most high God for delivering mercies is not onely a very acceptable duty with God but also the readiest way to obtain mercy in the like exigency and necessity again Oh that men would praise the Lord Psal 50.23 Who so offereth praise glorifieth mee and then it follows Hee that orders his conversation aright to him will I shew the salvation of God Munera crede mihi placant hominesque Deosq This Scripture now proves it to bee an acceptable performance in the sight of God and that such as give God the most and best of praises they shall have the greatest and the sweetest salvations Improve Neptunum accusat iterum qui naufragium fecit Hee is very injurious to Neptune that complains of being shipwracked when unthankfulness is the cause Alexander the Great by burning Frankincense frankly and freely to the gods gained by conquest the whole Kingdome of Arabia where all the sweet Aromatick trees do grow Ah Sirs you do not know how you might prosper at Sea would you but bee liberal in your praisings of God and thanksgivings to him The people in the Low Countries by giving the Stork leave to build and nest it in their houses to requite the house-keepers shee comes every year at her appointed time Wee read of small or no rain that falls many times in divers parts of Africa and the grand cause is supposed to bee the sandy nature of the soil from whence the Sun can draw no vapours or exhalations which ascending from other parts in great abundance resolve themselves into kinde benign showers refreshing and helping of the earth that yeeldeth none and this is the reason many times why God poures not down his blessings and benefits in such an abundance as sometimes hee hath been wont to do because your hearts are as dry and barren as the barren grounds and sands of Africa for if vapours of melting prayers tears prayses and thanksgivings go not up to heaven mercies will soon bee stopt in their passage down If Sea-men were not so much behinde hand with God in the tribute of praise and good life God would soon lay a charge upon all his creatures both in heaven and in earth that they should pay their tribute unto man the Sun his heat Ah Sirs I am afraid that many in the Sea do vitam gentilem agere sub nomine Christiano live even Turks under the name of Christians The Sailor sometimes is like a Rubrick or Sunday letter very zealously red and all the week after you may write his deeds and his unthankfulness unto his God for Sea deliverances in black the Sea his calmness the Winds their gentleness the Moon her light the Stars their influences the Clouds their moysture the Sea and Rivers their Fish the Land her Fruits the Mines their Treasures c. And when neglected God shuts up the windows of heaven and locks up the treasuries of his bounty and so lets Winds and Seas rage and roar and the creatures gnash and grin their teeth at a people for their ingratitude Ingratitude is a sin supposed to taint the very influences of the Stars it dries up the Clouds infects the very Air makes Winds terrible and boysterous blasts the very fruits of the earth Cyprian attributes the great dearth in his time to the want of thankfulness and truly I shal attribute the many ships that are cast away unto their unthankfulness unto their God for had they been more thankful more holy and humble for those storms God delivered them out of they had never gone so sadly to the pot as they have done Here is quoth Cyprian a very great and general sterility or barrenness of the fruits of the earth and what is the reason of it because there is such a sterility of righteousness and purity Men complain now a dayes that springs are not full Sea-men deal with God as the Heathen who would when they had served their torns upon their gods as Prometheus c. put them off with beasts skins stuffed with straw If they get but out of the storm they never look behinde them who sate upon the floods all the time to deliver them themselves not so healthfull nor the Seas so calm as formerly they have been nor the Winds so quiet and peaceable nor the showers so frequent the earth so fruitful nor the heavens so obsequious unto them as they have been to serve their pleasure and natural profit to God the creatures are obedient and on his errands they go Deu. 28.38 Thou shalt carry much seed out into the field and shalt gather but little in for the locust shall consume it It is sin that makes the Sea so dangerous and so dreadful sin that makes the heavens as iron over head and the earth to grow so full of thorns and brambles But to proceed I shall not adventure pluribus morari but rather bee tanquam Canis ad Nilum in a restless Sea where I can neither hold my pen in my hand nor keep my paper and ink upon board scarce The Arguments why Sea-men should praise God are briefly these 1. Because God had such a special Reason 1 eye and provident care over you in the preserving of you in all the unlikeliest and irrecoverablest dangers and calamities that you have been exercised withall in the Seas 2. Because God did so much for Reason 2 you which hee would not do for others That when God hath delivered men out Observ 4 of their Sea-streights and calamities Sceva told all his friends that at the siege of Dyrrachium where he so long resisted Pompeys Army that he had two hundred and twenty Darts sticking in his Shield Densamque tulit in pectore Sylvam Ah set your deliverances before people it is their duty not onely to praise God for his goodnesses towards them but also to set the fruit of those mercies before others to taste of Oh that men would praise the Lord c. Vers 37. Let them exalt him in the Congregation Portus Olympiaca vocem acceptam septies reddit If any knock or speak at the Gate or Portal of Olympus it returns a sevenfold Eccho of the knock or speech Your mercies should make you speak Sirs Observ 5 That although a man hath nothing to speak of Gods wonderful deliverances in the Seas but what is known unto others as well as to himself yet is it a part of Gods praise and of his thankfulness to make Gods works known and the continual matter of his talk and discourse Oh that men would praise the Lord Psal 105.2 Talk yee of all his wonderful works Talk not of one or two of some of them but of all of them which you have seen and known done and wrought for you in the Seas Observ 6 That freedome from perils in the Seas and injoyment of life are two mercies that call for many thanks at the hands of those that go down into them He that hath but a subjects purse may have
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-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
An honest heart would reflect on these things I do not deny but that sometimes you may have occasion for so doing but many times will and pleasure is all the reason 2. Quietness and gentleness This is as sweet a flower amongst all a mans virtues and enamelments as any other whatsoever of such rare worth is it that the Apostle deemed them that were without it to bee a dishonour unto God Christ and their profession 1 Thes 4.11 And that yee study to bee quiet Mich. 6.8 And what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God Heb. 11.12 Follow peace with all men let them bee what they will bee and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. But now whilst I press this vertue upon you mistake me not I would not have you of this temper when there is occasion given you to the contrary amongst your men no no. I have observed that a carrion crow will sit upon the back of a silly sheep and pull the very wooll of it from its skin when as this bird durst not do so to the Wolf or Mastive I leave the Application unto you I confess too much meekness and soft spiritedness at Sea is a meer peble though at land an excellent Jewel He that is of this temper commonly throws himself upon the Rocks of many injuries patience and mildness of spirit is ill bestowed where it is not deserved and especially where it exposes a man to wrongs and insultations Sheepish dispositions are good for others but worst of all for themselves I do not deny but that it is good to be of a meek and harmless carriage but if any one would dare to teare off my coate there is good reason then to bid him look to himself 3. Sobriety This vertue will bee as sweet oyntment poured out upon your names And the want of it will both crack and stain your credits in the States Service The Apostle presses on the Romans with very strong and cogent arguments to take up the practice of it Rom. 13.12 13. The night is far spent the day is at hand let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armour of light Let us walk honestly as in the day not in rioting and drunkenness not in chambering and wantonness not in strife and envying Let this Scripture bee your pattern I would have the Sea-Captains and every land Captain Commander as saithful as Pontius Centurio was to Caesar the Emperour who was one of his Captains and being taken by Scipio Pompey's Father in Law had his life offered him with an honourable place in Pompey's Army if he would but forsake Caesar and serve Pompey But he faithfully answered Scipio that though he thanked him greatly for his kind offer yet would he not accept of life upon such unequal conditions choosing rather for to dye than to falsify his faith to Caesar 4. Fidelity It is very requisite that none should go or bee employed as Commanders in the States ships of England but such as are both faithful trusty and well affected to the present governement otherwise the States may hereby suffer damage I could wish that the States of England would do by those whom they employ either at Sea or Land if once unfaithful as the Lacedemonians did in one case by their King Pausanias who finding it out that hee held correspondence with their enemy Xerxes they sent for him home and when he came back perceiving that his treason was discovered he took Sanctuary in the Temple of Pallas and the Lacedemonians fearing to violate the priviledge of the place durst not fetch him out to punishment but rather than hee should escape unrevenged they made up the doore with stones and starved him unto death Men that are unfaithful and disaffected in your ships should bee called in and not trusted in such disloyal hands Consider you that are trusted by the States with Seafaring Commands what sweet Scriptural Examples you have of the fidelity of those that were employed in great and weighty affaires What think you of Abraham's servant unto his Master Gen. 24. What think you of Jonathan's faithfulness unto David and of David's unto Jonathan 1 Sam. 20.15 2 Sam. 9.1 What think you of Jacob's faithfulness unto Laban Gen. 31.38 and what think you of Jehojadah's trustiness unto Joash 2 King 11.4 Behold Nehemiah cap. 7.2 Behold Daniel The Romans so highly esteemed of faith in all their publick affairs that in their City they had a Temple dedicated to it and for more reverence sake offered sacrifice to the Image of Faith cap. 6.4 Behold Joseph Gen. 39.8 Behold Rahab with the spies Josh 2.4 Behold the work-men about the Temple 2 King 12.15 All these are set forth as examples of honesty fidelity and godliness And these Examples are not like to unprofitable fables which feed the eye for a while and then are cast aside and seldom ever looked on more but here they are inserted for particular uses practises and applications and to bee practised by every one that is in any kind of trust Darius junior accounted nothing more sacred than faithfully to keep and perform all his Leagues Covenants Promises that ever hee made Xenophon whether great or small 2. Pursers These are Gentlemen that take in all the ships provisions viz. Bread Bear Beef Pork Butter Pease Cheese and Fish c. And whilst they take in this they think with themselves that hee is a sorry Cook that will not bee now and then licking of his fingers These lads shame no more to play with the mouse in the Bread-roome I mean to bee sharing in every victualling than Dorio that impudent slut of whom Terence tells of that when shee was reproved for her lewd life Non te Pudet Dorio minime dum obrem Shee answered when asked if she were not ashamed no in good truth as long as I get gain by it I leave the application These lads are like to the Mountain Stork of whom it is said that shee has a greedy and hungry worm in her Gorge and Crow A Purser is an homo manibus aduncis picacissimis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If Sea-Captains did not wink at their Pursers they could not trade so handsomely as they do I would gladly have Sea-Captains to do by them as Themistocles the honest Praetor of Athens did by Simonides the Poet who when he came to importune him for an unjust thing he answered him thus Neque tu bonus poeta esses si praeter leges carminis caneres neque ego civilis praetoressem si praeterquam quod leges permittunt tibi gratificarer As thou Simonides shouldest be no good Poet if thou shouldst swerve from the rules of Poetry so neither can I be a good Magistrate if to gratifio thee I should swerve from the rule of the Laws and never lives contentedly but cries out for
out their hearts do exceedingly fail them and there is nothing else then but crying weeping wailing and wringing of the hands for that lamentable and deplorable condition that they see themselves irremediably involved in now are they in a confusion ransacking and running to and again to throw the ponderousest of their goods over bord that their Vessel may bee the lighter What Dolor cordis is there amongst the Sea-men when the ship is dangerously leaky yea what animi molestiae and what Suspiria flebilia ab imo pectore one while they work and another while they weep to see themselves irrecoverably at deaths door Undique facies pallida mortis Death is now on every side them and with David they cry Psal 39.13 O spare mee that I may recover strength before I go hence and bee no more Being once in a dangerous and leaky Vessel in which the hearts of the Mariners were greatly daunted in respect that wee were very far from Land when wee arived safe on shore I could not but turn about and in the first place look up unto my God with a thankful feeling of heart and in the second look back upon the Sea from whence wee were delivered and write down this upon his undeserved mercy Psal 56.13 For thou hast delivered my soul from death and now doe they unloose every knot of sail that they can make to run unto the nearest shore that they can get unto to save their lives and ever and anon are they sending up one or other unto the top-mast head to see if hee can descry either Land or ships in the Seas which if they can but espy towards them they will make with the greatest cheer that can bee I have known some that have been seven or eight dayes in this very praecedent case and condition that I am now speaking off wherein they have most laboriously pumped and sailed as for their lives and at the last when they have been both despairing and desponding of life in respect that all their strength has been spent with hard working and the ship they sailed in filled even half full of water the Lord has looked down upon the travel of their souls and sent them one ship or other within the sight of them when they have been far out of sight of any Land towards which they have made with all the speed that in them lay and by firing of Guns which is commonly a signal of that ships distress that fires they steered their course directly towards her and taken out the men that would have been lost in her and in a little time the ship that they sailed in has sunk into the bottom Again others in leaky ships when that they have been denyed the sight of any ship in the Seas to flye to have got safe to Land notwithstanding that dreadful distress But now to look back upon and over this deliverance permit mee to move these two questions and they will magnifie it 1. Who is it that sends the Sea-man a ship out of the Seas to take him up when there is no possibility of keeping the ship that hee is in on flote and above water is it not the Lord 2. And who is it also that gives the Leakship leave to arrive safe on shore whereas in the eye of reason shee might rather have perished in the