dying mother, make a sadly impressive picture. The storm began about Christmas-day, and lasted till Easter, the snow lying, in some places, "many yards deep;" many who went abroad in it perished. "Shut up in the great snow" through all the dreary winter, he was the witness of his mother's piteous sufferings till death released her in the spring.

He now approached manhood, but his health had not strengthened. From the age of twenty-one till near twenty-three, his debility continued so extreme that he did not expect to live. Under this experience of suffering, he became more impressed than ever by the interests of religion, and the folly of those who neglect it; and the desire to enter into the Christian ministry (should his life be spared) grew stronger than before. He so felt the unspeakable greatness of the soul's salvation, that he thought if men only heard of it as they ought, they could not live careless and ungodly lives; and "he was so foolish as to think that he himself had so much to say of such convincing evidence for the truth, that men could scarcely be able to withstand it." This was the genuine instinct of the Preacher. The triumphant faith that he would move others by what so deeply moved himself, bespoke in Baxter thus early the true spring of all pulpit eloquence. It is pleasant to think of his nursing, amidst all his weakness, and when he seemed near to die, the impulse which was to give its highest distinction and energy to his life.

It was natural that in his circumstances he should give special attention to the controversy then agitating the Church of England. The presence of this controversy has been seen more or less in every turn of his boyhood, in relation to his father, and the villagers

amongst whom he lived-his teachers, and his brief visit to Court. His father, deeply religious as he was, and called a Puritan by the rioting villagers, because he would not countenance their Sunday sports, was yet a Conformist. He never "scrupled common prayer nor ceremonies, nor spake against bishops." Baxter had grown up with the same feelings and habits of worship. He "joined with the common prayer with as hearty a fervency as afterwards he did with other prayers." Not only so, but as far as he was able at this time to examine the subject for himself, and consider the fair grounds of argument on either side, he clearly inclined to the side of the Conformists. It appeared to him that their cause was "very justifiable, and the reasoning of the Nonconformist weak;" and he candidly confesses that the superior learning of the Church writers impressed him. Among these writers, he has mentioned in his life Downham, Sprint, and Burgess, and elsewhere he has mentioned Hooker, with whose great work, as well as with his sermons, he frequently shows his familiarity. He had also "turned over Cartwright and Whitgift." On the whole, he takes a fair and discriminating view of the controversy at this date. In ceremonies such as kneeling, and the ring in marriage, he saw no ground for scruple. The surplice and the cross in baptism seemed to him less lawful, and the latter he never once used. A form of prayer and liturgy he judged to be undoubtedly lawful, and in some cases lawfully imposed; but there appeared to him much disorder and defectiveness in the Church of England liturgy in particular. He also became doubtful about subscription, and greatly deplored the want of discipline in the Church. These were his mature convictions after ordination,

'which he received when he was about twenty-three years of age. He confesses that there were some subjects which he had not, at this date, examined with the care that he ought to have done. He had never once read over the Book of Ordination or the Book of Homilies, nor did he sufficiently understand certain controverted points in the Thirty-nine Articles.

Following his ordination, he was, about 1638, appointed to be head-master of a school established at Dudley. Here, in the parish church, he preached his first sermon. Here, also, he studied more at length the subject of Conformity, and became a zealous advocate for it. He "daily disputed against the Nonconformists," whose censoriousness and inclination towards separation he judged to be a threatening evil -as much contrary to Christian charity on one side, as persecution was on the other.

He continued in Dudley about a year, when he received an invitation to Bridgenorth, the second town in Shropshire, to be assistant to the incumbent there. He considered it his duty to accept the invitation; the employment exactly suited him, as he was left at liberty in certain particulars, in regard to the obligation of which he was beginning to feel uneasy. The minister of the place, Mr William Madstard, is described as a grave and severe ancient divine, very honest and conscionable, and an excellent preacher, but somewhat afflicted with want of maintenance, and much more with a dead-hearted unprofitable people." Here he preached with great zeal and to a very full congregation; but he complains that, although his labours were not without success, the people generally were very ignorant, and given to "tippling, ill company, and dead-heartedness." The freedom which

he enjoyed from all restraint in the discharge of his duty greatly pleased him; he used the Common Prayer, but he never administered the Lord's Supper, nor ever baptised any child with the sign of the cross, nor ever wore the surplice. This freedom of action, combined with his youthful fervour of feeling-for he never anywhere "preached with more vehement desire of men's conversion"-evidently made his work in Bridgenorth pleasing to him, notwithstanding the small results that seemed to follow it.

The first thing that disturbed him, and led him to renewed reflection on Church government, was the Et cætera oath, as it was called, which required the clergy to swear that they would "never consent to the alteration of the present government of the Church by Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, Archdeacons, &c." The attempt to enforce an obligation of this nature, it may be imagined, made a great commotion. Many, even of the Conforming clergy, were not disposed to bind themselves thus arbitrarily and blindly; only the Laudian section, who maintained that Episcopacy was jure divino, and that the royal will in itself was absolutely authoritative in ecclesiastical government, could honestly subscribe it. The measure was equally ignorant and outrageous-like many other acts of Laud's administration. It compassed no adequate purpose, while it called forth the strongest animosity, and rallied in opposition the intelligence and the conscience of the nation.

A meeting of clergy was held at Bridgenorth to "debate the business," and Baxter distinguished himself by his vigorous hostility to the oath. His renewed investigation and discussion of the subject shook his faith in Episcopal government altogether, or

at least in the "English diocesan frame." A system which admitted of such tyrannical action, and which, for practical purposes of moral discipline, was so powerless, he at length became satisfied was a "heterogenial thing," quite unlike the primitive Episcopacy. And so it was, as he himself says, that the Et cætera oath became the means of alienating him and many others from the moderate conformity in which they desired to spend their lives, and rousing them "to look about them, and understand what they did."

This occurred on the eve of the Scottish war, when the Covenant excitement had broken forth, and the noise of the successful opposition made in Scotland to the royal authority was spreading into England, and kindling into flame the discontent arising from the exaction of Ship-money. The national agitation was extreme. Years of misgovernment had embittered the country, and the most arbitrary interferences outraged the rights of the people and the Church, without compacting the interests of Government. The spirit of loyalty and reverence was wearing out, while the rising discontent was only met by insolence and violence. The Scottish army at length marched into England; and, pressed on all hands, the King was forced to call a Parliament.

After a temporary delay, the dismissal of the Parliament, and the renewed invasion of the Scotch, the Long Parliament met in 1640; and it had no sooner done so than it showed of what spirit it was. The Ship-money and the Et cætera oath mark the two lines of civil and ecclesiastical reform into which it immediately launched; the impeachment of Strafford and of Laud proved the stern spirit in which it was prepared to vindicate the national rights, and avenge the national