John Saltmarsh: New Model Army Chaplain

Leo F. Solt

doi:10.1017/S0022046900055391

John Saltmarsh: New Model Army Chaplain

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011

Leo F. Solt

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Leo F. Solt: Affiliation:
Columbia University, U.S.A.

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When Richard Baxter arrived in the camp of the victorious New Model Army shortly after the battle of Naseby in June 1645, he was greatly distressed by the religious and political heterodoxies that found expression through the ‘few proud, self-conceited, hotheaded Sectaries’ who had become Cromwell's ‘Favourites’. He observed that these men held ‘vehement Disputes’ in behalf of ‘Liberty of Conscience’, the doctrine that the civil magistrate should have nothing to do with matters of religion. Furthermore, he noticed that they also talked of ‘State Democracy’ and ‘Church Democracy’ as well as ‘about Free-grace and Free-will, and all the Points of Antinomianism and Arminianism’. In other words, in Baxter's mind those men who were attacking the orthodox Calvinistic doctrines of predestination and election were the very same men who were demanding additional political liberties. A single test case may be framed of the compatibility and nurturing effect (each upon the other) of these two tendencies by an examination of the writings of the New Model Army chaplain, John Saltmarsh.

Type: Research Article
Information: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , April 1951 , pp. 69 - 80

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046900055391 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1951

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^{page 69 note 1} Baxter, Richard, Reliquiae Baxterianae, ed. Sylvester, M., London 1696, i. 50, 53.Google Scholar

^{page 69 note 2} Ibid., i. 56.

^{page 70 note 1} See Alexander Gordon in Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. ‘John Saltmarsh’; Edwards, Thomas, The Third Part of Gangraena, London 1646, 114, 122.Google Scholar

^{page 70 note 2} The Leveller Tracts 1647–1653, ed. Haller, William and Davies, Godfrey, New York 1944, 361.Google Scholar

^{page 70 note 3} Williams, Roger, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, London 1644Google Scholar, contained in Publications of the Narraganselt Club, First series, Providence, Rhode Island 1866–74, iii. 151, 237.

^{page 70 note 4} Saltmarsh, John, Free-grace, corrected second ed., London 1646, 144.Google Scholar

^{page 70 note 5} Ibid., 144. In a little book called A Dying Fathers Last Legacy To An Only Child, written just before his execution as a regicide in 1660, Hugh Peters, Saltmarsh's colleague in the New Model Army, mentioned that he had formerly delighted in speaking to others about Free-grace, and that he thought it was ‘the sum of true practical Divinity’. Writing of Free-grace Peters said: ‘Now Christ thus loving the soul … is called Free Grace indeed; when the Father shall freely give his Son, and the Son freely his Heart-blood, and the Spirit freely all its operations, and make a free Covenant of grace and mercy to pardon all sin, to receive a sinner into his bosom, without money or price; nay not to offer any thing of his own, either Duty, or Righteousness … this call Free Grace …’: Peters, , A Dying Fathers Last Legacy to An Only Child, reprinted in Boston 1717, 58–9.Google Scholar

^{page 71 note 1} Saltmarsh, Free-grace, 104.

^{page 71 note 2} Ibid., 191.

^{page 71 note 3} Gataker, Thomas (A Mistake, or Misconstruction, Removed, London 1646, 24Google Scholar) argued that Saltmarsh's Free-grace was ‘legalistic’ because it made the act of believing a condition for regeneration just as others made repentance, obedience, and faith, conditions of salvation.

^{page 71 note 4} Ibid., 6.

^{page 71 note 5} Gataker, , Shadowes without Substance, London 1646.Google Scholar

^{page 71 note 6} Saltmarsh, , Sparkles of Glory, London 1647Google Scholar, ‘To the Reader’; Saltmarsh, Free-grace, 74.

^{page 72 note 1} Saltmarsh. An End of One Coutroversie, Contained in some Drops of the Viall, London 1646, 116.

^{page 72 note 2} Cf. supra, 70.

^{page 72 note 3} Saltmarsh, Free-grace, 203.

