A92140:863
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.
2. No error, except of the Article of the Creed is arraigned as Heresy by the Doctor, but he meaneth by error ignorance and mis-belief both; for I hope the Doctors charitis will not send all to hell, many godly there may be who have much ignorance of God, who know not, or are simply ignorant of some of the twelve Articles of the Creed, and of some of the ten Commandments, if therefore error here doth include not believing, as heresy must necessarily do, the pertinacious mis-believing and denying of many Stories in the Bible, as of the deluge, dividing of the red Sea, preserving of Jonah alive in the whales belly, raising of Lazarus, (if obstinacy be added) must be no less Heresy and an open belying of the God of truth, then the denying of an Article of the Creed, for the authority of God who commands us to know the one as well as the other, is in both despised, when we are ignorant of either.
2. No error, except of the Article of the Creed is arraigned as Heresie by the Doctor, but he meaneth by error ignorance and mis-beleif both; for I hope the Doctors charitis will not send all to hell, many godlie there may be who have much ignorance of God, who know not, or are simply ignorant of some of the twelve Articles of the Creed, and of some of the ten Commandements, if therefore error here doth include not beleeving, as heresie must necessarily doe, the pertinacious mis-beleeving and denying of many Stories in the Bible, as of the deluge, dividing of the red Sea, preserving of Ionah alive in the whales belly, raising of Lazarus, (if obstinacie be added) must be no lesse Heresie and an open belying of the God of truth, then the denying of an Article of the Creed, for the authoritie of God who commands us to know the one as well as the other, is in both despised, when we are ignorant of either.
3. It is to beg the Question, to say that any Error in the matters written to us in our Lords Testament, which so much concerneth both our knowledge and practise, can be simple Errors and have no confederation with personal iniquity, for it is as much as if not to read our Husbands love-letter from end to end, or to cause to read it, if it comes to the wives hard, were not our sin against our husband Christ, whereas to be ignorant of any thing in it, and mis-believe, it is sinful ignorance, and natural blindness, so the Doctor makes sin so innocent as to have no consideration with sin.