Name Paul Baynes | Died 1617 | |
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Books A commentary upon the first and second chapters of Saint Paul to the Colossians | ||
Paul Baynes (Bayne, Baines) (c.1573–1617) was an English clergyman. Described as a “radical Puritan”, he was unpublished in his lifetime, but more than a dozen works were put out in the five years after he died. His commentary on Ephesians is his best known work; the commentary on the first chapter, itself of 400 pages, appeared in 1618.
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Life
He went to school at Wethersfield, Essex. A pupil and follower of William Perkins, he graduated from Christ's College, Cambridge with a B.A. in 1593/4, M.A. in 1597, and was elected a Fellow of Christ's in 1600, a position he lost in 1608 for non-conformity. He was successor to Perkins as lecturer at the church of St Andrew the Great in Cambridge, opposite Christ's; they were considered the town's leading Puritan preachers.
Influence
Baynes was an important influence on the following generation of English Calvinists, through William Ames, a convert of Perkins, and Richard Sibbes, a convert of Baynes himself. This makes Baynes a major link in a chain of "Puritan worthies": to John Cotton, John Preston, Thomas Shepard and Thomas Goodwin. Ames quoted Baynes: "Beware of a strong head and a cold heart", an idea that would be repeated by Cotton Mather, who was grandson to John Cotton.