On Law

So shall I keep thy law continually forever and ever, and I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts.

King David
Psalm 119:44-45

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…The Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

The Apostle Paul
Romans 8:2

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But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deeds.

The Apostle James
James 1:23-25

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Dominion belongs to grace.

John Wycliffe
As quoted in History of the United States
by George Bancroft, 1850
Sometime in the late 1300s

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There is a two-fold liberty; natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt), and civil or federal.

The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts…. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild [monster], which all the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it.

The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal; it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man [contained] in the moral Law, and the politic covenants and constitutions amongst men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it…. It is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard of your lives, if need be… [for] it is the same type of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.

John Winthrop,
Puritan Governor of Massachusetts
Little Speech on Liberty, 1645

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The creature having nothing but what the Creator makes him, must owe all to Him, and nothing to any one from whom he has received nothing. Man therefore must be naturally free, unless he be created by another power than we had heard of…. This liberty must continue till either forfeited or willingly resigned.

Algernon Sidney
Discourses Concerning Government, 1654?

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…The glory of Almighty God and the good of mankind is the reason and end of government, and therefore government itself is a venerable ordinance of God, and…it is principally derived and intended by the Proprietary and Governor and freemen of Pennsylvania and territories thereunto belonging, to make and establish such laws as shall best preserve true Christian and civil liberty, in opposition to all unchristian, licentious, and unjust practices….

Great Law
(first legislative act
of Pennsylvania)
1681?

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I will not dispute now whether Princes are exempt from the Laws of their Country, but this I am sure: they owe subjection to the Laws of God and Nature. No body, no Power, can exempt them from that eternal Law.

John Locke
Second Treatise of Civil Government, 1714 Ed.
Chapter XVI

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Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins, if the Law be transgressed to another’s harm.

John Locke
Second Treatise of Civil Government, 1714 Ed.
Chapter XVIII

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Man’s…reason is corrupt, and his understanding full of error…. This has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of divine providence; which, in compassion to the frailty, the imperfection, and the blindness of human reason, hath been pleased, in sundry times and in divers manners, to discover and enforce its laws by an immediate and direct revelation. The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine Law, and they are to be found nowhere but the Holy Scriptures. These precepts, when revealed, are found upon comparison to be really a part of the original Law of Nature, as they tend in all their consequences to man’s felicity.

William Blackstone
Commentaries On the Laws of England
1765

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…I have long been convinced that our enemies have made it an object to eradicate from the minds of the people in general a sense of true religion and virtue, in hopes thereby the more easily to carry their point of enslaving them. Indeed, my friend, this is a subject so important in my mind that I know not how to leave it. Revelation assures us that “righteousness exalteth a nation”…. The diminution of public virtue is usually attended with that of public happiness; and the public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of Morals.

Samuel Adams
Letter to John Scollay
1776

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All men…are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights…. To secure these Rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

2nd Continental Congress
Declaration of Independence
1776

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Without Liberty, Law loses its nature and name, and becomes oppression. Without Law, Liberty also loses its nature and name, and becomes licentiousness (anarchy).

James Wilson, Delegate to the Constitutional Convention
As quoted in The New American magazine
Date Unknown

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Liberty and happiness have a powerful enemy on each hand; on the one hand tyranny, on the other licentiousness (anarchy). To guard against the latter, it is necessary to give the proper powers to government; and to guard against the former, it is necessary that those powers should be properly distributed.

James Wilson, Delegate to the Constitutional Convention
As quoted in The New American magazine
Date Unknown

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Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions - a government of FORCE, and a government of LAWS; the first is the definition of despotism - the last, of liberty.

Alexander Hamilton
Tully Papers
1795

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Virtue is to liberty what the soul is to the body.

John Adams
Date unknown

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Tis’ substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundations of the fabric?

George Washington
Farewell Address
1796

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The people…are inherently independent of all but moral Law.

Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson on the Supreme Court
1819

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[My form of government is] power, based directly upon force, and unrestricted by any laws!

Vladimir I. Lenin
As quoted in The World Book Encyclopedia
Date Unknown

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Law is the force that holds civilization together.

President Herbert Hoover
Early 1930s

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…The liberty we enjoy, however, is a liberty under law.

Dr. Frank Abbott Magruder
American Government, 1934
Used as a textbook for public schools

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The only way to bring about genuine liberty in a stable society is through the citizens' learned adherence to God's moral law.

Dr. Steven Yates
Worldviews: Christian Theism vs. Modern Materialism
2005

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When we understand that nothing is relative, we are free!

Zig Ziglar
Winning With A Priority-Driven Life,
Get Motivated Seminars
2006