‘Holy, safe, and sweet, and durable’

Abstract It has been suggested that Richard Baxter had a jaundiced conception of human friendship, an idea largely drawing on Baxter’s reflections on intimate and ‘bosom’ friendship in his pastoral aid, A Christian Directory (1673). Building on N. H. Keeble’s assertions to the contrary, that Baxter had ‘a genius for friendship’, this chapter extends a positive account of Baxter’s friendships to develop a multifaceted conception of friendship in his writings that was both classical and reformed, and which built upon and helped to shape a Puritan literary tradition of friendship. The chapter explores Baxter’s accounts of his real experiences of friendship through his correspondence, autobiography, and dedicatory epistles to friends.