A30587:163
Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and…
Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and evils of them : with cautions that we may not be hurt by them, and endeavours to heal them / by Jeremiah Burroughs.Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and evils of them : with cautions that we may not be hurt by them, and endeavours to heal them / by Jeremiah Burroughes.
London: printed for Robert Dawlman, 1653
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Though such as are not Christians cannot by violence by §9compelled to profess Christian Religion, yet notwithstanding any plea of their conscience, they may be restrained, & that by violence, if other means will not do it, from an open blaspheming Christ, and the Scriptures, or doing any acts of open dishonour to them• acts of open dishonour to God done by any whomsoever, as they are abominable, so such as have loved God and Christ, have accounted them unsufferable.
I suppose you have heard or read that notable story we have in the Book of Martyrs, of one Gardiner, though we undertake not to justify his practice as allowable in an ordinary way, he being but a private man, yet there were little question to be made of it had he been a Magistrate: He being a Merchant in Portugal, seeing the Cardinal offering the Host, though it were in the presence of the King and his Nobles, yet he runs to him and snatches it out of his hand, and throws it under his feet; if the King himself had done this, who would have condemned it?
I suppose you have heard or read that notable story we have in the Book of Martyrs, of one Gardiner, though we undertake not to justifie his practice as allowable in an ordinary way, he being but a private man, yet there were little question to be made of it had he been a Magistrate: He being a Merchant in Portugall, seeing the Cardinall offering the Hoast, though it were in the presence of the King and his Nobles, yet he runs to him and snatches it out of his hand, and throws it under his feet; if the King himself had done this, who would have condemned it?
Notwithstanding any mans conscience, he may be kept from endangering the salvation of others, no mans conscience can set him at liberty to hurt other.