The Reformed Pastor Quotes

“Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“To live among such excellent helps as our libraries afford, to have so many silent wise companions whenever we please.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“Nothing can be rightly known, if God be not known; nor is any study well managed, nor to any great purpose, if God is not studied. We know little of the creature, till we know it as it stands related to the Creator: single letters, and syllables uncomposed, are no better than nonsense. He who overlooketh him who is the 'Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,' and seeth not him in all who is the All of all, doth see nothing at all. All creatures, as such, are broken syllables; they signify nothing as separated from God. Were they separated actually, they would cease to be, and the separation would be annhiliation; and when we separate them in our fancies, we make nothing of them to ourselves. It is one thing to know the creatures as Aristotle, and another thing to know them as a Christian. None but a Christian can read one line of his Physics so as to understand it rightly. It is a high and excellent study, and of greater use than many apprehend; but it is the smallest part of it that Aristotle can teach us.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“Of all preaching in the world, (that speaks not stark lies,) I hate that preaching which tendeth to make the hearers laugh, or to move their mind with tickling levity, and affect them as stage-players use to do, instead of affecting them with a holy reverence of the name of God.”
― Richard Baxter, 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.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“Many who have undertaken the work of the ministry, do so obstinately proceed in self-seeking, negligence, pride, and other sins, that it is become our necessary duty to admonish them. If we saw that such would reform without reproof, we would gladly forbear the publishing of their faults. But when reproofs themselves prove so ineffectual, that they are more offended at the reproof than at the sin, and had rather that we should cease reproving, than that themselves should cease sinning, I think it is time to sharpen the remedy. For what else should we do? To give up our brethren as incurable were cruelty, as long as there are further means to be used.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“It is a palpable error of some ministers, who make such a disproportion between their preaching and their living; who study hard to preach exactly, and study little or not at all to live exactly.”
― Richard Baxter, THE REFORMED PASTOR

