*5. For many years it is true, the sins of this part of my life were entirely out of my thoughts. But when God began to convince me of sin, even those I had long since forgotten, those that were of an older date than any thing else I could remember, and not attended with any such remarkable circumstances, as could be supposed to make a deep impression on my memory, were brought on my mind with unusual distinctness. Whence I cannot but observe: 1. What exact notice the holy God takes of what men pass over as pardonable follies. 2. How just reason we have to fear, that in the strokes we feel in riper years, God is “making us to possess the iniquities of our youth.” 3. What an exact register, conscience, God’s deputy, keeps; how early it begins; how accurate it is (even when it seems to sleep) and how it will justify his severity against sinners at the last day. O how far up will it fetch its accounts of those evils which we mind nothing of! When God shall open our eyes to discern those _prints which he setteth upon the heels of our feet; when the books shall be opened, and the dead, small and great, judged out of the things that are written therein_! *6. When I review this first period of my life, what reason have I to be ashamed, and even confounded, to think I have spent ten years of a short life, without almost a rational thought, undoubtedly without any that was not sinful. And this being matter of undoubted experience, I have herein a strong confirmation of my faith, as to the guilt of _Adam_’s sin, and its imputation to his posterity: for, 1. From a child the bent of my soul was “enmity against God.” Nor was this the effect of custom or education, no; there was a sweet conspiracy of precept, discipline and example, to carry me the contrary way. Nor can I charge the fault of this on my constitution of body, or any thing that might in a natural way proceed from my parents. Yet was this enmity so strong as not to be supprest, much less subdued, by the utmost care, and the best outward means. This is undoubted fact. 2. To say, I was thus originally framed without respect to any sin chargeable on me, is a position so full of flat contrariety to all the notions I can entertain of God, to his wisdom, his equity, and his goodness, that I cannot think of it without horror. 3. Penal then this corruption must be, as death and diseases are. And whereof can it be a punishment, if not of _Adam_’s sin? While then these things are so plain in fact, and the deduction so easy from them, whatever subtle arguments any use against this great truth, I have no reason to be moved thereby.