The Age of Reason is a free Bible study/Christian history that shows how and why modern Christianity became apostate. |
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Having examined the philosophical,
educational, and legal climate that contributed to the Enlightened ideology of
Christians in the American British colonies, let’s now turn our attention to
what was going on in the churches those Christians attended.
Early in the 1700s a religious revival
known as the Great Awakening took place in the colonies. It was nothing sudden
or dramatic, it was more of a gradual increase in
church attendance than anything else. The reason for the increased interest in
“Christianity” was the ideological war of words going on in politics, on street
corners, and in pulpits. As we have already seen, the Protestant Reformation
was driven primarily by nationalism fostered by geographic differences – not by
Biblical doctrine. Protestant rebellion had been in the air and the prospect of
giving the Italian pope a black eye was appealing. Because the Protestant
Rebellion was justified by philosophy rather than Bible doctrine, the early
Protestant preachers delivered many sermons that “justified” rebellion against
froward rulers. Instead of quietly deciding to Take
a hike! like Joseph and Mary and the Pilgrims,
Protestant Christians chose rebellion, which, if they were interested in
justifying their actions with Scripture, was the single worst course of action
they could have taken. Rebellion is antichrist. Rebellion is Satanic. Rebellion
is witchcraft. Oh, rebellion is in the Bible – but it’s always bad. Therefore
the Bible had nothing to do with the Protestant Reformation, the English Civil
War, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, or the American Civil War.
In each of those conflicts you may pick and choose whatever side you like
and/or agree with all you want, but from a Biblical and Christian perspective
the side that rebelled against authority was the most wrong it is possible to
be: No matter what God does and no matter what you and Lucifer think or want,
it is always wrong to rebel against Him in any way. And that basic, fundamental
principle of authority is supposed to govern the way all Christians think and
act – according to the Bible – because all authority is of God.
Because the Bible condemned their actions
it was Natural for Protestants to embrace the Enlightenment so they could
justify themselves before men. After all, hadn’t Reason been an official part
of Christianity since Aquinas?
The preachers in the British colonies in
America were merely doing what is routinely done today in pulpits across the
country; they combined Enlightened politics with a
Bible sermon in order to dress their political agenda, which in this case was
rebellion of all things, in Christian garb. It worked: Christian attendance was
down when just the Bible was the topic, but when the topic was world events
Christians flocked to church (1 Jn 4:5).
The Rev. Charles G. Finney – just like
his Protestant forefather, Martin Luther – believed and preached that political
involvement was part of serving God: “Politics are a part of religion,
and Christians must do their duty to their country as a part of their
duty to God.” For another example of preaching that came from Greek philosophy
rather than the word of God, read the following points made by a New England
minister in 1717: “…origin of civil power is the people in a Natural
state…the purpose of government is the will of the people…the sovereign
is not to deprive them of their Rights and Liberties, and the prince who
strives to do so is the traitor and the rebel and not the people who are merely
defending what is theirs…the objective of all government is to cultivate
Humanity, promote Happiness, preserve Rights, life, estate, and honor.”
For a full Bible-based sermon, which
outlined the doctrinal position of the Protestant churches using chapter and
verse, we review the following famous and popular sermon preached by Rev.
Jonathan Mayhew in 1750. Mayhew was a graduate of Harvard College (which, as we
have seen took stern measures against any students who showed signs of
“enthusiastic Christianity”) and was the pastor of Boston’s West Church. Mayhew
is the one who invented the popular slogan used to clamor against the
government and to incite an armed rebellion, No taxation without representation! Our f-ing
father, President John Adams, called Mayhew a “transcendent genius.” After Rev.
Mayhew had everybody stand for the reading of Ro 13:1-7, he began his
sermon. Let’s open our Bibles and pull up a pew: (The notes I made sometimes do
not contain paragraph breaks. Either they didn’t appear in whatever
source I used, or I neglected to include them. If that is an inconvenience, I
am sorry.)
I have examined the Scripture in order to lay it
before you, not doubting but you will judge upon everything with the same
Spirit of Freedom and Liberty with which it is spoken… It is God’s will that
rulers are vested with authority for the well-being of society, and the sole
end of government is the Happiness of society. Disobedience to rulers is not
merely a political sin but a heinous offense against God and religion. The true
ground and reason for our subjection to the higher powers is that it assists
magistracy in its function of being subservient to the general welfare.
