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John Saltmarsh: New Model Army Chaplain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

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

Extract

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.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1951

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