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August 20: Election Day Sermon Series

20 August, 2016 in August 2016 by David_W_Hall | No comments

Britain’s Mercies and Britain’s Duty”
by George Whitefield  (Aug. 24, 1746)

Rev. George WhitefieldThe idea of unlimited submission to unjust government, especially to foreign British rule, was ablaze in America several generations prior to the revolution. Even the leading British evangelist of the Great Awakening, having come to America, weighed in on the subject. In a 1746 sermon, George Whitefield (1714-1770) invoked the same vocabulary as the earlier Reformers in speaking of the ruler as “a nursing Father of the church.” His Britain’s Mercies and Britain’s Duty exulted in “Protestant powers” as tokens of blessing given by the King of Kings.[1] Whitefield considered England blessed in having no “popish abjured pretender.” Employing the terminology of the Hebrew Psalter, he said, “if the Lord had not been on our side, Great Britain, not to say America, would, in a few weeks, or months, have been an Aceldama, a field of blood.” Had the “popish pretender” succeeded, Britain would not have been ruled by parliament but by “Arbitrary principles . . . sucked in with his mother’s milk.”[2] Whitefield also viewed his Protestant people as under obligation to hold fast to God’s commands. Like Mayhew, he stated that citizens were not obligated to submit to an unjust government.

But the chasm between Enlightenment conceptions of law and God’s law remained vast. There could be no progress in the future, and the classical models were disdained. Whitefield viewed God’s law as unimproveable, challenging: “Tell me, ye men of letters,” he asked, “whether Lycurgus or Solon, Pythagoras or Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, or all the ancient lawgivers and heathen moralists, put them all together, ever published a system of ethicks, any way worthy to be compared with the glorious system laid down” in Scripture.[3]

Had the Lord not providentially spared England from theological error, Whitefield thought the universities would have been ruined and pulpits filled with “freewill” and other antichristian doctrines. Protestant charity and influence would have diminished to the levels of impoverished England. Whitefield also associated the tyranny of Arminianism with a theology that worshipped classical idols like Diana and adored “unassisted unenlightened reason.” Like Calvin before him, Whitefield saw God at work throughout British history. He ascribed a military victory in England to the fasting and prayer of repentant Scottish ministers.

Whitefield, contrary to John Wesley, supported the independence of America. On one occasion, he even warned against English efforts to impose a bishop on North America. Prior to leaving America at the end of a 1764 crusade, Whitefield the Calvinist warned his spiritual compatriots that his heart bled for America. “O poor New England!” he exclaimed, “There is a deep laid plot against your civil and religious liberties, and they will be lost. Your golden days are at an end. . . . Your liberties will be lost.”[4] The cause of his fear was that Anglicans hoped to quell American independence by setting up a bishopric in America. That fear, combined with the outrage against the Stamp Act, which followed shortly thereafter, fired American attitudes against Britain even more. Whitefield, it turned out, was more loyal to Calvinism than to his British monarch; and he expected the worst.

Whitefield retained a great respect for America until the end of his life in 1770. This British Calvinist was eventually buried in an expatriate grave in Newburyport, Massachusetts. It is little wonder that he was still revered at the outset of the Revolutionary war. On one occasion, when a New England militia had set out on a disastrous attempt to invade Quebec, its commander, Benedict Arnold, prior to his traitor days, searched for a Holy Grail to encourage his soldiers. He led his officers down into the crypt where Whitefield’s remains lay. The officers stripped off Whitefield’s clerical collar and wristbands and distributed pieces of these relics to the soldiers as tokens of blessing. James H. Hutson observes of this episode: “The distribution of the Great amulets showed in its eerie way that men facing stress and anxiety wanted links to a preacher of a living God . . . One need look no farther for the reason evangelicalism demolished deism.”[5] Within weeks of his death, scores of memorial services were held for this British Calvinist who evangelized America.[6]

Like so many of these grandchildren of Calvin, he kept Genevan ideas alive and applied them to the American context. Stan Evans writes that American founders “faced the task of establishing a new political order of their own, rather than escaping one controlled by Whitehall; yet the concerns expressed about human frailty, and political power, continued exactly as before. Virtually everyone in our politics, it appears, was a believer in Original Sin, wherever he stood on the specific issues of the day. Simply reading statements on this topic, without other means of identification, one would have no idea at all as to what party or interest was being promoted.”[7] Many of the founders of modern western democracies were children of the Calvinist Reformation, not the Enlightenment Revolution.

