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Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – B.H. Carroll \u2013 Distinctive Baptist Principles – PART NINE \u2013 Freedom of Conscience<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This follows from individual responsibility. If one be responsible for himself, there must be no restraint or constraint of his conscience. Neither parent, nor government, nor church, may usurp the prerogative of God as Lord of the conscience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n God himself does not coerce the will. His people are volunteers, not conscripts. As has been stated, the prevalent theory in the days of the Reformation was: \u201cWhose it the government\u2014his is the religion.\u201d Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, signed by his grandfather, the great Henry of Navarre. Calvin burned Servetus at the stake. Luther loosed all the hounds of persecution upon the Baptists in his day. Holland, the little republic that tore her lowlands from the ocean flood, and for eighty years, by pike and dike, repelled the Spaniard with his Inquisition, did herself destroy her greatest statesman, John of Barneveldt, and banish her great historian Grotius for conscience\u2019 sake. Henry VIII., in England, and his successors, delighted to persecute for conscience\u2019 sake. John Knox, of\u2019 Scotland, so tarnished his great name. The Congregationalists of New England and the Episcopalians of Virginia alike denied freedom of conscience to their fellowmen. There was not a government in the world that allowed full liberty of conscience to all men until a Baptist established the colony of Rhode Island .<\/p>\n\n\n\n At a great dining in England John Bright asked a Baptist statesman beside him: \u201cWhat special contributions have your people made to the world?\u201d \u201cCivil and religions liberty,\u201d replied the statesman. \u201cA great contribution,\u201d replied John Bright. Bancroft, in his history of America, declares: \u201cFreedom of conscience, unlimited freedom of mind, was from the first the trophy of the Baptists.\u201d On November 5, 1658, these Baptists thus instructed their agent in England: \u201cPlead our case in such sort as we may not be compelled to exercise any civil power over men\u2019s consciences; we do judge it no less than a point of absolute cruelty.\u201d In their petition to Charles II. they thus urged: \u201cIt is much in our hearts to hold forth a lively experiment, that a most flourishing civil state may stand, and best be maintained, with a full liberty of religious concernments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so when their charter came it provided: \u201cNo person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall he in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called in question, for any difference in opinion in matters of religion; every person may at all times freely and fully enjoy his own judgment and conscience in matters of religious concernment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the character of their great school, now Brown University, has a clause of equal import, a thing unknown at that time in the chartered schools of the whole world. Freedom of conscience in our day, especially in this country, is a familiar thing. It was not so in earlier days. Pagan, Papist and Protestant ground liberty of conscience into powder under the iron heel of their despotisms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n – Next distinctive: Salvation is Essential to Baptism & Church Membership<\/p>\n\n\n\n Presented by Thomas E. Kresal from: BAPTISTS And Their Doctrines Sermons on Distinctive Baptist Principles BY B. H. CARROLL, D.D. PRESIDENT, SOUTHWESTERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, 1913 pg. 10<\/p>\n\n\n\n