ne such
little as I did, all their plot might have been broken, and King,
Parliament, and Religion might have been preserved." But no one
volunteered to assist him, and the "plot" of revolution went on.

After Worcester fight he returned to Coventry, to make his report to the
ministers assembled there. He told them of his labors and trials, of the
growth of heresy and levelling principles in the army, and of the evident
design of its leaders to pull down Church, King, and Ministers. He
assured them that the day was at hand when all who were true to the King,
Parliament, and Religion should come forth to oppose these leaders, and
draw away their soldiers from them. For himself, he was willing to go
back to the army, and labor there until the crisis of which he spoke had
arrived. "Whereupon," says he, "they all voted me to go yet longer."

Fortunately for the cause of civil and religious freedom, the great body
of the ministers, who disapproved of the ultraism of the victorious army,
and sympathized with the defeated King, lacked the courage and
devotedness of Baxter. Had they promptly seconded his efforts, although
the restoration of the King might have been impossible at that late
period, the horrors of civil war must have been greatly protracted. As
it was, they preferred to remain at home, and let Baxter have the benefit
of their prayers and good wishes. He returned to the army with the
settled purpose, of causing its defection from Cromwell; but, by one of
those dispensations which the latter used to call "births of Providence,"
he was stricken down with severe sickness. Baxter's own comments upon
this passage in his life are not without interest. He says, God
prevented his purposes in his last and chiefest opposition to the army;
that he intended to take off or seduce from their officers the regiment
with which he was connected, and then to have tried his persuasion upon
the others. He says he afterwards found that his sickness was a mercy to
himself, "for they were so strong and active, and I had been likely to
have had small success in the attempt, and to have lost my life among
them in their fury." He was right in this last conjecture; Oliver
Cromwell would have had no scruples in making an example of a plotting
priest; and "Pitchford's soldiers" might have been called upon to
silence, with their muskets, the tough disputant who was proof against
their tongues.

After a long and dubious illness, Bax