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The Life of the Reverend Richard Baxter (1662-1691)

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The Life of the Reverend Richard Baxter (1662-1691) Life of Baxter v1.qxp:Life of Richard Baxter 8 01 2009 02:05 Page 1 A LIFE OF THE REVEREND RICHARD BAXTER (1662–1691) Life of Baxter v1.qxp:Life of Richard Baxter 8 01 2009 01:58 Page 3 A LIFE OF THE REVEREND RICHARD BAXTER (1662–1691) by FREDERICK J. POWICKE, M.A., Ph.D. Quinta Press Weston Rhyn 2009 Life of Baxter v1.qxp:Life of Richard Baxter 8 01 2009 01:58 Page 4 Quinta Press Meadow View, Weston Rhyn, Oswestry, Shropshire, England, SY10 7RN Visit our web-site: http://www.quintapress.com ISBN 1 897856 xx x First published Layout copyright Quinta Press © 2009 4 Life of Baxter v1.qxp:Life of Richard Baxter 8 01 2009 01:58 Page 5 FIRST PROOF READING DRAFT 5 A LIFE OF THE REVEREND RICHARD BAXTER 1615–1691 Books by the Same Author JOHN NORRIS OF BEMERTON HENRY BARROW, SEPARATIST ROBERT BROWN, PIONEER OF MODERN CONGREGATIONALISM JOHN ROBINSON, ETC. RICHARD BAXTER From a painting by Robert Walker Life of Baxter v1.qxp:Life of Richard Baxter 8 01 2009 01:58 Page 6 6 THE LIFE OF THE REVEREND RICHARD BAXTER (1662–1691) A Life of the Reverend RICHARD BAXTER 1615–1691 by FREDERICK J. POWICKE M.A., Ph.D. Jonathan Cape, Ltd ELEVEN GOWER STREET LONDON FIRST PUBLISHED IN MCMXXIV MADE & PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY BUTLER & TANNER LTD LONDON CONTENTS PART ONE PREFACE . 7 NOTE TO THE PORTRAIT . 11 INTRODUCTORY . 15 1 KIDDERMINSTER . 35 2 FIRST PERIOD OF MINISTRY (APRIL 1641–JULY 1642) . 47 3 PERIOD OF SEPARATION (1642–1647) . 56 4 WITH THE ARMY . 69 5 SECOND PERIOD (1647–1660) . 80 6 HIS SUCCESS: ITS CAUSES AND LIMITS . 98 7 RELATION TO PUBLIC AFFAIRS (1647–1658) . 115 8 VISIT TO LONDON 1654–5—AND AFTER . 121 9 BAXTER AND HIS CORRESPONDENTS . 140 10 HIS HOME-CIRCLE OF FRIENDS . 153 11 THE WORCESTERSHIRE ASSOCIATION . 163 Life of Baxter v1.qxp:Life of Richard Baxter 8 01 2009 01:58 Page 7 FIRST PROOF READING DRAFT 7 12 SIR RALPH CLARE . 177 13 IN LONDON 1660–1661 . 189 PART TWO HIS CONTROVERSIES 1 CONTROVERSY WITH REV. JOHN TOMBES, B.D., OF BEWDLEY, ON BAPTISM . 224 2 ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY . 237 3 CONTROVERSY WITH THE QUAKERS . 246 4 THE ROMAN CONTROVERSY . 257 5 CONTROVERSY WITH PRELATISTS AND SEPARATISTS . 267 EPILOGUE . 278 APPENDICES . 289 INDEX . 321 6 7 PREFACE T will be seen at once that much the greater part of this Ibook is taken up with the period (1641–60) which covers Baxter’s ministry at Kidderminster; and for this I may plead several reasons. (1) Baxter himself regarded that ministry as the chief work of his life. He might be a writer, and his writings might en- gage most of his time. After 1662 they engaged nearly all his time. But they never held the first place in his esteem. He was always, in the first place, a pastor. Whatever else he did was done in that capacity. Nothing, in his view, could be of higher importance than the functions which belonged to the ministerial office. Nothing seemed to him more calamitous than the law which silenced him. Nothing in his memory shone with so grateful a light as the time when, year after year, he was free to spend himself in speech and life among the three or four thousand common folk of his parish. Moreover, though he thought none too highly of his own Life of Baxter v1.qxp:Life of Richard Baxter 8 01 2009 01:58 Page 8 8 THE LIFE OF THE REVEREND RICHARD BAXTER (1662–1691) success, it was to this he owed the reputation which opened the way, on all sides, to his written words. (2) The amount of space given to the Kidderminster period by his biographers, Calamy, Orme, etc., is very small in proportion to that occupied by the rest of his life—especially the last twenty years. These, of course, are full of interest from the point of view of Baxter’s close connection with the stream of events which immediately preceded and followed the great Disruption. There was none who suffered more keenly than he at the prospect of it, or laboured with greater persistence, even after it, to unite men in a middle way con- ducive to peace; or drew upon him so many poisoned arrows from the bigots of both extremes. His story, indeed, leads deep into the heart of things, from the days of delusive hope in 1660 to the dawn of a real day for liberty and justice in 1689. No wonder, therefore, that his biographers have chosen to linger around it. I have by