in favor of ministerial celibacy, at a time
when, as he says, "he thought to live and die a bachelor." But Baxter
had no reason to regret the inconsistency of his precept and example.
How much of the happiness of the next twenty years of his life resulted
from his union with a kind and affectionate woman he has himself
testified, in his simple and touching Breviate of the Life of the late
Mrs. Baxter. Her affections were so ardent that her husband confesses
his fear that he was unable to make an adequate return, and that she must
have been disappointed in him in consequence. He extols her pleasant
conversation, her active benevolence, her disposition to aid him in all
his labors, and her noble forgetfulness of self, in ministering to his
comfort, in sickness and imprisonment. "She was the meetest helper I
could have had in the world," is his language. "If I spoke harshly or
sharply, it offended her. If I carried it (as I am apt) with too much
negligence of ceremony or humble compliment to any, she would modestly
tell me of it. If my looks seemed not pleasant, she would have me amend
them (which my weak, pained state of body indisposed me to do)." He
admits she had her failings, but, taken as a whole, the Breviate is an
exalted eulogy.

His history from this time is marked by few incidents of a public
character. During that most disgraceful period in the annals of England,
the reign of the second Charles, his peculiar position exposed him to the
persecutions of prelacy and the taunts and abuse of the sentries,
standing as he did between these extremes, and pleading for a moderate
Episcopacy. He was between the upper millstone of High Church and the
nether one of Dissent. To use his own simile, he was like one who seeks
to fill with his hand a cleft in a log, and feels both sides close upon
him with pain. All parties and sects had, as they thought, grounds of
complaint against him. There was in him an almost childish simplicity of
purpose, a headlong earnestness and eagerness, which did not allow him to
consider how far a present act or opinion harmonized with what he had
already done or written. His greatest admirers admit his lack of
judgment, his inaptitude for the management of practical matters. His
utter incapacity to comprehend rightly the public men and measures of his
day is abundantly apparent; and the inconsistencies of his conduct and
his writings are too marked to need comment. He suffered per