Chapter IV: Book I: Part I. p. 2

But though my conscience would trouble me when I sinned, yet divers
sins I was addicted to, and oft committed against my conscience; which
for the warning of others I will confess here to my shame.

1. I was much addicted when I feared correction to lie, that I might
scape.

2. I was much addicted to the excessive gluttonous eating of apples
and pears, &c.

3. To this end, and to concur with naughty boys that gloried in evil,
I have oft gone into other men's orchards, and stolen their fruit,
when I had enough at home, &c.

There is a childlike simplicity in this account of his sins of his childhood which is very pleasing.

Ib. p. 5, 6.

And the use that God made of books, above ministers, to the benefit of
my soul made me somewhat excessively in love with good books; so that
I thought I had never enough, but scraped up as great a treasure of
them as I could. * * * It made the world seem to me as a carcase that
had neither life nor loveliness; and it destroyed those ambitious
desires after literate fame which were the sin of my childhood. * * *
And for the mathematics, I was an utter stranger to them, and never
could find in my heart to divert any studies that way. But in order to
the knowledge of divinity, my inclination was most to logic and
metaphysics, with that part of physics which treateth of the soul,
contenting myself at first with a slighter study of the rest: and
there had my labour and delight.

What a picture of myself!

Ib. p. 22.

In the storm of this temptation I questioned awhile whether I were
indeed a Christian or an Infidel, and whether faith could consist with
such doubts as I was conscious of.

One of the instances of the evils arising from the equivoque between faith and intellectual satisfaction or insight. The root of faith is in the will. Faith is an oak that may be a pollard, and yet live.

Ib.

The being and attributes of God were so clear to me, that he was to my
intellect what the sun is to my eye, by which I see itself and all
things.

Even so with me;--but, whether God was existentially as well as essentially intelligent, this was for a long time a sore combat between the speculative and the moral man.

Ib. p. 23.

Mere Deism, which is the most plausible competitor with Christianity,
is so turned out of almost all the whole world, as if Nature made its
own confession, that without a Mediator it cannot come to God.

Excellent.

Ib.

All these assistances were at hand before I came to the immediate
evidences of credibility in the sacred oracles themselves.

This is as it should be; that is, the evidence 'a priori', securing the rational probability; and then the historical proofs of its reality. Pity that Baxter's chapters in 'The Saints' Rest' should have been one and the earliest occasion of the inversion of this process, the fruit of which is the Grotio-Paleyan religion, or 'minimum' of faith; the maxim being, 'quanto minus tanto melius'.

Ib. p. 24.

And once all the ignorant rout were raging mad against me for
preaching the doctrine of Original Sin to them, and telling them that
infants, before regeneration, had so much guilt and corruption as made
them loathsome in the eyes of God.

No wonder;--because the babe would perish without the mother's milk, is it therefore loathsome to the mother? Surely the little ones that Christ embraced had not been baptized. And yet 'of such is the Kingdom of Heaven'.

Ib. p. 25.

Some thought that the King should not at all be displeased and
provoked, and that they were not bound to do any other justice, or
attempt any other reformation but what they could procure the King to
be willing to. And these said, when you have displeased and provoked
him to the utmost, he will be your King still. * * * The more you
offend him, the less you can trust him; and when mutual confidence is
gone, a war is beginning. * * * And if you conquer him, what the
better are you? He will still be King. You can but force him to an
agreement; and how quickly will he have power and advantage to violate
that which he is forced to, and to be avenged on you all for the
displeasure you have done him! He is ignorant of the advantages of a
King that cannot foresee this.

This paragraph goes to make out a case in justification of the Regicides which Baxter would have found it difficult to answer. Certainly a more complete exposure of the inconsistency of Baxter's own party cannot be. For observe, that in case of an agreement with Charles all those classes, which afterwards formed the main strength of the Parliament and ultimately decided the contest in its favour, would have been politically inert, with little influence and no actual power,--I mean the Yeomanry, and the Citizens of London: while a vast majority of the Nobles and landed Gentry, who sooner or later must have become the majority in Parliament, went over to the King at once. Add to these the whole systematized force of the High Church Clergy and all the rude ignorant vulgar in high and low life, who detested every attempt at moral reform,--and it is obvious that the King could not want opportunities to retract and undo all that he had conceded under compulsion. But that neither the will was wanting, nor his conscience at all in the way, his own advocate Clarendon and others have supplied damning proofs.

