IN PURSUIT OF PURITY, UNITY, AND LIBERTY

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY

OF
CHRISTIAN TRADITIONS
FOUNDED BY HEIKO A. OBERMAN †

EDITED BY
ROBERT J. BAST, Knoxville, Tennessee
IN COOPERATION WITH

HENRY CHADWICK, Cambridge

SCOTT H. HENDRIX, Princeton, New Jersey
BRIAN TIERNEY, Ithaca, New York
ARJO VANDERJAGT, Groningen
JOHN VAN ENGEN, Notre Dame, Indiana

VOLUME CXII

PAUL CHANG-HA LIM

IN PURSUIT OF PURITY, UNITY, AND LIBERTY

IN PURSUIT OF PURITY, UNITY,
AND LIBERTY
RICHARD BAXTER’S PURITAN
ECCLESIOLOGY IN ITS
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY CONTEXT

BY

PAUL CHANG-HA LIM

BRILL
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2004
 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lim, Paul Chang-Ha.
In pursuit of purity, unity, and liberty : Richard Baxter’s Puritan ecclesiology in its
seventeenth-century context / by Paul Chang-Ha Lim.
p. cm. — (Studies in the history of Christian thought ; v. 112)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 90-04-13812-9
1. Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. 2. Church—History of doctrines—17th century. I. Title.
II. Series.

BX9323.L56 2004
262’.059’092—dc22
2003069557

ISSN 0081-8607
ISBN 90 04 13812 9

© Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written
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printed in the netherlands

 CONTENTS

A  S T .......................................... ix

I. Works of Baxter .............................................................. ix
II. Journals, Monographs, Reference Works, and
Miscellania ........................................................................ xii
N  S .......................................................................... xv
A .................................................................. xvii

C O: H I,

M,  S ............................................ 1
I. Another Work on Baxter? Historiographical
Justification ...................................................................... 1
II. Methodology and Structure .......................................... 14

PART I: REFORMING THE NOTAE ECCLESIAE

C T: C  C: P

 R   T C .................................... 23
I. Introduction .................................................................... 23
II. Preaching: Definition and Significance in Baxter ........ 27
III. Conversionism, Modified Preparationism,
and Plain Style .............................................................. 28
IV. Catechizing: A Necessary Supplement to Preaching .. 44
V. Conclusion ...................................................................... 51

C T: R  E  

V C: B  C .................... 53
I. Introduction .................................................................... 53
II. Modern Historiography on Baxter’s Baptismal
Thought .......................................................................... 56
III. Context of Baxter’s Emerging Baptismal Thought .... 57
IV. Theological Considerations in Baxter’s Baptismal
Thought .......................................................................... 60
V. Revitalized Confirmation: The “Perfecting” of Infant
Baptism and Covenant Renewal .................................. 73
VI. Conclusion ...................................................................... 82
vi 

C F: B H F  U F:

B’ E T  C .................... 84
I. Introduction .................................................................... 84
II. The Puritan Context of the Struggle for the Purity of
the Lord’s Supper .......................................................... 86
III. Baxter’s Eucharistic Theology and the Question
of Open Admission ........................................................ 88
IV. Preparation, Assurance, and the Communion of
Saints .............................................................................. 96
V. On Reforming Primitive Pastoral Discipline ................ 103
VI. Conclusion ...................................................................... 113

PART II: UNITY, PURITY, AND LIBERTY PURSUED

C F: T P  P  U:

T W A   R
 P C ...................................................... 117
I. Introduction: Historical and Historiographical ............ 117
II. Pursuing Purity without Separatism: A Puritan
Dilemma............................................................................ 120
III. The Worcestershire Association: Its Genesis and
Activity for the Pursuit of Purity in Unity in the
Context of Religious Radicalism in the 1650s ............ 123
IV. Purity Perfected and Anti-Popery Continued: The
Quaker Threat and Baxter’s Interpretation of the
Proliferation of Sects ........................................................ 138
V. Occasional Communion and the Limits of
Non-Conformity................................................................ 144
VI. Conclusion ........................................................................ 154

C S: SOLA SCRIPTURA, S, A,

 D U  P P ...................... 156
I. Introduction ...................................................................... 156
II. The Clash of 1654 and Its Theological Background ...... 161
III. Baxter, Sola Scriptura, Socinianism, and the
Problem of Primitive Purity ............................................ 166
IV. Baxter’s Theological Pedigree ........................................ 173
V. John Owen and Richard Baxter: Common Puritan
Past, Divergent Dissenting Future? ................................ 182
VI. Conclusion ........................................................................ 187
  vii

C S: I P  L: THE GROTIAN

RELIGION   “T” H  P ............ 191
I. Introduction .................................................................... 191
II. The Problem of the Grotian Religion: Liberty
and Legitimacy of Reformed Ministry ........................ 195
III. The Quest for the “Right” History of the Puritans ........ 212
IV. Conclusion ...................................................................... 222

C E: C .................................................. 224

B .............................................................................. 231

I. Manuscripts .................................................................... 231
II. Works by Richard Baxter ............................................ 231
III. Other Printed Primary Sources .................................... 233
IV. Secondary Sources: Reference Works .......................... 239
V. Secondary Sources: Monographs .................................. 240
VI. Secondary Sources: Essays and Articles ...................... 246
VII. Unpublished Theses........................................................ 252

I  N ........................................................................ 255

I  T ........................................................................ 259
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 ABBREVIATIONS AND SHORT TITLES

I. W  B

[N.B. Place of Publication is London unless otherwise noted.]

ACU A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live (1658).

ADS An Answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlocke (1682).
AJ Aphorismes of Justification (1649).
ANM An Apology for the Nonconformists Ministry (1681).
ARFJ Against the Revolt to a Foreign Jurisdiction (1691).
ASJ A Sermon of Judgment. Preached at Pauls before the Honorable
Lord Major and Aldermen of the City of London, Dec. 17,
1654. And now enlarged (1655).
ADMC The Agreement of Divers Ministers of Christ in the County of
Worcester . . . for Catechizing or Personal Instruction (1656).
C&AM Cain and Abel Malignity, That is Enmity to Serious Godliness,
That is, To an Holy and Heavenly State of Heart and Life
(1689).
Cath. Theol. Richard Baxter’s Catholick Theologie: Plain, Pure, Peaceable
for Pacification of the Dogmatical Word-Warriours (1675).
CC Christian Concord, or, the Agreement of the Associated Pastors
and Churches of Worcestershire. With Rich. Baxter’s Explication
and Defence of it, and his Exhortation to Unity (1653).
CCD The Cure of Church-Divisions (1670).
CCOP The Certainty of Christianity without Popery (1672).
CCYM Compassionate Counsel to All Young-Men (1681).
CD A Christian Directory, Or a Body of Practical Divinity (1673).
CDRS Certain Disputations of Right to Sacraments (1657).
CF The Catechizing of Families (1683).
CHB&C Church-History of the Government of Bishops and their Councils
Abbreviated (1680).
C&R Confirmation and Restauration the Necessary Means of Reformation
and Reconciliation; For the Healing of the Corruptions and
Divisions of the Churches (1658).
CU Catholick Unity (1660).
DHM The Duty of Heavenly Meditations (1671).
x    

DPL A Defence of the Principles of Love, which are necessary to the

Unity and Concord of Christians; and are delivered in a Book
called The Cure of Church-Divisions (1671).
DPSC Directions and Persuasions to a Sound Conversion (1658).
DWDC Directions for Weak Distempered Christians to Grow up to a
Confirmed State of Grace (1669).
EBS The Church Told of Mr. Ed. Bagshaw’s Scandals (1672).
ENCY The English Nonconformity (1689).
FDCW Five Disputations of Church-Government and Worship (1659).
FES Full and Easie Satisfaction which is the True and Safe Religion
(1674).
FW Fair-Warning, or, XXV Reasons against Toleration and Indulgence
of Popery (1663).
GRD The Grotian Religion Discovered (1658).
HA Humble Advice . . . to many Honourable Members of Parliament
(1655).
HPW The Humble Petition of Many Thousands . . . of the County of
Worcester (1652).
JAAW The Judgment and Advice . . . of the Associated Ministers of
Worcestershire . . . in Reply to John Durey’s Proposals for Church
Unity (1658).
KC A Key for Catholicks. To open the Jugling of the Jesuits, and
satisfie all that are but truly willing to understand, whether the
Cause of the Roman or Reformed Churches be of God, and to
leave the Reader utterly unexcusable that after this will be Papist
(1659).
MLCS Making Light of Christ and Salvation (1655).
MPHC Monthly Preparations for the Holy Communion (1696).
NP Naked Popery (1677).
OSM One Sheet for the Ministry, against the Malignants of All Sorts
(1657).
OSQ One Sheet against the Quakers (1657).
Paraphrase A Paraphrase of the New Testament (1685).
PF Poetical Fragments (1681).
PMB The Poor Man’s Family Book (1674).
PSP Plain Scripture Proof of Infants Church-membership and Baptism
(1651). [All subsequent editions of this treatise will be
noted as PSP (publication year), followed by page num-
ber(s)].
QC The Quakers Catechism (1655).
     xi

RBA Rich. Baxters Apology Against the Modest Exceptions of Mr.

T. Blake . . . Mr. G. Kendall . . . Ludovicus Molinæus . . .
and . . . of Mr. W. Eyre (1654).
RBC Rich. Baxter’s Confession of his Faith, Especially concerning the
Interest of Repentance and sincere Obedience to CHRIST, in our
Justification and Salvation (1655).
RBPC Richard Baxter’s Penitent Confession (1691).
Reliquiae Reliquiae Baxterianae: Or, Mr. Richard Baxter’s Narrative of
the most Memorable Passages of His Life and Times, ed.
Matthew Sylvester (1696).
RMPC The Right Method for a Settled Peace of Conscience, and Spiritual
Comfort. In 32 Directions. Written for the use of a troubled
friend: and now published. (1653).
RP Gildas Salvianus: The First Part: i.e. The Reformed Pastor (1656).
RR Right Rejoycing (1660).
SB A Saint or a Brute (1662).
SDR Sacrilegious Desertion of the Holy Ministry Rebuked (1672).
SER The Saints Everlasting Rest (1650). [All subsequent editions
of this treatise will be noted as SER (publication year),
followed by page number(s)].
SES A Search for the English Schismatick (1681).
SOR A Sermon of Repentance (1660).
SR The Safe Religion (1657).
SSM A Second Sheet for the Ministry (1657).
SV The Successive Visibility of the Church of which the Protestants
are the soundest Members (1660).
TC A Treatise of Conversion. Preached and now Published of the
Use of those that are strangers to a true Conversion, especially
the grosly [sic] ignorant and ungodly (1657).
TC&CC The True Catholick and Catholick Church Described. And the
Vanity of the Papists, and all other Schismaticks, that confine
the Catholick Church to their Sect, discovered and shamed
(1660).
TE A Treatise of Episcopacy (1681).
THCD The True History of Councils Enlarged and Defended (1682).
TXY True Christianity, or, Christs Absolute Dominion, and Mans
necessary Self-resignation and subjection. In two Assize Sermons
preached at Worcester (1655).
UC Universal Concord. The First Part: The Sufficient Terms (1660).
UI The Unreasonableness of Infidelity (1655).
xii    

UR Joseph Reade and Matthew Sylvester, eds., Universal

Redemption of Mankind (1694).
WPD The Worcestershire Petition to the Parliament for the Ministry
of England Defended (1653).
WSP A Winding-Sheet for Popery (1657).
WTC Which is the True Church? The Whole Christian World, as
Headed only by Christ, (Of which the Reformed are the sound-
est part) Or, the Pope of Rome and his Subjecst as such? (1679).
WTL ‘What is that light which must shine before men in the
works of Christ’s Disciples?’, in Samuel Annesley, ed.,
A Supplement to the Morning-Exercise at Cripplegate: Or, Several
More Cases of Conscience Practically Resolved by Sundry Ministers
(1674).

II. J, M, R W,  M

ARG Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte.

Al. Cant. John Venn and J.A. Venn, eds., Alumni Cantabrigienses:
A Biographical List . . . Part I: From the Earliest Times to
1751, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1924).
Al. Oxon. Joseph Foster, ed., Alumni Oxonienses: The Members of the
University of Oxford, 1500–1714, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1891–2).
ANF J. Donaldson and A. Roberts, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers:
Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325,
24 vols. (Edinburgh, 1867–72).
Ath. Oxon. Anthony à Wood, Athenae Oxonienses . . . to which are Added
the Fasti of the University, ed. Philip Bliss, 5 vols. (Oxford,
1813–15).
ATR Anglican Theological Review.
BDBR Richard Greaves and Robert Zaller, eds., Biographical
dictionary of British radicals in seventeenth century, 3 vols.
(Brighton, UK: Harvester Press, 1982–84).
BL British Library, London.
BIHR Bulletin of the Institute of the Historical Research.
BJRL Bulletin of the John Rylands Library.
BNS Baxter Notes and Studies.
BQ Baptist Quarterly.
BSHPF Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français.
C&L Christianity and Literature.
     xiii

CCRB Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter, eds.

N.H. Keeble and Geoffrey F. Nuttall, 2 vols. (Oxford,
1991). [Cited by Letter, and not Page, number,
e.g., CCRB, #112]
CH Church History.
CJ The Journals of the House of Commons.
CJH Canadian Journal of History.
CQ Congregational Quarterly.
CR A.G. Matthews, Calamy Revised: Being a Revision of
Edmund Calamy’s Account of the Ministers and Others
Ejected and Silenced, 1660–2 (Oxford, 1988 repr.).
CSPD Calendar of State Papers, Domestic.
CTJ Calvin Theological Journal.
CUL Cambridge University Library.
DNB Dictionary of National Biography, Sir L. Stephen and
Sir S. Lee, eds., 22 vols. (1908–9).
EHR English Historical Review.
EQ Evangelical Quarterly.
Firth and Rait C.H. Firth and S.R. Rait, eds., Acts and Ordinances
of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, 3 vols. (1911).
HJ Historical Journal.
Institutes John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J.T.
McNeill and tr. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Phila-
delphia, 1960). [All citations are to Book, Chapter,
and Section numbers: e.g. Institutes, IV.iii.4]
JBS Journal of British Studies.
JDANHS Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeological and Natural History
Society.
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History.
JPHS Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society of England.
JR Journal of Religion.
JRH Journal of Religious History.
JURCHS Journal of the United Reformation Church Historical Society.
Letters The six volumes of Baxter Correspondence held in Dr.
Williams’s Library, London (MS 59, vols. i–vi).
Reference is to volume and folio numbers.
NPNF Philip Schaff, ed., A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-
Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series (Grand Rapids, MI, 1979).
Nuttall and Geoffrey F. Nuttall and Owen Chadwick, eds., From
Chadwick Uniformity to Unity 1662–1962 (London: SPCK, 1962).
xiv    

ODCC F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford

Dictionary of the Christian Church (2nd edn., Oxford,
1974).
P&P Past and Present.
PHS Proceedings of the Huguenot Society.
Powicke I F.J. Powicke, A Life of the Rev. Richard Baxter, 1651–1691
(1924).
Powicke II F.J. Powicke, The Reverend Richard Baxter under the Cross,
1662–1691 (1927).
PS Population Studies.
RH Recusant History.
SCJ Sixteenth Century Journal.
SL Studia Liturgica.
SUL HP Sheffield University Library, Hartlib Papers.
TAPS Transactions of the American Philosophical Society.
TBHS Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society.
TCHS Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society.
TLS Times Literary Supplement.
Treatises The twenty-one volumes of Baxter Treatises held in
Dr. Williams’s Library, London, MS 59, vols. vii–xiii,
and MS 61, vols. i–vi, xi–xviii. Reference is to volume,
item, and where available, folio numbers.
Wing D.G. Wing, Short Title Catalogue of books printed in
England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and British America, and
of English books printed in other countries, 1641–1700 (2nd
edn., New York, 1982–98).
WR A.G. Matthews, ed., Walker Revised: being a revision of
John Walker’s Sufferings of the clergy during the Grand
Rebellion, 1642–1660 (Oxford, 1988 repr.).
WTJ Westminster Theological Journal.
 NOTE ON STYLE

All quotations retain their original punctuation, capitalization, and

spelling. For transcriptions of the Letters, I have followed the guide-
line set by the editors of CCRB, in 1:x–xi. Dates follow the modern,
January 1 marking the beginning of the new year.
This page intentionally left blank
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

“In te enim curram accinctus et in Deo meo transiliam murum.”

[Ps. 18:30]

In the course of preparing this book for publication, I have benefited

from the scholarly, financial, and emotional support of numerous
institutions and colleagues, family and friends, and although in no
way adequate, I wish to express with deep gratitude these many
debts and contributions.
The first stage in the metamorphosis of this book was my doc-
toral studies undertaken between Michaelmas Term 1997 and Lent
Term 2001 at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of
Professor Eamon Duffy. I am grateful to the Master and Fellows
of Clare College, Cambridge, for electing me their inaugural recipient
of G.R. Elton Postgraduate Scholarship in History between 1998
and 2001. The Managers of the Lightfoot Fund and the Archbishop
Cranmer Scholarship of the Faculty of History are to be thanked
for awarding their funds, and as well the Faculty of Divinity for
awarding me both the Theological Studies Fund and the Bethune-
Baker Fund to see me though my Ph.D. years in reasonable comfort.
I have benefited greatly from numerous correspondence, conver-
sations, and unfailing encouragement from the following scholars dur-
ing that stage: Dr. J. William Black, Dr. Hans Boersma, Mr. John
Brouwer, Dr. John Coffey, Professor Patrick Collinson, Dr. Tom
Freeman, Dr. Don Gilbert, Professor Richard Greaves, Professor
N.H. Keeble, Dr. Michael Lawrence, Dr. Anthony Milton, and Dr.
Brent Whitefield.
The research on which the book is based was primarily carried
out in the Rare Book Room at the Cambridge University Library,
and I owe an incalculable debt to its staff for bringing and re-shelv-
ing a plethora of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century pamphlets, trea-
tises, and folios. In addition, libraries of the following Cambridge
collegiate libraries helped expedite my research: Gonville & Caius,
St. John’s, Wolfson, Emmanuel, the Wren Library at Trinity, and
the Forbes Mellon Library at Clare College. Finally, the staff of the
British Library, Lambeth Palace Library, Dr. Williams’s Library—
xviii 

all of London—Houghton Library at Harvard University, and the

University of Birmingham Library patiently all my esoteric queries
with great expertise.
Primordial ideas that are now more fully developed in these chap-
ters were first delivered at various conferences and seminar at: the
University of St. Andrews, the University of Birmingham, Warwick
University, Westminster College, Cambridge, and Newbold College,
Berkshire. Chapters Five and Six were presented in shorter forms at
the Church History Seminar, Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge, and
at the Early Modern British History Seminar, Faculty of History,
Cambridge, respectively.
While in Cambridge, I had the unique privilege of doing research
along with two other postgraduate students on Baxter: J. William
Black and John F. Brouwer. Their genuine enthusiasm for my aca-
demic progress was only matched by their unhesitant willingness to
share their growing knowledge of the man for whom godly socia-
bility and the communion of the saints was a true means of puri-
fying the Church. Bill and John have shown me how that could be
done, the memories of which I will always cherish.
An especial debt of gratitude needs be expressed to Professor
Eamon Duffy, my Doktorvater and friend, whose penetrating insight
into the morphology of salvation and the nature of English Puritanism
was incomparable, and as well his ability to encourage his students
to strive for the best in all their academic endeavors. Despite hav-
ing to wade through many garbled drafts and oft-incoherent thoughts,
he remained patient and most enthusiastic about the project, and
demonstrated once again why he has a widespread reputation as a
first-rate, caring and inspiring senior academic for training doctoral
students.
After the completion of the Ph.D., I found myself teaching theology
at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, in Hamilton, Massachusetts,
USA, a most congenial and picturesque setting for theological reflection,
research and teaching. A number of colleagues have discussed var-
ious aspects of this book and offered advice. I am especially grate-
ful to John Jefferson Davis, Gordon L. Isaac, Richard Lints, Garth
Rosell, Gary Parrett, Gwenfair Walters, and David F. Wells. My
research assistant for 2003–2004, Dawn Richardson, is to be thanked
for compiling the index and for helping with all other last minute
details.
  xix

Families often come last not because they matter the least but
because they always provide the teleological resting place in every
sense of the word. My parents and in-laws have shown such love
and understanding, and provided much needed encouragement for
completing this project. Lastly my wife and trusted friend, Mikyung
Kim, often reminded me of the great reality that my ultimate signi-
ficance before the One was by grace, not by grade. How much such
a reminder helped me to forge ahead, both during the doctorate
and afterward, she may never know! Appropriately it is to her that
this book is dedicated.

Paul Chang-Ha Lim

All Saints Day, 2003
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 CHAPTER ONE

HISTORIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION,
METHODOLOGY, AND STRUCTURE

I. A W  B? H J

William Ames, the leading spokesman of non-separating Congre-

gationalism, in declining an invitation from John Winthrop to come
to New England in 1629, advised the fledgling churches there to
ensure a “general care of . . . libertie, unitie, with puritie.”1 Such an
ecclesiological emphasis was a shared concern among the Puritans
of both New and Old England, committed as they were to their
vision of reform. Richard Baxter also self-consciously pursued this
ideal of unity, purity, and liberty of the church throughout his eccle-
siastical career, from his ordination in 1638 until his death in 1691.2
This book focuses on the Baxter’s ecclesiology, arguably one of
the best known and certainly the most prolific writer among the
Puritans in seventeenth-century England. To be sure, anyone who
has been called by Ernst Troeltsch “a good representative of Puritan
thought and achievement at its best,” or by Christopher Hill, the
“most resolute of Nonconformist divines” is not likely to lack histo-
riographical attention.3 Thus, unsurprisingly, both fervent encomi-
ums and ferocious attacks on Baxter’s works have appeared since
his first treatise Aphorismes of Justification was published in 1649. In
the seventeenth century, Baxter’s views on justification, ecumenical
endeavours, nonconformity, and grace elicited criticism from Dissenters
and Churchmen alike, involving writers such as John Owen, Thomas

1
William Ames to John Winthrop, dated 29 December, 1629, in Winthrop Papers,
vol. 2 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1931), pp. 576–77.
2
Since this book focuses on Baxter’s ecclesiology, only certain salient biograph-
ical details are highlighted. For biographical studies of Baxter, see Powicke, I and
II; Geoffrey F. Nuttall, Richard Baxter (London: Nelson, 1965).
3
Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon,
2 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1931), 2:678; Christopher Hill, Puritanism and revo-
lution: studies in interpretation of the English Revolution of the 17th century (London: Secker
& Warburg, 1958), p. 326.
2  

Long, Peter Heylyn, and Bishop Thomas Barlow.4 In the eighteenth

century, Baxter’s interpretation of the fate of Puritanism was taken
up by Edmund Calamy to legitimate the Nonconformist identity.
This prompted an equally vigorous historiographical restatement of
the Anglican cause by John Walker.5 Moving across the Atlantic in
the same century, Jonathan Edwards often appealed to Baxter’s
authority to validate his own stringent requirement for sacramental
administration.6
The proponents of toleration for anti-trinitarians in the nineteenth
century also appealed to Baxter’s radical stance on sola scriptura as
they debated the Dissenters’ Chapels Bill of 1844. Both Richard
Milnes and William Gladstone argued that the logical consequence
of Baxter’s biblicism was a toleration of those who scrupled to sub-
scribe to anything other than scriptural confessions.7 For Macaulay,
no “eminent chief of a party ever passed through many years of
civil and religious dissension with more innocence than Richard
Baxter.”8 Around the turn of the twentieth century, Max Weber, in

4
Owen criticized Baxter’s hypothetical universalism and his allegedly Socinianizing
view on the Trinity. See Owen, Of the Death of Christ (London, 1650); idem, Vindiciae
Evangelicae (Oxford, 1655), Appendix, 1–44; [Samuel Young], Vindiciae Anti-Baxterianae
(London, 1696). Thomas Long, A Review of Mr. Richard Baxter’s Life (London, 1697);
see also [Thomas Long], The Non-Conformists Plea for Peace Impleaded (London, 1680).
Peter Heylyn, Certamen Epistolare (London, 1659), sigs. A4r–A6v, 1–96. For Bishop
Barlow’s criticism of Baxter’s nebulous distinction between common and saving
grace, see, The Genuine Remains of . . . Thomas Barlow (1693), pp. 424–53.
5
Edmund Calamy, An Abridgement of Mr. Baxter’s History (1702). On Calamy, see
David Wykes, “To let the memory of these men dye is injurious to posterity,” in
R.N. Swanson, ed., Church Retrospective Studies in Church History 33 (Woodbridge,
UK: Boydell, 1997), pp. 379–92. John Walker, An . . . Account of the . . . Sufferings of
the Clergy (1714). On Walker, see Burke Griggs, “Remembering the Puritan Past,”
in Protestant Identities: religion, society, and self-fashioning in post-Reformation England, eds.
Muriel McClendon, Joseph Ward, and Michael MacDonald (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1999), pp. 158–91.
6
See Jonathan Edwards, Ecclesiastical Writings, ed. David D. Hall, vol. 12 of The
Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 326–27,
338–39, 344–46. On Baxter’s sacramental thought, see Hans Boersma, Richard
Baxter’s Understanding of Infant Baptism. Studies in Reformed Theology and History
(Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 2002).
7
For Milnes’ speech, see Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, third series, LXXV (1844),
pp. 354–59 (6 June 1844), esp. 358. For Gladstone’s speech, see ibid., pp. 319–32
(6 June 1844).
8
Thomas Macaulay, The History of England, ed. C.H. Firth, 6 vols. (London:
Longman, 1913–15), 1:485.
   3

his classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, also acknowl-
edged Baxter’s prominence among Puritans, and reduced the com-
plexity of Baxter’s thought to that of a proto-capitalist ideal.9
Among modern historians Baxter has been an authoritative voice
on the tumultuous eras of the Civil Wars, the Interregnum, and the
Restoration politics of religion and religious culture, largely due to
his writings on contemporary affairs in the Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696).
Joyce Malcolm commented that “an almost religious reliance” among
historians existed—and still does—on this unique source.10 In a brief
survey of several texts of early modern English social, religious and
political history, Baxter emerges as arguably the most frequently cited
Puritan.11
Amid such ample historiographical attention which Baxter has
received, there exists a surprising lacuna in works devoted to his
ecclesiology. Studies in Baxter and Puritan politics,12 Baxter and

9
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons
(New York: Scribner, 1958), pp. 155–6, 224, 226–9. Weber influenced historians
such as R.H. Tawney, Christopher Hill, and Michael Walzer, who primarily saw
the Puritans as “forward-looking,” modernizing and revolutionary elements in English
society. See Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: a historical study (New York:
Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1926); Hill, Economic Problems of the Church, from
Archbishop Whitgift to the Long Parliament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956); Walzer, The
Revolution of the Saints: a study in the origins of radical politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1965).
10
Joyce Malcolm, “A King in Search of Soldiers: Charles I in 1642,” HJ 21(1978),
pp. 252–3. William Lamont has warned us of an uncritical reliance upon the post-
Restoration account of Baxter on the Civil War and the Interregnum. See Lamont,
Puritanism and Historical Controversy (London: UCL Press, 1996), p. 6; idem, “The
Religious Origins of the English Civil War,” in Religion, Resistance and Civil War.
Papers presented at the Folger Institute Seminar “Political Thought in Early Modern
England, 1600–1660,” ed. Gordon J. Schochet (Washington, D.C.: The Folger
Institute, 1990), pp. 6–8.
11
The texts surveyed were: Michael Watts, The Dissenters (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1978); Ann Hughes, ed., Seventeenth-century England: a changing cul-
ture. Vol. 1. Primary Sources (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1980), pp. 1, 21–4,
82, 89–91, 133–34, 143, 149–50, 250–51, 256–60; Christopher Durston and
Jacqueline Eales, eds., The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700 (Basingstoke, UK:
Macmillan, 1996); John Spurr, English Puritanism, 1603–1689 (Basingstoke, UK:
Macmillan, 1998). Baxter’s ministry in Kidderminster was the only example high-
lighting the effectiveness of the Puritan ministry in David Cressy and Lori Anne
Ferrell, eds., Religion and Society in Early Modern England: A Sourcebook (New York:
Routledge, 1996), pp. 199–203.
12
R. Schlatter, Richard Baxter and Puritan Politics (New Brunswick: Rutgers University
Press, 1957); Lamont’s “Introduction” to Baxter, A Holy Commonwealth, ed. William
Lamont (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), ix–xxxi.
4  

millenarianism,13 Baxter and voluntaristic philosophical perspectives,14

Baxter and justification,15 Baxter as a literary figure,16 Baxter and
Puritan spirituality,17 Baxter and his inveterate antipathy toward
Antinomianism,18 and Baxter and pastoral ministry,19 have all con-
tributed substantially to our understanding of this eclectic Puritan.
However, less attention has been given to contextualized studies of
Baxter’s ecclesiology. In fact, this is the first monograph-length study
devoted to the ecclesiology of one whom Paul Seaver calls “one of
the finest Puritan writers and preachers of the seventeenth century.”20
This neglect of ecclesiology has been symptomatic of Reformation
historiography in general until the turn of the twentieth century. The
Princeton theologian B.B. Warfield’s comment helps to explain the
rationale behind such neglect: “For the Reformation, inwardly con-
sidered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine’s doctrine of
grace over Augustine’s doctrine of the Church.” This preoccupation
in Protestant Reformation scholarship with the issues of justification,
sacramental theologies, and confessionalization at the expense of
ecclesiology has been redressed only recently.21

13
Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium: Protestant Imperialism and the English
Revolution (London: Croom Helm, 1979).
14
Gavin McGrath, “Puritans and the Human Will” (Unpublished dissertation,
Ph.D., University of Durham, U.K., 1989).
15
Two representative studies are: J.I. Packer, “The Redemption and Restoration
of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter” (Unpublished dissertation, D.Phil.,
Oxford, 1954), and Hans Boersma, A Hot Pepper Corn: Richard Baxter’s Doctrine of
Justification in Its Seventeenth-Century Context of Controversy (Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij
Boekencentrum, 1993).
16
N.H. Keeble, Richard Baxter: Puritan man of letters (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1982); idem, The Literary Culture of Nonconformity in Later Seventeenth-Century England
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987). See also Joan Webber, “Richard Baxter:
the eye of the hurricane,” in her The Eloquent “I”: style and self in seventeenth-century
prose (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1968), pp. 115–48; Margaret Bottrall,
Every Man a Phoenix: Studies in seventeenth-century autobiography (London: Murray, 1958),
pp. 111–40.
17
Owen Watkins, The Puritan Experience: studies in spiritual autobiography (New York:
Schocken Books, 1972), pp. 121–43; A.R. Ladell, Richard Baxter: Puritan and mystic
(London: S.P.C.K., 1925).
18
Tim Cooper, Fear and Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: Richard Baxter and
Antinomianism (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001).
19
J. William Black, Reformation Pastors (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004).
20
Paul Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships: politics of religious dissent, 1560–1662 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1970), p. 30.
21
B.B. Warfield, Calvin and Augustine (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed,
1956), p. 322. John T. McNeill has argued that whilst the “space accorded by
   5

With the post-Reformation Church of England, however, there

has not only been considerable interest but also inherent tension in
ecclesiological issues.22 Assuredly, its official doctrines, established in
the Thirty-Nine Articles, unofficially affirmed in the Lambeth Articles23
and ascertained in the Synod of Dort, were clearly Protestant.24 Its
ecclesiological stance, on the other hand, in ceremonies, worship,
and polity often drew criticism from the more Geneva-orientated
Puritan contingent. Another related area of criticism had to do with
the slowness of reformation administered from top-down. Thus, vol-
untary religious exercises increased as they were designed to enhance
the spiritual quality of the parishioners. These intense religious meet-
ings promoted godly sociability and solidarity. Even though they
could lead to separatistic proclivities, the Puritan lectures, exercises
and prayer meetings were entirely typical and well-ingrained parts
of English Protestantism.25 Another significant manifestation was the

Calvin to the doctrine of the church in the Institutes is evidence of the high impor-
tance it assumed for him . . . until our century (twentieth) this part of his theology
has attracted little attention from his interpreters.” See John Calvin, Institutes of the
Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill and trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia:
Westminster Press, 1960), IV. i. 1, n. 1. This has been rectified, in part, by McNeill,
“The Church in Sixteenth Century Reformed Theology,” JR 22(1942), pp. 251–69;
Paul D.L. Avis, The Church in the Theology of the Reformers (Atlanta: John Knox Press,
1981); Geddes MacGregor, Corpus Christi: the nature of the church according to the Reformed
tradition (London: Macmillan, 1959); J.M. Headley, Luther’s View of Church History
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963); Philip Butin, Reformed Ecclesiology: Trinitarian
grace according to Calvin (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1994).
22
Among numerous others, three representative studies are, in the order of peri-
ods covered: Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: traditional religion in England,
c. 1400 –c. 1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); Peter Lake and
M. Dowling, eds., Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth-Century England (New
York: Croom Helm, 1987); Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: the Roman and
Protestant churches in English Protestant thought, 1600 –1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995).
23
On the Lambeth Articles, see H.C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor
Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), pp. 364–75; Peter Lake,
Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982), pp. 218–42; Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism,
c. 1590–1640 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 30–1; Alister McGrath,
Iustitia Dei: a history of the Christian doctrine of justification (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), pp. 292–93; the Lambeth Articles are printed in J. Strype,
The Life and Acts of John Whitgift, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1822), 2:280.
24
See The Ivdgement of the Synode Holden at Dort, Concerning the Fiue Articles (1619),
pp. 3–83; Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 87–105; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 393–5,
418–24; W.B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), Chap. 8.
25
Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships; Patrick Collinson, “Lectures by Combination:
6  

rise of radical separatism, arising from the conviction that the true
church was to be comprised only of visible Christians since the
national Church had failed to be an effective organism of reform.
Historiographically, therefore, separatists and their religious com-
munities have received attention from numerous historians and others
interested in the radical political ideology of early modern England.26
“Puritan” was a highly controversial term both then and now. It
was used as an opprobrious epithet with a wide semantic range in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Puritans were either those
in the community whose religious zeal was more fervent than the
majority of their neighbors, or those who scrupled over the liturgy
and polity of the Church of England, or those whose desire for cul-
tural reformation led them to endorse a strict Sabbatarianism27 and
oppose diverse expressions of communal festivities.28 John Geree’s
short treatise defining “an Old English Puritane” was published in
1646 and re-published several times during the next three decades,
reflecting perhaps its popularity and the apologetic necessity of the
Puritans to re-articulate their raison d’être. Similarly, William Bradshaw’s
English Puritanisme (1605) was re-published at crucial crossroads—in
1640, 1641, and 1660—in Puritan history, once again demonstrat-
ing the contested nature of Puritanism.29

Structures and Characteristics of Church Life in 17th-Century England,” BIHR 48

(1975), pp. 181–213.
26
The classical account of the history of religious dissent in England is Champlain
Burrage, The Early English Dissenters, 2 vols. (New York: Putnam, 1912). See also
B.R. White, The English Separatist Tradition: from the Marian martyrs to the pilgrim fathers
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); Stephen Brachlow, The Communion of Saints:
radical Puritan and separatist ecclesiology, 1570–1625 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988); idem, “John Robinson and the Lure of Separatism in Pre-Revolutionary
England,” CH 50 (1981), pp. 288–301; Geoffrey F. Nuttall, Visible Saints: the Congregational
way, 1640–1660 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957). Leland Carlson and Albert Peel have
added immensely to our understanding of Elizabethan separatist-nonconformist ide-
ology by their editing of The Elizabethan Nonconformist Texts, vols. 1–6 (London: Allen
and Unwin, 1951–70), illuminating the lives, theology, and ecclesiology of Thomas
Cartwright, Robert Harrison, Robert Browne, Henry Barrow, and John Greenwood.
27
See Kenneth Parker, The English Sabbath: a study of the doctrine and discipline from
the Reformation to the Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
28
See Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700
(New York, Oxford University Press, 1994).
29
John Geree, The Character of an Old English Puritane, or non-conformist (1646, 1649
repr., 1659 repr., 1672). In 1673, it was re-published as A Character of the sober non-
conformist. Bradshaw’s English Puritanisme was re-published as part of Several Treatises
of Worship and Ceremonies. For Geree, see DNB; for Bradshaw, see DNB, and BDBR,
and chaps. 5 and 6 below.
   7

Due to its supposedly obfuscating nature, numerous contemporary

historians such as C.H. George, Basil Hall, Michael Finlayson, and
Paul Christianson questioned the usefulness of the term “Puritan.”30
However, Patrick Collinson and Peter Lake, among others, invigo-
rated Puritan studies—particularly of the Elizabethan and Jacobean
periods—by demonstrating that Puritanism should not inevitably be
equated with an incipient form of radical separatism, though both
recognized the fissiparous tendency within Puritanism itself. Instead
they have shown the degree to which “the religion of Protestants”
during this period overlapped with what is often typically attributed
to Puritanism.31 I will use the term “Puritan” as describing a “hotter
sort of Protestant,”32 committed to fostering an ethos of individual
godliness, communal conversion, consequent avoidance of the profane,
and campaigning for a greater alignment of ministry and magistracy
for the sake of completing the work of reformation in England.

30
On the question of defining Puritans and Puritanism, among those who ques-
tioned the heuristic value of the terms “Puritanism” and “Puritans,” see C.H. George,
“Puritanism as History and Historiography,” P&P 41 (1968), pp. 77–104; Basil Hall,
“Puritanism: the Problem of Definition,” in G.J. Cuming, ed., Studies in Church History,
vol. 2 (London: Nelson, 1965), pp. 283–96; Michael Finlayson, “Puritanism and
Puritans: Labels or Libels?”, CJH 8 (1973), pp. 201–33; Paul Christianson, “Reformers
and the Church of England under Elizabeth I and the early Stuarts,” JEH 31
(1980), pp. 463–84. Both Hall and Christianson re-defined their term so narrowly
as to exclude the separatists from the classification of “Puritans.” Cf. William Lamont,
“Puritanism as History and Historiography: some further thoughts,” P&P 44 (1969),
pp. 133–46. For helpful studies in defining the term “Puritan,” see Thomas Clancy,
“Papist-Protestant-Puritan: English religious taxonomy 1565–1665,” RH 13 (1975–76),
pp. 238–41; Nicholas Tyacke, The Fortunes of English Puritanism 1603–1640 (London;
Dr. Williams’s Trust, 1990); Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary
England (New York: Schocken Books, 1964), pp. 15–30; R.L. Greaves, “The Puritan
Non-Conformist Tradition in England, 1560–1700: historiographical reflections,”
Albion 17 (1985), pp. 449–86.
31
The most representative of Professor Collinson’s view on the Puritan “main-
stream” is his The Religion of Protestants: the church in English society, 1559–1625 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1982); idem, “Elizabethan and Jacobean Puritanism
as Forms of Popular Religious Culture,” in The Culture of English Puritanism, eds.
J. Eales and Christopher Durston (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 32–57;
idem, “A Comment: concerning the name Puritan,” JEH 31 (1980), pp. 483–8.
The subversive potential of Puritanism is discussed in Collinson, The Elizabethan
Puritan Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967); idem, The Puritan
Character: polemics and polarities in early seventeenth-century either culture (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1989). For Lake’s view of Puritanism, see “Puritan
Identities,” JEH 35 (1984), pp. 112–23; idem, “Defining Puritanism—Again?”, in
Puritanism: Transatlantic Perspectives, ed. F. Bremer (Boston: Massachusetts Historical
Society, 1993), pp. 3–29; idem, Moderate Puritans, pp. 279–92.
32
One of the earliest occurrences of the term Puritan is in Perceval Wilburn’s,
8  

It is part of my contention that Baxter epitomizes the godly Puritan

tradition, laid out by Collinson and Lake.33 As Lake has shown,
Puritanism, “even in its most over gestures of refusal and rejection . . .
cannot be convinced in primarily in negative terms.”34 The positive
elements of edification and evangelization which Lake spoke of formed
the core of Baxter’s parochial reformation. This program of ecclesio-
logical re-configuration was based on a broad evangelical doctrinal
basis, conversionistic emphasis, and an inclusive catechizing. Baxter’s
reform fostered a “laborious holynesse,” an experimental and expe-
riential pursuit of godliness.35 If a Puritan was to be defined by the
degree of one’s religious zeal, then Baxter’s credentials certainly seem
impeccable.36
An interesting facet of the “negative” dimension in Baxter’s Puri-
tanism was the identification of the godly over against the ungodly

A Checke or reproofe of M. Howlet’s untimely schreeching (1581), fol. 15v: “the whotter
sorte of Protestants are Puritans.”
33
This is not to suggest that Baxter was in complete harmony with those who
considered themselves identifiable members of this group of godly Protestants. In
fact, as was perhaps true of other Puritans, Baxter’s Puritan identity was formed
and re-affirmed over against other groups: in his case with the separatists, high
Calvinists, and the Prelatists.
34
Lake, Moderate Puritans, p. 2; Collinson, “A comment: concerning the name
Puritan,” p. 463.
35
This phrase comes from a letter by Peter Ince in his praise of Baxter’s The
Saints Everlasting Rest (1650), as Ince perceived that Baxter was “rowsinge men up
to an active and busy religousnesse (which is religiousnesse indeed).” See Letters, iv.
181 (16 November 1652).
36
Even his high Calvinist critic, George Kendall praised Baxter’s zealous empha-
sis on experimental religion. See Kendall’s Sancti Sanciti (1654), “To the Reader,”
sig. ***3v. It is important to note that most Conformists such as Richard Hooker,
Archbishop William Laud, and Jeremy Taylor certainly regarded themselves religiously
zealous. Perhaps the main difference between Conformists and Nonconformists—
some of whom regarded themselves Puritans—lies in the mode of their spirituality
and expression thereof. Whereas Conformists emphasized sacramental devotion and
adhered to the religious praxis set forth in the Prayer Book, and thus were not as
fastidious about “semon-gadding,” the main critique of the religion of the Church
of England during the Elizabethan and early Stuart period was that it deviated
from the logocentric focus of preaching and catechizing. Judith Maltby’s ground-
breaking study of parochial religiosity during this period has helped recalibrate the
prevailing historiographical perspective to see the religious zeal of those whose pri-
mary sense and sensibility of religion was focused on the Altar and the Eucharist.
See Judith Maltby, Prayer Book and people in Elizabethan and early Stuart England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). See also Alexandra Walsham, “The
Parochial Roots of Laudianism Revisited: Catholics, Anti-Calivnists, and ‘Parish
Anglicans’ in early Stuart England,” JEH 49 (1998): 620–51. I am grateful to
Professor Richard Greaves for pointing this out.
   9

in the community, and not the usually thorny issue of conformity

and ceremonies.37 Another important common cluster of belief among
Puritans was their uncompromising anti-popery and commitment to
propagate evangelical Protestantism in opposition to it.38 Baxter’s
ecclesiology was also formed in conscious awareness of the putative
perceived threat of a Jesuit take-over of the ecclesiastical sovereignty
of England during the 1650s, only intensified after the restoration
of the monarchy. His anti-popery was transposed onto Restoration
prelacy, which Baxter feared as an accomplice in ushering in pop-
ery. This then prompted Baxter to become an avowed defender of
the cause of English Nonconformity in contradistinction to the sup-
posedly Popery-tainted Restoration Church of England before the
Glorious Revolution.39 Moreover, by studying Baxter’s ecclesiology,
we can follow the metamorphosis of Puritanism from the Civil War
ferment of religious radicalism to Restoration Dissent.40
Most recent studies on early modern English Protestant ecclesio-
logy have questioned the once stark polarities of “Puritans vs.
Anglicans,” and of separatists and radical Puritans.41 In addition to
the works by Collinson and Lake cited above, others deserve men-
tion, for they provide the historical and ideological groundwork for

37
Collinson has argued that Puritans cannot be properly defined by themselves,
since they comprised only “one half of a stressful relationship,” the other half being
the anti-Puritans who were content with a more calendrical and less logocentric
piety. See his The Birthpangs of Protestant England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988),
p. 143. As I will show in Chaps. 3 and 5, Baxter’s adiaphorist view regarding con-
formity to the ceremonies of the Restoration Church of England brought him much
closer to Lake’s “moderate Puritans” than otherwise has been assumed.
38
Peter Lake, “Anti-popery: the structure of a prejudice,” in Conflict in Early Stuart
England: studies in religion and politics, 1603–1642, eds. Richard Cust and Ann Hughes
(New York: Longman, 1989); idem, “William Bradshaw, Antichrist and the Community
of the Godly,” JEH 36 (1985), pp. 570–589.
39
Baxter’s anti-popery and defence of Puritanism over against it was already
hinted at in GRD (1658), Preface, sig. *2–C7. For Baxter’s defence of Puritan non-
conformity, see ENCY (1689); C&AM (1689).
40
See Nicholas Tyacke, “The ‘Rise of Puritanism’ and the Legalizing of Dissent,
1571–1719,” in From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and religion in England,
eds. Nicholas Tyacke, O.P. Grell, and J.I. Israel (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991), pp. 17–49. For Protestant ecclesiology of the sixteenth century, see
Peter Lake and Margaret Dowling, eds., Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth
Century England (New York: Croom Helm, 1987), especially Chaps. 3, 7, 8.
41
For studies that defined “Puritans” and “Anglicans” as clearly distinguishable
and mutually exclusive groups, see J.F.H. New, Anglican and Puritan: the basis of their
opposition, 1558–1640 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1964); J. Sears McGee,
The Godly Man in Stuart England: Anglicans, Puritans, and the Two Tables, 1620–1670
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).
10  

the present discussion of Baxter’s ecclesiology. Stephen Brachlow’s

The Communion of Saints, first of all, provided a nuanced picture of
the emergence of religious radicalism in Elizabethan and Jacobean
England. Brachlow demonstrated that the line of demarcation between
the proto-Presbyterians and proto-Congregationalists was often blurred,
and asserted that the eventual trajectory of the two traditions should
not be read back into Jacobethan Puritanism where such distinction
was more inchoate.42
Anthony Milton’s Catholic and Reformed, like Brachlow’s work, ques-
tioned the historiographical orthodoxies of the past generation, in
this case, the myth of the Anglican via media.43 Milton’s analysis of
the structure of the internal conflict within the Church of England
transcended the bifurcational model of the Calvinist vs. Arminian
soteriological divide, and showed the need to contextualize other
issues of the polemic during the period, especially that of ecclesiol-
ogy. He highlighted the ecclesiological significance of the debates
over orthodoxy, and the formation and consolidation of ecclesial
identities in polemic. Thus, a picture emerges of more multi-faceted
conflicts than a mere soteriological divergence, including the ques-
tion of the ecclesial validity of Rome, other non-episcopal Reformed
churches, and the role of jure divino episcopacy as a demonizing dis-
course used against the Puritans. All the above polemical issues con-
tributed to recognizing that the early Stuart Church was more unstable
than hitherto acknowledged, reaching its breaking point in the ensu-
ing Civil War of the early 1640s.
Dealing with a similar period yet focusing on the godly clergy of
the early Stuart period, Tom Webster has reconstructed the creation,
maintenance and conflicts of clerical networks of the Caroline Puritan
movement. His discussion of “alternative ecclesiologies” is significant
since it shows the complexity of the ecclesiological conflicts among
Puritans during the last years of the Laudian regime, and helps us

42
Stephen Brachlow, The Communion of Saints (Oxford, 1988). In doing so, Brachlow
gave a more subtle reading of the emergence of English Separatists than either B.R.
White or Champlain Burrage had done. See n. 26 above.
43
Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995). Milton thus provides a more nuanced account of the theological and eccle-
siological complexity of the Church of England than F.M.G. Higham, Catholic and
Reformed: a study of the Anglican church, 1559–1662 (London: S.P.C.K., 1962). See also
H.F. Woodhouse, The Doctrine of the Church in Anglican Theology 1547–1603 (London:
S.P.C.K., 1954).
   11

to place Baxter’s own ecclesiological development as a combination

of both the Amesian and moderate episcopalian positions.44 A recent
work by Elliot Vernon clearly demonstrated the moderate Puritan
context of the London Presbyterians, many of whom were Baxter’s
frequent correspondents and colleagues—Matthew Poole, Thomas
Manton, Simeon Ashe, among others. Vernon reconstructed the godly
network that endeavored to usher in a national reformed religion
over against the rise of the sects and the spiritual inertia many min-
isters faced in their parishes.45
John Spurr’s analysis of the Restoration Church of England picked
up where Milton, Vernon, and Webster leave off with respect to
chronology.46 Spurr emphasized the structure of conflict between the
Puritan Dissenters and the Anglicans, describing the various attempts
at comprehension, crackdowns on dissent in numerous penal codes,
and the creation of a national church which was less than inclusive,
setting the trajectory of the ecclesiastical history of the established
Church and dissenting chapels. Mark Goldie has also contributed to
our understanding of the Anglican ecclesiology of the latter half of
the seventeenth century. His analysis of the Anglican apologetic for
religious persecution during the Restoration era has shown how the
rhetoric of ecclesiastical unity was used as a further dividing device.
Moreover, the deep-seated distrust of the Restoration clergy was
directly linked to the rise of Whig ideology, highlighting the politi-
cal significance of religious divides.47

44
Tom Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: the Caroline Puritan movement,
c. 1620–1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 287–88, 299–309,
310–32, 334; idem, “The Godly of Goshen Scattered: an Essex clerical conference
in the 1620s and its diaspora” (Unpublished dissertation, Ph.D., Cambridge, 1993).
On the conflict of moderate Puritans with more radical elements, see most recently,
Peter Lake, The Boxmaker’s Revenge: ‘orthodoxy,’ ‘heterodoxy,’ and the politics of the parish in
early Stuart London (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); David Como and Peter
Lake, “‘Orthodoxy’ and Its Discontents,” JBS 39 (2000), pp. 34–70.
45
Elliot Vernon, “The Sion College Conclave and London Presbyterianism dur-
ing the English Revolution” (Unpublished dissertation, Ph.D., Cambridge, 1999).
46
John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1991); idem, “Schism and the Restoration Church,” JEH 41 (1990),
pp. 408–24; idem, “The Church of England, Comprehension and the Toleration
Act of 1689,” EHR 104 (1989), pp. 927–46.
47
See Goldie, “The Theory of Religious Intolerance in Restoration England,”
in From Persecution to Toleration, pp. 331–68; idem, “Priestcraft and the Birth of
Whiggism,” in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, eds. Quentin Skinner and
Nicholas Phillipson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 209–31;
idem, “Danby, the Bishops and the Whigs,” in The Politics of Religion in Restoration
12  

R.S. Paul emphasised the significance of ecclesiology during the

Westminster Assembly and its wider ramifications for the remainder
of the 1640s. As the Independents and Presbyterians were in over-
all agreement with respect to soteriology, the main area of contention
became ecclesiology: “Polity and the doctrine of the Church (i.e.
ecclesiology) were at the centre of its work; but within the context
of seventeenth century thought, it was inevitable that the new order-
ing of the Church would also point to the ordering of a new soci-
ety in England.”48 In an essay “Ecclesiology in Richard Baxter’s
Autobiography,” Professor Paul stressed the significance of ecclesiol-
ogy as a controlling theme for the various endeavors of Baxter, and
argued that since in “Baxter we see Puritanism at a point of tran-
sition,” his ecclesiological principles and priorities are indicative of
the ecclesiastical shifts of the mid- to late-seventeenth century.49
A. Harold Wood’s treatment of the ecumenical ecclesiology of
Baxter is broad in scope and well contextualized, demonstrating the
antithetical relationship between the moderate Puritans of Baxter’s
type and the more resolute Laudians and the Restoration Anglicans.50
Particularly strong is his analysis of the Restoration settlement, but
Baxter’s Interregnum endeavors for church unity, purity, and liberty
are not as well integrated.51 R.L. McCan dealt with various aspects
of Baxter’s ecclesiology, focusing particularly on the divergence and
convergence of ecclesiological thought with the other famed seven-
teenth century Puritan, John Bunyan.52 McCan’s thesis highlighted
Baxter’s ecumenically oriented ecclesiology and suggested that Baxter’s

England, eds. Goldie, Tim Harris and Paul Seaward (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990),
pp. 75–105.
48
R.S. Paul, The Assembly of the Lord: politics and religion in the Westminster Assembly
and the “grand debate” (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1985), pp. 2–3, 101–32.
49
R.S. Paul, in From Faith to Faith, ed. D.Y. Hadidian (Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press,
1979), pp. 357–402, here 388. Since Professor Paul’s discussion was limited to
Reliquiae Baxterianae, there is further need for a more contextualized study of Baxter’s
ecclesiology.
50
A. Harold Wood, Church Unity without Uniformity (London: Epworth Press, 1963).
51
For the Interregnum context of Baxter’s ecumenical endeavors, see pp. 97–117.
The Restoration context dominates Wood’s discussion, see pp. 118–292 for a more
balanced treatment of Baxter’s ecclesiology.
52
R.L. McCan, “The Conception of the Church in Richard Baxter and John
Bunyan,” (Unpublished dissertation, Ph.D., University of Edinburgh, 1955), pp.
291–310. On Bunyan’s ecclesiology, see Christopher Hill, A Turbulent, Seditious, and
Factious People: John Bunyan and his Church 1628–1688 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1988). On Bunyan’s life, see the definitive biography by Richard Greaves,
Glimpses of Glory: John Bunyan and English dissent (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2002).
   13

efforts for comprehension and unity failed as a result of the alleged

bigotry of the Prelatists. However, similar to other ecumenically-
driven treatments of Baxter’s ecclesiology, McCan’s presentation of
Baxter as an ecumenical hero of his era illuminates that single aspect
at the expense of shadowing other pertinent issues in his ecclesio-
logical thought.53 As I hope to show, Baxter’s pursuit of ecclesiasti-
cal unity was rigorously based on parish-reformation and catechetical
and conversion work. The mutuality between purity and unity of
the church was often overlooked in past treatments of ecclesiologi-
cal themes in Baxter’s thought. Moreover, ironically, Baxter’s avowed
ecumenical endeavors often polarized the tenuous bond among the
Puritans during the Interregnum and beyond.
Recently, J. William Black focused on Baxter’s pastoral principles,
and suggested that Baxter sought to inherit and re-invigorate the
Bucerian perspectives in parish ministry, showing the similarity between
the directions set forth in Bucer’s De Regno Christi and the actual—
and as Black argued, the first—outworking of the Bucerian ideal in
Baxter’s work.54 Black carefully showed that Baxter’s classic, Gildas
Salvianus: the Reformed Pastor was, far from being a major breakthrough
in Puritan pastoral theology, in reality the culmination of the
Elizabethan and Jacobean ministerial commitments and aspirations.55
In his Reformation Pastors, Black continued the same line of argument,
showing that Baxter’s pastoral work needs to be seen in the broader
context of European Reformation insistence on revitalizing the pas-
torate as the focal point of religious reform. However, it is curious
that little discussion on ecclesiology is provided in this otherwise
extraordinarily researched volume.56
Thus as the above historiographical survey has shown, although
much work has already been done on various aspects of Baxter’s
thought and life, his ecclesiology remains an area that requires and
merits further exploration. Moreover, ecclesiological expositions of

53
Irvonwy Morgan, The Nonconformity of Richard Baxter (London: Epworth Press,
1946); Walter Douglas, “Richard Baxter and the Savoy Conference of 1661,”
(Unpublished dissertation, Ph.D., McMaster University, 1972).
54
Martin Bucer, De Regno Christi, in Melanchthon and Bucer, ed. Wilhelm Pauck
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), pp. 174–394.
55
J. William Black, “Richard Baxter and the Ideal of the Reformed Pastor”
(Unpublished dissertation, Ph.D., Cambridge, 2000), pp. 57–76, 96–101, 190–221.
Black only deals with the Interregnum context of Baxter’s ministerial endeavors,
leaving once again the historiographical gap as regards his post-Restoration eccle-
siological thought.
56
See J. William Black, Reformation Pastors (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004).
14  

the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, including both radical Puritans,

Separatists, Laudians, and moderate Puritans have all appeared, set-
ting the proper historical context for understanding the ecclesiolog-
ical thought of this Puritan in whom lived, as Leopold von Ranke
noted, “all the orthodox zeal of old Protestants.”57

II. M  S

This book will draw from Baxter’s unpublished correspondence, pub-

lished sermons and treatises.58 Moreover, in order to situate Baxter’s
ecclesiology in the wider Puritan and Reformed contexts, works of
the Church Fathers, Reformers, and other English writers of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries are incorporated. Two things about
Baxter’s theology in general and ecclesiology in particular are to be
noted. Firstly, Baxter consciously saw himself as standing in the line
of faithful ministers within the Church of England; for him it was
of paramount importance that his particular views on reform and
ecclesiastical unity were not singular, or formed in deviation from
the accepted “godly” norms. Throughout his writings, there exist
numerous lists of ideologues whose views he considered to be simi-
lar to, if not identical with, his own. As such, his thought tended to
be more eclectic—or as he would argue, mere Catholic59—than that
of many of his contemporaries and this often became a cause for
concern if not controversy. N.H. Keeble thus summarized Baxter’s
eclecticism: “he refuses to choose between positions his contempo-
raries regarded as incompatible: he champions faith and works, the
operation of the Spirit and the value of ‘humane’ learning, the
enlightenment of faith and the power of man’s reason, episcopacy
and the independence of parish ministers, a liturgy and extempo-
rary prayers, preaching and catechizing, the need for a thorough
conversion and the need to grow in grace.”60 Secondly, Baxter’s views

57
Leopold von Ranke, A History of England, 6 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1875), 3:368.
58
In terms of sources, McCan’s thesis and A. Harold Wood’s book did not incor-
porate Baxter’s private correspondence in their works.
59
Baxter’s self-designated appellation was: “A Catholic Christian, for love, con-
cern and peace of all true Christians and obedience to all lawful commands of
rulers, but made, called and used as a Nonconformist.” TE, title page.
60
Keeble, Richard Baxter, p. 23. See also Wood, Church Unity without Uniformity,
p. 19: “Baxter’s ecclesiastical position has not been easily understood.” Baxter’s
   15

were often formed in response to the theological exigencies of the

day, be it antinomianism, separatism, or the resurgent Prelacy after
the Restoration. Thus, it is crucial to understand the political and
polemical context of Baxter’s ecclesiology, for his well-meaning paci-
fying discourses and motions often prompted further controversies.
In terms of periodization, this book starts with Baxter’s ecclesio-
logical formation from the beginning of his public ministry in 1638,
focusing on his Civil War experience and Interregnum ministry, and
ends with his activities after the Restoration until the end of the
reign of Charles II in 1685. This period of nearly half a century
will enable us to identify numerous ecclesiastical and polemical con-
texts which had direct bearing on Baxter’s ecclesiology, and how his
ecclesiological position in turn influenced the trajectory of Puritanism
during this period.
This book seeks to answer some fundamental questions regarding
Baxter’s ecclesiology. What were the prominent themes in his eccle-
siology? How did he adapt and apply his Puritan ecclesiological ideal
to the Interregnum and Restoration contexts? Finally, to what extent
did his ecclesiology shift as a result of the experiences in the Resto-
ration? Or alternatively was the tension already inherent in Baxter’s
Interregnum thought and activities? The principal aim is to provide
a contextualized ecclesiology of Baxter. Instead of portraying him as
a trailblazer of the modern ecumenical movement or a rational the-
ologian who is to be faulted for the moralism of the subsequent gen-
eration, it discusses his anti-separatism, anti-popery, anti-Prelatist
views, and opposition to antinomianism. Some inherent tensions in
Baxter’s ecclesiology will be explored in each chapter.
Ernst Troeltsch’s typology of the “Church” type and the “Sect”
type has been a useful conceptual framework in understanding the
ecclesiological varieties in Christianity. In his discussion of the English
Puritans, Troeltsch emphasised the individual dimension of the faith
as seen through “prophesyings,” and “personal spirituality and holi-
ness as the true essence of Christianity,” thus suggesting a more

eclectic stance is reflected in the way modern scholars, often approaching Baxter
from different angles, have appropriated his thought. C.F. Allison in his The Rise of
Moralism (London: S.P.C.K., 1966), pp. 154–64 has set Baxter as a leader of moral-
istic teaching in the Church of England, whereas A.C. Clifford has argued that Baxter
was a representative among English evangelicals on justification. See his Atonement
and Justification: English evangelical theology, 1640–1790 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
16  

“sect” type for Puritanism.61 As mentioned earlier, Troeltsch singled

out Baxter as the ideal embodiment of such Puritan spirit. However,
it is insufficient to describe Baxter’s Puritan ecclesiology merely using
the “sect” typology. As this book will show, Baxter was no less com-
mitted to this vision of individual “heart-work” than to the vision of
Catholic Christianity, and to the corporate dimension of the work
of reformation throughout the nation. His reform started with indi-
viduals as they covenant themselves to a life of “laborious holynesse”
and obedience to Christ, following their conversion. This gathering
of covenanted believers was to form what Baxter regarded as the
basic ecclesiological unit, a visible church, and it was a federation
of such churches that formed the national church, which was part
of the universal visible church. At the same time, despite his seeming
emphasis on congregational autonomy, he endeavored not to lose
sight of the catholicity of the church. Despite his commitment to a
version of “reduced episcopacy,” moreover, he believed that such
episcopal oversight was to remain more consultative than coercive.
David F. Wright has recently discussed the tension in Martin
Bucer’s ecclesiology: an inclusive vision of Christendom and an exclu-
sive vision of the disciplined minority within the visible church.62
Like Bucer, Baxter constantly negotiated the boundaries between
“sect” and “Church.” Unlike Bucer, however, Baxter faced a dilemma
after the Restoration when ecclesiological polarities of “sect” and
“Church” were pulling in opposite directions with increasing intensity.
The structure is as follows. Part I (Chapters 2–4) deals with the
notae ecclesiae in Baxter’s ecclesiology,63 followed by Part II (Chapters
5–7) where the tripartite themes of ecclesiological unity, purity, and

61
Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2:678–79. However, Troeltsch
does acknowledge that compared to Lutheran Pietism, English Puritanism showed
greater “loyalty to the Church.” Ibid., p. 280.
62
David F. Wright, ed., Martin Bucer: reforming church and community (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1994). Using the Troeltschian typology, Gottfried
Hammann has explored Bucer’s ecclesiological commitment. See his, Entre la Secte
et la Cite: le projet d’eglise du reformateur Martin Bucer (1491–1551) (Geneva: Labor et
Fides, 1984). For a similar ecclesiological tension in the Scottish context, see John
Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions: the mind of Samuel Rutherford (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 188–224.
63
Since Part I focuses on Baxter’s ministerial activities, most discussions will be
on the Interregnum contexts and activities. On the notae ecclesiae, see Christian Link,
“The Notae Ecclesiae: a reformed perspective,” in Toward the Future of Reformed Theology:
tasks, topics, traditions, eds. David Willis and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 239–61.
   17

liberty will be explored in his relationship with radical separatists,

Independents, particularly with their high Calvinist view and the cor-
responding nature of doctrine, and with the Prelatists.
In Chapter 2, the first notae ecclesiae, preaching, will be discussed.
Conversion was a constant ecclesiological preoccupation in his preach-
ing. This conversionistic emphasis is also related to his use of plain
style in preaching, modification of the preparationist school, as well
as his indefatigable efforts in catechizing, including the adult mem-
bers of his parish. One often neglected aspect of Baxter’s catechiz-
ing is the overt evangelistic significance he attached to it. He catechized
not only those who were covenanted members of his “particular
church” but also those who were in his parish.
Chapter 3 expounds Baxter’s baptismal thought and its ecclesio-
logical implications. His anti-separatism was one of the governing
principles in the formulation of his baptismal theology and defence
of paedobaptism. Baxter saw the legitimacy of the separatists’ com-
plaint regarding the impure communion of parish churches. One
strategy Baxter devised was to re-invigorate and reform the rite of
confirmation, deprived of its sacramental status and Laudian rem-
nants. Chapter 4 turns to the other sacrament in Baxter’s thought:
the Lord’s Supper. It discusses his views and practice of the Lord’s
Supper in the context of the mid-seventeenth century controversies,
and shows that his emphasis on pastoral discipline was designed to
create a more purified and united sacramental communion within
his parish.
In Part II, Baxter’s pursuit of purity, unity and liberty will be dis-
cussed. Chapter 5 deals with the goad of separatism and Baxter’s
response to the Puritan quest for greater purity in a mixed com-
munion. Just as Augustine’s ecclesiology was formulated in response
to the rigorist ecclesiology of the Donatists, Baxter’s view cannot be
understood apart from the rise of the separatists in mid-seventeenth
century England.64 For Protestant ecclesiology, at least that of the

64
For Augustine’s anti-Donatist writings, see Augustine, On Baptism, Against the
Donatists (4:411–514); Answer to the Letters of Petilian, Bishop of Cirta (4:519–628); and
The Correction of the Donatists (4:633–51), both in NPNF. See also W.H.C. Frend, The
Donatist Church: a movement of protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1952), pp. 315–32; Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: a biography (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1969), pp. 212–25; Gerald Bonner, “ ‘Christus Sacerdos’: the
roots of Augustine’s anti-Donatist polemic,” in Signum Pietatis, ed. Adolar Zumkeller
(Würzburg: Augustinus-Verlag, 1989), pp. 325–339.
18  

magisterial Reformers, Augustine’s ecclesiological perspective had to

be incorporated for apologetic purposes over against the radical
reformers whose pursuit of purity came at the expense of maintain-
ing Protestant unity.65 A strikingly similar situation repeated itself in
Baxter’s life-time and in his ecclesiology. Another interesting facet of
Baxter’s anti-separatist rhetoric was his willingness to identify Popery
as the hand behind the spread of radical religion. The post-Restoration
dilemma for Baxter’s continued anti-separatism will be discussed,
setting the ideological context for his eventual—yet short-lived—
disavowal of the restored Church of England in the early 1680s.
Chapter 6 looks in some detail at Baxter’s radical biblicism. His
commitment to scripture sufficiency and pre-Nicene primitive sim-
plicity is set in contrast to the leader among the Independents, John
Owen, with whom Baxter came to clash over the nature of ortho-
doxy and the question of doctrinal confession as a way of obviating
possible heretics and of achieving ecclesiastical unity. It furthers our
understanding of Baxter as a ‘mere Christian’ by showing the polem-
ical edges of such a self-designated appellation. A short discussion
of the sources of Baxter’s ecumenical discourse will link his ecclesi-
ology with his hypothetical universalism in soteriology by way of
John Davenant, Joseph Hall and James Ussher.
Chapter 7 traces the steps of Baxter’s anti-Grotian religion and
argues that Baxter’s disavowal of prelacy in the Restoration period
is based on his identification of the alleged Grotian party during the
Interregnum. It shows the long-lived legacy of the Laudian religion
in the 1650s and beyond, seen through Baxter’s polemical exchange
with Peter Heylyn, Peter Gunning, John Bramhall and Henry Ham-
mond. Lastly it also discusses Baxter as a ‘hater of false history’ and
his historiographical project, debunking the jure divino status of epis-
copacy by divulging its supposed errors. By doing so Baxter argued
for the “true” view of episcopacy, that of congregational episcopacy
in which the parochial bishop (i.e., pastor) was to carry out the
episcopal duty of preaching and the administration of sacraments
and discipline.
Chapter 8 provides a conclusion and argues for the validity of
seeing Baxter as a representative Puritan in an era of great transi-

65
See Pamela Biel, “Bullinger against the Donatists: St. Augustine to the defence
of the Zurich Reformed Church,” JRH 16 (1991), pp. 237–246.
   19

tion. His variegated experience demonstrates several principles of

English Puritanism which also encapsulates the best ecclesiastical and
theological tradition of the reformed Church of England, as he con-
tinually avowed: purity of the Christian, unity of the visible church
in true edification and fellowship, and the liberty of the Church and
Christian from the tyranny of foreign jurisdiction.
Baxter is known today primarily for his Practical Works,66 or for his
modified Calvinism, with its “rationalistic” tendencies which sup-
posedly paved the way for the Unitarianism of eighteenth-century
England. However, the polemical contexts and ecclesiological prin-
ciples underlying his writings are also needed if we are to under-
stand this Puritan, whose practical emphasis in the Christian life was
on the reformation of the whole church, and not on the individual
alone. Baxter’s principles and priorities embody much of the Puritan
aspiration to reformation. His ecclesiology illustrates the multifaceted
nature of Puritanism, not as a monolithic whole, but holding in ten-
sion divergent and sometimes contradictory energies.

