Joseph Salmon (writer)

Joseph Salmon (fl. 1647–1656) was a significant English religious and political writer of the middle of the seventeenth century.

Life

He served in the New Model Army, leaving it in 1649.[1] A Rout, A Rout contained criticism of the Parliamentary leadership. He was arrested in 1650, and imprisoned in Coventry,[2] with a six-month sentence; and cashiered from the Army.[3]

After 1650 he was for a time a minister in Kent.[4] He left Kent and went abroad in the middle of 1655.[5] He later emigrated to Barbados.[6]

A Ranter?

He was known to the Quaker George Fox,[7] from 1648/9, who identified him as one of the Ranters. Who exactly the Ranters were is now a topic of scholarly debate, and it is suggested Fox may have supplied that name later;[8] Christopher Hill[9] considers Salmon to have belonged to the ‘mystical and quietist wing’ of the Ranters.

Salmon's last known work is Heights in Depths, from 1651, an apparent if partial recantation,[10] written to fulfil a promise he had made to secure release from jail; he then fell silent as an author. He became a Quaker.[11]

Views

His views were pantheistic,[12] taking an allegorical-psychological view of the interpretation of the Bible.[13]

Works
  • Anti-Christ in Man (1647)[14][15]
  • A Rout, A Rout (1649)[16]
  • Divinity Anatomized (1649)[17]
  • Heights in Depths (1651)[18]

Notes
  1. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, p. 208
  2. Upside p. 218
  3. Hill, A Nation of Change and Novelty, p. 199-200.
  4. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 1970 edition p. 306-9, with extracts.
  5. "Coppin, Richard" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
  6. Hill, The Experience of Defeat (1984) p. 44, Upside p. 219 citing the dissertation of Frank McGregor; . A Joseph Salmon appears on a 1680 Barbados census , but the name was not uncommon.
  7. Journal of George Fox - Chapter Three
  8. Hill, A Nation of Change and Novelty, p. 179, note.
  9. Upside p. 202
  10. Upside p. 283
  11. Hill, Change and Novelty, p. 190, note.
  12. Upside p. 179
  13. Upside p. 217
  14. Anti-christ in man, or, A discovery of the great whore that sits upon many waters wherein is declared what that whore or inward mystery is, together with the destruction thereof, by the powerful appearing of Christ in us [WorldCat.org]
  15. Online text Archived 2008-02-05 at the Wayback Machine
  16. A rout, a rout, or, Some part of the armies quarters beaten up by the day of the Lord stealing upon them wherein is briefly discovered the present cloudy and dark appearance of God amongst them [WorldCat.org]
  17. Divinity anatomized. Or, Truth nakedly appearing out of its fleshly cloathing, and creature attire. [WorldCat.org]
  18. Heights in depths and depths in heights or Truth no less secretly then sweetly sparkling out its glory from under a cloud of obloquie. Wherein is discovered the various motions of an experienced soul, in and through the manifold dispensations of God. And how the author hath been acted in, and redeemed from the unknown paths of darkness; wherein, as in a wilderness, he hath wandered without the clear vision of a Divine Presence. Together with a sincere abdication of certain tenents, either formerly vented by him, or now charged upon him. Per me Jo. Salmon. [WorldCat.org]
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