Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break,
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I was sharing
parts of Areopagitica,
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John Milton's mid 1600
defense of freedom of speech
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and freedom of
printing and freedom of ideas.
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Which I think is if anything,
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the bedrock of
Western democratic,
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social and political life.
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And this is something else
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he wrote as part
of that argument,
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he says, "Suppose
we could expel sin
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by this means," in
other words, censorship,
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"suppose we could,
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look how much we
thus expel of sin,
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how much we expel a
virtue for the matter of them,
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both is the same.
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Remove that and you
remove them both alike.
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This justifies the
high providence of God,
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who, though he command us
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temperance, justice, continence,
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yet pours out before us,
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even to a profuseness,
all desirable things,
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and gives us minds
that can wander beyond
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all limit and satiety.
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Why should we then
affect a rigor contrary
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to the manner of
God and of nature,
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by abridging or
scanting those means,
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which books
freely permitted are,
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both to the trial of virtue
and the exercise of truth?
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To me, it's an
interesting logic.
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And he says this here
and a couple of pages over,
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he says, "Well knows
he who uses to consider,
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that our faith and
knowledge thrives by exercise,
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as well as our
limbs and complexion.
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Truth is compared in Scripture
to a streaming fountain,
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if her waters flow not
in a perpetual progression,
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they sicken into a muddy pool
of conformity and tradition.
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A fool may be a
heretic in the truth,
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and if he believe things only
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because his pastor says so,
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or the Assembly so determines,
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without knowing other reason,
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though his belief be true,
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yet the very truth he
holds becomes his heresy."
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You know, this is something
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that I wish my
fellow Adventist understood.
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We're preparing for a crisis.
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We have as the
New Testament says,
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you know, the oracles delivered,
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very oracles of
God delivered to us.
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But if we don't
know what they mean,
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we haven't tested
them by experience.
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You know, they might as
well be pearls before swine.
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And he says, "A man may
be a heretic in the truth,
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and if he believe things
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only because
his pastor says so,"
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repeating it, "or the
Assembly so determines,
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without knowing other reason,
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though his belief be true,
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yet the very truth he
holds becomes his heresy.
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There is not any burden
that some would gladly post off
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to another than to charge
and care of their religion."
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And again, this is how
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it will work in
a time of stress.
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There is no shortage of those
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who will put
you on the guardrail
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for practicing religion,
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as they wish
you to be practiced.
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And very often, most times
that is the wrong way to go.
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He says, "There be,
who knows not that...
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Who knows that
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there be of
Protestants and professors
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who live and die in as
arrant an implicit faith
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as any lay Papist of Loretto."
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Speaking to
Protestants, you know,
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just because you're a Protestant
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you're not saved.
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You think, you know the Bible,
if you don't experience it,
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if you don't understand
it, you're still wrong.
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And then he doesn't conclude.
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But I want to conclude
with this little paragraph,
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he says, "Where there
is much desire to learn,
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there of necessity
will be much arguing,
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much writing, many opinions,
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for opinion in good men is
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but knowledge in the making.
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Under these fantastic
terrors of sect and schism,
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we wrong the
earnest and zealous thirst
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after knowledge
and understanding
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which God hath
stirred up in this city."
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The experiment in
England ended badly,
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even though I've
not so much defended,
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but I speak of it often
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because it was a grand
moment in English history.
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There's no question
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when the
Puritans tried to purify,
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not just the Church of
England, but the entire state.
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It failed for the
reasons that he's giving there.
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Oliver Cromwell, who
was not as big a despot
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as the mostly Catholic
influenced historians nowadays,
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who can't dare
speak well of him.
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Oliver Cromwell
wasn't as bad as he appeared.
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In fact, ironically,
he even allowed to be
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published in his lifetime
during his reign, a book,
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a how to book on
how to assassinate him.
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I can promise you such a book
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would not be allowed in
the United States today.
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If you wrote a book
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on how to
assassinate a president,
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you would have to be the
FBI knocking at your door
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and the judges
gaveling you to other regions.
