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MEMOIR

OF

RICHARD BAXTER.

they live and abide for ever. In the bosoms of this latter class of men, piety and patriotism maintained a fervent heat, and diffused a cheering and salutary radiance in dark and troublous times. They were the 'Elijahs' and 'Elishas' of their age-they were men of faith and prayer-they were England's glory and strength-though, during the turmoil, they were sometimes treated as the filth of the world, and as the offscouring of all things. They planted, and watered, and watched, and trained the tree of civil freedom and religious liberty, under the shade of which we can now securely sit, and eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions' to our more distant and destitute brethren of mankind, for whom nothing is prepared.'

RICHARD BAXTER'S 'devotional and practical works' old non-conformist. Sacred principles are immortal; have long and deservedly occupied a very elevated station among the standard works of British theology. 'The tooth of time,' the progress of events, and the modern march of mind,' have neither rendered them antiquated, nor thrown them materially into the shade. They possess the seeds of sanctified genius, and the imperishable principles of spiritual grandeur, and permanent moral worth. After upwards of a century and a half, the works of the author continue 'to praise him in the gates.' They form the best biographical monument of their author's unparalleled industry and well-earned fame. The call for works of this kind by the reading and religious public, is, in our apprehension, ‘a token for good.' It indicates an improved and improving taste among the pious portion of our population, for the solid, substantial, Baxter's Call to the Unconverted has obtained a staple nourishment, of the ancient puritanic and non-range of circulation, and a degree of popularity, little conformist school. While they could descend to inferior to the Pilgrim's Progress, or Paradise Lost. feed the babes in Christ with the unmixed milk of It has come into thousands and tens of thousands of the word,' they could also cover the gospel board the cottages of our British peasantry. With many with 'strong meat,' suited to men of full age, even the author's name has become familiar as household those who, by reason of use, had their senses exer- words. His Reformed Pastor has found its way into cised to discern both good and evil.' the libraries and hands of hundreds, or thousands, of ministers. Its pungent pathetic appeals to the consciences of the torpid, the languid, and the lukewarm, have been productive of the most salutary effects, first upon the pastors, and then upon the people. Baxter's Saints' Rest has long and deservedly been a favourite with decided Christians of all denominations. His Dying Thoughts, though, perhaps, less known, have gilded the gloom of many a sick chamber, and cheered and charmed the desponding spirits of many a dying penitent, and taught him to repose his hopes upon the riches of revealed mercy. Many other treatises of Baxter's devotional and practical works, though less known than the above, are not less valuable, and calculated, by the Divine blessing, to prove highly beneficial to various classes of readers. The present edition of his Devotional and Practical Works, which this brief biographical sketch is intended to precede, will place the best productions of the author's prolific pen before the reader in a pleasing and portable form, in a style of typographical b

In the age and country in which we live, there is a numerous class of readers who love to luxuriate in the antiquarian lore of the olden times,' especially when it is presented to the imagination in the plastic drapery of novels, poetry, plays, and 'border tales,' which record the costumes, the customs, the habits, and modes of thought and expression, and the valorous deeds of our great-grandfathers on 'the flood and the field.' These are run upon, like paintings of the Flemish and Italian schools. They are many of them fancy pictures of men and manners; and, perhaps, owe more than two-thirds of their interest to the ingenuity of the literary artist. It is well that there is another, and pretty numerous class of readers, who prefer dealing in the facts and principles of antiquity, and who can appreciate sound sense and sterling piety under a plain puritanic garb; who can recognise the advocate of civil and religious liberty, and the unflinching friend of grace, and truth, and gospel holiness, under the antiquated costume of an

execution, agreeable, if not alluring to the eye, and at such a moderate cost as to place them within the reach of those who relish such massy and pathetic productions of the olden times.' They will amply reward the serious and inquisitive reader.

croachments of arbitrary power, and to give a salutary impulse and a safe direction to the public mind in Great Britain, through a considerable portion of the seventeenth century, the name of Richard Baxter ranks not among the least. He was born on the 12th of November, 1615, at Rowtan, near High Ercal, in Shropshire. His father was also named Richard Baxter. He was a sober, respectable, and rather religiously disposed man, who had a small freehold estate at Eaton-Constantine, about five miles from Shrewsbury. His mother's name was Adeney, and a native of the same county. The early part of his infancy was spent under the roof of his maternal grandfather. While yet in childhood, his father conceived that he saw some buds of early piety, and fondly hoped that young Richard was 'sanctified from the birth.'

