and it is an injury to the speaker, for besides the base disreputation it casts upon him, it doth in time bring a man to that baseness of mind, that he can scarce tell how to tell truth, or to avoid lying, even when he hath no colour of necessity for it; and in time, he comes to such a pass, that as another man cannot believe he tells a truth, so he himself scarce knows when he tells a lie. And observe it, a Lie ever returns, with discovery and shame at the last.

As you must be careful not to lie, so you must avoid coming near it. You must not equivocate: you must not speak that absolutely which you have but by hearsay or relation: you must not speak that as upon knowledge which you have but by conjecture or opinion only. . . . Be not over-earnest, loud, or violent in Talking, for it is unseemly; and earnest and loud talking make you overshoot and lose your business: when you should be considering and pondering your thoughts, and how to express them significantly and to the purpose, you are striving to keep your tongue going, and to silence an opponent, not with reason but with noise.

Hear

Be careful not to interrupt another in his talk. him out you will understand him the better, and be able to give him the better answer. It may be, if you will give him leave, he will say somewhat more than you have yet heard or well understood, or that which you did not expect.

Always, before you speak, especially where the business is of moment, consider before-hand; weigh the sense of your mind which you intend to utter; think upon the expressions you intend to use, that they be significant, pertinent, and inoffensive: and whereas it is the ordinary course of inconsiderate persons to speak their words, and then to think; or not to think till they speak; think first, and speak after, if it be in any matter of moment or seriousness. Avoid swearing in your

ordinary communication, unless called to it by the magistrate and not only the grosser oaths, but the lesser; and not only oaths, but imprecations, earnest and deep protestations. As you have the commendable example of good men to justify a solemn oath before a magistrate, so you have the precept of our Saviour forbidding it otherwise. . . . If there be occasion for you to speak in any company, always be careful, if you speak at all, to speak latest; especially if strangers are in company : for by this means you will have the advantage of knowing the sense, judgment, temper, and relations of others, which may be a great light and help to you in ordering your speech; and you will better know the inclination of the company, and speak with more advantage and acceptation, and with more security against giving offence.

I have but little more to write at this time, but to wish and command you to remember my former counsels that I have often given you. Begin and end the day with private prayers to God, upon your knees; read the Scriptures, often and seriously; be attentive to the public worship of God in the church; keep yourselves still in some good employment; for idleness is the devil's opportunity, and the nursery of vain and sinful thoughts, which corrupt the mind and disorder the life. Let the Girls take care of such business of my family as is proper for them; and their recreations may be walking abroad in the fields, in fair or frosty mornings, some work with their needle, reading of history or herbals, setting of flowers or herbs, practising their music, and such inno

cent and harmless exercises. Let the Boys be diligent at their books, and when they have performed their tasks, I do not deny them such recreations as may be healthy, safe, and harmless. Be you all kind and loving one to another, honcuring your minister, not bitter or harsh to my servants. Be respectful to all. Bear my absence patiently, cheerfully, and faithfully. Do all things as if I were present among you, and beheld you; for you have a greater Father than I am, that always and in all places beholds you, and knows your hearts and thoughts. Study to requite the love and care and expense of your father for you, with dutifulness, observance, and obedience to him; and account it an honour that God hath given you an opportunity, in my absence, by your care, faithfulness, and industry, to pay some part of that debt that by the laws of nature and gratitude you owe unto me. Be frugal in my family, but let there be no want : provide conveniently for the poor that come to my door. And I pray God to fill all your hearts with his grace, fear, and love; and to let you see the advantage and comfort of serving him; and that his blessing, and presence, and comfort, and direction, and providence be with you and over you all.-I am your ever loving father, MATTHEW HALE.

