The Protestants Plea for a Socinian

Marginal notes indicating the start of individual sections have been converted into section headings. Other notes have been numbered and moved to the end of each Conference. They often refer to the following (rather than preceding) passage, and if so are positioned accordingly. The locations of the marker for Note 13, and of the start of Section 8, are unclear: they have been inserted in accordance with the sense of the text.

Other markers that do not correspond to marginal notes have been removed. The "*" that are retained in sections 11, 13 and 18 do not indicate marginal notes, but instead function as bullet points.

Variations in spelling have been retained with the exception of the following:

Conference 1 Summary: "byass'd" changed to "bypass'd".

Conference 2 Section 17: "be-belief" changed to "belief" and "absolure" to "absolute".

Conference 5 Section 36 "enent" changed to "tenent"; Section 37 "Athenasian" changed to "Athanasian".

Obscured text has been transcribed as follows:

Conference 1 Section 8: "?her" transcribed as "Luther".

Conference 3 Section 18: the sentence beginning "But if it be said" has been reconstructed from the work cited.

Conference 5 Section 30: the phrases "not-conforming to" and "As to Charity" have been reconstructed.

At the beginning of Conference 1 a brace, extending over several lines, has been replaced by a column of individual braces.

Italics are indicated by underscores and Greek by +plus signs+. When a word in italics is followed by "'s" the latter may or may not be italicised. This inconsistency has been retained. Inconsistent hyphenation has also been retained.

The Text has been corrected in accordance with the Errata section. Mismatched brackets and parentheses have been removed and apparent punctuation errors corrected.

THE Protestants Plea FOR A SOCINIAN:

Justifying His Doctrine from being opposite to SCRIPTURE OR CHURCH-AUTHORITY;

And Him from being Guilty of HERESIE, or SCHISM.

In Five Conferences.

Publish'd with Allowance.

LONDON, Printed by Henry Hills, Printer to the King's Most Excellent Majesty for His Houshold and Chappel. 1686.

THE First Conference.

The Socinian's Protestant-Plea for his not holding any thing contrary to the Holy Scriptures.

1. That he believes all contained in the Scriptures to be God's Word; and therefore implicitly believes those truths, against which he errs. §. 2.

2. That also he useth his best endeavor to find the true sense of Scriptures: and, that more is not required of him from God for his Faith or Salvation, than doing his best endeavour for attaining it. §. 3.

3. _That, as for an explicite Faith required of some points necessary, he is sufficiently assured, that this point concerning the Son's Consubstantiality with the Father, as to the affirmative, is not so from the Protestant's affirming all necessaries to be clear in Scripture, even to the unlearned; which this, in the affirmative, is not to him._ §. 4.

4. _That several express, and plain Scriptures do perswade him, that the negative (if either) is necessary to be believed; and that from the clearness of Scriptures, he hath as much certainty in this point, as Protestants can have from them in some other, held against the common expressions of the former times of the Church._ §. 6, 8.