Leaving Westminster School " with no more religion than the satchel on his back," broken down in fortune and depressed in mind, Cowper arrived in the old city of St. Albans. Here the " sense of guilt and the burden of unpardoned sin " laid hold on him.
In this state he opened a Bible, and the first verse he read was this: " Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood " (Rom. 3. 25).
" Immediately," he says, " I saw the sufficiency of the atonement Christ had made, my pardon sealed in His blood. In a moment I believed and received the Gospel."
Thus the author of the hymn beginning, " There is a fountain filled with blood," and many other hymns and poems, was saved.