Richard Baxter (1615–91), born at Rowton, in Shropshire, was educated chiefly at the endowed school of Wroxeter, leaving with some Latin, a smattering of Greek, no Hebrew, and no mathematics. 'My faults,' he said, 'are no disgrace to any university, for I was of none; I have little but what I had out of books, and inconsiderable helps of country tutors. Weakness and pain helped me to study how to die; that set me on studying how to live.' In 1638 he was ordained, and was appointed master of the Free School of Dudley. From 1640 to 1642 he was pastor of Kidderminster, beloved and revered. During the Civil War he sided with the Parliament, and as chaplain in the army was present at the sieges of Bridgwater, Exeter, Bristol, and Worcester. He was disgusted with extreme views, political and religious, and vehement disputes about liberty of conscience, and was glad to leave the army and return to his old parishioners of Kidderminster, amongst whom, in spite of feeble health, he laboured with great success for fourteen years. Whilst there, during his recovery from a severe illness, he wrote his work The Saints' Everlasting Rest (1650). When Cromwell assumed the supreme power Baxter openly expressed his disapprobation, and in a conference with the Protector told him that the honest people of the land took their ancient monarchy to be a blessing and not an evil.' He was always opposed to intolerance. 'We intended not,' he said, 'to dig down the banks, or pull up the hedge, and lay all waste and common, when we desired the prelates' tyranny might cease.' Presbyterian though he was, he was not hostile to a modified Episcopacy. After the Restoration he was appointed one of the royal chaplains, but, like Owen, refused a bishopric offered him by Clarendon. The Act of Uniformity in 1662

drove him out of the Established Church, and he retired to Acton, in Middlesex, where, in spite of hardship and persecution, he spent several years in study and literary labour. The Act of Indulgence in 1672 allowed him to settle in London and divide his time between preaching and writing. In 1685 he published a Paraphrase on the New Testament, a practical treatise, in which certain passages were held to be seditious, and Baxter was tried and condemned by the infamous Jeffreys. When Baxter endeavoured to speak, 'Richard! Richard!' ejaculated the Judge, 'dost thou think we'll hear thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an old fellow, an old knave; thou hast written books enough to load a cart. Hadst thou been whipt out of thy writing trade forty years ago, it had been happy.' He was sentenced to pay five hundred marks, and in default to be imprisoned in the King's Bench until it was paid. Through the generous exertions of a Catholic peer, Lord Powis, the fine was remitted, and after eighteen months' imprisonment Baxter was set at liberty. He had now five years of tranquillity, dying 'in great peace and joy' on the 8th of December 1691.

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Baxter was one of the most eloquent and moving preachers of his time, and a most voluminous writer; he wrote, Orme reports, no less than one hundred and sixty-eight separate works or publications, from folios to pamphlets. His practical treatises are still read and republished, especially his Saints Everlasting Rest (1650) and Call to the Unconverted (1657) | -the latter so popular that twenty thousand copies have been sold in one year. His Life of Faith (1670), Reasons of the Christian Religion (1672), Christian Directory (1675), are only less well known. His Catholic Theology (1675) and Methodus Theologiæ Christianæ (1681) are troversial works on religious subjects. In 1696 appeared the Reliquiæ Baxteriana: Mr Richard Baxter's Narrative of the most Memorable Passages of his Life and Times, an autobiography which, like Baxter's writings generally, was a favourite book with Dr Johnson. In the next century it had no less warm an admirer in Coleridge, who terms it 'an inestimable work;' adding, 'I may not unfrequently doubt Baxter's memory, or even his competence, in consequence of his particular modes of thinking; but I could almost as soon doubt the Gospel verity as his veracity.' Another Churchman, Isaac Barrow, said that 'his practical writings were never mended, and his controversial seldom confuted.' His catholicity and tolerance led some to upbraid him as an Arminian, while others denounced him as a Calvinist. Though a keen controversialist, he was a singularly largehearted man he had come, he said in 1675, after a lifetime of study, to 'perceive that most of the doctrinal controversies among Protestants are far more about equivocal words than matter; and it wounded my soul to perceive what work both

tyrannical and unskilful disputing clergymen had made these thirteen hundred years in the world!' Of his Poetical Fragments the best known is the hymn, 'Lord, it belongs not to my care,' still a favourite; the great physicist, Professor ClerkMaxwell, used often to repeat it. The following extracts are all from his Reliquiæ:

The Country Clergy in 1620.

