Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission, Part IV: Philosophy, contd.

            Having thus affirmed the existence of a tripartite relationship between ruler, subject, and God, Mayhew next proceeded to explain what he believed to be the necessary consequence of an imbalance within this system. The crux of the matter, he offered, was that obedience was owed to God before any earthly authority. His grant of ordinance to civil rulers was accordingly conditional upon the understanding that they would heed his commission to govern justly, honestly, and in keeping with the general welfare. Civil authorities, however, were not alone in bearing fealty to God. The subjects of earthly government, while they indeed owed fealty to those duly-constituted authorities as existed in their region, owed an even higher obedience to God himself. When a given civil ruler ceased to exercise the power vested in them with the wellbeing of their subjects in mind, their subjects were therefore absolved of any duty of obedience to the same and in fact were required to oppose and remove said ruler from the position they were no longer qualified to hold. “Not to discontinue our allegiance, in this case,” Mayhew further asserted, “Would be to join with the sovereign in promoting the slavery and misery of that society, the welfare of which, we ourselves, as well as our sovereign, are indispensably obliged to secure and promote, as far as in us lies.” Thus the minister of Boston’s Old West Church laid before his congregation a proposition that was both unusual for its time yet also plainly flowed out of a close reading of scripture. Kings and parliaments, it seemed, were not the only entities upon whom responsibility for the good of society devolved. Every member of that society, in fact, was required by God to pay heed to the wellbeing of the whole, and to take action to preserve that wellbeing when such efforts were not otherwise forthcoming.

            By way of comparison, Locke’s corresponding argument in favor of a right of revolt focused more on the need to protect individual liberty and private property than the overall wellbeing of the community at large. To his thinking, it seemed, society was not something that needed protection so much as it was an instrument of protection itself. The individual was the source of sovereignty, and thus the crucial element in need of defense.  English law tended to be in agreement. Between documents like the Magna Carta (1215), the Petition of Right (1628), and the Bill of Rights (1689), due process guarantees like trial by jury and habeas corpus, the sanctity of private property, the right to bear arms, and safety from excessive fines or punishments considered cruel and unusual had been enshrined into the very fabric of the British Constitution. The concept of individual liberty was thus demonstrably paramount to the English understanding of political power and citizenship by the time Locke offered his theory of conditional legitimacy in 1689. In fairness, Mayhew did not necessarily attempt to discredit this focus on the individual in his 1750 sermon. Indeed, he more than once used the language of traditional English libertarianism to flesh out his argument in favor of justified resistance to civil authority. “For a nation thus abused to arise unanimously,” he so affirmed, “Is not criminal; but a reasonable way of vindicating their liberties and just rights; it is making use of the means, and the only means, which God has put into their power, for mutual and self-defense.” Here, it seemed, as elsewhere, Mayhew understood unlimited submission as being opposed to the “liberties and just rights” of the individual and accordingly described resistance as a form of “self-defense.”

            In the same breath with which he saw fit to affirm the sanctity of the individual, however, Mayhew also exhibited a distinct distrust in the ability of specific persons to behave with justice and moderation when the power to do otherwise was unquestioningly placed in their hands. “If we calmly consider the nature of the thing itself,” he thus offered,

Nothing can well be imagined more directly contrary to common sense, that to suppose that millions of people should be subjected to the arbitrary, precarious pleasure of one single man; (who has naturally no superiority over them in point of authority) so that their estates and every thing which is valuable in life, and even their lives also, shall be absolutely at his disposal, if he happens to be wanton and capricious enough to demand them.

The vocabulary here deployed paints a rather unflattering portrait of the “one single man” in question. By Mayhew’s thinking, it seemed, he was likely to be “arbitrary,” “wanton,” and “capricious,” and given to indulging his pleasures at the behest of those whose lives it was in his power to render infinitely more pleasant. This palpable sense of suspicion and mistrust, it must be said, was likely a natural outgrowth of the Calvinist tendency to emphasize the inherent sinfulness of the human condition and the consequent inability of mankind to resist self-interest. Having emerged from the same social and theological environment that produced fire-and-brimstone preachers  Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) – whose most famous sermon, it bears mentioning, was entitled Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God – Mayhew was arguably predisposed to see the darker angels of human nature as being generally ascendant. That being said, there was most assuredly also a political component to his evident suspicion of unlimited power in individual hands.

