A92140:754
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.
6. If God have left no means under the New Testament, but exhorting, to suppress the seducer, what shall be said of John 2 Epist. 10. who forbids to receive a seducer in our house, or bid him God speed. Sure this is some external forcing of the conscience, if we credit Libertines; for rather then some seducer lye in the fields in America in winter, he will say he abhors Familianisme, though he hate all the sound in the faith. Now is not this a greater external power, armed against a Seducer, then if the holy Ghost had said, If a murderer, a Parricide, a Sorcerer, a Drunkard, come to your house, let him not lye in the fields, lodge him, but give him course cheer, and no bed to lye on, no fire to warm him? yet so much is not said in express words, for the forcing of the conscience in the New Testament. Again, for the second member, if to teach what we judge in our conscience to be truth,1 though most erroneous, be no sin, but innocency, yea if (as Minus Celsus said) it be a token of a good conscience, and innocent fear of God, as Libertines say, we are to judge no mans heart, and that in a matter of salvation, no man will be so Devil-like as to go to hell, and lead millions of souls with him, the way being against his conscience. For Jer. Taylor saith, It is all one here,2 whether it be a real truth the Seducer holdeth and teacheth, or if he only apprehend it to be a truth, though it be an untruth; and he said well according to his way. Now, if to teach (I say) what we conceive to be truth, though most false, be no sin, but innocency, then the Magistrate ought not only not to punish it, but ⟨p. 320⟩reward it; and to allow stipends and maintenance to all Seducers, to teach what errors they judge saving truths. And grant me these three, which cannot be denied but by gross Anabaptists, 1. Rom. 13. That the Magistrate is to reward well doing. 2. That the workman is worthy of his wages, 1 Tim. 5. 18, 19. Matth. 10. 10