In twenty-first century America, at a time when the family structure is crumbling, divorce rates are at an all-time high, and respect for parents is diminishing, The Godly Home serves as a balm for those seeking God's plan for the family. With an introduction by J. I. Packer, this book includes topics for those passionate about families or those teaching on the characteristics of a godly family. Richard Baxter covers topics such as marriage, children, and family worship methodically and comprehensively through both hypothetical and real-life questions and concerns that arise in family dynamics. He uses arguments, objections, and frequent Scripture to help husbands, wives, and children to live godly lives.
More than three centuries ago, Puritan church leader Baxter compiled a 1,143-page tome entitled Christian Directory, which included a section on family life. The Godly Home is the only stand-alone version of that section of Christian Directory. Editor Randall Pederson has updated the language and syntax to make this seventeenth-century collection of words one that will continue on for generations to come.
He wrote 168 or so separate works -- such treatises as the Christian Directory, the Methodus Theologiae Christianae, and the Catholic Theology, might each have represented the life's work of an ordinary man. His Breviate of the Life of Mrs Margaret Baxter records the virtues of his wife, and reveals Baxter's tenderness of nature. Without doubt, however, his most famous and enduring contribution to Christian literature was a devotional work published in 1658 under the title Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live. This slim volume was credited with the conversion of thousands and formed one of the core extra-biblical texts of evangelicalism until at least the middle of the nineteenth century.
Richard Baxter was ordained into the Church of England, 1638, but in two years allied with Puritans opposed to the episcopacy of his church. At Kidderminster (1641-60) he made the church a model parish. The church was enlarged to hold the crowds. Pastoral counseling was as important as preaching, and his program for his parish was a pattern for many other ministers. Baxter played an ameliorative role during the English Civil Wars.
He was a chaplain in the parliamentary army but then helped to restore the king (1660). After the establishment of the monarchy, he fought for toleration of moderate dissent in the Church of England. Persecuted for more than 20 years and was imprisoned (1685) for 18 months, the Revolution of 1688, replacing James II with William and Mary, brought about an Act of Toleration that freed Baxter to express his opinions.
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