CALVINISM IN NEW ENGLAND

43. After Scotland, it was in Puritan New England that the Calvinistic system of government most nearly reached its ideal. In 1631, as soon as their numbers had become such that a definite policy must be established, they enacted the following statute:—ECE 790.2

“To the end this body of the commons may be preserved of honest and good men, it is ordered and agreed that, for the time to come, no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic but such as are members of some of the Churches within the limits of the same.”ECE 790.3

44. “Thus the polity became a theocracy; God himself was to govern His people; and the ‘saints by calling,’ ...were, by the fundamental law of the colony, constituted the oracle of the divine will...Other States have confined political rights to the opulent, to free-holders, to the first-born; the Calvinists of Massachusetts, refusing any share of civil power to the clergy, established the reign of the visible Church, a commonwealth of the chosen people in covenant with God.”—Bancroft. ^{18[Page 790] “History of the United States,” chap. “Self-Government in Massachusetts,’ par. 25.} This was the Calvinistic system precisely. The preachers were not to hold office in itself, but they were to be the rulers of all who did. For, as no man could be a citizen unless he was a member of the Church; and as none could become members of the Churches or even “propounded to the congregation, except they be first allowed by the elders;” this was to make the preachers supreme. This is exactly the position they occupied. They were consulted in everything, and everything must be subject to their dictation.ECE 790.4

45. The leading minister in Massachusetts Colony at this time was John Cotton. He distinctly taught the blessedness of persecution in itself, and in its benefit to the State, in the following words:—ECE 791.1

“But the good brought to princes and subjects by the due punishment of apostate seducers and idolaters and blasphemers, is manifold.ECE 791.2

“First, it putteth away evil from among the people, and cutteth off a gangreene which would spread to further ungodlinesse....ECE 791.3

“Secondly, it driveth away wolves from worrying and scattering the sheep of Christ. For false teachers be wolves, ...and the very name of wolves holdeth forth what benefit will redound to the sheep, by either killing them or driving them away.ECE 791.4

“Thirdly, such executions upon such evil doers causeth all the country to heare and feare and doe no more such wickednesse.... Yea, as these punishments are preventions of like wickednesse in some, so are they wholesome medicines, to heale such as are curable of these eviles....ECE 791.5

“Fourthly, the punishments executed upon false prophets and seducing teachers, doe bring downe showers of God’s blessings upon the civill state....ECE 791.6

“Fifthly, it is an honour to God’s justice that such judgments are executed.” ^{19[Page 791] “The Emancipation of Massachusetts,” pp. 35, 36.}ECE 791.7

46. And Samuel Shepard, a minister of Charlestown, preached an election sermon entitled “Eye Salve,” in which he set forth the following views:—ECE 791.8

“Men’s lusts are sweet to them, and they would not be disturbed or disquieted in their sin. Hence there be so many such as cry up tolleration boundless and libertinism so as (if it were in their power) to order a total and perpetual confinement of the sword of the civil magistrate unto its scabbard (a motion that is evidently distructive to this people, and to the publick liberty, peace, and prosperity of any instituted Churches under heaven).ECE 791.9

“Let the magistrate’s coercive power in matters of religion, therefore, be still asserted, seeing he is one who is bound to God more than any other man to cherish his true religion; ... and how wofull would the state of things soon be among us, if men might have liberty without controll to profess, or preach, or print, or publish what they list, tending to the seduction of others.” ^{20[Page 791] Id., pp. 36, 37.}ECE 791.10

47. In accordance with these principles, every inhabitant of the colony was obliged to attend the services of the Established Church on Sunday under penalty of fine or imprisonment. The fine was not to exceed five shillings, equal to about five dollars of the present day, for every absence.ECE 792.1

48. But in 1631 there came also into New England Roger Williams. There was a vacancy in the Church at Salem. The Church called Williams to fill his place; but as Governor Winthrop and his “assistants” objected, Williams went to Plymouth Colony.ECE 792.2

49. About 1633 Williams was called a second time to the ministry of the Salem Church. This time he was allowed to take the place; but it was not long before he was again in trouble with the theocrats. He denounced their laws making Church membership a qualification for office, all their laws enforcing religious observances, and especially their Sunday laws. He declared that the worst law in the English code was that by which they themselves when in England had been compelled to attend the parish church; and he reproved their inconsistency in counting that persecution in England, and then doing the same things themselves in New England.ECE 792.3

