Richard Baxter's penitent confession and his necessary vindication in answer to a book called…

§ 11. Page 13. He saith, [Our Nation would be less in danger of new Flames if all (my Books Practical and Polemical) were consumed to Ashes.]

Ans. How came I to escape till now my self? Not at all by your Clemency: Your Patron Judge Jeffreys on the Bench said, He was sorry that the Act of Indemnity disabled him from Hanging me: And your Mouth Roger Le Strange foretold the Reason: Never was so wicked a Book written as my Paraphrase on the New Testament. Were I at his Ear I would whisper to him, Do you not take the New Testament it self to be far worse? But what is the deadly evil? Why I say with Paul, That if an Angel from Heaven preach another Gospel let him be accursed? But did I make those words? Or find them made: The Judge by the help of our Great Clergy-men and their Curates, found out eight Paraphrases that deserved this Death. The sum of which was that I accuse the Pharisees, and Herodians, and Priests, for malicious hating and murdering Christ, for doing good and working Miracles; and for urging Men to be Informers against him, and for forbidding the Apostles to Preach: And they said that by an Innuendo I meant all this of the Church of England. And when a Famous (but exasperated Dr.) gathered some passages as Seditious against Government to have hanged me, even our Judges and prosecutors searching the Books, and particularly on Rom. 13. cast by those accusations, and never mentioned them. And when they burnt my Political Aphorisms, and I wrote my Judgment thereof to the Vice-Chancellor, I had not a word of contradiction.

Ans. How came I to escape till now my self? Not at all by your Clemency: Your Patron Judge Jeffreys on the Bench said, He was sorry that the Act of Indempnity disabled him from Hanging me: And your Mouth Roger Le Strange foretold the Reason: Never was so wicked a Book written as my Paraphrase on the New Testament. Were I at his Ear I would whisper to him, Do you not take the New Testament it self to be far worse? But what is the deadly evil? Why I say with Paul, That if an Angel from Heaven preach another Gospel let him be accursed? But did I make those words? Or find them made: The Judge by the help of our Great Clergy-men and their Curates, found out eight Paraphrases that deserved this Death. The sum of which was that I accuse the Pharisees, and Herodians, and Priests, for malicious hating and murdering Christ, for doing good and working Miracles; and for urging Men to be Informers against him, and for forbidding the Apostles to Preach: And they said that by an Innuendo I meant all this of the Church of England. And when a Famous (but exasperated Dr.) gathered some passages as Seditious against Government to have hanged me, even our Judges and prosecutors searching the Books, and particularly on