The state of religion and morals at that period in the country and neighbourhood, was extremely low; nor was he more favourably situated with respect to his schoolmasters. They were neither distinguished for learning nor morals. The genius and industry of the youth, however, surmounted these untoward circumstances. The father's small estate did not afford sufficient resources for enabling him to send his son to the university; but he placed him for a time under private tutors, who were alleged to have performed their duty to their pupil very imperfectly. Young Baxter's thirst for information, his native ardour of mind, and untiring application, however, conquered most of the difficulties which he encountered. Though Baxter never enjoyed the mental discipline of an academical life, nor realized the literary and varied advantages of a university course, yet he happily escaped many of the snares and temptations incident to such a situation, at a very critical period of life; and by the pure dint of invincible application, and the elastic spring of his opening genius, he acquired more varied and substantial knowledge of men and things-of books and systems-of principles and character, than thousands who have, for ten or fifteen years, breathed the air of academic groves. At a very opportune period of his early life, he had access to an excellent library, which proved of incalculable service to him. At the request of Lord Newport he went to Wrexeter, where he taught in a free school for six months.

An author whose writings we have frequently perused with ardour and interest, with pleasure and profit who has informed our judgment-corrected our errors dispelled our darkness, and dissolved our doubts who has warmed our hearts, invigorated our hopes, and taught us how to live with credit and comfort, and die in peace and safety-it is natural for us to wish to know something of his private character, his public life, his labours, and his latter end. We wish to have some personal intimacy with the man, and to see the Christian in his every day attire. Baxter, who was copious as the Nile on almost every subject which he treated, has left ample materials in his Life and Times,' which exhibit a full-length portrait of the man and his communications. The 'Reliquæ Baxterianæ,' or his autobiography of "The most remarkable Passages of his Life and Times,' though prolix, has all the charms, and some of the defects, of this species of writing. Silvester and Calamy, his early biographers, have adjusted and wrought up these materials to great advantage. The abridgment by the one, and the original by the other, contain a mine of matter, though some parts of it are rather tedious, and of minor importance. The patient, laborious student, and the black-letter men of antiquarian taste, who form only a minority of the reading republic, may love such a repast in the antiquated style. Something was still required to be done, to compress and modernise the work-to lop off extraneous and redundant matter to separate the alloy, and preserve every particle of the solid gold and present the interesting life and eventful times of Richard Baxter to the public, in a more readable dress and attractive form. This has been executed with much sound judgment and critical skill, by Baxter's last biographer, the late Rev. William Orme of Camberwell, and author of the Life of John Owen, D. D., &c. It is a work of singular and superior excellence. For more than half a century, Baxter occupied an ample and elevated space in the public eye. He lived in critical and stormy times. He stood high in an age pre-eminently distinguished by great and good men, of intellectual power and In 1633, before Baxter had completed his teens, high character. His biographer had drunk deeply he was persuaded, by a Mr Wickstead, to wave the into the spirit of the nonconformist age. He was studies in which he was then engaged, and try his familiar with the facts, and details, and contested fortune at court. He accordingly went to Whiteprinciples of that eventful period of our civil and hall. He carried with him recommendations to Sir ecclesiastical story. He could appreciate the work, Henry Herbert, master of the revels, by whom he and delineate the character, of such a man as Bax- was cordially received. Our author was then only ter; and by his candour and critical sagacity, exhibit eighteen, a period of life when the fascinations and 'the lights and shades' in his character, and the ex-blandishments of a court are very apt to exert a cellencies and defects of his elaborate writings. He has done so with great propriety, force, and feeling, and has presented us with a likeness, as large as life, of the intellectual and moral character of Richard Baxter. All we can contemplate here is a miniature sketch in profile. Our chief difficulties are selection and compression.

