Before dismissing Richard Baxter, there are three things respecting him which may be properly noticed here: the first, as an example of the popularity of his preaching; the second, as an instance of his independence and honesty in relation to Cromwell; and the third, as indicative of his charity and wisdom in promoting the interests of Christian union.

When Baxter preached that alarming and heart-stirring discourse at St. Lawrence Jewry which is entitled "Making light of Christ," the crowd was so great, that Lord Broghill, and the Earl of Suffolk, who brought the preacher to church in his coach, were "fain to go home again, because they could not come within hearing," and the crowd shewed so little respect to persons, that the old Earl of Warwick had to sit in the lobby; and Baxter adds—"Mr. Vines (the incumbent) himself, was fain to get into the pulpit and sit behind me, and I stood between his legs." "The Sermon on Judgment," published in "Baxter's Works"—another characteristic specimen of his mode of exposition and appeal—was delivered at the request of Sir Christopher Pack, Lord Mayor of London, in the old Gothic cathedral of St. Paul;[187] and the preacher tells us he delivered it to the "greatest auditory he ever saw." We find him also in the pulpit of Westminster Abbey, addressing immense congregations.

Baxter once, and only once, preached before Cromwell, when he chose for his subject the divisions and distractions of Christendom. He shewed how mischievous a thing it was for politicians to encourage divisions for their own ends, and to fish in troubled waters, thus keeping the Church in a state of weakness, and pointed out, at the end of his discourse, the necessity and the means of union. The preacher heard that his plain speaking had displeased his audience; yet, to use his own expression, "they put up with it." But Cromwell sent for Baxter, and began a long and tedious speech respecting God's Providence in the change of governments, and how He had owned that change already, and what great things had been achieved in consequence of it both at home and abroad. Baxter, wearied out of all patience, at length observed, that he took our ancient monarchy to be a great blessing, and craved pardon, as he asked his Highness in what way England had forfeited that blessing. Awakened into passion by this home thrust, Cromwell replied, that it was no forfeiture at all, but a "Divine dispensation;" and then he "let fly" at the Parliament, especially at four or five members who were Baxter's particular friends. A few days afterwards, the Protector addressed to the impatient preacher another slow and tedious speech upon liberty of conscience; and the preacher returned to the Protector a paper containing his own views upon the same subject. Baxter's paper would be to Cromwell as tiresome as Cromwell's talk could be to Baxter. Yet the whole of this remarkable intercourse between two remarkable men shewed the courage of the one, and the magnanimity of the other, and the perfect sincerity of both.

Baxter, at a later period, preached in Westminster Abbey, before the House of Commons, a sermon containing the following passage, which is as worthy of attention at the present day as when the impassioned Divine delivered it under the arched roof of that great national temple:—

"Men that differ about Bishops, ceremonies, and forms of prayer, may be all true Christians, and dear to one another and to Christ, if they be practically agreed in the life of godliness, and join in a holy, heavenly conversation. But if you agree in all your opinions and formalities, and yet were never sanctified by the truth, you do but agree to delude your souls, and neither of you will be saved for all your agreement."[188]

Another striking example of devotedness amongst the Presbyterian Clergy of the Commonwealth might be found at Maidstone. Thomas Wilson, the Vicar, was a stricter man, and of severer habits than Richard Baxter. He rose at two or three o'clock on Sunday mornings, called his family together at seven, and read the Scriptures and sang psalms till between eight and nine, "that all might be ready to attend public ordinances." Then he began the service at the parish church by "singing two staves of a psalm," and praying for a blessing, and afterwards he expounded the Scriptures for one hour, according to the "hour-glass in his desk." The same space of time was occupied in preaching. Having spent most of the interval between one service and another in singing hymns and in similar devotional exercises, he reappeared in his pulpit in the afternoon, and did as he had done in the morning, only that he expounded the New Testament instead of the Old. In the evening he called his neighbours together, and asked questions respecting the sermons they had heard, and, after a recapitulation of them, with additional singing, he concluded with prayer. We should have supposed that the religious services of the day were now concluded; but instead of that being the case we are informed that the minister went to his patron's house to supper, where there would be a hundred or more persons assembled, including the principal magistrates of the town, to join with their excellent Vicar "in the conclusion of the day"—when more remarks, questions, and prayers, were added to those already so abundantly offered. Not less than nine or ten hours were thus spent in acts of worship, so that the Sabbath could not be a season of rest; still, at least to Thomas Wilson, it was a day of light and gladness. Every Monday and Tuesday he held theological conferences; every Thursday he preached a market-lecture; and every Friday he expounded the Scriptures at a private meeting. His biographer bears admiring testimony to the change which he wrought by these unremitting labours in the town of Maidstone, and informs us that one of the Judges on the circuit held up the place as a choice and unparalleled example. Those who on Sunday had been wont to frequent the public-house, and to play at cudgell, football, or cricket, and had mocked the godly burgesses and their wives on the way to church,—now attended sermon themselves, and had actually come to believe that it was a sin even to draw water, or to walk in the fields, or to pluck a rose on the Lord's Day.[189]

