In consequence of these things, divinity was not merely carried on with the rest of his studies,it had always the first and chief place. He was led to study practical theology in the first place, in the most practical books, and in a practical order. He did this for the purpose of instructing and reforming his own soul. He read a multitude of the best English theological works, before he read any foreign systems of divinity. Thus his affections were excited, while his judgment was informed; and having his own benefit chiefly in view, he pursued all his studies with the greater ardor and profit. It is matter of regret that theology is often studied more with a view to the benefit of others than of the student himself. It is pursued as a profession, rather than as belonging to personal character and enjoyment. Hence it frequently produces a pernicious instead of a salutary effect on the mind, and debases rather than elevates the character. Familiarity with Divine things, which does not arise from personal interest in them, is to be dreaded more than most evils to which man is liable.

The broken state of his health, the irregularity of his teachers, and his never being at any university, materially injured his learning and occasioned lasting regrets. He never acquired any great knowledge of the learned languages. Of Hebrew he scarcely knew any thing; his acquaintance with Greek was not profound; and even in Latin, as his works show, he must be regarded by a scholar as little better than a barbarian. Of mathematics he knew nothing, and never had a taste for them. Of logic and metaphysics he was a devoted admirer, and to them he dedicated his labor and his delight. Definitions and distinctions were in a manner his occupation; the quod sit, the quid sit, and quotuplex-modes, consequences, and adjuncts, were his vocabulary. He never thought he understood any thing till he could anatomize it, and see the parts distinctly; and, certainly, very few have handled the knife more dexterously, or to so great an extent. His love of the niceties of metaphysical disquisition plunged him very early into the study of controversial divinity. The schoolmen were the objects of his admiration; Aquinas, Scotus, Durandus, Ockham, and their disciples, were the teachers from whom he acquired no small portion of that acuteness for which he became so distinguished as a disputer, and of that logomachy by which most of his writings are more or less deformed.

Early education exerts a prodigious power over the future pursuits and habits of the individual. Its imperfections or peculiarities will generally appear, if he attempt to make any figure in the scientific or literary world. The advantages of a university or academical education will never be despised except by him who never enjoyed them, or who affects to be superior to their necessity. It cannot be denied, however, that some of our most eminent men in the walks of theology, as well as in other departments, never enjoyed these early advantages. The celebrated Erasmus, "that great honored name," and Julius Cæsar Scaliger, had neither of them the benefit of a regular early education. As theological writers, few men, among our own countrymen, have been more useful or respected than Andrew Fuller, Abraham Booth, and Archibald Maclean, yet none of them received much education in his youth. Dr. Carey is a prodigy, as an oriental scholar,

and yet never was twelve months at school in his life. Among these and many other men of eminence, who never walked an academic porch, Richard Baxter holds a prominent place. In answer to a letter of Anthony Wood, inquiring whether he was an Oxonian, he replied, with beautiful and dignified simplicity," As to myself, my faults are no disgrace to any university, for I was of none; I have little but what I had out of books, and inconsiderable helps of country tutors. Weakness and pain helped me to study how to die; that set me on studying how to live; and that on studying the doctrine from which I must fetch my motives and comforts: beginning with necessities, I proceeded by degrees, and now am going to see that for which I have lived and studied."

Academical education is valuable, when it excites a taste for learning, sharpens the natural powers, and smooths the path of knowledge; but when it is substituted in after life for diligent application, and is supposed to supply the lack of genius or industry, it renders comparatively little service to its possessor. Those who have not enjoyed it, frequently make up the deficiency by the greater ardor of their application, and the powerful energy of natural talent. This was eminently the case with Baxter. Conscious of the imperfections of his early education, he applied himself with indefatigable diligence; and though he never attained to the elegant refinements of classical literature, in all the substantial attainments of sound learning he excelled most of his cotemporaries. The regrets which he felt at an early period, that his scholarship was not more eminent, he has expressed with a great degree of feeling, if not with the highest poetical elegance.

