Richard Baxter has been a popular Puritan in our age. Particularly he has been admired because of his practical writings. But behind his practical writings lies his heretical teachings on the question of our salvation.1 There has been a recent push and recovery of Baxter’s heretical views on Justification by Paedobaptists which has been witnessed on several online platforms. In light of this, I wish to provide some historical reflections on the reception of Baxter’s view. It may come as a surprise to many who admire Baxter to know that his views didn’t went by without criticism even back in his day. Yes, some of the best and brightest theologians back in Baxter’s day booed at Baxter and saw his teachings as heretical.
Baxter’s first book on Justification, Aphorismes of Justification, With their Explication annexed. Wherein also is opened the nature of Covenants, Satisfaction, Righteousnesse, Faith, Works, &c. (1649) was an expansion of his study in Saints Everlasting Rest.2
The reaction to his work was one of violent opposition, Baxter himself tells us about this:
I have voluntarily been more prodigal of my reputation in putting out that pamphlet of Justification, which I well know was like to blast my reputation with most Divines, as containing that which they judge a more dangerous errour then Anti-Paedobaptism, and the issue hath answered my exception: I am now so hissed at by them, that I feel temptation enough to schism in my discontents.
—Baxter, Plain Scripture Proof, p. 409.
Richard Baxter dedicated his Aphorismes of Justification to two Westminster Divines Anthony Burgess and Richard Vines. Neither of these two supported Baxter. Baxter received private criticisms from Vines and both private and public criticisms from Burgess.
Mr. Burgess thought his Name engaged him to write against it.
—Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1.107
Anthony Burgess wrote against Baxter (he doesn’t mention him by name) in his book The True Doctrine of Justification Asserted & Vindicated From the Errours of many, and more especially Papists and Socinians (1654), 220.
Baxter responded to Burgess in the preface of his Confessions (1655), Burgess responded again in his preface to Some Sermons on John 17 (1656). This led Baxter to write lengthy disputation against Burgess in Of Justification (1658).3
Obj. Richard Baxter recanted his views later on, one shouldn’t judge him just based on his Aphorismes.
Response: It is true that one shouldn’t judge Baxter based on just his Aphorismes. But it is false that he recanted or substantially altered his views:
Baxter’s comment against Tully: “And that I wrote my Confession, and Disputes of Justification, as an Exposition of it (Aphorismes); and that I Retracted, or Suspended, or Revoked, not the Doctrine, but the Book, till I had Corrected it, and did disown it as too unmeet an Expression of my Mind, which I had more fully exprest in other Books”4
—Richard Baxter, Of Justification (Answer, pp. 11-12)
Richard Baxter, said that Richard Vines “wrote to me applaudingly” (Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1.107) but this was not so. Richard Vines rejected Baxter’s view that works are
“secondary conditions unto Justification or conditions of a secondary Justification” and disagreed with Baxter’s “abdication of faith’s instrumentality.”
—Boersma, 35-36.
Now that we have seen the reactions of two esteemed Westminster Divines, neither of whom approved of Baxter’s Baxterianism. We’ll move on to see other reactions.
Private Criticism
Boersma notes (36-41) that apart from these two Westminster Divines Baxter received criticisms from at least five others. These were John Warren (1621-96), who had lived in Baxter’s house as a school boy when Baxter preached in Bridgnorth. John Tombes an Anglican Anti-Paedobaptist who questioned Baxter’s concept of continued Justification, that faith means obedience to the Gospel precepts, that faith justifies by receiving Christ as King as well as Savior, Baxter’s view of atonement, role of covenant in Justification. ( cf. Baxter, Of Justification pp. 325-30. Cf. Plain Scripture Proof, pp. 274-76). George Lawson opposed Baxter in Theo-Politica (1659), by rejecting the notion that Christ as King and Prophet is the special object of faith, denied that continued and consummate justification is by works, maintained that justification is a sentinel act of God by his Spirit in man’s soul. Lawson doesn’t mention Baxter by name. Lawson who was by Baxter’s testimony leaned more in an Arminian direction thought that Aphorismes strayed too far from a Calvinist line of thinking. Other two were Christopher Cartwright (1602-58) and John Wallis (1616-1703), a former student of Anthony Burgess.
Public Controversy (1649-)
John Owen : Richard Baxter publicly opposed John Owen, One of the greatest theologians, often referred to as the "Prince of the Puritans," in his work on Justification. His criticisms centered around Owen’s view of atonement. John Owen in his appendix to Vindiciae Evangelicae which is a reply to Baxter, called Baxter a Socinian:
“he that shall deny the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, and maintain that our performance of new obedience is the matter of our justification before God, according to the tenor of the new covenant, and yet grant the satisfaction of Christ, and assign it a place (some or other) in the business or our justification, his doctrine is but almost Socinian, and yet, in my judgment, is altogether an error.”
