LIFE OF RICLIARD BAXTER. 207 with my house till my time expired, were more trouble than my quiet prison by far." "The next habitation," he adds, "which God chose for me, was at Totteridge, near Barnet,.where, for a year, I was fain, with part of my family separated from the rest, to take a few mean rooms, which were so extremely smoky, and the place withal so cold, that I spent the winter in great pain ; one quarter of a year by a sore sciatica, and seldom free from such anguish." This removal was in the summer of 1669. Soon afterwards the act against conventicles was renewed by parliament, with new and more severe provisions, one of which was that no fault of the mit- timus should make it void. In the following summer, the duke of Lauderdale, who was proceeding to Scotland to effect some ecclesiastical changes there, sought an interviewwith Baxter,'andoffered him any situation in Scotland which he might choose---a church, a bishopric, or a place in one of the universities. Baxter declined this offer for several reasons.: his infirmities of body were such that his life, he was confident, must be short, and would be shortened by a more north- ern climate ; he was employed in writing his Methodus Theo- logiæ, and expected that the remainder of his life, which he esti- mated at about one year, would be barely sufficient to finish that work ; he had understood that Scotland was well supplied with preachers, and he apprehended the people therewould have jealous thoughts of a stranger; and finally the idea of removing his family, including an aged mother-in-law, too infirm to travel, with all their goods and books to such a distance, deterred him from such an undertaking. "All this," he says in his letter to the duke on the occasion, "concurreth to deprive me of this benefit of your lord- ship's favor. But, my lord, there are other fruits of it which I am not altogether hopeless of receiving. -I amweary of thenoise of contentious revilers, and have oft had thoughts to go into a foreign land, if I could find any where I might have a healthful air and quietness, that I might but live and die in peace. When I sit in a corner, and meddle with nobody, and hope the world will forget that I am alive, court, city, and country is still filled with clamors against me ; and when a preacher wanteth preferment, his way is to preach or write a book against the nonconformists, and me by name." "I expect not that any favor or justice of my superiors should cure any of this, but (1.) if I might but be heard for myself befdte I be judged by them; (2.) if I might live quietly to follow my privatestudies, and might have once again the use of my books, (which I have not seen for these ten years, and pay for a room for their standing at Kidderminster, where they are eaten by worms and rats, having nosecurity for any quiet abode in anyplace enough
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