Cylchgronau Cymru

THE WELSH CALmiSTIC METHODIST RECORD. JUNE, 1852. THE GROUND OF MAN'S RESPONSIBILITY TO GOD FOR HIS RELIGIOUS' BELIEF. This must be sought for in the position of man as a subject of the divine government. That position is the ground of responsibility in general and must therefore include this particular aspect of it. We shall presently see how his responsibility for his religious belief naturally arises out of his position. Every human government proposes some great ends for itself. These maybe, for instance, the protection of the lives, property, and, to some degree, the characters of the subjects. Each subject must contribute his share towards the attainment of these ends, or the government and the subject will be in opposition to each other, and constant confusion and misery will be the consequence. That the government and the subject may understand each other and cordially co-operate, they agree to enact certain laws, by which the government and the subject may alike know their duty in the attainment of the common ends. But fully to ensure such co-operation these laws must be known and understood, and their inherent justness and adaptation to the securing of the ends proposed, must be admitted by every subject. The subject neglects an important duty, if he wilfully remains so ignorant of these laws, at least in their main requirements, as necessarily to cause his movements to clash with the great ends of government. These remarks will apply, with more or less propriety, to all human governments, but with special force to the moral government of God, with this exception: in God's government he is the sole source of its laws. Imperfections in human laws, and an evident unfitness in some of them for the attainment of the ends proposed, frequently justify some amount of disaffection and of peaceful agitation on the part of the subject, that the obnoxious laws may be repealed or modified. But the laws of God are perfect as the mind from which they sprung, therefore the slightest breach of them cannot be justified. These laws are so thoroughly consistent with ffc