Select practical writings of Richard Baxter : with a life of the author
(/ y 11.1 c ^ I'lJ/lislird by Jh/7-nf L-/'^<:^..V'-^^'Ji.n SELECT PRACTICAL WRITINGS OF RICHARD BAXTER, WITH A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR, BY LEONARD BACON, PASTOR or THE FIRST CHURCH IN NEW HAVEN. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOLUME I. SECOND EDITION WITH ADDITIONS. NEW HAVEN : PUBLISHED BY DURRIE & PECK. 1836. t Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1834, by DuRRiE & Peck, in the Clerk's office, of the District Court of Connecticut. Printed by Hezekiah Howe <S: (>>. PREFACE In making the follqwing selections, I have, for obvious reasons, omitted those works of this venerated autlior which are famihar to the Christian pubhc ; and have been guided by a desire to provide a book suited to the wants of private Christians, and of Christian famihes. Had it been my object to afford the theological scholar the means of judging respecting Baxter's opinions and his modes of reasoning on disputed subjects in divinity, these two volumes would have been made up of very different materials. The writings of Baxter are distinguished, even above those of his cotemporaries, by the peculiarities of the man and of the age in which he lived. Those only who know what the author was, what were the vicissitudes through which he passed, what were the changes and commotions of the times in which he lived, and what were the men with whom he had to do, — can enter fully into the spirit of his writings. It is simply with a view of helping the un- learned reader to a knowledge of the man and of the age, that the Life of Baxter has been prefixed to this selection from bis works. Literary men and theologians will find the more extensive and la- bored work of the late Mr. Orme on the same subject, much better adapted to their use. When I began the preparation of these volumes, I expected to see the end of them much earlier. But I thank God that while I was studying the writings and the history of tliis eminent saiiit, and was seeking to imbibe that spirit which made him so successful a 4 PREFACE. pastor, my studies were interrupted by a signal revival of the work of God among the people of my charge. Whatever delay has attended the publication, has been caused by this happy inter- ruption. Now reader, let these devout and searching treatises have that attention which they deserve. Read to learn what truth is, and to receive the truth in love ; to learn what duty is, and to do it. New Havkn, Oct. 28, 1831. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Grateful for the favor with which these volumes have been re- ceived, I have endeavored to make them in this second edition more worthy of that favor. The Life has been carefully revised, and has been somewhat enlarged by more copious extracts from Baxter's own records. Additions have been made to the selections, amount- ing in all to nearly three hundred pages. Nkw Haven, Dec. 9, 1834. CONTENTS OP THE FIRST VOLUME. THE LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. Page. Part I. From his birth, to the beginning of the civil war in 164r, . 9 Part II. From the beginning of the war, to the time of his leavn.g the army, 5G Part III. From his return to Kidderminster, to the year 1660, . 79 Part IV. Frotn the year 1660, to the year 1665, ... 138 Part V. From the year 1665, to his death, .... 18B THE RIGHT METHOD FOR A SETTLED PEACE OF CONSCIENCE AND SPIRITUAL COMFORT. Epistle Dedicatory, ....... 229 To the Poor in Spirit, ....... 233 The Case to be Resolved, ...... 242 Direct. I. Discover the cause of your trouble,. 243 Direct. II. Discover well how much of your trouble is from melancholy or from outward crosses, and apply the remedy accordingly,. 244 Direct. III. Lay first in your understanding sound and deep apprehensions of God's nature. ..... 248 Direct. IV. Get deep apprehensions of the gracious nature and office of the Mediator, ........ 253 Direct. V. Believe and consider the full sufficiency of Christ's sacrifice and ransom for all,. 255 Direct. VI. Apprehend the freeness, fullness and universality of the law of grace, or conditional grant of pardon and salvation to all men,. 255 Direct. VII. Understand the difference between general grace and special; and between the possibility, piobability, conditional certainty, and abso- lute certainty of your salvation; and so between the several degrees of comfort that these may affiard, ..... 256 Direct. VIII. Understand the nature of saving faith,. 262 Direct. IX. Next, perform the condition, by actual believing,. 265 Direct. X. Next, review your own believing, and thence gather farther assurance,. ... 269 Direct. XI. Make use, in trial, of none but infallible signs,. 278 Direct. XII. Know that assurance of justification cannot be gathered from the least degree of saving grace, ..... 293 Direct. XIII. The first time of our receiving or acting saving grace, cannot ordinarily be known, ....... 