Navigation spiritualizedNavigation spiritualiz'd

Here you venture life and liberty, run through many Difficulties and Dangers, and all to compass a perishing Treasure; yet how often do you return disappointed in your Designs? or if not, yet it is but a fading short-lived Inheritance, which like the flowing Tide, for a little while, covers the shore, and then returns, and leaves it naked and dry again: And are not Everlasting Treasures worth venturing for? Good Souls, be wise for Eternity: I here present you with the Fruit of a few spare Hours, redeemed for your sakes, from my other Studies and Employments, which I have put into a new Dress and Mode. I have endeavoured to clothe Spiritual Matters in your own Dialect and Phrases, that they might be the more intelligible to you; and added some pious Poems, with which the several Chapters are concluded, trying by all means to assault your several Affections, and as the Apostle speaks, to catch you with guile. I can say nothing of it; I know it cannot be without its manifold imperfections, since I am conscious of so many in my self: Only this I will adventure to say of it, That how defective or empty soever it be in other respects, yet it is stuffed and filled with much true love to, and earnest desires after the salvation and prosperity of your Souls. And for the other defects that attend it, I have only two things to offer, in way of excuse: It is the first Essay that I ever made in this kind, wherein I had no President: And it was hastened, for your sakes, too soon out of my hands, that it might be ready to wait upon you, when you undertake your next Voyage; so that I could not revise and polish it. Nor indeed was I solicitous about the stile; I consider, I writ not for Critical and Learned Persons: my design is not to please your Fancies any ⟨image 6⟩further, than I might thereby get advantage to profit your Souls. I will not once question your welcome Reception of it: If God shall bless these Meditations to the Conversion of any among you, you will be the Gainers, and my heart shall rejoice, even mine. How comfortably should we shake hand with you, when you go abroad, were we persuaded your Souls were interested in Christ, and secured from perishing, in the New Covenant? What life would it put into our Prayers for you, when you are abroad, to consider that Jesus Christ is interceding for you in Heaven, whilst we are your Remembrancers here on Earth?

Here you venture life and liberty, run through many Difficulties and Dangers, and all to compass a perishing Treasure; yet how often do you return disappointed in your Designs? or if not, yet it is but a fading short-liv'd Inheritance, which like the flowing Tide, for a little while, covers the shore, and then returns, and leaves it naked and dry again: And are not Everlasting Treasures worth venturing for? Good Souls, be wise for Eternity: I here present you with the Fruit of a few spare Hours, redeemed for your sakes, from my other Studies and Imployments, which I have put into a new Dress and Mode. I have endeavoured to cloath Spiritual Matters in your own Dialect and Phrases, that they might be the more intelligible to you; and added some pious Poems, with which the several Chapters are concluded, trying by all means to assault your several Affections, and as the Apostle speaks, to catch you with guile. I can say nothing of it; I know it cannot be without its manifold imperfections, since I am conscious of so many in my self: Only this I will adventure to say of it, That how defective or empty soever it be in other respects, yet it is stuffed and filled with much true love to, and earnest desires after the salvation and prosperity of your Souls. And for the other defects that attend it, I have only two things to offer, in way of excuse: It is the first Essay that I ever made in this kind, wherein I had no President: And it was hastned, for your sakes, too soon out of my hands, that it might be ready to wait upon you, when you undertake your next Voyage; so that I could not revise and polish it. Nor indeed was I sollicitous about the stile; I consider, I writ not for Critical and Learned Persons: my design is not to please your Fancies any