The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2)

For much of what is reported of my sermon I utterly deny, and refer myself to the sermon itself, for what I have acknowledged to be delivered by me, although it is my judgment,...

_Sect._ 1. Now are we fallen upon the stronghold of our opposites, which is the king’s majesty’s supremacy in things ecclesiastical. If they did mean, in good earnest, to qualif...

For, 1. They who plead for the indifferency of the ceremonies must tell us whether they call them indifferent _in actu signato_, or _in actu exercito_; or in both these respects...

WORDS AND TO THE WORDS OF OTHERS WHOM HE CITETH. ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN PROPOSITIONS CONCERNING THE MINISTRY AND GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH. PROPOSITIONS. A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE...

THAT THE CEREMONIES ARE IDOLS AMONG THE FORMALISTS THEMSELVES; AND THAT KNEELING IN THE LORD’S SUPPER BEFORE THE BREAD AND WINE, IN THE ACT OF RECEIVING THEM, IS FORMALLY IDOLATRY.

THAT THE CEREMONIES ARE UNLAWFUL BECAUSE THEY ARE MONUMENTS OF BY-PAST IDOLATRY, WHICH NOT BEING NECESSARY TO BE RETAINED, SHOULD BE UTTERLY ABOLISHED, BECAUSE OF THEIR IDOLATRO...

_Sect._ 1. From that which hath been said it followeth inevitably, that since scandal riseth out of the controverted ceremonies, and since they are not things necessary, they ar...

pattern, and all this measuring, was not only in reference to Israel’s duty, but to God’s gracious purpose towards Israel. According to that, Zech. i. 16, “Therefore thus saith...

In the meanwhile we deny not but that in extraordinary cases, when lawful councils cannot be had, and when the clergy is universally corrupted through gross ignorance, perverse...

riotous ruffian (go church matters as they will) eats and drinks, and takes his pleasure; the cynical critic spueth out bitter aspersions, gibeth and justleth at everything that...

_Sect._ 1. The strongest tower of refuge to which our opposites make their main recourse, is the pretended lawfulness of the ceremonies, which now we are to batter down and demo...

782 Quia Paulus has epulas sacram caenam vocarit Et quia scriptum est apud Lucain, similiter et cali ceni postquam caen ivit Quae etiam fucrunt ut arbitror causae, cur illi Ægyp...

_Sect._ 1. It followeth according to the order which I have proposed, to show next, that the ceremonies are idolatrous, _participativè_. By communicating with idolaters in their...

_Sect._ 1. The Archbishop of St Andrews, now Lord Chancellor forsooth, speaking of the five articles concluded at the pretended Assembly of Perth, saith,(235) “The conveniency o...

nature, therefore it is called a cutting off of the chief members of the body (Mark ix. 43, 45, 47), a salting with salt, and a burning with fire (ver. 49), a circumcision (Col....

_Sect._ 1. That mystical significations are placed in the controverted ceremonies, and that they are ordained to be sacred signs of spiritual mysteries, to teach Christians thei...

THAT THE LAWFULNESS OF THE CEREMONIES CANNOT BE WARRANTED BY ANY ECCLESIASTICAL LAW, NOR BY ANY POWER WHICH THE CHURCH HATH TO PUT ORDER TO THINGS BELONGING TO DIVINE WORSHIP.

children by prayer and imposition of hands; for as Maldonat saith rightly,(830) _Hebreorum consuetudinem fuisse, ut qui majores erant et aliqua polle bant divina gratia, manuum...

which is according to godliness, but burning also with zeal for reforming abuses, and purging of the church from the dross thereof. Which made Augustine(1413) to apply propologi...

grounded no argument on those places, but spake “by way of allusion,” _Male Dicis_, p. 6. Now let the reader judge. His words to the Parliament were these: “Might I measure othe...

_Sect._ 1. Bishop Lindsey hath told us,(85) that the will of the law must be the rule of our conscience, so that conscience may not judge other ways than the law determines. Bis...

