Essay on Baxter's Life, Ministry, and Theology

It is a remark of Dr Wilkins, Bishop of Cliostor, that “it was pnoii;;h for one ape to produce such a man as Kichanl Baxter.” The ao which had the honour of producing this holy and yreat man, was the age of the Commonwealth, the ago of Nonconformity. “Never did our England, since she first emerged from the ocean, rise so high above surrounding nations. The rivalry of Holland, the pride of Spain, the insolence of France, were thrust back by one tinger each; yet those countries were more powerful th?.n they had ever been. The sword of Cromwell was preceded hv the niacc of Milton, by that man which, when Oliver had rendered his account, opened to our contemplation the garden-gate of Paradise. And there were some around not unworthv to enter with him. In the oompass of sixteen centuries, you will not number on the whole earth so many wise and admiralile men, as you could have found imited in that single day, when England shewed her true magnitude, and solved the question, Wiiick is most, oxf, on million? There were giants in those days; but giants who feared God, and not who fought against him.”

l)AXTEn was one of the numerous giants of the Commonwealth. He was to its theology what Ciiomwei.l was to its politics, — what Milton was to its liberties, — and what Owex was to its non-confiirmity.

This distinguished man was remarkable in every form of his char.icter, and in all those combinations of qualities which fitted him for extensive usefulness, as an eminent saint, a l.iborious pastor, and a profound divine. The series of works jiresonted to the public in the Linii.vuY of Pikttan Divines, are intended to interest the private Christian, the faithful Minister, and the theological Student. To meet these cases, this Essay is arranged to embrace

W. S.iTnjrc Landor’n Imaoivaiit CoNVEnvxioKs, in the conversation l)etwi’cn Makvel and Paheer.

EAXTKKS Lll’L’.

Baxter’s Life, Baxter’s Ministry, and Baxter’s Theology*, in the hope that it will succeed in making Baxter known to the Million.

CHAPTER I.

Baxter’s l i f k.

UicuARD Baxter was born Xovenihcr 12, IGlo, at Kowton, tiic house of his maternal grandfather, in High Ercall, a rural village, not far from the foot of the Wrekin, in Bhropshirc. His parents were connected with the gentry of the county; but his father had squandered much of his estate by the habits of gambling, to which lie was addicted in his youth. About the time of tlieAiirth of Kichard, a deep religious seriousness pervaded the chai-acter of his father, which was occasioned by reading the (Scriptures in private.

Baxter spent the first ten years of his life at Kowton, under the care of his grandfather; but the father had frequent interviews with his child, and the first religious impressions which his young heart received, were produced by the holy character and serious conversations of his father. Under this influence the boy became so haliituiiUy devout and serious, that, even at this early ago, as iJr Bates mentions in his funeral sermon for him, he would reprove the improper conduct of other children, “to the astonishment of those who heard him.”

The youthful piety of Kichard Baxter was imfoldcd in the midst of elements calculated to quench and destroj- it. He was born in a tlistrict where the religion of the ]5ook of ijjwrts was in the highest popularity. The clergy of the district were, almost universally, iiuTC readers of prayers, and no preachers. It is on this account that they were called reading curates, reading vicars, &c. In addition to their total incapacity for jireaching, they were, for the most jiart, poor, ignorant, immoral, and even dissolute nu;n. The result wa.>», that the villagers and jjcasants were sunk in vice and irrijligion, and spent the greater part of the Sabbath in dancing round the Ma)i)ole, and in other gambols, which the Book of Sports recommended and cujtuned as projicr exercises for the Lord’s day. Baxt(!r, at so tender an age, was likely to be iulluenced by the corrupting scenes around him; and, in subse(iucut life, l)o deeply laments that,” during his boyhood, he became addicted to the sin-t of disobedience to jjareuts, lying, stealing fruit, &c. — sins which afterwards greatly disturbed his coiibcicnce, and which he found great difHculty in mastering.

nAXTEIiS MIE.

In such a distrit-t, and in sui-h circumstances, the education of the future Schoolman of English Theolog-y was likely to be ;i>:- jjlected. IIi3 first ten years were spent amonjy the peasants of Hi Ercall, and all the education which he received, from the age of six to ten, was under the traininjj of the four successive curates of the parish, of whom the two ablest were drunkards, even to beggary. At the age of ten, he was removed from Eowton to the house of his father, at Eaton Constantino, a village reposing on the left bank of the Severn, about live miles below Slirewsbury. Here he was placed under the instruction of the curate, a notorious drunkard, who Lid been a lawyer’s clerk, who was now reading prayers under forged orders, and who, in Baxter’s time, preache.l only once, and was then drnnk. From this wretched teacher, i;i pretended holy orders, he was transferred to the care of a man of acknowledged abilities, “who,” says Baxter, ‘’ loved me much, and who expected to be made a bishop.” This tutor grievously neglected his charge, for, in the course of two j-ears, he never gave his pupil one hour’s actiml instruction, but “devoted his time to attacks on the Puritans.” His next tutor w;ls Mr Owen of Wroxeter, the head-master of the free school of that place. Here Baxter made considerable attaiuments in the Latin Classics, but not much progress in Greek.

In all these places of education, Baxter had to depend entirely upon his own diligence, ambition, and judgment. HLs proficiency at Wroxeter was so satisfactory to Mr Owen, that he was now deemed fidly prepared for the University of Oxford, for which he was intended; but instead of sending the youth to Oxford, Mr Owen recommended him to go to Ludlow, to be under the tuition of Mr Wiekstead, the chaplain of the council, who was allowed to have one pupil. Ue who luis once seen Ludlow Castle, will fondly remember it as the romantic centre of one of the sweetest landscapes in England, and as the august seat of many historical recollections. Here Baxter entered as a pui)il, — here, some three or four yeais afterwards, ^lilton presented his inmiortal “Comus’’ for the first time, — (ind here, some thirty years afterwards, Butler wrote the first p;irt of his Hudibras. In Ludlow Cxstle, however, as well as elsewhere, Baxter’s education was neglected by his “tutor; and all tlm benefit which tlic youth received, he derived himself from the e;:- joyment of abundance of time, and plenty of books. His own indomitable mind did all the; rest, in kis “pursuit of knowledge under difficultie.<.”

In the history of Baxter’s life, Ludlow is celebrated for two events which had great influence in the formation of hia reJi;,’iou9 character: and tlicse were his temptations to become a gambler, and the religions apostacy of his most intimate friend. The first game he ever played in his life, he played with the hest gamester in the Castle. It was soon perceived that, he must inevitably lose the game, unless he obtained one particular cast of the dice each tinp in snccession. The dice gave that particular cast each time, and he won the game. His astonishing success induced him to believe that the devil had managed the dice for the purpose of making a gamester of him. He therefore returned the money to his antagonist, and determined never to play another game. The apostacy of his yo’.mg friend was more dangerous to him than the temptation to gambling. His friend was a religious and a very devotional young man. They were very much attached to each other, and were constantly studying together. He was the first that Baxter had ever heard pray extempore, and it was from him that Baxter himself acquired the gift and habit. This youth became a reviler of all religion, and even scoffed at Baxter’s devotional habits. From the contagion of his influence Baxter was preserved, partly by his own deep religious convictions at that time, and partly by his removal from Ludlow Castle to Eaton Constantine.

When he returned to the house of his father he was fifteen years of age. He was one day rummaging among the books of his father, and discovered an old tattered book, which a poor cottager in the neighbourhood had lent him. Young Baxter, fresh from the scenes and recollections of Ludlow Castle, read this book very closely, and with great “searchings of heart;” and the reading produced in his mind decided convictions of the evil of sin. It will be interesting to know what book that was which gave the decisive turn to Baxter’s mind. That tattered old book was Bunny’s “Booke of Christian Exercise appertaining to Resolution.” Its name in common use was “Bunny’s Kesolution.” The real author of it was Parsons, the famous English Jesuit. The original was written on purely popish principles; but it was corrected and improved by Edmund Bunny, a thorough old Puritan, who was Rector of Bolton Percy, and who, after a life of apostolic labours, died in 1617.

“Bunny’s Resolution” deals much and vigorously with conscience, and rouses every man to the obligation of “resolving ourselves to become CTiristians indeed.” It is probable that this work gave to Baxter’s mind that awakening tone, and that eloquent energy, which tell so mightily in his “Call to the Unconverted.” The Jesuit, in composing this work, never thought that it would produce the author of “The Certainty of Christianity without Popery.” Bunny’s Resolution was useful to Baxter, only so far as it awakened his mind, and directed him to caution, prayer, and firmness: it neither led him to Christ, nor brought him to ‘he

BAXTEIl S LIFE. ▼

guklance and aid of the Holy Spirif;, and, therefore, it gave him no “joj’ and peace in believing.” This was reserved for another, and a very different work: this honour was for Dr Sibbs’ Bruised Reed. This admirable little work brought him and his resolutions to the Saviour, and melted his heart into devotion. If Bunny’s Resolution strung Baxter’s harp, it was Sibbs’ Bruised Reed that tuned it to the love of Christ.

These were the circumstances in which Baxter was making arrangements for studying theology. In these he was interrupted by his being requested to superintend the school at Wroxeter, on account of the illness of his old tutor Mr Owen, and then by his own bodily infirmities. After superintending the Wroxeter school for three months, he placed himself under the care of the Rev. Francis Garbett, of the same village, that he might study theology as a science. He had scarcely been a month in the study of logic, before he was attacked with a harassing cough, spitting of blood, and many other symptoms of consumption, which continued to afflict him, almost incessantly, for two years. This affliction checked his intellectual studies, but it gave a powerful and an onward impulse to his religious affections; it excited him to a closer examination of his motives for entering the ministry, and it associated all his future plans and present movements vnih eternity. He already began to feel as a dying man among dying men. In this frame of mind, he found EzEKiEL CuLVER^yELL’^ “Treatise of Faith,” a gi-eat help and a delightful solace. It is reported of him that, in the twilight of every evening, at that interval in which it was too dark for him to read, and not dark enough to light his lamp, he employed his mind regularly in thinking of heaven. This will account for the sweetness and power with which at a subsequent period he pvrote about “The Saints’ Everlasting Rest;” the reading of which now is like conversing in “the gate of heaven.”

The first month of his studies under Mr Garbett had been given to logic; but after this affliction, he resolved to devote himself rntirely, and almost exclusively, to theology, and that ^vth a special and direct view to the information and the spiritual furniture of his own soul. In his theological curriculum, he studied first practical theology as exhibited in the best works of our English divines. In learning systematic theology, he was obliged to have recourse to the works of foreign divines; because, unless Perkins’s Golden Chain be regarded as a systematic work, the English language did not at this period possess a Body of Divinity.

roxeter is to be held in remembrance as the place, in which Baxter finished his course of education preparatory to his entering on his ministerial work. In that important process he greatly needed

VI k.UlTek s like.

an intelligent gniile, who would have directed him to the best course of theological reailing, and to the best methods of study: but instead of having such guidance, he was left much to himseh”, and was almost entirely his own teacher. Had he had the advantages of a regular curriculum at a college or uuiversity-, his knowledge would have been better arranged and more S3’mmetrical, though, perhaps, not so various and discursive. In the absence of such salutary discipline and wholesome aid, his predilections and taste led him to plunge himself into the thick forests of metaphysical theology. In dialectics he became a consummate Aristotelian. The ecclesiastical fathers came to him as if they were brethren; Aquinas, as a familiar spirit; Anselm, as a fellow student; and Duns Scotus, as a pleasant companion. His success in these kinds of studies was so great and thorough, that, for acutcness in definitions, for subtlety in distinctions, and for masterly adroitness in disj)utation and logomachy, he deserved to be called the last of the Schoolmen. To all theologians, who have made any acquaintance with scholastic divinity, it is a pleasing marvel that, amid all its jargon Latin and its dry speculations,^ Baxter’s mind and heart were kept in all their lively freshness and healthy glow. On one occasion their ponderous tomes seriously endangered his life, as they fell from shelves under which ho Wiis reposing. He recounts his deliverance as a singular interposition of Providence. “As I sat in my study, the weight of my greatest folio books brake down three or four of the highest shelves, when I sat close under them, and they fell down on every side of me, and not one of them hit me, save one upon my arm; whereas the place, the weight, and the greatness of the books was such, and my hea<l just under them, that it is a wonder they had not beaten out my brains.” It is quite as great a wonder, that their weighty and crabbed lore did not wither and shrivel the energies of his capacious heart. Profound studies in metaphysics tend generally to freeze the religious affections of the student, but it is evident that they did not damp the ardour of Baxter’s devotion. Even while threading the labyrinths and “wondrous mazes” of scholastic theology, he was “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” Hear his own account, and his own estimate of his studies, as given in a letter to the bigotted and partial Anthony Wood, who wished to know whether lie was an alumnus of Oxford. “As to myself,” says Baxter, “my faults are no disgrace to any university, for I was of none; I have little but what I had out of books, and inconsiderable helps of country tutors. Weakness and pain helped me to study how to flu; that set me on studying how to liie; and that on studying the doctrine from which 1 fetch my motives and comforts. Beginning with necessitic!!, I proceeded by degrees; and now I am going to ice that for which I have lived and studied.”’

BAXTERS I.IFK. V:i

W’lu’ii Daxter was giving himself a theological eJacatiun at ANroxeter, his prospects of usefulness in the ministry were clouded by his diseased constitution. He was now eighteen years of age, and his liveliest hopes were blighted. His former tutor at Ludlow Castle advised him to try his fortune at court, “as being the only rising way.” For, at this period, Charles I. had but lately ascended the throne, ilauy circumstances seconded this recommendation. His parents had never been verj- cordial in his wishes to ••nter the ministry. They had great confidence in the opinion of Mr Wickstead; and he had great interest with Sir Henry Herbert, who was Master of the Ilevels. liaxter came to London and spent a niontli at court, but it was a month of disgust and revulsion. He says, •’ I had quickly enough of the court; when I saw a stage-play instead of a sennon on the Lord’s days in the afternoon, and saw what cjiurse was there in fashion, and heard little preaching but what was, as to one part, against the Puritans, I was glad to be gone.”

The illness of his mother supplied him with a good excuse for quitting Whitehall and retiring to Shroyjshire. He left London abiput Christmas 1633, during a severe frost. While travelling on horseback through a heavy and memorable snow-storm, he met, in a narrow part of the road, a loaded waggon, which he could pass only by riding on the side of a bank. In spurring his horse up this bank, the animal fell, the girths broke, and Baxter was thrown immediately before the wheel. At this critical juncture the horses stopped suddenly, unaccountably, but providentially, and his life was saved. The preservation of his life, in so remarkable a manner, deeply affected him. Under the influence of this fresh interference of (iod in his behalf, he reached his home, where he found his mother in such agonies of pain that her groans filled the whole house. She languished through the spring, and died on May 10, 1634. At the grave of his mother, and being rescued so wonderfully from his own grave, liLs mind was awakened to fresh and resolved thoughts ab<jut the ministry; and, in three or four ycirs more, he entered the church as a Conformist, though no Episcopalian.

In 1638 he was appointed head master of the Free School which had been just established at Dudley, where he would have also opportunities for iireaehing. In the same year he was ordained at N’orcestcr by Bishop Thomborough. After staying one year at Dudley, he removed to Bridgenorth. where the Et Caetera Oath iii.ide him a Nonconformist, and where, he says, he continued about a j’car and three quarters, having “liberty of preaching in troublous times.”

The days of Baxter’s sojourn in Bridgenorth might well be called “troublous times.” In these times Laud was teaching popery to England, and manufacturing bonds of iniquity for Protestant?

Vlll B.VXTEU S LIFE.

BtraSfortl was learning and practising servilityto Charles, and sapping the liberries of his country; kings trembled on their thrones, and bishops were ill at ease on their benches; the immortal Hampden was disputing with his king about shiiJ-ftioney; I’cter Smart was imprisoned twelve years for preaching against high church ceremonies; Dr Leightou, as much the minister of the freedom of truth, as his son was the minister of its love, had his ears cut off, and his nose slit, for writing his “Zion’s I’lea agauist Prelacy;” PrjTine, the barrister, had similar cruelties inlUcted on him for writing against plays and masquerades; the Scots were marching to England wth their Covenant; the High Commission Court was practising the abominations of the Inquisition; the English were beginning to speak in honest Saxon, and bold tones, to their princes; Charles was become the most consummate and shameless hypocrite in England; the House of Commons appointed a committee to receive the complaints and petitions of the people against their ignorant and dissolute clergy, and the chairman published those complaints in his “One Century of Scandalous Ministers.”

