1. Baxter, Richard, Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. Sylvester, Matthew (1696), 2:§33, 160–62. Baxter's letter is dated 2 Feb. 1656. Sir Ralph Clare (1587–1670) of Caldwall (or Caldwell) Hall, writes Baxter, was “an old Man, of great Courtship and Civility, and very temperate as to Dyet, Apparel and Sports, and seldom would Swear any lowder than [By his Troth, &c.] and shewed me much Personal Reverence and Respect (beyond my desert) and we conversed together with Love and Familiarity.” And though Baxter acknowledged Sir Ralph's piety, and found him helpful as an intermediary in his discussions with Peter Heylyn and Henry Hammond, Baxter also stated that he “did more to hinder my greater Successes, than a multitude of others could have done.” Clare resisted Baxter's attempts to introduce a system of discipline that went beyond the Book of Common Prayer. “All the Disturbance I had in my own Parish was by Sir Ralph Clare's refusing to Communicate with us, unless I would give it to him kneeling on a distinct Day, and not with those that received it sitting.” Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1:§137 (27), 94; 2:§66, 208; 2:§33, 157.Google Scholar See Gilbert, C. D. and Warner, Richard, Caldwall Hall Kidderminster (Kidderminster: Kenneth Tomkinson, 1999), 1–6;Google Scholar see also Stephen, Sir L. and Lee, Sir S., eds, Dictionary of National Biography (London, 1908–9; reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1973; hereafter DNB).Google Scholar

2. John Morrill suggests that the threat posed by the radical sects was exaggerated by the fears of both parliamentarian and royalist clergy. However, even the perception of a fragmenting religious and social order was enough to provoke a response from Baxter and others. See Morrill, , “Order and Disorder in the English Revolution,” in The Nature of the English Revolution (London: Harlow, 1993), 384–91.Google Scholar

3. The stories of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5:1–11 and of the Corinthian believer brazenly sleeping with his father's wife in 1 Cor. 5:1–5 served as signal examples of the seriousness with which God treated the unrepentant sinner in the church. However, consideration of the disciplinary practices of the early church and later Western Catholicism takes us beyond the more modest scope of this article.Google Scholar

4. “Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.” The Holy Bible, AV (1611).Google Scholar

5. See, for example, Morgan, Irvonwy's chapter “A Draft of Discipline,” in The Godly Preachers of the Elizabethan Church (London: Epworth, 1965), 175–217.Google ScholarSchilling, Heinz, however, does not allow enough room for the genuine religious concern as a motivation for ecclesiastical discipline in his “‘History of Crime’ or ‘History of Sin’?—Some Reflections on the Social History of Early Modern Church Discipline,” in Politics and Society in Reformation Europe: Essays for Sir Geoffrey Elton on his Sixty-fifth Birthday, eds. Kouri, E. I. and Scott, T. (London: Macmillan, 1987), 305–6.Google Scholar

6. See MacCulloch, Diarmaid, Thomas Cranmer: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 364–66;Google ScholarAmos, N. Scott, “‘It is Fallow Ground Here’: Martin Bucer as Critic of the English Reformation,” Westminster Theological Journal 61 (1999): 41–44.Google Scholar For Bucer's role in the English Reformation, see Hopf, Constantin, Martin Bucer and the English Reformation (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946);Google ScholarCollinson, Patrick, “The Reformer and the Archbishop: Martin Bucer and an English Bucerian,” in Godly People (London: Hambledon, 1983), 19–44;Google ScholarCollinson, Patrick, Archbishop Grindal 1519–1583: The Struggle for a Reformed Church (London: Cape, 1979);Google ScholarPorter, H. C., Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958);Google ScholarWright, D. F., “Martin Bucer and England—and Scotland,” in Martin Bucer and Sixteenth Century Europe, eds. Krieger, C. and Lienhard, M. (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 2:523–32;Google ScholarHall, Basil, “Martin Bucer in England,” in Martin Bucer: Reforming Church and Community, ed. Wright, D. F. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 144–60;CrossRefGoogle ScholarO, Rosemary'Day, The English Clergy (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1979), 27.Google Scholar