Among the great and good men whom Divine providence raised up, and qualified to counteract the en

powerful influence over the youthful imagination. To what pitch of political power his extraordinary talents and constitutional ardour might have raised him, as a senator or statesman, we know not; but it soon became apparent that the Lord designed him for purer and nobler employment. The dissolute character of the court of Charles I., in which the Book of Sports had been concocted, where interludes and plays were more relished than serious piety, and

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puritanism was as much disliked and shunned as the plague-presented a tainted moral atmosphere very uncongenial to Baxter's then existing state of mind. A single month sufficed him of a court life. It was not his proper element; and he left Whitehall with disgust. Like Moses, he ‘chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy' the honours and emoluments of a court, and 'the pleasures of sin for a season.' He had respect to the recompence of reward,' 'and endured as seeing Him who is invisible.' Though Baxter's religious character had been at that period but partially developed, and his religious principles were by no means matured, yet some of the books which he had read with interest and profit, such as Burney's Resolution, Sibb's Bruised Reed, Perkins on Repentance, on Living and Dying Well, &c., had been the means, under the Divine blessing, of generating in his mind the principle of vital piety.

"

An incipient desire for the work of the ministry' had early taken possession of Baxter's mind. It is frequently a feeling consequent upon conversion to God. It is often secretly cherished long before it is openly avowed, or the ulterior steps towards its at tainment are distinctly defined to the mind of the subject. This predilection, and the severe affliction of his mother, will partly account for his rapid removal from court. He resumed his studies with increased intensity. His mother died, under deep distress, in May following, 1634. His own health was also greatly shaken, The Lord was training him for future usefulness in the furnace; and ingenuously as he confessed, and deeply as he deplored, the defects of his early education-his want of a regular academical training and the honours and advantages of a course at the university, as apparently interposing insurmountable obstructions to his most sanguine wishes; yet all the while his heavenly Father was proving, and tempering, and training him in the furnace, ultimately to make him a workman who needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of God,' and that he might be able to comfort others, who are in any trouble, with the same consolations wherewith he had been comforted of God.' What he lacked, or lost in the acquisition of languages, literature, and mathematical science, he gained in experimental piety, close communion with God, and the acquisition of those spiritual attainments which so pre-eminently fitted him for the efficient discharge of the pastoral functions, and for doing the work of an evangelist.'

When Baxter arrived at the age of twenty-one, his health and strength were very much wasted. He apprehended that he could not survive above a year or two; and though deeply sensible of his deficiencies, yet seeing numbers perishing around him for lack of knowledge-feeling the frailty of his frame-a fervent desire to be useful to souls-and conceiving that he possessed some portion of the powers of persuasion, he took orders in the Church of England from the bishop of Worcester. His family connections, and personal predilections, were then all in favour of the church. He had then read but little, and studied less, of the subject of church government and discipline, or of the nonconformist controversy.

He received a license to teach a school at Dudley, where he also, for a short season, preached the gospel with much acceptance, and some success. It was while here that he became acquainted with some nonconformists. His first impressions of them were, that they were splenetic, and that their strictures were too severe against the bishops; yet he averred, that he found them to be both godly and honest men. They furnished him with several writings upon their own side of the question, and amongst others, with Ames' Suit Against Ceremonies, which he read with care, comparing it with Dr Burges's Rejoynder. The former work shook his faith in the divine right of modern Episcopacy, and several of its ceremonies, and made him feel, that he had acted either ignorantly, or rashly, in taking orders before he had maturely weighed what his oaths and subscription implied. His active mind ultimately took a wider range of reading upon both sides. This rather increased than diminished his scruples with respect to some parts of the church service. After labouring for nine months in Dudley, he removed to Bridgenorth, and became assistant to Mr William Madstone, an aged minister, who treated him with much respect and cordiality. He performed those parts of the church service himself, of the scriptural authority of which Baxter's conscience had begun to entertain serious scruples. At first a considerable excitement was produced by his ministrations in his new sphere of labour, and some portion of fruit appeared. Though then in the ardour of youth, his soul burning with zeal, and his heart melting with compassion for perishing sinners-though his aim was simple, and his eye single, yet the excitement subsided, and he was made to feel that his 'sufficiency' and his success alike, were 'of the Lord.'

