They interested me exceedingly. For works on Painting,
Sculpture, Architecture, I had not the least regard. They seemed to
have no tendency to help me in the work in which I was engaged, and I
had no desire to talk respectable nonsense on such subjects. I was fond
of Ecclesiastical and Civil History, and read most greedily such works
as threw light on the progress of society in learning, science, and
useful arts; in freedom, morals, religion and government. I read many of
the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the history of the
wonderful periods in which they flourished. I was especially fond of
Cicero, Seneca, and Epictetus. All subjects bearing on the great
interests of mankind, and all works revealing the workings of the human
mind and the laws of human nature, seemed to me to bear important
relations to religion and the Bible; and the writings of the great
philosophers, lawyers, and historians, appeared to be almost as much in
my line as Baxter's Christian Directory, or Wesley's Notes on the New
Testament.
Tales of wars and intrigues, and of royal and aristocratic vices and
follies I hated. Yet I was interested in accounts of religious
controversies, and read with eagerness, though with pain and horror, the
tragic and soul-harrowing stories of the deadly conflicts between
Christian piety and anti-Christian intolerance.
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