III. CHAS. I. thing more than the habit of profound abstraction CHAPTER from passing things, into which puritan divines had schooled their congregations. After a time the recurrence of battles and scenes of blood, no doubt, 1643—4—5. produces apathy, and the soldier's wife who follows with the camp shares the courage of her husband. But the parishioners of Alcester had not been trained to war: it was the first battle fought on English soil for centuries. Their parish minister, Mr. Samuel Clarke, for whom Baxter preached, was himself eminent amongst the puritans, and he had taught his people, it would seem, the noble lesson of peace in the midst of danger: he had taught them, in a word, to put their trust in God. Amidst the wild uproar of the war there were still scattered through the land innumerable households which, to use the puritan phrase (much ridiculed, but most appropriate), waited upon God. The miseries of a war at home exasperated some to madness; but they tutored others in the best lessons of adversity, and taught them the necessity of a closer intercourse with heaven. From many a parlour the incense of family worship went up unceasingly; in many a home the brightest graces of the christian character blossomed pure and lovely, like flowers in snow, amidst surrounding horrors. It was in such a home that Baxter, with broken health and in the full prospect of its blest enjoyment, wrote his meditations on "The saint's everlasting rest." He lived long and wrote much; but he left nothing behind him which will bear comparison with this sweet and solemn treatise. The turmoil of a busy life, hitherto spent amidst con III. A.D. CHAPTER fusion, seems to have been a help, and not a hindrance, to his soul; he saw the vanity of earthly CHAS. I. things, and felt, or at least described, as no other 1643-4-5. Writer uninspired has ever done, the instant realities of an eternal state. He unfolds the gates of heaven, and permits us for an instant to be ravished with its celestial splendours, and to hear the distant melody of its everlasting songs. His descriptions of an outer world of darkness few can read without an awful sense of the realities of hell. The misery of a lost spirit, its remorse and anguish and despair, the torments of the body and the stronger torments of the soul, once impressed, can scarcely be forgotten. Here indeed lay Baxter's fault: he is often distressing to a timid or an anxious mind. The consolations of the gospel are not always allowed their full pre-eminence, and there is in consequence a lowering shade, a want of perfect light and joy, such as implicit faith in the great sacrifice for sin imparts. Still the work, immortal in its way, stands, with Milton and "the Pilgrim's Progress," on a height from which it has long defied the shafts of criticism. The reader who is not acquainted with it knows little of the puritans. Addison took up by chance a leaf of one of Baxter's writings, and the author of the Spectator was so charmed with it that he purchased all the rest. "The Saint's Rest" was written amidst the din of war and the depression of sickness. It was begun in Derbyshire, and finished within a few months under the hospitable roof of Sir Thomas Rouse in Worcestershire. Happily, Baxter had neither books at hand nor strength to read them: he communed with his own heart and with his bible. And thus after two CHAPTER centuries his book is fresh and natural, and happily III. A.D. free from the decorations (of which Baxter deplored CHAS. I. the want) of Occam's Dialectics, Thomas Aquinas, 1643-45. or St. Augustine. It was published just as the war in England closed, and passed at once through several editions. The spiritual appetite of the country must have been vigorous and extensive; it must have spread far and wide. "The Saint's Rest" appealed to no passions and stirred no controversy. Its sudden popularity is a token that there were thousands of the puritans whose piety the war had left untarnished; men whose affections were set on things above, amidst the wreck and dissolution of all around them. The wide circulation of Baxter's work enables us to detect their existence, and to form some conjecture as to their numbers. But still the domestic piety of England during the civil war, among puritans and royalists, is involved in much obscurity. Many journals were kept by excellent men on both sides. But they chiefly relate to public affairs; the deliberations of the parliament or the assembly, and the movements of the camp. Without any disposition to underrate their value, we should thankfully exchange whole volumes of these political diaries for a few pages of some unpretending record which might admit us into the confidence of a pious English family in those days,-which would make us acquainted with the real character of their home religion, and lay bare, if possible, the true condition of their hearts. As if, however, to compensate for this deficiency, CHAS. I. A.D. CHAPTER the character of the army is presented to us without III. the least reserve. We can form an intimate acquaintance with its officers and men. We are, 1643-4-5. in fact, as well informed of the true condition of the parliamentary forces, with regard to conduct, habits, and religion, as with that of our own troops abroad during the recent war; and, by the admission of friend and foe, no such army was ever marshalled. The men were as peculiar as the cause for which they fought. At first, when the drum was beat, all comers were enlisted. And the parliamentary army was a rabble, like the king's, of serving-men without employment, loungers at the public-house, and the refuse of the village, the usual prey of the recruiting sergeant. sergeant. Hampden's regiment was an exception. His boundless popularity had long stirred the whole county of Buckingham, and his regiment of green coats was raised among the yeomanry and freeholders. In a few instances the tenants and retainers of the great landlords followed with their patriarch to the field. But this feudal custom was chiefly visible on the other side; for the old nobility shared the fortunes of the king. In London the troops were of a higher station in society. The students of the inns of court and their friends formed themselves into a life-guard for the earl of Essex: they brought not only zeal and courage, but that aptitude for new pursuits of the most unlikely character which is peculiar to young men of education. They drilled themselves for a few weeks under a person experienced in military affairs, at the artillery ground in London, and were at once expert in war; and III. A.D. from their corps, not amounting to a hundred, a CHAPTER considerable number of the parliamentary generals, afterwards so renowned, were chosen.* But these CHAS. I. were exceptions: it was reserved for Cromwell's 1643-4-5. penetration to perceive that in a cause like theirs the parliament must rely for its soldiers upon the middling classes of society, upon men who had both property and conscience, who had something to lose as well as much to gain. Writing to his friend and cousin Hampden, when disheartened by a few unsuccessful skirmishes, "I will raise men,' he says, "who will have the fear of God before their eyes, and who will bring some conscience to what they do, and I promise you they shall not be beaten."+ Cromwell represented Cambridge in parliament, and his influence was great in the eastern counties. There he went beating up for recruits, not at the tavern and the market-cross, but in the assemblies of the puritans, where men discussed the wrongs of their country, and the dishonour which popery and Laud had done to God. He raised fourteen squadrons of horse. They were yeomen's sons; men of character and substance; and, outwardly at least, of fervent piety. Their discipline was admirable. Their presence was hailed with satisfaction wherever they appeared. They were the guardians of property and morals. In this regiment a man was fined a shilling for an oath; if drunk he was set in the stocks "or worse;' * Generals Fleetwood, Ludlow, and Harrison, and colonels Rich, Tomlinson, Twistleton, Fiennes, and Whitley, all famous in the war, were of this corps.-Ludlow, Memoirs, p. 17. + Carlyle, Letters, &c. of O. Cromwell, i. p. 163, &c. |