These are things that appear to be of no great importance; and yet, if we do rightly consider, they express the same obedience as God required of His people Israel when they should be carried to Babylon. He gave charge unto them that, when they should see the Babylonians worship their gods of gold, silver, metal, and wood, they should say, "The gods that have not made the heaven and the earth shall perish from the heaven, and out of the earth." [Sidenote: John Knox prophesies of himself: his Confidence in God's Deliverance.] Master James Balfour being in the same galley as John Knox, and being wondrously familiar with him, would often ask his opinion whether he thought that they should ever be delivered. His answer ever was, from the day that they entered the galleys, that God, for His own glory, would deliver them from that bondage, even in this life. The second time that the galleys returned to Scotland, when they were lying betwixt Dundee and St. Andrews, and the said John was so extremely sick that few hoped his life, the said Master James willed him to look to the land, and asked if he knew it? He answered, "Yes, I know it well; for I see the steeple of the place in which God first in public opened my mouth to His glory. I am fully persuaded that, however weak I may now appear, I shall not depart this life until my tongue shall glorify His godly name in the same place." The said Master James reported this in presence of many famous witnesses, many years before the said John set his foot in Scotland this last time. William Kirkaldy, then younger of Grange, Peter Carmichael, Robert and William Leslie, who were all together in Mount St. Michael, wrote to the said John, asking his counsel as to whether they might, with safe conscience, break their prison? His answer was that if, without the blood of any shed or spilt by them for their deliverance, they could set themselves at freedom, they might safely take it: but that he would never consent to their shedding any man's blood for their freedom. He added, further, that he was assured that God would deliver them and the rest of that company, even in the eyes of the world; but not by such means as we had looked for; that was, by the force of friends or by their other labours. He affirmed that they should not be delivered by such means, but that God would so work in the deliverance of them, that the praise thereof should redound to His glory only. He therefore urged every one to take any occasion for deliverance that God might offer, provided that nothing was done against God's express commandment.