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Richard Baxter, one of the most famous Puritans of the seventeenth century, is generally known as a writer of practical and devotional literature. But he also excelled in knowledge of medieval and early modern scholastic theology, and was conversant with a wide variety of seventeenth-century philosophies. Baxter was among the early English polemicists who wrote against the mechanical philosophy of René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi in the years immediately following the establishment of the Royal Society. At the same time, he was friends with Robert Boyle and Matthew Hale, corresponded with Joseph Glanvill, and engaged in philosophical controversy with Henry More. In this book, David Sytsma presents a chronological and thematic account of Baxter's relation to the people and concepts involved in the rise of mechanical philosophy in late-seventeenth-century England. Drawing on largely unexamined works, including Baxter's Methodus Theologiae Christianae (1681) and manuscript treatises and correspondence, Sytsma discusses Baxter's response to mechanical philosophers on the nature of substance, laws of motion, the soul, and ethics. Analysis of these topics is framed by a consideration of the growth of Christian Epicureanism in England, Baxter's overall approach to reason and philosophy, and his attempt to understand creation as an analogical reflection of God's power, wisdom, and goodness, or vestigia Trinitatis. Baxter's views on reason, analogical knowledge of God, and vestigia Trinitatis draw on medieval precedents and directly inform a largely hostile, though partially accommodating, response to mechanical philosophy.
As a leader of religious thought in England, Richard Baxter (1615–1691) was deeply concerned about the state of the church, and, in particular, about the condition of the ministry. During his years at Kidderminster, he attempted to draw contending parties together by an experiment in Christian unity—afterwards famous as the Worcestershire Association—from which similar movements arose in other English counties. This volume preserves the documents in connection with this movement. It is therefore a historical study. Yet it has a wider purpose. Baxter’s Reformed Pastor is a classical writing on the Christian ministry. IT belongs not only to the seventeenth century, but to every generation. In our present time, when in the ministry of all the churches there is a deep searching of heart amidst these difficult days, this book presents both a challenge and an appeal from the pen of this Puritan divine, who styled himself “catholic Christian.”