the year 1645 to set forth "A Scripture Calendar," as a guide to speak and write in Scripture style; and continued it yearly to 1664. In this, besides the day of the month, age of the moon, progress of the sun, quarter-days, and the like, common to vulgar almanacks; there was, peculiar to his design, the scripture account of hours, days, night-watches, months and quarters; also the weights and measures therein mentioned; with a brief chronology and church history and still every year entertained the public with something new on these subjects comprising the whole in two sheets. This good man raised £300 for the relief of the Jews at Jerusalem.

:

Appendix.

"Like

P. 72. THERE are some fine things in the Address of certain Baptists to Charles II. in 1657, proposing to restore him. poor wildered travellers, perceiving that we have lost our way, we are necessitated, though with tired and irksome steps, thus to walk the same ground over again, that we may discover where it was we first turned aside, and may institute a more prosperous course in the progress of our journey. Thus far we can say we have gone right, keeping the road of honesty and sincerity and having yet done nothing but what we think we are able to justify;-not by those weak and beggarly arguments, drawn either from success, which is the same to the just and to the unjust, or from the silence and satisfaction of a becalmed conscience, but from the sure, safe, sound, and unerring maxims of law, justice, reason and righteousness.

"How have our hopes been blasted! how have our expectations been disappointed! how have our ends been frustrated! All those pleasant gourds under which we were sometimes solacing and caressing ourselves, how are they perished in a moment! how are they withered in a night! how are they vanished and come to nothing! Righteous is the Lord, and righteous are all his judgments! We have

P. liii. SIR JOHN FLOYER says that when immersion was used, a man of eighty whose father well remembered the practice, told him, that parents used always at the baptism of the children to desire the priest to dip that part very well in which any disease use to afflict themselves, to prevent its being hereditary. And it had long been a proverbial saying among old people, if any one complained of any pain in their limbs, "surely that limb had never been dipt in the font."

Crosby seems to have believed this himself.

238. One Poulter, an informer against the Quakers, forced to leave the country, "for he was discovered to have christened a cat, as the term is, by the name of Catherine Catherina, in derision of the Queen,and of feloniously taking goods from one of Brainford."

240. An epitaph upon Robert Shalder, a Baptist, concludes thus

"And now thy faith divine I'll pen upon thy herse,

It bright, though brief doth shine, Heb. vi. 1. 2. verse.'

66

379. It pleased God to show his displeasure against apostacy by pouring forth the vials of his wrath upon one Mr. John Child, a preacher of long standing among the Baptists. This poor man had conformed, and 'then wrote a cursed book. Quickly after this, says Mr. Benjamin Keach, he fell under fearful desperation, I was one of the first men that he sent for, and I found him in a dismal state and condition; being filled with horror, saying, he was damned; and crying out against himself, for writing that book, saying, he had touched the apple of God's eye. His poor wife intimated to me that the very ends of the hair of his head in the night season did stand in drops, through the anguish of his soul. Thus he continued for several months, under most fearful horror and desperation until Oct. 13, 1684, when to put an end to his miserable life he hanged himself. The book which did afterwards fill him with a great horror of soul was called "A second argument for a more full and firm union amongst all good Protestants."

The chief crime of which he is accused seems to be that of casting reproaches upon the Baptist ministers, because some of them were not learned men—I mean with the knowledge of the tongues.

Oh this heart-hardening bigotry!

Vol. 3.

P. xxxiii. BAXTER in his Plain Scripture Proof, p. 134, charges the practice of dipping in baptism as a breach of the sixth commandment, and forms his argument upon it thus. "That which is a plain breach of the sixth commandment, thou shalt not kill,' is no ordinance of God, but a most heinous sin. But the ordinary practice of baptizing by dipping over head in cold water, as necessary, is a plain breach of the sixth commandment; therefore it is no ordinance of God, but a heinous sin. And as Mr. Cradock in his book of Gospel Liberty shows, the magistrate ought to restrain it, to save the lives of his subjects, even according to their principles that will yet allow the magistrate no power directly in matter of worship. That this is flat murder, and no better, being ordinarily and generally used, is undeniable to any understanding man. For that which directly tendeth to overthrow men's lives, being wilfully used, is plain murder." And further he adds, "I know not what trick a covetous landlord can find out to get his tenants to die apace, that he may have new fines and heriots, likelier than to encourage such practices, that he may get them all to turn Anabaptists. I wish that this device be not it that countenanceth these men. And covetous physicians methinks, should not be much against them. Catarrhs and obstructions, which are the two great fountains of most mortal diseases in man's body, could scarce have a more notable means to produce them where they are not, or to increase them where they are. Apoplexies, lethargies, palsies, and all comatous diseases would be promoted by it, so would cephalalgies, hemicranies, phthises, debility of the stomach, condities, and almost all fevers, dysenteries, diarrhoeas, cholics, iliac passions, convulsions, spasms, tremores, &c. All hepatic, splenetic, pulmoniac persons, and hypocondriacks would soon have enough of it! In a word, it is good for nothing but to dispatch men out of the world that

are burdensome, and to ranken churchyards."

