er 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.

"And having received these mercies, and been delivered out of these
distresses, I may say to you, as Jacob said to his household (Gen.
xxxv.), 'Let us arise and go to Bethel;' let us serve God and praise
His name who answered us in the day of our distress, and was with us
in the way which we went. Let us also keep Jacob's vow: 'The Lord
hath been with us and kept us in our way, and brought us again to
our fathers' house in peace; let the Lord be our God.' Let not any
of our former vanities or lusts, or love