Thus ends Whitefield's history of his own boyhood. His confession of youthful wickedness is more minute than profitable. It was scarcely wise for a young evangelist of twenty-five, who had attained an unexampled popularity, and thereby brought upon himself the rancour of envious observers, to print such an enumeration of juvenile sins and follies. Indeed, the wisdom of doing this may be justly questioned in any case. A man may and ought to confess to God; but he is under no obligation to confess to men like himself. As already stated, the foregoing details would not have been reproduced in the present work, had it not been that this was necessary to exhibit the imprudent ingenuousness of the youthful preacher, and to show that his own unguarded writings fairly exposed him to some of the bitter pamphleteering with which he was soon attacked. Augustine had written similar Confessions, and so also had Jean Jacques Rousseau; but the world is none the better because Augustine and Rousseau made the world their father confessor. Whitefield's enemies were not slow to use the advantage against him with which he had furnished them; and, even nine years after the publication of his pamphlet, he had to pay a penalty for some of its well-meant, but inconsiderate expressions. "Mr. Whitefield's account of God's dealings with him," said Dr. Lavington, Bishop of Exeter, "is such a boyish, ludicrous, filthy, nasty, and shameless relation of himself, as quite defiles paper, and is shocking to decency and modesty. 'Tis a perfect jakes of uncleanness."[7] The reader, with the "account" unabridged before him, can easily form an opinion of the truthfulness, or rather free-tongued censure, of Whitefield's episcopal castigator. Whitefield assigned a reason for what he did; and, though the sufficiency of that reason may not be admitted, yet all will give Whitefield credit for sincerity and good intentions, and no spiritually minded man will laugh at the penitential spirit which the confessions unquestionably evince. [7] "Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists compared." Part II.