[84] The King gave his consent with hearty satisfaction: the bill became law; and the Puritan divines thronged to the Quarter Sessions of every county to swear and sign.

Many of them probably professed their assent to the Articles with some tacit reservations.

But the tender conscience of Baxter would not suffer him to qualify, till he had put on record an explanation of the sense in which he understood every proposition which seemed to him to admit of misconstruction.

The instrument delivered by him to the Court before which he took the oaths is still extant, and contains two passages of peculiar interest.

He declared that his approbation of the Athanasian Creed was confined to that part which was properly a Creed, and that he did not mean to express any assent to the damnatory clauses.