SALTMARSH. 71 then to root him out, together with the royal line, andappoint the crown to some other person." These sentiments were laid before the house of commons, and they underwent a particular examination ; but it does not appear whether he was sentenced to receive any, kind of. punishment. During this examination, however, one of the members said, " He saw no reason to condemn Mr. Saltmarsh ; for it was better that one family should be destroyed than many.". Mr. Saltmarsh employed his pen in controversy with several learned divines, among whom was Dr. Thomas Fuller, the historian. This person havingpreached a sermon on " reformation," which he afterwards published, Mr. Saltmarsh published his animadversions upon it, in which he chargedhim with several points of popery. Fuller, however, defended his former arguments, in a piece under the titleof Truth Maintained," in which he challenged Saltmarsh to reply; but lie declined the contest, giving this reason for it, that he would not shoot his arrows against a dead mark, being informed that Fuller was dead. He also engaged in controversy with the celebrated Mr. Thomas Gataker, Mr. John Ley, Dr. John Bastwick, Mr. Thomas Edwards, and others. It is said that the very titles of some of his pieces seemed to have some tincture of enthusiasm, if not of frenzy in them.* Mr. Edwards, who employs his presbyterian bigotry in re- proaching his memory, gives the followingaccount of him :- " There is one Mr. Saltmarsh, a man who hath of late writ many trashy pamphlets, fully stuffed with all kinds of errors, ignorance, and impudence, and hath been well answered and baffled by three learned divines. I am still in his debt for some passages in his " Groans for Liberty," and " Reasons for Unity, Love andPeace," against my first and second part of " Gangrna," and shall say in this third, I purpose to reckon with him once for all, in another tractate. This Master Saltmarsh, the last half year, hath much followed the army : a fit place for him. When Oxford was taken, he was one of those famous preachers who preached at St. Mary's as fit a man to credit the parliament and the reformation with the university, ashis brother Peters. Master Saltmarsh being to preach in the army on a fast-day this summer, made a preface by wayof apology, that he preached not for the fast: he would not be understood as preaching upon that occasion, or that his sermon was a fast sermon." Whitloeke's Memorial, p. 68. Biog. Brit.. vol. iii. p. 2053, 2054. Edit. 1747.
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