"Thy methods cross'd my ways: my young desire

To academic glory did aspire.

Fain I'd have sat in such a nurse's lap,

Where I might long have had a sluggard's nap;

Or have been dandled on her reverend knees,
And known by honored titles and degrees;
And there have spent the flower of my days
In soaring in the air of human praise.
Yea, and I thought it needful to thy ends,
To make the prejudiced world my friends;
That so my praise might go before thy grace,
Preparing men thy message to embrace;
Also my work and office to adorn,
And to avoid profane contempt and scorn.

But these were not thy thoughts; thou didst foresee

That such a course would not be best for me,

Thou mad'st me know that men's contempt and scorn

Is such a cross as must be daily borne."

Referring to what had once been his feelings, he expresses himself with great indignation, and then gives utterance to the high satisfaction he felt in the enjoyments God had bestowed on him-better far than titles and learning.

"My youthful pride and folly now I see,

That grudged for want of titles and degree;

That blush'd with shame when this defect was known;

And an inglorious name could hardly own.

Forgive this pride, and break the serpent's brain;

Pluck up the poisonous root till none remain.

Honors are shadows, which from seekers fly,
But follow after those who them deny.

I brought none with me to thy work; but there
I found more than I easily could bear:

Although thou would'st not give me what I would,
Thou gavest me the promis'd hundred fold.

O my dear God! how precious is thy love!

Thy ways, not ours, lead to the joys above." (pp. 15-17.)

After contending with a variety of difficulties, overcoming some scruples of conscience respecting the terms of subscription, and furnishing himself with the needful information, Baxter was ordained a minister of the establishment, by Bishop Thornborough, in the year 1638, and at the same time received a license to teach, as head master, the school at Dudley, a situation which afforded him opportunities of preaching to perishing sinners.

Soon after he commenced his ministry, Baxter turned his attention to the interesting but perplexing controversy which so long agitated the Church of England, respecting conformity and nonconformity; and though he was satisfied that episcopacy did exist in the primitive Church, yet he could by no means identify the Scriptural episcopacy with that which was established in England, nor reconcile to his judgment and conscience, the high-handed measures and the pompous display which were exhibited in the conduct of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the Church. And although we cannot justify all the scruples of his mind and the minds of those who acted with him in this perplexing and long-continued controversy, we cannot but admire the flexibility of his mind in yielding to convictions, and the honesty of his intentions in searching after the truth. Instead, however, of pertinaciously adhering to a party, and vindicating them in all their little scruples about kneeling at the sacrament, administering in a surplice, and using a form of prayer, Baxter seems to have attempted to steer a middle course between the contending parties; and he often threw himself into the breach with a view to arrest the onsets of the furious champions on both sides; by which means he was frequently exposed to the raking fire of each contending party. The weight of his influence, however, was always preponderating on the side of the nonconformists.

The first thing which gave him any considerable trial, and which brought him into the most direct collision with the government of his country so as to provoke open hostility, was the Et-cætera oath. This formed a part of certain canons or constitutions enacted by a convocation held in London and York in the year 1640. In this famous oath was the following absurd clause :-'Nor will I ever give my consent to alter the government of this Church by archbishops, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, &c, as it stands now established and

ought to stand.' This oath, which completely debarred any farther reformation in the Church and all improvement in any of its rites or ceremonies, liturgy or canons, was ordered to be taken by all ecclesiastical persons on pain of suspension and deprivation.

After hearing the subject debated by able men on both sides, in which he took an active part himself, Baxter came to the resolution never to take this oath, and also to a determination more thoroughly to examine the nature of that government which could impose such unreasonable restrictions upon the consciences of the people, the pressure of which he began so sensibly to feel. The resistance which was made to this oath and other things enjoined by the ritual of the Church of England, caused much individual suffering, by fines, confiscations, and imprisonments, and Baxter himself did not wholly escape the rage

of his enemies.

