Covenant and Conscience in English Reformed Theology: Three Variations on a 17th Century Theme

By Richard A. Muller

Ruffin, North Carolina

Reformed theology in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth century was not so rigidly scholastic that it failed to relate doctrine to piety. The system of faith was coordinated with a system of obedience. In English Reformed theology in particular doctrinal logic forged an intimate bond with moral casuistry. Positive doctrinal structures undergirded pious self-examination. The key to this conjunction of interests was the Augustinian, introspective character of the doctrine of assurance in Reformed theology. Augustinian piety stressed the sovereign grace of God in the work of redemption, causing those who accepted its tenets to look away from human actions to the inward man for signs of salvation.[1]

In England more than on the continent the complex analysis of “cases of conscience” became characteristic of Reformed piety. The English Puritans contributed a wealth of treatises and sermons on problems of individual conduct and piety, to the point that several seventeenth century thinkers observed with pride that the continent looked to England for definitive formulations of practical theology.[2] In these works the Puritan moralists examined each problem, anxiety, and temptation confronting the Christian life as a case to be tried at the bar of God’s saving will and its pattern of operation in the human soul. Inward moral controversies might thereby become grounds for personal assurance of salvation—or, more specifically, evidences of personal communion with God’s saving will under the terms of the covenant of grace. Although he was not the first to produce a treatise describing this moral cauistry William Perkins (1558–1602) was the first great master of the form. He wrote three works on the subject, A Case of Conscience, A Discourse of Conscience, and the Three Bookes of Cases of Conscience, each devoted to the methodical examination of the inward man and the delineation of grounds of assurance.

Perkins also set the pattern for his successors by developing not only a system of casuistry but also a system of doctrine, which he developed at considerable length in his An Exposition of the Creede. The link between his piety of conscience and his system of theology he made explicit in the hortatory excurses of his Exposition and in the structure and content of his most famous work, Armilla Aitrea or A Golden Chaine. This latter treatise was in fact a doctrinal version of the “greatest case of conscience” which demonstrated the, possibility of assurance of election by coordinating the ordo salutis with the inward questionings of the spiritual pilgrim and showing the order of causes, complete with doubts and temptations, which draw the believer toward his salvation.[3] Perkins emphasized the work of Christ and its application in covenant: “The foundation and ground worke of the covenant is Christ Jesus the Mediatour, in whome all the promises of God are yea and amen.”[4] This balance of system and piety focused on the work of Christ and the covenant was carried forward by Perkins’ foremost pupil, William Ames.[5] In their theology of covenant and piety of conscience the English Puritans attempted to resolve the possible antinomy between their emphasis on the sovereignty of God’s will in salvation and their commitment to high ethical norms. Even so, both Perkins and Ames incorporated into their systems concepts of foedus dipleuron and foedus monopleuron.[6] The former concept recognized a mutual pact and agreement between God and man while the latter proposed a one-sided compact in which God, by grace, fulfills his own demands. Conversion or regeneration was the nexus, the point of reconciliation, around which these divergent themes crystallized,[7] allowing the Christian life, considered as a covenantal warfare of conscience, to be systematized, stated as a vast series of “Cases of conscience,” and the dipleuric covenant to be presented in the form of a voluntaristic casuistry employed by the regenerate in their search for personal assurance. The greatest case of conscience toward which all others tended would naturally be “whether a man be a childe of God or no,” that is, whether a man be converted and under the covenant of grace.[8]

This English Reformed resolution of the problem of human responsibility in a system of salvation by grace alone was achieved independently of and largely prior to the development of continental federalism in the systems of Cocceius, Burman, Turretin, and Witsius. Scholars frequently note the appearance of Edward Fisher’s Marrow of Theology (1645) just prior to the publication of Cocceius’ Summa doctrinae de foedere et testamento dei (1648) as a sign of the early development of English federalism. But more than that, Fisher’s Marrow demonstrates the great difference between the historical paths of English and continental Reformed theology. Whereas Cocceius’ Summa was a positive statement of a system of covenantal doctrine manifesting the vitality of continental thought and pressing it toward a further synthesis, Fisher’s Marrow was a description of doctrinal stresses and strains in a system that was beginning to atrophy even in its moment of final codification.[9] Far from being a statement of normative doctrine over against heterodox straw-men, Fisher’s debate between the neophyte, the Puritan minister, the antinomian and the nomist sets forth the very real theological options of its day, the pressures that would transform English federalism in the latter half of the century. The doctrine and casuistry of John Downham (1570?-1652), John Bunyan (1628–1688) and Richard Baxter (1615–1691) exemplify the pattern of this transformation in terms of the three-fold pressure exerted on the system—established orthodoxy, antinomianism, and nomism.

I

After Perkins and Ames the most significant contribution to the English synthesis was the work of John Downham. Downham was educated in that greatest of Puritan seminaries, Christ’s College, Cambridge, receiving the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1599. Since Perkins remained a fellow of Christ’s College until 1594, Downham surely could not have avoided the influence of his thought.[10] Like Perkins and Ames, Downham founded his introspective piety on a carefully conceived system of theology. That system appeared in 1630 under the title, The Summe of Sacred Divinitie. The covenantal structures of Downham’s system relate closely to those of his elaborate treatise of moral casuistry, The Christian Warfare.[11]

Despite the scope and importance of Downham’s system, The Summe of Sacred Divinitie has not been properly appreciated in studies of Puritan theology. Haller recognized its importance for the development of English thought after Perkins but misunderstood its relationship to earlier thought: he believed that The Summe was modelled on Perkins’ A Golden Chaine.[12] The order of theological topics in A Golden Chaine bears little resemblance to the arrangement of loci in The Summe. In fact, Downham’s system took its form from a work published anonymously in 1599 under the title, The Sacred Doctrine of Divinitie. Jens Moeller recognized this reliance but misunderstood the relationship of Downham’s Summe to its predecessor. Moeller argued that Downham’s system was little more than a reissuing of The Sacred Doctrine of Divinitie.[13] The differences, however, are substantial and the exact pedigree of Downham’s treatise rather elaborate.

In its 1599 edition The Sacred Doctrine of Divinitie is a fairly brief instruction in faith presented in fifty-two pages. It divides into three books, the first of which deals with God’s “Kingdom and Honour.” The second book examines the demands of God’s honor in an analysis of the law and of human righteousness. Book three treats of the Gospel and the work of salvation in Christ.[14] An altered and shortened version of the work appeared in 1613 under the same title but with a preface signed by John Gordon. Book one of the earlier version was retained, conflated with parts of book two, and augmented by a discussion of the covenant of grace. Book three of the original treatise has become the second and final book and in this edition the whole system has been reduced to twenty octavo pages. This brief compend of theology became the basis of John Downham’s massive The Summe of Sacred Divinitie and appears as a synopsis set prior to the table of chapters in Downham’s edition of 1630. Downham’s own contribution to the volume follows the table and consists of an expansion of the arguments of the compend running to five hundred and fifty-one pages.

