ed opinions and cherished doctrines. His credulity at times
seems boundless. Hating the Quakers, and prepared to believe all manner
of evil of them, he readily came to the conclusion that their leaders
were disguised Papists. He maintained that Lauderdale was a good and
pious man, in spite of atrocities in Scotland which entitle him to a
place with Claverhouse; and indorsed the character of the infamous
Dangerfield, the inventor of the Meal-tub Plot, as a worthy convert from
popish errors. To prove the existence of devils and spirits, he
collected the most absurd stories and old-wives' fables, of soldiers
scared from their posts at night by headless bears, of a young witch
pulling the hooks out of Mr. Emlen's breeches and swallowing them, of Mr.
Beacham's locomotive tobacco-pipe, and the Rev. Mr. Munn's jumping Bible,
and of a drunken man punished for his intemperance by being lifted off
his legs by an invisible hand! Cotton Mather's marvellous account of his
witch experiments in New England delighted him. He had it republished,
declaring that "he must be an obstinate Sadducee who doubted it."

The married life of Baxter, as might be inferred from the state of the
times, was an unsettled one. He first took a house at Moorfields, then
removed to Acton, where he enjoyed the conversation of his neighbor, Sir
Matthew Hale; from thence he found refuge in Rickmansworth, and after
that in divers other places. "The women have most of this trouble," he
remarks, "but my wife easily bore it all." When unable to preach, his
rapid pen was always busy. Huge folios of controversial and doctrinal
lore followed each other in quick succession. He assailed Popery and the
Establishment, Anabaptists, ultra Calvinists, Antinomians, Fifth Monarchy
men, and Quakers. His hatred of the latter was only modified by his
contempt. He railed rather than argued against the "miserable
creatures," as he styled them. They in turn answered him in like manner.
"The Quakers," he says, "in their shops, when I go along London streets,
say, 'Alas' poor man, thou art yet in darkness.' They have oft come to
the congregation, when I had liberty to preach Christ's Gospel, and cried
out against me as a deceiver of the people. They have followed me home,
crying out in the streets, 'The day of the Lord is coming, and thou shalt
perish as a deceiver.' They have stood in the market-place, and under my
window, year after year, crying to the people, 'Take h