She herself remains always the same in her constitution, her
authority, and her faith; but varies her discipline with the
variations of time and place. Many of her canons, very proper
and necessary in one age, cease to be so in another, and many
which are needed in the Old World would be out of place in the
New World. Under the American system, she can deal with the
people as free men, and trust them as freemen, because free men
they are. The freeman asks, why? and the reason why must be
given him, or his obedience fails to be secured. The simple
reason that the church commands will rarely satisfy him; he would
know why she commands this or that. The full-grown free man
revolts at blind obedience, and he regards all obedience as in
some measure blind for which he sees only an extrinsic command.
Blind obedience even to the authority of the church cannot be
expected of the people reared under the American system, not
because they are filled with the spirit of disobedience, but
because they insist that obedience shall be rationabile
obsequium, an act of the understanding, not of the will or the
affections alone. They are trained to demand a reason for the
command given them, to distinguish between the law and the person
of the magistrate. They can obey God, but not man, and they must
see that the command given has its reason in the Divine order, or
the intrinsic catholic reason of things, or they will not yield
it a full, entire, and hearty obedience.
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