Note

The tractate by Baxter herein re-printed in a limited private edition, was unknown to Calamy, and also escaped his best Biographer — Orme, as well as Darling, in his “Cyclopaedia BibHographica.” My copy was formerly in the celebrated Library of Dr Philip Bliss of Oxford. It is bound richly in morocco, and marked by him as “not in the Bodleian Catalogue, 1843.” Another copy is in the British Museum Library: but I have not met with any mention of it elsewhere. As a book it is among the rarest of Baxter’s, and I have heard of prices being given for it recently, that recall the Bibliomania days of the Roxburghe Sale. Intrinsically it is packed with “judicious” thought, and has all its saintly author’s best characteristics, being scriptural, fervent to passion of entreaty, pungent, pointed, unmistakable: withal it is pure “Bread of Life” for the humblest. I give the text with scrupulous fidelity, and have added a few slight foot-notes. The original title-page will be found on the opposite page. May all to whom the little book comes “be saved,” and by His mercy evidence it here in a “holy life!”

A. B. G.

Liverpool.