“But the practice, or the recommendation, of anything that is immoral, and so accounted by all good men of whatever religious persuasion, is clearly punishable by the civil magistrate. Nor can any plea of conscience be admitted as justifying abusive language against any class of religionists,—threats, violence, personal slander, or interruption of religious worship.
“But if any man peaceably sets forth his own views respecting religion, appealing to men’s reason and conscience and the visible universe, or the Scriptures, we do not hold that the civil authorities are justified in going about to punish or silence him, or in excluding him from civil rights. Any church, indeed, to which he may have belonged will disown him as a member if he teach anything at variance with their fundamental religious principles; but this we do not regard as a punishment inflicted as for an offence, but rather as a dissolution of partnership between two parties who cannot agree as to the matter in which they were partners. He is excommunicated by his church only in the same manner as his church is excommunicated by him; but no secular penalties or privations are incurred by imputed religious error.
“For we consider that, in the first place, as the legislature is not infallible, there is no security that its enactments may not be on the wrong side; as there have been, indeed, both Trinitarian and Arian, Protestant and Popish laws and rulers: and, secondly, we consider that Christ and his Apostles, who did possess infallibility, deliberately chose to rest their cause on pure persuasion alone.”
“But might it not be urged,” said Mr. Sibthorpe, “that this would go to put an end to all legislation on all subjects, since no legislature can be infallible, even in political measures?”
“It is true,” replied Sir Andrew, “that statesmen can lay no claim to infallible wisdom, even in their own department; and there is, accordingly, no country whose laws are, or need be believed to be, perfect.
“It is the duty of a good citizen to labour to bring about the improvement of any laws which he thinks inexpedient; but in the mean time (and here lies the important difference) he may, in almost all cases, obey the laws with a safe conscience, even such as he may not approve of; because they require only the outward acts of compliance, and not the inward assent and conviction of the mind. You had, for instance, formerly a law enjoining all men to put out their fires at the toll of the curfew-bell; it is now long since repealed. You had a law against selling game, which you have told us is abrogated. These laws may have been very inconvenient; but it could not be against a man’s conscience to put out his fire or to abstain from buying and selling game, though it would have been to require him to declare his belief in the wisdom of those regulations.
“Hence it is that, imperfect as human legislation must be, laws, since they are essential to the existence of civil society, have the sanction of reason, and conscience, and Scripture in favour of submission to them, except in those cases where submission involves a violation of some prior duty; as if, suppose, we had a law enjoining us to hunt down the blacks, and kill them like wild beasts. But it is remarkable that almost all the cases where it does become a duty to resist the law, are those in which religion is concerned,—those, in short, in which the civil legislature has gone out of its own province; as when a man is required to profess or renounce, to preach or abstain from preaching, a certain religion; forbidden to instruct a slave in Christianity, (as, you say, was formerly the law at the Cape of Good Hope,) and other such injunctions.
“On these grounds,” continued he, “we hold that all interference of the secular power to enforce the profession of ‘true religion’ and punish ‘heretics,’ or to give Christians, or any particular description of Christians, political ascendency on religious grounds, are adverse to the spirit and injurious to the cause of true religion, contrary to the commands of its Author, tending to impair the force of its proper evidence, and leading at once to oppression in one party, to hypocrisy in the other, and to unchristian rancour in both.
“These principles may be said, in some sort, to form a part of our national creed; for there is no one of our churches that does not maintain them, and inculcate the strictly voluntary character of true Christianity, and the spiritual, and not secular nature, of its Author’s kingdom.”
“But what would you do,” said Mr. Sibthorpe, “if some church were to arise among you of opposite principles? Would you tolerate a sect whose religion forbade them to tolerate others?”