A26865:685
An apology for the nonconformists ministry containing I. the reasons of their preaching, II.…
An apology for the nonconformists ministry containing I. the reasons of their preaching, II. an answer to the accusations urged as reasons for the silencing of about 2000 by Bishop Morley ..., III. reasons proving it the duty and interest of the bishops and conformists to endeavour earnestly their restoration : with a postscript upon oral debates with Mr. H. Dodwell, against his reasons for their silence ... : written in 1668 and 1669, for the most of it, and now published as an addition to the defence against Dr. Stillingfleet, and as an account to the silencers of the reasons of our practice / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for T. Parkhurst and D. Newman, 1681
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
3. And experience telleth you and all the world, that you are mistaken: We read the same books out of a prison, as in it (if there we may have them): And what abundance of Ministers▪ within these ten years, have come out of long imprisonment in the same mind as they went in (yea much confirmed). But who can you name that came out convinced that his way was wrong? How long have they suffered, not only poverty and reproach, but that silencing which they account a greater evil? And yet how few are changed by all this (For the Novel-Politicians talk of a hundred men that continue to displease you, is but a means to tell the world, how exactly your Actions and Historical Narratives agree, and what posterity must expect from the later, as well as we from the former).
4. But if 9 or 10 years experience be too little for you, look back to the experience of all the world. Your Bishop Taylor, and ⟨p. 196⟩many of your own, can tell you, how opposition inflameth the opposed party into a greater zeal.
5. In a word, I know not only my self, but so many of the Nonconformable Ministers of England, that I utterly despair that even silencing or imprisonment should change their judgments.