Richard Baxter

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Quotes (795)

baxter Consider, is it not better to remember your sins on earth, than in Hell? Before your Physician, than before your Judge? . . . O wretch, that I am! Where was my understanding, when played so boldly with the flames of hell, the wrath of God, the poison of sin! When God stood by, and yet I sinned! When conscience rebuked me, and yet I sinned! When heaven or hell were close at hand, and yet I sinned! When, to please my God and save my soul, I would not hold back a filthy lust, or forbidden vanity of no worth! When I would not be persuaded to a holy, Heavenly, watchful life though all my hopes of Heaven depended on it! I am ashamed of myself; I am confounded in the remembrance of my willful, self-destroying folly! I loathe myself for all my abominations! O that I had lived in poverty and rags when I lived in sin! And O that I had lived with God in a prison, or in a wilderness, when I refused a holy, heavenly life, for the love of a deceitful world!

–  Richard Baxter

1615 – 1691

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Quotes (650)

Richard Baxter said, “Don’t pretend to love your people if you favor their sins.” Any pastor who says, “We don’t deal with sin here” doesn’t love his people, and it’s questionable whether he loves his God. Anybody who loves God loves what God loves, and what God loves is holiness and God loves His people to be holy, and if you’re indifferent toward their sins, then you don’t love people. If you say . . . as you hear preachers say, “God loves you, God loves you, God loves you,” then you have to immediately say, “And if you don’t turn to receive His Son you’re going to Hell.” If you love God and you love people you say that. And if in the church you say, “God loves you, God loves you so much that He gave His Son,” you’re going to have to also say, “God loves you so much that He wants you to stop that sin, He wants you to abandon that sin or you’re going to be put out of His Church. He’s a man who expresses the true and the pure, not some mushy sentimentalism.

– John MacArthur

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Quotes (646)

baxter

You may as well see without light, and be supported without earth, or live without food, as to be saved without holiness . . . the one thing necessary (Heb. 12:14). And when this has been determined by God, and established as His standing law, and He has told it so often and plainly, for any man then to say, “I will yet hope for better, I hope to be saved on easier terms, without all this ado,” is no better for that man than to set his face against the God of heaven. Instead of believing God, he believes the contradiction of his own ungodly heart; and hopes to be saved whether God wills it or not. He gives the lie to his Creator, under the pretense of trust and hope. This is indeed to hope for impossibilities. . . . Who is so foolish as to hope for this? Few of you are so unreasonable as to hope for a crop at harvest, without ploughing or sowing: or for a house without building; or for strength without eating and drinking. . . . And yet this would be a far wiser kind of hope, than to be saved without the one thing necessary for salvation.

– Richard Baxter

1615 – 1691

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Quotes (604)

baxter The servants of God consider the matter of religion more seriously than others do; and therefore their differences are more observable to the world. They cannot make light of the smallest truth of God . . . whereas the ungodly differ not about religion, because they have hardly no religion to differ about. Is this a unity and peace to be desired? I would rather have discord of the saints, than such a concord of the wicked. [The saints] are so careful about their duty that they are afraid of misusing it in the least particular; and this (with their imperfect light) is the reason of their disputings about these matters. But you that are careless concerning your duty, can easily agree about the ways of sin, or anything that comes along. The saints honor the worship of God so much that they would not have anything out of order; but you consider it so unimportant that you will be of the same religion as the king . . . .  The controversies of lawyers, historians, chronologers, geographers, physicians, and such like, never trouble the brains of the ignorant; but for all that, I would rather be in controversy with the learned, than without such controversy with you. If you scatter a handful of gold or diamonds in the street, perhaps men will scramble for them, and quarrel about them, while swine will trample on them and quietly despise them, because they do not know their worth.

– Richard Baxter

1615 – 1691

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Quotes (560)

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The office of pastor is not one that is to be attained to lightly. If a man desire the office of bishop, he desireth a good work (1st Timothy 3:1). But what is required of such a one? In order to be called a bishop, one must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach...not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil. Moreover he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. (1st Timothy 3:2-7). And what is required of him once he takes to the office? Richard Baxter, from The Reformed Pastor:

The nature of our office requireth us to ‘take heed to the flock.’ What else are we overseers,  for “Bishop” is a title which intimates more of’ ‘labor than of honor,’ says Polydore Virgil.’ To be a bishop, or pastor, is not to be set up as an idol for the people to bow to, or as idle ‘slow bellies,’ to live to our fleshly delight and ease; but it is to be the guide of sinners to heaven. It is a sad case that men should be of a calling of which they know not the nature, and undertake they know not what.

If you miscarry, they and you may perish. You have a subtle enemy, and therefore you must be wise. You have a vigilant enemy, and therefore you must be vigilant. You have a malicious and violent and unwearied enemy, and therefore you must be resolute, courageous and indefatigable.

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Quotes (519)

Richard Baxter

For myself, as I am ashamed of my dull and careless heart, and of my slow and unprofitable course of life, so, the Lord knows, I am ashamed of every sermon I preach; when I think what I have been speaking of, and who sent me, and that men’s salvation or damnation is so much concerned in it, I am ready to tremble lest God should judge me as a slighter of His truths and the souls of men, and lest in the best sermon I should be guilty of their blood. Me thinks we should not speak a word to men in matters of such consequence without tears, or the greatest earnestness that possibly we can; were not we too much guilty of the sin which we reprove, it would be so.

– Richard Baxter

1615 – 1691

HT: Soli Deo Gloria