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The Arguments of the Counsel of Joseph Hendrickson
The Arguments of the Counsel of Joseph Hendrickson Author:George Wood Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: instances, to be punishable, must be of a contumelious character ; the statute doctrine of blasphemy being merely declaratory of the common law. Within the wide ... more »range allowed by this statute, every man can freely and publicly enjoy his own opinions. But this liberty is broad and general, not restrictive and exclusive—christianity is deeply imbued with the spirit of genuine rational liberty. , Wherever it goes, it carries knowledge, civilization and liberty in its train—it strikes the shackles from the foot of the slave. But the liberty for which I contend, is liberty under the law, not the privilege of holding what may be got in a general scramble; and the law which protects this liberty, sheds its benign influence, not only on individuals, but on religious societies. Christianity is a social system. The christian individuated, would be a phenomenon. Through the whole course of its history we find it existing in the shape of religious societies, differing from one another; sometimes in essential doctrines, sometimes in forms of government, and sometimes in both. This state of things, is the combined result of two principles—freedom of thought, and social feeling. The movements springing from the appiication of these apparently antagonist principles, resemble, in some measure, the harmonious operations of physical nature. These various religious societies, though they differ, may live harmoniously together, but the members of the same society, must agree in all important particulars, in order to preserve this concord. " Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them," may be considered as something more than a mere consolatory declaration. It invokes an injunction, and exhibits at the same time, a prophetic view of the christian state....« less