7. “John Foxe's De censura sive exommunicatione ecclesiastica rectoque eius usu, published in 1551, was the earliest tract to be written by an English Protestant on the subject of ecclesiastical discipline.” Davies, C. M. F. and Facey, J. M., “A Reformation Dilemma: John Foxe and the Problem of Discipline,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 39 (1988): 37–65; 37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Davies, C. M. F., ‘“Poor Persecuted Little Flock’ or ‘Commonwealth Christians’: Edwardian Protestant Concepts of the Church,” in Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England, eds. Lake, P. and Dowling, M. (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 78–102. The complete absence of Martin Bucer in Davies's discussion of discipline and the Edwardian church here is striking. For other Edwardian treatments of discipline, see the official catechism in which discipline is described as a mark of the church, A short Catechism or Plain Instruction containing the sum of Christian learning (1553), sigs. Civ–G3; Thomas Lancaster, The Right and True Understanding of the Supper of the Lord (1550?), sig. D4;Google ScholarHooper, John, A Declaration of Christ and His office (Zurich, 1547), in Early Writings, ed. Carr, S. (Cambridge, 1843), 90–91.Google Scholar

8. Burnett, Amy Nelson, “Church Discipline and Moral Reformation in the Thought of Martin Bucer,” Sixteenth Century Journal 22 (1991): 439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. See Burnett, A. N., The Yoke of Christ: Martin Bucer and Christian Discipline (Kirksville, Mo.: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1994);Google ScholarBornert, René, La Réforme Protestante du Culte à Strasbourg au XVIe Siècle (1523–1598): Approche Sociologique et Interpretation Theologiaue in Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 28:84–207.Google Scholar

10. Burnett, “Church Discipline and Moral Reformation,” 439.Google Scholar

11. See Bucer, Martin, De Regno Christi in Melanchthon and Bucer, ed. and tr. Pauk, Wilhelm, Library of Christian Classics, no. 19 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 212–13, 266.Google Scholar

12. Bucer, Martin, Concerning the True Care of Souls and Genuine Pastoral Ministry and how the latter is to be ordered and carried out in the church of Christ, tr. Beale, P. (Strasbourg, 1538; translation found in Westminster Theological College library, Cambridge, U.K., n. d.), 2.Google ScholarThe Latin translation of this passage is found in De Vera Animarum Cura, Scripta Anglicana, ed. Hubert, Conrad (Basel, 1577), 260.Google Scholar

13. Bucer, Concerning the True Care of Souls, 74. De Vera Animarum Cura, 323.Google Scholar

14. Bucer, De Regno Christi, 228–30.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., 235.

16. See Wright, “Martin Bucer and England—and Scotland,” 525; Hall, “Martin Bucer in England,” 145, 157. The one exception is Thomas Sampson's 1573 attempt to bring Bucer's program for reform found in De Regno Christi to Lord Burleigh's attention. For Sampson's letter to Burleigh, see Strype, John, Annals of the Reformation (Oxford, 1824), 2:i, 2:392–95. See Collinson, “The Reformer and the Archbishop,” 30–31.Google Scholar

17. See Duffy, Eamon, “The Long Reformation: Catholicism, Protestantism and the Multitude,” in England's Long Reformation, 1500–1800, ed. Tyack, N. (London: University College London, 1998), esp. 36–42. Commenting on the challenge undertaken by England's early Protestants, Duffy states that “[c]onversion, therefore, meant not merely bringing the heathen to knowledge of the gospel, but bringing the tepid to the boil by awakening preaching, creating a godly people out of a nation of conformists” (42).Google Scholar

18. Article XIX mentions only two marks of a true church: faithful preaching of the Word of God and the right celebration of the sacraments. See also Cameron, James, “Godly Nurture and Admonition in the Lord: Ecclesiastical Discipline in the Reformed Tradition,” in Die danishe Reformation vor ihrem internationalen Hintergrund, eds. Granne, L. and Hørby, K. (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1990), 264–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Collinson, Patrick, Elizabethan Puritan Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 346.Google ScholarBrachlow, Stephen states that “[i]n the context of puritan soteriology, a disciplined, obedient life was the primary means for gaining personal assurance of everlasting life.” Stephen Brachlow, The Communion of Saints: Radical Puritan and Separatist Ecclesiology 1570–1625 (Oxford, 1988), 123.Google Scholar

20. “A Commination,” Book of Common Prayer (1559), in Liturgical Services: Liturgies and Occasional Forms of Prayer set forth in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. Keating, W. (1847), 239.Google Scholar