—John Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae
George Kendall : Wrote against Baxter in his books Θεοκρατια Or, A Vindication of the Doctrine Commonly Received in the Reformed Churches Concerning Gods Intentions of Special Grace and Favor to his Elect in the Death of Christ (London: Thomas Ratcliffe, 1653); Sancti Sanciti. Or, The Common Doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints (London: Thomas Ratcliffe, 1654). John Owen wrote the preface for Kendall’s work.
John Crandon: Wrote against Baxter in his book Mr. Baxters Aphorisms Exorized and Anthorized (London: 1654), which is a thorough refutation of Baxter.
Thomas Tully: Thomas Tully, was former principal of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford, chaplain to Kind Charles II, and since 1675, dean of Ripon, Yorkshire. In 1673, debates surrounding Justification came up again with the publication of William Allen’s book to which Baxter wrote the preface. Tully responded to both the book and Baxter’s preface along with his work Aphorismes of Justification in his book Justification Paulina sine operibvs.
After his death, further treatises came forth (by such men as Robert Traill, Isaac Chauncy, Benjamin Keach, and Thomas Edwards) against the doctrine sometimes known as “neonomianism” or “Baxterianism.”5
Robert Traill, A Vindication of the Protestant Doctrine concerning Justification, and of its Preachers and Professors, from the unjust charge of Antinomianism in The Works of the Late Reverend Robert Traill, AM. (reprint ed., Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth, 1975), 1:252–296.
Isaac Chauncy, Neonomianism Unmasked: or, The Ancient Gospel Pleaded against the other called a New Law or a New Gospel (London: J. Harris, 1692); Alexipharmicon: or a Fresh Antidote against Neonomian Bane and Poyson to the Protestant Religion (London: W. Marshall, 1700)
Benjamin Keach, The Marrow of True Justification, or Justification without Works (London: D.N. 1692; A Medium Betwixt Two Extremes (London: Andrew Bell, 1698)
Thomas Edwards, The Paraselene Dismantled of her Cloud, or, Baxterianism Barefaced (London: William Marshall, 1699)
Henry D’Anvers, A Second Reply in Defense of A Treatise of Baptism (London: Francis Smith, 1675), 223. D’Anvers similar to some of the theologians cited above says that Baxter’s view is like those of the Papists.
Modern Theologians
I have already made a list of modern works addressing Baxter. I will provide some quotations from those works here:
Baxter’s writings are a strange theological mix. He was one of a few Puritans whose doctrines of God’s decrees, atonement, and justification were anything but Reformed.
—Joel R. Beeke, Meet the Puritans
Richard Baxter (1615–1691) was certainly a Puritan, but he was not Reformed in the way of William Perkins (1558–1602), Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680), and John Owen (1616–1683). Intense theological debates between Baxter and Owen reveal that their differences went far beyond semantics...And while he contributed with other ministers to the writing of A New Confession of Faith, or the first Principles of the Christian Religion necessary to bee laid as a Foundation by all such as desire to build on unto Perfection (1654), Baxter did not approve of its final form. What is more, he accused Owen, Goodwin, and Thomas Manton (1620–1677) of lacking the judgment required for such a work....Baxter was clearly not happy with the confession, most likely because of article 12 on justification.
—Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology
…Baxter’s theology is at best heterodox and at worst heretical; his pastoral theology must therefore be treated with the greatest of caution.
—James M. Renihan, Reforming The Reformed Pastor
[i]t is difficult to say that he [Baxter] remains within the bounds of Reformed Orthodoxy as it was formally defined by its confessions and catechisms. Baxter’s departure from confessional norms surface in his restructured doctrines of the covenants of works and grace. Moreover, unlike his Reformed contemporaries, Baxter does not prioritize the doctrine of justification—it is no longer a definitive act based solely upon the imputed righteousness (active and passive) of Christ. Rather, justification is a lifelong defectible process that hinges upon the believer’s sanctification, which is only completed at the final judgment. Baxter’s constructions also lead him to restructure the common understanding of the doctrine of union with Christ—it no longer undergirds the whole of redemption, but is merely a political union, one of the relative graces of redemption.
—J.V. Fesko, Beyond Calvin Union With Christ and Justification in Early Modern Reformed Theology (1517-1700)
FINIS
See James M. Renihan, Reforming The Reformed Pastor: Baptism and Justification as the Basis for Richard Baxter’s Pastoral Method, in Reformed Baptist Theological Review 2.1.
Hans Boersma, A Hot Peppercorn: Richard Baxter’s Doctrine of Justification in its Seventeenth Century Context of Controversy, 33. I do not agree with Boersma’s assessment of Baxter’s views against Allison. See Michael Brown on this.
Ibid., 35.
Ibid., 37.
Renihan, Reforming The Reformed Pastor, in RBTR 2.1