Seas having so far to sail before shee could come to any port and besides could see no support nor succour from ships in her way Is it not the Lord 2. They that go down to the Sea in ships in their passage and re-passage from Country to Country and Nation to Nation have been oftentimes most sadly set at and assaulted by the Turk and other Pyrats insomuch that when the enemy has come up very near unto them almost within the reach of his Ordinance God has most wonderfully many a time appeared for them either by calmning of the winds in that part of the Sea their pursuing enemies have been in or by giving of them a strong gale of wind to run away from them when the enemy has lain in a calm with his sails flat to his Masts God has many and many a time calmed the winds for the English when they have been pursued with the Turk c. insomuch that the Seas have layn to admiration like a Mare mortuum de quo antiqui feruns sine vento sine motu By which means God has kept them from unmerciful thraldom and captivity And the enemy for want of wind has not been able to come up with and to his desired prize or otherwise by granting them a stiff gale until the going down of the Sun by which they have made their escape from the Pyrat in the black of the evening for then has not the enemy been able to see his chase nor to cast for the best because the chased very gladly alters his course This has the Lord Almighty done for many a Merchant ship blessed and for even blessed bee his sweet Name hee has denyed to fill the enemies sails with wind when they have had strong intentions to make spoil and prey of them Oh the many Sea-men that have been thus delivered 3. They that go down to the Sea in ships often and sundry times when they have been surrounded with way-lying Pyrats and Robbers I sometimes with two or three for one which is contrary to that well known rule Ne sit Hercules contra duos notwithstanding in their hot disputes and exchange of Ordnance one against the other even when shot has flown like hail on every side them some striking their Hulls I say no more but this Good Lord how bold and witty men are to kill one another what fine devices have they found out to murther a far off to slay many at once and to fetch off lives at pleasure what honour do many place in slaughter the monuments of most mens glory are the spoils of the slain and subdued enemy whereas contrarily all Gods titles sound of mercy and gracious respects to man some their Shrouds and othersome their men and though they have been most desperately beset both on head and on stern they have most couragiously by the assistance of the Lord cleered themselves out of their hands with very little and small damage I and other sometimes got the victory in their quarrels by sinking of the enemy and sending him down into the bottoms Oh the many Sea-men that have been thus delivered 4. They that go down to the Sea in ships many times when they are in chase of a pestilent enemy this I have seen satis superque satis and when wee have come almost up with him within Demi-culverin distance so that Ordnance has been levelled upon him and the shot has flown over and beyond him the Sea has presently layn all on a calm and as it were the winds have been called off from filling our sails insomuch that there has been a stop put
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
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
into the South but where are your thanksgivings all this time to God for your safe goings our and returnings home Go but to the Planets and they will tell you that they will not deal so with the Sun as you deal with your God wee say they receive much light from the Sun and for a testimony of our thankfulness wee do not detain it but reflect it back again upon the Sun Go to the Earth Sailors and shee will tell you that shee will not deal so with the Heavens as you do with your God shee will tell you that shee receives much rain from the Heavens and out of a testimony of much thankfulness shee detains it not but returns it back in Vapor again and after this manner may you hear her speaking Cessat decursus donorum si cesset recursus gratiarum Mercies from above would soon cease If my thanksgivings and returnings from below went not up It is said of the Lark that shee praises the Lord seven times a day with sweet melodious ditties Atque suum tiriletiriletiriletiriletirile cantat Alauda Isa 20. The beast of the field shall honour mee the Dragons and the Owls because I give waters in the Wilderness and rivers in the Desart to give drink to my people my chosen 1. Reason Because your lives were at the stake as Isaac's was upon the Altar's when the knife was at his throat yet did the Lord call and look forth very seasonably The Romans used to stick and bedeck the bosom of their great God Jupiter with Laurel as if they had glad tidings of fresh victories and that out of a testimony of their thankfulness for what they had out of the Heavens for you and spake to the winds when they were up in a rampant kind of hostility and rebellion against you and bid them be quiet and do you no harm otherwise you had perished in many a storm ere this day and is not this worthy a great many thanks Who can bee too thankful to that God that has been so careful and tender-hearted over you when in the Seas where there was no eye to pitty you 2. Reason Because in that storm if God had given it commission thou hadst been shortly after either in Hell I have met with a story of one when being risen from the dead therefore you that live ungodlily in the Seas think of it he was asked in what condition he was in when he was there he made answer No man will beleeve no man will beleeve no man will beleeve They asked him what hee meant by that he told them no man will beleeve how exactly God examines how strictly God judges and how severely hee punishes or Heaven or may I not leave Heaven out and thou hadst been in Hell where the Devils would have fallen upon thee to tear thee to peeces Ah Sirs your lives hang but upon small wyers and what would become of you if God should not spare you Bee affected with this mercy 3. Reason Because had the storm but had licence to have destroyed you and the ships you sailed in which the Lord would not suffer you had never come home with your rich lading nor never had that mercy granted you of ever seeing or enjoying of your loving friends wives children houses lands and acquaintance again and shall not all this move you unto thankfulness If this will not I know nothing in the world that will prevail with you I pray God that Sea-men do not with their deliverances at Sea as Pharaoh did with the miracles that were done before his face Exod. 7.23 Of whom it is said That hee would not set his heart to the miracle 4 Reason Because you have now at the present a still quiet and peaceable Sea to sail in and upon which in the storm you had not such was the proud vantingness of it that you durst not loose a knot of sail nor keep your Top-masts unlowred and un-peaked and the waves run mountain-high rageing and rowling on every hand you in such a miserable manner It seems strange to mee that Sea-men are not bettered by all the storms they meet with by all the calms God bestows upon them Iron is never cleaner than when it comes out of the furnace nor brighter than when it has been under the sharp file the Sun never shines clearer than when it comes from under a Cloud the Coale that has been covered with ashes is thereby the hotter the quicker every thing brightens betters but the rusty Sailor Gods mercies judgments in the Seas do not scour him as that you were at your wits-end but Oh what sweet peace and tranquil weather have you now insomuch that your Vessels go now upright without that nodding staggering and reeling which they were put to before How still are the waves how clear above bee the skies and Heavens how well escaped are you from the shore the Rocks and sands which you were so near to in the storm Are you not affected with this mercy The Lord soften your hard hearts then Give mee leave to present you with a few motives unto this duty of thankfulness 1. Consider Soul what an unspeakable mercy it is that God should hear thy Prayers in a storm when thou wast almost overwhelmed that God should hear prayers nay prating and babling rather than praying which is but an abomination unto the Lord that God should hear the prayers of the righteous that is nothing strange because hee hears them alwaies but that God should hear your prayers Sirs which are most sorry and sinful prayers The Stork is said to leave one of her young ones where shee hatched them The Elephant to turn up the first sprig towards Heaven when he comes to feed and both out of an instinct of gratitude to their Creator Sailors let not brute creatures excel you for whatsoever is not of Faith is sin this is wonderful Ah will not you bee thankful unto the Lord Sirs I have red of a Lyon that had but got a thorn in his foot as hee was walking and ranging in the Forrest for and after his prey and being exceedingly pained with it hee made after a foot-Traveller which hee spied in the Forrest making signs to him that hee was in distress which the Traveller seeing and apprehending that his case was dangerous if hee ran hee stood still to know the Lyons pleasure to whom the Lyon declared himself and the poor man pulled it forth and the Lyon to requite him followed him as guarding of him from all wrongs by other wild-beasts quite through the Forrest Ah Sirs will not you express your thankfulness to your good God 2. Consider the particular dealings of God with you he deals not so with every one Do you not see God in the winds Mercavab Velohaâ—ocheb how is hee to bee seen in the Chariot which he rides in though not the Rider says a Rabbi some goes down into the bottoms amongst the dead
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
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
Omnium possessionum pretiosissimum esse amicum fide Corda bonorum aliquando concussa melius solidantur The hearts of good men are best setled after they have been well shaken with a dreadful storm the fitter to serve God prudentia praestantem Great kindnesses Sirs are greatly to be regarded and serious things ought to bee seriously minded Ah Sirs be affected with what God does and has done for you 2. Make a profitable use of all your deliverances for your own good 1. For Obedience Sirs I wish you all that use the Seas when in violent blustring storms a bottle of the Queen of Thebes rich Nepenthe which she upon a time sent to a great Graecian beauty incomparable Lady of the world by name Helena the vertue of which was such that it would over-power all griefs sorrows troubles fears cares and dangers and make one cheerful though never so miserable If you want this at Sea you have a good God that is all this and much more 2. For Comfort 3. For Holiness 1. For confidence in God in the time of storms and dangers Former Experiences of Gods deliverings of you should sinnew and strengthen future confidence in God it was so with David 1 Sam. 17.37 The Lord that delivered mee out of the paw of the Lion and out of the paw of the Bear hee will deliver mee out of the hand of this Philistin Conclude Hee that preserved mee in the last storm and carried mee out of those perils that beset mee about on every side will do so still 2 Cor. 1.10 Who deliverd us from so great a death and doth deliver in whom wee trust that hee will yet deliver us 2. For comfort in bitter storms and heart-striking blasts evermore compare your present condition but with the former and that will make it the more comportable and fordable unto thee hast thou not been in the same or in the like or in as great or greater yet God comforted thee and bore thee out of it and is not this God the same God still yesterday to day and for ever his arm is not shortened Canst thou not Nay dost thou not experience that God has been with thee in six troubles and also in seven No better refuge in the world It was a good saving of one when in a dreadful storm at Sea quoth he I shall not certainly perish there be so many eyes of Providence over my head meaning the Stars in the night than to flye to the strong Tower of a good old Experience in the time of distress Psal 143.4 5. When David was in a great storm in his Kingdom hee flies to experience I remember the dayes of old I remember what thou didst formerly And here hee cast anchor and found much comfort 3. For holiness your daily summerly and winterly experiences of your hardships and difficulties in the Seas should bee carefully spiritualized and improved to the amendment of your hearts and lives 3. And lastly for the good of others bring out your experiences and delivering-delivering-mercies upon the Seas and set that savoury dish upon the table for pious gracious and tender hearts to feed on It is reported that sorrow and pleasure and pleasure and sorrow were at strife and variance one with the other insomuch that Jupiter was sent for from Heaven to come and reconcile them and seeing that neither of them would yeeld to one another in respect they referred themselves to Jupiters arbitration quoth he since this is your resolution you shall for ever hereafter go together You have not all hony in your imployments It is reported of a ship that shee spoke on this wise in the commendation of one that had been instrumental to carry her well out of a dangerous place in the Sea which was full of rocks and sands in a dark night Nauta bonus qui manum ad clavum oculos ad astra habet My Helmsman kept one eye upon the Stars and another upon the Card and thereby I escaped And will not you bring forth your experiences Ah Sirs in this case you are too much like Joshuahs Sun that stood still or Hezekias Sun that went backward whereas you should bee as Davids Sun that rejoyceth as a Giant to run his race and turns not again till hee hath finished it I would have Sea-men in this case to resemble that sort of Fish in the Sea that is called an Aspidochelon which is a Sea-monster and when hee opens his mouth there issues out such an aromatick savour that all the by-standing spectators are allured to swim near unto him whereupon hee makes a prey of them Ah Sirs I would have your mouthes to pour out the sweet aromatick perfumes of the Lords deliverances of you in the Seas even in all companies and societies you converse with Ah! you might very much ravish the hearts of all that should hear you would you but undertake to bring forth your Sea-experiences how might you set your souls on a burning flame and heat of love unto your God again Your experiences at Sea are not like Numa Pompilius's feast where there were spectandae dapes non gustandae But every one that hath a gracious frame of spirit may relish them Ah Sirs May not you say to all that know you Deut. 3.24 Oh Lord thou hast began to shew thy servant thy greatness and thy mighty hand for what God is there in heaven or in earth that can do according to thy works and according to thy might you do not think what good you might do in this case People that live on land will bee glad to hear them 4. I could wish that all our Sea-men would put all their experiences of Gods delivering-delivering-mercies into a method 1. Consider the greatness of them both for number and measure how many deliverances and mercies God hath given and doth give unto you hee even gives unto you whole loads Psal 68.19 Blessed bee the Lord who daily loadeth us with his benefits even the God of our salvation Selah When God had done great things for Israel as hee hath done for you that go in the Seas hee bad them 1 Sam. 12.14 Consider what God had done for them The word comes of Con and Sydus which signifies a company of Stars and not one bare simple Stella denoting that many give more lustre than one shewing thereby that it is not a transient view of Gods mercies that do affect the heart I may say of your perilous imployment as one sayes of Teneriff they that will go to the top of it must go by night and not by day for as soon as the day begins once to break and come upon the world it is high time to be gone lest that the tenuity of the air as is supposed should dissolve suffocate and stifle their spirits You get your living as if you stole it This is your Proverb as a man that rides Post cannot well make a true Map of a Country