"I have been informed," Crosby says, "that Mr. Baxter was for having all the Baptists hanged: and therefore shall add one passage more, and leave the reader to judge what he would have done to the Baptists had it been in his power. They are his own words. 'If,' says he, murder be a sin, then dipping ordinarily in cold water over head in England, is a sin. And if those that would make it men's religion to murder themselves, and urge it on their consciences as their duty, are not to be suffered in a commonwealth, any more than highway murderers; then judge how these Anabaptists that teach the necessity of such dipping are to be suffered.'"

from them many strange and monstrous worms." Keach purchased these receipts from Dr. Roberts, who was "famous for having prepared these two excellent medicines," and Crosby married one of Keach's daughters.

155. Andrew Gifford was taken at a meeting in Kingswood, because his son that was the watch upon the informers, was prevented giving timely notice of their coming, by being frozen to the ground, upon which he had sate down but a few minutes to rest himself: nor could he get free till he cut off the skirts of a new frieze coat he had on, and left them fastened to it by the violence of the frost: an Independent minister who was preaching at the same time in a neighbouring part of the wood, in attempt

64. John Bunyan used to say that he was a "town sinner" in his unregenerate days." Verily," he says, "I did meet my God sweetly in prison, comforting me and satisfying me that it was his will and mind that I should be there."

The bill of indictment against him was that he did devilishly and perniciously abstain from coming to church to hear divine service, &c.

Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, obtained his enlargement after twelve years!

87. Their sufferings were by the writ de capiendo et qui tam, the statutes for two pence per week and £20 per month. Presentments and excommunications, Edw. Morecock, a sea captain in Oliver's time, was fined for not going to church till he was exchequered for the sum of £800! 111.

147. Ah ha! Who would have looked for a family advertisement in the middle of the book of "a tincture which is a wonderful and an immediate cure for the bloody flux and the gripes,—and sugar plums for children which have been found to bring

166. Some curious particulars concerning Titus Oates. This wretch being once told that he ought not to seek revenge, but leave it to God, he replied "that vengeance was indeed God's sweet morsel, which he kept to himself."

189. This execution of Elizabeth Gavint, all circumstances considered, is the most damnable act of wickedness, the foulest murder-that ever was committed under the form of law. Her speech which she delivered in writing at the stake is here. "And now as concerning my crime, as it is called ;—alas, it was but a little one, and might well become a Prince to forgive.— But he that shows no mercy shall find none. I did but relieve an unworthy, poor, distressed family, and lo, I must die for it!"

235. Among some queries which a Baptist officer addressed to Oliver, one is, "Whether the Anabaptists may not as justly endeavour to eat out the bowels of your Government, as your Highness may endeavour to eat them out of their employments ? "

jesty's public entry, having obtained an order from the Lords of the Regency for their admission into the grand cavalcade, proposed to ride on white horses, in their own grey hair, and white camblet cloaks, with a nosegay in their right hands, composed of an orange inclosed with laurel; the orange in remembrance of the great Nassau, who left us this thrice happy legacy, the laurel in commemoration of the always victorious John, Duke of Marlborough, who by his sword rather obtained than preserved for us the possession of this entail, which is the bulwark of the Protestant religion. They designed to have formed themselves into six companies of twentyfour gentlemen in each, a captain and music in the front, an officer at the head of every company, attended by their respective servants in liveries on foot, with music in the centre and the rear; but were prevented in the execution of this their purpose, by his Majesty's not too soon, but unexpected happy arrival before they could form themselves into such proper order as became his reception."

BOGUE and BENNETT. History of the
Dissenters.

P. 55. WHEN the oath of supremacy was to be taken to Elizabeth," the conscientious Papists were reduced to the necessity of abandoning their situations in the establishment; but of some thousands no more than 243 had sufficient regard for truth and conscience to make this costly sacrifice. Yet as these were in all probability the best of the party, what can we think of those who retained their livings, and of the establishment which contained so many thousand weathercocks, who after having been reconciled to the holy see under Mary, now relapsed again to Protestantism at the beck of Elizabeth."

