Written By the Puritan Richard Baxter (1615 – 1691) from his book “The Godly Home.”

These are Richard Baxter’s instructions to wives. They are convicting and challenging!

Direction 1 : Be especially loving to your husbands.

Direction 2: Live in a voluntary subjection and obedience to them. It is God who appointed them your heads. Do not deceive yourselves by giving the bare titles of government to your husbands when you must have your will in all things, for this is but mockery and not obedience.

Direction 3: Learn from your husbands as your appointed teachers, and do not be self-conceited and wise in your own eyes, but ask them such instructions as your case requires. “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law. And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.” (1 Corinthians 14:33, 34)

Direction 4: Set yourselves to amend all those faults that they reprove in you. Do not take it wrongly to be reproved; do not swell against it, as if they did you harm or wrong. It is not a good sign to reject reproof (Proverbs 10:17; 15:10, 31-32; 17:100).

Direction 5: Honor your husbands according to their superiority. Do not speak of their infirmities to others, behind their backs, as some trifling gossips do who do not know that their husbands’ dishonor is their own and that to open it causelessly before others is to double their shame. (He does state if you need counsel, ask a “prudent friend for advice.”)

Direction 6: Live in a cheerful contentedness with your condition, and take heed of an impatient, murmuring spirit. It is a continual burden to a man to have an impatient, discontented wife. If is far heavier than his poverty. A contented, cheerful wife helps make a man cheerful and contented in every state.

Direction 7: In a special manner, strive to subdue your passions and to speak and do all in meekness and sobriety. The weakness of your sex usually subjects you more to passions than men; and it is the common cause of the husband’s disquietness and the calamity of your relation. You will not find yourselves at ease as long as you are passionate. By all means, subdue passion and keep a composed, patient mind.

Direction 8: Take heed of a proud and contentious disposition and maintain a humble, peaceable temper. Pride will make you turbulent and unquiet with your husbands and contentious with your neighbors. In a word, it is the Devil’s sin and would make you a shame and trouble to the world. “But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price” (1 Peter 3:4). Write those words in your bedroom, on the walls, where they may be daily before your eyes. Proud women often ruin their husbands’ estates and quietness and their own souls.

Direction 9: Do not affect a childish gaudiness of apparel or a vain, costly, or troublesome curiosity in anything about you. It dishonors your sex and yourselves to be so childish as to over-mind such trivial things. The cost, time (oh, precious time!) that they must lay out upon their dressings, entertainments, and other curiosities will be the shame and sorrow of their souls. Take heed if you will be such that howl against others who are not as vain and curious as you; for the nature of man is more prone to pride and vanity than to humility and the improvement of their time and cost in great matters.

Direction 10: Be careful in the government of your tongues. Let your words be few and well considered before you speak them. A double diligence is needful in this because it is the most common misconduct of your sex. Yea, though talk is good, it will be tedious and contemptible if it is poured out and too cheap. “A fool multiplies words” (Ecclesiastes 10:14). But a woman who is cautious and sparing of her words is commonly reverenced and considered to be wise. Let your words be few and weighty.

Direction 11: Be willing and diligent in your proper part of the care and labor of the family. As the primary provision of maintenance belongs most to the husband, so the secondary provision within doors belongs to the wife.

Direction 12: Do not dispose of your husband’s estate without his knowledge and consent. (Don’t waste his money.)

She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.
Proverbs 31:12

 I made a video going more in-depth into each direction (admonition) that he wrote! Watch it HERE!

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