Gildas Salvianus: The Reformed Pastor

And I must add this word of plainer dealing yet. You blame the Magistrate for giving so much liberty; and is it not long of your selves that he doth so? You will scarce believe that such enemies to Liberty of Conscience, are the causes of it: I think that you are; and that the keenest enemies have been the greatest causes. For you would run too far to the other extreme, and are so confident in every controversy that you are in the right, and lay such a stress upon many Opinions of your own as if life or death did lie upon them, (when perhaps the difference may prove more verbal then real, if it were searched to the quick) that this occasioneth Magistrates to run too far the other way; and if they look on such as—and dare not trust the sword in such hands, you may thank your selves. Truly Brethren, I see by experience, that there is among many of the most injudicious of us, such a blind confused zeal against all that is called error by their party, that without being able to try and make a difference, they let fly pell mell at all alike, and make a great outcry against errors, when either we know not what they are, nor how to confute them, nor which he ⟨p. 230⟩tolerable in the Church, and which intolerable, nor how far we may hold or break Communion with the owners of them, and perhaps are the erroneous persons our selves. The observation of this hath made the Magistrates so over-jealous of us, that they think if they set in with a party in each contention, we shall never be without blood and misery. And I confess I see in some Ministers so little of the fire of Divine Love, and Christian Charity, and compassion, nor heavenly mindedness, nor humble sense of their own infirmities, and so much of the zeal that James describeth (Jam. 3. 14, 15.) which is kindled from another fire, that makes them full of suspicions and jealousies, and keen and eager against their Brethren, censuring, defaming and unconscionably back-biting them, and straining an ill sense out of their well meant words and actions, and living towards them in plain envy and malice instead of Christian love and peace; I say I see so much of this in many that affect the Reputation of Orthodox, while they are indeed factious, that I am the less sorry that the Magistrate doth so little interpose. For were the sword in such envious angry hands, there would be little quiet to the Church:

And I must add this word of plainer dealing yet. You blame the Magistrate for giving so much liberty; and is it not long of your selves that he doth so? You will scarce believe that such enemies to Liberty of Conscience, are the causes of it: I think that you are; and that the keenest enemies have been the greatest causes. For you would run too far to the other extream, and are so confident in every controversie that you are in the right, and lay such a stress upon many Opinions of your own as if life or death did lie upon them, (when perhaps the difference may prove more verbal then real, if it were searcht to the quick) that this occasioneth Magistrates to run too far the other way; and if they look on such as—and dare not trust the sword in such hands, you may thank your selves. Truly Brethren, I see by experience, that there is among many of the most injudicious of us, such a blind confused zeal against all that is called error by their party, that without being able to try and make a difference, they let flie pell mell at all alike, and make a great outcry against errors, when either we know not what they are, nor how to confute them, nor which he