In my opinion, Sir, a magistrate, whenever he goes to put any restraint upon religious freedom, can only do it upon this ground,--that the person dissenting does not dissent from the scruples of ill-informed conscience, but from a party ground of dissension, in order to raise a faction in the state.
Burke discusses the limits of a magistrate's authority in matters of religious dissent, emphasizing the importance of conscience.
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The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable.
The people of England will not ape the fashions they have never tried, nor go back to those which they have found mischievous on trial.
Do they mean to attaint and disable backwards all the kings that have reigned before the Revolution, and consequently to stain the throne of England with the blot of a continual usurpation?
All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for…
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