t with in the rest. Here I read Hobbes
and Machiavel, Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury, Tindal and Chubb. Here I
first saw the works of Cudworth and Chillingworth, and here too I first
found the entire works of Bacon and Newton, of Locke and Boyle. Here
also I read the works of some of the older defenders of the faith.
Grotius on the truth of the Christian religion I had read much earlier.
I had used it as a school book, translating it both out of Latin into
English, and out of English back into Latin, imprinting it thereby
almost word for word upon my memory. I had also read the work of his
commentator on the causes of incredulity. Leland on the deistical
writers, and Paley's Evidences, and others, I read after. But in this
great old library I met with numbers of interesting and important works
that I have never met with since. And here, in the dimly lighted
antiquated rooms, I used to fill my mind with a world of facts, and
thoughts, and fancies, and then go away to meditate upon them while
travelling on my way, or sitting in my room, or lying on my bed. Day and
night, alone and in company, these were the things which filled my mind
and exercised my thoughts.

And having a rather retentive memory, and considerable powers of
imagination, I was able at times to bring almost all the things of
importance which I had met with in my reading, before my mind, and
compare them both with each other, and with all that was already in my
memory. And whatever appeared to me most rational, most scriptural, I
treasured for future use, allowing the rest to drift away into
forgetfulness.

No one can imagine the happiness I found in this my search after truth,
except those who have experienced the like. I seemed at times to live in
a region of the highest and divinest bliss. Every fresh discovery of
truth, every detection of old error, every enlargement of my views,
brought unspeakable rapture; and had it not been for the
narrow-mindedness of some of my friends, the restraints of established
creeds, and the thought of the trials which my mental revels might some
day bring on me and my family, my life would have been a heaven on
earth.

Perhaps I read too much, or too greedily and variously. Would it not in
any case have been better for me to have refrained from reading the
writings of such a host of heretics, infidels, and mere natural
philosophers? It is certain that what I attempted was too much for my
powers, and too vast for one man'