THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF RICHARD BAXTER
Introduction
It is often described that the 20th century, and consequently the 21st century, theologians “stand on the shoulders of giants.” By that we mean that we have great treasures of literary works by theologians and scholars from the past whose ministry and legacy are just as influential and relative today. What really is new under the sun? We turn to the newest “literary genius” and the New York Time’s Best Seller list and find that the content is no doubt a translation—a re-print of material and genius from ages past in colloquial ear-tickling. One of my personal favorite authors of the 20th century was C. S. Lewis. He was an apologetic for non-apologetics and in many ways, was unlike any other …show more content…
During that time he was pulpit supply at a church in Coventry and then finally accepted a position of chaplain in Cromwell’s army. During those years he wrote his controversial work, Aphorisms of Justification, where he began to disclose an unpopular view of merits of Christ. Nevertheless, he supported Cromwell’s efforts for two years and then was forced to resign due to his failing health. He then spent five months on his death bed, but it proved to be the one thing Baxter was not good at doing: dying. He was never idle as these months were spent writing The Saint’s Everlasting Rest. Even in his dedication of the book, he notes that he wrote it with “one foot in the grave.” He wrote:
The second book which I wrote… was that called The Saints’ Everlasting Rest. Whilst I was in health I had not the least thought of writing books, or of serving God in any more public way than preaching. But when I was weakened with great bleeding… and was sentenced to death by the physicians, I began to contemplate more seriously on the everlasting rest which I apprehended myself to be just on the borders of. And that my thoughts might not too much scatter in my meditation, I began to write something on that