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

By this taste, the Reader that knew not the Men, may judge with what sort of Men we had to do; for Dr. Pierce was not without too many Companions of his Temper. These Men that witness these Words of his were godly Men, who having been Mr. John Goodwin's Disciples, had been made Arminians by him; and fell in with Dr. Pierce, for his Agreement with them in the Arminian Points: But they could not lay by Piety and Charity in Partiality for Opinions, and being impatient of his Impudence, thus made it known to me. I purposed to have produced it before all the Bishops, when Dr. Pierce was there (having no other Opportunity to see him): But I had no fit Occasion, and was loth in Business of public respect, to interpose any thing that merely concerned my self; and so I never yet told him of it.

By this taste, the Reader that knew not the Men, may judge with what sort of Men we had to do; for Dr. Pierce was not without too many Companions of his Temper. These Men that witness these Words of his were godly Men, who having been Mr. Iohn Goodwin's Disciples, had been made Arminians by him; and fell in with Dr. Pierce, for his Agreement with them in the Arminian Points: But they could not lay by Piety and Charity in Partiality for Opinions, and being impatient of his Impudence, thus made it known to me. I purposed to have produced it before all the Bishops, when Dr. Pierce was there (having no other Opportunity to see him): But I had no fit Occasion, and was loth in Business of publick respect, to interpose any thing that meerly concerned my self; and so I never yet told him of it.

§ 117. That the Reader may understand this the better, by knowing the occasion of his Malice, this Mr. Tho. Pierce (being a confident Man, that had a notable Stile and Words at Will, and a venomous railing Pen and Tongue against the Puritans and Calvinists) having written somewhat in Defence of Grotius, as a judicious peaceable Protestant, in Opposition to some Passages in my [Christian Concord] where I warn the Episcopal Party to take heed of Grotianism that was creeping in upon them, I did thereupon write a little Collection out of the late Writings of Grotius (especially his Discussio Apologetici Rivetiani) to prove him to have turned Papist; and that Popery was indeed his Religion (though he communicated with no Church] (for he expressly pleadeth for our consenting to the Council of Trent, and all other general Councils as the Churches Law; and to the Pope's Sovereign Government; so it be according to those Laws, and to the Mistressship of the Church of Rome over all other Churches, and to Pope Pius's Oath, with much more to that purpose: and telleth us that he was turned from us because he saw that the Protestant Churches had no possibility of Union among themselves, &c. and there is a Book written (I think by Vincentius) a French Minister, called Grotius Papizans, which proveth it: And Claud Suravia, an honourable learned Counsellor of Paris, in his printed Epistles publisheth the same from Grotius's own Mouth) But Mr. Pierce was vehemently furious at my Book, and wrote a Volume against me full of ingenuous Lies and Railing; for he had no better way to defend Grotius or himself. In that Book he scrapes up all the Words through all my Writings where I speak any thing of my self, and puts them together, more impudently interpreting them, than could have been expected from a Man: Because I confess that the place I lived in was a Sequestration (whence an ignorant Reader had been put out before my coming to them) therefore he calls me Thief, as if I lived on another's Bread; As if no Man must ever have been the Teacher of the People, till that ignorant Wretch were restored to his Soul-murdering Condition: