aw away their soldiers from them. For himself, he was willing to go
back to the army, and labor there until the crisis of which he spoke had
arrived. "Whereupon," says he, "they all voted me to go yet longer."

Fortunately for the cause of civil and religious freedom, the great body
of the ministers, who disapproved of the ultraism of the victorious army,
and sympathized with the defeated King, lacked the courage and
devotedness of Baxter. Had they promptly seconded his efforts, although
the restoration of the King might have been impossible at that late
period, the horrors of civil war must have been greatly protracted. As
it was, they preferred to remain at home, and let Baxter have the benefit
of their prayers and good wishes. He returned to the army with the
settled purpose, of causing its defection from Cromwell; but, by one of
those dispensations which the latter used to call "births of Providence,"
he was stricken down with severe sickness. Baxter's own comments upon
this passage in his life are not without interest. He says, God
prevented his purposes in his last and chiefest opposition to the army;
that he intended to take off or seduce from their officers the regiment
with which he was connected, and then to have tried his persuasion upon
the others. He says he afterwards found that his sickness was a mercy to
himself, "for they were so strong and active, and I had been likely to
have had small success in the attempt, and to have lost my life among
them in their fury." He was right in this last conjecture; Oliver
Cromwell would have had no scruples in making an example of a plotting
priest; and "Pitchford's soldiers" might have been called upon to
silence, with their muskets, the tough disputant who was proof against
their tongues.

After a long and dubious illness, Baxter was so far restored as to be
able to go back to his old parish at Kidderminster. Here, under the
Protectorate of Cromwell, he remained in the full enjoyment of that
religious liberty which he still stoutly condemned in its application to
others.

He afterwards candidly admits, that, under the "Usurper," as he styles
Cromwell, "he had such liberty and advantage to preach the Gospel with
success, as he could not have under a King, to whom he had sworn and
performed true subjection and obedience." Yet this did not prevent him
from preaching and printing, "seasonably and moderately," against the
Protector. "I declared," said he, "C