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

§ V.

And such a Person was the Reverend Author (and in part the Subject Matter) of the subsequent Treatise. He was an early Votary to his God: so early as that he knew not when God engaged him first unto himself. And hence he in great measures escaped those Evil Habits and Calamities which old Age ordinarily pays so dear for, though he laments the carelessness and intemperance of his first childish and youthful days. And if the Reader think it strange and mean, that these, and some other passages inferioris subsellij should be inserted amongst so many things far more considerable, written by himself, and published by me, I crave leave to reply, 1. That Conscience is a tender thing, and when awakened, it accounts no sin small, nor any Calamity below most serious Thoughts and sensible and smart Resentments, that evidently springs from the least Miscarriage, which might (and ought to) have been prevented. 2. That the apprehension of approaching Death made him severer in his Scrutinies and Reflections. 3. That he thence thought himself concerned and bound in duty to warn others against all which he thought or found so very prejudicial to his own Soul and Body. 4. That as mean passages as these are to be found in Ancient and Modern Lives and Histories, which pass not under rigid Censures. 5. That the Author wrote this his History, sparsim & raptim, and it was rather a Rhapsody than one continued Work. So that I hope that the obvious inequalities of Style and Matter, (or the Defects in accuracy of Method (much more the Errors of the Press) will be no scandal to the ingenuous and candid Readers. 6. And as to my suffering such things to be exposed to public view; can any Man take it ill, that I give him what Mr. Baxter left with me to this end? and had I thought to have expunged some things, and to have altered others, I could not have said as he himself did (in his Preface to the Lord Chief Justice Hale's Judgment of the Nature of true Religion) 'I take it as an intolerable Piaculum to put any altering hand of mine to the Writings of such a Man—But to pass by this— His seriousness in and about the greatest things, and his solicitous care to save his own and others Souls, and his great zeal for Holiness, Truth, Concord and Peace amongst all Christians abroad, and in these Kingdoms, made him (when capable thereof) to mind how Matters stood betwixt God and us;