John Spilsbury (Baptist minister)

English Particular Baptist minister (1593 – c. 1668)

John Spilsbury (1593 – c. 1668) was an English cobbler and Particular Baptist minister who set up a Calvinist Baptist church in London in 1638.

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.

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

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.

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."

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 (Cox):
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.