ways found that to
appoint to go away was always crossed by some accident or other, so as
to disappoint and put it off again. And this brings in a story which
otherwise might be thought a needless digression, viz., about these
disappointments being from Heaven.

It came very warmly into my mind one morning, as I was musing on this
particular thing, that as nothing attended us without the direction or
permission of Divine Power, so these disappointments must have something
in them extraordinary, and I ought to consider whether it did not
evidently point out, or intimate to me, that it was the will of Heaven I
should not go. It immediately followed in my thoughts, that, if it
really was from God that I should stay, he was able effectually to
preserve me in the midst of all the death and danger that would surround
me; and that if I attempted to secure myself by fleeing from my
habitation, and acted contrary to these intimations, which I believed to
be divine, it was a kind of flying from God, and that he could cause his
justice to overtake me when and where he thought fit.[27]

These thoughts quite turned my resolutions again; and when I came to
discourse with my brother again, I told him that I inclined to stay and
take my lot in that station in which God had placed me; and that it
seemed to be made more especially my duty, on the account of what I have
said.

My brother, though a very religious man himself, laughed at all I had
suggested about its being an intimation from Heaven, and told me several
stories of such foolhardy people, as he called them, as I was; that I
ought indeed to submit to it as a work of Heaven if I had been any way
disabled by distempers or diseases, and that then, not being able to go,
I ought to acquiesce in the direction of Him, who, having been my Maker,
had an undisputed right of sovereignty in disposing of me; and that then
there had been no difficulty to determine which was the call of his
providence, and which was not; but that I should take it as an
intimation from Heaven that I should not go out of town, only because I
could not hire a horse to go, or my fellow was run away that was to
attend me, was ridiculous, since at the same time I had my health and
limbs, and other servants, and might with ease travel a day or two on
foot, and, having a good certificate of being in perfect health, might
either hire a horse, or take post on the road, as I thought fit.

Then he proceeded to tell m