Such were the times about 1640, when Baxter left Bridgenorth to settle in Kidderminster, where he had been invited by the people to become’ their lecturer. This was his first settlement in that town, which lasted about two years; but they were two years of laborious ^Meaching on his part, of great political agitations among thei)eople, and of imminent danger to his life. The Koyalist rabble were so malignant against his ministry, that his best friends recommended him to leave the plpce.

From Kidderminster he went to Gloucester, where he tarried one month. During his short stay, he witnessed, for the first time, one of the public disputations, which were sometimes held between the ministers and the Baptists, who were every where agitating the churches on the question of immersion, — a question on which, it is the humiliation and enervation of the Congregationalists, that they, have not agreed to differ without separating from each other. On all other topics they can meet and associate with safety and peace. A Baptist and Independent arc nmch like the powders of an acid and an alkali; they can mix together in the same phial, and in the same vessel, with perfect concord: but just drop a little vpater among them, and they are immediately in cfl’ervescenco. So did Baxter find them at Gloucester, and so did he afterwards find them in his controversies with Mr Tombes of Bewdley.

When lie had spent a month at Gloucester, his friends at Kidderminster thought he might return to them in safety; but, on his return, he found the town so much divided on the questions between the King and the I’arliament, that he was obliged to quit it immediately. Once more he was a wanderer, and he visited his old friend Jlr Samuel Clark, at Alcester, where he preached on Sunday, October 23, 1642, amid the sounds of the cannon at Edgehill. On the next day he went to see the field of battle, and saw the two armies keeping the ground in sight of each other, and the space between them covered wjth the unburied bodies of the slain. From Alcester he went to Coventry to spend a month with his friend ilr Simon King, who was minister there. He cxi)ected that, in a month, Charles and the Parliament would have adjusted their diSereuees and put an end to the civil war, but instead of ceasing, the war raged more and more furiously. The state of the country induced him to accept the invitation of the committee and governor of Coventrj’ to stay with them and to preach to the soldiers. After a stay of one year in this city, he went to Shropshire for the pui-pose of releasing his father, who was a prisoner at Lilleshall. It was on this occasion that he jouied Colonel ilytton, and Mr Hunt of lioreatton, at the garrison of AVem. In Shropshire, he was perpetually in the midst of tumults and skirmishes, and, therefore, at the end of two months, he returned to Coventry, and staid there another year. It was during this second stay that he signed the Scottish Covenant, and declared himself openly on the side of the Parliament. The first of these acts he always afterwards lamented; and for the second, he apologises lnt thii-ty-two reasons in his “Penitent Confessions.”

Baxter was at Coventry when Cromwell fought and won the battle of Naseby; and, two days after the victory, he visited the field of battle, and passed a night in the Parliamentary camp, near Leicester. This visit opened his eyes to the real state of the army on the subject of civil and religious liberty. His new information deepened and darkened his prejudices against Cromwell. Yet some of the officers persuaded him to join the army, and he consented to become chaplain to Colonel Whalley’s regiment.

As a military chaplain, his subsequent movements were regulated by the campaigns and marches of the regiment to which he M-as attached. Immediately on joining the anny, he marched to Somerton, and was present at the battle of Langport, where, standing on the brow of a hill, he could survey the operations of both armies. As Goring’s anny began to flee before the Parliamentary forces under Fairfax, Baxter stood next to JIajor Harrison, and heard the gallant officer “with a loud voice break forth into the praise of God with fluent expressions, as if he had been in a rapture.”

From Langyiort he accompanied the army to the siege of Bridgewater, which he saw taken by storm. He was again at the siege of Bristol, where, in about three days, he was taken ill of a fever, occa-X BAXTKi; S LIFE.

sionofl by the plafue wliicli prevailed in the iieiglilioiirlionrl. Ilo immediately quitted the camp, and rode to Bath, to be under the care of his physician, Dr Venner. In fourteen days the fever ended in a crisis, but it left him so emaciated and weak that “it Tras long,”’ he says, “before I recovered the little strength which I had before.” On his recovery, he returned to Bristol, and saw that city taken in four days, Major Bethell wounded and slain, and Prince IJupert routed with the loss of his “ordnance and arms.” His next march was to Sherborne Castle, which, after a fortnight’s siege, was taken by storm, “and that on a side which one would think could never Jiave been that way taken.” Cromwell, after his success at Basinghouse, near Basingstoke, resolved to pursue I^ord Goring’s troops to the west of England, where they had made themselves infamous for their flagrant impieties and barljarous outrages. In consequence <<f this movement of the army, Baxter was present at the siege of Exeter, where he continued abotit three weeks, and then left because his regiment was ordered to march against Oxford to keep that garrison in check till the army would return from Exeter. Colonel Whalley’s regiment quartered in Buckinghamshire for about six weeks, when it besieged and took Banbury Castle. It was while quartering in this neighbourhood that Baxter maintained his famous disputation with Bethcll’s troopers at Agmondesham.

At the siege of Worcester, ]5axter was again taken very ill, and lie was urged by his friends to visit London for medical advice. On arriving in the metropolis, his physician sent him to Tunbridge AV’ells, where he received considerable benefit, and then returned through London to the army in Worcestershire. Ilis quarters were at Rous Lench, the seat of Sir Thomas Eons, where lie had never been before. Here Providence supplied him with a vahiable friend, who continued for years to be of great use to him. This friend was liady Lench, “a godly, grave, and understanding woman, who entertained me,” says Baxter, “not as a soldier, but as a friend.” From Worcestershire he went into Leicestershire, .Staffordshire, and Derbyshire. At Melbourn, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, his former diseases again afflicted him. It was now a cold and snowy season, and “the cold,” he says, “together with other things coincident, set my nose bleeding. When I had bled a quart or two, I opened four veins, but that did no good. I used divers other remedies, for several days, to little purpose. * * * This so much weakened me, and altered my complexion, that my acquaintances who came to see me scarcely knew me.”

‘Hiis affliction was a turning jxiint in the history of Baxter. It took him completely from all his schemes of opposing the Ironsides, just when he thoi’tj’U liimscl’’ host prepared and furnished for the enterprise; and, by this means, he was separated for ever from the army. His ilhicss at JVIelbourn detained him in his chamber and among strangers for three. weeks. As soon as he gathered a little strength, he went to Kirhy Mallory, and spent three weeks at the house of his friend Mr Nowell. len the news of his illness reached Kous Lench, Lady Rous sent her servant all the way to Leicestershire to bring him under her roof. “In great weakness,” says Baxter, “thither I made shift to get, where I was entertained with the gi-eatest care and tenderness, while I continued to use the means for my recovery; and when 1 had been there a quarter of a year, I returned to Kidderminster.”

He had now been ill about five months, but they were the most memorable months in his history. It was in this season of pains and medicines that he wrote his first works. His disputes in the army had prepared him to ^Tite his “Aphorisms of Justification;” and his sanctified afflictions made him write of “The Saints’ Everlasting liest.” The work which he commenced first was the “Saint’s Rest;” and it was while discussing the rewards, which should be conferred on the saints for their works of faith, that he was led to write his “Aphorisms.” In speaking of the “Saint’s Rest.” he says, “AVliilst I was in health, I had not the least thought of writing books, or of serving God in any more public way than preaching. But when I was weakened with great bleeding, and left solitary in my chamber at Sir John Cook’s in Derbyshire, without any acquaintance but my servant about me, and was sentenced to death by the physicians, I began to contemplate more seriously on the everlasting rest which I apprehended myself to be just on the borders of; and that my thoughts might not too much scatter in my meditation, I began to write something on that subject, intending buf the quantity of a sermon or two (which is the cause that the beginning is, in brevity and style, disproportionable to the rest); but being continued long in weakness, where I had no books, nor DO better emplopnent, I followed it on till it was enlarged to the l)ulk in which it is published. The first three weeks I spent in it was at Mr Nowell’s house at Kirby llallory, in Leicestershire; a quarter of a year more, at the seasons which so great weakness would allow, I bestowed on it at Sir Tho. Rous’s house, at Rous Lench, in Worcestershire; and I finished it shortly after at Kidderminster. The first and last parts were first done, being all that I intcndeil for my own use; and the second and third parts came afterwards in besides my first intention.”

Mj-riads of saints will have to bless God for ever for having afdicted Baxter at Melbourn, and for having taught him, in the minister’s house at Kirbv, to write the “Saints’ Rest.” He wrote it Xii BAXTEUS LIFK.

when he had no books by hun but a Bible and a Concordance. It was the transcript of his own heart, and therefore he found that, of all his works, “it had the greatest force on the hearts of others.” It was first published in 1G49, and since then, it has gone through many successive editions — surpassed, in niunber of editions, by, perhaps, no other book but the Pilgrim’s Progress, or his own “Call to the Unconverted.” All the editions subsequent to 1659 are distinguished by one ])ainful peculiarity. In the Commonwealth editions, he has introduced the name of Lord Brook, Hampden, and Pym, as among the glorified saints whom he should meet in “the everlasting rest;” but in impressions under the Restoration, these names are left ont. The motive for omitting them was to please Dr Jane, and to induce him to license the publication of the volume. It is a wonder and a grief to all the friends of Baxter, that he should have thus truckled; for the omission was against his own firm judgment concerning these illustrious individuals; and the omission, like all other such will-sacrifices, was far from giving satisfaction to the prelatical party. According to Baxter’s own unchanged opinion, Hampden, Pym, and Brook, were still in the everlasting rest, though their names were no longer in his book about that rest. This omission marred the honour, but it did not injure the usefulness, of the book, ilany thousands own their conversion to it; and many more owe to it their growth in grace, and their edification in love and heavenly mindedness.

Baxter’s afflictions and meditations on the Saints’ Rest had prepared him for his pastoral work at Kidderminster, whither he hastened from Rous Lench. The account of his ministiy in that town, made famous by his pastorship, will be found in the second chapter of this Essay. He spent there fourteen years, which were as eventful in the history of England as they were in the life of the laborious minister. In these years Cromwell marched his troops against the Parliament and subdued it. Charles, after a life of improbity and bloodshed, was seized by the army and executed; the Commonwealth was estaldished, and Cromwell proclaimed its I’rotector; the Scottish Covenanters were intriguing with Charles II. at Breda, and sacrificed Montrose to their schemes; war was devastating Ireland and Scotland; Charles II. entered England, lost the battle of Worcester, and inmiortalized the royal oak; the Protector died, and his son was deposed; England ceased to be puritan; and General Mojdc had matured In’s plots for duping the army to restore Charles to the throne of his father.

Such was the state of England when Baxter left Kidderminster, and reached London, April 13, IGGO. On his arrival he conversed with Lord Lauderdale on the nation’s obligation to the oath whk’h

BAXTEli’S LIFE. xiii

tlif y had sworn to Kicliard C’roniwell. This Lauderdale was the man who had procured letters to bo written by Protestant ministers in France, filled with assurances that Charles was firmly attached to the Protestant religion. A new parliament was immediately summoned to cancel the obligation of the oath to Richard Cromwell, and to invite Charles II.* to England. To this parliament Baxter preached at iSt Margaret’s, Westminster, April 30, on Repentance, from Ezek. xxxvi. 31. Immediately after the sennon, the House was to meet to vote the return of Charles. On May 10, ho preached again from Luke x. 30, on “Right Rejoicing,” to the lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, who were keeping a day of solemn thanksgiving for Licneral Monk’s success in bringing the king back. As Charles ])assed through the city of London to Westminster, the London ministers attended him with acclamations, and, by the hands of the oldest minister among them, the venerable Arthur Jackson, they “presented him with a richly adorned Bible, which he received, and ti;ld them that it should be the rule of his actions.” Thus, before he had yet reached his throne, Charles began to act the hypocrite, even with the Bible in his hand, and to treat with flagitious duplicity the men who had restored him to his crown. These ministers were honest men, but they allowed themselves to be duped and entrapped; and, in two years after their acclamations, he made llieni ])ay dearly for their silly confidence in royal promises. Oh! had wisdom uttered her voice in some street, and cried in some place of concourse, or in the opening of the gates of London, while Charles was passing, and had told these ministers, “Put NOT Youu TKUsr i Pkixces,”* many wailings and much shame would have been saved this country.

After the Restoration, ten or twelve of the Presbyterian ministers were made royal chaplains; and among these was Baxter, “at his Majesty’s own desire, as an acceptable furtherance of his service.” In this ofllce none of them ever preached except Mr Calamy, Dr Reynolds, Dr iSpurslow, Mr Woodbridge, and Baxter, once each. After his appointment, he I’.ad an interview with the king on the practicableness of efi’ecting an agreement between the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, which ended in the royal farce of the meeting at ion College. In September 4, 16G0, Charles published his insulting Declaration, to which Baxter drew up an answer, in such terms of firmuess and manliness as to alarm Calamy and Reynolds,

At Bri’Ua, April 4, IGCO, Charks II. gave his royal word in these tiTins — “Wf do declare a liberty to tender consciences, and that no man shall be disquieted, or called in question, for dift’erences of o[iiiiion which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom.” This he had the proUigacy to declare on, what he called, ‘’ the word of a Christian king.’’ who (loclared that “it would not he so much as rcceivcfl.” ^Tlion Baxter’s modified reply was presented, a modified declaration of the king was proclaimed, which was as unsatisfactory as its first composition. Defective and even insolent as the king’s modified declaration was, the very pastors who had enabled Charles to insult them, met to thank him for the minimum of liberty which he graciously gave them. “Micn they presented their thanks to the king, Baxter refused to attend. On hearing this, the king sent for Baxter the next day. and flattered him, but did not change his opinion about royal fidelity. These discussions concluded with farce the second, called the Savoy Conference, at which Sheldon acted with the haughtiness and tyranny of a Wolscy.

Though the Presbyterian Divines were thus treated by the court and the hierarchy, the Nonconformists were known and felt to he a powerful body in the country. As a measure of kingcraft, therefore, it was proposed that the best way to silence them was to make some of their leaders Lord Bishops; and, accordingly, Hereford was ofiered to Baxter, Litchfield and Coventry to Calamy, and Norwich to Reyiolds, who accepted it on the ground that the congS d’elire was taken out without his knowledge by a friend. An emissary of the court, Colonel Birch, waited upon Baxter again and again to get him to intimate his consent; but he declared, that “if the old diocesan frame continued, he would not accept it.” Even this was not enough, the Chancellor, Qarendon, had an interview with him, and asked him about his resolution, when the proposal was rejected for ever. In saying “Nolo Episcopari,” he meant it as “the words of truth and soberness.”

The next step in Baxter’s life is one perfectly singular, and is a good illustration of his character. Having declined a bishopric, he entreated Clarendon to give him the poor curacy of Kidderminster. “My ])eople,” he says, “were so dear to me, and I to them, that I would have been with them on the lowest terms. Some laughed at me for refusing a bishopric, and petitioning to be a reading-vicar’s curate; l)ut I had little hopes of so good a condition, at least for any considerable time. The Chancellor, and even the King, professed to be for his restoration to his people, but they allowed themselves to ])e bn*iled by his well known enemy, Sir l?alph Clare; and Bishop ^Torley also was resolved that he should never again enter the diocese of Worcester.” When the people at Kidderminster understood the disposition of Baxter towards fliem, “in a day’s time they gathered the hands of sixteen hundred out of the eighteen hundred communicants,” with the assurance of more, if they had only time given them. Wlint Clarendon and the King had professed to fail to do, he tried to do for himself. “I went do^■n,” He says,” to

AVorcestersliire, to try whether it were possible to have any honest terms from the reading-viear there, that I might preach to my former flock; but -when I had preached twice or thrice, he denied me liberty to preach any more. * * * I offered to be his curate, and he refused it. I then offered to preach for nothing, and he refused it. And, lastly, I desu-ed leave but once to administer the sacrament to the people, and to preach my fiu-ewell sermon to them, but he would not consent. At last I understood that he was directed by his superiors to do what he did.” From Kiddermiuster, Baxter, after paying a hasty visit to his afflicted father in Shropshire, waited on Bishop Morley. “I reminded the Bishop,” he says, “of his promise to grant me his license, &c.; but be refused me liberty to preach in his diocese, though I offered to preach only on the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and that only to such as had no preaching.”

