INTRODUCTION
13 these are my fixed resolutions and desires; even to be Catholick in my Estimation and respect to all, Loving all christians of what sort soever, that may be truly called christins...and...with this Catholick Charity to have the Conversation of such as the world hath long called Puritanes; and in this state I desire to die. Richard Baxter , The Grotian Religion Discovered (1658)
the life of Richard Baxter spans what historians generally concur in regarding as the decisive century in English history, during which the foundations of our own modern age were laid. by the will of God James I acceded to the throne of a kingdom still essentially medieval; by Act of Parliament William and Mary ruled a people whose thinking and institutions, political, social, scientific, moral, aesthetic, clearly foreshadow our own. the following autobiography recounts one man's reaction to and understanding of, the bewildering succession of upheavals through which this transition was effected. in B's youth, on the eve of what it is now fashionable to call the 'Great Revolution' rather than the 'Puritan Rebellion' in order to mark it as a turning point in history, the possibilities before England seemed quite limitless: the issue was to be a strange tangle of conflicting rivalries and unforeseen reverses, during which men of all persuasions were freely to invoke divine sanction for their deeds, and were so to pursue their ends that rigid conservatism and fervent radicalism alike were to reach unprecedented extremes of intolerance and anarchy. when B died, the age of heroes, as Carlyle fondly styled it, had passed: it may have been a more civil world that ensued, it was certainly a less committed one, preoccupied with its own well-being. the 'Good Old Cause' yielded to common sense; the counting house replaced the Celestial City; Christian was metamorphosed into Crusoe. of all this, B was not simply an onlooker: the autobiography presents the verdict of one who was intimately involved in contemporary affairs, who contributed significantly to the intellectual life of his time and whose influence upon the subsequent history of christianity in England was immense. now that we prefer our history profane, we are liable to forget B's prominence in his won life-time. detested and derided admired and acclaimed, during the second half of he 17th century his was a name to
14 conjure with. although he never held any position higher (as this world goes) than that of vicar of Kidderminster (and even his wishes), his influence was such that it has been held sufficient to frustrate the religious policy of the Long Parliament, and at the Restoration it was though prudent to favour him with a royal chaplaincy and to endeavour to conciliate him with an offer of the see of Hereford. the influence of his books is incalculable: from the early 1650s they enjoyed greater sales than those of any other English writer. some evidence of their effect may be found in the letters preserved in Dr. Williams's Library, for he is there consulted by men of all persuasions and social positions on matters ranging from intimate personal problems to ecclesiastical issues of national significance, his friends and admirers included men pre-eminent in every field: he numbered among then the scientist Robert Boyle and the Lord Chief Justice, sir Matthew Hale; archbishop James Ussher, bishop John Wilkins and the future archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson; the New Englanders John Eliot and Increase Mather; colonel Edward Whalley and the future major-general James Berry; the nonconformists Edmund Calamy, Thomas Manton and John Howe; and the Countess of Cromwell, Charles II, Clarendon, Sheldon are here described by one with whom they more than disagreed, but whom they could not afford to ignore.
if, however, we try to specify more exactly the nature of B's contribution to the life of his time, we are liable to be beset by bewilderment. none of the usual classifications of opinion or allegiance will apply in his case. we find a man who preached against the Presbyterian Solemn League and Covenant, who refused the Engagement to the Commonwealth, and declined the oaths imposed by restoration legislation; one who denounced Cromwell as a usurper and who was yet regarded by the restored Court as its greatest adversary; a nonconformist who yet communicated with the parish churches and wrote against separation. if we look into his books, we find him refusing to choose between positions which his contemporaries habitually 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 extemporary prayer, preaching and catechizing, the need for a thorough conversion and the need to grow in grace through education. his contemporaries, we find, prove him
15 Papist, Arminian, Socinian, Presbyterian - what you will. alternatively, from his own works they show him to be hopelessly muddled and self-contradictory, as did Roger L'Dstrange in The Casuist Uncas'd, in a Dialogue betwixt Richard and Baxter, with a Moderator between them, for Quietnesse Sake (1680). subsequent scholars hail him as 'the Saint of Puritanism' and include his work in an anthology entitled Anglicanism; the Thought and Practise of the Church of England. he is characterized as 'a representative of Puritanism at it central, moderate best' and as the 'stormy petrel of later Puritanism. he is pointed to as a rationalist forerunner of John Locke's The Reasonableness of Christianity (1295), and claimed as a mystic. his Calvinism was purer than that of the Westminster assembly, and was a theory denied by his conscience with 'irresistible vehemence'. his was a personality 'strong and harmonious', 'fundamentally at one with itself, and he was 'an utterly self-divided man'. wherein lies the key to all this?