Following a basic tendency of sixteenth century Reformed theology, Downham emphasizes the centrality of Christ to Christian doctrine by the very structure of his system.[15] Christology provides the ground for understanding the doctrines of predestination and the covenant of grace, both of which are subsumed under the mediating office of Christ and are treated prior to the threefold division of the office into Christ’s priestly, kingly, and prophetic work. This order of loci is probably unique. Yet it bears some resemblance to the order of Theodore Beza’s highly Christocentric Confessio christianae fidei and the interpenetration of Christological, covenantal, and predestinarian motifs was characteristic of Musculus’ Loci communes. Both of these works were available in English editions in the late sixteenth century.[16] Downham’s Summe, therefore, reflects the double continental heritage of Reformed theology, the Genevan line represented preeminently by Calvin and Beza and the German Reformed line reaching from Zwingli and Bullinger on to Musculus and the Heidelberg theologians. In this Downham appears to have much in common with his English predecessors, Cartwright, Perkins, Fenner, and Ames.[17] Like them, Downham balances his soteriology carefully on the twin pillars of an absolute decree and a conditional promise.[18]

Covenant is the means by which Christ as Mediator “worketh our peace.” The Scriptures call him “the Mediator of the New Testament” and “the Angell of the Covenant.”[19] Theology considers “the end and fruit, the substance or foundation, the meanes or condition, and the extent of the Covenant.” Downham’s definitions draw on the thought of his predecessors but represent no duplication:

Christ himselfe is the foundation and grounde-worke of this Covenant, Esay.49.8. and the substance of all the Gospell, as the Apostle defineth, Rom 1:1, 2, 3, 4. and in many other places. The meanes to make the Covenant effectuall unto us, is Faith, the condition of the Covenant; Beleeve in the Lord Iesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, Acts 16:31. Touching the extent of the Covenant, all Mankinde are not partakers of this benefit, but some certayn men onely…being elect before the World was, and given unto Christ: that in time, through faith incorporated into him: and becoming one with him, that they might as Members make that Body, whereof hee is the Head: and so bee quickened by his Spirit unto everlasting life. And this election of some necessarily implyeth the rejecting of other some. Wherefore here the whole doctrine of God’s predestination is summarily comprehended: A matter above all other, most religiously and soberly to be dealt in….[20]

This ability to draw out complex doctrinal interrelationships in very brief compass is characteristic of the English Puritan systems. The absolute aspect of the covenant is the work of Christ as it relates to the decree and is applied directly to the elect, while the voluntaristic element is seen in the description of faith as the condition of the covenant—Christian life, founded on the sovereign grace of God, must be evidenced in the free exercise of faith.

Although the doctrine of predestination is a revealed truth, “we should not seke the testimonie of it in the secret counsell of God, but by calling which is set forth and made manifest in the Church.” We may climb upward to an assurance of election by means of the prayerful heart, as this inward attitude is a “testimonie of true Faith.” Faith in turn testifies to the effectiveness of calling and calling to the truth of our election.[21]

Election is inferred from its inward effects, the decree from its execution, the will of God from its dispensation in covenant.[22] Stress on the inwardness and spirituality of these exercises in assurance avoids the more empirical Bezan form of the syllogismus practicus.

Downham argues that an alternative form of covenant can be inferred from his definitions, a “covenant of works” known to us as the Law. Whereas the covenant of grace had man’s faith as its condition, the covenant of works demands perfect obedience. Downham concludes on the ground of these contravening conditions that the covenants are mutually exclusive and that, by extension, salvation cannot be attained partly under one, partly under the other. “Wee are justified by Workes onely, or by Faith alone.”[23] Since all men are corrupt and none can be justified by works, faith remains the only basis of covenant between God and man.[24] From this Downham can argue that the covenant of grace was “alwayes one and the same from the beginning, as Iesus Christ, the substance thereof was yesterday, and today the same, and for ever.” Even as the covenant of grace has been available to the faithful in all time, so does the covenant of works stand forever as a witness to God’s righteousness and the forfeited possibility of human self-justification.[25] When Downham returns to the doctrine of covenant in his chapter on regeneration the ties between his federalism and his piety of conscience become clearer. In regeneration the covenant is exhibited and the redeemed first come into possession of its benefits. Through regeneration this covenant of grace is applied to the elect only, drawing them toward sanctification and holiness.[26] The Spirit of God begins to work in the heart by taking away the dominion of sin after its guilt has been washed away by Christ.[27] Downham’s emphasis now changes: whereas he had earlier stressed the absolute aspect of the covenant, he now turns to its conditional character. Although God has fulfilled all righteousness in Christ, personal assurance is gained through the application of the covenant agreement to a labor of continual self-examination.[28]

Regeneration and sanctification are manifested by their benefits and effects. The sanctified elect find that the veil of ignorance cast upon the soul by sin is lifted by a new spiritual wisdom. Together wisdom and holiness work the life of holiness, of continuing repentance, of turning from the ways of the world. Reflecting the line of thought that would soon be embodied in the Westminster Confession, Downham views the imputation of Christ’s righteousness as forensic rather than actual and therefore argues the imperfection of sanctification and holiness in this life and the inability of even the regenerate of fulfilling the covenant of works.[29] Believers must “desire in all things to live righteously and well” even as they continue to “labour under the infirmities of the flesh.”[30] The heart, the desires, the will, and the affections are renewed in order that the regenerate may “fight against that Law of the old man” which continues to reside in the members.[31] To this end the regenerate have “intercourse with God by private and fervent prayer of Faith.” Prayer is accompanied by “sighs and groanings of the Spirit,” by a desire to seek all good in Christ, and by continuous meditation and preparation for devotion. The regenerate life is also marked by humility, “love of the breathren,” love and forgiveness for enemies, “open profession of Christ and the Gospel,” humble confession of sin, continuous repentance, and faithful observance of the Sabbath.[32]

The imperfection of sanctification in this life despite the presence of objective marks of regeneration results in an inward dynamic, a pilgrimage of soul toward God. Godly life follows the Augustinian pattern of peregrinatio or, as Downham chose to call it, “Christian Warfare.”[33] The phrase is significant. It occurs in Downham’s system, it is the title and theme of his treatise on moral casuistry, and it is the key to understanding Downham’s doctrine of Christian life: only following regeneration does the danger of temptation become fully known.[34] The spiritual pilgrim, given new powers by the grace of regeneration, joins battle with the armies of evil—the devil, the world, and the flesh.[35] What Downham and his Puritan brethren contributed to the development of Reformed doctrine on this point was the creation of a link between the conflict of flesh and spirit described in Romans 7 and Galatians 5 and the conception of covenant as mutual pact and agreement. The Puritan diarist Richard Rogers wrote of renewing his “covenaunt of a more gracious and holy passinge our time, that no comon folies of this life might break us of.”[36] Personal covenanting with God became the form of daily life under the covenant of grace. Even as covenant was drawn into relation with the Christian warfare of Romans 7, so was the act of personal covenanting related to the concept of the soldier’s oath. In the multitude of theological motifs that mingled in the Puritan mind, the voluntaristic definition of Covenant had early been related to the conception of sacraments as seals of God’s eternal pact and to the conception of participation in sacraments as the renewal of an oath.[37]

