A Presbyterian Broad-Churchman.

15

on the other!" The only ground on which, so far as we can learn, Unitarians allege a filial relation to Baxter is that he grew in liberality and charity, and longed for simpler terms of Christian fellowship. But if this makes one a Unitarian, who will refuse the name? No, we cannot allow that every liberal or charitable Christian is a Unitarian, or even a quasi-Unitarian. He is a Unitarian who denies the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and who, denying the Deity united to the humanity of Christ, (usually) refuses the truth of atonement for our sins through His death. Now Baxter was as firm on these doctrines to the last day of his life as any English divine that can be named. And while it is quite true that he wished to emphasise "fundamentals" only, it is equally true that among those fundamentals were the very doctrines which Unitarians impugn. We cite his own words-"I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost expresseth all the essentials intelligibly to him that hath learned truly to understand the meaning of these words. But as to the use of public professions of faith to satisfy the Church for the admittance of members, or to satisfy other Churches to hold communion with any particular Church, a form of words which is neither obscure by too much conciseness, nor tedious and tautological by a needless multiplication of words, I take to be the fittest." He proceeds to say that he would be content for the purpose with "the ancient Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments." When the objection was made-" A Socinian or a Papist will subscribe this"-Baxter replied, "So much the better, and so much the fitter it is to be the matter of our concord." On this Unitarians have fastened as though it proved that Baxter thought a Socinian not far wrong. But if they will read the whole passage they will find the speaker to have meant that it was useless to keep out either Socinians or Papists by a test; that they should rather be kept in to be instructed, but "called to account (by the Government) whenever in preaching or writing they contradict or abuse the truth to which they have subscribed." Certainly this would not suit Unitarians.

We have no wish to write hard things of the Unitarians of England. Among them are virtuous and exemplary men and women not a few. In the struggles of past days for liberty and for education they have borne a distinguished part. But why do they keep up the farce of calling themselves Presby

terians, when they have no feature whatever of Presbyterianism, and are strongly at variance with all the Presbyterian Churches in the empire? Why claim Richard Baxter as their father? They might as well claim Thomas Chalmers as their brother. Their rise synchronised with the sad decline of all that Baxter had held dear. Their origin was in the rationalising temper which in the last century fell on the desultory congregations called Presbyterian, but having none of the securities for doctrine or discipline which are essential to a Presbyterian Church. That the congregations which had been formed by orthodox Presbyterian ministers were left in this helpless condition was partly the fault, no doubt, of the Presbyterian leaders of the seventeenth century, Baxter among them, but more largely the fault of that intolerant government in Church and State which did not permit English Presbyteries to be organised.1

The published treatises of Baxter's prolific pen are 168 in number, more or less. The three which are best known are, we need hardly say, The Saints' Rest, The Call to the Unconverted, and The Reformed Pastor. The first of these, one somehow fancies, must have been the solemn task of his old age; but it was really the production of his early manhood, and the second that he sent to press. It was written in a time of weakness, and bears these words on its title-page :-" Written by the Author for his own use in the time of his languishing when God took him off all public employment." In composing it he had no books but his English Bible and Concordance; and so much the better, as it saved the treatise from those decorative quotations which were so much in vogue at the period. But the author afterwards inserted as many as he could in the margin. For modern use the book is too discursive, and bears judicious abridgment very well. In its original form, it at once obtained an immense circulation; and if we consider that it appeals to no passion or controversy of the period, the fact speaks much for the serious piety that was diffused through England even in the very throes of civil war. The second work to which we have referred was written at the urgent request of Archbishop Usher. The author thought little of

1 "Presbyterians durst not meet synodically unless in a jail.”—Rel. Baxt. part 3, p. 43.

Desire of Catholic Concord.

17

In little more than a

it, and was astonished at its success. year 20,000 copies of The Call to the Unconverted were published, a prodigious number if we consider what was the probable reading population of the country at the time. In the author's lifetime, it was translated and published in France and Germany; and the missionary John Eliot rendered it into one of the languages of the American Indians. Who can tell in how many copies and how many languages its earnest pleadings have, since those days, been poured out upon the world! The Reformed Pastor is a treatise which grew out of a sermon prepared by Baxter for delivery before an assembly of the clergy at Worcester, and in some respects seems to us unrivalled as a heart-warming book on the Christian ministry. On a revival of ministerial fidelity and efficiency the author's mind was bent most ardently. "All Churches," he said, "rise or fall as the ministry doth rise or fall, not in riches and worldly grandeur, but in knowledge, zeal, and ability for their work. But since Bishops were restored this book is useless, and that work not meddled with." In that last sentence is there just a little tinge of pique?

