A Residence of eight years in Persia among the Nestorian 1. M. T. Ciceronis Tusculanarum Quæstionum Libri Quinque. M. Accii Plauti Amphitruo et Aulularia. 2. The Age of Gold and other Poems. By G. W. Lunt. 3. Mesopotamia and Assyria. By J. B. Fraser. 5. Dr. Sharp's Hints on Modern Evangelism. 6. Magazine of the recent History of Missionary and Bible Soci- THE CHRISTIAN REVIEW. NO. XXIX. MARCH, 1843. ARTICLE I. LIFE AND TIMES OF BAXTER. AMONG the names which it is good to repeat, we know of none more inspiriting, as an example of ministerial devotedness, than that of RICHARD BAXTER. Known to the mass of society, in every land where the English tongue is spoken, as the author of two of the most useful volumes in the religious literature of that language, rich as that literature is, he deserves to be remembered by the youthful pastor as a signal example of ministerial fidelity, and power, and success, even had he never written the Call to the Unconverted, or that gem of devout genius, the Saints' Everlasting Rest. And, bequeathing, as he did, not only the lustre of a brilliant example, but, the rules of his own ministerial career, in his treatise, "The Reformed Pastor," he has acquired a title to be among those first named, whenever the eyes of the rising ministry are directed to the earlier worthies of the church. There is much in the character of the age to which he belonged to make it deserving of profound study. Seasons of revolution, by affording the requisite emergencies, and opening a freer path to talent, are fertile in great men. His was an era of revolution, alike in the political and in the moral elements of society. The English throne was overturned, to be replaced by a republic, itself followed by the Protectorate, which gave place to a restoration of the Stuarts, soon to be expelled by the revolution of 1688. In science, the methods VOL. VIII.-NO. XXIX. 1 of Bacon, now first practically applied, were working momentous changes. It was the age in which flourished his great disciple, Boyle, and in which were trained up Newton and Locke, who attempted, with such splendid power, to carry out the principles of Bacon into the world of matter and the world of mind. Then, too, it was that Milton gave to the literature of England his great epic, yet standing in unapproached and unapproachable grandeur. To the inhabitants of this country it must ever seem a momentous era, as being the age in English history out of which the creative hand of Divine Providence took the mass with which he formed the elements of American freedom, and in which lay the germs of our religious, political, and social character. The England of those times was the Eden in which were formed the Adam and Eve of the New England colonies. And as matter, not of self-gratulation, but of devout gratitude, it deserves to be remembered, that the national mind in our ancestral land was never of such sinewy manliness, so deeply penetrated by conscientious feeling, and so thoroughly suffused with scriptural knowledge, so racy and so pure, as in this, the era of our birth as a people. To the Christian scholar, the period is one teeming with interest. In the church, no less than the world, it was an era of remarkable men, and yet more remarkable events. In the interval, stretching from the reign of the First to that of the Second James, there appeared some of the strongest and holiest minds of the modern church. Never before or since, it is probable, was the Bible so thoroughly and devoutly studied by the British nation, as during that time. The effect was seen in the talent, and principle, and prowess of the statesmen, the scholars, the divines, the preachers, and the heroes that then adorned "the sea-girt isle." In biblical science, it was then that Walton elaborated his Polyglott, and Lightfoot accumulated his stores of rabbinical lore, and then, that flourished Castell and Pocock. Usher, and Selden, and Gataker, and Gale, and Pool, the giants of the schools, were in the pulpits, aided by other laborers, whose writings and preachings have scarce been surpassed in power over the conscience and the heart. In the bounds of the English Establishment, a memorable revolution was undergone, not less entire or wondrous, and more lasting, than that which tore up the foundations, and for a time altered the whole frame-work of the national governThe accession of James I had found the British church divided between two parties. On the one side was the body of the high-churchmen, of whom Laud became the head, the friends of arbitrary power, sticklers for order; in doctrine, the patrons of Arminianism, lovers of ceremony, pomp and tradition, laying the utmost stress upon Episcopal ordination, and carrying to its farthest limits the Episcopal power, and accused, not without specious grounds, of a strong leaning to Romanism. With them were the court and the star-chamber. On the opposite side stood the Puritans, Calvinists in doctrine, of the most austere morals, and the most exemplary pastors, and the most popular preachers of the country; many of them friendly to ministerial parity, but all more strenuous for piety of heart, than any external conformity to the rites of the church; and, finally, the dauntless advocates of political freedom, to whom Hume traces its origin in the English Constitution. With these were the body of the Parliament, the hearts of the people, and the grace of God. In the days of the Commonwealth, the leaders of the high-church party lost all power. Laud, their chief, perished on the scaffold, and Episcopacy itself was abrogated. The Puritans, those of them at least who favored ministerial parity, were now in prosperity; but shared it with many new communities, that, scattered by persecution and driven into close retirement during the days of the star-chamber, now burst into notice, and won rapidly both numbers and power. The Restoration drove the mass of the Puritans, with these other sects, into nonconformity; exiling from the Establishment a body of men as able and pious as it has ever possessed. But the national establishment was thus relieved of one party, only to receive another of far different character. The highchurchmen, of Laud's spirit, triumphed for a time in the court of the restored Stuarts; but their intolerance, and bigotry, and general inferiority of character, soon yielded to the superior talents and reputation of a body that sprung up in the bosom of the church during the Commonwealth, the latitudinarian divines, as they were commonly called. The growth of skepticism led them to study the outworks of Christian evidence. Against infidelity and popery they did good service in the cause of truth. Their dread of enthusiasm made them frigid, and their mastery of the ancient philosophy made them_profound. Their doctrines were generally Arminian. Their notions of church power were less rigid than those of the rival party, and they were also more tolerant of difference in opinion. But in their preaching they laid the whole stress, well nigh, of their efforts, upon morals, to the neglect of doctrine; and in theology, they attributed to human reason a strength and authority, which gradually opened the way to the invasion of the gravest heresies. Of generally purer character than their opponents, they were also abler preachers. But while valuable as moral treatises, their sermons were most defective; for the peculiar doctrines and spirit of the gospel were evaporated. Such were the low-churchmen of this time. The revolution under William threw many of the high-church party into the ranks of the nonjurors, from their attachment to the Stuart family, and lost them their posts in the church; while it left those who remained still in the national Establishment, a weaker and a discredited party. The latitudinarian divines gradually rose to an undisputed ascendency, and gave to the whole of the church their principles, until Whitefield and Wesley found the nation, under their influence, and their preaching of a morality well nigh dissevered from the gospel of the cross, rocked into insensibility, drenched with spiritual lethargy, and threatened by a wide-spreading profligacy, and the rapid growth of infidelity. Thus it was that, with articles and formularies remaining entirely unchanged, the English Establishment, in the commencement of Baxter's day, was divided between the high-churchmen and the Puritans. At the close of his stormy career, he saw it still divided; but the combatants were now the high-churchmen and their latitudinarian brethren. At the first of his course, the church had been rent between order and piety. At the last, the controversy was between order and morality. For, excellent as were many of the latitudinarian divines,-their Burnets, and their Tillotsons, and their Cudworths, they all resorted too often to the teachings of the Mr. Worldly Wiseman, the Mr. Legality, and that "pretty young man, his son," Mr. Civility, who have become known to us in Bunyan's matchless allegory. The low-churchman of the first period was then a very different being from the low-churchman of the second. The former quoted the Scriptures, and clung to the Reformers, and leaned on their own articles and liturgy. |