66
See, for example, the 4 volume edition of Baxter’s Practical Works (London,
1707); William Orme, ed., The Practical Works of . . . Rev. Richard Baxter (London,
1830), and the recent re-print of Practical Works in 1995.
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 PART I

REFORMING THE NOTAE ECCLESIAE

This page intentionally left blank
 CHAPTER TWO

CONVERSION AND CATECHIZING:

PREACHING AND REFORM OF THE TRUE CHURCH

I. I

On 11 October 1658, Peter Figulus, a son-in-law of Comenius, wrote

to Samuel Hartlib in London to request various treatises of English
practical divinity and sermons. After expressing his preference for
meditating “upon the sermons,” Figulus added that “Baxters workes,
& the like . . . I long to see them.”1 Another letter, this time to Baxter
himself, came from the Continent. Johann Zollikofer, a reformed
pastor in St. Gall, Switzerland, extolled the heart-piercing quality of
Baxter’s sermons, particularly The Saints Everlasting Rest and The Reformed
Pastor.2 By the middle of the 1660s, Baxter had achieved an inter-
national reputation as an effective preacher. These letters imply not
only the high regard in which Baxter was held by “divers Forreign
Divines” but the popularity of sermons as literary discourse and devo-
tional reading.3

1
Sheffield University Library, Hartlib Papers 9/17/34b (hereafter cited as SUL
HP). For Samuel Hartlib, see G.H. Turnbull, Hartlib, Dury, and Comenius: gleanings
from Hartlib’s papers (Liverpool: University Press of Liverpool, 1947); Mark Greengrass,
Michael Leslie, and Timothy Raylor, eds., Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation:
studies in intellectual communication (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Tom
Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997), pp. 255–65; DNB; Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: science, medicine, and
reform, 1626–1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975).
2
Johann Zollikofer’s letter of 16 April, 1663 is reproduced in Reliquiae, II. 443–4,
§442. On Zollikofer, see CCRB, #712, headnote.
3
For Baxter’s international popularity, see W.R. Ward, Protestant Evangelical Awakening
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 11–12, 176; Jan van den Berg,
“Die Frommigkietsbestrebungen in den Niederlanden,” in Der Pietismus vom Siebzehnten
bis zum Fruhen Achtzehnten Jahrhundert, ed. Martin Brecht (Götingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1993), p. 77; Reliquiae, II. 442, §442; Baxter, DWDC, sig. A5v. For
a brief history of Baxter’s books in German up to 1720, see Thomas Bürger and
M. Bircher, eds. Deutsche Drucke des Barock 1600–1720 in der Herzog August Bibliothek
Wolfenbüttel (München: Saur, 1996), vol. A11, entry number 8987; vol. B3, 2270,
2886–91, 2893–2900, 2902–6, 2912; vol. B5, 5137–5138; vol. B6, 6373–6374; vol.
B19, 16351; vol. B20, 17380; vol. C1, 582; vol. C5, 4157. For Dutch translations
of Baxter’s works, see Johannes van Abkoude, ed., Naamregister Vande Bekendste en
24  

Protestantism can be called a religion of the Word, if not a “reli-

gion of the ear.”4 Sola Scriptura was the major slogan of the Reformation,
in its insistence both that the Spirit can guide individual believers
to the truth without the teaching magisterium of the church, and
that preaching was now the primary means of grace. Protestant
churches tirelessly taught the centrality of preaching. Calvin spoke
of the unique role of preaching as a means of grace: “God breathes
faith into us only by the instrument of his gospel.” Heinrich Bullinger
taught the Swiss catechumens in the Second Helvetic Confession that the
preaching of the Word of God was the Word of God. Zacharius
Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus asserted that the Holy Spirit creates
faith in the heart “by the preaching of the holy gospel.”5 Ulrich
Zwingli’s ecclesiological conviction that the church was a mixed
assembly of the elect and the reprobate led to his strenuous empha-
sis on evangelical preaching of the Word.6
As J.S. Coolidge has shown, during the late sixteenth- and the
seventeenth-century there was a “Pauline renaissance in England,”
in which the Pauline injunction to “Preach the word, be urgent in
season and out of season” was painstakingly adhered to by many
preachers.7 Conviction of the necessity of preaching in further reform-

Meest in Gebruik Zynde Nederduitsche Boeken, Welke Sedert het Jaar 1600 tot het Jaar 1761
(Rotterdam: G.A. Arrenberg, 1788), pp. 41–42; twenty-six of Baxter’s works are
included. On the importance of the sermon as a significant source of religion, cul-
ture, and politics of early modern England, see Lori Anne Ferrell and Peter
McCullough, eds., English Sermon Revised: religion, literature, and history (New York:
Manchester University Press, 2000).
4
Ferrell and McCullough, English Sermon Revised, p. 10.
5
Teresa Toulouse, The Art of Prophesying: New England sermons and the shaping of
belief (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), p. 2; T.H.L. Parker, The Oracles
of God: an introduction to the Preaching of John Calvin (London: Lutterworth, 1947), pp.
50–56; Calvin, Institutes, IV. i. 5.; Heinrich Bullinger, “The Second Helvetic
Confession,” in The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches with Translations, ed.
Philip Schaff (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1877), p. 278; “The Heidelberg
Catechism,” Ibid., Question & Answer 65, p. 328. For the historical context of
these Creeds, see Schaff, A History of the Creeds of Christendom, 2 vols. (London: Hodder
and Stoughton, 1878), 1:390–95, 529–36.
6
Andrew Pettegree, “The Clergy and the Reformation: from ‘Devillish Priesthood’
to New Professional Elite,” in The Reformation of the Parishes: the ministry and the
Reformation in town and country, ed. Pettegree (New York: Manchester University Press,
1993), p. 9; Bruce Gordon, “Preaching and the Reform of the Clergy in the Swiss
Reformation,” in Ibid., p. 64.
7
John S. Coolidge, The Pauline Renaissance in England: Puritanism and the Bible (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1970); 2 Timothy 4:1; W. Fraser Mitchell, English Pulpit Oratory from
Andrewes to Tillotson: a study of its literary aspects (New York: Macmillan, 1932), p. 3.
    25

ing and restoring the biblical model of Christianity was widely shared,
irrespective of confessional differences. A well-known Danish Lutheran
theologian, Niels Hemmingsen, emphasized that without preaching,
no saving doctrine could be imparted to the masses.8 Similarly Richard
Bernard, in his popular The Faithful Shepherd, urged ministers to know
both the text of Scripture and the context of the congregation they
are addressing in order to “diuide Gods Word aright vnto their
Auditories; to preach mercy to whom mercy belongeth, and to
denounce judgement freely against the rest.”9 John Donne also echoed
the Protestant emphasis on the primacy of preaching in the overall
scheme of ministry: “There is no salvation but by faith, nor faith
but by hearing, nor hearing but by preaching; and they that thinke
meanliest of the Keyes of the Church, and speak faintliest of the
Absolution of the Church, will yet allow, That those Keyes lock,
and unlock in preaching.”10 John Wilkins, who would subsequently
become a Latitudinarian bishop during the Restoration period, wrote
in 1646 underscoring the priority of preaching as a means of reform-
ing the church.11
Baxter was one of the best known preachers of his era. In his
reforming vision, preaching was a sine qua non since he was con-
vinced that a true church should forge ahead by evangelical preach-
ing. N.H. Keeble has identified the sermons in the Baxter corpus
and provided a lucid discussion of the history and the texts.12 Furthering
the line of enquiry initiated by Professor Keeble, I will discuss some
ecclesiological themes which emerge from his sermonic discourse in
this chapter.

8
Niels Hemmingsen, The Preacher, or Method of Preaching, tr. J[ohn] H[orfall],
(1574), fols. 53v–58v.
9
Richard Bernard, The Faithful Shepherd (1621), pp. 175–205, 370. This was a
substantive revision of Bernard’s first edition of 1607. One of the helpful clues
Bernard provides in “The Shepherds Practice” discusses the ecclesiological reality
of England and how preaching ought to reflect that: “From the Prophets method,
and order of proceeding to a mixt people, we may learne the patterne of true
preaching, and of right diuiding of the Word, that is, the Law and Gospell, vnto
a mixt Congregation. The Law to the stubborne, to breake their hearts; and the
Gospell to the repentant, to comfort their spirits,” ibid., pp. 368–69.
10
John Donne, The Sermons of John Donne, eds., George Potter and Evelyn Simpson,
10 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953–62), 7:320.
11
John Wilkins, Ecclesiastes, or A Discourse Concerning the Gift of Preaching (1646).
12
N.H. Keeble, “Richard Baxter’s Preaching Ministry: its history and texts,” JEH
35 (1984), pp. 539–59.
26  

In terms of source material, the paucity of extant weekly sermons

for many (if not most) preachers presents a challenge. Tom Webster
has pointed out that Stephen Marshall and John Rogers must have
preached more than three thousand times during their Essex min-
istries. Juxtaposing that number with the total number of printed
sermons—which do not even account for 20 per cent—for Marshall
and Rogers immediately warns against drawing hasty conclusions
about their preaching. Baxter was no exception. Considering the
number of times he stood in the pulpit between 1638 and 1691—
in Dudley, Bridgnorth, Coventry, Kidderminster, various parishes in
pre- and post-Restoration London, monthly and weekly lectures as
well as assize sermons in Worcestershire, and disparate locations
whilst serving as a Civil War army chaplain—it is likely that he
preached well over two thousand sermons, if not more. The paucity
of evidence however only allows for suggestive speculation.13 Never-
theless, one factor working to our advantage is this: of nearly 140
works of Baxter, slightly over 25 per cent were preached as sermons.
These sermons, furthermore, cover a wide variety of preaching dis-
course—ranging from weekly Sunday sermons, occasional Assize ser-
mons, Parliamentary sermons, funeral sermons, Court preaching, and
to two farewell sermons. Baxter interacted with diverse audiences,
private and public; educated and illiterate; provincial and urban;
those advanced in sanctification and the unconverted.14
This chapter not only discusses several ecclesiological themes in
his preaching but also shows that Baxter’s understanding of preach-
ing included both the pulpit sermonic discourses, private catechizing,
and printed sermons. Consciously conversionistic and edificational

13
Webster, Godly Clergy, pp. 105–6.
14
Keeble, “Richard Baxter’s Preaching Ministry,” pp. 556–59 provides detailed
bibliographic and historical clues to Baxter’s sermons. In Reliquiae, Baxter spoke of
the occasions of most of his sermons that were subsequently published. See Reliquiae,
I. 110, §161; I. 111, §165–8; I. 114, §173; I. 116, §183; I. 117, §192; I. 120, §198—
§203; I. 120, §205–6. In I. 124, §211, Baxter identifies two sermon manuscripts
that are not extant. One was an assize sermon preached in Shrewsbury while
Thomas Hunt was sheriff that focused on the role of magistrate in religion. The
other was a series on Christ’s dominion “being many popular Sermons preached
twenty Years ago,” which makes it c. 1645. This explains the persistent anti-
Antinomian streak in Baxter’s preaching since in 1645 Baxter was in the middle
of his chaplaincy. See Tim Cooper, Fear and Polemic in seventeenth-century England:
Richard Baxter and antinomianism (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001). For Thomas Hunt,
see R.S. Cockburn, A History of the English Assizes 1558–1714 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1972), Appendix 7, p. 317.
    27

emphases characterized Baxter’s sermons. Private catechizing com-

pleted the “heart work” his public preaching began. Although after
the Restoration he did not have a regular pastoral charge, the pub-
lication of The Poor Man’s Family Book (1674) and The Catechizing of
Families (1683), as well as his summa of practical divinity, A Christian
Directory (1673), must be seen in the light of Baxter’s desire to con-
tinue “preaching” and instructing, albeit at a distance and through
the printed medium.

II. P: D  S  B

Baxter defined preaching as “Gods ordinary means for melting the

heart” and of conversion.15 It should be noted, however, that Baxter
did not limit preaching only to pulpit discourse. In fact, he broad-
ened the categories of preaching sufficiently to include “all divulging
of the substance of the Gospel, whether by a Solemn Sermon, by
writing, printing, reading, conference, or any other meanes that have
a rational sufficiency for information and conviction; are this preach-
ing.”16 Through it Baxter sought to “refresh the Saints,” rebuke the
sinners, and reform the church.17 In exhorting his ministerial col-
leagues, Baxter called preaching “the most excellent” part of the
work. At the same time, preaching was a difficult task since it was
“a work that requireth greater skill, and especially greater life and
zeal, then any of us bring to it.” Furthermore, it was “no small mat-
ter” to stand before the congregation as well as before God, but it
was no easier “to speak so plain, that the ignorant may understand
us, and so seriously, that the deadest hearts may feel us; and so con-
vincingly, that the contradicting Cavilers may be silenced.”18 Most
of Baxter’s colleagues shared his conviction concerning preaching.
Isaac Ambrose claimed that “whilest the Minister speaks, Christ
comes with power, and therefore he speaks and perswades.”19 In

15
TC, p. 260.
16
SER, p. 137. cf. SB, sig. A2v, where he calls printed books, “preacher for your
private families.”
17
SER, p. 59. In CD, p. 575, Baxter provides a catalogue of seven “chiefest
Helps to your salvation”; “powerful preaching” headed the list, followed by “Prayer,
Prudence, Piety, Painfulness, Patience, and Perseverance.”
18
RP, p. 78.
19
Isaac Ambrose, Prima, Media & Ultima (1654), p. 48. For other examples of
28  

Baxter’s ecclesiology, all the people of God were part of “the Externally
called,” though not vice versa. Except in extraordinary cases, exter-
nal calling of the gospel through preaching was indispensable since
“Scripture hath yet shewed us no other way to the Internal call, but
by the external.”20 Baxter inherited the Puritan logocentric empha-
sis, a preoccupation with “sermon gadding,” “combination lectures,”
and prayer meetings, which were indispensable tools for edifying a
godly community. In a letter to a Baptist leader, Benjamin Cox,
dated 4 July 1644, Baxter underscores the divine institution of preach-
ing: “The office of preaching the Word of God is of God.”21 Since
preaching dealt with matters of “unspeakable weight, necessity and
consequence,” Baxter asserted, its neglect would greatly compromise
the integrity and purity of the Church.22

III. C, M P,  P S

A. Conversion en masse Attempted

Conversion was as old as New Testament Christianity itself. Eamon
Duffy has spoken of two conversions in early modern English
Protestantism. The first was turning the parish ministry into a preach-
ing ministry. This had both chronological and theological priority
over the second conversion: enhancing the effectiveness of the pub-
lic preaching ministry through private catechizing ministry.23 In other
words, “if one had to identify the one central preoccupation of godly
ministers in Stuart England, it would be the urgent necessity of sav-
ing the multitude,” and the “task of awakening the sinner to his
need for grace and conversion.” The first conversion and its eccle-

the Puritan emphasis on preaching, see John Downame, The Christian Warfare (1634),
p. 158; John Mayer, Praxis Theologicae (1629), p. 182; Nicholas Byfield, An Exposition
upon . . . Colossians (1649), pp. 49–50; Thomas Hall, A Practical and Polemical Commentary
on Timothy (1658), p. 329.
20
SER, p. 137.
21
Letters, i. 35. Baxter’s dispute with Benjamin Cox over infant baptism will be
discussed in Chapter Three.
22
CD, p. 573.
23
Eamon Duffy, “The Long Reformation: Catholicism, Protestantism and the
multitude,” in Nicholas Tyacke, ed., England’s Long Reformation 1500–1800 (London:
UCL Press, 1998), p. 42. Here Duffy selects Baxter’s pastoral career during the
Interregnum as the prima facie example of the deep infiltration of Protestantism in
England by mid-seventeenth century.
    29

siological implications as borne out in Baxter’s sermons will be dis-

cussed in this section. The following section will deal with the sec-
ond—and what Baxter hoped to be the final—conversion in his
program of ecclesiological re-configuration. More must be said, then,
about Baxter’s involvement in the task of converting the “Christian
nation” into a “nation of Christians.”24
The Stewards for the Worcestershire Feast wrote to Baxter on 1
December 1655 concerning the possible implementation of “A weekly
Lecture in our country.”25 It was not unusual for the local émigrés
who now found their living in London to be concerned for and be
financially contributing toward fostering greater religious sensibility
and zeal in their home counties and parishes, as was the case with
the ex-Worcestershire merchants. They had collected thirty-seven
pounds to cover the expenses for these proposed lectures for the first
year. Baxter replied on 11 December, and by March or April of
1656 the lineup of lecturers and locations was decided. The letter
to “all the rest of the ministers of the gospel in this county from the
Worcestershire Association” was included as an appendix to The
Reformed Pastor. The above incident opens the window not only on
the extent of collaboration between the Puritan laity and clergy, but
on the crucial role preaching had in the program for reformation.26
Baxter explained the local ecclesiastical context for the extra pre-
cautions taken in starting these lectures. The desire for converting
all parishioners of various Worcestershire parishes was the focus of
Baxter in starting the lectureship.
For besides the Lectures set up on Week-days fixedly in several Places,
we studied how to have it extend to every Place in the County that had
need . . . when the Parliament purged the Ministry, they cast out the
grosser sort of insufficient and scandalous ones . . . But they had left
in near one half the Ministers, that were not good enough to do much
Service . . . their people greatly needed help. . . . Therefore we resolved
that some of the abler Ministers should often voluntarily help them.27

24
Duffy, “The Godly and the Multitude in Stuart England,” SC 1 (1986), pp.
34–35. The idea of England’s metamorphosis from a Christian nation to a nation
of minority Christians is well developed in Christopher Haigh, English Reformations:
religion, politics, and society under the Tudors (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993),
pp. 279–81. Cf. D. MacCulloch, “The Myth of the English Reformation,” JBS 30
(1991), pp. 1–19.
25
Letters, iv. 83.
26
Letters, iv. 84, iv. 85; RP, sigs. 2I5–2I7.
27
Reliquiae, I. 95, §137.
30  

The situation in Worcestershire in the mid-1650s was such that

numerous ministers still held livings whose preaching was neither
heretical nor oriented toward conversion. However, their life was not
so dissolute as to merit “ejection” by the newly formed State eccle-
siastical machinery, the Ejectors.
The “Ordinance for ejecting Scandalous . . . Ministers” was passed
on 28 August 1654 by the Cromwellian regime to ensure the prop-
agation of godly religion as Oliver Cromwell and his ecclesiastical
architects had defined it—Trinitarian, Calvinistic, and yet in many
ways anti-formal and protective of the “liberty of conscience,” one
of the central themes in Puritan religious sensibility, and one to be
explored in Chapter Seven.28 The ministers who were to collaborate
with the commissioners for the county of Worcester were Richard
Baxter; Benjamin Baxter, minister at Upton upon Severn; Giles
Collier, Vicar of Blockley; George Hopkins, Vicar of All Saints,
Evesham; and Thomas Bromwich, minister at Kemsey.29 Of these,
Richard Baxter, Collier and Hopkins were among the eighteen char-
ter signatories to Christian Concord (1653), which was the debut joint
document of the Worcestershire Association. Benjamin Baxter and
Bromwich had been members of the Association when the first edi-
tion of The Agreement of divers Ministers of . . . Worcester for catechizing was
published in 1656.30 By the time the letter to the “rest of the min-
isters” in Worcester was written, these ejectors were most likely
already part of the voluntary association. Consequently, there was a
great need for caution for the associating ministers in broadcasting
their plan lest they be misconceived as being de facto ejecting, dis-

28
For Blair Worden’s surefooted interpretation of the religious ethos of Oliver
Cromwell, see “Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate,” in Persecution and
Toleration, ed. W.J. Sheils (Studies in Church History 21, Oxford: Blackwell, 1984);
“Cromwellian Oxford,” in The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. IV: seventeenth-
century Oxford, ed. Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
29
For the text of the ordinance for establishing the ejectors, see C.H. Firth and
R.S. Rait, eds., Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642–1660, 3 vols. (London:
HMSO, 1911), 2:983; on the ejectors, see William Shaw, A History of the English
Church during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth, 1640–1660, 2 vols. (London:
Longmans, Green, 1900), 2:247–48; Claire Cross, “The Church in England 1640–
1660,” in The Interregnum: the quest for settlement, 1646–1660, ed. Gerald Aylmer (London:
Macmillan, 1972), pp. 104–5
30
For Bromwich, Hopkins, and Benjamin Baxter, see CR. Richard Baxter wrote
commendatory epistles to two of Benjamin Baxter’s works, A Posing Question (1662)
and Non-conformity without Controversie (1670); Geoffrey F. Nuttall, “The Worcestershire
Association: its membership,” JEH 1 (1950), pp. 197–206, here 198–201.
    31

missive measures. That may explain why none of the five Worcester
ejectors was chosen, since to do so would likely have been perceived
as threatening by the “mediocre” clergy. The four were Andrew
Tristram, Henry Oasland, Thomas Baldwin and Joseph Treble.31
Promoting collegiality among pastors was an important part of the
raison d’être of the Association. More crucial yet was the goal of con-
verting the masses.
For Baxter, conversion was of utmost significance for the ministry
of the Church.32 During his Kidderminster ministry, conversion was
a constant theme. In answering a rhetorical question, “how shall I
know whether I am converted, or not,” Baxter reminds his congre-
gation that he had “so often given” them several distinguishing marks
“already in the sermons I have preached, and the books I have writ-
ten for your use.”33 The primacy of conversion is evidenced in his
sermons, treatises, and letters. In his counsel to Abraham Pinchbecke,
a regular correspondent of Baxter, he gave several tips to becoming
a “faithfull & importunate suitor for Christ.” He urged Pinchbecke
to “let them perceive by all your dealing with them that your very
heart is set uppon them for their salvation,” and to “dwell much on
the fundamentall truths, about sin, misery, redemption, the nature
& way of conversion &.c & feare not oft repeating the same things,
so you handsomely diversify in method and termes.”34 For a minister
whose basis of church reform was the whole parish, pleading for the
conversion of his parishioners reflected his ecclesiological priorities.

31
Reliquiae, I. 95, §137; For Andrew Tristram (CR), Henry Oasland (DNB, CR),
Thomas Baldwin (CR; there were two Thomas Baldwins in the association. Which
of these two was the chosen lecturer cannot be ascertained.), Joseph Treble (CR);
Nuttall, “The Worcestershire Association,” pp. 199, 202; William Urwick, Nonconformity
in Worcester (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Kent & Co., 1897), pp. 45–46.
32
For historical treatments of conversion, see Marilyn Harran, Luther on Conversion:
the early years (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 15–53; A.J. Nock, Conversion:
the old and the new in religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1933), pp. 7, 193–211; Bernhard Citron, New Birth: a study of the
evangelical doctrine of conversion in the Protestant fathers (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press, 1951). Conversion was what he had hoped for as the outcome of his preach-
ing from the beginning of his ministry. cf. Reliquiae, I. 15, §21 where Baxter recalls
his preaching in Bridgnorth, his first curacy, that he “never any where preached
with more vehement desires of Mens Conversion.”
33
TC, p. 130.
34
Letters, iv. 168; Geoffrey F. Nuttall, “Advice to a Young Minister by Richard
Baxter,” CQ 30 (1952), pp. 231–35.
32  

B. Conversion and Anti-Separatism

It was his anti-separatist concerns that led Baxter to refrain from
creating a conventicle, in his larger parish, attractive as that option
appeared to be. Baxter had inherited the Augustinian ecclesiological
tradition which acknowledged the mixed nature of the church wherein
both the truly sanctified saints and saints in name only co-existed.
In The Arte of Prophesying, William Perkins had written of the eccle-
siastical reality of the late Elizabethan period and the correspond-
ing need of the preachers to adapt to the situation. “A mixt people
are the assemblies of our Churches . . . Let those that are hardened,
heare the Law . . . and let the afflicted conscience heare the voice
of the Gospell applied in speciall manner vnto it.”35 A carefully bal-
anced spiritual diet of Law and Gospel, designed for edification and
conversion, was the main task of the preacher, but separation was
unacceptable. To ensure the greatest overlap between the visible and
the invisible churches, most Puritans were prepared to suffer for sep-
aration within the parish, but not away from it. John Darrell reit-
erated that although the Church of England was a corpus permixtum,
this did not warrant separation. Darrell, in A Treatise of the Church
(1617), argued for the mixed ecclesiology of the visible Church for
all generations against the separatist teachings of Henry Ainsworth,
John Smyth, Francis Johnson, and John Robinson. After arguing that
there are “Christians indeed” and “Christians in name onely,” Darrell
suggested that “we must remember, that the greatest parts of the
visible Church are Christian in name onely.” By applying the dic-
tum of Christ that “many are called, but few chosen” to the visible
and invisible churches respectively, Darrell and his non-separatist col-
leagues defended their Augustinian ecclesiology.36
Baxter was reluctant to embrace this Augustinian ecclesiological
distinction without a corresponding effort to convert the hitherto
unconverted and edify the church. He wrote in 1650

35
William Perkins, “The Arte of Prophecying,” in The Workes of . . . William Perkins,
3 vols. (Cambridge, 1609), II:756.
36
John Darrell, A Treatise of the Church: written against them of the separation (1617),
sigs. ¶2v–¶3r, 35–41, 26, 28–29. “Visible church is,” Darrell asserted, “a confused
and mixt company . . . many times it is so overspread with wicked, that the right-
eous can hardly bee discerned . . . So that there is sometimes a Church without
any shew of it.” Ibid., 31.
    33

that these people of God are but a Part of those that are thus exter-
nally called, is too evident in Scripture and experience. Many are
called but few chosen: But the internally effectually called are all cho-
sen. . . . The bare invitation of the Gospel, and mens hearing the Word,
is so far from giving title to, or being an evidence of Christianity and
its privileges, that where it prevails not to an [sic.] through-Conversion,
it sinks deeper and casts under a double damnation.37
Baxter was acutely aware that such lack of conversion and visible
Christianity was a major catalyst for separatism, thus a consistent
conversionistic emphasis is found in his sermon corpus. A major rea-
son for his actively conversionistic preaching was to curb the sepa-
ratistic tendency of the more zealously religious in the parishes. In
a sermon preached in Worcester around 1654, Baxter accused the
separatists of flawed biblical exegesis in their zeal for separatism.
And for the Command, [Come out from among them, and be ye separate,]
its pitty that any Christian should need to be told, that it speaks onely
to the Church to come out of the Heathen, Infidel world . . . but there
is never a word in all the Bible, that bids you [Come out of the Church
and be ye separate!] Wonderfull! that God should be so abused by mis-
understanding Christians! . . . The Church is the House of Christ:
Forsake it not, while he stayes in it: Forsake it not, for he hath promised
never to forsake it.38
Nevertheless, greater purity of the church was of paramount impor-
tance in Baxter’s ecclesiology. Conversion was an integral part of
the solution. Those who remained unconverted, he averred, had “no
hope of salvation,” “no ground for one hours true Peace and Comfort,”
and were “slaves of Satan.”39 For Baxter, the church was becoming
more purified and united, but not already enjoying the being of the
invisible, triumphant church. The sober warning of Christ “that many
are called, few are chosen, and that most men perish” fuelled the
conversionistic passion for Baxter’s preaching. Preaching was an indis-
pensable mark of the church since it was the usual means of con-
veying God’s saving grace. “Nor do I think it meet to come once
into the Pulpit with any lower ultimate Ends then [sic] these . . . And
he that preacheth one Sermon for lower ultimate Ends then these,

37
SER, pp. 140, 143.
38
TC&CC, p. 205. See Keeble, “Richard Baxter’s Preaching Ministry,” p. 556
for the date of this sermon.
39
TC, pp. 143, 146, 149, 161.
34  

will seek himself and not Christ, and so be unfaithful in that Sermon.”40
A primary benefit of conversion was membership in the “true Church
of Christ.” Baxter delineated the contours of the invisible church
along the line of conversion whilst not denouncing the existence and
validity of the visible church, despite all its woes and weaknesses.
Here Baxter clearly identifies Augustine as the influence in his own
ecclesiology. As a result of conversion, a Christian
is at once united to the head and to the Body: A man may be a mem-
ber of the Visible Church, or rather, be Visibly made a member of
the Church before Conversion: But that is but as a wooden Leg to
the body. . . . Or as Austin saith, like the chaff among the corn, which
is so a part of the field, as to be an Appurtenance of the corn. So
that, till Conversion, even the Baptized and the most understanding
men, are but as the straw and chaff in Gods Barn, and as the tares
in his Field, as Christ himself compareth them. But Conversion doth
effectually ingraft them into the body, and make them living members.41
Baxter hoped that this conversionistic emphasis would silence the
furore of the Separatists who “would confine the Catholick Church
to their own party.” The Reformed, indeed most of the churches
throughout history, maintained that since election ultimately lay within
the secret counsel of God, the church ought to exercise judgment
of charity in discerning others’ salvific status.42 Baxter wanted to
make “that meet and necessary separation” within the parish by
preaching conversionistic sermons and implementing parish-based dis-
cipline. However, his purist rigor was balanced by his antipathy to
separatism and a sober realism of the provisional perfection of the
visible church. So he reminded his readers and auditors that “the
Church on Earth” was “a meer Hospital,” already in the hands of
the Divine Physician but not completely healthy yet.43 Living in such
dynamic ecclesiological tension required more charity and patience
than the separatists.

40
TC, p. 2
41
TC, p. 173. On Augustinian ecclesiology, see Colin Gunton, “The Church on
Earth: the roots of community’, in On Being the Church: essays on the Christian commu-
nity, eds. Gunton and Daniel Hardy (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), p. 55.
42
Baird Tipson, “Invisible Saints: the ‘judgment of charity’ in the early New
England Churches,” CH 44 (1975), pp. 460–71.
43
SER, p. 122.
    35

C. Conversion and Baxter’s Modified Preparationism

One little explored aspect of Baxter’s preaching is his modification
of preparationist teaching. We shall see that his preaching and casu-
istical career dealt with the side effects of preparationism—most
notably in battling what John Stachniewsky called “the persecutory
imagination,” and in encouraging the work of “through Conversion.”44
Baxter’s emphasis on conversionism originated from the growing
recognition among the godly that inordinate immersing in “John
Baptists water” would prove counterproductive. Thomas Goodwin
and Philip Nye were at best ambivalent toward the preparationist
teaching, of which Thomas Hooker was a leading practitioner. In
the preface to Hooker’s The Application of Redemption (1656), Goodwin
and Nye criticized his preparationist teaching while asserting that “it
hath been one of the glories of the Protestant Religion, that it revived
the Doctrine of saving Conversion, and of the new creature brought forth
thereby.” Hooker’s inordinate “urging” to prepare for salvation kept
many “too long under John Baptists water.”45 In fact, in a private cor-
respondence to the pan-European intellectual Samuel Hartlib, Goodwin
expressed his antipathy toward Hooker’s teaching more unreservedly:
“Hooker is a severe and Crule man like John Baptist, urges too
much and too farre the work of Humiliation . . . he was Erroneous
in it, making a difference of one that shal be saved and Not too
wide making it not true grace which indeed it is.”46
In the meticulous self-scrutiny and inward-driven spiritual taxon-
omy of the Puritans, preaching of the Law before the Gospel could

44
John Stachniewski, The Persecutory Imagination: English Puritanism and the literature
of religious despair (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Baxter is discussed in
pp. 55–61, 91–92, 143–44, 177–78, 214–15. It would be misleading, however, to
assume that all Puritan preachers were “preparationistic.” Richard Sibbes explicitly
warned against excessive preparationism: “It is dangerous (I confesse) in some cases
with some spirits, to press too much, and too long this bruising; because they may
die under the wound and burthen, before they be raised up again.” Sibbes, in The
Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. A.B. Grosart, 7 vols. (Edinburgh: J. Nichol,
1862–64), 1:47. On the struggle between the Preparationists and the Cottonians/
Sibbesians, see Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts: rereading American Puritanism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 6, 8, 19, 53–54, 96–97,
117–21, 124–26, 164–66.
45
Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, 12 vols. (Edinburgh: J. Nichol, 1863),
4:346; Goodwin and Nye, “To the Reader,” in Thomas Hooker, The Application of
Redemption (1656), sig. C2v; J.I. Packer, Among God’s Giants: aspects of Puritan Christianity
(Eastbourne, U.K.: Kingsway, 1991), pp. 172–73.
46
SUL HP 29/2/56a.
36  

lead to fear and despondency. At times it was possible that those

gripped in “fears and terrors” were already imbued with special
grace, struggling within the ordo salutis, but the preparationist teach-
ing often regarded them as “unbelievers preparing for grace.”47 Baxter
was aware of this spiritual labyrinth. He listed first the unexpected
side-effects of the preparationist teaching as he enumerated several
causes for “those Doubts of my own Salvation.”
I could not distinctly trace the Workings of the Spirit upon my heart
in that method which Mr. Bolton, Mr. Hooker, Mr. Rogers, and other
Divines describe! nor knew the Time of my Conversion, being wrought
on by the forementioned Degrees. But since then I understood that . . .
it is not possible that one of very many should be able to give any
true account of the just Time when Special Grace began, and advanced
him above the state of Preparation.48
In July 1654, Baxter received a letter from Giles Firmin. Regarding
Thomas Shepard’s Sound Beleever, Firmin asked for Baxter’s “judge-
ment of his Preparation: & of his Humiliation that wee might be
quick though we thinke God will never give us his love.” In a post-
script Firmin recounted the incident when Nathaniel Ward, his father-
in-law, had told Thomas Hooker that “he made as good Christians
before they come to Christ as ever they were after by his preach-
ing,” insinuating that those Hooker may have believed to be lack-
ing in special grace were in fact already Christians.49 Shepherd and
Hooker had said that one must prepare oneself so that “if God will
not work Grace, nor ever manifest Grace,” or “if God will leave in

47
Charles Cohen, God’s Caress: the psychology of Puritan religious experience (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 75–100; Webster, Godly Clergy, p. 108; Baxter,
ANM, p. 226.
48
Baxter, Reliquiae, I. 6. §6.
49
Letters iv. 284; cf. Webster, Godly Clergy, p. 112; Giles Firmin, The Real Christian
(1670), p. 19. It is noteworthy that in The Real Christian, Firmin continues to point
out the inordinate preparation work required by Hooker, Shepard, John Rogers
and Daniel Rogers. See also Sargent Bush, Jr., The Writings of Thomas Hooker: spir-
itual adventure in two worlds (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980), p. 148;
Thomas Shepard’s own spiritual journey was replete with tortuous routes of assur-
ance and doubt, and this as a minister in Boston, New England. Michael McGiffert,
ed., God’s Plot: the paradoxes of puritan piety, being the autobiography and journal of Thomas
Shepard (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1972), pp. 26, 96, 104, 110,
113; For an analysis of the preparationist teaching of Hooker, see Norman Pettit,
“The Order of Salvation in Hooker’s Thought,” in Thomas Hooker: Writings in England
and Holland, 1626–1633, ed. George H. Williams (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1975), pp. 124–39.
    37

that miserable and damnable state,” one should nevertheless resign

oneself to God. J.I. Packer has pointed out that both Baxter and
Firmin “took them (Hooker and Shepherd) to task for this, arguing
that it was not required by God nor psychologically possible for any
man ever to be content to be damned.”50
In contrast to the preparationist teaching—and after having described
his own torment caused by the same—Baxter penned his own res-
olution of this spiritual quandary:
And I understood, that though Fear without Love be not a state of
Saving Grace, and greater Love to the World than to God be not con-
sistent with Sincerity; yet a little predominant Love (prevailing against
worldly Love) conjunct with a far greater measure of Fear, may be a state
of Special Grace! . . . And that it is long before Love be sensibly pre-
dominant in respect of Fear (that is, of Self-Love and Self-preservation),
though at the first it is predominant against Worldly Love.51
Eight years earlier, Baxter had written on the need for conversion
in A Treatise of Conversion (1657). In discussing “the fifth part of the
work of Conversion,” he mentions that one’s affections are trans-
formed; but he is quick to add a disclaimer: “though these are not
so Evident and Certain always to try a mans state by . . . yet it is
certain that conversion changeth these also.” As a first-class casuist,
Baxter was acutely aware of the danger of excessive introspection,
pulling the carpet from under those who were hoping to prepare
their hearts for salvation. After asking, “that seeing you must be con-
verted, or condemned, will you set your selves to try whether you
are converted, or not?” Contrary to what Stachniewsky has sug-
gested, Baxter’s numerous spiritual directions contained substantial
“anti-persecutory” elements:
I pray you do not think that it is utter despair that I am driving you
to. If you should upon trial find that you are unconverted, you need
not despair, and say, ‘There is no Hope’: No, but you must know,
that there is Mercy before you. Christ hath prepared it for you, and
offereth it to you, and is willing you should have part in it, if you be
willing . . . It is Conversion, and not Desperation that God requireth.52

50
Thomas Shephard, Sound Believer (1645), pp. 140, 143; Thomas Hooker, Souls
Humiliation, pp. 116, 140. Both quoted in Firmin, The Real Christian, sigs. G2r–2v;
J.I. Packer, Among God’s Giants, p. 172. cf. Stachniewski, Persecutory Imagination, pp.
57–60.
51
Reliquiae, I. 7, §6.
52
TC, pp. 56, 132–33.
38  

Baxter asserted that Christ—and not the “almost Christian”—has

prepared the path of special grace, and this rhetorical and christo-
centric emphasis is noteworthy in this conversionistic sermon. Even
in the midst of a sermon that spoke of “the absolute Soveraignty of
Christ; and the necessity of mans subjection,” Baxter emphasised the
christocentric ground of assurance: “when sinne is remembered, and
thy conscience troubled, and the fore-thoughts of judgement doe
amaze thy soule; dost thou then fetch thy comfort from the views
of his blood, and the thoughts of the Freeness and Fulness of his
satisfaction, his love, and Gospel offers and promises?”53
While Baxter wanted to excoriate and urge the “hypocritical pro-
fessors” to a sound conversion, he was also concerned to address
those with tender consciences so that they would not be pushed over
the brink of despondency. He assuaged the fear of some listeners
and reminded them: “it is not onely our suffering . . . by which we
must enter into the Kingdom of God; but we have also Peace, the
way to Peace; and Life, the way to Life; and Joy, the way to Joy
and Glory.” It was through an apt employment of this type of fear-
assuaging pulpit rhetoric that Baxter sought to further purify his
flock.54 He preached the reality of an undeserved divine love. A key
passage in Saints Everlasting Rest encapsulates this well:
Poor, humble, drooping Soul, how would it fill thee with Joy now, if
a voyce from Heaven should tell thee of the Love of God? of the par-
don of thy sins? and should assure thee of thy part in these Joys? Oh,
what then will thy Joy be, when thy actual Possession shall convince
thee of thy Title, and thou shalt be in Heaven before thou art well
aware. . . . Poor Sinner, what sayest thou to such a day as this? . . . I
am no more worthy to be called a son: But Love will have it so; there-
fore must thou enter into his Joy.55
Since praise would be the celestial preoccupation for the glorified
saints, Baxter preached that Christians ought to “Learn, Oh learn
that Saint-beseeming work; for in the mouthes of his Saints, his

53
TXY, p. 156.
54
TC, p. 194. For Baxter’s spiritual realism: “And you may think that the godly
have no such Joy, because you see it not, or because you see them sad and heavy.
I know the Righteous have many troubles, and are oftener in tears and groans then
others: but that is from the Remnants of their sins, which as it consisteth with pre-
vailing Grace, so doth that sorrow with prevailing Joy, or may do at least . . . You
see then that Conversion is the beginning of Consolation.” Ibid., pp. 196–97.
55
SER, p. 39; SB, p. 20.
    39

praise is comely.” Although other duties and means of grace were

important, praise was the undergirding element for all.
Pray, but still praise; Hear and Read, but still praise: Praise him in
the presence of his people, for it shall be your Eternal work: Praise
him, while his Enemies deride and abuse you. . . . This is the Blessed
Rest; A Rest without Rest. Sing forth his praises now, ye Saints; It is
a work our Master Christ hath taught us.56
In a sermon delivered in 1674 at Cripplegate, London, Baxter
reminded the auditors—many of whose consciences were presum-
ably in need of comforting words—that “it is the Love of God which
the Preachers is to bring all men to, that must be saved: This is his
Office; this is his work, and this must be his study: he doth little or
nothing if he doth not this. Souls are not sanctified till they are
wrought up to the Love of God and Holiness.”57
In the final analysis, Baxter’s conversionistic emphasis was less of
a major paradigm shift in the soteriological framework of the godly
preachers than a minor difference of emphasis “within an agreed
framework.”58 Baxter was never under the illusion that he was pro-
pounding a new soteriological deviation. If anything, he saw him-
self in the tradition of the “old, solid Divines.”59 Preparationists and
conversionists were equally consumed by the desire to see Christ
honored in the church. Conversionists, of whom Baxter would be

56
SER, pp. 29–30.
57
Letters, iv. 168; WTL, p. 386. See also Baxter, “A Farewell Sermon,” fol. N1r,
where he proffers ten examples of a confirmed Christian. “That is the best and
strongest Christian, and most confirmed in grace, who is most employed and abides
in the love of God, in love to God: That hath the fear of God, but goes beyond
fear, and loves most, and abides most in the love of God . . . The more God’s love
is on thy heart . . . the stronger Christian.” cf. CD, p. 577, Direction 9.
58
Webster, Godly Clergy, p. 112. Harry Stout suggests the commonality of a “sin-
salvation-service formula” among the godly preachers, and any variations were
differences of emphasis not of substance. Stout, The New England Soul: preaching and
religious culture in colonial New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986),
p. 43. In Christian Directory (1673), Baxter provides a list of godly divines whose
books he highly recommended. The list included Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard,
John Rogers, Jeremiah Burroughs and Stephen Marshall. Was he now reconciled
to the teachings of the preparationists? Or did he never depart from them? CD,
pp. 922–8. Firmin also took exception with Baxter’s meticulous directions for heav-
enly meditations, contained both in SER and DHM. See Firmin, Meditations upon Mr
Baxter’s Review of his Treatise of Meditation (1672); Letters, v. 152; iv. 284.
59
Baxter listed “Perkins, Sibbs, Bolton, Whately, holy Dod, Hildersham, Preston” as
significant preachers whose sermons were formative influences in his spiritual growth.
See PF, p. 40.
40  

a representative, were partially driven by the need to combat the

separatist tendency of the more zealous as well as the spiritual
lethargy and inertia of the masses who were satisfied with perfunc-
tory religiosity.
For Baxter and his godly colleagues sermons were of utmost
significance because an accurate understanding of the proclaimed
word was indispensable to salvation. Thus, they did their best to
remove unnecessary stumbling blocks, including rhetorical eloquence.
Now we shall see Baxter’s plain style and the rationale he provided
for further edifying the church.

D. Conversion and the Use of Plain Style

One of the first Reformed homiletics manuals was Andreas Gerardus
Hyperius’s De Formandis Concionibus Sacris (1552), which was translated
into English in 1577, and became staple reading for the next gen-
eration of preachers.60 William Perkins’s The Arte of Prophesying ham-
mered away at similar themes in a shorter treatise and in “plain-style.”61
The Puritan preachers were aware of the danger of capitulating to
secular rhetorical devices. Philip Melanchthon’s De Rhetorica Libri was
an attempt to harmonize the protestant pulpit rhetoric along the pat-
tern established by humanistic concerns.62 However, many English
“metaphysical” preachers had pioneered in exploring the verbal and
aesthetic frontiers while their preaching often left the average lis-
tener more impressed than convicted.63

60
Andreas Hyperius, The Practice of Preaching, trans. John Ludham (1607).
61
William Perkins, The Arte of Prophecying (1607); Perkins’s Arte was followed by
Richard Bernard’s The Faithful Shepherd (1607), which was substantially similar to
Perkins. See also Niels Hemmingsen’s treatise cited in n. 7 above; William Chappell,
Methodus Concionardi (1648); its English translation appeared as The Preacher (1656).
62
H. David Schuringa, “The Vitality of Reformed Preaching,” CTJ 30 (1995),
p. 190; on Philip Melanchthon’s accommodation of the Aristotelian epistemology,
see Sachiko Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy: the case of Philip
Melanchthon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
63
Horton Davies, Like Angels from a Cloud: the English metaphysical preachers, 1585–1645
(San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1986); Nicholas Lossky, Lancelot Andrewes the
Preacher (1555–1626): the origins of the mystical theology of the Church of England, trans.
Andrew Louth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). For Andrewes’s theol-
ogy, epistemology, and preaching, see Deborah Shuger, Habits of Thought in the English
Renaissance: religion, politics, and the dominant culture (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1990), pp. 47–65, 69–90.
    41

Horton Davies has described numerous distinctive characteristics

of the metaphysical preachers—reliance on wit, the incorporation of
Patristic citations and references; the use of classical literature and
history; and abundance of riddles, paradoxes and emblems. Espousing
what may be called “the intellectual priesthood of all believers,” the
Puritan preachers assiduously rendered their meaning plain so that
salvific knowledge could be taught to the laity with minimal intel-
lectual resistance.64 Bryan Spinks argued that the Puritan plain style,
codified in the A Directory for the Public Worship of God (1644), was a
conscious move away from the tradition that kept rhetoric and logic
separate. It would be quite misleading, then, to construe the typical
Puritan sermon as boring. While it is undoubtedly true that florid
eloquence, “syllogistic juxtapositions” and “esoteric allusions” to both
Scripture and the Fathers were not a part of the usual arsenal of
the Puritan preachers, it is equally untrue to suppose that they were
not effective.65
The connection between Baxter’s plain style and his ecclesiologi-
cal convictions has often escaped scholarly attention. Lawrence Sasek
commented in 1961 that although “no aspect of Puritan literary
theory and practice has been so often discussed as the plain style . . .
some unexplored areas still remain.”66 One such area is the con-
nection between plain style and the Puritan conviction for conver-
sion and reformation. Calvin had established the precedent for future

64
Davies, Like Angels from A Cloud, pp. 50–88; idem, The Worship of the American
Puritans, 1629–1730 (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), pp. 79–82; John Wilson, Pulpit
in Parliament: Puritanism during the English Civil Wars, 1640–1648 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1969), pp. 140, 137–46; Paul Seaver, The Puritan Lectureships: the
politics of religious dissent, 1560–1662 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970), pp.
19–20.
65
Bryan D. Spinks, “Brief and Perspicuous Text; Plain and Pertinent Doctrine:
behind ‘Of the Preaching of the Word’ in the Westminster Directory,” in Like a
Two-edged Sword: the Word of God in liturgy and history (Norwich: Canterbury Press,
1995), pp. 91–111; Francis Bremer and Ellen Rydell, “Performance Art? Puritans
in the Pulpit,” History Today 45 (1995), pp. 50–54, here p. 51. On hermeneutical
analysis of the plain style, see Lawrence Sasek, The Literary Temper of the English
Puritans (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961), pp. 39–56; Mason
Lowance, The Language of Canaan: metaphor and symbol in New England from the Puritans
to the Transcendentalists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 177;
Thomas Lea, “The Hermeneutics of the Puritans,” Journal of Evangelical Theological
Society 39 (1996), pp. 271–84.
66
Sasek, The Literary Temper of the English Puritans, p. 39.
42  

pastors by advising that “a good and faithful pastor ought to con-

sider wisely what the present state of the church requires, so as to
accommodate his doctrine to its wants.”67 Like Calvin, Baxter avoided
the florid, eloquent style of pulpit discourse due to the urgency of
salvation. The conviction that without conversion no one could enter
the invisible church was the primary cause of Baxter’s plain style.
He stood in the well-established tradition of plain-style preachers.
Arthur Dent spoke for the godly preachers of Elizabethan and
Jacobean period when he exhorted, “Let us therefore be well con-
tent to stoupe downe; that Christ may be exalted. Let us be abased;
that God may be honoured. Let us doe all things in great love to
Christ, who hath said: If thou lovest me, feede, feede, feede my
flocke.”68
Baxter saw the rhetorical wit and exquisite combination of para-
doxes and phrases as having “no life in it” and judged it a “play
with holy things.” Although he confessed that “now I can find much”
to savor about metaphysical preaching, as he reminisced in 1657,
he still preferred the plain style:
The commonness and the greatness of mens Necessity, commanded
me to do any thing that I could for their relief; and to bring forth
some water to cast upon this fire, though I had not at hand a silver
Vessel to carry it in, nor thought it the most fit. The plainest words
are the profitablest Oratory in the weightiest matters. Fineness is for
ornament, and delicacy for delight; but they answer not Necessity . . .
for it usually hindereth the due operation of the matter, and keeps it
from the heart.69
Such insistence on plain style was noted by a rhetorician who remarked
that Baxter was a “supreme example of the deliberately plain school
of preaching.”70

67
John Calvin, commenting on Jude 4, quoted in Charles Milner, Calvin’s Doctrine
of the Church (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970), p. 103.
68
Arthur Dent, Plaine Mans Path-way to Heaven (seventh edition, 1607), p. 332.
See also Richard Rogers, Seven Treatises (1627 edn.), pp. 26–27; Rogers plainly sums
up the need for such unadorned pulpit rhetoric: “He would have Christ Crucified
to bee preached in a Crucified phrase.” John Rogers, The Doctrine of Faith (fifth edi-
tion, 1633), p. 54; Samuel Clarke eulogized the plain style of John Dod whose
“ministry was so spiritual, and yet so plain, that poor simple people that never
knew what Religion meant . . . could not choose but talk of his Sermon. It might-
ily affected the poor creatures to hear the Mysteries of God . . . brought down to
their own language and dialect.” Clarke, A General Martyrologie (1677), pp. 176–77.
69
TC, sig. a2v.
70
Mitchell, English Pulpit Oratory, pp. 103, 270, 352.
    43

A Sermon of Judgment was originally preached in Kidderminster, and

again in December of 1654 in London. A trip which started out
with Baxter as the substitute for Archbishop Ussher to sit in the
fourteen-member panel to hammer out the doctrinal framework for
the Commonwealth resulted in placing Baxter in the ranks of the
elite preachers of his day.71 Baxter was asked by the Lord Mayor
Christopher Pack to address the congregation at St Paul’s. Baxter
preached the same message delivered “once before a poor ignorant
Congregation in the Countrey” since he was certain that the “tran-
script of the Heart hath the greatest force on the Hearts of others,”
whether in London or Kidderminster. He reported that he “was glad
to see that the more curious stomacks of the Citizens did not nau-
seate our plain Countrey Doctrine, which I seemed to discern in the
diligent attention of the greatest Congregation that ever I saw met
for such a work.”72 However, he felt the need to defend dwelling
on “so common a subject” which was known already to those “that
are taken more with things New then with things Necessary.” “But
I do it purposely,” Baxter explained, “because I well know, that it
is these Common Truths, that are the great and necessary thing
which mens everlasting happiness or misery doth most Depend
upon.”73
“The quality of Professors in England ” also led Baxter to aban-
don parading theological erudition. Since most were “no great Scholars,
nor have much read, nor are men of profoundest natural parts,” it
was pastorally irresponsible if “those Truths” were talked about from
the pulpit. He added that “the greatest Divines of clearest Judgment,
acknowledging so much difficulty, that they could almost finde in

71
For the details of the transactions of this doctrinal conference, see Chapter 6.
Baxter preached in St Lawrence Jewry (November or December 1654), St. Martin’s-
in-the-Fields (24 December), Westminster Abbey (24 December), and St. Paul’s (17
December), all in London.
72
Reliquiae, I. 108. §158; ASJ, sig. A2r–v. It would seem that many patrons/
patronesses of the godly clergy also preferred the plain style of Puritan preachers.
Baxter said that in Henry Ashurst’s funeral sermon in 1681 underscoring his detes-
tation of the “Gentleman Preaching, set out with fine things . . . self-preaching, man-
pleasing and pride.” Instead, he preferred preachers such as Arthur Hildersham (especially
his lectures), Simeon Ashe (his pastor), and perhaps Baxter as well. See FSWC, pp.
41, 38–9. To divinity students, Baxter emphasized “the transcript of the heart,”
since “It seldom reacheth the hearts of the hearer, which cometh not from the
heart of the Speaker.” CCYM, p. 112.
73
ASJ, p. 3.
44  

their hearts, sometimes to profess them quite beyond their reach.”74

Plain style, therefore, was espoused for form and content. Undimmed
by his lack of rhetorical flourish, the enthusiasm for the “most blessed
work” of conversion propelled Baxter’s sermons to display the char-
acteristic urgency, as Keeble observed that most of Baxter’s sermons
dwelt not on elaborate exegetical points but on “the application of
doctrine.”75 In one instance, he even dared to call metaphysical
preaching “carnal Ostentation” and a sure way to “please Satan . . .
by doing his work.”76
In a similar note, Baxter declared that he “had rather that it (True
Christianity) might be numbered with those Bookes, that are carryed
up and down the Country from doore to doore in Pedlers Packs,
then with those that lye on Booksellers Stalls, or are set up in the
Libraries of learned Divinities.”77 This encapsulates Baxter’s desire
to disseminate conversionistic literature to the laity. A Treatise of Con-
version (1657), A Call to the Unconverted (1658), and Directions and Perswasions
to a Sound Conversion (1658) were all designed to “preach” to the read-
ers whenever they picked up these small tracts.78 In addition to his
preaching and publishing, Baxter regarded catechizing as a comple-
mentary tool to re-configure the visible parish churches.

IV. C: A N S  P

In her description of the godly reformation in Warwickshire, Professor

Ann Hughes identified the lack of catechizing as a key element in
its failure:
An overall reformation of the church did not occur . . . but the godly
had much success in building and defending their own networks and
communities. Ironically, it may be that this success contributed to the
broader failure . . . . These [networks and communities] . . . were not
going to be widely popular with lay people. For the clergy themselves,
there is simple fact that the maintenance of collegial links, the fre-
quent sermons, and their extensive publishing may well have been at

74
SER, p. 104.
75
Keeble, “Richard Baxter’s Preaching Ministry,” p. 553.
76
TC, p. 3.
77
ASJ, p. 59; Baxter, “To the Reader,” dated 7 August 1654, in TC, p. 119.
78
Even though “on the by and by parts, I know nothing is more common in
English,” Baxter asserted that his conversionistic literature was necessary because
    45

the expense of more immediate, grass-roots pastoral care . . . especially

catechizing.79
While this may be an accurate depiction for Warwickshire, Baxter
endeavored to achieve both godly sociability through the Worcestershire
Association and the conversion of the ungodly, primarily through
preaching and catechizing. The first conversion described before was
for “bringing the tepid to the boil” by evangelistic preaching. But
could preaching also become lukewarm in its effectiveness, despite
the preacher’s fervency? According to John Rogers, it certainly could,
even under his own famed homiletical delivery. Despite his frequently
impassioned sermons, Rogers admitted that his listeners were “like
the Smiths dogge, who can be under the hammers noyse, and the
sparks flying, and yet fast asleepe.”80 Baxter was aware of such dispir-
iting pastoral experience: “that which is spoken to all or to many,
doth seem to most of them as spoken to none.”81 A more hands-on
and even an interventionist pastoral approach was needed to awaken
many sleeping souls. Regarding this issue, William Perkins, surpris-
ingly, identified the absence of an adequate substitute for the Catholic
confessional as the Achilles heel of the religion of Protestants.
Againe, if the Minister be to confesse his peoples sinnes . . . then it
followeth also that they must discouer & confesse them vnto him, or
else it is not possible he should perfectly knowe their estate: the want
of this is a great fault in our Churches: for how euer we condemne
Auricular confession . . . yet we not onely allowe, but call and cry for
that confession, wherby a Christian voluntarily at all times may refer
to his Pastor, and open his estate . . . and craue his godly assistance,
and holy prayers.82

besides William Whately’s New Birth (1618), there was a lack of books devoted to
the subject of conversion “purposely and alone.” See TC, “To the Reader,” sigs.
a2r–a4v. See also Letters, v. 25, where Baxter recommends New Birth, in addition to
his own conversionistic literature—TC, ACU, and DPSC.
79
Ann Hughes, Godly Reformation and its Opponents in Warwickshire, 1640 –1662.
Dugdale Society occasional papers 35 (Stratford-upon-Avon: Dugdale Society, 1993),
p. 22.
80
Rogers, The Doctrine of Faith, p. 99. Baxter reflects the same sentiment: “a little
experience shewed me, that many are like a dog is that is bred up in a forge or
furnace that being used to it, can sleep through the hammers that are beating, and
the fire and hot Iron flaming about him, when another that had never seen it,
would be amazed at the sight.” ASJ, p. 238.
81
SOR, p. 10.
82
William Perkins, Of the Calling of the Ministerie, Two Treatises (1606), p. 21.
46  

Recently Eamon Duffy and Patrick Collinson have argued that the
collapse of the confessional and the continued existence of a dioce-
san system left a black hole of disciplinary problems in English
Protestantism.83 Baxter’s solution was catechizing. This was Baxter’s
protestantizing of the Catholic confessional system. If Rogers’s Dedham
had its share of smith’s dogs, Baxter’s Kidderminster had a compa-
rable number of those akin, at least spiritually, to the “veryest Heathen
in America.”
As Ian Green has demonstrated, catechizing was a well-established
tradition in English Protestantism, and was used as a preparatory
step to communion for children.84 Baxter, too, emphasised catechiz-
ing, but with an important caveat: all parishioners were to be cate-
chized and this would be private and not public. This all-out catechizing
would enable the minister to know the spiritual well-being of his
parishioners, a Puritan prerequisite to an effective ministry. In J.I.
Packer’s words: “the evangelism Baxter envisages is catechetical and
heavily didactic, and that emphasis reflects the deep doctrinal igno-
rance which at that time characterized the lay people of semi-rural
Worcestershire, apart from some exceptional folk in his own con-
gregation.”85 Baxter, well aware of the spiritual demographics of his
parish, divided it into twelve groups, going well beyond the simple
bifurcation of the godly and ungodly, ranging from those “the vul-
gar call precise,” “secret Heathens,” to those who “know not almost
any more, then the veryest Heathen in America.”86 To inculcate love
for God, Baxter turned up the intensity of catechizing. This is how
he recounted the beginning of a bold gesture in ecclesiological
reconfiguration in the midlands:

83
Patrick Collinson, “Shepherds, sheepdogs and hirelings: the pastoral ministry
in post-Reformation England,” in The Ministry: Clerical and Lay, eds. W.J. Sheils and
D. Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 216–20.
84
Green has produced a summa of catechisms of this period, The Christian’s ABC:
catechisms and catechizing in England c. 1530–1740 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1996). On Baxter’s catechizing, see pp. 222–7; See also idem, “‘For Children in
Yeers and Children in Understanding’: the emergence of the English catechism
under Elizabeth and the early Stuarts,” JEH 37 (1986), pp. 397–425.
85
Packer, Among God’s giants, p. 308.
86
C&R, pp. 157–65; Eamon Duffy, “The Godly and the Multitude in Stuart
England,” SC 1 (1986), pp. 31–55. This classification was an expansion of Richard
Bernard’s opinion that “every Congregation may bee reduced to one of these six
sorts.” See Bernard, The Faithful Shepherd . . . with the Shepherds Practice (rev. edn., 1621),
pp. 99–109.
    47

And about the same time [c. 1653–4], Experience in my Pastoral

Charge convinced me that publick Preaching is not all the ordinary
Work of a faithful Minister, and that personal Conference with every
one about the State of their own Souls, together with Catechizing, is
a Work of very great Necessity: For the Custom in England is only to
catechize the younger sort, and that but by teaching them the Words
Catechism in the Liturgy, which we thought . . . had little more expli-
catory than the Words themselves of the Creed, Lords Prayer, and
Decalogue: Therefore I propounded the Business to the Ministers [of
the Worcestershire Association], and they all . . . consented that I should
turn our brief Confession into a Catechism.87
Two things require brief comments: the Worcestershire Association
was a county-wide synod-cum-presbytery whose main focus was pro-
vision of a disciplinary structure and basis for godly unity. The
Association set the benchmark for pastoral ministry during the remain-
der of the Interregnum.88 Secondly, the final product of such min-
isterial deliberation was the publication of The Agreement of . . . Ministers . . .
in . . . Worcester . . . for Catechizing (1656).
This ministry of probing the souls of his parishioners for the pur-
pose of reforming and restoring was among “all the Works that ever
I attempted . . . [and it] yielded me most Comfort.” This work was
further abetted by the fact that though there were twelve groups of
spiritual demographics represented in the parish, they were on the
whole “tractable willing People.” Taking two days a week and seven
families per day, Baxter and his “faithful unwearied Assistant” em-
barked on this work. The upshot of this all-out effort to widen the
catchment area of evangelism was an increased knowledge of the
spiritual temperature of the flock. In a transparent passage Baxter
described his catechizing sessions in a way not too dissimilar to
confessions:
First they recited the Catechism to us (a Family only being present at
a time, and no Stranger admitted); after that I first helpt them to
understand it, and next enquired modestly into the State of their Souls,
and lastly endeavoured to set all home to the convincing, awakening,
and resolving of their Hearts according to their several Conditions;
bestowing about an Hour . . . with every Family; and I found it so

87
Reliquiae, II. 179, §40.
88
On Baxter’s pastoral strategy, see J. William Black, “Richard Baxter and the
Ideal of the Reformed Pastor” (Unpublished dissertation, Ph.D., Cambridge, 2000).
For the role of the Worcestershire Association, see Chapter Five below.
48  

effectual . . . that few went away without some seeming Humiliation,

Conviction, and Purpose and Promise for a holy Life.89
Catechizing was usually carried out in preparation for church mem-
bership and the Lord’s Supper. Implicit in the adherence to cate-
chizing was the belief that faith can be transmitted through teaching.
Puritan preachers of the Elizabethan and Stuart era felt the urgent
need to supplement their pulpit ministry with catechizing. Richard
Bernard suggested that unless preaching was reinforced by cate-
chizing, any hope of reformation would remain a mirage and preach-
ing an exercise in futility.90 Theologus, the protagonist in Arthur
Dent’s immsely popular The Plaine Mans Path-way to Heaven, under-
scored the necessity of catechizing: “You have spoken the truth. And
therefore, with some must needes take upon them this so great a
charge, it will be our best course, to labour much with them in
Catechizing, and private instructions; and that in most familiar and
plain manner. For much good hath been done, and is done, this
way.”91
Baxter took no exception to that general conviction of the godly
clergy. In December of 1654 he preached at St. Lawrence Jewry,
London, on the theme of “making light of Christ.” He spoke of the
need for careful monitoring and catechizing of the flock since preach-
ing alone would not sufficiently effect the work of reformation:
Let us preach to them as long as we will, we cannot bring them to
relish or resolve upon a life of holiness. Follow them to their houses,
and you shall not hear them read a Chapter, nor call upon God with
their families once a day. . . . Alas! How many Ministers can speak it
to the sorrow of their hearts, that many of their people know almost
nothing of Christ, though they hear of him daily! If we ask them an
account of these things, they answer as if they understood not what
we say to them, and tell us they are no Scholers, and therefore think
they are excusable for their ignorance.92
Less than a month later, Baxter pressed the same issue on the mem-
bers of Parliament. He urged them to “perfect that excellent Work,
of enjoyning Catechizing” since he was convinced that without it all

89
Reliquiae, II. 180, §41.
90
Richard Bernard, Two Twines; or Two Parts of One Scripture (1613), pp. 1–17.
91
Dent, The Plaine Mans Path-way to Heaven, p. 331.
92
MLCS, pp. 36, 39.
    49

efforts for reformation would be futile.93 Furthermore, he wanted

Parliament to administer a doctrinal litmus test based on the Shorter
Catechism of the Assembly. “Seeing you have well intended to Enjoyn
the Generall use of the Assemblies lesser Catechism, put it into the
Act of Ejection, that whosoever shall de industria after Admonition,
preach or perswade any against any Doctrine contained in the Cate-
chism, shall be Ejected.”94
Baxter’s strong desire for a speedy implementation of catechizing
was, as we can see from the correspondence he exchanged with his
colleagues, widely shared. It should be emphasized, however, that
his comment that “many a Ministers is [sic] so loath to get the ill
will of his people, that he lets them alone in their sins, or onely tel-
leth them of it in Publike, or at the most but in an easie uneffectual
way, and so fals in danger of perishing with them for company,”
has some reference to the pastoral reality of Interregnum England.95
Twenty-seven letters were exchanged between Baxter and his col-
leagues concerning catechizing during the Interregnum. The success
of catechizing he enjoyed in Kidderminster was not shared by all
his correspondents. Michael Edge wrote from Foremark, Derbyshire,
on 2 February 1657, to let Baxter know that he did not “reach men
much from the pulpit: people when we speake to them in generall,
doe not take themselves particularly to be concerned.” Therefore, to
Edge, seeing a group of ministers collaborating to implement cate-
chizing in their county was encouraging. Catechizing espoused by
the Worcestershire Association was “a rare worke” since it would be
an “attempt of particular instruction of persons.”96 Sounding some-
what envious, Peter Ince wrote to Baxter to let him know that after
signing An Apology for the Ministers of Wiltshire (1654), Ince had been
engaged in the work of catechizing in his parish at Donhead St.
Mary, but with a result far less promising.97 A great admirer of
Baxter from Newington Butts, Surrey, expressed his frustration that
he did not have an able assistant to cooperate in his endeavour.

93
Baxter recommended catechetical treatises by Zachary Crofton, Catechizing Gods
Ordinance (1656), and the London Provincial Assembly, Exhortation to Catechizing (1655).
See RP, sig. d2v.
94
HA, sig. A2r–v.
95
TC, p. 98.
96
Letters, iv. 65.
97
Letters, iii. 179 (21 April 1655). For Ince, see CR, s.v.
50  

Thomas Wadsworth’s parish was not much smaller than Kidderminster,

but more people refused to come to be instructed, fearing that their
ignorance might be divulged. “I cannot but think,” wrote Wadsworth,
“as for the most part of them, are very ignorant, and these I doe
resolve to sett on first, this will be more easie and likely to take
more effect. When I have dispatched these, then God willing, I shall
endeavour to the utmost for the rest.”98 For a minister of the Wor-
cestershire Association, his initial optimism for the “comfort . . . that
would . . . accruew to soules” by catechizing soon dissipated when
he found that “the old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon.”99
Baxter’s experience of catechizing in Kidderminster convinced him
that to shun it for fear of lay recalcitrance or apathy was unacceptable.
In his letter to the Ireland Association, written on 12 August 1655,
he gives an honest appraisal of the difficulty of such an undertaking:
We are now upon a joint Agreement to bringe all the ancient per-
sons in our Parishes . . . to our houses on certaine dayes every weeke,
by turnes, to be Catechized or Instructed, as shall be most to their
Edification: A worke that requireth soe much unwearied diligence &
selfe denyall & holy skill, & wherein we are like to meet with soe
much resistance, & yet doth appeare to us of soe great necessity &
use, we earnestly crave your prayers.100
In a letter to encourage Wadsworth to forge ahead in the work of
catechizing, Baxter counselled, “I take our busynes of discipline itselfe
to be a matter far below this. And I never had more Comfort in
any worke that I have sett my hand to, except publique Preachinge.”101
He had been “convinced that it is the duty of each Minister to
endeavour to know (if possible) each person of his charge, that so
he may know where his special duty lieth, and how to perform it.”102
In catechizing, Baxter allowed for multiplicity of theological per-
spectives, so long as the fundamentals were not denied. In the
Agreement . . . for Catechizing, the ministers suggested that “if any pre-
tend scruples against our Profession, or the allowed Catechism, they shall
use any Orthodox Catechism which themselves will choose.” The

98
CCRB, #294.
99
Letters, ii. 136.
100
Reliquiae, II. 170–1, §36.
101
Letters, ii. 249.
102
CC, sig. A3r.
    51

numbers of catechisms available for Christians during this period

were truly legion.103 By 1656 we see the ebullient yet realistic opti-
mism of Baxter. He wrote to Wadsworth:
The seriousnes of the discourse I find spendeth me much, even as
much each day as two sermons, so that I feare lest I shall not hold
out. But I see that hope of successe that convinceth me, we never hitt
the way of pulling downe the Kingdome of the Devill till now. I feare
nothinge but that many Ministers will lazily, dully & superficially slub-
ber it over, & do little more than heare them say the words &c.104
The prospect of “pulling downe the Kingdome of the Devill” excited
all the godly ministers, but little did they know that the hope for
the kingdom of God which they were so assiduously building would
be taken away by Charles II, who was expected to be their protec-
tor and sovereign. But after the Restoration, Baxter’s commitment
to catechize families continued, albeit in a different way. Since he
was convinced that the print medium was as effective as preached
sermons, he resorted to publishing two important catechetical trea-
tises: The Poor Man’s Family Book (1674) and The Catechizing of Families
(1681), in both of which he spelled out his confident belief that cat-
echizing faithfully would allow the Christians in the Restoration
church to pursue edification without separatism.

V. C

For Baxter, there was an organic unity between preaching (includ-

ing catechizing), baptism, and the Lord’s Supper in that these were
not only marks of the true church but also the ways to purify and
maintain the unity of the church. The desire to preach conversion-
istic sermons illustrates his ecclesiological conviction that the parish
churches in England were in considerable need of purifying. His
intrinsic antipathy to separatism and preparationism influenced his
preaching as well, thus revealing two other important ecclesiological
principles—unity of the church and its holiness. That Baxter cate-
chized was not revolutionary in itself, but his concern to provide

103
ADMC, p. 6; Green, The Christian’s ABC, “Appendix I,” pp. 573–751.
104
Letters, ii. 249.
52  

individual attention—encompassing all age groups—which was moti-

vated by the desire to provide a better prepared flock for the sacra-
ments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper certainly was. It is to these
sacraments we shall turn now to see how Baxter’s reforming vision
influenced his sacramental theology.
 CHAPTER THREE

REFORMING THE ENTRANCE INTO THE VISIBLE

CHURCH: BAPTISM AND CONFIRMATION

I. I

On 1 March 1655 Baxter received a letter from a colleague, frus-

trated by the recalcitrance of his parishioners. Peter Ince wrote:
truly Sir the greater part of my poore people that will have their chil-
dren baptized hate instruction & are as ignorant of Christianity I meane
of the plainest principles . . . as if they had never heard of them . . .
& unlesse I will baptize them in all hast away they run to some idle
drunken fellowes and thinke all well; and truly dear Sir it is not my
case alone.1
This letter highlights a fundamental issue in the ecclesiastical history
of mid-seventeenth century England, particularly concerning infant
baptism.2 We have seen in Chapter Two that Baxter endeavored to
reform preaching, considered by many Puritans as the most crucial
means of grace, by catechizing the entire parish as a means of facil-
itating conversion. If conversion was so crucial to Baxter’s ecclesio-
logy, how could he reconcile this with paedobaptism? The theology
of infant baptism and concomitant ecclesiological perspective came
under attack by the anti-paedobaptists, criticizing the systematic fail-
ure and exegetical incoherence of paedobaptism.3

1
Letters, iv. 245.
2
On Baxter’s baptismal thought, see McCan, “The Conception of the Church
in Richard Baxter and John Bunyan,” pp. 95–113; Packer, “The Redemption and
Restoration of Man in the Thought of Richard Baxter,” (Unpublished dissertation,
D.Phil., Oxford, 1954), pp. 310–29; John C. English, “The Puritan Doctrine of
Christian Initiation,” SL 6 (1969), pp. 158–70; D.M. Himbury, “Baptismal Con-
troversies, 1640–1900,” in Christian Baptism: a fresh attempt to understand the rite in
terms of Scripture, history, and theology, ed. A. Gilmore (London: Lutterworth, 1959),
pp. 279–80, 287–89.
3
See J.F. McGregor and B. Reay, eds., Radical Religion in the English Revolution
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); Ann Hughes, “The Meanings of Religious
Polemic,” in Puritanism: Transatlantic perspectives on a seventeenth-century Anglo-American faith
(Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993), p. 212; idem, “The Pulpit Guarded:
confrontations between orthodox and radicals in Revolutionary England,” in John
54  

In seventeenth-century England, baptism was understood as the

entrance rite of the Church. The Puritan paedobaptists had to inves-
tigate carefully the numerous issues surrounding this ancient rite of
initiation.4 The ecclesiastical regime of Archbishop William Laud
helped to foster a strong bond of solidarity among all Puritans—
Baptist and otherwise.5 In fact, the line of demarcation between the
non-separating Puritans and the separatists was not always drawn
clearly in the pre-Civil War generations.6 The idea of ecclesiola in
ecclesia was implanted in the religious psyche of many Puritans, and
there existed a cohabitation of the faithful with the unfaithful, albeit
fraught with much tension in the communities.7 However, by the
beginning of the Civil War, the tendency to separate from the estab-
lished church gained significant momentum as the repressive eccle-
siastical government of Laud was uprooted and Prayer Book religion
proscribed. The tension between the two seemingly irreconcilable
ecclesiologies, hitherto held together by their common commitments
to godliness, anti-Laudianism and anti-Popery, was now unsustain-
able. Professor John Morrill has commented that the excitement of
the Puritans entering the “Promised Land” soon led them to a decade
and a half of ecclesiological confusion, exacerbated in part by the
persistence of popular adherence to Prayer Book religion, and fur-

Bunyan and His England, 1628–1688, eds. Ann Laurence, W.R. Owens, S. Sim
(London: Hambledon Press, 1990), pp. 31–50.
4
See David Cressy, Birth, Marriage & Death: ritual, religion, and literature in Tudor
and Stuart England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 97–113, 173–80;
Ian Green, The Christian’s ABC, pp. 519–39; Geoffrey Wainwright, Christian Initiation
(London: Lutterworth Press, 1969), pp. 71–99; Peter J. Jagger, Christian Initiation
1552–1969: rites of baptism and confirmation since the Reformation period (London: S.P.C.K.,
1970); J.D.C. Fisher, Christian Initiation: the Reformation period (London: S.P.C.K., 1970),
pp. 89–111, 144–50, 154–56. For a statistical study, see B. Midi Berry and R.S.
Schofield, “Age at Baptism in Pre-Industrial England,” PS 25 (1971), pp. 453–63.
5
For William Laud, see H.R. Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud 1573–1645 (London:
Macmillan, 1940); Nicholas Tyacke, “Archbishop Laud,” in The Early Stuart Church,
1603–1642, ed. Kenneth Fincham (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 51–70.
6
See Stephen Brachlow, The Communion of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988).
7
The co-existence of the faithful with the unfaithful was explored extensively by
Professor Patrick Collinson in “The English Conventicle,” in Voluntary Religion, eds.
W.J. Sheils and Diana Wood (Studies in Church History 23, Oxford: Blackwell,
1986); “Lectures by Combination,” in Godly People: Essays in English Protestantism and
Puritanism (London: Hambledon Press, 1983), pp. 467–98; “The Early Dissenting
Tradition,” in Ibid., pp. 526–62; “The Cohabitation of the Faithful with the
Unfaithful,” in From Persecution to Toleration: the Glorious Revolution and religion in England
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 51–76.
        55

ther abetted by the popular distaste for the zealous worldview of the
Puritans.8 If, as Morrill argues, the Puritans could swiftly agree on
what to exclude from their religion, but not on what to include,
then the struggle over the validity of paedobaptism needs to be seen
in that context. This quest for a pure church, stripped of Laudian
and “Popish” elements, led to a contentious period of ecclesiologi-
cal re-configuration and re-consideration.
The rhetoric of “Anabaptism” so galvanized the community of the
godly into action that the London bookseller George Thomason col-
lected over 125 tracts written between 1642–1660 on this issue.9 In
addition to such prodigious literary output, there were at least sev-
enty-nine public disputes.10 The countermeasure of the Puritan pae-
dobaptists brought the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and even some
Independents together.11 Many paedobaptists were incensed that the
anti-paedobaptists were robbing “Infants of their Right, Parents of
their comfort, the Church of its members, and God of his glory.”12
They were equally suspicious of extremism, and of the polarity they
had seen develop in baptismal thought—popish “ceremonialism”
which would “shut infants out of the Church-Triumphant” and the
anti-paedobaptists’ abrogation of the rite which kept infants out of

8
See John Morrill, “The Church in England, 1642–9,” in Reactions to the English
Civil War, 1642–1649, ed. John Morrill (London: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 89–114;
Judith Maltby, Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1998); Alexandra Walsham, “The Parochial Roots of
Laudianism Revisited,” JEH 49 (1998), pp. 620–51. See also Geoffrey F. Nuttall,
Visible Saints: the Congregational way (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), p. 135.
9
Catalogue of the Pamphlets . . . Collected by George Thomason, 1640 –1661, 2 vols.
(London: British Museum, 1908); Nuttall, Visible Saints, p. 118; Cressy, Birth, Marriage,
and Death, p. 174.
10
Arthur S. Langley, “Seventeenth Century Baptist Disputations,” TBHS 6 (1919),
pp. 216–43. It seems that while the two middle decades (1640–1660) provided the
most fertile ground for such disputes, there were only twelve more in the ensuing
four decades (1661–1698).
11
Among Episcopalians, Daniel Featley, Dippers Dipt (1645); Henry Hammond,
The Baptizing of Infants (1655); Jeremy Taylor, A Discourse of Baptisme (1652). For
Presbyterians, Robert Baillie, Anabaptisme, the true Fountaine of Independency (1647); John
Geree, Vindiciae Paedo-Baptismi (1646); Stephen Marshall, A Sermon of the Baptizing of
Infants (1644). From Independents, see John Stalham, The Summe of a Conference at
Terling (1644); idem, Vindiciae Redemptionis (1647); John Goodwin, Water-Dipping No
Firm Footing (1653); idem, Katabaptism (1655). See Nuttall, Visible Saints, pp. 120–1
for the rationale of the Congregationalists to support and sympathize with the plight
of the Baptists on the one hand, and to write treatises against them defending pae-
dobaptism.
12
Thomas Hall, The Font Guarded with XX Arguments (1652), sig. a2r.
56  

the “Church-Militant.”13 It was in this “welter of religious creativity

and confusion” that Baxter endeavored to understand the ecclesio-
logical implications of baptism.14
He considered baptism to be the normal way of entrance into the
visible church. His constant preoccupation to purify the visible church
required a doctrine of infant baptism that had a higher “entrance
requirement” than that of some of his colleagues. The pastoral real-
ity described in Ince’s letter was not unknown to Baxter. In his
twelve categories of parishioners in Kidderminster, he had identified
those who he feared were as ignorant as “the veryest Heathen in
America,” and many who were utterly devoid of spiritual knowl-
edge.15 To enhance the spiritual understanding of such parishioners,
especially their children, Baxter administered infant baptism and
reformed confirmation as a “transition rite.” Just as preaching had
public sermons and private catechizing as interrelated components,
each enhancing the effectiveness of the other, the same interrelated
principle is seen between baptism and confirmation as twin elements
of Baxter’s baptismal theology.

