_A short account of his birth and life, till ten years of age._
1. MR. _Thomas Haliburton_, was born at _Duplin_, in the parish of Aberdalgy, (of which his father was sometime minister) on _December 25, 1674_. The three former parts of the following account were wrote by himself: the last is partly extracted from his diary, and partly taken from eye and ear-witnesses.
2. The common occurrences of the life of one in all respects so inconsiderable, are not worth recording; and if recorded, could be of little use either to my self or others. But if I can recount what has past between God and my soul, so as to discover not only the parts of this work, the several advances it made, the opposition of the world, the devil and my own heart; if I can represent this work in its order, it may be of great use to my own establishment; and, should it fall into the hands of any other Christian, it might not be unuseful: for the work of God in all is, as to the substance, the same and uniform; and as face answers to face in a glass, so does one Christian’s experience answer to another’s; and both to the word of God.
3. I came into the world with a nature wholly corrupted, and a heart fully set in me to do evil: and from the morning of my days, though I was under the great light of the gospel, and the inspection of pious parents, and not yet corrupted by custom; yet the imaginations of my heart, and the whole tenor of my life were only evil continually.
4. Indeed, in this period of my life, I had unusual advantages: my parents were eminently religious; I continually heard the sound of divine truth in their instructions, and had the beauty of holiness set before my eyes in their example. They kept me from ill company, and habituated me early to such outwards duties as I was capable of. But this care of my father during his life, (which ended October, 1682,) and of my mother after his death, did not change, but only hide nature. And, though I cannot remember all the particulars, from the fourth or fifth year of my life; yet I do remember the general bent of my mind, which was even then wholly set against God: insomuch, that when I now survey the decalogue, and review this portion of my time, notwithstanding the great distance, I still distinctly remember, and could easily enumerate many instances of the opposition of my heart unto every one of its precepts.
*5. For many years it is true, the sins of this part of my life were entirely out of my thoughts. But when God began to convince me of sin, even those I had long since forgotten, those that were of an older date than any thing else I could remember, and not attended with any such remarkable circumstances, as could be supposed to make a deep impression on my memory, were brought on my mind with unusual distinctness. Whence I cannot but observe: 1. What exact notice the holy God takes of what men pass over as pardonable follies. 2. How just reason we have to fear, that in the strokes we feel in riper years, God is “making us to possess the iniquities of our youth.” 3. What an exact register, conscience, God’s deputy, keeps; how early it begins; how accurate it is (even when it seems to sleep) and how it will justify his severity against sinners at the last day. O how far up will it fetch its accounts of those evils which we mind nothing of! When God shall open our eyes to discern those _prints which he setteth upon the heels of our feet; when the books shall be opened, and the dead, small and great, judged out of the things that are written therein_!