It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy the life I now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days:  and now I changed both my sorrows and my joys:  my very desires altered, my affections changed their gusts, and my delights were perfectly new from what they were at my first coming, or indeed for the two years past.

Before, as I walked about, either on my hunting, or for viewing the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me, to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner, locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption.  In the midst of the greatest composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm, and make me wring my hands, and weep like a child:  sometimes it would take me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two together:  this was still worse to me; but if I could burst into tears, or give vent to my feelings by words, it would go off; and my grief being exhausted, would abate.

But now I began to exercise myself with new thoughts; I daily read the word of God, and applied all the comforts of it to my present state.  One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these words, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee:”  immediately it occurred that these words were to me; why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and man?  “Well then,” said I, “if God does not forsake me, of what ill consequence can it be, or what matters it, though the world should forsake me; seeing on the other hand, if I had all the world, and should lose the favour and blessing of God, there would be no comparison in the loss?”

From this moment I began to conclude in my mind, that it was possible for me to be more happy in this forsaken, solitary condition, than it was probable I should ever have been in any other particular state in the world; and with this thought I was going to give thanks to God for bringing me to this place.  I know not what it was, but something shocked my mind at that thought and I durst not speak the words.  “How canst thou be such a hypocrite,” said I, even audibly, “to pretend to be thankful for a condition, which, however thou mayest endeavour to be contented with, thou wouldest rather pray heartily to be delivered from?” Here I stopped:  but though I could not say I thanked God for being here, yet I sincerely gave thanks to God for opening my eyes, by whatever afflicting providences, to see the former condition of my life, and to mourn for my wickedness, and repent.  I never opened the Bible, or shut it, but my very soul within me blessed God for directing my friend in England, without any order of mine, to pack it up among my goods; and for assisting me afterwards to save it out of the wreck of the ship.