A92140:617
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.
So this Author absolves us from all oaths and covenants, though we swear not to kill a captive taken in war, and swear to adhere to the fundamentals that there is one God, Christ is the one only Mediator, God and man, consubstantial with the father, yet if after you have talked with Sa• marsh, or put your faith in the power of the sophisms o• a cunning Jesuit, he makes it satisfactorily appear to your conscience that it is according to the word of God that the captive •e killed, •e is a murderer, and there be as many Mediators, as there be Saints in heaven, and as many Christs Godded with the fullness of the Godhead, as there be Saints of the family of love, and so your oath to your fundamentals obligeth you not; and you are guilty of no perjury though first you sware to the necessary truths of God, and now ye turn apostate from both faith and oath. Libertines infuse such a magic in your erroneous conscience that it is your only rule, and displaceth the Law of nature from all obligation, or the word of God the only rule of faith and manners, you are tied no longer by the oath of God, then your weather-cock-conscience,1 with this new Moon, hath catched a new light, you are as if there had been no such outward Covenant obliging you, take it upon the word of this Gamaliel, dormii securd in utramque aurem. But though it be true, nothing doth oblige, but it must appear to be according to the word of God, that it may oblige in the right and due manner and way, yet it is most false that it obligeth, as it shall appear, or qua•• nus, because it doth appear to the conscience to be the word of God, for a quatenus ad omne valet consequentia. Then every thing obligeth, as it appears to be the word of God to the ⟨p. 264⟩conscience most erroneous, then are some obliged to murder the innocent Apostles; for it appears satisfactorily to their conscience to be the word of God, and service to God so to do, Joh. 16. 1. and some are obliged to sacrifice their sons to God, though they did vow and covenant the contrary in Baptism, for it appears satisfactorily to their conscience, it is according to the example of Abraham, to offer their sons to God, except God from heaven forbid them as he did Abraham.