A92140:802
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.
CHAP. XXVII. Whether our darkness and incapacity to believe and profess, together with the darkness and obscurity of Scripture be a sufficient ground for Toleration.
CHAP. XXVII. Whether our darknesse and incapacity to beleeve and professe, together with the darknesse and obscurity of Scripture be a sufficient ground for Toleration.
AS Mr. John Goodwin the Lord pardon his perverting of Souls) led the way from Arminian principles, who teach with Socinians, that 1 To know is not in our power, which he and they borrowed from Aristotle, but wickedly understood [Greek or Hebrew].1 And 2 Arminians taught that God by an irresistible power, works illumination in the mind. So opinions not being in our power, the Magistrate can have no power over men to coerce them from spreading of heresy. Hence Baptist, the Bounder, the Stormer, and other Libertines, M. Goodwin speaks for. That which is not in our power to do, 2or not do, and is wrought in us by supernatural grace, and by God only, we are not punishable by the Magistrates sword, but to believe, to repent, to be sound in the faith, is wrought in us by supernatural grace, and by God only. Baptist heaps together but eighteen Scriptures, produced against Pelagians, Papists, Arminians, and his brethren Socinians, and old Anabaptists, that no man can come to the Son except the Father draw him; the natural man understands not the things of God, &c. And I am sure he is ignorant of the conclusion; for we profess the sword is to be drawn against no man, because he repenteth not, or believeth not, &c. Hence Baptist spitting out with other Antinomians his venom against us, though no matter (excepting the sin of it) if he wronged not Christ and his truth. For when a weak Christian (a disciple of Servetus, Socinus an Apostate denying the Lord Jesus to have come in the flesh, and all the Scriptures to be the word of God) tired of longer imprisonment and death, shall say, You say well, but how shall I prevail with my self to believe what you say? Thus reply these miserable comforters. Yield obedience to what is taught you, meditate on it often, desire to believe it, and God in time will bring you to believe it. Then poor Popery,