Perhaps when I wrote these things down I did not foresee that the writings of our own stories would be so much the fashion in England, or so agreeable to others to read, as I find custom and the humour of the times has caused it to be. If any one that reads my story pleases to make the same just reflections which I acknowledge I ought to have made, he will reap the benefit of my misfortunes perhaps more than I have done myself. ’Tis evident by the long series of changes and turns which have appeared in the narrow compass of one private, mean person’s life, that the history of men’s lives may be many ways made useful and instructing to those who read them, if moral and religious improvement and reflections are made by those that write them.
There remains many things in the course of this unhappy life of mine, though I have left so little a part of it to speak of, that is worth giving a large and distinct account of, and which gives room for just reflections of a kind which I have not made yet. Particularly, I think it just to add how, in collecting the various changes and turns in my affairs, I saw clearer than ever I had done before how an invincible overruling Power, a hand influenced from above, governs all our actions of every kind, limits all our designs, and orders the events of everything relating to us.
And from this observation it necessarily occurred to me how just it was that we should pay the homage of all events to Him; that as He guided, and had even made the chain of cause and consequences, which nature in general strictly obeyed, so to Him should be given the honour of all events, the consequences of those causes, as the first Mover and Maker of all things.
I, who had hitherto lived, as might be truly said, without God in the world, began now to see farther into all those things than I had ever yet been capable of before, and this brought me at last to look with shame and blushes upon such a course of wickedness as I had gone through in the world. I had been bred, indeed, to nothing of either religious or moral knowledge. What I gained of either was, first, by the little time of civil life which I lived in Scotland, where my abhorrence of the wickedness of my captain and comrade, and some sober, religious company I fell into, first gave me some knowledge of good and evil, and showed me the beauty of a sober, religious life, though, with my leaving that country, it soon left me too; or, secondly, the modest hints and just reflections of my steward, whom I called my tutor, who was a man of sincere religion, good principles, and a real, true penitent for his past miscarriages. Oh! had I with him sincerely repented of what was past, I had not for twenty-four years together lived a life of levity and profligate wickedness after it.
But here I had, as I said, leisure to reflect and to repent, to call to mind things past, and, with a just detestation, learn, as Job says, to abhor myself in dust and ashes.
It is with this temper that I have written my story. I would have all that design to read it prepare to do so with the temper of penitents, and remember with how much advantage they may make their penitent reflections at home, under the merciful dispositions of Providence, in peace, plenty, and ease, rather than abroad, under the discipline of a transported criminal, as my wife and my tutor, or under the miseries and distresses of a shipwrecked wanderer, as my skipper or captain of the sloop, who, as I hear, died a very great penitent, labouring in the deserts and mountains to find his way home to Virginia, by the way of Carolina, whither the rest of the crew reached after infinite dangers and hardships; or in exile, however favourably circumstanced, as mine, in absence from my family, and for some time in no probable view of ever seeing them any more.
Such, I say, may repent with advantage; but how few are they that seriously look in till their way is hedged up and they have no other way to look!
Here, I say, I had leisure to repent. How far it pleases God to give the grace of repentance where He gives the opportunity of it is not for me to say of myself. It is sufficient that I recommend it to all that read this story, that, when they find their lives come up in any degree to any similitude of cases, they will inquire by me, and ask themselves, Is not this the time to repent? Perhaps the answer may touch them.
I have only to add to what was then written, that my kind friends the Spaniards, finding no other method presented for conveying me to my home—that is to say, to Virginia—got a license for me to come in the next galleons, as a Spanish merchant, to Cadiz, where I arrived safe with all my treasure; for he suffered me to be at no expenses in his house; and from Cadiz I soon got my passage on board an English merchantship for London, from whence I sent an account of my adventures to my wife, and where, in about five months more, she came over to me, leaving with full satisfaction the management of all our affairs in Virginia in the same faithful hands as before.