scorning religion, wh. I had no temptation unto in regard of my
education. About ten years of age I had some notions of God: for, in
some frighting or danger, I have prayed unto God, & found manifest
answer: ye remembrance whereof, many years after, made me think that
God did love me: but it made me no whit the better. After I was twelve
years old, I began to have some more savor of religion: & I thought I
had more understanding in divinity than many of my years," etc. Yes, he
evidently had. And though the kind of "divinity" which had trained his
soul was of a grim sort, his own purity and gentleness of spirit
softened it while accepting it. He adds,--"Yet I was still very wild &
dissolute: & as years came on, my lusts grew stronger, but yet under
some restraint of my natural reason, whereby I had that command of
myself that I could turn into any form. I would, as occasion required,
write letters, &c. of mere vanity; & if occasion was, I could write
savoury & godly counsel." Seeing, however, that he was made a Justice of
the Peace when eighteen years of age, the inference is a fair one--his
own self-accusation to the contrary notwithstanding--that he was known
in his own neighborhood as a youth of extraordinary excellence of
character.

It would appear from the entries in his father's diaries that he was a
member of college some eighteen months. Why he left before completing
his course is to find its explanation for us either in the extreme
sickness before referred to as visited upon him there, or in the
agreeable "change in his condition," as the awkward and sheepish phrase
is, which immediately followed. The latter alternative leaves scope and
offers temptations for such inventiveness of fancy about details and
incidents, whys and wherefores, as the absence of all but the following
stingy revelations may justify. The good Adam, after recording, in
November, 1604, and in the ensuing March, two mysterious rides with his