300 Direct. XIV. Know that assurance is not the ordinary lot of true christians, but only of a few of the strongest, most active, watchf^ul and obedient, .304 Direct. XV. Know that even many of the stronger and more obedient, are yet unassured of salvation for want of assurance to persevere,. 310 Direct. XVI. There are many grounds to discover a probability of saving grace when we cannot yet discover a certainty; and you must learn, next to the comforts of general grace, to receive the comforts of the probability of special grace, before you expect or are ripe for the comforts of assurance, 312 Direct. XVII. Improve your own and other's experiences to strengthen your probabilities, ........ 316 Direct. XVIII. Page. Page. DiRKCT. XXII. Spend more time and care about your duty than your comforts, and to get, and exercise and increase grace than to discern the certainty of it, 337 Direct. XXIII. Think not that those doubts and troubles which are caused by disobedience will be ever well healed but by the healing of that disobedience, 342 Direct. XXIV. Content not yourself with a cheap religiousness, and to serve God with that which costs you little or nothing; and lake every call to costly duty or suliering for Christ, as a price put into your hand for advan- cing your comforts, ....... 370 Direct. XXV. Study the great art of doing good; and let it be yonr every day's contrivance, care and business, how to lay out all your talents to the greatest advantage, ....... 378 Direct. XXVI. Trouble not j^our soul with needless scruples, nor make yourself more work than God has made you, . . . 384 Direct. XXVII. When God hath discovered your sincerity to you, fix it in your memory; and leave not your soul open to new apprehensions, except in case of notable declinings or gross sinning, . . . 397 Direct. XXVIII. Beware ofperplexing misinterpretations of sciptures, pro- vidences, or sermons, ...... 402 Direct. XXIX. Distinguish carefully between causes of doubting, and causes of mere humiliation and amendment, .... 409 Direct. XXX. Discern whether your doubts are such as must be cured by the consideration of general or of special grace; and be sure that, when you lose the sight of certain evidences, you let not go probabilities ; or at the worst, when you are beaten from both, and judge yourself graceless, yet lose not the comforts of general grace, ..... 444 Direct. XXXI. In all pressing necessities take advice from your pastors, 448 Direct. XXXII. Understand that the height of a christian life, and the great- est part of your duty, lieth in a loving delight in God and a thankful and cheerful obedience to his will, ...... 459 THE CHARACTER OF A SOUND, CONFIRMED CHRISTIAN. Preface, ......... 469 To the Reader, ........ 471 The Characters of a strong, confirmed Christian. 1. He liveth by such a faith of unseen things that governeth his soul instead of sight, 478 2. He hath cogent reasons for his religion, .... 479 3. Heseeth the well-ordered frame of sacred verities, and the integral parts in their harmony or concert; and setteth not up one truth against another, 480 4. He adhereth to ihem, and practiceth them, from an inward con-natural principle, called " the Divine nature," and " the Spirit of Christ," . 481 5. He serveth not God for fear only, but for love, . . . 483 6. He loveth God, 1. Much for his goodness to himself 2. And more for his goodness to the church. 3. And most of all for his essential goodness and perfection, ........ 484 7. He taketh this love and its expressions, for the heart and height of all his religion, ........ 485 8. He hath absolutely put his soul, and all his hopes into the hand of Christ, and livelh by faith upon him as his Savior, .... 487 9. He taketh Christ as the Teacher sent from God, and his doctrine for the truest wisdom, and learneth of none but in subordination to him, . 488 10. His repentance is universal and eifectual, and hath gone to the root of every sin, ........ 489 11. He loveth the light, as it sheweth him his sin and duty, and is willing to know the worst of sin, and the most of duty, .... 490 12. He desireth the highest degree of holiness, and hath no sin which he had not rather leave than keep, and had rather be the best, though in poverty, than the greatest in prosperity, ..... 492 13. He liveth upon God and heaven as the end, reward, and motive of his life, 493 14. He counteth no cost or pains too great for the obtaining it, and hath no- thing so dear which he cannot part with for it, - . . 494 15. He is daily exercised in the practice of self-denial, as (next to the love of God) the second half of his religion, .... 496 16. He hath mortified his fleshly desires, and so far mastereth his senses and appetite, that they make not his obedience very uneasy or imeven, . 499 CONTENTS. i Page. 17. He preferrelh the means of his holiness and Iiappiness, incomparably be- fore all provisions and pleasures of the flesh,. 501 18. He is crucified lo the world, and tlie world to him, by the cross of Christ, and contemneth it through the belief of the greater things of the life to come, ......... 502 19. He foreseeth the end in all his ways, and judgeth of all things as they will appear at last, ........ 