This work examines Richard Baxter's understanding and practice of
pastoral ministry from the perspective of his own stated concern for
reformation and in the broader context of Edwardian, Elizabethan, and
early Stuart pastoral ideals and practice. It investigates Baxter's
major treatise on pastoral ministry, 'Gildas Salvianus, the Reformed
Pastor' (1656), and explores the background of each aspect of his
pastoral strategy. Far from being novel, Baxter's practice of pastoral
ministry certainly reflects aspects of his puritan predecessors'
practice, if not their rhetoric. Black argues, however, that the primary
contours of Baxter's ministry look back, not to the puritan pastoral
ideals and strategies dominant after the Elizabethan Settlement, but to
the Edwardian reformation emphases of the exiled Strasbourg reformer
Martin Bucer. The book concludes by considering the impact of Baxter's
pastoral legacy, both on the lives of individual pastors and on the
subsequent discussion of puritan ministry. Black's book is a
distinguished one, shedding new light not only on a neglected aspect of
a giant amongst the godly Protestants of the English Reformation but on
the personal dilemmas that face any pastor confronting the confusion and
helpless frailty of the bulk of humanity. --John Morrill, University of
Cambridge Thanks are due to Dr. Black for giving us this workmanlike
exploration of Richard Baxter's epoch-making ministry at Kidderminister
in its wider context. His book fills a gap in our historical knowledge
most competently, and warms the Christian heart too. --J. I. Packer,
Regent College Richard Baxter was the most influential puritan in Stuart
England, whose writings on the ordained ministry in the 1650s were to
prove seminal for Protestant understanding and practice for centuries.
Dr. Black's searching and scholarly analysis traces the pedigree of
Baxter's understanding of the ordained ministry to the work of the
Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer. He provides an authoritative account
of the theological context of Baxter's role in the formation of County
Associations of ministers in the 1650s, designed to cope with the
pastoral crisis precipitated by civil war and the collapse of the
Elizabethan Settlement, and he offers the most thorough analysis to date
of the pastoral presuppositions underlying Baxter's revolutionary
rethinking of the role of preaching and catechesis in parochial
ministry. This book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to
understand the development of Protestant pastoral practice in early
modern England, and it throws new and unexpected light on the
reformation inheritance of seventeenth century Puritanism. --Eamon
Duffy, University of Cambridge J. William Black received his BA from
Duke University, his MDiv from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and
his PhD from the University of Cambridge. An ordained minister of the
Presbyterian Church (USA), he has served churches in North Carolina and
Pennsylvania and has taught students preparing for Christian ministry in
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
