Ib. p. 24.

And once all the ignorant rout were raging mad against me for preaching the doctrine of Original Sin to them, and telling them that infants, before regeneration, had so much guilt and corruption as made them loathsome in the eyes of God.

No wonder;—­because the babe would perish without the mother’s milk, is it therefore loathsome to the mother?  Surely the little ones that Christ embraced had not been baptized.  And yet ’of such is the Kingdom of Heaven’.

Ib. p. 25.

Some thought that the King should not at all be displeased and provoked, and that they were not bound to do any other justice, or attempt any other reformation but what they could procure the King to be willing to.  And these said, when you have displeased and provoked him to the utmost, he will be your King still. * * * The more you offend him, the less you can trust him; and when mutual confidence is gone, a war is beginning. * * * And if you conquer him, what the better are you?  He will still be King.  You can but force him to an agreement; and how quickly will he have power and advantage to violate that which he is forced to, and to be avenged on you all for the displeasure you have done him!  He is ignorant of the advantages of a King that cannot foresee this.

This paragraph goes to make out a case in justification of the Regicides which Baxter would have found it difficult to answer.  Certainly a more complete exposure of the inconsistency of Baxter’s own party cannot be.  For observe, that in case of an agreement with Charles all those classes, which afterwards formed the main strength of the Parliament and ultimately decided the contest in its favour, would have been politically inert, with little influence and no actual power,—­I mean the Yeomanry, and the Citizens of London:  while a vast majority of the Nobles and landed Gentry, who sooner or later must have become the majority in Parliament, went over to the King at once.  Add to these the whole systematized force of the High Church Clergy and all the rude ignorant vulgar in high and low life, who detested every attempt at moral reform,—­and it is obvious that the King could not want opportunities to retract and undo all that he had conceded under compulsion.  But that neither the will was wanting, nor his conscience at all in the way, his own advocate Clarendon and others have supplied damning proofs.

Ib. p. 27.

And though Parliaments may draw up Bills for repealing laws, yet hath the King his negative voice, and without his consent they cannot do it; which though they acknowledge, yet did they too easily admit of petitions against the Episcopacy and Liturgy, and connived at all the clamors and papers which were against them.

How so?  If they admitted the King’s right to deny, they must admit the subject’s right to entreat.

Ib.

Had they endeavoured the ejection of lay-chancellors, and the reducing of the dioceses to a narrower compass, or the setting up of a subordinate discipline, and only the correcting and reforming of the Liturgy, perhaps it might have been borne more patiently.

Did Baxter find it so himself—­and when too he had the formal and recorded promise of Charles ii. for it?