A92140:100
A free disputation against pretended liberty of conscience tending to resolve doubts moved
A free disputation against pretended liberty of conscience tending to resolve doubts moved by Mr. John Goodwin, John Baptist, Dr. Jer. Taylor, the Belgic Arminians, Socinians, and other authors contending for lawless liberty, or licentious toleration of sects and heresies. / By Samuel Rutherfurd professor of divinity in the University of St. Andrews.A free disputation against pretended liberty of conscience tending to resolve doubts moved by Mr. John Goodwin, John Baptist, Dr. Jer. Taylor, the Belgick Arminians, Socinians, and other authors contending for lawlesse liberty, or licentious toleration of sects and heresies. / By Samuel Rutherfurd professor of divinity in the University of St. Andrews.
London: printed by R.I. for Andrew Crook, 1649
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.
CHAP. II. Conscience under Synods, and how; and, that the Conscience cannot have absolute liberty in matters of Religion.
CHAP. II. Conscience under Synods, and how; and, that the Conscience cannot have absolute libertie in matters of Religion.
THE Conscience is a tender piece, and either the best friend next to the Physician who can whole broken consciences, or the saddest enemy: if sick, it is like an aching tooth, the more you touch it, the more it pains you. The Conscience of its own nature, is a knowing power of the practical understanding, a• ⟨p. 23⟩therefore no illicit acts of the foul can be compelled, neither can Conscience act being muzzled and forced; but this […] but that men and devils in their conscience […] believe many things in some […] against their will […] out of the natural efficacy of conscience cannot […], but •ee must believe that there is a God, yet where there is a trembling, there must be some reluctancy in the will and affections. Juda• must believe his damnation was approaching, when he hanged himself, but against his heart. The Belgic Ar•i•ia•s, who contend for liberty of conscience in all ways, Apol. 95. […]. say, By determinations of Synods violence i• not offered to conscience, as conscience signifieth a mere internal act of the mind, immanent or biding within the mind, but as conscience signifieth an act of the mind by which any doth believe […] obliged […] teach others which he per […] himself to […] so the man is compelled by a Synods prescription, to dissemble what he believeth he ought to profess, and which he believeth to be false.