Who doubteth (Christian Reader) but innocency must be under the courtesy and mercy of malice, and that it is a real martyrdom to be brought under the lawless inquisition of the bloody tongue. Christ, the prophets, and apostles of our Lord, went to heaven with the note of traitors, seditious men, and such as turned the world upside down: calumnies of treason to Cæsar were an ingredient in Christ’s cup, and therefore the author is the more willing to drink of that cup that touched his lip, who is our glorious Forerunner: what, if conscience toward God, and credit with men, cannot both go to heaven with the saints, the author is satisfied with the former companion, and is willing to dismiss the other. Truth to Christ cannot be treason to Cæsar, and for his choice he judgeth truth to have a nearer relation to Christ Jesus, than the transcendent and boundless power of a mortal prince. — Rev. Samuel Rutherford, “Lex Rex,” 1644, preface.
Liberty Letters Comment: Such early, bold and fearless Christian thinking as Rev. Samuel Rutherford’s in, “Lex Rex,” struck at the supremacy of the Almighty State in favor of the higher law of God to which men could appeal for moral legitimacy against an unrighteous government or ruler
How vital it is to remember whence cometh our liberties – not from the thinking of anti-God Enlightment men that spawned the French Revolution (and ultimately communism and facsism), but in a Christian Enlightenment that liberated itself from the tyranny of the state, fled to a distant land, and by and by established the United States of America.
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