lord because hee hath dealt mercifully with mee 15. Did but those that use the Seas take up their joyes and delights in God they would be more thankful unto their God than they are Ah may I not say Psal 78.42 They remembred not his hand nor the day when hee delivered them from the enemy Observ 7 That the Lords creating of the Seas for the use of Navigation to that end men who can neither flye nor swim might the more facilly and commodiously commerce one with another in all and throughout all the forein parts of the world is a point of Gods great praise Oh that men would praise the Lord Heraclitus was such an admirer of the Sea that he said if wee wanted the Sun we should be in perpetual darknesse if wanted the Sea live like barbarous people God has founded the Earth upon the Seas and established it upon the floods Psal 24.2 Aristotle looked upon this as one of the greatest wonders of nature and well hee might that God should set the solid Earth upon the back of the waters for mans conveniency Psal 104.6 7. Jer. 5.22 That the saving and delivering mercies Observ 8 of God at Sea are and ought to bee carefully had and kept in a perpetual remembrance Oh
that men would praise the Lord. Psal 105.5 Remember his marvellous works that hee hath done his wonders and the judgments of his mouth A gratious heart files all the Lords dealings with his soul either at Sea or Land in his heart and steers the same course the Sea-man does in the great deeps who makes it his daily business in long Voyages to keep his Quotidian reckonings for every elevation hee makes whereby hee judges of his advancings and deviations Mens memories should bee deep boxes or store-houses to keep their pretious Sea-mercies in and not like hour-glasses which are no sooner full but are a running out Bind all your sea-deliverances and preservations as fast upon your hearts as ever the Heathen bound their Idol Gods in their Cities in the time of wars siedges and common calamities which they evermore bound fast with Iron chaines and strong guards and sentinels lest they should leap over the walls or run out of their Cities from them Ah Sirs look to those things which Satan will bee very prone to steal from you who is like unto a theef that breaks into an house but will not trouble himself with the lumber of earthen or wooden vessels A gratious heart will resolve that the Orient shall sooner shake hands with the West and the Stars decline the azured Skies than he will forget the Lords deliverances out of gloomy stormy tempestuous and heart-daunting Seas Sirs you stand in need to be called upon for your hearts are not unlike to the leads and plummets of a Clock that continually drive downwards and so stand in need of winding up but falls foul on the plate and jewels Hee does and will steal away your hearts from minding the precious jewels of your Sea-deliverances I find in Scripture that the people of God of old were very careful and heedful to preserve the memory of their mercies I wish all the States Tarpowlings were of the like temper 1. By repeating them often over in their own hearts Psal 77.5 6 11. I will remember the works of the Lord surely I will remember thy wonders of old Sea-men should say of their Sea-deliverances as Lypsius once did of the Book he took so much delight in pluris facio quum relego semper novum quum repetivi repetendum The more I read the more I am tilled on to read The more I think of what God hath done for me the more I still delight to think of it Vers 6. I call to remembrance my song in the night Paul when hee was amongst the Mariners writ down all their transactions in the time of their danger Acts 27.7 The wind not suffering us we sailed under Crete over against Salmone Vers 18. And being exceedingly tossed with a Tempest the next day they lightned the ship Vers 27. But when the fourteenth night was come as wee were driven up and down in Adria about midnight the ship-men deemed that they drew near to some Country Vers 28. And sounded and found it twenty faothms c. 2. By composing and inditing of pretious pious and melodious Psalms Remember the time of your inconsolabili dolore oppressi this was Davids practice Psal 38. which hee titles A Psalm of David to bring to remembrance Again in the 70. Psalm Wee have the very same title A Psalm of David to bring to remembrance In our late wars many had such a pretious spirit breathing in them that they have put the victories and battels of England into sweet composed meeter to the end they might bee remembred Ah Sirs call all your deliverances in this and in the other part of the world to remembrance 3. By giving names to persons times and places on purpose to remind them of Gods mercies This was Hannahs course in the 1 Sam. 1.20 And called his name Samuel saying The States ships resemble the tall Tree in Nebuchadnazzar's dream Dan. 4.20 Whose height reached unto the heaven and the sight thereof to all the earth They go into all parts in the world as much admired are they as Venus was by the Gods Who came flocking about her when shee went to heaven because I have asked him of the Lord to that very end shee might for ever perpetuate the Lords goodness towards her Abraham to keep alive the goodnesse of God towards him in the sparing of his Son would call the place where hee should have been sacrificed Jehovah-Iireth i.e. God will provide Gen. 22.14 The Jews that they might keep in remembrance the daies of their deliverance from bloody-minded Haman they titled them Purim i. e. Lots Esth 9.26 in memory of Lots cast by Haman which the Lord disappointed And very commendable is this Scriptural practice amongst us in England for I have observed it and I like it very well that our Military Grandees to perpetuate their dreadful Land and Sea-fights do give their warlike ships and battels such titles To keep alive that great and desperate engagement which our Army had with the Scots in Scotland one of their warlike ships is called the Dunbar Gentlemen Captains and Sea-men many of your Ships derive borrow their names from the stour-charged and fought Battels of the Souldiery in England to that end you may imitate their valour at Sea which they to the life performed on Land Some are called the Treddah some the Naseby and other some the Dunbar some the Plymouth some the Gainsborough and othersome the Massammore c. Be valiant Sirs the Souldiery fought apace when in those Battels To keep up the memory of Naseby great fight they have another ship which they call the Naseby To keep up the memory of Worcester fight they have a brave warlike ship which they call the Worcester To keep up the enemies defeating at Wakefield in Yorkshire they have a gallant warlike ship called the Wakefield To remember the fight at Nantwich they have a warlike ship called the Nantwich To remember their victory at Plymouth against the enemy they have a ship which they call the Plymouth To keep up the memory of that famous bout at Massammore when the three Nations lay at the stake they have a ship called the Massammore To remember that great fight that was fought at Treddah they have a warlike Vessel called the Treddah To perpetuate the memory of that great and hot dispute that was once at Selby in Yorkshire they have a famous ship they call the Selby To keep up the memory of that bout they had with the enemy at Portsmouth they have a warlike ship they call the Portsmouth To keep up the memory of their taking of Gainsborough they have a brave Prince-like ship called the Gainsborough To keep up the Memory of the dispute that they once had at Preston Bee valiant Sirs your ships have their names from valiant Exploits on Land and the States will deal as kindly with you as the Russians do by those they see behave themselves couragiously the Emperour
but it is an abiding and a staying upon them and turning of mercy upside down and looking first upon the one side and then upon the other that affects the heart 2. Take notice of the freeness of Gods dealings with you in the Seas if you would bee thankful to your God it is out of meer mercy and goodness without any merit or desert in you and though there bee much sinfulness amongst you swearing by the highest in Heaven and by the vilest in Hell Ah Sirs I wish I could get you to minde what God doth for you and that I could work upon you in what I have writ to you as Antonius de Padua once did upon the hearts of a people whom he once preached to he thundred so out of the holy Law of God that they would go one in the streets smiting of their breasts tears drilling down their eyes crying out Misericordia domine Misericordia Mercy Lord Mercy and all the abominable oaths that you cast forth in storms which is like to the mire and dirt the Sea casts up as the Prophet sayes yet doth God appear for you in them David was wonderfully affected with Gods dealings with him Gen. 32.10 2 Sam. 7.18 19. 3. Eye the seasonableness of all your Sea-deliverances God doth and ever did take the fittest time to accomplish every thing in Eccl. 3.1 To every thing there is a season Eccl. 3.1 And God makes every thing beautiful in his time vers 11. The season of the mercy puts a beauty and lustre upon it even as the Sun puts its beauty upon the Rainbow Was it not a seasonable mercy to the man that went from Jerusalem to Jericho and falling among Theeves had all that ever hee had taken from him I and more than that wounded and left for dead upon the ground and in that very juncture and extremity of time the good Samaritan comes providentially by and takes compassion of him Luke 10.33 That King Ahasuerus could not sleep in the night 1 King 17.18 19. before Mordecai should have been hanged of all the nights in the year besides and that a book should bee brought him and instead of other books which were his exercise the book of the Chronicles and of all places and passages in it that should bee turned to which had relation to Mordecaie's good service in discovering the Treason of the two Chamberlains which moved the King to save him from the Gallows Ah Sirs I would have you to say to your God what Luther once said before he was better informed to the Pope Leo 10 An. 1518. Prostratum pedibus me tibi offero cum omnibus quae sum habeo vocem tuam vocem Christi in te praefidentis loquentis agnoscam I humbly prostrate my self with all that I have and am at thy feet That when Peter was sinking Christ should then put forth his hand and still the waves Ah Sirs eye the seasonableness of all Gods mercies with you Mee thinks I hear many a gracious Sea-man say Ah wee had been drowned at such and such a time and cast away at such a time if God in his mercy had not prevented it 4. Minde the unexpectedness of delivering mercies at Sea I profess for my part when wee have been in storms and run upon sands I have thought it an impossible and a very unlikely thing to escape insomuch that I have had occasion to say as Sarah did to Abraham who would have thought it Gen. 21.7 Mercies come crouding in many times upon you that use the Seas unlooked for 5. Eye the mercies of God towards you in all those places that you either do or have traded into in the world how many Voyages thou hast made through and over the dangerous deeps and how God hath blessed thee prospered thee and delivered thee abroad gon out with thee and come home with thee Moses takes special notice of what God had done for Israel in bringing them out of Egypt and also of their journey through the wilderness of Canaan and so sets them all down in a local method in the Red Sea they passed through it on dry land Pharaoh and his host was drowned therein and in Rhephidim God gave them water out of the Rock Exod. 17. and victory over Amalek in the Wilderness of Sin At night and at morn they had flesh and Manna In Sinai God gave them his holy Law Exod. 16. Paul in a local method mindes the converting grace of God as to the place bestowed upon him at Damascus They that will go into the Elysian fields saies the Poet must over Acharon and Phlegeton and the several other Rivers of Hell before they can come into those pleasurable and delightful rich and flowery Meadows and so through many storms over the Seas before they can come at the beautiful and wealthy Countries in the forein parts of the world Vbi definit humanum auxilium ibi incupit divinum and his deliverance afterwards when hee was let down through the windows in a basket at Lystra Derbe and Iconium Act. 14. at Philippi Chap. 16. at Thessalonica Chap. 17. at Corinth Chap. 18. at Ephesus Chap. 19. c. But I proceed to a word of Application 1. Of Exhortation 2. Of Reproof Vse 1 1. Of Exhortation Is it thus then that God hath done all these things for you Ah Sirs bee exhorted to lay up all your Sea-deliverances let them lye the nearest your hearts of any thing in the whole world besides and let all your new mercies bee as goads in your sides and as spurs to a better life Vse 2 2. Of Reproof unto those that go down into the Seas and forget all their mercies and let them lye loose upon their hearts and spirits Sirs the Lord complains of you as hee did of Israel Jer. 3.8 When your condition was as Lyricus said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one wave after another passing over your heads then did the Lord appear for you but you have not come off like men with God in thankfulness Amos 4.6 to the 12. Thus and thus did I for you but you returned not to mee What shall not your escapes work upon you and shall not the ruines of others startle you how many Vessels bee there sunk in the Seas and you notwithstanding have come safe home out of them Ezek. 16.56 Thy sister Sodome was not mentioned c. the Chalde Paraphrast sayes was not for instruction the word in the Hebrew was not in thy mouth they had quite forgot the destruction of Sodome insomuch that it was neither in their thoughts nor mouthes The ruines of others is little thought of by you and your Sea-deliverances are forgot by you That miraculous eminent and remarkable Observ 9 Sea-mercies and deliverances benefit not hard flinty stony and impure hearts in the Seas Oh that men would praise the Lord. As if the Psalmist should say they have the greatest mercies of any people in the world bestowed
ΠΕΛΑΓΟΣ NEC Inter vivos NEC Inter Mortuos Neither Amongst the living nor amongst the Dead OR AN IMPROVEMENT of the SEA Upon the Nine Nautical Verses in the 107. PSALM Wherein is handled I. The several great and many hazzards that Mariners do meet withall in Stormy and Tempestuous Seas II. Their many several miraculous and stupendious deliverances out of all their helpless and shiftless distresses III. A very full and delightful description of all those many various and multitudinous objects which they behold in their travels through the Lords Creation both on Sea in Sea and on Land viz. All sorts and kinds of Fish Foul and Beasts whether wilde or tame all sorts of Trees and Fruits all sorts of People Cities Towns and Countries With many profitable and useful rules and Instructions for them that use the Seas By DANIEL PELL Preacher of the Word London printed for Livewell Chapman and are to be sold at the Crown in Popes-head Alley 1659. Pells Improvement of the Seas To the Right Honourable John Lord Desborough One of his Highnesses most Honourable Privy Council George Lord Munk Governour of Scotland and sole Commander of all the Forces in it George Lord Mountague General for the Narrow-Seas And George Askâ—e Knight and General for the Northern-Seas To the Right Honourable Commissioners for the Navy and Admiralty of ENGLAND Collonel Edward Salmon Col. John Clerk Col. Robert Beak Esquires c. Daniel Pell Wisheth all increase of saving Graces with true honour and prosperity in this life and eternal happiness in the life to come My Lords and Gentlemen LUke Dedicated his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles to that Honourable and Noble person Theophilus Luke 1.1 Act. 1.1 John dedicated as I finde in Scripture-Record his 2 Epist to the Elect Lady and his 3 Epist to his friend Gaius 2 Joh. 1 2. Alexander on his death-bed left his Kingdome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Optimatum Optimo to him that was the best of the best To your Honours I dedicate this worthless yet painful peece and I pray God it may prove profitable I hope you will like it the better because there is none of this subject extant that I do know of or ever heard of in the world The Age wee live in is all for novelties This I can say for my comfort that I could not bee at rest nor at quiet and at peace in my own heart and conscience till I undertook the writing of this peece both to reprove such as go in the Seas to do them good when I shall bee gone and to stir up your Honours to appear for the Lord against that prophaneness that is in the Sea and also to let my own dear Relations and the world to know That Iâ— made some use of my time whilst amongst the Lords wonders in the Deeps and high-strained Jigs of Musick God in his good time alter it and the newest songs are now adayes commonly best liked of for once because they were never heard of before but however I hope you will accept of it and if that these Lines which were writ in a restless and turbulent Sea may but obtain your much-desired countenance and comprobation I will couragiously speak it with the Orator 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I fear not any manscensure Nec frons Catonis movebit me nec Timonis lingua Perhaps some simple 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 will speak against it or some low-bred Pedantick Ex aula Telemachi or è Patrocli domo But no more shall it nor the Author regard them than the Moon doth the clamouring and snarling Cur in the Heavens of whom the Poet sings En peragit cursus surda Diana suos Some of Davids Psalms Insignis Ode Davidis Tremel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 prae corona aestimatur hie Psalmus Right Honourable and Right Worshipful are called Michtam which in the Hebrew tongue signifies a precious Jewel or a Psalm of gold Propter mirificam ejus excellentiam which is of far better worth than its weight in gold both for the matter thereof and the manner And I hope that you will say the like of this Aureum flumen orationis said Cicero concerning Aristotles Politicks there is in that book a golden flood of discourse Liber iste auro contra non carus said another concerning the lives of the Philosophers written by Diogenes Laertius no gold is comparable to that gallant peace how much more then may it bee said of this notable and precious Psalm that is here handled Ad votivas Insulas humanitatis vostra fortunatas navigo and if I may but have Apparente Horizonte Phaebo scintillantis adinstar metâ—eri that is all that I desire and look for from you The Sea is neither scribendi studendi neque commorandi praeter pugnandi navigandi locus a place to study in nor to write in it is no place beleeve it to tarry any long time in it is onely a place for transportation or navigation and digladiation Therefore I hope that your Honours will expect no Tullianum scribendi fluxum amaenum from mee that would better become a Coriphaeus or an Eloquii sol a bonarum literarum Phoenix a musarum decus and a Leporum delicium gratiarum unicum neither words that are pickt phrase choice composition smooth sentences fluent cadencies sweet language polite stile flourishing look not for Tropes of Rhetorick or Syllogismes of Logick or Axioms of Philosophy nor words set in checker work the Sea is no place to do it in and indeed non benè Cymbalissant quum nihil prater inconceptis verbis those words are not very savoury that are delivered rudi Minerva raw crude and unpremeditated for a ship is but a confused place to undertake the writing of any thing in where Drums and Trumpets Pikes and Muskets great Guns and Harquebusses ranting Roysters and Ear-deafing sails and cordage are evermore roaring about one which make a far greater noise than the Cataracts of Egypt by which and through which the Inhabitants that live near unto them are extraordinarily deafned This Hulk and poor Pinnace was builded and meanly rigged a good while ago at Sea and being ready to put forth one storm or other arose which caused it to lye by the Lee. But the weather now clearing up and promising a calm I have adventured and exposed it to wind and weather and the censuring world hoping that those that will come on board of it and truck with it will finde some commodity in it worth as much as the Merchant Venturer the Stationer will ask them for it The Reasons why I shroud this Book under your Honours bee these Right Honourable Reason 1 1. Because it was hatched and slidged in one of your ships and never writ on land but every syllable of it was penned and drawn up at Sea and I have not had the leasure to polish it any more than it is and therefore both the service of my body and brain was
