Participants:
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI210506B
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00:06 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider.
00:08 Before the break, 00:09 I was sharing parts of Areopagitica, 00:13 John Milton's mid 1600 defense of freedom of speech 00:18 and freedom of printing and freedom of ideas. 00:21 Which I think is if anything, 00:23 the bedrock of Western democratic, 00:26 social and political life. 00:29 And this is something else 00:30 he wrote as part of that argument, 00:31 he says, "Suppose we could expel sin 00:35 by this means," in other words, censorship, 00:37 "suppose we could, 00:39 look how much we thus expel of sin, 00:42 how much we expel a virtue for the matter of them, 00:45 both is the same. 00:46 Remove that and you remove them both alike. 00:51 This justifies the high providence of God, 00:54 who, though he command us 00:56 temperance, justice, continence, 00:59 yet pours out before us, 01:01 even to a profuseness, all desirable things, 01:05 and gives us minds that can wander beyond 01:08 all limit and satiety. 01:12 Why should we then affect a rigor contrary 01:16 to the manner of God and of nature, 01:21 by abridging or scanting those means, 01:24 which books freely permitted are, 01:27 both to the trial of virtue and the exercise of truth? 01:31 To me, it's an interesting logic. 01:35 And he says this here and a couple of pages over, 01:38 he says, "Well knows he who uses to consider, 01:41 that our faith and knowledge thrives by exercise, 01:46 as well as our limbs and complexion. 01:49 Truth is compared in Scripture to a streaming fountain, 01:55 if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, 01:58 they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. 02:03 A fool may be a heretic in the truth, 02:06 and if he believe things only 02:07 because his pastor says so, 02:09 or the Assembly so determines, 02:11 without knowing other reason, 02:13 though his belief be true, 02:17 yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy." 02:20 You know, this is something 02:21 that I wish my fellow Adventist understood. 02:24 We're preparing for a crisis. 02:26 We have as the New Testament says, 02:29 you know, the oracles delivered, 02:30 very oracles of God delivered to us. 02:32 But if we don't know what they mean, 02:34 we haven't tested them by experience. 02:37 You know, they might as well be pearls before swine. 02:42 And he says, "A man may be a heretic in the truth, 02:44 and if he believe things 02:45 only because his pastor says so," 02:47 repeating it, "or the Assembly so determines, 02:50 without knowing other reason, 02:51 though his belief be true, 02:53 yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy. 02:57 There is not any burden that some would gladly post off 03:00 to another than to charge and care of their religion." 03:04 And again, this is how 03:07 it will work in a time of stress. 03:09 There is no shortage of those 03:12 who will put you on the guardrail 03:14 for practicing religion, 03:16 as they wish you to be practiced. 03:18 And very often, most times that is the wrong way to go. 03:22 He says, "There be, who knows not that... 03:25 Who knows that 03:26 there be of Protestants and professors 03:28 who live and die in as arrant an implicit faith 03:33 as any lay Papist of Loretto." 03:36 Speaking to Protestants, you know, 03:38 just because you're a Protestant 03:39 you're not saved. 03:40 You think, you know the Bible, if you don't experience it, 03:42 if you don't understand it, you're still wrong. 03:45 And then he doesn't conclude. 03:47 But I want to conclude with this little paragraph, 03:49 he says, "Where there is much desire to learn, 03:54 there of necessity will be much arguing, 03:59 much writing, many opinions, 04:02 for opinion in good men is 04:04 but knowledge in the making. 04:09 Under these fantastic terrors of sect and schism, 04:13 we wrong the earnest and zealous thirst 04:17 after knowledge and understanding 04:19 which God hath stirred up in this city." 04:25 The experiment in England ended badly, 04:29 even though I've not so much defended, 04:32 but I speak of it often 04:33 because it was a grand moment in English history. 04:36 There's no question 04:37 when the Puritans tried to purify, 04:40 not just the Church of England, but the entire state. 04:43 It failed for the reasons that he's giving there. 04:46 Oliver Cromwell, who was not as big a despot 04:49 as the mostly Catholic influenced historians nowadays, 04:53 who can't dare speak well of him. 04:56 Oliver Cromwell wasn't as bad as he appeared. 04:58 In fact, ironically, he even allowed to be 05:01 published in his lifetime during his reign, a book, 05:06 a how to book on how to assassinate him. 05:09 I can promise you such a book 05:11 would not be allowed in the United States today. 05:13 If you wrote a book 05:14 on how to assassinate a president, 05:17 you would have to be the FBI knocking at your door 05:19 and the judges gaveling you to other regions. 