21. Patrick Collinson's distinction between the puritan movement which pressed for ecclesiastical reform along a Genevan model and ultimately failed, and puritan religion which “was something now widely dispersed and year by year growing roots which were not to be easily torn out” helps explain the existence of parallel conceptions of discipline amongst the godly. See Collinson, , Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 385.Google Scholar

22. See Fincham, Kenneth, Prelate as Pastor: The Episcopate of James I (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 147–76.Google Scholar See also Webster, Tom's description of the complexities of this system of ecclesiastical discipline in Essex in Godly Clergy in Early Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 180–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a sympathetic overview of the role of episcopal discipline, see Ingram, Martin, “Puritans and the Church Courts, 1560–1640,” in The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700, eds. Durston, C. and Eales, J. (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996), 58–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Fincham, Prelate as Pastor, 129–46.Google Scholar

24. Ibid., 129. See Fincham's discussion of Bishop Samuel Harsnett's use of stiff sentences against Sabbath breakers more as general deterrent than as particular justice, 174. Along a different line, Collinson highlights some of the fraternal benefits resulting from gatherings of clergy at visitations and synods. See The Religion of Protestants: The Church in English Society 1559–1625 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 122–30. Ingram states that “[i]n retrospect it is clear, contrary to puritan complaints, that these courts proved to be by no means ineffective agents of further reformation in England … ecclesiastical jurisdiction was not divorced from the pastoral mission of the church but part and parcel of it.” “Puritans and the Church Courts,” 69. Unfortunately, individual puritans had neither the luxury of hindsight nor the benefit of several generations with which to chart the reformation progress Ingram cites. These ministers complained precisely because the wheels of ecclesiastical justice seemed to turn so maddeningly slowly and could appear to be arbitrary and ineffective.Google Scholar

25. See Collinson, , The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 346–55; Meic Pearse, The Great Restoration: The Religious Radicals of the 16th and 17th Centuries (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), 167–74;Google ScholarCollinson, , “The Cohabitation of the Faithful with the Unfaithful,” in From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England, eds. Grell, O., Israel, J., and Tyacke, N. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 52 ff.Google Scholar On the coalescing of religious and social standards through the exercise of episcopal discipline, see Ingram, Martin, “Religion, Communities and Moral Discipline in Late Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century England: Case Studies,” in Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe 1500–1800, ed. Greyerz, Kaspar von (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984), 179–81.Google Scholar

26. See Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, 346, 101–55. The dilemma facing puritans was that the inherited and unreformed government of the Church of England as it stood was fundamentally incapable of effecting Biblical discipline. For many, like Thomas Cartwright and Walter Travers, the obvious solution was to proceed forthwith to a reformed government and discipline. Their solution called for a recasting of the entire church structure along a Genevan model—a transformation, it was argued, that would go a long way towards resolving local declensions in discipline.Google Scholar

27. The point must be made, however, that many of these early radical Protestants were actually against forming gathered churches of visible saints, agreeing instead with the notion of a state church to which everyone belonged. See Pearse, The Great Restoration, 161–62. By their call for true Christians to withdraw from what they considered to be corrupt and worldly local parishes and form true churches of visible saints, early separatist leaders such as Robert Browne and Robert Harrison were perceived as posing a direct threat to the existing order and ensured that official displeasure over calls for discipline would continue unabated. And by insisting that effective church discipline could only be instituted by “gathering the worthy and refusing the unworthy” for church membership and Communion, disillusioned separatists broke with those puritans who were still willing to work more or less patiently for reformation from within a Church of England which clearly still needed it. Appalled by the implications of separation, conforming and “moderate puritans” felt it scandalously arrogant for separatists to pass judgment on the majority of parish members by presuming to establish a true church of the truly saved. See Browne, Robert (1550–1633), A treatise of reformation without taryingfor anie (1582);Google ScholarBrowne, Robert, The Writings of Robert Harrison and Robert Browne, eds. Peel, A. and Carlson, L. (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1953), 402, 404;Google Scholar and see, for example, William Bradshaw's The Unreasonableness of the Separation (1614). See also Lake, Peter's discussion of William Bradshaw's polemic against the separatists in Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 272–78. Lake observes that “it is undeniable that there was a tension between Bradshaw's anti-conformist and his anti-separatist positions. It was the tension experienced, to a greater or lesser degree, by every mainstream puritan ideologue” (276).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28. For Clarke (1599–1683), see Matthews, A. G., Calamy Revised: Being a Revision of Edmund Calamy's Account of the Ministers and Others Ejected and Silenced, 1660–2 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1934; hereafter CR).Google ScholarSee also DNB, and Black, J. William, “Richard Baxter and the Ideal of the Reformed Pastor” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1999), 194–95, 201–6.Google Scholar

