There are people who take it upon themselves to decide for others their relationship to God and to the world, and there are people, the vast majority, who surrender this right to others and blindly believe what they are told. Both the former and the latter are equally at fault.
Another sort there be who, when they hear that all things shall be ordered, all things regulated and settled, nothing written but what passes through the custom-house of certain publicans that have the tonnaging and poundaging of all free-spoken truth, will straight give themselves up into your hands, make ‘em and cut ‘em out what religion ye please: there be delights, there be recreations and jolly pastimes that will fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream. What need they torture their heads with that which others have taken so strictly and so unalterably into their own purveying? These are the fruits which a dull ease and cessation of our knowledge will bring forth among the people. How goodly and how to be wished were such an obedient unanimity as this, what a fine conformity would it starch us all into!
I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks; the ghost of a linen decency yet haunts us.
— Milton
The moment the human being rejects his moral independence, the moment he begins to determine his obligations not according to his inner voice but according to the views of a particular class or party, the moment he shakes off his personal responsibility because he is but one of millions—from that moment, he loses his moral power. He begins to expect from other people that which only God can do, replacing divine power with the crude prescriptions of the human mind.
— Channing
We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish.
— Emerson
Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do you gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree produces good fruit, but the corrupt tree produces evil fruit. A good tree cannot produce evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not grow good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
— Matthew 7:15–20
A human being can make use of the tradition passed down to him from the wise and holy people of the past, but he must use his own reason to test the things that are being passed down to him, and decide what to discard and what to accept.
Everyone must establish their own relationship to God and the world.