50. They maintained, as argued by Cotton, that “persecution is not wrong in itself. It is wicked for falsehood to persecute truth, but it is the sacred duty of truth to persecute falsehood.” And, as stated by Winthrop: “We have come to New England in order to make a society after our own model; all who agree with us may come and join that society; those who disagree may go elsewhere; there is room enough on the American continent.” ^{21[Page 792] “Beginnings of New England,” p. 178.}ECE 792.4

51. Roger Williams told them that to compel men to unite with those of a different faith is an open violation of natural right; and that to drag to public worship the irreligious and the unwilling, is only to require hypocrisy. “Persons may with less sin be forced to marry whom they can not love, than to worship where they can not believe.” ^{22[Page 792] Backus’s Church History of New England,” pp. 62, 63.} Accordingly he insisted that “no one should be bound to worship or to maintain a worship against his own consent.” At this the theocrats inquired with pious amaze, “What, is not the laborer worthy of his hire?” To which Roger replied in words which they could not fail fully to understand, “Yes, from them that hire him.”ECE 792.5

52. The view that the magistrates must be chosen exclusively from membership in the Churches Roger Williams exploded with the argument that with equal propriety they should select a doctor of physic or the pilot of a ship, because of his standing in the Church. Against the statements of Cotton and Shepard and the claims of the theocrats altogether, as to the right of the magistrate to forestall corrupting influences upon the minds of the people, and to punish error and heresy, he set the evident and everlasting truth that “magistrates are but the agents of the people or its trustees, on whom no spiritual power in matters of worship can ever be conferred, since conscience belongs to the individual, and is not the property of the body politic; ...the civil magistrate may not intermeddle even to stop a Church from apostasy and heresy; this power extends only to the bodies and goods and outward estate of men.” ^{23[Page 793] Bancroft’s History of the United States,” chap. “The Providence Plantations,” pars. 3-6.}ECE 793.1

53. The theocrats raised the alarm that these principles subverted all good government. To which Williams replied: “There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes that both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm that all the liberty of conscience that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges, that none of the Papists, Protestants, Jews, or Turks be forced to come to the ship’s prayers for worship, nor compelled from their particular prayers or worship, if they practice any.” ^{24[Page 793] Blakely’s American State Papers,” page 68, note.} “The removal of the yoke of soul-oppression, as it will prove an act of mercy and righteousness to the enslaved nations, so it is of binding force to engage the whole and every interest and conscience to preserve the common liberty and peace.” ^{25[Page 793] Bancroft’s History of the United States,” chap. “The Providence Plantations,” par. 6.}ECE 793.2

54. He also denied the right of the compulsory imposition of an oath. The magistrates had decided to require an oath of allegiance to Massachusetts, instead of to the king of England. Williams would not take the oath, and his influence was so great that so many others also refused that the government was compelled to drop the project. This caused them to raise a charge against him as the ally of a civil faction. The Church at Salem stood by him, and in the face of the enmity of the theocrats elected him their teacher. This was no sooner done than the preachers met together and declared that any one who should obstinately assert that “the civil magistrate might not intermeddle even to stop a Church from apostasy and heresy,” was worthy of banishment. A committee of their order was appointed to go to Salem and deal with Williams and the Church “in a Church way.”ECE 793.3

55. Meantime the people of Salem were punished for choosing him for their teacher, by the withholding of a tract of land to which they had laid claim. Williams was ready to meet the committee at every point in expressing and defining his doctrines, and in refuting all their claims. After the committee had returned, the Church by Williams wrote letters to all the Churches of which any of the magistrates were members, “that they should admonish the magistrates of their injustice.” By the next general court the whole of Salem was disfranchised until they should apologize for these letters. The town and the Church yielded. Roger Williams stood alone. He was able and willing to do it, and at once declared his “own voluntary withdrawing from all these Churches which were resolved to continue in persecuting the witnesses of the Lord,” and “hoped the Lord Jesus was sounding forth in him the blast which should in His own holy season cast down the strength and confidence of those inventions of men.”ECE 794.1

