John Spilsbury (Baptist minister)


John Spilsbury was an English cobbler and Particular Baptist minister who set up a Calvinist Baptist church in London in 1638.

Biography

John Spilsbury was born in 1593 in London He was a cobbler at Aldersgate. He was a member of a London Separatist church, which he left in 1633, because of his position on believer's baptism.

Ministry

In 1638, Spilsbury founded the first particular Baptist church in London.

Scholarly work

From Spilsbury's pastoral doctrine, two issues, expansively developed, received forceful treatment: the constitution of a Christian congregation and the "invincible efficacy" of Christ's work for His people.
In 1643, Spilsbury published A Treatise Concerning the Lawfull Subject of Baptisme, which he reissued in a second edition in 1652, "Corrected and enlarged by the Author."
In 1646 he issued God's Ordinance, The Saints Privilege, with a discussion of what he perceived as the two Scripturally-based sacraments of the Christian church. Benjamin Coxe transcribed and enlarged the second part of this work.

Believer's baptism

Spilsbury's presentation of believer's baptism by immersion of necessity engaged covenantal theology. He approved covenant theology and built his doctrine of the church on the "infallible certainty" of the eternal covenant of grace; he argued, however, that the spirituality of the New Covenant in Christ eliminated the possibility of an infant's participation in it.
The issue of the salvation of infants dying in infancy he treated as an area of mystery. He argued that one's answer to that question does not affect the revealed qualifications for those who may legitimately receive New Covenant ordinances. Though the visible perpetuity of the Old Covenant included the circumcision of male infants, the exclusion of infants from the sign of the new does not mean that the new is less encouraging in its privileges than the old.
Spilsbury said that all participation in the positive provisions of the old covenant was only a shadow of the spiritual reality of the new. An infant's exclusion from the positive ordinance of baptism forbids to him, or her, no spiritual blessing. The new covenant assumes the effectual working of the Spirit to create a believing community justified by faith in Christ and employs new positive ordinances as the symbols of its character.
He firmly believed that Believer's baptism, not infant baptism, corresponds to the nature of the new covenant, stands alone as enjoined by the Lord's authority, and alone is practised by the apostles.
Somewhat controversially, Spilsbury asserted that any other baptism is not baptism at all but a faulty cornerstone that would "bring down the church." He said that Protestants, therefore, who retained infant baptism kept themselves "in the company of Antichrist." They must return to Rome or go forward to what he saw as "the true constitution of the church."

New Testament church

Spilsbury's first work, The Lawfull Subject of Baptisme, also dealt at length with the particular task of fitting and preparing the matter, that is how sinners are made fit for constituting a church.
In the final analysis, Spilsbury saw four elements that merged in the constituting of a "New Testament church".
First, he argued, must come the Word of God "which is to fit and prepare the matter for the form." The preaching of the Word assaults the pride of man, smooths his "hard and rough turbulent" spirit, aligns his "crooked and Serpent-like nature," and brings him humbly to embrace the "low and mean condition of Christ upon His cross."
Second, Spilsbury said that this same Word so convinces the sinner of its truth that its leaven "seasons and sweetens the whole man." The Word operates like a "fire that breaks forth and discovers itself" with such clarity in "such as have it," that they delineate specific truths from that Word. A confession of faith consisting of particular doctrines naturally develops. Others so prepared "come to one and the same mind and judgment in it."
Spilsbury said that this leads to the third "constituting cause" of a church. The believers so fitted by the Word now covenant to be a body of believers joined by "free and mutual consent and agreement upon the practice of that truth so by God revealed, and by faith received." This voluntary covenant precedes the ordinances.
He said that the fourth cause follows, the Spirit's work in knitting and uniting their hearts together in truth. A corporate witness to propositional truths provides the only clear evidence that such a work of the Spirit has, in fact, occurred.
He wrote:
Their practical subjection to Christ in the said truth, by them received and agreed upon as aforesaid, and this is the Covenant that forms the Church, which ever goes in order before the external administration of any other ordinance than the matters agreement together for orderly practice; for persons must be informed of the truth in judgment, and bound by the same in conscience, and agree upon the practice, before the same can orderly be put into execution.

Spilsbury believed that once such agreement in conversion and truth was ascertained and the "matter," converted and convinced persons so constituted has covenanted with fully informed consciences to be the people of God, the covenant is sealed with baptism. "Thus being in Covenant with God by faith in Jesus Christ, in which their state consists, and so the agreement made, and the covenant passed between them, now the seal is set to. Which is the outward ordinance of Baptism, to confirm the same," he wrote.

