Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 2

[291] and State, and therefore must, in the order of events, be overthrown by influencing Church and State to cease from their oppression. In order that the Church may be purified, it does not require abolitionists to be united with any such organization; for such a requisition it has no right to exact. In order that the State may be reformed, it addresses itself only to those who feel that they are bound to participate in State affairs; for it may not coerce or violate the conscience of any man who, from religious scruples, refuses to connect himself with the Church, or to mingle in the political strifes of the State. It simply condemns men out of their own mouths—measures them by their own acknowledged standard of action—sentences them according to their own confessions of guilt. “For though it be¹ free from all men, yet it is made servant unto all, that it may gain the more.” “And unto the Jew, it becomes as a Jew; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that it may gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law [” no-human-government men! “], as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ), that it might gain them that are without law.” Its language to one class is, “Ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear² the law?” To another class, “Stand fast, therefore, in the³ liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free.” In short, it enforces its claim upon all orders and conditions of men, irrespective of their views of religion or politics. It predicates the duty of ecclesiastical or political action, not upon the inherent excellence of ecclesiastical or civil organizations, but upon the fact of their existence as props of the slave system, and upon the views and professions of those who are allied to them by choice.

2. As individuals, abolitionists may utter sentiments which, in their associated capacity, they may not express. He who becomes an abolitionist, is under no obligation to change his views respecting the duty of going to the polls, or of belonging to a sect; they are those of an individual, and not binding at all upon any other member of the anti-slavery society. But if the society itself presume to endorse those views as sound and obligatory upon all its members, then it violates the spirit of its own constitution; or, if not, then it is not true that it welcomes to its aid all men, of whatever creed or party, and hence does not stand upon “the broad ground of a common humanity.” This distinction between the liberty of an individual,