Next to the love of God and of truth, the strongest feeling in Baxter's mind was the desire of concord in the Church. Accordingly, he was never weary of writing books with such titles as these-Catholic Unity; Christian Concord; A Friendly Accommodation; Five Disputations about Church Government in order to the Reconciliation of the differing Parties; An end of Doctrinal Controversies by reconciling Explication. It is easy to smile, and call such efforts Quixotic, but it was at all events the Quixotism of a warm heart and a big brain. The charity of Baxter was not that easy virtue which agrees to differ without taking any trouble to understand the ground and nature of those variances which it is so kind as to ignore. On the contrary, he examined and tried to estimate all the ecclesiastical diversities, and even all the party crotchets of his own and former times. But he did so that he might the better see how to adjust and reconcile them, not that he might set one in triumph over all the rest. He avowed himself always a Catholic Christian, and shrank from every imputation of being a sectary. In his eyes a sectary was one who sought the advancement of a faction rather than the common interest VOL. XXIX.-NO. CXI.

B

of Christianity. "And if," said he, "men can but get to be of a sect which they think the holiest (as the Anabaptists and Separatists), or which is the largest (as the Greeks and Papists), they then think that they are sufficiently warranted to deny others to be of God's Church, or at least to deny them Christian love and communion." In his enthusiasm for a Catholic concord, which he would not regard as a forlorn hope even in the worst days he ever saw, Baxter had to maintain a middle position, striking at controversial adversaries on the right hand and the left. On one side he assailed both sectaryism on account of its disintegration of Christian society, and the extreme assertion, whether of the Presbyterian or the Prelatic system, as tending to alienate and not reconcile objectors. On the other side, he struck heavy blows at the fallacious and arrogant Catholicism of the Church of Rome. His Key for Catholics is a really formidable dissection of the Roman claim and not unworthy to be read along with the masterpieces of Chillingworth and Stillingfleet in the same controversy.

In the present day, the thoughts and sympathies of many Christians have happily become too wide for their inherited systems; and many minds are musing over possible approximations, reconciliations, and even amalgamations of cognate religious communities. At such a time Richard Baxter's lifelong ardour for comprehension may hope for an appreciation such as the mere hacks of particular systems have never been willing to yield. We do not say that he was able to sketch out the very solutions of religious and ecclesiastical complications which are likely to be realised. The thoughts of men need to be still more widened with the process of the suns before any solution worthy of the name can be reached. But it does seem to us, that Baxter has inculcated lessons which all who would form a Liberal Evangelical School should lay to heart, e.g. (1) to discourage most strongly any attempt to make new sects or parties-implying of course the duty so to administer existing churches, and improve them where the need of improvement is confessed, that there may be no provocation to create new divisions; (2) to study carefully the rationale of each important division that now exists, not so much heeding the surface aspects as going down to the roots of separate church systems, especially of the three which virtually divide

Correspondence with John Eliot.

19

Protestant Christendom between them-Prelacy, Presbytery, and Independency; (3) while endeavouring to bring about some better adjustment of Christian communion at the roots, a work of time and patience, but one which should not be impossible, if we do not repeat the error of our fathers in over minuteness, and exacting too many points of agreement; to alleviate the evils of ecclesiastical separation as far as possible by hearty fraternal conference and co-operation on the ground of our common Christianity; (4) to take up no extravagant positions on questions of form and Church service. Baxter deplored the narrow spirit which counted men as in or out of the Church according as they accepted or refused certain ceremonies. "They that make their unstable forms and ceremonies essential to the Church," said he, "make a ceremony of the Church itself." But, on the other hand, he had no sympathy with those pedants of nonconformity who would make a church rest on a number of scruples, as on the points of pins. He would have scorned to make a church-principle of the refusal of a form of prayer, or the exclusion of instrumental music. In his mature life he wrote, "I do not lay so great a stress upon the external modes and forms of worship as many young professors do. I cannot be of their opinion that think God will not accept him that prayeth by the Common Prayer-book, and that such forms are a self-invented worship which God. rejecteth; nor yet can I be of their mind that say the like of extemporary Prayers."

On other subjects, too, Baxter was in advance of his time. Take, for instance, what we call Foreign Missions. Some interesting letters are preserved, which passed between Baxter and John Eliot," the Apostle of the Indians in New England," which show the warm and enlightened interest felt by the busy English divine in the remote labours of the missionary. "There is no man on earth," he wrote, "whose work I think more honourable and comfortable than yours." In that review of himself from which we have repeatedly quoted, he repeats his tribute to Eliot, and all who had "laboured in such work," and tells how the case of the heathen world more and more deeply affected him, though he was not "inclined to pass a peremptory sentence of damnation upon all that never heard of Christ." A consideration of "the method of the Lord's