“When pride has made the sermon, it goes with us into the pulpit. It forms our tone, it animates us in the delivery, and it takes us away from that which may be displeasing, no matter how necessary it is, and sets us in pursuit of vain applause. Basically, it makes men, both in studying and preaching, to seek themselves and deny God, when they should seek God’s glory and deny themselves. When they should be asking what they should say and how they should say it to please God best and do the most good, pride makes them ask what they should say and how they should deliver it to be considered an educated, able preacher and to be applauded by all who hear them.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“Lord, will you send me with such an unbelieving heart to persuade others to believe? Must I daily plead with sinners about everlasting life and everlasting death, and have no more belief or feeling of these weighty things myself? Oh send me not naked and unprovided to the work; but, as you command me to do it, furnish me with a spirit suitable thereto." Prayer”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“You are likely to see no general reformation till you procure family reformation. Some little obscure religion there may be in here and there one; but while it sticks in single persons, and is not promoted by these societies, it doth not prosper, nor promise much for future increase.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“Publicans and harlots do sooner come to heaven than Pharisees, because they are sooner convinced of their sin and misery.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“Prayer must carry on our work as well as preaching. He who does not pray earnestly for his people does not preach wholeheartedly to them. If we do not prevail with God to give them faith and repentance, we will never prevail with them to believe and repent. When our own hearts are so far out of order, and theirs are so far out of order, we are unlikely to be successful if we do not prevail with God to heal and help them.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“have found by experience that an ignorant man who has been an unprofitable hearer has received more knowledge and remorse of conscience in half an hour’s close discourse than he did in ten years of public preaching. I know that the public preaching of the gospel is the most excellent means of conversion because we speak to many at once, but it is usually far more effectual to preach it privately to an individual sinner.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“Esteem the church fathers and other writers, but value none of them as equivalent to the word of God.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“Make use of your people's parts to the utmost, as your helpers, in an orderly way, under your guidance, or else they will make use of them in a disorderly and dividing way in opposition to you. It hath been a great cause of schism, when ministers would contemptuously cry down private men's preaching, and with desire not to make any use of the gifts that God hath given them for their assistance; but thrust them too far from holy things, as if they were a profane generation. The work is likely to go poorly on if there be no hands employed in it but the ministers. God giveth not any of His gifts to be buried, but for common use. By a prudent improvement of the gifts of the more able Christians, we may receive much help by them, and prevent their abuse, even as lawful marriage preventeth fornication.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“Must I go to turn to my Bible to shew a preacher where it is written, that a man's soul is more worth than a world, much more than a hundred pounds a year; much more are many souls worth? or that both we and that we have are God's, and should be employed to the utmost for His service? or that it is inhuman cruelty to let many souls go to hell, for fear my wife and children should live somewhat harder, or live at a lower rate, when according to God's ordinary way of working by means, I might do much to prevent their misery, if I would but a little displease my flesh, which all that are Christ's have crucified with its lusts?”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“While we condemn papal infallibility, too many of us want to be popes ourselves and have everyone hold to our decision or opinion, as if we were infallible.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“If your hearts are not set on the goal of your labors, if you do not desire to see the conversion and edification of your hearers, and if you do not study and preach in hope, you are not likely to see much success. Just as it is the sign of a false, self-seeking heart that can be content to be doing without seeing any fruit of his labor, so I have observed that God seldom blesses anyone’s work so much as his whose heart is set upon the success of it.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“God can make His own ordinances useful, or else He would never have appointed them.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“It is not wise for humans to argue against the ordinances of God as useless, to find fault with His service instead of doing it, or to set their minds in opposition to their Maker.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“The life of the Christian religion and the welfare and glory both of the church and of the state depend much on family government and duty. If we allow the neglect of this, we will bring harm to it all.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“People would more readily believe that the gospel is from heaven if they saw more such effects of it upon the hearts and lives of those who profess it. The world is perhaps better able to read the nature of religion in a man’s life than in the Bible.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“When we are commanded to take heed to all the flock, it is plainly implied that flocks must generally be no larger than we are capable of overseeing, or taking heed to. God will not lay upon us natural impossibilities. He will not require men to leap up to the moon, to touch the stars, or to number the sands of the sea. If the pastoral office consists in overseeing all the flock, then surely the number of souls under the care of each pastor must not be greater than he is able to take such heed to as is here required.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“It is not only the work that calls for carefulness, but the workman also, that he may be capable for business of such importance. We have seen many men who lived as private Christians in good reputation for work and piety, when they took upon them either political or military employment, where the work was above their gifts. Temptations then overpowered their strength, and they proved to be scandalous, disgraced men.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“We are responsible for the care of Christ’s little ones. If we neglect to take food ourselves, we will starve them. It will soon be visible in their weakness and inability to carry out their various duties. If we let our love decline, we are not likely to raise theirs. If we decrease our holy care and fear, it will appear in our preaching. If the matter does not show it, the manner will. If we feed on unwholesome food, either errors or fruitless controversies, our hearers are likely to end up worse for it. However, if we abound in faith, love, and zeal, it will overflow, to the refreshing of our congregations, and it will appear in the increase of the same virtues in them.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“The sanctification of your studies is when they are devoted to God and when He is the end, the object, and the life of them all.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“My last request is that all the faithful ministers of Christ would, without any more delay, unite and associate for the furtherance of each other in the work of the Lord and for the maintaining of unity and harmony in His churches, and that they would not neglect their brotherly meetings to those ends, nor yet spend them unprofitably, but improve them to their edification and the successful carrying on of the work.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“The work of God needs to be done. Souls must not perish while you give your attention to your worldly business or worldly pleasure, take your ease, or quarrel with your brethren.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor: The Duties and Methods of Labors for the Souls of Men [Updated and Annotated]

“Convince them what a contradiction it is to be a Christian and yet to refuse to learn. For what is a Christian but a disciple of Christ, and how can he be his disciple if he refuses to be taught by him? He who refuses to be taught by his ministers refuses to be taught by Christ. He will not come down from heaven again to teach them by his own mouth, but he has appointed his ministers to keep school and to teach those under him.”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

“What an excellent life it is to live in the studies and preaching of Christ. How excellent to be still searching into his mysteries or feeding on them, to be daily in the consideration of the blessed nature, works, or ways of God!”
― Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor