I was born on the 30th of September, in the year 1794, in the town of Queensbury, Washington County, State of New York. My father, Asa Brown, belonged to the denomination of "Friend Quakers." His business was that of a farmer. I worked with him chiefly until I was twenty years of age.
During my boyhood I was much deprived of the benefits of education, owing to my father's removing from place to place, in new settlements, they affording him greater facilities for the purchase of cheap land than older ones. By these means he was enabled to have his children settle around him.
Being thus brought up, far from the abodes of the religious sectaries of the day, my ideas of religion were just those which are naturally instilled into the mind by the statements of Scripture, where no priestcraft exists to pervert them, diminish their force or cloud their meaning; consequently, I believed in the Bible just as it read, where the self-evident rendering of the context did not prove it figurative or parabolic.
The idea that revelation from God was unattainable in this age, or that the ancient gifts of the gospel had ceased forever, never entered my head, until I gathered the notion from the creeds of churches with which I became acquainted in after years. I can remember many times, on occasions of sickness among my relatives, while yet quite a boy, retiring to some barn, or other convenient place of the kind, and their being suddenly restored to health, in answer to prayers offered there, by me, in their behalf.
I continued thus until about fifteen years of age, when circumstances caused me to live in settlements where the sects of the day had established some of their churches, and I was unfortunate enough to hear their preaching.
I soon began to lose my pure, simple ideas of God, and imbibe those more generally received; and, shortly after, by listening to the contending opinions of these parties, I found the hitherto simple Bible a perfect mystery.
I had previously been seriously and religiously inclined, but the jarrings and uncertainty of my new ideas shook that simple faith which I had reposed in the Scriptures, and in God, until I began to mix with light or vain company. I at times thought little about such matters, but, in moments of reflection, the Spirit of the Lord would often show me the folly of my conduct, and bring to my remembrance the goodness of God manifested to me in past times.
The Universalist system appeared to me the most reasonable of the various denominations I came in contact with. The horrible hell and damnation theories of most of the other parties, in my idea, were inconsistent with the mercies and love of God.
However, I did not actually join the Universalists. But their doctrines, with respect to the eternity of punishment, etc., savored to me of a more generous and God-like nature, than the contracted notions held by the other denominations, concerning God's purposes towards the human family.
Amidst all the folly which, for short periods, I gave way to, a deep anxiety possessed me to find the truth, and I visited, and, to some extent, mingled with, the religious professors of many of the sects, at their meetings, and took part in the same.