OF CHRISTIAN LIBERTY AND LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE

1.  The liberty which Christ has purchased for believers under the Gospel, consists in their freedom from the guilt of sin and the condemning wrath of God, from the rigors and curse of the law, and in their deliverance from this present evil world, from the bondage to Satan, from dominion of sin, from the harm of afflictions, from the fear and sting of death, from the victory of the grave, and from everlasting damnation: as this liberty is also seen in their free access to God, and their ability to yield obedience to Him, not out of slavish fear, but a childlike love and willing mind.

All these freedoms were also common in substance to true believers under the Old Testament law; but under the New Testament the liberty of Christians is further enlarged, in their freedom from the yoke of a ceremonial law, to which the Jewish church was subjected, and in greater boldness of access to the throne of grace, and in fuller communications of the free Spirit of God, than believers under the law normally experienced.[1]

2.  God alone is Lord of the conscience, and has left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men which are in any thing contrary to His Word, or not contained in it.  Thus to believe such doctrines, or obey such commands out of conscience, is to betray true liberty of conscience; and the requiring of an implicit faith, an absolute and blind obedience, is to destroy liberty of conscience and reason also.[2]

3.  They, who upon pretence of Christian liberty practice any sin, or cherish any sinful lust, pervert the main design of the grace of the Gospel to their own destruction, so that they completely destroy the end of Christian liberty, which is that we, being delivered out of the hands of all our enemies, might serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our lives.[3]