A92140:549
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
Chapter 20: The parable of the Wheat and the Tares, discussed and cleared.
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.
1. Christ forbids not simply to pluck up the tares, but onely secundum quid, in a case, when there is danger to pluck up the wheat with the tares, as in punishing a multitude or a whole society.
1. Christ forbids not simply to plucke up the tares, but onely secundum quid, in a case, when there is danger to plucke up the wheat with the tares, as in punishing a multitude or a whole society.
2. Christ expounding the Parable, passeth that part of it, best while ye pluck up the tares, ye pluck up the wheat also, and that part of the parable that Christ expoundeth not, when he expoundeth all the rest, must belong nothing to the scope of the parable; and we can conclude solidly no controverted point from every limb, joint, or wing of a parable; nor was it Christs scope to show that Magistrates should punish none of the children of the wicked one, because of the danger of cutting off the children of the Kingdom with them, for the words may bear (saith Calvin) then, that all punishments and censures, both Civill and Ecclesiastic rebukes, and excommunication, should cease till the end of the world, and so also saith Bullinger; and the truth is, if the danger of erring in taking wheat for tares, or punishing the good and innocent, in place of ⟨p. 237⟩the guilty,1 should hinder Rulers to punish such as are hardly known to be guilty, we should not so much as rebuke one another, till the day of judgement, for there is danger in sinning, if we rebuke an innocent man in lieu of a guilty man or that the Magistrate kill an innocent man in place of a Murderer, for the danger in sinning in the least, is as good ground of abstaining from a duty, as in sinning in the greatest, and therefore this new point of Divinity, that the Magistrate should punish no false Prophets or Seducers, but let them all grow till the day of judgment, for fear that he punish or put to death a faithful teacher in lieu of a false seducer, as Luther following some of the fathers teacheth, is so far from being in this text, that it is not a truth contained in all the Old or New Testament. Yea, it is openly false, for then should we not avoid and turn away from Idolaters and Heretics contrary to 1 Cor. . 11.