Baxter was sUcnced, — the man who had received his “ministry from the Lord Jesus,” was rejected. He went to the Bishop’s palace with “neither purse uor scrip.” He said, “peace be to this house,” but “the son of peace was not there.” AMien the door of Worcester’s palace closed on “holy Baxter,” the event appeared trifling in episcopal judgment; but all the influence and bearings of that little event have not been yet developed. An edict has gone forth from the Lord, which says — “Into whatsoever city ye enter, and they receive you not, go your ways out into the streets of the same and say. Even the very dust of your city which cleaveth ♦n us, we do wipe off against you.” That dust, as it falls from the messenger, will have its influence on other interests. Natm-al Pliilusophy informs us, that a grain of sand on the point of a needle has its influence on the greatest and most remote bodies in the solar system. In the same manner. Revelation assures, that the dust from the sandals of ejected ministers, will, in the day of retribution, make it more tolerable for Sodom than for that city or that house which has rejected them.

After the prelate of Worcester had refused to license him in that diocese, he settled in London, and preached in various vacant pulpits, where his services were requested. After a year of such occasional, and always gi-atuitous ministrations, he resolved to become a colleague of the Rev. Dr Bates, at St Dunstan’s in the West, where he preached once a-week. The subjects of his sermons seem to have been regularly reported in high quarters, and he was always charged with sedition and rebellion, till he jn-eached the sti-ics which he afterwards published under the title of “The Formal lI)-])ocrite Detected,” when the low hyi)ocrites that reported him, and the high hyiiocrites which heard their reports, ceased their accusations.

It -was while preaclniig in St Dunstaii’s thai lio (lis;)kiycd that solemn and calm superiority to alarm and fear which is related by Dr Bates. The church of St Dunstan’s had “an ill name, as very old, rotten, and dangerous;” when therefore “a little lime and dust, and perhaps a piece of brick or two, fell down the steeple” during service, the whole congregation was exceedingly alarmed, and every one rushed towards the doors. Baxter “sat down in the pulpit, seeing and pitying their vain distempers; and then, as soon as he could be heard, he rose and said, “Wc are in the service of God, to prepare ourselves, that we may be fearless at the great noise of the dissolving world, when the heavens shall pass away, and the elements melt with fervent heat.” He then continued and finished his discourse, which was his last at St Dunstan’s church, which had to be rebuilt.

Between this time and the passing of the anti-Christian Act of Uniformity, he continued to preach for some time at St Bride’s in Fleet Street, and at St Ann’s, Black Friars, and he had also a week-day lecture in Milk Street, supported by Mr Ashiirst. Thus he continued to labour in his Jlaster’s work, till the shadows of Bartholomew Eve warned him to quit the English Church, which incessantly harassed him, and persecuted him even unto death.

The whole noble band of Nonconformists were about to be ejected from the Church of England on August 24, 101)2; but Baxter resolved to quit that Church before the Act of Uniformity came into force, and he accordingly preached his last sermon on the 25tli of the previous Maj-. This he did, partly because his legal advisers informed him, that as he was only a Lecturer, the liberty of all lecturers terminated on the 25th of May; partly to let authority know that he would obey it in all that was lawful; but chiefly to let all the Ministers in England understand in time that ho did not intend to conform, lest any should conform in the expectation that he would be a conformist. When the 24th of August came, two thousand illustrious, able, and faithful ministers — such two thousand as England saw never — wei-e faithful to their consciences, and faithful to the God of truth and liberty; and they all quitted the English Church. Popery had its Bartholomew’s day in France, and it shed the blood of myriads; and I’relacy has had its Bartholomew’s day in England, and it covered it with the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity.

While Baxter was busy in devising schemes of comprehension for Ejiiscopalians and Nonconformists, he was at the same time emjiloying his thoughts and his heart on a subject of much delicacy- and tenderness, and that was his marriage. On September U», 1062, just a fortnight after the dark and l.’lack IJartbolomew’s day, lie was married in Bennet Fink Church in Cheapside, by Mr Sa-DAXTi:]; LIKE. xvu

Tinit’.l Clark, to Miss JIarsaiet Charlton. Baxter was now forty-seven years of age, and iliss Charlton was about t^■enty-th■ee. It li!id always been a jiart of his ereed, that for ministers to marry was oidy barely lawful. All these things made his marriage notorious. The king’s marriage,” he says, “was scarcely more talked of than mine.” Two things brought Miss Charlton under the special notice of Daxtcr; she was born Tsithin three miles of his o^ti native ‘. illage, anil, on her removal with her mother to Kidderminster, his ministry was the moans of her conversion. Notwithstanding the inequality in their ages, he saj’S that “the many strange occurrences ■vfhieh brought it to pass, would take away the wonder of her friends and mine” — but “in her ease and mine there was muck that was extraordinary, what it doth not concern the world to be acquaintid with.” The terms on which Baxter proposed marriage, and which Jtliss Charlton accepted, are these: First, ‘• That I should have nothing that before our marriage was hers; that I, who wanted no earthly supplies, might not seem to marry her for covetousness. •Secondly, That she would so alter her affairs that I might be entangled in no lawsuits. Tb.irdly, That she would expect none of my time which my ministerial work should require.” They were “married in the Lord,” and he found in her a help-meet for him, sometimes his fellow prisoner, and always the helper to his joy.

Oil .Tune 1, 1663, Slicldon became Archbishop of Canterbiuy, a man of deep craftiness, of dexterous ability, and of unrelenting malignity against the Nonconformists; and, consequently, their sufferings were greatly aggravated on his accession to the primacy, especially through the severity of his act against private meetings. This law put all public service at an end. Baxter resolved to leave London; and he says, “I betook myself to live in the country, at Acton, that I might set myself to writing, and do what service I could for posterity, and live as much as I possibly could out of the world. Thither I went on the 14th of July 1663, where I followed my studies privately in quietness.” Here he attended the church in one iKirt of the day, and preached in his own house at another. Here also he finished some of his best works, especially his “Christian Directory.” On March 26, 1665, he was nearly being shot dead. While he was preaching and administering the Lord’s Supl)i’r, a bullet came in at the window, and passed close by him, but did him no hurt. The villain who had attempted to murder liini was never discovered.

Towards the close of 1 655 he Plague made its appearance in Jjondon, amidst all the troubles of a war with Holhmd. Baxter seems to have regarded this as a visitation upon England for the wickedness of the Corporation Act which had lately passed. He says, — “From London the plague is spread through many coxmties, especially next London, where few places, especially corporutiojis, are free; which makes me oft groan, and wish that London, and all the Corporations of England, would review the Couporation Act, and their own acts, and speedily repent.” ^Vhile Baxter was penning this noble sentiment, he was at Hampden, in Buckinghamshire, in the house of his beloved friend, Mr Richard Hampden, “the true heir of his famous father’s sincerity, piety, anddevotednessto God.” Here he continued while the plague raged about London.

It is probable that Nonconformity and Religious Liberty in England owe more to the Plague, and to the Fire of London, than to any other two causes in the providence of God. “When the plague grew hot,” says Baxter, “most of the conformable ministers fled, and left their flocks in the time of their extremity; whereupon divers Nonconformists, pitying the dj-ing and distressed people, when about ten thousand died in a week, resolved that no obedience to the laws of mortal man whatever could justify them in neglecting men’s souls and bodies in such extremities. They therefore resolved to stay with the people, and to go into the forsaken pulpits, though prohibited; and also to visit the sick and the dj-ing, and to get what relief they could for the i)oor, especially those that were shut up.” Yet while those noble and generous men were thus labouring in the very domain of death, and at the post which the hireling clergy had forsaken, Sheldon and Clarendon were forging the chains of the Five Mile Act to stop all their efforts. When the Plague ceased at Acton in March 166G, Baxter returned home, and “found the church-yard like a ploughed field with graves, and many of his neighbours dead.”

The next mysterious Providence which promoted religious liberty was the great Fire of London. It broke out at midnight, September 2, 1666. Baxter says, that “it was set on iirc,” and he believed that the agents in this awfid destruction “of one of the faii’cst cities in the world “were the Papists. Whether the suspicion be true or not, the report, and the connnon belief of it, shew in what degree of detestation all Papists were held in that age. After the fire, as well as during the iilague, the religious condition of the Londoners was equally wretched and destitute, as far as the conforming clergj’ were concerned. AVhen the churches were Inirnt, the parish ministers all departed, as if they had no ministry for the souls of men, except within the walls of churches. At this season, again, the generous Nonconformists came forth to the work of the ministry, with a disinterestedness and a diligence, that should have shamed their rivals and opi)ressors. ‘i’his was the birth-season of dissenting chajiels; for the ministers now prepared lai’ge i-oonis, and” plain chajicls with baxtek’s life. xix

pulpits, seats, and galleries, for the reception of as many as would come:” and, says Uaxter, “many of the citizens went to those meetings called private, more than went to the public parish churches.” These magnanimous labours produced a fresh rumour about a “comprehension,” and libert)’ of conscience; but the clergy opposed every effort for the restitution of the Nonconformists, and continued to refuse them all toleration till the fall of the wily Clarendon.

On the rise of the Duke of Buckingham, the preaching of the Nonconformists was connived at, “so that the people went openly to hear them without fear” — “and they did the like in most parts of England.” In the mean time, Baxter was busily engaged at Acton with his illustrious friend Judge Hale in arranging the heads of a new scheme of Comprehension. While Judge Hale and Baxter were thus employed, the inqiusitorial Sheldon addressed a circular letter to all the Bishops, requesting them to give an account of all the conventicles in their diocese. The result was, that many muiisters were imprisoned; and one of Sheldon’s iii-st victims was Baxter. Information was laid against him by his neighbour, one Colonel Phillips, for preaching in his own house at Acton, and he had to appear before the magistrates at Brentford. These, after treating him rudely and insultingly, sent hun to Clerkenwell prison, “where,” saj’S Baxter, “I had an honest jailer, who shewed me all the kindness he could.” Mrs Baxter went to prison with her husband; and he says, “My wife was never so cheerful a companion to me as in prison, and was very much against my seeking to be released.” From this prison he was liberated by a Habeas Corpus, but M’itli an ohitam dictum of the Judge that it was not on account of his innocence, but merely because of a flaw in the mittimus.

On his release, he found that his position was more difficult than he had apprehended; for the Five Mile Act prevented him from returning to Acton, where he had a house of large rent; and that his enemies among the magistrates had made a fresh and a more accurate mittimus to send him to Newgate “among thieves and murderers-,” he felt, therefore, that he must at any cost leave Jliddlesex.

His next place of abode was Totteridge, near Bamet, where he lived in “a few mean rooms, which were so extremely smoky, and the place withal so cold, that he spent the winter with great pain.” It was during his stay at Totteridge that he had his controversy with Dr Owen; that Lauderdale offered to make him a Scottish Bishop, or a Scottish Triucipal of one of the Universities; that he wrote a great part of his “Met/todiis Theohg’ue;” that he lost a great part of his property through the bankruptcy of the King’s Exchequer; that he aided Lord Orrery in forming the “Healing Measure,” which failed; and that he availed liimseif of the King’s “Dispensing DecLsration” to recommence preaching. Trusting in the. word of a king, lie removed to London, and preached as one of the lecturers at Tinners’ Hall, lie says: “On the 19th of November (1G72), r.iy baptism day, was the first dav, after ten years’ silence, that I preached in a tolerated assembly.” On Jannaiy 1G73, he began a Tuesday lecture at Mr Turner’s church in New Street, Fetter Lane, but “never took a penny of money for it from any one.” He had also a lecture at St James’ Market-IIouse. In this neighbourhood his ministry was veiy extensively useful, though it was now illegal; having been made so by the circumstance that the Parliament had annulled the King’s Dispensing Declaration, and had passed the Test Act. Informations were again laid against him, in which an Alderman of London, a Sir Thomas Davies, figures as a beast of prey seeking whom he might devour, who distrained his goods for fifty pounds for preaching his lecture in New Street.

In consequence of the dangerous state of his place of preaching at St James’s, his friends pressed him to obtain another place, and Oxenden chaiwl was built for him by their liberality. “Jlr Henry Coventry, one of his ilajcsty’s jirincipal secretaries, who had a house joining to it, and was a member of parliament, spake twice against it in the Parliament, but no one seconded him.” Here he was incessantly worried by his ])ersecutors. “I was so long wearied,” he says, “with keeping my doors shut against them that came to distrain my goods for preaching, that I was fain to go from my house, and to sell all my good’s, and to hide my library first, and after»vards to sell it; so that, if books had been my treasure (and I valued little more on earth), I had now been without a treasure. For about twelve years, I was driven a hundred miles from them; and when 1 had paid dear for the carriage, after two or three years I was forced to sell them.” As an illustration of his dangers at Oxenden Chapel, he gives the following account of ilr Seddon, who was to preach for him during his absence in the country: “I had left word that if he would but step into my house through a door, he was in no danger; they not having power to break open any but the meeting-house. While he was preaching, three justices, supi)osed of Secretary Coventry’s sending, came to the door to seize the preacher. They thought it had Ijcen I, and had prei)ared a warrant upon the Oxford Act to send me for six weeks to the common jail.”

After the silence of a whole year, he opened another place of preaching in the parish of St Martin. In the spring of 1676, Charles, utterly heedless of the “word of a Christian king” given at IJreda, urged .ill the judges and magistrates to jiiit the laws against Nonconformists in strict execution, yet Paxter recommenced preaching at a chapel in Swallow Street, while his own stood empty, at the

BAXTKi: ri LIFE. XXI

expense to him of thirty poiuids a-year for ground rent. A fresh waiTant was issued against him, ami for twenty-four SaLLaths constables and beadles watched the chapel door to apprehend him.

On the 14th of June 1G81, I’axter sustained tlic irreparalile loss of his excellent and heroic wife, ihc was buried in C’hristcliureli, and Howe preached her funeral sermon. Her husband praised her in the gates, and in the sketch of her character says, “She was the meetest helper that I could have hud in the world.” She was only forty when she died.

On August 24, 16S’2, he preached his last sermon in New Street, “just that day twenty years that I, and near two thousand more, had been by law Torliidden to preach.” “I took that day leave of the pulpit and public work in a tliaukful congregation.” “When I had ceased preaching, and was nearly risen from extremity of pain, I was suddenly surprised by a poor, violent informer, and many constables and officers, who rushed in, apprehended me. and served on me one warrant to seize my person for <’Oining within five miles of a corporation, and five more warrants to diiitrain for a hundred and ninety pounds for five sermons.” In this state he aeeompanicd them to the magistrate to be sent to jail, but his jihysician meeting him, made oath that he could not go to prison without danger of death. The magistrates represented the aflair to the King, and Charles consented that he should not be sent to prison for the present, that he might die at home. They, however, seized his books and goods, and even the bed which he lay sick on, and sold them all. “I had no remedy but utterly to forsake my house and goods and all, and take secret lodgings at a distance, in a stranger’s house.”

In 1G84 he suffered similar treatment. “^Vliile I lay in pain and languishing, the justices of the session sent warrants to apprehend me, about a thousand more being in catalogue to be bound to their good behaviour. I refused to oj)en my chamber door to them, their warrant not being to break it open; but they set six officers at my study door, who watched all night, and kept me from my bed and food; so that the next day I jnelded to them, who carried me, scaroe able to stind, to the sessions, and bound me in four hundred pounds.”

Early in 1685 appeared his New Testament with Notes, and on February 28 he was coniniitted to prison on a warr’ant from Judge Jefl’eries, on account of some sentiments in his Paraphrase. (pn the 18th of May, it was moved that, on account of Jiis great bodily pains, fe.rther time might be given him before his trial. Judge Jefr«rics said,” I will not give him a minute’s time more to sava his life. Yonder stands Oatcs in tlic pillory, and he says he suffers xxii b.vxtek’s life.

for the truth, and so says Baxter; but if Baxter did but stand on the other side of the pillory lrith him, I -vvould say, two of the greatest rogues and rascals in the kingdom stood there.” The trial came on at Guildhall on May 30, before Jefl’eries. Over every seat on which this ermined ruffian ever sat might be inscribed, “By appointment, Butcher to the Royal Family.” When Baxter’s counsel was defending him, Jefferies said,” This is an old rogue, who has poisoned the world with his Kidderminster doctrine. Au old schismatical knave, a hj-pocritical villain. Hang him, this one old fellow hath cast more reproach upon the constitution and discipline of our church than will be wiped ofl’ this hundred years; but 111

handle him for it; for, by G, he deserves to be whipped through

the city.” When Baxter attempted to explain and vindicate himself, JelTeries said to him, “Richard, Richard, dost thou think we’ll hear thee poison the court? Richard, thou art an old fellow, an old knave; thou has written books enough to load a cart, every one is full of sedition, I might say treason, as an egg is full of meat. Hadst thou been whii)ped out of thy writing ti-ade forty years ago, it had been happy. Thou hast one foot in the grave; it is time for thee to begin to think what account thou iutendest to give. But leave thee to thyself, and I see thou’lt go on as thou hast begun; but, by the grace of God, I’ll look after thee.” After Jelieries had charged the jury in a most un-English and outrageous manner, Baxter said, “Does your Lordship think that any jury will jiretend to pass a verdict upon mc upon such a trial?” The ruffian replied, “I’ll warrant you, Mr Baxter, don’t you trouble your head about that.” JclVeries was right, for without quitting the box, the jury found him “guilty.” At this trial Sir Henry Ashurst, the son of Baxter’s old and falthfiJ friend, acted nobly, led the venerable and injured friend of his father through the crowd, and conveyed him home in his own carriage. Baxter applied in vain to the Bishop of London to use his influence to obtain a new trial, or a milder judgment than was likely to be awarded to him by Jefferies. On the 20th of June his judgment was pronounced. He was to be fined live Iiiindred pounds, to lie in prison till he paid it, and to be bound to his good behaviour for seven years. This award was one of the first acts of James II., who had ascended the throne on the 6th of February. The prosecution was promoted by the efforts of L’Lstrange, a name of some rank among the learned men of his day. Every thing contributed to render the trial of Baxter a Inirning stigma on the royalty, law, and literature of England.

