w, after so much consideration
and preparation, I might be able to do. Indeed, after serious thinking
of these things, I would be very melancholy, and sometimes it would last
a great while; but I resolved it at last all into thankfulness to that
Providence which had delivered me from so many unseen dangers, and had
kept me from those mischiefs, which I could no way have 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 to my thoughts in
former time, 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 another way; nay, when sense, our own inclination, and perhaps
business, has called 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 over-rule us to go this way; and it shall afterwards appear, that
had we gone that way which we would 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
my mind, to doing or not doing any thing that presented, or to going
this way or that way, I never failed to obey the secret dictate; though
I new no other reason for it, than that such a pressure, or such an
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 saw with now: but 'tis never too late to be wise;
and I cannot but advise all considering men, whose lives are attended
with such extraordinary incidents as mine, or even though not so
extraordinary, not to slight such secret intimations of Providence, let
them come from what invisible intelligence they will; that I shall not
discuss, and perhaps cannot account for; but certainly they are a proof
of the converse of spirits, and the secret co