hrown out, I
found that, by the number of hands I had, being none but my own, it must
have been ten or twelve years before I could have gone through with it;
for the shore lay so high, that at the upper end it must have been at
least twenty feet deep; so at length, though with great reluctancy, I
gave this attempt over also.

This grieved me heartily; and now I saw, though too late, the folly of
beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of
our own strength to go through with it.

In the middle of this work I finished my fourth year in this place, and
kept my anniversary with the same devotion, and with as much comfort as
ever before; for, by a constant study and serious application to the Word
of God, and by the assistance of His grace, I gained a different
knowledge from what I had before. I entertained different notions of
things. I looked now upon the world as a thing remote, which I had
nothing to do with, no expectations from, and, indeed, no desires about:
in a word, I had nothing indeed to do with it, nor was ever likely to
have, so I thought it looked, as we may perhaps look upon it
hereafter--viz. as a place I had lived in, but was come out of it; and
well might I say, as Father Abraham to Dives, "Between me and thee is a
great gulf fixed."

In the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of the world
here; I had neither the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, nor the
pride of life. I had nothing to covet, for I had all that I was now
capable of enjoying; I was lord of the whole manor; or, if I pleased, I
might call myself king or emperor over the whole country which I had
possession of: there were no rivals; I had no competitor, none to dispute
sovereignty or command with me: I might have raised ship-loadings of
corn, but I had no use for it; so I let as little grow as I thought
enough for my occasion. I had tortoise or turtle enough, but now and
then one was as much as I could put to any use: I had timber enough to
have built a fleet of ships; and I had grapes enough to have made wine,
or to have cured into raisins, to have loaded that fleet when it had been
built.

But all I could make use of was all that was valuable: I had enough to
eat and supply my wants, and what was all the rest to me? If I killed
more flesh than I could eat, the dog must eat it, or vermin; if I sowed
more corn than I could eat, it must be spoiled; the trees that I cut down
were ly