yerful people, diligent readers of
the Scriptures, who were derided by their neighbors as Puritans,
precisians, and hypocrites. These were naturally drawn towards the new
preacher, and he as naturally recognized them as "honest seekers of the
word and way of God." Intercourse with such men, and the perusal of the
writings of certain eminent Non-conformists, had the effect to abate, in
some degree, his strong attachment to the Episcopal formula and polity.
He began to doubt the rightfulness of making the sign of the cross in
baptism, and to hesitate about administering the sacrament to profane
swearers and tipplers.

But while Baxter, 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 in