Kings and Princes of the Seas and the Conquerours of all the Armadoes in the world that shall dare to meddle with you Inter caetera providentiae divinae opera hoc quoque dignum est admiratione c. Amongst other works of a divine providence this is very admirable that the winds lye upon the Sea for the furtherance of Navigation and that they may all strike and vail to you as forein Nations once did unto the Kings and Princes that were their Conquerors of whom it is said that at what time they sent their Ambassadors to them whom they both had subdued and would have subdued to them they desired of them Terram Aquam and in token of their subjection they sent them both Water and Earth because all command is either by Sea or by Land and all possessions and riches are either gotten out of the Sea or out of the Land And now after all that I have said in the high commendations of you I pray God bestow peace on our Nation both at Sea and Land for that is far better than these dreadful and heart-amazing Wars There is small comfort in it to see Nation rising up against Nation and an imbruing of their hands in one anothers blood It is a very sad sight in these our dayes the Lord amend it to see Nations running one against another like the two Mountains in Pliny of which hee tells Montes duo inter se concurrerunt crepitu maximo assultantes recedentesque inter eos flamma fumoque in Calum exeunte that they ran continually one against the other Plin. cap. 2.83 Nat. Hist from whom nothing but smoke and fire rise up and ascended towards the heavens with a great sonorous and formidable noise they that take delight to see it I wish they may have enough of it Give mee leave to take my leave of you in a few directions which I would have you to look upon as one of the highest expressions of my love and affection that a man can possibly bear you I speak not only unto you altogether that fear the Lord but unto the other prophane crew also shall I commend a word of counsel and this Treatise is one of the greatest Legacies of my love that I either have or know how to bestow upon you and truly I could wish that every Minister that goes in your ships and in the States service would endeavour to shew something of the improvement of his time that it may stand upon record for the good of you that use the Seas and so far would I have any from carping at what I have done that I would wish them to mend it if they can or shew something of their own I had no warm study to sit in nor no place that was free of noyse and tumult when I writ it Sirs You may visibly behold the great love I bear you who hath taken all this pains in the Sea for you What would you have mee to do for you I have gone a begging to all the good Ministers in the land to pray for your preservation conversion and sanctification I have gone a begging to all the Saints and servants of God to pray for you It was somewhat a soure saying of one concerning the viler sort of Sea-men when he said if you see them not in Sea-port Towns in November December January and March which are the windiest Months in the year then you may conclude that they are all gone to Heaven or else they will never come there They mount up to Heaven c. vers 26. I have exhorted all the Sea-ports in England to pray for you and to remember you that go in the turbulent deeps and I will assure you that I will never forget you neither in Pulpit nor in private but pray hard for your prosperity in the Seas and felicity in the life to come My hearts desire is that you may bee saved in the day of the Lord. The Rules I would commend to you that travel are such as these following and I would hand them not onely to every good and honest heart that goes in the Seas but to every prophane wretch whatsoever 1. Let not the irreligion of those places you travel into whether France Spain Italy Barbary or Turky c. breed in you a neglect of divine duties or a disgustion unto the pure and most reformed Religion that is amongst us in England 2. When you meet the Host or Eucharist in the streets through which it is often born to the houses of the sick get out of the way that you kneel not to it which if a stranger neglects hee is lyable to the Inquisitors or one mischief or other 3. Go no further into the Outlandish Churches in the world than the hand of your own Religion and conscience will lead you lest you dash upon the rocks of Atheism and Idolatry 4. Pitty rather than spurn scoffe and scorn at those you see prostrate before a Crucifix or a Saint It hath been matter of pitty unto my soul many and many a time when in forein parts 5. Neglect will sooner kill an injury than revenge If you meet with injuries in forein parts prudently and patiently put them up an ill turn in those parts is far cheaped passed over than revenged the endeavour of which many times is but Gentleman usher to a greater 6. Keep your selves out of all the Mercenary Harlot houses that bee in the Italian French and Spanish Cities or in any other parts of the world you traffick to Prov. 5.8 Remove thy way far from her and come not nigh the door of her house 7. Begin all your voyages with fear and sincere and hearty prayer unto God to go along with you through and over the Seas to carry you well out to return you wel back You go very rashly upon all your designs The Israelites usually asked counsel of God first and then they went The Grecians went to their Oracles Gentlemen and Sea-men in your perusal of this Treatise you will finde me sharply striking at prophaneness in the Sea and to those that are bad I speak to and those that are honest and godly are very silly and simple if they quarrel with it thereby they will bring upon themselves an evil name for let but me hear a man speaking against it and I shall conclude him to bee some Swearer or c. the Persians to their Magi the Egyptians to their Hierophantae the Indians to their Gymnosophista the ancient Gauls and Brittains to their Druides the Romans to their Augures It was not lawful to propound any thing of weight and moment in the Senate Priusquam de coelo observatum est before they had observed from heaven whether God would shine upon their proceedings and enterprises yea or no. 8. Abhor to go to Sea out of any Sea-port Town in England in a drunken posture I would have those that are naught in the Sea to say with
of being prayed for Job 9.26 They are called in that place Ships of desire 1. When a man sees a goodly and a stately ship that is then a ship of desire 2. A Merchants longing for his ships good return home is a ship of desire 3. A ship of desire is a swift Pinnace oâ— a Pyrats Bark or Vessel that is made on purpose for the prey to out-sail all others But to proceed Let mee tell thee Good Reader before I take my leave of thee that I can say of and by my going to Sea for which I had as clear a all to as ever man had to any place in this world as a good man once said who had lyon a long time in prison in the primitive times of persecution I have quoth hee got no harm by this No more harm hath all my troubles at Sea done my inward man than a going up to the rops of those mountains hath done them that have made the trial where neither Winds Clouds nor Rain doth over-top them and such as have been upon them do affirm that there is a wonderful clear skye over head though Clouds below pour down rains and break forth in thunder and lightning to the terrour of them that are at the bottome yet at the top there is no such matter Mee thinks I have heard the Seas say unto mee Vide hic mare hic venti hic pericula disce sapere See how ready the Winds and Seas are at Gods beck and wilt not thou fear him If I may tell thee my experiences of Gods doing of my soul good in the Seas then can I tell thee thus much bee it spoken to the praise of that sweet God whom I serve and honour that I have got no harm by going to Sea but a great deal of good both to my soul and also to my understanding and intellectual parts 1. I have learned by my going to Sea to love the world less than I did before Love not the world c. 1 Joh. 2.15 2. I have learned to know men and the world far better than I did before 3. I have learned to prize a life in heaven far before a reeling and staggering life here on earth 4. I have learned to bee far more shye and wary of sin than I was before because I found my self so fearful of death and drowning many times in storms when in the Seas I have read of a young man that lay on his death-bed and all that ever hee spoke whilst hee lived was this I am so sick that I cannot live and I am so sinful that I dare not dye It is good to keep clear of sin 5. I have learned to live upon God and to put my trust in him more than ever I did before so that I can comfortably speak it Psal 7.1 O Lord my God in thee doe I put my trust c. 6. I have seen more of the Creation by my going to Sea than ever I should have done if I had stayed on Land The Lord sets men the bounds of their habitations It is said of Lypsius that he took such delight in reading of a Book I wish that thou mayest as much in this that hee said Pluris faecio quum relego semper novum quum repetivi repetendum The more I read the more I am tilled on to read 7. I have learned to fear God more and to stand in awe of that God who hath the lives of all his creatures under his feet and is able to dispose both of a mans present and also future condition even as pleaseth him than ever I did before 8. I have learned to pray better and to ply the Throne of Grace oftner with my prayers for spiritual blessings than ever I did before 9 I have so learned Christ that I made it my work and businesse all the time I was at Sea to lead my life so as in the continual presence and aspect of the Lord Meer Heathens thought God to be every where as appears by their Jovis omnia plena Quascunque accesseris oraâ— Sub Jove semper eris c. Psal 16.8 I have set the Lord alwayes before me c. and so I lived and have lived both at Sea and also at Land that I shall give both foe and friend and friend and foe their liberty to speak and observe me as much as they can 10 I have learned to love my God more than ever I did before and if I had not I should appear to be a very rebellious Child As Demetrius Phalerius deceived the calamities of his Banishment by the sweetness of his Study so I the troublesome Seas and rude society by mine I know that this poor Peece of mine has in it its 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Naâ—vi its blacks and spots its Human frailties which the good Lord remit yet in it is there truths Divine and things very profitable and worthy to be embraced in respect the Lord has done so much for me to preserve me and mercy me as hee hath done in a cruel Sea which is a place as the Poet sings Luctus ubique pavor plurima mortis imago Good Reader doest thou live in times of trouble and daies of danger then turn over this Book and thou wilt finde that there is a wise and a powerful God in the Heavens that sits at the Helm both of Sea and Land to preserve poor souls in them Wouldst thou hear of those Sights and Wonders of the Lord that those that goe down into the Seas doe see then will I commend this small Treatise to thee what delight fuller thing canst thou read than a Theam or Subject of the Sea and Sea affairs here mayest thou read and peruse this my Nec inter vivos nec inter mortuos which cost me much pains and get some good out of it When Nebuzaradan burnt the rubbish of the Temple hee kept the Gold c. Though in reading thou meetest with Creature-defects which I will assure thee was never writ upon Land but drawn up as I studied it upon water Libentèr omnibus omnes opes concesserim ut mihi liceat vi nulla interpellante isto modo in literis vivere Tully I would freely give all the good in the world that I might sit down in the world live and lead a studying life But it was the Lords will that I should travel in the great and wide Sea yet wilt thou meet with many a savoury truth if thou hast but a gracious heart in the brest of thee Accept of it My sute to you Readers is that upon your perusal of it you would seek the Lord in its behalf that it may doe good to them that use the Seas I begge the prayers of every godly and gracious Minister into whose hands peradventure it may come that he would pray that it may be instrumental to reform these People that goe in the Seas who stand in need of
neither fearing God nor Man what havock will you make of their Wines Sugars Fruits c Consider with your selves that you are but hired servants for so much per Moneth and have no order nor allowance from them to drink their Wines or steal their Fruits c. you ought to be content with your Wages I would have Seamen to be of Fabritius his mind or else I will not give a button for ten thousand of them of whom it s said that one might as well turn the Sun from his course as sway him from honest and ingenuous dealing Know this one thing that Gods eye is upon you though the Merchants or the Trustees be at a vast distance from you He is said a Heathen totus Oculus all Eye this is more than thousands of Sailors will either say or believe as if a mans body were all eye to see as well backwards as forwards and forwards as backward Christ saw Nathaniel when he was under the Fig-tree when he thâ—ught that no eye was upon him Joh. 1 5â— and Gods eye is upon you in your ships in the Seas when the Merchants cannot behold you nor cannot tell what you have done Reade but these few Scriptures and consider but Gods All-seeing eye and then tell me if you can play the Thief Joh. 4.29 Psal 139.7 8 9 10 11 12. There be two things that would exceedingly adorn the Seamen of England and raise out of the dust their lost and crackt Credit and esteem with the good people of the Land could they but be found dwelling in them and they are these two 1. A working hand 2. An honest heart 1. A quick and working hand There should be a diligent and quick dispatching and expediting of their Masters businesses and commands without loytering and taking their own ease and pleasures Gen. 24.33 Abrahams servant was so conscientious in the stirring in his Masters business that he preferred it before his meat and would not eat till his errand was told them Send me away says he that I may go unto my Master I would have all the Captains and Mariners in the States service to be of that honest minde and upright spirit that Drusius Livius was of of whom it s said that this great Roman Counsellor bespoke a curious Artificer to build him an house in the City as curiously as Art could make it That I will said he and I will so contrive it that none shall ever see your coming into it or going out of it nor what you do at any time in your house God forbid says he I will have my house built so that the eyes of the whole City may run up and down every corner in it and may clearly see what I do in my house every day I up rise Tell the States that you would have them to build you such Frigots as that all the ships that sail by you in the Seas may see into your Cabins and what you do every day And this would bespeak you honest men Jacob also served Laban with all his might Gen. 31.6 night and day did he take care for his gain and profit Make the like conscience of your service and the discharge of those Trusts that are imposed in you whether in the Merchants or States service and say when you have got your sailing Orders or when your Ships are fraughted Let 's be going Send us away now whilst the wind and opportunity serves Loyter it not in Harbors 2. An honest heart You should do for your Masters as you would do for your selves Nay you should esteem of their business before and above your own Upright Jacob did thus in Labans service Gen. 30.30 And the Lord hath blessed thee since my coming as if he were a going to say I have followed thy business honestly and closely and my own have I neglected And now when shall I provide for mine own house also It s wonderful to think what Jacob endured in Labans service Gen. 31.40 41. Heat scorched him by day and frost nipt him by night besides his losse of sleep and nocturnal rest I confesse that Seamens service is full of danger hardship night-watching and day-labouring but to go through-stitch with all they do out of a good principle is the life of all that is that which makes the service venerable Put on put on Masters of Ships and Seamen for honest hearts and principles God knows you are people that are the furthest on stern of any people in the world Use all fidelity in the keeping employing and encreasing of Merchants goods for their gain and advantage that you can Purloin not nor waste them in riotous eating and drinking What care took Jacob that nothing might miscarry in his hand Gen. 31.38 39. when his Master thought that he had robbed him he could not finde a rag amongst all his stuff that was his And will not you take the like on the behalf of those that employ you 2. Vnto the State In this service there be five sorts of men that deserve sharp Reproof and they are those that go under the Notion 1. Of Captains 2. Pursers 3. Gunners 4. Boatswains 5. Carpenters 1. Of Captains The Sea Captain is a Lad that has his faults slips spots and blemishes as well as another Alexander was continent yet immoderate Sylla was valiant yet violent Galba eminent yet insolent Lucullus generous yet delicious Marcellus glorious yet ambitious Architus patient yet avaritious Is there not very many that are now employed in the Seas who are no more fit for that function than the suit of a Giant is for a short-grown Dwarf Many creep into the States service that are both a disgrace to it a dishonour unto God and a gravaminous burthen to the ships and men they go amongst Let me tell the States of England thus much That the entertaining and countenancing of heretical erroneous factious and unpeaceable persons in their ships has exceedingly hurt poisoned and infected the silly and ignorant Sailors There would not have been found those damnable Errours in the heads hearts and mindes of Seamen that be now to be seen with great confidence and boldness at this day amongst them had there but been a careful keeping out of Command all such worthless persons who leave nothing else but a stink in every ship and Countrey they breathe in In former times when there was as much Peace in England as there is now as much Piety as there is now as much Honesty as there is now nay more Honesty and Sincerity whatever any in this Age cry up and boast of none but well-bred and accomplished men both of parts and estates were put into Commands at Sea It s a true saying that Ex quolibet ligno non fit Mercurius Every log of wood will not make a Scholar and I may with as great verity say that every uncomb'd Sailor will not make a Captain every one that knows the Rigging or the navigating and carrying of a
of Christ did Apollos 5. Admonish them of and about their faults Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart Thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour and not suffer sin upon him Lev. 19.17 But seeing I am very importunate with you to reprove and carry strict command over your men in the Seas I would have our Sea-Captains of that brave noble spirit that Themistocles was of of whom it is said that when he found a chain of gold in the street he would not stoop down to foul his fingers with it but said heroically unto another Tolle tu ego sum Themistocles Sea-men take you the spoyl I will not have a farthing-worth of it Beggarliness is an uncomely thing in Captains Give mee leave also to rub you a little upon the shore for you are not without your apparent slips no more than they are but are as far over the shooes in rotten practices as others Now I will shew wherein and that in several particulars and pray amend them 1. In Prize and Plunder Is there not more than a few couzening pranks plaid by you in the defrauding of your Sea-men of that which they have most desperately hazzarded themselves for It is a true Proverb That hee that shares hony with a Bear shall have the least share of it Sailors who fight hard for what they get and you that do little or nothing in the engagement run and take it from them what justice or equity is there now in this Leave off Leave off this stinking course and carry your selves Christianly amongst your Sea-men and let them have what is their dues in such cases Have not some of you been disgracefully turned out of your places about these things 2. In the solemn observation of the Sabbath This day God pardon you is as little observed or regarded in the Seas by you that are in command as it is almost in Turky My ears have often heard to my sorrow and to the dishonour of my God whom I serve that every day was a Sabbath unto them What have such Commanders intended now in such Diabolical speeches in the ears of an hundred and fifty men but to draw them off from the keeping of it And it is to bee feared that there bee more than a few of such still in the States ships of England who are secretly prophane and licentious What ever prophane wretches think of this day I will speak thus much in the vindication of it that God is wont to sanctifie his people more on this day than on another and that more have been converted in it than on any other day besides Heathen Princes are wont in their Coronation dayes to shew themselves to their people in their Royalties and to cast about them great handfulls both of silver and of gold The Sabbath is a day wherein God appears most comfortably to those that conscienciously keep it hee shews himself to them and they shew themselves to him On this day God makes our spirits holy and heavenly and sets them in tune and order for every good work and business 3. In the clubbing down of swearing Many Sea-Captains stand in their ships like Harpocrates the Egyptian who was alwayes painted with his finger upon his mouth Their fingers are in their mouthes when they should speak for God in the reproof of sin and seldome or ever shall you hear them active in the pulling down the Devils Dialect Sea-Captains in this case are very like unto those Idols David speaks of Psal 115. That have mouths but speak not and prophaneness God pardon you How doth many of you walk up and down in the ships you have command of even day by day and though you hear swearing betwixt decks or upon deck and on every hand you yet do not you open your mouthes to crush it and to punish such vile wretches who should beat down this sin in ships but you Let a Minister open his mouth against them and they are ready to eat them up because they love not his reproving of them More may bee done by that power you have over them as to the reclaiming of them from this evil than any Minister in the world can do though hee either threw out his heart amongst them or spit up his lungs with thundering against them for it I profess I wonder how you can hear and digest with patience and silence the very Oaths and rotten speeches that bee perpetually belched out of stinking mouthes that bee in your ships Instead of being valiant for God you are meer Cowards in good causes and Traytors unto the State of Christianity Nay let mee tell you that you do think by this sinful silence to gain and purchase unto your selves the name and the applause of no Medlers in other mens matters and so are cried up for merciful men and peaceable men when alas you are rather murderers of mens souls than preservers of them Ante Vacunales stantque sedentque focos Ovid. Put on put on Sea-Captains for that brave spirit of Jeroms who said in these words Si veritas est causa discordiae mori possum tacere non To put you now upon the beating up of the Quarters of all swearers and prophane wretches in your ships and to the discountenancing of all vice let these profitable Consectaries lye warm upon your hearts and spirits 1. How knowest thou but that a seasonable reproof may by the blessing of God bee an occasion of conversion to the offender And know that hee that converteth a sinner from the errour of his wayes shall save a soul from death and shall hide a multitude of sin Reproof in your mouthes would keep Sea-men from much sin as holy Bradford kept B. Farrar whilst he was prisoner in the Kings Bench from receiving the Sacrament at Easter in one kinde which he had promised to do And B. Ridley whilst prisoner in the Tower from going to Mass which once he did but was reduced by Mr. Bradfords godly letter Jam. 5.20 It is a noble imployment yea it is one of the gloriousest works in the world to have an hand in the holy business of the saving of a soul Many of your Sea-men Gentlemen are running headlong unto hell if you can by any means stop them do take hold of any thing that you can first lay hands on and tell them that you have a strong love in your hearts for the good of their poor souls I fear it will bee inquired into one day what good you have done the men you took a charge off Come hither Sea-man will the Lord say What Captain was you under in the Seas I served Captain whom I was never bettered by all the Voyage What Captain was you under also I was under Captain whom I never heard a word of God or of Christ drop out of his lips amongst us never in all my life What Captain served you under I was under Captain who never reproved swearing nor any