Pages might be filled with illustrations of like earnestness, with a similar lack of wisdom; but room remains for only one more example of the Presbyterian parish Minister of the Commonwealth. Thomas Hall spent "three apprenticeships at King's Norton—in addition to a lustre of years (rather more than four), at Mosely." His preface to "The Font Guarded," a publication belonging to the year 1651, compliments his parishioners after the following fashion:—"You have been a people very loving and free to the ministry. Many people deal by their ministers as carriers do by their horses, laying great burdens on them, and then hang bells about their necks; but ye have not so learned Christ. Your gratitude hath not been verbal but real, with your purse, as well as with your persons, you have promoted the Gospel for many years together in your town, to the refreshing of many hungry souls about you, in which number I acknowledge myself to have been one."

This individual affords an example of a common trouble in those days, occasioned by the preaching of sectaries who, in the estimation of the Presbyterian pastor, had received no legitimate call to the office which they exercised. He complained, that such persons interrupted him in the midst of his discourses, and rudely challenged him to a public dispute. Yet he could congratulate his parishioners upon the unity of spirit which they enjoyed, although they formed a large body, and were many of them "knowing people." To his great joy, his flock conformed not to the canons of the Bishops but to the canon of Scripture; and there were but few families which had not submitted to examination before approaching the sacrament.

Many clergymen in those days had no fixed opinions on the question of church government, not believing that any particular ecclesiastical system is taught in the New Testament. Any one who held Bishops to be of Divine appointment, or who maintained the Divine right of Congregationalism, were of course chargeable with a dereliction of principle if they adopted the Presbyterian polity; but the case was far otherwise with men who did not believe that there is Divine authority for one kind of church order more than another. Such persons, too, as would have preferred, or would have been satisfied with moderate Episcopacy, and yet believed that Bishops and Presbyters were originally identical, might with good faith submit to the Presbyterianism of the Church of England. Of this class was Thomas Gataker the younger, a man eminently learned in an age of abundant erudition[190]—the friend and correspondent of Archbishop Ussher, and the author of Latin treatises filled with rare and curious knowledge. First Lecturer at Lincoln's Inn, and then Rector of Rotherhithe, he manifested throughout the political and ecclesiastical changes of the times a singular pecuniary disinterestedness; and has, in a very peculiar book, written for his own vindication, given a full account of his preferments—thus throwing much light upon the incomes and upon the cares of Commonwealth clergymen.[191] At Rotherhithe he came to a dwelling-house much mangled and defaced by the late Incumbent's widow, through spite and spleen against some of the parishioners with whom her husband had been in prolonged contention. The wharf by the river opposite to the parsonage-house was ready to drop into ruins, for the repair of which—although two or three persons contributed something—the main expense came out of Gataker's own purse. The fabric of the church, which was supported with "chalky pillars," of such a bulk as filled up no small part of the edifice, being found faulty, and "threatening a fail if not a fall, unless speedily prevented;"—the minister had to contribute largely to remove these incumbrances, and to place strong timber columns in their place. A ship catching fire on the Thames, close by the Rectory, endangered the thatched roof, which the Rector had to exchange for tiles. He also relates in his copious narrative how, in the earlier period of his incumbency, he let out the whole tithe and glebe for one hundred pounds a year, subject to several deductions. At length ten pounds a quarter more was promised, to be assessed upon the wealthier sort of inhabitants—the poorer people being spared—and to be gathered by the churchwardens for the time being, and by them quarterly paid. "Which yet," he says—for we had better leave him to tell the rest of his story in his own way—"the most part came short more or less every quarter, as by my receipts may appear. And I may truly and boldly avow it, that during all the time of mine abode in this place—what in maintenance of my family; in affording a competency to an able assistant for me in the work of the ministry, and to a young scholar to write out divers things for me; in enlarging my house, which was somewhat scanty, for the more convenient lodging of mine assistant and scribe, and a student, one or two, (such of our own country as had left the University, and were fitting themselves for the ministry)—or strangers that from foreign parts came over to learn our language and observe our method of teaching—and gaining a room of more capacity for the bestowing of my library; in reparation of my house and of the wharf before it; in furnishing myself with books; in relief to the poor (wherein I shall spare to speak what I added voluntarily in a constant course unto that I was assessed); in these and the like put together, with what went to the higher powers—I spent, one year with another, all that ever I received in right of my rectory, as by proof sufficient I could make to appear."[192]

