A92140:969
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.
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,1 and sundry truths, and if there be two, there may be two and twenty Bibles, and contrary truths, and so we have not the Old, and New Testament, but the letters of it, and as many senses, by this, there be of Scriptures, as many Bibles, and as many sundry heads and various opinions of men. Hence liberty of prophesying is lawful, and so liberty of Faiths, of contrary Bibles; and from this it is, that which tendeth to unity of faith, as one Confession of faith, or uniformity of belief is mocked by these men, and every one that suffereth for his supposed truth, is persecuted for the Word of God, and so blessed, because persecuted for the Truth, and if blessed, as our Saviour meaneth, Matth. •. v. 11, 12. They have a great reward in Heaven, for so they expound the place,