the disease of this furious age, in which each man is ready to devour others because they do not know themselves."

47. "Baxter's Account to the Inhabitants of Kidderminster of the Reasons of his being forbid to preach among them." 4to. published in 1662.

48. "A Saint or a Brute: The certain Necessity and Excellency of Holiness so plainly proved, and urgently applied, as by the Blessing of God may convince and save the miserable, impenitent, ungodly Sensualists, if they will not let the Devil hinder them from a sober and serious reading and considering. To be communicated by the charitable, that desire the Conversion and Salvation of Souls, while the Patience of God, and the Day of Grace and Hope continue." 4to. published in 1662. This is a work of several hundred pages.

49. "Now or Never: The holy, serious, diligent Believer, justified, encouraged, excited, and directed; and the Opposers and Neglecters convinced, by the Light of Scripture and Reason." Published in 1663.

50. "Fair Warning; or Twenty-five Reasons against the Toleration of Popery." 8vo. published in 1663. There seems to be some doubt whether this pamphlet ought to be numbered among the writings of Baxter.

51. "The Divine Life, in three Treatises; the first of the Knowledge of God; the second of walking with God; the third of conversing with God in Solitude." 4to. published in 1664. This work was occasioned by a request of the countess of Balcarras. She was about returning to Scotland, after a residence of some time in England, and, having been much profited by Baxter's writings and by his preaching, desired him to preach the last sermon which she was to hear from him, on these words of Christ, 'Behold the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone; because the Father is with me.' The sermon thus preached is the third part of the work; he says he prefixed the other two treatises to make it more considerable. He apologizes for the work, in his Life, by saying that it was "but popular sermons, preached in the midst of diverting business, accusations, and malicious clamors."

How much freedom of the press the nonconformists enjoyed appears from an incident which he records respecting this book. "When I offered it to the press, I was fain to leave out the quantity of one sermon in the end of the second treatise, (that God took Enoch,) wherein I showed what a mercy it is to one that walked with God, to be taken to him from this world; because it is a dark, wicked, malicious, incapable, treacherous, deceitful world, &c. All

which, the bishop's chaplain must have expunged, because men would think it was all spoken of them. And so the world hath got a protection against the force of our baptismal vow."

52. In 1665 he published only three single sheets; two, designed "for the use of poor families, that cannot buy greater books, or will not read them;" and the third published at the time of the plague, entitled, "Directions for the Sick."

Among his earliest employments at Acton must have been the preparation of his Narrative of his own life, the first part of which was written mostly in 1664, and the second part in 1665. At the conclusion of the second part of this Narrative, he writes thus,

"And now, after all the breaches on the churches, the ejection of the ministers, and impenitency under all, wars and plague and danger of famine began at once on us. War with the Hollanders, which yet continueth; and the dryest winter, spring, and summer, that ever man alive knew, or our forefathers mention of late ages; so that the grounds were burnt like the highways, where the cattle should have fed. The meadow grounds where I lived bare but four loads of hay, which before bare forty. The plague hath seized on the famousest and most excellent city of Christendom, and at this time nearly 8,300 die of all diseases in a week. It hath scattered and consumed the inhabitants; multitudes being dead and fled. The calamities and cries of the diseased and impoverished, are not to be conceived by those that are absent from them. Every man is a terror to his neighbor and himself; and God, for our sins, is a terror to us all. O! how is London, the place which God hath honored with his gospel above all places of the earth, laid low in horrors, and wasted almost to desolation by the wrath of that God, whom England hath contemned! A Godhating generation are consumed in their sins, and the righteous are also taken away as from greater evils yet to come." "Yet, under all these desolations, the wicked are hardened, and east all on the fanatics; the true dividing fanatics and sectaries are not yet humbled for former miscarriages, but cast all on the prelates and imposers; and the ignorant vulgar are stupid, and know not what use to make of any thing they feel. But thousands of the sober, prudent, faithful servants of the Lord are mourning in secret, and waiting for his salvation; in humility and hope they are staying themselves on God, and expecting what he will do with them. From London the plague is spread through many counties, especially next London, where few places, especially corporations, are free; which makes me oft groan, and wish that London, and all the corporations of England, would review the Corporation Act, and their own acts, and speedily repent.