Dr. John Gauden—famous as the reputed author of "Icon Basilike"—is also well known as a Royalist and an Episcopalian. He has been made notorious by the charge brought against him of ambition and covetousness; for having eagerly sought preferment; for being dissatisfied with his first bishopric after the Restoration; and for saying "Exeter had a high rack but a low manger."[193] Yet Gauden, at first, was as much a Puritan as a Royalist; he preached "against pictures, images, and other superstitions of Popery," in a sermon before the Long Parliament, for which he was presented with a silver tankard, and in the following year with the Deanery of Bocking. Nominated a member of the Westminster Assembly, he was superseded by the Parliament who chose Thomas Goodwin in preference to him. Gauden is said to have taken the Covenant, a report which he denied; but his name is found in the Presbyterian classis of Hinckford, in Essex. His friendly feeling towards the Puritan party appears from his conduct at the Savoy Conference, after the Restoration. "He was our most constant helper," says Baxter, "and how bitter soever his pen might be, he was the only moderator of all the bishops, except our Bishop Reignolds;" he had "a calm, fluent, rhetorical tongue, and if all had been of his mind, we had been reconciled."[194] Disposed to conciliation, though a known Royalist, and conforming in some degree to Presbyterianism, Gauden was allowed, like others of that class, to continue his public ministrations, and retain his preferment. In 1658 he officiated publicly at the funeral of Robert Rich—heir to the earldom of Warwick, and husband of Cromwell's daughter Frances.[195]

