8 the discovery of this great principle, or to the promulgation of it. But,the distinguished glory of having first reduced it from speculation to actual and effective application, as a conventional rule of political conduct, is all their own. This great principle was not only a disturbing, but it was also an offensive- and annoying one. It was an appeal from the highest sovereign power in the State, to. a sovereign power still higher, and therefore was thought disloyal and seditious. It of course encountered then the same ingenious sophistry which, although often overthrown, has not even yet been silenced. It was argued, that if individual conscience may rightly refuse to- acquiesce in the results of the general conviction collected by the State and established as law, it may also rightfully resist the law by force, which would produce disorder and lead to anarchy. It was argued, also, that insomuch as civil government is of divine appointment, it must be. competent to act as an arbiter between conflicting consciences, and that implicit obedience to its decrees, as such arbiter, is therefore a religious duty. A’s might well have been foreseen, there arose, on the side of the Puritans, contestants worthy of the majestic, principle they defended, contestants whose . voices, then silenced by persecution or drowned by public clamor, have reached this' more congenial age, and are now giving form and condensation to the whole science of political ethics. Not again recalling the names of Locke and Sidney, there was Edwards, profoundest metaphysician of all ages, and Milton, always discontented and distrusted among men, but familiar with angels, and learned in the counsels of Heaven. It was their sufficient reply, that unenlightened and unsanctified consciences will never disturb despotism with their remonstrances, and that consciences illuminated and purified cannot be perverted to error; that God has delegated to no human tribunal authority to interfere between Himself and the monitor which He has implanted in the bosom of every moral being, and which is responsible to its Author alone; and that the boundaries of human authority are the boundaries of eternal justice, ascertained by the teachings of that monitor which, where it is free and fully awakened, must always be the same. They answered farther, and with decisive energy, that traditions and compacts subversive of freedom were altogether void, because the masses of men living at one time in a State must always have supreme control over their own conduct, in all that concerns their duty to God and their own happiness. Fortunately, the Puritans had keen sagacity. They would not ask liberty of conscience as a political concession; because, if granted as such, it might be revoked. Fortunately, they were notu purposely a political or civil body, but a purely religious one; a church in the wilderness, as they described themselves; a church without secular combinations, interests, or ends; a church with no interest but duty, no end but to. avoid the divine disfavor, and no head but God. Fortunately, also, the age was as yet a religious one. Skepticism, which has since so wildly overrun large portions of Europe, and scattered its poisonous seeds even here, had not then entered the world; and the plenary nature and authority of the revelation contained in the Holy Scriptures, to which the Puritans appealed, was universally acknowledged. It was especially felicitous that the lives of the Puritans vindicated their sincerity, magnanimity, and piety. Equally in domestic and social life, and in the great transactions of the State in which they became concerned, their conduct was without fear and without reproach. With all these advantages, the Puritans, as naturally as wisely, referred themselves to the Divine Revelation -for the principle which they promulgated. With effective simplicity, they confined themselves to the main point in debate. They neither pretended to define nor to make summaries of all. the natural rights of man which tyranny might invade, nor to trace out the ultimate secular consequences of the great principle on which they insisted.. They rested the defence of the one natural right, which was distinctly invaded, on no grounds of expediency or of public utility, but on the grounds alone that God had given it, and that man could not either invade or surrender it, without sin against the Divine
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