Ib. p. 27.

And though Parliaments may draw up Bills for repealing laws, yet hath
the King his negative voice, and without his consent they cannot do
it; which though they acknowledge, yet did they too easily admit of
petitions against the Episcopacy and Liturgy, and connived at all the
clamors and papers which were against them.

How so? If they admitted the King's right to deny, they must admit the subject's right to entreat.

Ib.

Had they endeavoured the ejection of lay-chancellors, and the reducing
of the dioceses to a narrower compass, or the setting up of a
subordinate discipline, and only the correcting and reforming of the
Liturgy, perhaps it might have been borne more patiently.

Did Baxter find it so himself--and when too he had the formal and recorded promise of Charles II. for it?

Ib.

But when the same men (Ussher, Williams, Morton, &c.) saw that greater
things were aimed at, and episcopacy itself in danger, or _their
grandeur and riches at least_, most of them turned against the
Parliament.

This, and in this place, is unworthy of Baxter. Even he, good man, could not wholly escape the jaundice of party.

Ib. p. 34.

They said to this;--that as all the courts of justice do execute their
sentences in the King's name, and this by his own law, and therefore
by his authority, so much more might his Parliament do.

A very sound argument is here disguised in a false analogy, an inapplicable precedent, and a sophistical form. Courts of justice administer the total of the supreme power retrospectively, involved in the name of the most dignified part. But here a part, as a part, acts as the whole, where the whole is absolutely requisite,--that is, in passing laws; and again as B. and C. usurp a power belonging to A. by the determination of A. B. and C. The only valid argument is, that Charles had by acts of his own ceased to be a lawful King.

Ib. p. 40.

And that the authority and person of the King were inviolable, out of
the reach of just accusation, judgment, or execution by law; as having
no superior, and so no judge.

But according to Grotius, a king waging war against the lawful copartners of the 'summa potestas' ceases to be their king, and if conquered forfeits to them his former share. And surely if Charles had been victor, he would have taken the Parliament's share to himself. If it had been the Parliament, and not a mere faction with the army, that tried and beheaded Charles, I do not see how any one could doubt the lawfulness of the act, except upon very technical grounds.

Ib. p. 41.

For if once legislation, the chief act of government, be denied to any
part of government at all, and affirmed to belong to the people as
such, who are no governors, all government will hereby be overthrown.

Here Baxter falls short of the subject, and does not see the full consequents of his own prior, most judicious, positions. Legislation in its high and most proper sense belongs to God only. A people declares that such and such they hold to be laws, that is, God's will.

Ib. p. 47.

In Cornwall Sir Richard Grenvill, having taken many soldiers of the
Earl of Essex's army, sentenced about a dozen to be hanged. When they
had hanged two or three, the rope broke which should have hanged the
next. And they sent for new ropes so oft to hang him, and all of them
still broke, that they durst go no further, but saved all the rest.

The soldiers, doubtless, contrived this from the aversion natural to Englishmen of killing an enemy in cold blood; and because they foresaw that there would be Tit for Tat.

Ib. p. 59.

It is easy to see from Baxter's own account, that his party ruined their own cause and that of the kingdom by their tenets concerning the right and duty of the civil magistrate to use the sword against such as were not of the same religion with themselves.

Ib. p. 62.

They seem not to me to have answered satisfactorily to the main
argument fetched from the Apostle's own government, with which Saravia
had inclined me to some Episcopacy before: though miracles and
infallibility were Apostolical temporary privileges, yet Church
government is an ordinary thing to be continued. And therefore as the
Apostles had successors as they were preachers, I see not but that
they must have successors as Church governors.

