Saturday, March 22, 2008

Gillespie's Miscellany Questions: Why Truth must be Declared and Defended

A Treatise of Miscellany Questions: Wherein Many useful Questions and Cases of Conscience are discussed and resolved: for the satisfaction of those, who desire nothing more, than to search for and find out the precious truths, in the controversies of these times.

By Mr. George Gillespie, late minister at Edinburgh.

Published posthumously by his brother, Mr. Patrik Gillespie, minister at Glasgow.
Edinburgh, 1649.

Publisher to the Reader.

It hath been a grand design of the Devil and Instruments acted by him, with much controversy to darken the light in the very breaking up of this present Reformation, and to hid the precious Truth that the simple should not find it, such pure malice doth he carry against the high way of the Lord, [Isa. 35.8] and so afraid he is, that the Way-faring men shall not err therein: but they know now the Counsel of the Lord, [Mich. 4.12] nor the thoughts of his heart, who is about to clear the Truth, by the manifold Errors which have risen in these late Times, to work His peoples hearts to a deep detestation of Error, as well as ungodliness, and to declare his Truth, to be proof of all the controversy that can be moved against it, when every Work shall be tried by the fire. There must be heresies, for making manifest who are approved, [1 Cor. 13.19; Zech. 14.7] and what is precious and praiseworthy Truth, but at the Evening time it shall be light, and the Lord shall make Truth shine the more brightly, that it hath been for a time darkened and born down, this cloudy Morning shall end in a clear day. This little treatise doth help to blow away and dispel the mists of Error, and clear many questioned Truths, beside some points which are practically handled therein. [....] I shall only wish that it may prove as useful and acceptable to the judicious and godly, as other pieces which came from [George Gillespie’s] Pen.

I am

Thy servant,

Pat; Gillespie.

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