Pilgrims Seek America for Liberty of Conscience
It was the desire for liberty of conscience that inspired the Pilgrims to brave the perils of the long journey across the sea, to endure the hardships and the dangers of the wilderness, and with God’s blessing to lay, on the shores of America, the foundation of a mighty nation. Yet honest and God-fearing as they were, the Pilgrims did not yet comprehend the great principle of religious liberty. The freedom which they sacrificed so much to secure for themselves, they were not equally ready to grant to others. The doctrine that God has committed to the church the right to control the conscience, and to define and punish heresy, is one of the most deeply rooted of papal errors.
It was the desire for liberty of conscience that inspired the Pilgrims to brave the perils of the long journey across the sea, to endure the hardships and the dangers of the wilderness, and with God’s blessing to lay, on the shores of America, the foundation of a mighty nation. |
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A kind of state church was formed, all the people being required to contribute to the support of the clergy, and the magistrates being authorized to suppress heresy. Thus the secular power was in the hands of the church. It was not long before these measures led to the inevitable result—persecution.
Eleven years after the planting of the first colony, Roger Williams came to the New World. Like the early Pilgrims, he came to enjoy religious freedom; but, unlike them, he saw—what so few in his time had yet seen—that this freedom was the inalienable right of all, whatever might be their creed. Williams “was the first person in modern Christendom to establish civil government on the doctrine of the liberty of conscience” (Bancroft, pt. 1, ch. 15, par. 16). “No one should be bound to worship, or,” he added, “to maintain a worship against his own consent” (Ibid., pt. 1, ch. 15, par 2).
Roger Williams was respected and beloved as right of civil magistrates to authority over the church, and his demand for religious liberty, could not be tolerated. He was sentenced to banishment from the colonies, and, finally, to avoid arrest, he was forced to flee, amid the cold and storms of winter into the unbroken forest.
Making his was at last, after months of change and wandering, to the shore of Narragansett Bay, he there laid the foundation of the first state of modern times that in the fullest sense recognized the right of religious freedom. The fundamental principle of Roger William’s colony was “that every man should have liberty to worship God according to the light of his own conscience” (Martyn, vol. 5, p. 354). His little state, Rhode Island, became the asylum of the oppressed, and it increased and prospered until its foundation principles—civil and religious liberty—became the cornerstones of the American Republic.
In that grand old document which our forefathers set forth as their bill of rights—the Declaration of Independence—they declared: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And the Constitution guarantees, in the most explicit terms, the inviolability of conscience. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
“The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that man’s relation with his God is above human legislation, and his rights of conscience inalienable. . . . It is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate” (Congressional documents {U.S.A.}, serial No. 200, document No. 271).
The feeble and isolated colonies grew to a confederation of powerful States, and the world marked with wonder the peace and prosperity of "a church without a pope, and a State without a king." |
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As the tidings spread through the countries of Europe, of a land where every man might enjoy the fruit of his own labor and obey the convictions of his own conscience, thousands flocked to the shores of the New World.
The Bible was held as the foundation of faith, the source of wisdom, and the charter of liberty. Its principles were diligently taught in the home, in the school, and in the church, and its fruits were manifest in thrift, intelligence, purity, and temperance. One might be for years a dweller in the Puritan settlement, and “Not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar” (Bancroft, pt. 1, ch. 19, par. 25). It was demonstrated that the principles of the Bible are the surest safeguards of national greatness. The feeble and isolated colonies grew to a confederation of powerful states, and the world marked with wonder the peace and prosperity of “a church without a pope, and a state without a king.”
The union of the church with the state, be the degree never so slight, while it may appear to bring the world nearer to the church, does in reality bring but the church nearer to the world.
The protestant churches of America—and those in Europe as well—so highly favored in receiving the blessings of the Reformation, failed to press forward in the path of reform. The majority, like the Jews in Christ’s day or the papists in the time of Luther, were content to believe as their fathers had believe and to live as they had lived. Man neglected to search the Scriptures, and thus they continued to accept false interpretations, and to cherish doctrines which had no foundation in the Bible.
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"Our reliance is in the love of liberty which
God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes
liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere. Destroy
this spirit and you whave planted the seeds of despotism at your
own doors.
Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage, and
you prepare your own limbs to wear them.
Accustomed to trample on
the rights of others, you have lost the genious of your own independence
and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tryant who rises
among you."
Abraham Lincoln, Edwardsville,
IL, 1858.
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