Was not Peter's sentence against Ananias an act of Church government? Therefore though Church government is an ordinary thing in some form or other, it does not follow that one particular form is an ordinary thing. For the time being the Apostles, as heads of the Church, did what they thought best; but whatever was binding on the Church universal and in all times they delivered as commands from Christ. Now no other command was delivered but that all things should conduce to order and edification.

Ib. p. 66.

And therefore how they could refuse to receive the King, till he
consented to take the Covenant, I know not, unless the taking of the
Covenant had been a condition on which he was to receive his crown by
the laws or fundamental constitutions of the kingdom, which none
pretendeth. Nor know I by what power they can add anything to the
Coronation Oath or Covenant, which by his ancestors was to be taken,
without his own consent.

And pray, how and by whom were the Coronation Oaths first imposed? The Scottish nation in 1650 had the same right to make a bargain with the claimant of their throne as their ancestors had. It is strange that Baxter should not have seen that his objections would apply to our 'Magna Charta'. So he talks of the "fundamental constitutions," just as if these had been aboriginal or rather 'sans' origin, and not as indeed they were extorted and bargained for by the people. But throughout it is plain that Baxter repeated, but never appropriated, the distinction between the King as the executive power, and as the individual functionary. What obligation lay on the Scottish Parliament and Church to consult the man Charles Stuart's personal likes and dislikes? The Oath was to be taken by him as their King. Doubtless, he equally disliked the whole Protestant interest; and if the Tories and Church of England Jacobites of a later day had recalled James II., would Baxter have thought them culpable for imposing on him an Oath to preserve the Protestant Church of England and to inflict severe penalties on his own Church-fellows?

Ib. p. 71.

And some men thought it a very hard question, whether they should
rather wish the continuance of a usurper that will do good, or the
restoration of a rightful governor whose followers will do hurt.

And who shall dare unconditionally condemn those who judged the former to be the better alternative? Especially those who did not adopt Baxter's notion of a 'jus divinum' personal and hereditary in the individual, whose father had broken the compact on which the claim rested.

Ib. p. 75.

One Mrs. Dyer, a chief person of the Sect, did first bring forth a
monster, which had the parts of almost all sorts of living creatures,
some parts like man, but most ugly and misplaced, and some like
beasts, birds and fishes, having horns, fins and claws; and at the
birth of it the bed shook, and the women present fell a vomiting, and
were fain to go forth of the room.

This babe of Mrs. Dyer's is no bad emblem of Richard Baxter's own credulity. It is almost an argument on his side, that nothing he believed is more strange and inexplicable than his own belief of them.

Ib. p. 76.

The third sect were the Ranters. These also made it their business, as
the former, to set up the light of nature under the name of Christ in
men, and to dishonour and cry down the Church, &c.

But why does Baxter every where assert the identity of the new light with the light of nature? Or what does he mean exclusively by the latter? The source must be the same in all lights as far as it is light.

Ib. p. 77.

And that was the fourth sect, the Quakers; who were but the Ranters
turned from horrid profaneness and blasphemy to a life of extreme
austerity on the other side.

Observe the _but_.

Ib.

Their doctrine is to be seen in Jacob Behmen's books by him that hath
nothing else to do, than to bestow a great deal of time to understand
him that was not willing to be easily understood, and to know that his
bombasted words do signify nothing more than before was easily known
by common familiar terms.

This is not in all its parts true. It is true that the first principles of Behmen are to be found in the writings of the Neo-Platonists after Plotinus, and (but mixed with gross impieties) in Paracelsus;--but it is not true that they are easily known, and still less so that they are communicable in common familiar terms. But least of all is it true that there is nothing original in Behmen.

Ib.

The chiefest of these in England are Dr. Pordage and his family.

It is curious that Lessing in the Review, which he, Nicolai, and Mendelssohn conducted under the form of Letters to a wounded Officer, joins the name of Pordage with that of Behmen. Was Pordage's work translated into German?

