The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

error, or that it is of no importance. What is this but to ask thousands or
millions to give up or imperil the results of their well-used right of private
judgment, at the call of one man, who abuses his? Could impudence go
further? 'Go,' they may rightly say, 'with your right of private judgment,
go where you belong, and cease to attempt the shallow jugglery, by which
one man's freedom means his autocracy, and every other man's slavery. If
your right of private judgment has made you an Atheist, don't call yourself
a Believer; if it has made you a Jew, don't pretend to be a Christian; if it
has made you a Papist, don't pretend to be a Protestant; if it has made you
a Friend, don't call yourself a Churchman.'
Meaning of subscription to a Confession.
When we confess, that, in the exercise of our right of private
judgment, our Bible has made us Lutherans, we neither pretend to claim
that other men shall be made Lutherans by force, nor that their private
judgment shall, or will, of necessity, reach the results of ours. We only
contend, that, if their private judgment of the Bible does not make them
Lutherans, they shall not pretend that it does. We do not say, that any man
shall believe that the Confession of our Church is Scriptural. We only
contend, that he should neither say nor seem to say so, if he does not
believe it. The subscription to a Confession is simply a just and easy mode
of testifying to those who have a right to ask it of us, that we are what we
claim and profess to be. So to sign a Confession as to imply that we are
what we are not, or to leave it an open question what we are, is not the just
result of the right of private judgment, or of any right whatever, but is
utterly wrong. For it is a first element of truth, with which no right, private
or public, can conflict, that names shall honestly represent things. What
immorality is more patent than the pretence that the right of private
judgment is something which authorizes a man to make his whole life a
falsehood; is something which fills the world with names, which no longer
represent things, fills it with black things, that are called white, with bitter
things, that are called sweet, and with lies, that are called truths, with
monarchists,