also often rises above it, and, by the lustrous fulness of his calm intellect, pierces far beyond its intellectual and spiritual machinery.

The life of Howe, like his writings, was comparatively quiet, and removed from the bustle of his times. He was one of Cromwell's chaplains, it is true; but the unworldliness of his character, his unambitious temper, and the spirituality of his devotions, kept him apart from the stir that surrounded him. It is a remarkable evidence of the comparatively undisturbed repose of his life, and the philosophical cast of his mind, that amidst the endless controversies in which his contemporaries were plunged, there is none of his writings that can be said to be directly polemical. The Living Temple is a vindication of Christian truth, but not of his own peculiar views of it against any of the sectaries and heretics of the day. It is more akin to the apologetical literature of a later time than to the controversial theology of his own. His vision ranged, as it were, over the hot fray of combatants immediately around him, and only descried in Spinoza an opponent worthy of his pen. Controversy then only assumed an interest for him when it ascended into the region of first principles, and left behind the formal details of ecclesiastical and theological warfare.

It is pleasant to contemplate such a man as Howe amid the fierce passions and rude and often petty conflicts of his age. He could not but bear their dint, living, as he did, in the very midst of them; but they touch him as little as possible. His countenance shows the traces of a refined and elevated nature, and of the same largeness and tenderness of soul that mark his writings. It would be difficult to conceive a more noble, spiritual, or gentle set of features. A

native dignity of manner and character shine in them. The court of Cromwell may not seem the most fitting nursery of such a nature; but the presence of one who, like Howe, combined earnestness with refinement, and all the glow of the Puritan religious feeling with a chastened taste and a radiancy of imagination, is enough to show that we are not to judge this court according to any mere vulgar estimate. It must have been a pure and high atmosphere in which Howe moved freely and exercised influence. One who lived so much above the world, and on whose spirit dwelt so familiarly the awe and grandeur of the Unseen, would be a constant monitor, both of high principle and duty, in circumstances sufficient to try the one and seduce from the other.*

As a preacher, he must have favourably contrasted with most of the Court chaplains. Others may have roused more by their vehemence, and delighted by their highness of doctrine; but none approached him in dignity, and a certain mixture of sweetness and sublimity of sentiment, that still captivates the reader. Especially when he descants of the glories of heaven, and his large but lazy imagination finds room to expatiate amidst its felicities, he rises into a pictured eloquence that is wonderfully impressive amidst all the prolixities that encumber his style.

Of our three theologians, Baxter was the most energetic, and in some respects the most prominent; the

Howe represented the highest religious aspect of Cromwell's court. It was not all that he wished it to be; and his sensitive uprightness and faithfulness sometimes brought him into conflict with the ruder and more fervent notions of the Protector. Preaching on one occasion of the fallacy and pernicious pride apt to be generated by the idea of a particular faith in prayer, Cromwell was observed to "knit his brows and discover great uneasiness" and afterwards the chaplain thought for some time that the Protector was "cooler in his carriage toward him."

most active sharer in the events of his time, and one of the most zealous representatives of its spirit; not merely theologian, but preacher, politician, and negotiator to the very last, when the powers of Puritanism had again sunk under oppression. He is more comprehensive than Owen, and rises more above the technical bondage of his system; while its spirit pervades as completely, if not more completely, every form of his mental life, and shows itself in him in a greater variety of mental forms. He was more in the world, more mixed in its conflicts, and more moulded by them than Howe. He appears, therefore, the most interesting representative of theological Puritanism: others bear its doctrinal stamp more definitely and precisely; but the very freedom of Baxter's doctrinal sentiments, which brought him into contact at almost every point with the religious activity of his age, invests his theological career with a greater attraction, and makes it richer in lessons of varied meaning and importance.*

Richard Baxter was born at the village of EatonConstantine, "a mile from the Wrekin-hill," in Shropshire, on the 12th of November 1615. His father was a freeholder in this county, originally of some substance. His mother's name was Beatrice, and she is designated as "the daughter of Richard Adeny of Rowton, a village near High Ercall, the Lord Newport's seat in the same county." His father had lived a

* Baxter has written his own life-a portly folio, under the name of Reliquia Bazteriana. It contains the most ample details of his history, and will be our chief guide and authority throughout. There is also a painstaking and creditable work by Mr Orme, entitled The Life and Times of Richard Baxter, in two volumes, the second of which is devoted to a review of his works. The same author has a similar work on Owen.

wild and jovial life in his youth, and squandered a great part of his estate in gaming; but about or shortly before the time of his son's birth a great change passed upon him. He became severely and strictly religious, and spent much of his time in pious meditation and study. This change had arisen from reflection, and the "bare reading of the Scriptures in private, without either preaching or godly company, or any other book than the Bible." Godly company and religious instruction, in fact, were not to be had in the district. The picture which Baxter draws of the clergy and their assistants is of the most melancholy description. As we read it, and think that the men whom he describes were not exceptions, but ordinary specimens of the parochial clergy of King James, the ardour of local Puritanism becomes strongly intelligible. The people, according to his description, were like their pastors-rude, ignorant, and irreligious. With such a clergy, it is remarkable that any moral or spiritual life subsisted among them at all. It is not remarkable that such as did subsist should have been called Puritan, and that its adherents, at first not at all disaffected, should have become gradually alienated from a Church that knew not how to respect the semblance of piety.

The incumbent at Eaton Constantine was eighty years of age. He had never preached, and yet he held two livings twenty miles apart. He repeated the prayers by heart; but, unable to read the lessons from his failing sight, he got first a "common thresher and day-labourer," and then a tailor, to perform this duty for him. At length a kinsman of his own, who had been a stage-player and a gamester, got ordination, and assisted him. The clergy of the neighbourhood

"four

were no better. In High Ercall there were readers successively in six years' time-ignorant men, and two of them immoral in their lives." A neighbour's son, "who had been a while at school, turned minister," and even ventured to distinguish himself from the others by preaching; but it was at length discovered that his orders were forged by the "ingenious" kinsman of the old incumbent, who had been a stage-player. "After him, another neighbour's son took orders, who had been a while an attorney's clerk, and a common drunkard, and tippled himself into so great poverty that he had no other way to live; it was feared that he and more of them came by their orders the same way, with the forementioned person." These, he adds, were the schoolmasters of his youth. They "read common prayer on Sundays and holy days, and taught school and tippled on the week days, and whipt the boys when they were drunk, so that we changed them very oft."

The people he has described more particularly in another work. "The generality seemed to mind nothing seriously but the body and the world: they went to church, and would answer the parson in responds, and thence go to dinner, and then to play. They never prayed in their families; but some of them, going to bed, would say over the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, and some of them the Hail, Mary.' All the year long, not a serious word of holy things, or the life to come, that I could hear of, proceeded from them. They read not the Scripture, nor any good book, or catechism. Few of them could read, or had a Bible. They were of two ranks. The

* Life, p. 2.

The True History of Councils, Enlarged and Defended, pp. 90, 91..

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