Richard Baxter’S Reformed Pastor
15
RICHARD BAXTER’S
REFORMED PASTOR
J. A. Caiger
I preach’d, as never sure to preach again
And as a dying man to dying men.
I was but a Pen in God’s hand,
and what praise
is due to a Pen?
These two familiar quotations help us to see Baxter himself and his attitude to his own ministry. In the first we are made to feel the burning sense of urgency which possessed him in his preaching. In the second his spirit of humility puts a proper check on our rising admiration of his influence and his work.
A Shropshire man, Richard Baxter was ordained in 1638, at the age of 23. Three years later he was appointed curate of Kidderminster. After a brief period of somewhat turbulent ministry there, disturbed, it seems, by the troop movements and the outbreak of violent feeling in the early days of the Civil War, he moved to join a number of other Puritan ministers who had found refuge in the Parliamentarian garrison at Coventry. In 1645 he became an itinerant chaplain in the Parliamentarian army, returning to Kidderminster as minister in 1647, where he remained to fulfill an enormously influential ministry through the days of the Commonwealth, until the Restoration brought him persecution and ignominy. Forbidden to preach, he turned to his pen, and used it powerfully until his death in 1691.
The Reformed Pastor was written in 1656, when Baxter was forty-one, and has its roots in Baxter’s own pastoral practice in Kidderminster, notable for the urgency of his preaching, and the astonishing devotion and dedication of his catechizing of his flock. The work is an enlarged and extended sermon on the work of the ministry. It is an urgent and powerful call for a pastoral reformation, a throwing down of the gauntlet to ministers of the gospel, challenging them to a full acceptance of the disciplines involved in their work, pleading with them to play their part by reforming themselves in the light of the teaching of the New Testament.
For the purposes of this paper it seems most convenient to make a selection from Baxter’s abundant material under four heads: (1) the pastor’s view of the ministry in general; (2) the pastor’s care for his own soul; (3) the pastor and his preaching; (4) the pastor and his brethren.
The Pastor’s View of the Ministry
Two simple presuppositions govern Baxter’s view of the ministry: (1) every flock should have their own pastor (one or more), and every pastor his own flock; and (2) flocks must be no greater regularly and ordinarily than we are capable of overseeing or taking heed of. “God will not lay upon us natural impossibilities. He will not bind men to leap up to the moon, to touch the stars, to number the sands of the sea. . . . Will God require one bishop to take charge of a whole county, or of so many parishes or thousands of souls, as he is not able to know or to oversee? Then woe to poor prelates! This were to impose on them a natural or unavoidable necessity of being damned. . . . O happy Church of Christ, were the labourers but able and faithful, and proportioned in number to the number of souls!” Was Baxter’s own mind governed by this latter principle when he refused the Bishopric of Hereford in 1660?
The pastor’s duty is to exercise “a very great care of the Church as a whole and in every part, with great watchfulness and diligence in the use of all those holy actions and ordinances which God hath required us to use for their salvation.” The ultimate end of our pastoral oversight is the pleasing and glorifying of God, and the glorification of His Church. The nearer ends of our office are the sanctification and holy obedience of the people in our charge, their unity, order, beauty, strength, preservation and increase, and the right worshiping of God, especially in the solemn assemblies.
The pastor must be addicted to pleasing God, and making Him the center of all his actions, living to Him as his God and happiness. He must be concerned with the felicity of the Church, delighting in its beauty, rejoicing in its welfare, and willing to spend and be spent for its sake. His heart must be set on the life to come, sensible in some measure how much the inestimable riches of glory are to be preferred to the trifles of this world. “He that delighteth not in holiness, hateth not iniquity, loveth not the unity and purity of the Church, abhorreth not discord and divisions, and taketh not pleasure in the communion of saints and the public worship of God with His people, is not fit to be a pastor of a church.”
