Samuel Bolde (1649–1737) was an English clergyman and controversialist, a supporter of the arguments of John Locke for religious toleration.
He justified his general praise of nonconformists, mentioning amongst others Richard Baxter and Henry Hickman as "shining lights in the church of God".
[1] The grand jury at the next assize presented Bold for the sermon and also for the Plea, and he was cited before the court of William Gulston, Bishop of Bristol, where he was accused of having "writ and preached a scandalous libel".
In 1690 he engaged in a controversy with Thomas Comber, author of a Scholastical History of the Primitive and General Use of Liturgies in the Christian Church, which Bolde perceived to be written to afford a pretext for persecuting dissent; in 1691 he followed it up with a second tract.
Edwards immediately retorted, and produced a second tract from Bolde with a preface on the meaning of the terms "reason" and "antiquity" as employed in the Socinian controversy.
[1] In 1717 Bolde's publisher brought out another tract demanding toleration;[3] and in 1724 appeared his last controversial work, Some Thoughts concerning Church Authority.
This was occasioned by Benjamin Hoadley's launching of the Bangorian Controversy, with a sermon on the nature of the kingdom of Christ, and his Preservative against the Principles and Practices of Nonjurors, of which Bolde approved.