The materials for forming a judgment of the actual state of religion during the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth are manifold. Attention should be directed first to the general accounts of the times which have been handed down to us by contemporaries. Isaak Walton, in his "Life of Dr. Robert Sanderson," declares that "the common people were amazed and grown giddy by the many falsehoods and misapplications of truth frequently vented in sermons, when they wrested the Scripture, by challenging God to be of their party, and called upon Him in their prayers to patronize their sacrilege and zealous frenzies." He also complains of honesty and plain dealing being exchanged for cruelty and cunning, and of the encouragement given to perjury by the violation of one oath through the taking of another. He says that Sanderson lamented much that "in many parishes where the maintenance was not great there was no minister to officiate; and that many of the best sequestered livings were possessed with such rigid Covenanters as denied the sacrament to their parishioners unless upon such conditions, and in such a manner, as they could not take it."[460] Baxter, however, remarks: "If any shall demand whether the increase of godliness was answerable in all places to what I have mentioned (and none deny that it was with us) I answer, that however men that measure godliness by their gain, and interest, and domination, do go about to persuade the world that godliness then went down, and was almost extinguished, I must bear this faithful witness to those times, that as far as I was acquainted, where before there was one godly profitable preacher, there was then six or ten; and, taking one place with another, I conjecture there is a proportionable increase of truly godly people, not counting heretics, or perfidious rebels, or Church disturbers, as such. But this increase of godliness was not in all places alike; for in some places, where the ministers were formal, or ignorant, or weak and imprudent, contentious or negligent, the parishes were as bad as heretofore. And in some places, where the ministers had excellent parts and holy lives, and thirsted after the good of souls, and wholly devoted themselves, their time, and strength, and estates thereunto, and thought no pains or cost too much, there abundance were converted to serious godliness. And with those of a middle state, usually they had a hidden measure of success. And I must add this to the true information of posterity, that God did so wonderfully bless the labours of His unanimous faithful ministers, that had it not been for the faction of the Prelatists on one side, that drew men off, and the factions of the giddy and turbulent sectaries on the other side (who pulled down all government, cried down the ministers, and broke all into confusion, and made the people at their wits' end, not knowing what religion to be of), together with some laziness and selfishness in many of the ministry, I say, had it not