, would Baxter
have thought them culpable for imposing on him an Oath to preserve the
Protestant Church of England and to inflict severe penalties on his own
Church-fellows?
Ib. p. 71.
And some men thought it a very hard question, whether they should
rather wish the continuance of a usurper that will do good, or the
restoration of a rightful governor whose followers will do hurt.
And who shall dare unconditionally condemn those who judged the former
to be the better alternative? Especially those who did not adopt
Baxter's notion of a 'jus divinum' personal and hereditary in the
individual, whose father had broken the compact on which the claim
rested.
Ib. p. 75.
One Mrs. Dyer, a chief person of the Sect, did first bring forth a
monster, which had the parts of almost all sorts of living creatures,
some parts like man, but most ugly and misplaced, and some like
beasts, birds and fishes, having horns, fins and claws; and at the
birth of it the bed shook, and the women present fell a vomiting, and
were fain to go forth of the room.
This babe of Mrs. Dyer's is no bad emblem of Richard Baxter's own
credulity. It is almost an argument on his side, that nothing he
believed is more strange and inexplicable than his own belief of them.
Ib. p. 76.
The third sect were the Ranters. These also made it their business, as
the former, to set up the light of nature under the name of Christ in
men, and to dishonour and cry down the Church, &c.
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