whole world gathered together into one Auditory and had some high Mountain for his Pulpit c. I shal say the like in another Were all the whole Navy of England gathered together that a Chaplains Pulpit were or could be placed in the Maintop of some goodly ship that he might have a prospect of all the ships in his view and were furnished with a heart of brass and a voyce as loud as a trumpet of an Archangel that all the whole Navy might hear him I would either choose for him or for my self these two texts of Scripture Jam. 4.12 But above all things my brethren swear not at all Isa 5.11 Wo to the Drunkards of Ephraim c. This is Dâ—vinity enough to be preached unto Sea-men and my reason is this that they that will not leave off swearing and drunkenness they will practise nothing in the whole book of God To scoure you of this rotten distemper let me prescribe you this soul-healing medicine which lyes in the sacred word of God and if you can but digest it I dare promise you that you will neither swear more nor affect it in others when you hear it Look then into Jam. 5.12 But above all things my brethren swear not at all c. Why so seems many a prophane wretch to say I will tell thee wherefore the reason is ready at hand â—xod 20.7 God is tender of his Name It is said of the Jews that they were so tender of the Name of God that one should never hear them presume to pronounce that dreadful name of Jehovah in the Law but read Adonai unless it were by the High-priest once a year Augustus as Suetonius reporteth would not have his name obsolefieri worn thred-bare What think you of the Lords holy Name then Sailors which you wear and tear in your mouths day by day The name of Mercurius Trismegistus was not commonly pronounced because of great reverence to him 1. Swearing is a grievous sin if thou consider but well the object about which its conversant and that is the Lord. 2. It is a grievous sin if thou consider the occasion and that is none at all God knows It is with the major part of the Sailors in England as it was with a great swearer in the dayes of King Edward the sixth to whom when that godly Minister Mr. Haines replied when hearing of a brave Gallant rapping out most horrid oaths told him that hee should one day give an account thereof the young Spark ill-mannerly answered him Take no care for mee but prepare for your winding sheet Well said the good Minister Amend for death gives no warning At which counsel hee still broke into a far â—â—her rage and strain of swearing till such times that he came to a bridge which passed over an arm of the Sea and putting the spurs to his horse the metalness of the beast took the wall and down went the horse and the great swearer into the depths and his last words were when hee saw no recovery but death Here is horse and man going now full speed unto the Devil I pray God it may not bee said both of some men and ships when they sink in the Seas That there is a ship and all the swearing Sea-men in her the other day or the last week gone to the Devil My reason is this the preaching of the word and the telling them of the danger of this sin would never take nor prevail with them and therefore what other end can such expect at their death than a meer going unto the Devil Our English Sailors are too like and too near a kin unto that desperate Boy of Tubing in Germany of whom it is said that hee was a most damnable Swearer and inventer of new Oaths even of such as were neither common nor ever heard of before A swearing ship is an ill air for holy zeal to breathe in a good heart will soon be weary of such an abode and say Wo is me that I dwel in Meshek and that I sojourn in the Tents of Kedar But what became of this blasphemous wretch may some say I answer and what the Lord did by him I pray you Sailors take notice lest God do not so by you for your swearing God sent a canker or some worse disease that did eat out his tongue which was the instrument hee blasphemed with I have read also of another and his usual oath was By Gods Arms shortly after this mans arm was hurt with a knife but nothing in all the world could ever cure it again but it wrankled festered and rotted off his body and through anguish and pain thereof hee dyed most miserably Is it not just with God think you to rot your arms legs and tongues off and out of your mouthes for you are worse swearers than any of these that I have presented unto you out of history as arguments to deter you from the practice of it This sin of swearing or any other sin indeed if it bee but born withall a while will not know it self to bee sin at all but plead innocency to bee no iniquity Consuetudo delinquendi pro lege est said Tertullian Custome is for a Law and so will bee accounted good if a man use himself but to this or any other sin a while hee will never take notice of it nor know when hee doth evil And truly after sin once becomes customary Citius finienda vita quam vitia Life may sooner end than they will part with their vices Most Sea-men are got into such a garb and habit of swearing that I may take up the words of the Prophet Jer. 23.13 and tell them that the Aethiopian cannot change his skin nor the Leopard his spots Woe bee unto you if this sin and your lives end together 3. Lying I know no people under the whole Heavens again given and addicted so much unto this evil as our Sailors are should inquiry bee made into all the Kingdomes Provinces Continents or Territories of the world their accounts would bee at last that they had none such amongst them as bee and go in the Seas A Tale-bearer or a Tale-carrier in the Hebrew Tongue is compared to a Pedlar who will when hee hath furnished himself and filled his pack with variety of pedling and petty stuffs of several colours of Ribbanding and Inkling trot up and down from Town to Town where hee can finde best custome and trading After this manner doth the pedling Sea-man carry upon his back his paltry pack of lyes and opens it on board every ship hee comes into I would Commanders would do by lyars in their ships as Artaxerxes did by one of his Souldiers when finding him in a lye caused his tongue to be thrust through with three needles This is a good course to discourage lying or every house and Town hee goes into hee matters not the truth of any thing hee speaks but out goes his rotten wares to impoyson all
a mile In some serene mornings I have seen many of them playing and sporting of themselves in the Seas Is not this a most formidable creature that sends out a smoak out of his Nostrils as if it were the smoak that flyes out of a great gun or a smoak that comes out of some great seething vessel when taken off the fire at a great distance one from another and sending forth such strange and prodigious smoaks and fumes as if there were some Town or Village of smoaking chimneys in the Seas Until I became acquainted with their postures I have been oftentimes put into no small wonderment what smoak it should bee that flyes so high above the waters Vers 25. When hee raises up himself the mighty are affraid by reason of breakings they purify themselves When hee is pleased to shew himself upon the waters and to come forth out of the deeps to the view of all that shall or dare behold him hee puts them into an astonishment and trembling fear and pavor Sword and buckler are no weapons to fight him withall for such is the fierceness of his motion in the waters that the great and burthensome ships cannot make their way with that speed that hee will do though they have the stiffest and strongest gale that ever blew This beast seems the Lord to say will make the boldest and the hardiest of men to betake themselves to flight and prayer and seriously to consider of their latter end before they can get clear of him after they have once encountered him Vers 31. Hee makes the deep to boyl like a pot of oyntment I have observed that when this creature is pleased to cut his sporting capers in the Seas and to take his frisks and skipping gambals or to dance his musical galliards in the waters The sight of this creature has put mee to a Me non tantum admiratio habet sed eâ—tam stupor being then in his pomp and grandeur all the waters forsooth fly round about him in fomeing froth and bubble which has oftentimes occasioned that in the Psalms to come into my mind Psal 104.26 There is that Leviathan whom thou hast made to play therein This creature is very much delighted in playing and sporting of himself in the waters insomuch that I have observed of them to curvet and rear themselves directly upwards out of the water so that the waters have flown this way and that way into the very aire at his falling down again he has been so much out of the water with his great and massy body Vers 32. Hee makes a path to shine after him one would think the deep to bee hoary This creature being of such an incredible magnitude latitude and longitude whose fins are like to the boughs or branches of the tallest Cedars and are the Oars which row and carry on the great vessel of his body withall from place to place at his pleasure The Whale puts as admirable a beauty upon that part of the Sea his body swims in as the Sun does upon the Rainbow by gilding of it with its golden and irradiating beams by which when hee comes and makes his princely appearance near unto the surface of the waters the Seas where hee is are of such a lustre verdancy and greenness as is most admirable to behold insomuch that if this creature never shewed himself at all one might know where hee is by the shining of the water were hee a mile or two in distance from the ship the Mariners sail in The often sight of this clear truth has not been a little delightful unto mee The sight of this creature 1. Meditation Naturalists tell us that the Whale never swims any way without his Pilot which is a small kind of fish called Musculus for hee being a deep drawing vessel stands in need of a guide to direct him lest hee should either run on ground shallows creeks rocks and sandâ— and when hee comes near any of these his Pilot gives him warning and intelligence thus beautifying of the Seas imprinted no less than this upon my heart that the Saints and servants of the most high God should shine with a bedazeling lustre and beauty in the several places of the world they live in Ezek. 43.2 The earth shined with the glory of the Lord. Holyness has a majesty in the countenance of it How should the people of God get and labour for shining lives shining faces and shining conversations hereby comes the Gospel of Christ to be honoured and others incouraged to come unto Christ and to bee won with the love of the truth and this is that which our Saviour expresly commands when hee says Matth. 5.16 Let your light so shine before men that they may glorify God c. and that they may say yonder is a childe of God and yonder is a beleever and yonder is one that lives up in very deed to the height of his profession Vers 33. Upon earth there is not his like for hee is made without fear Look and range all the whole earth over look into all the store-houses of Gods creatures examine and run through the deeps and the earth round about from East to West and from the South into the North none shall or can bee found either in the Sea or on Land resembling this intremendous and fearless creature all creatures else are fearful and timorous and are not without something of fear in them but there is none at all in this This has imprinted upon my spirit 2. Meditation no less than a bewailing of thousands yea of millions of people that live in the world as if they would tell all round about them that they are of this Leviathan Metal without all trembling fear of God the fear of sin and the fear of hell as if they had neither sins to bee pardoned souls to bee saved heaven to look after nor a God to serve and please Vers 34. He beholds all high things he is King over all the children of pride This creature it seems is not without pride loftiness and arrogance swelling with selfe-confidence in his own strength who is of a conceited undauntedness of spirit out of a scornful opinionativeness that the mightiest and greatest of monsters either in the Seas or upon the Land are not comparable to him accounting them his inferiours and himself the supream and sovereign of all the elementary creatures whatsoever 7. I cannot but write this upon these three crearures Creaturae ego Creatorem admiror They have many times a frequent sight of that pleasurable and most delightful fish-combat that is betwixt the Sword-fish the Whale and the Thresher the manner of this Fish-fight is admirable and very contentful to behold for the Sword-fish is so weaponed Sword-fish and well armed to encounter his enemy that hee has upon his head a fish-bone that is as long and as like to a two-edged sword as any two things in the world
e quovis bibunt fonte Jejunus stomachus raro vulgaria temnit Lapsana called of the Arabians Wilde Colewort and of Physicians Cera with the roots of this herb lived the host of Cesar a long time when far off any refreshments and this was at Dyrrachium from whence came that Proverb Lapsana vivere to live wretchedly and hardly which they cannot come to by reason of their great distance from any land or harbour they are constrained out of an impulsive necessity to lay their lips unto the same water the ship swims in now the water of the Sea wee all know is inutilis potui though good alere pisces servire navigantibus the drinking of which water throws many of them into irrecoverable sicknesses and diseases Again it is the special care of Mariners in these long voyages when grown short of water to hang out all the sail that ever they have that it may bee in readiness to receive all the showers of rain that falls upon the ship and this they will wring out of the Canvass to quench their thirst withall And this is sweet water in their mouthes although it run down the Tarry shrouds and Roaps about the ship which doth exceedingly imbitter it Against Rain Sailors are like Spiders in providence who hang their Nets in windows where they know Flyes do most resort and work most in warm weather because Flyes are then most abroad buzzing and stirring in every corner Prov. 27.7 To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet 17. Others are oftentimes most sadly endangered in rugged and violent storms I will write thus much upon this remarkable deliverance Ps 142.4 I looked on my right hand and beheld but there was no man that would know me refuge failed me no man cared for my soâ—â— insomuch that the Rudder is forced off its bands by their being thrown upon ground or sands and then is their case to the eye of reason so impossible of being remedied that they have no more command of the ship than the driver hath of the wilde Ass spoken of in Job 39.7 Who scorneth the multitude of the City c. Now will not neither can the ship bee got to go by the Card at this and that Point as formerly shee would I have known some that have been many dayes in this condition driving too and again upon the Seas Vers 5. I cried unto thee O Lord I said thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living not able to help themselves and though they have made great and vast recompencing promises unto ships that have seen them and comm'd by them in this distress yet would they not take them in a tow nor afford them any relief and yet notwithstanding when they have been thus forsaken in all their hopes and no eye hath pittied them nor no help from man hath come unto them yet hath the Lord looked out of the heavens upon their sorrows and beat down the waves of the Seas and the raging winds over their heads and then by weak and poor means they have got themselves safe to land Oh the many Sea-men that are yet living and can tell of this very mercy I may write thus much upon this deliverance In communi rerum acervo plurima videmus saepe inter Scyllam Charydim pofita I may further say of this memorable mercy Psal 34.18 The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and saveth such us be of a contrite spirit Vers 15. The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are open unto their cry 18. Some are many times by and through the violence of storm and tempest exceedingly hazzarded in their being overset insomuch that the ships Masts have been seen to lye in the very Sea and the ships decks covered all over with water which is one of the dreadfullest and heart-bleedingest conditions that can bee seen They that fall into this predicament of misery there is small hopes of their recovery or rising up again because when a vessel is or comes once to bee foundered there is no possibility of her being helped up insomuch that where one recovers five goes to the bottome 19. Many times when they are riding at an Anchor they are very dolorously hazzarded by violent gusts and stormy blasts of wind insomuch that Cables oftentimes break and their Anchors give way and so are most dreadfully put upon the drift and that which is the saddest circumstance in this unparalleld misery is the propinquity and nearness of sands upon which they are many times likely to perish I may write upon this remarkable deliverance Tria talia poma quadrante cara sunt Three other such Apples are too dear of a farthing I leave the Application It is with Mariners in this case as it was with the Egyptians when they had the Israelites amongst them Exod. 12 3â— Wee bee all dead men I may say of Sailors as the Spirit of the Lord saith of the Church Lamentat 5.9 Wee get our bread with the peril of our lives if there were not a singular providence stepping betwixt and to prevent the fatal stroak of such like stormy consequences Many through the undeserved kindness of the Lord have escaped when their Cables have broke in storms and others have gone to the bottome Is not this a mercy worth perpetual boxing and recording in the heart 20. It falls out oftentimes in rugged and blustering weather that they are forced both when they are at an Anchor and also when under sail to lay violent hands upon their masting and yarding and cut down all by the Board for the safe-guarding of their lives and vessel Being once in this condition when upon the coast of Norway I observed that there was not a little terrour and affrightment of being cast away among the Sailors for the wind failed us and the current heavâ—d us into the shore and the Rocks lay round about us and the Sea was so deep that there was no anchoring for us so that all hopes of being saved was taken away yet casting our selves upon our God he provided deliverance and sent out his breezes some from the Land and some out of the Sea some on Head and some on Stern making all the haste that ever they could as if they had been resolved to tell us that they strave who should bee the first at us to fill our sails and carry us back from dying upon the Rocks and oftentimes before they can take the leasure to hew them down the strongness of the winds breaks them down now in this most dreadful and heart-affrighting and soul-amazing weather when the Seas run Mountain-high as if resolved to swallow them up alive the Lord doth wonderfully preserve them they live in this hard stormy time and others perish in it 21. Others are oftentimes becalmed in the Seas when that they are in the dangerousest and perillousest of places and when that there
