A92140:565
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.
Answ. Plucking up is a metaphor, and when an heretic is pulled out of the gates and courts of the Lords house, the Church of God▪ and cast out of the society of the godly, and cursed by them, Gal. 1. 8. and they pray against him, and in faith avoid him, and ••l fellowship with him, he must Ecclesiastically dye and wither (if Gods ordinance be not blessed to recover him) and plucking up is as well a removing of him out of that condition and place, as any other thing.
Answ. Plucking up is a metaphor, and when an hereticke is pulled out of the gates and courts of the Lords house, the Church of God▪ and casten out of the society of the godly, and cursed by them, Gal. 1. 8. and they pray against him, and in faith avoid him, and ••l fellowship with him, hee must Ecclesiastically dye and wither (if Gods ordinance be not blessed to recover him) and plucking up is as well a removing of him out of that condition and place, as any other thing.
By the field,1 Christ understands the world. Celsus saith, the whole is put for the part, the world in which that seed of the word of the Gospel is sown, and that is the Church, for the Gospel is but heard in a small part of the world. But when did Christ sow the good seed of the Gospel first? happily when Christ himself first preached the Gospel: or rather when the old impostor Satan first dece••ed our first parents, but if so, then the Serpent did not immediately after •ow tares, for they were long ago sown, and the •eed was then grown into range growing corn, and there was no need of his owing, but of his further manuring of it, but this seed is sown, with every new act of preaching of the Gospel: so this parable cannot agree to the parable of the draw-net, in which there be both good and ill fish; now good and ill fish had their first breeding in the water, since the beginning: not agreeth it, for the same cause, with the parable of wheat and chae, which hath ever been in the world, whereas the tares are sown upon a new occasion of preaching the Gospel.