Note in Baxter's Life of Himself
Reading edition
1820. Among the grounds for recommending the perusal of our elder writers Hooker Taylor Baxter in short almost any of the folios composed from Edward VI. to Charles II. I note: 1. The overcoming the habit of deriving your whole pleasure passively from the book itself, which can only be effected by excitement of curiosity or of some passion. Force yourself to reflect on what you read paragraph by paragraph, and in a short time you will derive your pleasure, an ample portion of it, at least, from the activity of your own mind. All else is picture sunshine. 2. The conquest of party and sectarian prejudices, when you have on the same table before you the works of a Hammond and a Baxter, and reflect how many and how momentous their points of agreement, how few and almost childish the differences, which estranged and irritated these good men. Let us but imagine what their blessed spirits now feel at the retrospect of their earthly frailties, and can we do other than strive to feel as they now feel, not as they once felt? So will it be with the disputes between good men of the present day; and if you have no other reason to doubt your opponent's goodness than the point in dispute, think of Baxter and Hammond, of Milton and Taylor, and let it be no reason at all. 3. It will secure you from the narrow idolatry of the present times and fashions, and create the noblest kind of imaginative power in your soul, that of living in past ages; wholly devoid of which power, a man can neither anticipate the future, nor ever live a truly human life, a life of reason in the present. 4. In this particular work we may derive a most instructive lesson, that in certain points, as of religion in relation to law, the medio tutis simus ibis is inapplicable. There is no 'medium' possible; and all the attempts as those of Baxter, though no more were required than 'I believe in God through Christ,' prove only the mildness of the proposer's temper, but as a rule would be either equal to nothing, at least exclude only the two or three in a century that make it a matter of religion to declare themselves atheists, or else be just as fruitful a rule for a persecutor as the most complete set of articles that could be framed by a Spanish Inquisition. For to 'believe' must mean to believe aright and 'God' must mean the true God and 'Christ' the Christ in the sense and with the attributes understood by Christians who are truly Christians. An established church with a liturgy is the sufficient solution of the problem de jure magistratus. Articles of faith are in this point of view superfluous; for is it not too absurd for a man to hesitate at subscribing his name to doctrines which yet in the more awful duty of prayer and profession he dares affirm before his Maker! They are therefore, in this sense, merely superfluous; not worth re-enacting, had they ever been done away with; not worth removing now that they exist. 5. The characteristic contra-distinction between the speculative reasoners of the age before the Revolution, and those since, is this: the former cultivated metaphysics without, or neglecting empirical, psychology: the latter cultivate a mechanical psychology to the neglect and contempt of metaphysics. Both, therefore, are almost equi-distant from true philosophy. Hence the belief in ghosts, witches, sensible replies to prayer, &c. in Baxter and in a hundred others. See also Luther's Table Talk. 6. The earlier part of this volume is interesting as materials for medical history. The state of medical science in the reign of Charles I. was almost incredibly low.
Contents Contents, p.3