A92140:172
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.
why some external actions of words and deeds coming from mere conscience without any carnal pretext, as they will swear cannot be punished, but violence must be done to conscience, so the men persecuted, and others that do the like and speak the like from no principle but pure conscience, without any carnal pretext, as they will swear, are punished and yet neither violence is done to conscience nor the men persecuted, for acting according to conscience and a sworn Covenant. But they justly punished: if acting from mere Conscience be the formal cause why men are not to be punished, it should hold in all such acts.
why some externall actions of words and deeds comming from meere conscience without any carnall pretext, as they will swear cannot be punished, but violence must be done to conscience, so the men persecuted, and others that doe the like and speak the like from no principle but pure conscience, without any carnall pretext, as they will sweare, are punished and yet neither violence is done to conscience nor the men persecuted, for acting according to conscience and a sworn Covenant. But they justly punished: if acting from meere Conscience be the formall cause why men are not to be punished, it should hold in all such acts.
4. They seem to me sick in the brain, who hold that it is an act of love and charity in the Magistrate to restrain […], 1Socinianism &c. and to discountenance such seducers, and yet bring arguments against all external […] in matters of Religion or compulsion in general: a discou••• nancing and a keeping of men from places, dignities, offices is the highest compulsion of penalty you can devise. What arguments fight against any compulsion of the Magistrate positive or negative doth fight against all. If it be lawful for the Magistrate, as for all other men, to do all he can for the truth as some say, and the Magistrates invitations, recommendation, exemplary profession, general tuition, excluding coercing, are all nothing but words, these agree to all Christians as Christians and are nothing peculiar to the Magistrate, the Magistrate as a Magistrate cannot request, he must command as a Magistrate, and all his commands if disobeyed, are in order to the sword.