_Sect._ 1. Our next position which we infer, is this: That it is not indifferent to sit, stand, pass, or kneel, in the act of receiving the sacramental elements of the Lord’s su...

Mr Hussey all along calls for divinity schools: I confess himself hath much need of them, that he may be better grounded in his divinity; and that if he will plead any more for...

_Sect._ 1. What our opposites have alleged for the ceremonies, either from the law of God, or the law of man, we have hitherto answered; but we heard the law of nature also alle...

Mr Coleman’s doctrine was by me charged to be a violation of the solemn league and covenant. This he acknowledged in his _Re-examination_, p. 13, 17, to be a very grievous charg...

_Sect._ 1. Since it hath been evinced by unanswerable reasons that holidays, as now urged upon us, take away our Christian liberty, I will now pull off them the coat of some fig...

to harden their hearts to come against them in battle, and so to overrule the matter, by a secret and inscrutable providence, that the Israelites might lawfully and should certa...

_Sect._ 1. That which hath been said against all the controverted ceremonies in general, I will now instance of festival days in particular, and prove, both out of the law and g...

_Sect._ 1. For our better light in this question I will premit these considerations, 1. When we measure the goodness or the badness of a human action, we must not only measure i...

First, then, the ceremonies are inexpedient, because our most holy faith, for which we should earnestly contend, received no small harm and prejudice, and is like to receive sti...

as they are unregenerate, carnal, earthly, proud, unmortified (for “who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin,” Prov. xx. 9)? What if a Joshua envy Eldad an...

_propter Christum et sicut Christus praecipit_;(1199) for if we should know no more but the will of man for that which we do, then we should be the “servants of men,” not the se...

_Sect._ 1. There remaineth yet another inconveniency found in the ceremonies, which is scandal. They hinder our spiritual edification and growth in faith and plerophory, and mak...

signifying that true holiness and cleanness which ought to be among God’s people, so the Pharisees would have perfected the law by adding other washings (and more than God had c...

Mr Coleman ends his _Male Dicis_ with a resentment of accusations charged upon him by a stranger, a commissioner from another church. The lot of strangers were very hard, if, wh...

_Sect._ 1. To say nothing here of the homonymy of the word _indifferent_, but to take it in that signification which concerneth our present purpose, it signifieth such a mean be...

_Sect._ 1. The great evils which have befallen to many famous churches, through the means of intestine dissensions, should teach us not to admit the occasions of the like inconv...

insinuateth, that in the days of the New Testament the infancy of the church hath taken an end. And whereas it might be objected, that in the church of the New Testament there a...

of heaven and earth, Hag. ii. 6. The less wonder if I call reformation like a refiner’s fire. The dross of a church is not purged away without this violence of fire.

Mr Hussey, in his title page, tells us he hath prosecuted the argumentative part without any personal reflections, yet I could instance divers personal reflections in his book w...

THAT THE LAWFULNESS OF THE CEREMONIES IS FALSELY GROUNDED UPON THE HOLY SCRIPTURE; WHERE SUCH PLACES AS ARE ALLEGED BY OUR OPPOSITES, EITHER FOR ALL THE CEREMONIES IN GENERAL, O...

1. Mr Coleman, in his _Re-examination_, p. 14, makes the Parliament to be church governors and church officers to the whole kingdom. It was an argument used against the prelates...

_Sect._ 1. Having spoken of the nature of things indifferent, and showed which things be such; also of the rule whereby to try the indifferency of things: which rule we have app...

_Sect._ 1. That the word of God is the only rule whereby we must judge of the indifferency of things, none of our opposites, we hope, will deny. “Of things indifferent (saith Pa...

_Sect._ 1. My second argument whereby I prove that the imposing of the observation of holidays doth bereave us of our liberty, I take out of two places of the Apostle, the one,...

_Sect._ 1. That the ceremonies are a great hinderance to edification, appeareth, First, In that they obscure the substance of religion, and weaken the life of godliness by outwa...

_Sect._ 1. The third consequence which we infer upon our former rule of following the example of Christ is, that it is not a thing indifferent to omit the repetition of those wo...