The target of Mayhew’s January 30^th sermon, after all, was an observance whose beneficiary – Charles I – famously quarreled with his subjects and his government over the nature and extent of the authority he claimed to possess. And while the principle upon which Charles had attempted to assert his authority – the so-called “divine right” theory of kingship – had long since been discredited in mainstream British political discourse, the continued veneration by members of the contemporary ruling elite of perhaps its greatest champion was doubtless cause for concern among those who feared the erosion of the post-Glorious Revolution status quo. Being thus both opposed to a principle which he likely regarded as socially threatening as well as generally suspicious of the iniquity of the human race, Mayhew accordingly gave voice to his belief that unlimited power was plainly not meant for individuals. “What unprejudiced man can think,” he thus exclaimed,

That God made ALL to be thus subservient to the lawless pleasure and phrenzy of ONE, so that it shall always be a sin to resist him! Nothing but the most plain and express revelation from heaven could make a sober and impartial man believe such a monstrous, unaccountable doctrine, and, indeed, the thing itself, appears so shocking–so out of all proportion, that it may be questioned, whether all the miracles that ever were wrought, could make it credible, that this doctrine really came from GOD.

One may fairly wonder at Mayhew’s evident tendency to perceive humanity as both too sinful to justly govern without limits to its power and too reasonable to swallow the notion of absolute kingship without express revelation from God himself. If mankind was so base and irredeemable as to invalidate the very notion of unlimited authority, how is it that the rejection of the very idea should appear so obvious to another member of this same ill-starred species? The answer, quite simply, was that both characterizations represented different aspects of the same fundamental truth.

            Jonathan Mayhew, remember, was a Congregationalist minister who came of age and was educated during the height of the First Great Awakening. This trans-Atlantic socio-religious movement, sparked by the revivalist preaching of Englishmen like George Whitefield (1714-1770) and John Wesley (1703-1791) and Americans like the aforementioned Jonathan Edwards, encouraged individual believers to pursue an intense personal relationship with their own salvation and seek evidence of conversion through deep and emotional introspection rather than an intellectual grasp of scripture of doctrine. The resulting evangelical outlook emphasized the universality of sin and the centrality of the conversion experience as the twin poles of humanity’s spiritual existence. As it concerned Congregationalism in 1750s Massachusetts, this dual conception of mankind in essence demanded both a pitiless condemnation of sin and an unshakable belief in the promise of salvation. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in particular epitomized this sense of contrast. On one hand, its author excoriated humanity as an incurably sinful species doomed to eternal damnation. On the other, he promised deliverance to those who grasped the mercy Christ had offered them by confessing their iniquities and giving themselves over to the will of God. Mayhew’s seemingly contradictory belief in humanity’s depravity and its decency would seem to align very much with this species of religious conviction. While he emphatically acknowledged the lesser qualities in mankind which seemed to disqualify any one person from wielding unlimited authority, his faith the in possibility of salvation led him to simultaneously affirm that there was something in the human spirit that already knew this to be true. By appealing to this quality in his fellow man – manifested in traits like sobriety and impartiality – Mayhew arguably sought to perform the same action in the context of political philosophy that was otherwise his bailiwick in the realm of the soul.

            This kind of fusion of the sacred and the mundane is precisely what makes it so difficult to separate the political from the religious aspects of Mayhew’s Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission. There seemed to be, in the mind of its author, little difference between one and the other. Civil government, he repeatedly affirmed, was an instrument of God on Earth whose purpose was to preserve and promote justice, security, and peace. Civil rulers were thus God’s ministers and subjects thus his congregants, all of whom were bound in obedience to his will. The cited verses of Romans 13 embodied exactly this concept – or so Mayhew argued at length – while also offering the caveat that legitimacy could only flow from right action in the eyes of God. Failure to behave in accordance with the purpose God had laid down for civil government effectively voided one’s claim to authority and invited the relevant subjects to cast off their earthly allegiance and seek governors more capable of justifying the trust of the Lord. Taking this framework at face value – as that which fundamentally regulated human society – there would seem to be no room at all for the notion of secular government. Interpreting the aforementioned passage from Romans, Mayhew indeed asserted that it made no difference whether the authorities in question acknowledged the existence of God, denied the existence of God, or even avowed the existence of multiple gods. They warranted the blessing of the Almighty – and thus the obedience of their subjects – so long as they acted with justice and integrity towards those in their charge.