II. M H  B’ B T

Despite its importance in his ministry, there is a significant gap in

current historiography on Baxter’s baptismal thought. To date, arguably
the best synopsis is given in E.B. Holifield’s The Covenant Sealed.16
However, Holifield’s analysis was carried out without much histori-
cal contextualization. The historical contexts and the practical aspects
of Baxter’s baptismal debates were as important as theology in devel-
oping his baptismal thought.17 For Baxter, the subversive threat of
the Baptists was a powerful argument against conceding any further,
although he found many of their baptismal views persuasive, espe-
cially their concern for the purity of the church.18 Moreover, Holifield’s

13
Ibid., sig. a2v.
14
Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, p. 176.
15
See C&R, pp. 157–65.
16
E.B. Holifield, The Covenant Sealed: the development of Puritan sacramental theology in
Old and New England, 1570–1720 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp.
75–108.
17
Holifield’s treatment of the emergence of the English Baptists and their theo-
logical leitmotif in mere two paragraphs seems surprising. See Ibid., pp. 76–77.
18
See especially PSP, sig. b4r, p. 2.
        57

discussion of Baxter’s baptismal thought, carried out without reference

to Baxter’s commitment to confirmation, presented a partial view.
Paul Jewett assessed the tendency toward “legalism” which Baxter’s
conditional covenant of grace doctrine produced, and concluded that
it ran counter to the biblical notion of the new covenant, “one that
cannot be broken.”19 To what extent did Baxter’s legalistic understanding
of the covenant of grace mark a departure from the rest of his
Puritan colleagues? To answer this question and the issues raised
above in this survey, we will look at the historical and theological
factors that helped form Baxter’s baptismal thought, and his view of
confirmation. Consequently, we will identify the ecclesiological signi-
ficance of infant baptism and confirmation as marks of a true and
reforming church.

III. C  B’ E B T

Shortly after his ordination, in 1639 as a schoolmaster in Dudley,

Baxter had “daily disputed against the Nonconformists” for their
inclinations towards separation.20 This anti-separatism continued when
he moved to Bridgnorth in 1640. There he grew skeptical about
paedobaptism. After baptizing two infants, he “silently forbore the
practice, and set . . . to the study of the point.”21 Recalling his strug-
gles of a decade before, Baxter wrote that as a result of the study
he “saw more probability for Infant Baptism, then was against it.”22
However, after having mentioned that he saw more probability for
the paedobaptist position, Baxter followed up with the certainty of
the danger of separatism: “And the separating, dividing, scandalous
courses of all the Anabaptists that I was acquainted with . . . did
deterr me from . . . the Way of further temptation.”23 The first time
he encountered these “separating and dividing” baptists was in his
stay in Gloucester as he was forced out of Kidderminster “in this
Fury of the Rabble” in 1642.24

19
Paul K. Jewett, Infant Baptism and the Covenant of Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B.
Eerdmans, 1978), pp. 150–52.
20
Reliquiae, I. §19, 14.
21
PSP, sig. b3.
22
Ibid., sig. b4.
23
Ibid.
24
Gloucestershire stood on Parliament’s side in the Civil War, whereas Worces-
tershire, Herefordshire, and Shropshire were “wholly for the King.” Reliquiae, I.
40–41, §§57–8.
58  

By 1643, Baxter was living in Coventry to avoid the clamor his

detractors in Kidderminster. Urged as he was by the Committee and
Governor of Coventry, Baxter preached against the Baptists and
managed to “baffle both Separatists, Anabaptists, and Antinomians,
and so kept all the Garrison sound.”25 One of the unexpected results
of the victory of the parliamentary army during this period was that
the Baptists found a wider region for their evangelizing efforts; they
were in fact the most “successful disseminators of radical religious
ideas” in this era.26 The confession of faith for the seven Baptist
churches in London in 1644 spelled out their separatist stance.27
Benjamin Cox, a London Baptist, was sent to evangelize the pae-
dobaptists. Baxter and Cox entered into a heated dispute both in
person and in print.28 Again the insistence on separatism was what
Baxter could not countenance in Cox’s thought.29
Baxter’s major concern was “for unity and Peace,” which was of
greater significance than “Rebaptizing.” He even declared that if the
Baptists “did not hinder the Gospel, and sin against the plain word
by divisions, I should easily bear with any that differed from me in
the point of baptism.”30 In a remarkably transparent passage, he con-
fessed that “I bless God . . . that gave me a still a detestation of
Schism and a high esteem of the Churches unity and peace; or else
I had certainly then turned Anabaptist.”31 While he deplored the
Baptists’ separating tendency, he acknowledged that it directly arose
from the neglect of the non-separated churches and ministers. To
curb the fissiparous tendency of the Baptists, Baxter became per-
suaded that the prevailing practice of paedobaptism must be reformed
since “the Church should be caula ovium not hara porcorum.”32 Re-

25
Reliquiae, I. §66, 46.
26
McGregor, “The Baptists,” pp. 29, 31–32. A General Baptist church was in
existence in Coventry as early as 1626. See M.R. Watts, The Dissenters: from the
Reformation to the French Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 50. For
an helpful survey of English Baptist history, see B.R. White, The English Baptists of
the seventeenth century (London: Baptist Historical Society, 1983).
27
The Confession of Faith, of those Churches . . . called Anabaptists (1644).
28
No recorded evidence has survived. To reconstruct Cox’s baptismal thought,
see A Declaration (1645); An Appendix to a Confession of Faith (1646); An After-reckoning
with Mr Edwards (1646); Some Mistaken Scriptures (1646).
29
PSP, p. 144; Brachlow, The Communion of Saints, p. 150, suggests that the sep-
aratist ecclesiology inevitably brought about believer’s baptism.
30
PSP, sigs. b4v–c1r.
31
Ibid., p. 2.
32
Letters, iv. 247, “a sheep pen not pig-sty.”
        59

configuring the ecclesiological boundaries in his own parish could

only be achieved if the church became more aware of its being a
covenanted community, a confessing community, and one that sought
to inculcate the knowledge of and love for God in its children.
The general consensus among the conservative Puritans was that
the soldiers in the New Model Army were directly responsible for the
spread of separatist ideals. This became the bombshell that awak-
ened him to work indefatigably against them. After the Battle of
Naseby in June 1645, he discovered with horror the unimagined
spread of separatist political ideology:
We took the true happiness of King and People, Church and State,
to be our end, and so we understood the Covenant, engaging both
against Papists and Schismaticks: And when the Court News-book told
the World of the Swarms of Anabaptists in our Armies, we thought
it had been a meer lye, because it was not so with us. . . . But when
I came to the Army among Cromwell’s Soldiers, I found a new face of
things which I never dreamt of: I heard the plotting Heads . . . which
intimated their Intention to subvert both Church and State.33
In his debate with “some Sectaries of Chesham” while he was sta-
tioned in Buckinghamshire, Baxter “stayed it out till they first rose
and went away.” The major catalyst for Baxter during this marathon
debate was “a crowded Congregation of poor well-meaning People,
that came in the Simplicity of their Hearts to be deceived.”34 The
report of this hard “Days work” was subsequently included in Thomas
Edwards’s Gangræna, and Baxter feared that the “poor and well-mean-
ing” populace were easy prey to the separatist rhetoric of the Baptists.35
Such a separation would overthrow the ministry, the church and
eventually the state.36 A mere defence of infant baptism would only
prove to be a stopgap solution, and he fully engaged in his pastoral
“offensive” when he went back to Kidderminster after his Civil War
experience.37 To Baxter separatism was “an easie Religion . . . a des-
perate delusion.”38 More pungently he charged that Baptists would

33
Reliquiae, I. 50, §73.
34
Reliquiae, I. 56, §80.
35
Thomas Edwards, Gangræna (1646), second pagination, 1:49–50; PSP, p. 147.
36
The letter mentioned in Gangraena was originally addressed to Francis Tyton
(see THCD, part II, p. 190), and is similar to what Edwards recorded in non-epis-
tolary form in part I, 18–9.
37
Reliquiae, I. 56, §80.
38
PSP, p. 146.
60  

“run from God-preserving to God-destroying.”39 Thus, his baptismal

thought was formed in response to the Baptists of his day. In his
endeavors to reform the church, he debated the nature of faith
required for baptism and the covenantal priority of baptism with
other Puritan ministers.

IV. T C  B’

B T

In A Christian Directory (1673), Baxter defined baptism in Trinitarian

language, and reflected a clearly theocentric focus on this mark of
a true church:
Baptism is the mutual Covenant between God the Father, Son and
Holy Ghost, and a penitent Believing sinner, solemnized by the wash-
ing of water, in which as a Sacrament of his own appointment God
doth engage himself to be the God and reconciled Father, the Saviour
and the Sanctifier of the Believer, and taketh him for his reconciled
Child in Christ, and delivereth to him by solemn investiture, the par-
don of all his sins, and title to the mercies of this life and of that
which is to come.40
The “mutual Covenant” between God and humanity was a con-
trolling principle in Baxter’s sacramental theology. He constantly
reminded his readers to “know the Greatness of the Benefit, of the
Duty and of the Danger.”41 However, Baxter acknowledged that
“Positives” of paedobaptism were “mentioned in Scripture but spar-
ingly.” He insisted that “this controversie . . . it self ” was of less
significance than disputants from both sides imagined, unless it led
to separatism.42 What, then, were the distinctives of Baxter’s bap-
tismal thought? First of all, Baxter used the language of covenant to
defend the legitimacy of paedobaptism over against John Tombes
and other Baptists. Baxter utilized the Old Testament typology of

39
Ibid., pp. 138, 144.
40
CD, p. 690. For the views that may have shaped Baxter’s ecclesiological, more
particularly baptismal, thought (as he confesses in Reliquiae, I. 13, §19), see William
Ames, A Fresh Suit against Human Ceremonies in Gods Worship (1633), pp. 253–66. Ames
was critiquing Cornelius Burges, Baptismal Regeneration of Elect Infants (1629). See also
Robert Parker, A Scholasticall Discourse (1607), p. 101; William Perkins, A Golden Chaine
(Cambridge, 1600), p. 111.
41
CD, p. 691.
42
PSP, pp. 9–10.
        61

circumcision to interpret covenantal continuity. Secondly, the church

was not only a covenant community, but also a confessing commu-
nity. This may not seem extraordinary; indeed Baxter insisted that
his view was entirely consonant with other theologians throughout
church history. However, Baxter understood infant baptism as a
sacrament in the more Zwinglian or even possibly baptist sense, since
he required a profession of saving faith for the parents before their
children could be baptized. That he was chided by Tombes and
others to follow the logical implications of his baptismal thought and
abandon paedobaptism was not a mere polemical device. The ten-
sion he experienced in this context is revealing of his overall eccle-
siology. Like Martin Bucer of Strasbourg in the early years of the
Reformation whose reforming zeal and ideal exerted a great influence
on Baxter,43 “the attempt to pursue two ecclesiologies at the same
time, one comprehensive and the other selective, was probably self-
defeating.”44 Indeed, Baxter’s vision of ecclesiological re-configuration
influenced his baptismal theology profoundly, and while there were
numerous clues—and complaints—of the difficulty intrinsic to such
reform efforts, Baxter did not give up hope.

A. Against Tombes: Priority of the Parents’ Interest and Children’s

Membership in the Visible Church
Baxter gave surprising advice concerning the selection of the new
pastor for Bewdley, Worcestershire, between a paedobaptist and a
Baptist polemicist. He recommended Tombes over John Geree for
the task, but within five years of that critical decision, Baxter con-
cluded that “this was the greatest wrong that ever I knew I did to
Bewdley.”45
Tombes had already published his scruples against infant baptism
in two treatises before he arrived in Bewdley.46 In these treatises, he

43
See Black, “Richard Baxter and the Idea of the Reformed Pastor,” pp. 57–60,
96–102, 190–219.
44
D.F. Wright, “Infant Baptism and the Christian Community,” in Martin Bucer:
reforming church and community, ed., David F. Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), p. 102.
45
For John Tombes, see DNB, CR, and BDBR; Philip J. Anderson, “Letters of
Henry Jessey and John Tombes to the Churches of New England, 1645,” BQ , 28
(1979), pp. 30–40. John Geree defended paedobaptism in Vindiciae Paedo-Baptism
(1646).
46
John Tombes, An Examen of the Sermon of Mr. Stephen Marshall (1645); Marshall’s
62  

denied the putative New Testament warrant for paedobaptism and

the alleged subversive potential of “Anabaptism,” and argued that
the logic of paedobaptism militated against the intention and
signification of baptism.47 He utilized these “polemical” themes in
his debate with Baxter as well.48 Baxter and Tombes met in Kidder-
minster on 1 January 1650 for a public disputation.49 After the dis-
putation, Tombes complained of the novelty of Baxter’s polemical
vantage point.50 Baxter had asserted the possibility of children’s mem-
bership in the visible church, not only of the Old Testament era
but of the New as well.51 Previously most polemical exchanges on
paedobaptism had focused on the efficacy of infant baptism and the
disparity that existed between the two Testaments, but Baxter believed
that he would have greater success by establishing first that children
belonged to the visible church. Both Tombes and Baxter had agreed
that “all that must be admitted visible Church-members must be
baptized,” which left Baxter to prove that “some Infants ought to
be admitted visible Church-members.”52
Baxter responded that children of believing parents were mem-
bers of the visible church since the parents had natural and God-
endowed interest, allowing parental prerogative in directing the
spiritual welfare of their children.53 Thus, he stressed covenantal con-

sermon was published as A Sermon on the Baptizing of Infants (1644); Tombes’ Latin
argument proffered to the Westminster Assembly was translated and included in
Two Treatises: an exercitation about infant baptisme (1645); cf. S.W. Carruthers, The Everyday
Work of the Westminster Assembly (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Historical Society of
America, 1954), pp. 93, 102–4; Alex F. Mitchell and John Struthers, Minutes of the
Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1874),
pp. 172–73, 216. See also Tombes, An Apology or Plea for the Two Treatises (1646).
47
Tombes, An Examen, passim; Two Treatises, pp. 10–16, 23–25, 30–33.
48
Tombes, in An Antidote (1650), basically reiterated the same scruples he had
expressed in An Examen and Two Treatises.
49
In the third edition of PSP (1653), Baxter included all the correspondence
exchanged between the two as an appendix; Reliquiae, I. §138, 96; PSP (1653 edn.),
sig. d1v.
50
Reliquiae, I. §138, 96.
51
On children and the church, see R.L. DeMolen, “Childhood and the Sacraments
in the Sixteenth Century,” ARG 66 (1975), pp. 49–70; William Coster, “From Fire
and Water,” in The Church and Childhood, ed. Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994);
Anne S. Brown and David D. Hall, “Family Strategies and Religious Practice,” in
Lived Religion in America: toward a history of practice, ed. David D. Hall (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. 44–68; R. Phillip Roberts, “The Puritan View
of Children in the Church,” in Diversities of Gifts (London: Westminster Conference,
1980), pp. 57–69; Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death, pp. 99–114.
52
PSP, p. 26.
53
Ibid., p. 113.
        63

tinuity. “God hath no where reverst or abrogated” the command

for parents to “enter their Children into Covenant with God, and
Devote them to him.”54 For Baxter, acknowledging that children
belonged to the covenant community, therefore, was entirely con-
sistent with emphasizing the priority of the new covenant, as the
Baptists did.55 As we shall see, there was a conspicuous lack of the
sacramentalist view in Baxter—except the question of infant death
and salvific possibility—but rather a consistent emphasis on human
participation in the schema of the divinely initiated covenant of
grace.56 In a sense, his baptismal thought can be interpreted as infant
and parent dedication.
Baxter argued that since the new covenant was superior to the
Old Testament era—especially the Abrahamic covenantal sign of cir-
cumcision—and the Mosaic covenant, the spiritual state of children
should improve as well in the New Testament.57 In fact, “Infants
were members of the Church before Christs Incarnation: And Christ
came not to destroy Church Priviledges, but to enlarge them.”58 By
that he meant that the Israelites—which was interpreted by the mag-
isterial reformers and their subsequent followers as being analogous
to the visible church—included circumcised infants as members of
that covenanted community. And as such, Baxter concluded that if
children were part of the covenant community in the old covenant
era, so much more should they be part of the new covenant com-
munity. Thus, for Baxter this hermeneutical deduction, rather than
an exegetical proof-texting, was his theological justification for infant
baptism. Baxter stressed that to reject infant church membership was
a regress without any biblical sanction: “They [the Baptists] deny
them entrance into the visible Church, which is far wider then the
invisible. . . . They leave them as much out of the Church as the
Children of Turks and Pagans: They make the time of the Law to

54
C&R, pp. 6–7. See also PSP, pp. 49–59; CDRS, p. 312; UC, pp. 29–30; PMB,
pp. 59, 85; CD, p. 690.
55
PSP, p. 55.
56
As we shall see in the next chapter, as regards the Lord’s Supper and com-
fort, mercy and grace which a faithful covenanter could derive therein, Baxter does
have a highly sacramental view, emphasizing the aspect of Christ’s sacrifice as the
cause of eucharistic joy and deepening participation with Christ through the min-
istry of the Holy Spirit.
57
Ibid., p. 113. See also Nathaniel Holmes, A Vindication of Baptizing Believers Infants
(1646), p. 35.
58
PMB, p. 82.
64  

be incomparably more full of Grace to Children then the times of

the Gospel.”59
One ecclesiological theme on which Baxter laid special emphasis
was the significance of the visible church. This was ironic since the
separatists’ ecclesiology limited the church to a fellowship of all vis-
ible Christians. However, the context of Baxter’s emphasis on the
visible church was to show that if infants were denied membership
in it, then they were not only out of the covenant of grace but also
correspondingly out of God’s ordinary salvific schema:
To be visibly broken off from the invisible Church, is to be visibly
out of Covenant with God, out of his favour, and in a known state
of damnation . . . but all that are visibly out of Covenant with God,
and out of his favour, in a state of damnation, are visibly broken off
also from the visible Church . . . Therefore breaking off visibly from
the visible Church is inseparable from breaking off from the invisible:
(Nay, it is the same thing in another notion.)60
Baxter also argued that when the New Testament addressed the
“properties and priviledges of the invisible Church,” it usually referred
to the visible, thus warning the separatists that to expect ecclesio-
logical perfection on earth was exegetically unwarranted. However,
individual confession and covenantal commitment was the constitu-
tive element of the true church; Baxter’s ecclesiology resembles the
progressive, non-separating Congregationalist position of William
Ames:
I take it for granted, that to be a visible member of the Church, and
to be member of the visible Church, is all one . . . And that the invis-
ible Church, or the sincere part is most properly and primarily called
the Church and the body of Christ; and the Church, as visible, con-
taining also the unsincere part, is called the Church.61
However, like Calvin, Baxter denied that his ecclesiological position
made “two Militant Churches.” In fact, the church was not divisible,
but only “a two-fold respect of one and same Church; one as to the
internal Essence, the other as to the external manner of existing.”62

59
PSP, pp. 13, 55.
60
PSP, p. 47, sig. a4r.
61
Ibid., p. 73. William Ames, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (1642), pp. 151–56,
esp. p. 152.
62
Ibid.
        65

The ecclesiological co-inherence of the invisible and visible church

could become more realized as baptism served the function of admit-
ting only those who had a clear interest in seeing their children and
themselves included as members of the visibly covenanted commu-
nity, and this without separating from the parochial contexts of
Baxter’s Kidderminster.63

B. Against Thomas Bedford: Priority of the Covenant of Grace

What is the efficacy of infant baptism? Thomas Bedford wryly asked,
“Why do the Ministers cry down the Anabaptists for denying Infant-
Baptism, when they can show us no good that cometh by it”?64 This
reveals a tendency within the sacramental theology of the day; the
letter was written in 1650 and Bedford advised Baxter to “study well
this point, touching the efficacy of the Sacraments.” Bedford claimed
that his balanced view asserted real efficacy of baptism without falling
into the error of the Catholics.65 However, Baxter felt that the idea
that baptism conferred grace, instead of confirming the recipients in
grace, was a dangerous “means to make men Anabaptists,” since
just as the Papists did, Bedford was giving “more to Baptism then
is due.”66
Such a strong objection was not based on “uncertain conjecture,”
in fact Baxter himself had been tempted to run to the opposite
extreme of the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, which was Ana-
baptism.67 Baxter emphasized the priority of the covenant of grace
in his debate with Bedford.68 John von Rohr has persuasively described

63
Calvin expressed a similar view. See Institutes, IV. i. 7; François Wendel, Calvin:
the origins and development of his religious thought, trans. Philip Mairet (New York: Harper
& Row, 1963), pp. 292–311. The concept of the invisible church was articulated
most cogently in Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, trans. G.E. McCracken,
et al., Loeb Classical Library, 411–17 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1957–72). In On Baptism against the Donatists, (Bk. III, Chap. 19., in NPNF, 4:445),
Augustine follows the same line of argument to explain the ecclesiological difference
between the visible and invisible church.
64
PSP (4th edn., 1656), p. 352
65
Green, The Christian’s ABC, pp. 519, 528.
66
PSP, p. 293; Thomas Bedford, Treatise of the Sacraments (1638), pp. 92, 95, 153;
idem, “Letter to Baxter,” in PSP (4th edn., 1656), p. 352. For Bedford, see DNB.
67
PSP, sig. b3v.
68
For some representative studies on the subject of the covenant of grace that
tend to posit a disjunction between Calvin and the Calvinists, see David A. Weir,
The Origins of the Federal Theology in Sixteenth-Century Reformation Thought (Oxford:
66  

the tension within the theology of the covenant of grace—the “vol-

untaristic and experiential” concerns for holiness and purity, and the
“dogmatic demand” keeping the strict predestinarian framework. The
nexus of “evangel” and “election” was in the same covenant of grace.
They were not to be understood as antithetical to each other. Only
in understanding the complementarity of these two seeming antino-
mies can one begin to appreciate the duality of the nature of the
covenant.69
Bedford had argued that baptism was the instrumental efficient
cause to bring about the intended effects of “Regeneration of nature,
even Actual Regeneration,” as seminal grace works “on all Infants
Elect or not Elect duely baptized.” Knowledge of the elect and repro-
bate belonged to the secret will of God alone, and the ministers of
the visible church were not able to discern it. However, the most
alarming aspect of Bedford’s baptismal thought was that since the
recipient’s election did not matter in receiving the infused habits as
a gratuitous gift of the Holy Spirit, neither did the parents’ spiritual
disposition.70 Baxter feared that this would vitiate the covenantal
commitment among believers. Instead Baxter asserted that the par-
ents’ faith brought about a relative, not a real change in the bap-
tized, so that the infant can have a new relation with God: “Is it

Clarendon Press, 1990); Perry Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630–1650 (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1933); Green, The Christian’s ABC, pp. 387–421,
475–76, 511–12, 538–39; David Zaret, The Heavenly Contract: ideology and organization
in pre-revolutionary England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985); R.T. Kendall,
Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp.
39–41, 197–208; N. Pettit, The Heart Prepared: grace and conversion in Puritan spiritual
life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); J.B. Torrance, “Strengths and Weak-
nesses of the Westminster Theology,” in The Westminster Confession in the Church Today,
ed. Alasdair I.C. Heron (Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press, 1982), pp. 40–54. For
views that emphasize the continuity between Calvin and the subsequent generations
of federal theologians, see John von Rohr, The Covenant of Grace in Puritan Thought
(Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986); Richard A. Muller, “Perkins’ A Golden Chaine: pre-
destinarian system or schematized ordo salutis?”, SCJ, 9 (1978), pp. 68–81; idem,
“Covenant and Conscience in English Reformed Theology,” WTJ, 42 (1980), pp.
308–34; Lyle Bierma, “The Role of Covenant Theology in Early Reformed ortho-
doxy,” SCJ 21 (1990), pp. 453–62; George Marsden, “Perry Miller’s Rehabilitation
of the Puritans: a critique,” CH, 39 (1970), pp. 91–105; Paul Helm, “Calvin and
the Covenant,” EQ , 55 (1983), pp. 65–81; Randall Gleason, John Calvin and John
Owen on Mortification: a comparative study on Reformed spirituality (New York: Peter Lang,
1995).
69
Von Rohr, The Covenant of Grace in Puritan Thought, pp. 53–4; cf. Holifield, The
Covenant Sealed, pp. 94–5; Green, The Christian’s ABC, p. 409.
70
PSP, pp. 294, 311.
        67

not a large comfort, that God doth pardon their Original sin, and
put them in statum salutis, and will give them the means of Grace,
and his own help when they come to age for the working in them
a new heart, nisi ponatur obex [“unless an obstacle is placed”]; and
will effectually work it in his elect in the fittest season?”71 This state-
ment reveals the tension between “evangel” and “election,” and shows
how Baxter developed his covenant theology between these two poles.
The conditionality of the covenant is shown by the phrase nisi ponatur
obex; the voluntaristic aspect of covenant-keeping included that one
does not place obstinate obstacles in one’s hearts. However, he bal-
anced the conditional aspect of the covenant of grace by adding that
God will act infallibly to give the elect their new heart. To show
that it was by “Election and special Grace” of the covenant that we
have cor novum (“new heart”), Baxter commented that if Isaac had a
new heart as a result of circumcision, then there was nothing unlikely
about Esau procuring the same, for Esau too was circumcised.72
Thus, Baxter attempted to shift the locus of baptismal efficacy from
the action of baptizing to God’s acting inscrutably yet irresistibly in
election through the covenant of grace.
Consequently, for Baxter, the covenant of grace held the key to
baptismal efficacy. He believed that the sacramentalist teaching of
Bedford—which overlapped with Samuel Ward and Cornelius Burges’s
views of the same—obliterated any distinction between the elect and
non-elect, and eliminated the role of baptismal preparation. Thus,
Baxter’s covenantal understanding of baptism tended to emphasize
conditionality and mutuality, while undergirding the possibility of
human contingency on divine electing grace.73 Such an emphasis on

71
PSP (4th edn., 1656), pp. 358, 364.
72
See Ibid., p. 357. Cf. PSP, pp. 336–37. Baxter cites Perkins who, in How to
Live and That Well, in Works, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1612), 1:485–86, argued that “chil-
dren haue faith after a sort: because the parents according to the tenour of the
couenant. I will bee thy God, and the God of thy seede, beleeue for themselves and their
children.” Moreover, Perkins asserted, “If it be said, that by this meanes all chil-
dren of beleeuing parents are the children of God; I answere, that we must pre-
sume that they are all so; leauing secret judgements to God.” This last statement
of charitable optimism parallels that of Theodore Beza’s during the Colloquy of
Montbéliard. See Jill Raitt, “Probably They are God’s Children: Theodore Beza’s
doctrine of baptism,” in Humanism and Reform: the church in Europe, England, and Scotland
1400–1643, ed. James Kirk (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 164.
73
See PSP, p. 316, quoting partially from Acts of the Synod of Dort, part II, 79;
see also CF, p. 394 for another example of the absolute and conditional nature of
the covenant of grace.
68  

human responsibility among all the baptized was a conscientious

effort to treat the visible church as the earthly prototype of the celes-
tial, triumphant, and invisible church. As such, he called the par-
ents and children accustomed to the “Abrahamic sense of ‘generation’”
to a deeper evangelical sense of regeneration so that children would
not only be “generationally” related to their parents but also “regen-
erationally.”74 Such an emphasis on the conditionality of the covenant
often gave the impression that Baxter was a crypto-Anabaptist.75
Against such accusations, he argued that his position was not novel
or singular. On the contrary, this bilateralist view of the covenant
was a Protestant consensus:
It is agreed their most common doctrine, that the sacrament doth pre-
suppose Remission of sin, and our faith, and that they are instituted
to signifie these as in beeing; (though through infancy or error some
may not have some benefits of them till after), it is the common
Protestant Doctrine, that Sacraments do solemnize and publickly own
and confirm the mutual Covenant already entered in heart.76
Significantly, for Baxter, being in the covenant was the same as being
a Christian. Consequently, the faith required to enter the covenant
through infant baptism, as we have seen, was simply saving faith in
foro ecclesiae. The covenant community was founded by the covenant
of grace, entered by those who confessed saving faith. It is to Baxter’s
discussion of justifying faith in baptism we must now turn, and to
his main antagonist in this debate, Thomas Blake.

C. Against Thomas Blake: Baptism as a Mark of a Confessing Community

The church as a confessing community was a corresponding reality
of the church as a covenant community. For Baxter, a true visible
church ought to have “some Profession of true Christianity,” and
this confessional priority was the way the sacramental rite of the
church could maintain its purity by increasing the number of sin-
cere covenanters, and to further beautify its edifice.77

74
See Coolidge, The Pauline Renaissance in England: Puritanism and the Bible (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 85–89 to see the thematic tension between the “gen-
erationist” and “regenerationist” ideology coextensively inherent in Pauline epistles.
75
Brachlow, The Communion of Saints, pp. 151, 153; Holifield, The Covenant Sealed,
p. 98.
76
CDRS, p. 124.
77
C&R, p. 35.
        69

Baxter criticized the Catholic practice of baptism en masse by Jesuit

missionaries: “They drive the poor ignorant Americans by hundreds
to be baptized . . . and instead of staying till they make Profession
of a saving faith with any seeming seriousness, they make Baptism
an entrance into the state of the Catechumeni.”78 A closer look at
the context reveals that Baxter was juxtaposing the Jesuit practice
in America with that of some current English Protestant clergy.
Thomas Blake was the divine Baxter had in mind.
Blake had entered into the baptismal debate early in 1644, and
was suspicious of those who were too scrupulous over admission to
baptism. In the midst of the Baptist threat, he emphasized the divine
covenantal promise which was “descendable” to “them and their seed
after them, in all generations.”79 Therefore, the “vicious and scan-
dalous” lives of the parents were not insurmountable hurdles to their
children’s baptism. Based on his exegesis of Genesis 17:7, Blake even
argued that all children were eligible for baptism; children were “rel-
atively holy” since they were “descendants of Abraham.” Such an
inclusive ecclesiology prompted the Baptists to continue to repudi-
ate paedobaptism.80
Blake mentioned the “middle way”—between Brownists and Presby-
terians—and averred that “this middle way . . . I cannot but take to
be a step out of the way.” This middle way was precisely what
Baxter sought to accomplish so that the purity of the church could
be maintained over against Blake’s inclusivist approach, lest the
church be “utterly ruined and become a den of thieves” or “a stie
of swine.”81 Baxter’s main concern was that Blake taught that “a
faith short of justifying” entitled people—and their children—to bap-
tism.82 By 1655 Blake’s view was held in suspicion by numerous oth-
ers. Echoing Baxter’s concern, a group of Puritans asserted in 1655:
The faith required to be professed before Baptism, is such a Faith as
hath salvation annexed to it. . . . Mr Blake’s mistake lies in this, that
the ground of Baptism is either a Dogmatical faith, or a true justifying

78
CDRS, p. 51.
79
Thomas Blake, The Birth-Priviledge (1644), pp. 5–6. In 1645 Blake wrote Infants
Baptisme, Freed from Antichristianisme. For Blake, see DNB; RBA, part. i.
80
Tombes, An Exercitation, pp. 31–33; The Confession of Faith, Of those Churches . . .
called Anabaptists (1644), Article XXXIX, sig. C1v.
81
C&R, pp. 57.
82
CDRS, sig. d2v. Baxter was refuting Blake’s Covenant Sealed (1655).
70  

faith; which because no man can certainly know, he must only require
a Dogmatical faith. But we conceive neither of them to be the ground
of Baptism, but the profession of true justifying faith, or Acceptance
of the Covenant.83
For Baxter and these reform-minded ministers, profession of saving
faith was necessary in foro ecclesiae (in the forum of the church), whereas
true possession of saving faith would be needed in foro Dei (in the
forum of God). To anyone who came to be baptized, therefore,
“without this saving faith, there is only an offer of Internal Benefits
from God and no Delivery or Possession.”84 Baxter required a cred-
ible profession of saving faith although he knew that he could not
plumb the depth of the human heart. There was a subtle but pro-
found ecclesiological difference between Baxter and Blake over the
nature of the visible church and how it related to the invisible church.
Baxter defined the nature of true profession of faith in five head-
ings: first, it must be “made in a competent understanding of the
Matter which is Professed.” Second, the professor must exhibit “seem-
ing seriousness.” Third, it must not seem contrived or coerced, but
rather “voluntary or free.” Fourth, while waiting for further proof
of holiness was discouraged, a profession “not prevalently contra-
dicted by word or deed” would be necessary. Lastly, Baxter wrote
that “when a man hath utterly forfeited the credit of his word, the
Profession of that man must not be merely verbal, but practicall.”85
For Blake, the kind of faith required in baptism was “dogmati-
cal” or “historical” faith, devoid of saving faith, consisting only of
assent but not consent. However, for Baxter, initiation into the house-
hold of faith through baptism was such a crucial event that the
“whole Christian faith is contained in our common Profession at
Baptism.”86 Thus he claimed that Blake “deals too slightly in such
a solemne ordinance.” For Baxter, how one is initiated into the vis-
ible church was of paramount importance.87

83
Certain Propositions Tending to the Reformation of the Parish Congregations in England
(1655), pp. 5, 17–18. This Propositions was mentioned by Baxter in CDRS, sig. d3r.
84
CDRS, p. 2. On p. 113 of the same, Baxter quotes Calvin in support of this
point, that to the “Hypocrite,” baptism is ineffectual “qui nudis signis superbiunt,” since
it is a bare sign without the substance of faith.
85
CDRS, pp. 9–10.
86
Ibid., p. 14.
87
Letters, iii. 104.
        71

Baxter’s ecclesiological conviction led him to assert that the visible

and invisible churches completely overlapped; however, this was equally
matched by his reforming rigor. His response to Blake included cita-
tions from more than sixty-five Protestant divines speaking unani-
mously on the necessity of profession of true faith before baptism.88
Calvin was the first authority cited by Baxter. Citing Calvin’s com-
ment on Acts 7:38, Baxter concluded that “Baptism (as received ) is
the seal of our faith.”89 Since Baxter had emphasised that parental
covenantal interest in the children justified the continuance of pae-
dobaptism, and since in his view, baptismal confession encapsulated
true Christianity, he consistently argued that a genuine profession of
faith—assent and consent—was required in foro ecclesiae before chil-
dren could be baptized. He continued to speak of the logical prior-
ity of remission of sins to baptism, and cited Calvin’s comment on
Acts 2:38.90 In other words, before the Jews who were convicted by
the preaching of Peter could be baptized, they had to confess their
faith in Christ. Similarly, before anyone could be admitted to the
visible fellowship of the church, genuine confession—in foro ecclesiae—
had to be made. This was Baxter’s defence of his practice of requir-
ing more than mere “dogmatical or historical faith” from the parents
before their children could be baptized.
James Ussher was another theologian cited to support Baxter’s
emphasis on saving faith as an indispensable condition for efficacious
baptism. Usher argued that although “the outward elements are dis-
pensed to al [sic] who make an outward profession of the Gospel . . .
because man is not able to distinguish corn from chaffe . . . the
inward grace of the Sacrament is not communicated to all, but to
those onely who are heirs of those promises whereof the Sacraments
are seals.”91 Here both Ussher and Baxter emphasized the ecclesio-
logical tension between the visible and invisible church, but they fur-
ther argued that all effort has to be made to ensure that the outward
profession is a true reflection of the inward covenanting and mem-
bership in the invisible church.

88
CDRS, pp. 206–32.
89
Ibid., p. 206; Cf. Calvin’s Commentaries: The Acts of the Apostles, 1–13, eds. D.W.
Torrance and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1965), pp. 197–99.
90
CDRS, p. 207. Cf. Calvin’s Commentaries . . . Acts, pp. 79–82.
91
James Usher, A Body of Divinitie (1645), p. 415, cited in Baxter, CDRS, p. 218.
72  

Referring to the authority of the Westminster Assembly was another

effective rhetorical tool. Baxter had spoken of the assembly as “the
greatest assembly of men since the days of the Apostles,”92 a per-
spective shared by numerous Puritan divines, both Presbyterians and
Independents alike. Baxter asserted:
The Divines of the Assembly that wrote the Anotat. on the Bible, say on
Act. 8.27 . . . With a sincere and perfect heart, without which Baptism cannot
save. . . . Faith ought to precede Baptism in men and women of years, when they
who were aliens and strangers come to be baptized: For it is necessary that they
should confess their faith, and testifie their Conversion before they be admitted by
Baptism.93
Despite such a tenacious emphasis on the profession of saving faith,
there was a surprisingly “tender” side to Baxter’s baptismal thought.
As we have seen in Chapter Two, Baxter’s rigor for reforming the
church was balanced by his ecclesiological realism in his catechizing
program in that his standard of acceptable profession of saving faith
required before baptism was surprisingly flexible. Surprisingly, he
asserted
That the Pastors of the Church, must refuse no man that hath the
least degree of Grace, or makes a credible profession of the least. . . .
Should the Judgments of such persons seem unacquainted with some
fundamentals, about the Trinity, and the like mysteries, I should search
them better, and I should plainly tell them presently of the truth, and
if they received Information, I should not reject a willing Soul. The
very Apostles of Christ had the Sacrament administred to them by
himself, when they did not understand and believe, the Death and
Resurrection of Christ.94
As seen in Chapter Two, Baxter displayed great flexibility in cate-
chizing by accommodating the spiritual disposition of his parishioners
in order to inculcate the fundamentals of Christianity. What Baxter
counted more significant than doctrinal assent was the way these
fundamentals enhanced one’s love of God and desire for holiness.95
In the 1650s even an avid defender of paedobaptism such as
Stephen Marshall was dissatisfied with the way baptism was admin-

92
Baxter makes this comment in the context of praising the Westminster Confession
of Faith in RBC, “To the Reader.”
93
CDRS, p. 221.
94
C&R, pp. 78–9. Cf., Ibid., p. 113, “Postscript,” sigs. Bb1r, Y8r.
95
Ibid., p. 79.
        73

istered due to the fact that the children of those who showed little
if any interest in spiritual welfare were baptized without much
difficulty. What solutions, if any, were available to godly ministers
such as Marshall and Baxter, whose ministry operated within parish
bounds? For Baxter, a confessing covenant community must have
means to incorporate their adolescent members and allow them to
own the covenant with their own faith, and that was confirmation.96

V. R C:
T “P”  I B  C R

Confirmation was one of the sacraments repudiated by Protestants

during the early years of the Reformation. To deny the sacramen-
tal validity of confirmation and to jettison it from the life and liturgy
of the church was easy, compared to the task of replacing it with a
suitable non-sacramental counterpart. As R.L. DeMolen suggested,
the transition from childhood into adulthood posed a pastoral and
societal problem in early modern Europe.97 The solution numerous
reformers offered was to “neutralize” the rite of confirmation by
shifting its focus from its sacramental center to a catechetical one.
As discussed in Chapter Two, Baxter’s catechetical preoccupation
needs to be seen as part of this movement of confessionalization and
conversionism in England. Along with the catechetical focus, an
increasingly greater emphasis was placed on the confirmand to
covenant with God, not only to assent to the veracity of the faith
but also to consent to live in obedience to Christ. As we shall see,
this second emphasis of personal covenantal responsibilities became
a prominent theme of the sacramental theologies of Martin Bucer
and John Calvin, whose emphasis on evangelical confirmation shaped
Baxter’s desire for its reform.
Like their fellow Protestants on the Continent, the Church of
England, in Article XXV of the Thirty-Nine Articles, denied the
sacramental status of confirmation. Nevertheless, the acknowledged
necessity of confirmation as the means of transition from infant into

96
Stephen Marshall’s comment is found in Letters, iv. 284, from Giles Firmin to
Baxter. Marshall’s endorsement of paedobaptism is seen in his A Sermon of the Baptizing
of Infants (1644); A Defence of Infant-Baptisme (1646).
97
R.L. DeMolen, “Childhood and the Sacraments in the Sixteenth Century,”
ARG, 66 (1975), pp. 49–70.
74  

full-fledged membership secured its survival.98 It was a precarious

survival, however, since many Puritans found in the practice of
confirmation too many remnants of Popery. Unsurprisingly, there-
fore, Puritan nonconformists and Prelatical conformists often clashed.
The level of spiritual knowledge of the confirmand and the question
of whether it was the episcopal or the parochial incumbent’s pre-
rogative to confirm were the two major issues.
In the Millenary Petition, Puritans petitioned that “confirmation,
as superfluous, may be taken away,” and that “examination may go
before the communion.”99 At the Hampton Court Conference of
January 1604, the leader among the early Stuart Puritans, John
Rainolds campaigned for the Puritan position while making a con-
cession: keep confirmation, yet diffuse the episcopal prerogative to
every parish minister, and emphasize the catechetical aspect of
confirmation.100 When the Canons of 1604 were issued, the demand
for a catechetical emphasis was met, whereas the power to confirm
resided with bishops, and confirmations would take place in the
bishop’s visitation every third year.101 This episode reflects the ten-
sion between Puritan aspirations to influence the way children entered
into the mature phase of their Christian life and the reluctance on
the part of the bishops to relegate their power to parochial incum-
bents, asserting the “special honour” that was due to them.102

98
See Kenneth Fincham, Prelate as Pastor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp.
123–29; Green, The Christian’s ABC, pp. 33–35, 125–28; S.L. Ollard, “Confirmation
in the Anglican Communion,” in Confirmation or the Laying On of Hands, 2 vols.
(London: S.P.C.K., 1926), I:81–82, 97–102, 124–25; Jewett, Infant Baptism and the
Covenant of Grace, pp. 185–91; Susan Wright, “Catechism, Confirmation and Com-
munion,” in Parish, Church & People: local studies in lay religion 1350–1750, ed. Susan
Wright (London: Hutchinson, 1988), pp. 209–15; J.D.C. Fisher, Christian Initiation:
baptism in the Medieval West, a study in the disintegration of the primitive rite of initiation
(London: S.P.C.K., 1965), pp. 120–40.
99
Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain (1655), Bk. X, 21. The Puritan
complaint against confirmation went back to the Elizabethan period. In A Second
Admonition to the Parliament (1572), Puritans argued: “But as for Confirmation, as it
hath no ground out of the scriptures at all . . . how they recken [sic] up the seven-
fold grace as the papistes did”? In Puritan Manifestoes: a study of the origin of the Puritan
revolt (New York: E.S. Gorham, 1954), p. 117.
100
William Barlow, The Summe and Substance of the Conference . . . at Hampton Court
(1604), pp. 33–4.
101
Canon 60 of “The Canons of 1603(1604),” reprinted in The Anglican Canons,
1529–1947, ed. Gerald Bray (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1998), p. 351.
See also “The Reforms Agreed at the Hampton Court Conference, 12–18 January
1604,” reprinted in Ibid, p. 820.
102
See John Prideaux, Manuductio (1657), p. 157. For evidence of the Jacobean
        75

For Baxter, like the Puritans before him, it was fundamentally

wrong to do nothing about confirmation after emphasizing the sacra-
mental status of paedobaptism. He argued that this neglect would
inexorably lead to “a new kind of Christianity; and a new Gospel,
and a new Christ.” So he raised a rhetorical question: “And if all
these are fit to be Church-members,” without confirmation, “then
we must make a new kind of Church?”103 Paedobaptism was pred-
icated on the belief that adolescents would renew their covenant
interest personally in confirmation.104 Baxter was convinced that revi-
talizing the primitive rite of confirmation was “a way that is admirably
suited both to Reformation, and Reconciliation; to Unity, as well as
Purity.”105
Baxter wrote the preface to Jonathan Hanmer’s An Exercitation upon
Confirmation (1657) in which he asserted that “the want of a due and
solemn manner of Transition from the Number of Infant-Members
into the Number of the Adult” was the bane of true reformation.
Hanmer, in his ministry as Vicar of Bishop’s Twaton, Devon, was
convinced that a complete suspension of any transitional rite between
infant baptism and adult communion was detrimental to the desired
continuation of the work of reformation in England. This intrinsic
problem of paedobaptist theology, Baxter acknowledged, gave rise
to “Anabaptistry and Independency.”106 He asserted that confirmation
needed to be reformed as a complementary rite to infant baptism.
As early as 1649, he believed confirmation was a matter of necessity,
and even wished that “this practice were established by Authority.”107
The Root and Branch petition (1640) and The Directory for Worship
(1645) had eliminated confirmation from the rites of the church, and
along with it “an heap of Human Inventions . . . and tyrannical

bishops’ interest in confirmation after catechizing, see Kenneth Fincham, ed., Visitation
Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church, Vol. 2: 1625–1642 (Woodbridge, Suffolk:
Boydell Press, 1998), p. 10, n. 6 ( Joseph Hall for Exeter, 1631), p. 46 (Godfrey
Goodman for Gloucester, 1631).
103
C&R, pp. 156–65; Ibid, “Postscript,” sig. Aa8r.
104
Baxter, “The Savoy Liturgy,” in Reliquiae Liturgicae: documents connected with the
liturgy of the Church of England, 5 vols. (Bath: Binns and Goodwin, 1847), 4:82–3, 91.
105
C&R, p. 206.
106
Baxter, “Epistle Commendatory,” in Hanmer, TELEVSIS, or An Exercitation
upon Confirmation (1657), sigs. a8–b6; Reliquiae, II. 193, §48; I. 117, §190 (34). For
Jonathan Hanmer, Vicar of Bishop’s Tawton, Devon, see DNB; CR; Al. Cant.
107
AJ, p. 282.
76  

usurpations in the Discipline of the Church, have been cast out &
abolished.” However, Jonathan Hanmer was convinced that pae-
dobaptism alone failed to make a person “capable of any farther
Church-privilege.”108 Therefore to be “accounted a perfect Christian,”
adolescents needed to be confirmed in their faith as they committed
themselves to Christ and his church.109
Undoubtedly Baxter was enthusiastic about Hanmer’s clarion call.
In addition to Hanmer’s treatise, two additional theological supports
for rightly re-vitalizing confirmation came from “Calvin, and our
Rubrick in the Common Prayer.”110 In his Confirmation and Restauration
the Necessary Means of Reformation and Reconciliation, published in 1658,
Baxter singled out Calvin as his source for propounding the idea
that “the ancient practice of Confirmation may be reduced to its
primitive nature, (as Calvin earnestly desireth: Instit. l.4, cap. 19).”111
Calvin was, in many ways, Baxter’s ideal reformed pastor since he
had preached with fervor, catechized faithfully, administered the
Lord’s Supper in conjunction with examination and discipline, and
called for a renewal of confirmation. In his refutation of the sacra-
mental status of five of the seven Catholic sacraments, Calvin focused
mostly on confirmation. Calvin’s belief in the revitalization of this
ancient and apostolic rite of confirmation found its echo in Baxter
a little over a century later. Calvin put it strongly:
How I wish that we might have kept the custom which, as I have
said, existed among ancient Christians before this misborn wrath of a
sacrament came to birth! . . . If this discipline were in effect today, . . .
[t]here would be greater agreement in faith among Christian people,
and not so many would go untaught and ignorant.112
More importantly, Calvin asserted that the re-establishment of con-
firmation in reformed churches would curb the tendency of many
to embrace separatism and be “so rashly carried away with new and
strange doctrines.”113 In fact, after naming Calvin as one who endorsed

108
Hanmer, TELEVSIS, sigs. a1v–a2r, p. 54.
109
Ibid., p. 17.
110
Reliquiae, II. 193, §48.
111
C&R, p. 115.
112
Institutes, IV. xix. 13. Hanmer’s main authority in this re-invigoration of
confirmation was also Calvin: “We would deservedly wish that such a rite were
every where restored’. Hanmer, TELEVSIS, p. 42, citing Calvin’s In Opuscul. de
Eccles. Reform. rat. See also Institutes, IV. xix. 4 on the same page. Hanmer in Ibid.,
p. 76, also acknowledged his indebtedness to Baxter, especially his RP.
113
Institutes, IV. xix. 13.
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the practice of re-vitalizing confirmation, Baxter suggested it was

“the most excellent Expedient both for Reformation and Reconcilia-
tion,” and “a Medicine so effectual to Heale our Breaches” caused
by baptismal controversies.114
Bucer’s influence on the English Reformation was not limited to
the Edwardian era. As J. William Black has shown, Baxter’s refor-
mational priorities were adapted from the Bucerian perspective on
reform.115 One of the significant areas of Bucer’s influence on Baxter’s
ecclesiology was the pursuit of purity within the parochial context.
Both Bucer and Baxter were committed to reforming the visible,
parish churches to match—in its sacramental and doctrinal purity—
the invisible church. One instrument to accomplish this was re-insti-
tuting confirmation according to its primitive ideal. In his Censura of
the Edwardian Book of Common Prayer of 1549, Bucer argued that
if rightly practiced, confirmation could help the infant-baptized ado-
lescents become full-fledged adult members. “Even in the restoration
of the discipline,” Bucer continued, “we do not attempt a difficult
thing if we approach it earnestly, as faithful ministers of Christ must
do, and if we do not overlook the advice which I gave about
confirmation and, first of all, about the reception of children and
adolescents into the full fellowship of the church.”116 However, the
main critique lay in Bucer’s conception of an acceptable “confession
of faith.” The confession required at confirmation was more than a
recitation of the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Decalogue. Bucer
reminded the Edwardian reformers that it was “necessary to bear in
mind how greatly God is opposed to all those who praise him with
their words when their heart is far from him.” What was needed,
instead, was “a true profession of faith and of obedience to Christ.”117
In other words, both assent to the fundamental truths of Chris-
tianity and consent to a lifetime commitment to Christ were needed
before adolescents could enter adult membership of the church.
This, reasoned Bucer, would truly usher in the reformation of the
parishes, not by royal decree but by individual commitment to

114
Reliquiae, II. 193, §48; PSP, pp. 127–29; C&R, sig. A4v.
115
See J. William Black, “From Martin Bucer to Richard Baxter: ‘Discipline’
and Reformation in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England,” CH 70 (2001):
644–73.
116
E.C. Whitaker, ed., and trans., Martin Bucer and the Book of Common Prayer (Great
Wakering, UK: Mayhew-McCrimmon, 1974), p. 137.
117
Ibid., pp. 100, 102.
78  

covenant-keeping. In this regard, Baxter’s views resembled Bucer’s

theology of confirmation. Bucer’s position on confirmation went
beyond the traditional view of requiring assent to the church’s faith.
By requiring “commitment to obedience” in addition to intellectual
assent to the fundamental verities of Christianity, Bucer hoped to
ensure that the adolescent confirmands would be committed Chris-
tians—in both heart and mind—thus enhancing the purity of the
church and the reign of Christ.118 Amy Nelson Burnett demonstrated
the theological significance of Bucer’s usage of the phrase, “surren-
der to Christ,” in his theology of baptism and covenant.119
It was this Bucerian and Calvinian spirit of reform that Baxter
and his reformed-minded Puritan colleagues were following in the
1650s as they sought to establish genuine reformation of the parishes.
Similar to Calvin and Bucer, for Baxter, the purpose of confirmation
was closely related to the idea of covenant renewal and ownership
to fulfill the objective of infant baptism:
all persons when they come to age may be brought solemnly in that
face of the Congregation to enter or renew that covenant personally
which they entered by others in their Baptism, and that in so doing
they may profess their Assent to the Fundamentals of Faith, and their
Consent both to the . . . covenant . . . and their Resolution to be faith-
full in this covenant to the end of their lives.120
Covenant renewal found, according to Baxter, its theological prece-
dent in the Old Testament, namely, Moses’s (Deuteronomy 30),
Joshua’s ( Joshua 5) and Asa’s (2 Chronicles 15:12–14) renewal of
their commitment to God after periods of unfaithfulness. As discussed
earlier, continuity of the covenant of grace was an essential part of
Baxter’s sacramental theology. He asserted that should deal “more
openly and clearly with God, the Church, and our selves, in daies

118
Amy Burnett, “Confirmation and Christian Fellowship: Martin Bucer and
commitment to the church,” CH 64 (1995), p. 206.
119
This phrase comes from Amy Burnett, “Confirmation and Christian Fellowship,”
pp. 202–17. J. William Black pointed out the Bucerian legacy on Baxter’s pastoral
strategy, but did not discuss Baxter’s re-appropriation of Bucer’s commitment to
evangelical confirmation as a way of publicly declaring one’s commitment to Christ.
For Burnett’s further discussion of the Anabaptist influence on Bucer’s understanding
of confirmation, see “Martin Bucer and the Anabaptist Context of Evangelical
Confirmation,” MQR 68 (1994), pp. 95–122.
120
PSP, pp. 120–21; C&R, pp. 94–95. See Ibid., p. 93, for Baxter’s critique of
the Council of Trent’s denunciation of the Protestant view of confirmation.
        79

of Gospel Light and worship” than their predecessors in the Old

Testament era since the “obscure Types and Shadows” of the “darker
State” of the Old Testament were fulfilled in the New.121 Conco-
mitantly, Baxter noted that covenant renewals of the Old Testament
ought to be replicated, yet with greater zeal and earnestness, in his
day as well.
An interesting facet of the foregoing quote is the continuity between
adolescent confirmations and adult covenant renewals, which in
Baxter’s view were part of the same drive for further reform inher-
ent in his ecclesiology. Christians were to “frequently renew this
covenant” in cases of individual heresies within the congregation, or
in restoring individuals after excommunication. As a congregation,
covenant renewal was to take place each time the Lord’s Supper
was celebrated since it was “a Seal of the covenant” entered into in
infancy, confirmed in adolescence and more fully experienced in
adulthood.122
Baxter’s letter of 24 October 1657 to Abraham Pinchbecke clearly
demonstrates his conviction on confirmation: “We find here no way
better, than 1° to distinguish betweene I[nfant] title & membership,
and Adult: & to take all Baptized as Infant members, but not as
Adult, till they are admitted into that ranke (which Confirmation
should doe) upon P[ersonall pro]fession, which is the condition of the
title of the Adult.”123
Combining his accumulated pastoral insight with the experience
of his own confirmation, he called for a ministerial—not episcopal—
duty of confirmation as a “solemn meet Transition from an Infant,
into the Adult Church state.” Then Baxter reflected on his own
confirmation as a way of divulging the structural problem with the
Laudian practice of confirmation.
When I was . . . about 15 years of age, the Bishop coming into the
Country, many went . . . to be Confirmed . . . not knowing . . . the

121
C&R, p. 24.
122
C&R, pp. 91, 93.
123
Letters, iv. 53. Judging from this letter, we can conclude that the “revitalized”
confirmation, which he discussed in C&R was already in practice. For Pinchbecke,
see Al. Cant. and CR. Geoffrey F. Nuttall, “Advice to a Young Minister by Richard
Baxter,” CQ 30 (1952), pp. 231–35. Such revitalized confirmation was practiced in
c. summer of 1657 in “so reverend a manner as mightily mov’d all the Auditors”
at St. Botolph’s, Billingsgate, London, where Thomas Willes was rector. See Letters,
ii. 260.
80  

meaning of the business: when we came thither . . . The Bishop exam-

ined us not at all in one Article of the Faith; but . . . he past hastily
over us, laying his hands on our head, and saying a few words . . .
But whether we were Christians or Infidels . . . the Bishop little knew,
nor required. And it was one of the most esteemed in England.124
The confirming bishop was Thomas Morton of Coventry and Lichfield,
an avowed Calvinist whom Baxter greatly esteemed. Here Baxter
added pungent irony to episcopal confirmation then greatly empha-
sized in the Church of England. Not only did Baxter and his fel-
low confirmands fail to comprehend the significance of this rite, but
the confirming bishop did not know the spiritual preparedness of the
confirmands.
Baxter’s desire to revitalize confirmation reveals an important prin-
ciple in his ecclesiology: the quest for primitive purity. As T.D.
Bozeman has convincingly demonstrated, primitivism was an under-
girding religious leitmotif of the Puritans.125 It arose in the heated
exchanges between the Puritans and their polemical foes; it was also
a product of Renaissance humanism, which stressed the return to ad
fontes as the key to discovering truth. Equally important was the
corollary that true reformation could be achieved “more by Restauration
of Ordinances and Administrations to the Primitive Nature and Use” rather
than by a mere reactionary extirpation of a legitimate ancient praxis.126
There was a noticeable decrease in the number of public infant
baptisms administered in England between the mid-1640s and the
late 1650s, as surveyed by E.A. Wrigley and R.S. Schofield, and
confirmed by Christopher Durston.127 They concluded that as a result
of the proscription of the Prayer Book and the high spiritual demand
required for sacramental participation during the this period of Puritan
rule, more people opted to live without baptism.128 For Baxter, sus-
pension of the sacraments was not the answer for true reformation.

124
C&R, 154.
125
T.D. Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives: the primitivist dimension in Puritanism (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).
126
C&R, p. 3.
127
R.S. Schofield and E.A. Wrigley, The Population History of England 1541–1871:
a reconstruction (rev. edn., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Christopher
Durston, “Puritan Rule and the Failure of Cultural Revolution, 1645–1660,” in The
Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700, eds. Durston and Jacqueline Eales (Basingstoke,
UK: Macmillan, 1996), pp. 226–27.
128
Alternatively, it could also reflect that parish registers were not kept as dili-
gently during this period. I owe this point to Eamon Duffy.
        81

Instead, reformation would come by returning the sacraments and

confirmation to their primitive, apostolic use.129
“Surrender to Christ and commitment to the church” were twin
reasons for Baxter’s desire for restoring the rite of confirmation, just
as Bucer desired to implement the same in Strasborg. For Baxter
confirmation was in fact a covenant renewal: “Now in this Renewed
Covenant, as they give up themselves to Christ afresh, and person-
ally engage themselves to him, and renounce his enemies, owning
their Infant Baptism, when this was done by others in their names,
so God is ready on his part to bless his own Ordinance, with the
Collation of that Corroborating Grace, which the Nature of the
Renewed Covenant doth import.”130
After witnessing the proliferation of sects and separatists due to
the impurity of the parish churches, Baxter began the practice of
confirmation in Kidderminster, arguing that it was not of exclusively
episcopal prerogative.131 His endeavors for confirmation received much
accolade, resonating with the efforts of numerous divines to seek a
further reform of the Interregnum Church. One of Oliver Cromwell’s
chaplains, John Howe, wrote, “I rejoyce to heare what you are doing
about Confirmation.” A minister of the Devon Association, Francis
Fullwood, commended Baxter’s “late learned & industrious & pious
undertaking about Confirmation.”132 Finally, Michael Edge, a min-
ister in Essex, was certain that Confirmation and Restauration would “cer-
tainly conduce much to the churches reformation.” However, he
alerted Baxter to the skepticism of other ministers who questioned
his insistence on confirmation, seeking clarification as to whether this
“solemne way of investiture” was indeed “an ordinance of god.”133

129
Baxter, “Christian Reader,” in Hanmer, TELEVSIS, sig. a8r. Baxter also said
that in CDRS, pp. 120–22 he had urged the magistrates to take measures to imple-
ment a rite of “personal Covenanting of the Adult, besides the Infant-Covenant by
the Parents.” Other ministers echoed Baxter’s conviction. See Certain Propositions
Tending to the Reformation, p. 2; George Hughes, “Christian Reader,” in Hanmer,
TELEVSIS, sig. a7r.
130
C&R, pp. 94, 5.
131
Reliquiae, II. 193, §48.
132
Letters, ii. 297; Letters, ii. 258. See also Francis Fullwood, Discourse of the Visible
Church (1658), ep. ded., where Baxter’s leadership in revitalizing confirmation receives
high praise.
133
Letters, iv. 67.
82  

VI. C

In the “epic debate” over the nature of the church, Baxter chose
selectivity without separatism.134 We have seen that his baptismal
thought encompassed infant baptism and confirmation. He looked
to the testimony of the Scripture in both the Old and the New
Testaments, the Fathers, and numerous reformers, especially Bucer
and Calvin, to come to a more amenable baptismal practice. Rightly
administered, the church, which he so passionately sought to reform,
could become a faithful covenanting and confessing community. In
his involvement with the Baptists during the Civil War period, Baxter
decided against anti-paedobaptism because of its separatism. To be
sure, his own mature baptismal thought did reflect some Baptist
influence, such as his conviction that baptism was a badge of Christian
commitment and covenanting before God and the church. His debates
with Tombes, Blake, and Bedford, among others, demonstrate his
zeal to preserve baptism in its primitive administration. Since bap-
tism was instituted by Christ (in Matthew 28:19–20) as the normal
rite of entrance into the visible church, Baxter believed that the same
profession of faith was required for paedobaptism, not for infants
but for parents. This zeal for requiring profession of justifying faith
was modified by his willingness to adapt to the spiritual level of his
multi-grouped parish. His desire to keep the purity of the rite was
consciously contextualized to the religious needs of his flock so as to
optimize his program of conversion and re-configuration. Confirm-
ation was revitalized as the ideal way to usher adolescents into adult
membership of the church. Moreover, Baxter’s emphasis on frequent
re-covenanting —much along the line of what was required in
confirmation—reinforces the idea that the church was to be a Christ-
confessing, covenanting community of believers, irrespective of age.
Preaching and catechizing, paedobaptism and confirmation were
two pairs of means of grace Baxter utilized to reform the churches.
We have seen numerous examples which bespoke the level of difficulty
and resistance. Requiring people of various spiritual dispositions to
come under the pastoral authority of the minister and opting for
selectivity without separatism in a parochial context were not always
welcomed by the parishioners.

134
Holifield, The Covenant Sealed, p. 97.
        83

For Baxter, baptism was the beginning of the spiritual journey

which would eventually culminate in the celestial church. Given the
final destiny, those who started on the journey ought to exhibit sav-
ing faith in order to be admitted to the earthly, visible church. Giles
Firmin, an Essex minister, had written a treatise which in large mea-
sure agreed with Baxter’s position on reforming the rite of baptism.135
Firmin sought Baxter’s support in responding to Blake’s attack in
April 1656. In his reply, Baxter mentioned that Blake’s work was
hopelessly “ungratefull & unprofitable,” but in closing he reminded
Firmin of the eschatological reality and of the invisible church, in
the hope of such all were baptized:
Dear Sir . . . keep your eye upon that Center, where Mr. Blake & you
& I are one, & remember the time when we shall harmoniously con-
spire in the Praises of our Lord, & have no more thoughts of our
owne praise or dispraise, which now in the vanity of our minds we
so regard . . . yet we must compassionate the sufferinge Church that
is distracted & divided by such mistakinge & distempered Guides as
we all are: & the more earnestly Pray, Come Lord Jesus.136
With such a prospect of the invisible church in view, Baxter endeav-
ored to reform this sacrament of the visible church so that those
who entered it would, in growing measures, comprehend the glory
and joy of the church invisible. Now we shall turn to the other sacra-
ment, the Lord’s Supper, and the controversy that surrounded it and
Baxter’s own eucharistic thought in its context.

