that I disregarded the deliverance I had received; and I was, as it were, made to ask myself such questions as these, viz.  Have I not been delivered, and wonderfully too, from sickness; from the most distressed condition that could be, and that was so frightful to me? and what notice have I taken of it?  Have I done my part?  God has delivered me, but I have not glorified him; that is to say, I have not owned and been thankful for that as a deliverance:  and how can I expect a greater deliverance?  This touched my heart very much; and immediately I knelt down, and gave God thanks aloud for my recovery from my sickness.

July 4. In the morning I took the Bible; and beginning at the New Testament, I began seriously to read it; and imposed upon myself to read awhile every morning and every night; not binding myself to the number of chapters, but as long as my thoughts should engage me.  It was not long after I set seriously to this work, that I found my heart more deeply and sincerely affected with the wickedness of my past life.  The impression of my dream revived; and the words, “All these things have not brought thee to repentance,” ran seriously in my thoughts.  I was earnestly begging of God to give me repentance, when it happened providentially, the very same day, that, reading the scripture, I came to these words, “He is exalted a Prince and a Saviour; to give repentance, and to give remission.”  I threw down the book; and with my heart as well as my hands lifted up to heaven, in a kind of ecstasy of joy, I cried out aloud, “Jesus, thou son of David!  Jesus, thou exalted Prince and Saviour! give me repentance!” This was the first time in all my life I could say, in the true sense of the words, that I prayed; for now I prayed with a sense of my condition, and with a true scripture view of hope, founded on the encouragement of the word of God:  and from this time, I may say, I began to have hope that God would hear me.

Now I began to construe the words mentioned above, “Call on me, and I will deliver thee,” in a different sense from what I had ever done before; for then I had no notion of any thing being called deliverance, but my being delivered from the captivity I was in:  for though I was indeed at large in the place, yet the island was certainly a prison to me, and that in the worst sense in the world.  But now I learned to take it in another sense:  now I looked back upon my past life with such horror, and my sins appeared so dreadful, that my soul sought nothing of God but deliverance from the load of guilt that bore down all my comfort.  As for my solitary life, it was nothing; I did not so much as pray to be delivered from it, or think of it; it was all of no consideration, in comparison with this.  And I add this part here, to hint to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true sense of things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing than deliverance from affliction.  But, leaving this part, I return to my Journal.