BLACKWOOD. 389 esteemed for his steady piety and universal benevolence. When he had finished his labours and his sufferings, he died in a good old age, but at what period we cannot learn/. and was succeeded in the pastoral office by his son Mr. John Jeffery.. CHRISTOPHER BLACKWOOD received a learned educa- tion, and was probably trained up at one of our universities. He was beneficed in Kent, and possessed of a parochial charge in that county at the commencement of the civil wars. hi the year 1644, Mr. Francis Cornwell, a zealous baptist, having preached a visitation sermon at Cranbrook in Kent; and having openly declared his sentiments upon the subject of baptism, Mr. Blackwood,who heard the sermon, and took it down in short-hand, became a proselyte to his opinions. Having changed his, sentiments about baptism, he did not long continue in the established church. Hewas equally zealous against national churches, as against infant baptism. Upon his leaving the ecclesiastical establishment, he collected a separate congregation at S'taplehurst in Kent; but his sentiments being Calvinistic, and contrary to those of the society, he afterwards left it to the pastoral care of Mr. Kingsnorth. He was a zealous advocate for liberty of con- science, and as much opposed to the establishment of pres- byterianism as ,episcopacy. In the first piece he published, he joined together infant baptism and compulsion of con- science calling them "The two last and strongest garrisons of antichrist." He was accounted, by one who lived in those times, " among those worthy guides, in all respects well qualified for the ministry, w,ho voluntarily left their benefices in the establishment." In the year 1653 he went into Ire- land with the army under the command of General Fleetwood and Lieutenant Ludlow; and preached to a congregation in Dublin.t He lived till after the restoration, and signed the apology of the baptists in 1660, declaring against Venner's insurrection.# His WORKS.-1. The Storming of Antichrist in his two last and strongest Garrisons, Compulsion of Conscience and Infant-baptism, 1644. -2.'A brief Catechism concerning Baptism, 1644.-3. Four Treatises. First, the Excellency of Christ. Second, a Preparation Crosby's Baptists, vol. iii. p. 99. Thurloe's State Papers, vol. iii. p. 90. Crosby's Baptists, vol. i. p. 347-351.
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