The Rights of Conscience

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 29, 1876

The Rights of Conscience

LORENZO Dow says: Human governments have no right to interfere by assuming a power to tolerate man to pay his devotion to God. For before any human government existed in the world, there was a compact between man and his Maker, which cannot be altered by any human laws. Therefore, all laws ought to be made in conformity to this pre-existing compact; otherwise they do mischief by making encroachments upon the rights of conscience. Moral duties are the result of ‘moral law,’ which is the divine prerogative alone; and man hath no right to invade the moral duty of another, for this is the right of the divine government. No man, therefore, nor set of men, has a right to infringe upon or bind the conscience of another.