A92140:281
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.
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, 1and to make Anaxarchus, Hannibal, Empedocles, Seneca, who Judas-like murdered themselves, to be freed of servitude, and upon the lean and empty hope they had of eternal life, to have dyed conscienti• non mal•, with no ill conscience; for neither pleasure, profit, nor honour, but for the hope of life eternal, as the Martyrs of the devil do, especially ⟨p. 110⟩Servetus who dyed roaring and crying like a hopeless beast; as if there could be a good conscience in Hannibal, or any heathen, who knew and heard nothing of a conscience sprinkled in the blood of Jesus, and purged from dead works, to serve the living God, as if heathen self-murderers, who against the Law of nature kill themselves, deserved no more to be punished by the Magistrat• •he Minister of God, then a godly innocent heretic burnt for blaspheming of the Trinity and the Son of God: As a despairing dog Servetus dyed, and that they had officax signum conscientiae non malae, they had truly a good conscience, were free of hypocrisy, or vain-glory, or any bad end in killing themselves, this serves as much to free the most desperate and hellish murderer, from the sword of the Minister of God as heresy: