A92140:831
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. If therefore this argument be good, neither can the external preaching of the word be a lawful Ordinance,1 for God only gives repentance; the preaching of the Word without the Spirit,2 can but produce a carnal repentance, and the Bounder may cry down all preaching of the word,3 if he but change the word Magistrate, into the word Preacher, 4or Ambassador, for this course of Preaching by men, may lay a stumbling (I speak in his words) in every mans way, 5to profane the things of God, by doing them out of obedience to men, (that are but earthen vessels) not to God. If he say, that is by accident, because men, look to men, as men, and not to God, whose word men carry. So say I, mens abstaining from doing violence and murder, which the Magistrate forbids, may infer God, hath given no power to the Magistrate to forbid murder and adultery; for men may so profane the sixth Command, and abstain from murder because the Magistrate forbids it, not because God forbids it in the sixth Commandment. And the preaching of the word may be art down errors, so long as a man sound in the faith preacher• but when there ariseth a corrupt teacher, a ••ara•h, that knew not Joseph, errors shall walk on every side, and that not by permission, but by▪ commandment. Now this is the reasonless reason of the […], against the coercive power of Magistrates, these men argue ever, from the abused power of a Magistrate, and from persecution, to prov• heretics ought not to be punished, as if punishing of false teachers were persecution, which they can never prove.
3. If therefore this argument be good, neither can the externall preaching of the word be a lawfull Ordinance,1