or twenty savages, and found them pursuing me, and, by the swiftness of
their running, no possibility of my escaping them!

The thoughts of this sometimes sunk 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 not only should not have been able 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 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