st all
imputations, and might even boast themselves--as St. Paul did--of a
surplusage of merits of some sort, when registering the barometer and
the thermometer of their religious experience were the most unrelenting
self-accusers. It is safe to say, as a general thing, that those who in
that introspection, in the measurement of their heats and chills of
piety, grieved most deeply and found the most ingenious causes for
self-infliction were either the most calculating hypocrites or the most
truly godly. To which of the two classes any one particular individual
might belong could not always be infallibly concluded from what he
wrote. That comfort-loving and greed-indulging, yet picturesque, old
sinner, Samuel Pepys, Esq., did not profess to keep a religious diary.
But many such diaries have been kept by men who might have covered
alternate pages with matter similar to his own, or with worse. We must
interpret the religious diaries of that age by aids independent of
those which their contents furnish us. John Winthrop, writing of his
youth when he had grown to the full exalted stature of Christian
manhood, and though sweetly mellowed in the graces of his character by
genial ripening from within his soul, was still a Puritan of the
severest standard theologically, and, by principle, charges himself with
heinous sin. We feel assured that he was not only guiltless of any folly
or error that would deserve such a designation, but that he even
overstated the degree of his addiction to the lighter human faults. Only
after such a preliminary assertion of incredulity as to any literal
truth in them, could we consent to copy his own words, as follows:--"In
my youth I was very lewdly disposed, inclining unto & attempting (so far
as my heart enabled me) all kinds of wickedness, except swearing &
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. H