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Oliver Cromwell allowed that,
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but his regime after his death
was sudden too, by an illness,
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his regime collapsed totally
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because he attempted
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to remolarize an entire country.
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He appointed major generals
over military districts,
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his job like the muttawa,
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I think they're
called, or the religious police
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in Saudi Arabia
are trying today.
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They went around daily
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watching the
behavior in the godly,
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the public
godliness of every citizen,
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things like kite
flying, games, dances,
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all of the frivolities of life,
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which included
many wrong things,
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but also many harmless
pursuits were forbidden.
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And so the people
that had enough of that
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by the time Cromwell died
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and they rushed to
invite the king back.
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John Milton
understood very plainly that
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you cannot be a
conscience for another person.
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You can, of course,
point them toward the cross.
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You can, of course,
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explain to them
in the best language
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you can summon.
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And the best
language is your own life.
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You can explain to
them the things of God
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and the law that it has for you
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and how they
may partake of that.
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You know, I've
decided that's the witness.
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That is the definitive witness
that can never be gainsaid.
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If you can tell someone
else the Lord Jesus changed me,
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and this is what inspires me.
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Other people may want that
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if they see something
exemplary in your life.
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George Bush tried it
at least got him elected.
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And I can't
comment further than that,
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but he says, Jesus
was his favorite person
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because He changed my life.
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I remember in a debate
with Christopher Hitchens,
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the great
skeptic who used to shame
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and embarrass most Christians,
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Muslims, and others of
faith who argued with him.
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He couldn't answer Tony Blair
and the Reverend El Sharpton
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who had some
weird ideas of his own,
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but he couldn't
answer either of those
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because both of
them refused to argue
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I noted and said,
Jesus changed my life.
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This is what He did for me.
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You can't change them.
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And John
Milton, I believe was on
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to a powerful argument
in favor of free speech.
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Unless something is
openly seditious and dangerous,
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which it may well
be determined that
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some of the tweets
and other communications
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of recent months
in the United States
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were inspiring
people to violence
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and rebellion and so on.
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If such that is
not the sort of thing
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that any law allows.
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Under British, and
American, and Western law,
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if you incite a crowd to
violence, you're responsible.
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That's a well-established
legal principle.
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But as far as public expression,
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why can we think that we
could ever restrict anybody?
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One of my earliest memories
as a young man in Australia
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was my father took me along
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to Hyde Park in
Sydney, Australia named after
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Hyde Park in England.
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And there on a weekend,
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anybody could come along
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and very
literally they would often
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have a little wooden box.
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They would stand up on
it and it would hold forth.
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I heard communist espousing
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the most
virulent form of Marxism.
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I heard proto gay rights types
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way before it
ever was well known,
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arguing against
patriarchy and all the rest,
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interesting to hear people.
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They were harmless
allowed to share it in public.
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And if they had any value,
others could pick up on it.
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Never harmed
England or Australia
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or other places to let
people talk freely like that.
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It gives someone the idea
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that the world is
at their fingertips,
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ideas are exciting and
it can lead to political
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and social reform
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and advancement
in spectacular ways.
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What we want to avoid
need to avoid is the attempt
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to restrict the God
given right of others
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to exercise their conscience
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and their faculties in a way
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that will lead them
toward this pile of wonder
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unknowingly truth.
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It's worth remembering that
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many people
have lost their lives
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for saying the wrong thing.
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And in our modern era,
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people have
even lost their lives
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for thinking the wrong thing,
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and movies have been made about
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such crazy
phenomena as inception,
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before you even do
something you're convicted.
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But in reality,
freedom of speech
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is integral to
how life functions
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in our world.
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Freedom of speech is integral
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to how we function
before the Lord God Himself.
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God did not force
Adam and Eve to think
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and to do as he wanted.
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He urged them.
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He educated them.
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They made a wrong choice,
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but we can make
the right choices.
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We can speak about what we know.
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And for someone else
to try to restrict us
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is to do the devil's own work
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and to be a very
serpent in disguise.
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We are not going to
enter into that fallacy again.
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For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
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