A92140:773
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 26: Whether punishing of Seducing Teachers be persecution for Conscience.
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.
CHAP. XXVI. Whether punishing of Seducing Teachers be persecution for Conscience.
Libertines lay down for a ground, That to punish any for their conscience must be persecution; 1Arminians call punishing of Heretics persecution: it is proper to carnal men to persecute the Children of the Promise. He that is sick only of an error of the mind,2 breaks not the Law of God: If the Magistrate punish him for that, he is a Persecutor. So also the Anabaptists in Bullingers time. Mr. Williams going after these guides saith, 3I acknowledge that to molest any person, Jew or Gentile, for either professing doctrine, or practising worship merely Religious, or Spiritual, is to persecute him, and such a person (what ever his doctrine be, true or false) suffereth for his conscience; and beside, a man may be persecuted, because he holdeth or practiseth what he believes in conscience to be truth, as Daniel, and because he dare not yield obedience, to doctrines and worships invented by men, and so the Author of Storming of the Anti. and of the Ancient bounds.
LIbertines lay downe for a ground, That to punish any for their conscience must be persecution; 1Anninians call punishing of Hereticks persecution: it is proper to carnall men to persecute the Children of the Promise. He that is sick onely of an errour of the minde,