503 20. He liveth upon God alone, and is content with his favor and approbation, without the approbation and favor of men, .... 505 21. He hath absolutely devoted himself, and all thathe hath, to God, to be used according to his will, ....... 507 22. He hath a readiness to obey, and a quick and pleasant compliance of his will to the will of God, 508 23. He delighteth himself more in God, and heaven, and Christ, and holiness, than in all the world ; religion is not tedious and grievous to him,. 509 24. He is conscious of his own sincerity, and assured of his justification, and title to everlasting joys, ...... 513 25. This assurance doth not make him more careless and remiss, but increas- eth his love and holy diligence, ..... 514 26. Yet he abhorreth "pride as the first-born of the devil, and is very low and vie in his own eyes, and can easily endure to be low and vile in the eyes of others, ......... 515 27. Being acquainted with the deceitfulness of the heart, and the methods of temptation, he liveth as among snares, and enemies, and dangers, in a con- stant watch; and can conquer many and subtle, and great temptations (through grace), ....... 516 28. He hath counted what it may cost him to be saved, and hath resolved not to stick at suffering, but to bear the cross and be conformed to his crucified Lord, and hath already in heart forsaken all for him,. 517 29. He is not a Christian only for company or carnal ends, or upon trust of other men's opinions, and therefore would be true to Christ, if his rulers, his teachers, his company, and all that he knoweth should forsake him, 520 30. He can digest the hardest truths of Scripture, and the hardest passages of God's providence, ....... 521 31. PagP. 46. He is faithful and laborious in his outward trade or calling, not out of cov- etousness, but obedience to God, ..... 539 47. He is very conscionable in the duties of his several relations, in his family or other society, as a superior, inferior, or equal,. 540 48. He is the best subject, whether his rulers be good or bad, though infidel and ungodly rulers may mistake, and use him as the worst,. 540 49. His trust in God doth overcome the fear of man, and settle him in a con- stant fortitude for God, ...... 545 50. Judgment and zeal conjunct are his constitution; his judgment kindleth zeal, and his zeal is still judicial, ..... 546 51. He can bear the infirmities of the weak, and their censures and abuses of himself; and requiteth them not with uncharitable censure or reproach, 548 52. He is a high esteemer of the unity of Christians, and abhorreth the prin- ciples, spirit, and practices of division, .... 549 53. He seeketh the church's unity and concord, not upon partial, unrighteous, or impossible, but upon the possible, righteous terms here mentioned, 556 54. He is of a mellow, peaceable spirit ; not masterly, domineering, hurtful, unquiet, or contentious, ...... 560 55. He most highly regardeth the interest of God, and men'.s salvation in the world; and regardeth no secular interest of his own, or any man's, but in subserviency thereto, ....... 563 56. He is usually hated for his holiness by the wicked, and censured for his charity and peaceableness by ihe factious and the weak; and is moved by neither from the way of truth, ...... 566 57. Though he abhor ungodly, soul-destroying ministers, yet he reverenceth the office as necessary to the church and world ; and highly valueth the holy, faithful laborers, ....... 667 58. He hath great experience of the providence, truth, and justice of God, to fortify him against temptations to unbelief, .... 569 59. Though he greatly desireth lively affections and gifts, yet he much more valueth the three essential parts of holiness, 1. A high estimation in the un- derstanding, of God, Christ, holiness, and heaven, above all that be set in any competition. 2. A resolved choice and adhesion of the will, to these above and against all competitors. 3. The seeking them first, in the en- deavors of the life. FROM HIS BIRTH TO THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR IN 1641. The life of Richard Baxter extends over a little more than three quarters of a century. And perhaps in all the history of England, no period of the same length can be selected more abundant in memorable events, or more critical in its bearings on the cause of true liberty and of pure Christianity, than the seventy- six years between the birth of Baxter and his death. The Reformation of the English Church had been begun about the middle of the preceding century, by a wayward and arbitrary monarch, to gratify his own passions. Henry VIII. renounced the supremacy of the pope, only that he might be pope himself within the limits of his own dominions. He dissolved the monasteries, because their immense pqssessions made them worth plundering. He made the hierarchv 'independent of Rome, and dependent on himself, because he would admit no power co-ordinate with that of the crowTi. And though, in effecting these changes, he was under the necessity of employing the agency of some true reform- ers, who shared in