Christian warfare continues without truce between the sons of God and the brood of Satan. It is “the perpetuall state of Gods Church from the beginning, and was figured in Rebecca, a Type of the Church, in whose womb were two Nations that strove and fought together.”[38] Again we encounter a mingling of soteriological themes. The theme of election, taken from Romans 9:10–13 merges with the theme of the spiritual pilgrim found in Hebrews 11–13. The progress of the two cities, one earthly and enslaved to sin, the other heavenly never totally realized, in the world but bound to the risen Lord, has been interpreted as the warfare of the elect soul and its adversaries. A transition has been made from the more objective imagery of two cities to the subjective sense of personal pilgrimage and inward warfare. In an absolute sense no brood of Satan can overthrow God’s eternal election or undermine the foundation of his holy city. In the temporal, conditional, and subjective sense, however, no assurance of salvation is possible apart from the Christian soldier’s faithful resolve. The battlefield is the world, the protagonist is the human soul.

The confluence of these themes in Downham’s thought marks the accomplishment of an intellectual transition from an inward exercise of conscience for the sake of assurance to an active assault by means of the cases of conscience on the foes of God’s election. Introspection gains a militant character.

Manifold and most dangerous are the tentations and assaults of our spiritual enemies, whereby they labour to hinder the salvation of Gods Elect, and to increase the greatness of their hellish Dominions, by withdrawing (if it were possible) Gods servants from their Subjection and Allegiance…. To this end they take indefatigable paines, going continually about seeking whome they may devoure….[39]

In its voluntaristic aspects the covenant oath appears violable: although from God’s side perseverance is sure, the elect must, for their part, continually find comfort from their sins and temptations to sin in seeking the fruits of God’s work in themselves, in successful counterassault.

Within the system of cauistry even the mere presence of worldly trials is a ground of assurance. As Downham comments, only Christian soldiers who “resolve to serve the Lord in holiness and righteousness…are thus tempted and tried.”[40] He proceeds to catalogue in eleven hundred and sixty-seven pages all the temptations of the “spiritual enemies” and to propound the remedies. What The Summe of Sacred Divinitie lined out in brief systematic form concerning the regenerate life, The Christian Warfare set forth in most painstaking and personal detail. In the course of his spiritual pilgrimage, armed with the weapons of God’s Word, the Christian soldier was called to affirm his allegiance to the divine will. On the voluntaristic level where the freedom of secondary causes is affirmed, covenant appears as a pledge of service hedged about by a threat of forfeit, on grounds of disobedience, to the power of Satan.[41] Christ stands “faithful and true witness” to the steadfastness of his Father’s good will; while under the covenant of grace obedient pilgrims gain assurance of their forgiveness and their adoption as sons of God in Christ.[42]

II

John Bunyan is remembered chiefly as a towering figure in the literary history of England and in the development of devotional literature. But he also deserves to be considered as a primary example of the shift in English federalism away from the earlier synthesis (in the works of Perkins, Ames, and Downham) of the monopleuric and dipleuric views of covenant toward the monopleuric and predestinarian side of the system. Continuity between Bunyan and Downham appears, however, both in the description of the casuistry as warfare and in the denial of outward signs of assurance.[43] Bunyan’s reformulation of federalism represents a reaction against legalisitic covenant theology: it is, in other words, a movement away from the center toward the antinomian side of the spectrum, which nevertheless avoids the pitfalls of true antinomianism as described by Fisher.[44]

The entirety of Bunyan’s life was a succession of cases of conscience. Like Christian of The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan strove toward the goal of Mount Zion against manifold temptations. His spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, contains many parallels with the Progress, not the least of which is its concluding citation of Hebrews 12:22, “‘Ye are come unto Mount Zion, to the City of the living God…’ These words also have oft since this time been great refreshment to my Spirit.”[45]

Grace Abounding also gives an account of Bunyan’s intellectual pilgrimage. His first great theological confrontation occurred in 1656 when he attacked the teachings of Edward Burrough, a Quaker, in Some Gospel Truths Opened. Shortly thereafter, certainly before the publication of The Doctrine of Law and Grace Unfolded (1659), he chanced upon a copy of Luther’s commentary on Galatians. Bunyan recounts the profound effect of the work on his thought: for the first time he realized the function of the law in temptation. From his reading of Luther Bunyan gained a strong distaste for legalism and a profound sense of the meaning of Christian freedom. “I do prefer this book of Mr. Luther upon the Galathians,” Bunyan states, “(excepting the Holy Bible) before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded Conscience.”[46]

Indeed, it was in these years that Bunyan began to reevaluate the relationship of covenantal theology to casuistical piety.

Bunyan conceived his resolution of this problem of covenant and conscience as the establishment of an inner dialectic between the absolute and voluntaristic elements of Puritan theology. Such a dialectic appears quite clearly in the casuistical dynamic of The Pilgrim’s Progress where Christian, though one of God’s elect, must make for himself the decision to flee the worldly city. He is freed by God’s promise but remains subject to temptation and to problems of conscience. Bunyan’s works continually bear witness to this dialectic: in his dissertation on The Work of Jesus Christ as Advocate he could emphasize the inalterable pattern of God’s electing purpose, while in his catechism Bunyan could stress with equal force the necessity of continual self-examination and repentance.[47]

Even so, Bunyan’s story of Christian begins with a problem of conscience and the simple case-question, “What shall I do to be saved?” while the clear parallel between Bunyan’s story and the Gospel episode of the rich young man forces the reader toward the thought, “With men it is impossible, but not with God.”[48] The Slough of Despond into which Christian stumbles shortly after the beginning of his pilgrimage presents graphipally the problems which beset the first steps toward the new life and the first function of the law prior to justification. “As the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place.”[49] In the Slough Christian has come to the point of utter humility and helplessness necessary to the working of grace: he desires salvation but recognizes the impossibility of his situation.

This impossibility confronting the man who hopes to save himself can also be stated in terms of an antithesis between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. Christian meets on the one hand Mr. Worldly Wiseman and Mr. Legality and on the other, Evangelist. A contrast is created between Legality which rids no one of condemnation but only avoids the law temporarily through self-deception and the Gospel which alone sets men free from the burden of sin.[50] As Bunyan argued in The Doctrine of Law and Grace the first question of self-examination proposed to the soul is “Which of these two covenants art thou under,” the covenant of works under which all men are born or the covenant of grace into which some are born anew through regeneration and conversion.[51] As in Downham’s system, the complete incompatibility of the covenant of works with the covenant of grace becomes a ground of assurance.