The object of our pastoral care is the whole Church (involving us in the faithful performance of our public duties), and every member of it (presupposing the necessity that we should know every person belonging to our charge—for how can we take heed to them if we do not know them?).
Christ Himself, the great and good Shepherd, and Master of the Church, that hath the whole to look after, doth yet take care of every individual. . . . Many passages in Scripture assure us that it is our duty to take heed to every individual person in our flock; and many passages in the ancient councils do plainly tell us, it was the practice of those times, till churches began to be crowded and to swell so big that they could not be guided as churches should be, when they should rather have been multiplied, as the converts did increase. . . . It was then taken for a duty to look after every member of the flock by name, though it were the meanest servant man or maid.
The pastor’s work is described in terms of the various groups which come under his care.
The work of conversion is the great thing that we must first strive at, and labour with all our might to effect. . . . He that will let a sinner go to hell for want of speaking to him doth set less by souls than the Redeemer of souls did, and less by his neighbour than rational charity will allow him to do by his greatest enemy. Therefore brethren, whomsoever you neglect not the most miserable . . . ply this great work of converting souls, whatever else you leave undone!
There follows the building up of those that are already truly converted.
Most of the godly stick in weak and low degrees of grace; and it is no easy matter to get them higher. To increase their knowledge and gifts is not easy; but to increase their graces is hardest of all. . . . The strength of Christians is the honour of the Church. When men are inflamed with the love of God and live by a lively working faith, and set light by the profits and honours of the world, and love one another with a pure heart fervently, and can bear and heartily forgive a wrong, and suffer joyfully for the cause of Christ, and study to do good and walk inoffensively and harmlessly in the world, as ready to be servants of all men for their good, becoming all things to all men to win them, and yet abstaining from the appearance of evil, and seasoning all their actions with a sweet mixture of prudence, humility, zeal and heavenly spirituality—what an honour are such to their professions! The world is better able to read the nature of religion in a man’s life than in the Bible. It is therefore a necessary part of our work to labour more in polishing and perfecting the saints that they may be strong in the Lord and fitted for their Master’s use.
We must also minister to those that are fallen under some great temptation, and special mention is made of temptations to error and heresy. “O what a deal of holy prudence and industry is necessary in a pastor to preserve the flock from being tainted with heresies and falling into noxious conceits and practices: and especially to keep them in unity and concord, and hinder the rising or increase of divisions.”
The disconsolate must be comforted: the age and the afflicted must be encouraged; and the strong must be assisted to preserve the grace they have, to help them to further progress and increase, and to direct them in the improving of their strength for the service of Christ and the assistance of their brethren.
We must labor to be acquainted with the state of all our people as fully as we can. We must use all the means we can to instruct the ignorant in the matters of their salvation. We must be ready to give advice to those who come to us with cases of conscience. We must also have a special eye upon families, to see that they be well ordered, and the duties of each relation performed. The master of the family is to be encouraged to pray and to read the Scriptures with his household. The sick are to be visited and helped to prepare either for a fruitful life or a happy death. The offensive and impenitent are to be reproved and admonished, and where necessary discipline must be administered by the Church.
The Pastor’s Care for His Own Soul
If we did but study half as much to affect and amend our hearts, as we do our hearers, it would not be with many of us as it is! We do little for their humiliation, but I fear it is much less that some of us do for our own. Too many do somewhat for other men’s souls, while they seem to forget that they have any of their own to regard. . . .
It is a sad thing that so many of us preach our hearers asleep; but it is sadder still if we have studied and preached ourselves asleep, and have talked so long against hardness of heart, till our own grow hardened under the noise of our own reproofs.
One of our most heinous and palpable sins is pride. It is so prevalent in some of us, that it inditeth our discourses for us; it chooseth our company; it governeth our countenances, it putteth the accents and emphasis upon our words; when we reason it is the determiner and exciter of our cogitations; it fills some men’s minds with aspiring desires and designs; it possesseth them with envious and bitter thoughts against those that stand in their light, or by any means do eclipse their glory, or hinder the progress of their idolized reputation.