Baxter resolved to go to prison, for ho could not pay the fine; and even if he paid it, it was lilccly he would soon bo prosecuted again. In prison he was visited by some of the clergy, who lamented

BAXTEK S LIFE, XXlll

his nnjrst vcrilict. He continued in his prison nearly hvo years, when Lord Powis used his influence at Court to procure his release. He left the prison on Xovcmber 24, 1686. As a favour, Kinpj •Tames allowed hira to live in London, notwithstanding the Oxford Act; and havinf lived for some months within the rules of the King’s Bench, he removed on February 28 to Charterhouse Yard, and renewed his pulpit labours in company -with Mr Sylvester.

In these stirring times, Baxter’s age, sufferings, infirmities, and persecutions, prevented him from taking much interest in the agitations and changes which were taking place around him. Neither James’ downfall, nor the glorious Revolution of 1688, seems to have dra-ivn forth any remark from his pen or his pulpit. The last measure of legislation in which Baxter acted any part, was the Act of Toleration passed by William and jIary, which placed all Nonconformists under the shield of the British constitution. The last religious movement in which he interested himself, was the Bond of Agreement which was formed between the Presbyterians and Independents of London, memorable as commencing the name of Presby-terians, properly so called, ia England.

In Charterhouse Square he lived near Mr Sylvester’s meeting-house, where he preached gratuitously on Sunday mornings, and once a fortnight on Thursday mornings. After spending four years and a half in these engagements, he gave them up, and “opened his doors morning and evening every day” to all who would join him in family worship. Eventually his gro’wing infirmities constrained him to give up this engagement, and confined him to his own chamber. “He continued to preach,” says Dr Bates, “so long, notmthstanding his wasted, languishing body, that the last time ho almost died in the pulpit. It would doubtless have been his joy to have been transfigured in the mount. Not long after, he felt the approaches of death, and was confined to his sick-bed. He said to his friends, ‘You come hither to learn to die; I am not the only person that must go this way. I can assure you that your whole life, be it ever so long, is little enough to prepare for death.’ After a slumber ho waked and said, ‘I shall rest from my labour.’ A minister then present said, ’ and your works shall follow yoii.’ To whom he replied, ‘No works: I will leave out works, if God lill grant me the other.’”

When a friend reminded him of his past usefulness, he said, “I wxs but a pen in God’s hands, and what praise is due to a pen?” In the extremity of his agonies ho would sometimes pray earnestly to God for a speedy release, an<l then he would check himself and say, “It is not fit for me to prescribe; when thou wilt, what thou wilt, how thou wilt.” He was once asked how he felt in his inovarii man, and lils reply was, “I bless God I have a weli-grouii(U’(l assurance of my eternal happiness, and preat peace and coniioit within.” On the day before his death, Ur Bates and Mr Mather of New England visited him. To them he expressed his trrcat willin;:- ness to die; and when the question was asked, “How he did?” his answer was, “Almost well.” This was on a Monday, and he had fully expected and hoped that he should have died on the preceding ^fimday, which to Mr tylvester he called “a high day,” in the ( xpcctation of his joyful change, lie languished through Monday, and on Tuesday, December 8, 1C91, about four o’clock in the morning, he had his last conflict with disease, languished into life, and the “llcformed I’astor” found himself ia the “Saints’ Everlasting Kest.”

His body was interred in Qu-ist Church, with the body of h’& wife. Men of all ranks, and ministers of Nonconfonnist and of Conformist orders attended his funeral. Two fimeral sermons were preached for him; one by his colleague, Mr Sylvester, and the other by his friend Dr Bates, both of which were published.

CHAPTER II.

n A X T E U ‘S M I M S T K Y.

K Whitei’Ield is properly called the prince of preachers, Bax-TEK deserves to be ranked as the prince of pastors. The Holy Spirit made him a model pastor, and in the ecclesiastical hihtory of England, since the Kefornuition, no name can be mentioned as being his equal in the pastorship. To form an adequate conception of his pastoral character, it is necessary first to read his own ideal of a Christian minister in his “Gildas Salvianus, or Keformed I’astor,”’ and then to see his working out of that i(le;il in the “Rcliquia; Bjixtcrianyt’,” where he recounts his plans and methods of pastoral toil at Kiddernnnstcr.

Baxter commenced his ministry as a Conformist. His family, though inclined to Puritanism, were all Conformists, and so were all his connexions. The whole of his theological readuig had been .-igainst Nonconformity. AVhen he was about twenty years of age, l.e became acquainteil with several able Xonconformist divines in.’^hrollshire, and especially with the Ilev. ‘alter Cradock, the apostle of Nonconformity in North Wales. In their society he fuiuiJ an atmosphere which was refreshing to every thing devout, i;axti;hs vimstuy. tlw

unearthly and holy, in his own mind. The fervid piety, the serioua conversation, and the lofty devotion of those men raised them very highly in his esteem, and the prosecutions which they suffered kindled his indignation against the hierarchy that oppressed them; but neither the holy character of the Shropshire Puritans, nor th<; persecuting disposition of the prelates, produced in him any scruples about conforming. To be a minister, he must be episcopally ordained; to be ordained, he must subscribe the Articles and the Liturgy — and to subscribe consent and assent to them he had n<> hesitation, because, says he, “I had never once read the Book of Ordination.” In 1638, he was ordained at Worcester by Bishoip Thomborough, The first sermon he ever preached was in the Upper Church at Dudley, while he was head master of the grammar school there. He laboured in that town as a preacher for about ap year, but without any pastoral relation to the people.

The next scene of his ministry was Bridgenorth, a town at that time full of public houses. He preached here for nearly two years to large congi-egations of ignorant and besotted people, with very few instances of success, and with many discouragements. It is still reported in Bridgenorth that when he preached his farewell sermon to the people, he remarked that their hearts were as hard as the sandstone rock on which their church is built. It was at Bridgenorth that he became a Nonconformist. When, in 1640, regal tyranny and prelatical madness imposed upon the clergy the notorious Et Cactera Oath; * binding all the ministers of truth and liberty nerer to change their opinions concerning bishops, deans, &c., its ridiculous and wicked pretensions were carefully examined by the Salopian Conformists assembled at Bridgenorth. After this discussion, Baxter resolved that he would not subscribe the oath, and that he would honestly and manfully investigate the claims of Prelacy. He read with diligence and candour the works of distinguished and learned Nonconformists, as well as those of able Episcopalians, and he came to the conclusion that Diocesan Episcopacy was of unscriptural origin, opposed to the simplicity of primitive pastorship, and subversive of scriptural discipline and order in the church. The Et Cretera Oath produced many results favourable to the progress of Nonconformity, and among its ct cjetera consequences one was the Presbyterianism of Baxter.

On April 5, 1641, Baxter was appointed lecturer at Kidderminster. His removal to this town was brought about partly by the parliament, and partly by the people. The clergy, in every

* One part of the oath ran thus — “Xor «ill I ever give my consent to alter the government of this church by arelibishi’i)S. hishojis, dt-.-iU’, ami arthO.eriions, &c., as it stanUs now cstablishcJ, a:iU ought to stand.”

ixvl Baxter’s mixistkt.

part of the coiinhy, -(verc so ignorant and dissolute, that the parliament appointed a committee to enquire into the religious state of the country, and to hear the complaints and the petitions of the people against their ministers. The inhabitants of Kidderminster availed themselves of this arrangement, and presented a petition against the Rev. Mr Dance, their minister, who was a drunkard, and who preached only once a quarter. This petition resulted in the committee’s invitation to Baxter to talce the lectureship, which was seconded by an afTcctionatc letter from the people of the town.

Kidderminster had many attractions for Baxter: the town was large, and afforded an adequate sphere for his commanding talents; the people were generally of a profligate character, for which his fervid and rousing preaching was well adapted; and, among the i)ihabitants, there were a few who were sighing for the abominations of the place, and who would cheerfully welcome and further the efforts of a holy minister to do good. He commenced his ministiy among them by preaching for one Sunday on probation, and was then cordially chosen by the people as their lecturer. He spent here two years, which proved, in the arrangement of Providence, a kind of disciplinary novitiate to his remarkable labours there at a subsequent period. His first labours at Kidderminster were interrupted and blasted by the unhaiipy- rupture between Giarles I. and the Parliament. Mien the first rumours of a civil war were heard in the moans of an o))pressed people, Baxter began to develope some of the mental characteristics which marked the subsequent history of his life; for he sided with neither party, but found fault with both. This was not from timidity; much less was it from compromise; but it was from his sincere desire to secure and promote peace on earth and good will among men. All the writings of Piaster demonstrate that he was a firm and thorough friend to the cause of the parliament; and that though ho was loyal to the monarchy and the throne, he detested the consummate and heartless duplicity of Charles. All this the people of Kidderminster believed and knew; and, therefore, when the king’s declaration was one day being proclaimed at the market-place, just while Baxter was passing by, the officer who read it exclaimed, “there goes a traitor.” The rabble, who already hated him on account of his serious and faithful preaching, responded immediately and heartily, “Down with the roundheads” — and then directed their march in pursuit of him, with the resolution to take away his life. As the town of Kidderminster, and indeed nearly every town in Worcestershire were ojicnly for the king, Baxter was advised to quit the place and retire from the county altogether.

In the sketch of his life given in the preceding chapter, his re-BAXTEUS MIXISTUV. XXvii

tiremont to Gloucester — his brief return to Kiddcrminstor — his ))rcacliinp’ at Alcester on the Sunday that the battle of Edychill was fought — his first year at Coventry — his two months’ sojourn at Shropshire at the siege of Weni — and his second year at Coventry, have been recorded. In all these wanderings lie was ever faithful to the work of the ministry, preaching whenever he could and wliercvcr he might — sometimes in towns, and sometimes in villages and rural hamlets; now to soldiers in garrison, and anon to peasants in the highways and hedges. His village labours were carried on amidst many dangers, and especially at the hazard of apprehension and imprisonment. As an instance of the state of the times, and as a memorial of the interposition of Providence in his behalf, the following anecdote is introduced on the authority of the Congregational Magazine.*

The report is, that during Baxter’s residence at Coventry, several of the Nonconformist ministers of that city united with him in preaching a lecture at a private house, on a neighbouring common. ■’ The time of worship was generally a very early hour. Jlr Baxter left Coventry in the evening, intending to preach the lecture the following morning. The night being dark, he lost his wav; and, after wandering about a considerable time, he came to a gentleman’s house, where he asked for direction. The servant who came to the door informed his master that a person of very respectable appearance had lost his way. The gentleman, thinking it would be unsafe for such a person to be wandering on the common at so late an hour, requested the servant to invite him in. Mr Baxter readilv accepted the kind proposal, and met with a very hospitable reeej)- tion. His conversation was such as to give his host an exalted idea of his good sense, and his extensive information. The gentleman, wishing to know the quality of his guest, said, after supper, ’ as most persons have some cmplojnnent or profession in life, I have no doubt, sir, that you have yours.’ Ir l?axter replied, with a smile, ‘Yes, sir, I am a man catcher.” A man catcher,’ said the gentleman, ’ are you? I am very glad to hear you say so, for you are the very jKrson 1 want. I am a Justice of the Peace in this district, and am commissioned to secure the person of Dick Baxter, who is ex])Peted to preach at a conventicle in this neighbourhood early tt)- movrow morning; you shall go with me, and, I doubt not, we shall easily apprehend the rogue.’ Mr Baxter very prudently consented to accompany him.

‘• .Vccordingly, the gentleman, on the following morning, took Mr I’axtcr in his carriage to the place where the meeting was to b»-

Congr. M:ig. toI. iii.

xxvm BAXTERS jnxrsTRY.

held. ‘^^Tien they arrived at the spot, thoysa-w a cor.siderahle number of people hovering about; for seeing the carriage of the Justice, and suspecting his intentions, they were afraid to enter the house. The. Justice, observing this, said to Mr Ikxter — ‘I am afraid that they have obtained some information of my design; Baxter has probably been apprised of it, and therefore will not fulfil his engagement; for you see the people will not go into the house. I think, if we extend our ride a little farther, our departure may encourage them to assemble, and on our return we may fulfil our commission.’ When they returned, they found their efforts useless, for the people still appeared unwilling to assemble.

“The magistrate, thinking he should be disappointed of the object he had in view, observed to his companion, that, as the people were very much disaffected to Government, he would bo much obliged to him to address them on the subject of loyalty and good behaviour. Mr IJaxter replied, that perhaps this would not be deemed sufficient; for, as a religious service was the object for which they were met together, they would not be satisfied with advice of that nature: but, if the magistrate would begin with prayer, he would then endeavour to say something to them. The gentleman replied, putting his hand to his pocket, ‘Indeed, sir, I have not got my prayer book with me, or I would readily comply with your proposal. However, I am persuaded that a person of your appearance and respectability would be able to pray with them as well as to talk to them. I beg, therefore, that you will be so good as to begin with prayer.’ This being agreed to, they alighted from the carriage and entered the iioase, and the people, hesitating no longer, immediately followed them.

Mr Daxter tlicn commenced the service, and prayed with that seriousness and fervour for which he was so eminent. The magistrate, standing by, was soon melted into tears. The good divine then preached in his accustomed lively and zealous manner. When he had concluded, he turned to the Justice and said, ‘Sir, I am the very Dick IJAXXEii of whom you arc in pursuit. I am entirely at your disposal.’ The magistrate, however, had felt so much during the service, and saw things in so different a light, that he laid aside all his enmity to the Nonconformists, and ever afterwards became their sincere friend and advocate, and it is lielieved also a decided Christian.”

I’axter commenced his ministry in Coventry on the condition that he should neither lje obliged to take a commission in the army nor lie appointed a chaplain to a regiment. His duties were to preach once a-week to the soldiers, and once on the iabbaths to the town’s peopl*!. For his labours lie took no rennmeration but his diet. In this garrison he ibllowcd his studies, he s:iys,” as quietly as in the

BAXTEU.S MIXISTFiY. XXlX

time of peace.” After the battle of Xasoliy, foucjlit wliilc he was at Coveutry, his scruples to join the army gave way Iwl’ore what ho licard ami saw on visiting Cromwi’ll’s troops near Leicester, lie I’ound that the church ia the army was a different thing from the uliurch amid citizens and peasantry. He was astonished and grieved to hear civil and religious liberty openly, freely, a:id manfully discussed by the soldiers. “I heard,” he says, “the plotting heads hot upon that which intimated their intention to subvert Church and State;’’ and these were Cromwell’s chief fiivourites, and they were the soul of the army, though in number they were only as one to twenty. Several officers pressed him to join the army, and after consulting his ministerial friends in Coventry, and obtaining the reluctant consent of the city garrison to release him, he joined it as chaplain to Colonel Whalley’s regiment. Among his friends in the garrison, he said expressly that he attached himself to the army for the purpose of doing his best against its sectarian tendencies. On hearing him, Colonel L’urefoy said very magisterially, “Let me hear no more of that. If Nor, Ckomwei.l should hear any soldier but speak such a word, he would cleave his crown.”

On joining the army, he was introduced to Cromwell, who received him very coolly, and never afterwards conversed with him, nor was he ever allowed an opportunity to attend the meetings of the officers at head quarters. It is not unlikely that Colonel I’nrefoy had communicated Baxter’s designs to Cromwell, and this was the reason of the coolness; but anotlicr fact might also be in the recollection of Cromwell which woidd induce him to treat the divine with some reserve. AVhen Cromwell lay at Cambridge, he collected his first troop of Ironsides, which he and his officers tried to form into a eluirch; that is, a troop of church members, a literally militant church, or fighting congregation. This troop invited Baxter, while at Coventry, to become its pastor. In reply, he not only declined their invitation, but rebuked them for their constitution, and for their designs. This peevish denial and ill-timed reproof are enough to account for the coolness with which he was received by the army.