B himself comes before us as a Puritan. he never hid his admiration for the Puritans, 'the most serious, conscionable , practical, sober and charitable christians that ever I knew', 'the apple of God's eye'; and during the 1680s he emerged as their greatest champion in print, vindicating in book after book their record from the Long parliament to their present persecution. however, as B himself observed and as historians have never ceased to remark, 'Puritan' is an 'ambiguous ill-made word', which was then, and has ever since been, used in a great variety of contexts. trying to resolve this ambiguity historians have argued that Puritanism was characterized by Calvinism, that it was indigenous and owed little to Continental reformers, that there never was a movement sufficiently
16 coherent to merit a single name, that the movement was so strictly circumscribed as to exclude the Pilgrim Fathers, and that many were Puritan from merely secular considerations. in view of this it clearly behoves us to consider a little more carefully what B understood by the term before we are content simply to dub him 'Puritan.
as is well known the word itself became current in the 1560s as a nickname for those who were dissatisfied with the Elizabethan settlement of the church. by 1572 it was in 'prominent use' to describe men who would all have subscribed to the contention of the Admonition to Parliament of that year that 'we in England are so far off from having a Church rightly reformed, according to the prescript of God's Word, that as yet we are not come to the outward face of the same. for the next century it was the aim of Puritans (including B) to achieve such reformation of the episcopal church - not as an end in itself, but that godliness might be the better promoted. the essential incentive, nowhere more apparent than in B, was always practical and pastoral. about the means and end of such reformation there was, however, profound disagreement. presbyterians, the earliest legislation and negotiation with the King a national church on the lines of that founded in Scotland. Independents, who grew in strength during the Civil Wars under the patronage of Cromwell, were for a congregational system to be implemented (finally) by the execution of the King and a Republican government. a great variety of left-wing sects, who divorced themselves from all attempts to reform the national church and undertook instead 'reformation without tarrying for any' by founding separate purified churches, were damned collectively as 'separatists', 'sectaries' or 'Anabaptists'. since these various grouping wee capable of quarrelling with each other quite as violently as with the episcopal church they all condemned, to call a man puritan in this 'political' sense of the term is not to define his position at all precisely. B himself hesitated to accept the designation 'till I better understand the signification of the terms, especially with the speaker'. for this
17 hesitancy he had a particular reason: although frequently classed as a Presbyterian he in fact conformed to none of the above parties. 'You could not (except a Catholick christian) have trulier called me' he wrote, 'than a Episcopal-Presbyterian-Independent', for he sought to combine the best features of each polity in a system of modified episcopacy which was essentially that laid down by archbishop James Ussher in his The Reduction of Epicopacie unto the form of Synodical government received in the Ancient Church (1656). B's criticisms of each of these systems were founded on 2 convictions: that the minister of a particular church, as the only man with an intimate knowledge of his flock, should enjoy full power to minister to, direct and discipline his people; and that the Gospel of Christ directed to all should be denied to no man without good cause. the Congregational way or 'gathering' churches composed only of those who could prove they had experienced regeneration he believed belittled Christ ('I do admire how any christian can make himself believe that the love and grace of Christ is confined to so narrow a room') and shamefully abandoned those without the pale to their fate. B would go the other way about: rather than admit only