106 The Conversion of Mary Htirll. 



[p. 4] When they were removed by Death, it was my Lot to be put 

 Apprentice in a carnal Family [with one Walter Martyn, a Butcher, 21st 

 June, 1671] by the appointment of the publick magistrate in Marlborough, 

 for eight years, to learn to make Bone-lace, which time I accordingly served. 

 At the time I went to them, I was a stranger to God. There was in me a 

 carnal Heart, opposite to all that was Good ; in the Kemembrance of which 

 I have Eeason to be truly humbled, and do always lay myself low at the 

 Footstool of God's Grace. ... I had liv'd in this Place four years, 

 before I was convinc'd of Sin. I then rejoic'd when the Sabbath was come, 

 that I might have time for Kecreations, my business on that Day being to 

 walk about to see new Places. 1 had Companions like myself to walk with 

 me ... [p. 5]* . . . as to those I then lived with, I don't remem- 

 ber they ever told me it was an Evil to break the Sabbath. As for the Word 

 read in that Family, it was but seldom I heard it ; and what I did hear, 

 such was my wicked Heart and Nature, that it was rather a Burden than a 

 Delight to me. . . . 



[It was usually a stipulation in the indentures that an apprentice " 

 should have some religious teaching from the employers, the girls 

 being taught to read the New Testament in English. See a note 

 by Mr. Gwillim, in Wilts Notes and Queries, ii. 388. — Mary Hurll 

 observes that the Bible was in most cases the means providentially 

 used for awakening the soul. It may be remembered that it was 

 a text from the Apochrypha, Ecclesiastes, ii. 10, which rescued 

 Bunyan from despair. In Mary's own case the Scriptures had not 

 been familiar, but (like Bunyan himself, about 1652)^ she was, 

 about 1675, accessible to a dream. She thus continues : — ] 



The way that [God] took to convince me of Sin was by a Dream, when I 

 was about twelve years of age. I dream'd that I was walking with my 

 Companions in a large Common, which since I have often thought did fitly 

 represent the Common way to Hell, which I was then in. Before me i saw 

 a great Pit, which I was obliged to go to, and could not [p. 6J turn back 

 again. As I came near it, I saw a Ballance hang over the middle of the 

 Pit, I observ'd a great many sitting about the brink of it ; and as I looked 

 down into the Pit, I could see no Bottom, and looking up to the Balance, I 

 could discern nothing it hung bj'. I thought every man that sat round that 

 Pit, or came near it, was to be weighed in that Ballance, and every one that 

 turn'd the Ballance was to be cast into the pit, . . . and whilst I 

 trembled . . . methought there came a young man to me and bade me 

 sit down, and he would tell me the meaning of all these things. He told me 

 that the Pit I saw was the Pit of Hell, and that the Ballance that hung over 



' See Bunyan's account of his own dream. Grace Abounding, § 53, pp. 

 311 — 12. And for the reference to Ecclesiastes Ibid, §§ 62 — 65, pp. 314—5 

 (Oxon. 1879). 