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We lived in a country that had but little preaching at all in the village where I was born there was four readers successively in six years time, ignorant men, and two of them immoral in their lives; who were all my school-masters. In the village where my father lived, there was a reader of about eighty years of age that never preached, and had two churches about twenty miles distant: his eyesight failing him, he said commonprayer without book; but for the reading of the psalms and chapters, he got a common thresher and day-labourer one year, and a taylor another year (for the clerk could not read well) and at last he had a kinsman of his own (the excellentest stage-player in all the country, and a good gamester and good fellow), that got orders and supplied one of his places! After him another younger kinsman, that could write and read, got orders and at the same time another neighbour's son that had been a while at school turn'd minister, and who would needs go further than the rest, ventur'd to preach (and after got a living in Staffordshire), and when he had been a preacher about twelve or sixteen years, he was fain to give over, it being discovered that his orders were forged by the first ingenious stage-player. After him another neighbour's son took orders, when he had been a while an attorney's clerk, and a common drunkard, and tipled himself into so great poverty that he had no other way to live it was feared that he and more of them came by their orders the same way with the forementioned person: these were the school-masters of my youth (except two of them), who read common prayer on Sundays and holy-days, and taught school and tipled on the week-days, and whipt the boys when they were drunk, so that we changed them very oft. Within a few miles about us, were near a dozen more ministers that were near eighty years old apiece, and never preached; poor ignorant readers, and most of them of scandalous lives only three or four constant competent preachers lived near us, and those (though conformable all save one) were the common marks of the people's obloquy and reproach, and any that had but gone to hear them, when he had no preaching at home, was made the derision of the vulgar rabble, under the odious name of a Puritane.

Youthful Faults.

I was much addicted to the excessive gluttonous eating of apples and pears: which I think laid the foundation of that imbecillity and flatulency of my stomach which caused the bodily calamities of my life. To this end, and to concur with naughty boys that gloried in evil, I have oft gone into other men's orchards, and stoln their fruit, when I had enough at home.

Special Mercies.

And yet two wonderful mercies I had from God: that I was never overwhelm'd with real melancholy. My distemper never went so far as to possess me with any inordinate fancies, or damp me with sinking sadness,

although the physicians call'd it the hypocondriack melancholy. I had at several times the advice of no less than six and thirty physicians, by whose order I us'd druggs without number almost, which God thought not fit to make successful for a cure and indeed all authors that I read acquainted me that my disease was incurable; whereupon I at last forsook the doctors for the most part, except when the urgency of a symptom, or pain, constrained me to seek some present ease. The second mercy which I met with was, that my pains, though daily and almost continual, did not very much disable me from my duty; but I could study, and preach, and walk almost as well if I had been free: (of which more anon).

Cured of Inclination to Gaming.

While I look back to this, it maketh me remember how God at that time did cure my inclination to gaming: About seventeen years of age, being at Ludlow Castle, where many idle gentlemen had little else to do, I had a mind to learn to play at tables; and the best gamester in the house undertook to teach me! As I remember, the first or second game, when he had so much the better that it was an hundred to one, besides the difference of our skills, the standers by laugh'd at me, as well as he, for not giving it up, and told me the game was lost: I knew no more but that it was not lost till all my table-men were lost, and would not give it over till then. He told me that he would lay me an hundred to one of it, and in good earnest laid me down ten shillings to my six pence: as soon as ever the money was down, whereas he told me that there was no possibility of my game, but by one cast often, I had every cast the same I wished, and he had every one according to my desire, so that by that time one could go four or five times about the room his game was gone, which put him in so great an admiration that I took the hint, and believed that the devil had the ruling of the dice, and did it to entice me on to be a gamester. And so I gave him his ten shillings again, and resolved I would never more play at tables whilst I lived.

Fruits of Experience.

I now see more good and more evil in all men than heretofore I did. I see that good men are not so good as I once thought they were, but have more imperfections; and that nearer approach and fuller trial doth make the best appear more weak and faulty than their admirers at a distance think. And I find that few are so bad as either malicious enemies or censorious separating professors do imagine. In some indeed I find that human nature is corrupted into a greater likeness to devils than I once thought any on earth had been. But even in the wicked, usually there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to testifie for God and holiness, than I once believed there had been. I less admire gifts of utterance, and bare profession of religion, than I once did; and have much more charity for many who, by the want of gifts, do make an obscurer profession than they. I once thought that almost all that could pray movingly and fluently, and talk well of religion, had been saints. But experience hath opened to me what odious crimes may consist with high profession; and I have met with divers obscure persons, not noted for any extraordinary profession or forwardness in religion, but only to live a quiet blameless life, whom

I have after found to have long lived, as far as I could discern, a truly godly and sanctified life; only, their prayers and duties were by accident kept secret from other men's observation. Yet he that upon this pretence would confound the godly and the ungodly, may as well go about to lay heaven and hell together.