Obedience is required only to those rulers who comply with the sole end of all
government – the good of society. There is one very important point which
remains, namely the extent of that subjection to the higher powers, which is
here enjoined as a duty upon all Christians. Some have thought it warrantable
and glorious to disobey the civil powers in certain circumstances and, in cases
of very great oppression, to rise unanimously against even the sovereign
himself in order to redress grievances; to vindicate their Natural and legal
rights; to break the yoke of tyranny and free themselves from servitude and
ruin… Although this Scripture is delivered in absolute terms without any
exception or limitation, it is Reasonable to suppose that the apostle
directed these verses only against those vain persons who imagined that
they as Christians owed no allegiance at all to civil
governments, but only to church governments. And, agreeably to this
supposition, we find that he argues the usefulness of civil magistracy in
general, and so deduces the general obligation of submission to it.
Therefore, the duty of specific and unlimited obedience cannot be
argued from the general scope of the passage. And the apostle here we
find to be not in favor of submission to all rulers, but only to
those who actually rule properly by exercising a Reasonable and Just authority
for the good of human society. This is a point which it will be proper to
enlarge upon because the question before us turns very much upon the truth or
falsehood of this position. It is obvious that the rulers whom the apostle here
speaks of, and obedience to whom he presses upon Christians as a duty, are only
the good rulers, such as are benefactors to society. But how does
this argument conclude for paying taxes to such princes as are continually
endeavoring to ruin the public, when such are not God’s ministers but Satan’s?
They have no Natural and Just claim to obedience. It is hoped that those who
have any regard to the apostle’s character and Common Sense, will not represent
him as Reasoning in such a loose, incoherent manner and drawing conclusions
which destroy the public welfare and are a common pest to society. Thus, upon a
careful review of the apostle’s Reasoning, his arguments enforce submission only
to rulers which rule for the good of society. Common tyrants and public
oppressors are not entitled to obedience. If, for example, our king turns
tyrant, we are bound to throw off our allegiance to him and resist according to
the tenor of the apostle’s arguments in this passage. Not to resist would be to
join with the sovereign in promoting the slavery and misery of society. It is
true the apostle puts no case of such a tyrannical prince, but it is plain
he implicitly authorizes and even requires us to make resistance
whenever this shall be necessary to the public Safety and Happiness. The divine
right of kings and the so-called Biblical doctrine of nonresistance are
altogether as ridiculous as transubstantiation. A people really oppressed by
their sovereign have, like the Hesperian fruit, a dragon for their keeper, and
would have no reason to mourn if some Hercules should appear and violently
dispatch him. [Mayhew is here using a story in Greek mythology to make a point:
The Hesperides (daughters of a Greek god) represent
us Christians who are entrusted with preserving the magic fruit, which represents
the sacred principles of Greek philosophy like Reason and Happiness. If the
evil dragon guarding the fruit (King George taxing the colonists) were
violently slain by some Hero, Happiness would return.] For a nation thus abused
to resist the prince, even to the dethroning him, is
not criminal but a Reasonable way of vindicating their Natural Liberties and
Rights: it is making use of the means God has provided for self defense, and it
would be highly criminal not to make use of this means. And in such a
case it would be more Rational to suppose that they who did not resist would
receive to themselves damnation. To conclude, let us all learn to be Free. Let
us not profess ourselves vassals to the lawless pleasure of any man on earth.
But let us remember at the same time that Fair government is sacred and not to
be trifled with. Let us prize our Freedom but not use our Liberty for a cloak
of maliciousness. Extremes are dangerous. And while I am speaking of loyalty to
our earthly prince, suffer me just to put you in mind to be loyal also to the
Supreme Ruler of the Universe by whom kings reign and princes decree justice [Pv 8:15]. To which King, even to the only
wise God be all honor, praise, and thanksgiving, through Jesus Christ our Lord,
Amen.
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In order to see if this Harvard-educated
Protestant preacher really was the “transcendent genius” when it comes to the
Bible that President Adams said he was, let’s examine a single sentence from
his sermon that sums up his position: “And the apostle here we find to be not
in favor of submission to all rulers, but only to those who actually
rule properly by exercising a Reasonable and Just authority for the good of
human society.” The Pharisees were rulers of human society (Jn
3:1). Christ knew they were evil vipers (Mt 12:34) who transgressed
the Bible, worshipped God in vain, and were blind rulers leading human society
into the ditch (Mt 15:3,9,14) with false doctrine (Mt 16:6,12).