Professions of faith

The point must be made clearly and without equivocation that the earliest Particular Baptists, as well as General Baptists, established their churches by agreement to a confession of faith.
Spilsbury considered this as necessary, not just convenient and for the well-being of the church, but for the being of the church. Spilsbury declared in no uncertain terms that saving faith must be manifest in the hearty approval and assertion of a body of propositional truths. No church, and thus no baptism, could exist apart from submission to orthodox evangelicalism embodied in a confession of faith.
Spilsbury said that submission to such constituted the covenantal agreement was necessary before baptism into his doctrine of the church. He further argued that this union must first exist before communion in any other privileges may be enjoyed for the "comfort and well being" of the body.
He summarises the content of a true "Confession of Christ" in part one of Gods Ordinance, the Saints Privilege. The confession of Christ, including all the biblical truths about him, must be culminated in baptism.
He wrote:
The confession that Christ requires of men so believing, is to confesse him in his Name and Titles that his Father hath honoured him with, and set him out by, viz. To be a sufficient and onely Saviour, and the Mediatour of the new Testament; as King, Priest, and Prophet. A Priest to redeeme and purchase his people; a Prophet to teach and instruct that people; and a King to protect and defend the said people in their obedience to the truth, revealed by him as a Prophet, and by him as a King commanded to be obeyed; And as this is to be knowne and believed of such as expect life by him: even so it is to be confessed, by a professed subjection to him in the same.
The Rule of which professed subjection and confession, is the instituted order and administration of Christ's Testament; for no other confession doth he approve of but that which holds him forth to be Jesus Christ, the Sonne of God, come in the flesh, dead, and risen againe, ascended, and exalted at Gods right hand, to the throne of his Father David; and so to be Lord of Lord, and King of Kings. And submission to the instituted order and administration of Christ's Testament, is an ordained confession of this believing in him, in a professed subjection to him. This confession doth Christ therefore require of such as believe in him, and ownes no believing unto salvation in his new Testament, once confirmed by his death, where this is refused….If there be no baptising into Christ, then is there not confession of Christ, according to his appointment, then no faith to salvation by Christ, expresly owned.

A truly orthodox confession, arising from true faith, would, according to Spilsbury, certainly culminate in true baptism. Refusal to submit to this ordinance meant the absence of true profession and true faith, "expresly owned."

Influence on modern Baptists

Thus, Spilsbury might be excluding from salvation anyone who does not go on to believer's baptism. Alternatively, however, the meaning of "expresly owned" is that, apart from volitional submission to the established ordinance, the public confession whereby one says, "I have faith in Christ alone as Savior" is absent.
Spilsbury's arguments for the rightness of believer's baptism found virtually no detractors from within Baptist ranks; it continues to influence both Baptist belief and practice today. His arguments that believer's baptism as a necessity for the public owning of Christ became common doctrine.
On the other hand, if one applies the statement rigorously, that apart from believer's baptism there is no saving faith, few if any followers can be found in subsequent Baptist history. Perhaps this ambiguity gave rise to article XVI of the appendix to the 1646 edition of the London confession written by Mr. Spilsbury's friend and co-laborer, Benjamin Cockes :
Although a true believer, whether baptized, or unbaptized, be in the state of salvation, and shall certainly be saved: Yet in obedience to the command of Christ every believer ought to desire baptism, and to yield himself to be baptized according to the rule of Christ in His word: And where this obedience is in faith performed, there Christ makes this His ordinance a means of unspeakable benefit to the believing soul, Acts 2:38, 22:16; Rom. 6:3, 4; 1 Pet.3:21. And a true believer that here sees the command of Christ lying upon him, cannot allow himself in disobedience thereunto, Acts 24:16.

Personal confession of faith

Spilsbury submitted a personal confession of ten articles for the "Godly reader to judge, what difference there is between him and me, in the main, that men should be so incensed against me, as to seek my life, as some have done."
Spilsbury wanted to disarm those who cast "reproachful clamors... upon all without exception, that seem to be of my judgment about baptism" by declaring "a word of my faith, what I believe and hold to be truth, and desire to practice the same."
One year later, Spilsbury would join with the other Particular Baptist churches in London in publishing and signing the First London Confession: