On Dealing with Controversy
by Richard Baxter

Begin not too early with controversies in religion; and when you come to them, let them have but their due proportion of your time and zeal; but live daily upon [the] certain great substantials, which all Christians are agreed in. 

1. Plunge not yourselves too soon into controversies: For

(1.) It will be exceedingly to your loss, by diverting your souls from greater and more necessary things: you may get more increase of holiness, and spend your time more pleasingly to God, by drinking in deeper the substantials of religion, and improving them on your hearts and lives. 

(2.) It will corrupt your minds, and instead of humility, charity, holiness, and heavenly-mindedness, it will feed your pride, and kindle faction and a dividing zeal, and quench your charity, and possess you with a wrangling, contentious spirit, and you will make a religion of these sins and lamentable distempers. 

(3.) And it is the way to deceive and corrupt your judgments, and make you erroneous or heretical, to your own perdition and the disturbance of the church; for it is two to one, but either you presently err, or else get such an itch after notions and opinions that will lead you to error at the last. Because you are not yet ripe and able to judge of those things, till your minds are prepared by those truths that are first in order to be received. When you undertake a work that you cannot do, no wonder if it be ill done, and must be all undone again, or worse. 

Click here to read the rest of Baxter’s counsel on dealing with controversy. 

Taken with gratitude from Scripture Studies.com

Laboring for Understanding
by Richard Baxter

Labour to understand the true method of divinity, and see truths in their several degrees and order; that you take not the last for the first, nor the lesser for the greater. Therefore see that you be well grounded in the catechism; and refuse not to learn some catechism that is sound and full, and keep it in memory while you live. 
  
Method, or right order, exceedingly helpeth understanding, memory, and practice. Truths have a dependence on each other; the lesser branches spring out of the greater, and those out of the stock and root. Some duties are but means to other duties, or subservient to them, and to be measured accordingly; and if it be not understood which is the chief, the other cannot be referred to it. When two things materially good come together, and both cannot be done, the greater must take place, and the lesser is no duty at that time, but a sin, as preferred before the greater. Therefore it is one of the commonest difficulties among cases of conscience, to know which duty is the greater, and to be preferred. Upon this ground, Christ healed on the Sabbath day, and pleaded for His disciples rubbing the ears of corn, and for David’s eating the shew-bread, and telleth them, that “the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” (Mark 2:27) and that God “will have mercy, and not
sacrifice” (Matt. 12:7).

 Click here to read the whole message.

Taken with gratitude from Scripture Studies.com

Concerning Balance in Christianity
by Richard Baxter

 To change your opinions is an easier matter than to change the heart and life. A holding of the truth will save no man, without a love and practice of the truth. This is the meaning of James 2, where he speaketh so much of the unprofitableness of a dead, unaffected belief, that worketh not by love, and commandeth not the soul to practice and obedience.
 

•  To believe that there is a God, while you neglect Him and disobey Him, is unlikely to please Him.
• To believe that there is a heaven, while you neglect it, and prefer the world before it, will never bring you
  [there]. 
• To believe your duty, and not to perform it, and to believe that sin is evil, and yet to live in it, is to sin with aggravation, and have no excuse, and not the way to be accepted or justified with God. 
• To be of the same belief with holy men, without the same hearts and conversations, will never bring you to the same felicity. “He that knoweth His master’s will and doth it not” shall be so far from being accepted for it that he “shall be beaten with many stripes” (see Luke 12:47). 
• To believe that holiness and obedience is the best way, will never save the disobedient and unholy.

(Click here to read the whole message.)

 Taken with gratitude from Scripture Studies.com

Thanks for stopping by Baxter’s Directory.

 I “discovered” the puritan, Richard Baxter, about 17-18 years ago and have been a big fan ever since. My purpose for this blog is to introduce Baxter to others as well as to pass along his spiritual direction and encouragement to
those seeking to walk the right path.

My first website dedicated to Richard Baxter was called The Richard Baxter Homepage. It was on AOL for over ten years. In fact, Phil Johnson was gracious enough to put it on his Hall of Church History site that he maintained for quite some time. AOL kept my websites up and running long after I stopped using AOL. However, in 2008, the website was removed.

Therefore, this is my latest effort to share Baxter’s life and writing with a larger audience. 
 
I hope you will be blessed by this blog. Truly Richard Baxter was a faithful shepherd of souls. It’s my prayer that his life and spiritual direction will encourage you to want to know God better, love God more, follow God more closely, and become more like Christ in every sphere of your life.

If you would like to learn more about Baxter, please click here.

 PS – I love to read the puritans. I love the way they write. I love the language they use. But that’s just me. I’m not going to assume that’s true for anyone else who reads this. Therefore, I will, (unless it would harm the meaning
of the message), seek to paraphrase what Baxter is communicating.

Grace and Truth,
Dale Tedder