Top 121 Quotes & Sayings by Richard Baxter

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English priest Richard Baxter.

Last updated on December 21, 2024.

Richard Baxter was an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymnodist, theologian, and controversialist. Dean Stanley called him "the chief of English Protestant Schoolmen". After some false starts, he made his reputation by his ministry at Kidderminster in Worcestershire, and at around the same time began a long and prolific career as theological writer. After the Restoration he refused preferment, while retaining a non-separatist Presbyterian approach, and became one of the most influential leaders of the Nonconformists, spending time in prison. His views on justification and sanctification are somewhat controversial and unconventional within the Calvinist tradition because his teachings seem, to some, to undermine salvation by faith, in that he emphasizes the necessity of repentance and faithfulness.

English - Priest | November 12, 1615 - December 8, 1691

Source: Wikipedia

You may know God, but not comprehend Him.

Richard Baxter

I preached as never sure to preach again, And as a dying man to dying men.

Richard Baxter

Unity in things Necessary, Liberty in things Unnecessary, and Charity in all.

Richard Baxter

If they can see you love them, you can say anything to them.

Richard Baxter

Keep up you conjugal love in constant heat and vigor.

Richard Baxter

Be careful how you spend your time: Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of.

Richard Baxter

Dangers bring fears, and fears more dangers bring.

Richard Baxter

While doubt cannot be expelled, it can be subdued.

Richard Baxter

We are ignorant of things necessary, because we learn things superfluous and unnecessary

Richard Baxter

My Lord, I have nothing to do in this World, but to seek and serve thee; I have nothing to do with a Heart and its affections, but to breathe after thee. I have nothing to do with my Tongue and Pen, but to speak to thee, and for thee, and to publish thy Glory and thy Will. What have I to do with all my Reputation, and Interest in my Friends, but to increase thy Church, and propagate thy holy Truth and Service? What have I to do with my remaining Time, even these last and languishing hours, but to look up unto thee, and wait for thy Grace, and thy Salvation?

Richard Baxter

It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good; but well reading of a few.

Richard Baxter

Most (Christians) have an ungrounded trust in Christ, hoping that He will pardon, justify and save them, while the world has their hearts, and they live to the ?esh. And this trust they take as justifying faith.

Richard Baxter

This life was not intended to be the place of our perfection, but the preparation for it.

Richard Baxter

If life be long, I will be glad, Tthat I may long obey; If short, yet why should I be sad, To soar to endless day?

Richard Baxter

Of all the preaching in the world, I hate that preaching which tends to make the hearers laugh, or to move their minds with tickling levity and affect them as stage plays used to, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence for the name of God.

Richard Baxter

For it was thy sin, and the sin of all the world, that lay upon our Redeemer, and his sacrifice and satisfaction is sufficient for all, and the fruits of it are offered to one as well as another, but it is true that it was never the intent of his mind to pardon and save any that would not by faith and repentance be converted.

Richard Baxter

To be the people of God without regeneration, is as impossible as to be the children of men without generation.

Richard Baxter

Prayer must carry on our work as much as preaching; he preacheth not heartily to his people that will not pray for them.

Richard Baxter

A foolish physician he is, and a most unfaithful friend, that will let a sick man die for fear of troubling him; and cruel wretches are we to our friends, that will rather suffer them to go quietly to hell, then we will anger them, or hazard our reputation with them.

Richard Baxter

What we most value, we shall think no pains too great to gain.

Richard Baxter

If I were but sure that I should live to see the coming of the Lord, it would be the joyfulest tidings in the world. O that I might see His kingdom come! It is the characteristic of His saints to love His appearing, and to look for that blessed hope. "The Spirit and the bride say, Come." "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

Richard Baxter

Naturally, men are prone to spin themselves a web of opinions out of their own brain, and to have a religion that may be called their own. They are far readier to make themselves a faith, than to receive that which God hath formed to their hands; are far readier to receive a doctrine that tends to their carnal commodity, or honor, or delight, than one that tends to self-denial.

Richard Baxter

If you do not see yourselves and all things as living, moving, and having their being in God, you see nothing, whatever you may think you see.

Richard Baxter

Hell is paved with infants skulls.

Richard Baxter

The very design of the gospel doth tend to self-abasing; and the work of grace is begun and carried on in humiliation. Humility is not a mere ornament of a Christian, but an essential part of the new creature: it is a contradiction to be a sanctified man, or a true Christian, and not humble.

Richard Baxter

Prayer is the breath of the new creature.

Richard Baxter

Preach to yourselves the sermons which you study, before you preach them to others.

Richard Baxter

Lay siege to your sins, and starve them out by keeping away the food and fuel which is their maintenance and life.

