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This study takes the reader to the intriguing debates on justification in seventeenth-century English Puritan thought. Richard Baxter (1615-91), the well-known Kidderminster pastor and theologian, insisted that the Calvinists of his day, with their unyielding emphasis on the sola fide of the Reformation, ran the danger of ignoring the conditions that came with God's gift of the covenant of grace. Justification, Baxter insisted, required at least some degree of faith and works as the human response to the love of God. As one of his antagonists, John Crandon, put it: "If we magnifie one grain of our own pepper to that height that we make it a part of that righteousness by which to stand at Gods tribunall this one grain will sink us down to hell, so hot a poison is Mr. Brs pepper-corn." The mix of theological differences and unbending personality traits resulted in years of acrimonious and unyielding debate. Building on previous studies of Baxter's soteriology, this study maintains that Baxter is best understood as an eclectic scholastic covenantal theologian for whom the distinction between God's conditional covenant and his absolute will is key to the entire theological enterprise.

Dr. Beeke offers a heartfelt and solemn plea for families to return to Biblical, consistent and passionate family worship. With pastoral insight and care the author provides practical and valuable answers to the practice of family worship and at the same time addresses objections raised against it. In a world of impossible standards and idealism, this book is a helpful and motivating guide to implement or increase the depth of your family devotions. Author Joel R. Beeke (Ph.D. Westminster Theological Seminary) is president and professor of systematic theology and homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Serminary, pastor of the Heritage Netherlands Reformed Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, editor of The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, and author of numerous books.

While Richard Baxter (1615-91) has been called the ‘chief of English Protestant schoolmen’, few studies of his theology exist, and none of his major systematic work the Methodus Theologiae (1681). Through examining the scriptural and metaphysical foundations of his exemplaristic logic, and engaging extensively with his medieval and early modern sources, this study presents Baxter’s understanding of method as the unfolding of the believer’s relation with the Triune God through salvation history, revealing his profound debt to Scotist and Nominalist thought. In tracing the manifold ramifications of this method it offers a fresh reading of Baxter’s soteriology, countering the charges of moralism and rationalism often levelled at him, and placing his thought within a scholastic paradigm of ‘faith seeking understanding’.