those who could prove their fitness, he would accept into fellowship any man until he proved his unfitness, by immoral living, heretical opinions, or flat ignorance of christianity. the Presbyterian hierarchy of church-sessions, presbyteries, synods and general assembly, in which each court is over-ruled by the one above it, he considered too authoritarian in practice and the centre of power too far removed from 'the man on the spot'. as for Episcopacy, B was a little disingenuous in declaring 'I am for Bishops'. for his understanding of the term had nothing at all to do with that of the Episcopalians. this he knew full well. although he contended 'it is not the Office but the Tumor and that Tumor that maketh another species which i oppose', this 'other species' was simply 'the English Diocesane Prelacy'. his most grievous complaint against it was again practical: the order denies the minister of the particular church full power of the keys, so that he is unable to practise that discipline which is an essential part of pastoral care, while it is manifestly impossible for the bishop of a diocese which contains 'many score or hundred parishes, and so many thousand of such souls' to attend to such matters. the result is that 'our Congregations (are) defiled' and 'gods Laws' are 'dead letters, while the Bishops keep up the lame and empty name of Governours'. in contrast the Apostolic church order 'settled
18 one Pastor over one Congregation having no Presbyters under his rule'. Diocesan prelacy, he argued, evolved simply as an expedient to deal with the large numbers of christians in some cities, which, once it had taken root, was encouraged by man's natural ambition for pomp and power, so leading to the Papacy and all consequent evils. these 3 arguments - from experience, the New Testament and history ( a typical combination in B) - he deployed time and again in favour of a polity which, as it was national in scope, precluded the fragmentation of separatism; as it was parochial, avoid the exclusiveness of Congregationalism; and as it restored full responsibility for pastoral care to the particular minister prevented both the oligarchic authoritarianism of the Presbyterians and the arbitrary government of the Episcopalians.
in addition to this 'political' sense, the word was also used of 'Doctrinal Puritanes, by which name they understood those by some called Calvinists, by others Anti-Arminians'. the tendency to align these 2 theological positions (Calvinist and Arminian) with Puritans and anti-Puritans in the political sense is doubly misleading: until well into the 17th century most members of the established church who sought no further reformation of its government and ceremonies were Calvinists (King James I, with his dictum 'No bishop, no king'. was yet a Calvinist), while many of those who did seek such reformation were not Calvinists - the Independent John Goodwin, and the Quakers, come to mind. B, as we are beginning to expect, belongs to neither camp. although he wrote 'I know no man since the Apostles days whom I value and honour more then Calvin, his dread of the antinomian tendencies latent in Calvinism, and his intense pastoral and evangelical concern, led him to lay far more stress upon man's role in the scheme of Salvation than is usually thought to be compatible with Calvinism. 'works' for B were far more than a mark of election: they were an integral and essential part of man's justification. and in his appeals to the unregenerate, he constantly emphasized the sinner's own responsibility for his damnation, his ability to respond to divine grace, and he possibility that all might be saved. if he thus replace the doctrines of double predestination and a limited atonement by a potential universalism, he yet maintained the doctrine of election. it is typical of this eclecticism that while he could defend the Synod of Dort, he confessed himself particularly
19 indebted to Hugo Grotius, and, in reply to the assertion that he was 'for Calvinism, or Puritanism in doctrine', could deny wholehearted allegiance to Calvin. such eclecticism did not commend itself to theological partisans, who were wont to condemn it as 'a mere Galimophery, Hodg-podg Divinity'.