preserve them and to carry them away from the fire for it is a common thing amongst the Mariners in such cases to run away with the boat and leave all the rest to the mercy of the fire yet notwithstanding boats have been sent off from shore with all speed and their lives have been saved 49. Others have been delivered after this miraculous manner when the ship hath sprung a dangerous and an incurable leak which could in no manner art Now have the Sea-men trembled within themselves and their inward desires have been like those of Moses Deut. 3.25 I pray thee let me go over and see the good Land that is beyond Jordan that goodly Mountain and Lebanon The Lord has given them leave to come safe on Land when that they thought that they should have drowned in the Sea and skil bee stopped their lives being greatly hazarded the Lord has sent unto them a fish that has gone into the leak and made it up with its own body as firm and as tite as ever the ship was before to the admiration of all that were in the Vessel insomuch that when they have brought the ship on shore they have found the fish lying in the leak as fast as any planck about the Vessel 50. Others for want of victuals in their long voyages in the Seas have been forced to put into strange and uninhabited places into which they have come thinking to find relief yet could they not see with their eyes neither man beast nor foul yet in some time tarriance there the Lord has to admiration provided for them insomuch that great flocks of fouls have been seen to come out of other parts I may say of this wonderful preservation as it is said of Israels manna Joshua 5.12 Neither had the children of Israel manna any more but they did eat of the fruit of the Land of Canaan that year and light in those inhospitable places where the poor people were like to starve and lay them eggs in great abundance and thus they did for many daies till at such times they got supplies and then the fouls went away and left them but not till then 51. Others have been no less wonderfully delivered when sprung great and dangerous leaks in time of dreadful storms they have been thrown upon the sands and when thinking themselves past all hopes of being saved God has turned all for good by calming of the Seas and winds The sight of this truth appeared to bee no small mercy in my eye Seems not this to be the language of those many Sands that ly up and down in the Seas that sin has filled the great deeps with them and many other unequal shallows by which ships are most dreadfully perplexed and ruined many and many a time If mankind had not sinned nothing should have lain in his way to harm him in the Seas As that curse at mans unhappy fall fell upon the whole world Gen. 3.18 to this day all grounds are cumbred with Thorns and Thistles and so the Sea with thousands of Rocks and Sands and also stoping of the leak and to boot besides both their ship and lives again 52. Others again have wonderfully been preserved when in boats that have been towing at a Friggots stern the ships way being so furious and violent through the Seas the boats bows has been pulled out and all the men thrown into the naked Sea some lying here and some lying there in a most dreadfull condition insomuch that hee that is a spectator of these lamentable accidents would think that never a one of them should bee saved and besides it is a long time ere a ship can bee put upon the stayes when shee has her freshest way 53. Others again have been most wonderfully preserved when storms have come down upon them in the dreadfullest rage that ever was seen or heard insomuch that their cables break and are thereby forced from their anchors and that which ponderates and proves the greatest inconveniency in the circumstance is their propinquity unto Sands being thus put to it in a Moonless and Starless evening This seems also to be the language of all the in-Sea-lying Rocks We know that the Mariner would have us to depart the deeps and lye in the bowels of the Earth with the rest of our fraternity but truly here we are ordered for to lye and to be a trouble unto mankind that he might not have all the sweetnesse safety and security in his trading it is something terrible in respect that they are thrown upon them and at every held the ship has laid her very hatches in the water and the poor men looking at every rowl that the Vessel should overset upon them I have known some in this condition that have lived and got off again both with ship and lives 54. Others have been very admirably preserved when sailing in the Seas without any mistrust or jealousy of Sands or runing on ground yet has it pleased the Lord to put into the hearts of some or other in the ship and given them secret hints to sound the Sea and no sooner have they fadomed their depth but the ship has struck and by a speedy handling of the Helm through the blessing of the Lord they have very narrowly escaped 55. Others again have been wonderfully preserved in this respect when they have unawars come on ground or upon a Sand-bank it has but been upon a smal point of it I cannot look upon any of these prementioned deliverances but my soul tels me that there is the visible finger of the Lord in them Psal 92.6 A brutish man knoweth not neither doth a fool understand this whereas had the ship run directly upon it shee had been lost without all recovery The often sight of this pretious deliverance I hope will lye warm upon my heart as long as I live But to break off what shall I now say of all and after all these remarkable and notable deliverances My thinks I cannot pass by the point that was laid down without one short word or two of use 1. Of Reprehension 2. Of Exhortation Use 1. Of Reprehension If it bee thus That the Sea-man of all the men under the whole heavens none excepted is one that is both a partaker and a seer of the greatest and remarkablest of temporal deliverances How are such to bee checked that out of blinde eyes hard hearts and sottish spirits never look upon these pre-mentioned mercies and deliverances as either mercies or deliverances but hurl them at their heels and value them no more than they do their old shooes The end of my gathering up these your mercies and deliverances is only to stir up your hearts unto thankfulness and to let the people that live on land both see and know what God doth for you in the deeps the truth of it is these are buried mercies that I have been telling of and such mercies as have lyen in the
grave of oblivion where few have taken any notice of them many of these I have gleaned up both from my own experience and from the mouthes of others that have been both good and pious I never knew any one that ever undertook to write any thing upon this subject nor to gather up the Sea-mercies that I have done If they bee not savoury unto thee or any that reads them let me tell you thus much it is an argument of a carnal heart Did Jacob Gen. 33.10 undervalue his deliverance from the hand of his brother Esau as you do Did David look upon it as a small mercy that hee had so good a friend as Jonathan 1 Sam. 20.36 Did the Apostle Paul and the rest of those passengers that escaped that dreadful storm and shipwrack look lightly and think lightly of that deliverance Act. 27. God knows you are men that are at this day trampling these mercies under your feet Swine tread not corn nor trample Acorns under feet more brutishly than many do their deliverances at Sea Use 2. Of Exhortation Bee perswaded to bee much in thankfulness and more than ever you have been Ah souls consider what you owe unto your God you are in so great a debt to him that do what you can you will never bee able to come out of it I may say unto you in the words of Job 33.29 Thanks laid out this way are laid up non percunt shall I say of them sed parturiunt Is 32.8 The liberal man deviseth liberal things and by liberal things he shall stand One would think that he would the rather fall by being so bountiful but indeed he takes the right course to thrive Giving is the only way to an abundance God looks not that mens thankfulness should come from them â— as drops of blood from their hearts or that it should be squeezed out of them as wine out of the grape but that it flow from us as water out of a spring as light from the Sun and as hony from the Comb. Lo all these things worketh God oftentimes with man Even all those deliverances that I have been telling you of Let mee press these things upon you 1. Acknowledge that it is the Lord and hee alone that hath wrought all these deliverances both for you and for others and that not for your merits or for theirs but his own mercies sake 2. Praise his most glorious Name with your tongues and call upon others so to do 3. Obey God the more in your lives and intreat every Sea-man so to do 4. Love him intirely in your hearts and beseech every Sea-man so to do 5. Depend wholly upon him in all your distresses for the time to come and bid other Sea-men so to do 6. Bee evermore in a diligent circumspection and godly fear of provoking of the Lord unto anger and beseech other Sea-men so to do But to proceed Exod. 9.30 I know that yee will not yet fear the Lord God 4. And lastly If it bee demanded of mee What is meant and understood by the Lords Wonders in the deeps I shall give you my most humble thoughts in brief before you had it Works of the Lord and now his Wonders why his Works which wee have spoken of before are wonderful works and works and wonders in this place are both relatives and concomitants and as they go and may bee taken together I shall say of them Deus conjunxit nemo separet Such excellency and eminency is there in the works of the Lord that a seeing eye cannot but look upon the meanest of them as matter of wonderment and astonishment All the deliverances that have been presented and now stand in view upon the Stage before the whole world are nothing else but Gods wonders in the deeps and all those fishes in the Seas of which I have run upon and told you of are Gods Wonders in the deeps viz. the Whale the Sea-horse the Granpisce and the Sea-monster c. Again every wave is a wonder and he that hath a seeing eye in a storm may see ten thousand wonders how one mountainous wave rowls and follows in the heels of another which make most dreadful and amazing downfalls and hollows in so much that it is a terrible thing for a strong brain to look out of a ship into them and amongst them When the Seas are congregated into mountainous heaps rowling tonanti voce ships are jetted up unto the heavens and this is matter of wonderment Yonder is a wave a coming sayes the Sea-man that will bee with us by and by yea and break in upon us and in it comes over the ships waste and when that is over yonder is another a coming that will rowl over our Poops and Lanthorns and when delivered from that a while they sail and by and by rises another billow that threatens to run over the Main-yard arm which is four or six Fathom higher and above the ship insomuch that the Mariner is exceedingly affrighted lest that the ships decks should bee broke with that intolerable weight of water and also of being run down into the bottome But thus much shall serve for an account of those Works and Wonders that Sea-men do see in the Seas and so I proceed Vers 25. For hee commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind which lifteth up the waves thereof IN our handling of these words I will not stand upon that curious quaint and fine-spun division that might bee made of them beleeve mee the Sea will not permit it onely thus much I shall promise to give you all that this Scripture will afford us and that which is materially in it In the words then you have these two things 1. Gods Sovereign and Supreme power 2. The creatures ready and willing obedience The Seas like the Heliotrope or your solsequii flores Sun following flowers which stand constantly gazing and opening unto the Sun from whom they draw their life and nourishment even follow the blowing blustring winds if they be stiff and strong they make the Seas for to rage and roar For hee commandeth c. The particle for in this verse is used as a note of the effect or sign and in our common speech when wee would express our selves in something that others are either ignorant of or desirous to know we then take an occasion to proclaim it and say yonder 's ships in the Offin of the Sea for I see their white sails and yonder 's Guns fired to wind-ward for I see the smoak flying and ascending so that wee may read the word thus Because hee commandeth the winds to blow therefore is it that the waves are lifted up When the winds have blown hard in the remote parts of the Seas whether in the East West North or South the effects thereof are usually seen in far distant parts of the Seas that that storm never light upon for the winds disturb the Seas by blowing upon one part when they travel not
in the South-West and by West c. Psal 107.43 Who so is wise will observe these things 4. And lastly The other Army lies quartered in the South and this oftentimes is very commonly the fiercest and furiousest of them all This Army may be called neque manere finet neque navigare Sometimes it will neither suffer ships to sail nor to keep the Sea insomuch that it makes the Seas run mountain-high and lye all upon a bubling froth and curded foam This Army marches one while into the South and by East South and by and by into the South-East South-East and by South c. and is very ready and attentive to carry on the Lords designs either for good or evil There is both a wonderful vertibility and also variableness in the winds one while they are here and by and by they are there Eccl. 1.6 The wind goeth towards the South and turneth about unto the North it whirleth about continually and the wind returneth again according to his circuits Oh what quick eyes hearing eares ready feet strong arms may I say has these four-wind armies to go yea run If that an Italian General could say when one of his Nobleâ— complained unto him of their want of men I can have all Italy up in arms with one stamp of my feet upon the Earth What do you think then of the Lord cannot hee have all his forces both in Heaven and Earth up in arms Land sooner than Armies of men can bee at the sound of trumpet or at the beat of drum and fly upon Gods commands What more frequent than to hear this amongst the Mariners Wee were shipwracked when the Nothern wind-army lay in the North North-West and wee lost our ship says another when the Eastern wind-army lay in the East and by South c. and wee lost our ship says another when the Southern wind-army lay in the South and by East South c. and wee lost our ship seems another to say when the Western wind-army was upon its march in the West South-West c. But to proceed I will run on in a few more particulars as God has wind-armies at command so has hee many other strange unminded and unobserved armies to march into the field against a people when hee pleases 1. God has his Angel-fighting-armies some whereof are good and other some are bad 2 Sam. 24.16 And when the Angel stretched out his hand upon Jerusalem to destroy it the Lord repented him of the evil c. 2 King 19.35 And it came to pass that night that the Angel of the Lord went out If one Angel could do thus much what could not Christs twelve Legions have done upon the wicked Jews and smote in the Camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand c. 2. The Lord has his Sun Moon and Star fighting Armies and this is another sort of army that the Lord has sometimes mustred up to shew his mighty Power and these are called the Hosts of Heaven Deut. 17.3 This Host was up in Arms in Joshua's time Josh 18.12 13. But some may object and say this is something strange how should the Sun the Moon or the Stars fight I answer God may take away the use the benefit the light and the influences of them and in this sense the battel will bee found too hard to escape in 3. The Lord has his men-fighting-armies at command Exod. 12.51 By these did the Lord bring Israel out of Egypt The wicked are Gods sword and his Armies Isa 10.5 6 7. Jer. 25.9 God has Armies of men both good and bad and when hee pleases hee can presently arm them and send them upon errands of ruine and destruction against a Nation 4. The Lord has his water-fighting-armies at command Gen. 6.17 And behold I even I do bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh wherein is the breath of life from under heaven and every thing that is in the earth shall die 5. The Lord has his fire-fighting-armies at command Gen. 9.24 2 King 1.10 Levit. 10.2 And this Army shall bee up in arms either in ships at Sea or Houses Towns and Cities on Land to set them on burning flames 6. The Lord has his air-fighting army at command and when hee is pleased and displeased with a people hee lets flye the arrows of pestilence out of the strong bended bow of his fierce wrath and irresistable indignation He can infect the aire Numb 16.46 and this arrow shall neither flye over nor short but hit the white the person or the persons that the Lord aimes at whether they bee Towns or Cities Nations or Countries this contagious air shall lay siedge unto them and over them and the Sun shall not bee able to drive it away nor the winds to sweep it away and this stinking aire is able to stifle all whether in Towns Cities or Countries if hee do but impower it and set it on 7. The Lord has his Hail-stone-army at command this Army was up and on foot for God in Joshua's time Josh 10.11 I would all the Drunkards and Swearers Take heed Sailors how you sail to and again in the Seas with hearts full of guilt hands full of blood tongues full of lies and heads full of sinful projects and unreconciled men to God that are either in the States or Merchants Service would tremble before the Lord and bee in fear lest their pates should bee broken with hail-stones out of the Heavens 8. The Lord has his Earth-fighting-army at command Numb 16.32 And the Earth opened her mouth and swallowed them up and their houses c. Take heed Godless man how you walk on Earth lest at every step thou takest the Earth open to bury thee alive for thy drunken and swearing life 9. God has his fighting Armies at command out of the meanest and contemptiblest minutila's that are and these shall come in as good regimental and warlike order as the Souldier at the sound of trumpet or beat of drum viz. Lice Frogs Worms c. How have these adventured into Kings Palaces and who gave them that boldness These broke in at the windows ranged like rude Soldiers into every room belonging to Pharaoh's house Exod. 8.6 16.17 Acts 12.23 10. God oftentimes makes Conscience a terrible gnawing and fighting Army and this the great God of Heaven has command of to send a tormenting Hell into it who is able to stand in the face of this battel This enemy shoots through and through Job could not stand in it for hee cryed out Have pitty upon mee have pitty upon mee Oh my friends for the hand of the Lord hath touched mee But to proceed There is one phrase in the words before us that would bee a little opened and explained 1. What wee are to understand by a Stormy wind 2. What the effects of it are 1. I find that Scripture is delighted to speak of this very vapour Of that
impower and commissionate for services of the bloodiest severity that may be as one of the worlds great wonders but it could not bee such was the fury of the fire and the rage of the Souldiers both of them undoubtedly set on by God so that the fire would not bee extinguished when they threw in both water and the blood of the slain into it Josephus tells us that Herod the King had for eight years together before the ruine of it imployed ten thousand men at work to beautifie it This was a very glorious thing yet how quickly brought down for the sinfulness of a people 1 Cor. 10.11 Now if these things came upon them for sin and security my application is this in short to you that use the Seas Take heed that your sins bring not storms shipwracks and fires upon you when you are in the Seas far from any land If you ask the reason why such a famous City was destroyed the answer is easily returned It was for sin And if you ask what is the reason of such and such Towns and Cities in the world have been fired the answer will bee That sin was the cause of it and so consequently of the ruine of all your ships 2. Because God will shew his power Reason 2 and let nothing-man know what a bubble a flower a helpless creature man is in the hands of his Maker Matth. 8.24 And behold there arose a great tempest in the Sea insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves but hee was asleep and his Disciples came to him and awoke him saying Lord save us wee perish Proud man is very prone to ascribe that to himself which is absolutely and properly due unto the Lord Proud man is oftentimes priding of himself with high thoughts of himself what he is in point of wisdome parts art and skill but when God puts him to the trial hee is a meer nothing Bulla vitrum glacies flos fabula faeuum Vmbra Cinis punctum vo◠sonus aura nihil and therefore God would undoubtedly teach man thus much in storms that there is no wisdome art skill or strength can carry him out of his dangers but it must be God alone that must do it for them But many Sea-men are like to Aprogis that Egyptian Tyrant in many of their storms and dangers of whom it is said that hee was grown to such an height of pride and impiety and contempt of God that hee professed that hee held his Kingdome so safe Ut à nemine Deorum aut hominum sibi eripi possit Behold what a weakling the Sailor is in a storm Isa 33.23 Thy tacklings are loosed they could not well strengthen their Mast they could not spread the sail that neither God nor men could take it from him but hath not God let you see an end of your vain thoughts and imaginations many and many a time and have you not run upon sands when you have purposed to come well home and have you not at other times run on rocks and gone into the very bottome amongst the dead when you have both confidently thought and said you would come safely to your Ports God oftentimes sufficiently convinces you what you are in your own strength and wisdome without him But to proceed 3. Because God would have some Reason 3 humbled God was forced to send a storm after Jonah before hee could get him to buckle to his work Jon. 2.1 Then Jonah prayed unto the Lord his God out of the Fishes belly Nulli rei natus es nauta nisi paenitentiae Sailor thou and every one is born for no other thing but for repenrance and the Lord knows there is none in the world or under the whole heavens that repents less than thou doest Rugged storms will both dissolve men and cause their eyes to run down in rivulets of tears yea it is an argument of a good heart to bee afraid of Gods righteous judgements when the stormy winds are out upon the Seas Good people look upon them as no other but the sword of the Lord that is drawn out of the Scabberd of his indignation which hee waves to and again over and upon the face of the great deeps which puts them upon begging and praying upon the bended knees of their hearts that God would put it up again 4. Because God would have some Reason 4 converted It is very probable and apparent Jonah 1.16 that that storm that came down upon the Mariners proved their conversion Then the men feared the Lord exceedingly and offered a sacrifice unto the Lord and made vows Now they feared God whom they never owned knew nor feared before Storms have been the first converting Sermons that many a man ever met withall Yea God hath met with them in a storm Truly God is forced to do and deal with Sea-men many times as Land-men do with unruly Jades and unbacked horses when they have a minde to take them they must drive them up against some hedge gate or bank where they can neither get forwards nor backwards or else they can never halter them If God do not send down rowsing storms upon the Sailors heads that even threaten to rend both heaven and earth I fear they wil I never return nor come home to God whom a Sermon out of the Pulpit could never take nor reach I many have been caught in a storm that have stood at as great a distance and in as much opposition to God and his word as Ataliba that Indian Prince once did to Fryar Vincents book which hee presented to him withall telling him that it was a small Treatise of all the mysteries of salvation heaven and hell hee looked upon it and told the Gentleman that hee saw no such thing in it asking him withall how hee knew it Many who have heard the word and have said in effect they saw no such matter in it as the Preacher tells them of have been taken napping in a storm God sometimes takes here one and there one napping in a storm that could never bee catched in a calm The word converts but few at Sea but a dreadful storm may fetch in them whom a Sermon could not reach All ground is not alike some must have a shower some a clodding neither is all wood to be used alike some will plain and other some must be taken in the head with wedge and beetle Truly one would think that one of those fearful and most dreadful storms that fall now and then upon the Seas were and should bee sufficient to turn the heathenest Sailor that is in them into a very good and gracious Christian Quaedam fulmina aes ac ferrum liquefaciunt Some Thunders will soften both Brass and Iron and that is an hard heart surely that is not melted and converted before the Lord in those loud thundring claps of storm and tempest Reason 5 5. Because Sinners Swearers and Drunkards are in ships It is nothing but the