These evil rulers ruined the earthly lives of people, took people to hell with
them, and were full of extortion, excess, uncleanness, hypocrisy, and iniquity
(Mt 23:14,15,25-28). They murdered their own people, were of the devil,
and were liars (Jn 8:40,44,55).
Knowing how bad these rulers were, the Lord commanded the Christian multitude (Mt
23:1) to submissively and obediently do all and whatsoever the
evil rulers said (Mt 23:3). The second word in v.3 will tell you why
it was right for Christians to submit to evil rulers; the word therefore
refers to v.2, which says the evil rulers were to be obeyed because they
were in positions of authority. All authority is of God and is to be obeyed.
And then Christ went on to teach people to obey those evil rulers but
not to be like them. Obviously, Rev. Mayhew and his theology teachers missed/ignored verses like these that destroy the
arguments for and the revolutionary tenants of democracy. And so have all the
preachers and pewsters since. That is why Mayhew’s
false doctrine of just-cause clamoring and rebellion (which springs from covetousness) has survived, thrived, and
become gospel to all modern churches – including the one you attend. In order
to not be like evil preachers we must “search the Scriptures daily, whether
their teachings be so” (Ac 17:11),
because not only does God punish false prophets (Je 14:14,15), He also punishes those who
hear them (Je 14:16).
Rev. Mayhew’s treatment of Romans 13 was
no different from that in many other sermons around the thirteen small colonies
that were preached in support of the hot issue of rebellion. In fact, the f-ing fathers owned reprinted copies of A Defense of
Liberty Against Tyrants by Junius
Brutus, which also twisted Romans 13 in order to bring it into agreement with
the overriding Natural Law. I don’t know who this “Junius
Brutus” was. The real Junius Brutus was the Roman who
despised Julius Caesar’s monarchy and became a leader of those who assassinated
Caesar (“Et tu, Brute?”) in order to install a
republican government. Because it was usual during the buildup to rebellion to
use an assumed name when publishing treasonous material, it is probably correct
to assume the Christian author of Defense of Liberty Against
Tyrants chose this clever pen name.
In order to be “fair”, we’ll also examine
the arguments of those unenlightened Christians who espoused “enthusiastic
religion” and rejected the new Rational approach to
the Bible. One such preacher who refuted the revolutionary spirit of the Great
Awakening “revival” was Rev. Jonathan Boucher. On this hot topic he declared
“to suffer grievances nobly is proper, while to disobey the established
government is simply to resist the ordinances of God.” His preaching was
offensive to the f-ing fathers, who had nothing
charitable to say about him. Boucher responded to the threats of physical
violence against him by preaching his sermons armed with a brace of loaded
pistols. But he was finally driven from the colonies in September 1775 by
elements allied with the Sons of Liberty. In other words, the “freedom of
religion” so cherished by the majority of colonists only applied to Enlightened religion – and Christians like Rev.
Boucher who dared to preach the unpopular truth of the Bible and to call upon
God’s people to repent were openly despised, reviled, rejected, and not welcome
in America.
Rev. Boucher’s sermons used the same
Scripture commonly used to justify Enlightened
principles, but he tried to show that the verses did not do so. In
addition to Ro 13:1-7, he used Ga 5:1
because Republican Christians loved the fact that it says, “Stand fast,
therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ has set us free.”
There’s a preacher striding up to the podium now with a King James Bible and
two guns. That must be Boucher – let’s listen:
The liberty here spoken of denoted an exemption
from the burdensome services of the ceremonial law, manumission from the
bondage of the weak and beggarly elements of the world, and an admission into
the covenant of grace. It means freedom not from servitude, but from the
servitude of sin. The only true liberty is the liberty of servitude to
God; for His service is perfect freedom. Ga 5:1
cannot, without infinite perversion and torture, be made to refer to any other
kind of liberty, much less to that liberty of which every man now talks –
though few really understand it. The word liberty, as meaning civil
liberty, does not occur in all the Scriptures. The liberty in the
Scriptures is wholly of the spiritual or religious kind. This liberty is the
result of the new religion of the New Testament, which certainly gave them no
new civil privileges. They remained subject to the governments under which they
lived just as they had before they became Christians, and just as others who
never became Christians, with this difference only: The duty of submission and
obedience to government was enjoined on the converts to Christ with new and
stronger sanctions. The doctrines of the Gospel make no alteration in the
nature or form of civil government, but rather enforce afresh upon all
Christians that obedience is due to the respective governments of every nation
in which they may happen to live. Obedience to government is every man’s duty,
but it is particularly incumbent on Christians because it is enjoined by the
positive [written] command of God; and, therefore, when Christians are
disobedient to human authority they are also disobedient to God.
