rabble?"

These disputes led Mr. Baxter into a serious examination of ecclesiastical government; and he came to a firm conclusion against "the English Diocesan frame." He was eclectic in his ideas, and saw good and evil in all systems, but to the end of his life he continued a firm anti-Prelatist.

The strength of his mind, however, was by no means expended on ecclesiastical questions. From the beginning of his course, Baxter was above all things, a godly preacher and winner of souls. At Dudley, at Bridgnorth, and then at Kidderminster, he "laboured much in the Lord," visited, prayed, catechised, and preached “as a dying man to dying men." He seems to have neglected nothing that should engage the attention of a good minister of Jesus Christ. He watched over the moral tone of the community; stirred up neighbouring clergy to greater diligence; cared for the poor, spending on them no small part of his income of £60; picked out deserving pupils from schools, and contrived to send them on to the Universities; gave away vast numbers of Bibles and edifying books. A more fervent preacher, a more self-denying and useful pastor, England has never seen.

When the Civil War broke out, Baxter, as might be expected, took the side of the Parliament, though he had no wish whatever to see the monarchy overthrown. All he desired was to have a constitutional and not a despotic king; and in his opinion the real traitors of that time were those evil advisers who fomented the rupture between King Charles and the Parliament of England. He spent two years with the army of Fairfax and Cromwell as a chaplain; but apparently in a perpetual controversy. The multiplication of "the sectaries," and the growing revolutionary tendency of the army greatly disturbed him. He set himself with characteristic ardour to "discourse and dispute the soldiers out of their mistakes, both religious and political." They talked of State democracy, Church democracy, of forms of prayer and infant baptism, of free grace and free will, of Antinomianism and Arminianism. Alas! one of the chief heresies in Baxter's eyes was liberty of conscience. The good man feared it as

a source of endless vagaries.

Distrusting Cromwell, the Presbyterian chaplains left the army, and the English Revolution of the seventeenth century

had full swing. Baxter went back to Kidderminster, already a famous man, though only in his thirty-first year, and resumed the proper work of his ministry, combining with it a constantly growing literary activity. At this period, his powers as a preacher reached their highest point. When he went up to London, the parish churches could not hold the crowds that hung upon his lips; and Westminster Abbey and the old Gothic cathedral of St. Paul's often resounded to his eloquence.

So he lived and laboured during the protectorate. When Richard Cromwell fell from his father's seat, Baxter at once recognised the critical situation of public affairs, and repaired to the metropolis. He was not among the Presbyterian ministers who went over to Holland to confer with Charles II. ; but on the proclamation of the King, 8th May 1660, it was he who preached before the Lord Mayor and Corporation in St. Paul's. The sermon was on "Right Rejoicing," and is extant. "The moderate were pleased with it; the fanaticks were offended; the diocesan party thought I did suppress their joy."

On the arrival of the King, ten or twelve of the leading Presbyterian ministers were designated chaplains in ordinary to His Majesty. "But never any of them," says Baxter, "was called to preach at Court, saving Mr. Calamy, Dr. Reynolds, myself, and Dr. Spurston, each of us once; and I suppose never a man of them all ever received or expected a penny of salary." It is easy to understand that one sermon of such grave and searching preachers was quite enough for Charles II. and his Court. That "merry monarch" is credited with the saying, that Presbyterianism is no religion for a gentleman; and we may admit that it is not congenial to gentlemen like Charles II. It could never be induced to describe a heartless libertine as "our most religious king."

Baxter now came to the front as practically, if not formally, a Presbyterian leader. His anxiety, after the Restoration, was to secure the undisturbed continuance in their parishes of the more devout clergy who had been settled during the time of the Commonwealth, on which subject he spoke earnestly to the King; to prevent the recovery of power by the bigoted prelatical party; and to bring about an adjustment of differences by such a combination of Episcopacy and Presbytery as Archbishop Usher had sketched twenty years before. He did

At the Savoy Conference.

7

not succeed in any one of these objects; but his wisdom is none the less to be esteemed that it was not recognised in a confused and passionate age.

In the negotiations which followed at Sion College, and at the Savoy, Baxter and his comrades specified the ceremonies in Divine worship which their consciences would not permit them to observe, and pleaded that these should not be made imperative, so that there might be a comprehension of good men of all parties within the National Church. Those English Presbyterians took very different ground from their Scottish brethren, for they made no objection, either to liturgical service or to the Royal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical. They gained nothing by their extreme moderation. The restored prelates took advantage of the occasion to represent them as pertinacious men who were full of scruples and crotchets against harmless ceremonies, and raised captious exceptions to the Book of Common Prayer. To weaken their influence still more, an attempt was made to gain over the leaders to Prelacy by offers of preferment. Bishoprics were tendered by the Lord Chancellor to Reynolds, Calamy, and Baxter. After a little delay, Dr. Reynolds, who held that the form of Church polity is left undetermined in the New Testament, accepted the offer made to him, and became Bishop of Norwich. Baxter refused, and Calamy followed his example. Manton and Bates also declined the deaneries to which they were designated.