Ib. p. 79.

Also the Socinians made some increase by the ministry of one Mr.
Biddle, sometimes schoolmaster in Gloucester; who wrote against the
Godhead of the Holy Ghost, and afterwards of Christ; whose followers
inclined much to mere Deism.

For the Socinians till Biddle retained much of the Christian religion, for example, Redemption by the Cross, and the omnipresence of Christ as to this planet even as the Romanists with their Saints. Luther's obstinate adherence to the ubiquity of the Body of Christ and his or rather its real presence in and with the bread was a sad furtherance to the advocates of Popish idolatry and hierolatry.

Ib. p. 80.

Many a time have I been brought very low, and received the sentence of
death in myself, when my poor, honest, praying neighbours have met,
and upon their fasting and earnest prayers I have been recovered. Once
when I had continued weak three weeks, and was unable to go abroad,
the very day that they prayed for me, being Good Friday, I recovered,
and was able to preach, and administer the Sacrament the next Lord's
Day, and was better after it, &c.

Strange that the common manuals of school logic should not have secured Baxter from the repeated blunder of 'Cum hoc, ergo, propter hoc'; but still more strange that his piety should not have revolted against degrading prayer into medical quackery.

Before the Revolution of 1688, metaphysics ruled without experimental psychology, and in these curious paragraphs of Baxter we see the effect: since the Revolution experimental psychology without metaphysics has in like manner prevailed, and we now feel the result. In like manner from Plotinus to Proclus, that is, from A. D. 250 to A. D. 450, philosophy was set up as a substitute for religion: during the dark ages religion superseded philosophy, and the consequences are equally instructive. The great maxim of legislation, intellectual or political, is 'Subordinate, not exclude'. Nature in her ascent leaves nothing behind, but at each step subordinates and glorifies:--mass, crystal, organ, sensation, sentience, reflection.

Ib. p. 82.

Another time, as I sat in my study, the weight of my greatest folio
books brake down three or four of the highest shelves, when I sat
close under them, and they fell down every side me, and not one of
them hit me, save one upon the arm; whereas the place, the weight, the
greatness of the books was such, and my head just under them, that it
was a wonder they had not beaten out my brains, &c.

[Greek: Méga biblíon méga kakón.]

Ib. p. 84.

For all the pains that my infirmities ever brought upon me were never half so grievous an affliction to me, as the unavoidable loss of my time, which they occasioned. I could not bear, through the weakness of my stomach, to rise before seven o'clock in the morning, &c.

Alas! in how many respects does my lot resemble Baxter's; but how much less have my bodily evils been; and yet how very much greater an impediment have I suffered them to be! But verily Baxter's labours seem miracles of supporting grace. Ought I not therefore to retract the note p. 80? I waver.

Ib. p. 87.

For my part, I bless God, who gave me even under a Usurper, whom I
opposed, such liberty and advantage to preach his Gospel with success,
which I cannot have under a King to whom I have sworn and performed
true subjection and obedience; yea, which no age since the Gospel came
into this land did before possess, as far as I can learn from history.
Sure I am that when it became a matter of reputation and honour to be
godly, it abundantly furthered the successes of the ministry. Yea, and
I shall add this much more for the sake of posterity, that as much as
I have said and written against licentiousness in religion, and for
the magistrate's power in it, and though I think that land most happy,
whose rulers use their authority for Christ as well as for the civil
peace; yet in comparison of the rest of the world, I shall think that
land happy that hath but bare liberty to be as good as they are
willing to be; and if countenance and maintenance be but added to
liberty, and tolerated errors and sects be but forced to keep the
peace, and not to oppose the substantials of Christianity, I shall not
hereafter much fear such toleration, nor despair that truth will bear
down adversaries.

What a valuable and citable paragraph! Likewise it is a happy instance of the force of a cherished prejudice in an honest mind--practically yielding to the truth, but yet with a speculative, "Though I still think, &c."

Ib. p. 128.