Liberty is not in making our own wills the rule of our actions; it is in being
governed. It is often laid down as a settled maxim that the end of
government is “the common good of mankind.” I am not sure that the position
itself is indisputable, but if it were it would by no means follow that
government must therefore be instituted by common consent. There is an appearance
of Logical accuracy and precision in this statement, but it is only an
appearance. The position is vague and loose and is made without an attempt to
prove it. This popular notion that government was originally
formed by the consent or by a compact of the people rests on, and is supported
by, the notion of Equality. The position is false. Kings and princes,
far from deriving their authority from any supposed consent of men, receive
their commission from God, the source and origin of all power. No matter
how obsolete either the sentiment or the language may now be deemed, it is with
the most perfect propriety that the supreme civil magistrate, whether called an
emperor, a king, an archon, a dictator, a consul, or a senate, is to be
regarded, venerated, and obeyed as the vice regent of God. As Christians we owe
civil obedience to our civil rulers even though they should happen to be
oppressors, just as we owe religious obedience to the King of kings whether or
not we always agree with Him. This inquiry concerning the divine origin and
authority of government might have been deemed rather curious were it not for
some popular dangerous inferences to the contrary. One of these dangerous
inferences comes from the assumption that government is a mere human
institution, the inference being that “rulers are the servants of the people”,
which validates resistance and rebellion. It really is a striking feature in
our national history [Great Britain] that, ever since the Revolution [the
Glorious Revolution of 1688 in Britain], hardly any person has preached or
published a sermon without taking a stand against the previously common
doctrine of passive obedience and nonresistance. And even though the new “right
of resistance” has incessantly been delivered from the pulpit, insisted on by
orators, and inculcated by statesmen, the contrary position is still the
dictate of religion and is certainly still the doctrine of the established
church. All government is absolute and irresistible. The injunction to render
unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s is very comprehensive, implying that
unless we are good subjects we cannot be good Christians.
However, our paramount duty is to God, to whom we are to render the things that
are God’s. If, therefore, a case should occur in which the performance of both these
obligations becomes incompatible, it is our duty to obey God rather than men.
Our obedience to civil government in that case is to be passive rather than
active. Active obedience is required when duty may be performed without
offending God; passive obedience is required when that which is commanded by
man is forbidden by God. In passive obedience the Christian disobeys civil
authority only by not doing, while obeying God by not rebelling against civil
authority and by passively submitting to any penalties incurred by his
disobedience to man as Christ [and Daniel and Joseph in Egypt] did when accused
and tried unjustly. It will afford you no pleasure to be reminded that it is on
account of an insignificant duty on tea, imposed by the Parliament, and which
may or may not be constitutionally imposed that people resist and rebel! Let it
be supposed, however, that the three pennies a pound upon tea laid on by
Parliament is a grievance. What, in such a case, would I advise you to do?
Advice, alas, is all I have to give. My brethren, what better can you do than, following the apostle’s commands, to submit
yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake; whether it be to the king as supreme, or unto governors as unto them
that are sent by him. For so is the will of God, that with well-doing you may
put to silence the ignorance of foolish men; as free and not using your liberty
as a cloak of maliciousness but as the servants of God. Honor all men, love the
brotherhood, fear God, honor the King.
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Amen, brother! That’s good preaching!
Although doctrinally Boucher’s sermon was as straight as his gun barrels, it
lacked the ear-tickling appeal of this popular 1774 newspaper article entitled,
On the Depravity of Kings and the True Sovereignty of the People. At the
end of the article notice the open hostility towards conservative Christians
who rejected the unscriptural ideology of the Age of Reason:
Has the Impartial God of the Universe given
power, wisdom, justice, and mercy to kings only, and denied the least portion
of them to every other class of mankind? [How any Christian can write that
sentence without thinking of Nu 16:3 is beyond me. We covered this exact
situation/Scripture on page H2-5.] Let history decide that question: The
history of kings is nothing but the history of the folly and depravity of human
nature… The American Continental Congress, however, derives all its power,
wisdom, and justice not from kings but from you the people. A more august and
equitable legislative body than you never existed. Congress is founded upon the
Principles of the most perfect Liberty. A man by honoring and obeying the Congress, honors and obeys himself. The man who refuses to
honor Congress is a Slave who rejects the Dignity of Human Nature by refusing
to govern himself. Sell him and send him
to plant sugar with his fellow slaves in Jamaica, and let not the pure air of
democracy be contaminated with his breath!
