Note 609 — Chapter IV

‘We hold that tolleration of all religions is not farre from blasphemy.’ Rutherford's Free Disputation against Pretended Liberty of Conscience, p. 20. ‘If wolves be permitted to teach what is right in their own erroneous conscience, and there be no “Magistrate to put them to shame,” Judg. xviii. 7, and no King to punish them, then godlinesse and all that concernes the first Table of the Law must be marred.’ Ibid., p. 230. ‘Wilde and atheisticall liberty of conscience,’ p. 337. ‘Cursed toleration,’ p. 400. See also, in the same work (pp. 110, 244), Rutherford's remarks on the murder of Servetus. In 1645, Baillie, who was then in London, writes, ‘The Independents here plead for a tolleration both for themselfes and other sects. My Dissuasive is come in time to doe service here. We hope God will assist us to remonstrate the wickedness of such an tolleration.’ And on account of the Independents wishing to show common charity towards persons who differed in opinions from themselves, Baillie writes next year (1646), ‘The Independents has the least zeale to the truth of God of any men we know.’ Baillie's Letters and Journals, vol. ii. pp. 328, 361. Blair, who was in London in 1649, was sorely vexed with ‘the most illegal, irreligious, and wicked proceedings and actings of the sectarian army;’ one of their crimes being the attempt ‘to ruin religion by their toleration.’ Continuation of the Autobiography of Mr. Robert Blair, Minister of St. Andrews, p. 213. For other evidence of this persecuting spirit, see Dickson's Truth's Victory over Error, pp. 159, 163, 199–202; Abernethy's Physicke for the Soule, p. 215; Durham's Exposition of the Song of Solomon, p. 147; Durham's Commentarie upon the Book of the Revelation, pp. 141, 143, 330; and Shields' Hind let loose, p. 168.