just as B regarded the denigration of man's obedience and moral effort as a dubious way to exalt the grace of God in redeeming him, so he insisted that it was no service to God to deny the full nature of His creature, man. he is here a useful a useful corrective to the caricatures of Puritans as irrational dogmatists or heaters of the flesh. B maintained that as man was characterized by reason, faith, to be a fully responsible commitment, should be the 'rational Act of a rational Creature'. with this conviction he not only always directed his books to convincing the minds of his readers. but vehemently defended the pursuit of all branches of learning. a great lover of books himself, he encouraged his readers to study as the best (indeed, only) way to realize their responsibilities to men and to God, and actively promoted education by sending men to university, working for the foundation of a university in Wales, campaigning ceaselessly against illiteracy, and exhorting the wealthy to give books to the poor. he himself gave away many of his publications, and from his vast library sent a number of volumes to Harvard. he received nothing for his writings, preferring that they be sold as cheaply as might be in order to reach the widest possible audience. indeed one of his favourite images was to speak of christians as 'scholars of Christ', moving through the 'forms' of the 'School of Christ' under the direction of the 'usher', the minister. if he thus welcomed man's intellectual nature, equally he declared himself
'an Adversary to their Philosophy, that vilifie Sense, because it is in Brutes and am past doubt that the noble spirits of sensitives are debased ignorantly, by pretending Wits, that know not what they say or glory in. the humane souls are not less sensitive for being rational, but are eminently sensitive.
the senses, too, are a divine gift, which may be used in God's service. B shows himself sensitive to natural beauty, music poetry and encouraged his readers to use their imaginations in meditation quite as strongly as the Roman Catholic treatises of the Counter-Reformation.
20 Baxter, then, eludes all the usual classifications. it was this which seemingly gave substance to the charge that he was himself another heretic, the head of another school or sect.in 1680 he wrote that he had heard of a 'Scots Narrative' the author of which
knoweth not what to call me, unless it e a Baxterian, as intending to be a Haeresiarcha, being neither papist, nor of the Church of England, nor Presbyterian, nor Independent.
shortly after his death the appropriate odium was conveyed in the following analogy: 'as Arius was an Arian and Pelagius was a pelagian and Socinus was a Socinian, and Arminius was an Arminian, so Baxter was a Baxterian. this title B rejected, as he rejected all others: 'it is SIMPLE CATHOLICK CHRISTIANITY which I plead for'; 'call me by what Name of Title thou seest cause...I know of no title that well agreeth to the nature of that Religion which indeed I hold...but CHRISTIAN & CATHOLIKE, and these I won'. in reply to the 'Scots Narrative' he enlarged:
you know not of what Party I am of, nor what to call me; I am sorrier for you in this than for my self; if you know not, I will tell you, I am a CHRISTIAN, a MEER CHRISTIAN, of no other Religion; and visible where ever the Christian Religion and Church hath been visible: but must you know of what Sect or Party I am of? I am against all sects and dividing Parties; but if any will call Meer Christians by the name of a party, because they take up with meer Christianity, Creed, and Scripture, and will not be of any dividing or contentious Sect, I am of that Party which is so against Parties: if the CHRISTIAN be not enough, call me a CATHOLICK CHRISTIAN; not as that word signifieth an hereticating majority of Bishops, but as it signifieth one that hath no Religion, but that which by Christ and the Apostles was left to the Catholick Church or the Body of Jesus Christ on Earth.
from I Corinthians 12 he argued that 'all true Christian', of whatever time, place of profession, 'are the Members of which (this Body)doth consist. since 'mere Christianity' is no more (nor less) than the sincere profession of the essentials contained in the Decalogue ('the summary of things to be believed') and the Lord's Prayer ('the summary of things to be willed, desired, and sought'), B had no difficulty in distinguishing such true Christians':
21 he that has these essentials 'in his head, and heart and life, is certainly a member of the Catholick Church' every man 'that doth heartily Believe in God... by a faith that worketh by love, is a true christian' furthermore, no errors of theological opinion nor defects of practice nor irregularities of order which do not negate these essentials exclude a man from the catholic church. the church of which B counted himself a member thus cut across all sectarian differences, and included 'all the christians in the world' hence he was able to express the opinion, remarkable in that age of biter recrimination, that some Papists 'are now blessed souls with Christ; and that 'An Anabaptist may yet be a penitent and godly person and be saved. convictions for or against believer's baptism, extemporary prayer, Scriptural infallibility, vestments, altars, episcopacy, Calvinist or Arminian doctrines of justification, predestination...are all compatible with true faith. to insist on any of them as the mark of a true Christian is to depart from the simple rule of 'Scripture Sufficiency' to which B always turned. this was no Bibliolatry. on the contrary, he argued that while the Bible gave clear directions on essentials, much in doctrine was unrevealed and many practical matters were left to man's discretion. and what God had left indeterminate, man was not empowered to enjoin. wherever he saw the practice of the essentials, there he saw a true Christian, no matter his theological or ecclesiastical opinions. to those who wished to know which was the true church - 'is it the Protestants, the Calvinists, or Lutherans, the Papists, the Greeks, the Aethiopians' - he therefore replied, 'Why it is never an one of them, but all together that are truly Christians.
