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.Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, p. 208 A Rout, A Rout contained criticism of the Parliamentary leadership. He was arrested in 1650, and imprisoned in Coventry,Upside p. 218 with a six-month sentence; and cashiered from the Army.Hill, A Nation of Change and Novelty, p. 199-200.
After 1650 he was for a time a minister in Kent.Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 1970 edition p. 306-9, with extracts. He left Kent and went abroad in the middle of 1655. He later emigrated to Barbados.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.
A Ranter? He was known to the Quaker George Fox,Journal of George Fox - Chapter Three 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;Hill, A Nation of Change and Novelty, p. 179, note. Christopher HillUpside p. 202 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,Upside p. 283 written to fulfil a promise he had made to secure release from jail; he then fell silent as an author. He became a Quaker.Hill, Change and Novelty, p. 190, note.
Views His views were pantheistic,Upside p. 179 taking an allegorical-psychological view of the interpretation of the Bible.Upside p. 217
Works Anti-Christ in Man (1647)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]Online text A Rout, A Rout (1649)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] Divinity Anatomized (1649)Divinity anatomized. Or, Truth nakedly appearing out of its fleshly cloathing, and creature attire. [WorldCat.org] Heights in Depths (1651)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]
Notes
External links Adventurous History page Nigel Smith, "Salmon, Joseph" (fl. 1647–1656), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008, accessed 4 Aug 2008 A Rout, a Rout at the Ex-Classics Web Site