Richard Baxter, the author of the Saints’ Rest was an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymn-writer, theologian. He was born near Shrewsbury in 1615, and died at London in 1691. The Saints’ Rest is deservedly esteemed one of the most valuable parts of his practical works. He wrote it when he was far from home, without any book to consult but his Bible, and in such an ill state of health as to be in continual expectation of death for many months; and therefore, merely for his own use, he fixed his thoughts on this heavenly subject, “which,” says he, “hath more benefitted me than all the studies of my life.”