The passage of the Wicket-gate, the beginning of pilgrimage in earnest, marks a change in Christian’s image of himself. At the gate he had announced his presence by acknowledging his lowliness and need of grace:

Here is a poor burdened sinner. I come from the city of Destruction, but am going to Mount Zion, that I may be delivered from the wrath to come.[52]

Having overcome his deepest sense of condemnation under the law in his full conversion to the way of the Gospel, Christian will subsequently say,

I am come from the City of Destruction, and am going to Mount Zion…. My name, now, Christian; but my name at the first was Graceless.[53]

We have not heard this name before. We have always known our pilgrim as Christian. But it is also clear that Bunyan has not made a slip of the pen. “Graceless” signifies not the former name of the pilgrim but the pilgrim’s post-conversion view of his unregenerate nature. By the name “Graceless” Bunyan manifests the change that has taken place within Christian, a change of which Christian has become aware through self-examination.[54]

The characterization of pilgrimage as warfare appears clearly in the subsequent events recorded by Bunyan. Although Christian represents the elect of God, his way is not easy. Surely he now confronts adversaries with greater certainty of heart and mind but the voluntaristic aspect of his covenant relationship with God will bring him into conflict with still greater adversaries.[55] “When the soul is thus wrought upon,” writes Bunyan in a statement directly reflecting Downham’s concern for the regenerate Christian, “it must be sure to look for the very gates of hell to be set open against it with all their might and force to destroy it.”[56] Even so, when Christian reaches the palace called “Beautiful” he receives the armour of God as his support and stay during his passage through the Valley of Humiliation where he will meet and do battle with the fiend Apollyon.

Parallels between Bunyan’s narrative and Downham’s casuistry now become more apparent. Apollyon’s purpose is to increase his dominion by forcing the elect to relinquish their allegiance to God. The fiend assaults first the very basis of Christian’s strength, his conversion and his profession of service to God. Why should conversion be final—why not return to the camp of God’s enemy? Failing in this attack, Apollyon seeks Christian’s life, thereby revealing his true intention, the death of God’s creatures.[57] In Bunyan’s allegory the inward warfare of Downham’s treatise and the struggle of conscience presented by the Pauline text can be drawn in concerte images. The devil, the world, and the flesh appear as Apollyon, the smoke and hideous noises of the Valley of the Shadow, the Giant Despair, the riches of Vanity Fair, the many personal failings of the pilgrim. The most powerful inward weapon—again in agreement with Downham—is All-prayer.[58]

Characters of the allegory like Mr. Money-love, Mr. By-ends, Mr. Hold-the-World, Talkative, and Ignorance raise the problems of moral casuistry. Talkative, for example, illustrates the assault of specious religiosity on the minds and hearts of the faithful. He knows the language of theology, not the power of God. Christian must test all words about religion against the dictum, “The Soul of Religion is the practick part.” A saving faith finds its reflection in abhorrence of sin rather than in empty outcry against iniquity, in the inward working of God’s grace rather than in “Great knowledge of Gospel Mysteries.”[59] Ignorance claims to accept Christ as Saviour and to believe in the doctrine of justification. Yet he only recites dogma, hypocritically, faithlessly, for his speech shows no saving application of its principles. There is no conviction of sin, no joy in the free gift of grace—only Ignorance’s vociferous self-justification. In this case of conscience assurance derives from the practical working of grace, “the true effects of saving Faith in this righteousness of Christ, which is to bow and win over the heart to God in Christ, to love his Name, his Word, Ways, and people.”[60] In Downham’s more explicit casuistry, Talkative and Ignorance appear as personal vices, as temptations to misuse religious knowledge.[61]

According to Bunyan the Christian’s task throughout life is to enquire into himself and discern his relationship to the covenants. Under the covenant of grace the saints strive not to do good works but to rely on Christ as their one hope. Each sin, each temptation should lead the Christian man to deny his own powers even as the Christian warfare leads men of the new covenant “to press the more earnestly toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”[62] All. such are given the gift of faith inwardly by the Spirit and are borne heavenward in the love of God.[63] As described in Bunyan’s The Doctrine of Law and Grace this dynamic heavenward “progress” appears more certain of result and less troubled in passage than the progress of the pilgrim: here the absolute power of God’s grace in the foedus monopleuron becomes the focus of a reinterpretation of the problem of conscience. “If thou wilt…lay hold of Christ…come to him as the basest in the world, more fit to be damned.” In the covenant of grace and its application through conscience, “a believer seeth he shall stand, if Christ’s doings and sufferings stand…for God dealeth with him through Christ.”[64] The focus of covenant theology and of casuistry is now the federal headship of Christ:

Christ Jesus was looked upon of God, and should also be looked on by us, as that common or publick person, in whom all the whole body of the Elect are always to be considered and reckoned; that we fulfilled the Law by him, rose from the dead by him, got the Victory over sin, death, the devil, and hell, by him….[65]

In terms of the structure of orthodox seventeenth century federalism, Bunyan allows only an eternal pactum salutis according to which the Father designates the Son as Mediator in return for the Son’s promise to make satisfaction for the sins of man and to create a new righteousness in which to clothe the elect. Continental federalism and several English thinkers, Richard Baxter among them, had offset the extremely deterministic implications of the pactum salutis by balancing it with a temporally dispensed covenant of grace in which the sinner was a party. But Bunyan chose to follow the covenantal theory of the antinomians, Saltmarsh and Crisp, arguing that the parties in covenant are God the Father and Christ, the representative of the elect sinner.[66] As his exegetical ground, Bunyan emphasized the use of the singular, “seed,” in Galatians 3:16–17. There the covenant is said to be not between God and Abraham but between God and Abraham’s “seed”—which Bunyan understands to be Christ alone. Lacking in this doctrinal structure is the voluntaristic conception of covenant as a mutual pact and agreement between God and man.[67] Against the antinomians, however, Bunyan retains the dynamic of the foedus dipleuron in his elaborate casuistry. Christian warfare remains a central issue of piety as Bunyan shows with considerable emphasis that man’s inward striving is not toward but under the covenant.[68] Bunyan has safeguarded the system from the spectre of inward, spiritualized works made in payment for God’s continuing grace, but has paid the price of losing the federalist sense of God and man as parties in covenant.

