“While I was thus foolish, and blind (_even as a beast before thee!_) my fallen nature began powerfully to discover itself. The seed of the serpent working in my heart, broke forth in words and in deeds. Now pride, anger, and self-will especially, reigned over me. But alas! I then little knew that those accursed tempers proceeded from that source of universal disorder, and all human miseries, _original sin_. I believed that this had brought temporal death into the world, and great disorder into the whole state of the visible creation: but of its subjecting the soul to spiritual, and exposing it to eternal death, I had no apprehension. I had, it is true, conviction whenever I did amiss; told a lie, or fell into any other outward sin. But the Spirit of God, and the holy scriptures alone, I now plainly see, could convince me that my tempers deserved the damnation of hell. And hitherto I was ignorant of both. “When I was about eight years old, I began to love play, and divers other silly pleasures, spending the time I was out of school in catching of birds, playing at ball, and the like. My fondness for these occasioned my frequently breaking the sabbath, which I usually spent either in these vain amusements, or in reading some profane history, or other unprofitable book; and indeed no one so much as told me, that these kinds of employments were any violation of the Lord’s day: my parents, like the rest of their neighbours, esteeming them innocent diversions, harmless amusements. “I did not then know that I ought not on this day _to do mine own pleasure, to speak mine own words_, or think my own thoughts; that I ought to spend it wholly in glorifying God, by praying to him, hearing his word, and reading and meditating therein; _calling the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable_.¹ O the curse of ignorance and evil example! How many souls do these lead into the broad way of destruction! How happy would it have been for my poor soul, if I had known and _remembered my Creator in the days of my youth_! Had I been _brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord_; had I _known the scriptures from my childhood_!² How would it have contributed to prevent my wrong conceptions, and to regulate, at least, in some measure, my whole conduct. ¹ Isaiah lvii. 13. ² Ecclesiastes xii. 1. Ephesians vi. 4. 2 Timothy iii. 15.