68 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. moderate episcopacy, or of any healing way between the Episco- palians and the Presbyterians ; they most honored theSeparatists, Anabaptists, and Antinomians ; but Cromwell and his council took on them to join themselves to no party, but to be for the liberty of all. Two sorts, I perceived, they did so commonly and bitterly speak against, that it was done inmere design, to make them odi- ous to the soldiers, and to all the land; and these were, first, the Scots, and with them all Presbyterians, but especially the minis- ters ; whom they called ' priests,' and ' priestbyters,' ' dryvines,' and 'the dissemblymen,' and such like; secondly, the committees of the several counties, and all the soldiers that were under them, that were not of their mind and way. Some orthodox captains of the army did partly acquaint me with all this, and I heard much of it from the mouths of the leading sectaries themselves. This struck me to the heart, and made me fear that England was lost by those that it had taken for its chief friends. "Upon this I began to blame other ministers and myself. I saw that it was the ministers that had lost all, by forsaking the ar-, my, and betaking themselves to an easier and quieter way of life. When the earl of Essex went out first; each regiment had an able preacher; but at Edghill fight, almost all ofthem went home ; and as the sectaries increased, they were more averse togo into the army. It is true, I believe, that, now, they had little invitation; and it is true, that they could look for but little welcome, and great contempt, And opposition, beside all other difficulties and dangers; but it Is as true, that their worth and labor, in a patient, self-denying way, would have been likely to preserve most ofthe army, and to defeat the contrivances of the sectaries, and to save the king, the parliament, and the land. And if it had brought re- proachupon them from the malicious, who called them Military Levites, the good' which they had done would have wiped off that blot much better than the contrary course would do. "I reprehended myself also, who had before rejected an invita- tion from Cromwell. When he lay at Cambridge, long before, with that famous troop which' he began his army with, his officers purposed to make their troop a gathered church, and they all sub- scribed an invitation to me to be their pastor, and sent it me, to Coventry. I sent them a denial, reproving their attempt, and told them wherein my judgment was against the lawfulness and convenience of their way, and so I heard no more from them; and afterwards, meeting Cromwell at Leicester, he expostulated with me for denying them. These very men that then invited me to be their pastor were the men that afterwards headed much of the army, and some of them were the forwardest in all our changes ; which made me wish that I had gone among
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=