The negotiations failed. A great opportunity was miserablylost; and matters grew worse and worse for what was now the weaker party. Scarcely had a year passed from the sitting of the Savoy Conference, professedly with a view to reconciliation and concord, when the Act of Uniformity was passed by the new Parliament (1662) called by King Charles, and the Puritans, whether Presbyterians or Independents, being denied concession or forbearance in regard to jot or tittle of Church ceremonies, were compelled to leave the Church of England. Presbyterian ordination was for the first time pronounced invalid. The Prayer-Book was revised by Convocation, and changes made in the very opposite direction from that which had been sought. Its minutest forms and rubrics were imposed with greater strictness than ever, with the

express purpose of thoroughly alienating the Puritans. The designs of the dominant party were entirely successful; but what a success! What a piece of consummate folly and injustice to make, for the sake of forms and ceremonies, a deep and permanent rift all through the religious life of England!

It must have been a sore trial to so pronounced a churchman as Baxter to cast in his lot with the Nonconformists; and a deep vexation to see, at the age of forty-seven, all his negotia tions and expostulations fail, and all his hopes for charity and comprehension roughly trodden under foot. But he showed

no hesitation about the path of duty, and accepted his new position with a quite pathetic cheerfulness.

During his residence at Kidderminster, he had thought it conducive to his usefulness that he led a single life, and was not impeded by family cares; but after his ejection he married Margaret Charlton of Apley Castle, in Shropshire. In this he was much more happy than his great contemporary Richard Hooker, who in his connubial arrangements was certainly not "the judicious." Isaac Walton says that the blessing of a good wife" was denied to patient Job, to meek Moses, and to our as meek and patient, Mr. Hooker." Mr. Baxter escaped this trial, and had nineteen years of sympathy and affection.

So

He lived for a time at Acton, then at Barnet; and endeavoured indomitably as ever to fight against High Prelacy on the one hand, and separatism on the other. His temper was not soured by all the wrong which he and his brethren had endured, and the old love of "pacification" was strong within him. he wrote in every form and in all directions on possible adjustments of ecclesiastical differences, used every opportunity to treat with nobles and bishops of toleration and comprehension, and conferred earnestly with Dr. Owen regarding an agreement between the Presbyterians and Independents. Owen moved too slowly for his energetic correspondent, and their intentions, which were good on both sides, caine to no result.

It was at Acton that Baxter won the friendship of that righteous judge and admirable man, Sir Matthew Hale, then Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. They delighted to converse of philosophical and theological points, and Baxter pays

Life after his Ejection as a Nonconformist.

9

his friend the fine compliment of saying, " His very questions and objections did help me to more light than other men's solutions." On the ecclesiastical troubles of the age the two worthies were thoroughly agreed. of the extremities of the times, and the violence and foolishness of the predominant clergy, and a great desirer of such abatements as might restore us all to serviceableness and unity."

Hale " was a great lamenter

In that intolerant time, neither his own blameless life nor the friendship of good men could protect a notable Nonconformist from ill-treatment. Dr. Calamy had been in Newgate. Many others of like spirit were shut up in provincial jails; and Baxter's turn came to be arrested, and taken to Clerkenwell prison. He was soon released on the ground of an illegality in the mittimus. But his adversaries did not leave him long unmolested.

His health, too, was pitiful. At Barnet (or more precisely, at Totteridge) he lived in obscure lodgings, for he had now no professional income whatever. The rooms were smoky, and the place was cold; and such a complication of diseases tormented poor Mr. Baxter, that we wonder how he lived, much more how he laboured. Every part of his body seems to have had its ailment, not excepting a grievous attack of sciatica. He speaks of "vertiginous or stupefying conquests of the brain, so that I rarely have one hour's or quarter of an hour's ease. Yet, through God's mercy, I was never one hour melancholy, and not many times in a week disabled utterly from my work, save that I lost time in the morning, for want of being able to rise early." What a strong and healthy soul did that broken vessel contain !

A rumour having been spread that Baxter was willing to conform-a rumour which he could not publicly contradict, because the law forbade unlicensed printing, and no licence would be granted to him—the Earl of Lauderdale, on behalf of the King, proposed to him to settle in Scotland, and offered him any position he liked, "either a church, or a college in the university, or a bishoprick." The offer was at once declined. As to the care of a church, or an important post in a university, Baxter's state of health put it out of the question; and as for the third position tendered to him, a man who had refused a See in England, was not likely to begin to play prelate on a