Baxter Reformed Pastor Quotes

Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow.

To live among such excellent helps as our libraries afford, to have so many silent wise companions whenever we please.

Alas! can we think that the reformation is wrought, when we cast out a few ceremonies, and changed some vestures, and gestures, and forms! Oh no, sirs’! it is the converting and saving of souls that is our business. That is the chiefest part of reformation, that doth most good, and tendeth most to the salvation of the people.

Of all preaching in the world, (that speaks not stark lies,) I hate that preaching which tendeth to make the hearers laugh, or to move their mind with tickling levity, and affect them as stage-players use to do, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence of the name of God.

Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh him who is the 'Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,' and seeth not him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all. All creatures, as such, are broken syllables; they signify nothing as separated from God. Were they separated actually, they would cease to be, and the separation would be annhiliation; and when we separate them in our fancies, we make nothing of them to ourselves. It is one thing to know the creatures as Aristotle, and another thing to know them as a Christian. None but a Christian can read one line of his Physics so as to understand it rightly. It is a high and excellent study, and of greater use than many apprehend; but it is the smallest part of it that Aristotle can teach us.

Publicans and harlots do sooner come to heaven than Pharisees, because they are sooner convinced of their sin and misery.

You are likely to see no general reformation till you procure family reformation. Some little obscure religion there may be in here and there one; but while it sticks in single persons, and is not promoted by these societies, it doth not prosper, nor promise much for future increase.

Lord, will you send me with such an unbelieving heart to persuade others to believe? Must I daily plead with sinners about everlasting life and everlasting death, and have no more belief or feeling of these weighty things myself? Oh send me not naked and unprovided to the work; but, as you command me to do it, furnish me with a spirit suitable thereto." Prayer

It is a palpable error of some ministers, who make such a disproportion between their preaching and their living; who study hard to preach exactly, and study little or not at all to live exactly.

Many who have undertaken the work of the ministry, do so obstinately proceed in self-seeking, negligence, pride, and other sins, that it is become our necessary duty to admonish them. If we saw that such would reform without reproof, we would gladly forbear the publishing of their faults. But when reproofs themselves prove so ineffectual, that they are more offended at the reproof than at the sin, and had rather that we should cease reproving, than that themselves should cease sinning, I think it is time to sharpen the remedy. For what else should we do? To give up our brethren as incurable were cruelty, as long as there are further means to be used.

Must I go to turn to my Bible to shew a preacher where it is written, that a man's soul is more worth than a world, much more than a hundred pounds a year; much more are many souls worth? or that both we and that we have are God's, and should be employed to the utmost for His service? or that it is inhuman cruelty to let many souls go to hell, for fear my wife and children should live somewhat harder, or live at a lower rate, when according to God's ordinary way of working by means, I might do much to prevent their misery, if I would but a little displease my flesh, which all that are Christ's have crucified with its lusts?

Make use of your people's parts to the utmost, as your helpers, in an orderly way, under your guidance, or else they will make use of them in a disorderly and dividing way in opposition to you. It hath been a great cause of schism, when ministers would contemptuously cry down private men's preaching, and with desire not to make any use of the gifts that God hath given them for their assistance; but thrust them too far from holy things, as if they were a profane generation. The work is likely to go poorly on if there be no hands employed in it but the ministers. God giveth not any of His gifts to be buried, but for common use. By a prudent improvement of the gifts of the more able Christians, we may receive much help by them, and prevent their abuse, even as lawful marriage preventeth fornication.

I seldom come out of the pulpit but my conscience smiteth me that I have been no more serious and fervent. It accuseth me not so much for want of ornaments and elegancy, nor for letting fall an unhandsome word; but it asketh me, 'How couldst thou speak of life and death with such a heart? How couldst thou preach of heaven and hell in such a careless, sleepy manner? Dost thou believe what thou sayest? Art thou in earnest, or in jest? How canst thou tell people that sin is such a thing, and that so much misery is upon them and before them, and be no more affected with it? Shouldst thou not weep over such a people, and should not thy tears interrupt thy words? Shouldst thou not cry aloud, and show 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. Oh, what a thing is an insensible, hardened heart! O Lord, save us from the plague of infidelity and hardheartedness ourselves, or else how shall we be fit instruments of saving others from it? Oh, do that on our souls which thou wouldst use us to do on the souls of others!

Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied.

O brethren! It is easier to chide at sin, than to overcome it.

He felt oppressed by the ignorance, laziness, and licentiousness of the clergy, which had been exposed by a parliamentary committee in their report The First Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests (1643), which supplied one hundred shocking case histories. So Baxter addressed his Reformed Pastor to his fellow clergy,

When we are commanded to take heed to all the flock, it is plainly implied that flocks must generally be no larger than we are capable of overseeing, or taking heed to. God will not lay upon us natural impossibilities. He will not require men to leap up to the moon, to touch the stars, or to number the sands of the sea. If the pastoral office consists in overseeing all the flock, then surely the number of souls under the care of each pastor must not be greater than he is able to take such heed to as is here required.

It is not only the work that calls for carefulness, but the workman also, that he may be capable for business of such importance. We have seen many men who lived as private Christians in good reputation for work and piety, when they took upon them either political or military employment, where the work was above their gifts. Temptations then overpowered their strength, and they proved to be scandalous, disgraced men.

The work of God needs to be done. Souls must not perish while you give your attention to your worldly business or worldly pleasure, take your ease, or quarrel with your brethren.

My 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 for the maintaining of unity and harmony 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 successful carrying on of the work.

We are responsible for the care of Christ’s little ones. If we neglect to take food ourselves, we will starve them. It will soon be visible in their weakness and inability to carry out their various duties. If we let our love decline, we are not likely to raise theirs. If we decrease our holy care and fear, it will appear in our preaching. If the matter does not show it, the manner will. If we feed on unwholesome food, either errors or fruitless controversies, our hearers are likely to end up worse for it. However, if we abound in faith, love, and zeal, it will overflow, to the refreshing of our congregations, and it will appear in the increase of the same virtues in them.

The sanctification of your studies is when they are devoted to God and when He is the end, the object, and the life of them all.

People would more readily believe that the gospel is from heaven if they saw more such effects of it upon the hearts and lives of those who profess it. The world is perhaps better able to read the nature of religion in a man’s life than in the Bible.

The life of the Christian religion and the welfare and glory both of the church and of the state depend much on family government and duty. If we allow the neglect of this, we will bring harm to it all.

It is not wise for humans to argue against the ordinances of God as useless, to find fault with His service instead of doing it, or to set their minds in opposition to their Maker.

God can make His own ordinances useful, or else He would never have appointed them.

What an excellent life it is to live in the studies and preaching of Christ. How excellent to be still searching into his mysteries or feeding on them, to be daily in the consideration of the blessed nature, works, or ways of God!

It is important not to underestimate the cost. He took a full two days out of each busy week to do this work. Touchingly, he later described how the very poorest families of the parish would come to him for instruction, leaving a “plentiful” supply of lice to inhabit his chamber “for a competent space of time.”6 His new system demanded dedicated, painstaking, careful work. Preaching, he discovered, was not enough to bring about the reformation he sought. It also required these one-on-one, individually tailored conversations. But the work paid off. Baxter felt he had hit on the decisive method to bring about a true reformation. As he declared in his preface to The Reformed Pastor, “We never took the best course to demolish the kingdom of darkness till now.”7

Reverence is that affection of the soul that proceeds from deep apprehensions of God and signifies a mind that is much conversant with him.

Esteem the church fathers and other writers, but value none of them as equivalent to the word of God.

Many ministers study only to compose their sermons and very little more, when there are so many books to be read and so many matters that we should be acquainted with. In the preparation of our sermons, we are too negligent, gathering only a few bare headings and not considering the most forcible expressions by which we should set them home to men’s hearts.

Brethren, experience will teach you that men are not made learned or wise without hard study, unwearied labors, and experience.

have found by experience that an ignorant man who has been an unprofitable hearer has received more knowledge and remorse of conscience in half an hour’s close discourse than he did in ten years of public preaching. I know that the public preaching of the gospel is the most excellent means of conversion because we speak to many at once, but it is usually far more effectual to preach it privately to an individual sinner.