135
Giles Firmin, A Serious Question (1651). For Firmin, see CR, s.v.; Susan Hardman
Moore, “Arguing for Peace: Giles Firmin on New England and godly unity” in
R.W. Swanson, ed., Unity and Diversity in the Church (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp.
251–63.
136
Letters, iii. 108.
 CHAPTER FOUR

BETWEEN HOLY FAST AND UNHOLY FEAST:

BAXTER’S EUCHARISTIC THOUGHT IN CONTEXT

I. I

After noting that the Lord’s Supper was “a communal rather than
an individualistic action” in pre-Reformation England, Eamon Duffy
wrote that reception at Easter was commonly known as “taking one’s
rights, a revealing phrase, indicating that to take communion was to
claim one’s place in the adult community.”1 Though numerous ren-
ovations and innovations—architectural and liturgical—were brought
into the post-Reformation English church, the persistent echo of
parishioners demanding their “right” to sacraments could be heard
in the mid-seventeenth century as well. Baxter’s treatise Certain Dis-
putations of Right to Sacraments (1657) is a case in point.
Whose “right” to the Lord’s Supper was honored by allowing
them participation in Communion? On what basis could anyone dis-
cern his or her own fitness, let alone that of others? These ques-
tions fuelled the controversy over admission to the Lord’s Supper.
Ironically, the “bread of life and cup of joy” had become “an apple
of strife” for those seeking a further reform of the church after the
putative Laudian innovations and impositions.2 Some ministers sus-
pended the Lord’s Supper altogether.3 Others limited it to a select
few who could demonstrate signs of visible sainthood, gathered usu-
ally in semi-separatist or separatist congregations. Yet another group
of ministers urged that the Lord’s Supper should be given to all who
were not in scandalous sins, thus broadening the criterion of admis-
sion. Richard Vines’ comment echoed the cacophony of this period:

1
Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: traditional religion in England c. 1400–c. 1580 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 93–94.
2
Horton Davies, Bread of Life and Cup of Joy: newer ecumenical perspectives on the
eucharist (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1993); Richard Vines, A Treatise of . . .
the Lords Supper (1657), p. 102.
3
See, most recently, Christopher Haigh, “Communion and Community: exclu-
sion from communion in Post-Reformation England,” JEH 51 (2000), pp. 721–40.
       85

“The Lords Supper is not common for all, but a bar’d ordinance
to some. This indeed is a Question the more materiall, because it
is in our dayes of great agitation.”4
In the previous chapter, several ecclesiological implications of
Baxter’s endorsement of paedobaptism were explored. Selectivity
without separatism, requiring profession of saving faith, and revital-
ization of the rite of confirmation were Baxter’s solutions to the
controversy over paedobaptism. Continuing our discussion of the
sacraments, we will discuss the significance of the Lord’s Supper in
Baxter’s ecclesiology. He drew from an agreed framework of Reformed
and Puritan sacramental divinity that emphasised preparation, assur-
ance of faith resulting from such well-prepared communion, and the
corresponding necessity of saving faith. I will discuss these issues by
way of mapping out the Interregnum context of the controversy over
free admission and Baxter’s previously relatively unnoted role in this
crucial debate among the Puritans.5
In contrast to the current historiography on Baxter’s doctrine of
baptism, a number of studies have discussed his eucharistic thought.
Bryan Spinks’s recent study of Baxter, influenced by E.C. Ratcliff
and Dom Gregory Dix, highlighted his high eucharistic theology as
an important contribution from the Puritans.6 Stephen Mayor also
selected him as a representative Dissenter whose view of the Lord’s
Supper deserved an extensive discussion.7 However, in most cases,
the historical context that gave rise to Baxter’s eucharistic thought
has not been sufficiently treated.8 Baxter’s eucharistic thought needs

4
Vines, A Treatise . . . of the Lords Supper, p. 156.
5
W.W. Biggs and E.B. Holifield did not incorporate Baxter’s contribution to this
debate. See Biggs, “The Controversy Concerning Free Admission to the Lord’s
Supper 1652–1660,” TCHS 16 (1949–51), pp. 178–89; Holifield, The Covenant Sealed:
the development of Puritan sacramental theology in Old and New England 1570–1720 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 109–26.
6
Bryan Spinks, “Two Seventeenth Century Examples of Lex Credendi, Lex Orandi,”
SL 21 (1991), pp. 165–89. See Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (London:
Dacre Press, 1945), pp. 610, 677; E.C. Ratcliff, “The Savoy Conference and the
Revision of the Book of Common Prayer,” in Nuttall and Chadwick, p. 123.
7
Stephen Mayor, The Lord’s Supper in Early English Dissent (London: Epworth Press,
1972), pp. 122–47. See also Kenneth Stevenson, Covenant of Grace Renewed: vision of
the Eucharist in the seventeenth century (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1994),
p. 137.
8
An exception would be William Lamont’s discussion of the free admission con-
troversy. See his Richard Baxter and the Millennium (London: Croom Helm, 1979), pp.
151, 157–62.
86  

to be studied in the context of his consistent emphasis on discipline,

which, he hoped, would ensure the purity of the Lord’s Supper. I
also hope to show the significant influence of Continental Reformers
such as John Calvin and Hieronymus Zanchius on Baxter’s own
understanding of pastoral discipline.9

II. T P C   S   P 

 L’ S

A typical Puritan jeremiad deplored the gulf between the Scriptural

rhetoric of ideal and the contradictory reality. An Admonition to the
Parliament of 1572, for example, contrasted the exemplary eucharis-
tic practice of the first-century Christians with the Elizabethan coun-
terpart: “They toke it with conscience. We with custume,” it bewailed.
While “they shut men by reason of the sinnes, from the Lords
Supper,” continued the Admonition, “we thrust them in their sinne to
the Lordes [sic] Supper.” These Elizabethan Puritans sought to ame-
liorate the situation by petitioning Parliament to enjoin the “Elders
and other officers” to examine the communicants since they “wyl
not examine themselves.”10 Regarding the purity of God’s worship
and the administration of the sacraments, the “hotter sort of Protes-
tants” strove to achieve as much similitude to primitive Christianity
as possible. Indeed they endeavored to ensure the greatest overlap
between the visible and the invisible church.11 Although in theory
the clergy were to disallow those “openly knowne to live in notori-
ous sinne without repentance” and those who had “openly and mali-
ciously contended” with their neighbors from communion, many
complained that such injunctions were ineffective in preventing the
profane from approaching the altar or table.12 Godly ministers such

9
Current historiography on the Lord’s Supper has addressed the relationship
between discipline and its right celebration. See, for example, Arnold Hunt, “The
Lord’s Supper in Early Modern England,” P&P 161 (1998), pp. 39–83; Haigh,
“Communion and Community,” pp. 721–40.
10
The Admonition to the Parliament (1572), in Puritan Manifestoes: a study of the origin
of the Puritan revolt, eds. W.H. Frere and C.E. Douglass (New York: E.S. Gorham,
1954), p. 14. See also Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1967), pp. 348–54, 358–9, 361–3, 367–9.
11
See T.D. Bozeman, To Live Ancient lives: the primitivist dimension in Puritanism
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), Chap. 1.
12
Kenneth Fincham, ed., Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church,
2 vols. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1994), 1:102, 159.
       87

as William Seridge of East Hannigfield, Essex, excluded as many as

nineteen parishioners from taking their “rights,” and reserved the
celebration for “secret conventicles and meetings,” usually held on
Sunday evenings.13 In the mid-1620s, a Northamptonshire minister,
Robert Bincks, was cited for examining several of his parishioners
before Easter communion since they had been suspected of “crimi-
nal practices.”14 John Vicars, Vicar of Stamford, Linconshire, was
brought before the Star Chamber for his zeal to administer the
Lord’s Supper by having an “exercise on Friday and Satturday,
which he called preparacions”; he excluded those who did not show
up from the Lord’s Supper.15 This was the path of parish reforma-
tion the godly of the early Stuart period had chosen without sepa-
rating from the Church of England.
During the archbishopric of William Laud, the Table was turned
altarwise, and an increasing emphasis was laid on the sacrament of
communion rather than preaching as the culmination of sacred wor-
ship.16 For the Laudians “preaching was but a means to bring peo-
ple to prayer” since the Christian’s communion with God “begins
indeed in Baptisme but ends in the Lords Supper.”17 The new empha-
sis on sacramental grace in the Lord’s Supper, combined with a
relative devaluation of preaching, alarmed the godly that such “inno-
vations” in ceremony were too dangerous to remain unchecked.
While it is true that the struggle for “rival views of the Christian
religion, the one built around the sacraments and the other focused
on the sermon” marked the controversies of the Laudian era, it is
also true that the Puritans continuously sought reform of the Lord’s
Supper during the Interregnum as well.18

13
Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 349.
14
Tom Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), p. 120.
15
S.R. Gardiner, ed., Reports of Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission
(London: Camden Society, 1886), p. 204.
16
Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism c. 1590 –1640
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 176; idem, “Archbishop Laud,” in
Kenneth Fincham, ed., Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642 (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan,
1993), p. 67.
17
John Swan, Profanomastix (1639), p. 39. Note also the famous dictum of Laud
that exalted the place of the altar as of ultimate significance: “Hoc est corpus meum”
was more preferable than “Hoc est verbum meum.” Laud, The Works of William
Laud, 7 vols. (Oxford: Parker Society, 1847–60), 6:57; Laud reiterated his Eucharistic
centrality in Works, 4:284: “in all ages of the Church the touchstone of religion was
not to hear the word preached but to communicate.”
18
Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, p. 202.
88  

The Root and Branch Petition of 1640 was a decisive turning point
in the fortunes of English Puritanism, presaging the fall of both Laud
and Charles I. Two major complaints were lodged against the Laudian
practice of the Lord’s Supper: first, barring from Communion any-
one who refused “to come up thither [at the altar] to receive,” and
secondly, the “general abuse of that great ordinance of excommu-
nication.” Consequently, the purity of the church and its ordinances
was compromised.19 In the Directory for Public Worship, passed in January
of 1645, “the ignorant and the scandalous” were prohibited from
the Lord’s Supper. The commitment to the purity of the ordinances
was, according to Geoffrey F. Nuttall, an important part of the
Puritan reform during the Interregnum.20 However, a major back-
lash against the unrelenting quest for sacramental purity manifested
itself in the open admission controversy—first between William Prynne
versus George Gillespie and Samuel Rutherford during the 1640s,21
and then in the 1650s involving John Humfrey, Thomas Blake, and
Richard Baxter. It is with these developments that we turn to Baxter’s
eucharistic theology and the controversy over open admission.

III. B’ E T   Q

 O A

Shortly after his ordination by Bishop John Thornborough in 1638,

Baxter was called to Dudley, and the number of nonconformists he
encountered there caused him to study the case of nonconformity
in detail.22 In an important self-reflective passage, he revealed the

19
“The Root and Branch Petition (1640),” in The Constitutional Documents of the
Puritan Revolution 1625–1660, ed., S.R. Gardiner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906),
pp. 140, 142.
20
G.F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford: Blackwell,
1947), pp. 90–101. See “Directory for Public Worship (4 January 1645),” in Firth and
Rait, eds., Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum 1642–1660, 3 vols. (London: H.M.S.O.,
1911), 1:596–7. See also “An Ordinance for Keeping the Scandalous Persons from . . .
the Lord’s Supper (14 March 1646),” in Ibid., 1:834; “An Ordinance to Exclude
Improper Persons from the Sacrament (5 June 1646),” in Ibid., 1:855.
21
William Prynne, A Vindication of Foure Serious Questions (1645), p. 57. Prynne’s
Erastianism led to his defence of free admission. See Foure Serious Questions of Grand
Importance (1644); The Lords Supper Briefly Vindicated (1657). See also William Lamont,
Godly Rule: politics and religion, 1603–60 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1969), pp.
106–31; Holifield, The Covenant Sealed, pp. 110–17.
22
Reliquiae, I, 13, §19.
       89

reasons why he became a nonconformist. One dealt with the Lord’s

Supper. He was not particularly scrupulous about kneeling, which
he deemed adiaphorous: “Kneeling I thought was lawful, and all meer
Circumstances determined by the Magistrate.”23 Baxter, however,
recalled that “the promiscuous giving of the Lord’s Supper to all
Drunkards, Swearers, Fornicators, Scorners at Godliness &c. that are
not excommunicate by a Bishop” influenced his becoming a non-
conformist.24 This prevented him from taking “upon a full Pastorall
charge, but to preach only as a Lecturer, till I were fully resolved.”25
By 1649, he was administering the Lord’s Supper to those who
“solemnly professe their assent to every fundamentall Article of
Faith . . . and their consent that Christ shall be their Lord and Saviour
and that they will faithfully . . . obey his Scripture Lawes.”26 We will
see that since the Lord’s Supper was an efficacious covenant seal,
the purity of the sacrament and of the communicant were to be
maintained. To ensure this, many Puritan divines preached and pub-
lished a number of preparatory sermons, encouraged would-be com-
municants to be reconciled and make peace before the communion,
and sometimes even suspended the practice altogether, blaming the
lack of discipline as the problem.
William Lamont’s comment that “the debate over admission to
the Lord’s Supper in the Commonwealth period determined the
characteristic and fortunes of Puritanism for the rest of the century”
highlights the centrality of the debate over free admission.27 With
the collapse of Parliament’s projected Presbyterian settlement, many
ministers began to re-evaluate their position on the Lord’s Supper.
Humfrey, as mentioned earlier, re-introduced Prynne’s insistence that
the Lord’s Supper was a converting ordinance with the ability to
convert those who would otherwise have been refused communion
in a stricter system.28 Humfrey was Vicar of Frome in Somersetshire
when he wrote An Humble Vindication of a Free Admission, and an

23
Ibid., I, 14, §19. On kneeling, see W.W. Biggs, “The Controversy concerning
Kneeling in the Lord’s Supper—after 1604,” TCHS 15 (1947–49), pp. 51–62. For
Baxter’s adiaphorist view on ceremonies, see Chap. 5 below.
24
Reliquiae, I, 13, §19.
25
PSP, sig. b4r. It seems Baxter began administering the Lord’s Supper in 1649
“invited to it by an eminent wonder of providence.” AJ, “Appendix,” p. 60.
26
AJ, “Appendix,” p. 109; Ibid. (The Hague, 1655 edn.), pp. 282–83.
27
Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium, p. 157.
28
For John Humfrey (1621–1719), see DNB, CR.
90  

increase of sacramental suspension prompted him to re-consider the

nature and efficacy of the Lord’s Supper.29
Humphrey argued that the sacrament possessed the “same lati-
tude” as the Word: “The sacraments set forth Christ to the eye, as
the Gospell does to the ear.”30 This visible word, like the preached
word, could convert those with some measure of “historical faith,”
an assent to the doctrinal truth of Christianity. For Humfrey, this
minimal requirement was enough; he did not require proofs of vis-
ible Christianity, nor did he endorse coming before the elders for
examination. First, since we can never know the “inward holiness
in persons,” Humfrey maintained that “a visible ordinance [be given]
to the visible church, and the invisible grace, to the invisible mem-
bers that have a saving interest in them by faith.”31 The second rea-
son had to do with his understanding of the covenant and the nature
of its seal.32 Emphasizing the divine, objective side of sealing the
covenant, Humfrey maintained that an inordinate emphasis on prepa-
ration for the Lord’s Supper betrayed a solipsistic, anthropocentric
perspective on sacramental piety.33 Thus, for Humfrey, saving faith
was not a prerequisite to admission to the Lord’s Supper.
If Humfrey wrote his treatises to call for comprehensive pastoral
responsibility in not suspending the sacrament altogether, Roger
Drake wrote his responses to Humfrey underscoring sacramental
purity, which he regarded as compromised in Humfrey’s proposal.34
Drake, the minister of St. Peter Westcheap, London, and modera-
tor of the thirteenth Provincial Assembly, vigorously attacked Humfrey
in 1652 by asserting the necessity of further scrutiny. If a mere “ver-

29
For a detailed description of Drake vs. Humfrey debate, see Biggs, “The
Controversy concerning Free Admission to the Lord’s Supper, 1652–1660,” pp. 178–
89; Holifield, The Covenant Sealed, pp. 117–26.
30
Humfrey, Humble Vindication, p. 12. Cf. Ibid., p. 59 where he qualifies his posi-
tion by arguing that the Lord’s Supper, though a converting ordinance, did not
possessive such intrinsic power that the heathen could be converted by adminis-
tering it in isolation from preaching.
31
Ibid., pp. 38, 17.
32
John Von Rohr, The Covenant of Grace in Puritan Thought (Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1986); Ian Green, The Christian’s ABC, pp. 387–421.
33
Humfrey, Humble Vindication, pp. 44, 41. He continued: “Because God seals
not imaginably to our part of the Covenant which is faith, but to his owne part,
which is the promise, and so I call them seals of the Covenant or promise for-
mally, and not of faith.” Ibid., p. 45. See also Holifield, p. 117.
34
Holifield, p. 120.
       91

ball profession” was all that was required, Drake argued, the reduc-
tio ad absurdum would be “a childe of three years old, or a mad man
may be admitted, since they may easily be taught the words.”35 To
safeguard the purity of the sacrament, he urged that each would-be
communicant profess his or her faith before the elders. This was
repugnant to Humfrey, and as we shall see, unnecessary for Baxter
so long as a right catechetical training and discipline were imple-
mented.36 Drake argued that only “the Word is the instrument of
conversion, so not the Sacrament,” therefore, only those who are
already converted can partake of the “Sacrament of nourishment”;
it then was a confirming, not converting ordinance. Thus the unre-
generate and formal Christians had no right to Communion.37
On 11 May 1654, Humfrey sought Baxter’s advice after he had
written A rejoynder to Mr Drake, reiterating his earlier plea for open
admission. He wrote, “Now my petition to you is, that you will can-
didly give mee a few of your thoughts that by uppermost as to this
controversy . . . for my heart is much afraid doing any hurt to the
church of God.”38 Baxter replied, “as for my thoughts about your
controversy of the Lord’s Supper, you may gather much of them
from what is said in my Christian Concord with our Worcestershire
Agreement.” What he was referring to was not a detailed discussion
of the Lord’s Supper as a confirming or converting ordinance. Rather,
Christian Concord stressed the need for discipline to ensure a biblical
observance of the Lord’s Supper.39 Baxter proposed that “When the
Church or Officers are orderly acquainted that any man is obsti-
nate in sin, after private and lesse publick admonition, or that his
sin is notorious, and of publick scandal, it is unmeet to admit him
to publick communion at the Lord’s Supper while he is under just
tryall.”40

35
For Roger Drake, see DNB; CR; Drake, A Boundary to the Holy Mount (1652),
p. 17.
36
Drake, Boundary to the Holy Mount, p. 32; Roger Drake, The Bar, against Free
Admission to the Lord’s Supper, Fixed (1656), p. 85; In Reliquiae, II, 148, §28, Baxter
says that “the ordinary way of examining every man before they come, I was not
able to prove necessary.”
37
Drake, Boundary to the Holy Mount, pp. 57, 181.
38
Letters, i. 193.
39
Letters, i. 206.
40
CC, sig. A4v.
92  

The danger Baxter noticed in Humfrey’s position was that it would

vitiate the role of justifying faith in the Lord’s Supper. He cited
Justin Martyr’s Second Apology to buttress the point that only those
who have professed their saving faith and baptized were eligible for
Communion: “This food we call the Eucharist, to which no man is
admitted, but he that believeth the Truth of our Doctrine, being
washed, in the Laver of Regeneration, for Remission of sin, and that
so liveth as Christ hath taught.” This, according to Baxter, assumed
both intellectual assent to the doctrine of Christianity and consent
to commit to the life of a disciple.41
He made extensive use of Continental Reformers such as Calvin,
Beza, Peter Martyr, Zacharias Ursinus, and the divines of Saumur
to assert the necessity of saving faith “which all must bring to the
sacrament that will have the thing signified” and “that upon the
confession of true faith . . . we are to take them for faithful, till they
shew themselves hypocrites,” thus refuting Humfrey’s plea for open
admission.42 Since the Lord’s Supper was limited for those who pro-
fessed saving faith, for Baxter it was not a converting ordinance.43
In fact, he preferred Drake’s view of sacramental examination to
Humfrey’s open admission.44 God had never commanded those who
did not have saving faith to receive the Lord’s Supper.45 The efficacy
of the Lord’s Supper was predicated on true faith and remission of
sin. To reverse this order, as Baxter believed Humfrey and Prynne
did, was tantamount to a new Christianity. Baxter quoted again from
Rutherford to show the fallacy of Humfrey’s endorsement of free
admission: “The invisible, and not the visible church is the princi-
pal, prime, and only proper subject with whom the Covenant of
Grace is made, to whom all the promises do belong, and to whom
all Titles, Styles, Properties and Priviledges of special note, in the
mediator do belong.”46 He argued that since the visible church was
the earthly—though imperfect—representation of the invisible church,
all those who hoped to enter the invisible must first enter the visi-

41
RBA, Pt. I, 95.
42
CDRS, pp. 206, 207, 209–10, 212–13, 229.
43
Ibid., pp. 452, 454–57, 461, 463.
44
Ibid., p. 102.
45
Ibid., pp. 356, 358–60, 365–66.
46
Samuel Rutherford, Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), 242–44, 249, here 244, cited
in CDRS, 387.
       93

ble. He asserted that despite the persistence of hypocrites in the vis-

ible church, the profession of faith that would qualify one for the
invisible church was required.47
Other Puritan divines shared Baxter’s commitment to requiring a
profession of saving faith before Communion. Though feeble and
prone to failures, the faith required at the Supper was a “free con-
sent of the whole soule to the truth of God.” This consent was what
many Reformers had called fiducia. Daniel Rogers continued, “The
Lord requires that the soule simply relie it selfe upon this base Word
of his, because hee will performe it, without descanting this way or
that against it.”48 In a popular preparatory manual, William Bradshaw
argued that “Want of speciall faith” nullified the intended effect of
the sacrament.49 Arthur Hildersham was more explicit: “No man can
receiue this Sacrament worthily vnlesse he haue a true iustifying
faith.” Presaging Baxter’s position of nearly two decades later,
Hildersham showed that the faith required for baptism in the New
Testament was the same which must be professed in the Lord’s
Supper.50
Baxter’s answer in ensuring the spiritual competency of his com-
municant members lay not in examinations before each Communion
but in catechizing and discipline. As we have seen in Chapter Two,
catechizing was complementary to preaching; both were designed to
convert those who were devoid of saving faith. Since he and his
assistants, Richard Sargeant,51 Humphrey Waldron,52 or Joseph Read,53
catechized the entire parish, the opportunity to examine the parish-
ioners in a more intimate and less-threatening setting presented itself
annually. In The Agreement of Divers Ministers . . . in . . . Worcester . . . for
Catechizing, Baxter identified catechizing as a preparatory step before

47
CDRS, pp. 387–89.
48
Daniel Rogers, A Treatise of the Two Sacraments of the Gospell (1635), p. 259. See
also Hieronymus Zanchius, H. Zanchivs His Confession of Christian Religion (Cambridge,
1599), “The Epistle,” p. 33.
49
William Bradshaw, A Preparation to the Receiuing of Christs Body and Blovd (9th
edn., 1634), fols. 44v, 67r–68v.
50
Arthur Hildersham, The Doctrine of Communicating worthily in the Lords Svpper (8th
edn., 1633), pp. 85–86, 90–93. Emphasis added. See also William Ames, Conscience
with the Power and Cases Thereof (1639), Bk. IV, 85.
51
For Richard Sargeant’s catechizing efforts, see Reliquiae, I, 88, §137(11), III.
91, §202(12), CCRB, #799, and CR as Sarjeant.
52
For Waldron, see Reliquiae, I, 88, §137(11); CR; Al. Oxon.
53
For Joseph Reade, see his preface to UR, sig. A3v; CR; Al. Cant.
94  

Communion.54 Writing on 4 May 1655 the associating ministers

avowed: “It grieveth us also to see so many untaught children and
families among you! To see so many of you either live without the
Lords Supper, and the holy Communion of the Church, or else
expect it when you know not what to do.”55 Thus, he clarified the
relationship between catechizing, church membership, and the level
of spiritual knowledge expected for communion, declaring that those
who persisted in refusing to be catechized would be denied communion.
Out of approximately 1,800 potential communicants, Baxter reported
that he had about 600 communicating members.56 Juxtaposing that
statement with his minutely analyzed taxonomy of the parish—which
he divided it into twelve groups—we see that the first two, which
totaled about 600, coincided with those who were allowed to come
to the Lord’s Supper.57 Baxter emphasized that since “the Lord’s
Supper is the food of the soul, confirming by way of nutrition and
augmentation . . . therefore you must shew that you are alive, before
you may, partake of it.”58 However, it is important to note that
Baxter was willing to accommodate the spiritual condition of the
“ten groups” instead of rejecting them outright. Baxter noted that
Besides these [covenanted members], there are some that are tractable
and of willing minds, that by their expressions seem to be ignorant of
the very Essentials of Christianity; which yet I find to have obscure
conceptions of the truth, when I have condescendingly better searcht
them, and helped them by my enquiries. These also (as weak in the
Faith) we receive.
How did he deal with a few in his parish with separatist leanings
and those whose commitment to the Prayer Book religion made them
‘separate’ from the parochial communion? Baxter, describing this
“fourth sort,” added a marginal comment:
Of this fourth sort I hope are many that truly fear God, that some
on pretence, and some on an other, forbear to joyn with us in the
Communion of the Church, in the Lords Supper: but yet heare, and

54
ADMC, pp. 8, 11, 27.
55
ADMC, p. 29.
56
Reliquiae, I. 85, §136.
57
C&R, pp. 157–65; See Eamon Duffy, “The Godly and the Multitude in Stuart
England,” SC 1 (1986), pp. 31–55 for a helpful discussion of Baxter’s religious tax-
onomy of his parish.
58
C&R, p. 240.
       95

live in love and peace with us. And some do joyn with us (on the
grounds as godly strangers may be admitted) some time in the Lords
Supper; that yet expresly own not a membership in the particular
Church.59
In Kidderminster, Sir Ralph Clare exerted the greatest influence
among them. He was Lord of the Manor and High Steward of
Kidderminster, and for all his cordial attitude toward Baxter, yet
“did more to hinder my greater Successes, than a multitude of oth-
ers could have done” by refusing to receive Communion unless “I
would give it him kneeling on a distinct Day, and not with those
that received it sitting.”60 Sir Ralph occasionally held the Prayer
Book service at his own home, with the sequestered Vicar of St.
Mary’s, George Dance officiating. It would seem that Baxter sought
to include them, “but they hold off themselves, because they are
taught to question, if not to disown our Administrations.”
Baxter, instead of maintaining a high standard of doctrinal knowl-
edge, was apparently satisfied with having his parishioners give either
“affirmations or negations whether they indeed understand it, or
believe it, when they hear it exprest by us,” after which they would
be allowed to communicate. In addition, the despisers of the prac-
tice of sitting or standing in the Lord’s Supper were invited by Baxter;
such an invitation was given on the same grounds as some “godly
strangers” were permitted.61
Consequently, Baxter’s policy of the Table was neither excessively
restrictive nor lenient. He understood his pastoral context well; many
weavers and peasants who spent most of their waking hours in the
shops or in the field did not have much time to understand the fun-
damental verities of the faith. Thus, he assiduously catechized his
parish in the hope that they would gratefully approach the Table.
However, no sense of certainty of faith and assurance was required
before one came to the Lord’s Supper. Baxter was in the line of
Perkins, who had advised those who, after preparation, still felt
“vnworthie” that what was required by the Lord was not “perfection
of faith, and repentance; but the truth and sinceritie of them both,

59
Ibid., p. 158.
60
Reliquiae, I. 94, §137; II. 157, §33. On Clare, see Nuttall, Richard Baxter, pp.
54, 90–91; DNB.
61
ADMC, p. 7; C&R, p. 158.
96  

though they be imperfect.”62 It is to this significant doctrinal issue

in Puritan divinity we must turn—the assurance of faith and the role
of the Eucharist.

IV. P, A,   C  S

Baxter defined the Lord’s Supper as “a holy Feast that is purposely

provided by the King of Saints, for the entertainment of his family;
for the refreshing of the weary, and the making glad the mournful
soul.”63 The Lord’s Supper demonstrated and communicated “the
greatest mercies in the world, brought down to us in sensible Representations,
that they might be very neer us, and the means might be suited to
the frailty and infirmity of our present state.”64 To be a worthy guest
to this “holy Feast,” Baxter stressed due preparation. Other Puritans
defined the Lord’s Supper similarly, using exalted language and vivid
imageries. For John Preston, “the Sacrament preacheth the Gospell
to the eye, as we doe to the eare.”65 “In this Ordinance,” suggested
Hildersham, “Christ and his bloud is applied to use more particu-
larly than by any other meanes that ever God ordained.”66 Perkins
asserted that “the preaching of the word, and administration of the
Sacrament, are all one in substance. For in the one the will of God
is seene, in the other heard.”67

62
Perkins, The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience (Cambridge, 1606), pp. 341–2;
idem, A Golden Chaine (Cambridge, 1595), p. 183.
63
SB, p. 290; MPHC, p. 1. R.B., Monthly Preparations for Holy Communion (1696),
is not attributed to Baxter by Keeble and Nuttall. Like the Reliquiae, MPHC was
published in 1696 and carried the commendatory epistle by Matthew Sylvester.
Judging from Sylvester’s respect for Baxter, it is difficult to see that Sylvester would
put an epistle before a spurious work. Internal evidence also shows that even if it
were not written by Baxter, it nevertheless is a good indicator of his eucharistic
thought. For the purposes of this chapter, I shall treat MPHC as part of the Baxter
canon. See Wing B1310.
64
SB, p. 293.
65
John Preston, The Cuppe of Blessing (1633), p. 43.
66
Hildersham, CLII Lectures upon Psalm LI (1635), p. 635.
67
William Perkins, Cases of Conscience, Bk. II, 73, in Workes (Cambridge, 1617
edn.), II:73; Henry Smith, “The First Sermon,” in A Treatise of the Lords Supper (1591),
p. 1; John Rogers maintained that “The Word & Sacraments be the two breasts
of the Church.” The Doctrine of Faith (5th edn., 1633), p. 215. See also John Dod
and Robert Cleaver, Ten Sermons . . . for the Worthy Receiuing of the Lords Svpper (1632),
p. 95.
       97

For Baxter, there were five “proper ends” in the Lord’s Supper:
1. A solemn commemoration of the Death and passion of Jesus Christ.
2. A solemn renewing of the Holy Covenant which was first entered
in Baptism.
3. Lively objective means, by which the Spirit of Christ would work
to stir our Soul.
4. Solemn profession of Believers, of their Faith, Love, Gratitude and
Obedience to God the Triuine Being, Badge of Church before the
World.
5. Sign and means of the Unity, Love, and Communion of Saints.68
To ensure an edifying reception of the Supper, a constant empha-
sis was placed on sacramental preparation in Puritan divinity.69 The
paradox of the Puritan sacramental piety was that those who pre-
pared most effectually might well be the ones feeling least prepared,
while those who had not heeded the ministerial exhortation for prepa-
ration would thrust themselves to the Table with no compunction.
However, the feeling of unworthiness at the Lord’s Supper was pre-
cisely what qualified them for the banquet of the saints. This lies at
the heart of the Puritan paradox of sacramental preparation. Of
course this emphasis was not confined to Puritans. George Herbert’s
“Love bade me welcome” is representative among the poems that
depicted the soul’s sense of unworthiness and the sweet invitation of
Love Incarnate, which overcomes the timidity of the communicant.
Baxter recommended Herbert’s poetry to Katherine Gell, a woman
with a guilt-laden conscience.70 Perhaps as a way of dealing with
this acute pastoral issue, there was a recurring emphasis on assur-
ance and the role of the Lord’s Supper in it.71 For Preston, the first

68
MPHC, pp. 3–5; PMB, pp. 338–9; CD, p. 600. Cf. Lewis Bayly, The Practice
of Piety (1613 edn.), pp. 539, 547, 549.
69
See Daniel Rogers, A Treatise of the Two Sacraments of the Gospell (1635), pp.
230–317; Arthur Hildersham, CLII Lectures upon Psalm LI (1635), pp. 265–6, 636;
Henry Smith, “The Second Sermon,” in A Treatise of the Lords Supper (1591), pp.
21–42; Robert Bolton, The Saints Selfe-enriching Examination, in A Three-fold Treatise
(1634); John Brinsley, The True Watch and Rule of Life (5th edn., 1611), sig. A5r–v.
See also William Perkins, A Golden Chaine (1623 edn.), in Workes (1626 edn.), I:76;
II:81–82. For a good survey of sacramental preparation during the Elizabethan
period, see John Booty, “Preparation for the Lord’s Supper in Elizabethan England,”
ATR 49 (1962), pp. 131–48.
70
CCRB, #489. See also CCRB, #872.
71
This important aspect was neglected by R.T. Kendall’s discussion on the issue
of subjective/objective dimensions of assurance as a fundamental difference be-
tween Calvin and Calvinists, thus leading him to conclude that Puritan experimental
98  

and “maine end of the Sacrament” was to “confirme our faith in

the assurance of the forgivenesse of our sinnes.”72 Hildersham echoed
the same sentiment that the Lord’s Supper had “great force to work
and preserve in us assurance of Gods favour in Christ.” More
significantly, Hildersham’s undergirding conviction was that the sense
of assurance often eluded his auditors, so the Lord’s Supper was “to
recover it when it is lost.”73 Therefore, Robert Bolton was emphatic
when he said that “hereby wee lay surer hold by the hand of faith
upon the merits and sufferings of Christ, we feele more soundly and
sensibly the power and vertue of his passion, and are more fully and
feelingly ascertained of the favour of God.”74
Baxter was well aware of the problem of assurance and lack of
certainty in sacramental preparation, both personally and pastorally.
In preparation, two extremes were to be avoided: a careless attitude
that contradicted the sacramental significance of the Supper, and a
morbid and inward-driven despair. Both were caused by a failure to
understand the true nature of the Lord’s Supper. In his preparatory
manuals—Catechizing of Families, The Poor Man’s Family Book, A Christian
Directory, and Monthly Preparations—the second extreme received far
more attention. For him,
the latter extream is frequently caused as followeth; 1. By setting this
Sacrament at a greater distance from other parts of God’s worship, than
there is cause. . . . 2. By studying more the terrible words of eating and
drinking damnation to themselves . . . than all the expressions of Love and
Mercy, which that Blessed Feast is furnished with. So that when the
viewes of infinite Love should ravish them, they are studying wrath
and vengeance to terrifie them, as if they came to Moses, and not to
Christ.75
He encouraged those “uncertain of . . . sincerity, and in continual
doubting” to receive, recalling his pastoral experience at Kidderminster
where he had known “many such fearful Christians . . . that are fain

divinity deviated from its christocentric core. See his Calvin and English Calvinism to
1649 (Oxford, 1979).
72
John Preston, The Cuppe of Blessing (1633), p. 19; idem, A Preparation to the Lords
Supper (1638), p. 121; Arthur Hildersham, The Doctrine of Communicating Worthily in
the Lords Supper (9th edn.), p. 23; John Rogers, The Doctrine of Faith (1633), p. 253.
73
Arthur Hildersham, CLII Lectures on Psalm LI (1635), pp. 635, 407; William
Perkins, The Whole Treatise of the Cases of Conscience (Cambridge, 1606), pp. 347–48.
74
Robert Bolton, The Saints Selfe-enriching Examination, in A Three-fold Treatise (1634),
p. 43; Lewis Bayly, The Practice of Piety (1613 edn.), pp. 553, 556, 560.
75
MPHC, p. 15; CD, p. 602; CF, p. 425.
       99

many years to absent themselves from the Sacrament.” Rather than

a certain sense of faith and assurance, a promise to commit one’s
life to Christ would suffice: “to Consent is your preparation and your
life.”76 Since the Lord’s Supper was an assurance-giving sacrament,
it was not necessary that the communicant be assured of his or her
saving faith before coming to the Table.77 Here Baxter pointed at
the heart of the pastoral problem in early modern English Protestantism,
and showed the sensitivity of a celebrated casuist. It was not the cer-
tainty or assurance of faith that was the sine qua non of sacramental
participation, nor was it the assurance in the institution of the Mother
Church. Both were inaccurate and inappropriate.78 For him, “it is
the being of Sincerity and not the Assurance” of faith that was nec-
essary. Thus to individuals uncertain of their sacramental prepara-
tion, Baxter replied, “you must then Communicate,” trusting the act
of the Triune God in the Lord’s Supper.79 As a result, the faithful
communicant could have his or her sense of divine love more firmly
assured and say, “what sweetness doth such a Feast afford.”80 In an
eucharistic prayer directed to the Holy Spirit, Baxter said that it was
he “who condescendest to make perfect the Elect of God,” and it
was to the Holy Spirit “do I deliver up this dark imperfect soul.”
Thus, instead of relying on the subjective evidence of sanctification
and preparedness, Baxter placed an equal reliance on the objective
promise of grace and its augmentation by the Spirit: “Though the
way of this thy sacred influx be beyond the reach of humane appre-
hension; Yet let me know the reality and saving power of it, by the
happy effects.”81
Therefore, the Lord’s Supper was an assurance-enhancing sacra-
ment for the faithful, not only of the reality of God’s redeeming
covenantal love, but also of the communion of saints. Mixed com-
munion had been a thorn in the flesh for the godly in post-Reformation
England.82 The Holy Communion, as the name implies, provided

76
CD, pp. 603, 604.
77
MPHC, pp. 22, 295; CD, p. 611.
78
CDRS, pp. 44, 194.
79
PMB, p. 344.
80
SB, p. 290.
81
MPHC, pp. 66–67.
82
See Patrick Collinson, “The Cohabitation of the Faithful with the Unfaithful,”
in From Persecution to Toleration: the Glorious Revolution and religion in England, eds.
Ole Peter Grell, J.I. Israel, and Nicholas Tyacke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991),
100  

an ideal nexus for the fellowship of the faithful, although this con-
tinued to exercise the minds of the semi-separatistic or non-separat-
ing Puritans. Thus, for Edward Reynolds, one of the chief benefits
of the Lord’s Supper was to enhance the awareness of the commu-
nion of saints. The Holy Spirit, just as he accomplished the vertical
reconciliation between God and humanity through the ministrations
of Christ, he also effected a horizontal reconciliation and reassur-
ance of charity among the faithful “so that the most immediate effect
of this Sacrament is to confirme the Union of all the members of
the Church each to other in a Communion of Saints, whereby their
prayers are the more strengthened, and their adversaries the more
resisted.”83
Christopher Haigh recently demonstrated that a considerable num-
ber of people, when refused communion in their own parish, trav-
eled to others to receive, thus circumventing the role of the Lord’s
Supper as an agent and a symbol of the peace of the community.
Such a practice persisted, it would seem, in Baxter’s Worcestershire.
When the Worcestershire Association was founded, one of the agenda
items in the monthly meetings was to report such individuals so “that
we may know from the Minister of that place whether they are fit
to be admitted or not.” Baxter advanced the same idea in a sermon
preached in December 1654 before Parliament: “such unconscionable
man-pleasers, taking all wicked people Sacraments that flie from
Discipline out of other Parishes, are exceeding hinderers of our
Discipline, and deceivers and destroyers of the peoples souls.”84 For
him, true communion of saints, discipline, and reformation were not
contradictory. They were interrelated in that only those who were
willing to submit to the pastoral authority of the church could truly

pp. 51–76; Euan Cameron, “The ‘Godly Community’ in the Theory and Practice
of the European Reformation,” in Voluntary Religion, eds. W.J. Sheils and D. Wood
(Studies in Church History 23, Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), pp. 131–153.
83
Edwards Reynolds, Meditations on the Holy Sacrament of the Lords Supper (1638),
pp. 102–3; John Dod and Robert Cleaver, Ten Sermons tending chiefly to the Fitting . . .
of the Lords Supper (1622), p. 13. See also John Randall, Three and Twentie Sermons
(1630), pp. 91, 95; Perkins, A Golden Chaine, pp. 172–73; Thomas Taylor, Three
Treatises (1633), fols. L6r–L6v.
84
Christopher Haigh, “Communion and Community,” p. 738; CC, sig. B4r; HA,
p. 9. See also Arnold Hunt, “The Lord’s Supper in Early Modern England,” pp.
60–62; J.P. Boulton, “The Limits of Formal Religion: the administration of Holy
Communion in late Elizabethan and early Stuart London,” The London Journal 10
(1984), pp. 135–54.
       101

enjoy the communion and reconciliation—both horizontal (with neigh-

bors) and vertical (with God).85
Baxter asserted that “Here we have Communion with the Body of
Christ, his sanctified people, the heirs of life.”86 Moreover, there was an
emphasis in the communion with the saints in heaven as well. “The
excellencie of this Sacrament,” according to John Randall, was that
“it associates vs to all the Saints and Children of God both in Heauen
and Earth,” thus by partaking of the Lord’s Supper, the earthly church
could “haue a sweete Communion euen with them in Heauen.”87
Similarly, Baxter reminded his readers of the eschatological dimen-
sion of the Lord’s Supper:
Make it thy business in every duty, to winde up thy affections neerer
Heaven. . . . Gods end in the institution of his Ordinances, was, that
they be as so many stepping stones to our Rest, and as the staires by
which . . . we may daily ascend unto it in our affections: Let this be
thy end in using them, as it was Gods end in ordaining them.88
Baxter juxtaposed the earthly “Supper of Christ” and the heavenly
“marriage Supper of the Lamb” and encouraged readers to dwell
on the joys of heaven. For Calvin, the Lord’s Supper was a pow-
erful reminder of the eschatological glory of God to be revealed.89
Like Calvin, Baxter emphasised this aspect of the Lord’s Supper.90
The communion of saints, both of heaven and of earth, could be
enjoyed in a relatively pure sacramental fellowship. Baxter answered
the complaint of a hypothetical polemicist who wondered what com-
fort anyone could derive from “a Mixt Communion” by inverting
the rhetoric of discipline and purity against the would-be separatists.
He believed that a rightly established discipline would be absolutely

85
On the role of communion as an agent of “social miracle,” see John Bossy,
Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 70,
72, 74, 115.
86
SB, p. 292.
87
Randall, Three and Twentie Sermons, pp. 99–100. See also Robert Bolton, Directions
for a Comfortable Walking with God (1630), pp. 62–63.
88
SER, p. 676.
89
For Calvin’s eucharistic theology, see B.A. Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: the eucharis-
tic theology of John Calvin (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). See also Philip Walker Butin’s
Trinitarian exposition of Calvin’s eucharistic theology in Butin, Revelation, Redemption,
and Response: Calvin’s Trinitarian understanding of the divine-human relationship (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 114–121.
90
SER, p. 771.
102  

necessary to curb the zeal of separatism proliferating in Interregnum

England. He asserted:
If they do not their duty in . . . labouring to heal the diseased mem-
ber, and to reform the Church in Christs appointed way, Mat. 18.17. . . .
But if they faithfully do their own part, how should the sins of oth-
ers be their burden, unless by way of common compassion? And how
have Gods servants in all ages of the Church to this day received com-
fort in such mixt Communion?
Then Baxter quickly enjoined that such mixed communion “must
be born to the end of the world by al [sic] that will walk the waies
of Christ.”91 Applying further the Augustinian judgment of charity,
Baxter dichotomized the “Communion of Saints”: external commu-
nion with “professed Saints,” and internal “true . . . spiritual Com-
munion with hearty Saints.” Those who profess saving faith, however,
must be assumed to belong to the invisible church since “real Saints
in heart are unknown to us,” thus known only to God.92 He sought
to influence the first Protectorate Parliament with his anti-separatist
and pro-disciplinary zeal in a sermon at Westminster Abbey on 24
December 1654. “If any Arminians, Antinomians, Anabaptists, or
the like mistaken ones,” said Baxter, “think it not enough to hold
their Opinions, but they will hold Communion with none that are
of a contrary minde, nor admit them to the Lords Supper, though
Godly and otherwise fit, let such hold no Pastorall Cure . . . that
have the Publique Maintenance.” Furthermore, he exhorted the mem-
bers of Parliament to eject those ministers as “Negligent, that for-
bear All exercise of Discipline, as well as they that preach not.”93
The issue of mixed communion was best addressed by reforming
discipline.

91
CDRS, p. 37; MPHC, sig. A3v.
92
Ibid. See Baird Tipson, “Invisible Saints: the ‘Judgment of Charity’ in the
early New England churches,” CH 44 (1975), pp. 46–71. Elsewhere, Baxter spoke
of much confusion surrounding “judgement of infallibility” and “judgement of
Charity”: “A fallible judgement we are not bound to; yet it may be called a judge-
ment of Charity. . . . For it may be our duty to receive them as if they were true
Believers; and yet none of our duty to judge them certainly true Believers; but only
to judge them probably such.” PSP, p. 94. See also CD, p. 601; MPHC, p. 33.
93
HA, p. 4.
       103

V. O R P P D

For Baxter it was not enough to withhold the Lord’s Supper from
those in his parish who would not submit to his pastoral authority.
Something positive was needed: “But they think they do their duty
if they given them not the Sacrament of the Lords Supper, (when
it is perhaps avoided voluntarily by themselves) and in the mean
time we leave them stated members of our churches, and grant them
all other Communion with the Church, and call them not to Personal
Repentance for their sin.”94
Given the New Testament vision of the church as the bride of
Christ, discipline had to be instituted to keep the purity of its sacra-
ments. Unsurprisingly, Baxter’s emphasis on discipline as a necessary
complement to preserve the purity and stated intent of the Lord’s
Supper incurred the wrath of numerous divines who reproached him
and his colleagues “as a Sect . . . and Disciplinarians.”95
Historians such as Michael Walzer emphasised the revolutionary
potential of the Puritan political ideology.96 However, when Baxter’s
pastoral passion for re-establishing discipline is closely examined, it
becomes clear that for him, as Heiko Oberman has suggested, “refor-
mation [was] antirevolutionary in that it is, as its synonyms ‘con-
servation’ and ‘renovation’ imply, the return to the once-and-for-all
given order of God which has been constantly threatened but never
lost.”97 This unrelenting quest for the primitive purity was a com-
mon ideological goal of the Puritans, and it was this primitivism that
lay at the heart of Baxter’s desire for restoring pastoral discipline to
its earliest praxis.98
Edification was a Pauline concept writ large in Puritan life and
faith. Building the community through gadding to sermons, memo-
rizing their main points, meeting with like-minded believers for prayer

94
RP, p. 214.
95
Ibid., p. 111.
96
Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: a study in the origins of radical politics
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966); Christopher Hill, The World
Turned Upside Down: radical ideas during the English Revolution (New York: Viking Press,
1972).
97
Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: the shape of late medieval thought,
illustrated by key documents (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967), p. 20.
98
See Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives; J.S. Coolidge, The Pauline Renaissance in
England.
104  

and communion of saints formed the ideal Puritan ecclesiological

context. However, a genuine dialectical tension remained for non-
separating Puritan ministers and laity: pursuing edification in a parish
church.
According to John Field and Thomas Wilcox’s Admonition to the
Parliament of 1572, the ideal way to administer discipline faithfully
was “to plant in every congregation a lawful and godly seignorie,”
implying that there should no longer be any diocesan bishops, but
rather “equalitie of ministers.”99 When we come to William Bradshaw
and William Ames, both of whom Baxter praised throughout his
writings, a clear emphasis on congregational discipline is continued
as an Elizabethan Puritan legacy in order to ensure a true com-
munion of saints.100 The line of demarcation between bene esse and
ad esse as regard the place discipline had in ecclesiological consider-
ation was often blurred.
When we examine the texts of English Puritanism—both the 1605
and 1640 editions—more than 70 per cent of the discussion focuses
on ecclesiology: the nature of the true church, its officers, and the
right administration of discipline. Although there were textual emen-
dations, most likely by Ames, the disciplinary focus did not change
substantially. In the 1640 edition, however, Ames put a more con-
gregational spin to the paragraph on public consent before discipline
could be carried out. An emendation of more substantive nature,
however, was the move from defining the “true visible Church of Christ”
of the Puritans as “men ordinarilye joining in the worship of God,”
to that of “true beleevers.”101 This change reflects the general trend
of English Puritanism toward a more Congregationalist-leaning eccle-
siology. As the terms of conformity and limits of nonconformity
became harder to negotiate in the years under Laud, the tension
reached its climax in the ‘Et cetera oath’ of 1640, requiring unques-
tionable allegiance to the Church of England and its ecclesiastical
rules and regulations, which was completely unacceptable for many
Puritans.102

99
Admonition to the Parliament (1572), in Puritan Manifestoes, eds. W.H. Frere and
C.E. Douglas (New York: E.S. Gorham, 1954), p. 16.
100
Brachlow, The Communion of Saints, pp. 26–30, 35–41, 46–47, 56–60.
101
William Bradshaw, English Puritanisme (1605 edn.), p. 5, sig. ¶1. Cf. William
Bradshaw, English Puritanisme (1640 edn.), p. 6, sig. ¶1.
102
See Tom Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England, pp. 310–32.
       105

This was a sticking point for Baxter as well. He was unsure of

taking a full pastorate because of the unsettled nature of parochial
discipline in Kidderminster. He remedied this lack by teaching his
flock about the nature of the church, catechizing them to know the
fundamentals of the faith, and creating the Worcestershire Association
to facilitate the reform of the parishes in his county.103 By the time
his Reformed Pastor was published in 1656, the situation from the
Elizabethan Puritan days was dramatically changed in that the golden
hour which the earlier generation could only dream of had now
come to the “Puritans in power.” One of the first things to be
clarified was a correct understanding of discipline. In the sixteenth
century the word “discipline” often had an extended range of mean-
ing, including polity, type of government in the church, and the act
of purifying the church by admonishing, restoring and excommuni-
cating an offender. Baxter asserted that amid such diverse uses of
the word, the true meaning could easily be forgotten. “I know,”
Baxter argued, “that when the Church began to be tainted with vain
inventions, the word Discipline began to have another signification
(for . . . austere impositions, touch not, taste not, handle not) but its the
antient and truly Christian Discipline that I am contending for.”104
Baxter cited St. Cyprian’s treatise on pastoral conduct wherein he
declared God’s “threatenings to negligent Pastors” who disregarded
discipline. For Baxter’s polemical purposes, the significance of this
pre-Nicene bishop was primarily his emphasis on discipline and keep-
ing the purity of the communion intact.105 Baxter extolled the courage
of Cyprian: “When the Martyrs and Confessors would (upon others
perswasions) have had some offenders restored before they had made
Confession, and manifested openly Repentance for their sin, and
been absolved by the Pastor, Cyprian resisteth it, and tells them that
they that stand so firmly to the faith, should stand as firmly to Christs
Law and Discipline.”106 He argued that the majority of “godly

103
At the outset of the Worcestershire Association, Baxter and his colleagues
pledged to “first instruct our people in divers Sermons about the Nature of a
Church.” See CC, sig. B2r.
104
RP, p. 115.
105
Cyprian, Letters lxvii. 9, in ANF, 5:370.
106
RP, 114. Cyprian wrote: “Yet I hear that certain of the presbyters . . . have
already begun to communicate with the lapsed . . . when it was fitting that they
should attain to these things in due course.” See Cyprian, Letters xi. 2, in ANF,
5:292.
106  

ministers about us that gather not new churches, but (on sufficient
reasons and joint agreement) do only call the whole parish to know
whether they own their membership, and them for their Pastors, do
find almost none but a few Godly that will own it, for fear of being
troubled by Discipline.”107
For Baxter the “publike means” appointed by Christ for salvation
were preaching, the Lord’s Supper, and discipline, by which the min-
ister was to “rebuke with authority the scandalous and unruly,” thus
revealing the significance he attached to pastoral discipline.108 Mutual
admonition among the laity was another significant part of disci-
pline. This was, as Patrick Collinson put it, the apotheosis of vol-
untary religion: activism and spiritual monitoring turned to the purpose
of edification, not vilification. Baxter maintained that this “horizon-
tal discipline” would enhance the communion of saints in the enjoy-
ment of the Lord’s Supper and facilitate ministerial discipline as well.
He thus urged his flock to admonish each other “lovingly and mod-
estly,” and added, “but be sure you do it, and that seriously.” He
maintained that this was “the first step in Discipline. Expect not that
your Ministers should put any from the Sacrament, whom you have
not thus admonished once and again.”109 Moreover, he proceeded
to argue that discipline was possible only within a covenanted com-
munity. In that context, he insisted on the necessity of discipline to
a local magnate, Sir Ralph Clare, the go-between for Henry Ham-
mond. Baxter wrote in February 1656 that he “will be a Pastor to
none that will not be under Discipline: That were to be a half Pastor,
and indulge Men in an unruliness and contempt of the Ordinance
of Christ.”110
Recognizing that his emphasis on discipline might be misconstrued
as an act of separation, Baxter added that all associating ministers
agreed that “our present Churches are true particular organized
Churches of Christ.” Consequently, a church-reforming covenant,
not “a Church-making Covenant,” was required of the would-be
members. This creation of ecclesiola in ecclesia was the best “means
for our more facile and successful exercise of some Discipline and

107
CDRS, sig. E1r.
108
ADMC, p. 41. See also Reliquiae, II. 161, §33.
109
SER, sig. a2v.
110
Reliquiae, II. §33, 161.
       107

Government of our Congregations.”111 Though in theory the parish

church was regarded as a church, a semi-gathered church was formed
out of it, and this was often argued to have been an inevitable out-
come of Baxter’s—and Puritans’ in general—reforming ecclesiologi-
cal program. Baxter emphasized that the ultimate purpose of discipline
was “not for the offender himself, but for the Church,” and that
this was the “last remedy” for ushering in the reformation.112
For Baxter, the program of parish discipline was comprised of five
steps which would be facilitated by the support of the Worcestershire
Association. After private reproofs to the individual, “more publike
reproof,” “perswading the person to meet expression of Repentance,”
praying for him or her, “restoring the penitent,” and “excluding and
avoiding the impenitent” were the steps in disciplinary cases. The
“publike meeting of chosen persons (the Officers and some Delegates
of the Church on their behalf )” was to review all pertinent mater-
ial before gathering monthly to discuss disciplinary cases from all
associating churches.113 He looked to the Directory of Worship of
the Westminster Assembly for theological support for the reforma-
tion of discipline.114 His “disciplinary syllogism” summarizes the zeal
for reform of discipline as a key to his ecclesiological re-configuration:
“to be against Discipline is tantum non to be against the Ministry;
and to be against the Ministry, is tantum non to be absolutely against
the Church; and to be against the Church is neer to being absolutely
against Christ.”115
Just as Bucer and Calvin were deeply committed to build the
Church, which was often interpreted as the domain of Christ’s spir-
itual reign, so Baxter’s program of pastoral discipline was to pro-
mote a “further enlargement of the Kingdom of Christ.”116 In addition
to the Patristic authorities, Baxter also turned to the testimonies of
the magisterial reformers. Reminding his ministerial colleagues of the
necessity of discipline for the church truly reformed, he quoted from

111
CC, p. 10.
112
RP, p. 98.
113
Ibid., p. 95. Congregational input in the disciplinary process was to have “the
whole congregation . . . pray for them [the impenitent].” Ibid., pp. 105, 108.
114
Ibid., p. 109.
115
Ibid., p. 112.
116
Ibid., p. 134. See Bucer, De Regno Christi, pp. 174–394; Calvin, “The Catechism
of the Church of Geneva (1545),” in Calvin: theological treatises, trans. J.K.S. Reid
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954), pp. 95–96.
108  

the “words of two of the most godly, laborious, judicious Divines

that most ever the Church of Christ had since the daies of the
Apostles”: Calvin and Zanchius. This was a strategic selection: Calvin,
especially among the Puritans, was regarded as the reformed pastor
par excellence, thus to cite his authority would only bolster Baxter’s
own claims. In fact, Calvin was committed to restoring primitive bib-
lical vision of the communion of saints through discipline.117 He
asserted, “For indeed, the truth of God shines more brightly of itself
in this evangelical order of discipline, than to allow of it being eas-
ily overlaid with such lying devices.”118
In the first lengthy citation, Calvin affirmed the indispensable
nature of discipline:
if no society, indeed, no house which has even a small family, can be
kept in proper condition without discipline, it is much more necessary
in the church, whose condition should be as ordered as possible.
Accordingly, as the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the church,
do does discipline serve as its sinews, through which the members of
the body hold together, each in its own place. Therefore, all who
desire to remove discipline or to hinder its restoration . . . are surely
contributing to the ultimate dissolution of the church.119
For both Calvin and Baxter, there existed a shared commitment to
restore the primitive order of doctrine and discipline, both of which
were complementary elements for preparing the visible church for
its eschatological consummation. Peter Wilcox has demonstrated that
the pursuit of “restoration,” often considered to be a special pre-
rogative of the radical reformers, was also equally appropriate to
describe the work of reformation for Calvin.120 A similar case has
been made in Puritan studies by T.D. Bozeman, who spoke of the
Puritan paradox in which only by “retrogressing” to the primitive
days can a genuine reformation take place.121 Neither Calvin nor
Baxter expected a cataclysmic overhaul of existing world or ecclesi-

117
Wilhelm Niesel, The Theology of Calvin, trans. H. Knight (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1956), pp. 197–99; Institutes, IV. i. 8; IV. xii. 1.
118
Letter from Calvin to Myconius, dated 14 March 1542, in Jules Bonnet, ed.,
Letters of Calvin, 4 vols. (New York, 1972 repr.), 1:317.
119
Institutes, IV.xii.1, cited in Baxter, RP, sigs. b3r–v.
120
See for example, Peter Wilcox, “The Restoration of the Church in Calvin’s
Commentaries in Isaiah the Prophet,” ARG 85 (1994), pp. 68–96. For Baxter’s com-
mitment to restoring primitive discipline, see “The Preface” to FDCW, p. 11.
121
Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives, pp. 19–22.
       109

astical order, nor did they share the radical sectaries’ chiliastic tri-
umphalism. The provisional nature of current reform of the church
was not to produce desperation or separation, instead the providence
of God, the promise of Christ and the presence of the Spirit were
to encourage an active involvement in efforts to achieve a greater
resemblance to the invisible and ideal church by emulating the exam-
ple of the primitive days. Justifying the eucharistic practice of Geneva
to Bishop Sadoleto, Calvin highlighted his restorationist/primitivist
conviction: “All we have attempted,” explained Calvin, “is to restore
the native purity” of the ordinances to re-fashion the now-moribund
practice “back to its fountainhead.”122
Baxter cited the Institutes again to show that neglecting discipline
militated against divine wisdom. Moreover, this unremedied situa-
tion would inexorably ruin the church: “Those who trust that with-
out this bond of discipline the church can long stand are, I say,
mistaken; unless, perhaps, we can with impunity go without that aid
which the Lord foresaw would be necessary for us.”123 To facilitate
discipline, Baxter divided the church into two parts: pars gubernans
and pars gubernata, the governing part and the governed part, one
possessing the power of direction, the other the power of discretion.
This was quite similar to Calvin’s own position wherein he “divide[d]
the church into two chief orders: clergy and people.”124 Correspond-
ingly, there were two kinds of discipline. One was discipline admin-
istered among laity, while the other necessitated the presence, guidance
and verdict of the ministers whose decision nevertheless required the
people’s consent. Article XVIII of Christian Concord highlighted the
necessity of popular consent for the smooth running of this resusci-
tated pastoral machinery: “Discipline cannot be exercised without
the peoples consent . . . and we have at present no full discovery of
their consent.”125 Thus, this would, at least theoretically, preclude
the possibility of popular or priestly abuse or usurpation of power.
One crucial difference between Calvin’s and Baxter’s views on
pastoral discipline was that whereas Calvin believed that the Consistory

122
John Olin, ed., A Reformation Debate: Sadoleto’s letter to the Genevans and Calvin’s
reply (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 88. See also Alexandre Ganoczy, The
Young Calvin, trans., David Foxgrover and Wade Provo (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1988), p. 373.
123
Institutes, IV. xii. 4, cited in RP, sig. b3v.
124
Institutes, IV. xii. 1.
125
CC, sig. B2, Article XVIII.
110  

was an indispensable extension of the ecclesiastical authority of Geneva

and utilized it extensively, for Baxter, perhaps due to the relative
lack of magisterial or state support for such ecclesiastical machinery,
his rhetoric of discipline became increasingly congregational.126 Baxter
cited from the other great divine, Zanchius, to substantiate his em-
phasis on the relative autonomy of congregations in administering
discipline.
Hieronymus Zanchius (1516–1590) was an Italian reformer who
held the chair of theology at Heidelberg. He was famous for his
Reformed scholasticism, defence of absolute double predestination,
and casuistical insights.127 Though he had never been to England,
Zanchius was keenly interested in the direction of the reformation
in England. In his letter to Elizabeth, written on 10 September 1571,
he exhorted the Queen to complete the reformation.128 Similar con-
cern was expressed in his letter to Edmund Grindal, originally writ-
ten in 1572, and subsequently printed in his Operum Theologicorum.129
Ames and Perkins alike sought Zanchius’s authority to bolster their
views on ceremony and cases of conscience.130
Baxter, after citing from Zanchius’s De Ecclesia, asked: “But what
if the Magistrate will not help us? Nay, what if he were against it?”
He then quoted Zanchius, who had argued that despite the absence
of magisterial cooperation, notably during the first 300 years after
Christ, discipline was exercised, for “God gave this power [of disci-
pline] to us and since no one can remove this power from us,” it
“should be urged.” Moreover, Zanchius asserted in Cap. XXXIX
of De Ecclesia—quite similar to Baxter—that the necessity of disci-
pline also required a type of synod: “Ex necessitate disciplinae, conclude
necessitatem Synodi,” which in Baxter’s case was the Worcestershire

126
On the Genevan Consistory, see Robert Kingdon, “The Geneva Consistory
in the Time of Calvin,” in Alistair Duke, Andrew Petegree and Gillian Lewis, eds.,
Calvinism in Europe, 1540–1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp.
21–34; T.A. Lambert and Isabella Watt, eds., The Registers of the Consistory of Geneva
in the Time of Calvin, Volume I: 1542–1544 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000).
127
On Zanchius, see H.J. Hillerbrand, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation,
4 vols. (Oxford, 1996), s.v.
128
Printed in William Ames, A Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies in Gods Worship
(1633), Pt. II, pp. 43–64, here p. 49.
129
Zanchius, Operum Theologicorum, 3 vols. (Geneva, 1605), ep. ded. to vol. 1.
130
Ames, A Reply to Dr Mortons Generall Defence of Three Nocent Ceremonies (1622),
pp. 98–112. See “A Brief Discourse, Taken out of the Writings of Her. Zanchius,”
in William Perkins, A Case of Conscience (1595).
       111

Association.131 With or without magisterial collaboration, pastoral dis-

cipline was too essential for the bene esse of the church to be set aside
until a more opportune time. Moreover, with or without episcopal
presence and approval, discipline had to be carried out. This, Baxter
knew, had been a major area of contention among the godly dur-
ing the Interregnum. In fact, in the Reformed Pastor, he suggested that
excessive magisterial intervention would prove counterproductive:
“too much interposition of the sword with our Discipline, would do
more harm than good. It would but corrupt it by the mixture, and
make it become a humane thing.”132
To buttress his point, he cited from William Lyford, an episcopal
divine who had emphasized that “every minister is vested with this
authority by the Law of this Land,” thus he “hath the power of
Christs Ordinances to dispense the same in that Congregation or
Flock,” including discipline. But for excommunication from the church
and suspension from sacramental communion, ministers needed “the
assistance and consent of the Congregation.”133 Thomas Ball, a noted
Puritan minister of Northamptonshire, was cited as supporting Baxter’s
view that every minister, in the very act of his ordination, received
the power to exercise discipline as well:
Yet Bishops granted to all that they ordained Presbyters, the use and
exercise of Discipline as well as Doctrine. . . . (Will you then give your
faithful diligence always so to Minister the Doctrine and Sacraments,
and the Discipline of Christ as the Lord hath commanded . . . so that
you may . . . charge with all diligence and to keep and observe the
same).134
Thus for Ball, Lyford and Baxter, the touchstone of their pastoral
theology was that “every Minister is Episcopus Gregis, a Bishop in his
own Parish,” a position that provided the requisite impetus for restor-
ing discipline.135
The easier option, which Baxter always excoriated, was separa-
tism. We have seen in the preceding chapters, however, that his

131
Zanchius, De Ecclesia, pp. 134–35, cited in RP, sig. b5v. See Zanchius, Operum
Theologicorum, 3 vols. (Geneva, 1605), 3:533ff. Cf. “The Preface” to FDCW, p. 11.
132
RP, pp. 228–29, 231.
133
William Lyford, Lyford’s Legacie (1656), p. 55, cited in RP, sigs. b6r–b7r.
134
Thomas Ball, Poimhnopurgow: pastorum propugnaculum (1656), part. iii. chap. 4,
cited in RP, sig. b7v.
135
Lyford, Lyford’s Legacie, p. 55, cited in RR, sig. b6v. For Baxter’s own espousal
of Episcopi gresis, see his FDCW, “Preface,” p. 5.
112  

ecclesiology incorporated the strengths of semi-separatism, the eccle-

siola in ecclesia paradigm. This was the best option available for him
without abandoning the goal of revitalizing the parish to witness his
ideal of “exclusive ecclesiology” fulfilled in the context of an “inclu-
sive ecclesiology.” To do so, discipline was an essential component.
Reminiscing about the state of ecclesiastical discipline in the years
before the Civil War, Baxter, in typical pungency, narrated his expe-
rience of the days under Laud:
Besides this, there was scarce such a thing as Church-Government or
Discipline known in the Land; but only this harassing of those that
dissented from them. In all my life I never lived in the Parish where
one person was publikely admonished or brought to publike penitence
or excommunicated. . . . Only I have known now and then one for
getting a bastard, that went to the Bishops Court and paid their fees. . . .
But the antient Discipline of the Church was unknown. And indeed
it was made by them impossible, when one man that lived at a dis-
tance from them and knew not one of many hundreds of the Flock,
did take upon him the sole Jurisdiction (and executed it not by him-
self, but by a lay-Chancellor) excluding the Pastors of the several
Congregations.
Therefore, those who “pleaded for Discipline, were called by the
New name of Disciplinarians” as though to desire that were a “kind
of Heresie.”136 Nevertheless, in Baxter’s ecclesiology, discipline was
an essential element for the visible church. He maintained that rightly
established discipline reflects the headship of Christ over his church
since the visible church was a “political society,” headed by Christ,
gathered for the purpose of divine worship, the communion of saints,
and obedience to God:
I know that Discipline is not essential to a Church; but what of that?
Is it not therefore a duty; and necessary to its well-being; Yea more,
The power of Discipline is essential to a particular Political Church:
And what is the Power for, but for the work and use? As there is no
Common-wealth that hath not partem imperantem, as well as partem sub-
ditam, so no Church that hath not partem regentem, in one Pastor or
more.137

136
RP, pp. 155, 156.
137
Ibid., p. 306.
       113

Using the metaphor of a hospital and a school, Baxter underscored

his ecclesiological conviction that just as patients were restored to
physical health, those who were wayward spiritually could be brought
back to spiritual wholeness by pastoral discipline, while those who
are enjoying the communion of saints were taught deeper truths of
Christ by the “under-Schoolmasters,” the pastors, to grow into matu-
rity.138 His endorsement of discipline may make him a “church-type
Amesian” as he strove to implement a congregational episcopacy in
which the minister could exercise the governing power over his flock
while the synod served a consultative rather than a coercive role.
This would be severely tested during the Restoration.139

VI. C

Baxter’s zeal to reform the parish churches of England during the

Interregnum had to be modified when the Restoration shifted the
ecclesiastical contours dramatically. Prior to the Restoration, he inde-
fatigably emphasized pure communion and right implementation of
parochial discipline as keys for true reformation. However, his zeal
to see the nation converted was always checked by an equal dislike
of separatism. The tension between exclusive and inclusive ecclesi-
ologies clashed more painfully during the Restoration. As we shall
see in Chapter Seven, he modified his view of prelacy in general
and the Restoration Church of England in particular to see it as
deviation from true English Protestantism. On the other hand, even
in the drastically different ecclesiological context of the Restoration,
he emphasized that although discipline would be ideal, its absence
ought not prompt separatism: “It is possible that Preaching, Prayer
and Praise may be so excellently performed in some churches that
want both Discipline and the Lords Supper, and all so coldly and igno-
rantly managed in another Church that hath all the Ordinances,
that mens Souls may much more flourish and prosper under the
former than the later.”140
Similarly Baxter encouraged the nonconformists: “You must do
your best to promote true Church-Discipline: but must not separate

138
FDCW, p. 13.
139
Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England, p. 328.
140
CD, p. 866.
114  

from the Church because it is neglected.” Nevertheless, he allowed

that for edification and the communion of saints, nonconformists
could move elsewhere to find a more reformed parish as long as
such a move was not misconstrued as an act of separation.141 The
problem of separatism was one of the greatest thorns on Baxter’s
side throughout his career. As we have already seen, his creation of
the Worcestershire Association sought to address the issue of the
purity of the church. His plan was not to pursue ecclesiastical purity
in isolation from the parochial context, but rather from within.
Baxter’s pursuit of purity in unity will be the topic of the following
chapter.

141
PMB, p. 347.
 PART II

UNITY, PURITY, AND LIBERTY PURSUED

This page intentionally left blank
 CHAPTER FIVE

THE PURSUIT OF PURITY IN UNITY:

THE WORCESTERSHIRE ASSOCIATION
AND THE RHETORIC OF PARTIAL CONFORMITY

I. I: H  H

In 1691, the year of his death, Baxter published his Penitent Confession.
He highlighted the life-long commitment to church unity as he rem-
inisced about the vicissitudes of his controversial life: “Whoever . . .
reading my many . . . Writings for Concord and Peace . . . [will] know
that it hath been my chief . . . labour these forty four years to pro-
mote Unity . . . and yet will accuse my . . . Life, as . . . contrary to
all this, must bring . . . very clear evidence to prove me so mad and
deadly an Enemy to so . . . painful Labours.”1
It seems clear that Baxter desired to bequeath a legacy of his ecu-
menical vision. A plethora of his letters and nearly thirty per cent
of his published works dealt with the issues of Christian unity.2 His
view of church unity, however, has not gone uncontested, neither
during his lifetime nor in subsequent historiography. Those influenced
by the Whiggish historiographical perspective and those who sought
to propagate an ecumenical witness in church history lauded his
endeavors for irenicism. Revisionist historiography, however, criti-
cized the view that a timeless ecumenical core existed, and offered
a historicist interpretation of early modern irenicism.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge “affectionately admire(d) and bless(ed)
his peace-seeking spirit.”3 For Norman Sykes, Baxter was a man

1
RBPC, pp. 34, 41.
2
For the predominance of the subject of “Unity, Church” (123 letters, the most
frequently discussed subject)—and related themes, “Comprehension” (23 letters)
and “Communion, Occasional” (25 letters), see N.H. Keeble, A Subject Index to the
Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter (London: Dr. Williams’s Library, 1994),
pp. 10, 17.
3
H.N. Coleridge, ed., The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: W.
Pickering, 1836–39), pp. 264, 265.
118  

“whose genius was fertile in projects of union.”4 Horton Davies sim-

ply called Baxter “the first exponent of Ecumenism in England.”5
W.K. Jordan eulogized Baxter for his “catholicity,” which was “so
broad as to include the several elements of Protestantism.”6 For the
two leading contemporary Baxter scholars—N.H. Keeble and Geoffrey
F. Nuttall—his mere catholicity was one aspect that merited exten-
sive discussion in their works.7
More recently, however, Peter Lake and Anthony Milton have
provided a more ambivalent reading of seventeenth-century English
irenicism. Using Joseph Hall and John Dury, who were both instru-
mental in shaping Baxter’s irenical thought, Lake and Milton sketched
the polemical situation and political shifts of early Stuart England
to show how the rhetoric of irenicism of Hall, Dury and others was
used as a neutralizing device, and questioned the prevailing ortho-
doxy of “essentialist ecumenical succession.”8 William Lamont has
argued that much of the modern interpretation of Baxter as a trail-
blazing ecumenist owes more to the ecumenical perspective of J.W.
Lloyd-Thomas, who, as the editor of the modern abridgement of
the Reliquiae Baxterianae, had created a far more irenical portrayal
of Baxter than the manuscript of the Reliquiae warrants.9 More recently,

4
Norman Sykes, in Ruth Rouse and Stephen Neill, eds., A History of the Ecumenical
Movement, 1517–1948 (London: S.P.C.K., 1954), pp. 145–46.
5
Horton Davies, The English Free Churches (London: Oxford University Press, 1952),
p. 79.
6
W.K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 3 vols. (London:
Allen & Unwin, 1938), 3:332–33.
7
Keeble, Richard Baxter: Puritan man of letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp.
22–30; idem, “C.S. Lewis, Richard Baxter and ‘Mere Christianity,’” C&L 30 (1981),
pp. 27–44. Nuttall, Richard Baxter, pp. 64–84; idem, “Presbyterians and Independents:
some movements for unity 300 years ago,” JPHS 10 (1952), pp. 4–15; “The
Worcestershire Association: its membership,” JEH 1 (1950), pp. 197–206.
8
Peter Lake, “The Moderate and Irenic Case for Religious War,” in Mark
Kishlansky and Susan Amussen, eds., Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early
Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 55–83; Anthony
Milton, “‘The Unchanged Peacemaker’? John Dury and the politics of irenicism in
England, 1628–1643,” in Mark Greengrass, M. Leslie and Timothy Raylor, eds.,
Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),
pp. 95–117.
9
Lamont, pp. 79–80; idem, Puritanism and Historical Controversy (London: UCL
Press, 1996), p. 6; “The Religious Origins of the English Civil War,” in Gordon
Schochet, ed., Religion, Resistance and Civil War (Washington, D.C.: Folger Institute,
1990), pp. 6–8. See also Geoffrey F. Nuttall, “The MS. of Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696),”
JEH 6 (1955), pp. 73–79.
       119

J. William Black has questioned the simple equation of the Worces-

tershire Association with the modern effort for ecumenism, asserting
instead that Baxter’s primary interest was in implementing parochial
discipline, not unity for its own sake.10
This chapter contends that Baxter’s ecumenical aspirations can-
not be isolated from the context of the British Civil Wars, the
Interregnum and the Restoration.11 More specifically, his pursuit of
unity was shaped not merely by reading the “essential irenicist” writ-
ers such as Jacobus Acontius, Conrad Bergius, George Calixtus,
Ludovicus Crocius, Franciscus Junius or David Paraeus.12 A closer
reading of Baxter’s irenical corpus reveals the crucial role of the sep-
aratists and their quest for church purity in shaping his understanding
of unity. The creation of the Worcestershire Association was his bold-
est effort in ecclesiological re-configuration, and the separatist and
anticlerical threat were major impetuses. Baxter was committed to
pursuing peace and concord—though not in the terms dictated by
modern ecumenical temperaments. As seen in Part I, the tools for
achieving his goal of church concord were conversionistic preaching
combined with catechizing, reform of paedobaptism followed by evan-
gelical confirmation; and faithful administration of the Lord’s Supper
coupled with pastoral discipline for those in the covenanted church.
As the Apostles’ Creed makes clear, the church is both “One” and
“Holy,” united and pure. To be sure, as Black asserted, the Worcester-
shire Association was concerned with ecclesiological purity. However,
to see the Association’s work primarily as an exercise in establish-
ing discipline and purity misses a fundamental aspect of Baxter’s
ecclesiology: the interrelated nature of the church’s purity and unity.13

10
Black, “Richard Baxter and the Ideal of the Reformed Pastor,” Chap. 6.
11
Murray Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints: the separatist churches of London, 1616–1649
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 124; Margaret Spufford, Contrasting
Communities: English villagers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1974), p. 275. For the Restoration context of Baxter’s ecumenism,
see Reliquiae; N.H. Keeble, The Literary Culture of Nonconformity in Later Seventeenth-Century
England (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1987), pp. 25–32, 33–34, 36, 39, 56–57,
59; A.H. Wood, Church Unity without Uniformity (London: Epworth Press, 1963); R.L.
Greaves, Enemies under His Feet: radicals and Nonconformists in Britain, 1664–1677 (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 143–45; Roger Thomas, “Comprehension and
Indulgence,” in Nuttall and Chadwick, pp. 189–253.
12
For Baxter’s commendation of these “Peacemakers” over against Hugo Grotius’
insufficient terms of irenicism, see GRD, p. 8.
13
Black, “Richard Baxter and the Ideal of the Reformed Pastor,” pp. 137–38,
162.
120  

To pursue one at the expense of the other was counterintuitive.

