Likely a cursory review of American history will reveal the same thing. However, a cursory review of where true liberty has arisen in the world will prove the words of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court true. Like the defense counsel in the case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, I suspect that most Americans believe that Christianity would more likely lead to despotism than liberty. Unfortunately, Holmes and others like him have convinced most Americans, including many, if not most, Christians in America, that Christianity cannot be the basis of our laws. It seems that Holmes would have us look to nothing beyond the power of the sovereign for our law and our liberty. 457 (1897), he argues that morality itself should be separated from the consideration of law as well. In fact, in his famous The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. Holmes was undoubtedly arguing for the elimination of not only the idea of a natural or higher law behind the common law, but the elimination of Christianity as a basis for law altogether. Waiving all questions of hereafter, it is the purest system of morality, the firmest auxiliary, and only stable support of all human laws. Its foundations are broad and strong, and deep they are laid in the authority, the interest, the affections of the people. It is not proclaimed by the commanding voice of any human superior, but expressed in the calm and mild accents of customary law. Christianity is part of the common law of this state. So far from Christianity, as the counsel contends, being part of the machinery necessary to despotism, the reverse is the fact. No free government now exists in the world, unless where Christianity is acknowledged, and is the religion of the country.
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