November 12, 1615 • Richard Baxter and Popular Christian Literature

n today's Christian bookstore you can find literally hundreds of books that seek to uplift you spiritually. Did you ever wonder who first came up with the idea of writing such popular Christian literature for the lay person? It may not be possible to say exactly where it began, but Richard Baxter, a Puritan minister who was born on this day, November l2, 1615, certainly gave the movement a strong push with the 128 books he wrote.

Although his family was loyal to the Church of England, Baxter was greatly influenced by the Puritans. He admired the sharp contrast between their blameless lives and many of the clergy in the national Anglican church. The pastors who were the school masters of his youth "read Common Prayer on Sundays and Holy Days, and taught school and tippled (drank) on the week-days, and whipped the boys, when they were drunk."

As a young man, Richard admired his father, who had become a Christian through reading the Bible and who read it on Sundays while the rest of the town frolicked at games and dances. Richard taught school and studied theology. In 1641 he became pastor in the church at Kidderminster and his powerful preaching of God's Word and care to visit each person in it gradually transformed the town. Visiting travelers reported that instead of widespread immorality, they began to hear praise and prayer coming from every house.

With the outbreak of England's Civil War between King and Parliament, Baxter served for a time as chaplain to the Parliamentary forces, but got on the wrong side of Cromwell by refusing to take a position he offered him. Suffering from failing health and seemingly at the point of death, he wrote one of his best-known works, The Saints Everlasting Rest. It urged that hope of eternal life in heaven should be the driving force that controls the Christian's conduct on earth.

The English people were just emerging from the Civil War when the book appeared in print and it became standard reading in Puritan households. Baxter's famous advice that you should keep "heaven in your eye at all times" is the kind of admonition that never loses its strength.

Another book, the Reformed Pastor, taught other pastors his methods and extended the benefits of Kidderminster far across England. In addition to his 128 books he wrote an amazing number of sermons; his full works came to 35,000 pages.

One of his books, Call to the Unconverted, exhorted the reader to turn away from sin to a holy life. It was so successful that he wrote a whole series of similar conversion books, with personal appeals to readers, each one designed to bring people to repent. No one had written such a series before. Richard Baxter constantly stressed the importance of sanctification--becoming set apart for God's use like Jesus.

He was forbidden to preach by Charles II and sent to prison. His young, well-born wife brought her own bed and joined him. After his release, he was harassed and hounded, and even forced into hiding, in which he suffered serious pain because of his kidney stones. He and his wife lived close to poverty, but always found the means to help others. After her death, he went to prison again when he was an old man, sent there for his faith by cruel Judge Jeffries. He died in 1681.

Bibliography:

1. Adapted from an earlier Christian History Institute story.
2. "Baxter, Richard." The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Edited by F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
3. Loane, Marcus L. Makers of Religious Freedom in the Seventeenth Century. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1961.
4. Powicke, Frederick J. A Life of the Reverend Richard Baxter 1615-1691. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1924.

Last updated July, 2007.