Anger Management: Pocket Puritans series (Richard Baxter)

Anger Management

In the Pocket Puritans Series

The emotion of anger is God’s good gift to us, to help us to hate and resist all that is wrong. But anger may itself also be turned to serve sinful purposes. Richard Baxter gives valuable and practical advice on how to recognize and overcome this sinful anger in all its forms. Slightly adapted and paraphrased from the edition of Baxter’s A Christian Directory, edited by Richard Rushing. A small, “pocket edition”, 3-1/2″ x 5-1/4″ volume.

Commendation of the Pocket Puritans Series:

“To read the work of a Puritan doctor of the soul is to enter a rich world of spiritual theology to feed the mind, heart-searching analysis to probe the conscience, Christ-centered grace to transform the heart, and wise counsel to direct the life. This series of Pocket Puritans provides all this in miniature, but also in abundance.”

— Sinclair Ferguson, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, PA

About the Author

Richard Baxter (1615-1691) is chiefly remembered for the transformation his pastoral ministry effected on the town of Kidderminster, Worcestershire, during two periods of pastoral ministry there (interrupted by the English Civil War, in which he served as chaplain to the Parliamentary forces) between 1641 and 1661.

Born in Rowton, Shropshire, Baxter attended Wroxeter Grammar School but most of his study was by his own private reading. He was ordained by John Thornborough, Bishop of Worcester, in 1638. After a short time as a school-master in Dudley, became an assistant minister in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, before moving to Kidderminster in 1641. After leaving there in 1661, he preached in London, but was ejected from the Church of England the following year.

When almost fifty, Baxter married Margaret Charlton, one of his converts, who was in her early twenties. In spite of the difference in ages, they had an excellent marriage. Margaret shared her husband’s passion for Christ and the salvation of souls. Baxter suffered much ill-health, and the last twenty-nine years of his life were further ’embittered by repeated prosecutions, fines, imprisonment, and harassing controversies’ (Ryle), but there was some respite with the accession of William and Mary in 1689, just two years before his death.