“Here by the way,” he says, “I cannot but mention, and I think I can never forget, a handsome and deserved check that mine own heart, meeting with a special occasion, did give me, upon the laying down of the other task, and the undertaking of this, for my daring to enter either upon the one or the other. That very day wherein I first set pen to paper to draw up the description of the Temple, having but immediately before laid aside my thoughts of the description of the Land, I was necessarily called out, towards the evening, to go to view a piece of ground of mine own, concerning which some litigiousness was emerging, and about to grow. The field was but a mile from my constant residence and habitation, and it had been in mine owning divers years together; and yet till that very time, had I never seen it, nor looked after it, nor so much as knew whereabout it lay. It was very unlikely I should find it out myself, being so utterly ignorant of its situation; yet because I desired to walk alone, for the enjoying of my thoughts upon that task that I had newly taken in hand, I took some direction which way to go, and would venture to find out the field myself alone. I had not gone far, but I was at a loss; and whether I went right or wrong I could not tell; and if right thither, yet I knew not how to do so farther; and if wrong I knew not which way would prove the right, and so in seeking my ground I had lost myself. Here my heart could not but take me to task; and, reflecting upon what my studies were then, and had lately been upon, it could not but call me fool; and methought it spake as true to me, as ever it had done in all my life,—but only when it called me sinner. A fool that was so studious, and had been so searching about things remote, and that so little concerned my interest,—and yet was so neglective of what was near me, both in place, and in my particular concernment! And a fool again, who went about to describe to others, places and buildings that lay so many hundred miles off, as from hence to Canaan, and under so many hundred years' ruins,—and yet was not able to know, or find the way to a field of mine own, that lay so near me!