upon them but they are neither affected with them nor one jot the better for them Beleeve it this is a foul blot in the Sailors Scutchion Gods kindnesses and your amendment should alwayes go together yet I do confess that both the back and also the bones may bee broken in many a man and yet the heart bee too whole and unbroken Ahaaz sinned the more hee was punished Plentiful showers leave both Heaths Forrests and wilderness places unfruitful The generality of Sea-men are not unlike to Pharaohs seven ill favoured Kine which eat up the well-favoured tag and rag and although every one in the dream eat up a whole Cow a peece yet looked they still as leanly and as ill favouredly on it as they did before You devour the Lords mercies in the Seas and are not bettered by them but look as ill favouredly on it as ever you did Nine Plagues would not prevail with Pharaoh What do you think then how many storms will with Sailors 2 Chron. 28.22 And Sea-men swear and tear more when Gods judgements fall upon them in the Seas than they did before insomuch that all good people that live in the ships with them may even say as the Voyce that was heard in the Temple of Jerusalem a little before the destruction of it Migremus hinc Migremus hinc Migremus hinc Let us bee gone or else wee shall have the ships fired from heaven about our ears there is such swearing and cursing in them May I not say of such that they are able to scare all that are ought out of ships What Monica Austins mother said in one case I may say to the godly that go to Sea amongst prophane wretches Quid hic faciemus cur non ocyus migramus cur non hinc avolamus What do wee here in the Sea why depart wee not out of it why make wee no more haste from it A word or two to you Gentlemen and that of Terrour 1. It is an argument of extream hardness and naughtiness of heart not to be wrought on by storms 2. When storms work not upon men I pray God it bee not a dreadful sign of their reprobation and of Gods utter renouncing of them It is a black sign certainly of Gods displeasure when judgements better not a people 3. Such as are not bettered by storms they are very near to a curse Gentlemen If you will abuse your Sea-deliverances to serve your lusts swear whore drab and drink God will rain hell out of heaven upon you rather than not visit you for such sins Salvian Heb. 6.7 8. What will become of you Sirs you that have all means of reformation the Lords mercies and deliverances in the Seas judgements strive with you and mercies have attempted to allure you storms have called upon you and have been as Ambassadors sent from heaven to bid you amend and turn holy and yet all will not do do you think that God will strive with you long Is not that man in a sad and fearful case think you when all means leaves him meat nourishes not physick works not Ingentia beneficia flagitia supplicia good turns will aggravate the Sea-mans unkindnesses nor the Patient sleeps not all give him up for a gone man Let mee tell you that if you grow not better you are at the very next door to bee cursed Abused Sea-mercies will bring upon you sure certain speedy ponderous and inevitable judgements Quaento gradus altior tanto casus gravior the higher Sea-man thou art in mercy Nay others shall sport in hell when you shall fry in it the more grievous will bee thy fall and misery for thy abusing of it If Babylon bee destroyed shee may thank her self for it her pride If Sodome bee destroyed and burned into ashes shee may thank her wantonness for it If Jerusalem bee inhabited by Turks and Infidels Deus noluit punire ipsi extorquent ut pereant God takes no delight in the shipwracking of Sailors but they wrest judgements perforce out of his hands shee may thank her infidelity and Idolatry for it If woe bee to Capernaum and Bethsaida they may thank their contempt of the Gospel If ships bee destroyed in storms they may thank their abuse of Gods mercies to them in the Seas Mutet ergo vitam qui vult accipere vitam Let him turn to God betimes that would have God to favour him in the time of need I know that many a Sea-man will not bee born down but that hee is very godly It is true God in his judgements upon the Seas oftentimes remembers mercy But he will not do so alwayes and he abuses not the Lords mercies either to swearing or drinking but behold I have obeyed God as Saul said 1 Sam. 15.14 If thou hast done so then what means this bleating of the Sheep and the lowing of the Oxen in mine ears so that the bleating of the Sheep and the lowing of the Oxen proclaimed Saul a disobedient person If you will say that you have given God thanks and that you fear him and love him for all that hee hath done for you then what means the crying of the sands against you after you escaped off them And if you will say that you have not abused your Sea-mercies what then means the crying of the Rocks which you escaped in the Seas against you And what means the loud cryes of the winds and Seas which God hath delivered you from Give mee leave to lay down a few serious considerations and I will shortly and succinctly winde up my discourse and bid farewel unto you The Lord is merciful as it is said of Octavius Vtinam nescirem literas would I knew not my letters when he was put upon the assigning of a mans death God will not alwayes be so When Bacchus turned himself into a Lion he made all the Mariners in the ship leap overboard What think you of God then It was the language of a ship in a storm when ready to perish O crudelem Oceanum O volucrem fortunam O Caecos Nautas O praeposteros viros You may bless God that it hath not been so with you 1. Consider that you are mercied so as none are mercied and will you that live every day upon mercy bee no better for mercy 2 Consider that none are so near to death every day as you are there is but a three or four Inch plank betwixt you and death and will not you grow better 3. Consider that your sins go nearer to the heart of God than others do 4. Consider that the sin of swearing is a very unbeseeming thing in Sea-mens mouths in respect they live upon mercy 5. How unbeseeming Sea-men is the sin of drunkenness you live upon mercy and are Gods Hospitals in the Seas hee looks after you 6. Consider that more depends upon you than doth upon others that lies upon your backs look how you will discharge your selves than doth upon others The
THE Honest godly sober pious and Religious Sea-Captains and Sea-men whether within or without the Common-wealth of England Grace Mercy and Peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ Gentlemen Captains and Sea-men WAs not hee a very stout peece of flesh think you The use of shipping I conceive was first shewed by God in Noahs Ark whence afterwards that Audax I apeâ—i genus Japhete off-spring sailed and replenished the Islands that first adventured to put forth to Sea of whom the Poet sings and vaunts Illi robur aes triplex Circa pectus erat qui fragilem truci Commisit pelago ratem Primus nec timuit praecipitem Africum c. What shall I then say of you who are ten thousand times before him the worlds brave Viri Cordati and his matchless and unparalleld successors You have not onely the boldness to sail the ragingest and stormiest Sea that ever ran before the winds I would have none of you Viris spectantibus praelio stantibus instar stipitum lookers on and standers by like stockâ— and stones but at it down drive when you see others ingaged but to fight the proudest and out-bravingest enemy that ever was known or heard of under the Heavens Your stout-hearted valour hath been well known not onely to the Dutch but also to the French and Spaniard For your badge of Honour which I hope you will still maintain I give you the priority and pre-eminence for fighting Tamerlanes swordhandling Scanderbegs and world-conquering Alexanders above all the Nations that bee at this day under the wide and spatious Universe Terribler are you to your enemies than those two great peece of Ordnance which were feigned to be cast by Alphonsus Duke of Ferrara the one whereof was called an Earthquake and the other Grandiobolo the great Devil when they were fired You and your Friggots Mee thinks resemble the prancing valour of the Embattelized Horse in Virg. of whom the Poet sings If I were to give our English Captains Sea-men a Motto to the life it should then be that of Luthers Quo magis illi furiunt eo amplius procedo The more my enemies rage the more valiantly will I go on to charge them Quod siqua sonum procularma dedêre Starae loco nescit micat auribus tremit artus Collectumque premens volvit sub naribus ignem Cavatque Tellurem solido graviter sonat ungula cornu Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum Such was the impatiency of the warlike horse that the Poet here doth sing of that they would champ their Byts stamp and tear the ground with their feet prick up their ears dance it with their Riders upon their backs foam it at their mouhes and hardly bee held in till the enemy came up but would gladly bee amongst the Pikes and Drums and the ratling and thundring of the Guns and Cannons Such was the gallantry of the Sibarites War-horses that it is said of them Uni ad symphoniae cantum saltatione quadam movebantur What shall I further say of your valour Lucan lib. 1. Monstra enumerans quae bellum civile praecesserunt Certainly what hath been said of that War that was once on foot betwixt Pompey and Caesar when all the Sea seemed to bee on a gore blood it may more truly bee said of your most formidable and unparalled Disputes against the Dutch It was a Proverb in forein parts when they were in fear to say Clangite clamate Hanibal est ad portas Blow the Trumpet Hanibal our enemy is a coming upon us Stand to your arms left Holland fall foul of you and also with other Nations Superique minaces Prodigiis terras implerant aethera pontum Ignota obscura viderunt sydera noctes Ardentemque polum flammis caeloque volantes Obliquas per inane faces Fulgura fallaci micuerunt crebra sereno Et varias ignis denso dedit nere formas Your fights at Sea have been as terrible to all the Nations round about you both far and near as that great fight was that was once fought in the world betwixt Amurath the third King of Turks and Lazarus Despot of Servia in that battel the noyse of warlike weapons the neighing of Horses and out-cries of wounded and fighting men was so great and dreadful that the very wilde beasts in the woods stood astonished therewith the trees seemed to shake and tremble and the very ground to quake on which they fought on and the Turkish History to express the fatal terrour of that day vainly sayes that the very Angels themselves in the Heavens were so amazed with that hideous noyse Bee valiant you are Englands Armataephalanges to stand round about it as Solomons threescore valiant Warriours did about his bed Cant. 3.7 8. They all hold swords being expert in War every man hath his sword upon his thigh because of fear in the night that at that time they forgat their heavenly Hymns c. Gentlemen bee intreated never to stain your reputation in the Seas for the best and worst that an out-coming Nation can do against you Let mee tell you that if it bee true what the Poet speaks then are you men that live at the upper end of the world and seeing you so do labour to out-strip the whole world in valour and undaunted prowess The North is held to bee the upper part of the world according to that of Virgil Mundus ut ad Scythiam Riphaeasque arduus arces Consurgit premitur Libyae devexus ad anstros Let your stoutness resemble Alexanders the Great who when being asked how hee so soon over-ran the Universe answered I never held any thing dangerous to bee done or unlikely but would set upon it the rather and say Jam periculum video par animo Alexandri this is an enterprise for Alexander History tells us that the noble Dogs which the King of Albany presented Alexander withall out of an overflowing valour and courage scorned and contemned to encounter any beasts save Elephants and Lions Fear not the number nor the strength of your enemy but ask where are they They are like the Eccho in the Poet Quem non invenis usquam putas esse nusquam Julius Caesar who had in his time taken a thousand Towns conquered three hundred Nations taken prisoners a million of men and slain as many of whom the Poet sings should bee your Card to sail by Caesar in omnia Praeceps Nil actum credens dum quid superest ad agendum Fertur atrox Difficulty doth but sparkle mens spirits and set on an edge upon Heroick spirits Hannibal made his way through the Alps by breaking down an huge rock putrified with fire and vinegar poured thereon hence Juvenal Sat. 10. Opposuit natura Alpemque Nivemque Deduxit scopulos montem rupit aceto Gentlemen I will assure you that you both have and also shall have my prayers that you may bee the Lords
interest and glory in their bosomes and that they are no more pouring out of their hearts and spirits for the accomplishment of Gods promises and that Babylon may fall and rise no more God is resolved to down with it and it may be because England is not fit for such a mercy and because they pray not more earnestly constantly and vehemently for its downfall the work sticks and goes but slowly forward God is resolved to do it but hee will bee inquired of for and in the doing of it Ezek. 36.37 When God was about to do great and mighty things for Israel he tels them in plain terms totidem verbis that he would be inquired of and sought unto in the performance of them And wil not God bee sought unto more than he is for the downfall of the Pope and that incestuous and villanous house of Austria together with that cursed and tyrannical Inquisition before hee bring ruines and desolations upon you that live in your seiled houses and lye upon beds of down You that have all things at will and pleasure where are your prayers Where are your wrestlings with God you that live in the City And where are your loud cryes against the powers of darkness you that live in the Country History sayes that the Lord gave Naâ—setos victory more through zealous prayers that he used than his force and valour for he never went out into the Sea nor ever began battel or determined upon any war nor never mounted on his warlike Steed but first he went to the Temple and served God You did pray at a very high rate once and prayers issued out like a mighty stream some in the West and other some out the North some out the East and some out the South of England for your land Armies when they were ingaged in the fighting out your inbred Vipers where are they now for your water Armies For your Fleets and for that great and glorious work that is at this day on foot for God and Christ How might you help them on in those difficult and perillous undertakings and hazzards that they run How many thousands bee there that go in the Seas daily venturing of their lives in a just and lawful quarrel against one of Christs greatest enemies in the world Oh send send out your prayers for them and after them that you may hear of glorious things and remarkable and wonderfull actings from them that bee daily in the Seas Ovid begins his Metamorphosis and Cleanthes his Iambique verses with prayer Pliny in an Oration which hee made in the praise of Trajan commended the customes of the Antients in making invocations and prayers at the beginning of any great business saying That there can be no assured honest wise beginning The Lessons of Pythagoras Plato and their Disciples ever more began and ended with prayer The Brachmans among the Indians the Magi among the Persians never began any thing without praying unto God Prayer is Englands Alexipharmacum generale pretious drug against her many maladies her Cornucopiae because it brings her in many good tidings against her enemies It is her Delphicum gladium Delphian sword by which she prospers both at home and abroad or successful ending of any enterprize without the special aid and assistance