III

In contrast to Bunyan, Richard Baxter saw the greatest threat to English federalism not in nomistic theology but in antinomianism. Baxter’s first major systematic statement against the dangers of antinomianism, libertinism and fanaticism was his Confession (1655).[69] There he points out the “Truth in the middle” between these “contrary Extreams” and adumbrates the position he would later set forth in depth in his Catholike Theologie and his Methodus theologiae christianae.[70] Baxter would also balance these doctrinal works with a system of practical theology, his Christian Directory. In this latter work, he noted his continuity with earlier English theologians: “As Aniesius’ ‘Cases of Conscience’ are to his ‘Medulla,’ the second and practical part of Theology, so is this to a ‘Methodus Theologiae.’“ Baxter also mentions with approval Downham’s Christian Warfare.[71]

Baxter’s entire system, doctrinal and practical, coalesces around the concept of the divine covenanting. Under the general term foedus gratiae, argues Baxter, three distinct promises are to be considered. The first is God’s promise to redeem the world by means of the Messiah. This promise Baxter explicated in a typical historical discussion of the various dispensations of God’s grace from Adam to Christ. The second promise considered under the term foedus gratiae is the covenant made in the Redeemer himself, which is to say the pactum salutis. Third, and of greatest significance to Baxter’s system, foedus gratiae indicates the baptismal covenant or the promise of our salvation as accomplished in Christ.[72] Even so, at the beginning of his Christian Directory, Baxter describes the “Grand Directions” or central cases of conscience as “the explications of the essentials of Christianity, or of the baptismal covenant, even our relation-duties to God the Father, Son (in several parts of his relation), and of the Holy Ghost.”[73]

Consent to the baptismal covenant is the making of a Christian: faith in “the infallible Revelation of God” appears first as a command or condition of the covenant.[74] Yet Baxter will not undermine the utterly gracious character of salvation: he therefore formulates a doctrine of faith which draws both on the monopleuric conception of covenant and the scholastic view of faith as habitus infusa. “When we know it is to be thus required of us, and hear in the Gospel the Reasons which should persuade us, then the Holy Spirit moveth us by his Influx to believe and concent, where God and man are conjunct agents, but man subordinate to God.”[75] Faith is wrought by the Holy Spirit but, once begun, becomes with repentance and “sincere Holiness” one of “our own acts” in observance of the covenant.[76]

This view of covenant and conversion provides the key to understanding Baxter’s shift of the federal system toward the side of nomism. Unlike Downham and Bunyan, Baxter began his casuistry with a “call to the unconverted.” He stresses the activity of the human will and the need for the individual to decide to follow Christ. The underlying question of the casuistry remains ‘whether a man be converted and under the covenant of grace,’ but the cases of conscience now begin, not with the Christian already under the covenant and searching for signs of election, but with the nominal Christian baptized as an infant but in need of true adult acceptance of the covenant.[77] Although Baxter has an important place among the grounding principles of his system for the pactum salutes, he deemphasizes its relation to the believer countering the speculative movement of the antinomian system with a practical thrust: the emphasis of his federalism is upon instrumental causality and its effects rather than on first causes.[78]

Nevertheless, Baxter can move easily within the orthodox Reformed paradigm, juxtaposing the ante-lapsarian covenant of works and its demand of perfect obedience with the covenant of grace effective in various dispensations since Adam and its condition of faith. He can also insist that the covenant of grace requires no works other than those performed by Christ in satisfaction of the law.[79] These affirmations stand in tension with Baxter’s assertions to the effect that works will be counted at the judgment as well as faith and that perseverance in faith cannot be severed from perseverance in obedience.[80] Even though Christ’s merit in fulfilling the “law of works” frees believers from God’s anger,

the redeemed are not masterless, but still have a Lord, who hath now a double right to govern them: and this governor giveth them a law: and this law requireth us to do good works…. Such works, therefore, are rewardable according to the distributive justice of the law of grace, by which we must be judged.[81]

In an attempt to resolve these tensions, Baxter makes a distinction within his doctrine of the foedus gratiae:

The New Covenant is Christs Law of Grace; his Instrument by which he giveth Title or Right to the Benefits promised, and conveyeth Right to the Fruits of his Sacrifice and Merits; And his Law by which he governeth the Church as a Saviour, in order to recovery or Salvation.[82]

Because of our sinful condition we need more than the law of nature to lead us to Christ: we need also the command of revelation or the “remedying law” by which, as in covenant, we are made a “free universal Deed or Gift of Christ first, and of Pardon, Spirit, and Glory in and by him.” The Spirit renews the will while the preached Word invites men to “believe and consent.”

This covenant is…free…for being conditional: For the Condition is not the purchase, procurement by efficient causality, or anyway a proper cause of the Gift as given, but only a dispositive cause of our reception of it, and of the Gift as received: It is a removens prohibens.[83]

The line separating Baxter’s proclamation of a gracious but strictly legal covenant from an unabated nomism is a line of pure scholastic logic derived from his study of late medieval thinkers like Scotus, Durandus, and D’Ailly. The covenant must be of grace, since finite man cannot pay the price for sin. The covenant must also be of law, since it belongs to the ordained power of God in the governance of the world according to his righteous will. Both in his theory of covenant and in his doctrine of atonement, Baxter draws on the Scotist concept of an acceptilatio of obedience in place of the full price of salvation. The pactum salutes as effected in Christ is in fact the “Law of Redemption” in accordance with which God accepts the meritorious but finite death of Christ as payment for an infinite debt and as the ground of his redemption of mankind; while the “Law of Grace” as effected in the believer is a necessary obedience accomplished under the grace of Christ and the power of the Spirit by which God in his distributive justice accepts the removal of all prohibition standing in the way of man’s continuance in grace.[84] In Christ the Christian man is freed for obedience.

Christian freedom, therefore, is a liberty from sin, not a liberty to sin. A primary purpose of the casuistry is the defence of this liberty against the devil’s attempt to use it as an enticement to sin. Baxter lists twelve “temptations to particular Sins; with Directions for preservation and remedy;” forty-eight temptations and directions relating to “the Tempter’s Method in applying prepared bait;” twenty more temptations to “draw us off from duty” with their corresponding directions.[85] Here in particular Baxter’s fear of antinomianism is apparent: without law, Christian liberty easily becomes an excuse for sin. “True godliness,” he wrote, “is…the only way to perfect happiness.”[86]

The “directions” of which Baxter speaks guide the soul during its earthly pilgrimage, demonstrate the depth of its need and show Christ as the source of remedy. Believers must become “serious in the service of God” and “seek…first God’s kingdom,” denying themselves, forsaking all for Christ—or, if failing in this, recognize themselves to be in a “state of death.”[87] After setting forth his directions to the unconverted and the weak, Baxter comes to his “Grand Directions” for the life of the converted and committed Christian. Here the theological framework implicit in the previous directions of Baxter’s casuistry becomes more apparent. The purpose now is to “direct” believers in the “exercise of grace” and in the life of adherence to the way of God, an integral part of which is theological study. To the end that believers might gain “a true, orderly, and practical knowledge of God, in his several attributes and relations” Baxter presents a detailed chart describing God first “as in Himself” and then “as related to his creatures.” This knowledge of “every attribute and relation” of God is saving knowledge to be learned not extensively but intensively and for the sake of “the measure of its holy effects upon the heart.”[88] It behooves believers to study the will and the perfectons of God in so far as these are the ground of his law and his law the pattern of our obedience.

