Consent

Consent is the foundation of all contracts and legal obligations. The doctrine that the free consent of the parties bound, and not the will of any earthly legislator, or the form in which that will is expressed, constitutes the binding element in contracts, flows as an inevitable logical consequence from the doctrines of personal and political freedom. All that either civil or ecclesiastical authority can do is to ascertain, at the instance of one or other of the parties, whether consent has or has not been given.