[12] See note on verse fifty of the Meditations on Heaven.—Ed.
[13] This is a common temptation. Job felt it, and murmured at having been born, Job 3:3, and 10:18, 19. Jeremiah passed through the same experience, Jeremiah 20:14, 15. Bunyan had the same bitter feelings, and wished himself a dog or toad; see Grace Abounding, No. 104. Colonel Gardener was similarly tried. How awful is the havoc that sin has made with human happiness.-Ed.
[14] The finest particles or atoms of matter—
'As thick, as numberless 'As the gay motes that people the sunbeams.'—Milton.—Ed.
[15] How does this remind us of the awfully impressive cries of the man in the iron cage—'O, eternity, eternity! how shall I grapple with the misery that I must meet with in eternity!' 'A thousand deaths live in him, he not dead.'—Ed.
[16] From the Saxon scendan, to violate, spoil, revile; see Imperial Dictionary.—Ed.
[17] Altered by poetical license from 'bran.' Chaucer, in one instance, spells it 'bren,' to rhyme with men.—Ed.
[18] This evidently refers to a coin value four-penny half-penny, and, like a cracked groat, not so much prized as good coin. In Turner's Remarkable Providences, folio, 1697, pages 28, is a very singular allusion to one of these coins:—'Christian, the wife of R. Green, of Brenham, Somersetshire, in 1663, made a covenant with the devil. He pricked the fourth finger off her right hand, between the middle and upper joint, and took two drops of her blood on his finger, giving her four-pence half-penny. He then vanished, leaving a smell of brimstone behind.'—Ed.
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A Book for Boys and Girls Or, Temporal Things Spritualized.