A92140:881
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.
Answ. 11. The Doctor mocketh when he saith, No mere opinions are to be persecuted. That was never in question, a mere opinion, is a mere act of the mind within the walls of the soul, and can be known to no man; for neither Magistrate, nor Church can judge of invisible and hidden acts of the soul, so he says nothing.
Answ. 11. The Doctor mocketh when he saith, No meer opinions are to be persecuted. That was never in question, a meer opinion, is a meer act of the minde within the walls of the soule, and can be knowne to no man; for neither Magistrate, nor Church can judge of invisible and hidden acts of the soule, so he sayes nothing.
- 1How opinions are judicable and punishable.
2. The simple apprehension of God to be a four-footed beast, is by the Apostle, Rom. 1. esteemed Idolatry, and a mental changing of the glory of the incorruptible God into the glory of a corruptible creature; and the profession thereof ⟨p. 380⟩must then be the profession of manifest Idolatry, and so punishable, yet it is a profession of a mere opinion; but I confess of a most Idolatrous opinion, not of a fact, otherwise by this learning of Libertines there can be no sin in simple apprehensions of God, though most prodigious, and monstrous, what is blasphemy, is as controverted and as unjudicable as simple error. Servetus his naming the blessed Trinity a Cerberus, or three-headed dog, blasphemed, say we, I think Doctor Taylor will not say so, then by his way, blasphemy must be as unjudicable as heresy, and to him the formal of it is within, in the heart.