the spirit of Wickliffe, and Luther, and Calvin, nothing was farther from his design than the intellectual or moral renovation of the people. On his dealli, in 1547, an amiable prince, a boy in his tenth year, became nominally king of England ami head of the English church. During the short reign of Edward VI. the refonnation was carried on with a hearty good will, by Cranmer and his asso- VOL. I. 2 10 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. elates in the regency. The Bible in the Enghsh language, which, having been published by authority in the preceding reign, had been soon afterwards, by the same authority, suppressed, was now again placed by royal proclamation in the parish churches. Wor- ship was performed in a language "understanded of the people." The liturgy, first translated and established in the second year of this reign, was revised and purged from some of its imperfections three years afterwards, and then assumed nearly the form under which it is now used in the churches of the English Establishment and in the Episcopal churches of America. The design of the leading reformers in this reign was to carry the work of reformation as far as the circumstances in which they were placed would permit. They had their eye on the more perfect reformation of foreign churches ; they were in the full confidence of foreign reformers ; and their aim was to bring back the Church of England not only to the purity of scriptural doctrine, but to the simplicity of scriptural worship, and the strictness of scriptural discipline. In pursuance of this aim, foreign divines of eminence, hearty dis- ciples of the Swiss reformers, in discipline as well as in doctrine, were made professors of theology in both the universities, and were placed in other stations of honor and influence. The progress of the work was hindered by the influence of a powerful Popish party, including the heir presumptive to the throne, many of the bishops, the mass of the clergy, and perhaps the numerical majority of the people ; and its consummation was defeated by the premature death of the king in the sixth year of his reign. The crown and the ecclesiastical supremacy then devolved upon the "bloody Mary," in the year 1553. This princess inherited a gloomy temper ; and the circumstances of her early life, while they inspired her with a bigoted attachment to the religion of Rome, co-operated with that religion to aggravate all that was unfortunate in her native disposition. Under her government, a few months was time enough to undo all that had been done towards a refor- mation in the two preceding reigns. It was found that the king's supremacy was as able to bring back the old doctrines and the old worship, as it had been to bring in the new. All King Edward's laws about religion were repealed by a single act of an obsequious parliament. A solemn reconciliation was efiected with the See of Rome, and was ratified in the blood of an army of martyrs. Many of the active friends of the reformation, foreseeing the tem- pest, saved their lives by a timely flight to foreign countries. But God made the wrath of man to praise him-; for the six years of this reign contributed more, perhaps, than all the labors of Cranmer and his associates, during the six years of Edward, to open the eyes and quicken the sluggish minds of the people, and to inspire them LIFE OF RICHARD RAXTER. 11 at once with a warm affection for the Protestant faith, and with a jhearty detestation of Popery. The commencement of the reign of EHzabeth, in 1558, is the era of the estabhshment of the reformation in England. This queen, of all the children of Henry VIII., inherited most largely the spirit of her father. She was against the pope, because the pope's supremacy was at variance with her own. She was against the spirit of Protestantism, because she saw that its tendency was to make the people think for themselves. It soon appeared that, under her auspices, the reformation, which during the reign of Ed- ward had been progressive, and had been represented by its patrons as only begun, was to be progressive no longer. Those who had hoped that the new government would take up the work of reform where Cranmer and his associates had left it, and would bring the ecclesiastical affairs of the kingdom still nearer to a primitive sim- plicity in doctrine and in order, found that the queen's march of im- provement was retrograde, and that the church, under her suprem- acy, was to be carried back towards the stately and ceremonious superstition of Romanism. But the popular mind had begun to take an interest in these matters. So many religious revolutions, treading on each other's heels, had wakened thought and inquiry, even among those who were generally regarded as having only to obey the dictation of their superiors. To have suffered under Queen Mary, for dissenting from the established faith and order, was extolled under Queen Elizabeth as meritorious ; and the peo- ple began to apprehend that religious truth and duty might be something independent of the throne and the parliament; something