BAXTER'S FAREWELL SERMON 529 not been addicted to proud ostentation of your gifts or wisdom; nor inclined tó invade any part of the sacred office, but to serve God in thecapacity where he bath placed you. V. I rejoice that God bath made you unanimous, and kept out sects, and heresies, and schisms, so that you have served him as with one mind and mouth ; and that you have not been addicted to proud wranglings, disputings,,and contentions, but have lived in unity, love and peace, and the practice of known and necessa- ry truths. VI. I rejoice that your frequentmeetings in your houses, spent only in reading, repeating your teacher's sermons, prayer and praise to God, have had none of those effects which the conventicles of proud opiniators and self-conceited persons use to have, and which have brought even needful. converse and godly communi- cation into suspicion, at least with some that argue against duty from the abuse. Yea, I rejoice that hereby so much good hath been done by you. You have had above forty years' experienceof the great benefit of such well-ordered Christian converse, increasing knowledge, quicken- ing holy desires, prevailing with God, formarvelous, if not miracu- lous answers of your earnest prayers, keeping out errors and sects. VII. I am glad that you have had the great encouragement of so many sober, godly, able, peaceable ministers, in all that part of the country round about, you, and mostly through that and the neighbor countries ; men that avoided vain and bitter contentions, that engaged themselves in no sects or factions ;"that, of a multi- tude, not above two, that I know of, inall our association, had ever any hand in wars ; but their principles and practices were recon- ciling and pacificatory : they consented to catechise all their pa- rishioners, house by house, and to live in the peaceable practice of so much church discipline, as good Christians of several parties were all agreed in. And you have lived to see what that disci- pline was, and what were theeffects of such agreement. VIII. I am glad that you were kept from taking the solemn league and covenant, and the engagement, and all consent to the change of the constituted government of this kingdom. I took the covenant myself, of which. I repent, and I will tell you why : I never gave it but to one man, (that I'remember,) and he professed himself to be a Papist physician newly turned Protestant, and he came to me to give it him. I was persuaded that he took it in false dissimulation, and it troubled me to think what it was todraw multitudes ofmen, by carnal interest, so falsely to take it; and I kept it and the engagement from being taken in your town and country. At first, it was not imposed, but taken by volunteers ; but after that itwas made a test of such as were to be trusted or vol.. tr. 67
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