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not.'

from him. There was no man on earth whom I honored above him. It is his evangelical work that is the apostolical succession which I plead for. I am now dying I hope as he did. It pleased My understanding faileth, my me to read from him my case. memory faileth, and my hand and pen fail, but my charity faileth That word much comforted me. I am as zealous a lover of the New England Churches as any man, according to Mr. Noyes', Mr. Norton's and Mr. Mitchel's, and the Synod's model. I love your father upon the letters I received from him. I love you better for your learning, labors, and peaceable moderation. I love your son better than either of you, for the excellent temper that appeareth in his writings. O that godliness and wisdom may increase in all families. He hath honored himself half as much as Mr. Eliot; I say half as much, for deeds excel words. God preserve you and New England. Pray for your fainting languishing friend, RI. BAXTER."

"Aug. 3, 1691."

The sermon at Baxter's funeral, was preached, as he had himself requested, by his old and tried friend, Dr. Bates. Another sermon on the same occasion was preached to the congregation to which he had last ministered, by his associate in the ministry, Syl

From these sermons the following particulars are selected. "He continued to preach so long," says Bates, "notwithstanding his wasted, languishing body, that the last time he almost died in the pulpit. It would have been his joy to have been transfigured in the mount. Not long aller, he felt the approaches of death, and was confined to his sick bed. Death reveals the secrets of the heart; then words are spoken with most feeling and less affectation. This excellent saint was the same in lus life and death; his last hours were spent in preparing others and himself to appear before God. He said to his friends that visited him, You come hither to learn to die; I am not the only person that must go this way, I can assure you that your whole lite, be it ever so long, is little enough to prepare for death. Have a este of this vain, deceitful world, and the lusts of the flesh; be sure you choose God for your portion, heaven for your home, Godbe glory by your end, his word for your rule, and then you need never feat but we shall meet with comfort.'

"Never was penitent sinner more humble and debasing himself,
never was a sincere believer more calm and comfortable." "Ma-
ny times he prayed, 'God be merciful to me a sinner,' and blessed
God that this was left upon record in the gospel as an effectual
prayer. He said, 'God may justly condemn me for the best duty
I ever did; and all my hopes are from the free mercy of God in
Christ,' which he often prayed for."

“His resigned subinission to the will of God in his sharp sickness
was eminent. When extremity of pain constrained him earnestly
to pray to God for his release by death, he would check eft
is not fit for me to prescribe-when thou wilt, what thou wut, how
thou wilt.'

"Being in great anguish, he said, 'O! how ursparciale are his ways, and his paths past finding out; the reaches of lis providence we cannot fathom! And to his friends, 'Do not the the worse of religion for what you see me suffer.'

"Being often asked by his friends, how it was with his word man, he replied, 'I bless God I have a well-grounded assurance of my eternal happiness, and great peace and comfort win.' Ba was his trouble he could not triumphantly express it, by reason of his extreme pains. He said, 'Flesh must perish, and we must feel the perishing of it; and that though his judgment submitted, yet sense would still make him groan."

"Being asked by a person of quality, whether he had tot great joy from his believing apprehensions of the invisible state, he replied, What else, think you, Christianity serves for? He said, the consideration of the Deity in his glory and greatness, was too high for our thoughts; but the consideration of the Son of God in our nature, and of the saints in heaven whom we knew and loved, did much sweeten and familiarize heaven to him. The description of heaven, in Heb. xii. 22, was most comfortable to him; "that he was going to the innumerable company of angels, and to the general assembly and church of the first-born, whose names are written in heaven; and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel. That scripture, he said, 'deserved a thousand

tinued by successive prorogations ever since May, 1661. It is said that more than one hundred members of this body were kept in pay by the court. It is certain that a more infamous assembly under that name never disgraced the annals of England. The nation's money was given to the king almost without limit; and had the force of Charles' character been equal to the wickedness of his heart, the monarchy of England might have been made as absolute as that of France. But the profligacy of the king was in this instance the safety of the people. The millions which Charles received from parliament, and the treasures acquired by the sale of Dunkirk, and by a secret treaty with France, which had for its object the establishment of an absolute monarchy and of the Roman Catholic religion in Great Britain, were lavished on harlots and parasites; and the king was still kept in a state of dependence. Meanwhile the impiety and shameless debaucheries of the court, spread through all the orders of society. Drunkenness and impurity were the honored badges of loyalty; not only seriousness, but even temperance and chastity, were signs of nonconformity, and prognostics of rebellion; and the nation, in spite of all God's judgments, seemed ripening for the doom of Sodom.

