Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, or, Mr. Richard Baxters narrative of the most memorable passages of his…

My Father had only the Competent Estate of a Freeholder, free from the Temptations of Poverty and Riches: But having been addicted to Gaming in his Youth, and his Father before him, it was so entangled by Debts, that it occasioned some excess of worldly Cares before it was freed.

We lived in a Country that had but little Preaching at all: In the Village where I was born there was four Readers successively in Six years time, ignorant Men, and two of them immoral in their lives; who were all my School-masters. In the Village where my Father lived, there was a Reader of about Eighty years of Age that never preached, and had two Churches about Twenty miles distant: His Eyesight failing him, he said Common-Prayer without Book; but for the Reading of the Psalms and Chapters, he got a Common Thresher and Day-Labourer one year, and a Taylor another year: (for the Clerk could not read well): And at last he had a Kinsman of his own, (the excellentest Stage-player in all the Country, and a good Gamester and good Fellow) that got Orders and supplied one of his Places! After him another younger Kinsman, that could write and read, got Orders: And at the same time another Neighbour's Son that had been a while at School turned Minister, and who would needs go further than the rest, ventured to preach (and after got a Living in Staffordshire,) and when he had been a Preacher about Twelve or Sixteen years, he was fain to give over, it being discovered that his Orders were forged by the first ingenious Stage-Player. After him another Neighbour's Son took Orders, when he had been a while an Attorney's Clerk, and a common Drunkard, and tippled himself into so great Poverty that he had no other way to live: It ⟨p. 2⟩was feared that he and more of them came by their Orders the same way with the forementioned Person: These were the School-masters of my Youth (except two of them:) who read Common Prayer on Sundays and Holy-days, and taught School and tippled on the Week-days, and whipped the Boys when they were drunk, so that we changed them very oft. Within a few miles about us, were near a dozen more Ministers that were near Eighty years old apiece, and never preached; poor ignorant Readers, and most of them of Scandalous Lives: only three or four constant competent Preachers lived near us, and those (though Conformable all save one) were the common Marks of the People's Obloquy and Reproach, and any that had but gone to hear them, when he had no Preaching at home, was made the Derision of the Vulgar Rabble, under the odious Name of a Puritan.