"I should detain you very long, though I hope it would not be thought too long, to recite all our remarkable mercies; and it is an excellent thing that they are so numerous. We are now coming homewards. How did our God preserve us over the Baltic Sea from innumerable dangers of the rocks, sands, coasts, islands, fierce lightnings, storms, and those high-swelling waters! Such was our preservation in the Elbe, when our countrymen leaped into the water to bring us off from danger, and when the tempests hurried us up and down, by Heligoland, then towards Holland, then to the northward, then to the southward, in the open breaking rough seas, when we had lost our course and knew not where we were. "Above all other was that most eminent deliverance near our own coast, when our ship was stuck upon the sand twelve leagues from any shore, when no help nor human means were left to save us, when pale death faced us so long together, when no hopes remained to escape his fury or the rages of the waves, which we expected every instant to swallow us; even then, to show where our dependence ought to be, our God would make it His own work to deliver us. He it was that raised the wind, and brought it from the higher part of the bank, to shake our fastened ship, and crumble the loose sands; and no sooner had we taken a resolution of praying and resigning our souls to God, but He gave us our lives again, moving our ship by His powerful arm, making it to float again, none knowing how or by what means, but by the free act of His mercy, and not a return of ours, but of the prayers of some here present, and divers others our Christian friends, who at that very time were met together to seek the Lord for us and for our safe return. "Methinks the hearts of us who were partakers of these mercies should rejoice in the repetition of them, and those that hear them cannot but say they hear excellent things; and certainly never had any men more cause than we have of returning humble and hearty thanks to God who hath thus saved us.