This classic sermon is available in Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998). An online version is posted at: http://www.reformed.org/documents/index.html?mainframe=http://www.reformed.org/documents/Whitefield.html.

By Dr. David W. Hall, Pastor
Midway Presbyterian Church

For others like this order a copy of Twenty Messages to Consider Before Voting from Reformation Heritage Books.

[1] Ellis Sandoz, ed., Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730-1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 125.

[2] Ellis Sandoz, ed., Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730-1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 126. Whitefield detested the Arminian inroads to the Anglican Communion as heretical departures from Calvinism. His revival sermons were little more than “rehearsals of traditional Calvinist doctrine.” Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1966, 37. He insisted that “the constant Tenour of my preaching in America has been Calvinistical.” Idem. Non-Calvinist ministers were fearful of his emphasis on “Calvinistic Principles and [the] Doctrines of Grace.”

[3] Ellis Sandoz, ed., Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730-1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 134.

[4] Ellis Sandoz, ed., Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730-1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 120.

[5] James H. Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1998), 35. Geissler also reports that Aaron Burr visited the tomb of Whitefield and left with a relic. See Suzanne Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, Jr.: From the Great Awakening to Democratic Politics (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1981), 138.

[6] See Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1966, 142-143.

[7] M. Stanton Evans, The Theme is Liberty: Religion, Politics and the American Tradition (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1994), 99.

August 13: Election Day Sermon Series

13 August, 2016 in August 2016 by David_W_Hall | No comments

“As government is the pillar of the earth, so religion is the pillar of government. Take away the fear of God’s government and judgment and human rule utterly falls, or corrupts into tyranny.”

hallDWGuest author Dr. David W. Hall, pastor of Midway Presbyterian Church, returns today with the next post in his series of Election Day Sermons. We’re running this series for the obvious reason that we’re in an election year, and one clear lesson from these sermons is that in an earlier day, pastors routinely applied Biblical truths to the political situation at hand.

“Government the Pillar of the Earth”
by Benjamin Colman (Aug 13, 1730)

Another echo of Calvin’s continuing influence can be seen in the works of Benjamin Colman (1673-1747). Colman was an esteemed preacher who was offered the presidency of Harvard in 1724. He declined, however, preferring to devote himself to pastoral ministry. But in a 1730 sermon, Colman preached that, “Civil government is of divine institution.” Moreover, he maintained that God “commissions and entrusts” certain rulers by his sovereign will. In other words, the providence of God was a continuing reality in earthly politics, as it “disposed persons and offices” at God’s beckon. Colman called on political officials to “consider their obligations to be pillars in the places wherein Providence hath set them.”

The sermon outline, drawn from1 Samuel 2:8, is:

DOCTRINE. The Great GOD has made the Governments and Rulers of the Earth its Pillars, and has set the World upon them.

I. The Governments and Rulers of the Earth are its Pillars.

II. These Pillars of the Earth are the LORD’s.

III. GOD hath set the World upon the Governments and Rulers, whom He has made the Pillars of it.

USE. I shall now make a few Reflections, by way of practical Inference and Improvement.

It was preached before the local magistrate in August 1730, long before the revolutionary fervor reached its zenith. As such, it is a calm discourse, perhaps closer in tenor to Reformation political tracts than to the fiery preaching of the 1770s. He began with the observation about Samuel, to wit: “Great things are here said of God and of His Government in the families and kingdoms of men, and such wise and just observations are made as are worthy of deep contemplation by the greatest and best of men.”

He preached:

“We see then that the natural Earth has no pillars in any proper sense; neither has the moral Earth (i. e., the inhabitants of it) any, but in a metaphorical sense: And so the princes and rulers of it are called its pillars because the affairs of the world lie upon their shoulders and turn upon their conduct and management, in a very great degree. And thus the text explains itself and is to be interpreted from the scope of our context, which speaks of “the bows of the mighty men” and of “the thrones of princes,” and then adds: “the pillars of the earth.” So that by pillars we are to understand Governors and Rulers among men, but not the persons that bear rule so much as the order itself—government and magistracy [judgeship]. For the persons may be weak and slender reeds, little able of themselves to bear up anything, and here and there they may fall, but the order stands and does indeed uphold the world.”

