A92140:83
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.
3. The Saints comforting themselves in their godly, sincere, and blameless walking before God in love, knew what they spoke, and what spirit was in them, and that they walked not after the flesh, as men speak and fancy in a night dream, not knowing whether they be in Christ, or not; these were speeches of waking men, whose wits were in action. Psalm. 26. 8. Lord I have loved thy habitation, and the place where thine honour dwelleth. Psal. 119. 63. I am a companion of all them that fear thee; and of them that keep thy precepts. vers. 97. O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day. vers. 103. How sweet are thy words unto my taste! Yea sweeter then honey to my mouth. vers. 111. Thy Testimonies have I taken as an heritage for ever: for they are the rejoicing of my heart. vers. 162. I rejoice at thy word, as one that findeth […] great spoil: and the Church, Cant. 2. 3. I sate down under his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. ver. 5. Stay me with flagons and comfort me with apples, for I am sick of love. Isaiah 26. 9. With my soul have I desired thee in the night: yea with my spirit within me, I will seek thee early. And Hezekiah looking to his good Conscience, saith. Ezech. 39 3. Remember now, O Lord, that I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart. So Paul, 2 Cor 1. 12. For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our Conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God we had our conversation in the world, and more abundantly to you-wards. Now if the Saints can thus speak with the light and persuasion of Faith, before God and men, to their own solid peace and consolation, then may they be persuaded by these fruits of the Spirit, that they are branches growing in the Vine Christ, else all these speeches are but delusions ⟨p. 14⟩and fancies; and they must speak no other thing of themselves as vessels of the grace of God, then hypocrites […] reprobates may say of themselves?1 For D. Crisp, and also Libertines of New England, whose doctrine subverts the Faith, say, there can be no marks of saving grace from whence we can draw either comfort or peace, be it universal obedience, st rity, love to the Brethren, but it may be in hypocrites, in a Jew following the righteousness of the Law,