Of his own and other Men's Knowledge. Heretofore I knew much less than now, and yet was not half so much acquainted with my ignorance. I had a great delight in the daily new discoveries which I made, and of the light which shined in upon me (like a man that cometh into a country where he never was before): but I little knew either how imperfectly I understood those very points whose discovery so much delighted me, nor how much might be said against them, nor how many things I was yet a stranger to: But now I find far greater darkness upon all things, and perceive how very little it is that we know, in comparison of that which we are ignorant of, and have far meaner thoughts of my own understanding, though I must needs know that it is better furnished than it was then. Accordingly I had then a far higher opinion of learned persons and books than I have now; for what I wanted myself, I thought every reverend divine had attained, and was familiarly acquainted with; and what books I understood not by reason of the strangeness of the terms or matter, I the more admired, and thought that others understood their worth. But now experience hath constrained me against my will to know that reverend learned men are imperfect, and know but little as well as I, especially those that think themselves the wisest ; and the better I am acquainted with them, the more I perceive that we are all yet in the dark and the more I am acquainted with holy men, that are all for heaven, and pretend not much to subtilties, the more I value and honour them. And when I have studied hard to understand some abstruse admired book (as De Scientia Dei, De Providentia circa Malum, De Decretis, De Prædeterminatione, De Libertate Creaturæ, &c.) I have but attained the knowledge of humane imperfections, and to see that the author is but a man as well as I. And at first I took more upon my author's credit than now I can do; and when an author was highly com mended to me by others, or pleased me in some part, I was ready to entertain the whole; whereas now I take and leave in the same author, and dissent in some things from him that I like best, as well as from others.

On the Credit due to History.

I am much more cautelous [cautious] in my belief of history than heretofore; not that I run into their extream that will believe nothing because they cannot believe all things. But I am abundantly satisfyed by the experience of this age that there is no believing two sorts of men, ungodly men and partial men (though an honest heathen of no religion may be believed, where enmity against religion byasseth him not): yet a debauched Christian, besides his enmity to the power and practice of his own religion, is seldom without some further byass of interest or faction; especially when these concurr, and a man is both ungodly and ambitious, espousing an interest contrary to a holy heavenly life, and also factious, embodying himself with a sect or party suited to his spirit and designs, there is no believing his word or oath. If you read any man partially bitter against others, as differing

from him in opinion, or as cross to his greatness, interest, or designs, take heed how you believe any more than the historical evidence distinct from his word compelleth you to believe. The prodigious lies which have been published in this age in matters of fact, with unblushing confidence, even where thousands of multitudes of eye and ear witnesses knew all to be false, doth call men to take heed what history they believe, especially where power and violence affordeth that priviledge to the reporter, that no man dare answer him or detect his fraud, or if they do, their writings are all supprest. As long as men have liberty to examine and contradict one another, one may partly conjecture, by comparing their words, on which side the truth is like to lie. But when great men write history, or flatterers by their appointment, which no man dare contradict, believe it but as you are constrained. Yet in these cases I can freely believe history: 1. If the person shew that he is acquainted with what he saith. 2. And if he shew you the evidences of honesty and conscience, and the fear of God, which may be much perceived in the spirit of a writing. 3. If he appear to be impartial and charitable, and a lover of goodness and of mankind, and not possessed of malignity or personal ill-will and malice, nor carried away by faction or personal interest. Conscionable men dare not lye: but faction and interest abate men's tenderness of conscience. And a charitable impartial heathen may speak truth in a love to truth and hatred of a lye; but ambitious malice and false religion will not stick to serve themselves on anything. . . . Sure I am, that as the lies of the Papists, of Luther, Zwinglius, Calvin, and Beza, are visibly malicious and impudent, by the common plenary contradicting evidence, and yet the multitude of their seduced ones believe them all, in despight of truth and charity; so in this age there have been such things written against parties and persons, whom the writers design to make odious, so notoriously false, as you would think that the sense of their honour at least should have made it impossible for such men to write. My own eyes have read such words and actions asserted with most vehement, iterated, unblushing confidence, which abundance of ear-witnesses, even of their own parties, must needs know to have been altogether false: and therefore having myself now written this history of myself, notwithstanding my protestation that I have not in anything wilfully gone against the truth, I expect no more credit from the reader than the self-evidencing light of the matter, with concurrent rational advantages from persons, and things, and other witnesses, shall constrain him to, if he be a person that is unacquainted with the author himself, and the other evidences of his veracity and credibility.

