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

§ 6. And I cannot but think that as your honest and kind admonition obligeth me to be truly thankful to you, and to renew the trial of my ways; so I am obliged by the same principle of Love and Fidelity, humbly to entreat you, to consider (if possible) without partiality, 1. How you can answer the owning of such a Volume of a Lying Slanderers Accusations, before you hear the defence of the Accused. 2. But much more, how you can so far countenance the heinous sins of those that you call the Church, as not at all to blame them, and to take it for so great a crime to name them, and call men to repentance for them? Can you find so much of Hell, in the mention of the Dignities and Distinctions of Devils, and yet see nothing but blamelessness, in the silencings of about Two thousand such Ministers, seizing on the goods, and books, and beds of so many ⟨image 6⟩as were so used; laying many so long in common `fails with Rogues; even divers to their death; ruining so many hundred godly Families; shutting the Church doors against so many Scholars that were educated and devoted to the Ministry; causing and continuing the woeful divisions of the Land, to the great weakening of the Church, and hinderances of Piety and Love, and the great advantage of Popery and Foreign Enemies? O how much more of such work have some to answer for?

§ 6. And I cannot but think that as your honest and kind admonition obligeth me to be truly thankful to you, and to renew the tryal of my ways; so I am obliged by the same principle of Love and Fidelity, humbly to intreat you, to consider (if possible) without partiality, 1. How you can answer the owning of such a Volume of a Lying Slanderers Accusations, before you hear the defence of the Accused. 2. But much more, how you can so far countenance the heinous sins of those that you call the Church, as not at all to blame them, and to take it for so great a crime to name them, and call men to repentance for them? Can you find so much of Hell, in the mention of the Dignities and Distinctions of Devils, and yet see nothing but blamelesness, in the silencings of about Two thousand such Ministers, seizing on the goods, and books, and beds of so many ⟨image 6⟩as were so used; laying many so long in common `fails with Rogues; even divers to their death; ruining so many hundred godly Families; shutting the Church doors against so many Scholars that were educated and devoted to the Ministry; causing and continuing the woful divisions of the Land, to the great weakning of the Church, and hinderances of Piety and Love, and the great advantage of Popery and Forrein Enemies? O how much more of such work have some to answer for?