Christian liberty

“ One thing, and one alone, is necessary for life, justification, and Christian liberty; and that is the most holy word of God, the Gospel of Christ, as He says, "I am the resurrection and the life; ”

“ But you say, of the direct or indirect amalgamation of Church and State, proved to be dangerous to nations in Christian and for Christian times, because it affected the individual rights of men, and among them, the dearest of all, the liberty of conscience and the freedom of thought. Well, of this danger, at least, the future of your country is free; because here, at least, in this, your happy land, religious liberty exists. Your institutions left no power to your government to interfere with the religion of your citizens. Here every man is free to worship God as he chooses to do. ”

“ The liberty we enjoy as Christians is not a licentious liberty: though Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, yet he has not freed us from the obligation of it; the gospel is a doctrine according to godliness (1 Tim. vi. 3) , and is so far from giving the least countenance to sin that it lays us under the strongest obligations to avoid and subdue it. 2. Though we ought to stand fast in our Christian liberty, yet we should not insist upon it to the breach of Christian charity ”

“ Without these principles to guide you and govern you, you cannot do the work which, in the providence of God, you are called upon to perform. Liberty only is safe under the shield of Christianity; the former is the child of the latter; and child and parent mutually sustain and preserve each other. Without Christianity, liberty soon becomes disorder and licentiousness; the check and corrective of which is despotic and absolute power. Man can only govern himself, individually and collectively, as long as he is governed by the Christian religion. ”

“ Resume that precious, that dear-bought liberty, wherewith Christ has made his people free; a liberty from subjection to any authority but his own, in matters of religion. Call no man father, no man master on earth; for one is your master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren. ”

“ Believing in a Church in which the Spirit of God as truly governs and guides to-day as He did in Reformation or post-Apostolic times, and in a Christian liberty of which neither the practice nor legislation of holy men of the past can deprive them, they rightly refuse to surrender their liberty or to retire from their responsibility. ”

“ The government that maintains liberty of conscience as one of its fundamental principles, and under which Christianity is recognized as the common law, has just claims upon the Christian citizen for the vigilant exercise of all political rights. ”

“ Hardly anywhere was the Church free from them. Let us ask only one question here: by what power were they resisted? The human mind had then the fullest liberty of action in Christians. It was by a free choice—a choice accompanied with danger, and persisted in through suffering—that men became Christians. The liberty which men exercised in becoming Christians they could use further against Christian doctrine, by innovating ”

“ Since the Christian Religion lives in these times confronting civil liberty, those alone can be efficient champions of religion who at the same time profess fully the Christian Faith and accept with sincerity the tests of Liberty. ”

“ The Christian religion was misrepresented by its adversaries as prejudicial to the rights of princes and civil powers, and tending to faction and sedition, and to rebellion against lawful authority; therefore to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, and stop the mouths of malicious enemies, Christians must be reminded to show themselves examples rather of all due subjection and obedience to the government that is over them. Natural desire of liberty must be guided and bounded by reason and scripture. ”

“ And such faith is produced and preserved in us by preaching why Christ came, what He brought and bestowed, [13] what benefit it is to us to accept Him. This is done when that Christian liberty which He bestows is rightly taught, and we are told in what way we who are Christians are all kings and priests and so are lords of all, and may firmly believe that whatever we have done is pleasing and acceptable in the sight of God, as I have said. ”

“ They who upon pretence of Christian liberty do practice any sin, or cherish any sinful lust, as they do thereby pervert the main design of the grace of the gospel to their own destruction, [16] so they wholly destroy the end of Christian liberty, which is, that being delivered out of the hands of all our enemies, we might serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our lives. ”

“ Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken.
—George MacDonald. The way to preserve the peace of the church is to preserve the purity of it.
—Matthew Henry. Antedating our history, possessing and illumining the hearts of the founders of liberty in our free land, and constantly exerting the soul-equalizing and soul-elevating principles of the gospel of Christ as they fall from Sabbath to Sabbath on the masses of the people, the Christian church stands before all men as the pillar and ground of civil liberty in the world. ”

“ People speak of the liberation of the Christian church from the state, of granting or not granting liberty to Christians. In these thoughts and expressions there is some terrible misconception. Liberty cannot be granted to a Christian or to Christians, or taken from them. Liberty is a Christian's inalienable property. ”

“ It is a fact which entitles to the hope that your nation will revive the law of Christ, even on earth. However, the guarantee which your Constitution affords to religious liberty is but a negative part of a Christian government. There are, besides that, positive duties to be fulfilled. ”

“ Discerning the rights of man, we cannot fail to foresee the doom of all oppression. Slavery is not the Native freedom. legitimate state of man. God made man free. Paul said, “I was free born.” All men should be free. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Love and Truth make free, but evil and error lead into captivity.
Christian Science raises the standard of liberty, and cries: “Follow me! Escape from the bondage of Standard of liberty. sickness, sin, and death!” Jesus marked out standard the way. ”

“ We first approach the subject of the inward man, that we may see by what means a man becomes justified, free, and a true Christian; that is, a spiritual, new, and inward man. It is certain that absolutely none among outward things, under whatever name they may be reckoned, has any influence in producing Christian righteousness or liberty, nor, on the other hand, unrighteousness or slavery. ”