His ministry in the army was an utter failure. He was too belligerent in polemic theology, and too much of a field-marshal in logic, to maintain successfully a ministry of peace among soldiers, and especially among the independent Ironsides. In his ministerial labours, he set himself to discover the ecclesiastical corrnjitions of the soldiers — disputed with the troops upon all points, political as well as religious — contended against all varieties of opinions among them, whether Antiuoniianism, Arminianism, or Quakerism and Anabajitism, but es]iecially against Voluntarjism. In describing the army, lie says,” The most frequent and vehement disputes were for liberty of

•XXX BAXTER .S MIXISTRT.

conscience, as they called it; that is, that the civil magistrate had nothing to do to determine matters of religion by constraint or restraint.” With the leaders of these heroes of freedom, Eaxtcr ivonld dispute in the hearing of the rest, to try to make them the laughing-stock of the troops. The consequence was, that he was both bitterly scorned and cautiously avoided. It is due to these, lirst and noble disciples of liberty of conscience to record, that the failure of his ministry among them was to be traced more to the controversial tendencies of his own mind than to the military habits of the soldiers. To this fact he gives himself a candid and an honest j testimony. “Many of those honest soldiers who were tainted but with some doubts about liberty of conscience or independency, were men who would discourse of the points of sanctification and Christian experience very seriously.” As a proof of the manner in wliicli lie was treated and avoided in the army, he saj-s — “All the two years that I was in the army, even my old bosom friend who Jiad lived in my house, and been dearest to me, James Eorry, then Captain, after Colonel and Major, the Lord of the Upper House, who had formerly invited me to Cromwell’s old troop, did never once invite me to the army at fu-st, nor invite me to his quarters, nor ever once come to visit me, or ever saw me, save twice or thrice that we met by accident.”

After many marches and counter-marches with the army lur two years, and after many attacks of disease, through which it is not necessary now to follow him, he settled at Kidderminster, much to the joy of his jieople, and much to the honour of his own immortal character.

Baxter’s settlement at Kidderminster was the greatest honour that Clod ever conferred on that picturesque town. His pastorsliip there, will be had in everlasting remembrance, when the skill and the wealth produced by its peculiar manufactory will be forgotten for ever. As a model pastor, his character deserves to be known, studied, and imitated, yea, if possible, surpassed. To form a proper estimate of his pastoral labours, it is necessary to know the character of the inhabitants before he settled among them, the state of his health amid his numerous labours, the various plans of usefulness which he adopted, the amount of his success, and the peculiar advantages which lu! had for carrying on his operations.

‘J’lie character of the inhabitants of Kidderminster, at tlic period of his settlement, was as degraded and as unpromising as an incompetent and profligate clergy could make it. ‘i’he vicar of the place. «lid not understand even the substance of the chatechism or creed. His preaching consisted in scrajjing together, once a quarter, “a few words which lie so said over as to move jiity in hi.-: auditois.” Ath.VXTElt.S MIMSTItY. XXil

taclied to the parish there was a chapel, which was supplied by au old fiirate as ignorant as his vicar. This curate iot his living liy celebrating unlawful marriages. “I knew not,” says Baxter, “how to keep him from reading the prayers, for I judged it a sin to tolerate him in any sacred oflico.” In one of the suburban districts, called the Kock, there were two chapels. The curate of one of these got his living by cuttuig faggots; and the other curate by making ropes, “their ability being answerable to their studies and employments.” It is no wonder that under the ministry of such clergy the whole populace of the town had become a disorderly mass and au unruly rabble. The people were hostile to real religion under every name and form, whether conformist or nonconfonnist. They compelled Baxter to leave the town and the county to preserve his life, and they resoluiely oj)posed two or three attempts which the (;ongregation made to restore him. This fact in the history of Kidderminster, vriM supply a salutary lesson to some ministers in the present day, who, in contemplating some new sphere of labour proposed to them, speak of it as abounding with “up-hill work.” If any pastor on earth had “up-hill work,” Baxter had it. Ba.Kter’s discouragements, and Baxter’s devotedness, should cancel such phrase from every minister’s vocabulary, for in “destroying the works of the devil,” he must expect difficulty, toil, and suffering.

tSuch was Kidderminster: and now sec the man who is going to labour for Christ in it. In bodily health he seems a very Lazarus, and his painfid diseases would have been by many a sufficient apology for doing nothing in pastoral efforts. He says, “in my lahours at Kiddcnninster, after my return, I did all under languishing weakness, being seldom an hour free from pain. Many a tiniis have I been brought very low, and received the sentence of death in myself, when my poor, honest, praying neighbours have met; and, upon their fasting and earnest prayers, I have been recovered.” Another time, I had a tumour rose on one of the tonsils in my throat, white and hard like a bone, above the hardness of any schyriMUS tumour. I feared a cancer. This proved obstinate against all remedies, when, at the end of about a quarter of a year, I was checked in conscience that I had never publicly praised God particularly for any of the deliverances vouchsafed me.” He was no’i’ writing the second part of the “Saint’s Kest,” and while he was penning the passage of gratitude to God for his mercies, “the tumour vanished.” ho says; ‘” and no sign wherever it had been remained; nor did 1 know what went with it to this day.”” Another time, being in danger of an cegilops, and (to be brief) at divers times, in divers weaknesses, pains, dangers, I have been delivered

XiJiU B^IXTEU S ill.NISTKY.

upon earnest prayers.” “After abundance of diSiempcrs and languishings, I fell at last into a flux hepaticiis, and after that into manifold dangers necessarily too long to be cited.” He had very distressing headaches, and a stomach so disordered, that “a spoonful of wine yroiild disturb him for a whole fortnight.” His body was indeed a body of death, a vile body, sufficient to clog any soul, and to weigh dovra any common pastor. In addition to all the pains endured, lot it be remembered what debilitating influence such a body would have upon the mind and upon the temper, indisposing the mind to Mork, and souring the temper against all pastoral intercourse with his people.

Such was the man who regenerated ffidderminster. It is now to be seen what he did, and how he did it. It was remarked at the commencement of this Essay, that one purpose of its being written was to interest young ministers in the pastoral character of Baxter. To promote this purjiose, it is thought desirable to place the elements of his extensive usefulness in an adjusted order, that they might be apprehended with the greatest possible distinctness. This is the reason why they are arranged under separate and distinct heads.

I. baxtkr’s plaxs of usefulness.

The methods which he adopted for the regeneration of Kidderminster are the following : —

1. Before the wars he preached twice every Lord’s day, and afterwards once a Sal)bath.

2. On Monday and Tuesday in each week, his assistant and him-Belf took fourteen families between them for catechising and conference: Baxter taking the towni, and the assistant the parish. In these visits he heard them recite the words of the catechism, and then examined them in the meaning of it, and finally urged them to practise what they knew. He spent about an hour with each family, making seven hours a day.

3. He preached a lecture every Thursday morning; and after the lecture had “the company of several godly ministers, with whom he spent the afternoon in the truest recreation.”

4. Every Thursday evening he had Ills neighbours to meet him at his own house. On these occasions one of them repeated the leading thoughts of the sermon that had been preached in the mornins; and others i)ro])osed their dilliculties, and cases of conscience. These meetings closed by one or more engaging in extempore prayer, and sometimes he himself prayed.

BAXTEK d MIXISTKT. XXXill

jj. Once a-week the young people met a few of the nicmljers more privately, when they spent three hours in prayer together; and, especially on Saturday night, they met at some of their houses to repeat the sermons of the last Lord’s day, and to pray, and prepare themselves for the morrow.

6. Once in a few weeks, Baxter and his people held, on some occasion or other, a day of humiliation and prayer.

7. Every religious woman that was safely delivered in childbirth, if able, kept a day of open thanksgiving with some of her neighbours, praising God, singing psalms, and soberly feasting together.

8. On the first Wednesday m every mouth was held the monthly meeting Xor parish discipline.

9. Every first Thursday in the month was the Minister’s meeting for discipline and disputation, and mutual conference, at which he M’as “almost constant moderator;” and for wliica lie generally prepared a written determination.

This was indeed a week well filled up, and well spent. His only time for study was Monday, after speniing seven hours in pastoral visit; Tuesday the same; ^Vednesday entirely, except the iirst ^Vednesday in the month; and the whole of Eriday and Saturday. When his manifold labours, his intense sufi’erings, his laborious preparations, are taken into consideration, his industry must appear stupendous, and his economy of time virtuously avaricious. In his visitation to any district of the town, he expected to see every family, and lie was resolved to have an interview widi thcr.i, if possible. As an instance of this resolution, the following anecdote is current in Sliropshire. In some streets, he found some families so obdurate that they refused him admission, and the door was continued closed as long as he was known to be in the neighbourhood. In such cases, his practice was, on another day, to enter some friendly house which commanded a view of the door that had been closed against him, and thence watch to see if the door were open or on the jar; and whenever he s;iw the door partly open, he seized the opportunity, entered the house, and had rdigious conversation with the inmates.

II, liAXTKR S SCCCESS.

Having presented his plans and methods of labour, it is now proper to notice how they worked, and to record the amount of his success. In reference to his success, he says —” I have mentioned my pweet and acceptable cmplovment, let me, to the praise of my gracious Lord, acquaint you with some of my success. And I will

XXXIV n.VXTERS MIMSTUV.

not suppress it, though I foreknow th.at the malignant will imputo. the mention of it to pride and ostentation; for it is the sacrifice of thanksgiving which I owe to my gracious Gud, which I will not deny him for fear of being censui’ed as proud, lest I prove myself proud indeed.”

1. Plis public pi-eaching met with great acceptance. He w;is popular in the town, and even those that were so hostile to liiiu before the wars, not only became tractable, but also attended his ministry.

2. The congregation increased, and became so numerous that five galleries were built in succession to acconnnodate the crowds that attended, though the church itself was large and commodious. Even at the private meetings the place was well attended.

3. No disorder was to be seen on the street on the Lord’s day. He says — “You might hear an hundred families singing psalms, and repeating sermons, as you passed through the streets.” “When I came thither first, there was about one family in a street that worshipped God, and called on his name; and when I came away, tlicre were some streets where there was not past {i. e. -more than) one family in the side of a street that did not so.” This was the case even with the inns and public-houses of the town.

4. The number of his regular communicants averaged sixteen hundred; “of whom,” he says, “there was not twelve that I had not good hopes of as to their sincerity.”

5. When he began personal conference with each family, and catechised them, there were very few families in all the town that refused to come; and they consisted chietly of beggars and paupers who lived in the outskirts of Uie town. (Scarcely a family left his presence “without some tears, or seemingly serious promises of a serious life.”

(>. Some of the poor people liecame so versed in theological questions as “competently to understand the body of divinity,” and were able to judge in difficult controversies. “Some of them were so able in prayer, that very few ministers did match them in order and fulness, and apt expressions, and holy oratory, with fervency.” — “The temper of their minds, and the inuoccncy of their lives, was much more laudable than their i)arts.”

7. The lectures which he preached in his itinerant efforts at Worcester, Cleobury, WiifTnall, and especially Dudley, gave him great lincouragcment. At Dudley lie says, “the i)i)or nailers and laliourcrs would not oidy crowd the church as full as ever I had seen in ]jondon, but would also hang on the windows and leads without.”

8. llis success among his ministerial brethren was as great r.s among private Christiana. Their meetings were “never contentioiw, but always comfortable.” “We took,” he says, “great delif;lit in the company of each other, so that I know that the remembrance of those (lays is pleasant both to them and me.” — “When I attempted to bring them all conjunctly to the work of catechizin<^ and instrncting every family by itself, I found a ready consent i:i most, and i)Crformance in many.”

9. As Baxter became a model Pastor, the church at Kidderminster became a model Church to the surrounding congregations. “The /cal and knowledge of this poor people,” he says, “provoked many in other parts of the land. And though I have been absent from them now six years, and they have been assaulted with pulpit calumnies, and slanders, with threatenings and imprisonments, with enticing words and seducing reasonings, they yet stand fast, and keep to their integrity. Many of them are gone to God, and some are removed, and some are now in prison, and most still at home; but not one that I hoar of arc fallen off, or forsako their uprightness.”

It woidd be wrong to close this account of Baxter’s success without stating the devout feelings with which he recorded it. “I must here, to the praise of my dear Redeemer, set up this pillar of remembrance, even to his praise, who hath employed me so many years in so comfortable a work, with such encouraging success! (.y what am I, a worthless worm, not only wanting academical honours, but much of that furniture which is needful to so high a work, that God should thus abundantly encourage me, when the reverend instructors of my youth did labour fifty years together in one place, and could scarcely say that they had converted one or two of their ])arishes! And the greater was this mercy, because I was naturallv of a discouraged spirit; so that if I had preached one year, and seen no fruit of it, I should hardly have forborne running away like Jonah, but should have thought God had not called me to that place.”

III. — BAXTEi: S ADVANTAGES.

In surveying the wonderful success of Baxter, and in wishing to ailopt his plans of usefulness, many young ministers would l)e glad to know what were the peculiar advantages of his position whieli contributed to the efficiency of his ministry. He himself has recorded thirty of these advantages, which will now be presented in his own arrangement, and, for distinctness’ sake, in his own enumeration.

I. His going to a people who were not previously hardened by the Gospel. —” I came to a people that never had any awakening mixxxvi Baxter’s ^^IXI.<^TtV•.

iiistr- before, Lut a few formal coldsermons of the curate. If they had Leen hardened under a powerful ministry, and been sermon proof, 1 should have expected less.” This language was occasioned by his bitter remembrance of Bridgenorth.

2. His affectionate and serious style of preaching. — “I was in the vigour of ray spirits, and had naturally a familiar moving voice, which is a great matter with the common hearers; and doing all in bodily weakness as a dying man to djang men.” “It must be serious preaching which must make men serious in hearing and obeying it.”

3. The removal and disappearance of the profane rabble out of the to-wn. — “Those who had risen in tumult against me at fii-st, and who were the enemies of all godliness in the town, went, from the very hatred of the Puritans, to the wars, and perished in battle.”.

4. Freedom of conscience and liberty of proi)hesying under the reign of Cromwell. — Baxter himself bears testimony that the success of the Parliament in the civil wars “removed many and great impediments to men’s salvation.” Somewhere between the niches allotted for Charles the First and Charles the Second, in the New Houses of Parliament, where, as an insult to the civil and religious liberties of England, a statue was denied Cromwell, a tablet should be placed bearing in letters of gold the following testimony of Baxter: — “Though Cromwell gave liberty to all sects among us, and did not set up any party alone by force, yet this much, gave abundant advantage to the Gosj)el [viz.], removing the prejudices and the terrors that hindered it; especially considering that godliness had countenance, and reputation also, as well as liberty.” “For my part, I bless God who gave me, even under an usurper whom 1 opjjosed, such liberty and advantage to preach his Gospel with success, which I cannot have under a King to wliora I have sworn and ])erfornied subjection and nljedience; yea [liberty and advantage] which no age, since the Gospel came into this land, did before possess, as far as I can iearn from history.”

5. The esteem and veneration in which lie was personallj’ held by all. — “It is almost certain that the gi-atefulness of the person doth ingratiate the message, and greatly prepares the people to receive the truth. Had they taken me to be ignorant, erroneous, scandalous, worldly, scK-seeking, &c., I could have expected small success.”

G. The co-operation and zeal of his people. — ‘i’hesc “thirsted for the salvation of tlicir nciglibours, and were, in private, my assistants; and ))cing disijcrscd through the town, were ready, in almost all companies, to rejjress seducing words, and to justify godliness, to convince, reprove, and cxiiort men according to their uccds; as also, to teach them how to pray.”

Baxter’s mikistky. xxxvii

7. The consistent lives of the niemiiers of his church. — “The inaUcious iieoiiki could not say, ‘Your professors here are as proud and covetous as any.’ The blameless lives of godly people did shame opposers.”

8. The absence of sectarian bigotry in the tovm, — “We had no ]!rilate church, though we had private meetings. We had not pastor against pastor, nor church against church, nor sect against sect, nor Christian against Christian.”

10. The i)rivate meetings which he held with religious people. — These were meetings for religious conversation, and for the friendly discussion of some important point of doctrine. “Here I had an opportunity to know their ease; for if any were touched and awakened in public, I should presently see him drop into our private meetings.”

