We offer thanks, most gracious God, for the devoted witness of Richard Baxter, who out of love for thee followed his conscience at cost to himself, and at all times rejoiced to sing thy praises in word and deed; and we pray that our lives, like his, may be well-tuned to sing the songs of love, and all our days be filled with praise of Jesus Christ our Lord; who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
I’m glad that we Anglicans are beginning to show more appreciation for the remarkable life and ministry of Richard Baxter. Along with the famous devotional book cited above, his practical manual for pastors on best practices in parish ministry, [b]The Reformed Pastor[/b], is another classic that has inspired many.
One of the greatest Puritan leaders in English history, Baxter was expelled from the CoE when he refused to conform to the anti-Puritan demands imposed on clergy as part of the restoration of the episcopate and prayerbook religion in 1662. Our loss was Presbyterianism’s gain. On his tombstone is engraved a fitting epitaph: “[i]In the worst of times, he was the best of men[/i].”
One example of his greatness was his ability to get along very well with one of his chief opponents on the other side in the religious civil war that tore the CoE apart in the mid-1600’s, i.e., +John Pearson, the scholarly Bishop of Chester and a devout High Churchman. The two men were good friends, who respected each other as godly men of honor and integrity, despite their deep theological differences. Lesser men on both sides had trouble building such solid relational bridges in those tumultuous times.
One final comment. I’ve often wondered if Baxter’s Puritan aversion to fixed liturgies wasn’t in large part due to the unfortunate influence of his father, who was a clergyman in the CoE, but a very rigid and unattractive one. Somewhere Richard Baxter laments that in his whole lifetime, he never once heard his father pray a spontaneous prayer (not at home with his family or at any time). His dad was the kind of Anglican who seemed incapable of praying his own prayers out loud and was confined to repeating the eloquent liturgical prayers of Cranmer and the BCP. I think that if I had grown up in a home like that, I might have turned out a Puritan too.
David Handy+
An admirer of Baxter, though no friend of Puritanism