Moreover, if he was primarily concerned with ecclesiological purity,
then his commitment to unity during the Restoration period, seen
in his occasional conformity, becomes problematic.14 On the other
hand, his pursuit of unity of the church needs to be seen in its sev-
enteenth-century context, and even in a more ambiguous light. His
vision for true concord left little room for the Roman Catholic
Church, nor did it entertain much salvific possibility for the Quakers
due to their denial of the established ministry.15 After sketching the
background of the pursuit of purity and the critical question of sep-
aratism that influenced his own view, the following issues will be dis-
cussed: Civil War religious radicalism, especially its anticlericalism
and its influence on the formation of the Association movement; the
rise of the Quakers and Baxter’s anti-popery; and post-Restoration
partial conformity as three significant ways of the pursuit of godly
unity and purity in this watershed period of Puritanism.

II. P P  S: A P D

On 14 January 1645, Edmund Calamy, a leading light among London

Presbyterians during the Civil War period, warned the Long Parliament
of the danger of covenant-breaking. With an eye on the growth of
the sects, he emphasized unity as a “part of the Covenant . . . so
much forgotten.” If “unity be destroyed,” he continued, “purity will
quickly also be destroyed. The Church of God is una as well as
sancta.”16 Although Calamy’s comment applied specifically to the con-
text of the British Civil Wars, it also represents the highly contro-
versial ecclesiological question among Puritans: is true reform possible
within the framework of the national church? Should not separation
be the logical and biblically-mandated position?

14
John Ramsbottom argues that the Presbyterians’ occasional conformity was less
opportunistic and more reflective of their commitment to the national church and
its unity. See his “Presbyterians and ‘Partial Conformity’ in the Restoration Church
of England,” JEH 43 (1992), pp. 249–70.
15
See B.G. Armstrong, “The Modernity of Richard Baxter” (Unpublished dis-
sertation, Th.M., Princeton Theological Seminary, 1962), pp. 63–66; Hugh Martin,
Puritanism and Richard Baxter (London: SCM Press, 1954), p. 158.
16
Edmund Calamy, The Great Danger of Covenant-refusing and Covenant-breaking (1645),
p. 36.
       121

The quest for purity and edification was a shared concern for all
Puritans.17 What divided a separatist from a moderate or non-sepa-
rating Puritan was the effectiveness of the national church as a pros-
elytizing institution. The separatists found the Church of England to
be an ineffective agent of reform and called for separation. The non-
separating Congregationalists, while sharing much of the separatist
complaint, stopped short of separatism.18 Moderate Puritans sought
reform within the national church although the residual popish ele-
ments were acknowledged, as “it was not the existence of abuse that
was at stake; merely the exact status and significance of those abuses.”19
In some of his earliest extant correspondence, Baxter contended
with a separatist in Shrewsbury who “pleaded for seperation [sic]
causelessly,” citing William Bradshaw, Arthur Hildersham and John
Paget as authorities against separation.20 The discussion of Baxter’s
pursuit of purity in unity will follow a brief sketch of the anti-sepa-
ratism of Bradshaw as a representative of the triumvirate. This will
provide the context for Baxter’s commitment to purifying the parochial
congregations and his antipathy to separatism.
Bradshaw was a complex figure, who, though a protégé of Laurence
Chaderton, the moderate Puritan master of Emmanuel College,
Cambridge, spent most of his ministerial career as a nonconformist.21

17
See Frits Broeyer, “A Pure City: Calvin’s Geneva,” and Peter Staples, “Patterns
of Purification: the New England Puritans,” in W.E.A. Van Beek, ed., The Quest for
Purity: dynamics of Puritan movements (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1988), pp. 35–61,
63–87.
18
For the term “non-separating Congregationalism,” see Perry Miller, Orthodoxy
in Massachusetts 1630–1650 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933), pp.
73–101. For a view which locates the origin of the separatist ecclesiology within
the Elizabethan radical Puritan tradition, see Stephen Brachlow, The Communion of
Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Between the terms “semi-separatist”
and “non-separating Congregationalist,” I have adopted the latter for this thesis,
since that better explains the rationale behind Baxter’s appeal to the Ames-Bradshaw
circle as authority for his own ecclesiological position.
19
Lake, Moderate Puritans, p. 273.
20
Letters, v. 51. For the question of the identity of the recipient, see the head-
note to this letter, CCRB, #13. For Hildersham, Samuel Clarke, ed., A Generall
Martyrlogie (1651), pp. 374–86. On his anti-separatism, see John Cotton, The Way
of the Congregational Churches Cleared (1648), p. 7. On Paget’s anti-separatism, see Arrow
against the Separation of the Brownists (Amsterdam, 1618), “To the Christian Reader.”
21
On Bradshaw, see DNB; BDBR; Thomas Gataker’s “Life of . . . Bradshaw,” in
Clarke, A Martyrologie (1651). Bradshaw’s non-separating Congregationalism is dis-
cussed in Miller, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, pp. 76, 78, 91, 95, 98; Lake, Moderate
Puritans, pp. 262–78; Webster, The Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England, pp. 290–95,
122  

Bradshaw’s views on conformity, adiaphora, and the nature of English

Puritanism were immensely influential. In fact, during critical junc-
tures in the mid-seventeenth century, a number of his works were
reprinted, highlighting his prominence as a spokesman for non-
separating Puritanism. His best known work, English Puritanisme,
first published in 1605, was republished by William Ames at the
behest of the Commons in 1640, and again in 1660 along with a
number of other tracts on “worship & ceremonies.” As discussed in
Chapter Four, ecclesiology was a central concern in English Puritanisme,
comprising nearly seven-tenths of the tract. Bradshaw and other non-
separating Congregationalists gave a clear exposition of the congre-
gational nature of the New Testament church.22 However, they were
equally clear on the evil of separatism and in defending the eccle-
sial validity of the Church of England, however marred by impu-
rity. Bradshaw’s The Unreasonablenesse of the Separation was a cogent
defence of his ecclesiological position against the separatist Francis
Johnson. It was re-published in 1640, with additional material, this
time refuting the separatist John Canne. This reflected both the abid-
ing influence of Bradshaw’s anti-separatism and the continuing thorny
problem of separatism. In fact, numerous separatists insisted that
they derived their separatist view by reading Ames and Bradshaw.23
However, his biographer, Thomas Gataker, asserted that Bradshaw’s
zeal for purity of the church was only matched by his equally pas-
sionate anti-separatism.24 Bradshaw surely acknowledged the existence
of the “dross of popery” in the Church of England. However, for
him, the preaching of the right doctrine and the anti-papal stance
of the Church of England qualified it as a true church.25 Despite

328–31. For Bradshaw’s anti-popery, see Lake, “William Bradshaw, Antichrist and
the Community of the Godly,” JEH 36 (1985), pp. 570–89.
22
See, for example, William Ames, A Second Manuduction for Mr. Robinson (1615),
p. 33; Paul Baynes, The Diocesans Tryall (1621); William Bradshaw, English Puritanisme
(1640 edn.), p. 6.
23
For the context of Ames’ debate with the separatists, see Two Letters on Christian
Fellowship: one by . . . Ames, the other by . . . John Robinson (1611); Keith Sprunger, The
Learned Doctor William Ames: Dutch backgrounds of English and American Puritanism (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1972), pp. 37–44. See also John Canne, A Necessitie of
Separation (1634), pp. 67, 131, 242; [Francis Johnson], Certayne Reasons . . . Proving That
It Is Not Lawfull to Heare . . . Any . . . Ministerie of the Church of England (1608); Lake,
Moderate Puritans, pp. 272–76.
24
Gataker, “Bradshaw,” in Clarke, A Martyrologie (1652), p. 134.
25
Bradshaw, The Unreasonablenesse of the Separation (Dort, 1614), sigs. B3v, I3r–v,
N4r.
       123

the presence of the liturgy, which Bradshaw deemed neither adi-

aphorous nor biblical, he acknowledged that some kernel of good can
be extracted by the godly minister and edifyingly fed to the flock.
Ministerial imperfection could never justify separation, for it could
never be proven
that the admittance of this ministry is a hindrance of a better, but
rather it is a means to keep out a worse and a way in time to bring
a better, if a better be to be brought in. . . . And if it be as lawful for
us to conjecture as for him their general schism and rent from this
ministry hath been one main and principal means to uphold it as
it is.26
Against the backdrop of this non-separatism we will discuss Baxter’s
pursuit of purity in ecclesiastical unity.27 During the Interregnum,
his commitment to non-separating parish reform met its formidable
challenge from the rise of radical religion with its “doubly-perni-
cious” combination of anticlerical and separatistic tendencies.

III. T W A: I G  A

  P  P  U   C 
R R   1650

Anticlericalism has been an important, if controversial, interpretive

matrix to understand the extent, cause and effect of the Reformation,
both on the Continent and in England. The story is fairly straight-
forward: the growing discontent of the laity (and some clergy) with
multifaceted manifestations of laxity and moral turpitude of the clergy
during the late medieval era was a catalyst for the fomenting of zeal
to reform the church. Scholars have been divided over the role
played by anticlerical attitudes in bringing about such dramatic
changes, and although more sophisticated and less polarized views
have emerged recently, there exists a consensus that anticlericalism
was either a precursor or an outcome of the Reformation. Bob
Scribner commented, “Anticlericalism played an undoubted part as
a spur to reform and as a vehicle for popular religious dissent. It

26
Ibid., sig. G1r.
27
Baxter always extolled Bradshaw and other non-separating Congregationalists
for their ecclesiological commitment and their evangelistic zeal, of which “England
was not worthy.” See CC, p. 85; RP, p. 153; ANM, p. 70.
124  

might be overstating the case to claim it as a prime mover or as

the fuel of the Reformation movements, but its contribution is unde-
niable.”28 For the English context, John Guy, concurring with
Christopher Haigh’s view, has argued that it is more accurate to say
that “anticlericalism was a consequence, rather than a cause” of the
Henrician Reformation in England.29 However, when we move to
the 1640s and the Interregnum, we see that anticlericalism mani-
fested its explosive potency. As Christopher Hill demonstrated, the
fragmentation of religious unity, disappearance of cultural cohesion,
and eruption of political radicalism contributed to “a militant anti-
clericalism” which “was taken as axiomatic in the popular outlook.”30
Anticlericalism was a close corollary to, though not always a natural
consequence of, separatism. After the collapse of the Laudian régime
and political stability during the second-half of the 1640s, sects began
to proliferate in England.
Denouncing the beneficed clergy of the Church of England was
a rhetorical strategy often exploited by radical separatists. A Particular

28
See Bob Scribner, “Introduction,” in Scribner, Roy Porter and Mikulá? Teich,
eds., The Reformation in National Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), p. 17. For a survey of the extent of anticlericalism, see P.A. Dykema and
Heiko A. Oberman, eds., Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden:
E.J. Brill, 1993). See also Jonathan Grieser, “Anabaptism, Anticlericalism and the
Creation of a Protestant Clergy,” MQR 71 (1997), pp. 515–43; Susan Karant-Nunn,
“Neoclericalism and Anticlericalism in Saxony, 1555–1675,” Journal of Interdisciplinary
History 24 (1994), pp. 615–37. However, some have cautioned against excessive
dependence on anticlericalism as a momentum for the spread of the Reformation.
See Klaus Schreiner, “Gab es im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit Antikleri-
kalismus?”, Zeitschrift für Historiche Forschung 21 (1994), pp. 513–21; Nelson Minnich,
“The Role of Anticlericalism in the Reformation,” Catholic Historical Review 83 (1997),
pp. 452–61.
29
John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 293–94;
Christopher Haigh has strongly argued for the fictitious nature of Tudor anticleri-
calism, proffering the explanation that it cannot serve as an adequate explanatory
device for the Henrician Reformation. See his “Anticlericalism and the English
Reformation,” History 68 (1973), pp. 391–407. Cf. A.G. Dickens, The English Reformation
(London: B.T. Datsford, 1964), pp. 23–25, 83–104; “Shape of Anti-clericalism,” in
E.I. Kouri and T. Scott, eds., Politics and Society in Reformation Europe (Basinstoke,
UK: Macmillan, 1987). More recently, Richard Cosgrove, a historian of nineteenth-
century England, traced A.G. Dickens’ historiographical pedigree on anticlericalism,
concluding that it was James Froude’s mid-Victorian sensibilities that colored his
understanding of anticlericalism and Tudor Reformation. R. Cosgrove, “English
Anticlericalism: A Programmatic Assessment,” in Dykema and Oberman, Anticlericalism
in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, pp. 569–81.
30
Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (London: Temple Smith, 1972),
pp. 26–7, 28–32, 35–7, 102–3, 140–41; J.F. Maclear, “Popular Anti-clericalism in
the Puritan Revolution,” Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1955), p. 452.
       125

Baptist leader, Thomas Collier, in A Brief Discovery of the Corruption of

the Ministry of the Church of England, called the ministers of the estab-
lished church “ring-leaders of that mysticall (Babylonish) confusion,”
and followed with a three-pronged attack on them as de facto “Jewish
priests” but not genuine ministers of the new covenant, direct descen-
dants of Simon Magus, and “Artificiall Merchants,” paying money
for scholastic, not spiritual divinity. Since Collier’s tract was pub-
lished in 1647, we can see the deliberate anachronism of his attack
on the then already beleaguered Church of England shown in his
title, sweeping all the ministers who were not of separatistic tendency
under the same brush of ministerial infidelity.31 Rosemary O’Day
has persuasively shown that a “polarization of thought concerning
the nature of ministry and its relevance to salvation” occurred dur-
ing the Interregnum.32 If, as many sectaries argued, the light within
had come to all, irrespective of ordination, why should the minis-
ters maintain a monopoly on spiritual nurturing and edification?
The three main targets of anticlerical attack were tithes, social sta-
tus, and “the clergy’s claim to that special access to spiritual reme-
dies.”33 To answer the persistent queries of the sectaries and to
prevent the spread of the spirit of separatism and anticlericalism, the
godly ministers resorted to apologetics: public disputations with the
radical separatists, exploiting the genre of heresiography as a neu-
tralizing device, and endeavors to consolidate the power-base for pas-
toral activity by uniting various parties.34 Two of the best-known
heresiographers of this period were Thomas Edwards and Ephraim
Pagitt, who linked anticlericalism with political subversion as a pre-
cursor to social and cultural pandemonium. Pagitt’s attack on the

31
Thomas Collier, A Brief Discovery of the Corruption of the Ministry of the Church of
England (1647), sig. A2r, pp. 1–14, 15–36.
32
Rosemary O’Day, “Immanuel Bourne: a defence of the ministerial order,”
JEH 27 (1976), p. 101.
33
Andrew Pettegree, “The Clergy and the Reformation: from ‘Devilish Priesthood’
to new professional elite,” in Pettegree, ed., The Reformation of the Parishes (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1993), p. 1. For example, the issue of ministerial pre-
rogative in preaching and baptizing was attacked in England during the 1640s and
the 1650s: see Thomas Edwards, Gangraena (1646), pp. 29–30.
34
O’Day, “Immanuel Bourne,” pp. 101–2; Ann Hughes, “The Pulpit Guarded:
confrontations between orthodox and radicals in Revolutionary England,” in Stuart
Sim, Anne Laurence and W.R. Owens, eds., John Bunyan and His England (London:
Hambledon, 1990), pp. 31–50; idem, “The meanings of religious polemic,” in F.J.
Bremer, ed., Puritanism: Transatlantic perspectives on a seventeenth-century Anglo-American faith
(Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1993), pp. 201–29.
126  

Quakers focused on that very theme as he reported them proclaiming

that “This . . . is the holy age, the age of perfection, zeale and lib-
erty.” He interpreted the Quaker rhetoric of liberty from sin and
resultant anticlericalism as “confusion and madnesse, resistance, not
subjection.” This Quaker campaign against authority spilled over into
the ecclesiastical, political and cultural arena.35 Edwards, a conserv-
ative Presbyterian pamphleteer, set a benchmark for heresiography
when he wrote Gangraena (1646).36 The anticlerical threat of the mid-
to late-1640s was recounted with a sense of great alarm as he urged
both houses of Parliament to take swift action: “You have cast out
the Bishops and their Officers: and we have many that cast down
to the ground all Ministers in all the Reformed Churches.” Moreover,
while the Long Parliament did “cast out Ceremonies in the Sacraments,
as the Crosse, kneeling at the Lords Supper: and we have many cast
out the Sacraments, Baptisme and the Lords Supper.” In short, the
aspiration to reform the church from its impure elements, the iner-
tia of which was now overcome by the temporary elimination of
episcopacy, had now gained so much momentum that it was virtu-
ally out of control. Moreover, he argued that the sects had denied
“that the calling and making of Ministers of the Word and Sacraments
are not jure Divino, but a Minister comes to be so, as a Merchant,
Bookseller, Tailor, and such like.”37
Colleagues of Edwards shared an important habit of thought. While
Edwards, Pagitt and even Baxter would give painstakingly detailed
analyses of the genesis of various sects, their teleological perspective
helped to create a converging picture of the ultimate destiny of such
radical religious ideas—anarchy and the dissolution of ministerial and
societal order. These sects may have been created from different cul-
tural and ideological backgrounds, but soon in the minds of the con-

35
Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography (5th edn., 1654), pp. 140, 146. G.F. Nuttall
identifies the three arena of Quaker resistance in The Puritan Spirit (London: Epworth,
1967), pp. 170–76. For an in-depth analysis of Quaker religious language and atti-
tudes, see Nigel Smith, Perfection Proclaimed: language and literature in English radical reli-
gion 1640–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
36
Edwards’ authorial intent was to provide a comprehensive guide to the various
sects and heresies of his time. He cites Thomas Gataker, Gods Eye on Israel (1644);
Robert Baillie, Disswasive from the Errours of the Time (1646); Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography
(1645); and Daniel Featley, Dippers Dipt (1645). Gangraena was an instant success,
going through three editions in 1646 alone.
37
Ibid., 27, 29.
       127

servative clergymen and others, they were “shifting and amorphous

groups of people . . . congregating loosely about individual preach-
ers and flocking from one to another.”38
In The Saints Everlasting Rest, Baxter lamented the rise of Civil War
religious radicalism.39 The Puritan camaraderie forged during the
Laudian ecclesiastical regime was falling apart, and radicals criticized
the incongruity of the moderate Puritans’ half-reforming logic of
maintaining a national church. The cumulative effect of the Putney
Debates,40 the spread of the radical press,41 and several purgings of
Parliaments42 contributed to an unmistakable sense of apocalyptic
excitement and foreboding.43 For Baxter, the irony was that those
who awaited the day when “the scorners of Godliness [would be]
subdued, and the bitter prosecutors of the Church overthrown” were
now flying off from each other for divergent visions of the true
church.44
For Baxter, such pursuit of purity at the expense of unity priori-
tized individual piety at the expense of communal edification. After
his return from the Civil War, Baxter tirelessly fought against sep-
aratism and its anticlerical implications. The Gloucestershire minis-
ter John Sprint had highlighted the critical distinction between two
types of separatism: “the difference is, we suffer for separating in the
Church, you, out of the Church.”45 Baxter echoed a similar strain,
only to accentuate the positive that comes from “cohabitation”: “The
Comfort that Christians have in a suffering, self-denying course of
doing good, is a surer and more stable Comfort then that which is

38
William Haller, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1955), p. 203. Cf. Murray Tolmie’s The Triumph of the Saints
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
39
SER, pp. 110–18. See Keeble, Richard Baxter, pp. 94–100, for the Civil War
influence on the writing of SER.
40
A.S.P. Woodhouse, ed., Puritanism and Liberty: being the Army debates from the Clarke
Manuscripts with supplementary documents (1647–9) (London: Dent, 1984).
41
Tessa Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991); Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, pp. 17,
161–2; Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000).
42
David Underdown, Pride’s Purge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971).
43
On the general fear of the godly of the proliferation of the sects, see espe-
cially Thomas Edwards, Gangræna (1646); Ephraim Pagitt, Heresiography (5th edn.,
1654).
44
SER, p. 117.
45
Henry Ainsworth, Counterpoyson (Amsterdam, 1608), sig. A1r.
128  

drawn from the special advantages of Ordinances” found in gath-

ered assemblies.46 Moreover, Baxter continued,
the publique wellfare and Unity of the Churches, is to be preferred
before the . . . edifying of any single Member. . . . He that keeps in
Gods order under a meaner honest Minister, is like to be more hum-
ble, thriving Christian, then he that will break the order under pre-
tence of edification. . . . Gods work must be done before my own.47
He also broached the subject of unity among Episcopalians, Pres-
byterians, Independents and Erastians with Richard Vines, Master
of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Thomas Hill, Master of Trinity
College, Cambridge, and initiated a long-lasting epistolary relation-
ship with the peripatetic ecumenist John Dury.48
Anthony Milton and Peter Lake have cautioned against taking
irenic statements out of their unique historical situations. Taking seri-
ously the warning and taking a closer look at the Interregnum con-
text of Baxter’s irenic program, we can see that it was clearly forged
as a result of his conversations, letters, and treatises written to and
about these four parties, all of whom were deeply concerned about
the proliferation of radical religious ideas and sects.49 His ecumeni-
cal charity and tolerance reached its limit with separatists, either
“Quaker, Seeker, Ranter, Anabaptist,” or Roman Catholic.50 Such
necessity was then translated into action to form a supra-congrega-
tional ecclesiastical structure to pursue the purity of the church within

46
CC, pp. 35, 37.
47
Ibid., p. 37; RMPC, ep. ded., sigs. a2v–a3r. See also Peter White, Discoverie of
Brownisme (1605), p. 25; Peter Fairlambe, The Recantation of a Brownist, or a Reformed
Puritan (1606), sigs. C3r–v, G3r–H1r.
48
SER, sig. B3r; Letters, iii. 123 (from Vines, 7 September 1649[?]); Letters, iii.
272 (to Thomas Hill, 8 March 1652[?]); Letters, vi. 90 (to Dury, 7 May 1652); Letters,
vi. 94. For Hill and Vines, see DNB; Al. Cant.
49
A. Milton, “The Unchanged Peacemaker,” pp. 95–117; Peter Lake, “The
Moderate and Irenic Case for Religious War,” pp. 55–83.
50
Baxter’s identification of Roman Catholics as separatists may seem ironic to
modern readers. However, this was part of both his clear polemical strategy vis-à-vis
Roman Catholics and of his ecclesiological convictions. Ecclesiological polemics
between Rome and the Church of England had a long pedigree, ranging from John
Jewel’s classic, Apologia Ecclesiae Anglicanae (London, 1562), defended the ecclesiolog-
ical legitimacy of Church of England against the Catholics, to that of Richard
Bernard, Looke Beyond Luther: or an answere to that question, so often and so insultingly pro-
posed by our Adversaries, asking us; Where this our Religion was before Luthers time? (London,
1623), and to that of Baxter eventually.
       129

a united congregational framework.51 This led to the birth of the

Worcestershire Association.
There were two interrelated Elizabethan historical precedents. First,
Patrick Collinson illustrated in his article on the religious practice of
combination lectures—gathering local ministers together for monthly
lectures, culminating with a fellowship meal—fostered greater cleri-
cal sociability and godly solidarity, and these the means of pursuing
both purity and unity of the parishes.52 On this foundation that
Baxter added his idea of associations. In The Reformed Pastor (1656),
he linked the Elizabethan practice of prophesyings and ministerial
exercises as historical precedents, and mentioned Archbishop Edmund
Grindal:
My third and last Request is, that all the faithful Ministers of Christ
would without any more delay Unite and Associate for the furtherance
of each other in the work of the Lord, and the maintaining of Unity
and Concord in his Churches. And that they would not neglect their
Brotherly meetings to those ends, nor yet spend them unprofitably,
but improve them to their edification, and the effectual carrying on
the work. Read that excellent Letter of Edmond Grindal Arch-Bishop of
Canterbury to Q. Elizabeth, for Ministerial meetings and exercises.53
Secondly, Baxter added a parenthetical statement which revealed
an important source—in addition to that of Ames-Bradshaw non-
separating congregationalism—of his reform impulse and the type of
reformation envisioned in Kidderminster: “such Bishops would have
prevented our contentions and wars.”54 The Grindalian vision for
the reform focused on leading the Elizabethan church closer to
the Genevan ideal through revitalized preaching, catechizing, and
more assiduous attention to the “cure of souls.” Grindal’s reform,

51
Baxter asserted that in Worcestershire a Presbyterial government was attempted,
but “all our endeavors were frustrate.” See CC, p. 31.
52
Collinson, “Lectures by Combination: structures and characteristics of church
life in 17th-century England,” in Godly People (London: Hambledon Press, 1983),
pp. 467–98.
53
RP, sig. c1v.
54
Ibid. On Grindal and his importance for the trajectory of the English Reformation,
see Collinson, “The Reformer and the Archbishop: Martin Bucer and an English
Bucerian,” “The Downfall of Archbishop Grindal and Its Place in Elizabethan
Political and Ecclesiastical History,” both in Godly People (1983), pp. 19–44, 371–98;
idem, Archbishop Grindal, 1519–1583: the struggle for a reformed church (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1979).
130  

however, was short-lived due to his unexpected removal from his

archbishopric, and such a vision of reform was neither sufficiently
“Puritan” nor “Laudian” in the increasingly polarizing ecclesiologi-
cal context of the Caroline Church. Significantly Baxter sought to
re-invigorate the reform of the church along this evangelical line,
envisioned and proposed first by Bucer, further developed by Grindal
and left dormant for nearly half a century. The institutional struc-
ture to fulfill Baxter’s aspiration for reform was the Worcestershire
Association.
When was the Worcestershire Association formed? Judging from
the correspondence between Baxter and Dury and between the
Worcestershire Association and the Cumberland & Westmoreland
Association, we can conjecture that it was some time between April
and August 1652. To the Cumberland & Westmoreland Association,
Baxter wrote in October 1653 that “It is near a yeare and halfe
since we begun our Consultations,” thus making April 1652 the ear-
liest possible date.55 Judging also from the evidence of the letters
between Dury and Baxter, it seems as though Baxter’s pursuit of
purity in unity was already set in motion before he sensed the delay
of the Cromwellian regime in settling religious differences. When
Dury suggested “maintaining a correspondence” among the clergy
for unity in a letter of 6 January 1653, Baxter replied that “it is
above halfe a yeare since I have sett afoot such a treaty here in
Worcestershire.” Thus it seems that the frustration over his grand
ecumenical scheme was not the primary impetus behind the
Worcestershire Association. We must look elsewhere, namely, to the
problem of discipline and separatism.56
Henry Osland was a young curate ministering in Bewdley, a lit-
tle village contiguous to Baxter’s Kidderminster. Two letters of Osland
written to his former flock now separated from his cure in Bewdley
have survived and they shed significant light on the formidable poten-
tial of anticlericalism to divide the local community, and help context-
ualize the leitmotiv of the Worcestershire Association. On 6 September
1652, Osland averred that he could write the letter in blood “so it

55
See Letters vi. 94 (5 February 1653). See Reliquiae, II. 165, §34.
56
Cf. W.A. Shaw’s comment that “With his own latitudinarian mind Baxter has
stamped upon this movement an eclecticism which no doubt it largely bore, but
which will not explain the movement in its entirety.” Shaw, A History of the English
Church, 2:152.
       131

mayyst have reconsciled the difference between us.” We deduce from

Osland’s letter that Tombes, the celebrated Baptist minister who had
disputed with Baxter on the question of infant baptism in 1650, was
the mentor of the separatist group, whose insistence on private preach-
ing was seen by Osland as a clearly subversive gesture against his
public ministry.57 For Osland, the idea of having a private assem-
bly, comprised of his former flock, guided by Tombes, while parish
worship was taking place was absolutely unacceptable: “your wtDrawing
your best assistance from the saints in private, is a sin too.”58
Apparently, Osland’s pleading fell on deaf ears, for the second let-
ter, written in October 1652, rings more accusatory. His second let-
ter suggests that the separated community had embraced, to his
chagrin, lay preaching. Such a deliberately anticlerical attitude was
challenged by Osland, ironically, using the same issues the Quakers
would raise against the established clergy: the authenticity of their
apostleship, their demand for “extraordinary gifts,” their claim to
perform miracles, and their putative speaking with “tounge.”59 Here,
then, is an example of local anticlerical vigor expressed toward the
established church, culminating in the formation of another ecclesial
entity, with the guidance of separatistic clerical leadership, in this
case in John Tombes.60
By December 1653, Osland was thinking of calling together a
“private church” of his own, and Baxter had written to deter him
from that course. Baxter urged that Osland’s creation of yet another
private church will prove that “the Anabaptists will say they are the
Church of Bewdley as well as you,” thus exacerbating the very prob-
lem Osland hoped to rectify.61 In another letter to Baxter, written
before the end of January, 1654, Osland expressed his dilemma:

57
Henry Osland, “The First Letter to the Separated Christians of Bewdley,” BL
Harleian MS 6866, fol. 8r–v. Finally, Osland sardonically commented: “What con-
sequence, give a private illiterate tradesman, to watch over the flocks over wc the
holly gost hath made him overseare,” BL Harleian MS 6866, fol. 12r. For Osland,
see DNB, CR, Al. Cant., 3:286; W.W. Rouse Ball and J.A. Venn, Admissions to Trinity
College, Cambridge, vol. II. 1564–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1913),
p. 390; Rel. Bax. I. 86, §137.
58
Osland, “The First Letter,” fol. 9r.
59
Osland, “The Second Letter,” fols. 10r–13r.
60
Osland, “The Second Letter,” fol. 11r. Osland also attacked the London
Baptists’ Confession of 1644 arguing that “their heart & penne doe not agree
together,” Ibid.
61
Letters, vi. fol. 118r.
132  

“either I must do more, or I must bee gone” since “here I would

do somewhat but cannot, these men may do somewhat, but will
not.” Thus, he solicited Baxter’s advice: “is it not better that I remove;
I may in some time effect it [church discipline]; here I must live in
sin, & not do halfe the work I am persuaded I could do if govern-
ment were erected.”62 The dilemma of Osland seems to have been
this: the proliferation of radical religious ideas in the late 1640s did
not leave Bewdley unaffected, thus prompting the start of a sepa-
rated assembly. This, in turn, elicited an impulse in Osland to cre-
ate a separated assembly of his own in hopes of being able to
administer proper discipline, for he was convinced he “must not
deprive their souls of food,” referring to the Lord’s Supper. Because
Osland was well known for his homiletical passion and effectiveness,
it was not surprising that several churches in Staffordshire were woo-
ing him to find a better pasture there. Baxter’s epistolary responses
to Osland are not extant, but it is likely that his advice was couched
in terms of encouraging Osland to join the Worcestershire Association.
On 25 May 1654, the Worcestershire Association sent an official
correspondence to the London Provincial Assembly, and we find
Osland as one of the signatories, likely indicating that he had become
an integral member of the association. The private advice of Baxter,
offered to Osland, was consistent with the proposal to create the
Worcestershire Association: proper administration of pastoral disci-
pline, celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and genuine pursuit of church
purity by conversion and catechesis—all of which, Baxter was confident,
would usher in biblical and primitive Catholic unity.
Acknowledging the diversity of ecclesiological and even soterio-
logical perspectives, the associating ministers were prepared to “improve
those Points wherein we are all agreed, for unanimous practice.” This was
parochial discipline, or alternatively, pursuing purity of the church
within the bounds of particular covenanted churches.63 In fact, on
the title page of the “Explication” of the terms of Christian Concord,
Baxter spelt out his authorial intent. It was written to “prevent the
causeless Dissent and Separation, of any sincere Christians from our
CHURCHES, or sincere Ministers from our ASSOCIATIONS.”64

62
Letters, v. fol. 53r.
63
CC, 1v, p. 2.
64
CC, title-page.
       133

Ironically, for Baxter, to separate from the allegedly unreformed

majority of parish churches to create a more purified visible church
was a sign of laziness, not religious zeal. We can see how Baxter’s
vision of reformation clearly opposed the centrifugal tendencies of
the separatists. Thus he rebuked the separatists in his first published
work:
Lazinesse is the common cause of separation: when we should go with
words pitty and love, and with teares beseech sinners to return to their
duty. . . . we neglect all this, to save us the . . . suffering that sometime
follow this duty; wee will plead that they are no Church-Members,
and so not the Brethren that we are bound to admonish, and so lazily
separate from them, and say as Cain, Am I my Brothers keeper?65
As has been discussed, pastoral discipline was inextricably linked with
the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper inasmuch as excommunication
itself connoted the idea of exclusion from the most powerful symbol
of parochial unity, communion. The Association movement was
designed to facilitate the biblical administration of the Lord’s Supper
throughout the parishes. Thus, Baxter could “not agree to the loose
practice of those Ministers . . . who think it enough to keep people
from the Sacrament, and never proceed further with them in way
of Discipline: but let 500. or 1000. live in a Parish without any more
then such a Suspension: whenas [sic] Suspension is but in order to
their Tryall, or their Reformation or Rejection thereupon.”66 Thus,
avoidance of the separatists’ laziness or that of the majority of parish
incumbents was the vision of the Worcestershire Association.
In that light, Baxter defined the true parish church: “we are all
agreed among our selves, that our present Parishes (I mean not all
in England, but all ours that joyned in these debates) are true par-
ticular organized Churches of Christ: and therefore that we require
not this Profession as a Church-making Covenant, but for Reformation
of those that are Churches already.”67 This emphasis on the covenanted
nature of particular churches, Baxter knew, could prompt the ire of
the more conservative Presbyterians.68 Nevertheless, the lack of church
covenants was one of the main justifications offered for separatism.

65
AJ, “Appendix,” pp. 60–1; Ibid. (1655 edn.), p. 252.
66
CC, p. 5; RP, sig. b2v.
67
CC, p. 10; RP, pp. 56, 134–36, 189.
68
CC, pp. 10, 31–34.
134  

The threat of obliterating the parish bounds was exacerbated when

the Independents recruited people from parish churches to gathered
congregations. Baxter suggested that
the Liberty given in these times hath taken away some other bonds,
which formerly laid on men, to constrain them to acknowledge and
submit to the Ministry and Ordinances: and to obey the Church-
government that was then in force. We are therefore necessitated to
make use of the bond of their own Consent, and to require that it be
more express, then formerly it hath been.69
As the separatists enjoyed supposedly more pure ordinances with
clearer sense of assurance of salvation in their gathered churches,
Baxter chose a less trodden path: creation of a covenanted com-
munity within the parochial bounds and not being content with a
handful of professors. He acknowledged that disciplinary neglect
among non-separating churches was directly responsible for the growth
of separatism:
It is because we will not make that meet and necessary separation,
which Christ requireth regularly and authoritatively as Guides of the
Church, that so many do make irregular sinfull separations. The great
fault is within us, and we do but condemn our selves in crying against
Separatists, as long as we continue the occasion by our neglect.70
However, ministers from various parts began to notice the bold exer-
cise in ecclesiological re-configuration, and associations from no less
than sixteen counties emerged during the Interregnum period, some
of them owing their founding inspiration to the Worcestershire
Association.71 After the publication of Christian Concord, numerous let-

69
Ibid., p. 11.
70
Ibid., pp. 30–31. The London Presbyterians asserted: “Though we dare not
make separation from a true Church, yet we doe make separation in a true Church”
through pastoral discipline. See Giles Firmin, Separation Examined (1652), p. 39.
71
On these county associations, see W.A. Shaw’s A History of the English Church,
2:152–64. There were associations formed in Cumberland and Westmoreland (1653);
Wiltshire (1653, influenced in great measure by the Worcestershire Association);
Northamptonshire (1653); Cheshire (1653); Hampshire (1653); Dorset and Somersetshire
(1654); Kent (1654); Devon (1655); Cambridgeshire (1656); Cornwall (1656); Sussex
(1656); Shropshire (1656); Herefordshire (1658); Staffordshire (1658); Essex (1658);
and Norfolk (1659). See also Matthew Henry, An Account of the Life and Death of Mr.
Philip Henry (1698), pp. 59–61, for evidence of an association explicitly in the line
of the Worcestershire Association in Flintshire, Wales. Two Irish Associations existed:
The Dublin Association published The Agreement and Resolution of the Ministers . . .
Associated within . . . Dublin (1659); the Cork Association published, The Agreement and
Resolution of Severall Associated Ministers in . . . Corke (1657).
       135

ters came to Kidderminster. Thomas Hill, Master of Trinity College,

Cambridge, wrote that Northamptonshire ministers were hoping to
implement a similar design.72 A minister from Essex wrote that “when
your Worcester agreement came out, some of the ablest Divines in
Suffolke were so startled that they went about it presently.”73 What
might have attracted them was the Worcestershire ministers’ deter-
mination to go beyond preaching alone and attempt a further refor-
mation by discipline. This coordinated effort in Worcestershire indeed
came as a refreshing breeze to those who were weary of toiling alone
in their parishes. In a letter to Baxter, a former member of the
Westminster Assembly, William Mewe, then Rector of Eastington,
Gloucestershire, insisted that he was the true initiator of this design
of reforming the parishes. Regardless of the chronological priority,
Mewe opined that “our Common dilapidations need more Cyment
then stone For the repayring of our Breaches; wee have too many
rough & hardy dissenters that will not Easyly be brought to Lye
Square & Even,” indicating the difficulty of the task.74
Repairing the broken relationship between the brethren of different
judgments and jointly pursuing the work of reformation was the rai-
son d’être of the Essex Association. Susan Hardman Moore noted that
the statements of the Association movement “each have their own
character.” An analysis of the stated concerns of the Essex Association
would not only reveal the ecclesiological particularities of Essex, but,
as we shall see, Baxter’s influence on the Association as well.75
Building upon the uncompleted foundation of the Essex classes,
the Essex Association was chiefly concerned with reconciling the
differences between Presbyterians and Independents, and published
its agreement in 1658. According to Geoffrey F. Nuttall, not much
is known about the Association: neither its membership nor even the
signatories to The Agreement. We do know, however, that Giles Firmin,
a member, had a unique vantage point to observe the ecclesiologi-
cal disputes between Presbyterians and Independents. He had been
to New England twice, and had witnessed the excommunication of

72
Dated 12 September 1653, Letters, v. 237.
73
From Giles Firmin, dated 24 July 1654, in Letters, iv. 284; T.W. Davids, Annals
of Evangelical Nonconformity . . . in Essex (1863), p. 458.
74
Letters, iv. 279; Powicke I, p. 145.
75
Susan Hardman Moore, “Arguing for Peace: Giles Firmin on New England
and Godly Unity,” in R.N. Swanson, ed., Unity and Diversity in the Church (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1996), p. 259, n. 30.
136  

Anne Hutchinson from Boston Church on 22 March 1638. Moreover,

despite Thomas Edwards’ accusation, he was neither a vocal pro-
ponent of the New England way nor a disaffected reviler of the colo-
nial church.76
Firmin and the associating ministers maintained that bewailing the
plight of Essex was not helpful unless it led to “endeavors of redress”
of “a Brotherly Association.” The main solution centered on parochial
discipline as a way of procuring godly unity.77 Firmin had insisted
in A Serious Question Stated (1651) that a confession of both assent and
consent was required from the parents of the children to be bap-
tized. He emphasized the similarity between the Presbyterian and
Independent practice of requiring profession of saving faith before
sacraments were administered. Baxter and Firmin opposed Thomas
Blake’s covenant theology as applied to the admission criteria of pae-
dobaptism. In fact, Firmin received high praise from Baxter for his
Separation Examined (1651), in which he saw “so much Candor, Inge-
nuitie, Moderation, Love & Peace, and some convenient terms for
Peace discovered, that [he was] heartily sorrie that there are no more
to second him, and that his incitements are no more laid to heart.”78
The ecclesiological situation of New England was discussed in this
Agreement to exhort godly unity in England. In other Association doc-
uments, no such parallel is drawn. That Firmin had closely observed
the ecclesiological developments in New England might have influenced
its inclusion:
Thus New England it self also, acknowledges and practices the contrary,
and that upon Experience. And they accordingly . . . do not only wish,
but encourage . . . the Godly of different Judgements in this Nation,
to endeavour Unity. And certainly this must be very considerable, that
they of New England, who left this Country for liberty of Conscience . . .
yet these . . . after almost thirty yeares experience, find a Necessity of
union of Churches; and of godly Christians, of different Judgment.79

76
For Firmin, see DNB, CR, Al. Cant. Firmin was ordained by Daniel Rogers,
Stephen Marshall, N. Ranew and others, yet he was accused of having received
episcopal ordination. See his Separation Examined (1652), p. 27. See also Hardman
Moore, “Arguing for Peace,” pp. 251–61. Thomas Edwards’ accusation that Firmin
was an unordained “Apothecary” preacher is in Edwards, Gangræna (1646), Pt. I,
69; Pt. II, 54–5, 63, 69.
77
The Agreement of . . . Ministers . . . of Essex, p. 1.
78
RBA, Pt. I, 106–7.
79
The Agreement of . . . Ministers . . . of Essex, p. 15. For ecclesiological debates in
       137

The Agreement asserted that if the New England “radicals,” well-known

for the Antinomian excesses of Anne Hutchinson and for the exper-
iment in semi-separatism, were now seeking godly unity, then those
remaining England should strive after the same.80
Finally, Essex ministers desired “correspondency with our Brethren
in other parts of the Nation.”81 In fact, Firmin was already corre-
sponding with Baxter. Both had similar aspirations for godly unity.
Firmin, in his first letter, spoke of his endeavors against the Inde-
pendents’ “rending of churches,” which drew fire from either the
“Gospel-glutted professors” or separatism. He also confessed to Baxter
that “your workes move more then any mans that I saw,” indicat-
ing the proximity of their reformational priorities.82 Using an expres-
sion that might easily be descriptive of Baxter, Nuttall descdribed
Firmin as being “his own man, pragmatic but principled. . . . He was
no more a Classical Divine than he was one of the Congregational
Brethren; nor yet was he a new-style Episcopalian.”83 They both
argued passionately for peace and sought unity among the godly.
After participating in the sub-committee on religion for the
Protectorate Parliament in November-December 1654,84 Baxter had
an opportunity to articulate his reform program in London. In Humble
Advice, he broached the subject of associations:
We beseech you fail not . . . to recommend the free use of Ministerial
Assemblies and Associations: which whether necessary or not for
Regiment, are certainly necessary for Unity, that we cannot carry on
God’s work in Concord well without them. This most confesse.85
This was repeated in his advice to Edward Harley, MP for Here-
fordshire for the Second Protectorate Parliament. Writing on 15
September 1656, a mere two days before the opening of Parliament,

New England, see Edmund Morgan, Visible Saints: the history of the Puritan idea (New
York: New York University Press, 1963), pp. 110–12.
80
See Janice Knight, Orthodoxies in Massachusetts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1994), pp. 14–31, 47, 71, 73, 85, 98, 121–23, 178, 181–84; William K.B.
Stoever, ‘A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven’ (Middletown, CT: Weslyan University
Press, 1978).
81
The Agreement of . . . Ministers . . . of Essex, sig. A4r.
82
Letters, iv. 284 (dated 24 July 1654).
83
Geoffrey F. Nuttall, “The Essex Classes (1648),” JURCHS 3(1985), p. 199.
84
For an extensive discussion of this event, see Chapter Six.
85
HA, p. 3; RP, sig. c1v. Although the Worcestershire Association did not ordain
ministers, Baxter clearly saw ordination as part of the function of Associations. Ibid.,
p. 4.
138  

Baxter exhorted “that you doe not only (as before) authorize Asso-
ciations in order to Unity but earnestly perswade & press ministers
thereto . . . & let the united pastors & Churches have countenance
of the State.”86 Consequently, for Baxter the pursuit of purity in an
age of ecclesiological fracture would be best facilitated by associa-
tions, which were designed to create godly unity over against radi-
cal sects and their anticlerical clamor. For example, in his advice to
the London Provincial Assembly, Baxter urged that forging godly
unity was of secondary importance to creating a godly parish for
“ruling of the multitude & conquering impiety.” Thus it would seem
that instead of a mere ecumenical front, Baxter endeavored to achieve
both purity and unity. 87

IV. P P  A-P C:

T Q T  B’ I  
P  S

When the Worcester-shire Petition to the Parliament was published in 1652,

an immediate counter-attack came from the Quakers, who sought
to “prove Christs Ministers . . . Antichrists . . . and greedy dogs . . .
barking and raging like Sodomites against any that delight in Purity.”88
The rhetoric of perfection and a realized eschatology presented a
major threat to Puritan spiritual morphology.89 Instead of accepting
the traditional Puritan conception of the life of the pilgrim as one
of “wayfaring and warfaring,” the Family of Love, the Grindletonians,
and most pronouncedly the Quakers began to deny human deprav-
ity and jettisoned the Augustinian-Calvinist emphasis on sin and fear
of damnation.90 Alternatively they offered and preached a life free
from sin.91 According to the Quaker rhetoric, pre-lapsarian perfec-

86
Letters, i. 226. This letter is reprinted in Richard Schlatter, ed., Richard Baxter
and Puritan Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1957), pp. 46–60.
87
See Letters, iii. 190.
88
WPD, sig. A2r–v. Benjamin Nicholson responded to the WPD in his Truths
Defence against Lies (1653).
89
On the sources of the Quaker rhetoric of perfection, see Nigel Smith, Perfection
Proclaimed.
90
See Geoffrey F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1946), pp. 150–66.
91
See Raymond Mentzer, ed., Sin and the Calvinists: morals control and the consistory
in the reformed tradition (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994).
       139

tion and purity were attainable as a result of the inner light of Christ
coming into the heart of individuals. Conservative divines such as
Robert Baillie and Samuel Rutherford responded to this flood of
radical pamphlets by writing denunciatory tracts.92 To be sure, not
all radical religious ideas ran together,93 but most Calvinist apolo-
gists displayed a teleological reading of radical religion, treating ide-
ologies of all enthusiasts as varieties of the same deviant idea.
Baxter shared this theological preoccupation of conservative Puritans.
Of many sects, Baxter had perhaps least patience for and greatest
fear of the Quakers. Their energetic evangelism took them through-
out England, although their influence was not as considerable in the
midlands. The Quaker missionaries Richard Farnworth and Thomas
Goodaire challenged Baxter while he preached at St. Swithin’s,
Worcester, and held a disputation at Chadwick with two associating
ministers, Henry Osland and Andrew Tristram, in February 1655.94
Baxter was called by the Quaker missionaries “the great Rabbi,”
and he assumed the role of spokesman for the ministers in Wor-
cestershire, producing The Quakers Catechism in 1655 and One Sheet
against the Quakers in 1657, along with several others that dealt directly
with the Quaker threat to public ministry and their belief in perfection.
First, Baxter argued, Quakers were dangerously close to being
anti-Christian, far worse than Baptists and other sects, and asserted
that the “fag-end of religious radicalism” was Quakerism.95 The cen-
tral focus in his warning to the “Separatists and Anabaptists,” the
prime targets of Quaker evangelism, was that this was a divine sign
of “his detestation of those that withdraw from the Unity of his
Church.”96 By the time he published The Quakers Catechism (1655),
the Worcestershire Association was already engaged in parish evan-
gelism. For Baxter, that was the right way of reformation, one that
accorded with his ecclesiological conviction about the Augustinian

92
Robert Baillie, Anabaptisme, the true Fountaine of Independency (1647); Samuel
Rutherford, A Survey of the Spirituall Antichrist (1648).
93
For the context of the Baptist-Quaker polemical strife, see T.L. Underwood,
Primitivism, Radicalism, and the Lamb’s War: the Baptist-Quaker conflict in seventeenth-century
England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
94
William Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1912), pp. 194–5; Nuttall, Richard Baxter, p. 70; William Lamont, Richard Baxter
and the Millennium, p. 175.
95
See his letter “To the Separatists and Anabaptists in England,” in QC, sig. B1r.
96
QC, sig. B2r.
140  

doctrine of corpus permixtum. It was imperative, therefore, to exercise

judgment of charity. God would suspend ultimate judgment until the
eschatological day of reckoning:
God would have us let both grow together till the time of harvest;
But these proud men will stand at a further distance, and will dislike
Gods gracious dealings with sinners, and their eye is evil because he
is good; they will not grow in the same Field (or Church) where such
Tares do grow, but will transplant themselves and remove from the
field because God will not pluck up the Tares, (especially if any
Ministerial neglect of Discipline be conjoyned as too commonly it is:).97
Building further on these differences in eschatological perspective,
Baxter objected to the Quaker exegesis of Ephesians 4:12; accord-
ing to the Friends, true ministers were capable of “perfecting the
Saints” here and now, an assertion often used to demonize all pub-
lic ministry. Baxter responded by denying the Quakers’ realized escha-
tology, and by showing that true perfecting work was predicated on
ministerial collectivity and continuity throughout the centuries. The
work of a minister in the first century stood in the continuum of
the presently ongoing task of perfecting the saints, which would not
reach its consummation until the return of Christ:
This work therefore of perfecting is neither to be done conclusively
by any one Age of Ministers before the last age . . . though all are
given towards the perfecting of it, all do not actually perfect it: All
work for the perfection of the Building; but it is he that layes on that
top stone that perfecteth it. . . . God hath promised such a succession
of Builders till his House be finished; and he will make good his promise
in despight of all the rage of Hell.98
In A Sermon of Judgement, Baxter reiterated his concern for the legit-
imacy and necessity of public ministry: “It is by the Word, Spirit,
and Ministery, that Christ the King of his Church doth Govern it:
not separatedly, but joyntly, by all three: To disobey these, is to dis-
obey Christ: and subjection to Christ is Essential to our Christianity,”
thus exalting the role of ministry over against the claims of the sec-
tarians.99 However, there was another crucial dimension in Baxter’s
attitude toward the sects: the question of popery.100

97
QC, sig. B2r–v.
98
WPD, pp. 1–2.
99
HA, p. 4; ASJ, sig. A10r; UI, sig. b7v.
100
Lamont has explored this dimension of Puritan thought extensively in Godly
Rule (1969). See also his Richard Baxter and the Millennium, Chap. 3.
       141

The Quakers and Roman Catholics differed in their doctrine, wor-

ship, and ecclesiastical authority. However, for William Prynne and
Baxter, the Quakers were seen as puppets moved by the hidden
hand of the Papists.101 In the religious worldview of Baxter, this
strong if improbable version of anti-popery formed an integral part
of his irenicism. The increasing threat of Quakers and other radi-
cal sects was blamed on the Popish Plot redivivus. As Caroline Hibbard
has demonstrated, the situation in Charles I’s court, if not also in
Laudian episcopacy, provides strong evidence for significant Catholic
activities. Anti-popery was an integral part of English Protestant cul-
tural matrices.102
In the Baxter corpus, fourteen treatises were devoted to anti-
popery, making Baxter one of the more prolific anti-Catholic writ-
ers among Puritans.103 How could anyone who was so committed to
irenicism be simultaneously so intransigently set against toleration of
Catholics? Blair Worden’s portrayal of Baxter as a strong anti-tol-
erationist and W.K. Jordan’s insistence of seeing him as a paragon
of the ecumenical ideal find their converging point in Baxter’s anti-
popery and anti-radicalism.104 For Baxter religious radicalism was
orchestrated by the Jesuits, who were unanimous in opposing Puritan
ministry; as far-fetched as such notions may seem to modern sensi-
bilities, yet it is integral to identify this strong antipathy toward
Popery as an important matrix of Baxter’s ecclesiological thought.
Baxter explicitly linked the two groups in his Quakers Catechism: “The

101
See William Prynne, A New Discovery of Some Romish Emissaries (1656), p. 10;
J. Ives, The Quakers Quaking (1656), p. 43; John Tombes, True Old Light (1660), sig.
A2v; Immanuel Bourne, A Defence of the Scriptures (1656), sig. A2r. See also The Publick
Intelligencer 36 (2–9 June 1656), p. 605r; Mercurius Politicus 348 (5–12 February 1657),
p. 7587r.
102
Caroline Hibbard, Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1983); Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: seventeenth-century English polit-
ical instability in European context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); John
Miller, Popery and Politics in England 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1973); Anthony Milton, “A Qualifiied Intolerance: the limits and ambiguities
of early Stuart anti-Catholicism,” in Arthur Marotti, ed., Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism
in Early Modern English Texts (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 85–115;
Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), pp. 247–48, 272–74.
103
See SR; WSP; GRD; KC; CU; TC&CC; SV; CCOP; FES; FW; NP; WTC; CHB&C;
ARFJ.
104
Blair Worden, “Toleration and the Cromwellian Protectorate,” in W.J. Sheils,
ed., Persecution and Toleration (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), p. 201, citing Baxter’s HA
(1655), p. 2. For W.K. Jordan’s praise of Baxter, see n. 7 above.
142  

Quakers among us are the ignorant, proud, giddy sort of professors,

first made Separatists or Anabaptists . . . and then drawn further by
Popish subtlety, and now headed with some secret dissembling Friars,
and by them . . . enraged against the ministers of Christ, and set
upon the propagating of the substance of Popery.”105
According to Baxter, Protestant anticlericalism during the Continental
Reformation had been transformed into a Popish anticlericalism dur-
ing the English Revolution: “It is apparent that these enemies of the
Ministers [Quakers], are playing the Papists game. Because the just
disgrace of their Ministry, was the ruine of their Kingdom; therefore
they hope to win of us at the same game.”106 He cited a number of
reasons for espousing the Jesuit conspiracy theory. First, for Baxter,
both the Roman Catholic emphasis on transubstantiation and the
Quaker demand that miracles were proof of ministerial legitimacy
were equally erroneous, since after the truth of the Gospel had been
validated by the miracles in the New Testament era, they were
unnecessary now.107 Baxter enumerated a number of other supposed
similarities between the Quakers and the Papists. Their belief that
the
Pope [was] not Antichrist; undermining of the sufficiency of Scripture,108
the decrying of ministry, the unchurching of our Churches, the slieght-
ing of Justification by Imputed Righteousnesse, and drawing men to
the admiration of their inherent righteousnesse, and their own works,
the crying up the light within us,109 and the sufficiency of common
revelation, the setting up the strength of mans free-will, the asserting
the necessity of a Judge of Controversie above Scripture . . . the doc-
trine of Perfection without sinne in this life,110 and many more of the
like nature: All this the Papists have taught the Quakers.111
Against the anticlerical claims of the separatists, Baxter reminded the
readers that salvation and commitment to public ministry were inex-
tricably linked. He exhorted his readers that, “as ever thou wouldest
be sanctified, confirmed, and saved, hold fast to Christ, Scripture, Ministry,

105
QC, sig. C3r. See also Reliquiae, I. 116, §181 (25); OSQ.
106
OSM, pp. 4, 6; SSM, p. 2.
107
OSM, p. 14; SSM, pp. 2, 3, 6.
108
SSM, p. 2.
109
QC, p. 8.
110
Ibid., p. 24.
111
Ibid., sig. C3v.
       143

and Spirit, and that in the Church and Communion of Saints; and abhor
the thoughts of separating them from each other.”112
Baxter’s claim to be a “meer Catholick,” as well as the famous
imagery of Christendom being compared to a house with many
rooms, first arose in his anti-Catholic polemic. He inherited the
polemical strategy of William Perkins who, in A Reformed Catholike,
had argued that Rome had departed from its truly Catholic roots
and became a sectarian, woefully diseased part of the body of Christ.
However, instead of Rome’s doctrinal errors, Baxter focused on the
alleged Roman usurpation of Christ’s headship of the church. The
Church of England, however, had maintained its fidelity to the faith
and honored Christ as its head, thus making it a “truly Catholike”
church.113 Thus Baxter denounced the Church of Rome for having
narrowed the ecclesial boundaries and for having demonized the vast
majority of Christians who did not pledge allegiance to the Pope.
For Baxter the claim of Roman exclusivity was no different, in
spirit if not in polemic, from the separatist rhetoric. He defined the
“true Catholick Church” in contradistinction to these “schismatic”
entities.114 In the following passage his catholicity and anti-popery
converge, and it was for the purity and unity of this church that he
devoted a considerable part of his literary output. Baxter answered
the query of one seeking the true universal church:
Silly souls! They are hearkening to this party, and to that party, and
turn it may be to one, and to another to find the true Universal
Church: I speak not in contempt, but in compassion. . . . You runne
up and down from room to room to find the house; and you ask, Is
the Parlour it, or is the Hall it, or is the Kitchin, or the cole-house
it? Why every one is a part of it; and all the rooms make up the
house. . . . Which is the Catholick Church? Is it the Protestants, the
Calvinists, or Lutherans, the Papists, the Greeks, the Æthiopians, or which

112
OSM, p. 14. For ministerial defense against radical separatists, see Immanuel
Bourne, A Defence and Justification of Ministers Maintence by Tythes (1659); Thomas Hall,
The Pulpit Guarded with XVII Arguments (1651); idem, The Font Guarded with XX Arguments
(1652).
113
See SR; WSP; KC; TC&CC; SV, passim; Baxter, “Against Any Meer Humane
Head of the Church of Christ,” in [Nathaniel Vincent, ed.], The Morning-Exercise
against Popery (1675). William Perkins, A Reformed Catholike (Cambridge, 1598). See
also George Carleton, Directions to Know the True Church (1615), and Richard Bernard,
Looke beyond Luther (1623).
114
WSP, sigs. A2v–3r.
144  

is it? Why it is never one of them, but all together that are truly
Christians.115
In other words, Baxter was emphatic that Rome, qua under the head-
ship of the Pope, was not a true church. However, he was prepared
to acknowledge the salvific possibility of those who were in it. Again,
this reflects the ecclesiological ambiguity of Baxter with respect to
Rome: Roman Church as an institution, an unqualified denial, while
Roman Christians as individuals, a qualified acknowledgment.
In the Restoration, Baxter’s commitment to this “Universal Church”
would be severely challenged; indeed it is arguably true that his love
for true catholicity and the perceived unwillingness of the diocesans
to pursue purity in discipline made him a dissenter. Nevertheless, he
urged the people not to separate from the parish churches, but to
show Christian charity by their attendance although not participat-
ing in its “sin,” of becoming members or participating in the Lord’s
Supper. We will discuss Baxter’s position of occasional communion,
fraught with ecclesiological ambiguities, as a way of contextualizing
his pursuit of true unity.

V. O C   L  N-C

The litmus test of Baxter’s commitment to the unity of the Church

Catholic came with the restoration of the Church of England. Although
his rejection of the earl of Clarendon’s offer of a bishopric and sub-
sequent ejection won many admirers, his endorsement of compre-
hension, not toleration, caused much dismay among many Dissenters.116
Baxter’s role during the failed attempt for rapprochement between
the moderate Puritans and restored Episcopalians at the Savoy
Conference of 1661 has received much attention, as have his indefa-
tigable efforts for comprehension after the Ejection.117 In this section,

115
TC&CC, pp. 65, 67.
116
See Reliquiae, II. 281, §121. Aside from Baxter, Edward Reynolds (see of
Norwich) and Edmund Calamy (see of Coventry and Lichfield) were offered bish-
oprics. Reynolds accepted the offer while Calamy, urged on by numerous London
Presbyterians, declined it, opting instead for ejection with Baxter. See Reliquiae, II.
281, §120; Letters, v. 232. In his reply to Clarendon, Baxter provided a list of sev-
enteen other divines for consideration. See Treatises, ii. 59 (5); Reliquiae, II. 282–3,
§123.
117
Despite its partisan perspective, Baxter’s is a significant first-hand account of
       145

we will consider two neglected and interrelated dimensions in the

current historiography on Baxter. First, we will discuss the question
of the Puritan nonconformist tradition to which he contributed with
his anti-separatist principles. Secondly, we will focus on the extent
of his commitment to the adiaphorist position in defense of occasional
communion by analyzing his debate with Edward Bagshaw.
The legacy of William Bradshaw has been discussed earlier; by
1660, non-separating Puritans, perhaps fearing a wholesale re-impo-
sition of the controversial ceremonies, reprinted Bradshaw’s tracts on
worship and adiaphora.118 Many Puritans drew on the polemical divin-
ity of the Ames-Bradshaw circle for two different purposes: either to
justify the necessity of separatism, or to assert the opposite, that
despite all their criticism, neither Ames nor Bradshaw separated from
the Church of England. This internecine fight, adumbrated already
during the Interregnum, now intensified after the line of demarca-
tion between conformity and nonconformity was drawn far more
clearly than during the Jacobean or Caroline church.
For approximately two decades after the Restoration, Baxter opted
for comprehension and adhered to the pursuit of purity within unity.
He attended a parish church while living in Acton and Totteridge,

the Savoy Conference. See Reliquiae, II. 303–69, §§170–240. There are two inter-
pretive communities concerning the role of the “Laudian” clergy in the Restoration
settlement, and over the question of the culpability of the Puritans (especially Baxter’s).
Pre-revisionist and denominational historians have emphasized the Laudian take-
over of the Restoration Church of England. See R.S. Bosher, The Making of the
Restoration Settlement: the influence of the Laudians 1649 –1662 (London: Dacre Press,
1951). See also Ethyn Kirby, “The Reconcilers and the Restoration (1660–1662),”
Essays in Modern English History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941),
pp. 49–79; G.R. Abernathy, “The English Presbyterians and the Stuart Restoration
1648–1663,” TAPS 55 (1965), pp. 1–110. Among revisionists, see I.M. Green, The
Re-Establishment of the Church of England 1660–1663 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1978); Ronald Hutton, The Restoration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 332. Paul
Seaward, The Cavalier Parliament and the Reconstruction of the Old Regime 1661–1667
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 60–61, 66–67; John Spurr,
The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1991), pp. 29–42. Whichever interpretation is adopted for this period, Baxter’s tact-
lessness played a role in forestalling any remaining prospect for settlement. See
Reliquiae, II. 303, §170 for his own confession. For his tactical blunders, see N.H.
Keeble, The Literary Culture of Nonconformity, p. 30; Wood, Church Unity without Uniformity,
p. 212; E.C. Ratliff, “The Savoy Conference and the Revision of the Book of
Common Prayer,” in Nuttall and Chadwick, pp. 108–9. Clarendon largely blamed
Baxter for the eventual outcome of the Savoy Conference. Reliquiae, II. 365, §237.
118
See, for example, Several Treatises of Worship & Ceremonies, by . . . William Bradshaw
(1660). Eight tracts were published in this volume.
146  

and the private meetings he held on Sundays were intentionally

scheduled at times other than that of parochial worship.119 “Partial
conformity,” in John Ramsbottom’s view, was a principled ecclesio-
logical stance taken by moderate Dissenters. As we shall see, Baxter
typified this moderate nonconformist attitude toward conformity. The
practice of partial conformity further demonstrates that the rela-
tionship between Churchmen and Dissenters was not always polar-
ized, at least not when the “partial conformity” of “Presbyterians”
such as Baxter, Philip Henry, and Oliver Heywood is taken into
consideration.120 Baxter and others justified partial conformity on the
grounds of refusing “the partisan loyalty demanded by the Church
of England without lapsing into another, and equally damaging, par-
tisanship.”121
However, bitter complaints and a renewed desire to stamp out
dissent arose after the Second Conventicle Act (11 April 1670) came
into effect.122 With this potential shift of nonconformity into a full-
blown separatism in mind Baxter wrote The Cure of Church-divisions.123
Well aware of the polemical leverage of Bradshaw and like-minded
Puritans, he chose to highlight their anti-separatism:
And the old Non-conformists who wrote so much against separation,
were neither blind nor temporizers. They saw the danger on that side.
Even Brightman on Revelation that writeth against the Prelacy and
Ceremonies, severely reprehendeth the separatists. Read but the writ-
ings of Mr. John Paget, Mr. John Ball, Mr. Hildersham, Mr. Bradshaw,
Mr. Baine, Mr. Rathband, & many such others against the separatists
of those times.124
Baxter added two corollaries. After noting Christ’s example of attend-
ing Jewish worship, he asserted that “our Light is not greater, but less

119
Powicke II, pp. 20–46.
120
Ramsbottom, “Presbyterians and ‘Partial Conformity’ in the Restoration Church
of England,” JEH 43 (1992), pp. 249–70.
121
Keeble, The Literary Culture of Nonconformity, p. 36. See also Christopher Hill,
“Occasional Conformity,” in R. Buick Knox, ed., Reformation, Conformity and Dissent
(London: Epworth Press, 1977), pp. 199–220.
122
For specific cases, see CSPD, 1670, pp. 164–369, passim. On the extent of
suffering during the years of the Conventicle Acts, see Anthony Fletcher, “The
Enforcement of the Conventicle Acts, 1664–1679,” in W.J. Sheils, ed., Persecution
and Toleration (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), 235–46. See also G. Lyon Turner, Original
Records of Early Nonconformity under Persecution and Indulgence, 3 vols. (London: 1911).
123
See Keeble, The Literary Culture of Nonconformity, pp. 33–45, for a helpful cate-
gorization of nonconformists during the Restoration era.
124
CCD, sig. B5v.
       147

than theirs” because the “Puritan patriarchs” cited above did not
separate while his co-Dissenters denied communion with the re-estab-
lished church. Moreover, he insisted on the permanence of these
non-separating principles: “change of time doth not change the truth,”
unless religious views “change as oft as the times shall change.”125
He reiterated the Augustinian perspective on the invisible and visi-
ble churches, pleading for judgments of charity, not separation.126
Bagshaw challenged his supposedly moderate claims, theological
consistency, and seeming anachronism. He had been a student at
Christ Church, Oxford, during the Interregnum, under the tutelage
of John Owen and his like-minded Congregationalist colleagues, thus
negatively disposed toward liturgy, vestments, and other “extraneous”
additions to the simplicity of “gospel worship.” His post-restoration
writings emphatically called for a clear separation of the dissenters
from the potentially compromising worship of partial conformity. He
sought to exploit the putative logical inconsistencies in Baxter’s con-
formity: for example, how could he, who had opposed the Papists’
“impossible terms of Unity,” condone a similar imposition by the
Restoration bishops?127 Bagshaw accused Baxter of anachronism by
arguing that the main issue in their debate was “not Separation,” but
“Injust and Violent Persecution”; the grand scale of persecution was in
no way matched by that of the Jacobean period.128
However, even before Bagshaw’s attack, Baxter had been chided
for ignoring the vastly different historical contexts. In his letter to
Richard Sargeant, Baxter responded: “Its true, the world is changed
indeed: but the change is this: we are now silenced, persecuted,
imprisoned, hunted about, impoverished; & we have no place but
in private to preach, & none but such to heare us, whose passions
easily prevaile to carry their judgments into extreames: & these hear-
ers know not how to stand their ground against such trials, without
reeling out of the way of Charity, unity & peace.129
John Wilson, the ejected Vicar of Backford, Cheshire, argued that
if Hildersham, Ames and Parker were alive, they would oppose “hear-
ing Common Prayer” due to “the variation of circumstances.” Both

125
Ibid.
126
Ibid., pp. 33–34.
127
Edward Bagshaw, An Antidote against . . . Cure of Church Divisions (1670), pp. 3–4.
128
Ibid., p. 1.
129
Dated 14 May 1670, Houghton Library, Harvard University, Autograph File.
148  

Wilson and Bagshaw maintained that since times had drastically

changed, the option of principled non-conformity was a far less viable
choice.130 Baxter, while acknowledging the greater magnitude of
suffering of post-Restoration nonconformity, still criticized the pre-
vailing separatist spirit. Patient suffering in conformity was needed,
and for Baxter, this elicited the same advice he had offered during
his pastorate in Kidderminster. There was a consistency in his com-
mitment to godly unity and purity without embracing separatism.
With regard to the commendatory epistle before John Bryan’s book,
Dwelling with God (1670), Baxter asserted that neither Bryan nor he
opposed “Private meetings,” spoke against “Ministers constant preach-
ing there,” uttered one word “for Conformity,” or, most importantly,
said “one word against Preferring a purer Church Communion,
before a worse.” Instead, Baxter’s pursuit of ecclesiastical unity in
the Restoration context led him to encourage the dissenting laity to
focus more on the individual’s relationship with God and less on
polity, impurity of communion, and absence of discipline.131
Although Baxter was convinced that his writing against separatism
was not aiding the cause of prelacy, others were less certain. An old
friend of Baxter admonished him for branding his co-Dissenters sep-
aratists.132 The Earl of Lauderdale, hearing the rumor of Baxter’s
inclination to conform, offered Baxter “either a Church, or a Colledge
in the University, or a Bishoprick” in Scotland.133
Baxter’s answer to Bagshaw came in 1671 as A Defence of the
Principles of Love. In this treatise, he argued that only his proposal of
concord could usher in reformation, and insinuated that the refusal
of the Independents to co-operate with the Presbyterians and other
partial conformists toward the goal of comprehension into the national
church was only abetting the cause of the Quakers, whom he con-
sidered hardly Christians:
Yea, before our eyes, the most pernicious Heresies, even those of
Quakers, are still not only continued, but increase. And we see men
that to day condemn Communion with the Parish Churches, and then

130
Letters, vi. 22. For John Wilson, see CR; Powicke II, 257–58.
131
Baxter, “To the Reader,” in John Bryan, Dwelling with God (1670), sigs. A4r–b3v.
For Bryan, see Al. Cant.; DNB; CR; Reliquiae, III. 93, §203(1).
132
Letters, iii. 297, from Henry Osland (dated c. May 1670).
133
Baxter’s reply to Lauderdale (24 June 1670), declining the offer of a Scottish
bishopric, is in Reliquiae, III. 75–77, §171.
       149

with the Presbyterians: do shortly fly from Communion with the

Independents too. And mens passions in sufferings pervert their judge-
ments. . . . Its commonly known how many of late are turned Quakers. . . .
Separation will ruine the separated Churches themselves at last.134
He then asserted that their separatism was a betrayal of the polity
of radical Puritans: “As for them that say, If Dod,135 Ames,136 Hildersham,
&c. had lived till now, they would have been of our mind. . . . Is
not the Liturgie, Ceremonies, and Ministery the same?” This was
the crucial question. How would the ideologues of radical yet non-
separating Puritanism—Ames, Bradshaw, Dod, Hildersham—have
applied their ecclesiological principles amid the Restoration perse-
cution? Baxter was convinced that the “change of times doth not
change the truth.” He had already spoken of the mercy of Christ
in persevering with the weak, if hypocritical, Christians in the visi-
ble church;137 he had quoted amply from Calvin’s New Testament
commentaries to show the provisional nature of the purity of the
visible church;138 he had previously spoken of the non-separating
principle of John Sprint, a Gloucestershire minister who responded
to his separatist antagonists that Christians ought to separate from
the evils within the Church but never without. In fact, there is a strik-
ing resemblance and continuity between the religious ethos of main-
stream pre-Civil War Puritanism, mapped out by Professor Collinson,
and Baxter’s non-separating pursuit of godly unity and purity, even
into the Restoration period.139
Baxter earnestly desired that the restored church would recover
the vision of a broadly Protestant church, one much similar to that
during the Jacobethan period. He responded to Bagshaw and other