11. The diligence and laboriousuess of his ministerial assistants. These deserve honouraljle mention; they were successively Mr Richard Sergeant and ]Ir Humphrey Waldern. In speaking of Mr Sergeant, he says, — “No child ever seemed more humble. No interest of his own, either of estate or reputation, did ever seem to 6top him in his duty. No labour did he ever refuse which I could ))Ut him to. AVhen I put him to travel over the parish, which is nearly twenty miles about, from house to house, to catechize and instruct each family, he never grudged or seemed once unwilling. He preached at a chapel above two miles off one-half the day, and in the town the other, and never murmured;” “Mr Humphrey Waldern was very much like him.”

12. The coimtenance of the magistrates of the place. “A bailif and a justice were annually chosen in the corporation, who ordinarily were godly men, and always such as would be thought so; and were ready to use their authority to suppress sin and ipromote §(odliness.” This was in perfect keeping with Baxter’s views on the authority of the magistrate in religion; though it would be disputed by most Independents.

13. His generous liberality to the poor. The living was thought to be worth L.200 per annum, but only L.90, and sometimes only 3j.80 came to Baxter. His published works brought him in sometimes L.60, and sometimes L.80 per annum. Some of the cleverest children he sent to the universities, “where, for L.8 a-year, or L.IO at most, by the help of my friends there, I maintained them,” “Some of them are honest ministers, now cast out with their brethren.” “In giving what little I had, I did not inquire whether they were good or bad, if they asked relief: For the bad had souls and bodies that needed charity most. And this truth I will speak to the encouragement of the charitable, that what little money I have now by me, 1 got it almost all, 1 scarce know how, in thut time when I gave most. And since I have had less oppor tiinity of giving, I have had less increase.”

14. The free distribution and circulation of his practical writings among the inhabitants. Of all his smaller publications he presented ii copy to each family among his people, “which came to about eight hundred.”

15. The facilities for reading afforded by the particular trade of the town. In those days hand-looms allowed the people “time enough to read, and to talk of holy things;” but the wheels and spindles of power looms are not so accommodating. “The town liveth upon the weaving of Kidderminster stuffs, and as they stand in their loom, they can set a book before them, or edifie one another.” “And their constant converse and traffic with Loudon doth much promote civility and piety among tradesmen.”

16. His single life. “For I could the easilier take mj’ people for my children; and being discharged from the most of lamily cares, keeping but one servant, had the greater vacancy and liberty for the labours of my calling.”

17. His practice of physic. He found that “they that cared not for their souls did love their lives, and care for their bodies.” “Sometimes I could see before me in the church a very considerable part of the congregation, whose lives God had made me a means to save, or to recover their health. And doing it for nothing sip obliged them, that they would readily hear me.”

18. The influence of his young converts upon their relations. In the town there were few irreligious families “but some of their own relations were converted. Many children did God work upon at fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen years of age; and this did marvellously reconcile the minds of the parents, and elder sort to godliness. They that would not hear me would hear their own children.” “We had some old persons of near eighty years of age who are, I hope, in heaven; and the conversion of their own children was the chief means to overcome their prejudice, and old customs and conceits.”

19. Afflictions in families. “Though sick-bed promises are usually soon forgotten; yet was it otherwise with many among us. And as soon as they were recovered, they first came to our private meetings, and so kept in a learning state, till further fruits of piety appeared.”

“20. His bearing a public testimony against the iniquity of the times. Here he refers to Cronnvell’s army marching against the Parliament — to the execution of Charles I. — to the invasion of Scotland, &c., .and says,” Had I owned the guilt of others, it would have been my shame, and the hindrance of my work, and provoked God to have disowned me.” In his view, pul])it protests against iniquitous governments wei”e not likely to injure ministerial usefulness.

21. The character of the ministers around him. “Their preaching was powerful and sol)er; their spirits peaceable and meek; disowning the treasons and iniquities of the times, as well as we. They were wholly addicted to the winning of souls: adhering to no faction, neither episcopal, presbyterian, or independent, as to parties, but desiring union, and loving that which is good in all. These, meeting weekly at our lecture (in Kidderminster), and monthly at our disputation, constrained a reverence in the people to their worth and unity, and consequently furthered my work.”

22. The reproach and ridicule which intemperance brought upon itself. “There were two drunkards almost at the next doors to me, who, one by night, and the other by day, did constantly every week, if not twice or thrice a-week, roar and rave in the street like stark aiadmen. These were so beastly and fidiculous that they made that sin, of which we were in most danger, the more abhorred.”

23. The character and the fate of apostates and backsliders in the neighbourhood. “They that fell off were such as, before, by their want of grounded understanding, humility, and mortification, gave us the greatest suspicion of their stability.” “As they fell from the faith, so they fell to drinking, gaming, furious passions, horrildy abusing their wives, &c. — and so to a vicious life. I^’o that they stood up as pillars of God’s justice to warn others.”

24. The closeness of his appeals in his pastoral visits. In these visits he had “personal conference with every family apart, and catechising and instructing them. That which was spoken to them personally, awakened more attention, and was easier applied than public preaching, and seemed to do much more upon them.”

25. The firm maintenance of Church discipline among the memliers of his congregation. His system of discipline was somewhat doubtful for a parish Presbyterian, but the advantages of it to his ministry were the following, as stated by himself. (1.) “We performed a plain command of Christ, and we took oliedience to be better than sacrifice. (2.) We kept the church from irregular separations, &c. (3.) We helped to cure that dangerous disease among the people, of imagining that Christianity is Init a matter of opinion and dead belief; and to convince them how much it consisteth in holiness, &c. (4.) We greatly suppressed the practice of sin, and caused people to walk more watchfully than else they would have done.”

26. The wise adaptation of his ministry to the circumstances of his hearers. This he did, he says,” by ordering my doctrme to them in a suitableness to the main end, and yet so as might suit their dispositions and disciiscs. The thing which I daily opened to them, and, with the greatest importunity, laboured to imprint on their m-nds, was the great fundamental principles of Christianity

3U BAXTER S MIXISTUT.

oonfainecl in their baptismal covenant.” — “Yet I did usually put in sunething in my sermon, which was above their own discovery, and which they had not known before; and this I did that they miaht be kept humble, and still perceive their ignorance, and be willing to be kept in a learning state.”

27. The absence of wealthy men in his church. ‘’ My people were not rich.” — “There were none of the tradesmen very rich, seeing their trade was poor, that w-ould but find them food and raiment. The magistrates of the town were, few of them, worth L.40 per annum, and most not half so much. Three or four of the richest thriving masters of the trade got about L.500 or L.600 in twenty years, and it may be lose L.lOO of it at once by an ill debtor. The generality of the master workmen lived but a little better than their journeymen, from hand to mouth.” —” It is the poor that receive the glad tidings of the gospel, and that are usually rif.h in faith. As Jlr George Herbert saith in his Church Militant —

‘Colli and the gospel never did agree.
Religion always sides with poverty.’”

23. His abstaining from all money agitations with his people. Ho avoided “meddling with tithes and worldly business, whereby I had my whole time, except what sickness deprived me of, for my duty, and my mind more free from entanglements, than else it would have been. And also I escaped the offending of the people. And I found also that nature itself being conscious of the baseness of its earthly disposition, doth think basely of those whom it’ discerneth to be earthly.” — As an instance of his indifference to money, he gives the following racy account of his domestic life, while a bachelor. “In my family, I had the help of my father, and mother-in-law, and the benefit of a godly, undcrstamling, faithful servaul, an ancient woman, near sixty j-ears old, who eased me of all care, and laid out all my money for housekeeping, so that I never had one hour’s trouble about it, nor ever took one day’s account of her for fourteen years together, as being certain of her fidelity, providence, and skill.”

29. His continuing his ministry so long in one place. He was at Kidderminster “near two years before the war, and fourteen after.” — “He that removeth oft from [dace to place may sow good seed in many places, but is not like to see much fruit in any, unless some other skilful hand shall follow him to water it. It was a great advantage to me to have all the religious peoj)lo of the place of my own instructing and informing; and that I stayed to see them grown up to some conlirmedness and maturity.”

30. His itinerant labours in the surrounding towns and villages.

B.VXTEU’S MIXISTRY. Xll

Paxter and his brethren had a regular system of itinerancy for the county. In speaking of these country lectures, he saj’s — “To divers of them I went as oft as I was alilc, and the neighbour ministers oftener than I.” — “This business also we contrived to be universally and regularly managed; for, besides the lectures set up on week days fixedly in several places, we studied how to have it extended to every place in the county that had need. This lecture did a great deal of good; and we continued it voluntarily till the ministers were turned out, and all these works went down together.”

This concise but well-defined outline of Baxter’s labours and tisefulness contains nothing singular in the advantages of his position, — nothing novel or extravagant in the machinery of his means. His plans were simple, and his advantages were almost common to every faithful pastor; but his success is extraordinary, and its influence is yet telling throughout England and the Protestant world. The efficiency of his plans is found in his own masculine mind, and manly piety, baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire. His machinery was plain, but every wheel and pin in it was of the best gold; was all worked by a living and indefatigable heart, and that heart moved by the Holy Ghost. Pie mentions thirty advantages which contributed to his success: but one more might have been added to his enumeration, which perhaps his holy modesty prevented him from recording, — and that, the thirty-first, was his preaching talents. He was an efiective preacher, as well as an efficient pastor. Under the heads 3 and 26 he makes allusions to his preaching, such as his “familiar moving voice,” his “dealing in fundamentals,” &c.; but they are mere allusions, which give us no full conception of Paxter in the pulpit. His works are the best index to his preaching, for he delivered from the pulpit the greater part of his practical publications; and he says, that, except when diseased or idle, he wrote out all his sermons, and read them as they were written. Plis printed sermons demonstrate that his discourses were distinguished for three great principles of efi’ective preaching — simplicity of style, directness of purpose, and earnestness of manner.

Baxter’s own immortal lines will explain the simplicity of his style in the pulpit —

“I preached, as never sure to prcn<h again,
Aiiil as a dying man to dying men. ’

His language was sound, chaste, and vigorous Saxon, used without the Latin idioms of Owen, 6r the majestic m-gligence of Howe. Ho preached Christ crucified in a crucilied style, without ever di-

?;lii EAXTEn’S MIXISTKY.

verting his hearers by extravajrance, or offending them by coarsci:ess. He never ranged over poetical fields to cnU flowers for his ssrmons. All his tlowers, and many of them are of the loveliest and i’reshest hues, grew out of his subject; and there he let them stand, because they were either medicinal, or nourishing, to his hearers, as well as beautiful to their sight. He preached as feeling that the truths of God were too gi-eat and too glorious in themselves to be covered up with the little trappings of human adornments. He would {IS soon have thought of hanging the rainbow with corals, as of dressing the cross of Christ with tinsel. His eloquence consisted in fit thoughts, and not in rounded sentences. Consummate and ready (ilalectician as he was, he veiy rarely or never introduced metaphysics into his sermons. Sometimes indeed, as has been recorded, lie “would say something profound or abstruse, just to convince his liearcrs that his plain preaching and his simple style were not to be traced either to a feeble intellect, or to superficial knowledge; still b.e was never a metaphysical essayist in the pulpit. He never j)reached a sermon to display his scholastic learning, or his powers of logic; but his aim was ever to win souls to Christ. If fine and elegant sermons are tolerable at all, it is in the press only, when they are to be read as discussions of a subject, and read either as an intellectual exercise or as a discipline of conscience. In the pulpit splendid sermons are splendid sins. They dazzle, and amuse, and astonish, like brilliant fire-works, but they throw daylight on no subject. They draw attention to the preacher, instead of to the gospel. The splendid preacher, like the Pyrotechnist, calculates OJi a dark night among his attendants; and amid the corruscations of llie ])ulpit, his skill and his art are admired and applauded, but Christ is not glorified. If angels weep and devils inock, it is at the pulpit door of a splendid preacher.

His sermons are all distinguislicd for directness of purpose, and singleness of aim. He neither preached about his hearers nor at them, but to them. Even when recording his having preached at court in the days of the Commonwealth, he says that he “preached to Cromwell,” and not before him. Neither did he preach above or besid(! his audience; but they, like the hearers of our Lord, “perceived that he meant them.” It was the boast of the licnjamites that they could shoot their arrows at an oliject to the breadth of a hair; but it seems the pride of many pulpit-archers that they can shoot many degrees above their targets. In their puljut parades tluir shafts are polished, but they pierce none. The y)laiidits of (ho. archer are loud and long; but, after the whole quiver is exhausted, no groans of the wounded are heard, rrying for relief and life. In ijie ministry, every honest preacher must aim at success; and he must i:cver misinterpret the scripture narrative of a certain man who di-cw

Baxter’s ministry. xliii

an arrow at a venture, to justify desultory sermons or aimless preaching. All Baxter’s sermons have a given and intelligible aim, which stood distinctly and prominently before his eye, and that was the heart or the conscience. He aimed at producing impression, and producing while he was yet speaking; he, therefore, never sent his hearers home to decide, but always insisted on “Now or never.”

In preaching, Baxter’s heart burnt itliin him; and while he was speaking, a live coal from the altar fired his sermon with serapiiic fervour. Into his pulpit lie brought all the energies and sj-rapathies of his entire natui-c. He had a large mind, an accute intellect, a melting heart, a holy soul, a kindling eye, and a “moving voice” — and he called on all that was within him to aid him in his preaching. Being deeply earnest himself, he wished his hearers to be deeply earnest. Himself being a burning light, he wished to flash the hallowed fire into the hearts of others. He seems never to have studied action or “the start theatric.” The only teacher that gave him lessons in action and attitude was feeling — real, genuine, holy feeling: and this taught him how to look, how to move, and how to speak. In preaching, as well as in every thing religious, he believed with Paul, that “it is good to be always zealously affected;” and, consequently, that earnest fervid preaching is truly apostolic. Woidd God that there had been in the church of Christ a real uninterrupted succession in the fervour of apostolic preaching, and that the mantle of apostolic Elijalis had been taken up by succeeding Elishas, and by men like Apollos, “an eloquent man, and mighty in the Scripture, who being fervent in spirit, spake and taught diligently the things of the Lord.” The modern mode of preaching is more like Joseph’s coat of many colours, than like Elijah’s mantle, which raised the dead — it has never descended from a chariot of fire, and it is so flimsy, that it gives neither heat nor warmth even to the preacher himself.

Hear I’axter’s own heart-stirring thoughts on the best style of preaching.*” How few ministers do preach with all their might? Or speak about everlasting joy or torment, in such a manner as to make men believe that they are in good sadness. It would make a man’s heart ache to sec a company of dead and drowsy sinners sit under a minister, and not have a word that is like to quicken or awaken them. To think with ourselves, 0 if these sinne7-s were hit convinced and atccikened, they inif/ht yet he converted and live. And alas! we speak so drowsily or gently, that sleepy sinners cannot hear. The blow falls so light, that hard-hearted ))ersons cannot feel it. Slost ministers will not so much as put* out their voice and

* Hefonncd Pastor, Cli:i;>. iv. Sect. C.

xliv BAXTER S THEOLOGY

■Stir up themselves to an earnest utterance. But if they do speak out loud and earnestly, how few do answer it with earnestness of matter? and then the voice doth but little good: the people will take it but for mere bawhng, when the matter doth not correspond. It would grieve me to hear what excellent doctrines some ministers have in hand, and let it die in their hands, for want of close and lively application. What fit matter they have for convincing sinners, and how little they make of it; and what a deal of good it might do, if it were sent home; and yet they cannot or wUl not do it. Oh sirs! how plain, how close, and earnestly should we deliver a message of such a nature as ours is? When the everlasting life or death of men is concerned in it, methinks we are no where so wanting as in this seriousness. There is nothing more unsuitable to such a business than to be slight and dull. A’Tiat! speak coldly for God! and for mens salvation! Can we believe that our people must be converted or condemned, and yet can wo speak in a drowsy tone! In the name of God, brethren, labour to awaken your hearts before you come; and when you are in the work, that you may be fit to awaken the hearts of sinners. Remember that they must be awakened or damned; and a sleepy preacher will hardly awake them.”

CHAPTER III.

BAXTEIt’S TIIEOLOGT.