infinite mercy goodness and undeserved kindness of the Lord that every day in the Seas is not a stormy Sailors the Seas are turbulent because of you the winds above thunder and roar more over our heads every day than they would the skies are cloudy thick and foggy because of you and the Sun doth not give his light unto the Sea we take not our enemies in our chases because of you neither do wee nor can we bring them down with that violency as we might if you were but good and gracious a gloomy and a dreadful day as long as our ships are full of Diagoras's and drunken Zeno's c. I am confident there is more danger in going to Sea amongst the unsavoury crew that is in ships in England whether Merchant or Men of War than there was for Lot to stay in a stinking Sodome and yet in very deed he had been burnt if the two Angels had not come down from heaven to give him warning and to usher him out of the City whilst fire-balls were making in heaven Gen. 19. The Mariners that carried Jonah had like to have lost their lives what then may one expect in going amongst Sailors that are as full of sin and filthiness as a Dog is full of hairs and fleas 6. To put faith on work Christ was Reason 6 resolved to try Peter Matth. 14.29 30. But when hee saw the wind boysterous hee was afraid and beginning to sinke hee cried saying Lord save mee The German drinks down his sorrows the Spaniard weeps it away the French man sings it away and the Italian sleeps it away all these are but sorry shifts but if thou hast faith in God in stormy times this will make thee sweeter melody in thy foul than all the fidling jigs of Musik in the world Christ soon saw the weakness of his faith It is a strong faith that God delights in and indeed the greater the strength and boldness of it is in God the more it makes for Gods honour declaring him to bee All-sufficient in the worst and greatest of dangers Hee that is faith-proof may go with comfort to Sea whether to the East or to the West to the North or to the South nay such an one ma adventure to imbrace the Artick an Antartick Poles when as a faithless person is but like a Souldier without hi arms Get this grace of faith and thou wilt then see that all thy safety is in God that hee is thy only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Resson 7 7. That patience may bee set on work What a rare speech was that of Paulinus when under that great trial when the savage Goths had invaded the City Nola and ransacked it and taken from him all his richest goods out of his house and coffers hee yeelded not unto the stream of sorrow which might have carried him down into the gulf of despair When Cato's Souldiers were discouraged in their march through the Desart of Lybia because of thirst heat â—â—d and â—â—â—nts he 〈◊〉 this 〈◊〉 unto 〈◊〉 Come 〈◊〉 friends and â—â—at my â—â—uldiers impâ— nt and d câ—uraged these are all pleaâ—â— to a valiant man and to all the storms hazzards and dangers that Sailors meet with all to them that are both valiant and patient but striving against it hee lift up his hands to heaven after this manner Domine ne excrucier propter aurum argentum ubi enim omnia sunt mea tu scis Lord sayes hee let not the loss of these things vexe mee for thou knowest that my treasure is not in this world here was patience exercised The grace of patience is evermore in this world both at Sea and Land upon the trial and sanctified trials both do and will evermore leave in the soul a tranquil calm and quietness Heb. 12.11 Now no chastening for the present seemeth to bee joyous but grievous nevertheless afterward it yeeldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby This is Patiences language Plura sunt tolleranda there be harder storms to bee undergone Job 13.15 Though hee slay mee yet will I trust in him as if hee should have said Should an harder storm come upon mee I would bear it without murmuring Patience will bear every thing quietly and sit as mute in the Sea in time of storms as that Egyptian's goddess whom they call Constancy which they paint upon a rock standing in the Sea where the waves come dashing and roaring upon her with this Motto Semper eadem Storms shall not move mee Certainly all repining comes from an unmortified and an unsanctified spirit the fault lyes not in any condition how desperate soever but in the heart because the heart stoops not to it 8. To set prayer on work If fire bee Reason 8 in straw it will not long lye hid Bias the great Philosopher sailing over some small arm of the Sea amongst the Mariners at that very time there fell a most dreadful storm amongst them insomuch that the ship he was in was greatly endangered of being cast away and the Mariners falling to their strange and confused kinde of prayer and worship the poor Philosopher could not indure it but calls to them and intreats them to hold their peace lest the gods should hear them and he should thereby fare the worse for them if grace bee in the heart it will appear in time of storms and this is the method that God uses many times to put Seamen upon prayer Isa 26.16 Lord in trouble have they visited thee they powred out a prayer when thy chastening was upon them Isa 33.2 O Lord bee gracious unto us wee have waited for thee he thou our arm every morning our salvation also in the time of trouble Storms are like the tolling of a Bell in a ship and when they are dreadful and violent they call all that are in the Seas at those times to prayer and fasting The dumb Son of Craesus could then speak when hee saw the knife at his fathers throat Storms will open those mens mouthes at Sea that never opened them to God in prayer in all their lives The Sea-mans devotion is up in a storm but dead and down in a calm Hee is religious whilst the judgements of the Lord are roaring upon the face of the great deeps but as great a Swearer Drunkard and Adulterer is hee after they are over as ever hee was Reason 9 9. To urge them to seek unto God for pardon of sin There is none under the whole heavens that are more in debt to God than the Sea-man is yet is hee as little sensible of it and as little affected with it as the insensiblest thing in the world either is or can bee But gracious and penitent souls are much troubled for their sins in time of storms looking upon them as the products of their misery and so cannot sleep upon the pillow of worldly enjoyments without a pardon in their hands and hearts The hunted
wilde beast betakes himself to his Den and the wounded Hart to his medicinable herb Dictamnum the pursued Malefactor to the Horns of the Altar and under the Law the chased Man-killer to the City of Refuge Sea-men are a generation of people that can carry the damnable burthen of their Oaths Drunkennesses When the destroying Angel was abroad the Israelites fled into their chambers Exâ— 12.32 A good example for Sailors in time of storms for they that use the Seas deserve little better at Gods hands than those whom the Angel cut off they may well think that when God is killing and sinking others with a vengeance that they deserve the same and so ought to lay it to heart as the Israelites did in their chambers and Adulteries in calms as easily as the Sea can bear the great and heavy loaded ships or as Sampson did the gates of Gaza upon his shoulders but in storms when grim-countenanced death stares them in the face the top-gallant sails of their high hoysed spirits are a little lowred and melted 10. To bring their hearts into better Reason 10 rellish and esteem with calms If Sea-men were to live on land any long tract of time Prov. 27.7 The full soul loatheth the hony-comb One dish too often is stalling and cloying and Sardanapulus never liked any dish twice they would as little estimate it as those that never set their foot upon the salt waters but spend and end their dayes in Lands and Countries of peace and ease it is a general rule that most things are rather valued Carendo potius quam fruendo in their want than in their enjoyment I have observed that when wee have had a week or a fortnights sweet and tranquil weather so that wee have both sailed and anchored in as much quietness and stability as if wee had been lodging in beds and houses upon land but these continued mercies have been little prized by the Mariners Calms at Sea are devoured like Acorns by the Hog at land who never looks up at the hand that beats them down and little considered of as high favours from the Lord and begot little warmth love and affection in their hearts to God again It is very just with God to take his abused and unconsidered mercies from them and give them storms and tempests rowling raging Seas that never valued the kindnesses of God in mild and lovely weather When the Mariner is ruggedly dealt withall for a fortnight or three weeks in stormy and turbulent weather then how welcome is and would the tydings of a cessation of those winds and Seas that are up in arms against them be Ah souls it is a mercy that every day is not a day of sorrow of dread and terrour to you Calms have been very sweet to my soul and have drawn out my heart very much to bless my God for them and shall they not have the like impression with you Fear then lest God take mercy from you and license his indignation to arrest you Reason 11 11. To purifie the Seas It is not the fairest and calmest day that purifies the air but thundrings lightnings and blustering storms and winds that are the airs cleansing brooms and so consequently the same unto the Sea Storms do undoubtedly refine and purifie the salsitude of the Seas and that liableness that is in them unto depravity and coruption 12. For the furtherance and increase Reason 12 of Repentance God sees it fit to lay on storms and chastisements that they may bathe themselves in tears that their Repentance may bee true 2 Chron. 7.13 If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked wayes then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their Land Every storm should be as the Alarm that is struck upon a drum to call all that go in the Seas to Repentance and godly sorrow for their sins and the voice of storms seems to bee this Aut paenitendum aut pereundum I may better say that to Sea-men which holy Anselm said unto himself than that hee should speak it of himsel In his Meditations he confessed that all his life was either damnable for sin committed or unprofitable for good omitted and at last concludes Quid restat O peccator nisi ut in tota via tua deplores totam vitam tuam Oh what remains Sea-man but that thou shouldest not onely in storms but in thy whole life lament the God-provoking sins of thy life When the Lord once gets a people into fetters then does hee shew them their work and their transgressions Job 36.9 and makes their ears open to discipline good hearts when they are locked up in the stormy bolts and fetters of the Seas they then consider that it is for some sin or other and their ears are open and attentive to hear God speaking unto them Ezek. 36.31 Then shall yee remember your own evil waies and your doings that were not good and shall loath your selves in your own fight for your iniquities and for your abominations God many times sends down storms upon the Seas that hee may put that impaenitent crew that frequents them into a godly frame and compunction of heart for their sins but the Lord knows there is little reformation or amendment amongst them Non est poenitens sed irrisor qui adhuc agit unde poenitea That Sailor is but a counterfeit that makes a show of piety in a storm and wears the Devils and not Gods livery in a calm notwithstanding those dreadful dangers that they do daily converse withall this is the Lords complaint against the Sailors in England if I know any thing of the will and mind of that God whom I serve Jer. 8.6 I hearkned and heard but they spake not aright no man repented him of his wickedness saying What have I done Every one turned to his course as the horse rusheth into the battle Reason 13 13. To put them upon the searching of their hearts what sin it is that the storm has come down upon them for Aristippus told the Tarpaulings hee sailed with when they wondered why hee was not affraid in the storm as well as they that the odds was much for they feared the torments due to a wicked life hee expected the reward of a good one the Mariners did so in that storm they were in Jonah 1.7 And they said every one to his fellow Come and let us cast lots that wee may know for whose cause this evil is upon us so they cast lots and the lot fell upon Jonah There is some cause or other why such dreadful Tempests come upon you if you would but enquire them out and for my part I look upon it as a wonderful mercy that every day in the Sea is not a day of storm and a day of terrour so that you can neither sail nor take any comfort my reason
God usually scourges security not with ordinary rods but with Scorpions plagues and vengance Dilavium fuit circa finem Aprilis cum orbis quasi reviviscit cum aves cantillant exultant pecudes Luther The old world was destroyed in the end of April which is the most pleasant time of the year and in that moneth most commonly the most showers and thereupon came the flood the more unawars upon them and it was observed that the Sun broke out very sweetly upon Sodom the very same morning that it was destroyed who would now have looked for such a flood the winter was past and the year in its prime and who would in a fair Sun-shine morning have looked for such a dismal event of fire from Heaven Jer. 29.31 32. Get you up to the wealthy Nation that dwells without care and has neither Gates nor Bars Deut. 29.19 God in this Scripture pours out threatning upon threatning as if hee could not bee satisfied with threatning the sin of carnal security and where is there more of it than at Sea amongst the Sailors than you that are perpetually night and day at the Lords mercy of saving or drowning 3. Want of the fear of God Is there a people under the heavens that fear God less than you do although that you are in the rugged and boysterous storms of the Seas and are daily as a small bird inter periclitantes Aquilas betwixt the very paunces of two griping Eagles 4. Negligence I mean as to the matter of providing for your latter end How knowest thou soul but that the very first storm will bee the last that ever thou shalt see and bee in yea how knowest thou but when the Lords wind-trumpets sound on high that there is a summons for thee but where is the man amongst you that fears this or thinks of an eternity on the backside of this world 5. Vse This doctrine may serve for comfort and consolation to all those that fear the Lord and are daily employed in the Seas that hee is the great Generalissimo and Soveraign Commander both of the winds and Seas so that a blast of wind cannot pass without his leave license and cognizance me thinks this should rejoyce you and this should revive your spirits my heart I can tell you has even leaped within mee when I have sat down in stormy and uncomfortable weather considering that the Lord has both the winds and the Seas in an halter and a strong bridle so that they shall not do more than hee has appointed them for to do as to matter of ruine and danger Me thinks I have found the Lord saying unto mee when the waves have come swelling foming and flying over us and round about us on every side our ship Fear not bee not dismayed for I am hee that commands the greatest waves that have their motion upon and in the Seas and the strongest and stormiest winds are in my hands and under these contemplations I have sat very sweetly and safely under the wing of my God when nothing but death has been round about us 6. This doctrine may serve us to draw out a very profitable Vse of admiration by in the casting about and viewing of the wind which has in its stormy and tempestuous strength very much undoubtedly to set forth the great power and glory of the Lord by how strikes it upon all high things upon the proud towering-tops of steeples and the high-hoysed and advanced turrets of the terrestrial Kings and Princes Palaces and also upon the high and low top-masted ships that go in and through the Seas whereas lower building are both safe and at quiet from their turbulent rage and fury yea the bramble and the shrub have the happiness of standing fast when that the tall grown Cedar and the lofty Pine doth both rock and tremble The wind is one of the great wonders of the Lord in which and by which If it should be demanded what the wind is neither I nor none can tell but all that either is or can be said of it may bee summed up in these three words that it is a creature that may bee 1. Felâ— 2. Heard and 3. Little understood Very wonderful is the rise of the winds there is no outward cause either visible or perceivable at any time and yet when it is very calm and still insomuch that there is not a breath of aire scarce upon the Seas upon a sudden are they here and there and every where Psal 135.7 Hee bringeth the wind out of his treasuries But what these treasuries are and where they are all the men in the world are to seek to tel us the Lords name is wonderfully magnified but what it is and from whence it comes and whither it goes none can tell there be a thousand guessings at it in the world but what it is every man is in the dark some say to speak accuratly and learnedly that it is aâ—r motus air moved up and down others vapours raised up into the midle region and thereby cold is reverberated and so moves in the air after a collateral manner There are no winds stirring upon the tops of some mountains because they reach beyond the ascension of earthly vapours and so are beaten back as the mountain of Olympus of which many Travellers tell us that either manuscripts or pedescripts may bee seen in the very loose dust and sand that is upon it for many daies and years after Pliny that great searcher out of the secrets of Nature in his Natural History does tell us and withall speaks very doubtfully of the winds whether it bee saith hee a spirit or the spirit of Nature that ingendereth all things wandring to and fro as it were in the womb or rather air broken and driven by the several influences and rayes of the stragling stars and Planets and the multiplicity of their beams plain it is that they are guided by the rule of Nature not alltogether unknown though not truly and distinctly known 1. It is of wonderful use for Navigation if it were not for the winds what might ships do or how could the forein and remote parts of the world bee traded into by the help of the winds the ways of God the works of God the wisdom of God and the riches of God that are scattered up and down in the world are discovered by them Seneca a meer Heathen was so great an admirer of the winds Ingens naturae beneficium that hee called it Natures great benefit and did hee not speak ore Christiano potius quam humano it is more than many Christians doe either mind or observe 2. It is of wonderful use for Mils to grind the country peoples corn especially in those places where they have not the help and accommodement of brooks and rivers to do that work withall 3. It is of wonderful use to us that go in the wars to carry out our floating Castles against the Spaniard
