(Richard), an eminent divine among the nonconformists, was born at Rowton in Shropshire, November 12, 1615; and distinguished himself by his exemplary life, his pacific and moderate principles, and his numerous writings. He was remarkable for his piety even when he was very young. Upon the opening of the long parliament, he was chosen vicar of Kidderminster. In the heat of the civil wars he withdrew from that town to Coventry, and preached to the garrison and inhabitants. When Oliver Cromwell was made protector, he would by no means comply with his measures, though he preached once before him. He came to London just before the deposition of Richard Cromwell, and preached before the parliament the day before they voted the return of king Charles II., who upon his restoration appointed him one of his chaplains in ordinary. He assisted at the conference in the Savoy, as one of the commissioners for stating the fundamentals in religion, and then drew up a reformed liturgy. He was offered the bishopric of Hereford; which he refused; affecting no higher preferment than the liberty of continuing minister of Kidderminster; which he could not obtain, for he was not permitted to preach there above twice or thrice after the restoration. Whereupon he returned to London, and preached occasionally about the city, till the act of uniformity took place. In 1662, Mr Baxter was married to Margaret Charleton, daughter to Francis Charleton, Esq; of the county of Salop, who was esteemed one of the best justices of the peace in that county. She was a woman of great piety, and entered thoroughly into her husband's views concerning religion. During the plague in 1665 he retired into Buckinghamshire; but afterward returned to Acton, where he stood till the act against conventicles expired; and then his audience was so large that he wanted room. Upon this he was committed to prison; but procuring an habeas corpus, he was discharged. After the indulgence in 1672, he returned to London; and in 1682 he was seized for coming within five miles of a corporation. In 1684 he was seized again; and in the reign of king James II. was committed prisoner to the king's bench, and tried before the lord chief justice Jeffries for his Paraphrase on the New Testament, which was called a scandalous and seditious book against the government. He continued in prison two years; from whence he was at last discharged, and had his fine remitted by the king. He died December the 8th 1691; and was buried in Christ-Church.

Mr Sylvester says, that Mr Baxter's "person was tall and slender, and stooped much; his countenance composed and grave, somewhat inclining to smile. He had a piercing eye, a very articulate speech, and deportment rather plain than complimential." There is an original portrait of him at Dr Williams's library, founded for the use of Protestant Dissenting Ministers, in Red-crofs-street. Mr Sylvester also says, that "he had a great command over his thoughts. He had that happy faculty, so as to answer the character that was given of him by a learned man dissenting from him, after discourse with him; which was, that he could say what he would, and he could prove what he said. He was most intent upon the necessary things. Rational learning he most valued, and was a very extraordinary matter of. And as to his expressive faculty, he spake properly, plainly, pertinently, and pathetically. He could speak suitably, both to men's capacities and to the things inflicted on. He was a person wonderful at extemporate preaching." But his common practice appears to have been to preach with notes; though he said, "That he thought it very needful for a minister to have a body of divinity in his head." He was honoured with the friendship of some of the greatest and best men in the kingdom (as the Earl of Lauderdale, the Earl of Balcarres, Lord Chief Justice Hales, Dr Tillotson, &c. and held correspondence with some of the most eminent foreign divines.—He wrote above 120 books, and had above 60 written against him. The former, however, it should seem, were greatly preferable to the latter; since Dr Barrow, an excellent judge, Baxter says, that "his practical writings were never mended, his controversial seldom confused."

Mr Granger's character of him is too striking to be omitted. "Richard Baxter was a man famous for weaknesses of body and strength of mind; for having the strongest sense of religion himself, and exciting a sense of it in the thoughtless and profligate; for preaching more sermons, engaging in more controversies, and writing more books, than any other Nonconformist of his age. He spoke, disputed, and wrote with ease; and discovered the same intrepidity when he reproved Cromwell and expostulated with Charles II., as when he preached to a congregation of mechanics. His zeal for religion was extraordinary; but it seems never to have prompted him to faction, or carried him to enthusiasm. This champion of the Presbyterians was the common butt of men of every other religion, and of those who were of no religion at all. But this had very little effect upon him; his presence and his firmness of mind on no occasion forsook him. He was just the same man before he went into a prison, while he was in it, and when he came out of it; and he maintained an uniformity of character to the last gasp of his life. His enemies have placed him in hell; but every man who has not ten times the bigotry that Mr Baxter himself had, must conclude that he is in a better place. This is a very faint and imperfect sketch of Mr Baxter's character: men of his size are not to be drawn in miniature. His portrait, in full proportion, is in his Narrative of his own Life and Times; which though a rhapsody, composed in the manner of a diary, contains a great variety of memorable things, and is itself, as far as it goes, a History of Nonconformity."—Among his most famous works were, 1. The Saints Everlasting Rest. 2. Call to the Unconverted, of which 20,000 were sold in one year; and it was translated not only into all the European languages, but into the Indian tongue. 3. Poor Man's Family Book. 4. Dying Thoughts; and, 5. A Paraphrase on the New Testament. His practical works have been printed in four volumes folio.

