A92140:236
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.
Of his casting out buyers […] out of the Temple, through his zeal to the house of God, Psal. 69. of the betraying of him by Judas, and […] historical things that are not fundamentals, yet all th•• were a part of the Apostles and the Holy Ghosts testimony, Act. 5. 32. And to be believed with divine certitude of […] ⟨p. 77⟩faith, no less then the Articles of fundamentals, that Christ was the Son of man, and died for our sins and rose for our righteousness, except we say that the Apostles are false witnesses, and make God a liar, in saying that Judas betrayed him not, and that Barabbas a Murderer was not preferred to him, 1 Cor 15. 1•. Job. 3. 33. 1 Job. 5. 10. For if we give God the lye in non-fundamentals, and turne non-fundamentals into controversies and conjectures, and think we must believe fundamentals, one or two fixedly and peremptorily, and lead a good life, and so we are saved but not otherwise, but as touching non-fundamentalls, we may believe these with a reserve and a demur, and may believe them for a day, or an hour, and deny them to morrow, and again, be carried about with a new wind of doctrine and believe the third day, and deny them the fourth day, believe them the fifth day, and deny them the sixth day, and so make a whirly-gig of our faith, and a new faith for a new-moon, or for a half, and a quarter moon, as the Independents, in their Apology makes this a principle of their faith to believe these things so, as we leave room for a new light to cast a board again at the blowing of the wind of a new fancy (of which we have seen more in the Assembly of Divines,1 these four years, past then we desire to see in any that profess godliness) and as the Holland-Arminians say (from whom new lights or old darknesses have their rise) a faith of a thousand years may be the worst of all, which (say we) is most false,2 a false opinion of God, and a thousand year old lye, a grey-haired untruth is the worst of conjectures, but faith it neither is, nor can be called. But the late Independents, and the new Libertines of England do only say such a monthly faith is to be tolerated because of the darkness of our mind in the matters of God, which yet is faith, not but a conjectural opinion.