the appointment of a successor soon left him at liberty; and having resolved to enter the ministry, he put himself under the instruction of Mr. Francis Garbet then minister at Wroxeter, of whom he speaks with affection and reverence. Under this teacher he commenced, with much zeal, those metaphysical pursuits to which he was ever afterwards so much devoted. His studies however were much interrupted by disease, and sometimes by mental distress approaching to religious melancholy.

Not far from this time, when he was about eighteen years of age, he was persuaded for a little while to abandon his plans and expectations in regard to preaching the gospel, Mr. Wickstead, his tutor at Ludlow, who seems to have regarded him with a friendly interest, proposed that he should go to London in the hope of obtaining some office about the court. Baxter himself disliked the proposal; but his parents not having any great inclination to see their son a clergyman, (which cannot be thought strange considering the specimens of clerical character with which they were acquainted,) were so much pleased with it, that he felt himself constrained to yield to their wishes. Accordingly he went to London, and by the friendly aid of Mr. Wickstead, was introduced to the patronage of Sir Henry Herbert, then master of the revels. He stayed with Sir Henry at Whitehall about a month; and in that short time had enough of the court. For when he saw, as he says, "a stage play instead of a sermon on the Lord's days in the afternoon," and "heard little preaching but what was as to one part against the Puritans," he was glad to be gone. At the same time his mother being sick desired his return. So he "resolved to bid farewell to those kinds of employments and expectations." It is no wonder if, after this piece of experience, he entertained very little respect for the religion of the court and the king, and was more inclined than ever toward the principles of the calumniated Puritans.

When he came home, he found his mother in extreme pain. She continued in lingering distress for about five months, and died on the tenth of May 1635. More than a year afterwards his father married Mary the daughter of Sir Thomas Hurkes, a woman of eminent excellence, whose "holiness, mortification, contempt of

the world, and fervent prayer," made her "a blessing to the family, an honor to religion, and a pattern to those that knew her." This is the character given of her by her step-son, after her departure at the age of ninety-six.

He now pursued his preparation for the ministry without any further interruption save what was occasioned by the extreme infirmity of his constitution and the repeated attacks of disease. His physical frame, though naturally sound was never firm or vigorous; and from childhood he was subject to a nervous debility. At fourteen years of age he had the small pox; and in connection with that disease, he brought upon himself by improper exposure and diet, a violent catarrh and cough, which prevented all quiet sleep at night. After two years this was attended with spitting of blood and other symptoms of consumption; and from this time to the extreme old age at which he left the world, he lived a dying life. The ever varying remedies which he successively tried, following from time to time the discordant suggestions of physicians and other advisers, had little effect except to vary, and with each variation as it seemed, to aggravate the symptoms of disease. The record of his diseases and his remedies need not be transcribed. His "rheumatic head;" his "flatulent stomach that turned all things into wind;" his blood in such a state as to occasion the frequent excoriation of his fingers' ends; and his excessive bleedings at the nose-both periodical every spring and fall-and occasional, whenever he was subjected to any unusual heat, explain his intervals of melancholy, afford an apology for the alleged acerbity of his temper, and make the industry of his life, especially when viewed in connection with the results, almost miraculous.

This living continually at the gate of death, and as it were within. sight of an immediate retribution, had much to do in the formation of his character as a christian and as a minister of the gospel. When, at the age of seventeen, he was thought to be sinking in a consumption, the nearness of death set him on a close and trembling examination of his fitness to die. Thus was he "long kept with the calls of approaching death at one ear and the questionings of a doubtful conscience at the other;" and afterwards he "found that this method of God's was very wise," and that no other was

so likely to have tended to his good. It humbled him and led him to abasing views of himself. It restrained him from the levity and vanity of youth, and helped him to meet temptations to sensuality with the greatest fear. It made the doctrine of redemption the more delightful to him; and the studies and considerations to which it led him, taught him how to live by faith on Christ. It made the world seem to him like "a carcass that had neither life nor loveliness." "It destroyed," he says, "those ambitious desires after literate fame, which was the sin of my childhood. I had a desire before to have attained the highest academical degrees and reputation of learning, and to have chosen out my studies accordingly; but sickness and solicitousness for my doubting soul did drive away all these thoughts as fooleries and children's plays.”

