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IT is no good prognostik, when men to maintain a cause that they have under∣taken to defend, shall either for the gaining, or for the faining of a party, wrest and writhe other mens words, to wring that out of them that neither they speak, nor those that uttered them, ever intended in them. In which kind I find the speeches of many worthy men, some deceased, some yet surviving, by one Mr. John Saltmarsh, in a worke of his lately come abroad, much abused; being strangely stray∣ned, to make men believe, that they held forth in their writings some glimerings at least of those new counterfeit lights, which those deceased ones, were they surviving to see, would together with such of them, as are yet surviving, in all likelihood, not disclaim onely, but even abominate. But they are gone, tho their works yet remain, out of which matter enough might soon be collected, to shew, how many miles the Antino∣mians of these times and they are asunder. As for those of them that yet live, they may, if they so please, and deem it a work worth their labour, take a little paines to cleer the passages produced out of their writings, where they find them misap∣plied. Sufficient it shall be for me, to vindicate mine own from that which out of them this Autor would extract.
Among the rest therefore of those a 1.1 approved Writers, with whom some Truths of Free grace are related by him to be found Sparkling, in Testimony to what is in that his Discourse in part as∣serted, and in these times, by others Assertors of Free grace; (those of the Antinomian party, he meaneth, as he b 1.2 elswhere expresseth himselfe:) I find my self, and some words of mine produced; which I shall endeavour here to cleer.
The Point, that he propounds from my writings to be proved, is thus layd down by him.