56. In October, 1635, he was summoned before the chief representatives of the State. He went and “maintained the rocky strength” of his position, and declared himself “ready to be bound and banished, and even to die in New England,” rather than to renounce his convictions. By the earnest persuasions of Cotton, the general court, by a small majority, sentenced him to exile, and at the same time attempted to justify the sentence by the flimsy plea that it was not a restrainment on freedom of conscience, but because the application of the new doctrine to their institutions seemed “to subvert the fundamental state and government of the country.”ECE 794.2

57. In January, 1636, a warrant was sent to Williams to come to Boston and take ship for England. He refused to go. Officers were sent in a boat to bring him, but he was gone. “Three days before, he had left Salem, in winter snow and inclement weather, of which he remembered the severity even in his late old age. ‘For fourteen weeks he was sorely tost in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean.’ Often in the stormy night he had neither fire, nor food, nor company; often he wandered without a guide, and had no house but a hollow tree. But he was not without friends. The respect for the rights of others which had led him to defend the freedom of conscience, had made him the champion of the Indians. He had learned their language during his residence at Plymouth; he had often been the guest of the neighboring sachems; and now, when he came in winter to the cabin of the chief of Pokanoket, he was welcomed by Massassoit; and ‘the barbarous heart of Canonicus, the chief of the Narragansetts, loved him as his son to the last gasp.’ ‘The ravens,’ he relates, ‘fed me in the wilderness.’”ECE 795.1

58. The population of the four colonies was now about twenty-four thousand, Massachusetts having about fifteen thousand, and the other three colonies about three thousand each. The Federal commissioners formed an advisory board rather than a legislative body. The formation of his league strengthened the theocracy.ECE 795.2

59. By the strictness of the rules which had been framed by the preachers to regulate the admission of members to the Churches, there were so few that joined the Churches, that the membership, which was supposed to include at least the great majority of the people, in fact embraced not more than one third of them. And now as a demand began to be made for freedom of worship according to other than Congregational forms, the Congregational clergy saw that something must be done more firmly to confirm their power.ECE 795.3

60. Accordingly at Cambridge, August, 1648, after two years’ reflection, there was framed a “Platform of Church Discipline Gathered out of the Word of God.” It was in fact the establishment of the Congregational Church upon the basis of the confederacy of the four colonies; for throughout, although it professed to maintain the principles of the independence of each congregation, it provided “councils composed of elders, and other messengers of Churches to advise, to admonish, and to withhold fellowship from a Church,” but not to exercise special acts of discipline, or jurisdiction, in any particular Church. And further it provided that if any Church should separate itself from the communion of the Churches, the magistrates might compel them to conform. “The Westminster Confession was promulgated as the creed; the powers of the clergy were minutely defined, and the duty of the laity stated to be ‘obeying their elders and submitting themselves unto them in the Lord.’ The magistrate was enjoined to punish ‘idolatry, blasphemy, heresy,’ and to coerce any Church becoming ‘schismatical.’”ECE 795.4

61. In October, 1649, the platform was referred to the general court for consideration and adopted, and was further submitted by them to the Churches for their approval. In October, 1651, it was confirmed by each of the legislatures. Thus was the theocracy of Massachusetts completed and clothed with all the power of the commonwealth. And as its power was increased, so were its bitter fruits vastly increased. In 1649, Governor Winthrop died, and was succeeded by John Endicott; and in 1652 John Cotton died, and was succeeded by John Norton, and these two men, John Endicott and John Norton, have been not inaptly described as “two as arrant fanatics as ever drew breath.” And with the accession of these two men to the headship of the complete and fully furnished theocracy, the New England reign of terror may be said to have begun.ECE 796.1

62. Admission to the confederacy of the New England colonies had been absolutely refused Rhode Island, on account of its principles of liberty of conscience; but hatred of the Quakers led Massachusetts colony in 1657 to ask Rhode Island to join the confederacy in the endeavor to save New England from the Quakers. “They sent a letter to the authorities of that colony, signing themselves their loving friends and neighbors, and beseeching them to preserve the whole body of colonists against ‘such a pest,’ by banishing and excluding all Quakers, a measure to which ‘the rule of charity did oblige them.’”—Fiske. ^{26[Page 796] “Beginning of New England,” p. 180.}ECE 796.2