And now we’ll examine a report made by
British statesman Edmund Burke (Burke was an influential member of Dr. Samuel
Johnson’s inner circle. Johnson published his famous Dictionary in 1755,
and was the dominating literary figure of his time.) to
the House of Commons in 1775 about the ideological outlook of the colonists.
His report is a favorable one: He is saying the colonists, like the people of
England, are motivated by a love for Natural Liberty. But three things in his
report are of interest to us. One is his analysis of Protestantism – that its
true birthplace and foundation is philosophy, which makes it unalterably
opposed to monarchy (also called absolutism and arbitrary government). The
second is the zeal among colonists to learn the philosophical tenets of
Nature’s Law contained in Blackstone’s Commentaries. And the third is the
fact that morality and religion are believed to be the same. Let’s don our
powdered wigs and listen to this Parliamentary report:
…Religion…their mode of professing it is also one
main cause of this Spirit of Freedom. The people are Protestants, which is the most
adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a
persuasion [religion] not only favorable to Liberty, but built upon it.
I do not think, Sir, that the reason for this averseness in the
Protestant churches to all that looks like absolute government is so
much to be found in their religious tenets, as in history… The Protestant
interests have sprung up in direct opposition to all the ordinary powers
[of civil and religious government] of the world and can justify that
opposition only on a strong claim to Natural Liberty. Their very
existence depended on the powerful and unremitted assertion of that claim.
All Protestantism, even the most cold and passive, is a sort of dissent.
The religion most prevalent in our colonies is but a refinement on the
principles of resistance; it is the dissidence of dissent, and the protestantism of the Protestant
religion. This religion, under a variety of denominations,
agree in nothing but in the communion of the Spirit of Liberty.
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Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in
our colonies which contributes no mean part towards the growth of this spirit.
In no country perhaps in the world is the Law so general a study. All who read
– and most do read – endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science. I have
been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch
of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those
on the Law exported to the colonies. The colonists have now fallen into the way
of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many
of Blackstone’s Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage
[Commander of British forces in North America and Governor of Massachusetts]
marks out this distinction very particularly in a letter on your table… In
order to prove that the Americans have no right to their Liberties, we are
every day endeavoring to subvert the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of
our own Liberties. To prove that the Americans ought not to be Free, we are
obliged to depreciate the value of Freedom itself for which our ancestors shed
their blood. We cannot falsify the pedigree of the colonists and persuade them
that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of Freedom
circulates… There is not one of us who would not risk his life rather than fall
under a government purely arbitrary. Man acts from motives relative to his
interest, and not on religious speculations. Aristotle, the Great Master
of Reasoning, cautions us with great weight and propriety against delusive moral
arguments as the most fallacious of all sophistry.
By
now you should have a pretty good idea why so many sermons dealt with tenets of
Greek philosophy and used so many allusions to Greek and Roman mythology. And
you should understand that the foundation of Protestantism is the wicked
belief that protesting, resisting, clamoring, and rebelling against evil
authorities such as the Pharisees, Pharaoh, Herod, and Nebuchadnezzar is
pleasing to God. In other words, the main tenant of Protestantism – indeed, the
very tenant that gave Protestantism its name – came from Roman Catholicism’s
acceptance of pagan philosophy. Philosophy did not become the cornerstone of
Western civilization’s legal systems and governments by accident; it appeared
first in the church. Christians first heard (and still hear today) Enlightened
principles from the pulpit and took them to work with them. The role of Enlightened preachers cannot be overstated in the
development of Western civilization in general and the American Revolution in
particular. The Western fires of modern Freedom were kindled by Ambrose and
Augustine, kept alive by Abelard and Albertus Magnus,
spread across Europe by Aquinas, incorporated into Protestant political
activism by Luther and Calvin, and used by American Great Awakening pastors to
start a Revolution that would produce the greatest, most influential and
far-reaching secular democracy in the history of the world.