AN UTTERANCE OF 1776

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 4, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 27.

AN UTTERANCE OF 1776.

[From the address of the Presbytery of Hanover, Va., and the Baptists and Quakers to the General Assembly of Virginia, 1776.]

"IN this enlightened age, and in a land where all of every denomination are united in the most strenuous efforts to be free, we hope and expect that our representatives will cheerfully concur in removing every species of religious as well as civil bondage. Certain it is that every argument for civil liberty gains additional strength when applied to liberty in the concerns of religion; and there is no argument in favor of establishing the Christian religion but may be pleaded with equal propriety for establishing the tenets of Mohammed by those who believe the Alcoran; or, if this be not true, it is at least impossible for the magistrate to adjudge the right of preference among the various sects that profess the Christian faith WITHOUT ERECTING A CLAIM TO INFALLIBILITY, WHICH WOULD LEAD US BACK TO THE CHURCH OF ROME. . . .

"Neither can it be made to appear that the Gospel needs any such civil aid. We rather conceive that when our blessed Saviour declares His kingdom is not of this world, He renounces all dependence upon State power, and as His weapons are spiritual, and were only designed to have influence on the judgment and heart of man, we are persuaded that if mankind were left in quiet possession of their inalienable religious privileges, Christianity, as in the days of the apostles, would continue to prevail and flourish in the greatest purity by its own native excellence, and under the all-disposing providence of God.

"We would also humbly represent that the only proper objects of civil government are the happiness and protection of men in the present state of existence, the security of the life, liberty, and property of the citizens, and to restrain the vicious and encourage the virtuous by wholesome laws, equally extending to every individual; but that the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can only be directed by reason and conviction, and is nowhere cognizable but at the tribunal of the Universal Judge."