A92140:759
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.
So yet in a defensive way the Magistrate must offer violence to the conscience of men, who for mere Religious grounds do labour to scatter and violently to hinder the meetings of the servants of God: for how many of the Sectaries of England who are for liberty of conscience have come into Churches in England, and stepped up to the Pulpit, and hindered the Minister the discharge of his conscience to the flock, and offered violence to the meeting of the true Church? now it is not enough to say the Minister was but an Antichristian service-bookman, and it was no true Church whose service such Sectaries interrupted; but giving and not granting it were so, yet are Libertines not to offer violence to the conscience of any Church true or false, if they be true to their own principles: but this Author being an Anabaptist and a Seeker will say neither wars nor such violence are lawful, but if so, the Magistrate then cannot with the sword protect the true Church against the violence of men, who upon mere conscience disturb their Assemblies.
So yet in a defensive way the Magistrate must offer violence to the conscience of men, who for meer Religious grounds doe labour to scatter and violently to hinder the meetings of the servants of God: for how many of the Sectaries of England who are for liberty of conscience have come into Churches in England, and stepped up to the Pulpit, and hindered the Minister the discharge of his conscience to the flock, and offered violence to the meeting of the true Church? now it is not enough to say the Minister was but an Antichristian service-bookman, and it was no true Church whose service such Sectaries interrupted; but giving and not granting it were so, yet are Libertines not to offer violence to the conscience of any Church true or false, if they be true to their own principles: but this Author being an Anabaptist and a Seeker will say neither warres nor such violence are lawfull, but if so, the Magistrate then cannot with the sword protect the true Church against the violence of men, who upon meer conscience disturbe their Assemblies.
2. To Libertines all Churches professing true Religion (as all Churches on earth, Indians, and Mahometanians not excepted, do) must be true Churches, for they are not to judge, but that they follow their conscience,