2.  The conquest of party and sectarian prejudices, when you have on the same table before you the works of a Hammond and a Baxter, and reflect how many and momentous their points of agreement, how few and almost childish the differences, which estranged and irritated these good men.  Let us but imagine what their blessed spirits now feel at the retrospect of their earthly frailties, and can we do other than strive to feel as they now feel, not as they once felt?  So will it be with the disputes between good men of the present day; and if you have no other reason to doubt your opponent’s goodness than the point in dispute, think of Baxter and Hammond, of Milton and Taylor, and let it be no reason at all.

3.  It will secure you from the idolatry of the present times and fashions, and create the noblest kind of imaginative power in your soul, that of living in past ages; wholly devoid of which power, a man can neither anticipate the future, nor even live a truly human life, a life of reason in the present.

4.  In this particular work we may derive a most instructive lesson, that in certain points, as of religion in relation to law, the ’medio tutissimus ibis’ is inapplicable.  There is no ‘medium’ possible; and all the attempts, as those of Baxter, though no more required than “I believe in God through Christ,” prove only the mildness of the proposer’s temper, but as a rule would be equal to nothing, at least exclude only the two or three in a century that make it a matter of religion to declare themselves Atheists, or else be just as fruitful a rule for a persecutor as the most complete set of articles that could be framed by a Spanish Inquisition.

For to ‘believe,’ must mean to believe aright—­and ‘God’ must mean the true God—­and ‘Christ’ the Christ in the sense and with the attributes understood by Christians who are truly Christians.  An established Church with a Liturgy is a sufficient solution of the problem ’de jure magistratus’.  Articles of faith are in this point of view superfluous; for is it not too absurd for a man to hesitate at subscribing his name to doctrines which yet in the more awful duty of prayer and profession he dares affirm before his Maker!  They are therefore in this sense merely superfluous;—­not worth re-enacting, had they ever been done away with;—­not worth removing now that they exist.

5.  The characteristic contradistinction between the speculative reasoners of the age before the Revolution, and those since, is this:  —­the former cultivated metaphysics, without, or neglecting, empirical psychology the latter cultivate a mechanical psychology to the neglect and contempt of metaphysics.  Both therefore are almost equi-distant from pure philosophy.  Hence the belief in ghosts, witches, sensible replies to prayer, and the like, in Baxter and in a hundred others.  See also Luther’s Table Talk.

6.  The earlier part of this volume is interesting as materials for medical history.  The state of medical science in the reign of Charles I. was almost incredibly low.