Mr. Shepard under afflictions

From Life of Thomas Shepard [after loss of Shepard's firstborn and (then) only child directly following a great and miraculous deliverance from shipwreck at sea]:

There was no murmuring under the rod. The feeling of his heart was that of a loving child kindly chastised by a tender father; and he saw in every blow a manifestation of divine love, and a corrective of his waywardness. As if the Lord "saw that these waters were not sufficient to wash away my sinfulness, he cast me into the fire. He showed me my weak faith, pride, carnal content, immoderate love of creatures, of my child especially, and begat in me some desires and purposes to fear his name. I considered how unfit I was to go to such a good land as New England with such an unmortified, hard, dark, formal, hypocritical heart; and therefore no wonder if the Lord did thus cross me."