A27014:344
Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministry rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the gospel vindicated,…Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministery rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the gospel vindicated,…
Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministry rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the gospel vindicated, against the reasonings of a confident questionist, in a book called Toleration not abused; with counsel to the nonconformists, and petition to the pious conformists / by one that is consecrated to the sacred ministry, and is resolved not to be a deserter of it ...Sacrilegious desertion of the holy ministery rebuked, and tolerated preaching of the gospel vindicated, against the reasonings of a confident questionist, in a book called Toleration not abused; with counsil to the nonconformists, and petition to the pious conformists / by one that is consecrated to the sacred ministry, and is resolved not to be a deserter of it ...
London : s.n., 1672
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.
By this means you shall have no need to fear our injuring of your wealth or reputation; Nor the strengthening of the Papists by the weakening of Protestants through our-own divisions; (Only let not the people who scruple Conformity, be therefore denied Church-Communion and Sacraments.)
By this means you shall have no need to fear our injuring of your wealth or reputation; Nor the strengthening of the Papists by the weakening of Protestants through our-own divisions; (Onely let not the people who scruple Conformity, be therefore denyed Church-Communion and Sacraments.)
And now as God will judge, so let the world judge, & let posterity judge whether we are unworthy in comparison of the present Ministers of England, to be permitted to preach Christs Gospel on these self-denying and self-abasing terms; And whether they that cry out of the danger of Popery. Infidelity, Profaneness and Heresies, and yet had ⟨p. 138⟩rather let them in all, than give us leave to exercise that Ministry to which we were consecrated, in poverty and subjection; and while they cry out of Divisions, will not lay by the Dividing-engines; should rather accuse us or themselves, if the evils overwhelm us, which they seem to fear?
It is not pleasure, profit or worldly preferments, that we contend for: We would do no man hurt or wrong: If our lovers of Church-power do think us intolerable, because we obey them not as fully as they desire, we profess before God and Man, that it is not because we would not be subject and obedient to any, as far as will stand with our obedience to God, but only because we dare not, we will not do that which we believe that God forbideth us: And if we err, it is not for want of studying, perhaps as hard and impartially as they, to know the truth: And to him that thinketh he doth evil it is sin. It is sin, and no small or tolerable sin, which our consciences fear, in our forbearing subscriptions and Conformity: If they also take it to be a sin to suffer us to preach the Gospel, and a greater sin, than to suffer the inundation of Infidelity, Popery and the rest which they say is ready to break in upon us, And if they think our not Subscribing, Swearing, &c. to be in us so great a sin, that the punishment laid on