John Spilsbury
The Foundational Particular Baptist Who Cleared the Ground
1. Historical Context and Significance
John Spilsbury was one of the earliest English Particular Baptists and the author of the first sustained Particular Baptist treatise devoted specifically to baptism, A Treatise Concerning the Lawful Subject of Baptism (1643). He wrote in the midst of the ecclesiastical upheaval of the 1640s, when Presbyterians, Independents, Separatists, and emerging Baptist congregations were all contesting the nature of the church, the sacraments, and covenantal continuity.
Spilsbury stands at the headwaters of the Particular Baptist movement. Importantly, he was not a solitary polemicist. He was a signatory of the 1644 First London Baptist Confession, demonstrating that his views were part of an emerging corporate consensus among Calvinistic Baptists prior to the later confessional refinement of 1677/1689. His importance lies in establishing the trajectory, not in completing the system that later generations would more fully articulate.
The Critical Methodological Break
This is the key to understanding Spilsbury:
The Reformed tradition operates with the regulative principle: "What Christ has not commanded for his church may not be imposed upon it."
Spilsbury adds a crucial qualifier: "What Christ has not commanded for his church may not be imposed upon it, even by theological inference from the administration of earlier covenants."
This is not a disagreement about exegesis. This is a disagreement about epistemology—about what counts as legitimate warrant for church practice.
The Reformed allow covenantal reasoning to inform sacramental practice. Spilsbury excludes it entirely. Once this methodological move is made, paedobaptism becomes impossible to defend—not because of any particular text, but because the entire mode of reasoning that justifies it has been ruled inadmissible.
2. Spilsbury's Theological Location
Spilsbury occupies a precise but often misunderstood theological location:
- In soteriology, affirming divine sovereignty and particular redemption
- Separatist / Independent in ecclesiology, rejecting the national church model
- Credobaptist by conviction, grounded in principle rather than novelty
He did not regard himself as rejecting the Reformed faith wholesale. Rather, he believed the Reformed churches had failed to carry the Reformation through to its ecclesiological and sacramental conclusions, particularly with respect to baptism and church constitution.
3. Core Argument on Baptism
Spilsbury's central claim is:
He attempts to defend this claim along three lines:
1. Biblical Pattern
In the New Testament, baptism consistently follows preaching, repentance, and faith. There is no explicit command or example of infant baptism in the apostolic church.
2. Nature of the Church
The church is a gathered body of visible saints. Ordinances belong to the church as a spiritual community, not to the nation, the parish, or the biological household.
3. The Positive Law of Christ
Baptism is a positive ordinance instituted by Christ. As such, its subjects must be determined by Christ's explicit command. Spilsbury effectively applies the Regulative Principle to sacramental theology: what Christ has not commanded for his church may not be imposed upon it, even by theological inference from the administration of earlier covenants.
At this stage, Spilsbury's argument is primarily ecclesiological and exegetical, not yet architecturally covenantal.
4. Covenant Theology: What Spilsbury Has and What He Lacks
This distinction is helpful for understanding Spilsbury's role.
What Spilsbury does not yet do:
- He does not present a fully developed federal theology.
- He does not systematically distinguish the Covenant of Works from the Covenant of Grace.
- He does not yet articulate a detailed account of the Abrahamic covenant's relation to the Mosaic or New Covenants.
- He does not develop the later dual-aspect Abrahamic covenant framework, distinguishing between (a) the natural/national and typological dimension of Abraham's seed and (b) the spiritual/evangelical promise fulfilled in Christ.
These developments would come later, especially with Thomas Patient (1654) and Nehemiah Coxe (1681).
What Spilsbury does do:
- He explicitly denies that baptism may be justified by appeal to circumcision.
- He rejects the paedobaptist inference that the Abrahamic covenant supplies warrant for infant baptism.
- He insists that New Covenant ordinances must be governed by New Covenant revelation, not by "good and necessary consequence" drawn from prior covenant administrations.
5. Where Spilsbury Diverges from the Reformed Tradition
Reformed View
- The Abrahamic covenant is the Covenant of Grace.
- Circumcision was the covenant sign.
- Baptism replaces circumcision.
- Therefore, believers' children are covenant members and should receive the sign.
Spilsbury's Rejection
- Baptism is a New Testament ordinance grounded in Christ's explicit institution.
- Its subjects are determined by clear New Testament teaching, not covenantal analogy.
- Membership in the visible church is based on profession of faith, not physical descent.
Spilsbury does not yet explain in full covenantal detail why the Abrahamic logic fails, but he refuses to grant it authority over baptism. That refusal creates the conceptual space in which later Particular Baptist covenant theology is built.
6. Relationship to Later Particular Baptists
Spilsbury's significance is best understood genealogically:
Establishes the principle: baptism belongs to professing believers within a gathered church.
Provides the covenantal rationale explaining why.
Systematizes the federal theology underlying the distinction.
Formalizes the position confessionally.
Spilsbury is therefore not a fully developed "1689 Federalist," but he is the necessary ancestor without whom the later system would not exist.
