tical levellers and Antinomian sowers of heresy. No antagonist was
too high and none too low for him. Distrusting Cromwell, he sought to
engage him in a discussion of certain points of abstract theology,
wherein his soundness seemed questionable; but the wary chief baffled off
the young disputant by tedious, unanswerable discourses about free grace,
which Baxter admits were not unsavory to others, although the speaker
himself had little understanding of the matter. At other times, he
repelled his sad-visaged chaplain with unwelcome jests and rough,
soldierly merriment; for he had "a vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity as
another man hath when he hath taken a cup too much." Baxter says of him,
complainingly, "he would not dispute with me at all." But, in the midst
of such an army, he could not lack abundant opportunity for the exercise
of his peculiar powers of argumentation. At Amersham, he had a sort of
pitched battle with the contumacious soldiers. "When the public talking
day came," says he, "I took the reading-pew, and Pitchford's cornet and
troopers took the gallery. There did the leader of the Chesham men
begin, and afterwards Pitchford's soldiers set in; and I alone disputed
with them from morning until almost night; for I knew their trick, that
if I had gone out first, they would have prated what boasting words they
listed, and made the people believe that they had baffled me, or got the
best; therefore I stayed it out till they first rose and went away." As
usual in such cases, both parties claimed the victory. Baxter got thanks
only from the King's adherents; "Pitchford's troops and the leader of the
Chesham men" retired from their hard day's work, to enjoy the countenance
and favor of Cromwell, as men after his own heart, faithful to the Houses
and the Word, against kingcraft and prelacy.

Laughed at and held at arm's length by Cromwell, shunned by Harrison and
Berry and other chief officers, opposed on all points by shrewd, earnest
men, as ready for polemic controversy as for battle with the King's
malignants, and who set off against his theological and metaphysical
distinctions their own personal experiences and spiritual exercises, he
had little to encourage him in his arduous labors. Alone in such a
multitude, flushed with victory and glowing with religious enthusiasm,
he earnestly begged his brother ministers to come to his aid. "If the
army," said he, "had only ministers enough, who could have do