which law could not fix, nor revolution overturn. Those who had seen so many burnt, and so many banished, for particular religious opinions, and who understood that the opinions then proscribed were now triumphant, were led to inquire what those opinions were, and on what basis they rested. Thus the public mind was ripening for a real reformation. In these circumstances, there sprung up a new party, the party of the Puritans. Under King Edward, there had been dissen- sion among the reformers, some wishing to go faster and farther than others. The question related chiefly to certain vestments of the Popish priesthood, and the controversy was, whether they should be retained or disused. By some it was deemed important to continue the use of those garments in the administration of public worship, at least for a while, lest, by too sudden and violent a de- parture from all old usages and forms, the people might become unnecessarily and inveterately prejudiced against the reformation. By others those vestments were disapproved as relics of Popish idolatry ; and the disuse of them was insisted on, inasmuch as the 12 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. people had been taught to regard them with a supersthious feel- ing, and to believe that they were essential to the validity of all religious administrations. What was at first little else than a question of expediency, soon became a question of conscience. Dr. Hooper, one of the most zealous and efficient leaders of the reformation, was imprisoned several months by his brethren, for refusing to accept the bishopric of Gloucester unless he might be consecrated without putting on the Popish habits. That difficulty was at last compromised by the mediation of the Swiss reformers with Hooper, on the one hand, and of the king and council with the ruling prelates, on the other ; and Ridley and Hooper after- wards labored with the same zeal for the truth, and at last suffered with the same patience the pains of martyrdom. During the per- secution in Queen Mary's time, the controversy was revived in another form. Of the exiles who fled to the Protestant countries on the continent, many admired, and were disposed to copy, the discipline and worship of the reformed churches ; while others insisted on adhering to the letter of King Edward's service-book. At Frankfort, the congregation at first agreed, with entire unanimity, on certain modes of worship adapted, as they thought, to their ne- cessities ; but afterwards, a new company having arrived, who brought with them a zealous attachment to the liturgy, a schism arose, and a considerable portion of the congregation, with the ministers, left the field to the new comers, and took up tlieir resi- dence in Geneva. On returning to their native country, many of those who had approved the constitution of the Swiss and French Protestant churches, exerted themselves to promote a further refor- mation in England, or at least to secure some liberty in regard to matters which were acknowledged to be indifferent. Their influ- ence as individuals, some of them personally connected with men high in rank and authority, their influence in the universities, where some of them occupied important stations, and their influ- ence by means of the press, was employed to promote, by all lawful means, greater purity of doctrine and of discipline in the Church of England. But, as has already been intimated, unifor- mity, the imposing idea of a whole nation united in one church, with one faith and one form of worship, and subjected to a splendid hierarchy, with the monarch at the head of it, — 'was the idol to which the queen and her counsellors were willing to sacrifice both peace and truth. Other matters besides habits and ceremonies were soon brought into debate. The entire constitution of the English church was called in question. Thus the breach grew wider. It was evident that the Puritans were not to be put doAvn at a word ; for, to say nothing of the merits of their cause, they were the most learned divines, the most powerfld preachers, and LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER, 13 the most able disputants of the age. Thomas Cartwri<j;ht, Marga- ret professor of divinity in the university of Cambridge, of whom Beza said that " there was not a more learned man under the sun," led the van in the dispute against prelacy. The venerable Miles Coverdale, who, having assisted Tindal in the translation of the Bible, had been bishop of Exeter under King Edward, and had hardly escaped from death under Queen Mary, was a Puritan, and as such died poor and neglected. Meanwhile few preachers could be found to occupy the places of the ejected and silenced Puritans. J\ien without learning and without character were made clergymen ; but neither the orders of the queen in council, nor the imposition of episcopal hands, could qualify them to be pastors. The people, especially the thinking and the sober people of the middhng classes, when they saw the difference between the pious and zealous preachers who were deprived for non-conformity, and the ignorant and sometimes profligate readers who were put in their places, called the latter "dumb dogs," (in allusion to the language of scripture,) and were the more ready to follow their persecuted teachers. And those, ol every rank, who had begun to experience any thing of the power of Christian truth, and to love the doctrines and duties of the gospel, and who desired to see sinners converted by the preaching of God's word, sympathized deeply with these suffering ministers, and, out of respect ta their evangelical character, were strongly disposed to favor and to adopt the principles for which they suffered. Thus, while Puritanism was making constant prog- ress in the community, it was associated, almost from its origin, with serious and practical piety ; and it soon came to pass that every man, who cared more for godliness than his neighbors, or 14 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. was more strict than they in his obedience to the precepts of the gospel, or who exhibited any faith in the principles of experimen- tal religion, was called, by way of reproach, a Puritan. Elizabeth died after a reign of forty-four years, and was suc- ceeded by James I. in 1683. The Puritans, including both those who had been voluntarily or forcibly separated from the establish- ment, and those who, by a partial or entire conformity, still retained their connection with the church, had entertained strong hopes that a king who had reigned in Scotland from his infancy, who had made ample and frequent professions of his attachment to the ecclesiastical constitution of his native kingdom, and who had openly declared respecting the church of England, that " their ser- vice was an evil-said mass in English," would decidedly favor a more complete reformation. Accordingly he was met, on his prog- ress towards London, with numerous petitions, one of which was signed by nearly eight hundred clergymen, " desiring reformation of certain ceremonies and abuses of the church." But the king whom they addressed was at once a vainglorious, foolish pedant, and an arbitrary, treacherous prince ; and the first year of his reign abundantly taught them the fallacy of all their hopes. For the sake of first raising, and then disappointing and crushing, the expectations of such as were dissatisfied with the existing system, a conference was held by royal authority at Hampton Court, to which were summoned, on one side four Puritan divines, with a minister from Scotland, and on the other side seventeen dignitaries of the church, nine of whom were bishops. At this meeting, after the king had first determined all things in consultation with the bishops and their associates, the Puritans were made to feel that they were brought there not in the spirit of conciliation, but to be made a spectacle to their enemies ; not to argue, or to be argued with, before a king impartial and desiring to be led by reason, but to be ridiculed and scorned, insulted and reproached, by a fool too elevated in station to be answered according to his folly. And his majesty's conclusion of the whole matter was, " I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of this land, or else worse." Neal adds very truly, " and he was as good as his word." LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. 15 There were many things in the pohcy of the government, and in the character of the times, which promoted, during all this reign, the cause of Puritanism. The king, with nothing of the mascu- line energy by which Elizabeth controlled her parliaments, had the most extravagant notions of his own divine right to govern with- out limitation, and was evidently bent on setting his will above all laws. Under such a prince, too arbitrary to be loved, and too foolish to be feared, the spirit of liberty naturally revived among the people. James, in his folly, gave the name of Puritanism to every movement and every principle, wherever manifested, which breathed of popular privilege, or implied the existence of any limit to his prerogative. Thus the cause of the Puritans was associated, in the estimation both of court and country, with the cause of English freedom, and of resistance to the encroachments of arbi- trary power ; and the cause of the prelates was equally associated with all those measures of the government that were odious to the friends of liberty, or pernicious to the common welfare. Nor was there any incongruity in these associations. The Puritans were men of a stern and republican cast ; they spake as if they had rights, and addressed the throne with their complaints. The prel- ates, in all their relations, were dependent on the court ; they sympathized with the king in his love of power ; they joined with him in his maxim, " No bishop, no king ;" and they fed his orien- tal notions of royalty with strains of oriental adulation. Thus the party of the Puritans, though it lacked not the support of many a high-minded nobleman, rapidly became the party of the middling classes ; while prelacy was espoused chiefly by the luxurious and unprincipled