ABSTRACT
As the title suggests, the autobiography of Richard Baxter was published posthumously from manuscripts left when he died in 1691. To his friend Matthew Sylvester he bequeathed the task of editing them and supervising publication, a responsibility which Sylvester found heavy indeed, oppressed as he was with ill health, a busy pastorate, and the impatience of Baxter’s admirers. This chapter attempts to identify the main strands of Baxter’s recorded experience, to consider the style and structure of the work in relation to his themes, and to offer some conclusions on the place of the Reliquiae in the Puritan tradition of spiritual autobiography. Bunny’s Resolution was only the first of many books which brought him illumination, insight, challenge, and consolation. It is difficult to be certain of what literary influences there were on Baxter’s autobiography. The fact that his first recorded conviction of sin followed the robbing of an orchard is of course paralleled in Augustine’s Confessions.
