The MS. of Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696)
Richard Baxter could never write for long without inserting some autobiographical reminiscence, some reference to his own experiences. The argument of his most serious works is relieved by such an illustration as ‘When I was young, I was wont to go up the Wrekin-Hill with great pleasure (being near...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1955
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| In: |
The journal of ecclesiastical history
Year: 1955, Volume: 6, Issue: 1, Pages: 73-79 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Richard Baxter could never write for long without inserting some autobiographical reminiscence, some reference to his own experiences. The argument of his most serious works is relieved by such an illustration as ‘When I was young, I was wont to go up the Wrekin-Hill with great pleasure (being near my dwelling) and to look down on the country below me’; or ‘I cannot forget that in my youth…sometimes the morrice-dancers would come into the church in all their linen and scarfs, and antic-dresses, with morrice-bells jingling at their legs’; or ‘the case, as I remember, when I was a boy, our school was in, when we had barred out our master’; or ‘the raining of that grain about ten years ago in England…I tasted it, and kept some of it long, which fell on the leads of the church, and of the minister's house in Bridgnorth’; or ‘I never awaked since I had the use of memory, but I found myself coming out of a dream’. This autobiographic tendency Baxter himself might piously rationalise: ‘All these I mention as obliged to record the Mercies of my great Preserver to his Praise and Glory’; and ‘I find it convenient to remember what is past, and to insert the transcript of my own experiences, that I may fully try whether I have gone rationally and faithfully to work or not’. In fact, however, it is clear that he was fascinated by experience, and its strangeness, for its own sake; by life itself. In this, as in much else, he was a man of his age, which abounds in diaries, memoirs and autobiographies. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-7637 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of ecclesiastical history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0022046900069396 |