Liberty in Religion: a Serious Warning to Christians of the Present Time

(From the French of Adrian Boissier).
Nice, Jan. 21st, 1853.
Dear Brother,-The question of religious liberty, a subject of such general interest but a few years back, has again become the order of the day through the persecutions in Tuscany, and certain despicable interferences which have occurred in France. It is not without unfeigned sorrow that I see that many Christians are quite ready to renew former mistakes, and again to enter upon the same wrong path which we formerly, without blessing or result, followed.
Already has one, a brother in the Lord, a picked man as to endowment and activity, courageously thrown himself into the breach (watchful and intelligent sentinel that he is), to call attention to what is anti-scriptural and anti-spiritual in the project of placing the profession of faith in the Gospel under the protection of Protestant authorities, and of what may disastrously result from the realizing of the project. His warning, alas! will not be better listened to than that which I now make. For myself, I see not what reply can be given to the remarks, presented with so much feeling and logic in the late numbers of Les Archives du Christianisme.
The rapid survey of the Count de Gasparin had not misled him when he pictured to himself, as already seen gathering in the horizon, and about to burst forth in a future, not far distant, the tempest of a religious war; and his conscience, as a Christian, acted most correctly when in discussing the question of protection, he re-called the master principle laid down by Paul, "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal" (2 Cor. 10:4). Only be it remarked, the Count still remains the eloquent and conscientious advocate of the cause of religious liberty; a cause which, as I think, after the glance cast over the future (to which I have just referred), and the great principle of spirituality, which gives its tone to all that is in the church, ought, in common consistency, to have been entirely abandoned.
It is needless to say that in speaking thus, as also in that which I am about to add, I have in view only
Christians who are members of the body of Christ, and are of that peculiar nation which God forms for Himself from among the Gentiles, since from at first He began to visit them with this object in view (Acts 15:14).
From the moment that we become of that peculiar people, and in proportion as we grow in the understanding and realization of the privileges which pertain to that blessed position, the line of demarcation which separates between the things out of which we have been taken, and those into which we have been translated, daily becomes more and more visible; the judgment we entertain of them assumes a character more precise and distinct; we constantly learn to distinguish better; and among the former things there be principles, institutions, systems which we knew after the flesh, that is to say,
which we received favorably, loved, praised and propagated, henceforth know we them no more (2 Cor. 5:16). Protestantism, in general, and religious liberty, seem to me most peculiarly to have their place among the things formerly known in the flesh, but which the child of God knows no more.