Paul Baynes (also 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 Described as a "radical Puritan", he was unpublished in his lifetime, but more than a dozen works were put out in the five years after he died.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.

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 College 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. In 1617, Baynes described the types of servitude then existing in England, from apprentices to chattel slaves born enslaved.

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.

Works