no means escaped the attraction, as perhaps a second volume may show. (3) And another excuse for brief treatment of the Kidder- minster years may have been the apparent lack of material, beyond that contained in the twenty or so pages of Baxter’s 8 own account. If so, I have been deprived of this excuse by the fact of finding a considerable quantity of supplementary material in the Baxter MSS. of Dr Williams’s Library, Gor- don Square, London. The existence of these has been no secret. They have long been known, and, to some small extent, have been used. But thirteen folio volumes of close writing, often not easy to decipher, and quite as often concerned with things utterly dead and done with, may well have seemed rather a forbidding task; nor do I pretend to have had either the time or the will to explore the whole mass. I have simply looked it through with more or less care; and have been able to do this because the Librarian, Rev R. Travers Herford, with his wonted courtesy, besides giving me free access to the MSS. on the spot, obtained the consent of the Trustees to my use of them under the care of Dr. Guppy, the Chief Librarian at the Rylands Library, Manchester. The results have been Life of Baxter v1.qxp:Life of Richard Baxter 8 01 2009 01:58 Page 9 FIRST PROOF READING DRAFT 9 gratifying—though some are outside the scope of this volume. But for my present purpose, it has been gratifying, e.g.—after a vain search elsewhere—to come across the original parchment certificate of Baxter’s ordination at Worcester as ‘Deacon’ and the license granted him to teach at Dudley, in 1638; also, the correspondence relating to his first settlement at Kidderminster, and the renewed ‘call’—with 200 or 300 signatures attached- which introduced his second period; also, the precise reason of his sudden departure to London in April 1660, and letters from his anxious yet proud Kidderminster friends occasioned by his absence; also, his last letter to them in 1681—as well as scores of other letters which made it easy for me to write the chapter on the wide circle of his correspondents. Such items of new information could not fail to add unexpected light and fullness to the narrative. (4) But, after all, the true genesis of the book lies in the fact that I happen to have been born at Kidderminster; that my earliest associations were with the Chucch which bears Baxter’s name; and that from childhood, I was taught to think of him as constituting the town’s peculiar glory. Certainly I did not realize this at first. Before July 25, 1875, Baxter was little more than a name to me. But on that day, as I stood just be- hind Dean Stanley at the unveiling of the statue raised to his 9 memory in the Bull Ring, and listened to the little great Dean’s eloquent eulogy, the personality of the man came home to me. It seemed as if the stone figure, with its uplifted hand, was somehow instinct with a living spirit—a genius loci—call- ing to men, as long ago he did in St. Mary’s, to choose the better part. With this feeling I began to read him and learn all I could about him. I have been reading him and learning about him ever since; and hence came the desire—to present him in the framework of his Kidderminster life—of which this book is the very imperfect fulfilment. Nor can I help setting down the conviction that in Baxter the Pastor—which includes Preacher—a modern pastor may still find the richest possible incentive to all that is best and highest in his vocation, what- Life of Baxter v1.qxp:Life of Richard Baxter 8 01 2009 01:58 Page 10 10 THE LIFE OF THE REVEREND RICHARD BAXTER (1662–1691) ever may be the width of his difference from Baxter the Theo- logian. In conclusion, I beg to thank the Rev W. G. D. Fletcher, M.A.—Vicar of Oxon, Shrewsbury, and Editor of the Shrop- shire Archæological Society’s Transactions—for leave to reproduce, in abbreviated form, the Baxter pedigree published by him in the 1923 volume; and also the Rev H. W. Turner, B.A., of Wilmslow, for his kind service in preparing the index. October, 1924. FRED. J. POWICKE. 10 11 NOTE TO THE PORTRAIT 1 THERE are several portraits of Baxter. The latest, and least pleasing, is one found before some copies of A Call to the Unconverted—which presents him as holding in his right hand (with a skull just beneath) a small clasped Bible. It is obviously (except for the skull) a bad rendering of the ‘vera effigies’, first prefixed to the Life of Faith, (1670)—ætat.
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