Benefits of Afflictions
by Richard Baxter
Afflictions are God's most effectual means to keep us from losing our way to our heavenly rest. Without this hedge of thorns on the right hand and on the left — we would scarcely keep in the way to heaven. If there is but one gap open — how ready are we to find it, and turn out of the narrow way! When we grow wanton, or worldly, or proud — how does sickness, or other affliction, humble us! Every Christian may call affliction one of his best schoolmasters ; and with David may say, "Before I was afflicted, I went astray; but now have I kept your word." Many thousand recovered sinners may cry, "O healthful sickness! comfortable sorrows! O gainful losses! O enriching poverty! Blessed day that ever I was afflicted!" Not only the green pastures and still waters — but the rod and staff , they comfort us also. Though the Word and Spirit do the main work, yet suffering so unbolts the door of the heart — that the Word has easier entrance!
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He wrote 168 or so separate works -- such treatises as the Christian Directory, the Methodus Theologiae Christianae, and the Catholic Theology, might each have represented the life's work of an ordinary man. His Breviate of the Life of Mrs Margaret Baxter records the virtues of his wife, and reveals Baxter's tenderness of nature. Without doubt, however, his most famous and enduring contribution to Christian literature was a devotional work published in 1658 under the title Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live. This slim volume was credited with the conversion of thousands and formed one of the core extra-biblical texts of evangelicalism until at least the middle of the nineteenth century.
Richard Baxter was ordained into the Church of England, 1638, but in two years allied with Puritans opposed to the episcopacy of his church. At Kidderminster (1641-60) he made the church a model parish. The church was enlarged to hold the crowds. Pastoral counseling was as important as preaching, and his program for his parish was a pattern for many other ministers. Baxter played an ameliorative role during the English Civil Wars.
He was a chaplain in the parliamentary army but then helped to restore the king (1660). After the establishment of the monarchy, he fought for toleration of moderate dissent in the Church of England. Persecuted for more than 20 years and was imprisoned (1685) for 18 months, the Revolution of 1688, replacing James II with William and Mary, brought about an Act of Toleration that freed Baxter to express his opinions.