Faithful ministers are pillars for the church. Correspondingly, in the civil realm,

“The governments and rulers of the Earth are its pillars or ornaments, to adorn it. Pillars in a fine building are made as beautiful as may be; they are planned and polished, wrought and carved with much art and cost, painted and gilded for sight as well as use.” He continued: “So those in power and magistracy are to be supposed men adorned with superior gifts, powers, and beauties of mind: Men that adorn the world wherein they live and the offices which they sustain. And then their office adorns them, also, and sets them in conspicuous places, where what is great and good to them is seen of all. To be sure, government and magistracy adorn the world as well as preserve it. Magistrates uphold and adorn the world as pillars do a fabric, by employing their superior wisdom and knowledge, skill and prudence, discretion and judgment for the public good. These accomplishments are to be supposed in the civil order, and they render them the pillars of the Earth.”

Colman mentioned biblical characters like Moses, Joshua, Samuel, Jehoiada, Hezekiah, and Nehemiah, concluding that

“All that rule over men should be like to these, just men ruling in the fear of the Lord, and then they are to the world as the light and rain, without which the Earth must perish.” Colman defined a pillar in these words: “A pillar implies fortitude and patience, resolution, firmness, and strength of mind under weight and burden: Not to be soon shaken in mind, nor moved away from what is right and just, but giving our reason in the meekness of wisdom and hearing the reasons of others in the same spirit of meekness to form an impartial judgment and abide by it, but yet with submission to the public judgment and determination. The unstable are as water, and more fitly likened to the waves of the sea, than to a pillar on shore. And the irresolute, discouraged, and sinking mind is at best but a pillar built upon the sand which falls when the wind blows and the storm beats upon it, because of its weak foundation.”

God’s sovereignty also meant that these pillars belonged to the Lord:

“The Lord makes these pillars, forms [and] fashions them, polishes and adorns them. He gifts, qualifies, and furnishes all whom He calls out to public service.” “Thus,” he preached, “the Sovereign God forms the pillars of the Earth, prepares them, sets them up, ordains the places and times of their standing, takes them down and puts others in their room.” If governors are the pillars of the earth, as to one duty, Colman asked: “Are they the Lord’s? And has He set the world upon them? Let us then devoutly observe the governing Providence of God in the disposing of persons and offices, both with respect unto ourselves and others.” Moreover, he rightly assigned the places for the rulers and the ruled: “Let people reverence and honor their worthy rulers, and let the highest among men be very humble before God. They are pillars, but of the Earth. The Earth and its pillars are dissolving together. Government abides in a succession of men, while the Earth endures, but the persons, however good and great, must die like other men. We must not look too much at the loftiness of any, nor lean too much on any earthly pillar.”

Before his concluding application section, Colman summarized:

In a word, magistracy, like the other ordinances of Heaven, stands by the power and blessing of God, who effectually owns it and works by it, establishes the Earth and it abides. He has graven it deep in the hearts of men, even as the desire of happiness and self-preservation. He has as much ordained that while the earth remains civil order and government shall not cease, as He has sworn “that seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night,” shall not. Both the one and the other equally continue to the world’s end absolutely necessary to the life, comfort, and welfare of mankind.”

Colman also acknowledged the devotion and virtue of the New England settlers before him. From their example, he drew this lesson:

“As government is the pillar of the earth, so religion is the pillar of government. Take away the fear of God’s government and judgment and human rule utterly falls, or corrupts into tyranny.”

Colman, like most Calvinists of his day, remained suspicious about ecclesiastical aspirations to political power, and he thought the Reformation had delivered Europe from such bondage. At one point, he alluded to the long shadow of Swiss churches, citing the Helvetic Confession and commending the Reformed churches for impeding such ecclesiastical abuse of power.1

Nonetheless, the political themes of Geneva echoed in American sermons of the first half of the eighteenth century. A survey2 of Connecticut sermons leading up to 1776 dealt with these topics near to the heart of any pious Genevan:

  1. “Civil Rulers are God’s Ministers” (1712, John Woodward); also “Civil Rulers are the Ministers of God” (1749, Jonathan Todd)

  2. “Practical Godliness, the Way to Prosperity” (1714, Samuel Whitman)

  3. “God’s Providence” (1722, William Burnham)

  4. “Obedience to the Divine Law” (1724, Samuel Woodbridge)

  5. “Jesus Christ Doth Actually Reign” (1727, Timothy Woodbridge)

  6. “The Legislature’s Right” (1746, Samuel Hall)

  7. “Civil Government the Foundation of Social Happiness” (1750, Noah Hobart).