Character of Cromwell.

And as he went on, though he yet resolved not what form the new Commonwealth should be moulded into, yet he thought it but reasonable that he should be the chief person who had been chief in their deliverance (for the Lord Fairfax he knew had but the name). At last, as he thought it lawful to cut off the king, because he thought he was lawfully conquered, so he thought it lawful to fight against the Scots that would set him up, and to pull down the Presbyterian majority in the Parliament, which would else by restoring him undo all which had cost them so much blood and treasure. And accordingly he conquereth Scotland, and pulleth

down the Parliament: being the easilier perswaded that all this was lawful, because he had a secret byas and eye towards his own exaltation: for he (and his officers) thought that when the king was gone a government there must be, and that no man was so fit for it as he himself, as best deserving it, and as having, by his wit and great interest in the army, the best sufficiency to manage it: yea, they thought that God had called them by successes to govern and take care of the Commonwealth, and of the interest of all his people in the land; and that if they stood by and suffered the Parliament to do that which they thought was dangerous, it would be required at their hands, whom they thought God had made the guardians of the land.

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Having thus forced his conscience to justifie all his cause (the cutting off the king, the setting up himself and his adherents, the pulling down the Parliament and the Scots), he thinketh that the end being good and necessary, the necessary means cannot be bad and accordingly he giveth his interest and cause leave to tell him how far sects shall be tollerated and commended, and how far not; and how far the ministry shall be owned and supported, and how far not; yea, and how far professions, promises, and vows shall be kept, or broken; and therefore the Covenant he could not away with; nor the ministers, further than they yielded to his ends, or did not openly resist them. He seemed exceeding open hearted, by a familiar rustick affected carriage (especially to his soldiers in sporting with them) but he thought secrecy a vertue, and dissimulation no vice, and simulation, that is, in plain English, a lie, or perfidiousness, to be a tollerable fault in a case of necessity: being of the same opinion with the Lord Bacon (who was not so precise as learned), that 'the best composition and temperature is, to have openness in fame and opinion, secrecy in habit, dissimulation in seasonable use, and a power to feign if there be no remedy' (Essay 6. pag. 31). Therefore he kept fair with all, saving his open or unreconcileable enemies. He carried it with such dissimulation, that Anabaptists, Independants, and Antinomians did all think that he was one of them: but he never endeavoured to perswade the Presbyterians that he was one of them, but only that he would do them justice, and preserve them, and that he honoured their worth and piety; for he knew that they were not so easily deceived. In a word, he did as our prelates have done, begin low and rise higher in his resolutions as his condition rose, and the promises which he made in his lower condition, he used as the interest of his higher following condition did require, and kept up as much honesty and godliness in the main as his cause and interest would allow (but there they left him) and his name standeth as a monitory monument or pillar to posterity to tell them the instability of man in strong temptations, if God leave him to himself: what great success and victories can do to lift up a mind that once seemed humble: what pride can do to make man selfish, and corrupt the heart with ill designs: what selfishness and ill designs can do to bribe the conscience, and corrupt the judgment, and make men justifie the greatest errours and sins, and set against the clearest truth and duty: what bloodshed and great enormities of life an erring deluded judgment may draw men to, and patronize; and that when God hath dreadful judgments to execute,

an erroneous sectary, or a proud self-seeker, is oftner his instrument than an humble, lamb-like, innocent saint.

Character of Sir Matthew Hale.

