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"Many times my mind was inclined to be among them," he wrote, "and sometimes I broke loose from conscience and joined with them; and the more I did it the more I was inclined to it. But when I heard them call my father Puritan it did much to cure me and alienate me from them; for I considered that my father's exercise of reading the Scripture was better than theirs, and would surely be better thought on by all men at the last; and I considered what it was for that he and others were thus derided."

Richard Baxter, Sr., had been converted through reading the Bible and tried to pass his love for Scripture on to his son. When the young Baxter realized that it was for practices such as "reading Scripture" when the rest of the town "were dancing on the Lord's Day" that people like his father were reviled, he became convinced that "godly people were the best, and those that despised them and lived in sin and pleasure were a malignant, unhappy sort of people."

As a teenager he read several Puritan devotional books that opened his eyes to the love of God and taught him how to live by faith in Christ. Though his formal education was poor and he was persuaded not to attend university, he acquired a massive amount of learning through his own reading. "And the use that God made of Books, above Ministers, to the benefit of my Soul, made me somewhat excessively in love with good Books"—an apt comment for someone whose personal library numbered 1,400 volumes by the time he died, an impressive collection that included first editions of many Latin and Greek Fathers, as well as medieval Scholastics and Jesuit theologies.

Already beset by the illnesses that would plague him for the rest of his life, Baxter decided to make the best of what he thought was his short time left on earth. He was ordained at age 23, and after a short stint as a schoolmaster and a year as pastoral assistant in Bridgnorth, Baxter accepted a call to be "lecturer" in the parish of St. Mary's in the small weaving town of Kidderminster.

Shortly after Baxter arrived in Kidderminster, the English Civil War erupted, and he spent five years as a chaplain in Oliver Cromwell's army, hoping to bring a voice of moderation into the struggle. But he was troubled by what he saw. Like his fellow Puritans, Baxter believed that the church in England was in desperate need of reform in order to make it more like Calvin's Geneva, which the Scottish reformer John Knox called "the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on the earth since the days of the Apostles." But he could not agree with those who would tear apart the unity of the church by separating from it, or who ignored the fact that reformed faith also meant holiness of life.

When he returned to Kidderminster in 1647—this time as vicar—he brought a new understanding of reformation, later expressed in The Reformed Pastor: "Alas! Can we think that the reformation is wrought, when we cast out a few ceremonies, and changed some vestures, and gestures, and forms! Oh no, sirs! It is the converting and saving of souls that is our business. That is the chiefest part of reformation, that doth most good, and tendeth most to the salvation of the people."

The Reformed Pastor, published in 1656, was the culmination of Baxter's thinking about the ministerial role and the product of an enormously successful ministry in Kidderminster. Baxter believed that a true church was not composed of a mostly absent bishop and thousands of parishioners who preferred to pursue trivial pleasures rather than following the "plain man's pathway to heaven." Nor was it made up of a "society of friends" like the Quakers, who eliminated the office of pastor. A true church was both a hospital and a school, and healing and learning could only come through truth rightly taught and embodied. In that regard, the pastor, both as a role model for others and also as a shepherd and teacher, was absolutely crucial.

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March (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50