found them pursuing me, and by the swiftness of their
running no possibility of my escaping them! The thoughts of this
sometimes sank my very soul within me, and distressed my mind so much
that I could not soon recover it, to think what I should have done, and
how I should not only have been unable to resist them, but even should
not have had presence of mind enough to do what I might have done; much
less what now, after so much consideration and preparation, I might be
able to do. Indeed, after serious thinking of these things, I would be
melancholy, and sometimes it would last a great while; but I resolved it
all at last into thankfulness to that Providence which had delivered me
from so many unseen dangers, and had kept me from those mischiefs which I
could have no way been the agent in delivering myself from, because I had
not the least notion of any such thing depending, or the least
supposition of its being possible. This renewed a contemplation which
often had come into my thoughts in former times, when first I began to
see the merciful dispositions of Heaven, in the dangers we run through in
this life; how wonderfully we are delivered when we know nothing of it;
how, when we are in a quandary as we call it, a doubt or hesitation
whether to go this way or that way, a secret hint shall direct us this
way, when we intended to go that way: nay, when sense, our own
inclination, and perhaps business has called us to go the other way, yet
a strange impression upon the mind, from we know not what springs, and by
we know not what power, shall overrule us to go this way; and it shall
afterwards appear that had we gone that way, which we should have gone,
and even to our imagination ought to have gone, we should have been
ruined and lost. Upon these and many like reflections I afterwards made
it a certain rule with me, that whenever I found those secret hints or
pressings of mind to doing or not doing anything that presented, or going
this way or that way, I never failed to obey the secret dictate; though I
knew no other reason for it than such a pressure or such a hint hung upon
my mind. I could give many examples of the success of this conduct in
the course of my life, but more especially in the latter part of my
inhabiting this unhappy island; besides many occasions which it is very
likely I might have taken notice of, if I had seen with the same eyes
then that I see with now. But it is never too late to be wise; an