^{page 72 note 4} Saltmarsh, Reasons for vnitie, peace, and love, Contained in Some Drops of Viall, 136.

^{page 72 note 5} Saltmarsh, Free-grace, 102

^{page 72 note 6} Ibid., 31.

^{page 72 note 7} Gataker,A Mistake, 20.

^{page 73 note 1} Cf. Haller and Davies, op. cit., 40. Gataker wrote of Saltmarsh's theology:“… what is it but to teach men to believ a lie; that God will save such, as indeed never shall be saved: and to encourage them upon groundles perswasions and misapprehensions, the more securely, never questioning how it stands with them, to run on hoodwinked, until sodainly they fall headlong into hell?’: Gataker, A Mistake, 26. Samuel Rutherford, a Scottish member of the Westminster Assembly, accused Saltmarsh of believing in ‘grace universall” Rutherford, , A Survey of the Spiritual! Antichrist, London 1648, Part 1, 215.Google Scholar

^{page 73 note 2} Cf. supra, 69.

^{page 73 note 3} Saltmarsh, Free-grace, 163.

^{page 73 note 4} When Saltmarsh wrote that‘.… none can simply perswade a soul that it doth beleeve, but [He] on whom it doth beleeve’ (Free-grace, 94), he made the act of believing entirely dependent upon the Free-grace of God. This point of view is considerably altered in his discussion of the ‘Weak beleevers’. ‘They cannot be perswaded their sins are pardoned… they would, and they would not beleeve it …’ (Free-grace, 172). The resistance of the weak believer indicates an element of choice either in his conversion to or rejection of Christ.

^{page 73 note 5} Saltmarsh, Free-grace, 191.

^{page 73 note 6} Edwards, op. cit., p. 45.

^{page 73 note 7} Dell, William, The Building, Beauty, Teaching, and Establishment of the truly Christian and Spiritual Church, London 1646Google Scholar, reprinted in Several Sermons and Discourses, London 1709, 76Google Scholar.

^{page 73 note 8} Saltmarsh, Free-grace, 150.

^{page 74 note 1} John Saltmarsh, The Smoke in the Temple, 3rd ed., contained in Some Drops of the Viall.

^{page 74 note 2} Ibid., 3.

^{page 74 note 3} Ibid., ‘To the Beleevers’; cf. Milton, John, Arcopagitica, contained in Milton, Prose Selections, ed. Hughes, M. Y., New York 1947, 252Google Scholar.

^{page 74 note 4} Saltmarsh, An End of One Controuersie, 122.

^{page 74 note 5} Saltmarsh, Sparkles of Glory, 1646; quoted in Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, 11. 236.

^{page 74 note 6} Saltmarsh, The Smoke in the Temple, 1–3.

^{page 74 note 7} Saltmarsh, Sparkles of Glory, ‘The Epistle Dedicatory’; Peters took the same position in Mr Peter s Last Report of the English Wars, London 1646, 8Google Scholar, and in his A word for the Armxe, London 1647, 12Google Scholar.

^{page 75 note 1} Saltmarsh, , Sparkles of Glory, ed. Pickering, William, London 1847, 116–17.Google Scholar

^{page 75 note 2} Saltmarsh, The Smoke in the Temple, 72.

^{page 75 note 3} Documents of the Christian Church, ed. Bettenson, Helen, New York 1947, 393Google Scholar.

^{page 75 note 4} John Saltmarsh, The Divine Right of Presbytery, contained in Some Drops of the Viall, 108.

^{page 75 note 5} Saltmarsh, The Smoke in the Temple, 20.

^{page 75 note 6} Ley, John, Light for Smoke, London 1646, 46Google Scholar.

^{page 76 note 1} Saltmarsh, The Smoke in the Temple, 20.

^{page 76 note 2} Williams, The Bloudy Tenent, 333.

^{page 76 note 3} Woodhouse, A. S. P., Puritanism and Liberty, Being the Army Debates (1647–9) from the Clarke Manuscripts with Supplementary Documents, London 1938, Introduction, 58Google Scholar.