nobility on the one hand, and by their degraded and dependent peasantry on the other. to tlie newly-broached doctrines of Arminianism. Abbot, the archbishop of Canterbury, was indeed an opposer of those novel- ties, and promoted, to the extent of his influence, the preaching of evangelical truth, deeming it far more important than all the cere- monies ; but the king introduced into several of the most impor- tant bishoprics men of another stamp, whose views were known to be at war with the doctrines of the reformers ; and all who held the Calvinistic construction of the Articles, however strict their con- formity, were branded as "doctrinal Puritans," and for them there was no road to preferment. No wonder that, under such influences, dissatisfaction with the existing ecclesiastical system grew deeper and stronger. James I. was succeeded by Charles I. in 1625. In the scenes that followed, Richard Baxter sustained an im- portant part. He was born at Rowton, a village in Shropshire, November 12, 1615. His father (whose name was also Richai-d) was a freeholder, possessed of a moderate estate at Eaton Constan- tine, another village in the same county, about five miles from Shrewsbury. His infancy was spent under the care and in the house of his maternal grandfather at Rowton. At about ten years of age, he was taken home by his parents to their residence at Eaton Constantino. His father had been in youth so much addicted to gaming, as to have involved his property in very considerable embarrassments ; but, at a later period, the blessing of God on the simple reading of the Scriptures, without any other religious advantages, had made him a devout and godly man. The influence of a father's example and serious instructions, early affected rhe mind of the son with re- ligious impressions, and gave him a remarkable tenderness of con- science. !n subsequent years, the father expressed a strong belief that his son Richard was converted in infancy. Respecting the religious advantages of his childhood, aside from domestic example and instruction, Baxter gives the following testi- mony. " We lived in a country that had but little preaching at all. In the village where I vi^as born, there were four readers succes- si\ely in six years time, ignorant men, two of them immoral in their ■ lives, who were all my schoolmasters. In the village where my father lived, there was a reader of about eighty years of age, that never preached, and had two churches about twenty miles distant. His eyesight failing him, he said common prayer without book ; but for the reading of the Psalms and chapters, he got a common thresher and day-laborer one year, and a taylor another year; for the clerk could not read well. And at last he had a kinsman of his own, (the excellentest stage-player in all the country, and a good gamester and good fellow,) that got orders and supplied one LIFE OK UlCHARD BAXTER. J 7 of his places. After him another younger iiinsman, that could write and read, got orders. And at the same time another neighbor's son, that had been a wliile at school, turned minister, and, who would needs go further than the rest, ventured to preach, (and after got a living in Staifordshire,) and when he had been a preacher about twelve or sixteen years, he was fain to give over, it being discovered that his orders were forged by the first ingenious stage- player. After him another neighbor's son took orders, when he had been a while an attorney's clerk, and a common drunkard, and tippled himself into so great poverty that he had no other way to live. It was feared that he and more of them came by their orders the same way with the forementioned person. These were the schoolmasters of my youth, (except two of them,) who read common prayer on Sundays and holy-days, and taught school and tippled on the week days, and whipped the boys when they were diimk, so that we changed them very oft. Within a few miles about us were near a dozen more ministers that were near eighty years old apiece, and never preached ; poor ignorant readers, and most of them of scandalous lives. Only three or four constant, competent preachers lived near us, and those (though conformable all save one) were the common marks of the people's obloquy and reproach, and any that had but gone to hear them when he had no preaching at home, was made the derision of the \Tilgar rabble, under the odious name of a Puritane."