29. See Collinson, , “‘A Magazine of Religious Patterns’: An Erasmian Topic Transposed in English Protestantism,” in Godly People (1983), 499–526. See also Black, “Richard Baxter and the Ideal of the Reformed Pastor,” chapter 8.Google Scholar

30. See, for example, Eales, Jacqueline's “Samuel Clarke and the ‘Lives’ of Godly Women in Seventeenth Century England,” in Women in the Church, Studies in Church History, no. 27, eds. Sheils, W. J. and Wood, D. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 375.Google Scholar

31. In the case of Margaret Baxter, it is clear that Clarke edited Richard Baxter's text out of concern for the potential for controversy. Ibid., 375.

32. Samuel Clarke, A Collection of the Lives of Ten Eminent Divines, famous in their Generations for Learning, Prudence, Piety, and painfulness in the Work of the Ministry (1662), 107. For Gouge (1578–1653), longtime pastor of St. Anne's, Blackfriars, and member of the Westminster Assembly, see Barker, William, Puritan Profiles (Fearne, Scotland: Mentor, 1996), 35–38.Google Scholar

33. Clarke, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, 169. Arnold Hunt claims that, for the 1630s, Fairclough's example is an “exceptional case, made possible by the support and protection of… Barnardiston,” and that, however widespread godly concern for discipline might be, Fairclough's practice of discipline appears to be a singularity. Hunt, Arnold, “The Lord's Supper in Early Modern England,” Past & Present 161 (1998): 64–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. Clarke, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, 169. The author's perception of the connection between the cooperation of ministry and local magistrates in setting up effective discipline and the puritan promised land of reformation is significant, whether or not things in Kedington were actually that different. For a similar though later example of godly ministry leading to local reformation, see Clarke's account of Thomas Wilson (1601–54?), 18–35. Clarke gives 1651 as the year of Wilson's death (18 ff), but based on the evidence of Joseph Baker's 24 Apr. 1664 letter to Baxter, announcing Wilson's death, N. H. Keeble and G. F. Nuttall recommend revising the date to early April 1654. See Keeble, and Nuttall, , Calendar of the Correspondence of Richard Baxter (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991; hereafter Calendar), 137, no. 177, n. 2.Google Scholar

35. The dramatic increase in the number of separatists choosing exile in the Netherlands or the American colonies in the 1630s combine with the diary entries of pastors such as Ralph Josselin, cited above, to support such a reading.Google Scholar

36. Wrightson, Keith, “Postscript: Terling Revisited,” in Wrightson, Keith and Levine, David, Poverty and Piety in an English Village: Terling, 1525–1700 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 207, 210–11; see also chapter 6, 142–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For critiques of the “Terling thesis” see Spufford, Margaret, “Puritanism and Social Control?” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, eds. Fletcher, Anthony and Stevenson, John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985);Google Scholar Ingram, “Religion, Communities and Moral Discipline”; McIntosh, M. K., “Local Change and Community Control in England, 1465–1500,” Huntington Library Quarterly 49 (1986). For Wrightson's discussion of these and other critiques,CrossRefGoogle Scholarsee “Postscript: Terling Revisited,” 198–211.Google Scholar

37. Ser Duffy, Eamon, “The Godly and the Multitude in Stuart England,” Seventeenth Century 1 (1986): 31–55.Google Scholar

38. See Fincham, Kenneth, “Introduction,” in Visitation Articles and Injunctions of the Early Stuart Church (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), 2:xvii.Google Scholar See also Tyacke, Nicolas, “Puritanism, Arminianism and Counter-Revolution,” in Reformation to Revolution: Politics and Religion in Early Modern England, ed. Todd, Margo (London: Routledge, 1995).Google Scholar

