Richard Baxter
Richard Baxter
Richard Baxterwas an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymn-writer, theologian, and controversialist. Dean Stanley called him "the chief of English Protestant Schoolmen". After some false starts, he made his reputation by his ministry at Kidderminster, and at around the same time began a long and prolific career as theological writer. After the Restoration he refused preferment, while retaining a non-separatist Presbyterian approach, and became one of the most influential leaders of the Nonconformists, spending time in prison. His views on...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth12 November 1615
Speak to your people as to men that must be awakened, either here or in hell...
Doth any man live more to himself, or less to God, than the proud?
I like to hear a man dwell much on the same essentials of Christianity. For we have but one God, and one Christ, and one faith to preach; and I will not preach another Gospel to please men with variety, as if our Saviour and our Gospel had grown stale.
And though it be their sin and vanity that is the cause [of lust], it is nevertheless your sin to be the unnecessary occasion…You must not lay a stumbling-block in their way, nor blow up the fire of their lust…You must walk among sinful persons as you would do with a candle among straw or gunpowder; or else you may see the flame which you did not foresee, when it is too late to quench it.
Above all be much in secret prayer and meditation. By this you will fetch the heavenly fire that must kindle your sacrifice: remember you cannot decline and neglect your duty to your own hurt alone, many will be losers by it as well as you.
Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator.
Overvalue not therefore the manner of your own worship, and overvilify not other men's of a different mode.
Our very business is to teach the great lesson of self-denial and humility to our people, and how unfit is it then that we should be proud ourselves!
When the Son of God comes to rescue us and bring us back to God, He does not find in us the ability to believe.
My Lord, I have nothing to do in this World, but to seek and serve thee; I have nothing to do with a Heart and its affections, but to breathe after thee. I have nothing to do with my Tongue and Pen, but to speak to thee, and for thee, and to publish thy Glory and thy Will. What have I to do with all my Reputation, and Interest in my Friends, but to increase thy Church, and propagate thy holy Truth and Service? What have I to do with my remaining Time, even these last and languishing hours, but to look up unto thee, and wait for thy Grace, and thy Salvation?
The devils never had a Savior offered to them, but you have; and do you yet make light of Him?
Sinners, hear and consider, if you wilfully condemn your souls to bestiality, God will condemn them to perpetual misery.
Do not mathematics and all sciences seem full of contradictions and impossibilities to the ignorant, which are all resolved and cleared to those that understand them?
I take the love of God and self-denial to be the sum of all saving grace and religion.