What he says respecting the effect of all this on the course of his preparation for the ministry, is worthy of a particular attention. "It set me upon that method of my studies, which since then I have found the benefit of, though at the time I was not satisfied with myself. It caused me first to seek God's kingdom and his righteousness, and most to mind the one thing needful, and to determine first of my ultimate end, by which I was engaged to choose out and to prosecute all other studies but as meant to that end. Therefore divinity was not only carried on with the rest of my studies with an equal hand, but always had the first and chiefest place. And it caused me to study practical divinity first, and in the most practical books, in a practical order, doing all purposely for the informing and reforming of my own soul.* So that I had read a multitude of our English practical treatises before I had ever read any other bodies of divinity than Ursine and Amesius, or two or three more. By which means my affection was carried on with my my judgment; and by that means I prosecuted all my studies with unweariedness and delight; and by that means all that I read did stick the better in my memory ;-and also less of my time was lost by lazy intermissions, but my bodily infirmities always caused me to lose (or spend) much of it in motion and corporeal exercises, which

* A new day will dawn on the church, when all students of theology adopt this principle. VOL. I.

4

was sometimes by walking, and sometimes at the plow and such country labors.

"But one loss I had by this method, which hath proved irreparable; I missed that part of learning which stood at the greatest distance (in my thoughts) from my ultimate end, though no doubt but remotely it may be a valuable means-and I could never since find time to get it. Besides the Latin tongue, and but a mediocrity in Greek, with an inconsiderable trial at the Hebrew long after, I had no great skill in languages; though I saw that an accurateness and thorough insight in the Greek and Hebrew were very desirable. But I was so eagerly carried after the knowledge of things, that I too much neglected the study of words. And for the mathematics, I was an utter stranger to them, and never could find in my heart to divert my 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 teacheth of the soul, contenting myself at first with a slighter study of the rest. And these had my labor and delight; which occasioned me (perhaps) too soon to plunge myself very early into the study of controversies, and to read all the schoolmen I could get. For next to practical divinity, no books so suited with my disposition as Aquinas, Scotus, Durandus, Ockam, and their disciples; because I thought they narrowly searched after truth, and brought things out of the darkness of confusion. For I could never from my first studies endure confusion. Till equivocals were explained, and definition and distinction led the way, I had rather hold my tongue than speak; and was never more weary of learned men's discourses, than when I heard them wrangling about unexpounded words or things, and eagerly disputing before they understood each others' minds, and vehemently asserting modes and consequences and adjuncts, before they considered of the Quod sit, the Quid sit, or the Quotuplex. I never thought I understood any thing till I could anatomize it, and see the parts distinctly, and the conjunction of the parts as they make up the whole. Distinction and method seemed to me of that necessity, that without them I could not be said to know; and the disputes that forsook them, or abused them, seemed but as incoherent dreams."

Allusion has been made to the fears and difficulties which at

tended his religious views and feelings at this period of his life. These were, perhaps, in no respect peculiar. Few christians can read what he records on this subject, without finding much that coincides with their own experience, and much, in the way of analysis and explanation, that is adapted to their own necessities. "As for those doubts of my own salvation, which exercised me for many years, the chiefest causes of them were these:

"1. Because I could not distinctly trace the workings of the Spirit upon my heart, in that method which Mr. Bolton, Mr. Hooker, Mr. Rogers and other divines describe; nor knew the time of my conversion, being wrought on by the forementioned degrees. But since then, I understood that the soul is in too dark and passionate a plight at first, to be able to keep an account of the order of its own operations; and that preparatory grace being sometimes longer and sometimes shorter, and the first degree of special grace being usually very small, it is not possible that one of very many should be able to give any true account of the just time when special grace began, and advanced him above the state of preparation.

"2. My second doubt was as aforesaid, because of the hardness of my heart, or want of such a lively apprehension of things spiritual, which I had about things corporeal. And though I still groan under this as my sin and want, yet I now perceive that a soul in flesh doth work so much after the manner of the flesh, that it much desireth sensible apprehensions; but things spiritual and distant are not so apt to work upon them, and to stir the passions, as things present and sensible are; especially being known so darkly as the state and operations of separated souls are known to us who are in the body; and that the rational operations of the higher faculties (the intellect and will) may without so much passion, set God and things spiritual highest within us, and give them the pre-eminence, and subject all carnal interest to them, and give them the government of the heart and life; and that this is the ordinary state of a believer.

"3. My next doubt was lest education and fear had done all that was ever done upon my soul, and regeneration and love were yet to seek; because I had found convictions from my childhood, and had found more fear than love in all my duties and restraints.