For Richard Baxter the Reformation understanding of salvation was plainly inadequate. They rested too much upon faith as resting and receiving and they made “sincere obedience” to be necessary only as fruit and evidence of salvation. This was not enough. For Baxter, such an approach would never produce the desired outcome: more godliness, more obedience, more sincerity. So he changed the Reformed covenant theology. 

The magisterial Protestant churches (i.e., the Lutheran and Reformed) and their theologians did not speak of, teach, or confess a “two-stage” doctrine of justification or even a “two-stage” doctrine of salvation (justification, sanctification, and glorification). Yet, today, one sees leading evangelical and even some Reformed writers using this language. This raises the question: from where did Protestants learn to talk about “two stages” of justification or an “initial justification” in this life and a final justification through grace and works. I have provided an extensive library of articles on this topic below so I will not re-hash all of that here. Please take advantage of those resources to learn more.

One of the principal sources of the doctrine that we are initially justified by grace alone (sola gratia), through faith alone (sola fide) but that by good works we are “maintaining a right standing with God” (Piper, 1999), that “you are not saved through faith alone” (Desiring God, 2017), “that final salvation in the age to come depends on the transformation of life” (Bethlehem Baptist Elder Statement) was the English pastor and theologian Richard Baxter (1615–91). He is most remembered for his pastoral work in Kidderminster, which he described in his book, The Reformed Pastor (1656). I read this work in seminary because it was commended to us warmly. Like most others, I suppose, I did not know what Baxter taught about the salvation, that he utterly and self-consciously rejected the Protestant doctrine of salvation sola gratia, sola fide. John Owen (1616–83) however, did know what Baxter taught and he devoted an entire volume of his works to refuting Baxter’s errors.

Baxter’s Definition of Faith
What did Baxter say about justification that motivated Owen to write an entire volume refuting it? He published his views in 1649 in the volume, Aphorismes of Justification, With their Explication annexed. Wherein also is opened the nature of the Covenants, Satisfaction, Righteousnesse, Faith, Works, etc.. There he considered and rejected the historic Protestant view that James was explaining the necessity of good works for vindicating one’s claim to be a believer (p. 300–03).

Let us begin with thesis 70 (pp. 280–81) where Baxter gave his definition of faith:

Faith in the largest sense, as it comprehends all the condition of the new covenant, may be thus defined: It is, when a sinner by the Word and Spirit of Christ being thoroughly convinced of the righteousness of the Law, the truth of its threatening, the evil of his own sin, and the greatness of his misery hereupon, and withall of the nature and offices, sufficiency and excellency of Jesus Christ, the satisfaction he hath made, his willingness to save, and his free offer to all that will accept him for their Lord and Savior; doth hereupon believe the truth of this Gospel, and accept of Christ as his only Lord and Saviour, to bring them to God their chiefest good, and to present them pardoned and just before him, and to bestow upon them a more glorious inheritance, and do accordingly rest on him as their Saviour, and sincerely (though imperfectly) obey him as their Lord, forgiving others, loving his people, bearing what sufferings are imposed, diligently using his means and ordinances, and confessing and bewailing their sins against him, and praying for pardon; and all this sincerely, and to the end .¹

We should note first that the definition is in two parts. Because of its length the reader needs to persevere a bit. The first half seems largely uncontroversial and orthodox but this is why it is so important to keep reading. At the conjunction (and) everything changes. The effect of the definition is to say that faith is trusting and obeying.

The problem becomes clearer when we contrast Baxter’s definition with that offered by the orthodox English and Scottish Reformed divines in Westminster Confession chapter 11, adopted by the Westminster Assembly and presented to Parliament just before Baxter published his work:

2. Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification: yet is it not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.

As with Baxter’s definition there are two parts but notice the relationship between the two parts. Where Baxter makes faith both believing and working, the divines distinguish between faith proper, as “receiving and resting” and works as the evidence of the existence of faith. In the Savoy Declaration 11.2 (1658), Baxter’s fellow congregationalists followed the Westminster Divines rather than Baxter. Indeed, their slight modification of the language of the WCF suggests that they saw a need to put an even finer point on the matter so as to exclude Baxter’s definition:

Faith thus receiving and resting on Christ, and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justification; yet it is not alone in the person justified, but is ever accompanied with all other saving graces, and is no dead faith, but worketh by love.

The phrase “alone instrument” has echoes of Belgic Confession (1561) art. 22, in which the Reformed churches confessed “faith is only the instrument by which we embrace Christ, our righteousness” and “And faith is the instrument that keeps us in communion with him and with all his benefits.” The Reformers were well aware of the medieval doctrine of “get in by grace, stay in by works.” The orthodox Reformed in the 16th and 17th centuries rejected that doctrine in favor of “get in by grace, stay in by grace” (as it were).

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