134
DPL, pp. 49–50. For Baxter’s anti-Quakerism during the Restoration period,
see John Faldo, Quakerism No Christianity (1675), “To the Reader,” sigs. A6r–A8r.
Baxter had already accused the Quakers and Baptists of being heirs of the Donatists
who “sinfully appropriate the Catholick Church to themselves.” See TC&CC, pp.
79, 80–83.
135
‘Mr. Dod . . . thanked God for the Churches sake, that some conformed, and for the Truths
sake, that some conformed not’. DPL, p. 36.
136
“Dr Ames was half an Independent, and yet against separation.” DPL, p. 58.
137
TC&CC, pp. 205–6.
138
DPL, sigs. A3r–A4v. (From Calvin’s Comments on Matthew 13, Matthew 6,
and Romans 14:3).
139
DPL, p. 13. See Collinson, The Religion of Protestants, p. 277; idem, “The
Cohabitation of the Faithful with the Unfaithful,” p. 60; idem, “Sects and the
Evolution of Puritanism,” p. 158.
150  

more radical Independents: “I know that it is Concord and Union

upon such terms in which we are all agreed. . . . And that no Covenant
nor partial interest, can possibly justifie us, if we will stablish our
union on such terms, as shall either exclude such on one side as
Jewel, Grindal, Downam, Hall and other such Bishops, or such on
the other side as Ames, Hildersham, Cartwright, Bayne, Egerton,
and other such worthy persons that were Nonconformists.”140
Such an idealized picture of a harmonious co-existence between
the bishops and nonconformists concealed the reality of deprivation,
the clash of reforming visions, and the eventual growth of separatism.
Hildersham, noted for his nonconformity, argued for an explicitly
anti-adiaphorist position, one Baxter would not endorse. In a lecture
on Psalm 51, Hildersham asserted that “what thing soever I [God]
command you, that shall ye observe to do: thou shalt not add thereto,
nor diminish from it.” This was echoed by John Dod, another “old
nonconformist.”141 Was Baxter unaware of the ceremonial non-
conformity of Hildersham and Dod, two men he esteemed for their
anti-separatism? A more likely answer might be that he chose to empha-
size the latter instead of the former to suit his polemical purposes.
Bagshaw, noticing the seeming discrepancy in Baxter’s interpretation
of Hildersham, quoted from CVIII Lectures on the Fourth of John to
provide the corrective.142
As will be discussed in Chapter Seven, Baxter’s attitude toward
Prelacy would eventually cool considerably during the late 1670s and
early 1680s. For the time being, however, he still stressed the neces-
sity of communicating with parish churches, provided that the incum-
bent was godly. Baxter’s ideal of Protestant unity perhaps prevented
his acceptance of the radical Dissenting charge that the restored
Church of England was a failed proselytizing institution. Though
sharing the persecution and marginalization of the radical, he did
not accept the validity of separation. It was comprehension and not
toleration he longed to see. This commitment to comprehension as
the ideal way of reformation frustrated his tolerationist Dissenting
colleagues. Baxter’s insistence on the legacy of the Jacobethan

140
DPL, pp. 12, 18.
141
Arthur Hildersham, CLII Lectures upon Psalm LI (1642), p. 652; John Dod and
Robert Cleaver, A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandements (1604), pp.
59, 76, 80–82.
142
Bagshaw, Defence of the Antidote, pp. 15–16, 17.
       151

Puritanism would seem to confirm R.A. Beddard’s view that many

Presbyterians were slow to recognize the futility of their campaign
for comprehension.143
This was precisely the criticism of Bagshaw, who accused Baxter
of being “neither . . . altogether for Truth nor altogether for Error,
but to hang Laodicea like, in a Lukewarm and Neutral indifference between
both.”144 Bagshaw insisted that Baxter’s occasional conformity and
the rhetoric of comprehension grievously harmed the cause of Dissent,
and further argued that Baxter was exploited by Anglican apologists
to increase the division within Dissent.145 More importantly, Bagshaw
was convinced that if Baxter could but follow the progression of his
own logic, he would be an ally of Bagshaw. Baxter had disowned
diocesan episcopacy as such, nor would he have communion with
persecutors, nor yet with those ministers who “through insufficiency,
Heresie, [and] Impiety” were intolerable.146 Bagshaw’s conclusion,
based on his reading of Baxter, was: “I scarce see what it is that
you contend for, or so earnestly disclaim against; since from these
Grounds Separation at this day may easily be justified.”147 In response,
Baxter encouraged Bagshaw to read “Mr. Jacob the Independent
against Johnson; Mr. Bradshaw’s against Johnson, with Mr. Gatakers
defence of it against Canne: Mr. Gifford, Mr. Darrell, Mr. Paget,
Mr. Hildersham, Mr. Cartwright, [and] Mr. Brightman.”148
Once again Baxter’s advice to read these treatises was predicated
on the contestable claim that “the case [was] not much altered since
the old Non-conformists wrote against separation.” In other words,
he was willing to propound a tripartite view with respect to the

143
See Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium, pp. 210–84. R.A. Beddard,
“Vincent Alsop and the Emancipation of Restoration Dissent,” JEH 24 (1973), pp.
161–84. However, I hope to show in Chap. 7 that the seed of Baxter’s distrust of
the “New” Church of England was already sown in the Interregnum.
144
Bagshaw, Defence of the Antidote (1671), p. 2.
145
Ibid., p. 3. On using Baxter as a self-indicter for the cause of Dissent, see By
a Moderate Hand, and Humbly Presented to the Serious Consideration of All Dissenting Parties
(1670). On subsequent Anglican exploitation of Baxter’s ecclesiological ambiguity,
see Thomas Long, Mr Hales Schism Censured and Baxter’s Argument for Conformity (1678),
pp. 174–76; Remarks on the Growth and Progress of Nonconformity (1682), pp. 8–10, 43–44,
55; Francis Fullwood, The Necessity of Keeping Our Parish Churches (1672), p. 12; idem,
The Doctrine of Schism Fully Opened and Applied to Gathered Churches (1672), p. 68.
146
CCD, p. 36; EBS, p. 7.
147
Bagshaw, Defence of the Antidote, pp. 10–11.
148
DPL, p. 89.
152  

conformity debate. There were conformists and nonconformists, but

nonconformists were also to be distinguished from separatists, as he
saw himself in contradistinction to “the Quakers, Seekers, Behmenists,
and some others.”149 But for Bagshaw, in the crucible of Restoration
Dissent such a view was simply untenable. Times had changed and
the line of demarcation between conformity and nonconformity had
become much clearer, removing the middle ground of occasional
communion.150 Just as the non-separatist Puritans of old used to solve
cases of conscience for the would-be separatists, Baxter argued sim-
ilarly and went a step further. After warning his readers to beware
of “Love-killing and Church-dividing Principles,” he encouraged them
“extraordinarily to joyn sometimes with such a Parish, even when
you have a better, to shew by what Principles you walk.” This view
highlights his commitment to the catholicity of the church, calling
for judgment of charity with regard to those in the established church,
since only God knew the ultimate issue of election and reprobation.
Bagshaw and other dissenting brethren cared equally about the
catholicity of the church, but their “universal church” was congre-
gationally defined and existed independently of the national church.
Thus it was a fierce hermeneutical debate on the Jacobethan radi-
cal Puritan texts on (semi)separatism.
Another significant aspect of the polemics dealt with indifferent
ceremonies imposed by the magistrate for “order and decency.” The
issue of ceremonial conformity exercised Baxter’s mind shortly after
he was ordained, prompted in large measure by the Et cetera Oath
of 1640, which required all pastoral incumbents and candidates to
swear to subscribe to the Prayer Book and any other episcopal deci-
sions deemed appropriate for liturgy and polity. After reading widely
from both sides, he concluded that he was not against the ring in
marriage, kneeling to receive the Lord’s Supper, and the liturgy,
although he became convinced that a diocesan episcopacy that elim-
inated the possibility of parochial discipline administered by minis-
ters was unlawful.151 By acknowledging the magisterial prerogative
over ceremonial imposition, he followed the conformist rhetoric on

149
Ibid., p. 70.
150
EBS, p. 11.
151
For Baxter’s account of the Et cetera Oath, see Reliquiae, I. 15, §22; TE, sigs.
A2r–A3v, pt. ii, 2; ANM, pp. 60, 117. For the text of the Et cetera Oath, see William
Laud, The Works of William Laud, 7 vols. (Oxford: Parker Society, 1847–60), 5:623.
       153

adiaphora, which, beginning with the Vestiarian Controversy during

Edward VI’s reign, had been hotly controverted.152
Bagshaw was an avowed opponent of magisterial imposition on
the conscience of the Christian.153 In his treatise dealing with this
theme, published in 1660, he argued from natural law, biblical exe-
gesis, church history, and arguments of the Jacobethan critics of adi-
aphora, most notably William Bradshaw. Bagshaw argued that to
enjoin uncertain things upon the consciences of the subjects was not
a magisterial prerogative. The adiaphorist rhetoric, he noted, of resort-
ing to the Old Testament kings to legitimate magisterial imposition
lost its force inasmuch as all Old Testament precedents and pre-
cepts needed to be interpreted in the light of the climax of God’s
revelation, Jesus Christ.154 He further asserted that Constantine’s
involvement in religion had unintentionally “laid that foundation of
Antichristian Tyranny.”155 Clearly repudiating the argument based on
‘order and decency’, Bagshaw cited Bradshaw’s important treatise on
that theme. There was an important parallel between Bagshaw and
Bradshaw in that they both argued from philosophical and exegeti-
cal grounds that such a middle ground on adiaphora did not exist.156
Bagshaw attacked Baxter’s adiaphorist position as “dethron(ing) the
Scripture from being a Perfect Rule.” Furthermore, Bagshaw asserted
that to participate in divine worship containing aspects imposed by
human authority “would involve us in the guilt” of disobeying God’s
revealed will.157
Baxter, on the other hand, argued that no one’s “sin shall damn
you but your own,” and provided a searing criticism of the teleo-
logy of the anti-adiaphorist position:

152
See Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?: Presybterianism and English conformist thought
from Whitgift to Hooker (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988). On the adiaphorist contro-
versy, see J.H. Primus, The Vestments Controversy (Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1960); Bernard
Verkamp, The Indifferent Mean (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1977).
153
On the issues of conformity and conscience, Gary De Krey, “Rethinking the
Restoration: dissenting cases for conscience, 1667–1672,” HJ 38 (1995), pp. 53–83.
154
The Great Question Concerning Things Indifferent in Religious Worship (1660), pp. 14,
15, pt. ii, 7.
155
Ibid., pp. 2, 15.
156
Ibid., p. 4; William Bradshaw, A Treatise of the Nature and Use of Things Indifferent
(1605), p. 21, passim. For conformist rhetoric of “order and decency,” see [Francis
Fullwood], Some Necessary and Seasonable Cases of Conscience (1661), pp. 8–9; Francis
Mason, The Authority of the Church (Oxford, 1634 edn.), pp. 8–14; John Williams, The
Case of Indifferent Things Used in the Worship of God (1683), pp. 8–9.
157
Bagshaw, A Defence of the Antidote (1671), pp. 2, 12–13.
154  

There are men otherwise very honest, and truly godly . . . who think
that the Scripture is intended by God, not only as a General, but a
particular Law or Rule, for all the very Circumstances of Worship . . .
and that all written Books, and Printed [e.g. Prayer Books] are Images
there forbidden . . . and that no man that useth any such preparation
or form of words in preaching or prayer, doth preach or pray by the
help of Gods Spirit.158
He also argued that since men of eminence were propagating this
view, “poor, ignorant, unlearned persons” were in danger of fol-
lowing them. For Baxter, the fundamental problem was not that it
“altereth the very Definition of the holy Scripture,” but rather that
“hereby all possibility of Union among Christians and Churches must
perish, till this Opinion perish.”159 For Bagshaw, the vision of refor-
mation was of paramount importance, and this clashed with Baxter’s
view that “LOVE is . . . my Religion it self,” drawing Bagshaw to
conclude: “if . . . you still go on, and under pretence of Writing for
Love, doe what you can to keep up a mixed, disorderly, persecuting, and
Imperfect Church state, leaving us no hope nor possibility of Reformation . . .
I must then look upon you as one of our greatest dividers and so
much the more dangerous, as your pretensions outwardly are the
more fair and plausible.”160 It would seem that many Dissenters
began to prefer reformation to love which extended to embrace the
restored Church of England, and separated existence rather than
replicating the earlier Jacobethan spiritual calculus of the cohabita-
tion of the faithful and unfaithful.161

VI. C

Baxter had pursued purity of communion within the context of non-

separated parochial churches. His conviction was partly responsible
for galvanizing the otherwise moribund parish of Kidderminster and
the nation for a chance at completing the reformation. However,

158
DPL, pp. 97–98.
159
Ibid., pp. 99, 102.
160
Bagshaw, Defence of the Antidote, pp. 21–22.
161
See Gary De Krey, “Reformation in the Restoration Crisis, 1679–1682,” in
Donna Hamilton and Richard Strier, eds., Religion, Literature, and Politics in Post-
Reformation England, 1540–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp.
231–52.
       155

Baxter’s vision for peace which had won many admirers during the
Interregnum was challenged and attacked in the Restoration. To be
sure, during his Kidderminster years, he was goaded by separatist
rhetoric to reform the parish. During the Restoration era, however,
he was not at the forefront of reform; he was now a much-reviled
Dissenter whose overtures for peace with both the Churchmen and
Dissenters fell on deaf ears.
A letter from an old friend in Worcestershire, Henry Osland, illus-
trated the changing context of nonconformity. To Baxter’s dismay,
his flock at Kidderminster began censuring the anachronistic nature
of his defense of partial conformity. Even more alarming was the
ascendancy of John Owen’s nonconformist principles among Baxter’s
erstwhile flock and in Worcestershire where Baxter himself had
labored so tirelessly against separatism.162 Perhaps his epic battle for
the church’s coextensive pursuit of purity and unity had reached its
final destination: further polarization in the churches in England,
rational religion and fierce Calvinism, and the shattering of the ideal
of a nation in prayer, laboring in holiness. In Chapter Seven, we
shall continue our analysis of the context of Baxter’s complex rela-
tionship with Prelacy. But in the next chapter, we will discuss Baxter’s
proposal for doctrinal unity in primitive purity as a way of seeing
the break-up of Puritan Calvinist consensus in the Interregnum and
beyond.

162
See Letters, iii. 297, from Henry Osland (c. May 1670).
 CHAPTER SIX

SOLA SCRIPTURA, SOCINIANISM, ANTINOMIANISM,

AND DOCTRINAL UNITY IN PRIMITIVE PURITY

For did not Arius first, Socinus now,

The Son’s eternal god-head disavow?
And did not these by Gospel texts alone
Condemn our doctrine and maintain their own?
Have not all heretics the same pretence,
To plead the Scriptures in their own defence?1

I. I

In his Ephemerides (August–December 1654),2 Samuel Hartlib men-

tioned that “Baxter according to Mr [Philip] Ny’s own Confession
puzzles the Assembly and framers of the intended Parliament’s
Confession of Faith.”3 Robert Baillie, another active participant in
the ecclesiastical affairs of Britain and a representative among Scottish
high Calvinist commissioners at the Westminster Assembly, wrote to
Simeon Ashe, a leading figure among London Presbyterians during
the 1640s, to express a similar concern about Baxter. He complained
that Baxter’s recent sermon at St. Paul’s, London, “seems to be
stuffed with grosse Arminianisme” and “highly offends . . . many.”4
Writing in November 1658, Baillie again wished Ashe to “know that
Mr. Baxter does us more harm than all your Sectaries; . . . his avowed
Amiraldisme . . . does vex us.”5

1
John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), p. 41.
2
On Hartlib’s “Ephemerides,” see Stephen Clucas, “Samuel Hartlib’s Ephemerides,
1635–59, and the Pursuit of Scientific and Philosophical Manuscripts,” SC 6 (1991),
pp. 33–55.
3
“Ephemerides 1654, Part III,” SUL HP 30a.
4
The sermon was published as ASJ in 1655. Baillie, Letters and Journals, ed., David
Laing, 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1842) 3:304, 324.
5
On Moise Amyraut (1596–1664), see B.G. Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut
Heresy: Protestant scholasticism and humanism in seventeenth-century France (Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1969); Jean-Paul Pittion, “Saumur: a story of intellectual war-
fare,” PHS 25 (1990), pp. 184–89; Hans Boersma, A Hot Pepper Corn: Richard Baxter’s
doctrine of justification in its seventeenth-century context of controversy (Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  157

Chapter Five discussed Baxter’s pursuit of the purity of the church

in unity. In this chapter, we will expound on the second half of
Baxter’s ecclesiological dialectic between purity and unity. As the
issues of doctrinal unity and the limits of acceptable orthodoxy were
hotly debated during the 1650s, he proposed a radical return to
Scripture sufficiency and pre-Nicene doctrinal purity, a view often
interpreted by his high Calvinist opponents as similar to Socinianism.
He also strongly opposed antinomianism, which, he feared, would
eliminate the necessity of a “laborious holynesse,” a principal part
of his ecclesiological re-configuration.6 This opposition eventually pre-
cluded the possibility of the “Happy Union” between Baxter and
Owen during the Interregnum, foreshadowing the eventual soterio-
logical and ecclesiological divergence within Restoration nonconfor-
mity.7 The vision of the catholicity of the church, especially of
doctrine, was a great preoccupation of Baxter, and in that regard
he stood in a long line of theologians who shared the same ecclesi-
ological perspective.
The apostle Paul asserted that unity in the Holy Spirit would cre-
ate a doctrinal unity under “one Lord, one faith” in the Church
Universal.8 The reverse of this scriptural formula concerning doctri-
nal unity and catholicity was that “heresies have often arisen and
still arise because . . . disgruntled minds . . . will not keep the unity,”
as Cyprian, third-century bishop of Carthage, maintained.9 John
Chrysostom echoed the Pauline sentiment when he preached that
“all those who believe through the Apostles are one,” emphasizing

Boekencentrum, 1993), pp. 25–27, 197–200, 335–37. On Baxter’s approval of

Amyraut, especially his view of universal redemption and the twofold will of God,
see PSP, 275, 316; UR, 376; AJ, Appendix, 164. For Amyraut’s letter to Baxter,
see Reliquiae, II. 442, §442. See also Elisabeth Labrousse, “Une Lettre de Moïse
Amyraut à Richard Baxter,” BSHPF 119 (1973), pp. 566–75.
6
On Baxter’s struggles with Antinomianism, see Tim Cooper, Fear and Polemic in
Seventeenth-Century England: Richard Baxter and Antinomianism (Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2001).
7
On the context of the break up of the “Happy Union,” see Roger Thomas,
C.G. Bolam, Jeremy Goring, and H.L. Short, The English Presbyterians: From Elizabethan
Puritanism to Modern Unitarianism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 101–108, 113–23;
Roger Thomas, “Comprehension and Indulgence,” in Nuttall and Chadwick, pp.
189–254.
8
Ephesians 4:4–5.
9
Cyprian, The Lapsed, and the Unity of the Catholic Church, trans. Maurice Bévenot
(Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1957), p. 52.
158  

the ecumenical potential of apostolic doctrine.10 Similarly, Augustine

urged that unity in the primitive church and its doctrine was the
only way to attain true catholicity. For Thomas Aquinas, “What is
believed by all the faithful is one and the same reality, hence is
termed Catholic or Universal,” thus re-asserting the crucial element
of doctrinal catholicity.11 For Calvin, the doctrinal unity of faith was
simply the “perfection of the Church,” for which all churches ought
to be striving.12 Erasmus, in his paraphrase of Ephesians 4:5, reca-
pitulated the Pauline theme: “There is one Lord of al Jesus Christ:
al [sic] have but one profession of faith.”13 Finally, for Baxter, “the
Essentials of the Christian Faith, or Creed, are One and the same.”14
Given this consensus on the catholicity of the Christian faith, why
did Baxter’s view generate so much controversy? As reported by Hartlib,
Baxter’s commitment to doctrinal unity in primitive purity created
a furor during an assembly of divines, gathered in the autumn of
1654 to delineate the contours of orthodoxy and the limits of reli-
gious liberty, for the articles on religion XXXV–XXXVIII of the
Instrument of Government, the constitutional blueprint of the Cromwellian
government. The statements of Hartlib and Baillie alert us to the
doctrinal distance which numerous divines felt from Baxter and help
us to identify potential influences on Baxter’s soteriology, the role
played by his “innovative” theological stance of sola scriptura, and op-
position to Antinomianism resulting from his endeavor for church unity.
Historians such as Nicholas Tyacke, Conrad Russell and Anthony
Milton have identified Arminianism as the critical nexus between the
Jacobethan Calvinist consensus and the tumultuous years of the
Caroline church. This tension culminated in the person of Archbishop
William Laud, his ecclesiastical policies and the ensuing Civil War.15

10
John Chrysostom, “Homily 82,” in Commentary on St John . . . Homilies 48–88,
trans. T.A. Goggin (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1960),
p. 391.
11
Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, trans. M.L.
Lamb (Albany, NY: Magi Books, 1966), p. 155. See Augustine, In Answer to the
Letters of Petilian, in NPNF, vol. 4, chap. 99, §226.
12
Calvin’s Commentaries . . . on John 11–21, trans. T.H.L. Parker, eds. T.F. Torrance
and D.W. Torrance (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1961), 148.
13
Desiderius Erasmus, The Second Tome or Volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus vpon
the Newe Testament (Coverdale edn., 1552), fol. cxxxv.
14
Baxter, A Paraphrase of the New Testament (1685), sig. Qqq3v.
15
Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: the rise of English Arminianism c. 1590 –1640
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  159

Assuming the Tyackean theory to be true as an explanatory matrix

for pre-Civil War England, I will trace the trajectory of such explo-
sive doctrinal debates in the post-Laudian church in England. In
other words, did this Calvinist-Arminian split continue in the English
church during the Interregnum?16 Or did it become a subterranean,
if not insignificant, flow within English religious ideology?
This chapter argues that the doctrinal dispute over Calvinist ortho-
doxy continued during the Interregnum, most notably in the Socinian
controversies concerning justification and the role of reason, the doc-
trine of true Catholicity and Scripture sufficiency. Baxter’s ecumenical
endeavors need to be interpreted in this context. Blair Worden has
emphasized that the writings of John Biddle, the leading English
Socinian of the 1650s, galvanized Cromwellian Oxford, with far-
reaching repercussions beyond the university.17 Biddle denied ortho-
dox teaching on the Trinity, espousing a Unitarian doctrine instead,
reduced the role of Christ’s atonement, and rationalized the way of
justification by emphasizing the imitation of Christ as the perfect
moral guide.
Moreover, Baxter’s unitive vision was hindered by the presence
of the Antinomians, whom he perceived to be synonymous with high
Calvinists, headed by Owen. Nuttall has argued that the battle over
justification during the Interregnum needs to be accorded due histo-
rical significance.18 Baxter was convinced that to assert justification

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987); idem, “The rise of Arminianism recon-
sidered,” P&P 115 (1987); and more recently, idem, “Anglican Attitudes: some
recent writings on English religious history, from the Reformation to the Civil War,”
JBS 35 (1996), pp. 139–67. Conrad Russell, ed., The Origins of the English Civil War
(Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1993). Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: the Roman
and Protestant churches in English Protestant thought, 1600–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995).
16
See F.J. Trott, “Prelude to Restoration” (Unpublished dissertation, Ph.D.,
University of London, 1993).
17
Blair Worden, “Cromwellian Oxford,” in N. Tyacke, ed., The History of the
University of Oxford, Vol. IV: Seventeenth-century Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1997), pp. 754, 760–61. For the pre-Civil War background of the threat of Socinianism
see Nicholas Tyacke, “Religious Controversy,” in Ibid., pp. 587–88, 590–91, 599–601,
605, 607, 609. For John Biddle, see DNB; Al. Oxon.; Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian
Biography, 3 vols. (London: E.T. Whitfield, 1850), 3:173–206; BDBR.
18
Geoffrey F. Nuttall noted that “Baxter’s Apology . . . is a work of central impor-
tance for an understanding . . . of the controversies concerning justification with
which much theological writing during the Commonwealth was concerned.” See
his “Richard Baxter’s Apology (1654): its occasion and composition,” JEH 4 (1953),
p. 76.
160  

before faith, indeed from eternity, was the very “pillar of Antinomia-
nism,” and he accused Owen, Maccovius, and others of propagat-
ing this doctrine.19 A corollary to the high Calvinism of Owen was
his commitment to obviate heterodoxies by drafting new confessions.
On the other hand, Baxter’s adherence to the principle of sola scrip-
tura left little place for confessions in non-scriptural language. He
was convinced that only by adherence to Scripture sufficiency could
true doctrinal unity and primitive purity be preserved. Emphasis on
catechizing—only the absolute essentials—and a corresponding focus
on “laborious holynesse,” were two closely related themes in his rad-
ical sola scriptura and, in his view, the best way to rediscover primi-
tive simplicity and purity of the Christian faith. As such, non-Scriptural
theological language would confound rather than clarify the faith of
the laity. Moreover, Baxter was convinced that most Independents
were affected by Antinomian teaching, and that it would denigrate
the role of holiness in the Christian life. Thus, even though the
debate in 1654 was designed to create godly unity, prompted in
large measure by the Socinian teaching of Biddle, for Baxter, this
was a bitter experience. A strong suspicion of Baxter was raised
among orthodox Calvinists who regarded his modified Calvinism
with equal dislike and distrust. The irony of Baxter’s moderate
Calvinism was that it was motivated by a search for a pacifying
discourse through which he could bring Calvinists and Arminians
together and re-configure the church along the ideal of doctrinal
catholicity.20 James Ussher, John Davenant, and Joseph Hall were
three important sources of Baxter’s irenical and soteriological per-
spectives. This chapter contends that his doctrinal controversies were
closely related to his ecclesiological conviction: the return to primi-
tive purity and unity.

19
On Maccovius, see Keith Sprunger, The Learned Doctor William Ames (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1972), pp. 59–62; G.C. Berkouwer, Divine Election (Grand
Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1960), pp. 17–19; Richard A. Muller, Christ and the
Decree (Durham, NC: Labyrinth Press, 1986), pp. 3, 7, 131. On the soteriological
divergence between Owen and Baxter, see Carl R. Trueman, The Claims of Truth:
John Owen’s trinitarian theology (Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 1998), pp. 199–226.
20
His Cath. Theol. had three parts: “I. PACIFYING PRINCIPLES . . . II. PACI-
FYING PRAXIS . . . III. PACIFYING DISPUTATIONS,” title-page. His summa
of practical divinity, CD (1673), had its literary origin in the advice of Archbishop
James Ussher, who desired that Baxter’s talent as a persuasive and practical writer
be put to use in writing a comprehensive, pacifying discourse. See ACU, “The
Reason of This Work,” sigs. A2r–A3r; Keeble, Richard Baxter, pp. 73–76; Reliquiae,
I. 114–5, §174 (19).
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  161

II. T C  1654  I T B

On 3 September 1654 the first Protectorate Parliament convened,

and from the start, its debates converged on the Instrument of Government,
particularly on the religious clauses. Within eight days of opening,
a resolution was passed to “call together . . . able and Godly Divines”
for consultation, of which Baxter was informed by a letter from the
London Provincial Assembly.21 Mercurius Politicus for 1 November
1654 reported the apparent stalemate in the committee over the
parameters of fundamentals. Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, as a mem-
ber of the committee, nominated Archbishop James Ussher of Armagh
to the sub-committee.22 Ussher, however, declined, citing his age and
hesitation to immerse in unnecessary “wrangling”; consequently Baxter
was nominated in his place. Shortly thereafter, he received a letter
from Thomas Grove, a member of the committee, dated 4 November,
urging him to “come & help us.”23 Baxter hurried to London, but
“before I came,” he wrote, “the rest had begun their Work, and
drawn up some few of the Propositions which they called Fundamentals.”
The members of the sub-committee already laboring were: “Mr.
Marshal, Mr. Reyner, Dr. Cheynell, Dr. Goodwin, Dr. Owen, Mr. Nye,
Mr. Sydrach Sympson, Mr. Vines, Mr. Manton, and Mr. Jacomb.” This
perhaps reflects the conservative re-alignment between the Presbyterians
and Independents brought about by the fear of the imminent escha-
tology of the Fifth Monarchy men, and other radical ideologies and
rationalistic theologies.24 As a result, Baxter’s main role during this
assembly became that of a dissenting maverick.
He soon discovered that Owen and Francis Cheynell—“the over-
Orthodox Doctors”—were most influential in the sub-committee. The

21
Letters, ii. 279 (dated 11 September 1654); see CJ, vii. 367 for the text of the
resolution passed that day.
22
On Roger Boyle, see K.M. Lynch, Roger Boyle, First Earl of Orrey (Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1965); DNB. His brother Robert had long been con-
vinced of the necessity of such an ecclesiastical settlement. See Boyle to John Mallet,
23 March 1652. BL Add. MS. 32093, fol. 292r.
23
Reliquiae, II. 197, §50; Letters, iii. 169. For the context of the sub-committee on
religion’s work, see CJ, vii. 397, 399, 400, 401, 403; W.C. Abbott, ed., The Writings
and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1937–47), 3:445–67, 470–86.
24
Reliquiae, II. 197, §50. For an alternative listing of the divines in attendance,
see CCRB, #204, n. 8. On the conservative re-alignment among Congregationalists,
see Carolyn Polizzotto, “The Campaign against the Humble Proposals of 1652,” JEH
38 (1987), pp. 567–81.
162  

fact that Baxter clashed with them was no surprise. They disagreed
on the necessity of Scripture and on justification: Baxter was an
essentialist, and pleaded the authority of sola scriptura as the final
arbiter of religious controversies, whereas Owen and colleagues
believed that more detailed, context-specific confessions were needed.
Thus, Baxter proposed a “primitive” and radical way of composing
a confession of faith. Instead of drafting a new confession to fit the
context of the 1650s specifically, he believed it was more important
to use the ancient symbols of catholicity and unity, encapsulated in
our Baptismal Covenant, [I believe in God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
and give up my self in Covenant to him, renouncing the Flesh, the World and the
Devil.] He that doth this truly shall be saved. . . . But as to the Use of
Publick Professions of Faith, to satisfie the Church for the Admittance of
Members, or to satisfie other Churches to hold Communion. . . . I
think that this . . . should be required . . . [In general I do believe all that
is contained in the Sacred Canonical Scriptures, and . . . the Ancient Creed, and
I desire all that is contained in the Lord’s Prayer, and I resolve upon Obedience
to the Ten Commandments.]25
As we shall see, considering the highly charged polemical context of
this assembly, it is unsurprising that his proposals were quickly rejected.
Baxter recollected later that “because the Doctor (meaning Owen)
was the hotter, and better befriended in that Assembly,” Owen’s
cause carried the day. In this context Nye had said: “Baxter . . . puz-
zles the framers of the . . . Confession of Faith.” The comment that
offended the Reformed sensibilities of Baxter’s colleagues was one
that may arguably be his most controversial utterance: “So much
the better!” The immediate context was that he had suggested the
triumvirate badges of orthodoxy—the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’
Creed and the Decalogue—should be the basis for and limits of
orthodoxy. To this Owen and his colleagues responded, “A Socinian
or a Papist will Subscribe all this,” prompting Baxter’s reply, “So much
the better, and so much fitter it is to be the Matter of our Concord.”
Not only was this comment highly controversial, but it was also fre-
quently misunderstood. For example, Robert Wallace, in his hagio-
graphical history of well-known anti-trinitarians, quoted this incident
to show the broad-mindedness of Baxter over against the inflexibility
of Owen. A group of Unitarians, who, in 1719, refused to subscribe

25
Reliquiae, II. 197–8, §51.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  163

the Trinitarian formulation, also spoke of Baxter’s alleged accom-

modation of Socinians. Geoffrey Nuttall also interpreted this asser-
tion as betraying Baxter’s ecumenical sensitivity.26 The problem with
the above interpretation of Baxter’s comment is that neither Wallace
nor Nuttall reflected Baxter’s overall intention by failing to comment
on the sentences following that famous utterance. Baxter quickly
averred that
if you are afraid of Communion with Papists and Socinians, it must not
be avoided by making a new Rule or Test of Faith which they will
not Subscribe to, or by forcing others to Subscribe to more than they
can do, but by calling them to account whenever in Preaching or
Writing they contradict or abuse the Truth to which they have
Subscribed. This is the Work of Government.27
He was deeply committed to the vision of creating a well-disciplined
church where primitive doctrine was faithfully taught, and any deviance
from that would be obviated, not by new confessions, but by disci-
pline. He argued that “Presumptions” to catch heresy by formulat-
ing new and context-specific confessions were doomed to fail. Such
efforts “have divided and distracted the Christian Churches, and one
would think Experience should save us from them.”28 Interestingly,
Baxter’s antipathy toward new creeds—in addition to the Apostles’
Creed—is found in his earliest published work, Aphorismes of Justification
(1649). He lamented that the simplicity of the New Testament gospel
has now “swelled as big almost as Aquinas Summes,” and added pun-
gently: “If one of the Primitive Martyrs were alive among us, and
professed but what was in his ancient Creed, hee would scarce be
taken by many for a Christian.”29
Baxter certainly could not plead ignorance with respect to the
threat of Socinianism. The way he proposed to fight the danger of
Socinianism, however, was by using the same tool the Socinians
themselves extolled: Scripture sufficiency and holiness of life. As N.H.
Keeble has demonstrated, clearly Baxter’s “mere Christianity” stemmed
from his desire to replicate the Vincentian canon: adhering only to
that which has been “everywhere, always, and by all” believed and

26
Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography (1850), 1:120–21; Nuttall, Richard Baxter, pp.
122–23.
27
Reliquiae, II. 198, § 52.
28
Ibid.
29
AJ, “To the Reader,” sig. a2r–v.
164  

confessed.30 Signs of the spread of Socinianism were all too obvious

for concerned divines such as Baxter to miss. On 10 February 1652,
John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, and Sidrach Simpson
presented their proposal for ecclesiastical settlement to the Rump
Parliament.31 Attached to the proposal was a petition calling for
Parliamentary involvement in suppressing the Racovian Catechism, a
popular work designed to subvert the foundation of Trinitarian
Christianity. By 2 April 1652, the House ordered this Antitrinitarian
catechism to be burnt.32 Most Socinian works were couched in an
irenicist, rationalist, and biblicist tone. Moreover, denying Christ’s
substitutionary death, original sin, and human depravity, Socinianism
focused on imitation of Christ’s moral precepts and example.
In the same year, a “W.P., D.D.” published The Peace-maker, claim-
ing that “the confining of salvation to your own Partie, hath . . .
sharpened the pens of many Writers to much bitterness and con-
demning one another.” Rather, he alerted the readers to the greater
religious war against atheism, instead of enumerating heresies and
condemning Socinians:
Unto this holy warre I suppose all they would come, who have promised
to fight under Christ’s banner. And set aside for a while this private
interest of Protestant, and Papist, and Grecian, and Lutheran, and
Calvinist, and Arminian, and Socinian; . . . take upon us that generall
livery of Christianity, and so joyne together to rescue our brethren
from that wilde Boare of the Forrest which hath laid wast this goodly
vine.33
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the identity of W.P. was William Page; he
was a member of the so-called “Oxford school of rational theolo-
gians,” comprised of William Chillingworth, John Hales, and Chris-
topher Potter, among others. Chillingworth was most famous for his
anti-Catholic tract, The Religion of Protestants (1638), in which sola scrip-
tura without tradition, the teaching magisterium, and other external
aids save reason were clearly articulated. Page was not a Socinian;

30
N.H. Keeble, “C.S. Lewis, Richard Baxter, and ‘Mere Christianity’”, C&L 30
(no. 3, 1981), pp. 33, 41. The Vincentian canon was “quod ubique, quod semper,
quod ab omnibus creditum est.” (St Vincent of Lèrins, Commonitorium, II. 3.)
31
The Humble Proposals of . . . Owen . . . Goodwin . . . Nye . . . Simpson (1652).
32
CJ, 8:86. For the decision of the House, see Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials
of the English Affairs (1682), p. 521; CJ, 8:113.
33
W[illiam].P[age]., The Peace-maker (1652), pp. 73–74, 83.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  165

in fact, his other publications reflect more Laudian sympathies.34

What, then, was the connection between Page and the Socinians?
It had to do with the pursuit of a life of holiness. When the 1639
Oxford edition of Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ was trans-
lated, Page wrote the exact words quoted above in its preface, extolling
Christian charity and emphasizing the essentials of the faith.35 The
Socinians also adhered to such devaluation of doctrinal precision for
emphasis on holy living, and dependence on Scripture and the
Apostles’ Creed alone without further confessional authorities and
aids, as did Chillingworth, Page, and other rational theologians of
the Great Tew circle.
The implacable enemy of orthodoxy who was on the mind of
every committee member in 1654 was John Biddle, whose incendi-
ary anti-Trinitarian works, A Two-fold Catechism (1654) and The Apostolical
and True Opinion Concerning the Holy Trinity (1653), as well as several
other tracts had been the bane of orthodoxy.36 Therefore, behind
the complaint of Owen and Cheynell lurked the fear that Baxter’s
proposed scheme for orthodoxy was uncannily similar to that of the
Socinians. In 1653, Biddle had translated Dissertatio de Pace, wherein
the framework for deciding orthodoxy was given: “To the belief
of the Promises that plain Confession is sufficient, which passeth
under the name of The Apostles’ Creed: and if there be any thing else
requisite, I see not what can be added, besides the Reverence due
to the holy Scriptures, to which if credence be once denyed, the
certainty of our Salvation is brought into danger.”37
Surprisingly, Baxter had adopted the same line of argumentation—
albeit for different reasons—and other supposed similarities between
him and the Socinians diminished the prospect of a unified Reformed
front. Consequently, the skepticism of Owen and his high Calvinist

34
William Page, A Treatise or Iustification of Bowing at the Name of Jesus (Oxford,
1631). For Page, see Ath. Oxon.; Tyacke, ed., The History of the University of Oxford,
p. 588.
35
See Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, trans. William Page (Oxford,
1639), sigs. *10r–v, ***1v–2r.
36
The titles of Biddle’s works reflect this radical biblicist perspective: Twelve
Arguments Drawn out of the Scripture (1647); idem, A Confession of Faith touching the Holy
Trinity, According to the Scripture (1653); idem, A Twofold Catechism: the One Simply Called
A Scripture-catechism; the Other, A Brief Scripture-catechism for Children (1654).
37
S. Przipcovius, Dissertatio de Pace, trans. John Biddle (1653), p. 8; H. McLachlan,
Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951),
p. 195.
166  

colleagues increased, prompting them to wonder if Baxter might be

more of a foe of high Calvinism than a polemicist against the
Socinians.

III. B, SOLA SCRIPTURA, S   P 

P P

Baxter began to be called a “flat papist” or a Socinian after his

Aphorismes of Justification was published.38 He had argued that while
the Papists “take our Works to be part of our Legall Righteousness,
I take them not to be the smallest portion of it: But onely a part
of our Evangelicall Righteousness; or of the Condition upon which
Christs Righteousness shall be ours.” For numerous high Calvinists,
this was hardly distinguishable from the “hydra of heresy,” Socinianism
for its putative conditions before the righteousness of Christ was
imputed to the justified Christian.39 Thus he defended himself from
the opprobrium of the high Calvinists:
In some mens mouths, Socinianisme is but a word of reproach. . . . Mr.
Wotton is a Socinian, and Mr. Bradshaw . . . Gataker . . . Goodwin. . . . But
I had rather study what is Scripture-truth, then what is Socinianisme: I
do not think that Faustus was so Infaustus, as to hold nothing true: That
which he held according to Scripture is not Socinianisme. . . . In a word:
The Socinians acknowledge not that Christ had satisfied the Law for
us . . . but onely hath . . . become our pattern, and that we are Justified
by following him as a Captain and guide to heaven: And so all our
proper Righteousness is in this obedience. Most accursed Doctrine! So
far am I from this.40
When Baxter’s soteriology is juxtaposed to the Socinian understanding
of Christ’s satisfaction and the role and extent of atonement, the
two stand in sharp contrast. Baxter was no Socinian, but statements
such as “That which he held according to Scripture is not Socinianisme,”
certainly vexed his Calvinist colleagues. What is alluded to in the
sentence quoted above is Baxter’s radical dependence on Scripture
as the final court of appeal in doctrinal disputes, rather than using
any theological systems and confessions, be it of Calvinist or Arminian
vagary, as ultimate and binding authority.

38
From Henry Bartlett (28 August 1652), Letters, iv. 176.
39
AJ, p. 196.
40
AJ, pp. 196–97.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  167

Norman Sykes noted that one of the slogans of the Protestant

Reformation, sola scriptura, proved “to be the harbinger not of peace
but of a sword.”41 In the first edition of The Saints Everlasting Rest
(1650), Baxter criticized an avowed defender of Trinitarian ortho-
doxy to show the absurdity of arguing that Prelacy inevitably leads
to Arminianism, which then eventually led to Socinianism. According
to Baxter, this “learned, godly Divine” attacked the dangerous doc-
trinal stance of the Laudian church: “Here is the Socinians sound
or right Reason before the Illumination of the Spirit; and to please
the Arminians ordinary or universal Grace comes in; and the name
of Tradition to please the Popish party: And what all these are like
to do, without the special Grace of the Holy Spirit, I leave it to any
Protestant judge.”42 In response, Baxter did not argue that one needed
special grace to understand the truth of Scripture, nor that the English
Protestants had to re-assert Calvinist orthodoxy. Instead, Baxter
declared:
O when will the Lord once perswade his Churches to take his Scripture
Laws for the onely Canon of their Faith! and that in their own naked
Simplicity and Evidence! without the Canons and Comments of men;
which are no parts of our Creed, but helps to our understandings,
and bounds to our practice in matters circumstantial, which God hath
left to mens determination!43
This was a radical statement. To limit the usefulness of confessions
of faith to determine circumstantial truths less than five years after
the publication of the Westminster Confession was surprisingly can-
did.44 The “godly Divine” specifically cited was Francis Cheynell,
who was then Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford as well
as a former member of the Westminster Assembly.45 He was Owen’s

41
Norman Sykes, “The Religion of Protestants,” in S.L. Greenslade, ed., The
Cambridge History of the Bible: The West from the Reformation to the Present Day (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 178.
42
SER, Preface to Pt. ii., sig. 2b1v.
43
SER, sig. 2b4.
44
Shortly after the publication of SER in 1650, Richard Vines wrote that “you
levell faith . . . to the rank of other graces & that seemes not to agree soe well to
Scripture & to draw too near Socinianisme: This is said.” See Letters, ii. 15. Baxter
responded to this rising criticism that his view “is too near the Socinian way” by
enlarging and revising his preface to SER in the second edition of 1651. See SER
(2nd edn., 1651), Preface to Pt. ii, sigs. 2b1–2f 2.
45
The text from Cheynell Baxter quoted is, The Rise, Growth, and Danger and
Socinianisme (1643), p. 44.
168  

“scribe” and a “hammer” of the Socinians, having published several

treatises against the danger of Socinianizing tendencies inherent within
the rational theology of William Chillingworth.46 In addition to
Chillingworth, Cheynell accused Jacobus Acontius of Socinianism.
Interestingly, Baxter praised both Chillingworth and Acontius for
their radical dependence on sola scriptura and for their irenicism. He
would even say that, “particularly, Chillingworth hath already told the
world the way of Unity.”47 Baxter’s emphasis on sola scriptura led him
to critique the multiplying of confessions, a prevalent phenomenon,
especially in the light of confessionalization in Reformation Europe.
For Baxter, “Enlarging our Creed and making more Fundamentals
then God hath done” and “Delivering our Creeds and Confessions
in our own Humane Phrase” were both causes and symptoms of
departing from the “antient simplicity.”48 If there was Scriptural sup-
port, he maintained, then, regardless of a doctrine’s provenance,
it ought to be accepted. Ironically, such a radical interpretation of
the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura nearly sabotaged Baxter’s
dearest ecumenical endeavour—the creation of the Worcestershire
Association.
By February 1653, Baxter was working indefatigably to organize
a voluntary association through which pastoral authority and disci-
pline could be re-established and the purity of the church pursued
in the parochial context. A letter from George Hopkins, Vicar of
All Saints, Evesham in Worcestershire, arrived in Kidderminster by
4 February. Hopkins’ sense of frustration is evident:
I had great hopes to have now sent you the Profession subscribed,
and am much troubled that it is not yet done. Our brethren in these
parts still insist upon the former additions to the article concerning the
Holy Ghost, and without the explicit asserting of his divine nature (at
least) I believe they will not subscribe it. . . . I hope, there may yet be
a faire accommodation although, for the present, we are a little at a
stand.

46
See for example, The Rise, Growth and Danger of Socinianisme; idem, Chillingworth
Novissima (1644); idem, A Copy of Some Papers Past at Oxford (1647); idem, The Divine
Triunity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit (1650). On Chillingworth’s rational theology,
see Hugh Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: seventeenth-century essays (London:
Fontana, 1987), pp. 186–90, 220–2. For Cheynell, see DNB; CR; Ath. Oxon.
47
GRD, pp. 8, 29.
48
SER, sig. bb4r, pp. 174–8.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  169

Then Hopkins asked Baxter “whether there be any such danger in

professing to believe that the Holy Ghost is God” because it was
shown by “our classicall ministers, as Fundamentall, and not Problem-
aticall, as Dr. Cheynell proves in his Divine Triunity.”49 This letter
from Hopkins also shows that Baxter had proposed to use only the
trinitarian formula given in the Apostles’ Creed, and Hopkins feared
that “our Brethren of other Counties (probably) will not be satisfied
to go the same way.” His anxiety was well-placed. Many theologi-
cal controversies of the early 1650s dealt with the Socinians who
denied the deity of the Holy Spirit. To move beyond this impasse,
Hopkins urged Baxter to “send copies of this to two, or three, of
the ablest Divines” whom Baxter trusted for advice. It is evident
from this correspondence that Baxter desired the associating minis-
ters of Worcestershire to sign the doctrinal statement without a clear
affirmation of the deity of the Holy Spirit.
Baxter acted upon Hopkins’ request without delay. The two most
trusted confidants were John Dury and James Ussher. Baxter’s let-
ter provides some fascinating insight into his so-called crypto-
Socinianism. He revealed that his lone dissent was prompted not by
his skepticism concerning the deity of the Holy Spirit but since “in
this Creed . . . every silly woman must professe & . . . must be the
test for admitting or not admitting to Communion,” so no “worde
but the very words of Scripture” ought to be used. We have already
seen that Baxter accommodated himself to the spiritual level of his
parishioners, one of whom thought that “Christ was the Sunne, that
shineth in the Firmament; and the Holy Ghost was the Moone.”50
Secondly, the critical issue was not the veracity of such doctrine nor
the place for such confessional subscription among ministers, but
“whether it be necessary for every woman or illiterate person to their
salvation.” If it were so, then Baxter wondered “whether it be nec-
essary to depart from Scripture words in expressing it in our Creed.”
Thirdly, when “the divided parties unite,” the only center to anchor
all doctrinal formulation was “Scripture sufficiency,” since apart from
Scripture, no other rule was sufficient. Baxter’s alternative proposal
to his Worcestershire Association brethren had been to “these words

49
Letters, v. 236. For Hopkins, see Reliquiae, I. 90, §137 (21); CR; Ath. Oxon.
Hopkins’ Salvation from Sinne by Jesus Christ (1655) included a preface by Baxter. See
Reliquiae, I. 123, §210.
50
C&R, p. 161.
170  

to the Article” on the Holy Spirit: “I beleeve that the Holy Ghost,
the Spirit of the Father and the Son was sent from the Father and
the Son to inspire and guide the prophets and Apostles to be great
witness of Christ and of the truth of his doctrine, being one with
the Father and the word.” This formulation contained nothing intrin-
sically heterodox, but what aroused the fear of his fellow ministers
was what was omitted, not what was included. Needless to say, his
brethren rejected the proposed formulation. Then he proposed that
a supplementary commentary be attached to the briefer confession,
composed using only Scripture words. That, too, was turned down.
Out of desperation, Baxter turned to Dury for direction. Baxter
penned the following well-known words on Christian unity in the
context of his fear that new confessions would further move away
from the center of unity:
Sir, I have shewed you our great stop. God hath possessed my heart
with such a burning desire after the peace & unity of the Churches
that . . . I feele a supernaturall power forceing my strongest zeale . . .
that way: & I am afraide under pretence of reconciling to frame an
Engine for perpetuall divisions, by giving away the only rule & Center
of reconcilement & unity. . . . I know the Devills last way of undoing
is by overdoing, & when it fits his turne, he will seeme more ortho-
doxe & zealous against error than Christ himselfe.51
He was convinced that requiring an explicit affirmation of the Deity
of the Holy Spirit as a test of orthodoxy was a satanic strategy,
which was a far-cry from the classical formulation of the Niceno-
Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. This zeal against “over orthodox”
religion became his life-long conviction, with a particular slant against
Antinomianism.
Dury replied, along with Archbishop Ussher, that “Wee both think
it necessary that the Holy Ghost should bee acknowledged explicitly
to bee God.” Their recommended phraseology was: “I believe that God
the Holy Ghost the spirit of the Father & the Son was sent from the Father
by the Son, to Inspire & guide, &c.”52 Subsequently, when Christian Concord
(1653) was published, it reflected the advice of Dury and Archbishop
Ussher on the deity of the Holy Spirit verbatim.53 Although the final

51
Letters, vi. 94.
52
Letters, vi. 79.
53
CD, sig. C3r. See also CC, pp. 19, 21, 23 for evidence of a much more explicit
trinitarian language.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  171

outcome clearly reflected the trinitarian perspective of both Baxter

and his fellow ministers, the steps leading up to the publication of
Christian Concord demonstrate his radical commitment to scripture
sufficiency in doctrinal formulation.
Several other divines expressed misgivings about Baxter’s soterio-
logical “innovations,” intimating that such innovations undermined
his ardent desire for godly unity. A letter from Thomas Wadsworth,
a minister in the Tenth London Classis, dated 7 April 1655, reflected
the significant influence of Baxter’s program of church unity and
parish reformation. When Wadsworth had proposed to implement a
similar association in Surrey, he found his brethren enthusiastic, and
“proceeded to the examination of your Profession in Christian Concord.”
There they encountered a problem: the doctrine of the Trinity was
not set forth explicitly. Wadsworth quickly admitted that it was not
an insurmountable hurdle, but Christian Concord was clearly not explicit
enough in its trinitarian position for many orthodox Calvinists in the
polemical context of the 1650s.54
Henry Bartlett, a frequent ministerial correspondent of Baxter,
expressed his joy over the lifted cloud of misunderstanding among
“severall young Ministers” in Hampshire. These ministers were of
Owen’s theological persuasion, and after reading Baxter’s Aphorismes
of Justification, they concluded that Baxter “proved another Grotius,
& have published some Cassandrian Syncretism.” However, now that
Rich. Baxter’s Confession had been recently published in 1655, many
such doubts subsided. Nevertheless, the skepticism over his reformed
credentials certainly hampered his endeavors for church unity.55
In his advice to a leader of the Second Protectorate Parliament,
Baxter again showed his commitment to Scripture sufficiency and
“true” catholicity. Written on 15 September 1656, he urged Edward
Harley to
1° Impose nothinge to be necessarily subscribed, but what is express
Scripture, or (if any will needs goe further) which hath \not/ the
note of Catholicisme, [ab omnibus ubique et semper receptum]56
2° Let this rule extend to the termes as well as to the sence; (for 1°
no honest man will subscribe to one word against his Conscience:

54
Letters, ii. 250. For Wadsworth, see DNB; CR. For Baxter’s praise of Wadsworth,
see Reliquiae, III. 95, §205(6); ANM, p. 71.
55
Letters, vi. 112.
56
This was Baxter’s motto for catholicity, taken firstly from St Vincent of Lèrins.
172  

2° And they that must be Judges may make ill use of ambiguous
or insnaringe termes, against good men.)
3° Impose only necessary truths: & not points of inferiour nature.57
By 1658, Baxter had become a widely-known minister. One exam-
ple of his stature was seen when John Rothwell, a London book-
seller, about to print the second edition of the Westminster Assembly’s
works, contacted Baxter. At the behest of “some Reverend Ministers,”
Rothwell surprisingly requested him to “put an Epistle before their
Works,” recommending them to families. Though Baxter “thought
it a thing arrogant and unfit for a single Person, who was none of
the Synod,” he eventually wrote an epistle with a proviso: “be sure
that they print all or none.” Eventually when The Westminster Confession
of Faith was printed, it left out one part which highlighted Baxter’s
conviction of sola scriptura and a corresponding aversion to use human-
made confessions as litmus tests of orthodoxy. Baxter wrote:
But he58 leaveth out a part, which it seems, was not pleasing to all.
When I had commended the Catechisms for the use of Families, I
added, That [I hoped the Assembly intended not all in that long Confession and
those Catechisms, to be imposed as a Test of Christian Communion; nor to dis-
own all that scrupled any word in it; If they had I could not have commended
it for any such use, though it be useful for the instruction of Families, &c.]59
This was a significant, if not daring, move on Baxter’s part. Though
he readily acknowledged that “the Assembly at Westminster” was a
“Synod of as godly, judicious divines . . . as ever England saw,” to
use their works and words as tests of entering into the Church
Catholic, it was too restrictive.60 Returning to the tests of orthodoxy,
Baxter had proposed to the ministerial panel in 1654 that the catholic
symbols of the Lord’s Prayer, the Decalogue, and the Apostles’ Creed

57
Letters, i. 226. This letter is reprinted in Richard Schlatter, ed., Richard Baxter
and Puritan Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1957), pp. 46–60.
For Edward Harley, see DNB; Jacqueline Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: The Harleys
of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990).
58
Thomas Manton. See Letters, ii. 320 (dated 27 January 1659) where he apol-
ogizes to Baxter for leaving out that part which, Manton knew, was an integral
part of Baxter’s ecclesiological convictions.
59
Reliquiae, I. 122, §210 (53).
60
Baxter’s preface (bearing Manton’s name) was printed in The Confession of Faith
Together with the Larger and Lesser Catechisms (2nd edn., 1658), sigs. c2r–c4v; THCD,
p. 185.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  173

would suffice. His proposal was summarily rejected and the printed
version of the Principles of Faith, the fruit of the endeavors of the min-
isterial sub-committee, reflected the more putatively doctrinaire stance
of Owen and other high Calvinists.61 We have seen that despite sim-
ilarities in the rationalistic tendencies in both Baxter and the Socinians,
and their mutual commitment to a radical doctrine of sola scriptura,
Baxter’s view of justification and human depravity marked him as a
foe, if a reluctant one, of the Socinians. Who then were the theo-
logical sources of his irenic principles and priorities?

IV. B’ T P

In Reliquiae Baxterianae, Baxter eulogized the so-called reconciling

divines and their principles.62 Here he incidentally identified his theo-
logical shift from high Calvinism to moderate Calvinism, with an
emphasis on hypothetical universalism. Hypothetical universalism held
that the extent of Christ’s atonement was sufficient for all human-
ity, whereas its efficiency was limited to the elect alone, a view which
Peter Lombard proffered in his Sentences (Lib. III, dist. xx).63
At first I was greatly inclined to go with the highest in Controversies . . .
as with Dr. Twisse, and Mr. Rutherford, and Spanhemius . . . &c. But now
I can so easily see what to say against both extreams that I am much
more inclinable to reconciling Principles. And whereas then I thought
that Conciliators were but ignorant men, that were willing to please
all . . . I have since perceived that . . . greater Light and stronger
Judgment usually is with the Reconcilers, than with either of the con-
tending Parties (as with Davenant, Hall, Usher, Lud. Crocius, Bergius, Strangius,
Camero, &c.) But on both accounts their Writings are most acceptable.64
The theological perspectives of these “Reconcilers” had, in fact, been
among his earliest principles. In The Saints Everlasting Rest, published
in 1650, he provided ten directions to his flock in Kidderminster.
The fifth direction was:

61
See The Principles of Faith, Presented by Mr. Thomas Goodwin, Mr. Nye, Mr. Sydrach
Simpson, and Other Ministers (1654).
62
Part I of Reliquiae was written about 1664.
63
Peter Lombard taught that Christ’s atoning death had a universal scope (quan-
tum ad pretii ), but its efficiency is only found among the elect ( pro electis).
64
Reliquiae, I. 130, §211.
174  

Beware of extreams in the controverted points of Religion. When you

avoid one Error, take heed you run not into another; specially if you
be in [the] heat of disputation or passions. . . . The middle way which
Camero, Ludov. Crocius, Amyraldus, Davenant, &c. go, I think, is neerest
the Truth.65
In the revised edition, published in 1651, Baxter spelled out clearly
the connection between his peculiar theology and the emblem of
international Calvinism, the Synod of Dort:
Especially beware of the Errors of these times: Antinomianism comes
from gross ignorance, and leads to gross wickedness. Socinians are
scarce Christians. . . . The middle way which Camero, Ludov. Crocoius,
Martinius, Amiraldus, Davenant, with all the Divines of Britain and Brem,
in the Synod of Dort go, I think is neerest the Truths of any that I
know, who have written on those points of Redemption and univer-
sal Grace.66
Baxter had been attacked by some Calvinist divines for leaning dan-
gerously close to Socinianism, thus prompting his defence of his
orthodox credentials in this corrected edition. The names of John
Davenant, Ludovicus Crocius, and Matthias Martinius made a last-
ing impression on the participants at the Synod of Dort, which was
held between 1618–1619 to halt the spread of Arminianism in the
Dutch church. John Davenant, Samuel Ward—two of the five British
delegates at Dort—and the divines from the Calvinist academy in
Bremen all endorsed hypothetical universalism, which was a minor-
ity position among the contra-Remonstrants.67 Nevertheless, the five
articles that gave unqualified assent to Calvinist teaching and an
unmitigated condemnation of the Remonstrants kept the tension
between the sufficiency and efficiency of Christ’s death taut. For
example, in the second article dealing with the satisfaction made by
Christ, the Synod of Dort declared that the death of Christ was “of
infinite value and worth, more than sufficient to atone for the sins

65
SER, “Epistle Dedicatory,” sig. A4v.
66
SER (2nd edn., 1651), “Epistle Dedicatory,” sig. a1r.
67
Walter Balcanquahall wrote Dudley Carlton on 9 February 1618: “The Question
among us is, Whether the Words . . . [are] to be understood of all particular men, or only
of the Elect? Dr. Davenant and Dr. Ward are of Martinius of Bremen his Mind; That it
is . . . of all particular men: The other three take the other Exposition, which is of the
Writers of the Reformed Churches.” John Hales, Golden Remains of the Ever Memorable
Mr. John Hales (1711 edn.), p. 471.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  175

of the whole world.”68 At the same time, the fourth article dealing
with the saving efficacy of Christ’s death clearly stated that
the enlivening and saving effectiveness of the Son’s costly death should
work itself out in all his chosen ones, in order that he might grant
justifying faith to them only and thereby lead them without fail to sal-
vation. In other words, it was God’s will that Christ through the blood
of the cross (by which Christ confirmed the new covenant) should
effectively redeem from every people, tribe, nation, and language all
those and only those who were chosen from eternity to salvation and
given to him by the Father.
Here we note that Dort emphasized both the sufficiency of Christ’s
death to atone for all of human sins, and yet the realization of the
efficacy of Christ’s atoning death was bestowed only on the elect.
The English delegates Davenant and Ward and the Bremen dele-
gates wanted to assert both while giving emphasis to the hypothet-
ical universalistic scope of Christ’s death. Franciscus Gomarus, Macovius
and other high Calvinists could not find any legitimate reason for
such a tension when in fact according to the double decrees of God
and their redemptive-historical outworking, what really mattered was
who were eventually saved; thus the talk of the universal sufficiency
of Christ’s atoning death only derogated from the correct emphasis
on its efficacy among the elect.
John Davenant69 was President of Queens’ College, Cambridge
between 1614–1622, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in Cambridge
when the Synod of Dort was first convened in 1618, and eventually
Bishop of Salisbury. He contributed to An Exhortation to Brotherly
Communion betwixt the Protestant Churches (1641), which was urged on
by Dury in order to facilitate his irenical schemes with the Lutherans.70
For Davenant, that “which was not Fundamentall in the times of
the Apostles and Primitive Church, cannot with all our Affirmings,

68
See, for example, The Ivdgement of the Synode Holden at Dort, Concerning the Fiue
Articles (1619), Ch. 2. Articles III, V, and VI support the sufficiency of Christ’s death
to cover the sin of all reprobate. This was contrasted with Article VIII, which
unequivocally taught definite atonement. See Milton, Catholic and Reformed, pp. 418–26;
W.B. Patterson, King James I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), Chap. 8; W.A. McComish, The Epigones: a study of the theol-
ogy of the Genevan Academy at the time of the Synod of Dort, with special reference to Giovanni
Diodati (Alison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1989), pp. 91–94.
69
For Davenant, see DNB.
70
Davenant, An Exhortation to Brotherly Communion (1641), sigs. a2r–3v, p. 3.
176  

wranglings, and Cursings, become Fundamentall,” a view shared by

all shades of Protestant opinion in England.71 Following Augustine’s
verdict, Davenant argued that the Apostles’ Creed comprised “that
Rule of Fundamentall Faith . . . common to small and great.”72 He main-
tained that when the Apostle Paul called Titus, “mine own son after
the common Faith,” he had “an eye to these Fundamentall Articles,”
thus giving an almost canonical status to the Apostles’ Creed.73 In
the final section of his advice to the Lutheran divines, Davenant
discussed
this threefold kind of Fundamentals; Whereof the first is seen in the
Creed: The second, in the Commandments: The third, in the Sacraments
of Baptisme, and the Lords Supper: We may adde a fourth, contained
in the Lords Prayer. For seeing, invocation or Prayer is a duty belong-
ing to the worship of God, absolutely necessary for the obtaining of
Grace, and Salvation, it must needs have certaine fundamentals. . . .
That these foure things, which wee have touched, are alone to be
accounted Fundamentals of the Christian Religion, seemes to me plainly
to appeare out of the practice of the Apostle themselves and Primitive
Church.74
Thus both Davenant’s belief in hypothetical universalism in regard
to soteriology and strong adherence to the three badges of ortho-
doxy—the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer—
as well as his commitment to Protestant ecumenism were what Baxter
found appealing.
Joseph Hall had also been an original member of the British del-
egates to Dort, though due to sudden illness he had to come back
to England. He subsequently became Bishop of Exeter (1627–41)
and Norwich (1641–47). His soteriological position was similar to
Davenant’s. Like Davenant, he was greatly concerned with main-
taining a united Protestant front against Rome, and corresponded
regularly with continental divines to that end.75 As regard the type

71
Ibid., p. 13.
72
Augustine’s Epistle 57, is mentioned in Davenant, An Exhortation, p. 13.
73
Ibid.
74
Ibid., pp. 82–83. It would seem that by 1634, Davenant had not proffered a
clear opinion on the fundamentals. Hartlib wrote, “Davenant has not defined enough
wherin the formality of a fundamental article lyes. lately one is afraid to meddle
with that, for feare hee should bee counted to take in too little et so a Socinian
or too much.” SUL HP 29/2/41B [Ephemerides 1634, Part 4].
75
SUL HP 29/2/19B [Ephemerides 1634, Part 2]
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  177

of fundamentals appropriate for such overtures, Hall used the dis-

tinction between “Truths of Christians Doctrine, and Truths of Catholick
Faith,” pleading for a “great latitude and variety” concerning the for-
mer, but for the latter, “more narrownesse and restraint.”76 As we
have seen earlier in the formation of the Worcestershire Association,
this was Baxter’s doctrinal perspective as well. While he was pre-
pared to use the deity of the Holy Spirit as a litmus test for judg-
ing the theological integrity of ministers, he was clearly opposed to
using the same doctrinal criterion for the laity. Hall’s Peace-maker was
one of Baxter’s favorite irenicist treatises, and thus demands closer
scrutiny.77 Peter Lake and Kenneth Fincham have shown the polem-
ical motivation and rationale behind Hall’s irenicism during the 1620s
and 1630s.78 More recently, Tom Webster demonstrated the polem-
ical context behind Hall’s treatises on jure divino episcopacy in the
early 1640s.79 In such a polemical context—the struggle between
Laudian episcopacy and the Puritan demand for its abolition “root
and branch”—Hall’s Peace-maker needs to be understood. It was not
a mere panegyric to an abstract notion of peace. He rebuked the
radical Puritans who, having determined that Laudian episcopacy was
a dangerous collaborator with Antichrist, pulled down the episcopal
structure. So long as there was agreement in the fundamentals—as
Hall argued there was between the Puritans and the Laudians—no
schism from or subversion of the Church of England was acceptable.
The fundamentals were: “A subjection to one Lord prescribed in the
Decalogue; A beleefe of the same Article set downe in the Creed;
A joynt-use and celebration of the holy Sacraments, the initiatory
whereof is Baptisme.”80
In a treatise describing the “Reformed Pastor,” Baxter criticized
the lack of moderation among the “Root and Branch” Puritans who
opposed the healing motions of Hall and Usher, an important link
in shaping our interpretive perspective on moderate Puritanism, as
embodied by Baxter:

76
Joseph Hall, The Peace-maker: laying forth the right way of peace, in matter of religion
(1645), p. 2.
77
See RP, pp. 162, 185–86; FDCW, pp. 9, 340–1.
78
Peter Lake and Kenneth Fincham, “Popularity, Prelacy and Puritanism in the
1630s: Joseph Hall explains himself,” EHR 111 (1996), pp. 856–81.
79
Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England, pp. 319–23, 324–26.
80
Hall, Peace-maker, p. 12.
178  

We did not in our Assembly [at Westminster] invite them to a free

consultation, that their cause have the fulliest and fairest hearing, before
it had been condemned. What moderate Proposals were made to one
party by Bishop Usher, which both parties did dislike! How many
pacificatory motions and excellent Treatises came from that Heavenly
peaceable Bishop Hall, especially his Peace-maker, his Pax terris, and his
Modest Offer! But how little did they effect!81
Considering that the Reformed Pastor (1656) was written in the heyday
of the Cromwellian regime, and that inclusion of such a clear critic-
ism of the current ecclesiastical situation was not meant to advance
Baxter’s career, this comment is a reliable barometer of his ecclesio-
logical and theological perspective. In fact he had already written to
Thomas Hill, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in March 1652
expressing similar discontent: “You did not well in the Assembly to
Destroy without hearing them fully speake for themselves.”82
Ussher was another influence on Baxter’s theological formation.
Baxter called him “the most Reverend, Learned, Humble, and Pious
Primate of Ireland,” and regarded him as a great theologian. Un-
surprisingly, he always stressed that he and Ussher agreed on reduced
episcopacy as the way to settle ecclesiastical differences in half an
hour. In 1654, when George Kendall, who had written a treatise
attacking John Goodwin and Baxter together, sought to prove Baxter
wrong, Ussher was asked to be the arbitrator. Baxter reminisced of
that confrontation: “when the Bishop had declared his Judgment for
that Doctrine of Universal Redemption which I asserted, and glo-
ried that he was the Man that brought Bishop Davenant and Dr
Preston to it, he perswaded us . . . to Silence for the time to come.”83

81
RP, p. 162.
82
To Thomas Hill (8 March 1652): Letters, iii. 272.
83
In 1651, Baxter confessed that “a learned . . . Doctor of Cambridge tels me, that
Bishop Usher is of the same Judgment; and he was never taken to favour of
Arminianism. And to confirm me in it, I have lately received . . . a Manuscript
of Bishop Ushers in resolution to the question of Universal Redemption.” See PSP,
p. 275. The Ussher manuscript bears resemblance to Letter XXII, in content, dated
3 March 1617. Here Ussher maintained hypothetical universalism: “The All-sufficient
satisfaction of Christ, made for the sins of the whole World. The true Intent and
Extent. . . . . The one extremity extends the benefit of Christ’s satisfaction too far. . . .
The other extremity contradicts the riches of Christ’s satisfaction into too narrow a room.”
Ussher concluded: “Both extremities then . . . must be fought unto by a middle course.”
See Richard Parr, ed., The Life of James Ussher and a Collection of . . . Letters (1686),
pp. 46, 50.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  179

Ussher’s sermon before James I at Wansted focused on a theme

dear to both men.84 He acknowledged the diversity of theological
opinions between Lutherans and Calvinists, among others. However,
his exegesis of Ephesians 4:13 led to the conclusion that this “vari-
etie of mens judgements” on “Theologicall faith” ought not to pre-
clude the union based on “the fundamentall principles of the Catholick
faith.” This faith that connected the Christians of the first century
to those of the seventeenth was comprised of an “Agenda or practi-
call part, an abrenuntiation of the Divell, the World & the Flesh,
with all their sinful workes and lustes; and for the Credenda, the things
to be beleeved, an acknowledgement of the articles of the Creed.”85
Again we see the same commitment to primitive purity of doctrine
in both Ussher and Baxter. That Ussher’s soteriological view leaned
toward hypothetical universalism was another reason for Baxter’s
high esteem of the Primate of Ireland.
Just as Dury was instrumental in enlisting Davenant, Hall and
Ussher into the scheme of pan-Protestant ecumenism in the Caroline
Church, he also contacted Baxter for similar purposes during the
Interregnum. Of the three publications of the Worcestershire Asso-
ciation, one that has not been discussed yet is the final pamphlet,
Judgment and Advice . . . in Reply to John Durey’s Proposals for Church Unity
(1658). This was unique among all the publications of other associ-
ations during the Interregnum inasmuch as it provided collective
advice for true catholicity with respect to foreign churches. After
their meeting in Worcester on 6 August 1658, prompted largely by
the ecumenical endeavors of Dury, the Judgment and Advice was writ-
ten by Baxter.86 The associating ministers affirmed the doctrinal
soundness of the German Lutherans and extended the right hand
of fellowship to them.87
Comparing various confessions and their binding nature, Baxter
declared that “we make none of our Confessions the Rule of our

84
The irenical endeavors of James I are set forth convincingly in W.B. Patterson,
King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997).
85
James Ussher, A Briefe Declaration of the Universalitie of the Church of Christ, and the
Unitie of the Catholike Faith Professed Therein (1624), pp. 25, 27. This influential ser-
mon was republished in 1625, 1629, 1631, and 1687.
86
For the background of this particular ecumenical project of Dury, see Reliquiae,
I. 117, §189 (33); Letters, i. 76 (from Dury, 24 May 1658); Letters, i. 87.
87
JAAW, p. 3.
180  

Faith,” though he had publicly praised the doctrinal clarity and

orthodoxy of the Westminster Confession. The preceding comment
by Baxter highlights his unswerving commitment to sola scriptura.
Developing this point, he pointed out that
the great cause of our uncharitable censures and divisions, hath been
our departing from the Antient simplicity of Faith, and also from the
sufficiency of the holy Scripture to be the Rule and Test of our Faith:
And till we return to this Scripture sufficiency, and antient simplicity, there
is no hope of the antient Christian Unity and Charity, while proud
men thrust their own Opinions into the Churches Creed, or un-Church
all that hold not such Opinions.88
Baxter maintained that God, instead of leaving the bare Scripture
in our hands, had provided three divine aids: “We conclude there-
fore, that all that subscribe to the holy Scriptures, and particularly
to all contained in the Antient Creeds of the Church, and in the
Lords Prayer and Decalogue, do make so full a Profession of Chris-
tianity, that none may reject them, till they prove by some incon-
sistent contradiction that indeed they hold not what they do profess.”89
In answering Dury’s query concerning “Externall manifestation
of . . . charity” between Lutherans and Calvinists, Baxter insisted that
the basis of unity was not doctrinal unanimity but agreement on
fundamentals, and in this regard he followed the steps of Davenant,
Hall, and Ussher. Above all, Hall’s and Ussher’s greatest attraction
for Baxter was their distinguishing between doctrines that allowed
for some multiplicity of perspectives and those that were considered
essential. In The Cure of Church Divisions, Baxter provided a list of
writers whose works had shaped his ecumenical thinking up to that
point. He raised a rhetorical question:
Are not the old Apostolical rules and terms sufficient to the safety and
peace of Christians? Were those worthy persons, B. Usher, B. Hall, B.
Davenant, B. Morton, with the Bergii, the Crocii, and all the great pacificators
deceived, who wrote and preached and cried out to the world that ‘so
much as all Christians are agreed in, is sufficient matter for their concord; if they
would lay it upon no more’. vid. Ush. serm. before King James at Wansted.90

88
Ibid., p. 4.
89
JAWW, pp. 4, 5; TC&CC, pp. 166, 171–2; Cath. Theol., sig. A4r–v; CC, p. 13.
90
CCD, p. 381. For Ussher, the basis of catholic unity was the faith confessed
at baptism during the Apostles’ days.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  181

This reveals two important facets of Baxter’s theological themes. First,

for Baxter “Reformers” and “Pacificators” were co-extensive. The
litany of names he recited were those whose Calvinism was of a
moderate sort, and doctrinal precision usually took second place to
practical divinity and the pursuit of holiness. To put it differently,
their doctrinal precision was devoted to producing pacifying and
sanctifying discourse. Secondly, their proposed way to unity was
based on the belief and praxis of the early church.
The contrast between Baxter, whose irenical and ideological pedi-
gree we have just seen, and Owen, the most influential high Calvinist
of England, is becoming clearer. They did not share the vision of
the reform of the church along the same line, especially with respect
to the limits of toleration and orthodoxy. Professor Posthumus Meyjes,
commenting on the failure of Protestant irenicism in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, delineated the difference between the
Erasmian irenicists and their controversialists: “borderland between
‘reform’ and ‘reformation,’ church-order and doctrine, disciplina and
dogma.” Those who followed the Erasmian path were more inter-
ested in ethical and sanctificational imperative “through a renewal
of disciplina” and showed less precisionistic tendency towards doc-
trina.91 Upon a closer examination, one can see which categories
Owen and Baxter would fall under. The reason for Baxter’s infa-
mously misunderstood comment, “Socinians and Papists . . . so much
the better,” was because he believed in ministerial and magisterial
discipline to move the church ahead in doctrinal purity. For him,
sufficient doctrinal truth was already revealed in the Apostolic era
encapsulated in Scripture and explicated in the baptismal confes-
sion.92 To multiply confessions and increase the number of litmus
tests for orthodoxy were counterproductive. For Owen, however, doc-
trinal truth was of paramount importance, and was to be preserved
against deviations by confessional precision. As Meyjes commented,
“matters of discipline were by no means unimportant to them, but
their central issue was doctrine.” Blair Worden echoes Posthumus

91
G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes, “Protestant Irenicism in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries,” in David Loades, ed., The End of Strife (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984),
88; Posthumus Meyjes, “Hugo Grotius as an Irenicist,” in The World of Hugo Grotius
(1583–1645): proceedings of the international colloquium (Amsterdam: APA Holland University
Press, 1984), p. 56.
92
See Cath. Theol., sigs. A3r–A4r.
182  

Meyjes’s suggestion. Speaking of Arminianism and Socinianism, he

wrote: “By emphasizing ethics above doctrine, they questioned the
very primacy of faith.”93 Baxter may be seen as a representative of
the disciplinarian school, who, instead of doctrinal precision, sought
to propose Scripture sufficiency and primitive purity of doctrine,
combined with assiduous pastoral oversight and discipline. We return
finally to the controversy between Owen and Baxter, with particu-
lar attention to the Socinian scare of the 1650s and the continued
conflict in the Restoration period.

