John Flavel

John Flavel spent his ministry in Dartmouth, a Devon port town of sailors and merchants, and he preached like a man who knew his congregation's work. Navigation Spiritualized took the compass, the chart and the storm and turned each into a lesson; Husbandry Spiritualized did the same with the farm.

Ejected in 1662 and then driven out of town altogether by the Five Mile Act, he kept meeting his people anyway — famously on Salstone Rock in the Salcombe estuary, an island that surfaces at low tide and belongs to no parish, where they gathered between tides. His best-known book, The Mystery of Providence, works through Psalm 57:2 and argues that a believer should keep a record of God's dealings and read it back in dark seasons.

Flavel had dark seasons to read back: he was widowed three times, hunted by the authorities for years, and only saw his church legally reopened near the end of his life.