This renewed a contemplation which often had come into my thoughts in former times, 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 that way: nay, when sense, our own inclination, and perhaps business has called us 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 imagination ought to have gone, we should have been ruined and lost.
Esto me hizo considerar algo que, con frecuencia, había pensado antes, cuando empezaba a ver las generosas disposiciones del cielo frente a los peligros a los que nos exponemos en la vida: cuántas veces somos salvados sin darnos cuenta; cuántas veces dudamos o, por así decirlo, titubeamos acerca del camino que debemos seguir y una voz interna nos muestra un camino cuando nosotros pensábamos tomar otro; cuántas veces nuestro sentido común, nuestra tendencia natural o nuestros intereses personales nos invitan a escoger un camino y, sin embargo, un impulso interior, cuyo origen ignoramos, nos empuja a elegir otro y luego advertimos que si hubiésemos seguido el que pensábamos o imaginábamos, nos habríamos visto perdidos y arruinados.