Gauden was, at least virtually, a Presbyterian conformist. Dr. Thomas Fuller became one avowedly; openly declaring his preference for Episcopacy, he at the same time, with equal openness, submitted to Presbyterian arrangements. "Not to dissemble," he says, "in the sight of God and man, I do ingenuously protest that I affect the Episcopal government (as it was constituted in itself, abating some corruptions which time hath contracted) best of any other, as conceiving it most consonant to the word of God, and practice of the primitive Church." "But I know that religion and learning hath flourished under the Presbyterian government in France, Germany, the Low Countries. I know many worthy champions of the truth, bred and brought up under the same. I know the most learned and moderate English Divines (though Episcopal in their callings and judgments) have allowed the Reformed Churches under the discipline, for sound and perfect in all essentials necessary to salvation. If therefore denied my first desire, to live under that Church government I best affected, I will contentedly conform to the Presbyterian government, and endeavour to deport myself quietly and comfortably under the same." Fuller's fortunes were somewhat varied. For a little while—in the year 1647—he preached at St. Clement's, Eastcheap, and at St. Bride's, Fleet Street. The next year he was silenced. "It hath been," said he—addressing Sir John Danvers, in whose house he abode awhile—"the pleasure of the present authority, to whose commands I humbly submit, to make me mute, forbidding me, till further order, the exercise of my public preaching; wherefore I am fain to employ my fingers in writing, to make the best signs I can, thereby to express, as my desire to the general good, so my particular gratitude to your honour."[196] About the year 1649 he received by presentation from the Earl of Carlisle the perpetual curacy of Waltham Abbey, "wherein as many pleasant hills and prospects are as any place in England doth afford." Under the shadow of the Norman church, which Fuller describes as "rather large than neat, firm than fair;" he wrote incomparable books, and found within its walls on Sundays the "best commendation of a church," even "a great and attentive congregation." Historical associations were connected with the parish, most grateful to this Incumbent. It was there one night, at Mr. Cressy's home, that Cranmer had supped with Henry the Eighth, on his way home from a royal progress, and had suggested to the monarch—wearied with the dilatoriness of the Papal Court—a more summary method of getting rid of Queen Catherine. It was there, too, that John Foxe had compiled his "Acts and Monuments." And it was there, also, that Bishop Hall had, a few years before, "climbed the pulpit week by week," to repeat, memoriter, every word he had written of his sermons;—some of which included portions of his popular "Contemplations," which were first published during his ministry at Waltham. Whilst in that parish, Fuller completed his "Pisgah Sight," and his "Abel Redivivus;" and in the same place there occurred the following well-known incident:—Having to appear before the Triers, he said to John Howe, "You may observe, sir, that I am a somewhat corpulent man, and I am to go through a very strait passage; I beg you would be so good as to give me a shove, and help me through." When asked by the Commissioners "whether he had ever had any experience of a work of grace on his heart," Fuller gave the memorable reply—"that he could appeal to the Searcher of hearts, that he made a conscience of his very thoughts."[197] In the year 1652 he was restored to the Eastcheap Lectureship, which he held in connexion with the Waltham curacy. In the year 1658 he obtained the rectory of Crawford, and died in 1661.

A characteristic specimen of the quiet parish Presbyter (not Priest) who was more given to works of mercy than to controversial argument, yet who did all his good deeds after a quaint Puritan pattern, is to be seen in what is related of the life of Abraham Colfe, Vicar of Lewisham. He looked after the education of boys; and founded a parish school, with exhibitions for the universities—and a room for a library—and endowments for the purchase of Bibles and other books. He built almshouses for godly people, who could repeat the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. He gave away bread to the poor, and money for the marriage of one or two maidservants every year. He paid the clerk for taking care of the boys' Bibles, and for keeping in order the church clock, and he also instituted a sermon for the fifth of November. This record of his benefactions will indicate what sort of man was Abraham Colfe; and further glimpses of his character—not a peculiar one in those days—are caught in his Will, from which we may gather what were his likes and dislikes: he hated gamesters, and frequenters of alehouses, and all who were given to "wanton dalliances," or who lavished unnecessary expenses in following "vain, gaudy fashions of apparel;" he disapproved of all who wore "long, curled, or ruffin-like hair"—strangely associating such persons with the profane and heretical. Moreover, in reading Latin or Greek authors, this same Kentish Incumbent approved of pointing out the errors and vices which there appeared—and such as drew the young to Popish superstition, Epicurean licentiousness, or downright Atheism, instead of drawing them to godliness and a holy life. Nor would he let boys wear "long, curled, frizzled or powdered hair"—but enjoined upon them the importance of cutting it short, and of wearing it in such a manner as that their foreheads should be seen, "and no part of it be allowed to grow longer than one inch below the lowest tips of their ears."[198]

Some of the clergy in those times were very flexible. The district of Craven, in Yorkshire, is very remarkable for the examples of this description which it afforded. As in the sixteenth century—when the incumbents of that beautiful part of England gently bowed to all ecclesiastical changes, from the enactment of the Six Articles to the Act of Uniformity of Queen Elizabeth—so was it with their successors in the seventeenth century. Not a name is contributed from that quarter to the list of either Walker or Calamy. Surplice or Genevan cloak, Liturgy or Directory, Episcopacy or Presbyterianism, a King or a Commonwealth—all came alike to the accommodating Rectors and Vicars of that charming locality.[199] Others of a similar temper were found amidst less beautiful scenery.