In connection with the subject of the authority of the church an interesting and important question meets us. Does the right of liberty of conscience undermine and invalidate the lawful authority of the Church? Or are there limits to the right of liberty of conscience? These questions were raised in an acute form during the Civil Wars when the Sectaries carried the claims of the rights of liberty of conscience to indefensible lengths. The Brownists carried “pretended liberty of conscience” against all church authority while the Fifth Monarchy men did the same in reference to the state. Then there were the thorough-going Anti-nomians who pressed the claims of liberty of conscience against the authority of God’s law and the Libertines who held that men were at liberty to hold any opinions they pleased provided these were held conscientiously. It will be seen that the extraordinary confusion caused by these various parties all in the interests of liberty of conscience required some clearing up. Men of sound judgment saw clearly that such confused thinking required correctives. Hence we find in Edwards’ Gangraena; Baillie’s Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time; Rutherford’s Pretended Liberty of Conscience, etc., an exposure of these errors and an indication of the limits of liberty of conscience when confronted with lawful authority in Church or State. The Westminster Divines in their usual well-balanced way state clearly the claims of liberty of conscience and its limitations. “God alone is Lord of the conscience,” they assert, “and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to His Word, or beside it, in matters of faith or worship” (Confession of Faith, chap. 20: sec. 2). This has rightly been regarded as one of the finest statements on the rights of liberty of conscience that has ever been penned. But the Divines further add: “And because the powers which God hath ordained, and the liberty which Christ hath purchased, are not intended by God to destroy, but mutually to uphold and preserve one another; they who, upon pretence of Christian liberty, shall oppose any lawful power, or the lawful exercise of it, whether it be civil or ecclesiastical, resist the ordinance of God” (Confession of Faith, chap. 20: sec. 4). These sections conserve the rights of liberty of conscience and the authority of the State and the Church. On the one hand, they teach that the authority of the State or Church is not absolute for it is limited by the rights of conscience. On the other hand, the rights of conscience are not absolute for they are limited by the lawful authority of Church and State. The teaching of the Confession asserts that conscience and lawful authority, civil or ecclesiastical, are not antagonistic and inconsistent: for both are ordinances of God; they limit one another but are not antagonistic.
We live in an age when the liberty of the individual is emphasised with almost as much outcry as it was in the French revolutionary period though fortunately not accompanied with such insensate madness. Men who are obsessed with a sense of the infallibility of their logic and who keep their eye fixed unmoved on the liberty of the subject are liable to be troublers of peace in Church and State. It never seems to dawn on them that there are other rights than those of liberty. So they set about building a structure in which they entrench themselves with a complacency that for the time being makes them believe that they shall never be moved. Their attention is so intently fixed on liberty that they ignore, if ever they acknowledged it, the claims of authority. It is one of the delusions of the age and we need not be surprised if it should seek to enter the ecclesiastical as well as the civil sphere and work havoc in both spheres.
It is not our intention to deal here with the question of Toleration and bringing the Confessional doctrine of the power and duty of the civil magistrate in regard to religion into the discussion of which the doctrine of the rights of conscience enter. We have seen that according to the teaching of the Confession the rights of the liberty of conscience have certain limitations civil and ecclesiastical. For the present it is with the latter we are mainly concerned. What are these limitations? This is a question that is easier put than answered; but without attempting to lay down precisely, even if that were possible, the extent and limits of liberty of conscience there are certain general principles which may be noted.
1. The rights of liberty of conscience are limited by the divine law.
Divine authority cuts right across the rights of the individual and the claims of liberty of conscience. In the nature of things God’s law must be supreme and no claim made in the interests of the conscience can invalidate that authority in the slightest degree. There can be no liberty, it has been well said, under whatsoever pretext or plea, to think, act or believe in opposition to that law. The specious plea, often uttered by unthinking men, that we are free to think whatever we please is immoral and strikes in the very face of divine authority. We are not at liberty to think what is wrong. To maintain the opposite is barefacedly to put in a plea for licentiousness. We have no right, at the bidding of a mistaken conscience to do that which is against the divine law. God’s law and the conscience of man are not co-ordinate authorities. They are not to be regarded as each supreme in its own sphere. The conscience is subordinate to the divine law and any claims made by it must come within the ambit of God’s law and not go against or beyond it. There is a limit beyond which liberty of conscience cannot go and that limit is the authority of God’s law. It is anarchy of the worst kind to deny this limitation and act as if it did not exist.
2. Liberty of conscience is further limited by the lawful authority of the Church.
The Church is an ordinance of God. As such it is invested with a certain measure of authority as we have seen. The Church has authority to declare the truth of God and in doing so, to determine upon the faith and profession of its members for its own purposes. Its decisions in connection with controversies of doctrine and its declarations of the truths of the gospel are to be received and submitted to by its members where these decisions and declarations are in accordance with the Word of God. The Church also has authority in regard to the exercise of discipline, to proceed by admonition, censure, reproof and, if necessary, excommunication. “Such discipline too,” says Dr Bannerman, “is to be reverenced and submitted to because of the authority of the Church, as divinely appointed to exercise it. Here too, then, we have the lawful exercise of lawful authority that must oftentimes come into contact with the liberty of conscience in the case of individuals. And conscience may be pleaded, and pleaded honestly, on behalf of opinions and practice in the case of her members, which yet may be right and indispensable for the Church to condemn or restrain by means of the spiritual authority committed to her. Shall we say that the spiritual sword is to be stayed, and the authority of the Church disarmed, in consequence of the authority of conscience on the part of the offender? Shall we say that the exercise of that authority is unlawful, and its censures null and void, because of the liberty of conscience that is pleaded in opposition to them? To do so would be to deny the right of Church authority altogether; it would be to set aside, in any case in which conscience might be alleged, all ecclesiastical judgment or restraint as regards the offender, and to make religion entirely a matter of personal and individual concern, in regard to which the Church had no right to interfere and no commission to act. Such an interpretation of the liberty of conscience on the part of her members must destroy Church authority altogether, and must leave the kingdom of Christ without government or order, utterly helpless to redress wrong or restrain offences, and without power to guard its own communion from open profanation and dishonour. The plea of absolute and unlimited liberty of conscience is inconsistent with the authority and existence of a Church” (The Church of Christ,) I. 169-70.