unforgiven None but men that are out of their wits and men that are voyd of the fear of God would run such an hazzard and foolishly play such a card how many of you are killed when you go to Sea and divers others drowned and cast upon the Rocks and Sands and art thou sure that thou shalt escape take my word for it your unpardoned sins will bee as a thousand holes in the bottom of your Vessels to sink you into the bottoms The very Heavens even blush at the gracelesness of those men that go down into the Seas in these daies and are ashamed of this Age in which wee live that men can or should bee able to take that boldness in that employment which is one of the dangerousest ones that is under the Heavens with so much confidence of safety and security as if they were on firm and solid Land when alas they are in no favour at all with God but God is a dreadful enemy unto them and they no friend to him 2. Make up your peace with God before ever thou goest off the Land on board any ship whatsoever bee shee in the Merchant or States service and if thou wilst so do the God of Heaven go along with thee I will not fear thy perishing in the Seas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is good to begin your voyages in God and end them with your God It was a good saying of one Nullius est faelix conatus utilis unquam Confilium si non de◠que juvetqu◠Deus Whilst the ship is out in the Sea none can tell whether shee may ever or no come to the Land again take this sweet Scripture along with thee and get thee going there is no danger Isa 41.14 Fear not thou worm Jacob and yee men of Israel I will help thee saith the Lord and thy Redeemer the Holy one of Israel To encourage every poor Sea-man now unto the thing in hand bee perswaded upon this ground of Truth that if thou wilt seriously and sincerely treat with thy God hee will treat with thee all the scruples and objections that ever thou canst make are no hindrances to thy peace the Prodigal had no sooner a returning thought in his heart but the Lord very readily owned it and ran to meet him Si impius es cogita publicanum si immundus attende meretricem si homicida prospice latronem si iniquus cogita blasphemum peccasti paenitere millies peccasti milles paenitere If thou beest wicked and hast a mind to leave thy wickedness think of the Publican if unclean consider the Harlot if a man-slayer look upon the Thief if unjust think on the Blasphemer hast thou sinned Sailor repent hast thou sinned Sea-man a thousand times repent a thousand times Heaven gates were never shut upon crying and knocking Paenitents To put you now upon this good and needful work I will present unto you three serious considerations that will take with men that have the tincture of grace in them 1. Consider the uncertainty of your lives whilst you are in the Sea there is not an uncertainer thing upon the face of the Earth than the life of man is and although you cannot command one hour to live and breathe in how prodigal are you of your daies and years whilst in the Seas as if you had time in a string The Spirit of the Lord would gladly bring men into the Faith and belief of the shortness of their daies and lives by its comparing it with the brittlest ingredients that can be reckoned up in the world viz. a vapour grass a post a Weavers-shuttle c. yet who so void of Faith as you that use the Seas in this very particular Are not your lives poor souls ten thousand times in greater danger of being spilt and lost than those that live upon the Land Hee that went into the wars of old Qui ad bellum proficisceretur necesse est testamentum condere usually made his will before hee went as doubtful of his return But our Sea-men are far from this temper and harder hearted are they in this Age than in former I may say of them as it was once said of a graceless Sea-man Nec mergi nec damnari metuo I am neither affraid of drowning nor damning It may bee that you have escaped many storms and com'd off with life and limb in many a fight but are you sure you shall do so in the next 2. Together with the uncertainty of your lives I would have you consider and lay to heart the uncertainty of Gods tender of Grace grant thou hadst a lease of thy life and that thou shouldest go in the Seas many years and never perish art thou sure after all that long life and good success in the Sea that God will give thee grace and that God will give thee that which now thou undervalues Gen. 6. The Spirit of the Lord will not alwaies strive The tides of Gods Grace and Mercy are not like to your Sea-tides which come at set and certain times and hours so that hee that has no mind to go to Sea in the morning may go towards or in the evening I have read that Bernard having a younger brother brought up a Souldier being a riotous miserable and wretched young man sought earnestly with the best and sweetest arguments that ever he could use to put him upon the leading living a better course of life but the young gallant took snuff at it as most of your Sailors will do when reproved for evil and counselled for good well said Bernard time may come when God may let in my words into your heart by a hole in your side this yongster shortly after received a wound in the wars of which hee lay a long time sick and then his brothers words sprang in upon him to his amazement and affrightment Sea-men slight nor good counsel now if you do the time will come when your so doing will make you a Magor Missabib unto your selves In what an hurly-burly is the Sea-man in when he sees a gallant warlike ship making toward him with all the sail that ever shee can make Hostium repentinus adventus magis aliquando conturbat quam expectatus This is but a confused time to ask the Lord the forgiveness of all your sins in and to prepare for death in Isa 9.5 Every battel of the wariour is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood 3. Death is no fit time to learn the making up of your peace with God in Who would not count it a very absurd and ridiculous part in any Commander to have his ship to trim and to set in a fighting posture when the enemy is coming upon him But surely though there bee that wisdom in you to provide and to have your ships trimed for the fight I dare bee bold to say it there bee thousands of you at those times whose hearts and souls are not trimmed for death and for
that long entity of eternity Bee perswaded upon it all you that bear command you that are Captains Boatswains Gunners Carpenters c. that it is one of the indiscreetest and desperatest cards that you can play to have the work of your peace with God at such times to do and make It may bee that in an engagement you may come to lose both leggs and arms and such dreadful and mortal wounds given you under which you may lie groaning in your ships and then what through excessiveness of pain and dolour together with the fears of death your souls will bee then taken up withall you will bee the unfittest men in the world to come into the hands of your God at death in such conditions thou wilt bee little able to pray to think of any good or to doe any thing that is good but where is the Sea-man that ever thinks of these things beforehand Nay this has and is still the very burden of my soul when I think of it that when and whilst you are chasing of an enemy for six or seven hours together all this time or part of it might well bee spent in the thoughts and meditations of your death yet notwithstanding should God give you many daies chase it would bee no otherwise with you I could never see any of you so serious as to say Gentlemen wee are going to fight and whose hap it may bee for to die I know not it may bee mine as soon as another mans I have a great many sins to get pardoned I have an Heaven to look after and an Hell to escape whilst time permits my heart shall bee taken up with these things and therefore let mee request the like care in you it will bee no blot nor badge of disparagement neither in mee nor you for so doing none can brand us for cowardize to bee careful of our dying Oh that our Sailors could bee got to meditate death and the day of Judgment If your leasurable hours in the Seas were thus spent every day what rare men would you come to bee in the end I am confident that Nihil sic revocat à peccato sicut frequens mortis meditatio I have sometimes met with a story of one that gave a young Ruffian a ring with a deaths head in it and that upon this condition that hee should one hour daily for seven daies together look and think thereupon which hee accordingly did and in the end it bred a blessed change in that mans life Oh would to God that you that go in the Seas would bee much in the thoughts of death and that you would set before your eyes the very shortness of your lives Those red and Military vestments that you hang about your ships in the times of war are no other than the black mourning burial-cloaths that lye upon the Corpses and Coffins of the dead and so should bee advertising Sermons unto you of your mortality Philostrates lived seven years in his Tomb that hee might bee acquainted with the grave before his bones were interred I am sure that there bee thousands of our Sailors that have lived five times seven in the wars Might not many men that have been slain in ships in our late Sea wars have lived longer if they had but served God better I speak of Captains and Sea-men c. It was observed of old that that man that durst be so fool-hardy to go into the Wars without his house undedicated to the Lord that he never returned off the field alive Deut. 20.5 Let him go and return unto his house left hee dye in the battel and Merchants service and that in ships which are no other and no better than slaughtering and butchering houses or meer Coffins of mortality in which lye murdering Guns mortal engines and dis-mangling bullets yet may you finde them living in them as if there were no dying time to come nor no God no heaven no hell nor no devil to bee thought on I pray God that this might not bee too suitable a Motto for thousands of poor silly Sailors when they dye Anxius vixi dubius morior nescio quo vado I toyled hard all my life time for a living but that which is the worst of all I dye despairingly and so go out of the world I know not whither Or otherwise that of Adrian the Emperours Animula Vagula Blandula c. Ah poor soul whither art thou now going It will not now bee granted thee when thou art upon thy dye that thou shalt ever have any more respite for to jest it in to sport it in nay there will bee no more time allowed to swear in to drink in and to whore it in as many of the Sailors have done I may sing this of the jovial crew of the careless Sailors Hen vivunt homines tanquam mors nulla sequatur Vita cito avolat nec potest retimeri Mors quoti die ingruit nec potest resisti Mors ubique vos expectat Aut veluti infernus fabula vana foret Sea-men do live as if they should ne'r dye And as if hell were but a foppery Me thinks I hear the Seas saying unto all the prophane Sailors in England as the heathen Priest said to the people when begun to sacrifize 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Who is there the answer returned was this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 good and honest men if not sayes hee Procul oh procul este prophani The Seas say Bee gone you Swearers Take heed left you meet not with the Lord whilst in the Sea as the Church did on land when shee said Lamen 3.10 Hee was unto mee as a Bear lying in wait and as a Lyon in secret places Doth not your wickedness in the Sea pull down storms upon you and give you to experience that in Nahum 1.6 Who can stand before his indignation and who can abide in the fierteness of his anger his fury is poured out like fire and the rocks are thrown down by him Adulterers and Drunkards come not upon us in your ships lest wee send you going to thousands of those dead that wee have drowned 2. When you go to Sea resign up all and recommend your selves your souls your bodies your friends your wives your families goods and habitations I what ever you have or desire that the Lord would keep or fear to lose into the hands of your God and you will finde him a faithful keeper of what ever you do commit unto him the Apostle Paul found him so 2 Tim. 1.12 And I am perswaded that hee is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day Psal 121.5.6 The Lord is thy keeper the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand 3. If you would prepare for storms fill your hearts then every morning that you uprise with the fear of your God who hath the rule of the day and is also the Sovereign King and Lord over it and also of the
Haec non durabunt aetatem This will not alwayes indure 2. Bear all your storms and Sea-imbitterments with faith and confidence in God for his general and particular presence with you that sweet promise hath quieted my heart within when wee have had nothing but horrour without in the great and wide Sea Isa 43.2 When thou passest thorow the waters I will bee with thee and thorow the rivers they shall not overflow thee when thou walkest thorow the fire thou shalt not bee burnt neither shall the flame kindle upon thee 3. Beg every day at the hands of your God for a submissive frame of heart that you may resign and give up your selves and all that is of worth and value in your eyes to Gods will It was a sweet frame that a Stoick was in I would all our Sailors were of that temper when hee said Quid vult volo quid non vult nolo vult ut vivam vivam vult ut moriar moriar It is good to be of this temper in storms to bee contented either to live or dye svvim or drovvn for his disposal even as hee shall will and please to that end you may bee in a capacity to yeeld to whatsoever God shall do though it bee never so cross and contrary to your own carnal wills and in all your storms and dangers say Fiat voluntas sua the Lords will bee done One of King Cyrus's Courtiers having but little state and being about to marry his daughter one asked him how he vvould do for to give her a portion his ansvver was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cyrus is my friend and thus he casts his care and confidence upon the King and vvill not you do thus in storms 4. Cast all your fears cares and troubles that you meet withall in the Seas upon the Lord and hee will take care of you and for you you have it under hand and seal for so doing if you have but faith to lay hold on the promise Psal 55.22 Cast thy burden upon the Lord and hee shall sustain thee hee shall never suffer the righteous to bee moved The burden of a dreadful storm is too heavy for thee to bear thou hast sufficient warrant and commandement to unload thy self and cast it upon thy God there is many a man and woman in the world might go a great deal lighter both at Sea and Land if they had but the art of laying their cares upon their God hath not many a man had his back broke I and his heart broke because hee evermore bore his burden and had not the wisdome to run to God to desire him for to bear it for him Sailors lay those dreadful burdens that you meet with all in a stormy Sea upon the Lord and hee will bear them I and carry you out safe and alive from them But to proceed 2. It will not bee out of the road if I present this advertising word unto those that sit at the stern with the helm of our Republick in their hands It vvas a brave temper that Cato vvas of of vvhom it vvas said that he bore things so stoutly that no man ever saw him to be changed and though he lived in a time when the Common-wealth was often changing he was a semper idem in every condition even to bear storms stoutly I mean as to the effects of them which oftentimes end in the ruining of many a goodly sail and if so bee that ships bee cast away that are in your employments which are of vast worth cost and charge it cannot bee helped such casualties will bee coming and falling upon them now and then the Seas have a Million of dangers in them 3. I would hand this word unto the Merchants of our Land also that they would bear storms stoutly I have seen people in the world when unexpected losses Our Merchants of late resemble too much the mourning Nightingale of whom it is said that when her young ones are taken from her that shee will tell every bird of it maestis late loca questibus implere fill the woods with her complaints And so you the States eares with your losses and crosses have come upon them fall a weeping and wringing of their hands and cursing with their tongues in the greatest impatiency that ever was seen as if they were utterly undone now there is none that can be or is undone until they bee damned then they are undone indeed and then they may howl and weep where weeping and gnashing of teeth is in course but whilst in the world and in fair hopes for Heaven temporal accidents should not have that impression to breed that disturbance It is a notable speech of Seneca Suppose says hee that a man who having a very fair and goodly House to dwell in and fair Orchards and Gardens planted and plotted round about it with divers other fruitful trees for ornament and profit Plutarch reports of a certain people that to manifest their disliking and disdaining of men over-much dejected by any affliction they condemned them in token of disgrace to wear womens apparel because they so much unmanned themselves what an indiscreet part were it for that man to murmur and repine because the winds rise and blow down some of the leaves of it when as they hang fuller of fruit than leaves God has given your ships many a prosperous voyage and murmur not at it if you lose one or two now and then it is nothing but mercy that you have any left to trade and trafick withall I and moreover it is a great deal more than you deserve Chrysostom when speaking to the people of Antioch like himself who was a man of an invincible spirit against the tyrants of his time delivered himself thus In this should a gratious man differ from thc Godless hee should bear his crosses couragiously and as it were with the wings of Faith out-soar the hight of all humane miseries hee should bee like a Rock incorporated into Jesus Christ inexpugnable and unshaken with the most furious incursions of the waves and storms of the world It was a gallant speech of Galienus the Emperour when tidings came unto him that all Egypt was lost What then quoth the Emperour cannot I live without the flax of Egypt And by and by came tidings to him that the greatest part of his dominions in Asia were gone also What then quoth the Emperour cannot I live without the delicacies of Asia This is a rare example for Merchants when they lose rich-fraughted ships in the Seas either by storm or Pyrat What It was a gallant spirit that Habakkuk was of when he said Chap. 3.17 Although the fig-tree shall not blossom nor fruit upon the Vines nor Herds in the stalls yet will I rejoyce in the Lord I will joy in the God of my salvation Grant now the worst suppose you had not one ship in the Harbour nor one to come safely home is there not
God hears oftener from an afflicted people Curae leves mutescunt ingentes loquientur Small dangers are dumb but great ones make men for to speak Periculosâ—or tranquilitas Nautae quam Tempestas Sailors are like to Bees soon killed with hony but quickned with vinegar spoiled with calms but bettered by storms than hee either does or can from a people that are at ease quiet and out of danger Then they cry The prodigal Son was very high and resolved never to return till brought low by pinching and nipping afflictions then his Father had some tidings of him Hagar was proud in Abraham's house but humbled in the wilderness Jonah was asleep in the ship but awake and at prayer in the Whales belly Jonah 2.1 Manasses lived in Jerusalem like a Libertin but when bound in chains at Babel his heart was turned to the Lord. 2 Chron. 33.11 12. Corporal diseases forced many under the Gospel to come to Christ whereas others that enjoyed bodily health would not acknowledge him One would think that the Lord would abhor to hear those prayers that are made onely out of the fear of danger and not out of the love reality and sincerity of the heart If there had not been so many miseries of blindness lameness Palsies Feavers c. in the daies of Christ there would not have been that flocking after him Too much fertility hurts the Corn Storms invite men to go to God as the sight of Bugbears do children into the bosoms of their parents In calms Sea-men either pray not at all or if they pray rarae fumant faelicibus arae faintly yawningly Oratio sine malis est ut avis sine alis overmuch fruit breaks the limbs boughs and branches of the Tree the body is the worse for too long health and the Sea-man baddest of all in the enjoyment of many calmes Sailors are not unlike to the dumb son of Craesus who was never heard to speak a word but then to call out cleerly when hee saw the knife a going to his Fathers throat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 May not the Sailor say in stormy weather as the Heart of Apollo said when seething in an hot boyling kettle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I have been the cause of this That none have any assurance of the continuance of their lives and comforts in Observ 5 this life bee they at Sea or bee they on Land Then they cry It seems that both ship and men and all are now at the stake and ready to bee sacrificed There bee very many strange mutations and unexpected eversions befalling of the Mariner now and then That counsel that Xaverius presented unto John the third King of Portugal the very same would I give our Sailors He bid the King meditate every day a quarter of an hour upon that text Matth. 16.26 For what is a man profited if hee shall gain the whole world and loose his own soul or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul It is reported of a ship that shee spoke on this wise when in a dreadful storm after all that ever the Mariners could do to save her The Sea is Proteus-like assuming all forms and shapes now calm now stormy Fiet enim Subito sus horridus atraque Tigris Squamosusque Draco aut fulva Cervice Lcaena Virg. Georg. l. 4. Sometimes like bristled boar it fomes Like scaely Dragon now it roams by lightning of her and throwing not onely of the worst but of the best commodities into the Sea Fie Fie thou angry Sea wilt not thou bee hired will neither gold nor silver do any thing must I perish Alas I am fraughted with rich Wines Silks and Sugars ask what thou wilt for my ransome and thou shalt have it reverse reverse I pray thee thou great Sea thy cruel intentions and if thou wilt take the greatest summe that ever was given for a ship thou shalt have it for thy sparing of mee and the lives of them that live within me But all this fair speech that the ship made unto the Sea was not prevalent but shortly after shee sunk into the bottom I bring but in this passage now to shew you that wee have but a slippery hold of any thing that is temporal That there is such terrour and astonishment Observ 6 in deaths grim countenance that it makes all people whether at Sea or at Land cry out for deliverance from it Then they cry c. Jonah 1.5 Appius Claudius was the most out of love with the Greek letter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that ever I heard of because when it is pronounced it represents the gnashing teeth of a dying soul Sigismund was much out of love with death also for when he was upon the dye hee gave command to all his servants about not so much as to name death in his hearing Life is sweet and nature would preserve it self Then the Mariners were afraid and cried every man unto his God One cried out when death knockt at his door to take him away out of the world Oh spare mee yet a little longer Inducias vel ad horam let mee but have reprival for a day truce but for an hour respit for a minute but all would not doe What is it I wonder that men will not do in time of storms to save their lives I have read of one who was a Syracusian by Country that did in a storm when all ponderous things were hurled over-bord cried out to the Mariners come let us clap on the tagles and out with my wife and his reason was Quia maximum pondus erat that shee was the greatest burden in the ship Because there is so much flesh both in Reason 1 the best and worst of men and also because mens faith in God is so weak in them therefore is it that the fear of the waters is so strong Did men fear God more and trust him more they should then know more of the intentions of God in storms and also not be so much dejected at them as now they are Reason 2 Because there is a dunghil of guilt dwelling both in the best and worst of men this is that makes people afraid of death I have read of a pretious soul that was very much afraid to die but to encourage himself hee spoke on this wise What my soul art thou affraid now that hast served the Lord Jesus Christ this seventy years and upwards Oh go out go out my soul there is no fear I have read of another that under much wearisomness and discontentedness called for death and dye hee would and death appearing to him as hee had wished for it before hee told that soul and body-rending Sergeant that hee called him for no other end but ut hunc lignorum fascem super humeros imponeres That hee would help him up with his burthen of sticks The man had no more stomack to dye Those that are in Christ if they perish in storms or bee