In writing an essay on Baxter, it would be as wrong to omit his Theology, as it would be to omit philosophy in an essay on Bacon, or epic poetry in one on Milton. It was his theology that brought upon him assaults and onslaughts from all sects and divisions of the mihtant church in his own age. It is on account of his theology that a deep, strong, and general prejudice is cherished and expressed to this day. In fact, it is his theology that constitutes his individuality in History. By Baxter, every divine means Baxter’s theology. As l)y Mclancthon, one means the “Commimes Loci;” and by Calvin, the “Institutes;” so by Baxter, the theological reader means “the A])horism3on Justification,” and the devotional reader means, “the Saint’s Rest,” or “the Reformed Pastor.”

It is not likely that this volume will come into the hands of any one reader who has not some lurking and undefined prejudice against Baxter, and that solely on account of his theology. To render this volume, therefore, useful to such a reader, it is necessary tlut some notice should be taken of Baxter’s Theology.

Baxter’s tiieologv. xlv

In thaological science Baxter was a Thinker. He did not satisfy himself with reading and collecting the thoughts of other divines, but he thought out their thoughts, and he digested tht’ir master doctrines, until they gave him strength and stature, and bucarae part and parcel of his own gigantic mind. Some minds, like the bookworm, penetrate through musty volumes and ponderous tomes; and in their progress they devour syllables, words, and even whole sentences, but they themselves do not grow one cubit in thought. A Hviug, thinking mind is not so. “Whenever the thoughts of others get a lodgement in a healthy mind, as seed in a fertile soil, they produce other thoughts, and these thoughts are that mind’s own thoughts, its own produce, and its own seed for a further harvest. This was the case with Baxter. He roamed through the varied domains of thought, and schoolmen, and divines, and collected the thoughts of others more exclusively and successfully, perhaps, than any theologian of his age: — but he had also thoughts of his own, thoughts which had all the vigour and raciness of the Baxteriau mind, and these thoughts he worked out with a power, and indejjcndency, and a courage, which entitle him to all the distinction of an original Theologian.

In the breadth and the depth of theologj’ as a science, Baxter had no divine of his age that surpassed him: perhaps the truth would warrant the assertion, that in bi-eadth and depth, he had none equal to him. Usher was probably equal to him in the depth of theological dogmatics, and surpassed him in general knowledge. Jekemy Taylor was equal to him in the breadth of scholastic literature, and surpassed him in the brilliancy of amassed thoughts. But in both length and breadth, neither of them sur];)assed him; for every theological reader will allow that Baxter is more profound than Taylor, and more comprehensive than Usher. Among the Nonconformists, also, there were many who excelled him in some things; as Owen in Greek exegesis, Howe in loftiness of thouglu, Goodwin in evangelical savour, and Flavel, in gentle sweetness but none of them e(iualled him in all.

His only real rival among the Nonconformists was Dr Owen and it is a fact that, among religious parties two centui-ies ago, and among the evangelical readers of our own day, Owen was, and has been, a far greater favourite than Baxter. One of the most remarkable circumstances in this fact is that, even with Arminiau divines, the Calvinistic Owen is in far greater acceptance than tha eclectic Baxter. The reason is, that Owen studied the Christology of Redemption more than Baxter; and Baxter studied the Anthropology of salvation more than Owen. Owen exhibits with much jichness and amplitude what Christ did for the redemption of man. Baxter takes all this for granted, and, taking his position at thB xlvi Baxter’s theology,

cross of Christ, addresses a “Call to the Unconverted;” and explains and enforces the obligations of redeemed man to believe the testimony of God concerning his Son. The cold reception of Baxter, and the warm accci)tablGness of Owen, therefore, with Armiiiian divines, are curious phenomena in the philosophy of theological parties. Arniinians have forgiven Owen’s “limited redemption,” on account of his “Glorj’ of Christ,” and “Communion with God;” but they have never forgiven Baxter’s “Personal Election,” for the sake of his “General Redemption,” and his “Saint’s Everlasting Rest.”

The violent unkindness with which Baxter’s theology was treated by the divines of his own age, and of his own communion, is not peculiar to his contemporaries: it is the fate of theological enterprise in all ages. He seems to have suft’ered as much of odium and annoyance from his brethren on account of his doctrinal thoologj-, as lie suffered of reproach and persecution from the Episcopalian Royalists, on account of his ecclesiastical politics. Some indeed who disliked his theolo-n’, opposed it with honesty and plain speaking, chastened by kindness. Such were Blake, of Tamworth, in a postscript attached to his “Covenant Sealed;” Burgess, of Sutton Coldfield, in his “True Doctrine of Justification,” and George IjAwson, the able author of “‘i’heopolitica,” a work whose merit has never yet been appreciated by the theological student. Other opponents treated him with harshness and insulting severity. Such were Kendall in his work on “Perseverance;” Eyre, of Salisburj-, in his “Treatise on Justification;” Crandox, of Eawlej-, in his “Baxter’s Aphorisms exorcised and anthorized;” and especially by Thomas Edwards, in his “P.axterianism liarefaced.” Nor is Jh- Owen to be left out of this last enumeration, as is evident from the close of his tract “On the Death of Christ,” &c. attached to his “^’indiciiE Evangelica;.” The theological character of all his opi)onents is given by Baxter with one stroke of his pen. “The animadverters,” he says, “were of se.veral minds; and what one ajiproved, the other confuted, being farther from each other than any of them were from nic.”

To theologians of any class, it is a great dishonour; but to Protestant theologians, whose very existence is a standing protest against intellectual slavery, it is a flagrant .shame, that they .should cherish in themselves, and i)romotc in each other, a disjwsition to decry any 81 irit that appears among them claiming the right of iliinking with his own mind, seeing with his own eyes, and sj)eaking with his own lips. Why should they act thus? The God of mind, like the God of nature, is the God of variety. In variety there must necessarily be a scries and a collection of individualities; for where, there is no distinctive individuality, Uiere can bo no variety, but

BAXTEH’S TIIEOLOCIY. xlvil

only uniformity. To even’ germ of life “God hath given it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed it3 own body; and every flesh is not the same flesh.” In like manner, to every rational being, “God giveth it a mind and mental powers as it hath pleased him; and to every mind its own form, and its own modo of producing thonglit; and all thought is not the same thought.” Why, then, should theologians wish to destroy this beautiful variety in the intellectual system? Who has given them authority to interfere with this variety? Who are they themselves who claim this right to interft’re? Have they any divine right to difl’er from a man like Baxter, which a man like Baxter has not to difTer from them? Are not they themselves, as well described above, farther from each other, than any of them arc from him?

It is unlovely to see thiidiing men trying to murder every fresh produce of thought. It is unmanly and ungenerous to attempt to quench a man’s reason by wounding his feelings. It is the meanness of dastard imbecility to try to check the progress of his doctrine by Parthian javelins at his othcial position or his professional reputation. Yet this is the odium theolofjiatm. If men, in the affairs of everj’-day life, are to exercise forbearance towards each otlicr because they are in the flesh; the same forbearance is inci’ml)ent on theologians towards their brethren in intellectual struggles, since they themselves see but in a glass darkly. The men who are known in ecclesiastical history as heretics, would probably have never proceeded to the extreme errors with which their names are associated, had it not been for the intellectual tyranny, and the dogmatic despotism, of their contemporary theologians. Had a little intellectual liberty been allowed to the inquiring spirit, and had the new thinker been treated with gentle concern and alTectionate warning, instead of with reserve, rudeness, and barbarity, the powerful mind would have been preserved to the church and to the interests of truth. Spontaneous thoughts and doctrines are tender and vital matters to a thinking mind. AVhen, therefore, any luxuriant thoughts which may sprout from the vigorous roots of a healthy mind are wrenched otf by the hand of a ruthless orthodoxy, the heart’s blood will resiwud to the barbarity, and as in the tree of Virgil,

“QiioB prima solo ruptis radicibus arbos

VelUlur, liuif alio iiqinintur sanguine gut(ae,
£t tenaiu tubu iiiaculnnt.”

One is tempted to ask, which is the most nnehristian and most dangerous to Christianity — the freedom of s]’CCuiation which proves all things that it n-.ay hold the more fast that which is good; or the ungenerous, illiberal, and persecuting spirit with which the

SlviU BAXTER.S TIIEOLOCV.

<i;iponents <reat the raithor of that speculation? Yet, the inquirer is suspected, and the higot is canonized. Why, in the very temple of truth itself, God still speaks “in divers manners: “yea, in the very tones of truth, vcc are to expect harmony, but not unison. The discussion of truth and the agitation of doctrines have always resulted in good to the Church, and to the world. Even the waters <if Bethesda, in the very house of Mercy itself, needed to be agitated nnd disturbed to renew their healing power. It is, therefore, unfeemly in theologians, that when some ‘’ Doctor Angclicus” descends among them, and agitates the settled waters of their dull and stagnant orthodoxy, then always “a great UTultitude of impotent foil;, of blind, halt, and withered,” creep from the “five points” of their “five porches” to brandish their crutches against the intruder, cr to mutter their anathemas against the innovation, instead of welcoming the benignant visitor, sharing in the healthiness of tlic agitation, and becoming healed of whatsoever disease they had. Such an angel was Baxter, and such was the treatment of his wholesome and healing agitation of the waters of orthodoxy; and such will always be the treatment of theological agitations until intellectual liberty become an acknowledged law in the republic of literature.

Baxterianism was treated in the eighteenth century much as Baxter himself was treated by his contemporaries in the seventecntli. In the eighteenth century, ultra-Calvinism was rampant among the Baptist and Independent churches; and even in Episcopal churches, where there was Calvinism at all, it was inclined to ultraism, as may be instanced in Romaine and Toplady. This retreating from Baxterianism to the extreme bordei-s of Calvinism may be accounted for by the pernicious influence which professed Baxterianism exerted <in its avowed adherents. These professed disciples of Baxter gradually forsook the r/a media of their master, and travelled to Armin’ianism; and thence, after some progress through Arianism, ])ecame at last settlers in Soeinianism. From a survey of these painful consequences, many sound Calvinists hated Baxterianism, and asked, “Can any good thing come from Kidderminster? “The result was, that a blind and blinding prejudice against Baxter prevailed every where iai England, and especially in Scotland and “Wales.

A startling instance of the force and extent of this bigotted preju- ‘lice is given in Mr Philip of Maberly’s lively “Essay on th(^ (ienius, Works, and Times of Baxter,” attached to Virtue’s bciiutifiil edition of “Baxter’s I’ractical Works” in three volumes. A private gentleman, who was an elegant scholar and a good theologiai;, teeing the destructive influence of hyi)er-(‘alvinism upon pcrsoTia! piety, as well as upon theological science, resolved to try to soften

BAXTEU S THEOLOGY XilX

ilown the asperities of controversy by introducing among the controversialists the matured thoughts and strong ai’gumcnts of some master-mind in Israel. Agreeably to this method, he contrived to tiike the public by guile, and he published the opinions of “an author of the seventeenth century.”

“It is hardly credible,” says Mr Philip, “but it is true, that so lately as the close of the last century, specimens of the best of I^axtcr’s arguments on the great points at issue between C’alvinists and Arminians, -were brought before the public without his name, that they might be read without prejudice, and make their own impression, before the author could be discovered. This was done bj- Eli Bates, Esq., in a volume entitled, ‘Observations on some important Points in Divinity, &c. &c., extracted from an author of the seventeenth century.’ Even in the second edition of this volume, in 1811, Baxter’s name is not given in the title-page, nor allowed to appear even in the preface. The fact is. Bates was too proud of Baxter’s theology to peril it at once upon his name. He knew his peculiarities, and could not forget the odium tl’.ey once excited.” — “The dexterous bait took. Not a few Calvinists found out that there was an old and powerful writer whom the Arminians could not claim, and would not quote, for themselves, iven although he fought their battle at some of its hottest points, and still more, Arminians discovered that Calvinism did not necessarily limit the call of the Gospel, nor subvert the free agency of man.”

During the eighteenth century, the dissenting ministry in Britain were divided into Calvinists and Baxterians. Through the disre- ]inte into which the Arians and others brought the name of Baxterianism, many divines, who were Baxterians in theological sentiments, renounced the name; and since the commencement of the nineteenth century, they have preferred being called “Moderate, ‘alvinists.” The moderate Calvinists of the present century are in iact only the Baxterians of the preceding age. This change in the name is owing to the influence of the writings of President Edwards, of Andrew Euller, and of Dr AVilliams. The “Fullerism” of the sage of Kettering, and the “Modern Calvinism” of Dr Williams, would, in the eightcentli century, have been called Baxterianism. AV’hcn the disciples of Baxter are called Baxterians, it is not meant that they ever formed a distinct sect, or separate party, in the C’hristian Church. Instead of being, like the Wesleyans for in- •stance, formed into a distinct body, they were, and are, more like the friends of Arminius, scattered among different societies, and found among all communities. Though the denomination “Baxterian,” as the badge of a theological party, is likely to become extinct, the partj’ itself will always exist, as long as Arminianism will have any tendency to Pelagianism, and Calvinism have any bias towards Antinomianism,

1 BAXTElt’S THEOLOGY.

This account of the treatment of Baxter ami his Theology has probaljly excited the reader to wish to know what Baxterianism is.

Taxtcrianism is, in theology-, what eclecticism is in philosophy. It is a method of philosophizing, and, if the word be allowed, of theologizing, which seizes upon theological truth, in whatever system that truth may be foimd; and which gathers and appropriates to itself every truth, simply because it is truth. The theology of Baxter is distinguished from others by four peculiarities, — by its method of .systematizing the doctrines of Revelation; its adoption of universal Redemption in harmony with personal Election; its theory of Justification by faith; and its theoretical and practical assertion of the agency of man in conversion.

The method which Baxter adopted for systematizing the doctrines of theology may be called Triadism, or what he himself calls “Trichotomizing.” The meaning is, that as all the works and dispensations of God are the productions of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, some vestigia Trinitatis, some evidences of triplicity, or some marks of triadism, may be expected to discover themselves in all the phenomena of the divine operations. Those who understand what Alonadism was to Plato and Leibnitz, and what Tetractysm was to the Pythagoreans, will be prepared to comprehend what triadism was to Baxter. It is his starting point, the principle from which hs sots out, the -TTou (jTu, the where-to-stand of Archimedes, or, what the German philosophers call his stand-punkt, his stand-point.

The whole of his Latin Body of Divinity called “JIethodus Theologize,” is arranged according to this method. At the close of his “Counsels to Young Men,” published in 1682, he gives the following account of his method of arrangement in the “Methodus.” “It consists of seventy-three tables, or methodical schemes, pretending to a juster methodizing of Christian verities according to the matter and Scripture, than Is yet extant; furnishing men with necessary distinctions on every subject; shewing that trinity in unity is imprinted on the whole creation, and [that] trichotomizing is the just distribution in naturals and morals.” This trinal method was a decided favourite, it was almost a passion with him. Ho saw triadism every where. As in the Godhead ho saw Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, so he perceived that in God’s relations to tlw world, ho was Creator, Ruler, and Benefactor, — in the soul of man he saw power, will, and intellect, — in the divine dispensations towards man, he saw nature, grace, and glory, — in salvation ho saw the Father as Rector or Ruler, the Sou as Redeemer, the Holy Spirit as Sanctifier, — and in the Grace of the Spirit he saw faith, hope, and charity.

To those who delight to watch some great mind at some imuortant work, the practical application of this method to philosophy and tliOi)lnp:)-, must be as intercstiiifj as to see a painter plying his pencil and colours, or a sculptor his hanuner and chisel. The perspicacity necessary for detecting the trinal “priinalities” as they develope themselves in the phenomena of the universe, the skill to analyse them and place them in proper arrangement, and the extent of knowledge requisite to combine all these triads in one complete whole and one grand unity, demand an intellect that is quick, adroit, and comprehensive. The great drawback from the glory of the whole process is, that the eflort is not so useful as it is clever and amusing. As an intellectual exercise on the plains of si)eculation, it is pleasing not only because it is playful, but because also it is a wholesome discipline in the gjnnnastics of mind. But, as a system of methodizing, it is so hypothetical, so conjectural, and sometimes so pbantastic. But it is of no use either to practical religion or to theological science. The English reader will find how Baxter employs this method, in his “Catholick Theologie,” printed in 1675, but presented more succinctly in his “End of Controversies,” printed in 1091.

Baxter’s doctrine of universal Iledpmption in harmony with personal Election, can scarcely be called Baxterianism. Yet as far as English theology is concerned, it is one of the most distinctive characteristics of Baxterianism. This doctrine was, in fact, the theology of the French Caivinists, especially of Camero, Amyral-Dus, and Dall.eus. Baxter seems to have read the works of the French divines thoroughly, and therefore, upon this subject, English Baxterianism is nothing but what might be called AmjTaldism, or French Cameronianism. In his theory of Redemption, Baxter differed from most, if not from all of the Calvinistic theologians in Entrland.

