A92140:176
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.
for he may punish omissions of hearing the Doctrine of the Gospel and other external performances of worship, as as these omissions by ill example or otherwise are offensive• to the souls of these that are to lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty; nor does it follow that the sword is a kindly means to force outward performances, for the Magistrate as the Magistrate does not command these outward performances as service to God, but rather forbids the omissions of them as destructive to man, for example a Physician commands fasting, Pastors after the example of James commands fasting when judgements are on us, the physician ⟨p. 50⟩[…] ⟨p. 51⟩[…] ⟨p. 52⟩commands it, in so far as eating troubles the common society of humours,1 members and temper of the body, and the Physician forbids eating so as he will have no more to do with the patient, if he will disobey: and so trouble the temper of the body, which is the only object the physician works on. Pastors command fasting to be in sincerity for afflicting and humbling the soul under the mighty hand of God. So the Magistrate forbids cutting of a vein or shedding of blood as a thing troubling the peace of humane society, yet his command is not a direct means of preventing diseases in the body of a subject and for healthy living. But the Physician commands to cut a vein and to shed blood for health and to prevent a disease, and sins neither against the Magistrate nor God in so doing: so doth the Magistrate not directly command going to Church as a worship to God, so as his commands have influence on the conscience as the Pastors commands have,2 but he commands going to Church and hearing so as the omission of hearing harts the society whereof God hath made him a civill and politic head: in this latter sense must Lactantius, Tertullian and others be taken, otherwise these words, the Religion of another does his neighbour neither good nor ill in rigour, are not true, the ill example of others in Idolatry brings ill upon all the Church.