killed in Sea-engagements death is but the day-break of eternal brightness unto them Storms are but sturdy Porters which set open the doors of Eternity a rough passage to eternal happiness Why should they fear to pass the waters of Jordan and take possession of the promised Land that have the Arke of Gods Covenant in their eye than the Mariner has in a storm to drownd I would now observe two things 1. That death is comfortable to one sort of people 2. It is dreadful and terrible unto another 1. It is comfortable to the godly that have walked before God in the Land of the living with a true sincere and upright heart in all holy and true obedience and conformity unto the will of God Such a soul may boldly triumph over and in the face of death 1 Cor. 15.55 O death where is thy sting O grave where is thy victory Death is not terrible unto such because it is no more but the running and ratling of Joseph's Chariot wheels upon the pavement of this world to waft antient Jacob's soul in the golden streets that are above this sublunary world and that caelestial Orbe into that heavenly Jerusalem Every bullet that thou hears to come singing and flying over thine head that is shot out of the Gun-mouths of Christs enemies is but a Chariot that is sent for thee to fetch thy soul to Heaven Let the seas rise up and drownd thee they are but Chariots to transport thee into future happiness If I should bee slain or drowned at Sea in the wars against the Spaniard Objection then would there bee an end of all my comforts and thereby I should leave Houses Lands Wife Children and all the good things that I have raked together in this life behind mee I would have all our Seamen all our Commanders to take off their eyes from looking upon those things and fix them upon the great and glorious designs that Christ has on foot against the Antichristian powers that are and bee in the world Bee willing Gentlemen I and bee you valiant to do Jesus Christ all the service that you can you shall have better comforts for them regard not your stuff and worldly trash Gen. 45.20 For the good of all the Land of Egypt is yours When General Zelishlaus had lost his hand in the wars of the King of Poland the King sent him a golden hand for it If thou lay out a peny for Christ against his enemies thou shalt have a pound for it You shall have it well paid again in Heaven over and over double and treble 2. It is dreadful to the wicked because that after death comes judgment How dolefull Sailors live eat drink play card dice swear whore sing rant as if they had passed over the judgment day They think not of that day that will be cumbred with distress on every side them accusing sinnes on one side revenging justice on the other a gaping hell beneath them an angry Judge above them a burning conscience within them and a flaming world without them Good Lord what will become of those wicked wretches at that day when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound mountains melt stars fall fire falling sinners fainting poor creatures cry for graves hils and mountains to hide themselves in and heavy is this summons of death this roaring storm is not for our eares but for our hearts it calls us not onely to our prayers but to our preparation Oh with what terrour does the graceless Sea-man stand in now his hand trembles whilst it is lift up to Heaven his very lips quake and quiver whilst hee is praying Lord have mercy upon mee his countenance is pale sorrowful and wan his fear is ready to execute him before the hangman is the condemned malefactor I would to God that our Sea-men had but the like horrour upon them both in calms and storms which the guilty and damned souls of men will have when they stand before that dreadful Tribunal in the day of the great Assize where there will bee the presence of an infinite God to daunt them conscience to give in its evidence against them Legions of unclean spirits to seize upon them and to torment them they would then bee more afraid of death than they are That although those that go down into Observ 7 the deeps which are fearers of the Lord have comfortable promises of Gods protecting grace and mercy yet must they not idlely expect it but wrestle tug and struggle hard with God by Prayer for it Then they cry c. Isa 43.2 When thou passest through the waters I will bee with thee Sailor Sailor Durante pugna non cessat tuba Whilst the storm lasts bee thou at prayer if thou hopest lookest that God should protect thee God will have every thing fetched out by Prayer When God had promised Israel great things Ezek. 36.37 Thus saith the Lord God I will yet for this bee enquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them If thou wouldest bee saved in stormy and tempestuous weather let God hear from thee hee will expect it if thou expectest mercy at his hands The word storm in the Greek springs of two words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signify much sacrificing importing that that should bee a time of much praying Reason 1 Because means must bee used for the obtaining of things promised Noah pitched his Arke within without The Carman cried out to Hercules in the Fable when his Cart stuck in the dirt but would not put forth a finger to help it out God himself has ordained yea commanded that it should bee so and hee that neglects the use of means in such cases tempts but Gods Providence which the Lord Jesus himself dared not to do Matth. 4.7 Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God Christ speaks this of himself and not of Satan for that unclean spirit was never so happy since the fall as to bee in a capacity of fearing and submitting unto God in any divine and sacred precept Reason 2 Because Prayer is the ordinary condition of any promise Prayer should in storms resemble the Stars about the North pole which never go down or I would say the ordinary means appointed by God for the obtaining of a promise or of what the soul desires Prayer is causa conditio sine qua non By it wee may obtain any favour from God and without it wee cannot Matth. 7.7 Ask and yee shall have c. God does not in this promise limit any one in their asking but let them bee as large as they will and in what they will and they shall have it Reason 3 Because the Lord loves to bee sued and sought unto by prayer Reason 4 Because by prayer unto God wee shew our dependency upon him in the performance of this sacred duty wee acknowledg the Lord to take care for us 1. Of Encouragement Vse
far nimbler for your good than thought it self Who so is wise will observe these things 10. Minde how the Lord does very frequently in the time of dark misty foggy and uncomfortable weather when you are in a labyrinth and know not what way to steer take off and unbare the Sea-buyes by pulling off from their heads those night-caps of dismal squallour that they have been dressed and trimmed up withall by which means you have been enabled to pick out your way and to glean up your praeinformations how the Sands have lain and if the Lord had not thus favoured you you had assuredly perished Who so is wise will observe these things 11. Minde how wonderfully God appears for you at such times Me thinks you should receive these deliverances at Gods hands with more thankfulness to him contentedness with them than ever the Paphos Queen did the golden fruit that was sent her for a present This mercy came to you as the Italian says a buóna luna in a good hour or happy time when both foggy weather and also contrary winds arrest you in the Seas and detain you as their prisoners for many daies together insomuch that you are confounded in your Navigations not kenning where you are wishing continually that you could behold one sail or other that thereby you might bee informed how your way lay and in what propinquity or interval you might bee of Rocks or Sands Has not the Lord now when you have been thus puzzeled many and many a time given you the sight of a Vessel after which you have made and so received directions from them how to set and shape your courses Who so is wise will observe these things 12. Minde how the Lord does oftentimes direct you when you are coming in into Harbours that you are accustomed to and well acquainted withall there commonly arises great debats and various disputes about your steerage into them my heart has often aked to see your contentions and also that diversity of judgment that has been amongst you some protesting this and some that that your course lies by the bringing of such a light house The Graecians being delivered but from bodily servitude by Flaminius the Roman General called him their Saviour and so rang out Saviour Saviour that the very fouls of the air fell down dead with the cry thereof Plutarch What cause have you that are now and then delivered from drowning to bee oftentimes in the high praises of the Lord God gives you hold of an Ariadne's thread to wind you out of the perplexed mazes of the Sea a subtil Daedalus or such an hill or such a mark upon the Land upon such a point and in the midst of all contrary to the minds of many that would have had the ship navigated upon such a point or sailed by such a mark the Lord has established the mind of the Master Pilot or Commander of the ship to sail upon such a point by which means the ship has come safe into the difficultest Harbours Who so is wise will observe these things 13. Minde how Providence is at work for you in the forein parts of the world it may bee that you have good cleer and serene weather all or the most part of your Voyage till your arrival within sight of the Country where your business and Harbours lye and then upon a sudden it grows black cloudy and foggy and also stormy insomuch that you are put to an anxious extremity and dare not approach or advance any nearer either to the Land or the Harbour you would bee at that then upon the fiering of some pieces of Ordnance boats come off that promise to undertake the Pilotage of your Vessels by which means you are freed from abundance of care and trouble Corrupt blood must be drawn forth before the Leech fall off and carnal filthiness parted with in your ships before the storm ends Who so is wise will observe these things 14. Minde Whether the Lord does not bring storms shipwrack terrible and heart-daunting dangers upon you for your good yea or no. Look upon every blast that blows every storm that befalls you in the Sea as a messenger sent from the Lord to humble you Humility is not unlike to the low-lying Land in Holland but pride is like the Hogen and the Mogen in it and to better you This was the method that God walked in of old and also the course that hee took with Israel Deut. 8.16 That hee might humble thee and that hee might prove thee to do thee good at thy latter end This was Davids experience Psal 119.67 71. Before I was afflicted I went astray but now have I kept thy word This was the experience of a well-educated Scholar to his Tutor when upon a dye Istae manus mihi portant ad Paradisum by your correcting and instructing of mee I am now going to Heaven The Walnut-Tree is evermore most fruitful when most beaten and flowers do evermore smell sweetest after a shower I would it were thus with all our Sailors after their storms Good hearts in storms like Vines bear the beter for bleeding 15. Minde whether the Lord does not send tempestuous storms upon you in the Seas to fit prepare and dispose you for mercies calms and peaceable weather Good and comfortable weather will not neither is it valued by you Although I wander now in the America and untravelled parts of truth and experience yet may I if minded prove advantagious to those that use the Seas As soon may I collect the scattered wind into a bag or from the vvatery surface scrape the gilt reflections of the Sun as tell you of all the Lords appearings for you in your inevitable perils till you have been a long time tossed in Neptune's cradle-rocking surges and in the roaring blasts of Boreas then serene weather is valued and highly prized and cried up for a mercy amongst you Who so is wise c. 16. Minde how apparently Gods goodness and infinite Wisdom is visible to any seeing and observing eye in this respect that hee lays not on storms upon some parts of the world and not upon other some and that some harbours are blockt up with them and not other some Storms come not alwaies out of the South nor alwaies out of the West nor alwaies out of the North and East but sometimes they are in one quarter and by and by in another every part of the world that is traded into hath their share as well as another Who so is wise c. 17. Minde whether or no the winds bee not many times unwilling to serve such wicked wretches as you mostly are that use the Seas by reason of their long tarriance in a quite contrary quarter to your courses Are you not oftentimes wind-bound or wind-blockt and fettered Look out for the reason of it some sin or God-provoking iniquity or other is amongst you Who so is wise c.
his glorious Majesty hee is able to do all things that are works of power might and strength and are not things against his own nature or things that imply contradiction Reason 2 Because when things are impossible in mans eye then is it the fittest time for the Lord to appear in It is a common saying and a true one That mans extreamity is Gods opportunity Observ 6 That God in his Judgments upon the Seas often times remembers mercy And hee bringeth them c. God is slow to wrath I wish I may not say of the Lords indulgency to profane wretches in the Sea what Sigismund the Emperour used to say of his enemies Is inimicum occidit qui inimico parcit I am affraid Deus non nunquam parcendo saevit That the Lords long sparing will end in rageing and may I so speak hee is seen walking towards sinners in the shooes of Asher which were of ponderous brass Deut. 33.24 25. Observ 7 That the greatest dangers of the Seas and the proudest waves that ever elevated are and should bee no plea for unbelief And hee brings them c. Matth. 14.30 31. When Peter saw the wind boysterous his heart begun to fail him but was hee not reproved for his distrusting of the Lord Poop-lantern ship-covering and yard-arm-rising waves should not daunt and discourage faith in God Were the Seas in a storm as high as the mountains of Merionethshire in Wales whose hanging and kissing tops come so close together that the shepherds sitting on their several mountains may very audibly stand and discourse together but if they would go to one another they must take the pains to travel many miles Sailors should not bee apalled and terrified Dangers are faiths Element and in them it lives and thrives best Such was the high-raised valour of Luther that when hee was to go to the City of Worms they told him of strange things Faith like the Ivie the Hop the Woodbine which have a natural instinct in them to cling lay hold upon the stronger Trees laies hold on God in time of danger as many will doe fresh-water travellers at Sea but quoth Luther if all the Tiles that bee upon every House in the Town were devils they should not scare mee Sailors should have the like courage in storms which one had when in a great straight Certa mihi spes est quod vitam qui dedit idem Et velit possit suppeditare cibum Good hearts may say to the Sea when in a storm what Luther said to his enemies Impellere possunt sed totum prosternere non possunt crudeliter me tractare possunt sed non extirpare Haec est fides credere quod non vides dentes nudare sed non devorare occidere me possunt sed in totum me perdere non possunt Faith will put your heads into Heaven and your ships into an Harbour when in a storm it will set you on the top of Pisgab with Moses and descry the promised Land when you may come to bee denied the sight of Land in storms 1. Great Faith is seen in this as much as any one thing whatsoever that it both can and will beleeve in God as a man may say with reverence whether God will or no it will beleeve in an angry God in a killing God and in a drowning God Job 15.10 Great Faith is not easily shaken 2. Great Faith is never clearer seen than when in the midst of souzing storms and dangers there is great confidence and strength of heart in the soul at such times Observ 8 That God will have every thing wrested from him by prayer And hee bringeth c. Good Sea-men should play the part of Daedalus Templum Cybelis Deorum matris non manibâ—es sed precibus solummodo aperiebatur The gates of Cybeles Temples could not bee opened by hands but prayer quickly threw them open who when hee could not escape by way upon Earth went by way of Heaven and that is the way of prayer Five Motives to put Sea-men upon Prayer 1. Solemnly consider that in the creature there is nothing but emptiness and helplesness 2. Solemnly consider that you cannot have any hopes of winning ought from God but by prayer The Champions could not wring an apple out of Milo's hand by strong hand but a fair maid by fair means got it presently 3. Solemnly consider of God what hee is whom you serve naturally no other but goodness it self Nothing animated Benhadad so much as this that the Kings of Israel were merciful Kings It was said of Charles the great I would to God I could say so of every Tarpowling that goes in the Salt-waters that hee delighted so much in prayer that Carolus plus cum Deo quam cum hominibus loquitur That hee spake more and oftner to and with God than hee did with men Flectitur iratus voce rogante Deus And nothing encouraged Titus Vespatian the Emperour's Subjects so much as this that hee did nunquam dimittere tristem never send any away sorrowful 4. Solemnly consider how many in the Seas go upon the very same errand that you go on to him and mind how they speed and are carried securely out of all their distresses 5. Solemnly consider what Prayer is to God hee loves it Let mee hear thy voice for it is comly 6. Call to mind your former experiences did you ever pray in a storm but you fared the better by it Consider what cases you have been heard in That servent Prayer will prevail with Observ 9 God in the greatest storms I would all the States Tarpowlings were of James the Just's principle of whom Eusebius tells us Genua ejus in morem cameli obditrata sensum contactus amiserunt That his knees were hardned like the Camels by his frequent kneeling to Prayer Prayer is Optimus dermientium cuslos certissima navigautium salus tutissimum viatoribus scutum The slâ—epers best keeper the Sailors surest safety the Travellers protecting Shield And hee brings them out c. Witness the Mariners calm Jonah 1. and witness Christs disciples deliverance in the storm Impartial fire that comes from above has been often times seen to spare yeelding objects and to melt resisting metal to pass by lower roofs and to strike upon all high-Towered pinnacles I wish that our Sailors were as much given to Prayer as Anna the daughter of Phannel of whom it was said that shee never departed out of the Temple but served God night and day in prayer and fasting I wish it were the resolution of them that use the Seas to do as Ambrose the Bishop of Millain did when news came to him that Justina the mother of Valentinian intended to banish him hee told them that hee would never run away but if they had any purpose to kill him they should at any time find him in the Church praying for himself and for his people 1. Vse of Comfort For
