Baxter - Houston-Packer Collection BX5200 .B352 1835 v1

LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. 173 hinder any oneThat had not a license from the bishop ; and the poor people, who had come from far, were fain to go home with grieved hearts. " The next day, it was confidently reported, that a certain knight offered the bishop his troop to apprehend me, if I offered to preach:;. and the people dissuaded me from going to the bishop, supposing my liberty in danger. I went that morning, with Mr. Baldwin, and in the hearingof him and Dr. Warmestry, then dean of Worcester; I reminded the bishop of his promise, to grant me bis license, &c., but he refused nie liberty to preach in his diocese ; though I Offered to preach only on the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, catechistical principles, and only to such as had no preaching." "And since then I never preached in his diocese." "Bishop Morley told me, when he silenced me, that he would take care that my people should be no losers, but should be taught as well as theywere by me. When I was gone, he got a while a few scandalous men, with some that were more civil, to keep up the lecture, till the paucity of their auditors gave them a pretense to put it down. He came himself one day, and preached to them a long invective against them and me as Presbyterians, and I know not what; so that the people wondered that ever a man would venture to come up into a pulpit and speak so confidently to a people that he knew not, the things which they commonly knew to be. untrue. And this sermon,was so far from winning any of them to the estimation of their new bishop, or curing that which he called the admirationof my person, (which was his great en- deavor,) that they were much confirmed in their former judgments. But still the bishop lookedat. Kidderminster as a factious, schis- matical, Presbyterian people, that must be cured of their over- valuing of me, and then they would be cured of all the rest. Whereas, if he had lived with them the twentieth part so long as I had done, he would have known that they were neither Presbyte- rians, nor factious, nor schismatical,nor seditious; but a people that quietly followed their hard labor, and learned the Holy Scrip- tures, and lived a holy, blameless life, in humility and peace with all men, and never had any sect or separated party among them, but abhorred all faction and sidings in religion, and lived in love and Christian unity. "Yet, when the bishop was gone, the dean came and preached about three hours to cure them of the admiration of my person ; and a month after came again and preached over the same, per- suading the people that they were Presbyterians, and schismatical, and were led to it by their overvaluing of me. The people ad- mired at the temerity of these men, and really thought that they

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