39. See the evolution of sacramental concern from Perkins's, WilliamA Reformed Catholic (1611);Google ScholarPreston, John, The Cuppe of Blessing: Delivered in Three Sermons upon 1 Cor. 10. 16 (1634), and Three Sermons upon the Sacrament of the Lords Supper (1631);Google ScholarBayly, Lewes, The Practice of Pietie: Directing a Christian how to walke that he may please God, 30th ed. (1632), 522–624;Google ScholarBolton, Robert, The Saints Selfe-enriching Examination. Or, A Treatise concerning the Sacrament of the Lords Supper (1634).Google ScholarSee Hunt, , “The Lord's Supper in Early Modern England,” 39–83;Google ScholarDavies, Horton, Worship and Theology in England, vol. 1, From Andrews to Baxter and Fox, 1603–1690 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 76–123.Google Scholar

40. See Davies, Worship and Theology in England, vol. 2, From Andrews to Baxter and Fox, 1603–1690, 286–325.Google Scholar Davies traces the puritan attempts to preserve the use of the Lord's Supper from Catholic abuse, but fails to note the increasing importance to puritans of Christ's spiritual presence in the sacrament, and the use to which this truth was put by godly pastors assisting their parishioners to prepare for Communion. As a result, Davies is surprised to find Baxter's view of the Lord's Supper to be “higher” than what was implied in the 1552 and 1559 prayerbooks (320–23). But as we shall see, such a “high” view of the Lord's Supper goes far to explain puritan concern to receive the sacrament in a worthy manner, which brought the issue of local parish discipline as a means to facilitate worthy reception into sharp and practical focus. See also Spufford, Margaret, “The Importance of the Lord's Supper to Seventeenth-Century Dissenters,” Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society 5 (1993): 62–79.Google Scholar

41. Baxter, writes, “The main reason that turneth my heart against the English Prelacy [i.e. the Laudian practice of episcopacy] is because it did destroy Church Discipline, and almost destroy the Church for want of it, or by the abuse of it, and because it is (as then exercised) inconsistent with true Discipline. … And I must say, that I have seen more of the Ancient Discipline exercised of late, without a Prelate, in some Parish Church in England, than ever I saw or heard of exercised by the Bishops in a thousand such Churches all my dayes.”Google Scholar Baxter's prefatory letter to the second disputation, to the “Christian Reader,” in Five Disputations of Church Government, and Worship (1659), sigs. P4v–Q. For the rise of “Laudianism”Google Scholar see Tyacke, Nicolas, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, c. 1590–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).Google ScholarIn contrast, see Sharpe, Kevin, “Archbishop Laud,” in Reformation to Revolution: Politics and Religion in Early Modern England, ed. Todd, M. (London: Routledge, 1995).Google Scholar

42. For the development of London presbyterianism during the English Civil War, see Vernon, Elliot C., “The Sion College Conclave and London Presbyterianism during the English Revolution” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 1999), 26–131.Google Scholar

43. From “The Solemn League and Covenant,” 25 09. 1643, in The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution 1625–1660, 3d ed., ed. Gardiner, S. R. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1906), 268.Google Scholar

44. Ingram, , “Puritans and the Church Courts,” 91.Google Scholar

45. See Morrill, , “The Church in England 1642–9,” in The Nature of the English Revolution, 156–57.Google Scholar See also Lamont, W. M., “Episcopacy and a ‘Godly Discipline’, 1641–6,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 10 (1959): 88–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46. “[23 Feb. 1650/1] [S]o now we resolved on the work, how few so ever would joyne and trust god with the same, and to give publike notice to prevent offence, and yett admit none but such as in charity wee reckon to be disciples … we mett at Priory, divers presd that persons must make out a worke of true grace on their hearts in order to fellowship and this ordinance.… I … turned them to all places in the Acts and shewed that beleeving admitted into Communion, and none rejected that professed faith, and then if their lives were not scandalous that we could not turn away from them in this ordinance.” Josselin, Ralph, The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683, ed. Macfarlane, A. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 235–36.Google Scholar

47. For a more sympathetic treatment of the emerging Cromwellian Church see Tyacke, Nicolas, “The ‘Rise of Puritanism’ and the Legalizing of Dissent, 1571–1719,” in From Persecution to Toleration, 29–32.Google Scholar See also Cross, Claire, “The Church in England 1646–1660,” in The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement 1646–1660, ed. Aylmer, G. E. (London: Clarendon, 1974), 99–120.Google Scholar

