A92140:968
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.
Hence I argue, what ever opinion maketh every man• dictate of his conscience the true word of God, and as many Bibles, divers and contrary Gospels and words of God, and contrary rules of faith and practises, as there be divers opinions, fancies, dictates, and apprehensions of conscience, is a Godless and Atheistical way. But such is this opinion of Liberty of Conscience and Toleration, Ergo, &c.
Hence I argue, what ever opinion maketh every man• dictate of his conscience the true word of God, and as many Bibles, divers and contrary Gospels and words of God, and contrary rules of faith and practises, as there be divers opinions, fancies, dictates, and apprehensions of conscience, is a Godlesse and Atheisticall way. But such is this opinion of Libertie of Conscience and Toleration, Ergo, &c.
The Proposition is undoubtedly true, there being but one Gospel, one Faith, one truth, as there is but one Christ, and one Lord, Ephes. 4▪ 5. and the Scripture hath but one sense, that is true, and the ground of faith, otherwise this (There is but one God to us) should have one sense to the Treit•ites, to wit, There be three Gods, because three persons, it should have a contrary sense to another: To us there is but one God in nature and essence, and yet both should be the same truth to each man, as he apprehends.
The Assumption is manifest to those that will see, by the grounds of Libertines, because to every man, that is the word of God which he fancieth to be the Word of God; for otherwise, the truth should be monopolized to ut, or some few persons, and this is the sense of the word of God, and so the very Gospel and truth which this man believeth, and of you punish him for it, the man suffers for the […] for the word of God; and if his neighbour believe the contrary, that is to him the Word of God, and if you punish him for it, the man suffers for the word of God also, and there be two contrary Gospels,