Another sin the ministers of England are sadly guilty of is undervaluing the unity and peace of the whole Church. It is a great and common sin through the Christian world to take up religion in a way of faction, and instead of a love and tender care of the universal Church, to confine that love and respect to a party. . . . Of the multitude that say they are of the Catholic Church it is too rare to meet with men of a catholic spirit; men have not a universal consideration of and respect to the whole Church, but look upon their own party as if it were the whole. . . . We have as sad divisions among us in England, considering the piety of the persons, and the smallness of the matter of our discord, as most nations under heaven have known. The most that keeps us at odds is but about the right form and order of Church government. Is the distance so great that Presbyterian, Episcopal and Independent might not be well agreed?
We have seen to our sorrow that when the servants of God should live together as one, of one heart, and one soul and one lip, and should promote each other’s faith and holiness, and admonish and assist each other against sin, and rejoice together in their hope of future glory, we have contrarily lived in mutual jealousies and drowned holy love in bitter contendings. . . .
O what a nation might England have been ere now, if it had not been for the proud and obstinate contentions of godly ministers? Did we but agree among ourselves, our words would have some authority with the people. We may talk of peace as long as we live, but we shall never obtain it but by returning to the apostolical simplicity.
Baxter now puts the trumpet of exhortation to his lips and calls upon his brethren to rouse themselves up to the business of their ministry.
The harvest is great; the labourers are too few; the loiterers and contentious hinderers are many; the souls of men are precious, the misery of sinners is great; the beauty and glory of the Church is desirable; the joy that we are helping them to is inconceivable; the comfort that followeth and faithful stewardship is not small; the comfort of a full success will be greater. To be co-workers with God and His Spirit, is not a little honour; to subserve the blood-shed of Christ for man’s salvation is not a light thing; to lead on the armies of Christ through the thickest of the enemies, and guide them safely through a dangerous wilderness, and steer the vessel through such storms and rocks and sands and shelves, and bring it safe to the harbour of rest, requireth no small skill and diligence.
The fields now seem white unto harvest, the preparations that have been made for us are very great, the season of working is more warm and calm than most ages before have ever seen. We have carelessly loitered too long already: the present time is posting away: while we are trifling men are dying and passing quickly into another world.
Were there but such clear and deep impressions upon our souls of the glorious things that we daily preach, O what a change it would make in our sermons and in our private course. . . . O the gravity, the seriousness, the incessant discipline that these things require! I wonder at myself . . . that I can have room for almost any other thoughts or words, and that such astonishing matters do not wholly take me up. I marvel how I can preach of them slightly and coldly, how I can let men alone in their sins and that I do not go to them and beseech them for the Lord’s sake to repent, however they take it and whatever pains or trouble it should cost me. I seldom come out of the pulpit, but my conscience smiteth me that I have not been more serious and fervent. It accuseth me not so much for want of human ornaments or elegance, nor for letting fall an uncomely word; but it asketh me: ‘How could’st thou speak of life and death with such a heart? Should’st thou not weep over such a people, and should not thy tears interrupt thy words? Should’st thou not cry aloud, and shew them their transgressions, and entreat and beseech them as for life and death?’ Truly this is the peal that conscience doth ring in my ears, and yet my drowsy soul will not be awakened.
If the God of heaven, that knew our hearts, had in the midst of our prayers and cries on one of our monthly fasts, returned the answer with His dreadful voice, in the audience of the assembly: ‘What is reformation but the instructing and importunate persuading of sinners to entertain My Christ and grace as offered them, and the governing My Church according to My Word?’ I say, if the Lord (or any messenger of His) had given us such an answer, would it not have amazed us and have seemed incredible to us, that our hearts should have been such as now they prove?
