A92140:749
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.
For how can we in the name of the Lord, rebuke, threaten eternal wrath, deliver to, Satan, seducers, more than the Magistrate can use the sword against them, yea, or refute their errors, in the name and authority of Christ, or strike with his rod, since we are not infallibly persuaded more than these we call Seducers, for they may upon the same grounds call us Seducers, threaten us with eternal wrath, and deliver us to Satan, in the same name and authority that the sound Church proceedeth against them; for neither side had the infallibility of divine authority, in a reflex knowledge, more than others, by the Doctrine of Libertines. 5. They are no less contrary to growing up in knowledge and new light; for contrary reasons, and rebukes, and threatenings are as apt to expel new light, and to reduce the Seducer to old darkness, for any certainty of persuasion any of the sides have, for both may see beside their book, and dream the moon is made of wax, by this way, and instructing of teachers that see but on this, and the yonder side of truth with e••s of flesh, as they say, is as uneffectuall a remedy against Teachers, as the sword. 6. Since the sword and stoning, when used by the Jews, Deut. 13. presupposeth infallibility. What warrant do our Lords of licence of conscience give us, that all the Commons, and Lads, and Girls that lifted a stone against the Seducer, had Prophetical, infallibility: or that every wife, to whom her husband might say, Let us go and follow Baal and Dagon, for sure the Zid•nians and Philistines are a people taught of God as well as we, was infallible in ⟨p. 318⟩her knowledge and unerrable, and the husband an erring Seducer according to the principles that masters of licence would lead us on: for there must be a response given to all and every one to believe this is the Seducer, from the light of Moses law, else they had no more right to stone the Seducer, then the Seducer to stone them. For as we may err in persecuting true Prophets, I hope so did the people kill the Prophets, 1and stone them that were sent, Matth. 23. 27 and