The trades-man's calling being a discourse concerning the nature, necessity, choice, &c. of a…

Besides, every Tradesman should study and collect the particular Advantages of his own Calling. If it be laborious, then it's usually more free from Cares, and less subject to Losses; if you spend your time in buying and selling only, then you have commonly more Time, and less Toil. In some Trades you are brought into great Acquaintance, with the Mysteries of Nature; in others, with the Curiosities of Art; in some, you learn to know Men, in others, Things. Now the Tradesman should muster up and survey all these Excellencies and Advantages of his Calling, both to demonstrate and to further his Contentment therein, and so should conclude, I am well if I can see it, my Calling is but too good for me.

3. This Contentedness is to be shown, in a patient bearing of the Losses and Disappointments that ⟨p. 173⟩befall him in his Trade. And here our Tradesman hath occasion for all Grace he hath: For sometimes he meets with great losses in his Goods themselves; perishing either by their own Corruptibility, or by the Carelessness of his Servants; sometimes he hath great Losses by the Breaking of his Chapmen or Correspondents; and sometimes merely by the Providence of God, permitting either dreadful Storms at Sea, or wicked Pirates to swallow them up. Now if God's Grace do not support his Spirits under these Losses; he frets himself in pieces with impotent Vexation: he falls out with his Trade, with Men, yea with God himself, and enjoys nothing of what he hath left, because he is deprived of what he hath lost. He enlarges upon the Folly of Trading, he condemns all Mankind, because he finds some of them dishonest; he extols every Man's Calling but his own; he frets at the Providence of God; nay, almost questions whether there be any Providence, because it frowns upon him; quarrels with his Meat, his Drink, his Servants, his Wife, yea with himself; because (forsooth) he could not prophesy; he could not fore-see and fore-tell how the Seas or Men would prove: whereas by virtue of Christian Contentment, the Tradesman, tho he be not insensible of his Losses, yet he labours to digest them; and things looking ill, he will not make them worse by his own Folly.