{Keeping} :: My Commonplace

On Deliverance

Now I began to construe the words mentioned above, "Call on me, and I will deliver you," 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 activity I was in; for tho' 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 to 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.

Robinson Crusoe 

Daniel Defoe

Ch 12, p111