Evidently, then, the pretension that the Reformation has founded or favored religious liberty is as worthless as we have seen is the pretension that it has founded or favored civil and political liberty. It has, on the contrary, uniformly opposed it, and asserted only the liberty of its contradiction. To assert the liberty of the state, the people, or the individual to control religion, or to assert the liberty of infidelity or no-religion, surely is not to assert the liberty of religion. Protestantism yields always to the spirit of the age, and asserts the right of that spirit to modify, alter, or subject religion to itself. There can be no religious liberty where religion must follow the spirit of the times, and change as it changes. Religion, if any thing, is the supreme law of conscience, and conscience is a mere name if obliged to obey as its supreme law the dominant passion or tendency of the age or nation. The freedom of conscience is not in the emancipation of conscience from all law, for that were its destruction; but in its being subjected to no law but the law of God, promulgated by divine authority, and declared to the understanding by God himself, or a court appointed, enlightened, and assisted by the Holy Spirit. Under Protestantism there is and can be no freedom of conscience; for under it conscience is either destroyed by being subjected to no law, or enslaved by being subjected to another law than the law of God. This conclusion, which we obtain by a simple analysis of Protestantism, is confirmed by all the facts in the case. Every student of the history of Protestantism knows that the reformers never made the pretension now put forth in their name. No man was ever farther from proposing the emancipation of the mind from what is called spiritual thraldom than Martin Luther, and no man ever showed less respect for human reason. His aim was to emancipate the church from the authority of the pope; and in this laudable work he engaged the princes of the empire, who were ready to assist him, because in doing so they could also emancipate themselves, make themselves pontiffs as well as princes, and enrich themselves with the spoils of the church. But Luther substituted for the authority of the pope and councils that of the written word, as amended and interpreted by himself. He never recognized the so-called right of private judgement, and never asserted the right of every man to interpret the written word for himself. The Bible as interpreted by himself, Martin Luther, was to be taken in all cases as the supreme and only authority, and he would tolerate no dissent from his interpretation. He assumed for himself more than papal authority; for he confessedly assumed authority to alter the written word, which assuredly no pope ever did. He never admitted any right of dissent from his dicta, and wherever he could, he suppressed it by the strong arm of power.