If your hearts are not set on the goal of your labors, if you do not desire to see the conversion and edification of your hearers, and if you do not study and preach in hope, you are not likely to see much success. Just as it is the sign of a false, self-seeking heart that can be content to be doing without seeing any fruit of his labor, so I have observed that God seldom blesses anyone’s work so much as his whose heart is set upon the success of it.

Prayer must carry on our work as well as preaching. He who does not pray earnestly for his people does not preach wholeheartedly to them. If we do not prevail with God to give them faith and repentance, we will never prevail with them to believe and repent. When our own hearts are so far out of order, and theirs are so far out of order, we are unlikely to be successful if we do not prevail with God to heal and help them.

I know necessity may cause the Church to tolerate the weak; but woe to us if we tolerate and indulge our own weakness.

An ingenious man can hardly stay with a people against their will; and a sincere man can more hardly, for any interest of his own, remain in a place where he is likely to be unprofitable, to hinder the good which they might receive from another man, who hath the advantage of a greater interest in their estimation and affection.

I like not charity unreasonably large for the exempting of ourselves from the labour of duty: I would not choose such a charitable physician that would make his patients believe that they are in no danger, to save himself the labour of attending them for the cure.

Our church has a set of 8 books that each new elder is given, along with a monthly reading plan to use as a guide for meetings with a more experienced elder. There are many good resources out there, but a few of my most highly recommended are The Deliberate Church by Mark Dever and Paul Alexander, The Trellis and the Vine by Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands by Paul Tripp, the 9Marks volumes on Church Membership and Church Discipline by Jonathan Leeman, and The Reformed Pastor by Richard Baxter.

If you must needs have your pleasures, you should not have put yourselves into that calling that requireth you to make God and His service your pleasure, and restraineth you so much from fleshly pleasures.

Do you know that much of the Christian warfare consisteth in the combat between the flesh and the Spirit; and that is the very difference between a true Christian and a wicked wretch, that one liveth after the Spirit, and mortifieth the deeds and desires of the body, and the other liveth after the flesh?

The ministry is another kind of business than too many excellent preachers take it to be.

The ministerial work must be managed purely for God and the salvation of the people, and not for any private ends of our own.

If only preaching be necessary, let us have none but preachers. What needs there, then, such a stir about government? But if discipline (in its place) be necessary too, what is it but enmity to men's salvation to exclude it?

I would put no man upon extremes; but in this case flesh and blood doth make even good men so partial, that they take their duties, and duties of very great worth and weight, to be extremes. If worldly vanities did not blind us, we might see when public or other greater good did call us to deny ourselves and our families.

Recreations for a student must be especially for the exercise of his body, he having before him such variety of delights for his mind; and they must be as whetting is with the mower, only to be used so far as is necessary to his work.

A man may be a faithful minister, and yet never preach a sermon. If a great congregation have six or more pastors, and two or three of them be the ablest preachers, and the rest more judicious, and fit for discourse and private oversight, these latter may well employ themselves in such oversight, conference, and other ministerial works, and leave public-speaking in the pulpit to them that are more able for it, and so they may divide the work among them according to their parts: and it will not now follow that they are no pastors that preach not publicly.

They will understand a familiar speech, who hear a sermon as if it were nonsense, and they have far greater help for the application of it to themselves. And withal you will hear their objections, and know where it is that Satan hath most advantage over them, and what it is that stands up against the truth; and so may be able to shew them their errors, confute their objections, and more effectually convince them.

All that are upright are not equally fitted for the work, and many that are learned, judicious, and more able to teach the riper sort, are yet less able to condescend to the ignorant, and so convincingly and fervently to rouse up the secure, as some that are below them in other qualifications; and many that are able in both respects, have a barren people; and the ablest have found by experience that God hath sometimes blessed the labours of a stranger to that which their own hath not done.

You come hither to learn to die, I am not the only person that must go this way: I can assure you, that your whole life, be it ever so long, is little enough to prepare for death. Have a care of this vain deceitful world and the lusts of the flesh: Be sure you choose God for your portion, heaven for your home, God's glory for your end, his word for your rule, and then you need never fear but we shall meet with comfort.

Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We

Content not yourselves with being in a state of grace, but be also careful that your graces are kept in vigorous and lively exercise, and that you preach to yourselves the sermons which you study, before you preach them to others. If

When I let my heart grow cold, my preaching is cold; and when it is confused, my preaching is confused; and so I can often observe also in the best of my hearers, that when I have grown cold in preaching, they have grown cold too; and the next prayers which I have heard from them have been too like my preaching. We are the nurses of Christ’s little ones. If

Take heed to yourselves, lest your example contradict your doctrine, and lest you lay such stumbling–blocks before the blind, as may be the occasion of their ruin; lest you unsay with your lives, what you say with your tongues; and be the greatest hindrances of the success of your own labors. It

Beware lest, while you proclaim to the world the necessity of a Savior, your own hearts should neglect him, and you should miss an interest in him and his saving benefits. Take heed to yourselves, lest you perish, while you call upon others to take heed of perishing; and lest you famish yourselves while you prepare food for them. Though there

A graceless, inexperienced preacher is one of the most unhappy creatures upon earth: and yet he is ordinarily very insensible of his unhappiness; for he has so many counters that seem like the gold of saving grace, and so many splendid stones that resemble Christian jewels, that he is seldom troubled with the thoughts of his poverty; but (Rev3:15) thinks he is "rich, and increased in goods, and stands in need of nothing, when he is poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked." He

Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh him who is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,' and seeth not him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all.

Convince them what a contradiction it is to be a Christian and yet to refuse to learn. For what is a Christian but a disciple of Christ, and how can he be his disciple if he refuses to be taught by him? He who refuses to be taught by his ministers refuses to be taught by Christ. He will not come down from heaven again to teach them by his own mouth, but he has appointed his ministers to keep school and to teach those under him.

The universal church of Christ must consist of individual churches guided by their own overseers, and every Christian must be a member of one of these churches (except those who are away on business or travel or are in other similar cases of necessity). Though a minister is an officer in the universal church, yet in a special manner he is the overseer of that particular church committed to his charge.

It is no small matter to stand up in the face of a congregation and deliver a message of salvation or damnation as from the living God in the name of our Redeemer.

Hard studies, much knowledge, and excellent preaching are but a more glorious hypocritical sinning if the ends are not right.

Truth loves the light and is most beautiful when it is most naked. If you would not teach men, why are you in the pulpit? If you would teach men, why do you not speak so as to be understood?

Take heed unto yourselves that you are not unfit for the great employments that you have undertaken. He must not be himself a babe in knowledge who will teach men all those mysterious things that are to be known in order to enjoy salvation. Oh, what qualifications are necessary for the man who has such a charge on him as we have! How many difficulties in theology to be opened! How many obscure texts of Scripture to be expounded! How many duties to be done wherein ourselves and others may miscarry if they are not well informed in the matter, end, manner, and circumstances! How many sins to be avoided, which cannot be done without understanding and foresight! What manner of people ought we to be in all holy endeavors and resolutions for our work! This is not a burden for the shoulders of a child. What skill does every part of our work require, and of how much importance is every part?

When pride has made the sermon, it goes with us into the pulpit. It forms our tone, it animates us in the delivery, and it takes us away from that which may be displeasing, no matter how necessary it is, and sets us in pursuit of vain applause. Basically, it makes men, both in studying and preaching, to seek themselves and deny God, when they should seek God’s glory and deny themselves. When they should be asking what they should say and how they should say it to please God best and do the most good, pride makes them ask what they should say and how they should deliver it to be considered an educated, able preacher and to be applauded by all who hear them.

While we condemn papal infallibility, too many of us want to be popes ourselves and have everyone hold to our decision or opinion, as if we were infallible.

Some desire to know merely for the sake of knowing, and that is shameful curiosity. Some desire to know that they may sell their knowledge, and that too is shameful. Some desire to know for reputation’s sake, and that is shameful vanity. But there are some who desire to know that they may edify others, and that is praiseworthy; and there are some who desire to know that they themselves may be edified, and that is wise.