Until the end of the Revolutionary period, Connecticut legislatures were addressed with sermons on topics such as “Christ, the Foundation” (1767), “Civil Rulers an Ordinance of God” (1774), “Christian and Civil Liberty” (1776), and “The Importance of Religion” (1778). As late as 1809 the Connecticut legislature was enjoined to view “Prayer [as] Eminently the Duty of Rulers.”

From 1634, Massachusetts preserved a tradition of preaching to the legislatures until the nineteenth century (until 1884). Various preachers from the Mather family addressed the legislatures into the early eighteenth century. Moreover, Samuel Cheever preached “God’s Sovereign Government” (1712), John Hancock preached “Rulers Should be Benefactors” (1722), Jeremiah Wise preached “Rulers are Ministers of God” (1729), John Webb preached “The Government of Christ” (1738), and Nathanael Eells preached “Religion is the Life of God’s People” (1743). With additional charges to deem “God as the Strength of Rulers” (1741) and to view “Good Rulers the Fathers of their People” (1748), Bostonians became accustomed to hearing themes first proclaimed in Geneva repeated from the Old North Church pulpit. If the common man accepted these sermons on political topics as fitting and proper, so did sitting legislatures.

This sermon is available in printed form in the excellent anthology by Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998) and online at: http://www.belcherfoundation.org/pillar.htm.

By Dr. David W. Hall, Pastor
Midway Presbyterian Church

For others like this order a copy of Twenty Messages to Consider Before Voting from Reformation Heritage Books.

1 Whitefield preached at Benjamin Colman’s church in 1740. Suzanne Geissler, Jonathan Edwards to Aaron Burr, Jr.: From the Great Awakening to Democratic Politics (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1981), 36.

2 See R. W. G. Vail, “A Check List of New England Election Sermons,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 45 (Oct. 1935), 233-266.

August 6: Election Day Sermon Series

6 August, 2016 in August 2016 by David_W_Hall | No comments

Guest author David Hall will return next Saturday with the continuation of his series on Election Day Sermons. So today we would like to take notice of recent discussions on the doctrine of the Trinity and offer the following short article by the Rev. Dr. William Childs Robinson, a conservative stalwart who mentored many of the founding fathers of the PCA. This article originally appeared in THE PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL on August 6, 1975.

The Trinity: God in Action
by William Childs Robinson
The author, a professor emeritus of Church history at Columbia Theological Seminary, was living in retirement in Claremont, California at the time that this was written.

The Church’s interpretation of the Trinity, wrote Bethune-Baker of Cambridge in Early History of Christian Doctrine, “is that of one God existing permanently and eternally in three spheres of consciousness and activity, three modes, three forms, three persons: in the in-ner relations of the divine life as well as in the outer relations of the God-head to the world and to men.”

In his current book, The Triune God, E. J. Fortman concludes that God is not dead. “God is, was and always will be the Triune God who has revealed Himself by His inhabitational presence.”

These words emphasize that we must look to God Himself and His acts to keep our beloved Church in the Trinitarian faith; we must not permit the Church to be devoured by a unitarianism such as that which captured so many English Presbyterian and New England Congregational churches. Trinitarian experiences led Horace Bushnell to answer Unitarianism thus: “But my heart needs the Father, my heart needs the Son, and my heart needs the Holy Spirit, and the one as much as the other.”

God is the living God, and as such He may be expected to reveal Him-self primarily in action, not formula. This He has done in the incarnation of God the Son and in the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit.

The Old Testament is the preparation for this revelation, the New Testament the product of the revelation—spoken and lived by the Son and brought to believers by the Holy Spirit.

The climax of this record is found in many places: the farewell discourses in the book of John; the high priestly prayer of the Lord Jesus; the Gethsemane prayer; the Gospel of the forty days before the ascension, with the Christian name of God given by the resurrected Lord in His Great Commission; the account of Pentecost and the acts of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts and in the epistles.

Mindful that much of God’s self–-revelation has come through divine- human encounters—Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Isaiah, Paul—we agree with Frederick Gogarten that “faith is the concrete meeting with the triune God.” We also agree with Rahner that “the immanent Trinity as such confronts us in the experience of faith, a constitutive component of which is the word of Scripture itself.”

