, in the seclusion of his parish, was painfully weighing
the arguments for and against the wearing of surplices, the use of
marriage rings, and the prescribed gestures and genuflections of his
order, tithing with more or less scruple of conscience the mint and anise
and cummin of pulpit ceremonials, the weightier matters of the law,
freedom, justice, and truth were claiming the attention of Pym and
Hampden, Brook and Vane, in the Parliament House. The controversy
between King and Commons had reached the point where it could only be
decided by the dread arbitrament of battle. The somewhat equivocal
position of the Kidderminster preacher exposed him to the suspicion of
the adherents of the King and Bishops. The rabble, at that period
sympathizing with the party of license in morals and strictness in
ceremonials, insulted and mocked him, and finally drove him from his
parish.

On the memorable 23d of tenth month, 1642, he was invited to occupy a
friend's pulpit at Alcester.

While preaching, a low, dull, jarring roll, as of continuous thunder,
sounded in his ears. It was the cannon-fire of Edgehill, the prelude to
the stern battle-piece of revolution. On the morrow, Baxter hurried to
the scene of action. "I was desirous," he says, "to see the field. I
found the Earl of Essex keeping the ground, and the King's army facing
them on a hill about a mile off. There were about a thousand dead bodies
in the field between them." Turning from this ghastly survey, the
preacher mingled with the Parliamentary army, when, finding the surgeons
busy with the wounded, he very naturally sought occasion for the exercise
of his own vocation as a spiritual practitioner. He attached himself to
the army. So far as we can gather from his own memoirs and the testimony
of his contemporaries, he was not influenced to this step by any of the
political motives which actuated the Parliamentary leaders. He was no
revolutionist. He was as blind and unquestioning in his reverence for
the King's person and divine right, and as hearty in his hatred of
religious toleration and civil equality, as any of his clerical brethren
who officiated in a similar capacity in the ranks of Goring and Prince
Rupert. He seems only to have looked upon the soldiers as a new set of
parishioners, whom Providence had thrown in his way. The circumstances
of his situation left him little choice in the matter. "I had," he says,
"neither money nor friends. I knew n