this was to argue for a church too broad and too comprehensive to be recognizable as a church at all by most of his contemporaries. both the Congregationalists who would admit only the proven elect and the Episcopalians who would enforce national compliance with their church order, would circumscribe and define the church more clearly; the former by the touchstone of inner experience, the latter by external forms and rites. B detected schism in both extremes: by requiring something other than a simple profession of faith each would exclude well-meaning men, and was therefore divisive. furthermore, as he pointed out with characteristic realism, in this sublunary world both courses are doomed. the Episcopalian
22 attempt to dragoon men into uniformity denied simple human variety. in words of which William Blake would have approved, Baxter declared it is 'no more strange to have variety of intellectual apprehensions in the same Kingdome and Church than variety of temperatures and degrees of age and strength; in the nature of things, 'there is no hope of Agreeing the Disagreeing World . we must, therefore, recognize the inevitability and inconsequenced of such differences. the Congregational attempt to gather churches of the saints, on the other hand, was foredoomed by the fallen nature of man. with his usual perspicuity, (def - keen mental perception) B pointed to the fatal flaw which led to the fragmentation of Puritanism in its organized forms: 'know that all men are imperfect and faulty and so is all Men's Worship of God; and that he that will not communicate with faulty Worship, must renounce communion with all the World. so far is B from maintaining that a true church is but a gathering of the elect, that he repeatedly insists that it is impossible to identify the visible with the invisible church: 'The door of the visible Church, is incomparably wider than the door of heaven. God will sort the sheep from the goats, but here, on earth, it is impossible simply because 'of men's Subjective Religion... each person hath one of his own; and it cannot be known but by knowing what is in each man's mind!
it was this conviction which led B into the apparently anomalous course of occasional communion with parish churches. in fact he was being entirely consistent: if all churches are perforce 'impure' churches, we must 'take heed how we unchurch and unchristen any with whom we do not corporally joyn. while he could not give his approval to any church founded on additions to 'mere Christianity' he would not separate from it as hopelessly corrupt. he was, ironically perhaps, a nonconformist in an attempt to gain a situation in which noncomformity was impossible. if Anglican, Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Baptist could all subscribe the essentials. what need an Act of Uniformity, for 'as long as we all agree in the Fundamentals and live to God. we are of one Religion for all our Differences? 'So God loved the world... - it is not a promise which requires, as did the Act, unfeigned 'assent and consent ' to all in the Prayer Book (a human compilation), nor unqualified submission to diocesan prelacy (an historical institution). if any man, B wrote, would unite
23 the Church in Kings, in Councils, in any humane devices, (he) will but divide it. this the Anglicans had done. B could not subscribe.
it was on these terms that throughout his life B worked for unity. he has, with justice, been called 'the first exponent of Ecumenism in England. the Worcestershire Association (and hence the association movement) was his creation; he was engaged in negotiation schemes for unity in 1654, 1660-1, 1669 and 1675; he was constantly in correspondence with members of all parties to this end; to it he devoted 'above 100 books'; for it he suffered as a nonconformist. at the end of his life he looked back on 'my fourty five years labour for Peace. in some of his most compelling sentences he wrote.
