A92140:447
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 most strong against admonishing, rebuking and warning one another.1 I may condemn the innocent in these, because I am not infallible; it is against preaching, believing, writing of books of Divinity, making war, peace, borrowing, lending, buying, selling, in all these I am obliged to do upon certain persuasion of faith, that what I do is lawful, else I sin, Rom. 14. 23. and the word of God the most sure oracle to us must be my rule. Now I may no more venture on the least sin, then a Christian Prince may condemn to death an Idolater, and a blasphemer, who is a sound believer, which is a greater sin, if I be not clear as if an immediate oracle were speaking from heaven, as Libertines say, and the argument must be thus, what we cannot do with as great infallibility of not erring, as the Priest that immediately consulted the oracle, or the Prophet immediately inspired, that we cannot do lawfully. But the Christian Prince under the New Testament cannot with such infallibility punish Idolaters, Blasphemers, or any otherwise, ergo, The proposition is false, for certain knowledge is sufficient, for the Holy Ghost would never bid us admonish, and after admonition avoid an heretic, as Tit. 3. 10. nor would our Saviour bid us beware of men, of false teachers, and false Christs, and avoid them, and believe them not, and try them by their works, and search the Scriptures, and examine their doctrine, nor would the Lord bid us try the Spirits, and try the Antichrist, and eat not with Idolaters as he doth, Matth. 24. 23, 24, 25. Joh. 5. 39. Rem. 16, 17, 18. 1 Joh. 5. 1. 1 Cor. 5. 11. If he laid this ground of Libertines, heart-obstinacy, only legible to God, and knowable •s none but to infallible Spirits, makes an heretic and a false Christ before men, yet you are to admonish and eschew him, this is as much, as if the Lord should say, If any man have such an opinion and heart-thought never manifested to men or Angel, that knew whether the number of the stars were odds or equal, admonish such a man and