48. See Nuttall, Geoffrey, Visible Saints: The Congregational Way 1640–1660 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957), 43–69 (on separation), 131–39 (on distinguishing between the profane and the godly).Google Scholar

49. Baxter would later point out in a prefatory letter to the Lord Mayor of London, Christopher Pack, that “the Separatists reproach them for suffering the Impenitent to continue members of their Churches, and make it the pretense of their separation from them; having little to say of any moment against the authorized way of Government, but only against our slackness in the Execution.” Baxter, Richard, A Sermon of Judgement (1655), sig. A9. For Sir Christopher Pack, see DNB.Google Scholar

50. Baxter, , Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1:§136, 84–85.Google Scholar

51. Baxter, , Gildas Salvianus; The Reformed Pastor (1656), 9, 10, 13.Google Scholar See Baxter's, further discussion of the issues of church government, and the explanation of his own preference for “primitive episcopacy,” in the third of his Five Disputations of Churchgovernment and Worship (1659).Google ScholarBaxter, resonated with James Ussher's position in his The Reduction of Episcopacie unto the Form of Synodical Government received in the Antient Church (1656).Google Scholar For a discussion of Ussher's views, see Knox, R. B., James Ussher: Archbishop of Armaugh (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1967), 128, 140–45.Google Scholar See also Keeble, N. H., Richard Baxter: Puritan Man of Letters (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 27, 190;Google ScholarNuttall, G. F., Richard Baxter (London: Nelson, 1965), 80–81, 86–87.Google Scholar

52. Baxter gives the logic behind his own reluctance to administer the Lord's Supper in Kidderminster before 1648:Google Scholar “And no Minister can groundedly administer the Sacraments to any man but himself, because he can be certain of no mans justification and salvation, being not certain of the sincerity of their faith. … And who then durst ever administer a Sacrament, being never certaine but that he shall thus abuse it: I confesse ingeniously to you, that it was the ignorance of this one point which chiefly caused mee to abstaine from administering the Lords Supper so many yeeres.” Aphorisms of Justification (1649), 258–59; see also 251.Google Scholar

53. Writing for the associated ministers of Cumberland and Westmorland, Richard Gilpin stated, “When we compare the present miseries and distempers with our former confident expectations of unitie, and reformation, our hearts bleed, and melt within us. … Prophanness thrives through want of Discipline.” [Richard Gilpin], Agreement of the Associated Ministers & Churches of the Counties of Cumberland and Westmerland: With something for Explication and Exhortation Annexed (1656), sig. A2, 2.Google ScholarThe agreement had been in effect since 1653, having been devised contemporaneously with, yet independently from Baxter's Worcestershire Association.Google ScholarFor Richard Gilpin (1625–1700), pastor at Greystoke, Cumberland, and the grand-nephew of Bernard Gilpin, see DNB and CR. Such comments were echoed by an anonymous author writing on behalf of godly ministers in Norwich and Norfolk: “We cannot in the least doubt … that many of you … have with an equall moving of Bowels with (if not exceeding any of) us, considered the sad effects, which the want of a setled Discipline in the Church … have produced in … this Nation.” The Agreement of the Associated Ministers In the County of Norfolk and City and County of Norwich, Concerning Publick Catechizing (1659), sig. A2–A2v.Google Scholar

54. Baxter, , Confirmation and Restauration, The Necessary Means of Reformation and Reconciliation (1658), 248–49.Google Scholar

55. Baxter, , Aphorisms of Justification (1649), 248–51.Google Scholar

56. Baxter, , The Saints Everlasting Rest (1650), sigs. A4, A5v.Google Scholar

57. Baxter, , Reliquiae Baxterianae, 2:§28, 148.Google Scholar

58. Baxter, does cite William Lyford (William Lyford his Legacy, or a Help for Young People to Prepare them for the Sacrament [1656]) and Thomas Ball (Poimhnopurgoz. Pastorum Propugnaculum.Google ScholarOr, the Pulpits Patronage Against the Force of Un-Ordained Usurpation, and Invasion, 1656) as authorities in support of his program of church discipline. However, they were both published too late to be considered sources of his views. See Gildas Salvianus (1656), sigs. b6–b7.Google Scholar

