times there had been divers Presbyterian nonconformists, who earnestly pleaded for parish discipline: to subdue whom, divers canons were made, which served the turn against these meetings of the conformable puritans, and against going from their own parish churches, though the old Presbyterians were dead, and very few succeeded them. About as many nonconformists as counties were left; and those few stuck most at subscription and ceremonies, which were the hinderance of their ministry, and but few of them studied, or understood, the Presbyterian or Independent, disciplinary causes.

But when these conformable puritans were thus prosecuted, it bred in them hard thoughts of bishops and their courts, as enemies to serious piety, and persecutors of that which they should promote. Suffering induced this opinion and aversion; and the ungodly rabble rejoiced at their troubles, and applauded the bishops for it, and were every where ready to set the apparitors on them, or to ask them, "Are you holier and wiser than the bishops ?" So that by this time the puritans took the bishops to be captains; and the chancellors, archdeacons, commissaries, officials, and apparitors, their officers, and the enemies of serious godliness; and the vicious rabble to be as their army to suppress true conscientious obedience to God, and care of men's salvation. The censured clergy and officers, on the other hand, took the censurers to be schismatics, and enemies to the Church, unfit to be endured, and fit to be prosecuted with reproach and punishment; so that the said puritans took it to be but the common enmity that, since Cain's days, hath been in the world, between the serpent's and the woman's seed. When the persons of bishops, chancellors, officials, apparitors, &c, were come under such repute, it is easy to believe what would be said against their office. And the more the bishops thought to cure this by punishment, the more they increased the opinion that they were persecuting enemies of godliness, and the captains of the profane.

:

When such sinful beginnings had prepared men, the civil contentions arising, those called puritans, were mostly against that side to which they saw the bishops and their neighbors enemies. And they were for their punishment the more, because it seemed desirable to reform the bishops, and restore the liberty of those whom they prosecuted for the manner of their serving God. Yet they desired, wherever I was, to have lived peaceably at home; but the drunkards and rabble that formerly hated them, when they saw the war beginning, grew enraged for if a man did but pray and sing a psalm in his house, they would cry, "Down with the Roundheads!" (a word then new made for them,) and put them in fear of sudden violence. Afterward they brought the king's soldiers to plunder them of their goods, which made them fain to run into holes to hide their persons: and when their goods were gone, and their lives in continual danger, they were forced to fly for food and shelter. To go among those that hated them, they durst not, when they could not dwell among such at home. And thus thousands ran into the parliament's garrisons, and, having nothing there to live upon, became soldiers.' (pp. 33-36.)

The elements of which society was composed at that time were such that nothing short of a civil convulsion could have been apprehended

by those who carefully watched the signs of the times.' The king and his party adhered to the system of episcopacy as established by law, with all those obnoxious features which were so offensive to the taste and judgment of truly enlightened Christians. On the other hand, the Presbyterians, Independents, Baptists, Quakers, and various other sectarists, all just emerging from the darkness and despotism of popery, seeing the Episcopal Church leagued with monarchy, by which it was protected and supported, waged a war against both with a perseverance urged on by an implacable hatred—a hatred engendered by various oppressions and persecutions-until they succeeded in prostrating the throne and nearly extirpating episcopacy from the land.

Baxter was a friend to the monarchy. He likewise believed in episcopacy, provided it could be so modified as to be identified with the civil and religious rights of the people. But he also sided from principle and conscience with the puritans, while he disapproved of the Presbyterians, the Anabaptists, and Quakers. In a word, he chose and acted for himself, guided by a laborious and conscientious research into the records of the Church as it existed in the primitive days of Christianity. This threw him into a position in which he was compelled to receive the blows of each opposing party. He vainly thought he could successfully repel the onsets of all, and reconcile them together. Vain thought indeed! How erroneously did he estimate the strength of human passions, the pride of opinion, the obstinacy of sectarian jealousy, and the insatiable character of ambition, as well as the little that conscience and judgment had to do in regulating and adjusting the jarring sentiments and interests of that turbulent period! His pious labors, however, were not lost. For though he found the strength of his adversaries an overmatch for the potency of his arm, his efforts tended in some measure to check the fury of headlong zealots, and posterity have appreciated his labors, and profited by the tears, the prayers, and the writings of Richard Baxter, the son of peace. Let none therefore despair, however fruitless their efforts may be for the present. 'In due time they shall reap, if they faint not.'

