A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many useful questions and cases of conscience are…A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many usefull questions and cases of conscience are…

CHAP. XIII.

Whether conscionable Christians and such as love the power and practice of piety, can without defiling their conscience, or without a destructive wounding of the power of godliness, embrace and hold the principles of these who call themselves the godly party? Or whether they ought not rather to avoid those who do now Pharisaically and Donatistically appropriate to them selves the name of the godly party, as being indeed, such who under pretence of Zeal, for the power of godliness, hold diverse ungodly principles.

Whether conscionable Christians and such as love the power aud practice of piety, can without defiling their conscience, or without a destructive wounding of the power of godlinesse, embrace and hold the principles of these who call themselves the godly party? Or whether they ought not rather to avoid those who doe now Pharisaically and Donatistically appropriat to them selves the name of the godly party, as being indeed, such who under pretence of Zeal, for the power of godlinesse, hold diverse ungodly principles.

Let no man here stumble in the threshold, or be scandalized at the case I put: I intend nothing, either against piety, or truly pious persons, but to vindicat both from those principles of impiety, which some maintain and adhere unto, under colour of piety. The Arians, Ebionites, and Socinians in Poland, have pretended to be the godly party there, in so much that Faustus Socinus wrote a book entitled thus, That the men of the kingdom of Poland, and the great Duchy of Lithuania, commonly called Evangelics, who were studious of solid piety, ought altogether to adjoin themselves to the Assembly of those, who in the same places are falsely and undeservedly called Arians and Ebionites.