The Difference between Liberty and License

When we restrain a child by holding his hand firmly against his struggles to escape, we
restrict his liberty.

When we tell him to look both ways before crossing the street, we give him liberty and a
certain amount of license. Liberty is freedom to do. License is freedom to do without
guilt.

The extent of man's liberty is determined by a number of factors. His health, his social
skills, his society, his government, and his parents may all pose a restricting force on his
liberty.

Our moral license is defined in the Ten Commandments. Here love is given form and is
distinguished from sentimentalism and universalism. One wiser than man has given a
perfect moral code.

With have liberty to disobey. We do not have license to disobey.

The Bible exposes disobedience as a snare. Bondage to sin, we are told by Peter, is
pawned off as liberty. But sin restricts a man's ability to do. His ability to believe is
weakened. His ability to experience self-control and truest joy is reduced. Slaves to sin
have less liberty than their freed counterparts.

But both classes have equal license.

Yet a scant four pages later, Phillips writes:

When Adam fell from that state of perfection, the human family inherited his guilt (p.
21).

This, Kevin, seems like circular proof. To the person who doesn't believe in the necessary
connection of personal disobedience and guilt, this evidence will not appear to contrast
with your other citations of his book regarding victory over sin.

Phillips claims elsewhere, “There is no evidence in the Word of God that sinful nature
can ever be obedient to God!” (p. 104), and that “sinful nature cannot be controlled,
modified, or improved in any way” (p. 130, italics original).

If this is true, the Ellen White statements quoted by Phillips on p. 17—which clearly deny
that anyone can be forced to sin—are plainly contradicted by his own statements. If every
baby is a sinner from birth, then the tempter has compelled that baby to do evil merely by
the fact of birth.
You have a good point here. Phillips misses the point that the "nature" he refers to often
most certainly can be modified and improved. It is not the nature of man, but the nature
of the unconverted heart, that is the subject of many of his quotations.

It is not saying that children inherit sin. What they inherit is its results. Read "are its" for
"is its".