Richard Baxter (12 November 1615 – 8 December 1691) was an English Puritan church leader, poet, hymn-writer, theologian, and controversialist. Richard Baxter held to a form of Amyraldism, a moderated form of Calvinism which rejected the idea of a limited atonement in favor of a universal atonement similar to that of Hugo Grotius. He devised an eclectic middle route between doctrines of grace, namely the Bezan Reformed, Grotius's Arminian, John Cameron's Amyraldism, and Augustine's Roman traditions. Interpreting the kingdom of God in terms of Christ as Christus Victor and Rector of all men, Baxter explained Christ's death as an act of universal redemption, penal and vicarious, though substitutionary in explication, in virtue of which God has made a "new law" offering pardon and amnesty to the penitent.
