S E L E C T I O N S

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 29, 1858

S E L E C T I O N S .

DUTY TO OBEY ONLY RIGHTEOUS LAWS.

Disobedience to the laws of men, becomes duty when they require anything contrary to the Laws of God.

BIBLE TESTIMONY.

"We ought to obey God rather than men." Acts v, 29; Ex. i, 15–20; 1 Sam. xiv, 44, 45; xxii, 17; Esth. iii, 1–3; v, 9; Dan. iii, 15–18; vi, 7–10; Acts iv, 18–20. Obedience to civil rulers in such cases is sin. Proof. 2 Kings xvii, 7, 8, 19; 1 Kings xii, 28–30.

TESTIMONY OF MEN.

Milton says:

"Since, therefore, the law is chiefly right reason, if we are bound to obey a magistrate as a minister of God, by the very same reason and the very same law, we ought to resist a tyrant, and minister of the Devil."

Blackstone says:

"If any human law shall allow or require to commit crime, we are bound to transgress that human law, or else we must offend both the natural and divine."

Coke says:

"What the Parliament doth shall be holden for naught, whenever it shall enact that which is contrary to the rights of nature."

Luther says:

"Unjust violence is, by no means the ordinance of God, and therefore can bind no one in conscience and right, to obey, whether the command comes from Pope, Emperor, king or master."

Hampden says:

"The essence of all law is justice. What is not justice is not law; and what is not law, ought not to be obeyed."

Cicero says:

"Those who have made pernicious and unjust decrees, have made anything rather than laws."

When the Waldenses were commanded to obey the church of Rome, they replied that:

"In what regarded their religious worship they could obey no commands which interfered with the Laws of God."

The Congressional Committee of 1830 Report:

"The framers of the constitution recognized the eternal principle, that man's relation to his God is above human legislation, and his right of conscience inalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to establish this truth: we are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is this consciousness which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in tortures and flames. They felt that their duty to God was superior to human enactments, and that man could exercise no authority over their consciences. It is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate."

The Constitution of Pennsylvania is equally explicit; it says:

"No human authority can, in any case whatever, control or interfere with 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 his 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 preexisting compact; otherwise they do mischief by making encroachments upon the rights of conscience, and cause confusion in society by creating broils and animosities; consequently all denominations of religion should be protected in the peaceable enjoyment of their rights. And universal rights of conscience ought to be established in every land, agreeable to the Creator's Law, primarily established by Him. 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, have a right to infringe upon or bind the conscience of another.—Dow's Journal, pp. 423, 467.

Dr. Adam Clarke says:

"Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's is a maxim of Jesus Christ; but when Caesar arrogates to himself the things that are the Lord's, then, and in such cases, his authority is to be resisted."—Comment on Dan. iii, 17.