of the gods For all works affairs imployments businesses and wars that wee or any Nation takes in hand are to begin with prayer and to bee daily followed with our prayers Prayer is so wonderfully advantagious that I cannot think that there is any in our late Land broils but will acknowledge the profitableness of it nay our Armies could not have done what they did nor gone thorow that which they have if they had not had the prayers of the godly in the Land and how must our Fleets prosper and do the hard and desperate work that they have to do if you give over praying for them now There bee ten sorts of people that I would gladly put upon this needful duty of prayer for the War that is begun by England against the Spaniard 1. Ministers 2. Magistrates 3. Parliament-men 4. States-men 5. Land and Sea-Generals 6. Collonels 7. Land and Sea-Captains 8. Religious sober and godly Souldiers 9. Honest and well-minded Sea-men 10. The Respublica or the Common people of England Gentlemen Do you desire the downfall of Babylon then let mee tell you that you must bee earnest with God in prayer for a speedy accomplishment of your desires Are not these feral Beasts of Rome Spain to be prayed against Pray consider Do you desire a blessing upon the Church and State in which you live Then let mee counsel you to pray hard for them that they may increase in purity piety peace and plenty Do you desire that the Pope at Rome and all that cursed rabble that is in and about that incestuous and libidinous house of Austria may stumble and stagger Longius vulnerat quam sagitta Prayer will wound an enemy further than a shot out of the longest Gun or Arrow out of the strongest bow Then let mee tell you that God will bee sought unto for this very thing ere hee do it Pray pray that that proud Romana urbs aeterna as they have formerly most lyingly stiled her may bee brought down to ruine and to shame and poverty though shee hath got up again since shee was sacked and ransacked twice by the Visigothes taken once by the Herulians surprised by the Ostrogothes destroyed and rooted up by the Vandals annoyed by the Lumbards pilled and spoyled by the Grecians and whipped and chased by many others I hope ere long that shee will receive her last blow of the indignation of the most mighty and bee thrown headlong into an everlasting and horrible desolation where shee shall never rise any more Now do you desire that your warlike Fleets may prosper against them then pray pray The Spaniard would be more afraid of our Fleets in England did we but pray more I profess bee it soberly spoken that you deal with prayer in this case as the world dealt with Christ Joseph and Mary How dealt the world with them you will aske mee I will tell you in few words the Scripture is pleased to inform us that they could provide no better lodging and entertainment than a stable for the Prince of Glory to lye in But the gallants and the rich guests of the world they had the best beds and chambers that the house afforded As unkindly deal many with prayer against the adversaries of the Lord Jesus Christ they both put it out of door and out of mind and thought God is a rising undoubtedly to cut down his great matured ripened and old gray-headed enemies When Athens was straightly besieged very stoutly assaulted so that within the walls they were hardly put to it to keep their enemy out Diogenes that before lived in his Tub tumbled it up and down the Town thinking it an
I have read of a young prodigal Londoner who had a great longing to give all his five Senses a pleasure at once and allowed to the delight of every sense a several 100 l. by which and such like practices within the space of three years he wasted an estate of 30000 l. in mony left him by his father besides land plate jewels and houses furnished very richly to a great value I bring but this in as an instance to tell you that he that w ll feast his eye with the sight of the Creation it will both cost him penny and pains by which hee sees his works withall and then I will lay-down the promised particulars of what Mariners do see 1. Very wonderful is the sense of hearing tasteing smelling feeling but far more wonderful is the sense of seeing If it should bee demanded of mee what definition may bee given of the eye and what it is I think it may bee said truly that the eye is a little globe that is very full of visory spirits which do exceedingly resemble the round animatedness of the world The visory spirits have their generation from the Animal which flows from the brain to the eye by the nerve Optic and from those proceed the visible and reflected rayes in the eye as in a glass which will soon form any image that it beholds and so is received into the Chrystalline humour and by the visory spirits through the Nerve Optic is conveyed to the brain the object to bee considered of and by the internal senses as imagination memory and the common sense Observ 3 That good and perfect eye-sight is a singular mercy and special blessing from the Lord. These see the works of the Lord c. If it were not for this comfortable sense that God hath bestowed upon man his works could not bee seen nor discovered and viewed as to this day they are to his everlasting praise glory and honour I would exhort all the Sailors in the Seas now to consider how favourably God hath dealt with them in giving them eyes and perfect sight without which their lives would bee but a burden to them as his was that was brought to our Saviour Christ Mat. 12.22 Then was brought unto him one possessed with a devil blinde and dumb and hee healed him in so much that the blinde and dumb both spake and saw Are you not bound and much engaged to God that hee hath given you eyes to see withall whilst other men wanting sight better deserving it than you are like to go without it and so are forced and must go groping and groveling in the dark all their dayes till they come to lye down in their graves with what suspicion and fear walks the blinde up and down in the world how doth their hands and staves examine their way with what jealousie do they receive every morsel and every draught how do they meet with many a poast and stumble upon many a stone fall into many a ditch and swallow up many a flye to them the world is as if it were not or were all rubs gins snares and miserable downfalls and if any man will lend him an hand hee must trust to him and not to himself Consider but the blinde in the Gospel how they lay in the high wayes and roads that lead unto the City of Jerusalem and also amongst us here in England in every high way Towns end or Bridge and you will finde reason enough of your blessing of the Lord for his goodness unto you more than unto others Mark 10.46 47. And when hee heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth hee began to cry out and say Jesus thou Son of David have mercy on mee 2. The eyes in number are two the better to give direction to us Oculists observe that whereas other creatures have but four muscles to turn their eyes about with which is the main reason that they cannot look upwards but altogether downwards now man hath a fifth whereby he can look upwards into the Caelum Empyraeum Os homini sublime dedit caelumque tucri Oculus ab oculendo I may say as God hath set 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the great world both the Sun and Moon as instruments of light to serve it so hath he most wisely wonderfully placed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in man the little world two eyes in the highest part of the body as Organs to serve him This is the sense by which the Sailor or the Traveller turns over and over that Volumen magnum Creationis Elephantinam And though this be a very quick and nimble sense and one that is never weary of seeing yet is there work enough for it in the Creation to behold and more than it can ever run thorow and range over should it do nothing else but travel the whole Creation over and information unto the internals in figure round and thereby they are the more capable of all objects by their motion Their situation is placed very high above the rest of the senses to direct our motion and to foresee our dangers 3. The necessity of this Organ is very great if wee do but seriously ponderate for the welfare of our outward being and the government of our selves and our affairs without which sense the life of man would but bee a very toylsome and wearisome thing unto him in the world 4. By this Organ man sees and foresees that which is good or evil helpful or hurtful and that at a distance The Mariners Proverb is Praevisa saxa minus feriunt Rocks but seen before-hand will never hurt us The first circumstance then that I will a little run on in is those creatures that are Aquatical live in the element of water which are some of the principal and wonderful works of God which Sea-men or men that go down into the Seas do behold And these I will a little set out in view to the end it may the cleerlier appear that they see most or the greatest part of the works of the Lord in and thoughout the Creation 1. They that go down to the Sea in ships c. They often times have a frequent sight of that strange and prodigious sort or kind of fish called the Flying-fish Flying-fish whom God out of wisdom has given wings unto like a foul for the preservation of its life in the great waters This poor creature is often hunted chased and pursued by the Boneto Porpise and other ravenous fish which follow it with as much violence as the hungry hound does the poor silly and shelterless Hare Insomuch that it is forced one while to fly and another while to swim and although nature has provided for it in giving it two strings for its bow yet is all little enough to carry him cleer of the snatching chaps and jaws that make after him This fish whilst in the water I have observed in the Mediterranean is exceedingly exposed to irrecoverable danger and when
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
the half way nay it may bee that a storm that hath fallen upon the Occidental Seas is felt and seen in the South though many hundred miles from it by its rowling restlesness the Hebrew Expositors read it How hee commandeth and raiseth that is maketh to stand c. And indeed none see how the Lord raiseth up the stormy wind but those that go down into the Sea these see the dreadful billows that bee at such times upon the face of the deeps All that I finde now either remarkable or observable in the words is this 1. That the great God hath all the creatures at his command All the creatures Observ 1 both the Magnalia and the Minutila throughout the whole universe are at Gods command to come and go and go and come at his will and pleasure Nay let the errand bee what it will they will perform it if but commissionated from him to go about it If that hee say but unto the winds Go I will have the Seas thrown into heaps hills and mountains There be storms which fall upon the sandy plains in Egypt that bury many thousands of travellers that pass over them The least gnat in the air but impowred and set on by God shall choak one as it did once a Pope of Rome a little hair in milk strangle one as it did a great Counsellour in Rome a little stone of a Raisin stop ones breath as it did the Poetical Pipe of Anacreon how quickly is it done and when the Seas were but even now on a sweet smoothe and silver calm they are upon an instant thrown into dashing and dreadful clashing waves This Wind-army when the Lord stands in need of it may I so speak or hath service for it to do it is presently upon the march to run and dispatch his errands whether of indignation or of mercy If that the great Lord General of Heaven and Earth the great supreme Commander of the winds will have them to destroy a people to throw down their houses on land or break their ships at Sea it is quickly done 2 Chron. 20.37 Because thou hast joyned thy self with Ahaziah the Lord hath broken thy works and the ships were broken that they were not able to go to Tarshish Nay the snuff of a candle a tile of an house a crum of bread a Chery-stone hath been impowred to mortalize man God wants not for means to punish the wicked divers wayes When God is about to fight against a people all the creatures will march in rank and file against them the Drum of Gods wrath is no sooner struck up and the Trumpet of his indignation blown but the creatures are up in their arms his servants are in every corner of the world let a man travel what way hee will hee hath a rod in every angle of the universe to lay upon their backs and that will follow them at the heels God is Lord General in chief and all the creatures are his hosts and servants if hee say to the Plague Feaver Ague c. Go and fall upon such a Town Country or person it is gone The unruly Sea tamely stands still if God command it and lovingly opens its bosome to entertain the Israelites The Sun goes backward at his command Josh 10.12 The greedy and cruel Lions are quickly muzled and grow gentle at his command Isa 38.8 So the Sun returned ten degrees by which degrees it was gone down The course that I shall now shape in the handling of this Proposition will bee to inlighten you further in this truth in a parcel of very clear evidences The four Wind-armies of the world This Wind-army of the Lord then as I may properly call it I shall rank divide and marshal into four Squadrons because they lye quartered in the four corners of the world at a great distance from one another 1. The first is quartered in the North and it is a very terrible Army when it hath a commission and is set on by God vi armis as wee say it makes the Seas under the Artick pole and elsewhere to snere again and if it doth not execution enough in that quarter hee can give it command to advance on to the North and by West and do his will there and if not in that place in the North North-west and there shall it stay and blow and accomplish his ruining work upon ships even as hee pleases and if not in that place on it marches into the North-west and by North North-west and if not there on it goes again into the North-west and by West West North-west c. Who so is wise will observe these things Psal 107.43 2. The other lyes quartered in the East and it is no less potent and powerful than the other but doth presently at the sound of Gods silver Trumpet consurgere in arma rise up into arms and military postures either to break ships or to throw the Seas into pyramidical hills Be advertised all ye graceless Sailors that go in the Seas that think your selves because you have good ships under you so safe and so secure that neither God Winds nor Devils can harm you alas if God commissionate impower and set but on one of these Wind-armies upon your backs you would not be able to stand under the blows of it it would either tear your ships to peeces throw them upon the shore the Rocks and Sands or else sinck you down right into the bottoms where you should never bee seen nor heard of more and mountains and this Army wheels as easily about to serve the Lord in any part of the world as the flaming sword did to keep the Garden of Eden Gen. 3.24 If it bee not serviceable enough either to do good or evil in the Seas in the East and by East it will advance on into the East South-east and if not in that place it will go on into the East and by South and again if the Lord will have some Vessels or other ruined and drowned it will wait upon his pleasure in the East East and by North and from thence again to attend upon his sacred and most holy will it will bee in the twinkling of an eye in the East North-east I and round about the Card if hee pleases to break ships in any part of the world whatsoever 3. The next Army is quartered in the West and it is as blustring and stormy as the rest and when it has pleased the Lord to suffer this Army to draw the sword many ships have perished in the Seas by it and been both forced on shore and also unmercifully and irrecoverably thrown upon the Rocks and Sands of destruction This is one of the great supream Lord General 's attendants and is ready at hand to bee his messenger either of good or evil where the great Soveraign of Heaven and Earth shall appoint him either to take ships and break them in the West South-West or if not there
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
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
in this verse as the Taches and Loops were amongst the Curtains of the Tabernacle The Taches put into the Loops did couple the Curtains of the Tent and sew the Tent together that it might be one Exod. 26.10 11. So doth this very particle couple with the other phrase In the words you have these two things 1. An act of mercy 2. An object of misery And hee brings them out of their distresses Here is transcendent mercy shewed to them that are oftentimes drowned and plunged into irrecoverable misery There is nothing difficult in the words but the view of them is very obvious unto the meanest capacity that is Observ 1 That God loves not to give deliverance till it bee welcome Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble and he bringeth them out of distresses When the ship is upon the sand rapping and knocking as if at every blow shee takes upon the ground would make her flye into a thousand peeces then and not till then comes deliverance Act. 27.44 And the rest some on boards and some on broken peeces of the ship and so it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land When the ship is half full of water with dangerous leaks then and not till then doth the Lord many times appear for them by sending some ship or other into their sight unto which they will make and thereby miraculously they are delivered from drowning by flying out of theirs into that When the ship that Christ and his Disciples were imbarked in was covered all over with waves then and not till then did Christ appear to abate and asswage the storm even but then when there was in the very eye of reason little or no possibility of being saved When Israels Bricks were doubled then and not till then was Moses sent and this is Gods usual time and method to deliver when there is no visible helps or hopes within sight for deliverance 1. Because mercy will not be valued if men should not be thus dreadfully put to it The sound man cryes puff Reasons a fig for the Physitian the Souldier a rush for his enemy when in a strong hold and so the Mariner a straw for storms when in a good harbor but when in the hazards of their lives the mercy then is highly prized 2. Because God would have the glory of his power wisdome and free goodness clearly beheld Act. 27.30 31. And as the ship-men were about to flee out of the ship when they had let down the boat into the Sea under colour as though they would have cast Anchors out of the fore-ship Paul said to the Centurion and to the Souldiers Except these abide in the ship yee cannot bee saved God is tender of his glory power wisdome and honor he would have it seen by the eyes of men 3. Because hee will have the tribute of praise out of every salvation and this is one reason why mercy and deliverance is so oftentimes delayed in the Seas Observ 2 That God in his providence hath a special hand a seeing eye and a prudent care in and over all his creatures for good And hee bringeth them out of their distresses Psal 104.10.21 Psal 107.6 Beasts of the field Fowls of the air Fish in the Sea and all crawling and creeping things upon the face of the earth are preserved and cared for by him If God stept not out of heaven may I so speak to fetch poor souls out of the griping talons of the stormy Seas where no succour and relief can come unto them from the land except it come out of heaven When God would express the tenderness of his love and care to to his people he makes it out by naming the very tenderest part that is in the body Zach. 2.8 Every little thing you know will offend the eye that which wee call the eyes Apple Philosophers call the Chrystalline humour Isbon in Hebrew Ish in Latine Pupilla of pupa because within there is the pretty resemblance of man or otherwise because man is prized and preferred before and above all the creatures besides Heb. 13.5 the Seas and the winds would tear them and their ships to peeces They would soon take down the proudest high decked ships that ever came upon the Seas if God watched not over them both by night and by day How soon would the Sea drink them up even as that great water-drinking Behemoth in Job 33. who drinks up a River I could abundantly inlarge my self in and upon this point but it is such tedious writing in the Sea that I shall bee short and give you in a few inductions to the bargain 1. I would have Sea-men to minde how undeservedly God is with them in their distresses even many wayes A gracious soul spoke on this wise when in a storm and tempestuous night Surely I shall not perish there be so many stars eyes of providence over my head because it was a bright and clear night one while strengthening of you and another while comforting of you Act. 27.22 And now I exhort you to bee of good cheer for there shall bee no loss of any mans life among you but of the ship This was the Apostles experience This was Davids experience Psal 23.4 Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with mee thy rod and thy staffe they comfort mee 2. Minde how God doth deliver you out of storms and also the manner and means thereof and the very nick of time that God appears for you and works it in All which circumstances well heeded and observed will make your Sea-deliverances the more wonderfully Sea-men may well say of their deliverances as Moses said of the burning Bush Exod. 3.3 I will now turn aside and see this great sight Ah turn about souls and look with a thankful eye upon all your preservations and the more marvellously glorious in your eyes Paul was a great observer of the deliverance that hee and those that sailed with him partaked oâ— Act. 27.44 And the rest some on boards and some on broken peeces of the ship and so it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land Call to minde the times when you were shipwracked in Italy Spain or France c. and observe the manner of your deliverances 3. Minde how God delayes and defers sometimes to abate violent storms and to deliver you till that your wills bee conquered into a conformable contentment and obedience unto Gods will to bee delivered or not delivered This was Peters experience Matth. 14.30 31. that Christ reached him not his hand till he was a sinking And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand and caught him This was Abrahams experience Gen. 22.12 13 14. That God was not seen but in the Mount and Isaac was not delivered from being made a sacrifice of till the knife was at his throat Have you not found it many times that
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
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.
18. Minde well Gods dreadful dealings with others in the Seas how hee lets the winds fall upon them It is reported of a Cable that it spoke on this wise when it broke in a grievous storm and let the ship run upon the sands both to the fatal loss of the ship and all the passengers that were in her Grande peccatorum intus onus me extra fregit The grievous burden of sin within board layd a greater stress upon mee than the storm without did and therefore I was not able any longer to hold the ship and the wicked that were in her from perishing but the Lord bid mee break and let them go for they were not worthy the holding and preserving from the jawes of death You are wise and know how to apply this and the Seas seize upon them insomuch that both ship and men go down into the uninhabited bottoms Is not the news coming to your ears very often that such and such a sail is cast away such and such a ship was split to peeces in the occidental or oriental parts of the Seas Cast up the sad sorrows that others taste of and consider what God hath done for you in sparing you with your lives in those many storms that you have been in and in those many voyages that you have made Who so is wise c. 19. Minde how God hath disposed of the winds and granted unto them a very varying and altering motion insomuch that they blow not alwayes one way The Sea-man makes no doubt of it but if hee have wind to carry him into forein Countries hee shall have a wind to bring him back again which hee might have so ordered and decreed if but been pleased but his providential care for the good of man hath made them changeable whereby they blow one while out of the East and another while out of the West one while out of the North and another while out of the South by which ships are carried out of all parts in the world and so again returned Who so is wise c. 20. Minde how the Lord hath had a tender eye over you in stormy and blowing weather when Pilots have undertaken to carry you into forein harbors promising and protesting to you that there hath been a competent and sufficient profundity of water to swim your ships in Mee thinks this mercy should bee sufficient to make a Sailor melt if hee were composed of marble whose very Physiognomy hath a Magnetick force to ravish souls with the goodness of God and when come to the trial your ships have been run on ground where you have lyen beating for two hours together as if the ship would flye into shivers at every billow that hath rushed upon her and heaved her up and thrown her down yet after some expenditure of time the flood hath heightned and carried you off clear both with ship and lives Who so is wise c. 21. Minde how the Lord hath taken a fatherly care of you when your ships have unexpectly been on fire that it hath entred into the heart of some one or other to go down into the Hold not dreaming of any thing have espied the very initials of fire burning upon the cordage and timber of the ship Ah that I should say of Sea-men as the Rabbins say of the Jews who throw the book of Hester upon the ground before they read it because the name of God is not in it Sailors throw their precious deliverances at their heels by which means it hath been extinguished and the ship and your lives miraculously preserved Who so is wise c. 22. Minde how the Lord undertakes for you when you are come to an Anchor either in France Holland Italy Could I tell of more of your mercies I would for as the Apostle saith I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ I shall say unto you and unto the world that I am not ashamed to tell of the mercies that the Lord bestows upon you in the deeps c. when the wind hath come fair off the land you have taken the greater boldness to anchor under it thinking your selves secure enough but in a little time the wind hath wheeled about and been upon your backs and yet through an over-ruling providence hath favoured you till you have got up your Anchors and freed your selves from the shore by turning it up into the Sea and then the storm hath grown on amain which would have hazzarded your lives if you were in that place at an anchor again Who so is wise c. 23. Minde how the Lord hath favoured you when been coming to an appointed port or station where there hath been a very intricate sailing by reason of those many sand banks that have lain on every hand you steering and holding in stormy weather a direct course upon them and the ships you have been sent too to anchor by considering your danger This inquiry now that I have made of the Lords appearances for you in the great deeps is but small and I have but played the part of the skilful Mathematician who takes special notice of the many parts of the world and is able exactly and distinctly to set them out to any one as they lye in this and the other climate but yet when hee hath done all hee leaves a great space for a terra incognita and that unknown World for ought I knovv may be five times bigger than all the knovvn World Your deliverances are far more than I can tell of have fired some peeces of Ordnance one towards you and another from you which is the usual sign of danger you have thereby altered your course and been delivered Who so is wise c. 24. Minde how the Lord hath troubled some of you that are and have been in command in your sleep by dreams when sailing in the night how that the ship hath been near to land insomuch that you have started out of your beds and gone and looked over the ships head out of fear What was once said of Henry the third King of France that he had not the ingenuity to discern his friends from his foes may bee said of the Mariner in dark nights at Sea had hee not the Lord to direct him and presently got a sight of it whereas both the ship and your lives had been at the stake if the Lord had not looked out for land for you Who so is wise c. 25. Minde how the Lord hath and doth still very frequently help you when in dark and heart-danting evenings how doth hee establish your hearts when there are great and hot disputes amongst your selves about the lights that are upon the Sea-coasts both in this and other Countries insomuch that you have gone on in a great deal of boldness upon such a point and preter-navigated all rocks sands and dangers Who so is wise will c. 26. Minde how the Lord hath looked down
out of the heavens for you Accensam lucernam nemo moleste aspicit extinctam dolent omnes When Sea-coast light-houses burn clear bright the Mariner greatly rejoyces in it but when dimly and dully he freâ—â— and curses when Land-lights have burned very deadly and dimly in black dark and blustring evenings upon the sight whereof you have judged your selves to have been at a greater distance than you were and thereby have hazzarded your ships and lives by standing in so much to the shore yet in fine some or other in the vessel have had a fight of the land thorow the thick darkness whereby you have been precautionated to alter your course Who so is wise c. 27. Minde how the Lord looks out of heaven into the deeps for you in the absence of the Moon which is oftentimes over-cast with thick clouds and foggy vapours insomuch that when you have been standing in for the shore and been nearer to it than aware of that the Lord hath caused the Moon to break out very clearly in the skies Wear not these mercies aâ— the Romans â—â—d pearls upon their shoos because of the commonness of them but put them upon the file and hang them the nearest your hearts of any thing in the world besides Alexander thought all cost too little to make a Casket to keep Homers Poems in by which means you have seen what would have been your portion if providence had not been at work for you Who so is wise c. 28. Minde what a care the Lord hath of you in black and formidable nights of wind and rain when in the wide and shelterless Sea The Seas in the night time are as difficult in some places to navigate as the Hircâ—nian Forrests are to travel through in the night Writers say that they are so intricate and difficult to get out of if a man once get into them that the skilfullest traveller that is is oftentimes put to his shifts and were it not for the flying of certain birds which afford such a bright and glistring lustre in their leasurely flight by reason of their white feathers they might take up their lodgings in them who causes the stars to afford you a glimmering light in the absence of the Moon by which means you have in your Navigations observed the frothy breaches of the Seas over the Sand-banks which places you have taken as ominous and altered your courses and thereby gone safe away and clear Who so is wise c. 29. Minde how the Lord takes care for you by giving you secret fears and hints in dark nights when you are in narrow Seas through which many ships trade and travel all the night long insomuch that when they have come within the touch of you by a speedy handling of your helm you have escaped whereas either one or both would have gone down into the bottoms if providence had not looked out for you Who so is wise c. 30. Minde what the Lord doth for you when you are in great distress as to the want of Victual Beer and fresh water when you are many hundred leagues off England how hee gives you a very fair wind which carries you on for a spurt may bee a day or half a day and then it fails you and so a contrary wind looks you in the face and puzzles you and being in