LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. í2A1 ing, and the people crowded constantly to hear them ; and all was done with so great seriousness, that, through the blessing of God, abundancewere converted from their carelessness, impenitency, and youthful lusts and vanities; and religion took that hold on many hearts, as could never afterwards be loosed."* At this time it was, the parliament being assembled at Oxford, whither the king had removed his court on account of the plague, that it seemed good in the eyes of Lord Clarendon, Archbishop Sheldon and their associates, to visit the ejected ministers with new persecutions. A law was therefore enacted, Oct. 1665, entitled "An Act to restrain Nonconformists from inhabitingCorporations." By this act every nonconforming minister was required to profess, with a solemn oath, the unlawfulness of taking arms against the king or those commissionedby him, upon any pretense whatso- ever ; and to promise, with the same solemnity, never, at any time, to endeavor any alteration of government in churchor state. After the 24th of the following March, nononconforming minister should be allowed, unless in passing the road, to " come or be within five miles of any city, town corporate, or borough that sends bur- gesses to parliament; or within five miles of any parish, town or place wherein they had, since the act of oblivion, been parson, vicar, or lecturer, or where they had preached in any conventicle, on any pretense whatsoever," without having first publicly taken and subscribed this oath. Everyoffense against this act was to be punished with a fine of forty pounds, one third of which should be for the informer; and any two justices of the peace, upon oath made before them, were empowered to commit the offender to prison for six months without bail. The ingenuity which framed this act was equal to the tsruelty which inspired it. The oath prescribed was, upon the face of it, a denial of all the liberties of Englishmen ; insomuch that, without much explanation, no honest man couldtake it. The refusal of this oath by any of those against whom the provisions of the act were directed, it was designed, should drive them from all those places, where they were known, orhad any possible means ofsubsistence, either by their personal exertions or by the contributions of their friends. " In,this strait," says Baxter, " those. ministers that had anymaintenance of their own, didfindout some dwellings inobscure villages, Or in some fewmarket towns which were no corporations. And those that had nothing did leave their wives and children, and hid themselves abroad, andsometimes came secretly tothem bynight. But (God bringing good out of man's evil) many resolved to preach the more freely in cities and corporations till they went to prison. * Narrative, Part III. p. 2. VOL. I. 26
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