63. But Roger Williams was still president of Rhode Island, and, true to his principles, he replied: “We have no law amongst us whereby to punish any for only declaring by words their minds and understandings concerning things and ways of God as to salvation and our eternal condition. As for these Quakers, we find that where they are most of all suffered to declare themselves freely and only opposed by arguments in discourse, there they least of all desire to come. Any breach of the civil law shall be punished, but the freedom of different consciences shall be respected.” ^{27[Page 797] Id pp. 184, 185 This was not in any sense an expression of Indifference as to the teachings of the Quakers; because by discussion Roger was constantly combating them. He wrote a book against them, entitled “George Fox Digged out of his Burrowes,” and at the age of seventy three he “rowed himself in a boat the whole length of Narragansett bay to engage in a theological tournament against three Quaker champions.”—Id., p. 186.}ECE 796.3

64. This reply enraged the whole confederacy. Massachusetts threatened to cut off the trade of Rhode Island. In this strait, Rhode Island, by Roger Williams, appealed for protection to Cromwell, who now ruled England. The appeal presented the case as it was, but that which made it of everlasting importance, as the grandest and most touching appeal in all history is the piteous plea, “But whatever fortune may befall, let us not be compelled to exercise any civil power over men’s consciences.”ECE 797.1

65. In all respects the Puritans justified and deserved the scathing sentence of the historian of the United States, that “the creation of a national and uncompromising Church led the Congregationalists of Massachusetts to the indulgence of the passions which disgraced their English persecutors, and Laud was justified by the men whom he had wronged.”—Bancroft. ^{28[Page 797] “History of the United States,” chap. “The Place of Puritanism in History, par. 5. in his last revision, however, this is softened into this: “The uncompromising Congregationalists of Massachusetts indulged the passions of their English persecutors.”}ECE 797.2

66. Nor was it alone in New England that Church and State were united. It was so to a greater or less extent in every one of the thirteen original colonies in America, except Rhode Island. In New England the established religion was Congregationalism, while in all the colonies south from New York to Georgia, except only Pennsylvania, the Church of England was the favored one. In Pennsylvania there was no union with any particular denomination as such, but no one could hold office or even vote except “such as possess faith in Jesus Christ.” And protection from compulsory religious observances was guaranteed to no one, except those “who confess and acknowledge one almighty and eternal God to be the Creator, Upholder, and Ruler of the World.” As all were thus required to be religious, and to possess faith in Jesus Christ, it was therefore required “that according to the good example of the primitive Christians, every first day of the week, called the Lord’s day, people shall abstain from their common daily labor, that they may the better dispose themselves to worship God according to their understandings.” ^{29[Page 798] “Charters and Constitutions,” Pennsylvania.}ECE 797.3

67. Maryland, while held by the Roman Catholics, was freer than any other colony, except Rhode Island; yet even there, as in Pennsylvania, it was only toleration that was guaranteed, and that only to persons “professing to believe in Jesus Christ.” But in 1692 the Episcopalians took possession, and although other forms of religion were still tolerated, “Protestant Episcopacy was established by law,” and so continued until the Revolution.ECE 798.1

68. The Church and State system in Georgia, and even its practical working as late as 1737, may be seen in the persecution of John Wesley. The case grew out of Wesley’s refusing the sacrament to certain women, and this was made only the opportunity to vent their spite upon him in whatever else they could trump up. The first step was taken thus:—“GEORGIA. SAVANNAH SS.ECE 798.2

“To all Constables, Tythingmen, and others whom these may concern: You and each of you are hereby required to take the body of John Wesley, clerk, and bring him before one of the baliffs of the said town, to answer the complaint of William Williamson and Sophia, his wife, for defaming the said Sophia, and refusing to administer to her the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, in a publick congregation, without cause; by which the said William Williamson is damag’d one thousand pound sterling. And for so doing, this is your warrant, certifying what you are to do in the premises. Given under my hand and seal the eighth day of August, Anno Dom., 1737. “THO. CHRISTIE.”ECE 798.3

