The Lord’s day was kept with peculiar strictness. No victuals were dressed on that day in any family. No member of it was permitted to walk out for recreation, but the whole of the day was spent at the public meeting, or at home in reading, meditation, and prayer, in the family or the closet. It was my custom at that time to recollect as much as I could of the sermons I heard, and to commit it to writing. This practice I began very early, and continued it until I was able from the heads of a discourse to supply the rest myself. For not troubling myself to commit to memory much of the amplification, and writing at home almost as much as I had heard, I insensibly acquired a habit of composing with great readiness; and from this practice I believe I have derived great advantage through life; composition seldom employing so much time as would be necessary to write in long hand any thing I have published. By these means, not being disgusted with these strict forms of religion as many persons of better health and spirits probably might have been (and on which account I am far from recommending the same strictness to others) I acquired in early life a serious turn of mind. Among other things I had at this time a great aversion to _Plays and Romances_, so that I never read any works of this kind except Robinson Crusoe, until I went to the academy. I well remember seeing my brother Timothy reading a book of Knight Errantry, and with great indignation I snatched it out of his hands, and threw it away. This brother afterwards, when he had for some time followed my father’s business (which was that of a Cloth-dresser) became, if possible, more serious than I had been; and after an imperfect education, took up the profession of a minister among the Independents, in which he now continues. While I was at the Grammar School I learned _Mr. Annet’s Short hand_, and thinking I could suggest some improvements in it, I wrote to the Author, and this was the beginning of a correspondence which lasted several years. He was, as I ever perceived, an unbeliever in Christianity and a necessarian. On this subject several letters, written with care on both sides, passed between us, and these Mr. Annet often pressed me to give him leave to publish, but I constantly refused. I had undertaken the defence of Philosophical Liberty, and the correspondence was closed without my being convinced of the fallacy of my arguments, though upon studying the subject regularly, in the course of my academical education afterwards, I became a confirmed Necessarian, and I have through life derived, as I imagine, the greatest advantage from my full persuasion of the truth of that doctrine.