            Mayhew was not alone in linking spiritual and terrestrial authority, of course. The impetus for his September 30^th sermon, after all, was the continued commemoration of the execution of a secular ruler by the membership and supporters of a particular ecclesiastical hierarchy. The ruler in question, Charles I, had claimed repeatedly and at length that his authority was derived from God and that he owed allegiance to the Lord before any earthly power. His supporters echoed this same assertion, emphasizing in particular the degree to which Charles gave license to leadership of the Church of England to enforce the basic tenets of its faith upon his Non-Conformist subjects. Not only do these assertions appear consistent with the exhortations contained in relevant text of Romans 13, but they seem even to conform to certain of the basic contours of Mayhew’s elaboration thereof. Just as the minister of Boston’s Old West Church asserted that rulers and subjects were alike bound in allegiance to the authority of God above all, Charles and his partisans had declared and affirmed that the king was bound first and foremost in his obedience to God, from whom all legitimate authority derived. Without necessarily disagreeing with the essential logic of this conviction, Mayhew nevertheless found fault with two aspects in particular of the reign and subsequent canonization of Charles I.

The first – and undeniably the most obvious – was that Charles had betrayed the trust placed in him by God by refusing to behave with justice and integrity towards the people he claimed to rule. Certainly the Anglicans among his subjects were likely to have felt that their faith was being well served by the king’s dedication to episcopacy, to the Book of Common Prayer, and to preventing politically active sects like the Puritans from too aggressively agitating for ecclesiastical and social reform. But all those whose faith did not align with the mainstream Anglican confession – a category which included, but was not limited to, Puritans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists, and Quakers – undeniably suffered at the hands of Charles and his supporters within the Church of England’s hierarchy. When one also accounts for the number of people who were taxed by the Crown without the consent of Parliament during the 1630s, suffered at the hands of the monopolies Charles granted as a means of raising money, or were killed during the Bishops Wars (1639-1640) in Scotland, the Eleven Years’ War (1641-1653) in Ireland, or the Civil War (1642-1651) in England, the sheer quantity of destruction and displeasure that the king’s actions wrought would seem quite obviously to disqualify him or his supporters from claiming to possess the blessing of the Almighty. “Rulers have no authority from God to do mischief,” Mayhew declared, and Charles I was nothing if not a mischievous ruler.      

            The other reason Jonathan Mayhew might have found fault with the martyrdom of Charles I, in spite of otherwise agreeing with the concept of divine sanction for earthly rule, would seem to derive from the nature of the tripartite relationship described above. Earthly authority, as defined in the text of Discourse, rested upon a foundation composed of three essential pillars. Rulers were blessed with power over their fellow man so that they might serve the community in which they resided. Subjects owed their rulers obedience so that government might function as intended. And God supervised the other two, blessing some with power and promising justice and peace to all. Within this framework, rulers were unique in the authority they wielded and the benefits they enjoyed while still being bound in obedience to the will of the Lord himself. Specifically, kings or magistrates thus blessed by God were responsible for the wellbeing of the subjects in their charge. A ruler who failed to heed this duty – by negligence or with intention – thus effectively violated the unspoken contract upon which their authority was based and exposed themselves to whatever fate their actions set in motion.

In all likelihood, Charles I and his supporters would have agreed with this basic formulation. As far as the king was concerned, all of his actions which critics perceived as damaging to the lives and liberties of his subjects had been undertaken in service of what he and his supporters knew in their hearts to be the one true faith in which God’s promise of salvation was made manifest. By thus faithfully serving the Church of England throughout his reign – and, according to Eikon Basilike, suffering martyrdom rather than see its structure or liturgy perverted – Charles had indeed redeemed the trust placed in him by God by attending tirelessly to the spiritual welfare of his many and various subjects. Those who had suffered as a result of these policies – i.e. Non-Conformists – were of no account because their beliefs were false and heretical, their actions misguided and in need of correction, and their opposition to the prerogatives of the Crown baseless and illegitimate. Charles was able to make this claim, of course, because he was God’s appointed minister on earth. His authority stemmed directly from the Lord Almighty, and no individual, community, or even nation of people could interpose themselves between God himself and the head on which he placed the crown.