"Leaving most of my family at Acton, compassed about with the plague, at the writing of this, through the mercy of my dear God, and Father in Christ, I am hitherto in safety and comfort in the house of my dearly beloved and honored friend, Mr. Richard Hampden, of Hampden, in Buckinghamshire, the true heir of his famous father's sincerity, piety, and devotedness to God; whose person and family the Lord preserve; honor them that honor him, and be their everlasting rest and portion.

"Hampden, September 28, 1665."*

* Narrative, Part II. p. 448.

PART FIFTH.

FROM THE YEAR 1665 TO HIS DEATH.

THE reader has now traced the series of events in the life of Richard Baxter to the fiftieth year of his age. We have seen him approving himself the man of God in the camp and in the court, in the rural parish and in the great metropolis; we are now to see him in the decline of life, like the illustrious poet, his cotemporary, "unchanged,"

"On evil days though fall'n and evil tongues,

In darkness and with dangers compassed round."

At this period in his history, it is a privilege to have before us his own deliberate review of the changes which had been wrought upon his mind and heart, in his progress from youth to the commencement of his declining years. This review is the conclusion of the first part of his personal Narrative, and was written in 1664, the forty-ninth year of his age. It is presented here much abridged.

"Because it is soul-experiments which those who urge me to this kind of writing do expect that I should, especially, communicate to others, and I have said little of God's dealings with my soul since the time of my younger years, I shall only give the reader so much satisfaction as to acquaint him truly what change God hath made upon my mind and heart since those unriper times, and wherein I now differ in judgment and disposition from myself. And for any more particular account of heart occurrences, and God's operations on me, I think it somewhat unsavory to recite them, seeing God's dealings are much the same with all his servants in the main, and the points wherein he varieth are usually so small, that I think such not fit to be repeated. Nor have I any thing extraordinary to glory in, which is not common to my brethren, who have the same spirit, and are servants of the same Lord. And the true reason why I do adventure so far upon the censure of the world as to tell them wherein the case is altered with me, is, that I may take off young unexperienced Christians from over confidence in their first apprehensions, or overvaluing their first degrees of grace,

or too much applauding and following unfurnished, unexperienced men; and that they may be directed what mind and course of life to prefer, by the judgment of one that hath tried both before them.

"1. The temper of my mind hath somewhat altered with the temper of my body. When I was young, I was more vigorous, affectionate, and fervent, in preaching, conference, and prayer, than, ordinarily, I can be now. My style was more extemporate and lax, but, by the advantage of warmth, and a very familiar moving voice and utterance, my preaching then did more affect the auditory, than many of the last years before I gave over preaching. But what I delivered then was much more raw, and had more passages that would not bear the trial of accurate judgments; and my discourses had both less substance and less judgment than of late.

"2. My understanding was then quicker, and could more easily manage any thing that was newly presented to it upon a sudden; but it is since better furnished, and acquainted with the ways of truth and error, and with a multitude of particular mistakes of the world, which then I was the more in danger of, because I had only the faculty of knowing them, but did not actually know them.) I was then like a man of quick understanding, that was to travel a way which he never went before, or to cast up an account which he never labored in before, or to play on an instrument of music which he never saw before. I am now like one of somewhat a slower understanding, who is traveling a way which he hath often gone, and is casting up an account which he hath often cast up, and hath ready at hand, and that is playing on an instrument which he hath frequently used; so that I can very confidently say my judgment is much sounder and firmer now than it was then. When I peruse the writings which I wrote in my younger years, I can find the footsteps of my unfurnished mind, and of my emptiness and insufficiency; so that the man that followed my judgment then, was liker to have been misled by me than he that should follow it now.

"And yet, that I may not say worse than it deserveth of my former measure of understanding, I shall truly tell you what change I find now in the perusal of my own writings. Those points which then I thoroughly studied, my judgment is the same of now as it was then, and therefore in the substance of my religion, and in those controversies which I then searched into with some extraordinary diligence, I find not my mind disposed to a change; but in divers points that I studied slightly, and by the halves, and in many things which I took upon trust from others, I have found since, that my apprehensions were either erroneous or very lame." "And this token of my weakness accompanied those my younger studies, that I was very apt to start up controversies in the way of my practical writings, and also more desirous to acquaint the world with