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Kingdom which is not of this world, the subjects of which are forbidden to fight.
As every human government is upheld by physical strength and its laws are enforced virtually at the point of the bayonet, we cannot hold any office which imposes upon its incumbent the obligation to compel men to do right on pain of imprisonment or death.
We therefore voluntarily exclude ourselves from every legislative and judicial body, and repudiate all human politics, worldly honors and stations of authority.
If we cannot occupy a seat in the legislature or on the bench, neither can we elect others to act as our substitutes in any such capacity.
It follows that we cannot sue any man at law to compel him by force to restore anything which he may have wrongfully taken from us or others; but if he has seized our coat, we shall surrender up our cloak rather than to subject him to punishment.
We believe that the penal code of the old covenant, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” has been abrogated by Jesus Christ, and that under the new covenant, the forgiveness instead of the punishment of enemies has been enjoined upon all his disciples in all cases whatsoever.
The history of mankind is crowded with evidences proving that physical coercion is not adapted to moral regeneration; that the sinful disposition of men can be subdued only by love; that evil can be exterminated from the earth only by goodness.
But while we shall adhere to the doctrine
Chicago: the Public Publishing Company, 1905.
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