First, He asserted that the Atonement, or Satisfaction of Christ, did not consist in his suflering the identicil punishment which was due to mankind from an offended law. This he expressed in the language of the schools, by saying that Christ did not suiter the idem threatened in the penaltj-, but the tuntundem, or the equivalent. In plain English, the theory means, that the curses of the law were due to men for their sins, — that Girist became a substitute for men, — that the law could inflict no curse upon an innocent Substitute, — and that the Lord did not suffer the curses of the law, but answered “the end of the law,” by suffering what would have the sr.me effect in moral government, as if he had endured the identical punishment thre;itened.

Secondly, he asserts that Christ rendered this tantimdem, or endured these equivalent sufferings, with the design of furnishing an honourable consideration, or safe ground, for proclaiming pardon lii EAXTr.r/s thkology.

and offering salvation to cveiy human being. This Kiea.ns that Christ died for sins and not for persons.

Thirdly, he asserts, that while the-honefits of this substitutionary atonement are aeeessihle and available to all men for their salvation, they have, in the divine appointment, a special reference to the subjects of personal election; that is, Christ is an atoning Ransom, and is “the Saviour of all men, but specially of them that believe.” This third assertion is the head and front of Baxter’s offending. By admitting universal redemption, he offended the <,’alvinists; and by admitting personal election, he offended the Arminians.

Had Baxter satisfied himself with admitting these two doctrines into his system without attempting to harmonize them, he would have acted the part of a humble believer, and of a philosophic theologian, and would besides have spared himself much polemic obloquy and persecution. Great faith is believing a great truth. He is greatest in faith who believes the greatest truths, and the greatest number of truths; and he is complete in faith who believes all truth. Upon this principle, Baxter believed that he found the two truths, genei-al redemption and personal election, in the Book of truth, and therefore he admitted them into his system of theology. And why not? He was charged with admitting discrepancies and contradictions; and the charge was apparently true. To this charge every believer is subject. Kinety-nino men out of a hun- <’,red believe what arc called contradictions; and the hundredth man is <inc who either doubts every thing, or examines nothing. These two principles are not contradictions because men call them so: they may, in the realities of the case, be verities in the most perfect harmony, though our feculties are not adequate to the task of reconciling them. The office of Keason, in reference to all truths presented to it, is to examine them and believe them. It is never called upon first to reconcile them, or, if it fail in that, then to reject them. In no portion of the Scripture does God enjoin upon his servants the obligation to harmonize his truths; for, that is his work, and not theirs: it is theirs to believe that he has harmonized them before they were revealed and announced.

Jiaxter attempted to reconcile these two doctrines by a theory much in vopue in his time, of Common Grace and Special Grace: but that theorj’ was as inconsistent and contradictory as that of Universal Rc’dcmption and Special Salvation was supposed to be. ‘J’hat theory was, that if any man made a proper use of common Grace, God wuuld then give l)im saving Grace. Baxter illustrates this with the metaphor of a house with two stories; and says, that if man would use common Grace to come up the first flight of stairs, God would give him saving Grace to ascend the second flight, and

EAXTEU’S THEOLOGY. liii

tlnis enter the hijrher (lei)artnu’nt. He does not say what this common grace is, why it is called common; nor does he distinguish it i’roni what was afterwards called natural ability, which, as an element essential to acconntableness, is a matter of Justice, and not of Grace. Indeed, the whole In-pothesis seems to be proposed rather to justify the damnation of the sinner than to aid him in his salvation. It must therefore be confessed that Baxter, in his eftbrts at reconcilijition, did not meet the question fairly and fully. His theory is, that all the elect are sure to be saved; and that those who are non-elect may he saved, if they believe the Gospel. The question which he had to solve was this: Will any of the non-elect believe, and be actually saved? This question he could not meet, because the Scriptures record no instance of such a circumstance.

This difficulty is produced, not by the evidence of the two truths, Universal Kedemption and Personal Election, as independent doctrines, but by the attempt to reconcile them. The reasoning of liaxter, stripped of its scholastic form, would probably be embodied in the following statement: That the number of the finally saved, who will be at the right hand of Christ in the last day, is foreknown, and therefore fixed, is indisputable; and that ‘Iirist, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man, and for the sins, not of the elect only, but also for the sins of the whole world, and that the call to accept his salvation is sincerely adilressed to all men, are equally indisputable: why then not admit both V ‘i’heologians who believe in general Providence, believe also in special Providence. “What is special Providence but the application of the principles and means of general Providence to special oases? It is thus that “all things” in general Providence “work together for good,” special/// “to them that love God.” In the. same manner, a theologian may admit Universal Redemption and Special Itedemption, since Special Redemption is only the application of the benefits and provisions of general redemption to special e.T«es; it is Christ being generally the Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe.

In line, liaxter believed that a certain and fixed number of saved men was determined in the deci’ce about Redemption, without any reference to their faith as the ground of their election. Here he was a decided Calvinist of the Dordt School. He also believed that the divine decrees contemplate no Reprobation of any, but a universal redemption for all who will accept it, since Christ died for all. llcrc he was a decided Arminian. He admitted both doctrines to be tnie, and this gave to his theology tlic name of Baxterian.

A third distinctive peculiarity of Baxter’s theologj- was his theory of J ustification by Faith. His theory was, that in justification of liv Baxter’s theology.

a sinner, it is not the righteousness of Christ that is imputed to him, but his Civn actual iaith. In explaining his theoiy, it is necessary to state the hypothesis which he had to attack. The majority of the C’alvinistie divines of his day believed in, what was called the imputation of Christ’s active righteousness to the believer. It was presented in this manner. The law said “Do this and live.” The sinner could not “do this” perfectly; therefore he must die. Jesus Christ “did this,” or obeyed the law instead of the sinner, both as his substitute and as his representative, and therefore the law could not again say to the sinner “do this,” since it had been done for him by his representative. In this theory the sinner is accounted as if he had obeyed the law, /. e. what Christ had done as his representative is accounted as having been done by himself, and therefore the law coidd not ask him twice. This opened a way direct to all the heights, moors, and bogs of Antinomianism; for the inference was unavoidable that, if Christ rendered to the law all the active obedience which was due to it from the believer, the law could not ask him for any more obedience; that is, Christ obeyed the law that the believer might not obey it. To hedge off this tremendous precipice some divines introduced the hypothesis of a distinction between the law as a Covenant of Works and as a Rule of Life, which they borrowed from Cocceiu.’?.

To counteract the above opinions, Baxter sought to establish, in harmony with many of the Fathers, and of the divines of the Reformation, that, in justification, the active righteousness of Christ was not at all imputed, but only the faith of the believer in the Righteousness of Christ. In this statement he deemed himself firmly sustained by the express language of Scripture, and by the literal exegesis of the passages in which “faith” was found in connexion with “justification,” — e. g. Gen. xv. 6; Rom. iv. 3, 5, 9, 23-24. All these passages, he argued, shew that the doctrine of Paul was, that it was “faith,” and not the active righteousness of Christ, that was imputed for justification. In opposition to this interpretation, Dr Owen and others argued, that by the word “fiith” here, the Apostle meant the object of faith, viz. the righteousness of Christ. Baxter contended that such a gloss was against all honest exegesis of the passages, and against the logical argument of the Apostle. “If it be not faith indeed,” he says, “that the Apostle meaneth, the context is so far from relieving our understandings, that it contributeth to our unavoidable deceit and ignorance. Read over the texts, and put but ‘Christ’s righteousness’ every where instead of the ‘faith,’ and sec what a scandalous parai)hrase you will make.” This was honest and manly dealing, and warranted by the context. As an example of this absurdity, read Rom, iv. 9, as Baxter suggests —” Wc say that the object of his fajth, the righteousness of

BAXTERS THEOLOGY. Iv

Christ, was coiuited to him for righteousness.” This “object of his faith could not be Ids, until it was imputed to him; but it is evident that he exercised /n’s faith before the imputation. Besides, a:5 if the Apostle wished to speak more explicitly, he savs, in verse 22, that by “faith,” he did not mean the “object of faith,” but the act of “believing” in him, “who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead.” Faith is believing. Justifying faith is believing a justifying truth. God informed Abraham that all the nations of the earth should be blessed, /. e. pardoned and saved on account of his seed, the ilessiah. Abraham witnessed this saving and justifying truth, and his beUeving it in the saving character of his Seed, was counted to him for righteousness, or a justifpng faith. It was a proper, a just, and a right thing that Aljraham should believe God’s testimony concerning the Alessiah, and therefore it was imputed to him as a right thing, or as a righteousness. The Owenian divines objected that in this shewing, faith was an act, and therefore a work, which would imply justification by -works. And that such an act or work implied merit, and therefore did not, like the gospel justification, exclude boasting. It would be now too tedious to enter fully upon these objections. Let it suilice just to state that the objection is a play upon the word “work” — that believing in a substitute is no “work of law” — that faith is only an act of compliance with the gospel method of justification, and that no human being is ever conscious that there is any merit vrhatever in believing a true statement.

The fourth, and which was regarded by some as the most offensive peculiarity of Baxter’s theology, was his doctrine that every sinner has a distinct agency of his own to exert in the process of his conversion. Among his works there is no separate treatise on human ability or free agency; but in all his works he either asserts or assumes that every man has power to do his duty. The most lengthened investigation of the ditncukies of this question is found in Iiis “Catholic Theologie,” in the Dialogues on origmal shi, free v.i.l, and eSfeetual grace. In “the Sixth day’s Conference on natural corruption and impotency,” he puts to his antagonist the following questions, which are all answered by being conceded.

1. Have not wicked iiici: natural life? or are they dead?

2. Have they not natural powci’s or faculties for natural acts?

3. Is it not the same natural faculty of intellection by which we imderstand and believe things common and (things) spiritual? And the same natural faculty of wiliing, by which Ave love or will them both?

4. (This is about common grace).

5. Is there any nation or people in the world that are not obliged

lvi BAXTERS TIIIiOLOGV.

bj’ Got! to use some means towai-ds their own conversion, and t forbear their sin?

6. Is there not sueli a thing in the world as a true power to di) something that never is done, and forbear what is not forborne?

Tills puzzles the antagonist, but Baxter proeeeds to demonstrate it: and then on “the Eleventh day’s Conference” he rallies him and asks — “Would you not have your wife, children, and servants taught that it is their duty to love, honour, and obey you? and your neighbours to deal justly with you? and the rulers to i)rotect you, and the judges to do you justice?”

The antagonist replies — “I speak only of religious, and not civil duties.”

Answer. “You are indififerent, it seemeth, as to the interests of God’s honour and man’s salvation. Let those alone, so be it your own interest be secured. Duty to you must be preached, but nut to God. But would you not have them taught to do you service as to the Lord, and as such as from him shall have punishment and reward? Should not all be done to the glory of God?”

All intellectual philosophers avow the doctrine that man has power to command his owti attention; and no theologian can dispute it. This power to comnumd his own attention, or “power over his own will,” in man, is called, in doctrinal theology, “the self-determining power of the will.” Baxter assumed this in all his writings, and in all his sermons, and especially in the two works embodied in this little volume.

The “Call to the Unconverted” takes for granted, in every page, that man “hatk power over his own will.” Indeed, no work has ever been written on conversion, and no work can be written on the subject, which does not imply that man acts voluntarily, whether in accepting or in rejecting the calls of the Gospel. The leading doctrines in the “Call to the Unconverted” are the following : — l’hat the wicked must either turn and be converted, or perish, — that the wicked, whoever they are, shall be saved if they will oidy turn, — that God is pleased in their conversion, but displeased in their danmation, — that (rod is shicu’C in this pleasure, and has confirmed it by oath, — that (iod importunes men to be converted, — that he reasons with the wicked, and asks them to account for their non-conversion, — and that the blame of their being unconverted is not to be attached to any secret decree in God, but entirely to their own obstinacy.

It is true that his views of free-agency were not very dear or di,^- tlnct; but the only thing that clouded them was the misty theory of common grace and saving grace. ‘J’his is evident from the niannor in which he meets the following objections to the wicked being called to turn : —

Baxter’s theology. lvii

“Object. — But we cannot convert ourselves till God convert us; wo can do nothing without his grace. It is not in him that willeth, nor in him that runneth, but in God that sheweth mercy.”

“Ans. 1. — God hath two degrees of mercy to shew; the mercy of conversion first, and the mercy of salvation last. The latter he will give to none but those that will and run, and hath promised to them only. The former is to make them willing that were unwilling; and though your own willingness and endeavours deserve not his grace, yet your wilful refusal deserveth that it should be denied you. Your disability is your very unwillingness itself, which excuseth not your sin, but maketh it the greater. You could turn, if you were but truly willing; and if your wills themselves were so corrupted that nothing but effectual grace will move them, you have the more. cause to seek that grace, and yield to it, and do what you can in the use of means, and not neglect it, or set against it. Do what you are able first, and then complain of God for denying you grace, if you have cause.”

“Object. — But you seem to intimate all the while that man hath free-will.”

“Axs. — The dispute about free-will is beyond your capacity. I shall therefore trouble you with no more but this about it. Your will is naturally a free, that is, a self-determining faculty; but it is viciously inclined, and backward to do good; but that is the wickedness of it which deserveth punishment.”

Whatever may be our sentiments concerning Baxter’s theory of human agency in conversion, it is evident that Dr Owen could not, on his principles, write a “Call to the Unconverted.” This theory gave a character to Baxter’s mind and to Baxter’s preaching. It is probable that it was the very characteristic that arrested the attention of Archbishop Usher, who suggested to him his adaptation to write works of this description. In the preface he gives a detailed account of Usher’s couviTsation with him on the importance of producing such a work. The work was not commenced till after the death of the venerated Archbishop, and was published on December 11, 1657. It is introduced by a very serious address “to all unsanctitied persons who shall read this book, especially my hearers in the parish of Kidderminster.” Of its remarkable and extensive usefulness, he gives the following account; —

*’ God hath blessed it with unexpected success beyond all the rest that I have written, except the ‘Saint’s Kest.’ In a little, more than a year, there were about twenty thousand of them printed by my own consent, and about ten thousand since, besides many thousands by stolen impressions, which j)oor men stole for lucre’s sake. Through God’s mercy, I have had inforaiation of almost whole households converted by this small book, which I set so light

IvUi Baxter’s theology.

by: and, as if all this in England, Scotland, and Ireland, were not mercy enough to me, God since I was silenced, hath sent it over on his message to many beyond the seas. For when Mr Elliot had printed all the Bible in the Indian’s language, he next transhited this my ‘Call to the Unconverted.’ * * * Mr Stoop, the pastor of the French church in London, being di-iven hence by the displeasure of his superiors, was pleased to translate it into elegant French, and print it in a veiy curious letter: “and I hope it will not be unprofitable there, nor in Germany, where it is printed in Dutch.”

Since the death of Baxter it has been translated into almost all the European languages, and has gone through very numerous and very large editions, both in England and in America. The instances of its usefulness, known and unknown, ai-e a number which 110 man can number.

The other work contained in this volume is written on the same theological principles as the “Call to the Unconverted,” and is intituled, “Making light of Christ.” This latter work is the substance of a sermon preached at St Lawrence, Jewry, where the Kev. lilr Vines was pastor. %he brief history of this sermon supplies an index to the great popularity of Baxter as a preacher. When he had to preach this sermon at St Lawrence, Jewry, he sent word to Mr ^^ines to secure seats or ])ews for Lord Brogliill and the Earl of Suffolk, “with whom he was to go in the coach.” “Yet,” he says, “when I came, the crowd had so little respect to persons, that they (the said Lords) were fain to go home again, because they could not come within hearing. The old Earl of Warwick, who stood in the lobby, brought me home again. And Mr Vines himself was fain to get up into the pulpit, and sit behind me, and I stood between his legs: which 1 mention, that the reader may understand that verse in my poem concerning him, which is printed, where I say, that ’ at once one pulpit held us loth.’”

The full title of the sermon is, “The Causes and Danger of slighting Christ and his Gosi)el: or, Eternal Salvation made Light by multitude’s to whom it is freely offered.” It was first preached at Kidderminster, and afterwards in London. The whole discourse abounds with solemn and stirring passages. To his readers he says in the preface — “Should you but seriously read, and well consider as you read, till your heart be scnsililc what a sin it is to make light of Christ and his salvation, and till the Lord that bought jou. be advanced in the esteem and alfections of your soul, — this will fulfil my desires.” In these desires the writer of this Essay, and the Editor and I’ublisher of these voliunesof “Tlic I’uritan Divines,” sincerely and devoutly join.