nable life I led all the past part of my days; and now,
having changed both my sorrows and my joys, my very desires altered, my
affections changed their gust, and my delights were perfectly new from
what they were at 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
made 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, and this was still
worse to me; for if I could burst out into tears, or vent myself by
words, it would go off; and the grief, having exhausted itself,
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, 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 all 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 have ever 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 an hypocrite,"
said I, even audibly, "to pretend to be thankful for a condition, which,
however thou mayst endeavour to be contented with, thou wouldst rather
pray heartil