About this time arbitrary power and ecclesiastical tyranny were making rapid in roads upon the civil liberties of the subjects, and recklessly invaded the sacred rights of conscience. What in our ecclesiastical annals is called the et cætera oath, came to be imposed about this period. It had been devised as a kind of test, and enacted as a clap-trap. Such crooked carnal policy generally overshoots the mark

it defeats the very object which it seeks to secure. Many men of principle, who 'feared an oath,' and could afford to keep a conscience,' were justly stumbled and startled at such an imposition, which was little short of the Romish claim to infallibility. This famous, or rather, infamous oath, induced Baxter and many more to study the authority of English Episcopacy, and the arrogant claims of the hierarchy, more carefully than ever. The clause at which his conscience revolted runs in these terms:- Nor will I ever give my consent to alter the government of the church by archbishops, bishops, deans, and archdeacons, &c., as it stands now established, and as by right it ought to stand.' Expulsion from the altars of the church was the stern penalty of not swallowing this oath. If a church rule her sons with a rod of iron, and seek to bind them to her interests, as slaves, in chains of brass, she is not to wonder at the alleged weakness of the men who demur at her mandates; but she ought to blush at her own wickedness in seeking to rivet human fetters upon Christ's

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free men.
lently submitted to parts of the principle in detail;
but deliberately to swear to it by compulsion and
penalty, changed the complexion of the case.

In some instances they might have si- pre-eminent degree, 'did the work of an evangelist;'
it was here that he displayed the unexampled dili-
gence of the Christian pastor; it was here that 'he
fed the church of God' with the kindness of a fa-
ther, and the tenderness of a mother, which he had
purchased with his own blood;' it was here that he
received many for his 'joy and crown;' it was chiefly
in this favoured spot that he immortalized his own
name, and has given all but permanent celebrity to
the place, having identified it, in the associations of
the reading and religious public, with the Northamp-
ton of America.

no principle, they were allowed to pillage and plunder the puritans, as fair game, with perfect impunity. Having suffered in his person, his family, and property, in the most rude and barbarous manner, he was induced, for a time, to retire from his favourite field of labour.

