A92140:778
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.
show us a word of Old or New Testament warranting you to call it persecution, to molest any for worship or practice, though most false. Mr. Williams saith, to malest any for their conscience is persecution, then must Jeremiah be a Persecutor, for he molested those with rebukes and threatenings, who out of mere conscience, killed their sons and daughters to Malech. Christ molested Pharisees and Sadducees, who out of mere conscience defended the traditions of men, false interpretations of the Law, denied the Resurrection; yea the Lord commanded the Judges in his Law, not only to molest, but to stone to death without mercy, those who professed ⟨p. 336⟩doctrine out of mere conscience, and practice worship upon merely Religious grounds, which tended to drive away people from the true God, and such as blasphemed God, Deut. 13. Exo. 32 26, 27. Rom. 15. 1. 13. 4. Lev. 24. 10, 11. Deut. 17. 2. Levit. 20. 2. But God never commanded in any Law persecution, but hated it, and no more commanded it, then his holy Laws can be unjust.
shew us a word of Old or New Testament warranting you to call it persecution, to molest any for worship or practice, though most false. Mr. Williams saith, to malest any for their conscience is persecution, then must Jeremiah be a Persecuter, for he molested those with rebukes and threatnings, who out of meer conscience, killed their sons and daughters to Malech. Christ molested Pharisees and Sadduces, who out of meer conscience defended the traditions of men, false interpretations of the Law, denied the Resurrection; yea the Lord commanded the Judges in his Law, not onely to molest, but to stone to death without mercy, those who professed ⟨p. 336⟩doctrine out of meer conscience, and practice worship upon meerly Religious grounds, which tended to drive away people from the true God, and such as blasphemed God,