Episode 432 - Civil War: Part 2 - Church and State Theological Polity Muddle

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With all that is happening at the border and more, I delve into the present rumblings of Civl War – Part 2 – Church and State Theological Polity Muddle. I finish with Mayhew, who discusses what civil war would do to the nation. Remember that the Colonies were part of the nation of Great Britain. The American Revolution was actually a Civil War. Consider Reference #1 by John Kudla below.Mayhew does delve into what it is to ultimately understand God given Rights and act accordingly to preserve them?

Our Citizenry, for the most part, have no realistic clue as to the fundamentals of God given Rights. Those bellowing and blowing in the wind are humanistic statists, on the ‘left’ and ‘right’. Therefore they view Rights relativistically, having no moral order from the existence of a Biblical God who is active in His creation. Therefore, unlike the Citizens during the founding era, indigenous (the Webster 1828 definition) US Citizens are not prepared for Civil War or even defending the Republic from political enemies and those now here from the border invasion (read This Weeks News Articles Resources #2.)

Mayhew establishes the ‘Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate’ in how the Stamp Act was addressed. What does that mean for us when the Citizenry and those serving in any level of government activities have zero to limited comprehension of how to apply this foundational truth?

Ezra Stiles opened his sermon, which we will discuss next week, with:

These events have been so ordered as to become a display of retribution and sovereignty; for, while the good and evil hitherto felt by this people have been dispensed in the way of exact national retribution, their ultimate glory and honor will be of the divine sovereignty, with a “Not for your sakes do I this, saith the Lord, be it known unto you, but for mine holy name’s sake.”

What Stiles preached is very true even for our present situations.

It is necessary to note that Mayhew takes a lot of time attempting to reconcile the Colonist to the King and Parliament. And then he moves to develop the following, from the sermon:

‘Let none suspect that, because I thus urge the duty of cultivating a close harmony with our mother country, and a dutiful submission to the king and Parliament, our chief grievances being redressed, I mean to dissuade people from having a just concern for their own rights, or legal, constitutional privileges. History, one may presume to say, affords no example of any nation, country or people, long free, who did not take some care of themselves; and endeavor to. guard and secure their own liberties. Power is of a grasping, encroaching nature, in all beings, except in Him to whom it emphatically “belongeth;” and who is the only king that, in a religious or moral sense,”can do no wrong.” Power aims at extending itself, and operating according to mere will, wherever it meets with no balance, check, control or opposition of any kind. For which reason it will always be necessary, as was said before, for those who would preserve and perpetuate their liberties, to guard them with a wakeful attention; and in all righteous, just and prudent ways, to oppose the first encroachments on them. “Obsta principiis. (Obstacles to principles)” After a while it will be too late. For in the states and kingdoms of this world, it happens as it does in the field or church, according to the well-known parable, to this purpose that while men sleep, then the enemy cometh and soweth tares, which cannot be rooted out again till the end of the world, without rooting out the wheat with them.’

Opening Comments

In considering Civil War, what are the ‘doctrines of civil liberty?’ Few of our fellow citizens have the knowledge, understanding and wisdom regarding that which Mayhew discusses. We have desensitized our last two generations as to what real civil liberty is. We have withheld the just the deep education of liberty as taught by ‘such men as Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero and other renowned persons among the ancients; and such as Sidney and Milton, Locke and Hoadley.’ Worse, the pulpits have withheld what Mayhew preached that that he ‘learned from the Holy Scriptures that wise, brave and virtuous men were always friends to liberty.’ And also Mayhew preached, ‘…that the Son of God came down from heaven to make us “free indeed,” and that where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty; this made me conclude, that freedom was a great blessing. Having, also, from my childhood up, by the kind providence of my God, and the tender care of a good parent now at rest with Him, been educated to the love of liberty, though not of licentiousness, which chaste and virtuous passion was still increased in me as I advanced toward and into manhood; I would not, I cannot now, though past middle age, relinquish the fair object of my youthful affections. Liberty; whose charms, instead of decaying with time in my eyes, have daily captivated me more and more.’

In our present age, we have no right to Civil War nor do we have the context to even use the phrase for any engagement we are encountering that is in fact ‘moral / sinful’ determinable beliefs. There are those using the phrase but in what context? Some think we are already in a Civil War (article #12) but are we?

In respect to history and the present, Mayhew’s sermon was delivered at the repeal of the Stamp Act. Therefore he finishes with words of reconciliation and unification in good governance within the scope of constitutionalism, Magna Charta, as well as the watchful care of protecting Liberty and God given Rights.

Unfortunately, Mayhew died the same year in which this sermon was delivered, 1766. He did not see the immediate troubles that came with the Townshend Acts of 1767 and 1768, which were again egregious taxes on the Colonies.

Final point

In our present day, the United States Administrative Corporative Globalist State has exceeded the combined Parliamentary actions of Colonial Britain by an order of magnitude. Yet we must adhere to our Constitutional means of remonstrance, petition and accountability. But this must be lead by the pulpits with reformation in the Christian religion to that which was in the Founding era, then we will have a unified educated Citizenry again that can fully engage in standing up for our Liberties as intended.