It was this final conviction – judging by the arguments he put forward in Discourse – that likely most troubled Mayhew. By claiming to rule by an absolute and divine right – and deriving from that supposed right the authority to speak for God on earth – Charles I seemed to have forgotten the very nature of the source of his power. God was supreme over all, ruler and subject alike. He may have ordained – as per the dictates of Romans 13 – that mankind should obey and support the civil rulers under whose authority they found themselves, but these same rulers were equally bound in submission to the Lord. They could not, in consequence, claim an exclusive knowledge of God’s will or an unequalled right to interpret his intentions. God could not thus be bound to human purposes. His connection to mankind was not linear, flowing only through his chosen ministers, but all-encompassing and omnidirectional. God thus reigned over all things, made himself known to whom and by what means he pleased, and always with the intention of improving the lot of his children on Earth. The error committed by Charles I and his supporters, therefore, was fundamentally one of arrogance. They had claimed to know God’s will, exclusively, and refused to admit that his intentions might manifest in those who were not otherwise blessed with terrestrial authority.

This, too, was very much a criticism rooted in Mayhew’s status as a Congregationalist and a student of the First Great Awakening. Being a proponent of congregational autonomy and a critic of clerical hierarchy – as repeatedly affirmed, hinted at, and boldly declared in the text of his September 30^th sermon – it would seem inevitable that he would take issue with the notion that any one person or body of people possessed a superior right to decipher or enact the will of God on Earth. A king, in this context, was no better than a priest – “Who has naturally no superiority over them in point of authority” – aspiring to a greater knowledge of the nature of the Lord or the meaning of salvation. Knowledge of God, the Congregationalist credo affirmed, was the equal possession of all mankind regardless of social station or circumstances of birth. Assertions to the contrary, to Mayhew’s thinking, were of the same quality as the decadent ceremoniousness of the Roman Catholic Church – both having as their object, of course, the separation of the love, the light, and the liberty of God from those who needed it most. Thus did the minister of Boston’s Old West Church declare in his 1750 Discourse, that, “The hereditary, indefeasible, divine right of kings, and the doctrine of non-resistance, which is built upon the supposition of such a right, are altogether as fabulous and chimerical, as transubstantiation; or any of the most absurd reveries of ancient or modern visionaries.” No one had a right to know God or claim his blessing in a way that made them superior to their fellow man, Mayhew thereby affirmed, any more than transubstantiation – symbolic of Catholic practice in general and subject to legal discrimination in contemporary Britain – was truly a miracle.      

The widespread turn towards evangelicalism that was spurred by the First Great Awakening likely fed into and intensified this same basic conviction by further championing the connection between God and the individual. Whereas Charles I, the Church of England, and the High Tory supporters of the same represented the “Old Light” sensibilities of hierarchy, authority, and obedience, Mayhew, his congregation, and contemporaries like the aforementioned Jonathan Edwards championed the “New Light” values of sincerity, morality, and self-reflection. For a New Light like Mayhew, therefore, an avowal of direct and absolute knowledge of God would have likely seemed stultifying, narrow, and reactionary. God, as he understood it, did not move through power structures or priests but through people. To deny this was to deny truth and to foreclose on the possibility of salvation. Far from acting solely through his sanctioned magistrates on Earth, the God envisioned by the First Great Awakening was knowable to every human being and expected from each of them an awareness of sin and a dedication to living a moral existence. Thus Mayhew was able to determine that those who rebelled against and ultimately overthrew Charles I had acted justly and in full accord with the intention laid out in Romans 13. People were expected to obey their civil rulers, he reasoned, not simply because it had been declared that they ought to, but because it served to further the objective – i.e. peace, justice, and prosperity on Earth – which they had in common with God. By the same token, however, at the moment that whatever king, prince, or government under which they found themselves ceased to serve this objective, it still fell to them to act in such a way as to fulfill God’s purpose. Even if this meant removing the civil authority in question, the objective and the means of its accomplishment remained the same. 

Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission, Part III: Philosophy

Having thus demonstrated and explored the principally religious aspects of the case Jonathan Mayhew put forth in his Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission, it remains now to discuss the extent to which his attempt to oppose an observance he deemed corrupt and un-Christian was in fact a deeply political statement about the nature of authority and the relationship between rulers and their subjects. Bearing in mind that the elements of Discourse that might fairly be identified as chiefly political or philosophical in nature do tend to flow out of statements or observations that were in turn explicitly religious, there is bound to be some degree of overlap between the convictions of Mayhew’s faith and his ideological leanings. Indeed, in Mayhew’s mind there was surely little difference between the rules he believed ought to govern either the spiritual or material circumstances of the human race. Attempting to explore these categories of thought in tandem, however, would surely make for something of a rambling muddle. The distinction that has here been drawn – while to some degree artificial – thus stems from a legitimate desire for organizational clarity. Mayhew himself might have found it a curious choice, but it would seem, under the circumstances, a necessary one.

That being said – and begging the forgiveness of those who perceive a plain contradiction in what follows – the core of Mayhew’s political rationale within the text of Discourse undeniably sprang from an attempt on his part to elucidate the true meaning of a particular passage from the Holy Bible.

The excerpt in question was the oft-cited Romans 13:1-8, an extract invariably deployed by regimes that claim to embody Christian piety while pursuing demonstrably un-Christian ends. In seeming preemptive answer to those whose ire might fairly have been aroused by his accusing the Church of England of supporting Charles I out of rank self-interest, Mayhew challenged the common interpretation of Romans as a blanket sanction for actions undertaken by rulers and governments of any stripe. To that end, he first cited the verses in question – notable among them the injunction, “Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be, are ordained by God” – and then commenced to separate the words themselves from what he regarded as their true and substantial meaning. First, Mayhew reminded his audience to pay heed to the context in which the relevant text was written. The author in question, Saint Paul (5-64/67), had set himself to addressing the nature of earthly authority for a very specific reason. At so early a period in the history of the Christian faith, it seemed, there existed converts who interpreted, “That liberty which the gospel promised” as pertaining to their material existence and thus, “Disowned subjection to the civil powers in being where they respectively lived [.]” Described elsewhere by Saint Peter as, “Them that–despise government–presumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities [,]” these anarcho-Christians supposedly failed to understand the nature of Christ’s kingdom – described by Mayhew as being, “In a very plain and important sense […] not of this world” – and so became a nuisance to themselves and their fellow converts by applying the stain of insurrection to their as yet small and vulnerable community. In consequence, it appeared necessary to Saint Paul to explain to his fellow believers that acknowledging the supremacy of Christ over all earthly authorities did not practically absolve one from the responsibility of obedience to the same.

Mayhew then proceeded to draw the attention of his audience to certain key phrases within the cited text. Consider, he asked of them, Saint Paul’s assertion that, “Whosoever […] resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” Did this not make plain that civil rule – in whatever form it may take – is the instrument of God’s will on Earth, and that to resist one was to resist the other? And then there was the apostle’s declaration that, “Rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil […] Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise for the same.” Was this not an affirmation that, “Even pagan rulers, are not, by the nature and design of their office, enemies and a terror to the good and virtuous actions of men,” and that it was accordingly needless to oppose a given civil authority, “When ye see the good end and intention of it?” Mayhew’s interest, it seemed, was in what he perceived to be the subtext of Romans 13, particularly as it related to the intention of God in granting his ordinance to civil rulers. Two further citations appeared to give answer to this inquiry.

“But if thou do that which is evil,” Mayhew quoted Saint Paul as having written, “Be afraid, for he beareth not the sword in vain. For he is the minister of God, a revenger, to execute wrath upon him that doth evil.” To the minister of the Old West Church, it seemed, this passage was clearly meant to affirm that civil rulers were not possessed of the means of punishment for reasons passing understanding. “They are,” he asserted, “By their office, not only the ministers of God for good to those that do well; but also his ministers to revenge, to discountenance and punish those that are unruly, and injurious to their neighbors.” When Mayhew next quoted Saint Paul as having declared that, “For this cause pay you tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing,” it was coupled to a kind of logical inverse of this same affirmation of purpose. “And here is a plain reason also why ye should pay tribute to them [,]” he explained accordingly,

For they are God’s ministers, exalted above the common level of mankind, not that they may indulge themselves in softness and luxury, and be entitled to the servile homage of their fellow-men; but that they may execute an office no less laborious than honorable; and attend continually upon the public welfare.

