ABSTRACT
‘My name is Brecknock; and I am the eldest son of a wealthy farmer in Galloway. I was naturally of a fierce and ungovernable disposition, which my father unfortunately fostered, instead of checking, by a misguided education. He had imbibed some newfangled opinions of certain French philosophers, 454 and proposed to train me up in a manner directly opposite to that of our ancestors. He not only prevented my being educated in the religion of the country, but taught me, by his example, to ridicule it. He guarded my mind from imbibing any religious principles at all, under the notion of preserving it to maturity, like a rasa tabula, 455 free from all prejudices. In consequence of this, I greedily embraced every licentious opinion, / and was, with warm passions, exposed to temptation and the corruption of bad example, without any principles of reason, morality, or religion, to counteract them; but rather with a bias in their favour. I was not restrained in any whim or caprice, nor subject to any coercion or penalty, for fear of breaking my sprit, and destroying the energies of my freeborn mind.
