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‘ [174] this trouble,’ he remarks, ‘but my wife easily bore it all.’ When unable to preach, his rapid pen was always busy. Huge folios of controversial and doctrinal lore followed each other in quick succession. He assailed Popery and the Establishment, Anabaptists, ultra Calvinists, Antinomians, Fifth Monarchy men, and Quakers. His hatred of the latter was only modified by his contempt. He railed rather than argued against the ‘miserable creatures,’ as he styled them. They in turn answered him in like manner. ‘The Quakers,’ he says, ‘in their shops, when I go along London streets, say, “ Alas! poor man, thou art yet in darkness.” They have oft come to the congregation, when I had liberty to preach Christ's Gospel, and cried out against me as a deceiver of the people. They have followed me home, crying out in the streets, “The day of the Lord is coming, and thou shalt perish as a deceiver.” They have stood in the market-place, and under my window, year after year, crying to the people, “ Take heed of your priests, they deceive your souls;” and if any one wore a lace or neat clothing, they cried out to me, “ These are the fruits of your ministry.” ’

At Rickmansworth, he found himself a neighbor of William Penn, whom he calls ‘the captain of the Quakers.’ Ever ready for battle, Baxter encountered him in a public discussion, with such fierceness and bitterness as to force from that mild and amiable civilian the remark, that he would rather be Socrates at the final judgment than Richard Baxter. Both lived to know each other better, and to entertain sentiments of mutual

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