59. Baxter, , Reliquiae Baxterianae, 2:§28, 148.Google Scholar

60. For “he that dare take on him to be an Overseer and Ruler of the Church, not to oversee and rule it, and dare settle on such a Church-state, as is uncapable of Discipline is so perfidious to Christ, and ventureth so boldly to make the Church another thing, that I am resolved not to be his follower.” Baxter, , Confirmation and Restauration (1658), 173–74.Google Scholar

61. Ibid., 174–76.

62. Ibid., 180.

63. Baxter, , An Apology for the Nonconformists Ministry (1681), sig. A2.Google Scholar

64. See Baxter's, discussion of the relative merits of confirmation rightly practiced versus the believer's baptism of the “Anabaptists,” Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1:§137 (25), 92–93.Google Scholar

65. Ministers should extend pastoral care to all such members, “denying them nothing that lawfully we can yield them, in matters of Buryal, Marrying, Praying, Preaching, or the like.” Baxter, , Confirmation and Restauration (1658), 284.Google Scholar

66. See Fincham, , Prelate as Pastor, 123–29.Google Scholar

67. For Baxter's account of his own confirmation by Bishop Morton, see Confirmation and Restauration (1658), 154–56.Google Scholar

68. Ibid., 155–56.

69. Ibid., 166. Says Baxter, “by this hastening and admitting all the unprepared in to the Number of Adult Christians, and members of the Church, we do either put a necessity upon our selves to throw away Church-discipline, or else to be most probably the damnation of our peoples Souls, and make them desperate, and almost past all hope, or remedy.” Ibid, 172.

70. For similarities between Baxter's “covenant” and the covenants devised by separatist and congregational churches during 1640–60 as a means for protecting the purity of the Sacraments and local church fellowship, see Nuttall, , Visible Saints, 70–81. Whether Baxter drew inspiration for his notion of “parishioner consent” from his congregational or separating brethren, or from his reading of Martin Bucer, or from both, remains an open question.Google Scholar

71. [Baxter], Christian Concord (1653), sig. B2, article XVIII. Christian Concord contains models of the profession of faith and of the profession of consent for pastors to use in their own parishes, see sigs. C3–C3v. Baxter hints at a similar covenantal process that predicated his original coming to Kidderminster in 1641.Google ScholarSee The Saints Everlasting Rest (1650), 601. Samuel Clarke recounts a similar episode of covenant-making as part of the negotiations concerning his return to Alcester following the Civil War. Clarke, The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons, 9. The significant change introduced by Baxter was in making the adult rights of church membership contingent on the profession and consent with which the covenant was comprised.Google Scholar

72. Baxter was sensitive to charges that his covenantal basis for the exercise of church discipline promoted either separation or the formation of ecclesiola in ecdesia. His response was that “we require not this Profession as a Church-making Covenant, but for Reformation of those that are Churches already; and as a means for our more facile and successful exercise of some Discipline and Government of our Congregations.” Baxter, “An Explication of some Passages in the foregoing Propositions and Profession,” appended to Christian Concord, 10.Google Scholar

73. Baxter, , Christian Concord (1653), sigs. A4–B.Google Scholar

74. Baxter's, aversion to the presbyterian understanding of eldership is here transparent. In Baxter's expansion of the duties of these “trustees,” he states that “they were chosen once a year here unto (as *Grotius de Imperio Sum Potest. adviseth).” The asterisk refers to a note in the margin, “*The Principles of which Book I most liked and followed.” Reliquiae Baxterianae, 2:§31, 150.Google Scholar See Grotius, Hugo, De Imperio Summarum Potestatum Circa Sacra (Paris, 1647).Google Scholar See also Dam, Harm-Jan van, “De Imperio Summarum Potestatum Circa Sacra,” in Hugo Grotius Theologian, eds. Nellen, H. J. M. and Rabbie, E. (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 19–39.Google Scholar

75. Baxter gives twelve reasons why discipline is necessary in his retrospective Universal Concord (1660), sigs. a6–a7. See also Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1:§137 (25), 92, for a more concise list.Google Scholar