But though Baxter felt the principle of loyalty in his heart, such were the corruptions which surrounded the king and his profligate court; and such the unchristian conduct of most of the prelates who rallied around the throne, that he sided with the parliament as the least of two evils, and as being more likely to subserve the general interests of religion and the cause of liberty and humanity. He accordingly attached himself to the parliament, in which were found a number of distinguished individuals no less eminent for their civil virtues than they were for their religious principles and literary attainments. With a view also of diffusing among the soldiers correct religious and civil

principles, Baxter entered the army, not as a combatant, but as a minister of Jesus Christ. His account of his disputes with the various sects which composed Cromwell's army is curious in itself, and affords a striking evidence of the enthusiasm of the times, as well as the vain hope of introducing into such discordant materials any thing like uniformity in religious sentiment, or even of regularity in Christian conduct. We admire, indeed, the motive which induced the pious and indefatigable Baxter to embark in such a hazardous enterprise, as well as the zeal and fidelity with which he executed his high trust as an ambassador of Jesus Christ; but we at the same time have additional evidence of the tenacity with which the human mind, especially when ignorance and fanaticism hold dominion over it, will cleave to a favorite theory, however absurd and ridiculous it may be in the estimation of common sense. We give the following extract from Baxter's own account of his reasons for entering the army and of his employment while there :

Naseby being not far from Coventry, where I was, and the noise of the victory being loud in our ears, and I having two or three who had been my intimate friends in Cromwell's army, whom I had not seen for above two years, I was desirous of seeing whether they were dead or alive; so to Naseby field I went two days after the fight, and thence by the army's quarters before Leicester, to seek my acquaintance. When I found them, I stayed with them a night; and understood from them the state of the army much better than ever I had done before. We that lived quietly in Coventry kept to our old principles, and thought all others had done so too. Except a very few inconsiderable persons, we were unfeignedly for king and parliament; we believed that the war was only to save the parliament and kingdom from papists and delinquents, and to remove the dividers, that the king might again return to his parliament; and that no changes might be made in religion, but by the laws which had his free consent. We took the true happiness of king and people, Church and state, to be our end, and so we understood the covenant, engaging both against papists and schismatics; and when the court news-book told the world of the swarms of Anabaptists in our armies, we thought it had been a mere lie, because it was not so with us, nor in any of the garrisons or county forces about us. But when I came to the army, among Cromwell's soldiers, I found a new face of things which I never dreamt of; I heard the plotting heads very hot upon that which intimated their intention to subvert both Church and state. Independency and Anabaptistry were more prevalent; Antinomianism and Arminianism were equally distributed; and Thomas Moor's followers (a weaver of Wisbitch and Lynn, of excellent parts) had made some shifts to join these two extremes together.

Abundance of the common troopers, and many of the officers, I found to be honest, sober, orthodox men; others were tractable, ready to hear the truth, and of upright intentions. But a few proud, self-conceited, hot-headed sectaries had got into the highest places, and were Crom

well's chief favorites; and by their very heat and activity bore down the rest, or carried them along with them. These were the soul of the army, though much fewer in number than the rest, being indeed not one to twenty in it; their strength being in the generals, in Whalley's and in Rich's regiments of horse, and among the new-placed officers in many of the rest.

