palliation of the offense.
Paul was guilty in persecuting the church, though he thought he was
doing God service. And the man, who by a perverted conscience, is led to
refuse obedience to a righteous law, stands without excuse at the bar of
God. The moral sanction of civil laws, which gives them their chief
power, and without which they must ultimately become inoperative, cannot
possibly extend further than this. For what is that moral sanction? It
is a conviction that our duty to God requires our obedience; but how can
we feel that duty to God requires us to do what God forbids? In other
words, a law which we regard as immoral, can not present itself to the
conscience as having divine authority. Conscience, therefore, is on the
side of the law wherever and whenever this is possible from the nature
of the case. It is a contradiction to say that conscience enforces what
conscience condemns. This then is all the support which the laws of the
land can possibly derive from our moral convictions. The allegiance of
conscience is to God. It enforces obedience to all human laws consistent
with that allegiance; further than this it can not by possibility go.
And as the decisions of conscience are, by the constitution of our
nature, determined by our own apprehensions of the moral law, and not by
authority, it follows of necessity that every man must judge for
himself, and on his own responsibility, whether any given law of man
conflicts with the law of God or not.

We would further remark on this point that the lives and property of men
have no greater protection than that which, on this theory, is secured
for the laws of the state. The law of God says: Thou shalt not kill. Yet
every man does, and must judge when and how far this law binds his
conscience. It is admitted, on all hands, that there are cases in which
its obligation ceases. What those cases are each man determines for
himself, but under his two fold responsibility to his country and to
God. If, through passion or any other cause, he errs as to what
constitutes justifiable homicide, he must bear the penalty attached to
murder, by the law of God and man. It is precisely so in the case before
us. God has commanded us to obey the magistrate as his minister and
representative. If we err in our judgment as to the cases in which the
command ceases to be binding, we fall into the hands of justice, both
human and divine. Can more than this be necessary? Can any thing be
gain