I am not aware that any author has pointed out a remarkable coincidence
in the Confessions of St. Augustin and of Baxter:
"Divers sins I was addicted to, and oft committed against my
conscience, which, for the warning of others, I will here
confess to my shame. I was much addicted to the excessive and
gluttonous eating of apples and pears, which, I think, laid
the foundation of the imbecility and flatulency of my
stomach.... To this end, and to concur with naughty boys that
gloried in evil, I have oft gone into other men's orchards and
stolen the fruit, when I had enough at home.... These were my
sins in my childhood, as to which conscience troubled me for a
great while before they were overcome."
Sir W. Scott cites the above passages in his _Life of Dryden_, with
sharp comments on the rigid scruples of the Puritans:
"How is it possible," he says, "to forgive Baxter for the
affectation with which he records the enormities of his
childhood?... Can any one read this confession without
thinking of Tartuffe, who subjected himself to penance for
killing a flea with too much anger?..."
It probably did not occur to the biographer, that no less illustrious a
saint than Augustin, to whom Puritanism can hardly be imputed, had made
a parallel confession of like early depravity many centuries before.
Enlarging on his own puerile delinquencies, and indeed on the wickedness
of children in general, he confesses that, in company with other
"naughty boys" ("nequissimi adolescentuli"), he not only stole apples,
but stole them for the mere pleasure of the thing, and when he "had
enough at home":
"Id furatus sum quod mihi abundabat, et multo melius. Nec eâ
re volebam frui quam furto appetebam; sed ipso furto et
peccato. Arbor erat pirus in viciniâ vineæ nostræ pomis
onusta, nec formâ nec sapore illecebrosis. Ad hanc excutiendam
atque asportandam, nequissimi adolescentuli perreximus nocte
intempestâ; et abstulimus inde onera ingentia, non ad nostras
epulas, sed vel projicienda porcis, etiamsi aliquid inde
comedimus.... Ecce cor meum, Deus meus, ecce cor meum, quod
miseratus es in imo abyssi!"--_Confessionum_, lib. ii. cap.
iv.
In comparing the two cases, the balance of juvenile depravity is very
much against the great Doctor of Grace. He does not seem to have had
even a fondness for fruit to plead in extenuation of his larceny. He
robbed orchards by wholesale of apples, which, by his own admission, had
no attractions either of form or flavour to tempt him. Yet the two
anecdotes are so much alike, that one would be inclined to suspect one
story of being a mere recoction of the other if it were possible to
doubt the veracity of Richard Baxter.
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The incident, however, is one too familiar in schoolboy life to make the
repetition of the story a matter of surprise. The property in an apple
growing within the reach of a boy's hand has from time immemorial been
in peril, and the law itself has not always regarded it as an object of
scrupulous protection. The old laws of the Rheingau, and (if I mistake
not) of some other states, warranted a wayfaring man in picking apples
from any tree, provided he did not exceed the number of three.