A19884:151
An apologetical reply to a book called an answer to the unjust complaint of…An apologeticall reply to a booke called an ansvver to the unjust complaint of…
An apologetical reply to a book called an answer to the unjust complaint of VV.B. Also an answer to Mr. I.D. touching his report of some passages. His allegation of Scriptures against the baptising of some kind of infants. His protestation about the publishing of his writings. By John Davenport BD.An apologeticall reply to a booke called an ansvver to the unjust complaint of VV.B. Also an answer to Mr. I.D. touching his report of some passages. His allegation of Scriptures against the baptising of some kind of infants. His protestation about the publishing of his wrightings. By Iohn Davenporte BD.
Rotterdam: printed by Isaac van Waesberghe, 1636Rotterdam: printed by Isaack van Waesberghe, 1636
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Beginnings are ominous. Things ill begun seldom end well. It is much to be suspected that he intendeth to quarrel, who so needlessly falleth upon me, in the first onset, being not any way occasioned to mention me, by any thing which the complainants have expressed, or intimated, in this section: and yet he taketh ⟨p. 15⟩occasion, in this one section, to make mention of me seven times, and to wright my name at its full length, every time. His own heart knoweth what his purpose was in so doing. But let us consider what he chargeth upon me, that, if it be just; I may confess, and give glory to God: If it be unjust; I may declare my innocency.
Beginnings are ominous. Things ill begun seldom end wel. It is much to be suspected that he intēdeth to quarail, who so needlesly falleth upon me, in the first onset, being not any way occasioned to mention me, by any thing which the complainants have expressed, or intimated, in this section: and yet he taketh ⟨p. 15⟩occasion, in this one section, to make mention of me seven times, and to wright my name at its full length, every time. His owne heart knoweth what his purpose was in so doing. But let us consider what he chargeth upon me, that, if it be just; I may confesse, and giue glory to God: If it be unjust; I may declare my innocency.
As for Mr. D. he is guilty of nourishing contention in our Church.
Nourishing contention in the Church is the thing laid to my charge. An heinous offence, if the accusation be true, but, in him, a grievous slander, thus to reproach me in print, if it be false. I cannot but admire how he fell upon this accusation, to charge me with an evil so contrary to my disposition, and the practise of my whole life, especially, since my public employment in the Ministry. I was about seventeen years a preacher in London, and lived there almost ten years in a pastoral charge. There I had much converse with Ministers of differing judgments, and with people (almost of all conditions and degrees) of different affections, and ways, being employed, both in public occasions and private cases: Let this Answerer speak plainly (I challenge him before all men) whether he hath ever heard, by any credible report, that I have been, I say not, detected, but so much as rationally suspected of contentiousness, in mine own country? And is it probable, that change of air, should work such a change in my disposition,