A92140:280
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.
That they might be delivered from the torment of conscience they were under, and the fury and hellish zeal of not sparing the flesh, and losing the life for an heresy, which the heretic knows through the glimmering of a conscience deluded, to be a heresy, but will revenge, on a contrary sect, of a contrary opinion, desire of glory, and a name of knowledge, of a great wit, singular holiness blind the light, and what was their end who baked bread, and warmed themselves with a part of an Ash tree, and of the residue made a God and worshipped it? It is a vain thing to ask what rational end a man hath in these, for God hath judicially shut his eyes and his heart, as the devil hath run away with his natural wit.
That they might be delivered from the torment of conscience they were under, and the fury and hellish zeale of not sparing the flesh, and losing the life for an heresie, which the hereticke knowes through the glimmering of a conscience deluded, to be a heresie, but will revenge, on a contrary sect, of a contrary opinion, desire of glory, and a name of knowledge, of a great wit, singular holinesse blind the light, and what was their end who baked bread, and warmed themselves with a part of an Ash tree, and of the residue made a God and worshipped it? It is a vaine thing to aske what rationall end a man hath in these, for God hath judicially shut his eyes and his heart, as the devill hath runne away with his naturall wit.
2. It is bad Divinity to say there was no other cup offered to Christ, but the cup of temporary death offered to all the Martyrs, as if Christ suffered not the wrath of God, and death, due by justice, to all the Elect, whose sins he bare, he must think basely of Christ, the grace of union and of unction of whom it is said, Esa. 42. He shall not be discouraged, who teacheth that the fear and apprehension of death temporary caused him sweat blood; and complain, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? and what comfort have we in Christs death, if he suffered not that which is equivalent to eternal wrath? and if he suffered no other death then a godly Martyr did, whereupon Minus Celsus goeth on to extol heathens, who dyed worthily for the hope of eternity, as Anaxarchus, who bad the enemies beat the bellows, not Anaxarchus, when they were hammering him alive with iron hammers, and Hannibal who, lest he should come into the hands of the Romans, drank the poison which he carried under a pearl in his ring, hoping for immortality; these and the like serve to equal the death of Hannibal and Jesus Christ,