quote · Legacy record

Is a man in a small Letter, yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted of the Apple.... He is nature’s fresh picture, newly drawn in oil, which time and much handling dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper, unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith at length it becomes a blurred note-book. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He kisses and loves all, and when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater.... His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loth to use so deceitful an organ.... We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game is our earnest: and his drums, rattles and hobby-horses but the emblems and mocking of man’s business. His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember; and sighs to see what innocence he has outlived. The older he grows, he is a stair lower from God; and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches.... Could he put off his body with his little Coat, he had got eternity without a burthen, and exchanged but one Heaven for another.

Is a man in a small Letter, yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted of the Apple.... He is nature’s fresh picture, newly drawn in oil, which time and much handling dims and defaces. His soul is yet a white paper, unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith at length it becomes a blurred note-book. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He kisses and loves all, and when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater.... His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loth to use so deceitful an organ.... We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game is our earnest: and his drums, rattles and hobby-horses but the emblems and mocking of man’s business. His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherein he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember; and sighs to see what innocence he has outlived. The older he grows, he is a stair lower from God; and, like his first father, much worse in his breeches.... Could he put off his body with his little Coat, he had got eternity without a burthen, and exchanged but one Heaven for another.

In print by 1921 AD · modern

Recorded in a printed collection by this date; the original date of these words is still unknown.