A REVIEW OF Mr. Richard Baxter's LIFE WHEREIN Many Mistakes are Rectified some False Relations Detected some Omissions supplyed out of his other BOOKS WITH REMARKS on several Material Passages By THOMAS LONG B.D. One of the Prebendaries of St. Peter's Exon. I have been in the heat of my Zeal so forward to Changes and Ways of Blood that I fear God will not let me have a hand in the peaceable building of his Church Mr. Baxter's Letter to Dr. Hill LONDON Printed by F.C. and are to be sold by E. Whitlock near Stationers-Hall 1697. TO THE RIGHT REVEREND Father in GOD JONATHAN Lord Bishop of Exeter May it please your Lordship I Am very sensible how Criminal it is for any Christian to do what the very Heathen have forbid to speak any thing of the Dead but what is well and yet there are so many ill things recorded of Mr. Baxter in the following Treatise that I might justly incur your Lordships displeasure if I could not plead very necessary and satisfactory Reasons for this Undertaking First therefore I plead that I have said little or nothing in what is now published but what Mr. Baxter reported of himself as Matters of Fact in the History of his Life and other Books printed in his Life time or what is fairly inferred from the same 2. That the Substance of what is now published was printed about nine years before his Death which it is evident he had perused and acknowledgeth he had given no Answer to it except a Mentiris which was his usual Reply to other Adversaries for want of Reason and Argument 3. I say that though dead he hath first provoked me for in p. 188. part 3. of his Life he saith Long of Exeter wrote so fierce a Book to prove me out of my own Writings to be one of the worst Men living on Earth full of Falshoods and old retracted Lines and half Sentences that I never saw any like it and yet though so much concerned and surviving about Nine years he hath not discovered that fulness of Falshoods c. which he suggested but tells his Readers that it is none of the Matter in Controversie whether he be good or bad whereas it is certain that a good Man would never ingage in so bad a Cause as he hath defended by his Personal Actions as well as in many Writings and he himself tells us That a true Description of Persons is much of the Life of History p. 136. of his Life And an evil Tree cannot bring forth good Fruit. 4. I plead not my own Cause but the Cause of the Church and National Constitutions and in truth of all Degrees of Persons in the Nation for this Historical Relation of his own Life contains a virulent invective and grinning Satyr against all that live in conformity to the Ecclesiastical or Civil Laws the King is represented as a Papist and Authorizer of the Irish Insurrection the Parliament is Tyrannical making such Laws as proved Taring Engines and such as no Man fearing God could submit to the established Order of Episcopacy as Antichristian the Clergy as perjured and persecuting Persons the Nobility and Gentry as strengthners of Iniquity in the Land And do not such Scandals demand a Reply 5. It is necessary to disperse those Clouds and Umbrages with which he would cover his mischievous Designs his Pleas for Peace first second and third and his Only way of Concord being nothing else but Seeds of Discord and Confusion and necessary it was that such ill things should have good Names given them those that would propagate Schisms and Heresies need a Form of Godliness to set them off Arius Aerius and Donatus were Men of good Learning and as to appearance of good Lives also yet the one most strangely propagated that damnable Error of denying the Lord that bought him and the other those Schisms which have divided the Body of Christ his Church to this present Age 'T is but an Artifice therefore of all Seducers of which the Apostle forewarns us 2 Tim. 3.2,3 That in the last days men should be lovers of themselves covetous boasters proud blasphemers disobedient to parents unthankful unholy without natural affection truce-breakers false accusers incontinent fierce despisers of those that are good traitors heady high-minded lovers of pleasures more than of God and all this under a Form of Godliness and when even Satan can transform himself into an Angel of Light it is no marvel if his Ministers be transformed as the Ministers of Righteousness 6. I remember that our Excellent Bishop of Worcester prudently foretold of Mr. Baxter That he would dye leaving his sting in the wounds of the Church which Mr. Baxter hath abundantly fulfilled in this and many other of his Writings which Stings must be pluckt out or the Wounds which they have made will be still kept open and bleeding for though Mr. Baxter be dead he hath done what he could to raise up and arm a Succession of such a Generation of Dissenters as shall still eat into the Bowels of the Church and he hath provided a Magazine of Ammunition for them Mr. Sylvester tells us How much he was delighted in a hopeful Race of young Ministers and Christians how much he valued young Divines and hopeful Candidates for the Ministry how liberal he was of Counsel and Encouragement to them and inquisitive after and pleased with their growthful Numbers and Improvement And he told me that he had the greatest hopes and expectations from the succeeding Generation of them that they would do God's Work much better than we had done before them To which end he acquaints us in the beginning of his Preface That Mr. Baxter left the orderly disposal of his bequeathed Library to young poor Students So that here is a Fund provided for a perpetual Schism And Mr. Sylvester hath discovered a hidden Treasure of Mr. Baxter's which he is improving as a Supply of Deficiencies in another Volume Having shewn your Lordship the Reasons of my Undertaking I shall briefly give you an Account of what I have performed to frustrate these pernicious Attempts Your Lordship knows I have served as a Veterane Souldier in these Parts of the Church Militant about Fifty years and might now sue for a Dismission being somewhat elder than Mr. Baxter was when he left writing which was as Mr. Sylvester says Seven years before his death when he was as I compute it Sixty nine years old and I am now entred into the Seventy sixth year yet to excite and encourage men of greater Abilities I have as I were able performed these two things First Whereas a great part of this and other Writings of Mr. Baxter as also of his whole Life hath been spent in framing Objections against and Defamations of our well-establish'd Discipline and Liturgy which he blameth as too confused for want of Method and for its Matter abstracted from the Penal Laws as abounding with Thirty or Forty such tremendous things as a man