05:24 Oliver Cromwell allowed that, 05:25 but his regime after his death was sudden too, by an illness, 05:29 his regime collapsed totally 05:31 because he attempted 05:33 to remolarize an entire country. 05:36 He appointed major generals over military districts, 05:39 his job like the muttawa, 05:42 I think they're called, or the religious police 05:44 in Saudi Arabia are trying today. 05:46 They went around daily 05:48 watching the behavior in the godly, 05:51 the public godliness of every citizen, 05:53 things like kite flying, games, dances, 05:56 all of the frivolities of life, 05:59 which included many wrong things, 06:01 but also many harmless pursuits were forbidden. 06:04 And so the people that had enough of that 06:06 by the time Cromwell died 06:07 and they rushed to invite the king back. 06:10 John Milton understood very plainly that 06:15 you cannot be a conscience for another person. 06:19 You can, of course, point them toward the cross. 06:21 You can, of course, 06:23 explain to them in the best language 06:25 you can summon. 06:26 And the best language is your own life. 06:28 You can explain to them the things of God 06:30 and the law that it has for you 06:33 and how they may partake of that. 06:34 You know, I've decided that's the witness. 06:37 That is the definitive witness that can never be gainsaid. 06:42 If you can tell someone else the Lord Jesus changed me, 06:46 and this is what inspires me. 06:48 Other people may want that 06:49 if they see something exemplary in your life. 06:52 George Bush tried it at least got him elected. 06:54 And I can't comment further than that, 06:56 but he says, Jesus was his favorite person 06:59 because He changed my life. 07:01 I remember in a debate with Christopher Hitchens, 07:04 the great skeptic who used to shame 07:07 and embarrass most Christians, 07:10 Muslims, and others of faith who argued with him. 07:13 He couldn't answer Tony Blair and the Reverend El Sharpton 07:17 who had some weird ideas of his own, 07:19 but he couldn't answer either of those 07:20 because both of them refused to argue 07:22 I noted and said, Jesus changed my life. 07:26 This is what He did for me. 07:28 You can't change them. 07:30 And John Milton, I believe was on 07:33 to a powerful argument in favor of free speech. 07:36 Unless something is openly seditious and dangerous, 07:39 which it may well be determined that 07:43 some of the tweets and other communications 07:46 of recent months in the United States 07:50 were inspiring people to violence 07:51 and rebellion and so on. 07:53 If such that is not the sort of thing 07:55 that any law allows. 07:57 Under British, and American, and Western law, 08:00 if you incite a crowd to violence, you're responsible. 08:04 That's a well-established legal principle. 08:07 But as far as public expression, 08:10 why can we think that we could ever restrict anybody? 08:15 One of my earliest memories as a young man in Australia 08:18 was my father took me along 08:20 to Hyde Park in Sydney, Australia named after 08:23 Hyde Park in England. 08:24 And there on a weekend, 08:26 anybody could come along 08:28 and very literally they would often 08:29 have a little wooden box. 08:31 They would stand up on it and it would hold forth. 08:34 I heard communist espousing 08:36 the most virulent form of Marxism. 08:38 I heard proto gay rights types 08:43 way before it ever was well known, 08:45 arguing against patriarchy and all the rest, 08:48 interesting to hear people. 08:49 They were harmless allowed to share it in public. 08:53 And if they had any value, others could pick up on it. 08:58 Never harmed England or Australia 09:00 or other places to let people talk freely like that. 09:03 It gives someone the idea 09:05 that the world is at their fingertips, 09:06 ideas are exciting and it can lead to political 09:11 and social reform 09:13 and advancement in spectacular ways. 09:16 What we want to avoid need to avoid is the attempt 09:21 to restrict the God given right of others 09:24 to exercise their conscience 09:27 and their faculties in a way 09:31 that will lead them toward this pile of wonder 09:33 unknowingly truth. 09:38 It's worth remembering that 09:39 many people have lost their lives 09:43 for saying the wrong thing. 09:45 And in our modern era, 09:46 people have even lost their lives 09:48 for thinking the wrong thing, 09:50 and movies have been made about 09:52 such crazy phenomena as inception, 09:56 before you even do something you're convicted. 09:59 But in reality, freedom of speech 10:01 is integral to how life functions 10:03 in our world. 10:04 Freedom of speech is integral 10:06 to how we function before the Lord God Himself. 10:10 God did not force Adam and Eve to think 10:14 and to do as he wanted. 10:16 He urged them. 10:17 He educated them. 10:19 They made a wrong choice, 10:20 but we can make the right choices. 10:23 We can speak about what we know. 10:25 And for someone else to try to restrict us 10:28 is to do the devil's own work 10:30 and to be a very serpent in disguise. 10:33 We are not going to enter into that fallacy again. 10:38 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2021-11-16