Baxter has insisted that the Christian pastor be a man of learning, a man who neglects his studies at the peril of his ministry: but he insists also that these intellectual disciplines are not of the first and highest importance. Perspective is essential to a right view of the pastoral ministry, and the different elements in this ministry must each be seen in their proper relation and proportion to each other.
I highly value common knowledge, and would not encourage any to set lightly by it; but I value the saving of souls before it. That work which is immediately connected with the end of all our labours must be done, whatever be undone. Men’s souls may be saved without knowing whether God did predetermine the creature in all its acts; whether the understanding necessarily determines the will; whether God works grace in a physical or moral way of causation; what free-will is; with a hundred such like. Get well to heaven, and help your people thither, and you shall know all these things, and a thousand more, which by all your studies you can never know. . . .
This serious dealing with sinners for their salvation will help you to far deeper apprehensions of these saving principles than will be got by any other means; and a little more of the knowledge of these is worth all the other knowledge in the world. O when I am looking heavenward, and gazing towards the inaccessible light, and aspiring after the knowledge of God, and find my soul so dark and distant, that I am ready to say, ‘I know not God—He is above me—quite out of my reach,’ this is the most killing and grievous ignorance! Methinks that I could willingly exchange all other knowledge that I have for one glimpse more of the knowledge of God and of the life to come. O that I had never known a word in logic, metaphysics, etc., nor known what schoolmen said, so I had but one spark more of that light that would shew me the things that I must shortly see . . . I would throw by all the libraries in the world, rather than be guilty of the perdition of one soul; at least I know this is my duty.
Yet such is the balance of Baxter’s mind that he does not call his brethren to choose between a saving ministry and an increase of learning. He calls them to achieve both with due regard to the proper importance of each. And therefore the pastor must exercise the most careful watch on his time. He dare not trifle away a minute, either in needless sleep, or in unfruitful activity. He should take time for physical exercise in order to keep himself physically healthy, but recognizing that his health and vitality are for God, and for His service.
What have we our time and strength for, but to lay both out for God? What is a candle for, but to be burnt? Burnt and wasted we must be, and is it not fitter we should be in lighting men to heaven, and in working for God, than in living to the flesh? What comfort will it be at death, that you lengthened your life by shortening your work? He that works much, lives much.
He that hath looked death in the face as often as I have done will thereby be taught to value his time. I profess I wonder at those ministers that can hunt, shoot, bowl, or use like recreations two or three hours, yea, whole days together; that can sit an hour together in vain discourses and spend whole days in complimental visitations—when so many souls about them cry for help and death gives no respite, and they know that the smallest parish hath so much work that may employ all their diligence night and day.
May a physician in the time of the plague, take any more relaxation or recreation than is necessary for his life, when so many are expecting his help in a case of life and death? As his pleasure is not worth men’s lives, so neither is your’s worth men’s souls! The more you do, the more you receive; the more you lay out, the more you have coming in. If you are strangers to these Christian paradoxes you should not have taken on you to teach them to others. At the present, our incomes and spiritual like and peace are commonly in the way of duty; so that he that is most in duty hath most of God; exercise of grace increaseth it. And is it slavery to be more with God, and to receive more from Him, than other men?
Baxter makes much of the dignity and privileges of the pastor in his care of the Church of God. A right view of the Church is a powerful argument for a faithful exercise of the ministry.
It is the Church of God which we must oversee and feed. It is that Church for which the world is much upheld, which is sanctified by the Holy Ghost, which is united to Christ and is His mystical body; that Church which angels are present with, and attend upon as ministering spirits, whose very little ones have their angels beholding the face of God in heaven. O what a charge have we undertaken! Have we the stewardship of God’s own family, and shall we neglect it? God forbid! Are the souls of men thought meet by God to see His face, and live for ever in His glory, and are they not worthy of your utmost cost and labour? Christ walketh among them. Remember His presence, and keep all as clean as you can. The praises of the most high God are in the midst of them. They are sanctified, peculiar people, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a choice generation, to show forth the praises of Him that hath called them. . . . What a high honour it is to be but one of them, yea, but a doorkeeper in the house of God: but to be the priest of these priests, and the ruler of these kings—this is such an honour as multiplieth your obligations to diligence and fidelity in so noble an employment!