Through revelation man perceives revelation. “In His light we see light.” By being in God the Holy Spirit, we behold the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

God’s self-revelation as the Trinity is no impersonal system of hypostases in an essence. As Hodgson wrote, “It is the living, loving communion of Father, Son and Spirit into which we have been adopted in Christ.” That is, we have been adopted to share in the “family life of God.”

God the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirits that God the Father has accepted us as His children and bids us call upon Him as “Abba,” our dear Father, because of the merits of God the Son. The Trinity represents the concept of God involved in the Christian life, and the Christian shares by adoption in the sonship of Christ. Thus the Christian looks out upon the world from within the divine social life of the Trinity.

God is the living God, and as such He may be expected to reveal Himself primarily in action, not formula. This He has done in the incarnation of God the Son and in the outpouring of God the Holy Spirit.

We are brought into this life by the threefold actions of God in the riches of His grace. God is before all and above all that He has created, and He has given to and for us His only begotten Son, the unspeakable gift of His love, for love came to earth in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

This Son, of His own will, came not to be ministered unto but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many. His kind lips rang with the gracious invitation, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden,” with the reassuring promise that “him who comes to me I will in nowise cast out.”

We accept the Father’s gift and the Son’s invitation. We come to Christ and we cast ourselves upon Him; we entrust ourselves to Him. Yet we do this only as we are drawn by the Father, persuaded and enabled by the effectual calling of the Spirit. It is in the tripersonal experience of the presence of the Father, and of the presence of the Son, and of the presence of the Holy Spirit that God reveals the glory of His grace in saving us sinners.

The Anglican scholar, Bishop K. E. Kirk of Oxford, has said this: “The doctrine of the divine personality of the Spirit emphasizes what has been called the prevenience of God in the aspirations of the human heart, just as that of the divinity of the Son emphasizes that same prevenience in the work of human redemption, and that of the divinity of the Father—which is the doctrine of the existence of God— His prevenience over all the forces and powers in the creation and sustenance of the universe.”

Professor Claude Welch put the truth this way in his book, In This Name: “God is present to us in a threefold self-differentiation. He makes Himself known as the one who stands above and apart, the one to whom Jesus points as His Father and therefore our Father. At the same time, He is the one who con-fronts man in Jesus Christ as the ob-jective content of revelation, i.e. the Son. And He is the one who seizes and possesses man so that he is able to receive and participate in revela-tion, new life, salvation, viz, the Holy Spirit.”

It may be that the religious ex-periences of some denominations or congregations focus more upon one person of the Trinity than another. Certainly it is true that a person will find peculiar satisfaction in the con-templation of one person on one oc-casion and another in a different sit-uation. But in the course of a nor-mal life span, each Christian avails himself of the complete revelation of the holy Trinity.

As our propitious heavenly Father, the creator, who has life in Himself and gives life to all His creatures, has graciously revealed Himself in the gift and mediation of His only begotten Son. He bids us call upon Him as the Jewish toddler cried out to his parent, “Abba,” dear father. In hours of stress, uncertainty, anxiety and loneliness, we draw close to the everlasting arms and nestle nearer to the heart of Him who makes all things work together for good to those who love Him, those whom He has called into His family.

The guilty soul finds the answer to the most poignant question life ever poses in Him, who is the eternal reason, the light of the under-standing, and the source of all knowledge. “The work of Christ in relation to sin,” wrote J. Denney, “is the culminating point in revelation; not the insoluble problem, but the solution of all problems.” We do have an advocate with the Father; He is Jesus Christ, the righteous, the propitiation for our sins.

When the meanness, the wickedness, the littleness—the sin that does so easily beset us—threaten to engulf the soul in the lusts of the flesh, the pride of life, and the machinations of Satan, we then cling to the Holy Spirit, the author of all goodness, wisdom, love, mercy and purity that bless this sin-cursed world. In the words of Jonathan Edwards, “Holiness is entirely the work of God’s Spirit.”