69. Wesley was arrested, and brought before the recorder for examination. When questioned upon this matter, he replied that “the giving or refusing the Lord’s Supper being a matter purely ecclesiastical, I could not acknowledge their power to interrogate me upon it.” The case was deferred to the next regular sitting of the court. When the court convened, the judge charged the grand jury to “beware of spiritual tyranny, and to oppose the new illegal authority that was usurped over their consciences.” The grand jury, says Wesley, was thus composed: “One was a Frenchman who did not understand English, one a Papist, one a profest infidel, three Baptists, sixteen or seventeen others, dissenters, and several others who had personal quarrels against me, and had openly vow’d revenge.”ECE 798.4

70. A majority of this grand jury framed an indictment of ten counts, as follows:—ECE 799.1

“That John Wesley, clerk, has broken the laws of the realm, contrary to the peace of our sovereign lord the king, his crown and dignity.ECE 799.2

“1. By speaking and writing to Mrs. Williamson against her husband’s consent.ECE 799.3

“2. By repelling her from the holy communion.ECE 799.4

“3. By not declaring his adherence to the Church of England.ECE 799.5

“4. By dividing the morning service on Sundays.ECE 799.6

“5. By refusing to baptize Mr. Parker’s child otherwise than by dipping, except the parents would certify it was weak, and not able to bear it.ECE 799.7

“6. By repelling Wm. Gough from the holy communion.ECE 799.8

“7. By refusing to read the burial service over the body of Nathaniel Polhill.ECE 799.9

“8. By calling himself ordinary of Savannah.ECE 799.10

“9. By refusing to receive Wm. Agliorly as a godfather, only because he was not a communicant.ECE 799.11

“10. By refusing Jacob Matthews for the same reason, and baptizing an Indian trader’s child with only two sponsors.”ECE 799.12

71. The prosecution was made to drag along with Wesley neither convicted nor acquitted, but held, as he describes it, as a sort of “prisoner at large,” until, willing to bear it no longer, he determined to go back to England. That he should leave Georgia and go somewhere was just what the Georgians wanted, and although a pretense of opposing his going was made, they were glad when he left, Dec. 2, 1737. ^{30[Page 799] “John Wesley a Missioner to Georgia,” by William Stevens Perry, D. D. bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Iowa; New York Independent, March 5, 1891, pp. 5, 6}ECE 799.13

72. Of the Southern colonies, Virginia took the lead, and was next to Massachusetts in intolerance and persecution. The colony was divided into parishes, and all the inhabitants were taxed to maintain the worship of the Episcopal Church. All the people were required to attend the Churches of the establishment. The rights of citizenship were dependent upon membership in the Episcopal Church. Whoever failed to attend Church any Sunday “without an allowable excuse,” was to be fined one pound of tobacco, and if any one should be absent from Sunday service for a month, the fine was fifty pounds of tobacco.ECE 799.14

73. Virginia, however, though standing in the lead of the Southern colonies in the severity of its religious legislation, was the first of all the colonies to separate Church and State, and to declare and secure by statute the religious rights of all men.ECE 800.1

74. From this review of Protestantism, it plainly appears that after Martin Luther, until the rise of Roger Williams, not a single Reformer preached in sincerity, nor was there found exemplified in a single country, the principles of Christianity and of Protestantism as to the rights of conscience, and that in not a single place except the colony of Rhode Island, was there even recognized, much less exemplified, the Christian and Protestant principle of the separation of Church and State, of the religious and civil powers.ECE 800.2

75. Throughout this whole period we find that in all the discussions, and all the work, of the professed champions of the rights of conscience, there everywhere appears the fatal defect that it was only their own rights of conscience that they either asserted or defended. In other words, their argument simply amounted to this: It is our inalienable right to believe and worship as we choose. It is likewise our inalienable right to compel everybody else to believe and worship as we choose.ECE 800.3

76. But this is no assertion at all of the rights of conscience. The true principle and assertion of the rights of conscience is not our assertion of our right to believe and worship as we choose. This always leaves the way open for the additional assertion of our right to compel others to believe and worship as we choose, should occasion seem to demand; and there are a multitude of circumstances that are ever ready strongly to urge that occasion does demand.ECE 800.4

77. The true principle and the right assertion of the rights of conscience is our assertion of every other man’s right to believe and worship as he chooses, or not to worship at all if he chooses. This at once sweeps away every excuse and every argument that might ever be offered for the restriction or the invasion of the rights of conscience by any person or any power.ECE 800.5

