A26870:111
A breviate of the life of Margaret, the daughter of Francis Charlton ... and…
A breviate of the life of Margaret, the daughter of Francis Charlton ... and wife of Richard Baxter ... : there is also published the character of her mother, truly described in her published funeral sermon, reprinted at her daughters request, called, The last work of a believer, his passing-prayer recommending his departing spirit to Christ, to be received by him.
London: printed for B. Simmons, 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.
CHAP. V. Her temper, occasioning these troubles of mind.
§. 1. THE soul while in the body, works much according to the bodies disposition. 1. She was of an extraordinary sharp and piercing Wit. 2. She had a natural reservedness, and secrecy, increased by thinking it necessary prudence not to be open; by which means she was oft mis-understood by her nearest friends, and consequently often crossed and disappointed by those that would have pleased her. And as she could understand men much by their looks and hints, so she expected all should know her mind without her expressing it, which ⟨p. 44⟩bred her frustrations and discontents. 3. And she had a natural tenderness, and troubledness of mind, upon the crossing of her just desires: too quick, and ungovernable a sense of displeasing words or deeds. 4. She had a diseased unresistible fearfulness; her quick, and too sensible nature was over-timorous: and to increase it, she said she was four times, before I knew her, in danger of death (of which, one was by the Small-Pox): And more to increase it, her Mothers house (Apply-Castle, near Wellington), being a Garrison, it was stormed while she was in it, and part of the housing about it burnt, and men lay killed before her face, and all of them threatened, and stripped of their clothing, so that they were fain to borrow clothes. 5. And the great work upon her soul, in her conversion, moved all her passions. 6. And then her dangerous sickness, and the sentence of death to so young a Convert, must needs be a very awaking thing; and coming on her before she had any assurance of her justification, did increase her fear. 7. And in this case she lived in the Church-Yard side, where she saw all the Burials of the dead, and kept a deaths head (a skull) in her Closet still before her. And other such mortifying spectacles increased her sad disposition.
§. 1. THE soul while in the body, works much according to the bodies disposition. 1. She was of an extraordinary sharp and piercing Wit. 2. She had a natural reservedness, and secrecy, increased by thinking it necessary prudence not to be open; by which means she was oft mis-understood by her nearest friends, and consequently often crost and disappointed by those that would have pleased her. And as she could understand men much by their looks and hints, so she expected all should know her mind without her expressing it, which