To give a concise and accurate opinion of these Aphorisms, is no easy task. This difficulty arises from the great number of separate propositions, which are neither always consistent with truth nor with one another. As a book, it abounds in moral and metaphysical distinctions, and yet its definitions are frequently both inaccurate and obscure. It contains a large portion of truth, mixed and interwoven with no small portion of error. When he thus expresses himself about our participation of Christ’s righteousness, every true Christian is prepared to go along with him : “That God, the Father, doth accept the sufferings and mediation of his Son, as a full satisfaction to his violated law, and as a valuable consideration, upon which he will wholly forgive and acquit the offenders themselves, receive them again into favour, and give them the addition also of a more excellent happiness, so they will but receive his Son upon the terms expressed in the Gospel.” But when he comes to explain ” the terms of the Gospel,” and the manner in which men submit to them, we meet with much that is incautious. To a good deal of the objectionable language of his theses, he indeed gives a harmless interpretation in the accompanying explanation, or in some subsequent proposition renders it entirely nugatory. But still there remains much which is calculated to mislead. He speaks about the Gospel being ” new law, the conditions of which are easier than those of the old;” of “faith as the righteousness of a Christian.” He defines this faith as “the condition of the new covenant,” and includes in it the whole of religion. He represents the death of Christ as not “affecting any sins against the Gospel;” speaks of “works” as “part of the condition on which Christ’s righteousness becomes ours,” and maintains that ” we are justified by sincere obedience.” To this language, no man who understands aright the gratuitous justification which is through faith in the blood of Christ, will ever subscribe.

These were some of the expressions or sentiments which involved Baxter in most of the doctrinal altercations that occupied so large a portion of his future life, and on account of which his name has been placed at the head of a peculiar creed. While he explained, modified, and retracted, many things in this first, and perhaps most objectionable of his works, he adhered to the substance of its sentiments to the last.

William Orme, The Life and Times of Richard Baxter, 2 vols. (James Duncan, 1830), 2.41–42.

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