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Why Did Richard Baxter and John Owen Diverge? The Impact of The First Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2010

TIM COOPER
TIM COOPER
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studes, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand; e-mail: tim.cooper@otago.ac.nz
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Abstract

This article explores an important but hitherto neglected factor that helps to account for the early divergence between Richard Baxter (1615–91) and John Owen (1616–83). Theological differences alone cannot account for that divergence, since in the early 1640s Baxter and Owen would have agreed on the issues that later separated them. Their starkly contrasting experiences of the First Civil War helped to set them apart. For Baxter, personally caught up in the upheaval, the war was a disaster that corrupted the Gospel. For Owen, untouched by the fighting, the war was a blessing from God that liberated the Gospel from Arminian captivity. All this helps to illuminate some of the ways in which the civil wars continued to shape religious developments and divisions long after the battles had ceased.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , July 2010 , pp. 496 - 516
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, or, Mr. Richard Baxter's narrative of the most memorable passages of his life and times, ed. Matthew Sylvester, London 1696 (Wing B1370), iii. 61.

2 Idem, The aphorismes of justification, with their explication annexed, London 1649 (Wing B1185), appendix at pp. 137–65.

3 Owen wrote Of the death of Christ in 1650 in reply to Baxter's Aphorismes of justification: Works of John Owen, ed. William H. Goold, repr. Edinburgh 1983, x. 429, 435ff.

4 See Paul Lim, In pursuit of purity, unity, and liberty: Richard Baxter's Puritan ecclesiology in its seventeenth-century context, Leiden 2004, ch. vi.

5 Bill Black, Reformation pastors: Richard Baxter and the ideal of the reformed pastor, Carlisle 2004, 132.

6 William Lamont, Richard Baxter and the millennium: Protestant imperialism and the English revolution, London 1979, 162–3.

7 Ibid. 183, 220–1.

8 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, ii. 277.

9 For a sense of this see ibid. iii. 62, and DWL, ms BC, ii. 273 (CCRB, no. 760).

10 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, iii. 69. See also Lim, Purity, unity, and liberty, 187–90.

11 Edmund Calamy, An historical account of my own life with some reflections on the times I have lived in (1671–1731), London 1829, i. 378. The ‘affair of Wallingford House’ refers to Owen's alleged part in the downfall of Richard Cromwell. Baxter certainly believed that Owen had been complicit in the event. For the unedited manuscript version of Baxter's recollection see Geoffrey F. Nuttall, ‘The ms of Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696)’, this Journal vi (1955), 77–9.

12 When Calamy produced his Abridgement of Baxter's life and times (London 1702) his entry on John Owen, ‘a Great Man’ (p. 220) was markedly more applauding and positive than the tone initially set by Baxter.

13 Orme, William, ‘Memoirs of the life and writings of Dr. Owen’, in Thomas Russell (ed.), The works of John Owen D. D., London 1826, i. 90. Though much briefer than Orme's memoirs, another nineteenth-century work of immediate relevance is Ely Bates, ‘Baxter and Owen’, National Review xv (1862), 95–120Google Scholar. The article presents Baxter and Owen as representative of ‘two entirely different tendencies’ (p. 113) within nonconformity.

14 Orme, ‘Memoirs’, i. 89.

15 Ibid. i. 91, 114, 215, 236.

16 Baxter was much more a feature of Orme's memoirs of Owen than Owen was in Orme's later two-volume biography of Baxter. There, Orme treated Baxter a little more generously in the context of his dealings with Owen, though Orme's liking for Owen remains apparent: William Orme, The life and times of Richard Baxter with a critical examination of his writings, London 1830, i. 352–3; ii. 243–7.

17 Ibid. i. 89.

18 For example, Owen made only two incidental appearances in Geoffrey F. Nuttall, Richard Baxter, London 1965, 16, 122. The index to the earlier two-volume biography of Baxter by Frederick F. Powicke has only one entry for Owen, although at least two other discussions of him have been omitted from the index: A life of the Reverend Richard Baxter, 1615–1691, London 1924, 1927, i. 239–40, 275–6; ii. 202–11.

19 Peter Toon, God's statesman: the life and work of John Owen, Grand Rapids 1971, 113, 136.

20 Lamont, Richard Baxter and the millennium, 220–3.

21 Carl Trueman, John Owen: reformed catholic, renaissance man, Aldershot 2007, 4, and The claims of truth: John Owen's Trinitarian theology, Carlisle 1998, 229.

22 Idem, Claims of truth, 25–6. There is no evidence for ‘a certain amount of rapprochement’, only of a failed effort to achieve it.

23 Ibid. 26–7, 40.

24 Ibid. 205–6, 214–25, 49–53, 93–4, 99. Trueman also includes an excellent appendix (pp. 241–5) in which he explores the fundamental differences of approach between the two men. Owen was seeking to defend the Reformed tradition, while Baxter was prepared to take seriously some of the criticisms directed against it. That difference flowed into the positive and negative nature of their respective theological methods.

25 Lim, Purity, unity, and liberty, 189.

26 I am grateful to Professor Neil Keeble for making this observation in the course of a recent conversation.

27 Vivienne Larminie, ‘Du Moulin, Lewis (1605?–1680)’, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19428].

28 Douglas Nobbs, ‘New light on Louis du Moulin’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London xv (1936), 489.

29 Richard Baxter, Richard Baxter's confutation of a dissertation for the justification of infidels, London 1654, sig. 2L4 (in Rich. Baxters Apology, pt iii) (CCRB, no. 167).

30 DWL, ms BC, vi. 92 (CCRB, no. 871).

31 Ibid. vi. 214 (CCRB, no. 387).

32 Du Moulin ‘is now at this Day one of those Friends who are Injurious to the Honour of their own Understanding by overvaluing me’: Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 110.

33 Toon, God's statesman, 54.

34 Nuttall, Richard Baxter, 94.

35 Upton's relationship to Margaret cannot explain Baxter's friendship with Upton, since it preceded Richard's marriage on 10 September 1662 by at least four years. For the date of Baxter's marriage see his A breviate of the life of Margaret … Baxter, London 1681 (Wing 1681), 47.

36 DWL, ms BC, iii. 200 (CCRB, no. 443).

37 Ibid. iii. 127 (CCRB, no. 462).

38 Ibid. vi. 235 (CCRB, no. 574).

39 Ibid. i. 257 (CCRB, no. 700). In this letter, Baxter denies saying that Henry Vane played a part in the regicide.

40 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, iii. 67.

41 Idem, Aphorismes, 55.

42 Idem, Confession, 3.

43 Idem, Richard Baxter's catholick theologie: plain, pure, peaceable for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriours, London 1675 (Wing B1209), preface sig. a2.

44 Dr Williams' Library, Baxter treatises, vii. 312 (item no. 268). See also Nuttall, Richard Baxter, 103, and Keeble, Neil, ‘C. S. Lewis, Richard Baxter, and “mere Christianity”’, Christianity and Literature xxx (1981), 28–9Google Scholar. Baxter defined those ‘called Presbyterian’ as ‘all that were neither Prelatical, nor of any other Sect’, a definition that would capture him as well: Reliquiae Baxterianae, ii. 284.

45 Owen, Works, xiii. 39.

46 John Cotton, The doctrine of the Church to which are committed the keys of the kingdome of heaven wherein is demonstrated by way of question and answere what a visible church is according to the order of the Gospel, London 1643 (Wing C6429).

47 Ibid. xiii. 223.

48 Toon, God's statesman, 28.

49 For a full discussion of the strain between Baxter and Owen see Tim Cooper, Heated agreement: John Owen, Richard Baxter and the formation of nonconformity, Aldershot, forthcoming 2011.

50 Richard Baxter, A holy commonwealth, or political aphorisms opening the true principles of government, London 1659, 457.

51 Trevor Royle, The British civil war: the war of three kingdoms, 1638–1660, New York 2004, 165.

52 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 40.

53 Royle, British civil war, 186.

54 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 40.

55 DWL, ms BC, ii. 93 (CCRB, no. 139).

56 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 40–1.

57 Ibid. i. 42.

58 See Royle, British civil war, 186–8.

59 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 42.

60 Ibid.

61 Ibid. i. 43.

62 This is quoted without citation in Charles Carlton, Going to the wars: the experience of the British civil wars, 1638–1651, London 1992, 146.

63 Edward Benlowes, ‘Canto xii’, in George Saintsbury (ed.), Minor poets of the Caroline period, Oxford 1905, 450, quoted ibid. 118.

64 The practical works of Richard Baxter, repr. Ligonier, 1990–1, iii. 57.

65 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 43–4.

66 Ibid. i. 46.

67 Carlton, Going to the wars, 123.

68 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 50.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid. i. 51–2.

71 Royle, British civil war, 335. For Baxter's account see Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 54.

72 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 54–5.

73 Ibid. i. 55.

74 Ibid. i. 58.

75 Ibid. i. 53.

76 DWL, ms BC, ii. 24r (CCRB, no. 46).

77 Ibid. ii. 269v (CCRB, no. 41).

78 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 58.

79 See Tim Cooper, Fear and polemic: Richard Baxter and Antinomianism, Aldershot 2001, ch. iv.

80 The work began as Baxter's funeral sermon: Practical works, iii. 1. The other book to emerge from the crisis was The aphorismes of justification.

