TOGETHER WITH

SOME ANIMADVERSIONS UPON MR HUSSEY'S PLEA FOR CHRISTIAN MAGISTRACY:

SHOWING,

THAT IN DIVERS OF THE AFORE-MENTIONED PARTICULARS HE HATH MISCARRIED AS
MUCH AS,

AND IN SOME PARTICULARS MORE THAN, MR COLEMAN.

BY GEORGE GILLESPIE,

MINISTER AT EDINBURGH, 1649.

EDINBURGH:

ROBERT OGLE, AND OLIVER & BOYD.

M. OGLE & SON, AND WILLIAM COLLINS, GLASGOW.

J. DEWAR, PERTH. W. MIDDLETON, DUNDEE. G. & R. KING, ABERDEEN.

W. M'COMB, BELFAST.

HAMILTON, ADAMS & CO., AND JAMES NISBET & CO., LONDON.

1649.

REPRINTED BY A. W. MURRAY, MILNE SQUARE, EDINBURGH

1844.

PREFACE TO THE READER.

As I did not begin this present controversy, so I do not desire to hold up
the ball of contention, yet having appeared in it (neither alone, nor
without a calling and opportunity offered), I hold it my duty to vindicate
the truth of Christ, the solemn league and covenant, the ordinances of
Parliament, the church of Scotland, and myself. For this end was I born,
and for this end came I into the world, that I might bear witness to the
truth, whereunto I am so much the more encouraged, because it appeareth
already in this debate, that _magna est vis veritatis_,--great is the force
of truth, and so great, that my antagonists, though men of parts, and such
as could do much for the truth, yet, while they have gone about to do
somewhat against the truth, they have mired themselves in foul errors;
yea, so far is in them lieth, have most dangerously shaken and endangered
the authority of magistrates, who are God's vicegerents, and particularly
the authority of Parliament, and of parliamentary ordinances. They have
stumbled and fallen, and shall not be able to rise but by the
acknowledgment of the truth.

In this following reply, I have not touched much of the argumentative part
in Mr Hussey's _Plea for Christian Magistracy_, reserving most of it to
another work, unto which this is a _prodromus_ (howbeit much of what he
saith is the same with what I did confute in my _Nihil Respondes_, and his
book, coming forth a month after, takes no notice of that second piece of
mi