It follows from these considerations that Baxter’s casuistry is far less militant than the casuistry of Downham and Bunyan, Rather than gain assurance from the continuing battle against the devil, the world, and our flesh, Baxter would find assurance in the progress of the human spirit toward ever more consistent good works. The sheer fact of temptation does not provide as positive a sign of election as it did for Downham, nor does ‘Christian warfare’ provide as sure a description of the regenerate life as it did for Bunyan. Rather than a militant this is an almost muscular Christianity in which the believer moves past the elementary problems of sin to a complex of directions “for the government of the thoughts,” “of the passions,” “of the senses…the eyes,… the ear,…the taste and appetite;” “directions against sinful Excess of Sleep” and against “Sinful Dreams;” directions for the government of the tongue.”[89]

Despite this sometimes extreme counter to the antinomian, “hyper-Calvinism” of his day, Baxter can still avoid formulating a syllogismus practicus on the one hand or violating the Reformed doctrine of predestination on the other. Our works are meritorious only in a very restricted sense: “our very doing is our receiving; for it is [God] that ‘giveth us both to will and to do,’ by his operation in us; even ‘he, without whom we can do nothing.’“ Even so God does not look at our works but at our sincerity and piety, not at “the external part of the work” but at “the heart of him that doth it.”[90] Baxter can affirm that God elects freely and not on the ground of foreseen merit:

Gods Executive Election in time is twofold: 1. By giving one man converting effectual grace which he giveth not to another. 2. By taking consequently the Converted person to be one of his Adopted and justified Ones, as his choice peculiar treasure.[91]

Similarly, Baxter limits atonement according to its efficiency for the elect while affirming its sufficiency for all sin—at least under the terms of the divine acceptilatio. Baxter, thus, retains much of the federalist structure: he affirms the utterly gracious character of salvation, the priority of divine grace, and the presence—under the conditions of God’s grace and saving will—of a mutual pact and agreement, a foedus dipleuron between God and man. Nevertheless the price has been considerable: he has let go the objective sufficiency of Christ’s death seemingly as a corollary of the divine acceptation of the believer’s good works; and he has lost the dynamic casuistry of the sinner struggling to attain an utterly unmerited assurance. Finally, Baxter has allowed the sense of God’s sovereign will to recede into the presuppositional background to the point that it can hardly be said to pervade his system as it had Downham’s.

Over the course of the seventeenth century, neither the detailed delineation of dangers to the federal system, as in Fisher’s Marrow, nor the perspicuous codification of the system in the Westminster standards perserved English Refdrmed theology from the internal pressures of antinomianism and legalism. In moving away from the delicate theological balance achieved by Perkins, Ames, and later by Downham, the thinkers of the second half of the century did more to show the weaknesses of the system than to preserve its integrity. For if Bunyan and Baxter represent the limits to which the federal structure could be stretched, they also delineate the points beyond which Reformed theology cannot go without becoming on the one hand a metaphysical determinism and on the other a pious voluntarism. Polarization of federalism along these lines would ultimately lead to the loss of the federalist dynamic and the demise of that delicate synthesis of faith and obedience, doctrine and piety that characterized the English Reformed or Puritan covenant theology.

