A vindication of the Animadversions on Fiat lux

especially as to your pretence of the Infallibility of any man, or men, any further then his conceptions agree with what is revealed in that Gospel which they have received, and now for its own sake believe to be from God. And once to imagine, that when the Scripture is received by faith, and hath brought the soul into subjection to the Authority of God exerting it self in it, and by it, that it will not warrant them in the rejection of any respect unto men whatever, is, to err not knowing the Scripture, nor the Power of God. In this condition of things, men will bless God for any means which he was pleased to use in the communicating the Gospel unto them; and if those who were employed in that work shall persist in obtruding upon their faith and worship, things that are not revealed, they will quickly discover such a contradiction in their Principles, as that it is utterly impossible that they should rationally assent unto, and embrace them all, but either they must renounce the Gospel which they have brought them, or reject those other Principles which they would impose upon them that are contrary thereunto. And whither of those they will do, upon a supposition that the Gospel hath now obtained that Authority over their consciences and minds, which it claims in and over all that receive it, it is no hard matter to determine. Men then who have themselves mixed the Doctrine of the Gospel with many abominable errors of their own, ⟨p. 320⟩may in the Providence of God be made instrumental to convey the Gospel unto others. At the first tender of it they may for the Truths sake which they are convinced of, receive also the errors that are tendered unto them, as being as yet not able to discern the chaff from the wheat. But when once the Gospel is rooted in their minds, and they begin to have their senses exercised therein to discern between good and evil, and their faith of the Truth they receive is resolved into the Authority of God himself the Author of the Gospel, they have their warrant for the rejection of the Errors which they had before imbibed, according as they shall be discovered unto them. For though they may first consider the Gospel on the proposition of them that first bring them the tidings of it, as the Samaritans came to our Saviour upon the information of the woman;