God the Son did purchase it with His blood. O what an argument here to quicken the negligent! Saith one of the ancient doctors: ‘If Christ had but committed to my keeping one spoonful of His blood in a fragile glass, how curious should I preserve it, and how tender should I be of that glass.’ If then He have committed to me the purchase of His blood, should I not as carefully look to my charge? What, sirs, shall we despise the blood of Christ? Shall we think it was shed for them that are not worthy of our utmost care? You may see here, it is not a little fault that negligent pastors are guilty of. As much as in them lieth, the blood of Christ should be shed in vain. They would lose Him those souls whom He hath so dearly bought!
O then, let us hear those arguments of Christ, whenever we feel ourselves grow dull and careless: ‘Did I die for them, and wilt thou not look after them? Were they worth My blood, and are they not worth thy labour? Did I come down from heaven to earth to seek and to save that which was lost; and wilt thou not go to the next door, or street, or village, to seek them? How small is thy labour and condescension as to Mine? I debased Myself to this, but it is thy honour to be so employed. Have I done and suffered so much for their salvation, and was I willing to make thee a co-worker with Me, and wilt thou refuse that little that lieth upon thy hands? Every time we look upon our congregations, let us believingly remember that they are the purchase of Christ’s blood and therefore should be regarded accordingly by us.
So in every way and for every reason the pastor must take heed to himself: and not least because his position exposes him particularly to the assaults of our great adversary.
The tempter will make his first or sharpest onset upon you. If you will be leaders against him, he will spare you no further than God restraineth him. He beareth you the greatest malice, that are engaged to do him the greatest mischief. . . . He knows what a rout he may make among the rest, if the leaders fall before their eyes. He hath long tried that way of fighting, of smiting the shepherd, that he may scatter the clock. As wise and learned as you are, take heed to yourselves lest he over-wit you. The devil is a greater scholar than you, and a nimbler disputant.
He can transform himself into an angel of light to deceive; he will get within you and trip your heels before you are aware; he will play the juggler with you undiscerned, and cheat you of your faith or innocence, and you shall not know that you have lost it; nay, he will make you believe it is multiplied or increased when it is lost. You shall see neither hook nor line, much less the subtle angler himself, while he is offering you his bait; and his bait shall be so fitted to your temper and disposition, that he will surely find advantages within you, and make your own principles and inclinations to betray you; and whenever he ruineth you, he will make you the instruments of your own ruin.
There can be few warnings in the whole of Christian literature that are wiser and more powerful than this.
The Pastor and His Preaching
Baxter is not as volcanic in his style as Luther. Luther’s fulminations light up the imagination with vivid pictures of fire and sulphur, of rocks and lava, hurled explosively over a trembling countryside. Baxter is more reminiscent of a torrent hurling itself over a waterfall, thundering down and rushing along its course with tremendous energy. Both were preachers, and in their preaching their amazing spiritual vitality is most fully shown.
How few ministers do preach with all their might? Alas, we speak so drowsily or gently, that sleeping sinners cannot hear. The blow falls so light that hard-hearted persons cannot feel it.
What excellent doctrines some ministers have in hand, and let them die in their hands for want of close and lively application. . . . O sirs, how plainly, how closely and earnestly, should we deliver a message of such a nature as ours is, when the everlasting life or death of men is concerned in it. . . . There is nothing more unsuitable to such a business than to be slight or dull. What! Speak coldly for God and for men’s salvation! . . . If you give the holy things of God the highest praises in words and yet do it coldly, you will seem in the manner to unsay what you said in the matter. . . . If we are commanded, whatever our hand findeth to do, to do it with all our might, then certainly such a work as preaching for men’s salvation should be done with all our might, that the people can feel us preach when they hear us.
