A92140:350
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 In the case of an erroneous conscience standing in its vigorous thing, the question is, both, what is commanded, and what is good, for these two are not contrary, but agree well: for the Lords command to Adam (eat not of this fruit) is to Adam the cause why the not eating is good, and the cause of the obligation to what is commanded also, but only the obligation is (ad modum facti, non ad factum) to the ••• ner of doing, that if we do, or abstain, we do it […], in faith, and persuasion without any jarring between the conscience and the object, but there is no obligation to the fact. On the regular way of doing, I am never obliged to obey God with an erring conscience, or contrary to the indictment of an erring conscience.
2 In the case of an erroneous conscience standing in its vigorous thing, the question is, both, what is commanded, and what is good, for these two are not contrary, but agree well: for the Lords command to Adam (eate not of this fruit) is to Adam the cause why the not eating is good, and the cause of the obligation to what is commanded also, but onely the obligation is (ad modum facti, non ad factum) to the ••• ner of doing, that if we doe, or abstaine, we do it 〈…〉, in faith, and perswasion without any jarring between the conscience and the object, but there is no obligation to the fact. On the regular way of doing, I am never oblieged to obey God with an erring conscience, or contrary to the inditement of an erring conscience.
3 The material object being sin, and forbidden by the law of God, is an object by accident, even when it is proposed by practical reason, if that reason be erroneous, and misinformed, as it is in this case, the proposing of practical reason, doth not make that to be good or commanded, which of it self was neither good nor commanded, but sinful, it may make it good in the manner of doing, and oblige in the manner of doing, but that is not our question, but whether the practical judgement and conscience remaining erroneous, doth both ligare, bind and oblige to the fact that is sinful, that is denied. And though he that is circumcised upon the supposal of a blind, erring, and Jewish conscience, thinking the law of shadows obligeth when the body Christ is come, he is a debtor to do the whole Law, and to eat the Passover, to sacrifice at Jerusalem, to keep the new-Moons, &c. But how is he debtor? He is this way debtor, what warrant he hath to be circumcised, he hath the same warrant to keep the Passover, to