He entered Queen's College, Oxford, at the age of twelve, and took his MA in 1635.
He studied ferociously hard, driven forward by his ambitions after political or ecclesiastical eminence; but, though a churchman, he was not yet a Christian in the true sense. In his early twenties, however, God showed him his sins, and the torment of conviction threw him into such a turmoil that for three months he avoided the company of others and, when addressed, could scarcely utter a coherent sentence.
Slowly he learned to trust Christ, and so found peace.
--J. I. Packer,
A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Crossway, 2010; repr.), 191
