A92140:932
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
Chapter 28: Divers other Arguments for pretended Toleration, answered.
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.
But the Bounder and Castalio must be bloody persecutors by this. For 1. What the Magistrate calleth truth, and godly doctrine, that these men, whom the Bounder and Castalio call Atheists, judge in their conscience to be Idolatry and Blasphemy? and if ye kill a man because he speaks as he thinketh, ye kill him for the truth, for it is truth to speak what ••• think for the 15. Psalm pronounceth him blessed who speaks […] what is in his heart. But Castalio may read righter if he please, and he is blessed [Greek or Hebrew] who speaketh truth not falsely from his heart, nor doth the Psalmist speak of the doctrine of truth, so as he should bless Mattan and Pashur or any false Prophet, or the King of Assyria, 1because he saith, No God can deliver out of the hand of that Tyrant, but the God of the Assyrians, for so I conceive he thinketh, when he relates what false experiences he had of that Bastard God; but he speaks of truth of facts between man and man, Psal. 15. in speaking whereof there may be invincible and so excusable error, whereas men sin grievously in false apprehensions of Gods truth, when as God reveals himself sufficiently to us in his works and word; but thus do Libertines leave the first simple apprehensions of the mind because they are natural, not under the stroke of freewill, free from all Law and guiltiness; so as the Egyptians sin not in apprehending the Godhead to be a Cow, the Persians to be fire, or the Sun, Israel to be a Calf, the Philistines to be a Fish; for certain it is all Idolaters who worship the God that made the Heavens and the earth, [Greek or Hebrew] ignorantly, Acts 17. in the creature, or in the works of mens hands, should have by this way no sinful, nor unlawful apprehensions of God, when shamefully they apprehend the Creator of the world to be a Beast. 2. They must be blessed then and speak truth from their heart, by the Exposition that Vaticanus putteth upon Psal. 15. who say that God is a cow, a calf, a fish, why? because ⟨p. 397⟩their erroneous conscience dictateth so to them. But why should they be punished then who blaspheme, commit Idolatry? for it is the conscience, and the mere conscience of Baals Priests to speak of God, and worship him as they do, they had rather dye as not do that which you call Blasphemy; and 1. It is not in their will to think what they will. 2.