Also the Socinians made some increase by the ministry of one Mr. Biddle, sometimes schoolmaster in Gloucester; who wrote against the Godhead of the Holy Ghost, and afterwards of Christ; whose followers inclined much to mere Deism.

For the Socinians till Biddle retained much of the Christian religion, for example, Redemption by the Cross, and the omnipresence of Christ as to this planet even as the Romanists with their Saints.  Luther’s obstinate adherence to the ubiquity of the Body of Christ and his or rather its real presence in and with the bread was a sad furtherance to the advocates of Popish idolatry and hierolatry.

Ib. p. 80.

Many a time have I been brought very low, and received the sentence of death in myself, when my poor, honest, praying neighbours have met, and upon their fasting and earnest prayers I have been recovered.  Once when I had continued weak three weeks, and was unable to go abroad, the very day that they prayed for me, being Good Friday, I recovered, and was able to preach, and administer the Sacrament the next Lord’s Day, and was better after it, &c.

Strange that the common manuals of school logic should not have secured Baxter from the repeated blunder of ‘Cum hoc, ergo, propter hoc’; but still more strange that his piety should not have revolted against degrading prayer into medical quackery.

Before the Revolution of 1688, metaphysics ruled without experimental psychology, and in these curious paragraphs of Baxter we see the effect:  since the Revolution experimental psychology without metaphysics has in like manner prevailed, and we now feel the result.  In like manner from Plotinus to Proclus, that is, from A. D. 250 to A. D. 450, philosophy was set up as a substitute for religion:  during the dark ages religion superseded philosophy, and the consequences are equally instructive.  The great maxim of legislation, intellectual or political, is ’Subordinate, not exclude’.  Nature in her ascent leaves nothing behind, but at each step subordinates and glorifies:—­mass, crystal, organ, sensation, sentience, reflection.

Ib. p. 82.

Another time, as I sat in my study, the weight of my greatest folio books brake down three or four of the highest shelves, when I sat close under them, and they fell down every side me, and not one of them hit me, save one upon the arm; whereas the place, the weight, the greatness of the books was such, and my head just under them, that it was a wonder they had not beaten out my brains, &c.

[Greek:  Mega biblion mega kakon.]

Ib. p. 84.

For all the pains that my infirmities ever brought upon me were never half so grievous an affliction to me, as the unavoidable loss of my time, which they occasioned.  I could not bear, through the weakness of my stomach, to rise before seven o’clock in the morning, &c.

Alas! in how many respects does my lot resemble Baxter’s; but how much less have my bodily evils been; and yet how very much greater an impediment have I suffered them to be!  But verily Baxter’s labours seem miracles of supporting grace.  Ought I not therefore to retract the note p. 80?  I waver.