LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. eil to repress their censoriousness, and the boldness and bitterness of their language against the bishops, and to reduce them to greater patience and charity. "But'I found," he adds, " that their suffer- ings from the bishops were the great impediment to my success ; and he that will blow the coals must not wonder if some sparks do fly in his face ; and that to persecute men, and then call them to charity, is like whipping children to make them give over crying. The stronger sort ofChristians can bear mulcts, and imprisonments, and reproaches, for obeying God and conscience, without abating their charity to their persecutors ; but to expect this from all the weak and injudicious, the youngand passionate, is against all reason and experience. I saw that he that will.be loved, must love ; and he that rather chooseth to be more feared than loved, must expect to be hated, or loved but diminutively. And he that will have children, Must be a father ; and he that will be a tyrant, must be contented with slaves." He occupied his post at Dudley only nine months. The people were of a degraded class, having been much addicted to drunken- ness ; but his labors among them were attended with an encourag- ing measure of success. Being invited to Bridgenorth, the second town in his native county, to preach there as assistant to theworthy pastor of that place, he left his school, and thenceforward had no work but that of the ministry. At Bridgenorth he had an excel- lent colleague, a full congregation, and, owing to some peculiar cir- cumstances, a freedom from all those things respecting which he had scruples or objections. Thepeople to whomhe here preached were "ignorant anddead- hearted." The town was one which afforded the people no uniform and regular employment; and at the same time was full of inns and alehouses. Of course he labored at a great disadvantage. His preaching, however, was very popular, and was blessed to the con- version of some of his hearers. But the tippling, and evil-commu- nications, and stupidity; of the people were such, that though, as he says, he never preached any where with more fervor or with more vehement desires for the conversion of his hearers', his success was much less than it afterwards was in other places. While Baxter continued at Bridgenorth, the controversy, civil and ecclesiastical, which had so long been growing up, and which from year to year had agitated the nation with a deeper and strong- er interest, broke out in those commotions which overturned the hierarchy and the throne. Abrief viewof the progress of affairs from the beginning of this reign seems proper in this connection, as the means of illustrating to readers not familiar with the details of English history many events recorded or referred to in the sequel ofthis narrative.
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