Walter Marshall (15 June 1628 – August 1680) was an English, non-conformist Puritan pastor and author best known for his book on the Gospel Mystery of Sanctification.
Walter Marshall became a fellow of New College, Oxford in 1648 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1652. In 1656, he was appointed to the vicarage of Hursley, Hampshire.
When the Act of Uniformity passed in 1662, Marshall joined many of his Puritan colleagues and was ejected from his parish. Soon afterwards, Marshall was installed as minister of an Independent congregation at Gosport, Hampshire, where he served for eighteen years.
For several years, Marshall experienced seasons of spiritual depression. For years, Marshall sought assurance, holiness and peace, consulting contemporaries like Richard Baxter. However, it was not until a life altering conversation with Thomas Goodwin that he began to focus more on Christ's spiritual power in comparison with his own natural power. With this new focus, he found "holiness, peace of conscience, and joy in the Holy Ghost".[1]
The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification was first published in 1692 after Marshall's death. The book is divided into fourteen sections that Marshall called directions. In the first direction, Marshall asserts that "sanctification, whereby our hearts and lives are conformed to the law, is a grace of God that He communicates to us by means."[2] The means of grace include prayer, the word, sacraments, and the church. Many have alluded to the book's teachings on union with Christ.[citation needed] Direction 5 is titled: We cannot attain holiness by our endeavours in a natural state, without union and fellowship with Christ.
In 1739 the Dutch minister Alexander Comrie (1706-1774) published a Dutch translation of The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification. The book was published in Leiden in 1739 with the following title in Dutch De verborgentheit van de euangelische heiligmaking. In 1750 Comrie wrote that this book was probably the best what was written about sanctifacation[3]