81 Baxter, Practical works, iii. 58.

82 Ibid. iii. 57.

83 Ibid. iii. 4.

84 Ibid. iii. 235.

85 Ibid. iii. 238.

86 Ibid.

87 Stephen Porter, Destruction in the English civil wars, Gloucester 1994, 66.

88 Baxter was largely right when he said ‘I think there were few Parishes where at one time or other Blood had not been shed’: Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 44.

89 Ibid. i. 67–8.

90 Carlton, Going to the wars, 204, 206.

91 Works of Owen, xiii. 3. For the detail of this ‘insurrection’ and ‘invasion’ see Alan Everitt, The community of Kent and the great rebellion, 1640–1660, Leicester 1966, 187–200.

92 Works of Owen, i. 465. The quotation has obvious allusions to Paul's last words to the Ephesian elders in Acts xx.20–1, 27.

93 Toon, God's statesman, 25–6.

94 Quoted without citation ibid. 15–16.

95 Works of Owen, viii. 15, 21–2.

96 Ibid. viii. 6.

97 Ibid. viii. 11, 10. See also p. 19.

98 Ibid. viii. 26–7, 31–2.

99 Whether there was a ‘rise of Arminianism’ in early Stuart England has been much debated. Kevin Sharpe cuts through the discussion: ‘Whatever the historical reality …, it remains the case that significant contemporaries did perceive Laud to be the spawn of a papist and an Arminian threat and did fear dangerous innovations in the Caroline church’: ‘Religion, rhetoric, and revolution in seventeenth-century England’, Huntington Library Quarterly lvii (1994), 263. Owen's sermon bears this out.

100 Works of Owen, viii. 28.

101 Ibid. viii. 25. See also p. 30.

102 Ibid. viii. 31.

103 Ibid. viii. 7.

104 Ibid. viii. 18.

105 Barbara Donagan, ‘Did ministers matter? War and religion in England, 1642–1649’, Journal of British Studies xxxiii (1994), 126.

106 Michael Walzer, Exodus and revolution, New York 1985. See also John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan revolution: religion and intellectual change in seventeenth-century England, Woodbridge 2006, 89–90.

107 Works of Owen, viii. 25, 40.

108 Ibid. viii. 33.

109 Ibid. viii. 18.

110 Ibid. viii. 26.

111 Ibid. viii. 27.

112 Ibid. viii. 40.

113 Ibid. viii. 16–17, 18.

114 Ibid. viii. 27–8.

115 I am particularly indebted to Professor John Coffey for his thoughts and suggestions embedded in this paragraph.

116 Oliver Cromwell's letters and speeches with elucidations, ed. Thomas Carlyle, London 1846, i. 152.

117 Carla Gardina Pestana, ‘Peter, Hugh (bap. 1598, d. 1660)’, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/22024].

118 DWL, ms BC, vi. 97 (CCRB, no. 22). Baxter was defending Goodwin against George Walker's accusations of Socinianism. Two years later Baxter stood by his support of Goodwin: ‘I see now J[ohn] Goodwin is a flatt Arminian: but that Condemneth not any charitable thoughts of him’: DWL, ms BC, ii. 20 (CCRB, no. 68). And in 1678 Baxter repeated his defence, though it was not published until 1690: A breviate of the doctrine of justification, London 1690 (Wing B1397), sig. A2r-v.

119 Goodwin's commonalities with Owen should not be overstated, since Owen reportedly had at least the intention of writing against Goodwin's soteriology: DWL, ms BC, iv. 180 (CCRB, no. 77).

120 John Goodwin, Anti-cavalierisme, or, truth pleading as well the necessity, as the lawfulness of this present war London 1642 (Wing G1146), 5. See Coffey, John Goodwin, 85–91, and Tai Liu, ‘Goodwin, John (c.1594–1665)’, ODNB [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10994].

121 Coffey, John Goodwin, 54–5. This also means that Goodwin and Owen were unlikely to agree on soteriology. Owen wrote The doctrine of the saints perseverance (1654) in response to Goodwin's Redemption redeemed (1651): Works of Owen, xi. 1, 12–13.

122 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, appendix at p. 98 (CCRB, no. 887).

123 Cooper, Fear and polemic, 145–6.

124 Carlton, Going to the wars, 125.

125 Baxter, Practical works, iii. 58.

126 Ibid. iii. 236.

127 Works of Owen, viii. 6.

128 Baxter, Practical works, iii. 226.

129 Ibid.

130 Idem, Reliquiae Baxterianae, i. 57.

131 It is possible that my interpretation here has been taken in a little by what Baxter, writing after the Restoration, wanted his reader to believe.

132 Works of Owen, viii. 58.

133 This is a comment of the editor, ibid. viii. 2.