THAT THE CEREMONIES TAKE AWAY CHRISTIAN LIBERTY PROVED BY A FOURTH REASON, VIZ., BECAUSE THEY ARE PRESSED UPON US BY NAKED WILL AND AUTHORITY, WITHOUT GIVING ANY REASON TO SATIS...

_Sect._ 1. If Christian liberty be taken away, by adstricting conscience in any, much more by adstricting it in them who are fully persuaded of the unlawfulness of the thing enj...

The Papists make advantage of the ceremonies, and thereby confirm themselves in Popery. First, in that they use them as the bellows to blow up the fire of contention among us, r...

It was before both denied and yielded by Mr Coleman, that there is a church government which is distinct from the civil, and yet not merely doctrinal. He did profess to subscrib...

_Sect_. 1. This I prove, 1. From their practice; 2. From their pleading. In their practice, who seeth not that they would tie the people of God to a necessity of submitting thei...

_Sect._ 1. Who can blame us for standing to the defence of our Christian liberty, which we ought to defend and pretend in _rebus quibusvis?_ saith Bucer.(64) Shall we bear the n...

_Sect._ 1. As for those who allege some conveniency in the ceremonies, they say more than can abide the proof of reason, which the induction of some particulars shall demonstrat...

739 We adore Christ as well in the preaching of the gospel and sacrament of baptism, as in the sacrament of the supper, saith Cartwright on 1 Cor. xi. sect. 18.

_Sect._ 1. The ceremonies serve to be instruments of cruelty against the sincere servants of Christ, they are used as Absalom’s sacrifice, to be cloaks of wicked malice, they oc...

God’s word; and when we find that they require of us anything in the worship of God which is either against or beside his written word, then modestly to refuse obedience, which...

_Sect._ 1. From that which hath been said of following Christ, and the commendable example of his apostles, in all things wherein it is not evident that they had some such speci...

If it seem to any that it is a strange method to speak now of indifferency, in the end of this dispute, which ought rather to have been handled in the beginning of it, they may...

were infidels. If he say they are Christ’s vicegerents, then, 1. He must say, that Christ, as Mediator, reigns without the church, and is a king to those to whom he is neither p...

The Bishop of Edinburgh, to prove that of necessity our consciences must be ruled by the will of the law, and that it is necessary that we give obedience to the same, albeit our...

A CONFUTATION OF THAT WHICH MR COLEMAN HATH SAID AGAINST CHURCH GOVERNMENT; SHOWING ALSO THAT HIS LAST REPLY IS NOT MORE, BUT LESS SATISFACTORY THAN THE FORMER, AND FOR THE MOST...

INDIFFERENCY OF THE CEREMONIES. A BROTHERLY EXAMINATION OF SOME PASSAGES OF MR COLEMAN’S LATE SERMON UPON JOB XI. 20. NOTICE. EXTRACT FROM COLEMAN’S SERMON. A BROTHERLY EXAMINAT...

WARRANTED BY ANY ORDINANCE OF THE CIVIL MAGISTRATE; WHOSE POWER IN THINGS SPIRITUAL OR ECCLESIASTICAL IS EXPLAINED. DIGRESSION I. OF THE VOCATION OF MEN OF ECCLESIASTICAL ORDER....

for the deacons were chosen by the church, were ordained with prayer and laying on of hands, and their charge was to take special care of the poor; all which is clear, Acts vi....

CHURCH GOVERNMENT; SHOWING ALSO THAT HIS LAST REPLY IS NOT MORE, BUT LESS SATISFACTORY THAN THE FORMER, AND FOR THE MOST PART IS BUT A TERGIVERSATION AND FLEEING FROM ARGUMENTS...

GROUNDED UPON THE HOLY SCRIPTURE; WHERE SUCH PLACES AS ARE ALLEGED BY OUR OPPOSITES, EITHER FOR ALL THE CEREMONIES IN GENERAL, OR FOR ANY ONE OF THEM IN PARTICULAR, ARE VINDICAT...