At this time [1671] the scheme of the court was so far advanced, that it was judged safe to offer the persecuted nonconformists some sort of shelter under the wing of the prerogative. "The ministers in several parties," as Baxter informs us, "were oft encouraged to make their addresses to the king, only to acknowledge his clemency, by which they held their liberties, and to profess their loyalty. The king told them, that though such acts were made, he was against persecution, and hoped ere long to stand on his own legs, and then they should see how much he was against it."

About the first of January, 1672, the Exchequer was shut up; so that," in the words of Baxter, "whereas a multitude of merchants and others had put their money into the bankers' hands, and the bankers lent it to the king, and the king gave orders to pay out no more of it for a year, the murmur and complaint in the city were very great, that their estates should be, as they called it, so surprised." "Among others, all the money and estate, except ten pounds per annum, for eleven or twelve years, that I had in the

world, of my own, was there. Indeed it was not my own, which I will mention to counsel those that would do good, to do it speedily, and with all their might. I had got in all my life the just sum of one thousand pounds. Having no child, I devoted almost all of it to a charitable use, a free-school; I used my best and ablest friends for seven years, with all the skill and industry I could, to help me to some purchase of house or land to lay it out on, that it might be accordingly settled. And though there were never more sellers, I could never, by all these friends, hear of any that reason could encourage a man to lay it out on, as secure, and a tolerable bargain; so that I told them, I did perceive the devil's resistance of it, and did verily suspect that he would prevail, and I should never settle, but it would be lost. So hard is it to do any good, when a man is fully resolved."

This wholesale plunder, by which the king gained £1,400,000, was the first decided step in the development of his plan for the establishment of arbitrary power and the return of popery. The second step was the renewal of war, in alliance with France, against the Dutch republic, with the intent of blotting out that prosperous, free and protestant government from among the nations. The third movement, was the king's declaration published March 16, 1672, in which by virtue of his supreme power in all ecclesiastical matters, he suspended the execution of all penal laws in relation to religion; and established at a word a system of toleration, under which a convenient number of places was to be licensed with certain restrictions, as places of public worship, for the use of protestant dissenters, while the papists were only to be indulged with the liberty of holding meetings for worship at their own discretion, in their own houses. The face of the declaration seemed to frown on the papists; but it was instantly discovered that the operation of the system would be to give the Roman Catholics much more liberty than was offered to the protestants.

The nonconformists saw through this scheme; and yet determined to avail themselves of whatever advantages it offered them. Some of the ministers waited on the king to thank him for the indulgence; and many of them took out licenses and began to preach publicly. Baxter delayed for a while, till the ministers in the city

had opened their respective places of worship, and had gathered their congregations. After that, he consented to take a license, on condition he might have it "without the title of Independent, Presbyterian, or any other party, but only as a nonconformist.” Such a license was obtained for him; and "the 19th of November," he writes, "my baptism-day, was the first day after ten years silence that I preached in a tolerated public assembly, though not yet tolerated in any consecrated church, but only against law in my own house." In January, he began a week-day lecture in the chapel of a brother minister. On the Lord's days, he had no congregation of his own, but preached occasionally and gratuitously where he was invited. The next spring he removed his family into the city, having resided at Totteridge three years.

But the progress of the court towards arbitrary power, had roused something of the English spirit even in that degenerate age. When the parliament assembled, corrupt and venal as it was, the declaration of indulgence was voted illegal, and after much debating and resistance on the part of the administration, was finally given up by the king. The dissenters themselves were known to be against the declaration. One of the representatives of the city of London, speaking in the name of the nonconformists, declared that they would rather not have their liberty than have it at the expense of the constitution. The overthrow of the declaration was followed by the Test act, which though leveled against the designs of the court and the catholics, bore hard on the interests of protestant dissenters. Yet this act, the dissenters, in their zeal against the common enemy, heartily promoted; trusting that the parliament would immediately honor their integrity, and relieve their burthens. A bill for their relief was brought into the house of Commons; but was defeated by the united management of the court and the bishops.

The court seeing that the Puritans were not to be enticed into a conspiracy against the constitution, now let loose upon them the whole pack of informers, and determined to make them feel the weight of the law. A number of infamous persons in London and elsewhere followed the trade of informers, and shared with justices of the same stamp, the fines imposed on dissenters for the exercise