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Untitled Article
itself , and hence , as no one has a right to force conviction upon us , no one has a right to dictate to us or controul our religious worship . If , however , it should be argued that although this right cannot belong to individuals because of their equality one with another , it may yet be delegated to the state , as the common functionary or protector commissioned to maintain the public peace , —M . Vinet answers this objection by thus defining the legitimate functions of the state or civil power .
It is authorized to take care of and to support the morale of the social body , that is to say , to maintain public order and decency . This charge , however , implies no right to intermeddle with individual or domestic morality , and consequently no right over those religious or philosophical opinions which constitute its basis . When any one , therefore , makes a public profession of a particular religious worship or creed without any act which offends against public peace or order , he is out of the reach of the civil
magistrate and in no wise accountable to him . If , on the contrary , a particular religion or worship violates the public order of society in any particular overt act , the state is authorized to check such an infringement , and to restrain that worship , or at least that part or act of it which offends against the peace of society ; but even then it has no right to proscribe the exercise of that religious worship altogether , under pretence that it contains something contrary to the laws of society . It has cognizance only of acts , not of
opinions . Still less has the state a right to require every one to adopt some sort of external profession of religion , if it should find some who on conscientious conviction decline to profess any . If , however , by acts or a public expression of indifference or disbelief in the opinions of others , an annoyance or social disorder is committed , the civil power resumes its risjht , and it may
impose silence , only , however , in those respects m which an act of offence against the peace of society has been committed . The state , in short , stands on the same footing with conscience as every individual does , having no right over conscience itself or its acts , whether positive or negative , provided that these acts are not opposed to the execution of the laws or to the respect due to public morality .
. M . Vinet then proceeds to the supposition of the state being invested with this right , which he denies to be implied in its institution . Granting that it is empowered to preside over the conscience , to bend it according to its own discipline , that is to say , to impose any sort of what it calls truths , how is it to set to work ? The task is possible as far as regards some sorts of truths : such , for example , as are self-evident , and which common sense cannot refuse to admit . It would undoubtedly be tyrannical and absurd to proclaim
a state arithmetic or a state geometry ; still , without setting up for an infallible arithmetician , the state could find some points in these sciences fixed and agreed on by all , which it might as well as not promulgate officially . In the case of religious truth , or axioms on the contrary , where shall we find the fixed point on which all agree ? The very essence of this truth is its being matter of revelation or deduction , and not being evident to the senses . The
state is neither a philoso pher nor a theologian ; but if it were , how many philosophers and theologians could be found who would exactl y agree with it in defining a single point ? Does it ever happen that two men hold precisely the same opinions on these subjects ? To avoid this perplexity , the state must resolve on deliberating by itself , and abiding by its own opinion . Ite it so ; but then which of tne thousand solutions , adopted by mankind from time to time , will it in the result make choice of , with regard to these impor-
Untitled Article
280 Review . —Vinet on Religious JAherty .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1827, page 280, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1795/page/48/
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