of them which the Collector hath not done by him The best is the words of such a scandalous Person will not be taken as a blot And I desire my conforming Brethren not to be troubled at the Railings or Reproaches of this Zealot and that they would forbear troubling him who as he saith hath been a dying Man almost these forty years And though I never spake nor thought half so ill of him as he hath recorded of himself yet I shall charitably hope and pray That if he live to see himself in this his own Glass he will yet at last repent of those Sins which he cannot but condemn as very heinous and dangerous in the sight of God and Man I shall be so charitable as to propose a method to ease him from one great fear Mr. Baxter seems much troubled to think that his Adversaries may have the last word of him Now I perceive that Mr. Hicringle by opposing the Bishop of Worcester hath ingratiated himself with Mr. Baxter Preface to Second Defence of whom he doth not come much short in confident boasting of himself It is a difficult matter to infuse to him the Art of Defining and Distinguishing by which Mr. Baxter is able to evade any Argument But this defect may be supplied if Mr. Baxter bequeath him his Eighty Books and enjoyn him especially to study his Arguments for Separation and the heinous sins of Conformity which he shall find often repeated and to apply them on all occasions But let him not do as in his Naked Truth conceal the Name of his Benefactor but quote him totidem verbis and so Mr. Baxter may have the last word as long as the Faction continueth But if this fear be thus removed I question whether a greater will not follow viz. of being like Jeroboam who having set up Calves at Dan and Bethel in opposition to the established Worship is recorded to have made Israel to sin not in his life-time only but long after his death and how dreadful the final Sentence of such a one may be I commend to Mr. Baxter's most serious Meditations But if Mr. Baxter who so solemnly cites others to Judgment continueth to go on impenitently to that dreadful day I shall yet pray for him as he doth for the Conformists Lord have mercy on him And because I doubt not but his Friends and Disciples will raise a Monument to perpetuate the Memory of their Master I shall commend this Characteristical epitaph Hic jacet RICHARDUS BAXTER Theologus Armatus Loiolita Reformatus Haeresiarcha Aerianus Schismaticorum Antisignanus Cujus pruritus disputandi peperit Scriptitandi Cacoethes nutrivit Praedicandi zelus intemperatus maturavir ECCLESIAE SCABIEM Qui dissentitab iis quibuscum consentitmaximè Tum sibi cùm aliis Nonconformis Praeteritis praesentibus futuris Regum Episcoporum Juratus Hostis Ipsumque Rebellium Solennae foedus Qui natus erat per Septuaginta Annos Et Octoginta Libros Ad perturbandas Regni Respublicas Et ad bis perdendam Ecclesiam Anglicanan Magnis tamen excidit ausis Deo Gratias REFLECTIONS ON Some Material Passages First concerning the Marquess Antrim MR. Baxter had related in his Penitent Confession N. 22. That he had read the King's Letter in Spain to the Pope promising to venture Crown and Life for the Union of Christian Churches including the Roman and whether it be true as the Scots say That the King put the Broad Seal to a Commission for the Irish Rebellion he determines not but it 's past doubt that the Marquess of Antrim had his Commission if Mr. Baxter means that he had a Commission for the Irish Rebellion in the first Insurrection yet he himself says That if a Subject had seen such a Commission he was bound not to believe that the King was the Authour of it p. 16. of second Plea for Peace What ground then had he for his confidence that Sir Philem O Neale had such a Commission as was boasted of But the Cheat was undeniably proved but Antrim's Commission was not heard of till after the end of the War and then there appeared no Evidence of it nor do we find it mentioned in any History of that War I shall therefore set before the Reader Mr. Baxter's Relation of that pretended Commission and then shew that his presumption could have no other ground but his vile Opinion that the Royal Martyr was a Papist as he maliciously represents him or from the Relation of Ludlow or some other of the Regicides in that Scandalous Pamphlet which is Mr. Baxter's chief Authority called Murder will out That I may clear the Prejudice of such Readers as are too ready to give Credit to this Relation of Mr. Baxter I desire them to take notice that this Commission to Antrim is pretended to be granted to authorize that Insurrection of the Irish wherein Two hundred-thousand Protestants were massacred which if it had been true how vainly and foolishly did Sir Phelim O Neale act in Counterfeiting another Commission and pleading that to countenance their Rebellion if they had an Authentick one Had Antrim such a Commission and never made it known to Sir Phelim O Neale or to the Lord Muskerry and Mackguire Or if these Men had known of such a Commission would not they or one of them at least have confessed it when their Lives and Estates were offered them upon that Condition before their Execution And did not all three deny that they knew of any Commission from the King or that he was privy to their Rising How then is Mr. Baxter past doubt that the Marquess of Antrim had that King's Commission which he aggravates as followeth I had forgotten one Passage in the former War of great remark which put me into an amazement Part 3. of Mr. Baxter's Life p. 83. The Duke of Ormond and Council had the Cause of the Marquess of Antrim before them who had been one of the Irish Rebels in the beginning of that War when two hundred thousand Protestants were murdered His Estate being sequestred he sought Restitution of it when Charles the Second was restored Ormond and the Council judged against him as one of the Rebels He brought his Cause over to the King and affirmed that what he did was by his Father's Consent and Authority The King referred it to some worthy Members of his Privy Council to examine what he had to show Vpon Examination they reported that they found that he had the King's Consent or Letter of Instructions for what he did which amazed many Hereupon his Majesty Charles the Second wrote to the Duke of Ormond and Council to restore his Estate because it appeared that what he did was by his Father's Order or Consent Whereupon the Parliaments old Adherents grew more confident than ever of the righteousness of their Wars And the very Destroyers of the King whom the first Parliamentarians called Rebels did presume also to justifie their Cause and said That the Law