V. J O  R B: C P P,

D D F?

Baxter first attacked Owen in print in 1649, focusing on his Salus

Electorum, Sanguis Jesu (1648). Although Owen’s stated goal was to
show that both Arminianism and hypothetical universalism were
untenable if not inimical to the purity of the Gospel, he was more
concerned to expose the danger of the latter. He argued that “the
infinite value and worth which we assert to be in the death of Christ,
we conceive to be exceedingly under valued by the assertors of uni-
versall redemption . . . but its true worth consists in the immediate
effects.”94 Baxter and Owen differed, among other things, on the
nature of the satisfaction made by Christ on behalf of humanity.
Owen had argued that Christ’s death was “the payment of the very debt”
which we had owed, and “doth ipso facto free the debtor,” and that divine
justice demanded nothing more and would be satisfied by nothing
less. However, Baxter insisted that Christ’s payment of our debt was
not identical to the very debt (solutio tantidem), instead as a demon-
stration of God’s grace, “a refuseable payment” is accepted by God.95
Although they engaged in a highly technical debate, Baxter identified
the crux of his polemical concerns as the fear of Antinomianism. He
asserted that the “Doctrine of Christs immediate Actuall delivering
us from guilt, wrath, and condemnation,” which was the capstone

93
Posthumus Meyjes, “Protestant Irenicism,” p. 88. Worden, “Cromwellian Oxford,”
in The History of the University of Oxford, p. 754.
94
John Owen, Salus Electorum, Sanguis Jesu (1648), p. 174.
95
AJ, p. 302. Cf. Owen, Salus Electorum, pp. 140–41; Boersma, A Hot Pepper Corn,
pp. 200–202.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  183

of Owen’s reformed theology, “is the very pillar and foundation of

the whole frame and fabrick of Antinomianisme.”96 The reason for
Baxter’s fear of Owen’s crypto-Antinomianism was that this would
detract from the central importance of sanctification and the pursuit
of holiness in the overall salvific schema. As Peter Lake and David
Como have conclusively shown, Antinomian teaching had under-
ground support in London during the late Jacobean and Caroline
period.97 Moreover, in the 1640s and during the Interregnum, the
radical Antinomian teaching —salvation by faith and grace alone
apart from the works of the law—was incorporated into the theol-
ogy of several high Calvinists such as William Eyre, George Kendall,
and John Owen, all of whom attacked the anti-Antinomian tenor of
Baxter’s view on justification. Eyre attacked Benjamin Woodbridge
and Baxter in his Vindiciae justificationis gratuitae (1654) in which he
asserted justification, both initial and eschatological, without condi-
tions vis-à-vis Baxter, who had taught that our evangelical right-
eousness must vindicate the living reality of the righteousness of
Christ. In particular, Eyre and Owen held in highest regard the doc-
trinal perspective represented by Edward Fisher’s The Marrow of Modern
Divinity (1645), which Baxter bitterly criticized in his Aphorismes of
Justification (1649), labeling it the classic Antinomian teaching.98
Two more issues need to be mentioned here: Baxter showed sup-
port for Hugo Grotius, the Dutch theologian and diplomat who had
become a bête noire among high Calvinists for his endorsement of
Arminianism. Although this was not a complete endorsement of Gro-
tian thought, that Baxter consistently preferred Grotius’ understanding
of atonement to Owen’s cast further doubt on his reformed credentials.99

96
AJ, p. 319.
97
David Como, “Puritans and Heretics: the emergence of an Antinomian under-
ground in early Stuart England,” (Unpublished Dissertation, Ph.D., Princeton
University, 1999); Como and Peter Lake, “‘Orthodoxy’ and its discontents: dispute
settlement and the production of ‘consensus’ in the London (Puritan) ‘underground,’”
JBS 39 (2000), pp. 34–70; Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the emergence of
an Antinomian underground in pre-Civil-War England (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
forthcoming). See also Tim Cooper, Fear and Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England:
Richard Baxter and Antinomianism (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001).
98
Benjamin Woodbridge, Justification by Faith, or A Confutation of that Antinomian
Error, that Justification Is before Faith (1652) sparked off the local controversy in Salisbury
between Woodbridge and Eyre, who responded with Vindiciae Justificationis Gratuitae
(1654). See Baxter’s AOJ (1655 edn.), Appendix, pp. 227, 229, 250, 263–66, 272,
275–76, 285.
99
Boersma, A Hot Pepper Corn, pp. 200–202.
184  

In 1650, Owen’s Of the Death of Christ was published, wherein he

carried on the polemic against Davenant’s hypothetical universalism,
and by extension against Baxter.100 Baxter’s Plain Scripture Proof, pub-
lished the following year, supported Davenant against Owen:
The doctrine of Universal Redemption as is to be seen, in the suffrages
of the British Divines in the Synod of Dort ad Art. 2. &c. And spe-
cially in his [Davenant’s] excellent judicious Dissertation on that sub-
ject, and on Predestination. Against which I find indeed a learned,
godly man . . . I mean Mr. Owen of Coggeshell in Essex, Put as the parts
of this learned man, had they the addition of much more, I think
would have found work enough in dealing with a Davenant, so I am
much more confident that his cause would faile him more than his
parts, and that Davenants cause is built on the impregnable rock.101
Two things Baxter found appealing about Davenant’s soteriological
position of hypothetical universalism were: his consistent emphasis
on human responsibility while giving theological priority to the sov-
ereignty of God, and his stress on the necessity of ecclesial unity
amid doctrinal variations.
Conversely, although it is true that Owen’s high Calvinism and
Baxter’s moderate Calvinism differed in significant ways, the real dis-
tance, as Baxter perceived, was in the ecclesiological outworking of
their soteriologies. The teachings of John Saltmarsh’s Free-Grace (1646)
and E.F.’s The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), along with that of
Owen, were attacked by Baxter as representative of Antinomianism.102
In his view, Antinomianism taught that the elect were justified from
eternity past, and that God had no anger toward the elect, thus
leaving no room for “laborious holynesse.” This was his fundamen-
tal objection to Owen’s high Calvinism, since such a soteriological
position would allegedly vitiate the holiness of the church, as Anti-
nomianism denied any role of human righteousness in salvation.103

100
Owen, challenging the hypothetical universalism of Davenant in Dissertationes
Duæ (Cambridge, 1650), wrote: “I undertake to demonstrate that the main foun-
dation of his whole dissertation about the death of Christ . . . are neither found in,
nor founded on the word; but that the several parts thereof are mutually conflicting
and destructive of each other,” in Owen, Works, 16 vols. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1850–53), 10:558.
101
PSP, pp. 332–33.
102
AJ, p. 276 (Saltmarsh), Appendix, 76–106 (on The Marrow), Appendix, 124–5
(Owen).
103
On Antinomian reaction to the excessively preparationist teaching, see T.D.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  185

After the Civil War experience, Baxter zealously fought against

Antinomianism, which he saw to be the “natural religion of the god-
less.” For Baxter, according to Keeble, “an improper reliance upon
the merit of deeds is far preferable to a confident trust in a justification
which does not need to be demonstrated.”104 In fact, for Baxter the
Antinomian promise of God’s justification from eternity was at best
a placebo to the afflicted conscience, and at worst a poison. This
conviction led Baxter to oppose “the Anti-nomians common, confident
obtrusion of their Anti-Evangelical doctrines and methods for com-
forting troubled souls. They are the most notorious Mountebanks,
the highest pretenders . . . that most of the Reformed Churches ever
knew.”105 He regarded Antinomianism as anti-biblical and the cor-
responding preoccupation of the high Calvinist Independents with
confessional precision as hurtful to godly unity in doctrinal purity.
Amid such fear and suspicion, Baxter reacted with alarm when
he heard of the Humble Proposals of Mr. Owen, Mr. Tho. Goodwin, My.
Nye, Mr. Sympson, and Other Ministers (1652). His letter to Thomas Hill,
dated 8 March 1652, has the following illuminating comment con-
cerning his attitude toward the Independents: “I heare the Independents
are now about cutting out all themselves.” Here he was referring to
the Humble Proposals and how this was feared to be a move for eccle-
siastical hegemony by the Independents. Thus, Baxter adds, “It will
be sadd to the church, if such an Accommodation preceede not their
Settlement.”106
However, it was not until 1655, a few months after the closure
of the committee’s work on the limits of orthodoxy, that Owen fully
engaged in an attack on Baxter’s ecumenical endeavors as well as
his perceived affinity toward Socinianism. In March 1654, the gov-
ernment invited Owen to confute the dangerous hydra of Socinianism

Bozeman, “The Glory of the ‘Third Time’: John Eaton as contra-Puritan,” JEH
47 (1996), pp. 638–54; David Como, “Puritans and Heretics,” Chaps. 4–6.
104
Keeble, Richard Baxter, p. 69.
105
RMPC, sig. b1r.
106
Letters, iii. 272. For the background of the Humble Proposals, see Tai Liu, Discord
in Zion: The Puritan divines and the Puritan Revolution 1640–1660 (The Hague: Nijhoff,
1973), p. 106. The enlarged and emended version of the Humble Proposals was pub-
lished as Proposals for the Furtherance and Propagation of the Gospel (1653). See also
Polizzotto, “The Campaign against the Humble Proposals of 1652,” pp. 567–81; Liu,
Discord in Zion, pp. 109–110; Geoffrey F. Nuttall, “Presbyterians and Independents:
some movements for unity 300 years ago,” JPHS 10 (1952), pp. 4–15.
186  

once and for all.107 The culmination of Owen’s endeavour was Vindiciae
Evangelicae, a careful exposition of orthodox Calvinism. The tripar-
tite opponents in Vindiciae were Biddle, Grotius and Baxter. The
implicit message was simple: Baxter’s orthodoxy was suspect because
his position was dangerously similar to that of Biddle and Grotius.
In his autobiography, Baxter recollected that Owen sought to “inti-
mate that I belonged to that Party.”108 It is possible that Owen’s
misgivings—both about Baxter’s theological reliability and his pro-
posed terms of church unity—were crystallized in their confrontation
in 1654, thus influencing Owen’s interpretation of Baxter’s soterio-
logical views in Vindiciae Evangelicae (1655).
After a brief praise of Baxter’s character, Owen defended his posi-
tion against Baxter’s attack. First, he confessed that he did not believe
in justification from eternity, prior to faith. Secondly, he disowned
the doctrine that “justification by faith, is but in foro conscientiæ, or in
our owne feeling, & terminated in conscience & not in foro dei.”
Having cleared some misconceptions, he launched into a counterat-
tack. The first issue he chose to deal with was the alleged faulty
Trinitarian thought of Baxter, particularly the “Confession of Faith”
contained in Christian Concord (1653), the charter document of the
Worcestershire Association. Among other things, Owen found Christian
Concord defective in its “way of delivering the Doctrine of the Trinity,”
which was identical with the Socinian except “one expression.” More
specifically, he argued that Christian Concord made too clear a dis-
tinction between the Son and Father, seen in these words:
I doe heartily take this one God, for my only God and chiefest good, and this
Jesus Christ for my only Lord Redeemer and Saviour, evidently distinguishes the
Lord Jesus Christ our Redeemer, as our Lord, from that one true God;
which not only directly answers that Question of M. Biddles, hoy many
Lords of Christians are there in distinction from this one God, but in termes
falls in with that which the Socinians professe to be the tessera of their
Sect . . . which is, that they believe in the one true living God the father, and
his only Sonne Jesus Christ our Lord.109
After this attack, Owen added a parenthetical comment, “I doe freely
clear the Subscribers of that Confession from any sinister opinion of the
Trinity, or the Deity of Jesus Christ, though as to my selfe I suppose

107
CSPD, 1654, p. 3.
108
Reliquiae, I. 111, §163.
109
John Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae (1655), Appendix, 3, 5, 7.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  187

my Reasons abundantly sufficient to detaine me frõ a subscription of

it.” This was a cleverly deployed attack on the framers of the
Confession, especially Baxter, and not necessarily on the laity who,
for their lack of theological knowledge, might subscribe to this sup-
posedly semi-Socinian confession. Again we see how the confession
of faith contained in Christian Concord (1653) caused much contro-
versy among the Puritans of his day, particularly due to the insufficiently
trinitarian language with a clear affirmation of the deity of the Holy
Spirit. Owen concluded his attack on Baxter by going back to the
issue of Christ’s satisfaction and imputation of righteousness, and the
perceived dangerous overlap between Baxter and the Socinians. Since
Baxter emphasised that “our performance of new obedience is the mat-
ter of our Justification before God,” Owen could only conclude that
“his doctrine is but almost Socinian, and yet in my Judgment is alto-
gether an Errour.”110

VI. C

A number of letters were exchanged between Baxter and Owen in

1669 when the motions for rapprochement between the Presbyterians
and Independents were made and prospect for unity among non-
conformists looked promising. Typically, Baxter initiated the motion
for peace with the Independents, and contacted Owen, whom he
regarded “the fittest man in England for this Work.” After initial con-
sultations, Baxter and Owen agreed to put their proposals in writ-
ing. Weeks of delay exasperated Baxter, and when Owen’s reply (25
January 1669) finally came, among other things, Baxter found that
he still was a stickler for anti-Socinianism. Owen wrote:
You expresly exclude the Papists, who will also sure enough exclude themselves,
and do, from any such Agreement: But have you done the same as to the Socinians,
who are numerous, and ready to include themselves upon our Communion? The
Creed, as expounded in the Four first Councils will do it.111
Baxter’s response to Owen’s complaint showed how the changed
polemical contexts had not shaken his convictions on Scripture

110
Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae, Appendix, 10.
111
Reliquiae. III, 61, §141. For Owen’s letter, see Letters, v. fol. 15; Rel. Bax, III.
63, §142; Peter Toon, ed., The Correspondence of John Owen (1616–1683) (Cambridge:
James Clarke, 1970), pp. 136–38.
188  

sufficiency alone as the litmus test of orthodoxy—and not any addi-

tional confessions of faith except the Apostles’ Creed—and distrust
of conciliar doctrinal formulations, including those of Nicea (325),
Constantinople (381), Ephesus (431), and Chalcedon (451), as sug-
gested by Owen. “The Reasons,” replied Baxter, “why I make no
larger a Profession necessary than the Creed and Scripture, are, because if
we depart from this old sufficient Catholick Rule, we narrow the Church,
and depart from the old Catholicism: And we shall never know where
to rest: From the same Reasons as you will take in Four Councils,
another will take in Six, and another Eight, and the Papists will say,
Why not the rest, as well as these?” The numerous references to the
Catholics show the augmented fear among the Dissenters of the per-
ceived Catholic machinations. Turning his attention to Owen’s crit-
icism that he was soft on Socinians, Baxter claimed:
If there be nothing against Socinianism in the Scripture, it is no Heresie:
If there be (as sure there is enough, and plain enough) Judge them
by that Rule, and make not new ones.
But if any will not hold to this truly Catholick Course, I shall next
like your Motion very well, to take up with the Creed, as Expounded
in the 4 First Councils, called General: which I can readily subscribe
my self, but it’s better let them all alone, and not to be so fond of
one onely Engine, which hath torn the Church for about 1200 Years. I
mean departing from the Ancient Rule, and making new Creeds and
Forms of Communion.112
This continued cleavage between these two nonconformist leaders
was perhaps one of the reasons why no coherent sense of unity could
be procured during their consultations in 1669. Needless to say,
Baxter was frustrated with Owen, whom he called “the over-Orthodox
doctor.” In the manuscript of Baxter’s autobiography, Reliquiae Bax-
terianae, Baxter candidly expressed his antipathy toward Owen, a fact
concealed from public readership under the careful editorializing of
Matthew Sylvester. In the manuscript form Baxter commented that
Owen’s filling the vacuum left by Jeremiah Burroughs’ death was
the start of the irreconcilable distance between the Independents and
the rest of the godly.
Mr. Burroughs being dead, Dr. John Owen arose with a contrary spirit
to fill up his place: This one mans Pride, & Mr. Philip Nye’s Policie,

112
Letter dated 16 February 1669, in Reliquiae, III, 65, §143; Toon, The Correspondence
of John Owen, pp. 138–45.
 SOLA SCRIPTURA, ,  189

increased the flame, & kept open our wounds, & carried on all, as if
there had bin none but they considerable in the world . . . (making)
things much worse, and more unreconcileable than ever they were
before.113
In the printed version of Reliquiae, the phrase “This one mans Pride”
is excised by Sylvester, and Owen had not “a contrary spirit” from
Burroughs but merely “not of the same Spirit,” once again reflecting
the editor’s desire to portray both Baxter and Owen in the best pos-
sible light.
Owen and his high Calvinists colleagues emphasized two things
which were repugnant to Baxter: the necessity of confessions to curb
the spread of heretical ideas, and Antinomian-leaning theological ten-
dencies, which Baxter felt led people from parochial churches and
a life of holiness. This ecclesiological and doctrinal divergence played
a significant role in pre-empting the prospect for achieving godly
unity during the Interregnum and beyond. Combining their ecclesi-
ological and soteriological differences, we can trace the trajectory of
these two “traditions” within Puritanism.
In his commendatory epistle for Thomas Doolittle’s The Protestant’s
Answer, Baxter reiterated his commitment to the principles of catholic-
ity: “Remember that our Religion is nothing but meer CHRISTIAN-
ITY.” The test of orthodoxy was still antiquity and primitive simplicity,
“believing as Tertullian, Quod primum id optimum; and with Vincent
Lerinensis, Quod semper ubique & ab omnibus receptum, is my
Religion, in which I am going to God.”114 He sought to bring as many
into this church as possible, which he regarded as truly Catholic.
However, such ancient simplicity and Scripture sufficiency proved to
be a lofty ideal that failed to stem intra-Puritan conflict in the
Interregnum and the Restoration. To be sure, both Owen and Baxter
held very high views of Scripture, but their divergent contours of
orthodoxy and conceptions of the fundamentals divided the Puritan
tradition.
In this chapter, we investigated the trajectory of conflict be-
tween Baxter and his high Calvinist polemicists, especially Owen, by

113
BL Egerton MS. 2570, fol. 27r–v; Cf. Reliquiae, I. 103, §147; I. 104, §149;
Geoffrey F. Nuttall, “The MS. of Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696),” JEH 6 (1955), pp.
73–79.
114
T[homas] D[oolittle], The Protestant’s Answer to that Question, Where was your Church
before Luther? (1678), sig. A3v.
190  

examining their fall-out in 1654, and explored the theological influences

on Baxter and the way Owen came into conflict with them, espe-
cially Davenant. Lastly, I argued that this soteriological and ecclesio-
logical divergence between these two great Puritans during the 1650s
foreshadowed the eventual break-up of their relationship after the
Restoration.
According to Owen, Baxter was an admirer of Grotius, but I will
show in the next chapter that Baxter’s attitude toward Grotius was
more ambiguous and fraught with implications that eventually led
Baxter to disavow, albeit temporarily, the ecclesiological validity of
the Restoration Church of England.
 CHAPTER SEVEN

IN PURSUIT OF LIBERTY: THE GROTIAN RELIGION

AND THE “TRUE” HISTORY OF PURITANISM

Yea, further, the pride and ambition of the prelates

being boundless, unwilling to be subject either to
men or laws, they claim their office and jurisdiction
to be Jure Divino.1

The Falsehood of History is an intolerable abuse of

mankind: To know nothing done before our times,
is to shut up mankind in a dungeon: and false History
is worse than none.2

I. I

In the Ford Lectures of 1979, Patrick Collinson described the extent

to which the polemics over Laudian episcopacy cast their shadow
on modern historians. Collinson asserted:
They almost oblige us declare our preferences for one of two alter-
native episcopal strategies and, among historians . . . we must line up
either with Richard Baxter, who wrote of the Elizabethan Archbishop
Grindal, the soul of protestant moderation: ‘Such bishops would have
prevented our contentions and wars’; or with Clarendon, for whom
the . . . death of . . . Archbishop Bancroft in 1610 was one of the ear-
liest events to which it was profitable to refer in accounting for the
Great Rebellion—‘with whom died’, wrote Heylyn of Bancroft, ‘the
Uniformity of the Church of England’.3
It is significant that both Baxter and Heylyn are cited as represen-
tatives of two opposing interpretations of the religious and political

1
Article XXV of the “Root and Branch Petition,” in S.R. Gardiner, ed.,
Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1625–1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1906), p. 142.
2
THCD, p. 53.
3
Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: the Church in English Society 1559–1625
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 43. The sources cited are: RP, “Preface”;
Clarendon, History of the Great Rebellion, ed. W.D. Macray, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1888),
1:118; Peter Heylyn, Cyprianus Anglicus (1668), p. 62.
192  

turmoil of seventeenth-century England. The question which Heylyn

and Baxter sought to answer was this: who represented the true
Church of England? Inherent in the question were competing versions
of the ecclesiological definition, separating former co-religionists
sharing episcopal ordinations, Calvinist soteriological perspectives,
zeal against separatism and radicalism, fear of popery, and finally
the vision of a godly nation at prayer.
Before a discussion of Baxter’s relationship with the so-called
“Prelatical party,” a few historiographical tendencies need brief re-
examinations. As discussed in Chapter Five, Whig historians, defend-
ing the libertarian ideal of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth
centuries, found in the British Civil War period a seedbed of mod-
ern notions such as tolerance, liberty, and democracy. Richard Baxter
has been interpreted from this perspective, abetted by the fact that
since he was a Dissenter, the historiography of Protestant Dissent
tended to focus on his sufferings.4 In a tercentenary commemorative
volume of the Bartholomew Day’s ejection and the subsequent shape
of Puritan Dissent, Baxter is cited most frequently for his views on
prelacy, the Restoration settlement, and the trajectory of Puritanism.5
The hegemonic struggle between the Laudians and Puritans, or
as Baxter would put it, between the Grotians and the reconciling
parties, has not received its due historiographical attention. For exam-
ple, in his impressive two-volume history of the Interregnum church,
W.A. Shaw gives virtually no account of the activity of the Laudians
and the vitality of Prayer Book religion, leaving an impression that
the episcopalian ideal and its religious practice were virtually eclipsed
during the period. This historiographical lack has recently been
redressed.6

4
W.K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 4 vols. (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1940), esp. vols. 3 and 4; S.R. Gardiner, A History
of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649–1656, 4 vols. (London: Longmans, Green,
and Co., 1894–1903), 3:26; Thomas Macaulay, The History of England, ed. C.H.
Firth, 6 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1913–15), 1:485, 486; Hugh Martin, Puritanism
and Richard Baxter (London: SCM Press, 1954); M.L. Loane, Makers of Religious Freedom
in the Seventeenth Century: Henderson, Rutherford, Bunyan, Baxter (London: Inter-Varsity
Fellowship, 1960).
5
Nuttall and Chadwick. See also G.R. Cragg, Puritanism in the Period of the Great
Persecution 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), where Baxter—
along with Bunyan—is cited as the definitive voice in the plight of Puritan Dissent.
6
Shaw, A History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the Commonwealth,
1640–1660, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1900); Claire Cross, Church
     193

The Interregnum was characterized by “the quest for settlement.”

It was also a period of intense struggle for the identity of the Church
of England. As F.J. Trott has recently demonstrated, the level of
acrimony and the extent to which this became the “prelude to Res-
toration” must be reckoned as a significant force behind the Restoration
settlement.7 Laudianism was not a spent force during the Interregnum.8
Much of the Puritan polemic, in increasing measures, attacked the
Laudians by equating them with the Roman Catholics for their sim-
ilarities in ceremonial emphasis in worship and defection from the
Calvinist orthodoxy.9 Thus, anti-popery was an effective polemical
trope in early modern Britain.10 Baxter played a considerable role
in shaping the English Protestant and Puritan identity. Carl Trueman
has recently pointed out that “considerable work [needs] to be done
on the sources” of Baxter’s thought.11 Who and what circumstances

and People, 1450–1660 (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester, 1976), p. 223. In addition to

Nuttall, William Lamont dealt with the impact of the Grotian scheme in Baxter’s
millenarian thought. See his Richard Baxter and the Millennium, pp. 45, 53, 84, 89,
105–6, 109, 148, 166, 183–5, 199.
7
G.E. Aylmer, The Interregnum: The quest for settlement (London: Macmillan, 1972);
F.J. Trott, “Prelude to Restoration” (Unpublished dissertation, Ph.D., University of
London, 1993). This is a substantially nuanced re-statement of Bosher’s The Making
of the Restoration Settlement: the influence of the Laudians, 1649 –1662 (London: Dacre
Press, 1951).
8
See John Morrill, “The Church in England, 1642–9,” in Morrill, ed., Reactions
to the English Civil War, 1642–1649 (London: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 89–114; Judith
Maltby, “From Temple to Synagogue: ‘Old’ conformity in the 1640s–1650s and the
case of Christopher Harvey,” in Peter Lake and Michael Questier, eds., Conformity
and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c. 1560–1660 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press,
2000), pp. 88–120; Alexandra Walsham, “The Parochial Roots of Laudianism
Revisited,” JEH 49 (1998), pp. 620–51.
9
See, among others, Robert Baillie, Ladensium AUTOKATAKRISIS (1640); idem,
A Parallel or Briefe Comparison of the Liturgie with the Masse-Book (1641); and William
Prynne, Rome for Canterbury (1641).
10
Peter Lake, “Anti-popery: the structure of a prejudice,” in R. Cust and Ann
Hughes, eds., Conflict in Early Stuart England: studies in religion and politics 1603–1642
(London: Longman, 1989), pp. 72–106; Robin Clifton, “The Popular Fear of
Catholics during the English Revolution,” P&P 51 (1971), pp. 23–55; Anthony
Milton, “A Qualified Intolerance: limits and ambiguities of early Stuart anti-
Catholicism,” in Arthur Marotti, ed., Catholicism and Anti-Catholicism in Early Modern
English Texts (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 85–115; Caroline Hibbard,
Charles I and the Popish Plot (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983);
Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: seventeenth-century English political instability in European
context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
11
Carl Trueman, “A Small Step Towards Rationalism,” in Trueman and R.S.
Clark, eds., Protestant Scholasticism: essays in reassessment (Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster,
1999), p. 195.
194  

influenced his anti-popery, expressed as anti-Prelacy? What moti-

vated him to write compendia of the history of church councils, their
abuses, and excesses? Lastly, how did that influence his vision of
church history in general and the history of English Puritanism in
particular?
This chapter does not purport to tell the entire story of Baxter’s
relationship with the Church of England. Chapter Five discussed his
practice of occasional conformity, which reflected his anti-separatism
and commitment to a vision of a parish-based national church. He
always emphasized his unswerving commitment to its reformed per-
spective which, he believed, was a legacy of the Edwardian refor-
mation, influenced as it was by such men as Thomas Cranmer, Peter
Martyr Vermigli, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, Hieronymus Zanchius,
and Philip Melanchthon. However, what belied this rhetoric of enthu-
siastic assent to the reformed Church of England was the presence
of the other ecclesiastical tradition. Baxter argued that its origin lay
in the persecuting spirit of Cain, first seen in the fall-out among the
Marian exiles in Frankfurt, though it did not emerge into the cen-
ter of religious polemic until the Laudian ascendancy. In his view,
the fight for the reportedly true reformed Church of England was
an intense struggle, one party having excessive scruples over cere-
monies and the other over its persecutory policy. Thus, his histori-
ographical view corresponds to Tyacke’s thesis that the Laudian
anti-Calvinists unsettled the ecclesiastical equilibrium of the Jacobean
church and further destabilized the early Stuart church.12
The question of when Baxter became anti-prelatical is an impor-
tant one, for in answering that question one can see an important
shift in Baxter’s ecclesiology. William Lamont and R.A. Beddard
have given their interpretation of the “emancipation of Restoration
dissent,” dating the significant watershed in English religious history
as 1704 and 1689, respectively.13 I suggest that the roots of this

12
Nicholas Tyacke, “Archbishop Laud,” in Early Stuart Church, 1603–1642
(Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 51–70; idem, “Puritanism, Arminianism
and counter-revolution,” in Margo Todd, ed., Reformation to Revolution: politics and reli-
gion in early modern England (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 53–70; idem, “Anglican
Attitudes: some recent writings on English religious history, from the Reformation
to the Civil War,” JBS 35 (1996), pp. 139–67.
13
Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium, pp. 210–84; R.B. Beddard, “Vincent
Alsop and the Emancipation of Restoration Dissent,” JEH 24 (1973), pp. 161–84.
     195

“emancipation,” at least for Baxter, lay in his attitude toward prelacy.

Though he published a spate of anti-prelatical writings at the height
of the Popish Plot in the late 1670s and early 1680s, this chapter
contends that the conflicts of the Interregnum, and especially Baxter’s
fear of “Grotian Religion,” presaged his temporary disavowal of the
Restoration Church of England during the last five years of Charles
II’s reign. This fear also provided the right theme for his historio-
graphical program. In that sense, there is continuity between these
two historical gulfs in seventeenth-century English history. Thus,
Jonathan Scott identified Baxter as a source of early modern English
anti-popery: “The accounts of contemporaries like Richard Baxter
make it clear just how central this perception was, particularly after
the Irish Rebellion of 1641, to the circumstances which gave rise to
the Civil War. Baxter’s interpretation was widely echoed in the pam-
phlet literature of 1678–81.”14 Baxter showed the “Grotian Religion”
to be the link.

II. T P   G R: L 

L  R M

Baxter’s theological indebtedness to Grotius was considerable. Owen’s

inclusion of Baxter in his Vindiciae Evangelicae—an exposé of reputed
Socinian errors—along with Grotius and Biddle accentuated this
seeming dependence. Among some Calvinist Puritans, Baxter was
suspected of being “another Grotius” for his “Cassandrian Sync-
retism.”15 Baxter himself averred that “if I might be partial for any
man, it were very likely to be for Grotius.” Moreover, said Baxter,
Grotius’ “Pacificatory design, in General I take it to be one of the
most Christian, noble, blessed works, that any man can be employed
in.”16
Nonetheless, he made it clear that he considered Grotius a dan-
gerous figure, especially with regard to his irenical schemes to bring
fractured Protestantism back to unity under the headship of Rome,

14
Jonathan Scott, “England’s Troubles: Exhuming the Popish Plot,” in Tim
Harris, Paul Seaward, and Mark Goldie, eds., The Politics of Religion in Restoration
England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 107–31, here p. 111.
15
Letters, vi. 112.
16
GRD, pp. 4–5.
196  

by way of Gallican concilliarism. Geoffrey Nuttall has shown the

nuanced attitude Baxter had toward Grotius and the significance of
his The Grotian Religion Discovered (1658) in highlighting this previously
neglected aspect of the Interregnum polemics and politics of religion:
the relationship between the extruded Episcopalians and Puritans.17
The Grotian Religion Discovered concentrated on Grotius’ alleged
embrace of Rome as the ideal option to achieve ecclesiastical reunion.
Baxter contended that Grotius’ English “disciples” were replicating
the same fateful mistake of their “master.”18 Baxter had already
adumbrated its appearance, however, in a treatise published in 1653:
“An Explication of . . . the foregoing Propositions and Profession,”
appended as his commentary to Christian Concord, published in the
same year. “An Explication” devoted nearly half of its space to
divulge the scheme of the “Popish Episcopall Divines, who will . . .
come to the Romish polity.” To Baxter, they were deeply affected
by “Cassandrian and Grotian” religious perspectives.19 In fact, in
addition to Christian Concord and Grotian Religion Discovered, three other
major treatises by Baxter published during the Interregnum—The
Reformed Pastor (1656), Five Disputations of Church-Government and Worship
(1659), and A Key for Catholicks (1659)—dealt with various aspects of
Grotian religion. His interpretation of “Grotian Religion” can only
be understood in the light of a brief sketch of Grotius’ efforts toward
reunion of Christendom.
Views differ concerning the nature of Grotius’ irenicism and the
extent to which this ought to be interpreted as a capitulation to “a
foreign jurisdiction” of papal or conciliar hegemony. From very early
on, Grotius was acutely aware of the problem of a divided
Christendom, and propounded that concord would be possible if the
number of fundamental articles were reduced to a bare minimum.
In this regard, Grotius’ and Baxter’s views bear striking resemblance.20

17
Nuttall, “Richard Baxter and the Grotian Religion,” in Derek Baker, ed., Reform
and Reformation: England and the Continent c. 1500–c. 1750 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979),
pp. 245–50.
18
FDCW, “The Preface,” sig. D4v.
19
“An Explication,” in CC, 2v. The discussion of Grotian religion and prelacy
takes up fifty-five pages (41–95) out of 120.
20
G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes, “Hugo de Groot’s ‘Meletius’ (1611),” Lias 11 (1984),
pp. 147–50. On fundamental articles, see Hugo Grotius, Meletius sive de iis quae inter
Christanos Convenient Epistola, ed. G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988),
pp. 133–34.
     197

As for his influence in England, it is generally agreed that Grotius

carried an Erasmian irenicist program into the seventeenth century.
We have already seen that Baxter’s program of reform and restora-
tion of primitive purity was primarily Erasmian, with its emphasis
on pursuit of holiness and discipline rather than doctrinaire adher-
ence. There is less agreement, however, on Grotius’ putative influence
on the English Arminians and Laudians in their relationship with
Rome.21 Hugh Trevor-Roper has argued that for England “the most
influential of the Dutch Arminians was not Arminius himself, but . . .
Hugo Grotius.” For Grotius, the Jacobean Church of England was
the ideal institution, not given over to excesses in ceremonies or
polity nor doggedly doctrinaire and reformed.22
In a letter from Paris, Viscount Scudamore sought Laud’s endorse-
ment of the Grotian scheme of uniting the Swedish Lutherans and
the Church of England. Laud showed a little more interest in Grotius’
scheme than Dury’s similar attempts, which sought to include Calvinists
as well. Grotius’ more realistic appraisal of the situation with the
Calvinists may have resonated with Laud’s own view, predicting that
“here is no medium left for reconcilement.”23 On 21 March 1642,
Dury, in a letter to a minister in Edinburgh, expressed grave mis-
givings about the trajectory of Grotius’ ecumenical overtures, fearing

21
For the view that emphasizes the Grotian ecumenical ideal taking root in
England, see Hugh Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans (London: Secker
& Warburg, 1987), pp. 52–55; W.B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion
of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 139–54; W.K.
Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England: from the accession of James I to
the convention of the Long Parliament, 1603–1640 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1936),
p. 348; William Lamont, “Arminianism: the controversy that never was,” in Political
Discourse in Early Modern Britain, eds. Quentin Skinner and Nicholas Phillipson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 49–66; G.H.M. Posthumus
Meyjes, “Hugo Grotius as an Irenicist,” in The World of Hugo Grotius, 1583–1645
(Amsterdam: APA Holland University Press, 1984), pp. 43–63. Other works, how-
ever, are silent on the supposed Grotian influence. See Hibbard, Charles I and the
Popish Plot; A.E.O. Whiteman, “The Restoration of the Church of England,” in
Nuttall and Chadwick, esp. pp. 36–49; John Spurr, The Restoration Church of England,
1646–1689 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), pp. 141, 256; Norman Sykes,
Old Priest and New Presbyter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957).
22
Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans, and Puritans, p. 52; Posthumus Meyjes, “Grotius
as an Irenicist,” p. 59.
23
PRO C 115/Bundle M12/7223, fols. 1r–4r, dated 8 January 1638, cited in
W.J. Tighe, “William Laud and the Reunion of the Churches: some evidence from
1637 and 1638,” HJ 30 (1987), pp. 717–27. Cf. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Archbishop
Laud, 1573–1645 (London: Macmillan, 1940), pp. 269–70.
198  

that his putative dalliance with Rome might vitiate the oft-battered
pan-Protestant stance.24 Grotius published Rivetani Apologetici in 1645
and summarized the evolution of his irenicism:
He has always desired a restoration of all Christians. . . . Originally he
thought that this could begin with a union of protestants among them-
selves. Later he saw that this was utterly impossible; . . . the nature of
practically all Calvinists is averse to any peace. . . . It is for that rea-
son that, Grotius is now utterly convinced . . . that a union of all protes-
tants is impossible, unless simultaneously a reunion be effected with
the supporters of the see of Rome.25
Baxter was prompted to warn of the danger of “Grotian Religion,”
specifically the seeming defection from Protestantism and embrace
of Rome as the way of unity. Returning to “An Explication,” pub-
lished as part of Christian Concord (1653), which itself dealt with the
issue of a pan-Puritan ecumenism, he asserted that there were “in
England two sorts of Episcopal Divines.” The first were “Protestants,”
converging with the “rest of the Reformed Churches” on doctrinal
matters, except in “this matter of Church-Government.” Included
among them were “Jewel, Davenant, and many more formerly; and
such as are A.B. Usher, B. Hall, B. Morton, Dr Sanderson and many
more.” The other was “of the last edition, and of the growth of
about thirty years,” thus identifying c. 1623 as the incipient stage of
the Grotius religion. Implicated also in this group were those who
“differ from us in greater matters then [sic] Episcopacy, being indeed
Cassandrian Papists, and leveling all their doctrines to the advance-
ment of the Papal interest.” Consequently, Baxter asserted that if
“you will appeal to these Episcopal Divines, we should almost as
soon consent to an appeal to Rome.”26 The divergence over Calvinist
orthodoxy was singled out as the most obvious area of difference;
the others concerned the form of church government and differing
attitudes toward Rome. Further describing the Catholic interest afoot
in England, Baxter spoke of Gallicanism and its emphasis on con-
ciliarism as a greater threat than “the Spaniards and Italians” were:

24
SUL HP 6/4/130A–B. See also SUL HP 2/10/1B.
25
Hugo Grotius, Rivetani Apologetici (Amsterdam, 1645), in Opera Omnia Theologica
(Basel, 1732), 4:744b, cited in Posthumus Meyjes, “Grotius as an Irenicist,” pp.
54–55.
26
“An Explication,” in CC, pp. 44–45.
     199

The French are more moderate Papists then the Spaniards and Italians
are: Especially as to the points of the Popes Infallibility, and his power
over a General Council. . . . Since the mixture of the English and French
blood, there have been strong endeavours afoot to make these two
nations of one Religion, and that must be the moderate Cassandrian
Popery. . . . But one of the first and most famous Trumpets that sounded
a retreat to . . . return to Rome, was H. Grotius.27
As a renowned French historian, J.H.M. Salmon, has suggested, the
political and ideological perspectives of the English and French
churches were considerably similar even though one was Protestant
and the other Roman Catholic, in that “under the challenge of a
resurgent papacy with universal claims” their relationship became
one of “reciprocal influence, and even association.”28
Baxter sought to answer three main arguments from those whom
he termed “Grotians.” The first dealt with whether disciplinary power
resided solely with the bishop or with parish ministers as well. The
second involved the ecclesial validity of the churches to which Puritans
ministered, which “are no true Churches, both because we are not
Diocesan Churches, and because we have no Bishops . . . and so are
no true Ministers, and therefore it is unlawfull to acknowledge us as
Pastors, or to joyn with our Churches Members.”29 The last major
issue of contention was the prelatists’ refusal of communion with
Puritans unless “they . . . have the Sacrament kneeling, and the
Liturgie used as formerly it hath been.”30
As seen in Chapter Four, Baxter was familiar with the complaint
of the prelatists, partly through his controversy with Baxter and the
local magnate of Kidderminster, Sir Ralph Clare, over receiving
communion. We now turn to the question of the legitimacy of non-
episcopal ordinations and the larger implication for the international
reformed community. If Collinson’s Puritans were “the hotter sort of
Protestants,” Baxter’s Grotians were the “colder and more Ceremonial

27
Ibid., p. 45. For Gallicanism, see Victor Martin, Les origins du Gallicanisme,
2 vols. (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1930); William Bouwsma, “Gallicanism and the Nature
of Christendom,” in A. Molho and J.A. Tedeschi, eds., Renaissance Studies in Honor
of Hans Baron (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1971), pp. 811–30; N. Sykes, From Sheldon
to Secker: aspects of English church history, 1660–1768 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1959), pp. 113–30.
28
J.H.M. Salmon, Renaissance and Revolt: essays in the intellectual and social history of
early modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 155.
29
“An Explication,” p. 42.
30
Ibid., pp. 41–2.
200  

party of the Protestants.”31 Several historians have recently challenged

this tendency of the godly to create an imaginary direct link between
ungodliness and support for prelacy.32 Baxter nevertheless excoriated
both the inability of Prelacy to reform the manners of the people
and its unwillingness to foster a congregationally-oriented communion
of saints through discipline.
In October 1653, two Shropshire ministers, Thomas Good and
Thomas Warmestry, contacted Baxter upon hearing of the formation
of the Worcestershire Association “in order to bring in the Episcopal
Party” to it. Baxter saw Good and Warmestry as of the “moderate
ancient Episcopal Party.”33 Warmestry had opposed the Laudian
“Etcetera” Oath of 1640 and his convocation speech was published
in 1641, wherein he expressed dissatisfaction with some “outward
things,” images, and the recent canons. More significantly, although
Warmestry was willing to submit to episcopal government, he earnestly
desired that “it may be fatherly, not despoticall, much lesse tyran-
nicall; not as Lords over Gods heritage, but as Stewards of the
manifold graces of God.” Therefore, Baxter’s emphasis on the ideal
of episcopus gregis might have appealed to moderate episcopal divines
of this sort.34
On 20 September 1653, Good and Warmestry, after meeting with
Baxter in Cleobury, Shropshire, gave provisional support for the asso-
ciation movement and promised that after consulting the rest of the
Episcopal divines in Shropshire, they would be ready to engage fully
in this “noble task.” Correspondence from Good, written about three
weeks after the conference, revealed the nature of the dilemma that
these moderate episcopalians faced: the question as to who their real
enemy was. Was it “Atheists & subtle Jesuites,” as Good asserted,
or was it the non-episcopal ordained “intruders,” who have sidelined
the Laudians, and were now scheming to divide and conquer them?35

31
Ibid., p. 45.
32
Ibid., p. 41. Most notably, Judith Maltby, John Morrill, and Alexandra Walsham.
See n. 8 above.
33
Baxter, Reliquiae, II. 149, §29. The subscribed document of Warmestry and
Good is printed in II. 149, §30.
34
Thomas Warmestry, A Convocation Speech by Mr. Thomas Warmestry One of the
Clerks for the Diocese of Worcester: against images, altars, crosses, the new canons and the oath,
&c. (1641), pp. 1, 2, 9, 10, 13–14, 16.
35
Letters, vi. 127 (from Good, 12 October 1653).
     201

The result of the meeting in Ludlow reflected the wider struggle

between moderate and Laudian episcopalians:
Upon this I desired their subscription to the Premises [of Christian
Concord ]; some that were present replyed (& that very truly) that it
was a business of great consequence, & required mature deliberation,
that they had not soe thoroughly considered it as indeed was suitable
to the nature & quality of it, that some of them had already wrote
unto their learned friends, others desired to consult with theirs, to
know their judgments in reference to this designe of association.36
Good and Warmestry’s London brethren urged that ministers in
Shropshire “must not strike a League with Faction, &c,” citing Baxter’s
“Passages which oppose those Episcopal Divines who deny the Ministry
and Churches which have not Prelatical Ordination.”37 Thus in addi-
tion to Sir Ralph Clare of his own parish, Baxter now faced the
stark reality of prelatical opposition as he endeavored to attain eccle-
siological re-configuration. During this time, he was also debating
with Martin Johnson, a minister in Worcestershire, over the neces-
sity of episcopal ordination, exchanging seven letters in the course
of their debate: Baxter denying the absolute necessity, and Johnson
affirming it so as to ensure apostolic purity of the keys.38 Not know-
ing that the author of the “Paper of Animadversions” was Peter
Gunning, the future Bishop of Ely and an inveterate enemy of Puritan
dissenters during the Restoration period, Baxter defended his posi-
tion of “mere Puritan” ecclesiology and ministry.39
Gunning had denied that Baxter’s Worcestershire Association was
a “true Union in Ecclesiastical Peace,” deeming it a “Schismatical
Combination, reaching to enclose in the Episcopal Divines also.”
Baxter’s reply to Gunning was based on the existential necessity of
continuing worship in his county during this period of ecclesiologi-
cal confusion:
Is that man guilty of no Schisme . . . who will rather have no Discipline
exercised at all on the profane and Scandalous, but all vice go without

36
Ibid.
37
Baxter, Reliquiae, II. 150, §33.
38
See Baxter, Reliquiae, Appendix. ii, pp. 18–21, 21–39, 39–40, 40–3, 43–6,
46–9, 50. On Johnson, see Ibid., II. 179, §38; headnote to CCRB, #130.
39
Gunning’s refutation of Baxter’s overtures for peace is not extant. However,
since Baxter’s point-by-point reply paraphrased each of Gunning’s exceptions, it is
possible to reconstruct the terms of the polemic. See Baxter, Reliquiae, Appendix I,
pp. 1–18. For Gunning, see DNB.
202  

controul . . . who will rather have no Ministerial Worship of God, in

Prayer or Praise, no Sacraments, no Solemn Assemblies to this end, no
Ministerial Teaching of the people, but have all Mens Souls given over
to perdition . . . then any of this should be done without Bishops? That
had rather the doors were shut up, and we lived like Heathens, than
we should Worship God without a Bishops Commands?40
Moreover, Baxter denied that diocesan episcopacy and correlating
Apostolic succession was “necessary ad esse to the very being of a
Church, or of God Worship, without which we may not offer God
any publick Service, or have any Communion with any Congregation
that so doth.”41 The necessitarian argument was carried further in
Baxter’s discussion of the foreign reformed churches. For polemical
purposes, he mentioned the Synod of Dort and the struggle over jure
divino (divine right) episcopacy witnessed there:
Were the Low Countries so far from England that they could not pos-
sibly have borrowed a Bishop to Ordain? Was not Bishop Carleton at
the Synod of Dort with them? Why did not that Synod desire this
Curtesy? It is said, he protested for Bishops in the open Synod, and
that the took their Silence for Consent, and also, that some after told
him, that they would have them if they could; as if Silence were any
Sign of Consent against their own established Discipline.42
In this regard, he was not entirely correct. In A Joynt Attestation,
Avowing That the Discipline of the Church of England Was Not Impeached
by the Synode of Dort (1626), the British delegates defended themselves
against Richard Montagu’s criticism that they had caved in to the
non-episcopal polity of most other Dort delegates. We have already
seen in Chapter Six that the Synod of Dort was, for Baxter, a high
mark of orthodoxy for Protestantism, and though he insistently saw
the doctrinal formulation of Dort through the minority lens of
Davenant, Hall, Ward, Martinius, Crocius, and other Bremen divines,
it was nevertheless true that he held the proceedings of Dort to be
an extremely valuable doctrinal guide and precedent in European
Protestant history. Thus, to show that no real motion had been made

40
Baxter, Reliquiae, Appendix I, p. 2.
41
Ibid. On the issue of jure divino episcopacy, see J.W. Hunkin, Episcopal Ordination
and Confirmation in Relation to Inter-Communion & Reunion: a collection of Anglican prece-
dents and opinions (Cambridge: W. Heffer, 1929); Thomas Bilson, The Perpetual Government
of Christ’s Church (1593), pp. 320, 352.
42
Baxter, Reliquiae, Appendix I, p. 4.
     203

for episcopacy, and to prove that point by Hugo Grotius, the bête
noire of Baxter’s plan for ecumenical plans was doubly advantageous.
Baxter argued, “Grotius knew France as well as you, whoever you are;
and he tells us another Story of them, Discus. Apologet. Rivet. that they
willfully cast out the Order of Bishops as far as their Authority could
reach; what impossibility hath there been these hundred Years for
France, Belgia, Helvetia, Geneva, with the rest of the Protestant Churches
to have had Bishops if they had been willing?”43 As a result, he
asserted that it was untrue that foreign reformed churches were “will-
ing but unable”; rather, they were “able but unwilling,” for they had
deemed episcopacy unnecessary for the esse or even bene esse of the
church. By this assertion, Baxter hoped to “exculpate” the alleged
sins of the Puritans of England who themselves were “unwilling” to
take orders from bishops.
The abolition of episcopacy, the failure of the Presbyterian sys-
tem in the late 1640s, and the subsequent quest for ecclesiastical set-
tlement among Cromwellians provided incentive for the hard-line
jure divino episcopalians to promulgate their view on the exalted eccle-
siological position of the bishop. The most significant figure in this
theological development was Henry Hammond.44 Hammond was a
first-rate Oxford patristics scholar who was encouraged by Ussher
to defend the authenticity of the disputed Ignatian epistles, contro-
verting scholars of such international stature as Salmasius and David
Blondel. In addition, Hammond was an ardent supporter of Grotius.45
Hammond defended the authenticity of Grotius’ Protestant creden-
tials during the 1650s with a vengeance. He published A Second Defence
of the Learned Hugo Grotius (1655), followed by A Continuation of the
Defence of Hugo Grotius (1656), in which he regarded as preposterous

43
Baxter, Reliquiae, Appendix I, p. 4. For an illuminating discussion of “necessi-
tarian argument” and the attitude of the early Stuart Church of England toward
foreign Reformed churches, see Milton, Catholic and Reformed, chaps. 8, 9.
44
See J.W. Packer, The Transformation of Anglicanism, 1643–1660, with a Special
Reference to Henry Hammond (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1969); Neil
Lettinga, “Covenant Theology Turned Upside Down: Henry Hammond and Caroline
Anglican moralism, 1643–1660,” SCJ 24 (1993), pp. 653–69. See also Ath. Oxon.
3:493–502.
45
For this Ignatian debate, see Packer, Transformation of Anglicanism, pp. 106–23;
Hugh de Quehen, “Politics and Scholarship in the Ignatian Controversy,” SC 13
(1998), pp. 69–84.
204  

the claims that Grotius was a Socinian or a Papist.46 Besides his pub-
lished defense of Grotius, Hammond confided to a correspondent:
“for that excellent person, Let me say that he was not papist; but
to my knowledge a great lover of the Ch of England, wherein he
had an ambition to have liv’d and dyed: And thus continued to his
Death neither Socinian nor papist.”47 Hammond resided at Hampton
Lovett, Kidderminster, with Sir Christopher Packington, during the
Interregnum and continued to prepare for the return of episcopacy
by staunchly defending jure divino episcopacy and by denying the legit-
imacy of Puritan Calvinist soteriology, including Baxter’s moderate
congregational episcopacy.
With the publication of Baxter’s Christian Concord, the formidable
threat which might jeopardize the unity among the extruded Laudians
emerged. Sensing this, Hammond wrote to Gilbert Sheldon, future
Bishop of London, who eventually became the Primate of England
in 1674: “Mr. Baxter already divided the Prelatical clergy into two
parts, one exemplified by Dr. Ussher and Dr. Sand[erson]; the other
sytled in gross Cassandrian, Grotian Papists, and several of his friends
marked out by some circumstances to be of that number.” Conse-
quently, to allow “Dr Sanderson joining with the Grantham lectur-
ers” was “to sweeten them by complying with them in Schismatical
acts.”48 Robert Sanderson eventually stopped associating with the
Puritan lecturers at Grantham, Lincolnshire, to promote collegiality
and sociability among parish incumbents, urged on by Sheldon and
Hammond. This was an important episode in forging a clearly prelat-
ical identity against moderate Puritans of Baxter’s type.49
By January 1658, the relationship between parish Puritan minis-
ters and the prelatists deteriorated, as a Derbyshire minister urged
Baxter to
Do something toward the vindication of the present Churches and
Ministers from the aspersions of the New Prelatical party in England.
It is a principle much made of by many of the Gentry and others,

46
Hammond, Works of the Reverend and Learned Henry Hammond, D.D., 4 vols. (1684),
2:45–47.
47
Letter, dated 4 January 1652, to Thomas Smith of Christ’s College, Cambridge,
in Lambeth Palace Library, MSS 595, fol. 14.
48
British Library, Harleian MSS 6942, fol. 77r, dated 23 November 1653; CC
was dated 2 May 1653.
49
F.J. Trott, “Prelude to Restoration,” chaps. 2, 3.
     205

that we are but Schismatical branches broken off from the true body. . . .
With these men we must be all unchurched for casting off Diocesan
Episcopacy.
Michael Edge reported that the prelatists asserted that since “we had
not Bishop to lay his hands on us, we are not sent from God.” Edge,
ordained as Presbyterian, turned to Baxter, the emerging leader
among parochial Puritans, for advice.50 A foreboding that “we shall
also arrive at our old Church-customs again” greatly concerned Edge.
His premonition was not ill-advised or groundless since episcopal
ordinations and neo-Laudian ministers who occupied livings in the
Cromwellian church were quite numerous.51 Baxter’s answer to Edge
and others with similar concerns was Five Disputations of Church-
Government and Worship, published in 1659.
Baxter accused the “violent men of the Prelates side” who inde-
fatigably “labour to perswade the world that the contrary-minded
are Schismaticks, and that all the Ministers that have not Episcopal
ordination are no Ministers . . . and to . . . argree with such were to
strike a Covenant with Schism itself ” of schism itself.52 Given the
polemical context of his day, it is surprising that Baxter neither
denounced episcopal ordination nor enthusiastically pressed alterna-
tive ways of ordination. The rationale for this neutrality was no
reflection of his theological indecision or diplomatic opportunism. In
fact, he emphasized that the determinative factor in ordination was
the direct investiture of Christ to the minister, an action which is
not contingent upon episcopal ordination. Using scholastic categories,
Baxter argued that “As the will of God is the Cause of all things . . .
[there is ] No other principal efficient cause than the Will of Jesus
Christ . . . No more therefore is of Absolute Necessity, but what is of
so necessary to signifie his will. If Christs will may be signified with-
out Ordination, a man may be a Minister without it.”53 This was
an ingeniously subversive argument, quickly setting aside the necessity

50
The letter is printed in FDCW, “Preface,” to Disputation II, sig. R4r–v. Edge
was ordained by the Wirkwirth Classis. See J.C. Cox, ed., “Minute Books of the
Wirkwirth Classis, 1651–1658,” JDANHS 2 (1908), pp. 194–95.
51
Bosher, The Making of the Restoration settlement, pp. 38, 48; Michael Murphy,
“Oliver Cromwell’s Church: state and clergy during the Protectorate” (Unpublished
dissertation, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1997).
52
RP, p. 163.
53
FDCW, p. 142.
206  

of episcopal mediation. Thus unsurprisingly Baxter denied the claim

of jure divino episcopalians who had earlier denied presbyterial ordi-
nation by insisting “Nemos dat quod no habet,” for no one possessed
the power to ordain directly except Christ: neither bishops nor pres-
byters!54 Citing the Dutch Calvinist theologian Gisbert Voetius, Baxter
further argued against the absolute necessity of ordination—episco-
pal or otherwise—for the being of the ministry.55 That explains why
the Worcestershire Association did not venture to ordain, as other
associations did. In his letter to one minister inquiring about the
absolute necessity of ordination, Baxter wrote: “I thinke Ordination
necessary . . . where it may be had: but not necessary simpliciter to the
office.”56 Ordination was not intrinsically necessary because the office
was endowed directly by Christ, and the human agents, e.g., bish-
ops, did not possess any intrinsic ability to confer ministerial power.57
Baxter’s Grotian Religion Discovered prompted an immediate backlash
from episcopal divines such as Thomas Pierce, Peter Heylyn, Laurence
Womock, and John Bramhall.58 Bramhall perceptively criticized the
reductio ad absurdum of Baxter’s radical adherence to scripture sufficiency
without any conciliar authorities, arguing that “it seemeth he rejecteth
the authority of general Councils, either past or to come, as well as
Pope; so dare not we. . . . If he thinks that Christ left the Catholic
Church as the ostrich doth her eggs, in the sand, without any care
or provision for the governing thereof in future ages, he erreth
grossly. . . . And if he takes the authority of general Councils, he
leaveth no human helps to preserve the unity of the universal
Church.”59 Bramhall further argued that Baxter’s fear of the puta-
tive Grotian infiltration into the Church of England was groundless.
To a certain extent, Baxter widened the semantic field of the word

54
Ibid., p. 147; ANM, pp. 244, 245.
55
See FDCW, sig. R2v, pp. 151, 168. Gisbert Voetius, Desperata Causa Papatus
(Amsterdam, 1635).
56
On the Worcestershire Association’s hesitation to ordain, see “An Explication,”
p. 9: “We resolve not to put such controverted Points into our Agreement; lest
thereby we necessarily exclude the dissenters.” Cf. Letters, i. 30; FDCW, p. 149.
57
See also William Ames, Marrow of Sacred Divinity (1642), pp. 161–66.
58
Thomas Pierce, The New Discoverer Discovered (1659), 20, 22, 170. On Pierce,
see Ath. Oxon. 4:299–307; Peter Heylyn, Certamen Epistolare, or, The letter-combate (1659).
For Heylyn, see Ath. Oxon. 3:552–69; Laurence Womock, Arcana Dogmatum Anti-
Remonstrantium (1659); John Bramhall, Bishop Bramhall’s Vindication of Himself (1672).
59
Bramhall, The Works of John Bramhall, 5 vols. (Oxford: Parker Society, 1842–5),
3:521, 543.
     207

“Grotian” to fit the current polemical context.60 As such, this was a

propaganda success, but it exacerbated the already-hostile relation-
ship between the two parties.
Heylyn, responding to Grotian Religion Discovered, vehemently denied
that a Grotian plot was afoot in the 1650s, and added:
But whether I positively am, or really am not of the Grotian Religion . . .
I am not bound to tell you now. . . . But so farr I assure you, I am
of the Religion of Hugh Grotius, that I wish as heartily as he did, that
the breaches of the walls of Jerusalem were closed up; that the Puritans
submitting to the Church of England, and the Church of England being
reconciled with the Church of Rome, we might unite and center in
those sacred Truths.61
A letter dated 20 April 1655 came from a certain “Theophilus
Church” (a pseudonym of Peter Heylyn) in which he and other
Laudian colleagues denounced the practice of the Puritans in nine-
teen queries. Particularly vindictive was: “Which was of . . . peace of
Conscience may a quiet Christian order . . . as long as that part of the Catholick
Church wherein he lives, is under persecution, and the visible Ruling Church
there is faln Schismatical, if not in many particulars Heretical?” 62 This was
a clear denial of the ecclesial validity of the Interregnum non-Laudian
church. Thus while Heylyn was greatly desirous of being reconciled
to and re-united with Rome, he was equally passionate about thwart-
ing the plans of Puritan ecclesiological re-configuration. Baxter him-
self was committed to the sort of mere catholicity outlined by Heylyn,
but to capitulate to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Rome was unac-
ceptable to him. According to Anthony Wood, the historian of the
University of Oxford, the three leaders among jure divino episcopalians
were Heylyn, Hammond, and Pierce, who “victoriously engaged
many of the most specious and plausible pamphleteers.”63
However, Baxter’s work also received some accolades, showing the
shape of alignment between Puritans and Laudians during the
Interregnum. Peter Du Moulin, the son of the Huguenot theologian
Pierre Du Moulin and brother of Lewis, expressed “hearty thanks
in the name of the Orthodoxe of that party for your grave & solid
rebuke of the Grotian divines, who certainly doe great wrong to

60
GRD, sig. B4v.
61
Heylyn, Certamen Epistolare, p. 93.
62
Reprinted in Baxter, Reliquiae, II. 152, §33.
63
Wood, Ath. Oxon., 4:301.
208  

their brethren” for providing further arsenal to the anti-episcopalians.

Du Moulin also singled out Herbert Thorndike as an implacable
Grotian: “I have Thorndykes last book with me, which I cannot
read without a just indignation almost at every page.”64 The book
was An Epilogue, a gargantuan effort by Thorndike to deny the eccle-
sial validity of non-episcopal divines and their church, thus further
distancing the jure divino episcopalians in the Church of England from
its reformed roots by repudiating the predestinarian theological par-
adigm of the Puritans, and by re-defining the marks of the true
church to include the indispensable nature of episcopal ordination.65
In addition to Baxter, this “ecclesiological exclusivism” was severely
criticized by Peter and Lewis Du Moulin and Robert Baillie, among
others.66
Another letter of support for Baxter’s anti-Grotian stance arrived
from the Earl of Lauderdale67 shortly after the publication of The
Grotian Religion Discovered. Reminiscing about his Parisian experience
in 1637 when between Lauderdale and Grotius “some visits past
among us,” Lauderdale told Baxter that
I remember well he was then the Esteemed by such a papist as you
call Cassandrian, & so did Cordesius Esteem him, who was a priest . . .
with him I was also acquainted, he was a great admirer of Grotius,
an Eminent enemy to Jesuites, & a moderate French Papist. This oppo-
sition of Mr. Peirce [sic] makes me expect you will hear more from
that sort of men.
In order to prepare Baxter for the impending attack from the Grotians,
Lauderdale singled out William Forbes, the first Bishop of Edinburgh
and a friend of Grotius, as a person to study. In particular, Lauderdale
recommended Forbes’ Considerationes Modestae et Pacificae Controversiarum
(1658), a posthumous publication suffused with “Popery enough if

64
Letters, iv. 69; Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium, p. 199.
65
Thorndike, An Epilogue to the Tragedy of the Church of England (1659).
66
Lewis du Moulin criticized Thorndike in his A Short and True Account of the
Several Advances the Church of England Had Made Towards Rome (1680), p. 9. See also
Robert Baillie, Letters and Journals of Robert Baillie (Edinburgh, 1842), 3:400, 406,
where he spoke of the “present leaders of the Episcopall party, Dr. Tailor, Mr.
Pierce, Dr. Hamond, Mr. Thorndyk, Dr. Heilin, Bishop Wran, Bishop Bramble,
and others” who were exceedingly “high, proud, malicious, and now very active
and dangerous party.”
67
On John Maitland, the second Earl of Lauderdale and a member of Charles
II’s Cabal, see Reliquiae, I. 121, §207; III. 180, §9; Powicke, II, pp. 44, 92; DNB.
     209

the defending Images, prayer for the dead, a new fashioned purga-
torie, & the Messe to be a propitiatory sacrifice for Living & dead.
If these be popery.”68
When Baxter published Five Disputations and A Key for Catholicks,
both in 1659, he proffered a more nuanced analysis of the Grotian
party, dividing it into “the Old Episcopal party,” “ the New Reconciling
Protestant party,” and “the Reconciling Papists, or Grotians.” The
Old and New Episcopal divines differed doctrinally. Whereas the
“Old Episcopal party” agreed with the Puritans in soteriology, shown
in the mutual commitment of these parties to the Synod of Dort,
the “New Episcopal divines, both Protestants and Papists,” on the
other hand, rejected the Canons of Dort and adhered to the tenets
of “Jesuits and Arminians” instead.69 For Baxter, two issues of greater
significance were the different attitudes toward the pope and the
Church of Rome, and the disparate views of foreign reformed churches
and non-episcopal ordinations. On the issue of the pope and Rome,
the Old Episcopal Divines did renounce the Pope as Antichrist, and
thought it the duty of the Transmarine Churches to renounce him,
and avoid communion with his Church, as leprous and unfit for their
communion. But the New Episcopal Divines do not only hold that the
Pope is not Antichrist, but one part of them (the Protestants) hold that
he may be obeyed by the Transmarine Western Churches as the
Patriarch of the West, and be taken by us all to be the Principium uni-
tatis to the Catholick Church, and the Roman Determinations still may
stand, except those of the last four hundred years, and those, if they
obtrude them not on others.
Worse yet, Baxter affirmed, the “Grotians teach, that the Church of
Rome is the Mistris of other Churches, and the Pope to stand as the
Head of the Universal Church, and to Govern it according to the
Canons and Decrees of Councils; and they received the Trent-Creed
and Council, and all other Councils which the Pope receives.”70 A

68
Letters, iii. 44. This letter was reprinted in F.J. Powicke, “Eleven Letters of
John Second Earl of Lauderdale . . . to the Rev. Richard Baxter,” BJRL 7 (1922–3),
pp. 87–90. William Forbes (1585–1634) was a proponent both of sacramental beauty
and of Arminian soteriology with a greater tendency toward rational theology than
the Calvinist counterpart. See C.F. Allison, The Rise of Moralism (London: S.P.C.K.,
1966), pp. 31–48; DNB.
69
FDCW, “A Preface,” p. 7.
70
Ibid., pp. 7–8. Baxter specifically named Bishop John Bramhall and Christopher
Dow. For Dow, see WR, p. 355. For his Laudian stance, see Innovations Unjustly
Charged upon the Present Church and State (1637).
210  

corollary of the first difference was their varying attitude toward for-
eign Protestant churches. According to Baxter, the old Episcopal
party held fraternal relations with other Reformed churches of “France,
Savoy, Geneva, Helvetia, &c. that had no Prelates” as their brethren
and acknowledged their ordination as valid. The new sort, however,
denied the ecclesial validity of such non-episcopal churches while
“they acknowledge the Church of Rome to be a true Church, and
their Ordination valid.” Finally, concerning the Puritans, the old
Episcopal party accepted their ministry, but the New sort “separate
from their communion, and teach the people to do so, supposing
Sacramental administrations to be there performed by men that are
no Ministers, and have no authority.”71
According to Baxter, one of the Arminians who embodied that
ecumenical ideal of Grotius was Bishop Richard Montagu.72 Com-
menting on the development of the “new Prelatical party,” Baxter
emphasized that “I know of none before Bishop Mountague of their
way, and but few that followed him, till many years after. And at
the demolishing of the Prelacy, they were existent of both sorts.”73
Montagu had become the bane of Calvinist orthodoxy in the Jacobean
church. During the York House Conference, Montagu’s ostensibly
“Pelagian” book, A Gagg for the New Gospel? (1624), became the cause
of a maelstrom; his Appello Caesarem (1625) created a stronger impres-
sion among Puritans that his soteriological and ecclesiological soft-
ening moved Canterbury dangerously close to Rome.74 In fact,
Montagu seemed to envision a plan of reunion between the Gallican
and Anglican churches. As he suggested:
The Churches of France, not admitting the Councill of Trent, nor
admitting the Superioritie of the Papists above Generall Councills, but
following . . . Gerson . . . and the Schoole of Sorbon, depart from
the Communion of the Papists, but not from the Communion of the
Church of Rome. King Henry the 8 of England separated from the
Communion of Pope and Court of Rome, as appeareth in the Articles

71
FDCW, “A Preface,” pp. 8–9.
72
For Montagu, see DNB; J.S. Macauley, “Richard Montagu Caroline Bishop,
1575–1641” (Unpublished dissertation, Ph.D., Cambridge, 1965); F.J. Trott, “Prelude
to Restoration,” p. 13.
73
FDCW, “A Preface,” p. 6.
74
For Montagu’s plans for reunion with Rome, see Milton, Catholic and Reformed,
pp. 220–21, 227–28, 353–59, 362–66, 368–69, 372–73. For the York House
Conference, see Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, pp. 164–80.
     211

of Supremacie, but not from Communion with the Church of Rome,

as appeareth by the Act of 6 Articles.75
Thus citing the example of the Henrician separation from Rome,
Montagu gave a nuanced interpretation of this oft-embarrassing inci-
dent in the history of the Church of England. By asserting that the
Jacobean Church of England was committed to the ecumenical vision
of seeing Rome as a sister church, which the French also shared as
well, Montague sought to link the two national churches as close
allies. Perhaps the most revealing passage that shows Montagu’s com-
mitment to a jure divino episcopacy was in his YEANYRVPIKON . . .
originum ecclesiasticarum (1640). His view was more astringent than the
earlier articulations of jure divino episcopacy by Matthew Sutcliffe,
Thomas Bilson, Richard Hooker, Adrianus Saravia, and Richard
Bancroft. Montagu argued that, since in the past, apostolic succes-
sion by bishops was an indispensable element not only of right priest-
hood but also of salvation of the people, it was non-negotiable. He
also rejected the calling of non-episcopally ordained priests unless
they performed miracles, which, as Anthony Milton has suggested,
echoed Roman Catholic arguments. Montagu heightened the polem-
ical stake between the Church of England and Continental Protestant
churches. He called the ministerial actions of the foreign non-
episcopal ministers intrusions, and accused their argument from neces-
sity—which pointed out that where episcopal system is not in place
in the State, then non-episcopal ordination was equally legitimate
due to the extenuating circumstances, an argument often used by
non-episcopal churches in response to the argument of hard-line epis-
copals—as a supposition leaning on impossibility (“suppositioni inniti-
tur impossibilitatis”). He further asserted that to insist on anything but
episcopal ordination would be a denial of Christ’s words in Matthew
16:18 and 28:20. In fact, Montagu’s denunciation of foreign reformed
churches would become the primary evidence to accuse the Laudians
of departing from the Protestant communion, as had many during
the heated debates before the outbreak of the Civil War, among

75
Cambridge University Library MS Gg/1/29, fol. 101v. See also John Bramhall,
Works, 3:550–1, where he cites the Conciliarist Jean Gerson, who acknowledged the
authority of the pope. On Gerson, see G.H.M. Posthumus Meyjes, Jean Gerson,
Apostle of Unity: his church politics and ecclesiology, trans. J.C. Grayson (Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1999).
212  

them Robert Baillie, Stephen Marshall, Edmund Calamy, Matthew

Newcomen, Thomas Young, and Sir Simonds D’Ewes.76
Baxter did not clearly distinguish between Laudian ecclesiological
exclusivism and Grotian ecumenical excess. They were close enough
for him. Both, he argued, threatened to undermine the reformed
communion and “unchurched” ministers of England without epis-
copal ordination. Baxter, in the “First Disputation” of his Five
Disputations, concluded that “the taking down of the English Episcopacy”
was a necessary part of completing the reformation in England.
Furthermore, he averred that the non-episcopal ordinations “per-
formed by these Parochial Bishops” were “nearer the way of the
Primitive Church” than the Prelatists’ counterparts.77 This was a
cogent defense of the liberty of the reformed ministry against the
Laudian, prelatist opposition. In order to legitimate the cause of the
Puritans after the Restoration, however, Baxter turned to the task
of history writing. We shall see that although contexts had changed,
the same undercurrent of the fear of “Grotian Religion” and its con-
comitant anti-popery (of the Gallican type) continued.

