SHOULD PRESENTIMENTS BE TRUSTED ? 229

sence of mind enough to do what I might have done; much less
what now, after much consideration and preparation, I might be
able todo. Indeed, after serious thinking of these things, I should
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 it being possible.

This renewed a contemplation which often had come to my
thoughts in former time, when first | 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 hesita-
tion 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 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 ima-
gination 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 J found those secret hints or
pressings of my mind to doing or not doing anything that pre-
sented, or to going this way or that way, I never failed to obey
the secret dictate, though I knew no other reason for it than that
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 saw with now. But it: is 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 |