genuine spirit of the Gospel is quenched or checked among its members.
The church has a power of compelling men to come to Christ, and to
embrace the true faith, but its instruments of compulsion must be
spiritual only: its sword must be supplied from God's own armoury. The
sentence, "Having the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men," conveys
an idea of tremendous consequences in store for those who refuse to
obey the truth; but the consequences are reserved for the immediate
dispensation of Him "who knoweth the thoughts." That believers, when
possessed of temporal power, should have recourse to bodily restraint,
and torture, and death, as the earthly punishment of those who
entertain unsound doctrine, is a monstrous invention, which can (p. 329)
derive no countenance from "the Word," and must be supported only
by a worldly sword, and the arm of man wielding it. If, indeed,
Christians are so far forgetful of the spirit of the Gospel as, on the
plea of defending and spreading its genuine doctrines, to disturb the
peace, and shake the foundations, and threaten the overthrow of
society, the civil magistrate, whether Christian or heathen, will
interpose. But neither has he, more than the church, any authority
whatever for interfering by violence with the faith of any one. It is
the duty of a Christian magistrate to provide for his people the means
of religious instruction, and worship, and consolation; but, on the
principles which alone can be justified, he must leave them at liberty
to reject or to avail themselves of the benefit. Their neglect, or
their abuse of it, will form a subject of inquiry at another tribunal;
and the final, irreversible judgment to be pronounced there, man has
no right to anticipate by pain and punishment on earth. These are the
true principles of Christianity, and a church departs from the Gospel
whenever these principles are neglected.

In adopting, however, these principles, and making them practically
one's own, it must never be forgotten that there is a danger of
confounding them, as they are unhappily too often confounded, with the
results of a philosophy, falsely so called, which would teach
governments to be indifferent to the religion of their people, (p. 330)
and would encourage individuals to take no interest in the
dissemination of religious truth. East is not more opposed to west,
than the spirit of persecution, which would compel others by secular
punishments to make professio