Religious Liberty Endangered by Legislative Enactments.

AN APPEAL
TO THE
FRIENDS OF EQUAL RIGHTS AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM,
IN THE
UNITED STATES,
FROM THE
SEVENTH-DAY BAPTIST GENERAL CONFERENCE.
MDCCCXLVI.

NEW-YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE AMER. SABBATH TRACT SOCIETY
No. 9 Spruce-Street

E. G. CHAMPLIN, STEREOTYPER AND PRINTER.

☞ The Seventh-day Baptist General Conference held its Forty-second Anniversary at Shiloh, N. J., on the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 13th days of September, 1846. During the session a resolution was passed expressing the settled conviction of the Conference, "that all legislation designed to enforce the religious observance of any day for a Sabbath, thereby determining by civil law that such day shall not be used for labor or judicial purposes, is unconstitutional, and hostile to religious freedom." A Committee was appointed to prepare an Address to the people of the United States in accordance with the opinion thus expressed. The following is the Address reported by the Committee, approved by the Conference, and referred to the American Sabbath Tract Society for publication.

THE APPEAL.

Fellow-Citizens:—

We fully agree with you in the popular sentiment of our nation, that liberty is sweet—to men of noble minds, much more precious than estates, or treasures of silver and gold—dearer than our reputation and honor among the despots of the world. Was it not this sentiment, firmly-rooted in the minds of the Fathers of our National Independence, which led them to stake their "lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor," rather than be the serfs of a British King and his aristocratic Lords? Applauding their spirit, we know that you will agree with us in the sentiment, that the preservation of that liberty which they achieved and perpetuated in our ever-glorious Constitution, is the highest civil duty which we owe to ourselves, to our posterity, and to our nation. All but coercionists will agree with us, that the preservation of our religious liberty is a sacred duty, which we owe alike to the cause of truth and our political happiness.

Give us your candid attention, then, while we present a brief statement of the wrongs we are suffering in these United States, despite the principles of the National Declaration of Independence, and the guarantees of our National Constitution.