He was a man of no quick utterance, but often hesitant; but spake with great reason. He was most precisely just; insomuch as I believe he would have lost all he had in the world rather than do an unjust act. Patient in hearing the tediousest speech which any man had to make for himself. The pillar of justice, the refuge of the subject who feared oppression, and one of the greatest honours of his Majestie's government; for with some other upright judges, he upheld the honour of the English nation, that it fell not into the reproach of arbitrariness, cruelty, and utter confusion. Every man that had a just cause was almost past fear if he could but bring it to the court or assize where he was judge; for the other judges seldom contradicted him. He was the great instrument for rebuilding London; for when an act was made for deciding all controversies that hindered it, he was the constant judge, who for nothing followed the work, and by his prudence and justice removed a multitude of great impediments. His great advantage for innocency was, that he was no lover of riches or of grandeur. His garb was too plain; he studiously avoided all unnecessary familiarity with great persons, and all that manner of living which signifyeth wealth and greatness. He kept no greater a family than myself. I lived in a small house, which, for a pleasant back-side, he had a mind of; but caused a stranger, that he might not be suspected to be the man, to know of me whether I were willing to part with it, before he would meddle with it. In that house he liveth contentedly, without any pomp, and without costly or troublesome retinue or visitors; but not without charity to the poor. He continued the study of physicks and mathematicks still, as his great delight. . . . He had got but a very small estate, though he had long the greatest practice, because he would take but little money, and undertake no more business than he could well despatch. He often offered to the lord chancellor to resign his place, when he was blamed for doing that which he supposed was justice. He had been the learned Selden's intimate friend, and one of his executors; and because the Hobbians and other infidels would have persuaded the world that Selden was of their mind, I desired him to tell me the truth therein. He assured me that Selden was an earnest professor of the Christian faith, and so angry an adversary to Hobbs that he hath rated him out of the room.

Observance of the Sabbath in Baxter's Youth. I cannot forget that in my youth, in those late times when we lost the labours of some of our conformable godly teachers, for not reading publicly the Book of Sports [re-enforced on the clergy by Laud in 1633] and dancing on the Lord's Day, one of my father's own tenants was the town-piper, hired by the year, for many years together, and the place of the dancing assembly was not a hundred yards from our door. We could not, on the Lord's Day, either read a chapter, or pray, or sing a psalm, or catechise, or instruct a servant, but with the noise of the pipe and tabor, and the shoutings in the street, continually in our ears. Even among a tractable people, we were the common scorn of all the rabble in the streets, and called puritans, precisians, and hypocrites,

because we rather chose to read the Scriptures than to do as they did; though there was no savour of nonconformity in our family. And when the people by the book were allowed to play and dance out of public service-time, they could so hardly break off their sports that many a time the reader was fain to stay till the piper and players would give over. Sometimes the morris-dancers would come into the church in all their linen, and scarfs, and antic dresses, with morris-bells jingling at their legs; and as soon as common prayer was read, did haste out presently to their play again.

Baxter's Practical Works, in 23 vols., were edited, with a Life, by Orme in 1830; and have been reprinted in four. There are shorter Lives by Rev. A. B. Grosart (1879), Dean Boyle (1883), and J. H. Davies (1886).

Thomas Goodwin (1600–80), born at Rollesby, in Norfolk, studied at Cambridge, where he was made vicar of Trinity Church; but becoming an Independent, he preached in London, and then to the English congregation at Arnheim, in Holland. He was afterwards a member of the Westminster Assembly, chaplain to Cromwell's Council of State, and president of Magdalen College, Oxford. Deprived at the Restoration, he in his later years preached to an Independent congregation in London. He published sermons full of fervour, elaborate expositions of Scripture, and some controversial pamphlets. His devotional works are still prized by evangelical divines.

John Owen (1616-83), one of the greatest of the Puritan divines, was born at Stadhampton, in Oxfordshire, and studied at Queen's College with extraordinary diligence and zeal. Driven from the university by Laud's statutes, he became a private chaplain, and having written a polemical Display of Arminianism, was appointed to a living in Essex. He passed from Presbyterianism to Independency, and repeatedly preached before the Long Parliament. Cromwell took him as chaplain to Ireland in 1649, and set him to regulate the affairs of Trinity College; and in 1650 brought him to Edinburgh, where he spent six months. Subsequently he was promoted to the deanery of Christ Church College in Oxford, and soon after to the vice-chancellorship of the university, offices he held till Cromwell's death. He was one of the Triers appointed to purge the Church of scandalous ministers, opposed the giving of the crown to Cromwell, and the year after Cromwell's death was ejected from the deanery. He bought an estate at Stadhampton, and formed a congregation there. After the Restoration he was favoured by Lord Clarendon, who offered him high preferment in the Church if he would conform-an obviously impossible suggestion. Owen also declined invitations from congregations in New England and from Harvard College. Ultimately he ministered to a congregation of Independents in Leadenhall Street. Spite of his opposition to the Church, Owen's character for singular moderation, together with his repute for ability and influence, secured him the esteem of Churchmen and courtiers, and even of the