A92140:5
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
To the reader: TO THE Godly and unpartial Reader.To the reader: TO THE Godly and unpartiall Reader.
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.
TO THE Godly and unpartial Reader.
TO THE Godly and unpartiall Reader.
I Offer (Worthy Reader) to your unpartial and ingenuous censure these my ensuing thoughts against Liberty of conscience, from which way looking to me with a face of Atheism, I call the Adversaries, Libertines, not intending to reach a blow to any godly man, or to wound those who out of weakness are captived with that error, but to breed in the hearts of the godly a detestation of that way, which in truth hath its rise from Libertinism, and savoureth rankly of wide, loose and bold Atheistical thoughts of the Majesty of God, as if our conscience had a Prerogative Royal beside a rule; yea (which is prodigious) in its simple apprehensions of God, of the Mediator, of the revealed will of God, above the Law of God: For 1. This way bringeth in Aristotle's [Greek or Hebrew], and the worlds [Greek or Hebrew]. So I think, and all say so, and our faith and hope must be resolved in the first principle of Scepticism. So it seems to me, for the young daughters of the mind, the simple acts of apprehending, knowing, believing God and divine truths are innocent, harmless and ill-less foul-works, being from under all dominion of either free-will or a divine Law, and the mind, a free borne absolute Princess, can no more incur guiltiness in its operations about an infinite Sovereign God, and his revealed will, by this lawless way, then the fire can in burning, the Sun it enlightening, the stone in moving downward, be ⟨image 3⟩arraigned of any breach of Law, if toleration have place.
I Offer (Worthy Reader) to your unpartiall and ingenuous censure these my ensuing thoughts against Liberty of conscience, from which way looking to me with a face of Atheisme, I call the Adversaries, Libertines, not intending to reach a blow to any godly man, or to wound those who out of weaknesse are captived with that error, but to breed in the hearts of the godly a detestation of that way, which in truth hath its rise from Libertinisme, and savoureth rankly of wide, loose and bold Atheisticall thoughts of the Majesty of God, as if our conscience had a Prerogative Royall beside a rule; yea (which is prodigious) in its simple apprehensions of God, of the Mediator, of the revealed will of God, above the Law of God: For 1. This way bringeth in Aristotles , and the worlds . So I thinke, and all say so, and our faith and hope must be resolved in the first principle of Scepticisme. So it seems to me, for the young daughters of the minde, the simple acts of apprehending, knowing, beleeving God and divine truths are innocent, harmelesse and ill-lesse foul-works, being from under all dominion of either free-will or a divine Law, and the minde, a free borne absolute Princesse, can no more incur guiltinesse in its operations about an infinite Sovereigne God, and his revealed will, by this lawlesse way, then the fire can in burning, the Sunne it inlightning, the stone in moving downward, be