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The Word of God in the New Model Army

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

William Haller
William Haller
Affiliation:
Barnard College, Columbia University
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Extract

At the close of 1644 the Long Parliament and the Westminster Assembly found themselves in a difficult position. The preachers had declared that, if they all did the will of the Lord in the church, He would surely bless the efforts of their army in the war against the King. But the church was still unreformed and the King undefeated. They could have peace at the risk of allowing Charles to regain control of the church. They could go on with the war at the cost of permitting religious differences among their own partisans to continue and spread. In other words, nothing could be settled so long as Charles kept the field and the fear of defeat hung over English and Scots, Parliament and Assembly, Presbyterians, Independents, and sectaries alike. The predicament was made to Cromwell's hand. The campaign of 1644, having ended in frustration, he returned to his place in the House of Commons and initiated the maneuvers which led to the reorganization of the army with Fairfax in command but in the event with Cromwell still as its driving force. The result was the victory the Assembly divines had looked for as the sign of God's favor upon their efforts to reform the church but victory on terms which made reform of the church as they conceived it more difficult than ever. For Cromwell's accomplishment in war and politics was due to his gift for drawing upon those very energies of the spirit in himself and others which had been evoked in the people by Puritan preaching but which the ministerial caste was now striving to keep within bounds. He had succeeded in organizing victory not by curbing and containing the Puritan spirit but by giving it free play among the men under his command and by granting scope to its most characteristic modes of expression and organization. Hence the preaching of the Word in the parliamentary army as reconstituted in the New Model had not a little to do with the army's military success.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 1950 , pp. 15 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1950

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References

1 The best account of the religious organization of the parliamentary army is to be found in Firth, C. H., Cromwell's Army (1902), 313–348. This deals, however, rather with the religious establishment in the army than with the nature and effect of religious teaching.Google Scholar

2 Vicars, John, Jehovah-Jireh (1644), 200; quoted by Firth, Cromwell's Army, 315.Google Scholar

3 Baxter, Richard, Religuiae Baxterianae (1696), 51.Google Scholar

4 Baillie, Robert, Letters and Journals (1841–1842), II, 230.Google Scholar

5 The Cleere Sense: Or a Just Vindication of the late Ordinance of Parliament, 1645; see also Firth, Cromwell's Army, 334.

6 Saints Everlasting Rest (1650), Dedication.

7 Reliquiae, “Breviate of the Contents.” A still earlier but much briefer statement of Baxter's impressions appears in a letter, written in June 1646, which found its way into Thomas Edwards' Gangraena (1646); Pt. III, 45–46.

8 Saltmarsh, John, Free-Grace, “To the Reader.”Google Scholar

9 Saltmarsh, , Sparkles of Glory (1647), 113–14, 201–02.Google Scholar

10 Saltmarsh, , Smoke in the Temple (1646), 6.Google Scholar

11 Finding the question of justification too difficult to solve in Saints Everlasting Rest, Baxter undertook to settle it and refute Saltmarsh, in Aphorismes of Justification (1649), a duodecimo of five hundred pages, and in a larger work of four hundred and sixty-two pages, Rich: Baxters Confession of his Faith (1655). For the quotation in the text, see Aphorismes of Justification, “To the Reader.”

12 Dell, William, Power from on High (1645), Dedicatory Epistle and 5–6.Google Scholar

13 Dell, , The Building and Glory of the truely Christian and Spiritual Church (1646), Epistle.Google Scholar

14 Ibid.

15 Dell, William, Right Reformation (1646).Google Scholar

16 Sprigge, William, Anglia Rediviva, 70.Google Scholar

17 Baillie, , Letters and Journals II, 165.Google Scholar

18 Edwards, , Gangraena I, 130–32; II, 61; III, 76.Google Scholar

19 Lilburne, John, Discourse betwixt Lieutenant Colonel Iohn Lilburn … And Mr. Hugh Peter (1649).Google Scholar

20 Master Peters Messuage from Sir Thomas Fairfax (1646).

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22 Ibid., IV, 471.

23 Ibid., I, 292.

24 Ibid., I, 340.

25 Ibid., I, 360.

26 Ibid., I, 256.

27 Ibid., I, 278.

28 Ibid., I, 360.

29 Ibid., I, 365.

30 Ibid., I, 377.