many fears and doubts of starving the Lord alters that wind again and causes a gale to stand and wast you over to your desired Ports Who so is wise will c. 31. Minde what a mercy it is The Earl of Ulster endeavoured fifteen times to sail over Sea into Ireland but the wind drave him ever back Every one is not priviledged as you are Satius est claudicare in via quam currere extra viam Better to stop and sound in the Channel than run the ship on shore when in dark stormy and blowing weather you come out of the Southern parts into the channel and are at a stand not knowing where you are whether you bee nearer the French shore or the English but by sounding you distinguish your propinquity to either of them in respect that the one is a white sand and the other red and hereby your ships are preserved many a time Keep these mercies in remembrance as Alexander kept Homers Iliads pro viatico rei militaris for his fellow and companion in the Wars 32. Minde the Lords appearances for you in all your Sea-engagement-mercies when your Masts have been shot down by the board and the enemy hath lain pouring in his great and small shot upon you how seasonably some ship or other hath come in to relieve you from the mouth of the Lion Who so is wise c. 33. Minde how the Lord hath taken care for you when fire ships have been grapled to you that before those combustible materials which they are usually fraught withall have taken fire you have cleared your selves from being devoured in that unmerciful element Who so is wise c. I may write upon this deliverance In tempore veni quod omnium rerum est primum If I had not come in time you had been sent into the bo tome 34 Minde what care the Lord hath used for you in your engagements when you have been so shrewdly worsted by the enemy that you have been put to your flight to the end you might carine and stop your leaks and the enemy observing you at such a disadvantage hath made after you to sinke you down-rights which hee would have done if Providence had not set on some ship or other to prevent him Who so is wise c. If it bee thus then Vse Comfort that God hath such a special eye c. This Doctrine may serve to cheer up the honest hearts and spirits that go into the Sea that God will take care of them When one asked Alexander how hee could sleep so soundly and securely in the midst of danger hee told him that Parmenio watched and when hee watched not hee durst not sleep so soundly Go to Sea with comfort you that fear the Lord not onely Parmenio watcheth for you but the Lord. That if the Lord brought not ships out Observ 3 of storms they were never able to get out of them themselves And hee bringeth them out of their distresses That Sea-mens distresses are both infinite Observ 4 and many yet God out of his infinite mercy helps them out of all And hee brings them out of their distresses That all impossibility in mans narrow Observ 5 judgement and apprehension of being delivered hinders not God in delivering Fides in pericuâ—is secura est in securis periclitatur And hee brings them out c. Witness that wonderful deliverance that Paul and his fellow-passengers received from the cruelty of the Seas Act. 27. Because his power is an unlimited Reason 1 and an unstraitned power which is infinite and most like to
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
all that fear the Lord that when they cry they have a God to hear them when they call they have a God to answer them when they need they have a God to help when they mourn they have a God to pitty them when ready to bee overwhelmed with the great waves of the Sea they have a God to defend them So that I may say of such that go in the Seas blessed are the people that bee in such a case yea happy are all they that have the Lord for their God Psal 144.15 who is easily prevailed withall by Prayer That in tempestuous and ship-hazzarding Observ 10 storms it is every mans duty to stand still Charles the fifth gave the Emblem Vlterius stand noâ— still but go on further But in this case us amplius procedas and look up to God for life and for Salvation And hee bringeth c. If the Lord must bring ships out of their distresses then let Sea-men look up unto the Lord for deliverance and trust not too much to their own art and skill Vicount Hugo de Millains motto was on a ship without tackling to stay it with In filâ—ntio spe fortitudinem My strength is in silence and in hope Haedera undemis invenit quo se alliget 〈◊〉 Ivie being weak upon a time looked upon the Elme and spoke on this wise I am not able to stand of my self pray let mee lean on you Sailors you are not able to save your selves in storms lean upon your God That God is the great Saviour and deliverer Observ 11 of mankind Sailors are evermore hurling out of their mouths the demiculverin shot of their own praises Decempedalia sesquipedalia verba You shall seldom hear them say that God ever delivered them out of a storm in and out of all their storms and Tempests And hee bringeth c. The sweet singer of Israel quickly spies out the Sea-mans deliverer But this is more than many a beetle-headed Sailor can do Every eie observes not the stupendious and astonishing mercies of the Lord. Dextra mihi Deus est said a profane man my right-hand was my God or else I had lain my bones in the danger I was surrounded with Another said Haec ego feci non fortuna but never prospered after Wee see that Nebuchadnezzar trusted in his princely City Babel and that Babel became a Babel of confusion to him Xerxes trusted in his multitude of men and his multitude incumbered him Darius trusted to his wealth and his wealth sold him Eumenes in the valour of his Regiment called the Silver-shields and his Silver-shields sold him and delivered him up to Autigonus Roboam in his young Counsellors and his young Counsellors lost him the ten Tribes Caesar in his old Senatours and the Senate conspired against him Domitian in his Guard and his Guard betrayed him Adrian in his Physicians and his Physicians poysoned him so that the proverb ran Multitudo Medicorum perdidit Adrianum Imperatorem Observ 12 That although men at Sea in their dangerous storms seem as it were both forgotten and forsaken yet does the Lord at last very frequently make it evident unto them and to the world that hee does not forget them And hee brings c. Observ 13 That the evil and unworthy deservings of men at Sea does not alwaies interrupt the course of Gods goodnesse towards them And hee brings c. Vers 29. Hee maketh the storm a calm So that the waves therof are still THe words offer unto us two things to bee considered of 1. The Agent 2. The Act or the Effect 1. The Agent that is the Lord in these words Hee maketh the storm a calm 2. The Act or the Effect So that the waves thereof are still That the cessation of all storms and Observ 1 Tempests is by through and from an irresistable and an uncontroulable omnipotentiary power that is in God Hee maketh the storm a calm c. Xerxes finding Helespont to be a little unsmooth would needs throw Irons into it to fetter it so impatient Or if you will take the point thus That God is the great allayer and principal calmer of the raging winds and Seas Philosophers tell us that the winds are allayed several waies 1. When the air is over-burdened troubled and softned by vapours contracting themselves into rain 2. When vapours are dispersed and subtilized whereby they are mixed with the air and agree fairly with it and they live quietly then is the wind allayed 3. When Vapours or Fogs are exalted and carried up on high so that they cause no disturbance until they be thrown down from the middle Region of the air or do penetrate it 4. When vapours gathered into clouds are carried away into other Countries by high-blowing winds so that for them there is peace in those Countries which they fly beyond 5. When the winds blowing from their nurseries languish through their long travels finding no new matter to feed on then does their vehemency abate and expire 6. Rain oftentimes and for the most part does allay winds especially those which are very stormy Observ 2 That the insensiblest of creatures have an ear unto their makers speech It is said of Caesar that hee could with one word quel the discontentedest motion that ever rise in his Army What is the Lords power then in the stilling of the winds and do out of an obediential subjection yeeld to his will to carry on his purposes and designs whether of good or evil of preservation or of destruction towards a people He maketh the storm a calm c. If the Lord speak unto the winds they have an ear to hear him if to the Sea the Sea is attentive to listen to his divine pleasure and bee it good or bee it evil they are both of them loyal and fiducial Souldiers under Heavens Flag or Standard to execute his pleasure Jonah 1.4 Observ 3 That God can when hee sees it fit preserve a people from ruine in and after an incredible unlikely unexpected and miraculous manner Hee maketh c. Acts 27.20 When all hopes of being saved failed the Mariners then began the Lord to stir for them The Lord oftentimes keeps his hand for a dead lift That the great waters stilness and Observ 4 peaceableness at any time is by and from Gods calling off the flying and Sea-disturbing winds Hee maketh c. That it is the Lord that makes changes Observ 5 of conditions in the Sea and gives calmness out of his indulgent kindness and by and by storms for the abuse of the mercies of his calms Hee maketh c. The Seas are quickly alarm'd and beat up into dreadful waves even in all quarters at the commands of the Lord and shall puzzle and torment wicked men as much as those Ciniphes that bred in terra Egypti de fimo muscae quaedam sunt minutissimae inquietissimae inordinatè volitantes in oculos irruentes non permittentes homines quiescere
dum abiguntur iterum irruunt c. The Flyes that were sent to quarter in Egypt so pestered and plagued Pharaoh and his people that they could not take any rest they did so chase them and flye into their mouths and eyes Of the like restlesness are the Seas when once commissionated by the Lord. And also the Seas are calm and quiet when and at what time the Lord pleaseth to give out the word either to the winds or Seas Mark 4.39 Christ speaks but the word to that raging Sea that had so much disturbed his Disciples Bee still As if hee had said statim penitusque obmutesce Let us not hear any noise in you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fraenum hee put a bridle upon the mouth of the Sea or haltered it that it might rage no more Truly if God did not halter the Sea I wonder whither that unruly beast would carry our wooden horses Hee that has a mind to go to the Sea let him expect to meet with such waves as Jude speaks of hee calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ☞ rageing waves the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rageing signifies untamed wild waves roaring like the wild beasts in the Woods Forrests and wide Wildernesses of the World Some render the word fluctus maris Erasmus undae efferae maris Others Vndae maris efferatae Hee that will to Sea must look for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rageing and boysterous waves One Poet call them Fluctus truces cruel and terrible Another calls them Latrantes undae barking waves Another calls them Rapidas aquas Observ 6 That as the Lord hath set times of chastning of those that go in the deeps with dangerous storms So has hee also his set times for comforting of them again Hee maketh the storm a calm The Lord makes them amends after a rugged storm How little should any that have this Observ 7 powerful God for theirs Quid timet hominem mare homo in finu Dei positus What needs that maâ— fear that lies under the protection of heaven bee dismayed with or in the dreadfullest Seas and stormiest weather that ever blew Hee maketh the storm a calm It was a good saying of an Heathen Since God quoth Socrates unto a sort of Heathen is so careful for you wherefore need you bee so careful for your selves Numa Pompilius put so much confidence in the Gods that one day when it was told him that his enemies were up in arms against him his answer was And I sacrifice That if God did not bridle the fury of Observ 8 the raging Sea and the Tempestuous wind neither the Mariners skill nor the strength of shipping could preserve them Vers 30. Then are they glad because they bee quiet THese words offer us two things 1. The Sea-mans cheerfulnesse Then are they glad 2. The reason of it Because they bee quiet Before every drop seemed to fight one against another but at the Lords Commandement the Seas are still as if they were of a congealed Ice and this administers matter of comfort to them that go down into the Seas Observ 1 That Gods saving and delivering mercies from the jaws of death in and upon the great and dangerous Seas are both very heart-affecting delighting glorious and wonderfull joyous to behold Then are they glad c. Now have they cause to sing Psal 126.3 The Lord hath done great things for us whereof wee are glad Observ 2 That although Sea-men bee often put to mourning and unto prayer it is but for a time the end and issue thereof frequently terminates in joy and praise Then are they glad c. When Bishop Jewel was in his banishment hee comforted himself with this Haec non durâ—bunt aetatem This will not last alwaies Observ 3 That it is no smal comfort and obligation that is put upon any soul in the Sea to have experience of Gods regarding of his Prayer and granting of his requests Then are they glad c. This was Davids resolution Oh let it bee yours souls that go in the Seas Psal 116. I will love the Lord why because hee hath heard my voice If God did not hear your cries in stormy Seas I wonder what would have become of you ere this day Observ 4 That deliverances out of Sea-perils administer matter of great joy to gratious hearts that God is pleased both to trust them and to empley them also in further service for his glory Then are they glad c. That the generality of men do affect Observ 5 quietnesse calmnesse and peaceablenesse In storms Itur ad aethereas per magna pericula sedes both at Sea and Land Then are they glad c. When England in her late wars was tossed like a ship in a storm how gladly did all the good and honest hearts of the Nation wish for peace and a good harbour for her to ride in Horat. Od. 14. lib. 1. O navis referent in mare te novi Fluctus O quid agis fortiter occupa portum c. But alas wee have a great many of male-contented incendiaries in the land that play the Pazzians parts in Florence of whom it is said that to draw and drive on a multitude to their conspiracy in the market-place they would cry Liberty Liberty when indeed and in truth they intended to bring the people into misery and thraldom It has been thus by the Anabaptists and other Schismaticks in the Land But these sort of cattel are like the Porphyrius There be many low-fortuned Pedanticks in England that would gladly be the Princes and the Governors of it May I not say of such be they in authority or out of it as one said of Ventidius Bassus when made of a Mule-driver a Consul at Rome That they had spoiled a good Mulâ—â—er and not made a good Consul which is a Serpent that is full of poyson but toothless There is a Sect of divers forlorn creatures in England that have a great deal of poyson in their bowels against the present Government and indeed all civil order but they are toothless It is a very sad sight may I speak of it to think that an Italian Traveller should say thus of England ☞ when hee had been in it some late years agoe There be a thousand villanous things to be seen in England that former ages would have blushed at and been ashamed of England deals with good government as the great Student did with his wife of whom it is said that he studied so much that he neglected her and chiding of him shee wished her self a book what book quoth he I wish thou wert an Almanack then should I have a new one every year 1. That hee saw a general contempt of the Worship Word and Ministers of God in it 2. A great deal of pride in apparrel 3. Covetousness and imperiousness in Superiours 4. Sedition and seditious practices against Magistracy 5. A general supine carelesness