Notes

1. A Ramist dichotomy between faith and obedience was observed by William Ames in his Medulla s.s. theologiae (Amsterdam, 1623) and is also present in Amandus Polanus, Syntagma theologiae christianae (Hanover, 1609; Geneva, 1626) and Johannes Wollebius, Compendium theologiae christianae (Basel, 1626). The general character of Reformed and Puritan piety has been discussed in August Lang, Puritanismus und Pietismus (Neukirchen, 1941), William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938), and Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (reprinted, Boston, 1961); older but still worthy of consideration in view of its sense of the relationship between pietism and the federal theology is Heinrich Heppe, Geschichte des Pietismus und der Mystik in der reformirten Kirche (Leiden, 1891). The development of systems of moral casuistry parallel to the complete system of doctrine appears to be an English phenomenom: on this balance, particularly in Ames and Baxter, see William Orme’s Life of Baxter, vol.I in Orme’s edition of The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter (London, 1830), pp.543–544.
2. See Edward Leigh, A Systeme or Body of Divinity (London, 1662), Book 1, ch. i (p. 4) and Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory, in Works, ed. Orme, vol.II, pp. viii-ix.
3. In The Workes of that Famous Minister of Christ in the University of Cambridge, Mr. William Perkins (Cambridge, 1612–1619), vol. I, pp. 9-114; and see my article, “Perkins’ A Golden Chaine: Predestinarian System or Schematized Ordo Salutis?” in The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol.IX, no. 1 (April, 1978), pp.69–81.
4. Perkins, Workes, I, p. 165, col. 2C.
5. Ames balanced the system of doctrine presented in the Medulla with a system of casuistry, his De conscientia et eius iure vel casibus (Amsterdam, 1630), trs. as Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof (London, 1639).
6. Perkins, Workes, I, pp. 3l, col. 2–32, col. 1; p. 70 (A Golden Chaine, chapters 19 and 31); Ames, Medulla, I.x.9–11; xxiv.10–22; xxx.16–17; xxxviii-xxxix. On the covenant theology see: Jens Moeller, “The Beginnings of Puritan Covenant Theology,” in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, XIV (1963), pp.46–67; Richard Greaves, “The Origins and Early Development of English Covenant Thought,” in The Historian, XXI (1968), pp.21–35. A foundational study emphasizing the New England theology is Perry Miller, “The Marrow of Modern Divinity,” reissued as chapter 3 of his Errand Into the Wilderness (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1956). George Marsden, “Perry Miller’s Rehabilitation of the Puritans: A Critique,” in Church History, XXXIX (1970), pp.91–105 needs to be studied along with any reading of Miller.
7. On the centrality of conversion to the Puritan experience, see Alan Simpson, Puritanism in Old and New England (Chicago, 1955), pp. 2-6,22–25, 32–36. Simpson unfortunately does not elaborate on the relationship of covenant and conversion. Also, Norman Pettit, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life (New Haven, 1966). Pettit drives too much of a wedge between English Puritan and continental Reformed theology: more attention needs to be drawn to the relation of preparationism to the first use of the law and to the sense of the demands of the Gospel and of the preached Word in Reformed theology. A solid critique of Simpson and Pettit is found in Lynn Baird Tipson, “The Development of a Puritan Understanding of Conversion,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale, 1972), pp.319–320, 327–331. Also see Haller, pp. 83-127.
8. Perkins, A Case of Conscience, in Workes, pp. 421-438.
9. After Cocceius produced his Summa doctrinae de foedere et testamento dei, he demonstrated that his covenantal theology could be fit into a more traditional systematic model, his Summa theologiae ex scriptura repetita (Amsterdam, 1665). Franz Burman, Synopsis theologiae, & speciatim oeconomiae foederum Dei (Utrecht, 1671) Francis Turretin, Institutio theologiae elencticae (Geneva, 1679–1685) furthered the synthesis of covenantal with the earlier Reformed theology while Hermann Witsius, De Oeconomia foederum Dei cum hominibus (Leeuwarden, 1685) and Exercitationes sacrae in Symbolum quod Apostolorum dicitur, et in orationem Dominicam (Amsterdam, 3rd edition, 1697) continued the covenantal line to the end of the century. In England, the appearance of Fisher’s Marrow, like the publication of James Ussher’s A Body of Divinitie (London, 1645), was a theological prelude to the issuance of the Westminster standards.
10. A sketch of Downham’s life and a list of his works is available in the Dictionary of National Biography. Note that his name was also spelled “Downame.”
11. The Christian Warfare wherein is first generally shewed the malice, power, and politike stratagems of the spiritual enemies of our salvation, Satan and his assistants the world and our flesh (London, 1604). A second edition appeared in 1608 and a “second part” in 1611. The third edition corrected and enlarged to four parts dates from 1612. All citations in the present essay refer to the fourth edition, London, 1634. Among the many works of casuistry Thomas Brooks’ two treatises, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (London, 1652) and Heaven on Earth: A Treatise of Christian Assurance (London, 1654) deserve to be mentioned for comparison with Downham’s work.
12. William Haller, Liberty and Reformation in the Puritan Revolution (New York, 1955), p. 169.
13. Moeller, p. 58.
14. The Sacred Doctrine of Divinitie (London, 1599), pp. 3, 7-9.
15. The Summe of Sacred Ditinitie, briefly and methodically propounded, …more largely and clearly handled (London, 1630?), cf. Book II, chs. i-iv (hereinafter cited as Summe). Even in this form the treatise does not list an author on the title page. Downham authorized its publication and provided it with a introductory address. He was regarded as the author during his own lifetime: cf. Walwyns Just Defence Against the Aspersions Cast upon Him (London, 1649), p. 9 in Haller and Davies (eds.) The Leveller Tracts, 1647–1653 (New York, 1944), p. 362. The date of the Summe is also uncertain, 1630 being suggested by Pollard and Redgrave in their Short-title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, & Ireland, and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640 (London, 1948).
16. Theodore Beza, A Briefe and Pithie Summe of the Christian Faith, made in the form of a Confession (London, 1565) and Wolfgang Musculus, Common Places of Christian Religion (London, 1563; 1578).
17. In addition to the works of Perkins and Ames already cited, see: Thomas Cartwright, Christian Religion: Substantially, Methodically, Plainlie, and Profitablie Treated (London, 1611); Dudley Fenner, The Groundes of Religion set down in Questions and Answers (Middleburgh, 1587), Certaine Godly and Learned Treatises (Edinburgh, 1592), and Sacra theologia sive veritas qua est secundum pietatem ad unicae et verae methodi leges descripta (Geneva, 1589).
18. Cf. John von Rohr, “Covenant and Assurance in Early English Puritanism,” in Church History, XXXIV (1965), pp. 200-202.
19. Summe, pp. 282-283, citing Heb 12:24 and Mal 3:1.
20. Ibid., p. 283.
21. Ibid., pp. 302-303.
22. Ibid., pp. 303, 307.
23. Ibid., pp. 307, 308.
24. Ibid.; cf. The Christian Warfare, pp. 272-274.
25. Summe, p. 309-310, citing Heb 13:8. Downham’s interpretation of the covenant of works is quite typical and, indeed, would be embodied in the Westminster Confession (chapter VII, sections ii and iii). For a general view of the covenant of works and its place in Reformed theology see Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, Set out and Illustrated from the Sources, trs. G. T. Thomson (London, 1950), chapters XIII-XIV (pp. 281-319).
26. Summe, pp. 419-420.
27. Ibid., pp. 427, 441.
28. The Christian Warfare, dedicatory epistle.
29. Summe, pp. 443-448, 454–455; cf. Westininster Confession, XI.i,v; in Philip Schaff, ed. Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols. (New York, 1877; fourth edition, 1919), vol. III, pp. 626-627.
30. Summe, pp. 457-458; cf. von Rohr, p. 198.
31. Summe, pp. 459-460.
32. Ibid., pp. 462-467, 486–487.
33. Ibid., pp. 487-488.
34. The Christian Warfare, pp. 1086-1087.
