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Untitled Article
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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&n& pi&ctiee of ages . No sooner had Constahtfne * he Great Embraced Christianity , than he enacted against Dissenters from the established creed the Same punishments which his pagan predecessors had inflicted on those who apostatized from the religion of their fathers . His example was frequently follpwed by succeeding emperors $ it ^ a ^ ado pted without hesitation by the princes of the Northern tribes , who after their conversion were accustomed
to supply from the imperial constitutions the deficiencies of their own scanty legislation . Hence religious intolerance became part of the public law of Christendom : the principle was maintained , the practice enforced by the Reformers themselves , and whatever might be the predominant doctrine , the Dissenter from it invariably found himself liable to civil restrictions , perhaps to imprisonment and death . By Henry the laws against heresy were executed with equal rigour both before and after his quarrel with the Pontiff , "
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Art * III . —Me * moire en faveur de la LibertS des Cultes ; couronni par la Socttti de la Morale ChrStienne ; par M » Alexandre Vinet , du Canton de Vaud . Paris . 8 vo . 1826 . The Canton de Vaud is a fit spot from whence a defence of the princU pies of religious liberty on the broadest scale sbould issue ; and as the work before us has been crowned by the sanction and applause of a most , respect * able religious society in France , and may therefore be reasonably supposed
to speak to a considerable extent the sentimeftts of the friends of freedom oF opinion there , we shall give an analysis of its contents ; and that we may still further illustrate the tone adopted in France on these subjects , and the freedom in which even public journals discuss them , we designedly confine ourselves to almost literally translating this analysis from the review of the book in the " Globe , " an able and highly-interestirig newspaper published in Paris three times a week .
The question of religious liberty , according to M . Vmet's view of it , resolves itself into the three following propositions : No temporal power , no government has a right to decide upon the merits of different systems of religious opinion , nor consequently to exercise authority over them , or to protect one or more at the expense of the rest . Supposing , however , that a government had this right , it could not , from the very nature of religiouis opinions , fairly and justly exercise it ; and finally , even if it were possible so to do , to attempt to exercise the power would be contrary to the interests both of the government and of religion .
The two first of M . Vinet ' s propositions are of course designed to make out the title to religious liberty as a right , while the tendency of the third is to recommend toleration as a matter of policy ; that is to say , to ^ enjoin the expediency of adopting in practice what the two others established as just in theory . The arguments in support of the two first propositions are numerous . But they all resolve themselves into and are founded on this—that the free
and honest exercise of religious conviction of every kind is and ought to be sacred and inviolable ; and that we should no longer be men or accountable beings if any one had the right of compelling us to believe what seems to us to be false , or not to believe what seems to us to be true . Religious worshi p being merely the public profession of religious conviction , is entitled to the same liberty . That cannot be refused to the consequence , which is granted to the principle : acts of conscience are , therefore , as mviolable as conscience
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Remew .- ~ Pmet on Religious Ltitfify . $ 7 $
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1827, page 279, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1795/page/47/
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