Richard Baxter

Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow.

Richard Baxter

Suffering so unbolts the door of the heart, that the Word hath easier entrance.

Richard Baxter

The longer you delay, the more your sin gets strength and rooting. If you cannot bend a twig, how will you be able to bend it when it is a tree?

Richard Baxter

Do not waste your time on light, weak, milktoast ministries and books

Richard Baxter

Make careful choice of the books which you read: let the holy scriptures ever have the pre-eminence, and, next to them, those solid, lively, heavenly treatises which best expound and apply the scriptures, and next, credible histories, especially of the Church... but take heed of false teachers who would corrupt your understandings.

Richard Baxter

We must feel toward our people as a father toward his children; yea, the most tender love of a mother must not surpass ours. We must even travail in birth, till Christ be formed in them. They should see that we care for no outward thing, neither liberty, nor honor, nor life, in comparison to their salvation... When the people see that you truly love them, they will hear anything from you...Oh therefore, see that you feel a tender love for your people in your hearts, and let them perceive it in your speech and conduct. Let them see that you spend and are spent for their sakes.

Richard Baxter

Use sin as it will use you; spare it not, for it will not spare you; it is your murderer, and the murderer of the world: use it, therefore, as a murderer should be used. Kill it before it kills you.

Richard Baxter

Once more consider, there is nothing, but heaven, worth setting our hearts upon.

Richard Baxter

An aching tooth is better out than in. To lose a rotting member is a gain.

Richard Baxter

The heart is naturally hard, and grows harder by custom in sin, especially by long abuse of mercy, neglect of the means of grace, and resisteing the spirit of grace.

Richard Baxter

See that your chief study be about heart, that there God's image may be planted, and his interest advanced, and the interest of the world and flesh subdued, and the love of every sin cast out, and the love of holiness succeed; and that you content not yourselves with seeming to do good in outward acts, when you are bad yourselves, and strangers to the great internal duties. The first and great work of a Christian is about his heart.

Richard Baxter

You are not likely to see any general reformation, till you procure family reformation.

Richard Baxter

The more perfect the sight is the more delightful the beautiful object. The more perfect the appetite, the sweeter the food. The more musical the ear, the more pleasant the melody. The more perfect the soul, the more joyous the joys of heaven, and the more glorious that glory.

Richard Baxter

I tell you again, God hath not ordinarily decreed the end without the means; and if you will neglect the means of salvation, it is a certain mark that God hath not decreed you to salvation. But you shall find that He hath left you no excuse, because He hath not thus predestined you.

Richard Baxter

Speak to your people as to men that must be awakened, either here or in hell.

Richard Baxter

Keep up a humble sense of your own faults, and that will make you compassionate to others

Richard Baxter

Spend your time in nothing which you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray for the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act.

Richard Baxter

Christ leads me through no darker rooms than He went through before.

Richard Baxter

It is a contradiction to be a sanctified man, or a true christian, and not humble.

Richard Baxter

I take the love of God and self-denial to be the sum of all saving grace and religion.

Richard Baxter

Such is the depth of the Christian Scriptures, that even if I were attempting to study them and nothing else from early boyhood to decrepit old age, with the utmost leisure, the most unwearied zeal, and talents greater than I have, I would be still daily making progress in discovering their treasures.

Richard Baxter

Tomorrow is always the sluggard's working day; today is his holiday

Richard Baxter

We must study as hard how to live well as how to preach well.

Richard Baxter

Keep company with the more cheerful sort of the Godly; there is no mirth like the mirth of believers.

Richard Baxter

In hell, sinners shall forever lay all the blame on their own wills. Hell is a rational torment by conscience.

Richard Baxter

Keep your children as much as may be from ill company, especially of ungodly playfellows. It is one of the greatest dangers for the undoing of children in the world; especially when they are sent to common schools: for there is scarce any of those schools so good, but hath many rude and ungodly ill-taught children in it.

Richard Baxter

Lord, I surrender. I am completely overcome by your love.

Richard Baxter

Holiness is nothing else but the habitual and predominant devotion and dedication of soul, and body, and life, and all that we have to God; and esteeming, and loving, and serving, and seeking Him, before all the pleasures and prosperity of the flesh.

Richard Baxter

Is it but right that our hearts should be on God, when the heart of God is so much on us.

Richard Baxter

O what a blessed day that will be when I shall . . . stand on the shore and look back on the raging seas I have safely passed; when I shall review my pains and sorrows, my fears and tears, and possess the glory which was the end of all!

Richard Baxter

I have pain; there is no arguing against sense, but I have peace, I have peace.

Richard Baxter

Make careful choice of the books which you read: let the holy Scriptures ever have the preeminence.

Richard Baxter