We must be sincerely affectionate, serious and zealous in all our public and private exhortations. All our work must be managed reverently as beseemeth them that believe the presence of God, and use not holy things as if they were common. The more of God appeareth in our duties, the more authority will they have with men: and reverence is that affection of the soul which proceedeth from deep apprehensions of God, and signifieth a mind which is much conversant with Him. The most reverend preacher that speaks as if he saw the face of God, doth more affect my heart, though with common words, than an irreverent man with the most exquisite preparations. Of all the preaching in the world I hate that preaching which tendeth to make the hearers laugh, or move their minds with tickling levity, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence in the Name of God. We should, as it were, suppose we saw the throne of God, and the millions of glorious angels attending Him, that we might be awed with His majesty, when we draw near Him in holy things, lest we profane them and take His Name in vain.
All our work must be done spiritually, as by men possessed by the Holy Ghost, and acted by Him, and men that savour the things of the Spirit. There is in some men’s preaching a spiritual strain, which spiritual hearers can discern and relish: and in some men this sacred tincture is so wanting that, even when they speak of spiritual things, the manner is such as if they were common matters.
It is a sign of a distempered heart that loseth the relish of scripture excellency. For there is a connaturality in a spiritual heart to the Word of God, because that is the seed that did regenerate him.
There must be a prudent mixture of severity and mildness both in our preaching and discipline. If there be no severity, there will be contempt for our reproofs: if all severity, we shall be taken as usurpers of dominion, rather than persuaders of the minds of men to the truth. . . . The whole course of our ministry must be carried on in a tender love to our people. We must let them see that nothing pleaseth us but what profiteth them, and that which doth them good doth us good: and nothing troubleth us more than their hurt. When the people see that you unfeignedly love them, they will hear anything and bear anything, and follow you the more easily. . . . Therefore see that you feel a tender love to your people in your breasts, and then let them feel it in your speeches, and see it in your dealings.
Morever, if you would prosper in your work be sure to keep up earnest desires and expectations of success. God seldom blesseth any man’s work so much, as his whose heart is set upon the success. Let all that preach for Christ and man’s salvation be unsatisfied till they have the thing they preach for.
You cannot break men’s hearts by jesting with them, or telling them a smooth tale, or patching up a gaudy oration. Men will not cast away their dearest pleasure upon a drowsy request of one that seemeth not to mean as he speaks, or to care much whether his request be granted. . . . A great matter with most of our hearers lies in the very pronunciation and tone of speech. The best matter will scarce move them, if it be not movingly delivered. Especially see that there be no affectation, but that we speak as familiarly to our people as we would if we were talking to any of them personally. The want of a familiar tone and expression is as great a defect in most of our deliveries as anything whatsoever, and that which we should be very careful to amend.
Be very careful that your graces be kept in life and action. When your minds are in a heavenly holy frame, your people are likely to partake of the fruits of it. Your prayers and praises and doctrine will be heavenly and sweet to them. They will feel when you have been much with God. That which is on your hearts most, is likely to be most in their ears. We are the nurses of Christ’s little ones: they will quickly find it in want of milk: and we may quickly see it again in them, in the lean and dull discharge of their several duties. If we let our love go down, we are not likely to raise up theirs. If we abate our holy care and fear, it will appear in our doctrine. If the matter shew it not, the manner will. If we feed on unwholesome food . . . our hearers are likely to fare the worse for it. Whereas if we could abound in faith, and love, and zeal, how would it overflow, to the refreshing of our congregations, and how would it appear in the increase of the same graces in others.
I confess that I must speak it by lamentable experience that I publish to my flock the distempers of my soul. When I let my heart grow cold, my preaching is cold: and when it is confused, my preaching will be so: and so I can observe too oft in the best of my hearers, that when I have a little grown cold in preaching, they have cooled accordingly: and the next prayers that I have heard from them have been too like my preaching.