35. Cf. John Calvin, A Commentarie upon the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romanes, trs. Christopher Rosdell (London, 1583): the comment on Romans 7:15 reads in part, “The godly…fight against their nature, and their nature fighteth against them…. This is that Christian warrefare, betweene the fleshe and the spirits, of the whiche Paule speaketh to the Galathians (Gal 5:17.).” Puritan casuistry rose directly out of the Reformed interpretation of the warfare of flesh and spirit in Romans 7 as a description of the regenerate life.
36. Two Elizabethan Diaries by Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward, edited by Marshall M. Knappen (Chicago, 1953), p. 66.
37. Cf. Moeller, pp. 48-50. Moeller is speaking of Bullinger and Tyndale but the statement applies to later Engish theology as well.
38. The Christian Warfare, p. 489.
39. Ibid., “Epistle Dedicatorie.”
40. Ibid., p. 3, col. 2.
41. Ibid., pp. 5-10.
42. Ibid., p. 208, col.2—p. 210.
43. Bunyan’s theology has been admirably analyzed and appraised by Richard Greaves in his John Bunyan (Grand Rapids, 1969). On the thought of The Pilgrim’s Progress see Maurice Hussey, “The Humanism of John Bunyan,” in The Pelican Guide to English Literature, vol.3, edited by Boris Ford (Baltimore, 1960), pp. 219-232. The metaphor of Christian life as warfare appears particularly in Bunyan’s allegory The Holy War: in The Whole Works of John Bunyan, accurately reprinted from the author’s own editions, with editorial prefaces, notes, and life of Bunyan, by George Offor, 3 vols. (London, 1862), vol. III, pp. 245-373 (hereinafter cited as “Offor”).
44. Fisher, Marrow, e.g., p. 37; cf. Tobias Crisp, Christ Alone Exalted (London, 1643), part I, pp. 80-83 for the antinomian position.
45. Grace Abounding (1666) in Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners and The Pilgrim’s Progress from this World to that which is to Come, edited with an introduction by Roger Sharrock (London, 1966), sections 263–264 (p. 84): hereinafter cited as “Grace Abounding”; The Pilgrim’s Progress will be cited from the same edition as “Progress.”
46. Grace Abounding, sec. 129–130 (pp. 42-43). Bunyan refers to A Commentarie of M. Doctor Martin Luther upon the Epistle of S. Paul to the Galathians, first collected and gathered word by word out of his preaching (London, 1575). Subsequent editions appeared in 1577, 1580, 1588 (two impressions), 1603, 1615, 1616, 1635: this was by far the most popular of the works of Luther published in England. On Bunyan’s use of Luther see Greaves, pp. 101-102, 106–107, 112, 115, 118.
47. Progress, pp. 150-152; also, The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate (1668) in Offor, I, pp. 151-201, particularly pp. 163-164, 174–175, and Instruction for the Ignorant: Being a Salve to Cure that Great Want of Knowledge, which so much reigns both in young and old, particularly the questions addressed to children, in Offor, II, p. 679, col. 2.
48. Progress, pp. 153-154.
49. Ibid., p. 151.
50. Ibid., pp. 152-155.
51. The Doctrine of Law and Grace Unfolded, in 0ffor, I, pp. 492-575 (hereinafter cited as “Law and Grace”) on this point see p. 555. The reader should also be aware of the critical edition of this work edited, with an introduction, by Richard Greaves (N.Y., Oxford University Press: 1976). Also, cf. Grace Abounding, sec. 36, 186 (pp. 16, 60); and Greaves, pp. 99-102.
52. Progress, p. 159.
53. Ibid., p. 176.
54. Cf. Frank Mott Harrison, John Bunyan: A Story of his Life (London, 1964), pp. 156-157.
55. Progress, pp. 169-173, 185–188.
56. Law and Grace, p. 546, col. 2.
57. Progress, p. 186.
58. Ibid., pp.189–191; cf. Grace Abounding, sec. 175–181 (pp. 56-58) where prayer itself becomes a case of conscience.
59. Progress, pp. 203-205.
60. Ibid., pp. 256-259. In all this, cf. the personified sins like Incredulity, No-Truth, Stand-to-lies, False-peace, and Atheism given positions as Aldermen in Mansoul by Diabolus, in The Holy War, ch. ii, in Offor, III, pp. 260-262.
61. The Christian Warfare; Part IV, book ii, ch. 14–16 for hinderances placed in the way of right thinking by the flesh (pp. 1059-1072) and II.i.8–12 for the contrast of spiritual with worldly wisdom. Chapter 12 deals specifically with the vice of Talkative, “unfruitful knowledge of God” which “hurteth us in respect of our soules” (pp. 399-402).
62. Law and Grace, p. 573, col. 1.
63. Ibid., pp. 519-520.
64. Ibid., pp. 559, col.1; 551, col. 1; cf. Progress, pp. 251-255, Hopefull’s discourse on conversion and imputation of Christ’s righteousness and cf. the emphasis on the power of Christ alone to save from “backslidings” in The Holy War, ch. 18, in Offor, III, p. 371, col. 1.
65. Grace Abounding, sec. 234 (p. 75).
66. Law and Grace, pp. 522-523; Greaves, p. 103.
67. Law and Grace, pp. 521-522; cf. von Rohr, p. 196.
68. Ibid., “On the Use of the New Covenant,” pp. 559-566.
69. Rich: Baxter’s Confession of his Faith, Especially concerning the Interest of Repentance and sincere Obedience to Christ, in our Justification & Salvation (London, 1655).
70. Richard Baxter’s Catholick Theologie: plain, pure, peaceable: for pacification of the dogmatical Word-warriors. In three Books (London, 1675). In its eight hundred folio pages, replete with references to such late medieval thinkers as Durandus, Aegidus Romanus, Petrus Aureolus, Gregory of Rimini, Ockham, Scotus, Pierre D’Ailly, Thomas Bradwardine, this work is Baxter’s English “summa”—and, if peaceable, it is often far from plain. In his Methodus theologiae christianae (London, 1681) Baxter surveys his theology less apologetically but at equally great length.
71. The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, edited by William Orme. 23 vols. (London, 1830), vol. II, pp. v-vi.
72. Methodus, III.i, explication 13: “Iterum Lectorum monendum duco, ne tria distincta Promissa vel foedera, sub nomine generali [foederis Gratiae] confundat; viz 1. Promissionem de mundo Redimendo per Messiam: 2. Foedus vel promissionem ipsi Redemptori factam: 3. Foedus Baptismi vel promissionem salutis nobis per Christum factam….” On the pactum salutis, cf. Catholike Theologie, II.iv.69.
73. Practical Works, II, p. vi.
74. Catholick Theologie, fol. A3, recto; cf. A Christian Directory, in Practical Works, II, pp. 134-135.
75. Catholike Theologie, II.v.72.
76. Ibid., II.ix.166.
77. Practical Works, II, pp. 6-88.
78. Cf. Catholick Theologie, II.iv.69; A Christian Directory, loc cit., p. 134: Baxter speaks of the “object” of “a holy life” as “the eternal God himself; the infallible Truth, the only satisfactory good” not speculatively, however, but “condescending and appearing to us, in the mysterious, but suitable glass of a Mediator.” Baxter generally examines doctrine in terms of its practical effects on human life. This does not mean that he could not or would not deal with speculative theological issues: the first book of his Catholick Theology shows his mastery of the most subtle metaphysical points.
79. Confession, pp. 105-106; Catholick Theology, Book II; and Methodus, Book II on the theology of the covenants; Catholick Theologie, II.iii-iv on the work of Christ. On Baxter’s theology see Geoffrey Nuttall, Richard Baxter and Philip Doddridge: A Study in Tradition (London, 1951); also W. Lawrence Highfill, “Faith and Works in the Ethical Theory of Richard Baxter,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Duke University, 1954), and George Park Fisher, “The Theology of Richard Baxter” and its sequel, “The Writings of Richard Baxter,” in Bibliotheca Sacra, IX (1852), pp. 135-169, 300–328. There is, to my knowledge, no full-scale study of Baxter’s doctrinal theology.
80. Highfill, pp. 68-72, citing in particular Baxter’s Aphorismes of Justification (The Hague, 1655), pp. 56-57, 126–127.
81. Practical Works, II, p. 321.
82. Catholick Theologie, II.iv.60.
83. Ibid., II.iv.64.
84. Compare ibid., II.iii.50–53 with A Christian Directory, in Practical Works, II, pp. 320-324. There is, of course, a marked resemblance between Baxter’s theory of atonement and the so-called “governmental” theory propounded by Hugo Grotius earlier in the century, and Baxter may have been influenced somewhat by Grotius. Nevertheless both Baxter’s great knowledge of the scholastics and his direct reference to Pierre D’Ailly at the point of the development of,his doctrine of the Atonement (Catholick Theologie, II.iii.50–53, marginal citation of “Alliac. Camerar.” = Petrus de Alliaco, Cardinal Cameracensem) manifest the immediate origin of his theory.
85. A Christian Directory, in Practical Works, II, pp. 276-320.
86. Ibid., p. 134.
87. Ibid., pp. 32-33.
88. Ibid., p. 199.
89. Ibid., vol.III, pp. 172-612; cf. vol. II, pp. 258-319, where Baxter does speak of the “Christian warfare,” but not nearly so militantly as either Downham or Bunyan.
90. Ibid., II, p. 323.
91. Catholick Theologie, I.xvi.450, 663.