A92140:349
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.
and we are not to do upon a supposition, that the conscience stand erroneous, nor hath the erroneous conscience any warrant at all, nor commission from the Sovereign Lord of conscience, to command you to believe you must be circumcised, or upon the supposal of that faith to oblige you to be circumcised, more then any earthly judge hath a warrant from God to command murder or robbery; nor is it a law of nature, or of God that you must do absolutely and without trying what an erroneous conscience indites you to do, under pain of sin, nor is it a sin to resist an erroneous conscience by not doing, or suspending the action, more then it is a sin not to obey an earthly Judge, when he commandeth beside, and contrary to the law of the supreme Law-giver. No wonder they make a Pope of conscience, who make the conscience of the Pope the supreme court that obligeth all men on earth. The reason of this error is, Papists (and Libertines join with them in this) dream hat as God doth command unerringly, & indeclinably, so he hath communicated ⟨p. 138⟩to Popes and Heralds, and to every lawful […] under him, and so to the conscience, that they may •• errantly, and indeclinably also command, but they should remember when power of commanding comes out of God, the fountain of authority, now it looseth its absolute undeclinablenesse, when it is in conscience, or in any creature, and it is only conditional and limited in the streams, whereas it was absolute and sovereign in the fountain.
and we are not to do upon a supposition, that the conscience stand erroneous, nor hath the erroneous conscience any warrant at all, nor commission from the Sovereigne Lord of conscience, to command you to beleeve you must be circumcised, or upon the supposall of that faith to obliege you to be circumcised, more then any earthly judge hath a warrant from God to command murther or robery; nor is it a law of nature, or of God that you must do absolutely and without trying what an erroneous conscience indites you to do, under paine of sin, nor is it a sin to resist an eroneous conscience by not doing, or suspending the action, more then it is a sin not to obey an earthly Judge, when he commandeth beside, and contrary to the law of the supreame Law-giver. No wonder they make a Pope of conscience, who make the conscience of the Pope the supream court that obliegeth all men on earth. The reason of this errour is, Papists (and Libertines joyn with them in this) dreame hat as God doth command unerringly, & indeclinably, so hte hath communicated