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

who are called republicans, with Socinians, who are called Trinitarians,
with Arminians, who are called Calvinists, with Romanists, Rationalists,
fanatics, or sectarians, who are called Lutherans?
We concede to every man the absolute right of private judgment as
to the faith of the Lutheran Church, but if he have abandoned the faith of
that Church, he may not use her name as his shelter in attacking the thing
she cherishes, and in maintaining which she obtained her being and her
name. It is not enough that you say to me, that such a thing is clear to your
private judgment. You must show to my private judgment, that God's word
teaches it, before I dare recognize you as in the unity of the faith. If you
cannot, we have not the same faith, and ought not to be of the same
communion; for the communion is properly one of persons of the same
faith. In other words, your private judgment is not to be my interpreter, nor
is mine to be yours. If you think me in error, I have no right to force myself
on your fellowship. If I think you in error, you have no right to force
yourself on mine. You have the civil right and the moral right to form your
impressions in regard to truth, but there the right stops. You have not the
right to enter or remain in any Christian communion, except as its terms of
membership give you that right. So easy is this distinction, and so clearly a
part, not of speculation, but of practical morals, that the law of the land
recognizes it. If certain men, under the style and title of a Church, which
imply that it is Calvinistic, call an Arminian preacher, the law takes that
Church from an Arminian majority which calls itself Calvinistic, and gives
it to a Calvinistic minority which is what it calls itself. Does this mean that
the majority must sacrifice their right of private judgment, that the law
wishes to force them to be Calvinists? Not at all. It simply means, that the
right of private judgment is not the right to call yourself what you are not,
and to keep what does not belong to you. Put, your Arminians under their
true colors, though in minority, and your Calvinists under false colors,
though in majority, and you