III. T Q   “R” H   P

Baxter believed history, especially church history, to be a great heuris-

tic device for the Christian. Instead of reading “Romances, Play-books,
and false or hurtful History,” he encouraged the youth to read “Scripture-
History”, and then gradually proceed to church histories. However,
he was acutely aware of the pressing question of different versions
of history: “Alas, what is history? How will you know whom to
believe?”78
On 21 May 1661, Matthew Newcomen, one of the Presbyterian
leaders during the 1640s whose initials had been a part of the col-
lected authorial identity of “Smectymnuus,” importuned Baxter to

76
Montagu, YEANYRVPIKON . . . Originum Ecclesiasticarum Libri Duo (1640), ii:463–4.
See Sir Simonds D’Ewes, The Journal of Sir Simond D’Ewes, ed. W. Notestein (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1923), p. 355; Robert Baillie, Ladensium AUTOKATAKRISIS
(Edinburgh, 1640); Smectymnuus, An Answer to . . . an Humble Remonstrance (1641),
p. 69; Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 491.
77
FDCW, pp. 103, 105. See ibid., pp. 28–9 for Baxter’s approval of Presbyterian
government over prelatical government.
78
“The True State of Present English Divisions,” in Treatises, vol. I, fol. 261.
     213

write the “true history of the Nonconformists from the Teachers of

Frankfurt to this day,” since he feared that “wee are not only Like
to suffer but to suffer as Evill doers.”79 For Newcomen, Baxter, and
others, suffering was accepted as a lot of the Christian pilgrimage,
and was even welcomed as a vindicating mark of election, but to
suffer as a result of supposed evil was unacceptable. Earlier in 1659,
Cornelius Burges, a former Assessor of the Westminster Assembly,
expressed his gratitude for Baxter’s Five Disputations, and asserted that
“since the beginning of the Long Parliament” he and his moderate
colleagues had never spoken for “the extirpation of all Episcopacy;
but, only to reduce it to the Primitive.”80 This was part of the Puritan
effort to set the record straight, perhaps being intuitively aware that
Charles II might come back, bringing episcopacy with him. “In the
matter of our Episcopacy,” Baxter replied to Burges, “our new Grotian
or Arminian prelates will hardly believe” the report of moderate
episcopalians, indicating the considerable fissure between moderate
Puritans and the prelatists.81
It was in this struggle of Puritans to tell the “right” story that
Baxter emerged, Keeble noted, “as the pre-eminent champion not
only of the nonconformists, but of the Puritan tradition” as a whole.82
Baxter had a keen sense of how English Protestantism had splin-
tered during the Marian exile. Even before Newcomen urged him
to write a Puritan history of their effort for reformation and their
eventual rejection, Baxter had written of the singular importance of
the fall-out between the co-religionists:
Is it not a very sad History of the troubles at Frankford, to read that
so many godly, learned men that had forsaken all for the Reformed
profession, and were Exiles in a forraign Land . . . should even then
fall in pieces among themselves, and that about a Liturgy and
Ceremonies, so far as to make a division; and after many plottings

79
Letters, v. 179. Newcomen urged that “I wish now with all My heart that the
Papers that are in your hand were printed not onely in English but in Latine that
forrein [sic] Churches might see how much hath been Conceded for peace.”
80
Letters, iii. 80; Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium, p. 219.
81
Letters, iii. 82 (30 September 1659).
82
Keeble, Richard Baxter, p. 18. Baxter’s role as a historian has yet to receive
adequate attention. In addition to Keeble, pp. 114–21, 149–55, Royce MacGillibray,
in his Restoration Historians and the English Civil War (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1974),
pp. 145–64, discussed Baxter as a historian. However, his analysis suffered from
the paucity of source material used for analysis; he only utilized Reliquiae Baxterianae
(1696).
214  

and counter-plottings . . . one part of them must leave the City, and
go seek another for their liberty!83
D.R. Woolf has commented that “the more radical a seventeenth
century author’s political and religious views, the more likely he was
to attribute the crises of the 1640s to long term causes.”84 How “rad-
ical” then was Baxter’s historiographical perspective? After fighting
for peace in the first two decades of the Restoration, he began to
sense that the level of supposed Popish infiltration was proving to
be too discomforting to escape notice. His view of the religious
conflict was rooted not merely in the “troubles begun in Frankfurt,”
but in the primordial struggle between the godly and ungodly seed.
He asserted that “Adam’s fall” immediately placed an implacable
“Enmity . . . between the Womans and the Serpents seed,” and it is
this history that became the controlling plot line for all subsequent
histories.85 Indeed as both histories—from Scripture and from church
history—were replete with this enmity, Baxter turned to this “malig-
nity” to explain the struggles for further reformation in England.
Who was blocking this path of “righteousness”?
Baxter’s seemingly “simplistic” historical perspective of the inerad-
icable enmity between Cain and Abel had a surprisingly long pedi-
gree. Ambrose of Milan had written On Cain and Abel (375),86 which
was followed by Augustine’s De Civitate Dei.87 Thomas Bradwardine’s
history of heresies in The Cause of God against Pelagius was also a sweep-
ing dichotomization of church history into those who were for or
against de causa Dei, setting Cain as the archetypal figurehead of the
Pelagians.88 If it is true that Baxter’s historical perspective was greatly

83
RP, p. 149. This fall-out was a significant moment in Laudian historiography
as well. See Peter Heylyn, Aerius Redivivus (1670), p. 14. See also William Whittingham,
A Brief Discourse of the Troubles Begonne at Franckford (1575) for a first-hand account.
84
D.R. Woolf, The Idea of History in early Stuart England: erudition, ideology, and ‘The
light of truth’ from the accession of James I to the Civil War (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1990), p. 251.
85
C&AM, “To the Reader,” sig. A5r–v. See also Baxter, “The True State of
Present English Divisions,” 261r.
86
For a useful discussion of the theme of the “Torchbearers for Abel” and “Cain,”
see Heiko Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation: the shape of late medieval thought, illus-
trated by key documents, trans. Paul L. Nyhus (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1966), pp. 19–26. For Ambrose, see ibid., p. 25; Ambrose, De Cain et Abel, in J.P.
Migne, ed., Patrologia Latina (Paris, 1844–1865), 14:315–60.
87
UI, sig. C6v, where “Austin de Civitate Dei” is extolled.
88
For Thomas Bradwardine (c. 1295–1349), Archbishop of Canterbury and a
staunch defender of the Augustinian view of double-predestination, see DNB and
     215

influenced by Augustine, it is equally true that Baxter’s anti-prelatical

stance was not found in the corpus of the Bishop of Hippo. For it,
we turn to a source closer to Baxter’s own time, to Martin Luther,
and especially to his On the Councils and the Church (1539).89
Luther wrote On the Councils after his own dream had failed for a
“free, general, Christian council,” a position he had already articu-
lated in his Open Letter to the Christian Nobility (1520) and reiterated in
the Augsburg Confession (1530).90 The general thrust of On the Councils
was that the true reform of the church could not follow conciliar
authorities and decisions, and that they did not possess the requisite
authority to impose new articles of faith.91 These views of Luther
were replicated in Baxter’s anti-conciliar writings. Baxter’s own per-
spective on councils focused less on the defense of orthodoxy than
on the darker side of these conciliar histories, the ambiguities and
personality conflicts therein. Moreover, he affirmed that these coun-
cils did not have any jurisdictional or even doctrinal claims on the
English church. His skepticism toward ecclesiastical councils was not
an immediate by-product of the collective suffering of the Dissenters
during the Restoration. In fact, he clearly evidenced animosity toward
conciliar authority and cited Luther in support of his position in The
Reformed Pastor (1656). The three “lamentable vices of the Prelates of
the Church then”—and by implication of Laudian prelacy as well—
were “Pride, the root; Contention, and Vain impositions and inventions, the
fruits.” Then he quoted Luther, “For before the Council of Nicaea
the heresy of Arius was a jest compared with the misery evoked after
the council.”92 This would be an important polemical trope to neutral-
ize the overall benefit of these Councils. Finally, he concluded by
urging his ministerial colleagues to “read that Treatise throughout.”93

ODCC. See also Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation, pp. 22, 25, 151–64; Gordon
Leff, “Thomas Bradwardine and De Causa Dei,” JEH 7 (1956), pp. 21–29.
89
Martin Luther, “On the Councils and the Church,” in Jaroslav Pelikan and
Helmut Lehmann, eds., Luther’s Works, 55 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing
House, 1966), 41:5–178. (hereafter cited as LW ). See also John M. Headley, Luther’s
View of Church History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 164–70, 225–28.
90
LW, 41:5–6.
91
See also Luther’s “Smalkald Articles,” III. 10, in Theodore Tappert, ed., and
trans., Book of Concord: the confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1959), p. 314.
92
RP, pp. 145, 146. Cf. LW, 41:120.
93
RP, p. 146.
216  

Baxter problematized the conciliarist position espoused by the

Gallicans and some Restoration churchmen by emphasizing the doc-
trinal cacophony, political conflicts, and provisional nature of these
councils.94 By divulging the conciliar excesses and abuses, he demon-
strated that no council was to be taken as the head of the visible
church. According to Baxter, such had been the case in England
since the days of Laud, Grotius, and their followers. The true church
which the godly Puritans represented was “in its conflict with the
Church of Cain” ruined by the Grotian Prelatists.95
As the sub-title of Baxter’s Cain and Abel Malignity implied, this
enmity was made visible, not necessarily in doctrinal differences and
deviations as Bradwardine had asserted, but rather in the “holy war”
between godliness and ungodliness. Ironically, Baxter argued that the
party most culpable for propagating Cain’s interest was the clergy.
He averred that the “warre between Cain & Abell is introduced in
many a parishes in the land,” thanks to the bishops winking at the
wickedness of the rabble and suppressing the pursuit of godliness.
As Kenneth Fincham and Martin Ingram have shown, prelates often
earnestly carried out their duty as pastors, including administering
episcopal disciplines, and ecclesiastical courts were not always as stag-
nant and backlogged as the Puritan jeremiads would have us believe.96
However, Baxter’s radically dichotomized spiritual cosmology did not
allow such concession, especially not to the diocesan episcopalians.
Baxter’s historical writings of this period were decidedly anti-dioce-
san and anti-conciliar. In A Search for the English Schismatick (1681), he
drew a stark contrast between the old and the new Church of
England. The old church included the “39 Articles,” Jewel’s Apology,
anti-popery writings of Hall, Ussher, Davenant, Dudley Carlton,
Chillingworth, Thomas Morton, and unsurprisingly, “The Writings
against Bishop Laud.” The ecclesiastical innovations comprised of “Dr.
Heylyn’s Writings . . . particularly his description of the designed reconciliation
with the Papists,” “Mr. Thorndike’s Just Weights and Measures,” the

94
THCD, p. 217.
95
G.J.R. Parry, A Protestant Vision: William Harrison and the reformation of Elizabethan
England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 4.
96
Ken Fincham, Prelate as Pastor: the episcopate of James I (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1990); Martin Ingram, “Puritans and the Church Courts, 1560–1640,” in C. Durston
and J. Eales, eds., The Culture of English Puritanism 1560 –1700 (Basingstoke, UK:
Macmillan, 1996), pp. 58–91.
     217

defense of Grotius by Bramhall, Pierce, and Samuel Parker, and the

spirit of Laud resurrected in the “Bishops endeavour since 1660.”97
Baxter’s Church-History of the Government of the Bishops and Their Councils
Abbreviated was typical of this genre. A Treatise of Episcopacy (1681) and
The True History of Councils Enlarged (1682) also chronicled the evils of
episcopacy which departed from the primitive congregational epis-
copacy and the corruption that had crept into the church, especially
after the civil magistrate granted undue power and jurisdictional
authority to bishops. Though there were anti-Constantinian tenden-
cies in his writing, the main culprits were always the bishops. In
fact, in the case of the first Council at Nicaea, Baxter argued that
without the intervention of Constantine, the bitter wrangling would
have split Christendom. He emphasized the entirely “human,” and
not divine nature of the Councils, starting at Nicaea and culminat-
ing in Constance, where the Bohemian reformers Jan Hus and Jerome
of Prague were burned, clearly betraying the departure these coun-
cils had made from the primitive norm. Therefore, the councils could
never become the head of the church, displacing Christ from his
headship. That was the undergirding argument that sustained Baxter’s
anti-episcopal polemic.98
The polemical opponent who stood at the other end of the his-
toriographical spectrum was Peter Heylyn, with whom Baxter had
already engaged in “letter combat” as well as a disputation on the
legitimacy of the Cromwellian church.99 Heylyn was a prolific and
an unmistakably partisan historian.100 It was historians of Heylyn’s
persuasion that Baxter labeled “new Historians.” Their objective was
to re-write the history of the English reformation from an unequiv-
ocally anti-Puritan perspective, exalting, as Baxter charged, “an
Universal humane Soveraignty with Legislative and Judicial power
over all the Churches . . . and that this is in Councils . . . of which

97
SES, sig. A1r-v.
98
Critiquing the Councils of Constance and Basil, Baxter argued that though
they “were for Reformation . . . how falsly and cruelly they dealt with Hus and
Jerome [of Prague] and rejected the four great requests of the Bohemians, and fixed
their pollutions.” CHB&C, pp. 430, 434, 440; THCD, p. 39.
99
See Heylyn, Certamen Epistolare, pp. 3–4 (from Heylyn, 13 September 1658),
pp. 6–11 (to Heylyn, 20 October 1658), pp. 12–94 (10 December 1658).
100
For Heylyn, see J.A.I. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: the Church of
England and its enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992),
pp. 64–77; DNB; WR, p. 184.
218  

the Pope may be allowed to be president, and Principium Unitatis.”

In this context Baxter identified Heylyn’s historiographical project as
willfully misrepresenting the true reformed identity of the Church of
England:
Whereas it is notoriously known that before Bishop Lauds time the
doctrine of this Church was quite Contrary, as may be seen at large
in the Apology, the Articles of Religion, the writings of the Bishops
and Doctors; Yea they write copiously to prove that the Pope is
Antichrist, and put it into their Liturgy. And Dr. Heylin tells us that
the Reason why Bishop Laud got it out was, that it might not offend
the Papists and hinder our reconciliation with them. And the Oath of
Supremacy swears us against all foreign Jurisdiction.101
According to Baxter, therefore, Laud and his colleagues were
the innovators, and Heylyn put the finishing touch on this histo-
riographical myth by publishing histories reflecting such a bias.
Furthermore, Baxter pointed out the doctrinal distance between the
Laudians and the British delegates to the Synod of Dort, arguing
that “when the Clergy would not long stand to the decrees that by
our own six Delegates were moderated: Dr. Heylin tells you how
Bishop Laud’s Zeal was the cause of our following Contentions.”102
Correspondingly, the raison d’être of Baxter’s anti-prelatical and anti-
conciliar treatises was to debunk the new history of Heylyn, and to
warn of the danger of surrendering English ecclesiastical indepen-
dence to a “foreign jurisdiction.”103 To Baxter, the true Church of
England was basically Calvinistic—along the line of the British del-
egates to Dort—and was committed to a sort of episcopacy that
encouraged the pursuit of edification and evangelism.104 As. J.H.M.
Salmon has argued, the Gallican and post-Restoration Anglican
churches diverged in their responses to Calvinism, but converged on
the point of their high view of episcopacy and their shared antipa-
thy towards the Jesuits.105

101
THCD, p. 88. A similar accusation is repeated in Baxter: “The True State of
Present English Divisions,” Treatises, vol. I, fol. 264r; C&AM, p. 26; ARFJ, p. 105
(Bramhall); p. 115 (Heylyn); pp. 119–26 (Thorndike).
102
THCD, p. 184.
103
Baxter identified with “the Reformers” who took the headship of Christ as
the only way to achieve true unity and who regarded “an Aristocracy,” Gallican
Conciliarism, to be “more irrational than a Papal Monarchy.” See ARFJ, pp. 12–13.
104
SER, pp. 9, 22–5, 17–18.
105
Salmon, Renaissance and Revolt, pp. 174–75.
     219

An important corollary to this international threat was the domes-

tic ramification of such an ecclesiological position. For Baxter, this
Grotian scheme redivivus was the very reason why Protestant non-
conformists in England were persecuted. This Grotian plot did not
countenance a charitable co-existence between the Dissenters and
those who endorsed an ecclesiology of jure divino episcopacy. Moreover,
as he had argued throughout his writings, ungodliness was inexorably
interpreted as anti-Puritan. In this bifurcated spiritual cosmology,
Baxter asserted, there was an unsurprising collusion of the interests
of diocesan bishops and of the ungodly anti-Puritans.106
In his True History of Councils Enlarged and Defended, Baxter refuted
seven positions which the Gallican—and by implication, Grotian—
sympathizers had allegedly propagated. His historiographical approach
was thus typical of polemical historiography, finding justification for
the disputed position of the present in the repository of the history
of the Christian church.107 In this regard, he followed the basic for-
mat of what by then had become a standard Protestant anti-Catholic
polemic, Matthias Flaccius Illyricus’ Ecclesiastica Historia . . . Secundum
Singular Centurias (1559), more commonly known as the Magdeburg
Centuries, which, in thirteen volumes depicted the declension of eccle-
siological and doctrinal purity to the year 1300.108 Baxter maintained:
1. That a General Council of Bishops or the Colledge of Bishops
Governing per Literas formatas out of Council, are the Supreme
Governing Power over the Universal Church on Earth.
2. That among these the Pope is justly the Patriarch of the West, and
the principium unitatis to the whole.
3. That there is no concord to be had but in the Obedience to this
Universal Governing Church. But all Persons and all National
Churches are Schismaticks who live not in such Subjection and
obedience.
4. That such as the Diocesan Episcopacy which is over one lowest
Church containing hundreds or multitudes of Parishes and Altars

106
See for examples, THCD, pp. 90–1.
107
See also Bossuet’s History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches (Fraser, MI,
1997 repr.), p. 593, where he praises the Restoration Bishop George Bull’s defense
[Defensio Fidei Nicaenae (1685), p. 2, nn. 2, 3] not only of Nicean orthodoxy but more
importantly of the infallibility of the councils. For Bull, see DNB; Spurr, The Restoration
Church of England, pp. 158, 311–16.
108
Matthias Flaccius Illyricus was a self-conscious Lutheran who opposed Melanch-
thon and sought to preserve the teachings of Luther on sola fide against the more
synergistic interpreters of the justification-sanctification debate.
220  

without any other Bishop but the said Diocesan is that Episcopacy
which all must be subject to, while it is subject to the Universal
supreme.
5. That every Christian must hold subjective Communion with the
Bishop of the place where he liveth: And say some, must not prac-
tice contrary to his Commands, nor appeal for such practice to the
Scripture or to God.
6. That if this supreme Power silence the Diocesans, or these Diocesans
silence all the Ministers in City or Country, they must Cease their
Ministry and forsake the Flocks.
7. And say divers of them, They are no true churches, or Ministers, that
have not ordination from such Diocesans, yea by an uninterrupted
succession from the Apostles: And for want of this the Foreign re-
formed Churches are no true Churches, but the Church of Rome is.109
That this was a continuation of an old debate between Baxter and
his Grotian opponents can be seen in the next sentence: “Much
more of this Nature I have already transcribed (and confuted) out
of A. Bishop Bramhall, Dr. Heylins Life of A. Bishop Laud, Mr. Thorndike,
Mr. Dodwell, and divers others.”110 With all the above mentioned
controversialists—except Dodwell—Baxter had already engaged in
fierce polemics during both the Interregnum and the Restoration.
Consequently, we have come back to Baxter’s polemic against dioce-
san episcopacy. Whether he called it Grotian, Laudian, or prelati-
cal was relatively immaterial to him so long as the Protestants in
England were sufficiently aware of the putative covert machinations
of this group to re-define the Church of England, and, more signi-
ficantly, to re-capitulate the Church of England to its implacably
anti-Puritan, and anti-disciplinarian, and pro-Conciliar existence.
In Against a Revolt to a Foreign Jurisdiction, published in 1691, Baxter
reiterated the reality of the Grotian religion, leaving no doubt as to
the centrality of anti-popery in his relationship with the prelatists.
To be sure, he did acknowledge that Grotian scheme also sought to

109
THCD, p. 47; ARFJ, pp. 13–14. See also THCD, p. 217, where Baxter cites
Henry More, A Modest Inquiry into the Mystery of Iniquity (1664), p. 132, in which
More discusses the reputed fallacy of the principle of the “Right Succession of
Bishops and Priests.” For More, see DNB; Reliquiae, II. 387, §284 (2).
110
THCD, p. 47. For Baxter’s conviction that the Grotian religion was a formi-
dable threat during the reign of Charles II as well that of his father, see Ibid., pp.
100, 119, 190. See also ADS [controversy among William Sherlock, Henry Dodwell,
and Baxter]; ARJF, pp. 131, 177–81, 185–207, 207–31, 232–61 [epistolary dispute
between Peter Gunning and Baxter].
     221

push aside scholastic verbal wrangling, that the lives of lazy clergy
had been reformed, and that Grotius sought to pull together France,
Sweden, England, and possibly the Lutherans under one unified
Protestant body. However, a crucial component of Protestantism was
missing in Grotius’ ecumenical design: the Calvinists. Baxter wrote
that the purpose of Grotius’ early-phase Protestant endeavors was to
“crush the Calvinists as unreconcileable.” Although Baxter was often
castigated as an Arminian, Papist, or Socinian, ironically it was his
desire to defend the Calvinist credentials of the true Church of
England which fueled his anti-Grotian polemic. Baxter asserted that
Grotius’ ecumenical plans took a more Rome-ward turn:
His design was to bring Rome, as the Mistris Church, to Rule, not
arbitrarily, but by the Canons of Councils, securing the Right of Kings
and Bishops. . . . And he tells us how many in England favoured what
he did, though those whom he miscalled Brownists were against it. . . .
A. Bishop Laud, and the new Clergy Men (Sibthorp, Mainwaring, Heylin,
&c.) were the Cause of all; I say, these things raising in men a dread
of Popery our greater distances were here begun.111
The most alarming aspect of this Grotian position was how this
would create two churches in England: one subject to a greater sov-
ereign—Rome—and the other, a persecuted little flock of Christ.
This was to revert to the ecclesiological perspective of the Marian
Protestants, for whom persecution had become a vital vindicating
mark of a true church.112 Whether the “Grotian religion” created
two “species” of church is beyond the scope of this chapter. However,
coincidental or not, two churches—established and dissenting —
became permanent parts of the religious life of Britain after the pas-
sage of the Toleration Bill of 1689, ending the life-long quest of
Baxter for a pure, united church enjoying liberty from foreign eccle-
siastical jurisdiction.

111
ARFJ, pp. 23–25, 91, 92, 93–99.
112
See Catharine Davies, “‘Poor Persecuted Little Flock’ or ‘Commonwealth of
Christians’: Edwardian Protestant concepts of the church,” in Peter Lake and Maria
Dowling, eds., Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England (London:
Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 78–102.
222  

IV. C

Having begun with a quote from Patrick Collinson on the polarity

between the religion of Protestants as conceived by Baxter and Heylyn,
the chief Laudian historian, it is perhaps fitting to conclude with a
quote from Baxter which encapsulated the difference between the
“old” and the “new” Church of England, and especially their atti-
tudes toward the Puritans:
These divided from the rest, strove who should prevail in Power: A.B.
Grindall first, and A.B. Abbot, next being cast out, and both reproached
by Dr. Heylin (Laud’s Pen-man) as the Heads of one Party in England,
and B. Usher in Ireland: and Bishop Laud is praised as the Leader of
the other side, Reforming the spoiled Reformation, which the Universities
and Bishops had spoiled by Calvinism. These two Parties differed in their
Zeal against the Nonconformists: Grindall being for Love and Lenity,
and Lecture-Exercises to breed up Preachers, and Abbot by Heylin made
a Mischief to the Church for being popular: but Laud’s Party being
for more severely against them, which was exercised accordingly.113
A clear line of demarcation between the party of Laud and that of
Grindal represented the different trajectories of their reformations.
The party with which Baxter identified emphasized “Lecture-Exercises”
and an awakening, evangelistic ministry, one he practiced himself in
Kidderminster and encouraged other ministers, both in Worcestershire
and beyond, to follow. To best convert the nation, the episcopalians
of Grindal, Abbot, and Ussher’s type consciously sought to widen
the pastoral base by including the Puritan nonconformists in the
church, and by aligning themselves with “international Calvinism.”
To Laud and his followers, however, the “old” church nearly “spoiled”
the hope of reformation by “Calvinism,” and by creating a church
which defined itself in opposition to Rome.
How much was Baxter responsible for further widening the eccle-
siological gulf between the “old” and “new” Church of England, or
between the Puritans and the Grotian party? As Anthony Milton
has persuasively shown, “polarization of opinion [was] often . . . seen
to have been a function of polemical debate, rather than its trigger.”114
Baxter’s consuming passion for the evangelical Church of England,

113
SES, p. 9.
114
Milton, Catholic and Reformed, p. 5.
     223

headed by Christ, purified by a converting ministry, united under

the authority of sola scriptura, and set at liberty to pursue “laborious
holiness,” was thwarted in large measure by the conflict in which
he found himself—and which he helped to create—aligned against
the prelatists, and less dramatically yet really with other Puritans.
We have seen that Baxter’s identification of the so-called “Grotian
Religion” in the Interregnum played both a divisive and a unifying
role. His anti-Grotian polemic created, or at least intensified, the
division between the moderate and Laudian episcopalians, while it
united numerous Puritans who opposed jure divino episcopacy. Geoffrey
Nuttall commented that Baxter was the first in England to “perceive
the issues” of the “Grotian religion.”115 This identification of the
“Grotian religion” deeply influenced his historiographical project,
convincing him of the bifurcated reality of the Church of England
between the “old” and the “new.” On the other hand perhaps his
anti-prelatical historiography might have further perpetuated the divi-
sion. One absolute certainty for Baxter, and for his ecclesiology, was
that the “old” bishops “would have prevented our contentions and
wars.” However, it was the “new” church that could narrate the vic-
tor’s history. In a way this fitted his own vision of church history:
the suffering church and Christian had the existential assurance of
belonging to the invisible church although they might be rejected
by the visible one.

115
Nuttall, “Richard Baxter and The Grotian Religion,” p. 250.
 CHAPTER EIGHT

CONCLUSION

Baxter, petitioning for a license to preach in 1672, defined the reli-

gion of “a mere Nonconformist.”
My Religion is merely Christian; but as rejecting the Papall Monarchy
& its attendant evills, I am a Protestant: The Rule of my faith & doc-
trine is the Law of God in Nature & Scripture. The Church which I
am a member of is the universality of Christians. . . . My judgment of
Church Government is for that Forme of Episcopacy which is described
in Ignatius and Cyprian and was the usage then of the Christian
Churches.1
We have contextualized several interrelated aspects of Baxter’s eccle-
siology by situating them in the reformational concerns of the Puritans
and in the polemical development of the Interregnum and the
Restoration. William Lamont has debunked the “myth of monolithic
Puritanism” by providing a “horizontal’ analysis.2 This supposed
Puritan ideological monolith was severely tested in the following
areas: the legitimacy of infant baptism, the suspension of the Lord’s
Supper, the quest for purity in separated churches, the elusive nature
of the fundamentals of faith, and finally the attitude toward the
Restoration Church of England. In one significant respect, however,
Baxter’s ecclesiological concerns challenge Lamont’s assertion of the
“myth.” Throughout his controversial career, Baxter denied the sin-
gularity of his position, whether in emphasizing evangelical right-
eousness for justification or in his unswerving anti-separatism. More
significantly, in his post-Restoration historiographical projects, set
against the prelatists, Baxter portrayed the history of the English
Reformation, indeed of all humanity, in the universal conflict between

1
Letter dated 25 October 1672, in Treatises, vii. 268; Powicke, II. pp. 71–2;
Nuttall, Richard Baxter, p. 103; Reliquiae, III. 102–3, §226. The license was granted
on 27 October 1672. See G. Lyon Turner, ed., Original Records of Early Nonconformity
under Persecution and Indulgence, 3 vols. (London: T.F. Unwin, 1911–14), 1:575; CSPD
1672, p. 88.
2
William Lamont, Puritanism and Historical Controversy (London: UCP Press, 1996),
p. 4.
  225

Cain and Abel. However, his rhetoric of a unified Puritan front

belied the divergent and divided parties within Puritanism. Even in
the midst of suffering and disillusionment, he did not give up on the
church. This owes partly to Baxter’s commitment to two Augustinian
emphases: the visible and invisible church, and the eschatological tri-
umph of the church of Abel despite the oft-countervailing evidence.
Baxter’s preaching took on a self-consciously conversionistic tone
in order to create a distinctly godly community within the parochial
context. His deliberate emphasis on plain style, application-focused
preaching underscored the ecclesiological circumstances of his parish.
Moreover he was convinced of the wider appeal and necessity of
such conversionistic focus, leading to the publication of A Treatise of
Conversion (1657), Directions . . . to a Sound Conversion (1658), and A Call
to the Unconverted (1658). An important corollary to conversionistic
preaching was his modification of preparationist teaching. Convinced
that “God breaketh not all Mens hearts alike,” Baxter opted for con-
versionistic preaching as a conscious step away from an inordinate
emphasis on preparing for grace.3 Although there was a clear conver-
sionistic preoccupation in his preaching, he simultaneously empha-
sized the Christocentric aspect in the life of a converted Christian.
In addition to conversionistic preaching, the re-vitalization of parish-
wide catechizing appropriately demonstrated his evangelistically-
oriented ecclesiology. For Baxter, catechizing was an indispensable
supplement to preaching because it allowed him to “preach privately”
to the parishioners, custom-tailoring his discourse to their needs.
Thus, in his eyes a genuine reform could occur by combining public
and private preaching with the already-existing Puritan voluntary
religious culture of sermon gadding, combination lectures, and prayer
meetings. He further attempted to reform the parish churches with
the separatists’ rigor of the pursuit of a greater purity in view, illus-
trating anti-separatism as an important ecclesiological theme in his
work.
Baxter’s endorsement of paedobaptism was a case in point. The
English Revolution witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of radical
sects. Denying the ecclesial validity of parish churches, Baptists also
challenged their entrance rite. The indiscriminate administration of
baptism to those who lacked faith caused Baxter to re-consider his

3
Reliquiae, I. 7, §6 (4).
226  

baptismal thought. In his interaction with the Baptists John Tombes

and Benjamin Cox, his emphasis on the unity of the church and
the covenantal continuity between the Old and New Testaments
prompted him to defend the validity of paedobaptism. However, his
acknowledgment of the validity of the Baptists’ criticism was reflected
in his emphasis on professions of saving faith, both in terms of assent
and consent, before adults or their children could be baptized.
Confirmation was the complementary rite to paedobaptism in
Baxter’s reformational ecclesiology. He acknowledged Calvin as a
major influence on this evangelical “rite of transition.” He imbued
the rite of confirmation with the sense of committing oneself to the
Christ and moving beyond a mere catechetical dimension. In this
regard, his view of confirmation also resembled that of Martin Bucer,
who, in his Censura to the Edwardian Book of Common Prayer,
emphasized evangelical obedience for the confirmand.
The Lord’s Supper was a fiercely debated, if seldom practiced,
sacrament in Baxter’s England. Here again, he chose selectivity with-
out separatism, and administered the Lord’s Supper without sepa-
rating to enjoy a purer communion. He “did not choose between
rival positions . . . not because ‘he could not’ but because he ‘would
not’”.4 He incorporated the disciplinary emphasis of the separatists.
Properly established discipline would ensure a biblical celebration of
the Eucharist, and as such this was an assurance-enhancing sacra-
ment. For Baxter, the combination of establishing discipline and con-
tinuing to administer the Lord’s Supper would foster the purity of
the community, as opposed to forming a separatist congregation.
In Part II we discussed the themes of ecclesiastical unity, doctri-
nal purity through adherence to sola scriptura, and liberty of the
Reformed ministry and defense of the godly tradition of the Church
of England against the Grotian “party.” Baxter’s ecclesiological com-
mitment to the “mere Catholick” way became increasingly more
untenable in a period of polarization, marked by a strong Puritan
anti-Laudian sentiment in the early 1640s, lasting through the
Interregnum, and by an equally strong anti-Puritan backlash after
the Restoration.
Other Puritans shared the passion for the quest for purity, albeit
in varying degrees and manifested in diverse ecclesiologies, as Tom

4
Keeble, Richard Baxter, p. 148.
  227

Webster has shown.5 The separatists’ disavowal of the parish church

prompted Baxter to emphasize edification within the parochial con-
text because individual Christians’ purity and edification could not
be pursued in isolation from the unity of the church. Once again,
this brings Baxter’s evangelistic emphasis to the fore. The Worcestershire
Association provided an avenue of godly solidarity from which min-
isters could engage in reformation and the pursuit of holiness together.6
Anti-popery was a crucial component of Baxter’s ecclesiology. The
spread of radical religion in the Interregnum was threatening in and
of itself, but the alleged Jesuit mastermind behind it was even more
so. Baxter’s godly unity excluded those who undermined the eccle-
sial validity of parochial churches. Partial conformity also showed
his commitment to godly unity during the Restoration. Despite its
numerous weaknesses, he acknowledged the restored Church of
England as a true church and participated in parish worship. Although
this is only half of the story in his relationship with the national
church, it nevertheless highlighted his anti-separatism. His consistent
preference for comprehension—the union of dissenters with the
Restoration Church of England—rather than toleration incurred the
“wrath” of radical Puritan colleagues such as Edward Bagshaw and
John Owen.
“Purity of doctrine,” Nicholas Tyacke argued, “was one of the
conventional marks of a true church.”7 Although all the Puritans
were committed to doctrinal purity, symbolized by sola scriptura, the
way to doctrinal consensus was not always clear, especially for Baxter
and for those involved in doctrinal controversies with him. Despite
the shared commitment to scriptural authority, Baxter and his high
Calvinist opponents differed over the necessity of context-specific con-
fessions to obviate heresies. He was averse to using human language
to formulate “dividing engines,” e.g., confessions as litmus tests for
orthodoxy. He greatly emphasized catechizing; he was even willing
to let his parishioners choose any of the “godly” catechisms available.

5
See Webster, Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England: the Caroline Puritan movement
c. 1620–1643 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 253–338.
6
For helpful discussions of the corporate pursuit of holiness in Renaissance and
Reformation Europe, see Heiko Oberman and Charles Trinkaus, eds., The Pursuit
of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974).
7
Tyacke, “Anglican Attitudes: some recent writings of English religious history
from the Reformation to the Civil War,” JBS 35 (1996), p. 144.
228  

However, to determine one’s orthodoxy, he believed, only Scripture

and the Apostles’ Creed should be used.
Baxter and Owen gathered in 1654 to hammer out the funda-
mentals to be confessed in the Commonwealth, and here their different
visions of reform clearly emerged. Baxter was a doctrinal essential-
ist, perhaps as a result of the ecclesiological context in Kidderminster
where much doctrinal ignorance prevailed. The “mere Catholick”
doctrinal stance of Baxter was based on New Testament Christianity
with its corresponding emphasis on “laborious holynesse”; any depar-
ture from this vision, whether by Antinomianism or Conciliarism,
would greatly weaken, if not subvert, the foundation of the true
church. Owen, on the other hand, adhered to an Independent eccle-
siology that favored gathered congregations of visible saints. The
clash and subsequent fall-out between Owen and Baxter in 1654
showed the extent to which the Calvinist consensus of the Elizabethan
and Jacobean Church, broken first by the Laudians, also affected
the “core” of the Puritan rank, presaging the eventual break-up
of the “Happy Union” between the Independents and Presbyterians
in the 1670s. Thus, Baxter’s unswerving commitment to the Vincentian
canon turned out to be a highly polemical stance. His theological
convictions had a greater affinity with the moderate Calvinism of
Bishops John Davenant, Joseph Hall and James Ussher rather than
the radical Puritans. Their views on hypothetical universalism and
their openness to irenicism were two factors that drew Baxter to
them.
On the other hand, his relationship with the Church of England
was ambiguous. For the most part, he held many of its clergy to be
the “stupor mundi,”8 and considered the Thirty-Nine Articles an
excellent and balanced articulation of the Reformed faith. However,
he was unequivocally opposed to the alleged dalliances with Rome,
largely through the influence of Hugo Grotius. His relationship with
Grotius was also ambiguous. Although he adopted much of Grotius’
soteriological perspective, Baxter found the Grotian ecumenical over-
tures to bring the Protestants back to Rome clearly dangerous. The
Grotian Religion Discovered (1658) was Baxter’s clarion call against the
“Rome-ward” move of the Laudians.

8
Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: the Church in English society 1559–1625
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 92.
  229

Recently, scholars have shown the continuity of the polemics of

this significant historical divide of the Restoration. In our discussion
of Baxter’s “Grotian Religion” controversy, we saw that the seed of
his disavowal of prelacy at the height of the Popish Plot in the late
1670s and early 1680s was already sown in the Interregnum. His
fight for the liberty and legitimacy of non-episcopally ordained and
non-Laudian ministers against Henry Hammond, Peter Heylyn, Peter
Gunning, and Thomas Pierce illustrated the long-reaching cause and
effect of the religious division within the Church of England.
In 1661, Baxter was asked to provide an “accurate” history of the
Puritans since the days of the fall-out in Frankfurt during the Marian
exile. Although he did not respond to that request right away, by
the late 1670s he became more doubtful about the Church of England
as an effective proselytizing institution. Writing in the tradition of
Augustine, Thomas Bradwardine, and more significantly Luther,
Baxter denounced the church of Cain, which manifested itself in
England in the re-established state church. This is the seldom-told
story of the long shadow of the “Grotian Religion” upon Baxter and
his opposition to prelacy as an ecclesiastical system that eliminated
the possibility of genuine reformation, the lack of which would be
followed by the “Revolt to a Foreign Jurisdiction,” that of Rome.
Baxter was a truly eclectic Puritan. He typified the godly, evangel-
istic zeal and commitment to anti-popery which, according to Professors
Lake and Collinson, characterizes a Puritan. His rhetoric of anti-
separatism drew unsurprisingly from the Ames-Bradshaw circle. So
did Baxter’s commitment to relative congregational autonomy, as he
believed that individual pastors had the God-given authority to dis-
cipline and guide the flock. That he endorsed synods for consulta-
tive, not coercive purposes, bears striking resemblance to Ames and
Bradshaw’s English Puritanisme.
The avowed anti-Baxterian, Roger L’Estrange, spoke of the self-
contradictory tendencies in all of Baxter’s writings. He was reviled
either as a Socinian, the Rabbi of Kidderminster, and Bellarmine,
Jr., or he was revered as a saintly man, a great preacher, and one
who might have been one of the Fathers. Such a polarized recep-
tion of Baxter’s person and thought is not merely impressionistic.
Baxter’s confessed non-partisan commitment to reform was bound
to be misunderstood as a product of an inconsistent mind. However,
this book has sought to show that his ecclesiology was a product of
the polemical and political context of mid- to late-seventeenth century
230  

Britain. For all his commitment to the church and his antipathy
toward separatism, Baxter spent more time as a non-ministering
ordained clergyman of the Church of England than as a parish min-
ister. His literary and theological output continued for forty-two years,
totaling nearly 140 publications, excluding commendatory epistles
and sermons included in other volumes. It is amusing to note that
the fictional pope in A Dialogue between the Pope and the Devil, about
Owen and Baxter (1681) complained that Baxter wearied readers by
publishing books by the cartloads, and the gossip recollected in 1696
that he was known among the “Learned Divines in Oxford in Oliver’s
days” as “Scribbling Dick.”9
Baxter’s vision of reform was founded in his conviction that the
visible church was not coextensive with the invisible church, and to
remedy that, people needed to be converted. Because of the eccle-
siological tension found in Scripture and in experience, he assidu-
ously fought the “evil” of separatism and instead called Christians
to unite in joint pursuit of holiness and purity. He was also equally
committed to ensuring the liberty of Christians to bow their ulti-
mate allegiances to Christ alone, not to the pope or councils. In this
context Baxter endeavored to purify the church and encourage
Christians to delight themselves in the joys of the communion of
saints, which, though real, was only provisional. This progress in
“laborious holynesse” was to end ultimately in the saints’ everlast-
ing rest wherein Christians entered the triumphant, celestial, and
invisible church, made finally visible. This was the church for the
love of which Baxter was willing to be a martyr.

9
A Dialogue between the Pope and the Devil about Owen and Baxter (1681), 1; Barry
Coward, “A Proper Puritan,” Review of CCRB, in Times Literary Supplement 3 July
1992.
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VII. U T

Armstrong, B.G., ‘The Modernity of Richard Baxter: A Study in Ecumenical

Endeavor’, Princeton Theological Seminary, ThM, 1962.
Black, J. William, ‘Richard Baxter and the Ideal of the Reformed Pastor’, University
of Cambridge, PhD, 2000.
Como, David, ‘Puritans and Heretics: The Emergence of An Antinomian Underground
in Early Stuart England’, Princeton University, 1999.
Cooke, Timothy R., ‘Richard Baxter, Puritan Churchman’, University of Western
Ontario, PhD, 1991.
Douglass, Walter, ‘Richard Baxter and the Savoy Conference of 1661’, McMaster
University, PhD, 1972.
Gilbert, C.D., ‘Richard Baxter’s Ministry in Kidderminster, 1641–1661’, University
of Birmingham, MPhil, 1996.
Macauley, J.S., ‘Richard Montague Caroline Bishop, 1575–1641’, University of
Cambridge, PhD, 1965.
  253

McCan, R.L., ‘The Conception of the Church in Richard Baxter and John Bunyan:
A Comparison and Contrast’, University of Edinburgh, PhD, 1955.
McGrath, Gavin, ‘Puritans the Human Will: Voluntarism within Mid-Seventeenth
Century English Puritanism as seen in the Works of Richard Baxter and John
Owen’, University of Durham, PhD, 1989.
Murphy, John Michael, ‘Oliver Cromwell’s church: State and clergy during the
Protectorate’, University of Wisconsin, PhD, 1997.
Packer, J.I., ‘The Redemption and Restoration of Man in the Thought of Richard
Baxter’, University of Oxford, DPhil, 1954.
Schneider, Carol, ‘Godly Order in a Church half-Reformed: The Disciplinarian
Legacy, 1570–1641’, Harvard University, PhD, 1986.
Trott, F.J., ‘Prelude to Restoration: Laudians, Conformists, and the struggle for
“Anglicanism” in the 1650s’, University of London, PhD, 1993.
Vernon, Elliot, ‘The Sion College Conclave and London Presbyterianism during
the English Revolution’, University of Cambridge, PhD, 1999.
Webster, Tom, ‘The Godly of Goshen scattered: an Essex clerical conference in
the 1620s and its diaspora’, University of Cambridge, PhD, 1993.
This page intentionally left blank
 INDEX OF NAMES

Abbot, George 222 Bincks, Robert 87

Abel 216 Black, J. William 13, 77, 119
Abraham 69 Blake, Thomas 69, 70, 71, 82, 83,
Acontius, Jacobus 119, 168 88, 136
Adam 214 Blondel, David 203
Ainsworth, Henry 32 Bolton, Robert 98
à Kempis, Thomas 165 Boyle, Roger 161
Ambrose 214 Bozeman, T.D. 108
Ambrose, Isaac 27 Brachlow, Stephen 10
Arius 156 Bradshaw, William 6, 93, 104,
Ames, William 1, 64, 104, 110, 122, 121–123, 145, 149, 151, 153, 166
145, 149, 150 Bradwardine, Thomas 214, 216
Amyraut, Moise 156, 174 Bramhall, John 18, 206, 217, 220
Aquinas, Thomas 158, 163 Bromwich, Thomas 30
Arius 215 Brownists 69
Arminius, Jacobus 197 Bryan, John 148
Ashe, Simeon 11, 156 Bucer, Martin 16, 61, 73, 77, 78, 81,
Augustine 4, 17, 32, 34, 102, 138, 107, 130, 194, 226
158, 176, 214 Bullinger, Heinrich 24
Bunyan, John 148
Bagshaw, Edward 145, 147, 148, 151, Burges, Cornelius 67, 213
152, 154 Burnett, Amy Nelson 78
Baillie, Robert 139, 156, 158, 208, Burroughs, Jeremiah 188
212
Baldwin, Thomas 31 Cain 194, 214, 216
Ball, Thomas 111 Calamy, Edmund 2, 120, 212
Bancroft, Richard, Archbishop 191, Calixtus, George 119
211 Calvin, John 24, 42, 64, 71, 73, 76, 86,
Barlow, Thomas 2 101, 107, 108, 109, 149, 159, 194
Bartlett, Henry 171 Cameron, John 173, 174
Baxter, Benjamin 30 Canne, John 122
Baxter, Richard Carleton, Dudley 216
as a Bucerian pastor 13 Charles I, King 88, 141
as an ecumenist 12–13 Charles II, King 51, 195, 213
as a historian of Puritanism 18 Cheynell, Francis 161, 165, 167, 169
doctrinal eclecticism 14 Chillingworth, William 164, 165, 168,
ecclesiology passim 216
parochial reformation 8 Christ 38, 39, 77, 82, 138–139, 153,
representative of the Puritan 166, 169, 170, 186, 205–206, 217, 223
tradition 8 Christianson, Paul 7
Beddard, R.A. 151, 194 Chrysostom, John 157
Bedford, Thomas 65, 82, 83 Clare, Sir Ralph 95, 106, 199, 201
Bergius, Conrad 119, 173, 180 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 117
Bernard, Richard 25, 48 Collier, Giles 30
Beza, Theodore 92 Collinson, Patrick 7, 8, 9, 46, 106,
Biddle, John 159, 160, 165, 186, 195 129, 191, 199, 222
Bilson, Thomas 211 Comenius 23
256   
Como, David 183
Constantine, Emperor 153, 217
Coolidge, J.S. 24
Cox, Benjamin 28, 58, 226
Cranmer, Thomas 194
Crocius, Ludovicus 119, 173, 174,
180, 202
Cromwell, Oliver 30, 59, 81, 178
Cyprian 105, 157
Dance, George 95
Darrell, John 32
Davenant, John 18, 160, 173, 174,
175–176, 178, 180, 184, 190, 198,
202, 216
Davies, Horton 41, 118
DeMolen, R.I. 73
Dent, Arthur 42, 48
D’Ewes, Sir Simonds 212
Dix, Dom Gregory 85
Dod, John 149, 150
Dodwell, Henry 220
Donatus 16
Donne, John 25
Doolitte, John 189
Drake, Roger 90
Duffy, Eamon 28, 46, 84
Du Moulin, Lewis 207, 208
Du Moulin, Pierre 207
Du Moulin, Peter 207–208
Durston, Christopher 80
Dury, John 118, 128, 169, 170, 175,
178, 179, 197
Edge, Michael 49, 81, 205
Edward VI, King 153
Edwards, Jonathan 2
Edwards, Thomas 59, 125, 126, 136
Erasmus, Desiderius 158, 181,
196–197
Eyre, William 183
Farnworth, Richard 139
Field, John 104
Figulus, Peter 23
Fincham, Kenneth 177, 216
Finlayson, Michael 7
Firmin, Giles 36, 83, 135–137
Fisher, Edward 183, 184
Forbes, William 208
Fullwood, Francis 81
Gataker, Thomas 122, 166
Gell, Katherine 97
George, C.H. 7
Geree, John 6, 61
Gerson, Jean 210
Gillespie, George 88
Gladstone, William 2
Goldie, Mark 11
Gomarus, Franciscus 175
Good, Thomas 200
Goodaire, Thomas 139
Goodwin, John 166, 178
Goodwin, Thomas 35, 161, 164,
178
Green, Ian 46
Grindal, Edmund 110, 129–130, 150,
191, 222
Grotius, Hugo 171, 183, 186, 195,
197, 199, 203–208, 216, 219–223,
226, 228
Grove, Thomas 161
Gunning, Peter 18, 201, 229
Guy, John 124
Haigh, Christopher 100, 124
Hales, John 164
Hall, Basil 7, 198
Hall, Joseph 18, 118, 150, 160, 173,
176–179, 180, 198, 202, 216
Hammond, Henry 18, 106, 203, 207,
229
Hanmer, Jonathan 75–76
Hardman-Moore, Susan 135
Harley, Edward 137, 171
Hartlib, Samuel 23, 35, 156, 158
Hemmingsen, Niels 25
Henry VIII, King 210–211
Henry, Philip 146
Herbert, George 97
Heylyn, Peter 2, 18, 191, 206, 207,
216, 217, 218, 220, 222, 229
Heywood, Oliver 146
Hibbard, Caroline 141
Hildersham, Arthur 93, 96, 98, 121,
149, 150
Hill, Christopher 1, 124
Hill, Thomas 128, 135, 178, 185
Holifield, E. Brooks 56
Hooker, Richard 211
Hooker, Thomas 35, 36
Hopkins, George 30, 168–169
Howe, John 81
Hughes, Ann 44
Humfrey, John 88, 90, 92
Hus, Jan 217
Hutchinson, Anne 136
    257

Hyde, Edward, 1st Earl of Clarendon Newcomen, Matthew 212–213

191 Nuttall, Geoffrey F. 88, 118, 135,
Hyperius, Andreas Gerardus 40 137, 159, 163, 196, 223
Nye, Philip 35, 156, 161, 162, 164,
Illyricus, Matthias Flaccius 219 188
Ince, Peter 49, 53, 56
Ingram, Martin 216 Oberman, Heiko 103
O’Day, Rosemary 125
James I and VI, King 179, 180 Olevianus, Caspar 24
Jerome, of Prague 217 Osland, Henry 31, 130, 131, 132,
Jewel, John 150, 198, 216 155
Jewett, Paul 57 Owen, John 1, 18, 147, 155, 157,
Johnson, Francis 32, 122 159, 160–162, 164, 165, 167, 171,
Johnson, Martin 201 173, 181–183, 186–190, 228, 230
Jordan, W.K. 118, 141
Junius, Franciscus 119 Pack, Christopher 43
Packer, J.I. 37, 46
Keeble, N.H. 14, 25, 44, 118, 163, Packington, Sir Christopher 204
185, 213 Page, William 164–165
Kendall, George 178, 183 Paget, John 121
Pagitt, Ephraim 125
Lake, Peter 7, 8, 9, 118, 128, 177, Paraeus, David 119
183 Parker, Samuel 217
Lamont, William 89, 118, 194, 222 Paul, the Apostle 157, 176
Laud, William, Archbishop of Paul, R.S. 12
Canterbury 54, 87, 88, 112, 158, Pelagius 214
159, 197, 218, 220, 222 Perkins, William 32, 40, 45, 95, 96,
Lloyd-Thomas, J.W. 118 110
Lombard, Peter 173 Pierce, Thomas 206, 207, 208, 217
Long, Thomas 2 Pinchbecke, Abraham 31, 79
Luther, Martin 215 Poole, Matthew 11
Lyford, William 111 Posthumus Meyjes, G.H.M. 181, 182
Potter, Christopher 164
Macaulay, Thomas 2 Preston, John 96, 97–98, 178
Maccovius, Johannes 160, 175 Prynne, William 88, 92, 141
Magus, Simon 125
Maitland, John, 2nd Earl and 1st Rainolds, John 74
Duke of Lauderdale 208 Ramsbottom, John 146
Malcolm, Joyce 3 Randall, John 101
Manton, Thomas 11, 161 Ratcliff, E.C. 85
Marshall, Stephen 26, 72, 161, 212 Read, Joseph 93
Martinius, Matthias 174, 202 Reynolds, Edward 100
Martyr, Justin 92 Robinson, John 32
Mayor, Stephen 85 Rogers, Daniel 93
McCan, R.L. 12 Rogers, John 26, 45
Melanchthon, Philip 40, 50, 191 Rothwell, John 172
Mewe, William 135 Russell, Conrad 158
Milnes, Richard 2 Rutherford, Samuel 88, 139, 173
Milton, Anthony 10, 118, 128, 158,
211, 222 Sadoleto, Bishop 109
Montagu, Richard 202, 210–211 Salmon, J.H.M. 199, 218
Morrill, John 54–55 Saltmarsh, John 184
Morton, Thomas 80, 180, 198, Sanderson, Robert 198, 204
218 Saravia, Adrianus 211
258   

Sargeant, Richard 93, 147 Vermigli, Peter Martyr 194

Sasek, Lawrence 41 Vernon, Elliot 11
Schofield, R.S. 80 Vicars, John 87
Scott, Jonathan 195 Vincent, of Lérins 163, 171
Scribner, Bob 123–124 Vines, Richard 84, 128, 161
Seaver, Paul 4 Voetius, Gisbertus 206
Seridge, William 87 Von Ranke, Leopold 13
Shaw, W.A. 192 Von Rohr, John 65
Sheldon, Gilbert, Archbishop 204
Shepard, Thomas 36 Wadsworth, Thomas 50, 51, 171
Simpson, Sidrach 161, 164 Waldron, Humphrey 93
Smyth, John 32 Walker, John 2
Socinus, Faustus 156, 166 Wallace, Robert 162
Spanheim, Friedrich 173 Walzer, Michael 103
Spinks, Bryan 41, 85 Ward, Nathaniel 36
Sprint, John 127, 149 Ward, Samuel 67, 174, 175
Spurr, John 11 Warfield, B.B. 4
Stachniewsky, John 35, 37 Warmestry, Thomas 200
Strangius, John 173 Weber, Max 2
Sutcliffe, Matthew 211 Webster, Tom 10, 26, 177
Sykes, Norman 117, 167 Wilcox, Peter 108
Sylvester, Matthew 188 Wilcox, Thomas 104
Wilkins, John 25
Tertullian 189 Wilson, John 147, 148
Thomason, George 55 Winthrop, John 1
Thornborough, John 88 Womock, Laurence 206
Thorndike, Herbert 208, 216, 220 Wood, Anthony 207
Tombes, John 60, 61, 62, 82, 131 Wood, Harold A. 12
Treble, Joseph 31 Woodbridge, Benjamin 183
Trevor-Roper, Hugh 197 Woolf, D.R. 214
Tristram, Andrew 31 Worden, Blair 141, 159, 181
Troeltsch, Ernst 1, 15 Wotton, Anthony 166
Trott, F.J. 193 Wright, David F. 16
Trueman, Carl 193 Wrigley, E.A. 80
Twisse, William 173
Tyacke, Nicholas 158, 159, 194 Young, Thomas 212

Ursinus, Zacharius 24 Zanchius, Hieronymus 86, 108, 110,

Ussher, James, Archbishop of Armagh 194
18, 43, 71, 160, 161, 169, 170, Zollikofer, Johann 23
173, 177, 178, 180, 198, 203, 204, Zwingli, Ulrich 24, 61
216, 222, 228
 INDEX OF TERMS
Adiaphora 122, 123, 145, 150, 153
Admonition to the Parliament (1572) 104
Antichrist 177, 209
Anticlericalism 120, 123–138, 142
Anti-Constantinianism 217
Antinomianism 4, 14, 58, 102, 157,
158, 159, 160, 174, 182–185, 189
Anti-Popery 9, 15, 54, 120, 140–141,
193–194, 195
Anti-Separatism 15, 17, 18, 32–34,
57, 102, 121, 122, 133–134,
146–148, 151, 194
Aphorismes of Justification (1649) 1, 163,
166, 171, 183
Arminianism 10, 102, 156, 159, 160,
164, 166, 167, 174, 182, 183, 194,
197, 209, 210, 213, 221
Associations 130, 134, 135, 137, 168,
171
Assurance
christocentric ground of 38
in general 96–102, 134
Atonement 159, 166, 173
Auricular confession 45
Autonomy, congregational 16
Baptism
in general 17, 51, 54–56, 176, 181
and circumcision 60–61
as infant and parent dedication 63,
82
as the initiatory rite 54
as mutual covenant 60, 65–68, 82
baptismal regeneration 65–66
Baptist critique of infant baptism
55
Baxter-John Tombes debate 61–65
Baxter-Thomas Bedford debate
65–68
Baxter-Thomas Blake debate 68–73
infant 17, 53, 55, 57, 60, 62
parental responsibility in baptism
63–64, 66
rite of initiation 54
as a sign of confession of faith
68–73
and visible church 62–64
Baptists 56–60, 63, 69, 102, 128,
131, 139, 142
Bishop, office of 217
Book of Common Prayer 54, 77, 80,
94, 192
Bremen delegates at the Synod of Dort
174, 175, 202
Calvinism 18, 30, 155, 160, 166, 173,
174, 181, 184, 186, 192, 193, 204,
222
Calvinist(s) 80, 156, 157, 159, 160,
164, 166, 167, 171, 173, 174, 179,
180, 183, 185, 189, 195, 197, 221
Calvinist consensus 10, 158, 159, 198,
208, 210, 218, 221, 222
Cambridge, University of 175
Cassandrian Papists 198, 204, 208
Catechesis
in general 8, 13, 14, 16, 28,
44–51, 56, 72, 82, 93, 94, 105,
119, 132
The Agreement of Worcestershire Ministers
for Catechizing (1656) 47–48, 50,
93
in English Protestantism 46
complementary to the work of
preaching 45, 46
Ceremonies 5, 9, 194, 213
Christian Concord (1653) 30, 109, 196,
198, 204
Church
as the Bride of Christ 103
as a confessing community 61,
68–73, 134
catholicity of 34, 157–158, 159,
162, 172, 206, 207
comprehension of 145
Cromwellian 217
division within 196
early Stuart 10, 194
of England 10, 14, 121, 122, 124,
144, 150, 154, 177, 190, 191–193,
194, 222
government 198, 200
invisible 32, 33, 34, 42, 65, 71, 83,
92, 102, 104, 147, 223
260   
national 6, 11, 16, 120, 121, 194
primitive 80, 212
purity of 13, 17, 18, 33, 51, 75,
80, 103, 119–120, 121, 123, 127,
128–129, 132, 138, 143, 144,
145, 149, 154, 155, 157, 158,
168, 181, 185
reformed 194
Restoration 18, 113, 195
“true Catholic Church” 34, 143,
144, 171, 189
unity of 11, 13, 17, 18, 51, 75,
117, 119–120, 121, 123, 127,
128, 129, 132, 137, 138, 139,
143, 144, 145, 147–148, 149,
150, 154, 155, 157, 158, 162,
168, 170, 171, 180, 181, 184,
185, 189, 195
visible 16, 32, 34, 65, 66, 71, 83,
92, 102, 104, 112, 147, 223
Civil War, British 3, 10, 26, 54, 59,
82, 112, 119, 120, 127, 158, 185,
192, 195, 211
Combination lectures 129–130
Communion of saints 101–102, 112,
200
Concilliarism
in general 196, 215–216
Gallican 196, 198, 210, 212, 216,
218
Confessions of faith 18, 160, 162,
168, 179–180, 181, 186–187,
189
Confessionalization 4, 168
Confirmation
in general 17, 56, 57, 73–83
Baxter’s own experience 79–80
and covenant renewal 78–81
Conformity 9, 104
Congregationalists 12, 121, 122, 128,
134, 137, 147, 148, 150, 160, 161,
185, 187 see also independents
Conversion
as ecclesiological re-configuration
13, 16, 26, 28–31, 33–34, 45, 51,
53, 132
and preparation 35–40
Council
in general 194, 199, 206, 217
abuse of 215
of Chalcedon 188
of Constance 217
of Constantinople 188
of Ephesus 188
of Nicea 188, 215, 217
of Trent 209, 210
Covenant
and baptism 60, 65–68, 136, 162
new 63
renewal and confirmation 78–81
in secondary literature 65–66
of grace 57, 63, 65–67, 78, 175
Creed, the Apostles’ 77, 158, 162,
163, 165, 169, 172, 176, 177, 180
Cromwellian regime 30
Death
of Christ as substitution 164
the extent of Christ’s death
174–175
Decalogue 77, 162, 172, 176, 177,
180
Decrees of God 175
Discipline 17, 34, 100, 101, 102,
103–113, 132, 133, 134, 144, 152,
163, 168, 181–182, 197, 199, 200,
201, 216
Dissenters 1, 9, 11, 144, 146, 150,
154, 192, 194, 201, 219
Doctrine 181–182
Dort, Synod of 5, 174, 175, 176,
184, 202, 209, 218
Ecclesiology
in general 3–6, 10, 104, 122, 194,
201
Amesian 11, 64, 113
Augustinian 17, 32, 102, 139–140,
147
and baptism 60–73
during mid-seventeenth century 12
ecclesiola in ecclesia 54, 106–107, 112
of Ernst Troeltsch 15
of Martin Bucer 16
Ecumenism 1, 15, 117–120, 159,
163, 179, 198, 211–212
see also irenicism
Edification 8, 28, 103–104, 121, 127
Election, doctrine of 34, 66–67, 213
English Puritanism (1605, 1640 edn.) 104
Episcopacy
in general 14, 152, 155, 167, 200,
202–203, 217
jure divino 10, 18, 202, 203, 204,
206, 208, 211, 219, 223
moderate 11, 200, 201, 209–210,
213, 223
prelatical 9, 13, 14, 18, 74, 177,
   
178, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196,
199, 200, 201, 202, 204, 205,
210–212, 216, 220, 223
reduced 16, 18, 213
Episcopalians 55, 128, 137, 144, 150,
196
Erastians 128
Eschatology 140
Et cetera Oath (1640) 104, 152, 200
Evangelization 8
Faith 70, 77, 92, 93, 105, 182
Family of Love 138
Fifth Monarchy 161
Frankfurt 194, 213, 214
Fundamentals of doctrine 72, 168,
169, 175–176, 177, 179, 189, 196
Grace 1, 36, 38, 167, 176
Great Tew Circle 165
Grindeltonians 138
“Grotian religion” 18, 195–196, 199,
204, 206, 208–209, 212, 213, 216,
219, 220, 223
Holiness 8, 16, 51, 72, 160, 181,
183, 184, 189, 197, 223 see also
sanctification
Holy Spirit 24, 66, 167, 168–170,
177, 187
Hypothetical universalism 18, 173,
174, 176, 178, 179, 182, 184
Ignatian epistles 203
Imitation of Christ 159
Independents 12, 55, 72, 128, 135,
136 see also congregationalists
Instrument of Government (1654) 161
Interregnum 3, 12, 15, 18, 49, 87,
88, 102, 119, 124, 155, 157, 159,
179, 189, 192–193, 195, 196, 204,
207, 220, 223
Irenicism 118, 168, 173, 176, 181,
196, 197, 198 see also ecumenism
Jesuits 9, 69, 141, 218
Justice, divine
Baxter’s understanding of 182
Owen’s understanding of 182
Justification
in general 1, 4, 162, 166, 173,
183, 185, 186
before faith in eternity 160, 184, 185
by faith 159
261
Kidderminster 26, 43, 46, 49, 50, 56,
57, 58, 59, 65, 81, 95, 105, 129,
154–155, 168, 173, 199, 204, 222,
229
Lambeth Articles 5
Laudianism 13, 17, 18, 54–55, 79,
84, 124, 165, 167, 177, 191,
193–194, 197, 200, 205, 207,
211–212, 216
Law of God 166
Lectures, puritan 5, 28–29, 204
Liberty
of conscience 18, 30, 158, 192, 223
of non-episcopal clergy 212
Liturgy 6, 14, 123, 152, 213
London Provincial Assembly 11, 132,
138, 156, 161
Lord’s Prayer 77, 162, 172, 176, 180
Lord’s Supper
in general 17, 48, 51, 76, 83,
84–114, 126, 132, 133, 144, 152,
176
and assurance 96–102
as communal rather than individual
action 84, 100
and communio sanctorum 100–101
as a converting ordinance 89–92
and covenant renewal 79, 89
defined by Baxter 96
as an eschatological event 101
and excommunication 111
and the Laudian practice 87–88
mixed communion 99–100,
101–102
and open admission 88–89, 92
and pastoral discipline 103
and preparation 96–102
and Puritans 86–88, 89, 96, 98
Transubstantiation 142
Lutheran 164, 175–176, 179, 180,
197, 221
Magisterium, teaching 24
Magistrate, civil 7, 217
Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645) 183
Means of grace 39, 82, 106
“Mere Christianity” 14, 18, 163, 189
Millenarianism 4
Millenary Petition 74
Ministry 4, 7, 120, 223
Natural law 153
New England 1, 135, 136, 137
262   
New Model Army 59
Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed
170, 187
Nonconformity 1–2, 9, 57, 88–89,
104, 113–114, 145, 146, 155, 157,
213, 219, 222
Non-separating congregationalism 1,
129
Obedience, new 16, 187
Occasional communion 120,
144–154, 194
Ordination 192, 199, 201, 205–206,
208, 209, 210–212
Orthodoxy 10, 18, 157, 158, 162,
165, 167, 170, 172, 180, 181, 186,
188–189, 202
Oxford, University of 159, 167, 203,
207
Parliament 48, 49, 100, 102, 120,
137, 161, 164, 171, 213
Partial Conformity 120, 146 see also
occasional communion
Persecution 11, 219
Pope 144, 209, 218
Popish Plot 195
Practical divinity 23
Praise of God 38–39
Preaching
in general 14, 16, 82
and conversion 33–34, 39, 41, 119
as external call 28
defined by Baxter 27
metaphysical preaching in early
Stuart England 40–41
significance assumed within the
Protestant Reformation 24–25, 29
and use of rhetoric 16, 40–44
Prelacy see also episcopacy
Preparationism
Baxter’s modified view 16, 35–40,
51
intra-Puritan debate on its efficacy
35, 36
Presbyterians 12, 55, 72, 128, 133,
135, 136, 146, 148, 149, 161, 187,
203, 205
Primitive simplicity of doctrine 18,
160, 162, 180, 182, 189, 197
Protestants, Protestantism 5, 24, 28,
167, 176, 198, 199, 202, 213, 221
Puritanism
defined 7
historiography of 18, 212–223
history of 194, 195, 212–213
in general 2, 6, 8–11, 130, 177,
189
moderate 121, 177, 213
New England 1, 136–137
non-separating 145
political ideology 103
post-Restoration 192
transformation of 15
Puritans
in general 6–7, 187, 193, 195, 196,
199, 205, 207, 210, 216, 223
conflicts among 189
Elizabethan 86
Marian exiles 194, 213, 221
radical 10, 58, 120, 177, 192
Quakers 120, 126, 128, 138–144,
148, 152
eschatology 140
Racovian Catechism (1652) 164
Radicalism 10 see also radical
Puritans
Ranters 128
Reason 167
Reformation 4, 5, 7, 16, 19, 24,
29, 75, 77, 81, 103, 107, 110, 120,
123, 129, 133, 139, 148, 150, 154,
167, 168, 171, 181, 194, 214, 217,
222
Reformed communion, international
10, 199, 202, 209–212
Religious radicalism 125–127, 132,
139, 141
Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696) 3
Renaissance humanism 80
Restoration 3, 9, 11, 15, 18, 25, 51,
113, 119, 144, 149, 155, 157, 182,
189, 190, 192, 193, 201, 212, 214,
216, 218, 220
Revisionist historiography 117
Righteousness
and justification 166
Christ’s 166, 183
evangelical 166, 183, 184
imputation of 166, 187
legal 166
Roman Catholic Church 10, 120,
128, 140–141, 144, 163, 166, 167,
176, 181, 187, 193, 197, 198, 199,
204, 207, 210–211, 222
Root and Branch Petition (1640) 88
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Sacramental theology 52, 60, 65, 78
Sanctification 183 see also holiness
Satisfaction, offered to God by Christ
182, 187
Savoy Conference of 1661 144
Schism 201, 205, 207
Scripture
in general 181
sufficiency 18, 157, 159, 160,
166, 167, 169, 180, 182,
187–189, 206
Second Conventicle Act (1670) 146
Seekers 128, 152
Separatism 6, 7, 13, 14, 17, 32–34,
51, 57, 58, 59, 64, 82, 100,
111–112, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124,
125, 131, 133, 137, 142, 146, 150,
155, 192
Sin
original 164
Socinianism 157, 159, 160, 163–166,
167–169, 173, 174, 181, 182, 185,
187–188, 195, 204, 221
Sola Scriptura 2, 24, 158, 160, 162,
167, 168, 172, 173, 180, 223
Soteriology 158, 166, 171, 174, 176,
209
Suffering 213, 223
263
Thirty-Nine Articles 5, 73
Tolerance 192
Toleration 2, 128, 150, 181, 221
Tradition 167
Trinity, trinitarian 30, 60, 159, 163,
164, 167, 169, 171, 186–7
Troeltschean typology of Church and
Sect 15–16
Typology 78–79
Unitarianism 2, 19, 159, 162
Unity see also Church, unity of
Vindiciae Evagelicae (1655) 186, 195
Westminster Assembly 12, 72, 135,
156, 167, 172, 178, 213
Westminster Confession 167, 172,
180
Whig historians 11, 117, 192
Worcestershire Association 29, 30, 45,
47, 49, 50, 100, 105, 119, 128–129,
132, 139, 168–169, 177, 179, 200,
201, 206
Works of the Law 183
Worship 5, 86, 112, 201–202
York House Conference 210
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