or Castles if that you that are the Sea-ports of our Nation were but a praying pious and religious people and that holiness purity equity and justice dwelt amongst you and were pregnantly in you were these the fruits that the skirts or branches of our Nation brought forth for so I call you because you are but the feet of the Land you are far from the head and heart of the Nation how might you strengthen us that go in the Seas and weaken our enemies against whom wee fight Ah Sirs if you live irreligiously in these Towns and Ports Many Sea-port Towns are like to Rumny-marsh Neque hyeme uque aestate good neither Winter nor Summer The very scum of the Land dwells in them all the Nation will smart by it surely it would do better that the best people in England lived in Sea-ports and not the worst How many Sea-ports has the Turk made havock of both of the Venetians and also of the Spaniards they were well enough fortified but sin being within a filthy people living in them they were soon conquered and made fire faggot and captives of Inland-Towns fare the worse for Godless Sea-ports Ezek. 39.6 Ezek. 30.9 In that day shall messengers go forth from me in ships to make the careless Ethiopians afraid and great pain shall come upon them as in the day of Egypt lo it cometh Ezek. 28.7 That great trading City of Tyrus which was the fame of the world for exporting and importing of Commodities If any one would ask me the definition of a Sea-port-Town I should tell him I would draw the Picture of the people speaking they are given to gross railing privy defamations and whisperings to the prejudice of one another hot scalding words and tongues set on fire in hell are the best fruits they bear Jam. 3.6 to whom resorted the Merchants of all Countries for traffique both of Palestina Syria Egypt Assyria Judea and Arabia by reason of her filthinesse was brought down from all her pomp and pride Alas They that live in Sea-ports should bee Moses's and Aaron's to stand in the gap and plead with God and not trash and trumpery When people live profanely and irreligiously in Sea-ports it makes all strangers think that people are no better that live higher up in the Land truly they will bee apt to censure the whole Nation if it bee not amended amongst you 2 Word is unto the States-men of our Land and that is succinctly this What Claudian the Heathen Poet sang of Theodosius's good success in the wars the like shall I sing of our English Warriours in the Seas O nimium dilecte Deo cui militat aether Et conjurati veniunt ad classica venti That all their warlike Ships and Boats that are employed in the Seas derive their felicitous arrivals and good success abroad whether unto or from Spain and the West-Indies or off and from those many parts and corners of the World where now you send them from the Lord Almighty whose the the Sea is And hee bringeth them to their desired haven Italiam Italiam laeto clamore salutant Virg. Good news is coming to you oftentimes from them and that as thick as the three luckie messengers that were sent to King Philip of Macedon at one time 1. One came and told him that â—â—e had won the game at Olympus by the running of his Chariots 2. Another came and brought him word that his Captain Parmenio had overthrown the Dardanians 3. Another came and told him that his wife Olympia had born him a son which was called Alexander and hee was very fair for a fourth It is not the Pagans Neptune or the Papagans S. Nicholas I know not what that delivers people in the Seas brings them home to their harbours as many ignorant Papists fancy 3. Word is unto the Merchant and Sea-man I would wrap you both together because you are sharers most commonly either in each others losses or successes you have interests and that of great worth and value in several and sundry bottoms which cut their way through the Salt waters and great wisdom it is indeed not to venture all in one bottom for hee said wittily that said He liked not that wealth that hung in ropes meaning ships There bee many dangers not good to have all in one bottom the Mouse will not trust to one hole therefore shee has many if in case shee bee assaulted But that which I ayme at unto you Gentlemen is this when any of your ships come home and richly laden with the rich and wealthy Commodities of forein parts which you are partakers and sharers in Oh bee affected with such mercies and consider how undeservedly the Lord throws in the world upon you it flows in upon you and flyes â—ay from others Ah Sirs when your ships come home bless the Lord for his goodness towards you and them in bringing them home both to theirs and also your desired Haven 4. Word is unto the Inland Towns and Cities of the Nation Gentlemen I may say to our Inland-Towns Cities what the Orator in another case once said to his Auditory Non timet mare qui non navigat non bellum qui noâ— bellat non terae motum qui est in Galatia non fulmen qui est in Aethiopia They that sail not know not what the roughness of the Seas are Their condition in the Sea is like the mans in the Emblem that runs through thick thin foul fair saying Culmen ad Aonidum recto contendere cursu Fert animus Pindi saxa pâ—â— tribulos Friends and Country-men you live far from the Sea neither are you in the sight of it at any time nor in the hearing of its roaring and ear-deafening waves yet is not this any excuse for you to bee unmindful of those that are employed in it and daily upon it Sea-men which are the Nations servants run through a Million of hazzards to fetch in the rich and costly Commodities of forein parts viz. Silks Spices Oranges Figs and Lemmons c. The shipping of the Land is not onely Sub Deo instrumental to keep you in safety but also to afford you those Commodities that have not their growth nor entity in England David lived at Jerusalem far from the Sea as many of you do yet was not hee ignorant of the many sorrows and dangers that those that use the Seas do goe through and meet withall Whereupon you have him here composing of their condition into a Psalm and is much affected with it Hee was sensible of the blowing of the winds of the raging and roaring of the Seas of the Rocks and Sands of the dangers and shipwracks that men in those employments were liable to Ah Sirs pitty them that go in the Seas and bestow a thousand prayers upon them for their condition calls for it and requires it at your hands if you have any spark of pitty and Christianity in you
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
people naked and being asked the reason why hee said hee could not tell vvhat apparrel to put upon them You are thankless to your God for your Sea mercies I must bee forced to do as the Musitioner who evermore strikes most and oftenest upon the sweetest note in his song the Paven or Galliard brevity is the Card I must sail by in the Sea unless I were in some warm study upon Land to write and expatiate my self in The uses are two 1. Of Reproof 2. Of Exhortation 1. Of Reproof Is it thus then that your great and many mercies do cal for thanksulness at your hands then let me tell you that this point looks sourely upon you even as Diana's image in Chios did upon all those that came into her Temple with a lowring and contracted countenance but looked blithe and smiled on them when they went forth Ah Sirs consider what you do you with-hold Gods right from him Will any Land-lord bear with his Tennant that shuffels him off from year to year Mariners like the fish Borchora of vvhom it is said that shee does devour many fish one after another but at last is met vvith taken so do they their Sea-mercies but God vvill meet vvith them if they repent not of it and pays him never a farthing Gentlemen consider this God will not alwaies bear with your ingratitude Pharaoh escaped many plagues and judgments as you do ship-wracks storms and Tempests which the rest of the Egyptians smarted under and so may you many storms whilst others perish and are denied to bee saved either by planks or boats but what was Pharaoh kept for was hee not reserved for the Sea to bee made a prey on in the great deeps so may you even thousands of you for ought I know out of all your deliverances out of storms bee reserved for the next to bee swallowed up in The Sodomites were rescued out of the hands of Chedorlaomer but were after consumed with fire from heaven and thus the wicked have many deliverances which they had in a manner as good bee without for they turn into curses and not blessings when they are not sanctified Will not the Lord say to you when you come into distresses Jer. 22.21 I spake unto thee in thy prosperity but thou saidst I will not hear this hath been thy manner from thy youth that thou obeyedst not my voyce I will deliver you no more for you have been unthankfull under all 2. Of Exhortation What I speak to you good people I speak to my own soul and the Lord speak it to us all let mee beg of you who have been delivered even out of a little Million of perils by Sea to express your thankfulness to that God that hath delivered you even to his praise in all societies that you either go amongst or converse with Ah how near drowning have you been at such a time how near killing at another time how near being lost Your condition hath been many and many a time like the tree the Poet fingâ— of which bore golden boughs Quaquantum vertice ad auras Aethereas tantum radice in tartara tendit Virg. whose root was just so much beneath the earth as the top was in height above it Your ships were hard by drowning and of never being heard of more many a time and is not all this worthy of thanks to that God from whence you had his care over you to protect you Observ 2 That there is no duty that man is more dull and backward to and in than in the praysing Si ingratum dixeris omnia dixeris let me but hear of a man accused for unthankfulness and you need say no more Senec. and celebrating of the Name of the Lord. Oh that men would praise the Lord c. Mee thinks there is a great deal of dead-heartedness upon the Sea amongst men as to the performance of this very duty Masters are dead Captains are dead Lieutenants Boatswains Gunners Carpenters Sea-men Tarpowlings and all that use the Seas are not so much affected with their deliverances as they should bee He deserves to lose his Garden that will not afford his Landlord a flower I have read of the heathen that when they had escaped shipwracks at any time they would hang up their votivas tabulas to Neptune as a testimony of their thankfulness What will you do Sirs for your God Sirs If you would praise God take these ensuing Directions along with you In some tenures people do not refuse to do their homage though it be but the rendring of a Red rose or a Pepper-corn 1. Labour for humility of heart Gen. 32.10 I am not worthy of the least of all thy mercies and of all the truth which thou hast shewed unto thy servant A proud spirit cannot bee thankful unto God a haughty minde is never thankful unto God for any mercy bestowed 2. Labour for a due consideration of the greatness of the blessing Will a Picture continue that is drawn upon an Ice will it not fade and melt away when the Ice upon which it is drawn thaws 3. Take all advantages of praising God Jam. 5.13 when you are upon the merry pin then praise the Lord I mean cheerful Praise God in publick Many of you are as unthankful for your Sea-mercies as Bajazet the great Turk was for his being made so great a Monarch who when asked if ever hee had thanked God for it he said that he never so much as once thought of it in all his life time then but just you should smart for it quoth Tamerlain and praise him in private 4. Strive against all hindrances whatsoever bee it sluggishness backwardness or whatsoever 5. If you would praise the Lord do it speedily 6. Do it sincerely 7. Largely 8. Freely 9. For the least mercy 10. Constantly not like the new Moon which shines all the beginning part of the night and then leaves all the hinder part in darkness Motives to praise God are these 1. Hereby you will honour God much 2. It is a gainful kinde of trading with God the husbandman delights to sow his seed in and upon fruitful soils where hee knows his increase will yeeld sixty or an hundred fold There be seven sorts of people that I would put upon the praising of God for Sea-mens deliverances 1. Their Wives 2. Their Parents 3. Their Friends 4. Their Brethren 5. Their Sisters 6. Their Acquaintance 7. Gods people The meeting of Friends after a long Voyage at Sea should bee like that of Joseph Gen. 46. And hee fell on his neck and wept c. They are not lost praises that are given unto God 3. It is a most noble act of Religion to praise God 4. Giving of thanks to God is more than to pray 5. If you will bee much in the praising of the Lord you will bee under much joy and comfort Observ 3 That the praysing of the Name of the great and
upon us from comming up to make him a prisoner or otherwise to sink him whereas before for many hours chase the wind has carried on our ship with as great celerity as could bee desired This is clear to mee now that there is an over-ruling power above that orders all affaires even as hee pleases which keeps ships in the Seas from murthering of one another Herein certainly appears the very visible finger or hand of God Two ships in the Seas if they bee at variance one with the other they are not unlike to the two Pitchers upon whom this Motto was writ Si collidimur frangimur If wee meet wee must either one or other break in giving our very enemies their lives and liberties which otherwise would have been taken from them many and many a time if that the wind would but have contributed its help unto us 5. Others are many times beat and forced out of the Seas vi armâ— even by and with the violency of storms and tempests insomuch that they are hurled upon the shore and most dangerously ship-wracked the weather being so boysterous and extreame that they have not been able to bear themselves up against it nor to free themselves from the ruining consequences of it yet has the Lord shewed them mercy when that the Vessels has been denied to bee saved even then when the Seas have seized upon her and broke her up into an hundred peeces and parcels and upon these Plancks Yards Masts and offals of the Vessel have all the Mariners got safe to the shore Thus has God provided for men in the deepest of danger when that they would have been drowned if that they had not had those Offalls to have been as Boats to have landed them out of the stormy Sea 6. Some have been too often if it had been the Lords will either through their heedlesness or negligence in a most dreadful estate and condition by fire which has come either from Candle as the snuffs of it or by the fire from the Ashes that have been carelesly blown out of their Pipes hereby has the ship been set on a burning blaze and roaring flame and before the ship has been burnt or the fire has got so low as the Powder boats have been sent out of other ships to fetch the men out of her And in a short time afterwards the ship has blown up into the aire in a Million of shivers How often have some been thus miraculously delivered and how often have others perished in the burning flames of those Tarry-materials 7. Othersome of them have many a time been taken captive by the Turk and after the expence of several years in cruel bondage and unmerciful thraldom they have after a most wonderfull manner inimicorum contra voluntatem been delivered out of it It seems that it is the custom of the Turk to make use of many of his vassals and captives in the Seas to sail his ships to and again about their Pyrating and filching designs and the Lord undoubtedly who sees and looks down upon the bitter sufferings of his people provides most admirably to and for their freedoms for many a time has the Lord sent out a strong wind to blow upon them against which they have not been able to contend and thereby have been cast upon the Christian shore These are the Angliae crabrones Cynoâ—yae Viperoe Cantharides sometimes in France and other sometimes in Spain sometime in Portugal and other