SOME VERY IMPORTANT QUOTES CONCERNING THE CONTEXT OF LIBERTY AND "RIGHT OF CONSCIENCE" UNDER AMERICA'S REPUBLICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT.


1. "No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the power of its public functionaries..." (Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Methodist Episcopal Church at New London, Connecticut, Feb. 4, 1809).

2. "The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind as well as the acts of the body are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitmate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others." (Thomas Jefferson quoted from "Jefferson Himself" edited by Bernard Mayo, p.81, University Press of Virginia).

3. "And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?" (Thomas Jefferson from his "Notes on Virginia", 2:229-30)