A supplement to The Morning-exercise at Cripple-Gate, or, Several more cases of conscience practically…

7. Take sit time for the getting knowledge. You have a great deal to learn, you had need be early up, that you may have the most time, and the best time. Begin young, before your minds be corrupted with errors, or possessed with prejudices; before you have learned too much of those things which must be unlearned, if ever you would learn the things of God. It is a great advantage in this case, when Men are instructed in the Scriptures from their childhood, ¹when the first thing they learn is to know God and Christ and themselves, their own condition, their duty, their hopes. The time of youth is the best time for getting knowledge, as of other things, so of Spiritual things.² There is then least within to keep knowledge out, and what is then received, usually enters most deeply, and proves to be most durable, The more pliable the wax is, the deeper the impression, and the deeper the impression is, the more like it is to last. Train up a Child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it, Prov. 22.6. It is I am sure a preposterous course, to learn other things before you learn what is most necessary: to get a Trade, before you have a Religion: to learn to know the World, before you know God.

7. Take sit time for the getting knowledge. You have a great deal to learn, you had need be early up, that you may have the most time, and the best time. Begin young, before your minds be corrupted with errors, or possessed with prejudices; before you have learned too much of those things which must be unlearned, if ever you would learn the things of God. It is a great advantage in this case, when Men are instructed in the Scriptures from their childhood, ¹when the first thing they learn is to know God and Christ and themselves, their own condition, their duty, their hopes. The time of youth is the best time for getting knowledge, as of other things, so of Spiritual things.² There is then least within to keep knowledg out, and what is then received, usually enters most deeply, and proves to be most durable, The more pliable the wax is, the deeper the impression, and the deeper the impression is, the more like it is to last. Train up a Child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it,