SAFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. 111 While he was thus employed in London, he preached occasion- ally to crowded assemblies in several churches of the metropolis, once at St. Paul's before the mayor and aldermen. One of his sermons was takendown, in part, as it fell from his lips, and was thus published; and after his return to his own parish, he was importuned by many letters to publish others. In several in- 'stances, hè complied with these requests. A favorite, hope of Baxter, and one on which he expended, during these years, no small portionof his prodigious industry, was the hope of seeing a reconciliation and visible union among evan- gelical Christians of different denominations. The spirit of secta- rianism and division ; the spirit of exclusion which builds up a middle wall , of partition in the church of God; and which raises, among . the multitude of those who should own no master but Christ, the clamor, "1 am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas," was a spirit with which the large and catholic mind of Richard Baxter could have no sympathy. He saw thatthe points on which the evangelical Christians of his day were agreed, were infinitely more important than the points on which they differed; and he felt that, while they continued to divide from each other, they would continue to treat with comparative neglect the great truths on which they built their common hopes, and to attach dis- proportionate importance to their several distinctive principles. He himself belonged to no party. . He thought for himself on every subject of controversy; and he saw, or thought he saw, in regard to many of the controversies of his day, the peculiar errors and peculiar truths of each opposing party. It seemed to him that men who were so near together might be brought to a hearty fellowship, and to a happy co-operation for .the advance- ment of a common cause. He has left on record a long history of his labors in behalf of unity and catholic communion among Christians, includinga voluminous correspondence with distinguish- ed men of different parties. Theparticularsof these efforts hardly come within the design of this narrative ; yet we maygather from that partof what he has written concerning his own life and times, a few things which could hardly be omitted here, consistently with . justice to his character as a Christian, and as a minister of the gospel. The principal parties of those days, in the disputes respecting the constitution and government of the church,were the Erastians, the Diocesans,the Presbyterians, and the Independents.* Baxter belonged, strictly, to none of them ; though generally he acted with the Presbyterians, and was high in their confidence, in so Some account of these parties has already been given. See pp. 61,65.
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