^{page 76 note 4} Saltmarsh, , Dawnings of Light, London 1644, 36Google Scholar.

^{page 76 note 5} Saltmarsh, Sparkles of Glory, 160.

^{page 76 note 6} Ibid., 304.

^{page 76 note 7} Saltmarsh, Sparkles of Glory, 149–50; The Smoke in the Temple, 31; The Divine Right of Presóytery, 112; Reasons for Vnitie, Peace, and Love, 146–7.

^{page 76 note 8} Saltmarsh, Sparkles of Glory, 135; The Divine Right of Presbytery, 110.

^{page 76 note 9} Saltmarsh, Sparkles of Glory, 137; cf. Peters, Last Report, 12.

^{page 77 note 1} Saltmarsh, , A Solemn Discourse Vpon the Sacred League and Covenant, London 1644, 7Google Scholar.

^{page 77 note 2} Saltmarsh, , Examinations, or A Discovery of Some Dangerous Positions, London 1643, 6.Google Scholar

^{page 77 note 3} Saltmarsh, The Smoke in the Temple, 30.

^{page 77 note 4} Saltmarsh, , A Peace but no Pacification, London 1643, fol. B3.Google Scholar

^{page 77 note 5} Saltmarsh, Examinations, 7.

^{page 77 note 6} Saltmarsh, A Solemn Discourse, 7.

^{page 77 note 7} The other type of democracy that Baxter found in the Army was ‘Church Democracy’. By this term he was probably referring to the practice employed by those who professed themselves to be of the Independent way, whereby a group of people gathered themselves into voluntary congregations and elected a pastor by popular vote to minister to their spiritual needs. Saltmarsh contended that churches could not make pastors because such practices were not authorized in the Word of God. Saltmarsh, The Smoke in the Temple, 8. ‘And one may question whether in spirituals, as in Civils, Votes and Voyces are to make Laws … that is only to be a Law or Truth in the Church and Kingdom of Saints, not what is so in the common consent or voyce, but what is a Law in the very Gospell-truth of it’: ibid., 74. Although Saltmarsh recognized that civil laws were made through election procedure, nevertheless, he did not see any relationship between the ecclesiastical structure of the ‘gathered’ church and the administrative structure of the state. Cf. Williams, The Bloudy Tenent, 332, 356. On the contrary, as has been already noted, he briefly suggested without elaboration that the hierarchy of administration in the Presbyterian Church might be helpful to the State in the current crisis.

^{page 78 note 1} Saltmarsh, Sparkles of Glory, 159.

^{page 78 note 2} Ibid., 165–9.

^{page 78 note 3} Ibid., ‘Epistle Dedicatory’.

^{page 79 note 1} Edwards, op. cit., 45.

^{page 79 note 2} Ibid., 63. On 8 July 1646 Dell was called before the House of Lords to answer for these statements, and he promptly denied having spoken them in his sermon. His case was referred to the committee which was drawing up charges against John Lilburne. Three days later Lilburne was ordered to be imprisoned and fined. On 17 July Dell was released from further attendance at the House, and the case was subsequently dropped. Journals, House of Lords, viii. 397–436.

^{page 79 note 3} S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War 1642–1649, iii. 253–5.

^{page 79 note 4} Bulstrode Whitelock, Memorials of the English Affairs, ii. 253–3.

^{page 79 note 5} Wonderfull Predictions Declared in a Message, as from the Lord, London 1648, 5.Google Scholar

^{page 79 note 6} Ibid., 6.

^{page 79 note 7} Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution, ed. Wolfe, D. M., New York 1944, 61Google Scholar.

^{page 80 note 1} Cf. supra, 77.

^{page 81 note 1} The Leveller An Agreement of the People stood for redistribution of the members of Parliament, dissolution of the existing Parliament, biennial summonings of Parliament, the sovereign power to rest with the people, complete religious freedom, freedom from conscription, and equality of all men before the law. Gardiner, op. cit., iii, Appendix.

^{page 80 note 2} Whitelocke, op. cit., ii. 252–3.

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