rocks, in another perilous fands, and every where ftormy winds, ready to deftroy them. Well may the feamen cry out, Ego craftinum non habui; I have not had a tc-norrow in my hands thefe many years. Should not they then be extraodinary ferious and heavenly, continually! Certainly (as the reverend author of this new compass well obferves) nothing more composeth the heart to such a frame, than the lively apprehenfions of eternity do; and none have greater external advantages for that, than feamen have, 2. Confider (feamen) what extraordinary help you have by the book of the creatures; "The whole creation is God's voice; it is "God's excellent hand-writing, or the facred fcriptures of the "moft High," to teach us much of God, and what reasons we have to bewail our rebellion against God, and to make confcience of obeying God only, naturally, and continually. The heavens, the earth, the waters, are the three great leaves of this book of God, and all the creatures are fo many lines in thofe leaves. All that learn not to fear and ferve God by the help of this book, will be left inexcufable, Rom. i. 20. How inexcufable then will ignorant and ungodly feamen be! Seamen fhould, in this refpect, be the beft fcholars in the Lord's fchool, feeing they do, more than others, fee the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the great deep, Pfal. cvii. 24. 3. Confider how often you are nearer heaven than any people in the world. "They mount up to heaven," Pfal. cvii. 26. It has been faid of an ungodly minifter, that contradicted his preaching in his life and converfation, that it was pity he should ever come out of the pulpit, because he was there as near heaven as ever he would be. Shall it be faid of you, upon the fame account, that it is a pity you fhould come down from the high towering waves of the fea? Should not feamen that in ftormy weather have their feet (as it were) upon the battlements of heaven, look down upon all earthly happiness in this world but as base, waterish, and worthlefs? The great cities of Campania feem but fmall cottages to them that stand on the Alps, Should not feamen, that fo oft mount up to heaven, make it their main business here, once at laft to get into heaven? What! (feamen) fhall you only go to heaven against your wills? When feamen mount up to heaven in a ftorm, the Pfalmift tells us, That "their fouls are "melted becaufe of trouble." O that you were continually as unwilling to go to hell, as you are in a storm to go to heaven! 4. And lastly, Confider what engagements lie upon you to be fingularly holy, from your fingular deliverances and falvations. They that go down to the fea in fhips, are fometimes in the valley of the fhadow of death, by reason of the springing of perilous leaks; and yet miraculously delivered, either by fome wonderful stopping of the leak, or by God's fending fome fhip within their fight, when they Terror ubique tremor, timor undeque terror. Ovid. † Mundi creatio eft Scriptura Dei. Clemens. Univerfus mundus eft Deus explicatus. have been far out of fight of any land; or by his bringing their nearperifhing fhip fafe to thore. Sometimes they have been in very great danger of being taken by pyrates, yet wonderfully preferved, either by God's calming of the winds in that part of the fea where the pyrates have failed, or by giving the poor pursued fhip a strong gale of wind to run away from their purfuers, or by finking the pyrates, &c. Sometimes their ships have been caft away, and yet they themselves wonderfully got fafe to fhore upon planks, yards, mafts, &c. I might be endlefs in enumerating their deliverances from drowning, from burning, from flavery, &c. Sure (feamen) your extraordinary falvations lay more than ordinary engagements upon you, to praife, love, fear, obey, and trust in your Saviour and Deliverer. I have read that the enthralled Greeks were so affected with their liberty, procured by Flaminius the Roman general, that their fhrill acclamations of Ewinp, Ewinp, a Saviour, a Saviour! made the very birds fall down from the heavens aftonished. O how fhould feamen be affected with their fea-deliverances! many that have been delivered from Turkish flavery, have vowed to be fervants to their redeemers all the days of their lives. Ah! Sirs, will not you be more than ordinarily God's fervants all the days of your lives, feeing you have been fo oft, fo wonderfully redeemed from death itself by him? Verily, do what you can, you will die in God's debt. "As for me, God forbid that I fhould fin against the "Lord in ceafing to pray for you," 1 Sam. xii. 23, 24. That by the perufal of this fhort and fweet treatife, wherein the judicious and ingenious author hath well mixed utile dulci, profit and pleasure, you may learn the good and right way, even to fear the Lord, and ferve him in truth with all your hearts, confidering how great things he hath done for you. This is the hearty prayer of Your cordial friend, earnestly defirous of a profperous voyage for your precious and immortal fouls, T. M. W THE AUTHOR TO THE READER. 