An interesting era in the life of Baxter now occurred. In the year 1640 he received an invitation by the bailiff and principal inhabitants of Kidderminster, to come and preach the gospel among them. He embraced it. His salary was £60 per annum. He who holds the key of David set before him an open door. The vicar and his two curates had been accused by them as incompetent for the functions of the offices which they nominally, but inefficiently Baxter had scarcely got the fallow-ground fully filled. Probably under the dread of formal inquiry, broken up at Kidderminster, after two years' active and the scrutiny of parliamentary triers, the vicar labour, when the civil war broke out. The tide of consented to grant the above allowance to an accept party feeling ran very high. The country became able preacher. As he was a man who neither had divided between the King and the Long Parliament. capacity nor inclination to preach-seldom gave them The cavaliers, or royalists, as they styled themselves, a sermon but once a quarter-and was a noted fre- rallied round the standard of the King; and the quenter of ale-houses-and as the curates he em- friends of liberty and serious piety generally sided ployed were of the same stamp, it is very likely, in with the Parliament. Baxter ranked among the latthe then existing state of the country, they would ter. His residence at Kidderminster was interrupted feel perfectly willing to keep the peace with one of by the civil war. Persons who dared to leave the such devotedness of heart to his proper work, and beaten track, or deviate from the forms of the Esenergy and decision of character, as Richard Baxter. tablished Church, were suspected by the royalists, The moral change produced by the labours of and treated by the rabble, as enemies to the King, Baxter formerly, and latterly at Kidderminster, was, and hostile to the church. Mr Baxter became a perhaps, without a parallel in Great Britain. It pre-marked man by the king's troops. Without the resented a noble field for unfolding the sleepless ener-straints of military discipline, having little pay and gies and the indefatigable labours of 'the man of God.' It seemed a spot selected by heaven for a spiritual experiment. By the Divine blessing it succeeded to an astonishing extent. By his labours and prayers, his teaching and preaching publicly, and from house to house,' the moral 'wilderness and solitary place were made glad.' This once dreary and In order to avoid such annoyances, he was percheerless desert assumed the fragrance of Carmel, suaded to retire to Coventry, where he might remain and the fertility of Lebanon. He early felt a pre- with safety. That place had been garrisoned by dilection to the people and the place. It was just Parliament; and there he found thirty other minissuch a field as suited Baxter's genius and taste; ters, who, for similar reasons, had sought refuge unthough, with the exception of a very small remnant der the wing of the garrison from the face of the of pious persons, who were ready to enter into his spoilers.' He remained there for two years, as in sentiments, sympathies, and plans, the minds and strong hold,' and preached once every Lord's day to morals of the overwhelming majority of the people the garrison, and once to the inhabitants of the town. were very few removes from a state of pure heathen- However unfavourable a season of civil commotion ism; but bad as they were, they were in a more is for the preaching and patient hearing of the tidings hopeful state than those among whom he had la- of pardon and peace among men embroiled in a civil boured, and recently left, at Bridgenorth. They had contest, yet, in other respects, there seems to be an sunk into the arms of carnal security, and into a sys- imperious call for the still small voice of mercy' tem of selfishness, under a sound and awakening min- during the solemn pauses between contending paristry. To the great body of Baxter's new charge, ties, and the relentless ravages of the sword. In the gospel was quite a new thing. They had not this new and strictly militant sphere of labour, Baxpreviously heard it, nor were they hardened in the ter did not forget the apostolic charge: Preach the guilt of having rejected it. The few praying people word; be constant in season and out of season; rewho were there, had longed for it, and prepared the prove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and docway for it. When the poor and the needy seek trine.' After the decisive action of Naseby, and water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for the favourable aspect of affairs to the Parliamentary thirst, I the Lord will hear, I, the God of Israel, will men, Baxter accepted the appointment of chaplain to not forsake them: I will open rivers in high places, Whalley's regiment of dragoons. The extravagant and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make notions which obtained at that time in the army upon the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land subjects of religion and politics, required a man of springs of water.... That they may see, and know, sound judgment, to check party feeling, repress enand consider, and understand together, that the hand thusiasm, and lay before the opening and inquisitive of the Lord has done this, and the Holy One of Is-minds of these patriotic men, the sacred and subrael has created it.' It was here that Baxter, in a stantial principles of Divine revelation. This, Bax

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forms an important chapter in his Life and Times, and throws a considerable portion of light upon the state of parties during an eventful crisis of our ecclesiastical annals. Marking their discussions and decisions, as an attentive and impartial observer, stationed on an elevated neck of neutral territory, he has expressed his opinions of the men, and the matters of discussion, with candour and freedom; and although it would be quite incompatible with the re

was a spectator rather than an actor, to enter into those lengthened details, yet we presume a few sentences by such a writer as our author, upon the principles, spirit, and character of the parties who composed this far-famed Assembly, will be gratifying to the reader. For more ample details, we would refer him to the Life and Times, or Orme's Life of Baxter.

