A92140:593
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 21: Of the Samaritans, and of no compelling of Heathens. How the Covenant bindeth us.
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.
A certain Author hath written a Treatise called Ancient bonds, 1in which there is little antiquity, less […], no impartiality, much ignorance, for he neither doth, nor can so much as state the question. And he faith 1. We are to endeavour ⟨p. 252⟩Reformation of Religion in the three Kingdoms not simply, but according to the word of God, 2the only pattern and regulation of the best Reformed Churches, and of us, we clip the Covenant of these words.
A certaine Author hath written a Treatise called Ancient bonds, 1in which there is little antiquity, lesse 〈…〉, no impartiality, much ignorance, for he neither doth, nor can so much as state the question. And he faith 1. We are to endeavour ⟨p. 252⟩Reformation of Religion in the three Kingdomes not simply, but according to the word of God, 2the only patterne and regulation of the best Reformed Churches, and of us, we clip the Covenant of these words.
- 1Ancient bonds c. 10. sect. 3. p. 67. 68.
- 2The word of God as it is in every mans conscience no rule of Reformation in the Covenant.
Answ. The word of God (say the Familists in their Petition to King James an. 1604.) as we understand it. So as Libertines understand it, and according to their conscience, so the Jews would swear to endeavour a Reformation according to the word of God in the Old Testament, as they understand it, and the Papists according to the word of God, as they understand it, to written and not written, and will the Author dare to look God or men in the face and say the words, according to the word of God, is according as every Covenanter understands the word of God, the Prelatical man, the Socinian, Arian, Familist, Antinomian, Seeker, Separatist, Antiscripturist, Antitrinitarian, Arminian? for all these did take the Covenant (if we speak de genere singulorum) or did those that took the Covenant speak or mean that toleration of all these Sects and Reformation, and nearest uniformity can consist, or that he, and all these had this sense under-hand of these words (according to the word of God) that is, as Socinians, Libertines, Familists, Antinomians, &c. expound the word of God? If so, we must justify the Jesuits equivocation, and their oaths with mental reservation, for the sense of Prelatical men, and of those that go for Heretics and Schismatics now as then,