Reflections from Richard Baxter
Over the past few months, I have been sipping Richard Baxter's classic text, The Reformed Pastor.
Baxter, a 17th Century Puritan, was the vicar at Kidderminster is, perhaps, history's greatest articulator of practical, pastoral theology.
A couple of challenging quotes:
"A world of business they make themselves about nothing, while they are willful strangers to the primitave, independent, necessary being, who is all in all. Nothing can be known if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied."
p. 56
Regarding Ministerial Students: "O think with yourselves, what a sad thing it will be to their own souls, and what a wrong to the church or God, if they come out from you with common and carnal hearts, to so great and holy and spiritual a work." p. 61
"No man that hath not the vitals of theology is capable of going beyond a fool in philosophy." p. 58
He speaks of "pastors who are loathe to misplace a word in their sermons . . . but make nothing of misplacing affections, words and activities in the course of their lives." p. 64
Baxter, a 17th Century Puritan, was the vicar at Kidderminster is, perhaps, history's greatest articulator of practical, pastoral theology.
A couple of challenging quotes:
"A world of business they make themselves about nothing, while they are willful strangers to the primitave, independent, necessary being, who is all in all. Nothing can be known if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied."
p. 56
Regarding Ministerial Students: "O think with yourselves, what a sad thing it will be to their own souls, and what a wrong to the church or God, if they come out from you with common and carnal hearts, to so great and holy and spiritual a work." p. 61
"No man that hath not the vitals of theology is capable of going beyond a fool in philosophy." p. 58
He speaks of "pastors who are loathe to misplace a word in their sermons . . . but make nothing of misplacing affections, words and activities in the course of their lives." p. 64
Richard Baxter is one of my favorite writers.
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