A92140:646
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
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.
16. Nor can we give a more public scandal and just offence to the best Reformed Churches, with whom we are to endeavour the nearest conjunction and uniformity in Religion, then to cry against both their doctrine and constant practise in that they teach a necessity of both Civill and Ecclesiastical censures against ravenous wolves who spare not the flock, and cease not, with Elimas the Sorcerer, to pervert the right ways of the Lord.
16. Nor can we give a more publicke scandall and just offence to the best Reformed Churches, with whom we are to endeavour the nearest conjunction and uniformity in Religion, then to cry against both their doctrine and constant practise in that they teach a necessity of both Civill and Ecclesiasticall censures against ravenous wolves who spare not the flocke, and cease not, with Elimas the Sorcerer, to pervert the right wayes of the Lord.
17. And we dare appeal to the consciences of our brethren in England, when we did willingly enter in the Covenant of God, to dye and live, sink and swim, give our lives with, and for them in this common cause of God, if they did not conceive our downright and ingenuous sense and meaning of the Covenant to be against all such pretended liberty of Conscience, for which cause sundry of them joining with us as friends, yet did refuse to take the Covenant, or if by the liberties of the Kingdoms, or the true public liberty, or any like word, they did understand liberty of professing Socinianism, Prelacy, Popery, Familism, Heresy, or any thing contrary to sound doctrine; or if they did believe their brethren, who in the simplicity of their hearts did rather choose to suffer affliction with the people of God, then enjoy their own pleasures and peace for a season, or that the honourable Houses had any such sense, when in the return of the Parliament of England, p. 6, 7. in their Letters and Declarations, they invited us to join in Covenant to endeavour an uniformity of Doctrine, Worship, and Discipline with them, which sen•e, if any had, (for we shall believe the honourable Houses, invited not us to ruin our selves, and the Reformed Religion ⟨p. 272⟩