If the good had nothing to fear from civil rulers, Mayhew claimed, and the wicked every reason to feel alarm in offering opposition to the same, it must accordingly have followed that the ordinance and trust of God in these same earthly authorities was joined to his desire to protect one and punish the other. A civil authority that promoted justice and peace, therefore, was indeed a “minister of God” and thus deserving of obedience. And a ruler whose behavior fostered injustice and was “injurious to their neighbors” deserved nothing but reproach, for God would surely never deign to sanction those who would do evil in his name.

            Having thus sufficiently teased out what he regarded as the genuine intention behind Saint Paul’s admonition to always obey the civil authority, Mayhew then proceeded in the text of his Discourse to distill the relevant verses of Romans 13 into a relatively straightforward set of value statements. Notable among these various declarations was the bond he consistently perceived and affirmed between the duties of an office and the claim to its titles and dignities. “The end of magistracy is the good of civil society,” he accordingly affirmed, and, “There should be some persons vested with authority in society, for the well-being of it [.]” He also declared that, “The sole end of government [is] the happiness of society [,]” and that, “The true ground and reason of our obligation to be subject to the higher powers, is the usefulness of magistracy (when properly exercised) to human society, and its subserviency to the general welfare [.]” If the sentiment embodied in these statements appears in any way familiar to either longtime readers of this program or students of the European Enlightenment, there is ample reason for it. Though he arrived at this conviction in particular through an analysis of scripture rather than via the ruminations of abstract thought, the conviction here expressed by Mayhew as to the purpose of civil government bears an undeniable – and deeply significant – similarity to the political theory most recently explored – as of 1750 – by English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704).

            Locke, whose Two Treatises on Government was originally published in 1689, famously described therein the so-called “state of nature” in which mankind existed by default in the absence of any laws, governments, or civil institutions. While this state provided absolute freedom to all who dwelled within it – “All being kings [,]” as it were – it concurrently offered nothing in the way of security for one’s person or property. In the state of nature, therefore, power was the only source of legitimacy and the only guarantor of liberty. Seeking to extricate itself from this tenuous existence, Locke posited that mankind developed cooperative mechanisms by which a modicum of autonomy might be sacrificed by groups of individuals in exchange for an increase in the safety and comfort of all. In time these mechanisms took the form of increasingly complex civil societies which expanded, combined, and formalized to the point that they took on the aspect– by 17^th century standards – of recognizable government. Complex though these administrations ultimately became, however, and in many ways self-sustaining and self-perpetuating, Locke affirmed that their central purpose never changed. The end of government, he asserted, was to protect and promote the liberty of the individual (within reason) and secure to them the enjoyment of their personal property. And while it was possible for monarchies, republics, and aristocracies alike to successfully achieve this aim, the regime that demonstrably failed to do so – though greed, corruption, cruelty, or neglect – was inherently illegitimate. The resulting “right of revolution” permitted – nay, obligated – the citizens of such a regime to remove their rulers by force of arms and replace them with those who appeared more likely to fulfill their responsibilities. The resulting arrangement of trust and obligation, check and balance was described by Locke as kind of “social contract.” 

            While Mayhew never used this specific phrase in Discourse to describe the relationship he believed was embedded in the text of Romans 13, his exploration of its significance and implications showed obvious parallels to Locke’s earlier construction. Attempting to introduce the beginnings of an argument against the kind of oppressive rule practiced by Charles I through the lens of scripture, for example, he posited to his audience that there were perhaps certain instances in which resistance rather than subjection to higher powers became necessary. “Some have thought it warrantable and glorious,” he thus claimed,

To disobey the civil powers in certain circumstances; and, in cases of very great general oppression, when humble remonstrances fail of having any effect; and when the publick welfare cannot be otherwise provided for and secured, to rise unanimously even against the sovereign himself, in order to redress their grievances; to vindicate their natural and legal rights: to break the yoke of tyranny, and free themselves and posterity from inglorious servitude and ruin.