he that is not a son of Peace, is not a son of God. all other sins destroy the Church consequentially; but Division and Separation demolish it directly... Many Doctrinal differences must be tolerated in a Church: and why? but for Unitie and Peace? therefore Disunion and Separation is utterly intolerable. Believe not those to be the Churches Friends, that would cure and reform her by cutting her throat. those that say, No Truth must be concealed for Peace, have usually as little of the one, as the other. Study Gal. 2.2 Pom. 14.1 and Acts 21.24, 26 I Tim. 1.4 and 6.4 Titus. 3.8-9
it is little wonder that he could 'as willingly be a martyr for charity as for faith. at the same time, it is easy to understand how this apostle of charity, moderation and conciliation outraged and antagonized so many: to direct such words to men who, in all conscientiousness, took their stand upon god's law revealed, is to appear far from charitable, moderate or conciliatory. B's own zeal was, indeed, often his undoing. and yet we can hardly withhold admiration from a man who so resolutely refused to equivocate with the truth. if he spoke harshly to his fellow chrisitians, he was no kinder to Cromwell, Charles II or the lord bishops. his bearing towards them was less than politic: but we should be cautious before condemning one whose Lord also eschewed policy. 'these thing, B declared at his trial, will surely be understood one day: if so it will be in no mall part due to his determined integrity, which has ensured that he still speaks to us with clarity, power
24 and authority. and now, as then, once he is given a hearing, B is difficult to silence.
B, then, was 'opposed to every sect and belonged to none. in an age when party dominated men's thinking to a cruel degree the result was that he attracted the enmity of all parties. both the Arminians and the 'hot Anti-Arminians' censured ; he was 'reviled' by 'Separatists' as 'overconformable' and by conformists for his nonconformity: he turned 'both parties in the fray...against my self; when each epigraph from Revelation 3.15, 'I would thou wert either hot or cold' well catches the exasperation B's moderation could arouse. and yet it is not altogether true to say, as does James Stephen, that B 'can properly be described only as a Baxterian - at once the founder and the single disciple of men, but persuaded none', B himself repeatedly repudiated the charge that he was singular, maintaining that he was but one of a substantial number of 'Reconcilers'. this claim he advanced by distinguishing between the main body of those called 'Presbyterians', who advocated a strict Presbyterian system. the latter , he contended (and a number of studies have endorsed his view, were in a minority throughout the history of Puritanism, outnumbered even in the Long Parliament and Westminster Assembly, and the reader of he following pages will find him insisting repeatedly that those called 'Presbyterians' at the Restoration 'never put up on petition for Presbytery. 'Presbyterians', 'the greatest number of the godly ministers and people throughout England were in fact 'for Catholicism against Parties. that Presbyterianism lacked real popular support, and was indeed a church polity in large part foisted upon English Puritans as the price of the Scottish alliance. is suggested by the fact that the Long
25 Parliament was powerless to establish it. the success of the association movement further vindicates B's analysis; and the theses of R. G. Bosher's The Making of the Restoration Settlement (1951) suggests that it was precisely by flattering the hopes of the substantial number of Reconcilers that the Laudians were able to regain control after the Restoration. furthermore, after the Ejection the Presbyterians not only failed to establish classes and synods, they did not even attempt to do so: true Presbyteriansim had to await the founding in 1836 of The Presbyterian Church in England. nevertheless, although B repudiated the 'odious name' of Presbyterian, he was unable to prevent the Reconcilers being vulgarly so called. we thus reach the ironical situation in which B was indeed a presbyterian in that he rejected strict Presbyterianism.
it appears, then, not only that the usual political and doctrinal definitions of Puritanism will not apply to B, but that his teaching and reflections on the religious groupings of his time afford evidence for arguing that they do not apply even to the main body of Puritan opinion. behind the voluble exponents of particular policies, behind the interminable doctrinal and ecclesiastical controversies, B sees a great number of the 'sober godly' concerned with 'practical christianity' and not with the imposition of any particular orthodoxy. this takes us to a third sense of the word 'puritan': it was used as a term of derision to suggest hypocrisy and overfastidiouness in religion. it is this usage with which we are familiar from Elizabethan drama and Restoration satire and it was in this sense that B first encountered the word, used of his own father. knowing his father's sincere and repentant character he 'liked that name no whit the worse ' and later experience convinced him that it was but a sobriquet used by the ungodly of the godly. during the wars, he recalled, the way 'men must prove themselves no Puritanes, was, if they could swear 9 oaths in a breath', and, after the Restoration when new terms were in vogue, he observed, 'it is not their foolish names and scorns (as Whigs, Trimmers, Presbyterians etc.) that will prove it is not serious Piety that they hate'. b was in no danger of being shamed by such ridicule: 'I am not deterred from any truth by Names'. believing those so scorned to be true christians he was proud to acknowledge them: and he found them, predominantly, among the Reconcilers.
