Quotes from Richard Baxter

As Socrates said when his wife first railed at him, and next threw a vessel of foul water upon him, "I thought when I heard the thunder, there would come rain

Do I not well deserve to be turned into hell, if the scorns and threats of blinded men, if the fear of silly, rotten earth, can drive me thither (588)?

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

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

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.

The sweetest poison doth often bring the surest death (645).

If our rest was here, most of God's providences must be useless. Should God lose the glory of his church's miraculous deliverances, and of the fall of his enemies, that men may have their happiness here?

But a tedious way to a grievous end(745);

what a silly, frail, and forward pieces are the best of men (647)!

and the best, if not heedfully used, will prove the word. The better and keener the knife is, the sooner and deeper will it cut thy fingers, if thou take not heed (647).

O blessed be the grace that makes advantages of my corruptions, even to contradict and kill themselves (648).

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.

The name of this city much helpeth Jew and Gentile to see the state of peace, for this is called Jerusalem, and that in Canaan hath Christ destroyed: this name should clearly have taught bot h the Hebrews not to look and pray daily for to return to Canaan, and pseduo-catholics not to fight for special holiness there (658-9).

I would desire every divine to beware that he tell not the unsanctified, that whoever hath the least degree of love to God for himself, and not as a means to carnal ends, shall certainly be saved ; for he would certainly deceive many thousand miserable souls that should persuade them of this (670).

remember, you cannot decline and neglect your duty, to your own hurt alone; many will be losers by it as well as you.

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.

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.

Much more do they want that moral perfection which the blessed partake of; those holy dispositions of mind; that cheerful readiness to do the will of God; that perfect rectitude of all their actions: instead of these, they have that perverseness of will, that loathing of good, that love to evil, that violence of passion, which they had on earth.

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?

Desire a thousand times more to be godly, than to seem so.

God has made the desire of our own happiness so necessary to the soul of man, that it cannot be separated from our desire to please him. Therefore, both in respect to God, and to our own happiness, "we must believe that he is the everlasting Rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

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

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.