M.

by his enemies. One unhappy exception is to life, as the free but unconscious agents of the be made. It is impossible to read without pain Divine Will, is the higher design with which the names of Luther, Melancthon, and Bucer, he writes, to trace the mysterious inter eation amongst the subscribers to the address to the of Providence in reforming the errors and landgrave of Hesse, on the subject of his in-abuses of the Christian Church is his immetended polygamy. Those great but fallible men remind his highness of the distinction between universal laws and such as admit of dispensation in particular cases. They cannot publicly sanction polygamy. But his highness is of a peculiar constitution, and is exhorted seriously to examine all the considerations laid before him; yet, if he is absolutely resolved to marry a second time, it is their opinion that he should do so as secretly as possible! Fearful is the energy with which the "Eagle of Meaux" pounces on this fatal error,-tearing to pieces the flimsy pretexts alleged in defence of such an evasion of the Christian code. The charge admits of no defence. To the inference drawn from it against the reformer's doctrine, every Protestant has a conclusive answer. Whether in faith or practice, he acknowledges no infallible Head but one.

diate end; and to exalt the name of Luther, his labour of love. These purposes, as far as Ley are attainable, are effectually attaine D'Aubigne is a Protestant of the inal stamp, and a biographer of the old fashion;— not a calm, candid, discriminating weiger and measurer of a great man's parts, but a warmhearted champion of his glory, and a resolute apologist even for his errors;-reay to do battle in his cause with all who shall impugn or derogate from his fame. His hock is conceived in the spirit, and executed with all the vigour, of Dr. M'Crie's "Life of Knox." He has all our lamented countryman's sincerity, all his deep research, more skill in composition, and a greater mastery of subordinate details; along with the same inestimable faculty of carrying on his story from one stage to another, with an interest which never subsides, and a But we have wandered far and wide from vivacity which knows no intermission. If he our proper subject. Where, all this while, is displays no familiarity with the moral sciences, the story of Luther's education, of his visit to he is no mean proficient in that art which Rome, of the sale of indulgences, of the de-reaches to perfection only in the drama or the nunciations of Tetzel, of the controversy with romance. This is not the talent of inventing, Eccius, the Diets of Worms and Augsburg, the but the gift of discerning, incidents which imcitations before Cajetan and Charles, the papal part life and animation to narrative. For M. excommunication, and the appeal to a general D'Aubigne is a writer of scrupulous veracity. council? These, and many other of the most He is at least an honest guide, though his premomentous incidents of the reformer's life, are possessions may be too strong to render him recorded in M. D'Aubigne's work, from which worthy of implicit confidence. They are such, our attention has been diverted by matters of however, as to make him the unccinpromising less account, but perhaps a little less familiar. and devoted advocate of those cardinal tenets It would be unpardonable to dismiss such a on which Luther erected the edifice of the Rework, with a merely ceremonious notice. The formation. To the one great article on which absolute merit of this life of Martin Luther is the reformer assailed the papacy, the eye of the great, but the comparative value far greater. biographer is directed with scarcely less inIn the English language, it has no competitor; tentness. To this every other truth is viewed and though Melancthon himself was the bio- as subordinate and secondary; and although, grapher of his friend, we believe that no foreign on this favourite point of doctrine M. D'Autongue contains so complete and impressive a bigne's meaning is too often obscured by denarrative of these events. It is true that M. claration, yet must he be hailed by every D'Aubigne neither deserves nor claims a place genuine friend of the Reformation, as having amongst those historians, usually distinguished raised a powerful voice in favour of one of as philosophical. He does not aspire to illus- those fundamental truths which, so long as trate the principles which determine or per- they are faithfully taught and diligently obvade the character, the policy, or the institutions served, will continue to form the great bulof mankind. He arms himself with no dis-warks of Christendom against the overweening passionate skepticism, and scarcely affects to be impartial. To tell his tale copiously and clearly, is the one object of his literary ambition. To exhibit the actors on the scene of

estimate, and the despotic use, of human authority, in opposition to the authority of the revealed will of God.

LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1839.]

THIS publication reminds us of an oversight in omitting to notice the collection of the works of Richard Baxter, edited in the year 1830, by Mr. Orme. It was, in legal phrase, a demand for judgment, in the appeal of the great nonconformist to the ultimate tribunal of posterity, from the censures of his own age, on himself and his writings. We think that the decision was substantially right, and that, on the whole, it must be affirmed. Right it was, beyond all doubt, in so far as it assigned to him an elevated rank amongst those, who, taking the spiritual improvement of mankind for their province, have found there at once the motive and the reward for labours beneath which, unless sustained by that holy impulse, the utmost powers of our frail nature must have prematurely fainted.