78. Charles I. found "his parliaments hostile to Arminianism, Popery, and arbitrary power."

87. Under the Saints "the episcopal

clergy very generally conformed to the new establishment" (vide Walker for the truth of this!)—" for though they were forbidden to read the liturgy, they were at liberty to conform their own prayers to it as much as they pleased. But to prohibit the use of the old form of prayer in the families of those who were partial to it, was most iniquitous."

92. The times of the Saints they say, "with all their disadvantages, when compared with the profligate reign of Charles II. may be called in sacred language, the days of heaven upon earth."

93. Cromwell they do not rate too highly, because they cannot, but they say, "His chaplains were the most able and faithful men that England or any other country has ever known,"

94. Cromwell had well said when he was advised to restore Charles, "he is so damnably debauched that he will undo us all.” And these writers say truly "from the constrained decency of the Commonwealth, all ranks now burst forth into the most profligate debaucheries." Yet, "none were become profane but those who were not before pious. This reverse in the face of society only proved the folly of introducing a system of ecclesiastico-military tactics to reduce a whole nation into the forms and movements of a church."

แ

99. The ejected ministers. "We have no hesitation in saying that of them the world was not worthy; nor have their equals been seen in any age or nation. Their writings have erected to their memory a monument more durable than brass or marble, which has so perpetuated and diffused their sentiments and spirit, that had their enemies anticipated the consequences of excluding them from the pulpits, they would have left them to preach that they might have no leisure to write."

102. "Volumes could not contain a complete history of the sufferings of these men (the Nonconformists) whose souls from beneath the altar of God cry, 'How long, Lord, holy, just, and true?'"

113. "To the reformer of Geneva it appeared, that if the Bishop of Rome was the Image of the Beast, which had been set up for idolatrous worship, the other Lord Bishops of the Church were the lofty pedestal on which it had been erected; so that a complete reformation must, with the image, destroy also the base on which it stood.

114. Th expulsion of Calvin and Farrel from Geneva "would have been a profitable lesson, had it induced the exiles to reflect that their model of discipline, allowing it to be drawn from the sacred scriptures, was there exhibited as the regulations, not of a whole state, but of a church or a community, gathered out of the world and formed by divine grace to tempers and habits suited to the high tone of morals at which the Genevese spurned."

218. Comprehension Bill. "The alterations proposed and made in the standard and services of the church, by such men as Tillotson, Burnet, Stillingfleet, Patrick, Sharp, Kidder, Beveridge, Tennison, Scott, Fowler, Williams, &c. justify the faults found with them by Dissenters, incessantly proclaiming that there are many things (600 alterations were made) in the Church of England which stand in need of alteration and amendment. Instead of being enabled to take the benefit of the improvement of these excellent men, which would have rendered the service the first of liturgical compositions, to be compelled for more than a hundred years longer to use the obsolete, the harsh and uncouth phraseology of the sixteenth century, when our language was in a rude unpolished state, is an injury of no ordinary size!!!"

these men know how much passion there is in repetitions such as these!

392. Richard Davis, a forerunner of Wesley and Whitefield. 396, 7, 8.

412. Effects of controversial preaching on the congregation. "The soul grows lean." They say well of the over zealous preacher of grace-" The nourishment is injurious to the constitution. It is as if children instead of living on milk should be fed with ardent spirits."

422. Goodman, bishop of Gloucester. They say that from his turning Papistthe prevalence of this spirit (of catholicizing) among the clergy may be judged of. Ex uno disce alios. Logical and charitable !

Vol. 2.

P. 6. "AGAINST those educated in seminaries an objection has frequently been urged that they are man-made ministers.— We beg to know whether self-made ministers are one whit better?" "That

17. The Comprehensive Act. horrible decree, written in the blood of millions of immortal souls."

24. "The name of Owen-raised to imperial dignity in the theological world, by Dr. John Owen."

27. The stone is called "the instrument of death to the divines of that century."

70. The rack of ministers in that age. 47. Justifying those dissenters who addressed James the Second, they say, "when a gang of assassins are tearing my flesh, and drinking my blood, and breaking my bones without mercy; if Satan's eldest son were to pass by, and drag mine adversaries off me, and rescue me from their murderous hands, I know not that it would be any crime to thank him for his merciful interposition, and his compassion to a poor tor

292. Reasons for dissent.