The living God dispenses the riches of His grace in this threefold way not just in our daily living; He also has “dying grace” for His people, for the triune God is sufficient for Himself and for His people. In their last hours God is present with those who are His, so that each is enabled to say with confidence, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me.” Our gracious God refreshes our memory with the promises of the many mansions in our Father’s house, echoing back the final words of the Saviour Himself: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” 

Our heavenly Father in three persons stays with His people in life and in death—

July 30: Joni Erickson Tada

30 July, 2016 in July 2016 by David_W_Hall | No comments

Our guest author David Hall is taking a summer break from his Election Day series and will return with a new post on August 13th. So for today’s post, Rev. David Myers has this to share with us:—

Disabled in Body, But Not in Spirit

The teenager had gathered that Sunday, July 30, 1967 with some friends and sisters to swim in the Chesapeake Bay waters.  Diving into the bay seemed like a safe thing to do, but Joni Erickson was not aware of the shallowness of that water.  As she struggled to rise to the surface, her sister had to assist  her because she had no feeling in her arms.  Indeed, after an emergency vehicle had taken her to the emergency room was it discovered that she  had broken her neck.  She was paralyzed from the shoulders down.

Understandably, she went through a horror of emotions in the first two years.  The “why” answers were not being given by God or anyone else.  She immersed herself in the Bible and there in that inspired book found both the strength to continue on  and a purpose to continue living.

With her loving husband, Ken Tada by her side, whom she married in 1982, they began a ministry for the disabled called Joni and Friends.  It is a world-wide organization which seeks to minister to those  disabled to conquer life’s challenges, and especially to find the love of God through Christ.

Joni has had an autobiography in her book (“Joni”) , then in movie form, several musical albums, books galore, etchings — all to show that disabled people can have a ministry  in the church and in the world.  And as a member of the Presbyterian Church in America, she has had extraordinary opportunities to share her saving faith in all sorts of forums.

Even in her recent challenge of breast cancer, which she successfully endured, she is hopeful of a positive prognosis.  God has not abandoned those with disabilities.  All kinds of sufferings will “work together and  will fit into a plan for good and for those who love God and are called according to His design and purpose.” (Amplified, Romans 8:28)

Words to Live By: Jesus, in one of the dinners he had been invited to while on earth, gave some instructions to his host.  He, in Luke 14, told him “to invite the poor, the disabled, the lame, and the blind.” (v. 13)  We have a ministry to these ones who are in desperate need of acceptance by the believers of today.  Let’s plan on ways we can minister in word and deed to these ones, especially the disabled in our churches and neighborhoods.  What can you do to show them hospitality?

July 25: Rule Justly, in the Fear of God

25 July, 2016 in July 2016 by David_W_Hall | No comments

hallDWOur Saturday series of Election Day Sermons is in hiatus until August 13th. However, as with last Monday and the start of the Republican National Convention, so too today we thought it appropriate to revisit one of this year’s contributions from guest author Dr. David W. Hall.  Our selection for today is Dr. Hall’s review of a sermon by the Rev. Charles Chauncy:—

“Civil Magistrates Must be Just, Ruling in the Fear of God”
by Charles Chauncy (May 27, 1747)

Charles Chauncy (1705-1787) was one of the most influential pastors in Boston during his life. He received his theological training at Harvard and served as pastor of First Church for nearly 60 years. He wrote numerous pamphlets between 1762-1771 against the British proposal to impose a Bishop in America. This sermon preached in 1747, addressed to rulers (the Governor, the council, and the Massachusetts House of Representatives), called them to be just and frequently to recall their subordination to God. Original punctuation has been preserved. He drew upon an often used text from 2 Samuel 23—a passage that was a slam dunk for pastors comparing candidates to unchanging norms. He began: “there are none in all the Bible, applicable to civil rulers, in their public capacity, of more solemn importance.”

Viewing these as the last sentiments of David, Chauncy’s outline was:

  1. There is a certain order among mankind, according to which some are entrusted with power to rule over others.
  2. Those who rule over others must be just, ruling in the fear of God.
  3. The whole will then be applied to the occasions of the day.

In his first section, an apology for government in general, Chauncy observed: “Order and rule in society, or, what means the same thing, civil government, is not a contrivance of arbitrary and tyrannical men, but a regular state of things, naturally resulting from the make of man, and his circumstances in the world.” Human sin necessitated this. As both Calvin and Madison had noted, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” While government in general was ordained by God, the particulars could and did vary.

Government was “not a matter of mere human prudence, but of moral necessity. It does not lie with men to determine at pleasure, whether it shall or shall not take place; but, considering their present weak, exposed and dependent condition, it is unalterably right and just there should be rule and superiority in some, and subjection and inferiority in others: And this therefore is invariably the will of God; his will manifested by the moral fitness and reason of things.”

