The Confessio reveals a young man brought to crisis in life through enslavement and captivity, who emerges from fear, grief and loneliness to become a man of prayer, full of zeal and strong in the Holy Spirit:

" . . .But after I reached Ireland I used to pasture the flock each day and I used to pray many times a day. More and more did the love of God, and my fear of him and faith increase, and my spirit was moved so that in a day [I said] from one up to a hundred prayers, and in the night a like number; besides I used to stay out in the forests and on the mountain and I would wake up before daylight to pray in the snow, in icy coldness, in rain, and I used to feel neither ill nor any slothfulness, because, as I now see, the Spirit was burning in me at that time. ." Confessio 16

Above: Sliabh Mis today (Mount Slemish)