ed by trying to make God require us to break his own commands? Can
conscience be made to sanction the violation of the moral law? Is not
this the way to destroy all moral distinctions, and to prostrate the
authority of conscience, and with it the very foundation of civil
government? Is not all history full of the dreadful consequences of the
doctrine that human laws can make sin obligatory, and that those in
authority can judge for the people what is sin? What more than this is
needed to justify all the persecutions for righteousness' sake since the
world began? What hope could there be, on this ground, for the
preservation of religion or virtue, in any nation on the earth? If the
principle be once established, that the people are bound to obey all
human laws, or that they are not to judge for themselves when their duty
to God requires them to refuse such obedience, then there is not only an
end of all civil and religious liberty, but the very nature of civil
government, as a divine institution, is destroyed. It becomes first
atheistical, and then diabolical. Then the massacre of St.
Bartholomew's, the decrees of the French National Assembly, and the laws
of Pagan Rome against Christians, and of its Papal successor against
Protestants, were entitled to reverent obedience. Then, too, may any
infidel party which gains the ascendency in a state, as has happened of
late in Switzerland, render it morally obligatory upon all ministers to
close their churches, and on the people to renounce the gospel. This is
not an age or state of the world in which to advance such doctrines.
There are too many evidences of the gathering powers of evil, to render
it expedient to exalt the authority of man above that of God, or
emancipate men from subjection to their Master in heaven, that they may
become more obedient to their masters on earth. We are advocating the
cause of civil government, of the stability and authority of human laws,
when we make every thing rest on the authority of God, and when we limit
every human power by subordinating it to him. We hold, therefore, that
it is not only one of the plainest principles of morals, that no immoral
law can bind the conscience, and that every man must judge of its
character for himself, and on his own responsibility; but that this
doctrine is essential to all religious liberty, and to the religious
sanction of civil government. If you deny this principle, you thereby
deny that government is a