A92140:303
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.
1and thereby binds them up, and denieth all liberty of preaching or prophesying their own word, or their own persuasions, even under the notion of the word of the Lord, and doubtless when Nathan exhorted David to build the Temple, and Samuel said, that Elijah was the Lords. ⟨p. 118⟩anointed, they spake not that as their own word, but were persuaded that God revealed himself to them, though both were mistaken grossly; so Christ saith to his Apostles, Matth. 28. 19, 20. Go preach, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; he interdicteth them upon the same reason to bring any of their own Commandments flowing from their own Spirit, under any pretence, though they think them right, though Peter should conceive to Judaize a little, Gal. 2. was the mind of Christ, and he might preach it, and practise it, as the mind of Christ, yet Peter and all the Apostles, Matth. 28. are bound up▪ they have no liberty of conscience to preach their own (videtur) so it seems; for then should our faith be ultimately resolved into mens fancies, and (so thinketh our Reverend Saltmarsh, or Will. Del) and not into the word of God. Libertines say their Goddess, their Diana, is strangled and fettered, and the spirit it quenched, if this liberty of prophesying be denied to them; but to restrain liberty of sinning and lying, is no violence done to the spirit of prophecy, but this exposition calleth the fancies of men the spiritual sense of the word of God, as Familists and Antinomians in England father their dreams upon the Spirit of God. So Pe•. Stairie, who ordinarily preacheth the rovings of his own fancy, taught 29. Oct. 1647. before the House of Commons, after the Houses passed a brave Ordinance for Liberty of Conscience and Prophesying, that the House should not oppose, or resist any thing that pretended to Christ. Now if he spake this to the House as a Parliament, he forbade to hinder a Simon Magus, an Hymeneus, a Philetus, a Jezebel, a Jesuit, to preach▪ what he pleased, for Jesuits pretend to Jesus both name and thing, all the Familists, Socinians, Arians, Libertines, and false teachers, who deceive (if it were possible) the very elect, pretend to Jesus Christ, and to the anointing.