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at that place some time, and finding his health im- proved, he visited London just before the deposition (1f Cromwell, and preached to the Parliament the day previous to its voting the restoration of the king. He preached occasionally about the city of London, having | a license from Bishop Sheldon. He was one of the j Tuesday lecturers at Pinners' Hall, and also had a Friday lecture at Fetter Lane. In 1662 he preached his farewell sermon at Blackfriar's, and afterward re- tired to Acton in .Middlesex. In 1676 he built a meet- ing-house in Oxendon Street, and, when he had but once preached there, the congregation was disturbed, and Mr. Sedden, then preaching for him, was sent to the Gatehouse, inst sad of Baxter, where he continued three months. In 1682 Baxter was seized, by a war- rant, for coming within five miles of a corporation, and his goods and books were sold as a penalty for live Bermons he had preached. Owing to the bad state of his health, he was not at that time imprisoned, through the kindness of Mr. Thomas Cox, who went to five jus- tices of the peace and made oath that Baxter was in a bad state of health, and that such imprisonment would most likely cause his death. In KJtfo he was sent to the King's Bench by a warrant from the Lord Chief Justice Jeffries for some passages in his Paraphrase on th<: New Testament ; but, having obtained from King James, through the good offices of Lord Powis, a par- don, he retired to Charter-house Yard, occasionally preached to large and devoted congregations, and at length died, December 8th, 1691, and was interred in Christ Church.
Baxter's intellect was rather acute than profound. He was one of the most successful preachers and pas- ters the Christian Church has seen. His mind was rich, discursive, and imaginative; qualities which fitted him admirably, in conjunction with his deep and arden; piety, to write books of devotional and practical re- ligion. His Saint's Rest abounds in eloquent and pow- erful writing ; perhaps no book except Kempis and Pilgrim's Progress has been more widely read or mora generally useful.
Baxter's theology was of no school, but, on the ■whole, eclectic and undecided. In his Jfethodus The- ologies and Univei-sal Redemption he sets forth a modi- fied scheme of the Calvinistic doctrine of election. But the real author of the scheme, at least in a sys- tematized form, was Camero, who taught divinity at Sinmur, and it was unfolded and defended by his disciple Amyraldus, whom Curcellseus refuted. See Amtra'ut; Cahebo. Baxter says, in his preface to it's Rest, '-The middle way which Camero. Crocius, Martinius, Amyraldus, Davenant, with all the divines of Britain and Bremen in the Synod of Dort, go, I think is nearest the truth of any" that I know who have written on these points."'
(1.) Baxter first differs from the majority of Cal- vinists, though not from all, in his statement of the j of satisfaction : " Christ's sufferings were not & fulfilling of the law's threatening (though he bore its ' rial'y), but a satisfaction forour not fulfilling the precept, and to prevent God's fulfilling the' 'threaten- < Shrist paid not, therefore, the idem, but the quivalens; not the very debt which we owed and the law required) but the value (else it were not strictly sitisfaction, which is redditio (equivalents I the rendering of an equivalent ] ) : and (it being im- prop srly called the paying of a </■ bt, hot properly a suf- ' thi guilty) the idem is nothing but suppli- aum deltnquentis [the punishment of the guilty in- dividual!. I,, criminals, 'In,,, alius soloet simul aliud soloUur [when another suffers, it is another thing u Buffered]. The law knoweth no vicarius ubstitute in punishment], though the law- m&er may admit it, as he is above law; else there were no place for/iar&n, if theprojwrdefcbepaidand the law not relaxed, hut fulfilled. Christ did neither obey nor suffer in any man's stead, by a strict, proper
BAXTER
representation of his person in point of law, so as that the law should take it as done or suffered by the party himself; but only as a third person, as a midiator, he voluntarily bore what else the sinner should have borne. To assert the contrary (especially as to par- ticular persons considered in actual sin) is to overthrow all Scripture theology, and to introduce all Antinomi- anism ; to overthrow all possibility of pardon, and as- sert justification before we sinned or were born, and to make ourselves to have satisfied God. Therefore, Ave must not say that Christ died nostro loco [in our stead], so as to personate us, or represent our persons in lata sense, but only to bear what else we must have borne."
(2.) This system explicitly asserts that Christ made a satisfaction by his death equally for the sins of every man ; and thus Baxter essentially differs both from the higher Calvinists, and also from the Sublapsari- ans, who, though they ma)7' allow that the reprobate derive some benefits from Christ's death, so that there is a vague sense in which he may be said to have died for all men, yet they, of course, deny to such the bene- fits of Christ's satisfaction or atonement which Baxter contends for: "Neither the law, whose curse Christ bore, nor God, as the legislator to be satisfied, did dis- tinguish between men as elect and reprobate, or as be- lievers and unbelievers, depresenti vel defuturo [with regard to the present or the future]; and to impose upon Christ, or require from him satisfaction for the sins of one sort more than of another, but for mankind in general. God the Father, and Christ the Mediator, now dealeth with no man upon the more rigorous terms of the first law (obey perfectly and live, else thou shall die), but giveth to all much mercy, which, ac- cording to the tenor of that violated law, they could not receive, and c.Jlcth thorn to repentance in order to their receiving further mercy offered them. And accordingly he will not judge any at last according to the mere law of works, but as they have obeyed or not obeyed his conditions or terms of grace. It was not the sins of the elect only, but of all mankind fallen, which lay upon Christ satisfying ; and to assert the contrary injuriously diminisheth the honor of his suf- ferings, and hath other desperate ill consequences."