78. This is the Christian doctrine. This is the Roger Williams doctrine. This is the genuine Protestant doctrine, for it is “the logical consequence of either of the two great distinguishing principles of the Reformation, as well as justification by faith alone as of the equality of all believers.”—Bancroft. ^{31[Page 801] “History of the United States,” chap, “Self-Government in Massachusetts,” par 22.}ECE 801.1

79. Bryce’s arraignment of Protestantism on this point is well deserved, and is decidedly applicable here: “The principles which had led the Protestants to sever themselves from the Roman Church should have taught them to bear with the opinions of others, and warned them from the attempt to connect agreement in doctrine or manner of worship with the necessary forms of civil government. Still less ought they to have enforced that agreement by civil penalties, for faith, upon their own showing, had no value save when it was freely given. A Church which does not claim to be infallible is bound to allow that some part of the truth may possibly be with its adversaries; a Church which permits or encourages human reason to apply itself to revelation, has no right to argue with people and then to punish them if they are not convinced.ECE 801.2

80. “But whether it was that men only half saw that they had done; or that, finding it hard enough to unrivet priestly fetters, they welcomed all the aid a temporal prince could give; the result was that religion, or rather, religious creeds, began to be involved with politics more closely than had ever been the case before. Through the greater part of Christendom wars of religion raged for a century or more, and down to our own days feelings of theological antipathy continue to affect the relations of the powers of Europe. In almost every country the form of doctrine which triumphed associated itself with the State and maintained the despotic system to the Middle Ages, while it forsook the ground on which that system had been based.ECE 801.3

81. “It was thus that arose national Churches, which were to be to the several Protestant countries of Europe that which the Church Catholic had been to the world at large; Churches, that is to say, each of which was to be coextensive with its respective State, was to enjoy landed wealth and exclusive political privilege, and was to be armed with coercive powers against recusants. It was not altogether easy to find a set of theoretical principles on which such churches might be made to rest; for they could not, like the old Church, point to the historical transmission of their doctrines; they could not claim to have in any one man, or body of men, an infallible organ of divine truth; they could not even fall back upon general councils, or the argument, whatever it may be worth, ‘Securus indicat orbis terrarum.’ECE 801.4

82. “But in practice these difficulties were soon got over, for the dominant party in each State, if it was not infallible, was at any rate quite sure that it was right, and could attribute the resistance of other sects to nothing but moral obliquity. The will of the sovereign, as in England, or the will of the majority, as in Holland, Scandinavia, and Scotland, imposed upon each country a peculiar form of worship, and kept up the practices of mediaeval intolerance without their justification.ECE 802.1

83. “Persecution, which might be at least excused in an infallible, Catholic, and apostolic Church, was peculiarly odious when practiced by those who were not Catholic; who were no more apostolic than their neighbors; and who had just revolted from the most ancient and venerable authority, in the name of rights which they now denied to others. If union with the visible Church by participation in a material sacrament be necessary to eternal life, persecution may be held a duty, a kindness to perishing souls. But if the kingdom of heaven be in every sense a kingdom of the spirit, if saving faith be possible out of one visible body and under a diversity of external forms, persecution becomes at once a crime and a folly.ECE 802.2

84. “Therefore the intolerance of Protestants, if the forms it took were less cruel than those practiced by the Roman catholic, was also far less defensible; for it had seldom anything better to allege on its behalf than motives of political expediency, or more often the mere headstrong passion of a ruler or a faction, to silence the expression of any opinions but their own.... And hence it is not too much to say that the ideas ...regarding the duty of the magistrate to compel uniformity in doctrine and worship by the civil arm, may all be traced to the relation which that theory established between the Roman Church and the Roman Empire; to the conception, in fact, of an empire Church itself.” ^{32[Page 803] “Holy Roman Empire,” chap 18, par 8.}ECE 802.3

85. In the promulgation of the principles of Protestantism, and in the work of the Reformation, the names of MARTIN LUTHER and ROGER WILLIAMS can never rightly be separated. Williams completed what Luther began; and together they gave anew to the world, and for all time, the principles originally announced by Him who was the Author and Finisher of the faith of both—JESUS CHRIST, THE AUTHOR OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.ECE 803.1