’Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though you know them, and be established in the present truth.’  To all I may say, with the wise man (Prov. viii.), ’Hear! for I will speak of excellent things,’ free mercies, great deliverances, wonderful preservations:  excellent things to those who were sharers of them in action, and for the contemplation of those who are hearers of them; therefore I may shortly recite some of the most eminent of them.

“In the first day of our voyage with a fair wind, at night it changed, and we were stopped till comfortable letters came to me, which otherwise could not have come, and were no sooner answered but the wind came fair again.  When we toiled in the open sea with cross winds and tempests, driven near to our own coast back again, God sent us then fair weather and a good gale for our voyage.  How was He pleased to bring us so very near great danger on the Riff, and then bring us safe off from it and hold on our course again!

“When we were in no small danger in the tempestuous seas on the back of the Skaw, when the anchors dragged a league in one night with the storm, and every moment we expected to be devoured by the raging waves, there the Lord was also our deliverer; as He also was upon the rocky coast of Norway and in the difficult passage to the harbour of Gothenburg.  Throughout our voyage the providence of God watched over us and protected us.  Thus did He in our land journey, where the extreme hardships we were put unto are sufficiently known to all of us, and will to our life’s end be felt by some of us.

“My particular preservation was wonderful from an intended assassination by one who thrust himself into my company to have the better opportunity to execute it; but, overcome with kindness, his heart relented, and he forsook his purpose and my company.

“If the snow had fallen (as in other years) in the time of our travel, we could not have passed our journey; but He who rules the heavens and the earth restrained it till we came within half a day of our journey’s end, and in safety He conducted us to Upsal.  The same Providence kept us there, and when some of our company were sick and hurt, restored health again.

“It was marvellous and unexpected, that in a foreign country, at such a distance from friends and acquaintance, God should raise us up friends out of strangers, namely the Queen, foreign ministers, and great officers, in whose sight we found wonderful favour, to our preservation under God and a great means of effecting what we came about, maugre the labours and designs of our enemies against it, and their plots and attempts for our destruction, had not our Rock of Defence secured us.

“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