Baxter (William), nephew and heir to the former, was an eminent schoolmaster and critic. He was born at Lanluggan in Shropshire, in the year 1650; and it is remarkable, that at the age of 18, when he first went to school, he knew not one letter nor understood one word of any language but Welsh; but he so well improved his time, that he became a person of great and extensive knowledge. His genius led him chiefly to the study of antiquities and philology, in which he composed several books. The first he published was a Grammar, in 1679, intitled De Analogia seu Arte Latinae Linguae Commentariolus. He also published a new and corrected edition of Anacreon, with Notes; an edition of Horace; a Dictionary of the British antiquities, in Latin; and several other books. He was a great master of the ancient British and Irish tongues, was particularly skilled in the Latin and Greek, and in the northern and eastern languages. He died May 31, 1723, after being above 20 years master of Mercer's School in London.

Baxter (Andrew), a very ingenious metaphysical writer, was born in 1686 or 1687, at Old Aberdeen (where his father was a merchant), and educated in King's College there. His principal employment was that of a private tutor to young gentlemen; and among others of his pupils were Lord Grey, Lord Blantyre, and Mr Hay of Drummelzier. About 1724 he married the daughter of a clergyman in the shire of Berwick. A few years after he published in 4to, "An Inquiry into the Nature of the human Soul, wherein its immateriality is evinced from the principles of reason and philosophy;" without date. In 1741 he went abroad with Mr Hay, and resided some years at Utrecht; having there also Lord Blantyre under his care. He made excursions from thence into Flanders, France, and Germany; his wife and family residing, in the meantime, chiefly at Berwick-upon-Tweed. He returned to Scotland in 1747, and resided till his death at Whittingham, in the shire of East Lothian. He drew up, for the use of his pupils and his son, a piece intitled Matho: sive, Cognitiovera, puerilis, Dialogus. In quo prima elementa de mundi ordine et ornato propinquantur, &c. This was afterwards greatly enlarged, and published in English, in two volumes 8vo. In 1750 was published, "An Appendix to his Inquiry into the Nature of the human Soul;" wherein he endeavours to remove some difficulties which had been started against his notions of the vis inertiae of matter by MacLaurin, in his "Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries." To this piece Mr Baxter prefixed a dedication to Mr John Wilkes, with whom he had commenced an acquaintance abroad. He died this year, April the 23d, after suffering for some months under a complication of disorders, of which the gout was the chief. He left a wife, three daughters, and one son, Mr Alexander Baxter; from which last the authors of Biographia Britannica received, as they inform us, sundry particulars of his life.

His learning and abilities are sufficiently displayed in his writings. He was extremely studious, and sometimes sat up whole nights in reading and writing. His temper at the same time was very cheerful, and he was a friend to innocent merriment. It is informed by his son, that he entered with much good humour into the conversation and pleasures of young people, when they were of an innocent nature: and that he presided, all the time of his abode at Utrecht, at the ordinary which was frequented by all the young English gentlemen there, with much gaiety and politeness, and in such a manner as gave universal satisfaction. He also frequented the most polite assemblies in that city, and his company and conversation were particularly acceptable to the ladies. So that Mr Baxter appears to have studied the graces, though without neglecting more valuable acquisitions and accomplishments. He was at once the scholar and the gentleman. In conversation he was modest, and not apt to make much show of the extensive knowledge of which he was possessed. In the discharge of the several social and relative duties of life, his conduct was exemplary. He had the most reverential sentiments of the Deity, of whose presence and immediate support he had always a strong impression upon his mind; and the general tenor of his life appears to have been conformable to the rules of virtue. Mr Baxter paid a strict attention to economy, though he dressed elegantly, and was not parsimonious in his other expenses. It is known also, that there were several occasions on which he acted with remarkable disinterestedness; and so far was he from courting preferment, that he has repeatedly declined considerable offers of that kind which were made him, if he would have taken orders in the church of England. The French, German, and Dutch languages were spoken by him with much ease, and the Italian tolerably; and he wrote and read them all, together with the Spanish. His friends and correspondents were numerous and respectable; and among them are particularly mentioned Mr Pointz, preceptor to the late Duke of Cumberland, and Dr Warburton, bishop of Gloucester. He was a man also of great benevolence and candour; which appears most strikingly from this, insomuch as though Mr Wilkes had made himself so very obnoxious to the Scottish nation in general, yet Mr Baxter kept up with him an affectionate correspondence to the last, even after he was unable to write with his own hand. He left many manuscripts behind him; he would gladly have finished this work upon the human soul: "I own," says he, in a letter to Mr Wilkes, "if it had been the will of heaven, I would gladly have lived till I had put in order the second part of the Enquiry, showing the immortality of the human soul; but Infinite Wisdom cannot be mistaken in calling me sooner. Our blindness makes us form wishes." It was, indeed, what he considered it, his capital work: a second edition of it was published in two volumes 8vo in 1737, and a third in 1745. In another letter, speaking of his endeavours to establish the particular providence of the Deity, and to show its incessant influence and action on all the parts of matter, through the wide universe, from the inactivity of this dead substance; expresses his hope, that when the present party-zeal subsides a little, men will come more easily into own such a plain truth. "His prediction," the editors of the Biographia Britannica observe, "hath not yet been accomplished. Several eminent names seem rather disposed to increase than to lessen the powers of matter; and they have expressly maintained that the soul of man is material. However, other names equally eminent have asserted the essential distinction between the mind and the body. Perhaps, in the revolutions of opinion, the doctrine of immateriality may again obtain the general suffrage of metaphysical and philosophical inquiry.