in this, as we may style it, 'moral' sense, Puritanism is not
26 peculiar to the 16th and 17th centuries: Dr Nuttall has observed that
a passionate desire for righteousness, which demands improvement and reform and therefore implies opposition from lazy souls, is an essential part of christianity, and in every or almost every, century there have been groups of men who have seen this and who have striven to realize their ideal. these men have been Puritans, in spirit , if not in name, whether they were the early Cistercians, the early Independents...or the early Quakers.
this B himself appreciated, refusing to condemn either Papist monks and hermits or separatists since both wee led by the desire for greater purity of life. it is this breath of sympathy, this recognition of the true nature of Puritanism as a commitment to a way of life rather than to any particular doctrinal or ecclesiastical theory, that gives to the following pages their peculiar power and authority. by putting into proper perspective the disagreements which plagued the age (and to which, despite himself, B devoted much time and paper) B's work rises far above the particular concerns of one period in ecclesiastical history. it is the supreme apologetic for the Puritan spirit in Christianity.
this may seem to be a curious claim to advance about what is, after all, an autobiography, the account of one man's life. that B should have written an autobiography was, in itself, almost inevitable. the development of the autobiographical genre in the 17th century owed much to Puritanism which, in all its guises, was preoccupied with personal experience. following II Corinthians 13.5 the duty enjoined and regular subsequent self-scrutiny was encouraged. a written record of one's findings was recommended since it would supply matter for consolation in periods of depression, and would enable the christian to trace more carefully his progress in grace. the sincere believer was further encouraged to record the operation of God's providence both in his own life and in national affairs, that he might neither miss occasion for thankful praise nor for get god's condescension towards him. and it was firmly believed that saints could benefit from each other's experiences - from as Prof. Haller aptly put it, sharing 'spiritual gossip'. christian recounting his fortunes to Prudence, Piety and Charity in the House Beautiful is an emblem of the edification that might so be gained. in these 3 contexts - of man's relation to God, God's disposition
27 towards man and man's converse with his fellow men - there was an insistent incentive to both the writing and the publishing of diaries, journals and autobiographical papers. just how seen from William Matthew's bibliography of British Autobiographies, which lists but 2 works before 1500, 14 for the 16th century and some 200 for the seventeenth.
such advice B himself gave repeatedly and these motives are clearly at work here. he recounts his spiritual struggles, notes particular mercies he has enjoyed, observes God's judgment on the nation, and is well aware of the usefulness to others of this record of his experiences. only a man long accustomed to searching his soul and to assessing dispassionately his behaviour in the world could have written the incomparable self-review which concludes the first part of this book. yet none of these things is at the heart of the book as an whole. though the form is autobiographical, the theme is not. neither B's spiritual life, nor his experience of God's providence in the world supply the shaping principle of the work. it may be objected that it is somewhat fanciful to credit the remarkably unshapely Reliquiae (and even the following more orderly abridgment) with a 'shaping principle' at all. and it is true that although he wrote more than any other man of his age B paid scant attention to literary technique or construction. 'I write not to win they praise of an artificial comely Structure ; but to help souls to Holiness and Heaven. he was first and foremost a pastor, not a writer, who turned to the press not from literary ambition, but simply because it 'hath a louder voice than mine' with which to preach the Gospel the books were written in great haste, without forethought, and in the midst of other affairs . in them he used precisely those techniques he would employ in the pulpit or in catechetical instruction. this gives to all he wrote a curiously informal tone and can make for remarkably direct writing; but it leads also to repetitiveness, disorder and prolixity (def - extended to unnecessary length) -traits all evident in the Reliqueae, and still apparent in the following pages.