However, under the second head, the manner of rulers was prescribed. The first quality (and the one with the most discussion in this sermon) was for ruler to be just. One of Chauncy’s full elaborations of justice was:

They should do it by appearing in defense of their liberties, if called in question, and making use of all wise and suitable methods to prevent the loss of them: Nor can they be too active, diligent or laborious in their endeavors upon this head: Provided always, the privileges in danger are worth contending for, and such as the people have a just right and legal claim to. Otherwise, there may be hazard of losing real liberties, in the strife for those that are imaginary; or valuable ones, for such as are of trifling consideration.

They should also express this care, by seasonably and faithfully placing a proper guard against the designs of those, who would rule in a despotic manner, to the subversion of the rights naturally or legally vested in the people.

They were to be just in their use of power (not encroaching due liberties) and also just in regard to “the laws by which they govern.” He articulated this second rung of justice as “They should not, when upon the business of framing and passing acts, suffer themselves to be swayed by any wrong bias, either from self-will, or self-interest; the smiles or frowns of men greater than themselves; or the humor of the populace: But should bring the proposed laws to a fair and impartial examination.” He warned against “framing mischief by a law.” Just rulers would also punish evildoers and maintain honest economic standards.

Surely with the book of Proverbs’ admonition toward just weights and measures in mind, Chauncy also applied:

And if justice in rulers should show itself by reducing the things that are bought and sold to weight and measure, much more ought it to be seen in ascertaining the medium of trade, as nearly as may be, to some determinate value. For this, whether it be money, or something substituted to pass in lieu of it, is that for which all things are exchanged in commerce. And if this, which is of such universal use in the affair of traffic, be a thing variable and uncertain, of one value this week, and another the next, it is difficult to conceive, how justice should take place between man and man, in their dealings with one another.

Justice also called for right execution of laws and for the appointment of just persons to carry out those just laws. Justice was called for in terms of debt—not a light matter; and justice was to be a guarantor of liberties. Not only could liberties be threatened by those of high office, but Chauncy also warned about excessive populism: “The men who strike in with the popular cry of liberty and privilege, working themselves, by an artful application to the fears and jealousies of the people, into their good opinion of them as lovers of their country, if not the only stanch friends to its interests, may, all the while, be only aiming at power to carry every thing according to their own sovereign pleasure: And they are, in this case, most dangerous enemies to the community.”

A ruler could, thus, err in many ways. The standards for office were high, according to the Hebrew standards and to those of early America. Chauncy put it this way:

If it is their business to act as executioners of justice, they must faithfully inflict the adjudged sentence: In doing of which, though there may be room for the exercise of compassion, especially in the case of some sort of debtors; yet the righteousness of the law may not be eluded by needless, much less fraudulent delays, to the injury of the creditor.

In fine, whatever their trust is, whether of less or greater importance, they must exercise it with care, fidelity, resolution, steadiness, diligence, and an entire freedom from a corrupt respect to men’s persons, as those who are concerned for the honor of government, and that its laws may take effect for the general good of the community.

He charged the General Court to apply themselves to these standards of justice. He further reminded his listeners that they were responsible to God, specifically telling them “that they are accountable to that Jesus, whom God hath ordained to be the judge of the world, for the use of that power he has put into their hands.” The latter part of this sermon provides a discussion of the fear of the Lord, with the injunction that rulers were to keep that in mind in their activities and decisions. This aspect was salutary as follows: “But no restraints are like those, which the true fear of God lays upon men’s lusts. This habitually prevailing in the hearts of rulers, will happily prevent the out-breaking of their pride, and envy, and avarice, and self-love, and other lusts, to the damage of society; and not only so, but it will weaken, and gradually destroy, the very inward propensities themselves to the various acts of vice. It naturally, and powerfully, tends to this: And this is the effect it will produce, in a less or greater degree, according to the strength of the religious principle, in those who are the subjects of it.”

Chauncy’s sermon wraps up with specific charges to the rulers to apply these standards. Somehow, I doubt that the need for fear of God as discussed above, or the requirement to be just, has been altered by time or circumstance.

A printed copy of this sermon is available in my 1996 Election Day Sermons and is also available in Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998). The sermon is online at: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N04742.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext.

By Dr. David W. Hall, Pastor
Midway Presbyterian Church

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