III. Another great and precious principle enthroned in the founding of
our commonwealth was that of religious liberty.
One of the saddest chapters in human history is that of persecution on
account of religious convictions--the imposition of penalties,
torture, and death by the sword of government on worthy people because
of their honest opinions of duty to Almighty God. For the punishment
of the lawless, the wicked, and the intractable, and for the praise,
peace, and protection of them that do well, the civil magistrate is
truly the authorized representative of God, and fails in his office
and duty where the powers he wields are not studiously and vigorously
exercised to these ends. But God hath reserved to himself, and hath
not committed to any creature hands, the power and dominion to
interfere with realm of conscience. As he alone can instruct and
govern it, and as its sphere is that of the recognition of his will
and law and the soul's direct amenability to his judgment-bar, it is a
gross usurpation and a wicked presumption for any other authority or
power to undertake to force obedience contrary to the soul's
persuasion of what its Maker demands of it as a condition of his
favor.
It is a principle of human action and obligation recognized in both
Testaments, that when the requirements of human authority conflict
with those of the Father of spirits we must obey God rather than man.
The rights of conscience and the rights of God thus coincide, and to
trample on the one is to deny the other. And when earthly governments
invade this sacred territory they invade the exclusive domain of God
and make war upon the very authority from which they have their right
to be.
The plea of its necessity for the support of orthodoxy, the
maintenance of the truth, and the glory of God will not avail for its
justification, for God has not ordained civil government to inflict
imprisonment, exile, and death upon religious dissenters, or even
heretics; and his truth and glory he has arranged to take care of in
quite another fashion. What Justin Martyr and Tertullian in the early
Church and Luther in the Reformation-time declared, must for ever
stand among the settled verities of Heaven: that it is not right to
murder, burn, and afflict people because they feel in conscience bound
to a belief and course of life which they have found and embraced as
the certain will and requirement of their Maker. We must ward off
heresy with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, and not
with the sword of the state and with fire.