Respecting the High Church party, he thought that they made too light of the power of the ministry, church, and excommunication-that they made church communion more common to the impenitent than Christ would have it-that they made the church too like the world, by breaking down the hedge of spiritual discipline, and laying it almost common with the wilderness; and that they misunderstood and injured their brethren, affirming that they claimed, as from God, a coercive power over the bodies and consciences of men. ... I utterly disliked their extirpation of the true discipline of Christ, not only as they omitted or corrupted it, but as their principles and church state had made it impracticable. They thus altered the nature of churches, and the ancient nature of bishops and presbyters. They set

ter laboured to perform, without fear or flattery, with some considerable degree of success. After following the camp for some time, he left the army early in the year 1657. A profuse bleeding at the nose, and several alarming symptoms, compelled him to retire to the house of Sir Thomas Rouse, in which he continued for some time in a very precarious state of health. On his recovery, he returned again to Kidderminster-he resumed his labours among the people of his choice and remained their faithful, af-stricted limits of this brief sketch, in which our author fectionate, and successful pastor, during the lapse of fourteen additional years. During the sixteen years of his energetic and devoted ministrations in this favoured spot while the country was convulsed with a civil war while he was the subject of no ordinary share of personal afflictions, and incessant bodily infirmities—while he had an ample share of the trials incident to a life of fearless, active benevolence in 'the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ'-yet he was honoured, under God, to effect an astonishing spiritual change in the minds and morals of the people. The wide moral wastes were brought under a process of successful cultivation-Zion's wilderness was made like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness were found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.' The bright visions of ancient prophecy were palpably realized: Instead of the thorn there came up the fir tree; and instead of the briar there sprang forth the myrtle tree; and it became to the Lord for a name, and an everlasting sign that should not be cut off.' It was during the time Baxter was at Coventry that the celebrated Westminster Assembly of Divines was convened by order of Parliament. Though not himself a member of that body, he had paid par-up secular courts-vexed honest Christians-counticular attention to their proceedings; he was well acquainted with the principles, characters, talents, and various parties who composed it; and in his Life and Times, has given a pretty full and candid account of their deliberations and chief transactions. Had he been a member, he would in all probability have been a leading man among the Presbyterian party, or those who wished to introduce a species of modified Episcopacy. In doctrinal sentiments, he substantially accorded with the pious of all parties; but upon the constitution, discipline, and government of the church, it is questionable if he would have agreed entirely with any one of them. He decidedly disliked the Erastianism of some of the high church party; he disapproved of the intolerant spirit of some of the Presbyterians; and though he eulogised the piety and talents of the leading men among the Independents, who formed but a fractional part of the Assembly, yet he blamed them for bigotry-ranked them and the Baptists among the minor sectaries-thought them too strict and exclusive in their discipline and membership-would allow the civil magistrate no power in the church-and conceived that they carried the principles of religious liberty and the inviolable right of conscience to an unreasonable extent. He has, however, given a more impartial account of the character and proceedings of the Westminster Assembly, than has been given either by Lord Clarendon, Baillie, or Milton.

tenanced ungodly teachers-opposed faithful ministers-and promoted the increase of ignorance and profaneness.'

As to the Presbyterians, he says:-'I saw, too, that in England, the persons who were called Presbyterians were eminent for learning, sobriety, and piety; and the pastors so called were those who went through the work of the ministry in diligent and serious preaching to the people, and edifying men's souls, and keeping up religion in the land. ... But I disliked their order of lay elders, who had no ordination, or power to preach and administer sacraments; for though I grant that lay elders, as the chief of the people, were often employed to express the people's conduct, and preserve their liberties, yet these were no church officers at all, nor had any charge of private oversight of the flocks. I disliked, also, the course of some of the more rigid of them, who drew near to the way of prelacy by grasping at a kind of secular power, not using it themselves, but binding the magistrate to confiscate or imprison men, merely because they were excommunicated, and so corrupting the true discipline of the church, and turning the communion of the saints into the communion of the multitude, who must keep in the church against their wills, for fear of being undone in the world; whereas a man whose conscience cannot feel a just excommunication, unless it be backed with confiscation or imprisonment, is no fitter to be a memBaxter's details of this celebrated convocation Life, part ii. pp. 139, 140. Ormo's Life, chap. iv. pp. 72, 73.

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