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

1. The Temper of my Mind hath somewhat altered with the Temper of my Body. When I was young, I was more vigorous, affectionate, and fervent in Preaching, Conference and Prayer, than (ordinarily) I can be now; my Stile was more extemporate and lax, but by the Advantage of Affection, and a very familiar moving Voice and Utterance, my preaching then did more affect the Auditory, than many of the last Years before I gave over Preaching; but yet what I delivered was ⟨p. 125⟩much more raw, and had more Passages that would not bear the Trial of accurate Judgments; and my Discourses had both less Substance and less Judgment than of late.

1. The Temper of my Mind hath somewhat altered with the Temper of my Body. When I was young, I was more vigorous, affectionate, and servent in Preaching, Conference and Prayer, than (ordinarily) I can be now; my Stile was more extemporate and laxe, but by the Advantage of Affection, and a very familiar moving Voice and Utterance, my preaching then did more affect the Auditory, than many of the last Years before I gave over Preaching; but yet what I delivered was ⟨p. 125⟩much more raw, and had more Passages that would not bear the Tryal of accurate Judgments; and my Discourses had both less Substance and less Iudgment than of late.

2. My understanding was then quicker, and could easilyer manage any thing that was newly presented to it upon a sudden; but it is since better furnished, and acquainted with the ways of Truth and Error, and with a Multitude of particular Mistakes of the World, which then I was the more in Danger of, because I had only the Faculty of Knowing them, but did not actually know them. I was then like a Man of a quick Understanding that was to travail a way which he never went before, or to cast up an Account which he never laboured in before, or to play on an Instrument of Music which he never saw before: And I am now like one of somewhat a slower Understanding (by that praematura Senectus which weakness and excessive bleedings brought me to) who is travelling a Way which he hath often gone, and is casting up an Account which he hath often cast up, and hath ready at hand, and that is playing on an Instrument which he hath often played on: So that I can very confidently say, that my Judgment is much sounder and firmer now than it was then; for though I am now as competent Judge of the Actings of my own Understanding then, yet I can judge of the Effects: And when I peruse the Writings which I wrote in my younger Years, I can find the Footsteps of my unfurnished Mind, and of my Emptiness and Insufficiency: So that the Man that followed my Judgment then, was liker to have been misled by me, than he that should follow it now.