Deeply am I persuaded of Luther's position, that no man can worthily
estimate, or feel in the depth of his being, the Incarnation and
Crucifixion of the Son of God who is a stranger to the terror of
immortality as ingenerate in man, while it is yet unquelled by the faith
in God as the Almighty Father.
Book I. Part I. p. 2.
But though my conscience would trouble me when I sinned, yet divers
sins I was addicted to, and oft committed against my conscience; which
for the warning of others I will confess here to my shame.
1. I was much addicted when I feared correction to lie, that I might
scape.
2. I was much addicted to the excessive gluttonous eating of apples
and pears, &c.
3. To this end, and to concur with naughty boys that gloried in evil,
I have oft gone into other men's orchards, and stolen their fruit,
when I had enough at home, &c.
There is a childlike simplicity in this account of his sins of his
childhood which is very pleasing.
Ib. p. 5, 6.
And the use that God made of books, above ministers, to the benefit of
my soul made me somewhat excessively in love with good books; so that
I thought I had never enough, but scraped up as great a treasure of
them as I could. * * * It made the world seem to me as a carcase that
had neither life nor loveliness; and it destroyed those ambitious
desires after literate fame which were the sin of my childhood. * * *
And for the mathematics, I was an utter stranger to them, and never
could find in my heart to divert any studies that way.
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