* The state of society in which his early years were spent, he describes in the same style. The character of the people corre- sponded with the character of their religious privileges. VOL. I. 3 18 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. speak scornfully of others as Puritans, whom I never knew, I was at first apt to believe all the lies and slanders wherewith they load- ed them. But when I heard my own father so reproached, and perceived the drunkards were the forwardest in the reproach, I perceived that it was mere malice. For my father never scrupled common prayer or ceremonies, nor spake against bishops, nor even so much as prayed but by a book or form, being not even acquainted with any that did otherwise. But only for reading scripture when the rest were dancing on the Lord's day, and for praying (by a form out of the end of the common prayer book) in his house, and for reproving drunkards and swearers, and for talk- ing sometimes a few words of scripture and the life to come, he was reviled commonly by the name of Puritan, Precisian, and Hypocrite ; and so were the godly conformable ministers that lived any where near us, not only by our neighbors, but by the common talk of all the \ailgar rabble of all about us. By this experience I was fully convinced that godly people were the best, and those that despised them, and lived in sin and pleasure, were a malignant, unhappy sort of people ; and this kept me out of their company, except now and then, when the love of sports and play enticed me. "* Al)out the age of fifteen, the mind of Baxter was more deeply and permanently affected with the things that pertain to salvation. That tenderness of conscience, which has already been described as characteristic of his early childhood, made him feel with much sensibility the guilt of some boyish crimes into which he had been led by his ruder companions. In this distress, he met with an old torn book, which had been lent to his father by a poor day -laborer. The book, though now obsolete, seems to have been blessed in its day to the conversion of many. It was written originally by a Jesuit, on Roman Catholic principles, but had been carefully cor- rected by Edmund Bunny, a Puritan of Queen Elizabeth's time, after whoni it was entitled " Bunny's Resolution. " The reading of this book was attended with the happiest effects on his mind. *' I had before heard, " he says, '' some sermons, and read a good book or two, which made me more love and honor godliness in the general ; but I had never felt any other change by them on my heart. Whether it were that till now I came not to that maturity of nature, which made me capable of discerning ; or whether it were that this was God's appointed time, or both together, I had no lively sight or sense of what I read till now. And in the reading of this book, it pleased God to awaken my soul,fand show me the folly of sinning, and the misery of the wicked, and the * Narrative, Part I, pp. 2, 3. LIFE OF RTCHARD BAXTER. 19 inexpressible weight of things eternal, and the necessity of resolv- ing on a holy life, more than I was ever acquainted with before. The same things which I knew before, came now in another manner, with light, and sense, and seriousness, to my heart. This cast me at fii'st into fears of my condition ; and those drove me to sorrow, and confession, and prayer, and so to some resolution for another kind of life. And many a day I went with a throbbing conscience, and saw that I had other matters to mind, and another work to do in the world, than I had minded well before. " Yet whether sincere conversion began now, or before, or after, I was never able to this day* to know ; for I had before had some love to the things and people which were good, and a restraint from other sins except those forementioned ; and so much from those, that I seldom committed most of them, and when I did, it was with great reluctance. And both now and formerly, I knew that Christ was the only Mediator by whom we must have pardon, justification and Hfe. But even at that time, I had little Hvely sense of the love of God in Christ to the world in me, nor of my special need of him ; for all Papists almost are too short upon this subject, "t At this time bis father bought of a pedler at the door, another book, " The Bruised Reed," by Dr. Richard Sibbs. This he found adapted to the state of his mind in those circumstances. It disclosed to him more clearly the love of God towards him, and gave him livelier apprehensions of the mystery of Redemption, and of his obligations to the Savior. Afterwards a servant came into the family with a volume of the works of William Perkins, another ancient and eminent Puritan divine ; the reading of which instructed him further, and gave new strength to his determination. " Thus," he says, " without any means but books, w^as God pleased to resolve me for himself." During all this period of his educa- tion and of his Christian experience, neither his father nor himself had any acquaintance with a single individual better instructed than themselves on the subject of religion. It is also worthy of notice that they had never heard an extemporaneous prayer. " My prayers," says Baxter, " were the confession in the common prayer book, and sometimes one of Mr. Bradford's prayers in a book called his ' Prayers and Meditations,' and sometimes a prayer out of another prayer book which we had." The ignorant and tippling schoolmasters, under whom he ac- quired the earliest rudiments of education, have already been described. Of a Mr. John Owen, master of a considerable free school at Wroxeter, near his father's residence, he speaks with * Written in 1G64, thirty-four years afterwards. t Narrative, Tarl I. p. 3. 20 LIFE OF RICHARD BAXTER. 