Above all, be much in secret prayer and meditation. There you must fetch the heavenly fire that must kindle your sacrifices.
The Pastor and His Brethren
Baxter was deeply burdened for the unity of the Church. He entreats his brethren to be very tender of the unity and peace of the Catholic Church. He is conscious of the difficulty of establishing the test of a Christian and true Church, and he raises the question as to what is the true center and cement of the unity of the Church in and by which our common calamitous breaches must be healed. He wishes it were possible to agree on the use of one or other of the ancient creeds, but at last declares that the only place of rest for the Church is in the Scripture itself.
Till men can be again content to make the Scripture the sufficient rule, in necessaries to be explicitly believed, and in all the rest implicitly, we are never likely to see a catholic, Christian, durable peace. . . . This is the thing that I would recommend therefore to all my brethren, as the most necessary thing to the Church’s peace: that you unite in necessary truths and tolerate tolerable failings; and bear with one another in things that may be borne with; and do not make a larger creed and more necessaries than God hath done . . . He that shall live to that happy time when God will heal His broken Church shall see all this reduced to practice, and this moderation take place.
He labors to convince his brethren of the sinfulness of schism—in themselves, and in their congregations. They must demonstrate their hatred of division by joining together with their true brethren whenever this is possible, doing as much of God’s work as they can in unanimity and concord: and when they become conscious of schismatic influences at work in their congregations they must seize every opportunity of a moderate, gentle opposing of the errors, remembering that it is easier to chide a sectary in the pulpit, and to subscribe a testimony against him, than to play the skillful physician for his cure.
We must be very studious in union and communion among ourselves, and of the unity and preacher of the churches that we oversee. Ministers must not only hearken to motions for unity, but propound them and prosecute them. They must therefore keep close to the ancient simplicity of the Christian faith and the foundation and centre of Catholic unity. . . . The Scripture sufficiency must be maintained, and nothing beyond it imposed on others. . . . We must learn to difference well between certainties and uncertainties, necessaries and unnecessaries, catholic verities and private opinions; and to lay the stress of the Church’s peace upon the former and not upon the latter. Instead of quarrelling with our brethren, we must combine against the common adversaries. Ministers must associate, and hold communion, and correspondence, and constant meetings to those ends: and smaller differences of judgment are not to interrupt them. They must do as much of the work of God in unity and concord as they can: which is the use of synods—not to rule over one another, and make laws: but to avoid misunderstandings, and consult for mutual edification, and maintain love and communion, and go on unanimously in the work that God hath already commanded us.
What then are the matters which should concern us in Baxter’s view of the Christian ministry?
1. First I would put the call to pastoral fidelity. The pastor is a shepherd of the flock of God. The sheep are not his; they belong to his Father, and he is charged with the care of them. He must therefore be faithful in personal sanctity, in proper preaching, and in pastoral counsel.
2. There is then the call to recognize the preciousness of the unity of the Church, to trace its source in “the apostolical simplicity” of the gospel, and to avoid like the plague every schismatic tendency.
3. Arising from this the faithful pastor will discern the necessity of ministerial fellowship. The visible unity of the Church in any locality certainly depends upon the free, but regular, association of the ministers of the churches.
4. Lastly, we shall do well to ponder Baxter’s view of the ministry as a whole—its dignity, its solemnity, its privilege, its demands, its rewards, its aims, its glory. This was well expressed in words spoken at the unveiling in 1925 of a tablet to Baxter’s memory in Christ Church, Newgate Street, where he is buried: “The Reformed Pastor is the best manual of the clergyman’s duty in the language, because it leaves on the reader’s mind an ineffaceable impression of the sublimity and awfulness of spiritual ministry.”
With these words we can only leave ourselves in the mighty hand of God with the humble and heartfelt prayer that He will, in His goodness and grace, make us worthy to fulfill such a calling.