# James Bannerman on popery and the rights of man



## Reformed Covenanter (Jan 26, 2021)

There are his rights of conscience, and more especially the right of judging for himself what is his duty and what his sin in reference to God, and of determining for himself what he shall believe as God’s truth, and what reject as man’s doctrine and commandment. There are the rights of his soul, and more especially the right to that salvation which his soul requires, and which is freely given him of God.

These are rights intimately spiritual nature, which are dearer and better to him than property or life; and these rights the Church of Rome, in the exercise of its ecclesiastical power, has rudely trampled on, or violently taken away. And the history of that Church tells on its every page, and in characters never to be effaced, that the spiritual power committed to it “for edification” has been turned “ to the destruction” of the body of Christ.

_First, _Popery has turned the power of the Church to the purposes of destruction, by violently taking away or rudely disregarding the rights of man, viewed as a rational and intellectual being. The right of every man to think and to judge for himself, and on his own responsibility, as a rational creature, Popery has taken away from its victims; and above all, the right to know God directly and immediately, by what God has made known of Himself, the Church of Rome has denied, and by its ecclesiastical power interdicted to its slaves. ...

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