A42469:48
Thomas Gataker B.D. his vindication of the annotations by him published upon these words,…
Thomas Gataker B.D. his vindication of the annotations by him published upon these words, Thus saith the Lord, learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the heathen are dismayed at them, Jer. 10. 2 against the scurrilous aspersions of that grand impostor Mr. William Lillie : as also against the various expositions of two of his advocates, Mr. John Swan, and another by him cited, but not named : together with the annotations themselves : wherein the pretended grounds of judiciary astrology, and the Scripture-proofs produced for it are discussed and refuted.Thomas Gataker B.D. his vindication of the annotations by him published upon these words, Thus saith the Lord, learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signes of heaven, for the heathen are dismayed at them, Jer. 10. 2 against the scurrilous aspersions of that grand imposter Mr. William Lillie : as also against the various expositions of two of his advocates, Mr. John Swan, and another by him cited, but not named : together with the annotations themselvs : wherein the pretended grounds of judiciary astrologie, and the Scripture-proofes produced for it are discussed and refuted.
London: printed by J.L. for Richard Thrayle, 1653
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.
Thus you see, (such are led by him blindfold) neither of them bow their knees to ⟨p. 17⟩this Baal, nor magnify Calvins Idol. This by the way I rather insert, to show whom these men concur with in traducing the Presbyterian Government, and by what manner of slights, to wit, notorious lies and slanders, their guise is to oppugn it. And for my part, it is so far from bringing me out of love with it; that it makes me rather the more inclinable to that opinion of the Jus Divinum & necessarium, which those of the Independent party pressed hard to have in the late Assembly passed of it; wherein both the Dutch and French Reformed Churches seem to concur with them; for that these Merlins and Mercuries, (for herein they accord) shaking hands with such Romish railing and lying Pamphleteers, (whom yet they would seem to defy and detest) are so embittered against it. As he said sometime of the Christian Profession;1 Non potest esse nisi grande aliqod bonum a Nerone damnatum. It must needs be some grand good, that such a one as Nero was, should condemn. So of the Presbyterian Discipline say I, It can not be other then some very needful and useful thing, that such creatures as these do so eagerly oppose.2 And howsoever a man sometime of great note among us, in his Preface to his elaborate Treatise of Ecclesiastical Polity, having first transcendently extolled Mr. John Calvin, do afterward decipher him as a mere Politician devising a new Church Government of his own, and by cunning slights both introducing, establishing and continuating the same; and an other of less note in a late Satirical Libel (for no other it is) entitled Fur praedestinatus, 3do therein both grossly abuse Calvin, and jeer the Presbyterian, or Genevian Discipline, as such that any debauched person by an Hypocritical disguise of contrition and dejection for his loose and lewd courses might easily both delude and elude. Yet the Government of that City hath received good approbation and attestation even from some Popish Writers themselves. These are the words of John Bodine a Papist indeed, but an ingenuous and judicious Writer, of great and good note, as well among Protestants as Papists, in his Methodus Historica, cap. 6. pag. 245.