'Tis gone from me too young, and now is run CHAP. I. The launching of a fhip plainly fets forth OBSERVATION. O fooner is a fhip built, launched, rigged, victualled, and manned, but she is prefently fent out into the boisterous ocean, where the is never at reft, but continually fluctuating, toffing, and labouring, until fhe be either overwhemled, and wrecked in the fea; or through age, knocks, and bruifes, grow leaky, and unserviceable; and fo is haled up, and ript abroad. APPLICATION. No fooner come we into the world as men, or as Christians, by a natural or fupernatural birth, but thus we are toffed upon a fea of troubles. Job v. 7. "Yet man is born to trouble, as the fparks fly "upwards." The spark no fooner comes out of the fire, but it flies up naturally; it needs not any external force, help, or guidance, but afcends from a principle in itfelf; fo naturally, fo easily doth trouble rife out of fin. There is radically all the mifery, anguish, and trouble in the world in our corrupt natures. As the fpark lies close hid in the coals, fo doth mifery in fin; every fin draws a rod after it. And thefe forrows and troubles fall not only on the body, in those breaches, flaws, deformities, pains, aches, difeafes, to which it is fubject, which are but the groans of dying nature, and its crumbling, by degrees, into duft again; but on all our employments and callings alfa, Gen. iii. 17, 18, 19. These are full of pain, trouble, and difappointment, Hag. i. 6. We earn wages, and put it into a bag with holes, and difquiet ourselves in vain; all our relations full of trouble. The apoftle fpeaking to thofe that marry, faith, 1 Cor. vii. 28. "Such fhall have trouble in the flefh" Upon which words one gloffeth thus: Fiefh and trouble are married together, whether we See Mr Whate- marry or no; but they that are married, marry with, and match into new troubles: All relations ley's Care-cloth. have their burdens, as well as their comforts: It were endleís to enumerate the forrows of this kind, and yet the troubles of the body are but the body of our troubles; the fpirit of the curfe falls upon the fpiritual and noblest part of man. The foul and body, like to Ezekiel's roll, are written full with forrows, both within and without. So that we make the fame report of our lives, when we come to die, that old Jacob made before Pharaoh, Gen. xlvii. 9. "Few and evil have the days of the years of our lives been." Eccl. ii. 22, 23. "For what hath man of all his labour, and of the "vexation of his heart, wherein he hath laboured under the fun? "For all his days are forrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart "taketh no rest in the night: This is alfo vanity " Neither doth our new birth free us from troubles, though then they be fanctified, fweetned, and turned into bleflings to us. put not off the human, when we put on the divine nature; nor are we then freed from the fenfe, though we are delivered from the fting and curfe of them. Grace doth not prefently pluck out all thofe arrows that fin hath fhot into the fides of nature. 2 Cor. vii. 5. "When we were come into Macedonia, our flesh had no reft, but "we were troubled on every fide: Without were fightings, and "within were fears." Rev. vii. 14. "Thefe are they that come out "of great tribulations." The first cry of the new-born Christian (fays one) gives hell an alarm, and awakens the rage both of devils and men against him. Hence Paul and Barnabas acquainted those new converts, Acts xiv. 22. "That through much tribulation they must "enter into the kingdom of God." And we find the state of the church, in this world, fet out (Ifa. liv. 11.) by the fimilitude of a diftrefled fhip at fea: "O thou afflicted [and toffed] with tempefts, and not comforted." [Toffed] as Jonah's fhip was; for the fame word is there ufed, Jonah i. 11, 13. as a veffel at fea, ftormed, and violently driven without rudder, maft, fail, or tackling. Nor are we to expect freedom from thofe troubles, until harboured in heaven; fee 2 Theff. i. 7. O what large catalogues of experiences do the faints carry to heaven with them, for their various exercifes, dangers, trials, and marvellous preservations and deliverances out of all! and yet all these troubles without, are nothing to those within them; from temptations, corruptions, defertions, by paffion and compaffion; Befides their own, there come daily upon them the troubles of others; many rivulets fall into this channel and brim, yea, often overflow the bank. Pfalm xxxiv. 19. "Many are the afflictions of the righte" ous." REFLECTION. 7. Hence fhould the graceless heart thus reflect upon itself, O my foul! into what a fea of troubles art thou launched forth! and what a fad cafe art thou in full of trouble, and full of lin; and these do mutually produce each other. And that which is the most dreadful confideration of all, is that I cannot fee the end of them. As for the faints, they fuffer in the world as well as I; but it is but for a while, I Pet. v. 10. and then they fuffer no more, 2 Theff. i. "But all "tears shall be wiped away from their eyes," Rev. vii. 17. But my troubles look with a long vifage, ah! they are but the beginning of forrows, but a parboiling before I be roafted in the flames of God's eternal wrath. If I continue as I am, I shall but deceive myself, if I conclude I shall be happy in the other world, because I have met with fo much forrow in this: For I read, Jude, ver. 7. that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, though confumed to afhes, with all their eftates and relations, (a forer temporal judgment than ever yet befel me) do, notwithstanding that, continue itill in "everlasting "chains, under darknefs, in which they are referved unto the judg "ment of the great day." Thefe troubles of the faints are fanctified to them, but mine are fruits of the curfe. They have fpiritual confolations to balance them, which flow into their fouls in the fame height and degree, as troubles do upon their bodies, 2 Cor. i. 5. But I am a ftranger to their comforts, and "intermeddle not with their "joys,” Prov. xiv. 10. If their hearts be furçnarged with trouble, they have a God to go to; and when they have opened their caufe before him, they are eased, return with comfort and their "counte"nance is no more fad,” 1 Sam. i. 18. When their belly is as bottles full of new wine, they can give it vent by pouring out their fouls into their Father's bofom: but I have no intereft in, nor acquaintance with this God, nor can I pray unto him in the Spirit. My griefs are fhut up like fire in my bofom, which preys upon my fpirit. This is my forrow, and I alone must bear it. O my foul, VOL. V. Ff |