VirginiaHuguenot
Puritanboard Librarian
Matthew Sylvester, English Puritan (c. 1636 - January 25, 1708), was a dear friend and literary executor of Richard Baxter. Baxter served as Sylvester's "unpaid and occasional assistant" in the ministry at Charter-house-yard for several years at the end of Baxter's life. When Baxter died, funeral sermons were preached for him by Sylvester and William Bates. Edmund Calamy the Historian also served as Sylvester's assistant pastor starting in 1692. In 1696, Sylvester published Reliquiae Baxterianae, or Mr Richard Baxter's Narrative of the most memorable Passages of his Life and Times. Sylvester contributed four of the Cripplegate Sermons: 1) How we may overcome inordinate Love of Life and Fear of Death; 2) How may a gracious Person, from whom God hides his Face, trust in the Lord as his God?; 3) How may a lukewarm Temper be effectually cured in ourselves and in one another?; and 4) Baptism and the Lord's Supper are the only Sacraments of the Covenant of Grace under the New Testament. Other sermons by Sylvester include: Submission to the will of God in times of affliction asserted, in a sermon from I Sam. 3. 18 and Being for ever with the Lord, the great hope, end and comfort of believers what it is, and how to be obtained and forethought of.