...hath exceeding much refreshment in it:—blessed be His Name for shining upon so dark a heart as mine! You know what my manner of life hath been. Oh, I lived in and loved darkness, and hated light; / was a chief, the chief of sinners. This is true: I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me. O the...

...letter was written to his cousin, Mrs. St. John, containing Cromwell's reference to his early life — " Oh I lived in and loved darkness and hated light; I was a chief, a chief of sinners" — which some of our historians have taken too literally, for their own credit...

...they do not positively exclude it. At the age of thirty-nine he writes to his cousin, Mrs St. John : " You know what my manner of life hath been. Oh, I lived...hated light ; I was a chief, the chief of sinners." So, indeed, said St. Paul. And in the mouth of an earnest Puritan this phrase from Scripture refers,...

...life as utterly vile in the sight of God and man. " You know," he wrote, not many years afterwards, " what my manner of life hath been. Oh ! I lived in and loved darkness, and hated light. I was chief, the chief of sinners. This is true, I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me." ' It is not...

...back on that period long afterwards he wrote : " I lived in and loved darkness, and hated light. I was chief, the chief of sinners. This is true, I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me." Carlyle, on the strength of Warwick's Memoirs, attributes this spiritual straggle to a splenetic and...

...Mrs. St. John, Cromwell confided to her the story of this crisis in his life. " You know," he said, " what my manner of life hath been. Oh, I lived in and...true, I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me." Even now the struggle was not ended. " I live in Meshec, which they say signifies Prolonging ; in Kedar,...

...to his cousin, the wife of Oliver St. John, in 1638. "Oh, I lived in darkness and hated light; I was the chief of sinners. This is true; I hated Godliness, yet God had mercy on me." Seriously to argue from such language as this that Cromwell's early life was vicious, is as monstrous...

...to his cousin, the wife of Oliver St. John, in 1638. "Oh, I lived in darkness and hated light; I was the chief of sinners. This is true; I hated Godliness, yet God had mercy on me." Seriously to argue from such language as this that Cromwell's early life was vicious is as monstrous...

...exceeding much refreshment in it: — blessed be His Name for shining upon so dark a heart as mine ! You know what my manner of life hath been. Oh, I lived...true : I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me. O the riches of His mercy! Praise Him for me; — pray for me, that He who hath begun a good work would...

...from his own language in a subsequent letter to his cousin, Mrs. St. John : " You know," he wrote, "what my manner of life hath been. Oh ! I lived in...This is true, I hated godliness, yet God had mercy upon me." It has however never been wise to take the expressions of a converted penitent literally,...