they have seen their fellow creatures to fal and miscarry in and to avoid building those places which they formerly built in both in Towns and Cities in the time of pestilent and contagious years When you hear of ship-wracks bee affraid and bethink with your selves why may not our turn bee the next if our lives bee not amended whilst storms are a brewing in the skies and are at hand to come upon you it is a special piece of wisdom to send out an Embassie of prayer for conditions of peace in a way of sincere turning unto the Lord. The sins and punishments of others should bee your instructions your afflictions your admonitions their woes should bee your warnings ther 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should bee your 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 their sufferings your Schoolmasters and remembrancers 4. Look upon the shipwrack of others with an impartial and speedy enquiry and examination into your own hearts whether such upon whom the severe vengeance of the Lord did so heavily fall upon What was Jeroms observation of the wicked upon Land is mine upon the Sea Bonus est Deus domos ergo eorum qui erant defixi in fecibus suis destruit nec eos in leprosis domibus habitaere permittit God being God cannot but destroy the dwellings of them that are bad were greater sinners than your selves ask your consciences that question which the Prophet once propounded and put forth unto the Israelites Are there not with mee even with mee the same sins against the Lord Ransack your hearts and you will quickly finde out the Jonah for which storms came down upon you therefore hide not your transgressions and abominations from the Lord which puts him I am confident upon the ruining and making so many publick examples as there bee and are to bee seen at this day A seeing eye may soon spell out the language of God in the casting away of ships Jer. 32.31 For this City bath been to mee a provocation of mine anger c. So the ships I have cast away This is the language of a sunk ship Oh man thou seest what I now am thou knowest what I have been I know those that use the Seas are as apt to say that to themselves which the Prophet complains of as Israel was to themselves Isa 28.15 Wee have made a Covenant with death and with hell are wee at an agreement when the over-flowing scourge shall pass through it shall not come unto us how many voyages I have gone in safety hitherto over the Seas now think with thy self what thou mayest come to bee 5. Look upon the ships you both know to bee cast away in such and such storms and also upon those whose Top-masts you see at this day standing in the Seas above the waters with an humble thankfulness not as rejoycing in those publick miseries but as blessing the unwearied patience and undeserved sparing and prolonging mercies of the Lord towards you Ah Sirs What an hard-heartedness is there amongst many of you for though you see wracks of ships upon sands and the Masts of sunk ships standing some in the East some in the West some in the North and other some in the South you can sail by them and over the graves of the dead in the Seas and never bee affected with them nor as much as say the Lord bee thanked that I was not in that Vessel or that it fell not so out with mee in those many voyages that I have made What was writ upon the Tomb of that great Assyrian Monarch punished by God for his impieties the same may well be writ upon every sunk ship in the Seas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Look upon mee and learn to bee godlier What a mercy is it that you that equallize those in penalty of drowning whom you have far out-stripped and exceeded in sinning should bee preserved from day to day 6. Give your assent and faith to the truth of Gods judgements upon the ships that are broke in storms What is said in Exod. 15.10 may be well writ upon all cast away ships Thou didst blow with thy wind the Sea covered them they sank as lead in the mighty waters bee sure that you make this construction of every ruined ship that it was for some deserved sin or other It is and ever hath been the Devils policy and subtil contrivancy both in this and indeed in all ages to strike out the credulity of this truth out of the mindes of men I have read of Porphyry in what Authour I cannot for the present well tell one of Satans fine spun Sophisters and cunning agents that to overturn the miraculousness of the Israelites passage through the Red Sea would say that Moses took the advantage of the low ebbing water and so went thorow safely which the Egyptians not understanding came in with the flood and were drowned by the exuberancy of the waters Strabo also undertakes to weaken Gods raining down Hell out of Heaven upon Sodome and Gomorrah by saying that those Cities were situated on sulphurious soils which were full of holes out of which fire breaking forth consumed them and thus hee attributes the destruction of these Cities to natural causes It is a special act of mercy that God lets not all the Devils out of hell upon those that use the Seas as is supposed some of them were by Origen when the four corners of Jobs house in which his children was was thrown down to the ground It is a wonder that one Devil runs not up into the Main top another into the Fore-top another to the Helm one into the Mizon-top and another on to the Boltsprit and other some into the Howld to pull the Ships you sail in into a thousand peeces for your wickednesse And thus do many Sea-men their lost ships unto the cause of this and that Commonwealths and Kingdomes have their falls and periods let Athens Sparta Babylon Nineveh and Carthage bee witnesses who have at this day no other fences but Paper-walls to keep up their memories Now what have been the causes of these subversions most men are ignorant the Epicure will ascribe it to Fortune the Stoick to Destiny Plato Pythagoras and Bodin to Number Aristotle to an asymmetry and disproportion in the members Copernicus to the motion of the Center of excentrick Circles Cardanus and the major part of Astrologers to Stars and Planets but the Oracles of the Lord speak in other language that sin is the grand cause both of ships States and Commonwealths ruines You are apt to lay the blame of your miscarrying in the Seas upon the Pilot What one sayes of a Cities overthrow the same will I say of cast-away ships Civitatis eversio est morum non murorum casus A Cities overthrow is sooner wrought by lewd lives than weak walls upon the Master upon the Commander of the ship and not upon that abominable weight of sin that is in ships It is every way
their desired Haven Gods people upon the Sea even the very meanest of them may say I never stir out nor sail in the great deeps but my life-guard goes along with mee and if they want for preservation there is never a creature in heaven or earth Sea or land but both will and shall take their parts What man is able to finde out a danger in which God could not or the time when God did not help them Ah Sirs never distrust God Was it dangerous to bee shut out of the Ark when the waters increased upon the old world or to bee shut out of the City of Refuge when the Avenger of blood pursued or to want blood upon the door posts when the Angel was destroying and is it not as dangerous to those that go to Sea without the fear of God Consider but that What hath been said and recorded of Troys Palladium that whilst that image remained there the City was impregnable had not the Greeks found out the stratagem to steal their Idol away they could never have conquered the City I will say of the godly and religious that go in the Seas whilst they walk close with their God It is reported that the Seas on a time being very rough and tempestuous great waves and billows flying mountain high a great Vessel was sailing upon them and every wave threatning to drown her the wicked wretches that were in her scared not the Seas the Waves asked them how it happened that they were no more fearful quoth the Mariners Nos Nautae We are Mariners How much more may the godly say in time of storms Nos Christiani et Deum Omnipotentem habemus the waves shall never hurt them 2 Chron. 15.2 The Lord is with you while you bee with him and if you seek him hee will bee found of you but if you forsake him hee will forsake you That the Lords merciful dealings with Observ 7 the sons of men in the Seas gives the world a convincing evidence of his gracious nature willingness and readiness to do good and to shew favour unto all Hee brings them to their desired Haven That when God will deliver a people out Observ 8 of storms in a shelterless Sea then no opposition shall nor can oppose or hinder him Hee brings them to their desired Haven No powers in Heaven Sea or Land that God cannot over-top and make vail and strike sail to him when hee pleases Psal 114.3 4 5 6 7. What ailed thee Oh thou Sea that thou fleddest thou Jordan that thou wast driven back Proud-vanting This was Davids experience of Gods readinesse to help him when in distresse Psal 18.10 And hee rode upon a Cherub and did flye yea hee did flye upon the wings of the wind The Lord is continually upon one Cherubs back or other over and upon the great deeps one while in the North and another while in the South c. for your deliverance and billow-bouncing Seas soon lower their top-sails at Gods rebuke Vers 31. Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works to the children of men IN the words wee may soon espye two remarkable things 1. A vehement desire Oh that men would praise the Lord. 2. A duplicatory reason of this desire 1 For his goodness 2. For his wonderful works to the children of men If the heavens were parchment the Seas Iâ—ke and every pile of grasse in the world a pen all would be too little to set forth the high praises of the Lord by This Verse seems to include the ardent earnestness of the Psalmists spirit that Sea-men would bee much in thankfulness and much and frequent in praising of the Lord their deliverer out of all their distresses Oh seems hee to say that I could put men upon this duty it would bee more comfortable to mee seems the Psalmist to say to finde such a principle in the hearts of those that are imployed in the great waters Ah Sirs you let the fresh running floods of Jordan I mean your Sea-deliverances fall into the mare mortuum of your forgetfulnesse than any one thing in the world again whatsoever Oh is but a little word consisting of two letters but no word that ever a man utters with his tongue comes with that force and affection from the heart as this doth Oh is a word of the highest expression a word when a man can say no more This Interjection oftentimes starts out of the heart upon a sudden from some unexpected conception or admiration or other In the composure of these words wee have two things onely considerable 1. The manner of it 2. The matter of it Oh that men would praise the Lord. But to open the words a little Oh that men would praise the Lord c. Heb. That they would confess it to the Lord both in secret and in society this is all the rent that God requires hee is contented that those that use the Seas should have the comfort of his blessings so hee may have the honour of them this was all the fee Christ looked for for his cures Go and tell what God hath done for thee words seem to bee a poor and slight compensation but Christ saith Nazianzen calls himself the Word That deliverances at Sea out of storms Observ 1 and Tempests call upon all the sharers therein and the receivers thereof to bee evermore thankfully praising and magnifying the wonderful goodness Lucan reports that the Elephants that come out of the Nabathaean Woods to wash themselves in the floods near unto them as if to purifie will fall down to adore the Moon or otherwise their Creator and return into the woods again And will nor you that use the Seas to your God that delivers you and undeserved kindness of the Lord vouchsafed unto them Oh that men would praise the Lord. Shall I prove the poynt I profess if Scripture were silent no man I should think should bee so audaciously impudent as to deny the verity thereof 1 Thes 5.18 In every thing give thanks for that is the will of God If in every thing then surely in and for Sea-preservations Men must take heed that they bee not thankless in this thing lest the Heavens blush at their ingratitude Psal 119.62 At midnight will I rise to give thanks to thee Ah that our Sea-men were as forward as they lie in their Cabbins and Hammocks Ah Sirs how many voyages make you to and again upon the Seas one while into the East-Indies So affected were the inthralled Greeks with their liberty procured by Flaminius the Roman Generael that out of thankfulness to him they would oftentimes lift up their voices in such shrill acclamations crying Soter Soter Saviour Saviour that the very birds would fall down from the heavens astonished and amazed And will not you Gentlemen be affected with your Sea deliverances and another while into the West one while into the North and another while
whilst you do float above When the Lord would stir up David and melt his heart and bring it unto a kindly sorrow for all his mercies hee takes this course 2 Sam. 12.7 Did not the Lord do thus and thus Did hee not make thee King of Judah and of Israel Did he not give to thee thy Masters wives and houses into thy bosom and if this had not been enough hee would have done more for thee therefore recount the particular kindnesses and Sea-deliverances the Lord has bestowed upon thee does not the Lord seem to say I delivered thee at such a time and in such a storm did not I deliver thee from such a Rock and from such a sand God keeps a reckoning Sirs of what hee does and also of all your deliverances it is but wisdom then to kiss the Son lest hee bee angery to kisse him with a kiss of adoration and subjection all your daies 3. Consideration That thankful hearts are evermore full of thankful thoughts and these are such as are evermore suitable unto the benefits that are received Psal 116.12 What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits Hee has delivered mee out of this and the other storm from this and the other shore from many Rocks and Sands both in this and also in the other parts of the world I have met with a story of a Company of Sailors in Zara called by some Jadera a Town in Sclavonia that they consecrated a Church to St. John di Malvatia which they built out of their own wealth and wages to express their thankfulness for their great deliverance out of a storm in which they had like every man of them to have gone to the pot This they vowed when at Sea and when come on Land they were as good as their words where are your thanks Sailors what shall I now bestow upon him How has hee preserved mee when shot has flown like hail When dangers have been unfordable and miseries innumerable then has the Lord stept in to deliver mee Ah Sirs what cause have you that use the Seas to fall down before the Lord in all thankful acknowledgment to him for your deliverances at Sea even as the Wise men of the East did before Christ and offer unto him Gold Incense and Myrrhe aurum fidei thus devotionis aromata pietatis mentes humiles probos mores animos dignos Deo The Gold of faith the Frankincense of Devotion the Myrrhe of Godliness humble minds good manners souls worthy of God 4. Consider That thankful hearts are evermore full of admiring thoughts I wonder at the goodness of God says a good and an honest heart that hee should come and step down so seasonably to deliver mee when I was in a Sea far from any eye or heart to pitty mee Ah how has mercy taken the pains to come and meet us How has mercy as it were fallen into our mouths and into our laps even very unexpectedly Abraham's servant was very full of admiring thoughts when hee saw providence so working for him Gen. 14.21 as the womans coming to the well and her willingness to give him and his Camels as much water as they pleased Ah stand amazed at Gods deliverings of your souls in the stormy and tempestuous Seas 5. Consider That thankful hearts are evermore full of awful and trembbling thoughts at the Judgments of God both executed and threatned upon others in the Seas when they see themselves so threatned in storms and others to bee cast away in them and yet notwithstanding they themselves spared this strikes thoughts of fear into them and upon them Psal 119.20 My flesh trembles for fear of thee and I am afraid of thy righteous Judgments 6. Consider That thankful hearts are evermore full of viewing and observing thoughts Oh how has the Lord delivered mee in this late storm and Tempest in what danger was I in but now our Sails rent our Mast fell about our ears wee pumped and toyled night and day for our lives Cables broke and at another time our Anchors came home and our ships drive And thus such hearts cannot but say Exod. 15.13 Thou in thy Mercy hast led forth the people which thou hast redeemed 7. Solemnly consider that thankful hearts after Sea-deliverances are full of improving thoughts and will not you bee so too Gentlemen You that use the Seas Such a soul has his whole mind taken up with the mercies of the Lord and hee plots contrives and designs how hee may make a good use and a good improvement of all that he has done for him in the Seas Pliny writes of Egypt It is well if it may not too truly be said of those that use the Seas that shee was wont to boast how shee owed nothing to the Clouds or any forein streams for her fertility being abundantly watered by the inundation of her ovvn River Nile I am affraid that you think that you are not beholden to your God and beheld with his eyes in the great deeps Such a soul sets all his Sea-deliverances in print and layes them up in the wardrobe of his heart The holiness goodness mercifulness and majesty of God is evermore much in such a souls eye 8. Consider That all good men are for it and that with tooth and naile and will you not then bee thankful unto the Lord I will tell you who bee against it the Devil and wicked men but I pray God preserve you from such Counsellors Psal 65. Praise waiteth for thee O God in Sion Psal 29.2 Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name Worship the Lord in the beauty of holynesse 9. Consider That God himself is for it Mal. 2.2 If yee will not hear and if yee will not lay it to heart to give glory unto my name saith the Lord of hosts I will even send a curse upon you 10. Consider That God commands it The shortest cut to ruine men is unthankfulness Trumpeters delight to sound when where they are answered with an Eccho 11. Consider That God expects it 12. Consider That God prizes it and commends it 13. Consider That God is hereby much honoured by it Psal 50. ult 14. Consider That God will fully and freely reward it A word or two now of Use and so I will leave the point because it is so painful to mee to write and lay down at large what I might and what every point would bear I do acknowledge that Spices when they are pounded and beaten small they do evermore smell the sweetest and points of doctrine or Scriptures when they are branched forth expounded and broken up into parts are evermore the profitablest For my part I know not what to say to the generality of Sea-men because they put me to as great a stand as the Turky Painter was once put to when he was to set forth all the several Nations of the world according to their Country dress and habit hee left one
usually sends them a peece of gold stampt with the Image of St. George upon it Who was valiant amongst you had Medals in the Dutch wars they have a brave warlike ship which they call the Preston To keep up the memory of that dreadful Sea-fight which they had with the Dutch near Portland they call one of their warlike ships the Portland To keep alive the memory of their transactions against the enemy at Yarmouth they have a gallant ship which they call the Yarmouth That their dealings with the enemy at Famouth might bee remembred and celebrated to the praise of that God whom they serve they call one of their brave warlike Vessels the Famouth To keepe alive the goodness of God in their helping them to overcome their enemies at Bristow they call one of their sumptuous ships the Bristow To keep up the memory of one sore bout they had with the enemy in Kent they call one of their ships which they built afterwards the Kent That they might not forget their dispute with the enemy at Dartmouth one of their ships is stiled the Dartmouth To remember that bout they had with the enemy at Tarrington they call another ship the Tarrington To remember the engaging of the enemy in Essex All these ships are called by the names of Englands Battels and every ship carrying the name of an English Battel upon her cannot otherwise chuse but under God be heart daunting terrible to the proudest enemy that ever strutted in the Seas What is said of the Leviathan I think I may say of our ships Job 41.9 Shall not one bee cast down even at the fight of them they call one of their ships the Essex To keep up the memory of that bout they had with the enemy at Basin-house in Hampshire they call one of their Friggots the Basin To perpetuate their engaging the enemy in Pembrokeshire they call one Friggot the Pembroke Another they call the Hamshire Another the Glocester Another the Non-such And all these besides several others as the Lime c. have been built since and after these disputes and so named Paul after his ship-wrack I find to that end hee might remember that deliverance calls it Melita and the Maltezes's at this day La scala di San Paulo St. Pauls shipwrack or arrival Sea-men have you no names for the places where you have been shipwracked what call you the places where you have been in greatest danger Call to mind the many places that you have been in and the many storms and perils that you have gone through The States of England throw not their dear and costly purchased Victories at their heels Imitate the Tartars in valour who go slightly armed into the Battel upon their Backs as scorning and abhorring ever to turn their backs whâ—n once the chief Standard of the General is let flye in the field A certain Prince would bee pictured with this Motto which I give to you that use the Seas Luctor non mergor I was much endangered but God has preserved mee Sibyllae mos erat in palmarum foliis oracula scribere in meliori metallo autem tenete naufragia vestra which they have got in their late wars but to keep them alive they put them upon their warlike Sea-boats 4. By erecting Pillars to bee standing memorials and monuments of the Lords undeserved goodness unto them Samuel set up a stone and called it Eben-Ezar 1 Sam. 7.10 12. Hitherto quoth hee when the Philistins fought against them Hath the Lord helped us The States of England to keep up the memory of their Land-deliverances layd out very costlily three thousand pound upon one ship Accipe redde Cave is a Motto that is writ upon all mercies Upon Fire is writ take heat from me Upon Apparel take warmth from me Upon bread take strength from me Upon a piece of a plank in a storm take safety from me But make a good improvement of these things or else stand cleer four thousand Pound upon another and six thousand upon another And will you lay out nothing to perpetuate the memory of your deliverances Give mee leave to hand to every soul in the Sea this short and sweet word of advice 1. Improve all your Sea-mercies for Gods glory 2. For your own good 3. For the good and benefit of others 1. For Gods glory esteem of God highly look out for higher thoughts of God than ever you have had in your souls and labour daily to beat down your own pride loftiness and haughtiness of mind otherwise you will never bee able to maintain high thoughts of God and to say of the Lord in all your Sea-preservations Exod. 15.11 Who is like unto thee O Lord amongst the Gods who is like thee glorious in holiness fearful in praises doing wonders 2 Chron. 6.14 There is no God like thee in the Heaven nor in the Earth 2. To love God more dearly that has done so much for you David's heart began to bee on a burning glow within him when hee begun to consider of the Lords hearing of his prayers Psal 116.1 2. I love the Lord because hee hath heard my voice and my supplications Ah Sirs will not you that use the Seas love your God no more than you do Good Sirs do not with your God as the Heathens did by theirs of whom it is said that they would put them off with slight Sacrifices when called for a man they brought a candle Hercules offered up a painted man instead of a living one what had been become of you ere this day if God had not heard your prayers in your calamities 3. To thank and praise God Praecepta docent at exempla movent more heartily for what hee has done for you in all your straits at Sea Psal 103.1 2. Bless the Lord oh my soul and all that is within mee bless his holy name Tully calls gratitude Maximam imo matrem omnium virtutum reliquarum the greatest and the mother of all virtues 4. To obey God more cordially Many Sailors are a meer tortile lignum Too much a kin to the Crab Nunquam recte ingrediuntur Cancri Very disobedient and crooked unto God and freely this is to render again according to the mercies and favours God did for you when in the great deeps which Hezekiah nay not onely hee but thousands of our Sailors fail in this very duty 2 Chron. 32.25 But Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him The Elements are obedient unto the Caelestial bodies the Orbs and Sphaeres to the moving intelligence and all the Intelligences to the chiefest of all which is the Lord loved of all Darius escaping a great danger in his return out of Scythia by the faithful counsel and assistance of Hysteus the Milesian hee was so taken with this kindness that to reward him hee sent for him to the Court to praefer him to one of his Privy Councel gave him this commendation