Puritanism: History and Theology

1. Puritanism: History and Theology CASE-STUDY: Richard Baxter

2. BAXTER: EARLY LIFE • Rowton, Shropshire. Poor education (local clergy) • John Owen master of the free school at Wroxeter 1629-1632 • Ludlow Castle with Richard Wickstead • Court under the patronage of Sir Henry Herbert • Ministry call confirmed by the death of his mother. • Baxter read theology with Francis Garbet, the local clergyman. In about 1634, he met Joseph Symonds and Walter Cradock, two famous Nonconformists who influenced him considerably. Puritanism: Richard Baxter

3. Early ministry, 1638-1660 • Dudley and Bridgnorth • 1638 Baxter became master of the free grammar school at Dudley, having been ordained and licensed by the Bishop of Worcester. He was soon transferred to Bridgnorth and he took a special interest in the controversy relating to Nonconformity. • Alienated from the C of E after the requirement of what is called "the et cetera oath," he rejected episcopacy. Though regarded as a Presbyterian, all forms of church government were regarded by him as subservient to the true purposes of religion. Puritanism: Richard Baxter

4. Kidderminster • One of the first measures of the Long Parliament was to reform the clergy; with this view, a committee was appointed to receive complaints against them. Among the complainants were the inhabitants of Kidderminister. The vicar agreed that he would give £60 a year, out of his income of £200, to a preacher who should be chosen by certain trustees. Baxter was invited to deliver a sermon before the people, and was unanimously elected as the minister. This happened in April 1641, when he was twenty-six. Puritanism: Richard Baxter

5. The Reformed Pastor • His ministry continued for about nineteen years; and during that time he accomplished many reforms in Kidderminster and the neighbourhood. He formed the ministers in the country around him into an association, irrespective of their differences as Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Independents. • The Reformed Pastor, a book which Baxter published in relation to the general ministerial efforts he promoted, drives home the sense of clerical responsibility with extraordinary power. Even today his memory is preserved as that of the true apostle of the district. Puritanism: Richard Baxter

6. The English Civil War • Baxter blamed both parties in the Civil War but Worcestershire was a Royalist county. • So he moved to Gloucester and later Coventry, where he preached regularly both to the garrison and the citizens. After the Battle of Naseby he became chaplain to Colonel Whalley’s regiment, till February 1647. • Aphorisms of Justification, 1649 Puritanism: Richard Baxter

7. Baxter and Cromwell • Baxter joined the Parliamentary army to maintain the cause of constitutional government. • Cromwell avoided him. Of Cromwell he said, "I saw that what he learned must be from himself." • Baxter was summoned to London to assist in settling "the fundamentals of religion," • In 1647, Baxter was staying at the home of Lady Rouse of Rouse-Lench, and there, in much physical weakness, wrote a great part of his famous work, The Saints' Everlasting Rest (1650). Puritanism: Richard Baxter

8. Return to Kidderminster • Ministry following the Restoration, 1660-1691 • Baxter encouraged the Restoration 1660 and settled in London. • Act of Uniformity 1662 disappointed his hope for restoration of dissenters. • Offered bishopric of Hereford but unhappy with assenting to things as they were. • After his refusal he was prohibited him from preaching in the diocese of Worcester. • Baxter, however, found much consolation in his marriage in 1662 with Margaret Charlton, a woman like-minded with himself. She died in 1681. Puritanism: Richard Baxter

9. Legal troubles • From 1662 until the indulgence of 1687, Baxter's life was constantly disturbed by persecution of one kind or another. Acton: imprisoned for meetings.. • 1672 preaching licence recalled and the meeting house which he had built for himself in Oxendon Street was closed to him after he had preached there only once. • In 1680, arrested and books and goods were seized. In 1684, he was carried three times to the sessions house, being scarcely able to stand, and without any apparent cause was made to enter into a bond for £400 in security for his good behaviour. Puritanism: Richard Baxter

10. Encounter with Judge Jeffreys • May 1685 imprisoned for idiculous charge of libelling the Church in his Paraphrase on the New Testament, and was tried before Jeffreys on this accusation. • Baxter was sentenced to pay 500 marks, to lie in prison till the money was paid, and to be bound to his good behaviour for seven years. Jeffreys is even said to have proposed he should be whipped behind a cart. Baxter was now seventy, and remained in prison for eighteen months, until the government, vainly hoping to win his influence to their side, remitted the fine and released him. Puritanism: Richard Baxter

11. Later writings and last years • Baxter's health had grown even worse, yet this was the period of his greatest activity as a writer. He wrote 168 or so separate works -- such treatises as the Christian Directory, the Methodus Theologiae Christianae, and the Catholic Theology, • 1658 under the title Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live. This slim volume was cred with the conversion of thousands • The remainder of his life, from 1687 onwards, was passed peacefully. He died in London, and his funeral was attended by churchmen as well as dissenters. Puritanism: Richard Baxter

12. Theology • A form of Calvinism without a limited atonement. • He explained Christ’s death as an act of universal redemption (penal and vicarious, though not substitutionary). • Baxter insisted that the Calvinists of his day, armed with their unyielding alleigance on the sola fide of the Reformation, ran the danger of ignoring the conditions that came with God's gift of the covenant of grace. Puritanism: Richard Baxter

13. Theology • Justification, Baxter insisted, required at least some degree of faith and works as the human response to the love of God: "If in acknowledgement of the favour of his Redemption, he will but pay a pepper corn, he shall be restored to his former possession, and much more." Puritanism: Richard Baxter

14. Not quite Calvinist • The atonement did not consist in Christ suffering the identical but the equivalent punishment as that deserved by mankind because of offended law. Christ died for sins, not persons. • The elect were a certain fixed number determined by the decree without any reference to their faith as the ground of their election; which decree contemplates no reprobation but rather the redemption of all who will accept Christ as their Saviour. • What is imputed to the sinner in the work of justification is not the righteousness of Christ but the faith of the sinner himself in the righteousness of Christ. Puritanism: Richard Baxter

15. A final word • Baxter is best understood as an eclectic scholastic covenantal theologian for whom the distinction between God's conditional covenant (the voluntas de debito) and his absolute will (the voluntas de rerum eventu) is key to the entire theological enterprise. Despite the difficulty in classifying Baxter, his emphasis on the conditionality of the covenant of grace and therefore on the necessity of faith and works for our standing before God is undeniable. Puritanism: Richard Baxter