In 1641 he accepted of an invitation from the inhabitants of Kidderminster to become their pastor, for whom he contracted the strongest and most tender attachment, and which continued through the whole course of his active and eventful life. This attachment he expressed in the following lines, which he wrote several years after his residence among them :

'But among all, none did so much abound

With fruitful mercies, as that barren ground,
Where I did make my best and longest stay,
And bore the heat and burden of the day.
Mercies grew thicker there than summer flowers,
They over-numbered my days and hours.
There was my dearest flock and special charge,
Our hearts with mutual love Thou didst enlarge:
'I'was there Thy mercy did my labors bless,
With the most great and wonderful success.'

He continued his pastoral labors in this place about two years, when the civil wars compelled him to separate himself for several years from the people he so tenderly loved. The following is Baxter's description of the state of things at the commencement of those civil commotions which overthrew the monarchy of England, and eventuated in the establishment of the commonwealth in the hands of Cromwell :—

Where I was bred, before 1640, which was in divers places, I knew not one Presbyterian clergyman or layman, and but three or four nonconforming ministers. Till Mr. Ball wrote in favor of the liturgy, and against Canne, Allen, &c, and till Mr. Burton published his "Protestation Protested," I never thought what presbytery or independency was, nor ever spake with a man who seemed to know it. In the place where I first lived, and the country about, the people were of two sorts. The generality seemed to mind nothing seriously, but the body and the world: they went to church, and could answer the parson responses, and thence to dinner, and then to play. They never prayed in their families; but some of them, on going to bed, would say over

in

the creed and the Lord's prayer, and some of them the Hail Mary. They read not the Scriptures, nor any good book or catechism: few of them indeed could read, or had a Bible. They were of two ranks; the greater part were good husbands, as they called them, and minded nothing but their business or interest in the world: the rest were drunkards. Most were swearers, though they were not all equally gross; both sorts seemed utter strangers to any more of religion than I have named, though some hated it more than others.

The other sort were such as had their consciences awakened to some regard for God and their everlasting state, and, according to the various measures of their understanding, did speak and live as serious in the Christian faith, and would inquire what was duty, and what was sin, and how to please God and make sure of salvation; and make this their business and interest, as the rest did the world. They read the Scriptures, and such books as "The Practice of Piety," "Dent's Plain Man's Pathway," and "Dodd on the Commandments," &c. They used to pray in their families, and alone; some with the book, and some without. They would not swear, nor curse, nor take God's name lightly. They would go to the next parish church to hear a sermon when they had none at their own; and would read the Scriptures on the Lord's day, when others were playing. There were, where I lived, about the number of two or three families in twenty, which, by the rest were called puritans, and derided as hypocrites and precisians, that would take on them to be holy; yet hardly one, if any, of them ever scrupled conformity; and they were godly, conformable ministers whom they went from home to hear. These ministers being the ablest preachers, and men of serious piety, were also the objects of vulgar obloquy, as puritans and precisians.

This being the condition of the vulgar where I was, when I came into the acquaintance of many persons of honor, and power, and reputed learning, I found the same seriousness in religion as in some few before described, and the same daily scorn of that sort of men in others, but differently clothed; for these would talk more bitterly, but yet with a greater show of reason, against the other, than the ignorant country people did. They would, also, sometimes talk of certain opinions in religion, and some of them would use part of the common prayer in their houses; others of them would swear, though seldom, and these small oaths, and lived soberly and civilly. But serious talk of God or godliness, or that which tended to search and reform the heart and life, and prepare for the life to come, they would at least be very averse to hear, if not deride as puritanical.

This being the fundamental division, some of those who were called puritans and hypocrites, for not being hypocrites, but serious in the religion they professed, would sometimes get together; and, as drunkards and sporters would meet to drink and play, they would, in some very few places where there were many of them, meet after sermon on the Lord's days, to repeat the sermon, and sing a psalm, and pray. For this, and for going from their own parish churches, they were first envied by the readers and dry teachers, whom they sometimes went from, and next prosecuted by apparitors, officials, archdeacons, commissaries, chancellors, and other episcopal instruments. In former