LIPS OF RICHARD BAXTER. 20$ ritywere the honored badges of loyalty ; not only seriousness, but even temperance andchastity, were signs of nonconformity, ana prognostics of rebellion; and the nation, in spite of all God's judg- ments, seemed ripening for the doom of Sodom. At this time [1671] the scheme of thecourt wasso far advanc- ed, that it was judged safe to offer the persecuted nonconformists some sort of shelter under the wing of the prerogative. "The ministers' in several parties," as Baxter informs us, " were oft en- couraged to make their addresses to the king, only to acknowledge his Clemency, by which they held their liberties, and to profess their loyalty. The king told them, that, though such acts were made, he was against persecution, and hoped ere long to stand on bis own legs, and then they should see how much he was against it. By this means many score nonconformingministers in London kept up preaching in private houses, some fifty, some a hundred, many three hundred, andmany oneor two thousand, at a meeting, by which, for the present, the city's necessities were much sup- plied. For very few of the burnt churches were yet built up again. "* About the first of January, 1672, the exchequer was shut up ; "so that," inthe words of Baxter, "whereas a multitude of mer- chantsand others had put their money into the bankers' hands, and the bankers lent it,to the king, and the king gave orders to pay out nomoreof it for ayear, the murmur and complaint in the citywere very great, that their estates should be, as they called it, so sur- prised." "Among others, all the money and estate, except ten pounds per annum, for eleven or twelve years, that I had in the world, ofmy own; was there. Indeed it was not my own, which I will mention to counsel those that woulddo good, to do it speedi- ly, and with all their might. I had got in all my life the just sum of one thousand pounds. Having no child, I devoted almost all of it to a charitable use, a free-school ; I used my best and ablest friends for seven years, with all the skill and industry I could, to help me to some purchase of house or land today it out on, that it might be accordinglysettled. And though there were never more sellers, I could never, by all these friends, hear of any that reason could encourage a man to lay it out on, as secure and a tolerable bargain ;. so that I told them, I did perceive the devil's resistance of it, and did verily sttspect that he would prevail, and I should never settle, but it would be lost. So hard is it to do any good, when a man is fully resolved." This wholesale plunder, by which the king gained £1,400,000, was the first decided step in the development of his plan for the Narrative, Part III. p. 87. VOL. I. 27
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