I perceived that they took the king for a tyrant and an enemy, and really intended absolutely to master him or to ruin him. They thought if they might fight against him, they might also kill or conquer him; and if they might conquer, they were never more to trust him farther than he was in their power. They thought it folly to irritate him either by war or contradiction in parliament, if so be they must needs take him for their king, and trust him with their lives when they had thus displeased him. "What were the lords of England," said they, "but William the conqueror's colonels; or the barons, but his majors; or the knights, but his captains!" They plainly showed that they thought God's providence would cast the trust of religion and the kingdom upon them as conquerors; they made nothing of all the most wise and godly in the armies and garrisons, that were not of their way. Per fas aut nefas, By law or without it, they were resolved to take down, not only bishops, and liturgy, and ceremonies, but all who did withstand them. They were far from thinking of a moderate episcopacy, or of any healing method between the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians; they most honored the Separatists, Anabaptists, and Antinomians; but Cromwell and his council took on them to join themselves to no party, but to be for the liberty of all. Two sorts, I perceived, they did so commonly and bitterly speak against, that it was done in mere design, to make them odious to the soldiers, and to all the land; and these were the Scots, and with them all Presbyterians, but especially the ministers; whom they called priests, and priestbyters, dryvines, and the dissemblymen, and such like. The committees of the several counties, and all the soldiers that were under them, that were not of their mind and way, were the other objects of their displeasure. Some orthodox captains of the army partly acquainted me with all this, and I heard much of it from the mouths of the leading sectaries themselves. This struck me to the very heart, and made me fear that England was lost by those that it had taken for its chief friends.

Upon this I began to blame other ministers and myself. I saw that it was the ministers that had lost all, by forsaking the army, and betaking themselves to an easier and quieter way of life. When the earl of Essex went out first, each regiment had an able preacher; but at Edghill fight, almost all of them went home; and as the sectaries increased, they were the more averse to go into the army. It is true, I believe now, that they had little invitation; and it is true, that they could look for little welcome, and great contempt and opposition, beside all other difficulties and dangers; but it is as true, that their worth and labor, in a patient, self-denying way, would probably have preserved most of the army, and have defeated the contrivances of the sectaries, saved the king, the parliament, and the land. And if it had brought reproach upon themselves from the malicious, who called them VOL. IV.-April, 1833.

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Military Levites, the good which they had done would have wiped off that blot, much better than the contrary course would have done.

I reprehended myself also, who had before rejected an invitation. from Cromwell, when he lay at Cambridge with that famous troop with which he began his army. His officers purposed to make their troop a gathered Church, and they all subscribed an invitation to me to be their pastor, and sent it me to Coventry. I sent them a denial, reproving their attempt, and told them wherein my judgment was against the lawfulness and convenience of their way, and so I heard no more from them; but afterward meeting Cromwell at Leicester, he expostulated with me for denying them. These very men, that then invited me to be their pastor, were the men that afterward headed much of the army, and some of them were the forwardest in all our changes; which made me wish that I had gone among them, however it had been interpreted; for then all the fire was in one spark.

When I had informed myself, to my sorrow, of the state of the army, Captain Evanson (one of my orthodox informers) desired me yet to come to their regiment, which was the most religious, most valiant, and most successful of all the army; but in as much danger as any one whatsoever. I was unwilling to leave my studies, and friends, and quietness, at Coventry, to go into an army so contrary to my judgment; but I thought the public good commanded me, and so I gave him some encouragement. Whereupon he told his colonel, (Whalley,) who also was orthodox in religion, but engaged by kindred and interest to Cromwell; who invited me to be chaplain to his regiment. I told him I would take but a day's time to deliberate, and would send him an answer or else come to him.

As soon as I came home to Coventry, I called together an assembly of ministers; Dr. Bryan, Dr. Grew, and many others. I told them the sad news of the corruption of the army, and that I thought all we had valued was likely to be endangered by them; seeing this army having first conquered at York, and now at Naseby, and having left the king no visible army but Goring's, the fate of the whole kingdom was likely to follow the disposition and interest of the conquerors. We had sworn to be true to the king and his heirs in the oath of allegiance. All our soldiers here think that the parliament is faithful to the king, and have no other purpose themselves. If the king and parliament, Church and state, be ruined by those men, and we look on and do nothing to hinder it, how are we true to our allegiance and to the covenant, which bindeth us to defend the king, and to be against schism, as well as against popery and profaneness? For my part, said I, I know that my body is so weak, that it is likely to hazard my life to be among them; I expect their fury should do little less than rid me out of the way; and I know one man cannot do much among them but yet, if your judgment take it to be my duty, I will venture my life; perhaps some other minister may be drawn in, and then some more of the evil may be prevented.

The ministers finding my own judgment for it, and being moved with the cause, did unanimously give their judgment for my going.Hereupon, I went straight to the committee, and told them that I had an invitation to the army, and desired their consent to go. They con