Such, from his tenth to his sixteenth year were the teachers of the most voluminous theological writer in the English language. Of that period of his life, the only incidents which can now be ascertained are that his love of apples was inordinate, and that on the subject of robbing orchards, he held, in practice at least, the doctrines handed down amongst schoolboys by an unbroken tradition. Almost as barren is the only extant record of the three remaining years of his pupilage. They were spent at the endowed school at Wroxeter, which he quitted at the age of nineteen, destitute of all mathematical and physical scienceignorant of Hebrew-a mere smatterer in Greek, and possessed of as much Latin as enabled him in after life to use it with reckless facility. Yet a mind so prolific, and which About the time when the high-born guests yielded such early fruits, could not advance to of Whitehall were celebrating the nuptial manhood without much well-dressed culture. revels of Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, The Bible which lay on his father's table, and the visiters of low degree were defraying formed the whole of the good man's library, the cost by the purchase of titles and monopo- and would have been ill-exchanged for the lies, there was living at the pleasant village treasures of the Vatican. He had been no of Eton Constantine, between Wrekin Hill stranger to the cares, nor indeed to the disorand the Severn, a substantial yeoman, incu- ders of life; and, as his strength declined, it rious alike about the politics of the empire was his delight to inculcate on his inquisitive and the wants of the exchequer. Yet was he boy the lessons which inspired wisdom teaches not without his vexations. On the green be- most persuasively, when illustrated by dearfore his door, a Maypole, hung with garlands, bought experience, and enforced by parental allured the retiring congregation to dance out love. For the mental infirmities of the son no the Sunday afternoon to the sound of fife and better discipline could have been found. A tabret, while he, intent on the study of the pyrrhonist of nature's making, his threescore sacred volume, was greeted with no better years and ten might have been exhausted in a names than puritan, precisian, and hypocrite. fruitless struggle to adjudicate between antaIf he bent his steps to the parish church, vene-gonist theories, if his mind had not thus been rable as it was, and picturesque, in contempt subjugated to the supreme authority of Holy of all styles and orders of architecture, his Writ, by an influence coeval with the first case was not much mended. The aged and dawn of reason, and associated indissolubly purblind incumbent executed his weekly task with his earliest and most enduring affections. with the aid of strange associates. One of It is neither the wise nor the good by whom them laid aside the flail, and another the thim- the patrimony of opinion is most lightly reble, to mount the reading-desk. To these suc-garded. Such is the condition of our exist ceeded "the excellentest stage-player in all the country, and a good gamester, and a good fellow." This worthy having received holy orders, forged the like for a neighbour's son, who, on the strength of that title officiated in the pulpit and at the altar. Next in this goodly list came an attorney's clerk, who had "tippled himself in so great poverty," that he had no other way to live but by assuming the pastoral care of the flock at Eton Constantine. Time out of mind, the curate had been ex officio the depositary of the secular, as well as of the sacred literature of the parish; and to these learned persons our yeoman was there fore fain to commit the education of his only son and namesake, Richard Baxter.

*The Practical Works of Richard Baxter, with a Preface, giving some Account of the Author, and of this edition of his Practical Works; and an Essay on his Genius, Works, and Times. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1838.

ence, that beyond the precincts of abstract science, we must take much for granted, if we would make any advance in knowledge, or live to any useful end. Our hereditary prepossessions must not only precede our acquired judgments, but must conduct us to them. To begin by questioning every thing, is to end by answering nothing; and a premature revolt from human authority is but an incipient rebellion against conscience, reason, and truth. Launched into the ocean of speculative inquiry, without the anchorage of parental instruction and filial reverence, Baxter would have been drawn by his constitutional tendencies into that skeptical philosophy, through the long annals of which no single name is to be found to which the gratitude of mankind has been yielded, or is justly due. He had much in common with the most eminent doctors of that school-the animal frame characterized

