j8 LIFE OF RICHARD BAITER. return to Kidderminster. The " Saint's Rest" was published in 1650. Of the circumstances in which this work was written, theau- thor says, "While I was inhealth, I had not the least thought of writing books, or of serving God in any more public way than preaching; but when I was weakenedwith great bleeding, and left solitary in my chamber at Sir John Cook's in Derbyshire, without any acquaintance but my servant about me, and was sentenced to death by the physicians, I began to contemplate more seriously on the everlasting rest, which I apprehended myself to be just on the borders of. That my thoughtsmight not too much scatter in my meditation, I began to write something on that subject, intending but the quantity of a sermon or two ; but being continued long in weakness, where I had no books and no better employment,I fol- lowed it on, till it was enlarged to the bulk in which it is pub- lished. The first three weeks I spent in it was at Mr. Nowel's house, at Kirkby. Mallory, in Leicestershire ; a quarter of a year more, at the seasons which so great weakness would allow, I be- stowed-on it at Sir Thomas Rous's house, at Rous-Lench in Wor- cestershire ; and I finished it shortly after at Kidderminster. The first and last parts were first done, being all that I intended for my own use ; and the second and third parts came afterwards in, besides my first intention." " The marginal citations I put in, after I came home to my books, but almost all the book itself was written when I had no book but a Bible and a Concordance ; and I found that the tran- script of the heart bath the greatest force on thehearts of others. For the good that I have heard that multitudes have received by that writing, and the benefit which I have again received by their prayers, I here humbly return my thanks to him that compelled me to write it. "* . There are few testimonies to the great intellectual vigor, and the extraordinary industry of Baxter, more surprising than the fact that " The Saint's Everlasting Rest," which, at its first publication, was a quarto volume of eight hundred pages, was written in six months, while the author stood languishing and fainting between life and death. Narrative, Part I. p. 108.
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