sometimes in Italy c. by which means the poor captived and imprisoned have been freed and the Turks perpetually inslaved Oh the many Sea-men that are still living and can tell of this very deliverance 8. Sometimes when they have been taken by the Turk and lain long in smarting vassallage and bondage they have cleared themselves out of their enemies hands by stealing away in the night and taking the water adventuring life rather than stay in such an Egyptian usage to get into the ships that have been riding in the Turks harbours Why may not I tell of these deliverances to the praise of my God I finde in Scripture that as small is made mention of Act. 9.25 Then the Disciples took him by night and let him down by the wall in a basket by which means they have got their liberty and come home for England 9. Others have been sometimes taken by and with the Turk and also other Pyrats whereby they have lost liberties freedomes and costly ships of an unspeakable worth and value and when that the enemy hath been carrying them away in a most victorious and triumphing manner I may sing of this frequent and providential deliverance Hic bene de laxis cassibus exit aper hee hath not had his prize over a day or half a day in his hands but some ship or other hath got sight of them as it is the manner of Men of War to speak with every sail they espy in the Seas and after that they have begun once to give them chase it is the usual custome of an enemy when hee is far off to flye and make all the sail hee can to escape if they finde them unwilling to bee spoke with all Frigots let flye all the sails that ever they can make and those that are of a singular going will in time fetch them up as oftentimes they do and hereby are the Captives most miraculously redeemed out of the hands of their blood-thirsty enemies Oh the many Sea-men that aâ—â— still living and can tell of this very sweet and seasonable deliverance 10. Others many times have been taken by the Turk and upon their preconsidering of their misery that would ensue in their captivity and slavery have set their heads on work how to get their freedoms again I may write upon this deliverance Tunc cum tristis erat defensa est Ilion armis Militibus gravidum laeta recepit equum Whilst Troy was too secure the panched horse ruined her as indeed I have known several such who have been taken by them have given the Turks all the wine that ever they could get them to swallow down to that end they might get them fudled by which means they have got both their ship lives and liberties again and an enjoyment of England which they were in all likeliness never to have seen more 11. Some are oftentimes meeting one another at an unawares both in the day and especially in the night stem for stem and this is so dreadful a thing that many times either one Gentlemen you are bound in the very same obligation that Israel stood in unto their God for all your deliverances I leave the charge with you answer the contrary another day if you can Deut. 4.9 Onely take heed to thy self and keep thy soul diligently lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen and lest they depart from thy heart all the dayes of thy life Your eyes have seen wonderful preservations
or both of those ships that do so meet goes down with all their passengers in the very bottome where they are never seen more Other sometimes again I have seen them meet and through mercy they have escaped sinking only this they have gone off with a great deal of damage as to the breaking of the ships heads Boltsprits ships Boles and strong Timbers c. These are as cunning to watch all opportunities as the little Arabian Spider who spreads out her tent for the prey how heedfully doth shee watch for the passenger as soon as ever she hears the noise of the Five a far of he hastens to look out at his door and if she come near unto him he presently weighs and stands after her and brings her at last to a most cruel end for he bindes him fast with his most subtil cords and so drags the helpless Captive into his Cave 12. Some have been taken sometimes in the West-Indies by that feral and savage kinde of people which are both of a Cannibal and Anthropophagite nature It is very common for that people in some parts of the Indies to come running out of the Woods Holes and Caves if they espie any Outlandish people coming amongst them and to kill them with their bows and arrows and many a poor man have these cut off for they are an avarous and an inordinate kinde of people as unto the flesh of man which they do love-above Duck Goose and Mallard which they have in as great plenty to go to when they please as the greatest Prince in the world hath any thing at his command And if they take any men that come in ships they will feed them with the best Venison and the fattest and finest Fowls that ever they can get and after they have got them once fat and in good liking they will kill them and eat their bodies I knew one that was a very sober-minded man that affirmed it unto mee for a truth that hee was in their hands for above a quarter of a year and lay in holes and caves with them and being begged by an Indian-woman shee kept him from being killed and living not far from the Sea side I may write upon this deliverance Non avis utiliter viscatis effugit alis hee every day had an eye upon it looking out if hee could see any ships a coming to that place and after the expence of some sad and solitary time amongst the Indians it happened that the same ship came to that very place again little expecting him to bee alive and as soon as hee saw the ship hee ran down to the Sea side unto her where they most joyfully imbraced him and the woman that kept him seeing him running away from her made after him with the greatest violence that could be ran up to the middle in the sea for him 13. Some are many and many a time thrown upon sands and rocks and yet notwithstanding those danting I may write this upon this deliverance Evasi per mille pericla demum incolumis He that will go to Sea had need to carry an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 along with him whether to drown or live and dreadful hazzards they have by and through the mighty power of Gods out-stretched Arm lyen safe and in the end got happily off them How commonly visible is this very thing that ships may be seen here and there sticking and stopping upon the sands whereas if the Lord should but give the windes commission to blow and to raise up the waves of the Seas upon them they would beat them into a thousand parcels Oh the many ships and Mariners that have been thus delivered Who deserves the praise of this mercy 14. Others oftentimes are most sadly hazzarded in stormy and tempestuous weather insomuch that when they have been busied about their Masts Yards and Sails of their Ships that both the Yards and Masts have broke and the poor men have fallen over-board into the Sea and although that the ship hath had fresh way and is long before shee can bee stopped many of them have been saved The great and wide Sea is not unlike to that Sea in Panten of which it is said that who or whatsoever falleth into it is never seen after It is like the Spanish Inquisition into which if any one come they are never heard of more God keep our poor Sailors out of it yea even such as never had the art to strike one swiming stroke have been found lying upon the water to admiration as if the Sea had no commission to hurt or drown them Oh the many Sea-men that are still living and can tell of these very deliverances bestowed upon them 15. Some oftentimes when they have been thousands of miles from any Portland or Country have been in smarting want and most miserable Certainly it is a dishonour for a parent or any special friend to hang his Picture in a dark hole in some obscure and contemptible place because it is expected thâ—â— we should make it as conspicuous as may be and so hang it up in some eminent place signifying that we do rejoyce in it as an ornament to us Let me therefore take upon me to tel all the Sailors in England that it is a great evil in them to hide obscure great and remarkable deliverances by which God should be glorified both before Men and Angels I have therefore endeavoured to hang up some of your forgotten and underfeet trodden mercies and preservations in the very view of the whole world and pinching stints and allowance and the wind hath lain in their very teeth even in the very way that they should steer homewards as if threatning to block them up and starve them in the Seas I have heard some Sailors say that they have been glad to feed upon Rats to keep themselves alive with and othersome have been forced for want of victual to kill Porpoise and other uncouth fish they could dart shoot or lay their hands upon in the salt waters You may now see that it oftentimes goes hard with the Mariner I and that the Lords own people have not alwayes the fattest Pastures to graze in Daniel lived on Pulse Elijah upon his Cake that was baked upon the Coal and Cruse of water Luther lived upon his Herring and Junius upon his one Egg a day when means was short with him by reason of the Civil wars that were in France 16. Some are oftentimes so hard put to it in the remote parts of the world in their long and prolix voyages that for want of fresh water Sailors Darius like who said in his flight when he could get no better liquor for his thirst than thick and muddy water that stood in an horse-stepping that he never drunk sweeter water in his life I will write thus much upon this hard case and condition that the Mariner is often in Qui fitiunt in Mediâ— mari non statiâ—
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
is this there is such swearing cursing and profaning of the holy Name of the Lord amongst you that a gracious heart that goes in ships with you would think that he were rather in an hell conversing with Devils than Men and Christians How ought all our Sailors in the time of storms to say with the Church unto their God Lam. 3.40 Let us search and try our waies and turn again to the Lord. Jonah was searched out in the storm and Achan when the Camp was troubled no better way or course to pacify an angry God than to seek for all that filthiness that is upon and in your hearts and spirits and so to throw it over board and take out the new and sacred lesson of piety and uprightness of heart and spirit 14. To put the godly upon the growth Reason 14 in holiness and make their hearts the better Storms are gods pruning-knives Corrupt blood must be drawn out before the Leech falls off and all carnal filthiness parted with before the storm end Boysterous storms are Gods people's kitchin-scullions to scour off their rust their dross canker to let Sea-men bleed withall for they have a great deal of corrupt blood in their veins and though they carry Chirurgions with them at Sea yet God is their best Physician This course God takes that they may bring forth more fruit Joh. 15.2 And every branch that beareth fruit hee purgeth it that it may bring forth more fruit Flowers have a sweeter savour after a shower than ever they had before so a gracious soul a brokener heart after a storm than in a calm Wheat under the flail parts with its chaff Gold when put in the fire loses it dross Reason 15 15. To put people into a greater fear of sinning and offending that have smarted so much for sin It is a common Proverb That the burnt child dreads the fire It was Job's resolution Chap. 34.32 If I have done iniquity I will do no more I think it would bee the Sea-mans greatest wisdom not onely to say so but to have a care of offending God who is able to hurl the Seas into dreadful waves and raging surges about his ears Reason 16 16. To keep people from back-sliding If you should alwaies have fair weather at Sea The game hunting dogs of Cicily lose their sport oftentimes by reason of the sent and sweet smel of flowers And so thoughts of God and Heaven if all calms and no storm and every thing as you would have it that were the onely way to have you to forget your God Israel soon cast God out of their thoughts and hearts when they got into Canaan but oftner in their thoughts when in a pinching and hard-faring Wilderness The Bee is quickly drowned if shee fall but into the pot of hony and a good heart is soon over-run with weeds and corrupted if not under imbitterments and afflictions Reason 17 17. To wean people from the world and all the earthly comforts and merchandizings of it Whilst there is sweetness to bee sucked out of the dugs of worldly comforts they will not care for the relinquishing of them but when God laies wormwood upon them then they will grow weary of them and even bee ad instar canis ad Nilum as the dog at the river Nilus that dare not stay to take his full draught for fear of the Crocodile The Uses of this doctrine are various but especially they are these five 1. Information 2. Circumspection 3. Meditation 4. Reprehension 5. Consolation 1. Vse This doctrine may inform you and let you see that every boysterous Storm and Tempest that breaks out upon the face of the great deeps is no other but an arrow shot out of the bended bow of Gods displeasure against you or one of the lower tier of his indignation that is fired upon you Nahum 1.3 The Lord hath his way in the whirl-wind and in the storm and the clouds are the dust of his feet If shiphazarding storms fall upon you you may conclude that the Lord is in them and not far from you I and that hee is not well pleased with you 2. Vse This doctrine may serve to put you upon a serious meditation and deliberative ponderating upon the Power and terrible Majesty of God who has the whole universe at his command to wage war against whom hee pleases but especially in these three things 1. What is the cause or occasion of immoderate storms 2. What is his end in the sending of them upon you 3. And lastly what improvement you should make of them 3. Vse This doctrine may serve for a word of advice to startle you and to tell you that you have great need to look about you if so bee that all perilous and ship-wracking storms and Tempests are of the Lords commissionating and raising I mean not onely to make the best provisions that you can to prevent dangers for common reason prompts you to that but my advice is this that you would live every day preparedly seeing your lives are the deepliest engaged and in the greatest hazzards of any under the whole Heavens if a man were to go over some narrow bridge under which hee knew that there was deep water how gingerly and how carefully would hee tread I and if there were no way else to go but that what prayers would hee put up that hee might go safely over and if not that God would cancel all his scores my thinks it should bee thus with you who are in greater dangers in the raging Seas 1. Sin less swear less and drink less than you do if you would have God to preserve you in time of storms 2. Please God more if you desire favour and preservation in the day of calamity and irremediable adversity 3. Make it your business to get sin daily pardoned or otherwise you may look for nothing but an open hostility from the winds and Seas 4. Vse This doctrine may serve to reprove and to lash that bold profaneness and atheisticalness that is amongst the generality of Sea-men and Sailors who never have it in their thoughts when the greatest storm that ever blew is from the Lord but a thing in course or common and ordinary and so never acknowledge the hand of God in those dreadfull judgments that hee lays upon the Seas and those affrighting and heart-melting sorrows that they are often plunged into There be four things that I would reprove you for 1. Ignorance 2. Carelesness 3. Want of the fear of God 4. Negligence 1. Ignorance This is an Epidemical distemper that all or the greatest part of Sea-men are aegrotant off or in Suffer this doctrine to reprove you and I am sure it will tell you to the full that it is the Lord that sends out his stormy wind fulfilling his Word upon you I and also condemn you for your infidelity and paganism in this very particular 2. Carelesness Who more loose who more prophane and who more secure