On May 5, 1861 “the prince of the preachers for the prince of darkness,” one of the great theological prostituting compromisers of popular consumption, preached a sermon wherein he gave inordinate and disgusting praise to the prolific heretic, Richard Baxter:
“You will bear me witness, my friends, that it is exceedingly seldom I ever intrude into the mysteries of the future with regard either to the second advent, the millennial reign, or the first and second resurrection. As often as we come across it in our expositions, we do not turn aside from the point, but if guilty at all on this point, it is rather in being too silent than saying too much. And now, in bringing forward this question, I would say, I do not do it to amuse your curiosity by novelty, or that I may pretend to have the true key of the prophecies which are as yet unfulfilled. I scarcely think it would be justifiable for me to spend my time upon prophetic studies for which I have not the necessary talent, nor is it the vocation to which my Master has ordained me. I think some ministers would do for more for the profit of God’s people, if they would preach more about the first advent and less about the second. But I have chosen this topic because I believe it has practical bearings, and may be made useful, instructive, and rousing to us all.
I find that the most earnest of the Puritanic preachers did not forbear to dwell upon this mysterious subject. I turn to Charnock and in his disquisition upon the Immutability of God, he does not hesitate to speak of the conflagration of the world, of the millennial reign, and the new heavens and new earth. I turn to Richard Baxter, a man who greatly loved the souls of men; who more perhaps than any man, with the exception of the apostle Paul, travailed in birth for souls; and I find him making a barbed arrow out of the doctrine of the coming of the Lord, and thrusting this great truth into the very heart and conscience of unbelievers, as though it were heaven’s own sword” (C.H. Spurgeon; underlining mine–CD) [SOURCE]
To at least one person having read some of Richard Baxter says that his work on Universal Redemption was
“one of the most unnecessarily prolix books I have read. The book is divided into essentially three parts. Chapters 1-2 contain something like introductory remarks. Chapters 3-4 contain a battery, long and wearisome, of propositions. The remainder of the book a defense of those propositions with more long and wearisome rebuttals to objections. Given the very prolix nature of this book, I have decided to break down some of the key assumptions regarding the nature and extent of the atonement and covenant, as Baxter so understood them. Then I will delineate some of his counter objections to Owen and the Protestant Scholastics, namely their exegetical claims” (David Ponter, A Brief History of Deviant Calvinism).
Here is just one malignant morsel of Baxter’s God-hating blasphemy against the efficacious atonement of Jesus Christ:
“When God saith so expressly that Christ died for all [2 Cor. 5: 14-15], and tasted death for every man [Heb. 2: 9], and is the ransom for all [1 Tim. 2: 6], and the propitiation for the sins of the whole world [1 Jn. 2: 2], it beseems every Christian rather to explain in what sense Christ died for all, than flatly to deny it” (Richard Baxter, Universal Redemption; underlining mine–CD). [SOURCE]
Agrammatos 