by sluggish appetites, languid passions, and | still the religion of the poor. Amidst persecugreat nervous energy; the intellectual nature tion, contempt, and penury, the Puritans had distinguished by subtlety to seize distinctions toiled and suffered, and had, not rarely, died in more than by wit to detect analogies; by the their service. Thus in every city, and almost power to dive, instead of the faculty to soar; in every village, they who had eyes to see, and by skill to analyze subjective truths, rather ears to hear, might, at the commencement of than by ability to combine them with each the seventeenth century, perceive the harbinother and with objective realities. But what gers of the coming tempest. Thoughtful and was wanting in his sensitive, and deficient in resolute men had transferred the allegiance of his intellectual structure, was balanced and the heart from their legitimate, to their chosen corrected by the spiritual elevation of his leaders; while, unconscious of their danger, mind. If not enamoured of the beautiful, nor the ruling were straining the bonds of authoconversant with the ideal, nor able to grasp rity, in exact proportion to the decrease of their the comprehensive and the abstract, he en- number and their strength. It was when the joyed that clear mental vision which attends future pastors of New England were training on moral purity-the rectitude of judgment men to a generous contempt of all sublunary which rewards the subjection of the will to the interest for conscience' sake, that Laud, not reason the loftiness of thought awakened by content to be terrible to the founders of Conhabitual communion with the source of light- necticut and New England, braved an enmity and the earnest stability of purpose insepara- far more to be dreaded than theirs. With a ble from the predominance of the social above view to the ends to which his life was devoted, the selfish affections. Skepticism and devo- his truth and courage would have been well tion were the conflicting elements of his inter- exchanged for the wily and time-serving genius nal life; but the radiance from above gradually of Williams. Supported by Heylin, Cosins, dispersed the vapours from beneath, and, Montague, and many others, who adopted or through a half a century of pain and strife, exaggerated his own opinions, he precipitated and agitation, he enjoyed that settled tranquil- the temporary overthrow of a church, in harlity which no efforts merely intellectual can mony with the character, and strong in the attain, nor any speculative doubts destroy, affections of the people; upheld by a long line the peace, of which it is said, that it passes of illustrious names; connected with the whole understanding. aristocracy of the realm; and enthusiastically defended by the sovereign.

Baxter was born in 1615, and consequently attained his early manhood amidst events Baxter's theological studies were comominous of approaching revolutions. Deep menced during these tumults, and were insenand latent as are the ultimate causes of the sibly biassed by them. The ecclesiastical. continued existence of Episcopacy in England, polity had reconciled him to Episcopal ordinothing can be less recondite than the human nation; but as he read, and listened, and obagency employed in working out that result. served his attachment to the established ritual Nursed by the Tudors, adopted by the Stuarts, and discipline progressively declined. He be. and wedded in her youth to a powerful aris-gan by rejecting the practice of indiscriminate tocracy, the Anglican church retains the in- communion. He was dissatisfied with the delible stamp of these early alliances. To the compulsory subscription to articles, and the great, the learned, and the worldly wise, it has baptismal cross. "Deeper thoughts on the for three centuries afforded a resting-place and point of Episcopacy" were suggested to him a refuge. But a long interval had elapsed be- by the et cetera oath; and these reflections soon fore the national temples and hierarchy were rendered him an irreconcilable adversary to consecrated to the nobler end of enlightening | the "English diocesan frame." He distributed the ignorant, and administering comfort to the the sacred elements to those who would not poor. Rich beyond all Protestant rivalry in kneel to receive them, and religiously abjured sacred literature, the Church of England, from the surplice. Thus ripe for spiritual censures, the days of Parker to those of Laud, had and prepared to endure them, he was rescued scarcely produced any one considerable work from the danger he had braved by the demon of popular instruction. The pastoral care of civil strife. The Scots in the north, and which Burnett depicted, in the reign of William the Parliament in the south, summoned Charles and Mary, was at that time a vision which, and Laud to more serious cares than those of though since nobly fulfilled, no past experience enforcing conformity, and left Baxter free to had realized. Till a much later time, the enlarge and to propagate his discoveries. alphabet was among the mysteries which the English church concealed from her catechumens. There is no parallel in the annals of any other Protestant State, of so wonderful a concentration, and so imperfect a diffusion of learning and genius, of piety and zeal. The reigns of Whitgift, Bancroft, and Laud, were unmolested by cares so rude as those of evangelizing the artisans and peasantry. Jewel and Bull, Hall and Donne, Hooker and Taylor, lived and wrote for their peers, and for future ages, but not for the commonalty of their own. Yet was not Christianity bereft in England of her distinctive and glorious privilege. It was

With liberty of speech and action, his mind was visited by a corresponding audacity of thought. Was there indeed a future life?Was the soul of man immortal?-Were the Scriptures true?-were the questions which now assaulted and perplexed him. They came not as vexing and importunate suggestions, but " under pretence of sober reason," and all the resources of his understanding were sum. moned to resist the tempter. Self-deception was abhorrent from his nature. He feared the face of no speculative difficulty. Dark as were the shapes which crossed his path, they must be closely questioned; and gloomy as was the

men begin, and afterwards Pitchford's soldiers set in; and I alone disputed against them from morning until almost night." Too old a campaigner to retire from the field in the presence of his enemy, "he staid it out till they first rose and went away." The honours of the day were, however, disputed. In the strange book published by Edwards, under his appropriate title of "Gangræna," the fortunes of the field were chronicled; and there, as we are informed by Baxter himself, may be read "the abundance of nonsense uttered on the occasion."

abyss to which they led, it was to be unhesitat- | against their confounding errors." The soldiers ingly explored. The result needs not to be discoursed as earnestly, and even published stated. From a long and painful conflict he as copiously as himself. After many an affair emerged victorious, but not without bearing to of posts, the hostile parties at length engaged the grave some scars to mark the severity of in a pitched battle at Amersham in Buckingthe struggle. No man was ever blessed with hamshire. "When the public talking-day more profound convictions; but so vast and came," says Baxter, "I took the reading pew, elaborate was the basis of argumentation on and Pitchford's cornet and troopers took the which they rested, that to re-examine the tex-gallery. There did the leader of the Chesham ture, and ascertain the coherence of the materials of which it was wrought, formed the still recurring labour of his whole future life. While the recluse is engulfed in the vortices of metaphysics, the victims of passion are still urged forward in their wild career of guilt and misery. From the transcendental labyrinths through which Baxter was winding his solitary and painful way, the war recalled him to the stern realities of life. In the immediate vicinity of the earlier military operations, Coventry had become a city of refuge to him, and to a large body of his clerical brethren. They believed, in the simplicity of their hearts, that Essex, Waller, and Cromwell, were fighting the battles of Charles, and that their real object was to rescue the king from the thraldom of the malignants, and the church from the tyranny of the prelatists. "We kept," says Baxter, speaking of himself and his associates, "to our old principles, and thought all others had done so too, except a very few inconsiderable persons. We were unfeignedly for king and Parliament. We believed that the war was only to save the Parliament and kingdom from the papists and delinquents, and to remove the dividers, that the king might again return to his Parliament, and that no changes might be made in religion, but by the laws which had his free consent. We took the true happiness of king and people, church and state, to be our end, and so we understood the covenant, engaging both against papists and schismatics; and when the Court News-Book told the world of the swarms of Anabaptists in our armies, we thought it had been a mere lie, because it was not so with us."

Cromwell regarded these polemics with illdisguised aversion, and probably with secret contempt. He had given Baxter but a cold welcome.to the army. "He would not dispute. with me at all," is a fact related by the good man with evident surprise; "but he would in good discourse very fluently pour out himself in the extolling of free grace, which was savoury to those that had right principles, though he had some misunderstanding of free grace himself. He was a man of excellent natural parts for affection and oratory, but not well seen in the principles of his religion; of a sanguine complexión, naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity as another man hath when he hath drunken a cup too much; but naturally, also, so far from humble thoughts of himself, that it was his ruin." The protector had surrendered his powerful mind to the religious fashions of his times, and never found the leisure or the inclination for deep inquiry into a subject on which it was enough for his purposes to excel in fluent and savoury dis course. Among those purposes, to obtain the approbation of his own conscience was not the least sincere. His devotion was ardent, and his piety genuine. But the alliance be tween habits of criminal self-indulgence, and a certain kind of theopathy, is but too ordinary a phenomenon. That at each step of his pro gress, Cromwell should have been deceived aud sustained by some sophistry, is the less wonderful, since even now, in retracing his course, it is difficult to ascertain the point at which he first quitted the straight path of duty, or to discover what escape was at length open to him from the web in which he had become involved. There have been many worse, and few greater men. Yet to vindicate his name from the condemnation which rests upon it, would be to confound the distinctions of good and evil as he did, without the apology of being tempted as he was.

Ontology and scholastic divinity have their charms, and never did man confess them more than Richard Baxter. But the pulse must beat languidly indeed, when the superior fascination of the "tented field" is not acknowledged; nor should it derogate from the reverence which attends his name, to admit that he felt and indulged this universal excitement. Slipping away from Durandus, Bradwardine, Suarez, and Ariminensis, he visited Edgehill and Naseby while the parliamentary armies still occupied the ground on which they had fought. He found the conquerors armed cap-a-pie for spiritual, as well as carnal combats; and to convert the troops from their theological errors, was the duty which, he was assured, had been committed to him by Providence. Becoming accordingly chaplain to Whalley's regiment, he witnessed in that capacity many a skirmish, Baxter was too profound a moralist to be and was present at the sieges of Bristol, Sher- dazzled by the triumph of bad men, however borne, and Worcester. Rupert and Goring specious their virtues; or to affect any comproved less stubborn antagonists than the placency towards a bad cause, though indebted seekers and levellers of the lieutenant-gene- to it for the only period of serenity which it ral's camp; and Baxter was "still employed ever was his lot to enjoy. He had ministered In preaching, conferring, and still disputing to the forces of the parliamentary general but