Among truths certain in themselves, all are not equally certain unto
me; and even of the mysteries of the Gospel I must needs say, with Mr.
Richard Hooker, that whatever some may pretend, the subjective
certainty cannot go beyond the objective evidence. * * * Therefore I
do more of late than ever discern the necessity of a methodical
procedure in maintaining the doctrine of Christianity. * * * My
certainty that I am a man is before my certainty that there is a God.
* * * My certainty that there is a God is greater than my certainty
that he requireth love and holiness of his creature, &c.

There is a confusion in this paragraph, which asks more than a marginal note to disentangle. Briefly, the process of acquirement is confounded with the order of the truths when acquired. A tinder spark gives light to an Argand's lamp: is it therefore more luminous?

Ib. p. 129.

And when I have studied hard to understand some abstruse admired book,
as 'de Scientia Dei, de Providentia circa malum, de Decretis, de
Prædeterminatione, de Libertate creaturæ', &c. I have but attained the
knowledge of human imperfection, and to see that the author is but a
man as well as I.

On these points I have come to a resting place. Let such articles, as are either to be recognized as facts, for example, sin or evil having its origination in a will; and the reality of a responsible and (in whatever sense freedom is presupposed in responsibility,) of a free will in man;--or acknowledged as laws, for example, the unconditional bindingness of the practical reason;--or to be freely affirmed as necessary through their moral interest, their indispensableness to our spiritual humanity, for example, the personeity, holiness, and moral government and providence of God;--let these be vindicated from absurdity, from self-contradiction, and contradiction to the pure reason, and restored to simple incomprehensibility. He who seeks for more, knows not what he is talking of; he who will not seek even this is either indifferent to the truth of what he professes to believe, or he mistakes a general determination not to disbelieve for a positive and especial faith, which is only our faith as far as we can assign a reason for it. O! how impossible it is to move an inch to the right or the left in any point of spiritual and moral concernment, without seeing the damage caused by the confusion of reason with the understanding.

Ib. p. 181.

My soul is much more afflicted with the thoughts of the miserable
world, and more drawn out in desire of their conversion than
heretofore. I was wont to look but little further than England in my
prayers, as not considering the state of the rest of the world;--or if
I prayed for the conversion of the Jews, that was almost all. But now
as I better understand the care of the world, and the method of the
Lord's Prayer, so there is nothing in the world that lieth so heavy
upon my heart, as the thought of the miserable nations of the earth.

I dare not not condemn myself for the languid or dormant state of my feelings respecting the Mohammedan and Heathen nations; yet know not in what degree to condemn. The less culpable grounds of this languor are, first, my utter ignorance of God's purposes with respect to the Heathens; and second, the strong conviction, I have that the conversion of a single province of Christendom to true practical Christianity would do more toward the conversion of Heathendom than an army of Missionaries. Romanism and despotic government in the larger part of Christendom, and the prevalence of Epicurean principles in the remainder;--these do indeed lie heavy on my heart.

Ib. p. 135.

Therefore I confess I give but halting credit to most histories that
are written, not only against the Albigenses and Waldenses, but
against most of the ancient heretics, who have left us none of their
own writings, in which they speak for themselves; and I heartily
lament that the historical writings of the ancient schismatics and
heretics, as they were called, perished, and that partiality suffered
them not to survive, that we might have had more light in the Church
affairs of those times, and been better able to judge between the
Fathers and them.

It is greatly to the credit of Baxter that he has here anticipated those merits which so long after gave deserved celebrity to the name and writings of Beausobre and Lardner, and still more recently in this respect of Eichhorn, Paulus and other Neologists.

Ib. p. 136.

And therefore having myself now written this history of myself,
notwithstanding my protestation that I have not in anything wilfully
gone against the truth, I expect no more credit from the reader than
the self-evidencing light of the matter, with concurrent rational
advantages from persons, and things, and other witnesses, shall
constrain him to.

I may not unfrequently doubt Baxter's memory, or even his competence, in consequence of his particular modes of thinking; but I could almost as soon doubt the Gospel verity as his veracity.