“ We demand that all laws looking to the enforcement of “Christian” morality shall be abrogated, and that all laws shall be conformed to the requirements of natural morality, equal rights, and impartial liberty.
9. We demand that not only in the constitutions of the United States and of the several States, but also in the practical administration of the same, no privileges or advantage shall be conceded to Christianity or any other special religion; that our entire political system shall be founded and administered on a purely secular basis ”

“ But the liberty we lay claim to is such as the primitive church justly sought under the heathen emperors, to wit, for men of sobriety, honesty, and a peaceable conversation, to enjoy the liberty and exercise of their conscience towards God and among themselves, and to admit among them such, as, by their persuasion and influence, come to be convinced of the same truth with them, without being therefore molested by the civil magistrate. ”

“ Through this perversion of things it has happened that the knowledge of Christian grace, of faith, of liberty, and altogether of Christ, has utterly perished, and has been succeeded by an intolerable bondage to human works and laws; and, according to the Lamentations of Jeremiah, we have become the slaves of the vilest men on earth, who abuse our misery to all the disgraceful and ignominious purposes of their own will. ”

“ The christian religion natively tends to cherish and diffuse a spirit favourable to civil liberty, and this, in its turn, has the most happy influence upon christianity, which never flourished extensively, and for a long period, in any country where despotism prevailed. ”

“ This ignorance and this crushing of liberty are diligently promoted by the teaching of very many blind pastors, who stir up and urge the people to a zeal for these things, praising them and puffing them up with their indulgences, but never teaching faith. Now I would advise you, if you have any wish to pray, to fast, or to make foundations in churches, as they call it, to take care not to do so with the object of gaining any advantage, either temporal or eternal. ”

“ Yet it was only for this right of private judgment, for this independence of another man’s control in religious concernments, that the godlike champions of religious liberty perilled themselves and perished. ”

“ And it is this very class of men who have thus abjured the precepts of Jesus Christ, who have trampled upon the divine doctrines of liberty and love, that now so clamorously summon us to an obedience to law. ”

“ The Gospel of the Son of God extends to the world that perfect law of liberty. Founded on truth, and a proper appreciation of those principles which tend to the largest possible happiness to humanity, it restrains mankind, not in the enjoyment of freedom and liberty, but from efforts to deprive their fellows of it. ”

“ Hence, the church in asserting and vindicating the rights of God, asserts and protects in the fullest manner possible the so-called inalienable rights of man, opposes with divine authority all tyranny, all despotism, all arbitrary power, all wrong, all oppression, every species of slavery, and asserts the fullest liberty, political, civil, social, and individual, that is possible without confounding liberty with license. The liberty she sustains is true liberty ”

“ But always and everywhere does the church assert, and, as far as she can, maintain the full and perfect liberty of religion, the entire freedom and independence of the spiritual order, to be itself and to act according to its own laws—that is, religious liberty in her sense, and, if the words mean any thing, religious liberty in its only true and legitimate sense. ”

“ The soul is free. No power can compel one to belong to any church, nor in any manner to hold or exercise religious faith, or religious duty or obligation. In other words, men are free, and this freedom, aside from any other guaranty of the Constitution, should make us all feel affection and veneration for this great charter of human liberty.
But freedom of worship is only one of the many rights and privileges guaranteed to the people—to all the people. ”

“ If there is any truth in history, or any reliance to be placed on the inductions of reason, the author has amply proved, in opposition to the pretensions of Protestants and revolutionists, that society under the direction and influences of the Catholic Church marches steadily toward a true and regular liberty—a liberty which is grounded in the rights of God, and therefore secures the rights of man. ”

“ The logical tendency of Christianity was, therefore, to originate the idea of personal liberty for all men, unknown to the world before; to repudiate the heathen doctrine of the divine character and right of kings; to sit in judgment upon their laws, and to intelligently obey, or refuse to obey, them ”

“ Come the liberty that shall strike off every chain, not only of iron, and iron-law, but of painful constriction, of fear, of enslaving passion, of mad self-will; the liberty of perfect truth and love, of holy faith and glad obedience! ”

“ And it teaches Christians, that the liberty which Christ purchased, and to the enjoyment of which they are called by the gospel, does not exempt them from subjection and obedience to civil authority, which is a divine ordinance for the good of mankind; that they are bound to obey existing rulers, although they should be of a different religion from themselves ”

“ Solely in behalf of this freedom of conscience, I lift my voice and confidently cry: No laws may by any right be laid upon Christians, whether by men or angels, without their consent; for we are free from all things. And if any laws are laid upon us, we must bear them in such a way as to preserve the consciousness of our liberty, and know and certainly affirm that the making of such laws is an injustice, which we will bear and glory in, giving heed not to justify the tyrant nor yet to rebel against his tyranny. ”

“ While on the one hand we are willing that others should worship him in what manner they please, we have a right to the same privileges, rights and immunities, and possessing ourselves of this idea we take the liberty to do so. ”

“ They require that the integrity of religion and their church and the liberty of their conscience be left inviolate, and they are resolved to defend their lawful freedom, and even the smallest right of the church, with all energy and without fear. ”

“ Religious Liberty, likewise, is a power of acting as we like in religion; or of professing and practising that mode of religious worship which we think most acceptable to the Deity.—But here the limitation to which I have referred must be attended to. All have the same unalienable right to this Liberty; and consequently, no one has a right to such a use of it as shall take it from others. ”