"Will you demand Grace at my hand,
and challenge what is mine?
Will you teach me whom to set free
and thus my Grace confine?
You sinners are, and such a share
as sinners may expect;
Such you shall have; for I do save
none but my own Elect.
"Yet to compare your sin with their's
who liv'd a longer time,
I do confess yours is much less,
though every sin's a crime.
A Crime it is, therefore in bliss
you may not hope to dwell;
But unto you I shall allow
the easiest room in Hell."
Thomas White wrote a book for children which certainly comes under the head of religious books, though its pages held also those frivolous lines "A was an archer who shot at a frog," etc. This dreary volume was entitled a Little Book for Little Children. It contained accounts of short-lived and morbid young Christians, much like those of James Janeway's book. One child of eight wept bitter and inconsolable tears for his sins. One wicked deed was lying. His mother asked him whether he were cold. He answered "Yes" instead of "Forsooth," and afterward doubted whether he really was cold or not. Another sin was whetting his knife on the Sabbath day. Poor Nathaniel Mather whittled on the Lord's day—and hid behind the door while thus sinning. A boy's jack-knife was a powerful force then as now. This book also had accounts of the Christian martyrs and their tortures. This was an English book, first reprinted in Boston in 1702. An edition of Pilgrim's Progress was printed in Boston in 1681, another in 1706, and an illustrated edition in 1744, but I doubt that these were the complete book. Many shortened copies and imitations appeared. One was called The Christian's Metamorphosis Unfolded. Another The Christian Pilgrim. Dr. Neale edited it for children, making, says a modern critic, "a most impudent book." Bunyan also wrote Divine Emblems, which the young were enjoined to read, and he also "bowed his pen to children" and wrote Country Rhimes for Children. For many years no copy of this was known to exist, but one was found in America in recent years, and is now in the British Museum. It is an uncouth mixture of religious phrases and similes and very crude natural history.
And the serpent ſaid unto the woman, Ye ſhall not ſurely die.
GENESIS iii. 4.
THE
HOLY BIBLE
ABRIDGED:
OR, THE
HISTORY
OF THE
Old and New Testament.
Illuſtrated with Notes, and adorned with Cuts,
For the Uſe of Childrens.
Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not. LUKE xviii. 16.