nevertheless, when all that can be said has been said about
28 the formal defectiveness of this work, the variety and disparity of its contents, the disorder of their arrangement, and so on, there remains a conception, a dominating idea, which runs though the whole. the book may, indeed, be taken as an emblem of the entire corpus: a blithe disregard for the niceties of composition coupled with a compelling singleness of purpose. what that purpose is has already been intimated: it is,in essence, personal apologetic, but B takes it to be his duty 'to be so faithful to that stock of reputation which God hath intrusted me with, as to defend it at the rate of opening the truth' not from any sense of his own deserving, but solely that calumny and slander may not 'blast his labours'. it is his teaching, his ministry, his cause, not himself, he would defend, 'lest the fable pass for truth' when he is dead. and that cause is the cause of catholic christianity, not his alone, but that of 'the greatest number of the godly' in England. repeatedly his experience is offered as representative: his views are the views of the majority; he was one of many working for association; he spoke for many at the Restoration; he suffered with many under the Clarendon Code. the constant concern is to distinguish this central body of moderate opinion from the formal excesses of the Episcopalians on the one hand and the enthusiastic excesses of the fanatics on the other. it is this concern which runs through his attack on Cromwell and the New Model as betrayers of the cause of the Civil Wars; through his description of his attempt to create by practical christianity in the Worcestershire Association what force and politics had failed to achieve - reformation; through his account of the Restoration negotiations as the pursuit of a careful policy by the Episcopalians at times indistinguishable from double-dealing; through his recollections of the Bartholomeans who suffered. certainly, B's character does stamp the whole book: no one else could conceivably have written it. and yet it is not, in its entirety, a piece of confessional writing nor (though often described as such) a 'spiritual autobiography' designed to render one man's particular experience of grace for throughout B's own personal experience serves to particularize and typify that of the Puritans at large. the focus is not upon him as an individual, but upon him as one of those who strove, not to promote any dogma or church polity, but to lead sincere, charitable and conscientious lives following the commandments of God and walking in His holy ways. the book thus becomes the final answer to those who think him an individual eccentric and a vindication of the Puritan spirit. the great theme is God's dealing with 'His people in this land, as
29 experienced by one who would so entirely yield himself that
My working Love should others Love excite:
in Love I'd be a Burning Shining Light.
Love through the Lanthorn of my flesh should shine:
who heard me speak, should hear that I am Thine.
University of Aarhus N. H. Keeble.
Denmark, 1973
in Chap. 1 - Birth and Boyhood
5 but though my conscience would trouble me when I sinned, yet divers sins I was addicted to and oft committed against my conscience; which for the warning of others I will confess here to my shame.
10 and as for those doubts of my own salvation, which exercised me many years, the chiefest causes of them were these: (and he lists 3 and ends on p12 with his chiefest remedies
he then lists them...
1. temperance as to quantity and quality of food...
2. exercise till I sweat...
3. a constant extrinsic heat by a great fire, which may keep me still near to a sweat, it not in it (for I am seldom well at ease but in a sweat).
4. beer as hot as my throat will endure, drunk all at once, to make me sweat.
15 great bodily weakness...
17-8 against non-conformists
79b-84 ministry at Kidderminster
94-102 some of his books: The Saints Everlasting Rest; the True Catholic and the Catholic Church Described;
94-102 Call to the Unconverted; The Reformed Pastor; 5 Disputations about Church Government; Mischiefs of Self-Ignorance and Benefits of Self-Acquaintance
106-18 Self - Analysis; speaking truth to others
120-132 Christian Concord
135-8 Endeavours after Christian Concord
171-6 Silenced
177-85 Conformists and Non-conformists
186 Persecution
216b-217 Seek Christ!
240f Afflictions and Distresses
246b-247T Comment on being lied about
250-4 Comment on True Episcopacy
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