76. Baxter, Richard, “To the Reader,” in Samuel Clark (the younger), Ministers Dues and Peoples Duty (1661), unpaginated. Baxter's letter is dated “Nov.10.1660.” For Clark (1626–1701), ejected Rector of Grendon Underwood, Buckinghamshire, see CR, 119–20.Google Scholar

77. Baxter, , The Saints Everlasting Rest (1650), sig. A4, 508–9; Christian Concord (1653), sig. A3v.Google Scholar

78. Baxter's, own practice of “knowing” his parishioners is reflected in his sophisticated diagnosis of his parishioners' spiritual state contained in Confirmation and Restauration (1658), 157–65. “Of these twelve sorts of People, this Parish is composed, which I therefore mention, that the state of our Parishes may be truly known; while others are compared with this: For everyone hath not had the opportunity which I have had, to know all their people, or the most” (165). See Duffy, “The Godly and the Multitude in Stuart England,” 37–40.Google Scholar

79. Baxter, , The Unreasonableness of Infidelity (1655), 150–52;Google ScholarChristian Concord (1653), sigs. B2, C2.Google Scholar

80. Baxter, , Christian Concord (1653), especially sigs. C2–C3v;Google ScholarCertain Disputations of Right to Sacraments (1658), Disputation 1.Google Scholar

81. Baxter, , Certain Disputations of Right to Sacraments (1658), Disputations 4 and 5;Google Scholarsee also Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1:§137 (25), 91.Google Scholar

82. [Baxter, ], The Agreement of Divers Ministers of Christ in the County of Worcester … For Catechizing or Personal Instructing (1656);Google ScholarBaxter, , Gildas Salvianus; The Reformed Pastor (1656);Google ScholarBaxter, , Universal Concord (1660), 34–35; Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1:§135, 83; 1:§136, 85; also 2:§40–42, 179–180.Google Scholar

83. Baxter, , Confirmation and Restauration (1658);Google ScholarUniversal Concord (1660), sigs. G2v–G3.Google Scholar

84. See Baxter, , Aphorisms of Justification (1649), 248–51;Google ScholarThe Saints Everlasting Rest (1650), sig. A5v; Christian Concord (1653), sigs. A3v–B; Universal Concord (1660), 18–19.Google Scholar

85. Baxter, , Gildas Salvianus, 98.Google Scholar

86. Baxter, , The Saints Everlasting Rest, 509.Google Scholar

87. Baxter, , Gildas Salvianus, 81.Google Scholar

88. “To the Right Reverend Dr. Compton, Lord Bishop of London, Dr. Barlow, Lord Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Grosts, Lord Bishop of Hereford, Dr. Rainbow, Lord Bishop of Carlisle, Dr. Thomas, Lord Bishop of St. Davids, Dr. Lloyd, Lord Bishop of Peterborough.” Baxter, An Apology for the Nonconformists Ministry (1681), sig. A2.Google Scholar For the Restoration episcopate, see Spurr, John, The Restoration Church of England 1646–1689 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 132–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

89. Baxter, , Gildas Salvianus, sig. (a6)v.Google Scholar

90. Baxter, , Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1:§136, 84–85.Google Scholar

91. Ibid., 1:§137, 91.

92. Ibid., 1:§136, 85; 1:§137 (25), 91.

93. Ibid., 1:§136, 85–86.

94. Baxter, , “A Preface to those of the Nobility, Gentry, and Commons of this Land, that adhere to Prelacy,” in Five Disputations of Church Government, and Worship (1659), 28–29.Google Scholar

95. The letter is dated 20 Apr. 1655. Dr Williams's Library, Baxter Letters, MS 59, ii, 252. For Thomas Wadsworth (1630–1676), who served at Newington Butts from 1653–60, and then as curate of St. Lawrence Pountney, London, from January of 1662 until he was ejected in August, see CR, DNB, Calendar 1:172, no. 235, note. See also no. 238.Google Scholar

96. Baxter, , Reliquiae Baxterianae, 2:§40, 179.Google Scholar

97. Ibid., 2:§66, 207.

98. For Dance, , see Matthews, A. G., Walker Revised: Being a Revision of John Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy during the Grand Rebellion, 1642–60 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1948).Google Scholar

99. Baxter, , Reliquiae Baxterianae, 2:§152, 298.Google Scholar

100. Ibid., 2:§151, 298.