Consider, again, some of the terminology Mayhew here chose to deploy. Like Locke, he affirmed that the paramount measure of the legitimacy for a ruler or regime was its ability to protect and promote “public welfare.” This being the fundamental and original purpose of government – i.e. the basis of the social contract – those that either failed to pursue it successfully or actively damaged it by their actions caused the obligation of seeking “redress” or “remonstrance” to once more devolve upon the public itself. Mayhew’s use of the phrase “natural and legal rights” also served to echo the doctrine of authority earlier espoused by Locke. He believed that natural law guaranteed to every individual a fundamental right to life, liberty, and property regardless of the authority or government to which they were subject. Legal rights in turn served the end of natural rights by harnessing state institutions to the purpose of securing individual liberty.

            That Mayhew approved of this formulation was made evident by his subsequent citation of several historical instances in which tyrannical rulers were removed or overthrown by the very people whose rights they sought to suppress. “It was upon this principle [,]” he thus affirmed,

That Tarquin was expelled from Rome; and Julius Cesar, the conqueror of the world, and the tyrant of his country, cut off in the senate house. It was upon this principle, that king Charles I, was beheaded before his own banqueting house. It was upon this principle, that king James II was made to fly that country which he aim’d at enslaving: And upon this principle was that revolution brought about, which had been so fruitful of happy consequences to Great-Britain.

The citation of these four figures – Tarquin, Caesar, Charles, and James – was both individually and collectively significant. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (??? – 495 BC), also known as Tarquin the Proud, was the legendary seventh and final king of Rome whose oppressive treatment of his subjects was so unbearable as to trigger the popular uprising that led to the creation of the Roman Republic. Caesar (100-44 BC), of course, was the Roman statesman and general whose actions helped bring about the downfall of that same republic, while Charles I and James II were kings of England whose respective reigns came to abrupt ends amid protest, civil war, and revolution. While each of these men on their own would seem to represent the kind of oppressive ruler Mayhew believed it was just to overthrow – with James in particular looming large in the contemporary Anglo-American mythos of responsible government and legitimate resistance to authority – grouping them together provided for a somewhat clearer definition of his philosophical sensibilities.

Tarquin, it seemed, whose role in classical Roman history was to be an almost cartoonishly evil figure against which the virtue of the republic could be contrasted, was of the same category to Mayhew as Julius Caesar, who was of the same category as Charles I, who was of the same category as James II. While in point of fact these men wrought different levels of damage upon the institutions and populations under the authority – Caesar and James seem particularly far apart in that regard – the minister of the Old West Church evidently perceived in them a moral equivalency that belied the true extent of their transgressions. As his Discourse would have it, violating the natural and legal rights of the individual was the worst possible crime that any ruler could commit, and one which consistently justified the overthrow of the same. It thus mattered little that Tarquin purportedly had several of his relatives killed so that he could ascend the throne while Charles I perpetrated the comparatively mild offense of seeking to tax his subjects without the permission of Parliament. One was as bad as the other in the eyes of Jonathan Mayhew, and as undeserving of obedience and loyalty. Bearing this conviction in mind, his criticism of the veneration of Charles I’s execution would appear to be grounded upon philosophy as well as faith. If men like Tarquin, Caesar, and James II remained objects of dishonor to the mainstream of contemporary Anglo-American society – and indeed they did – it would doubtless follow that Charles, their fellow tyrant, was no more deserving of reverence than they were. Definitive though this may seem, Mayhew’s effective combination of scripture and Enlightenment philosophy found even more pointed expression in the section of his Discourse which drew a distinction between those who claimed the title of ruler and those who earned it.

Yet still expanding upon the significance of Romans 13 and the supposed intentions of its author, Mayhew asserted that anything like a close and careful study of the words put down by Saint Paul would show that his exhortation to submit oneself to civil authority, “Be such an one as concludes not in favor of submission to all who bear the title of rulers, in common; but only, to those who actually perform the duty of rulers, by exercising reasonable and just authority, for the good of human society.” While the similarity between this conviction – rulers are only legitimate if they rule justly – and that which formed the core of Locke’s right of revolution – governments are only legitimate if they serve the general welfare – is plainly evident, Mayhew’s perspective was manifestly less secular. Whereas Locke emphasized the primacy of natural law, Mayhew grounded his argument upon a deep respect and reverence for what he believed to be the will of God. Granted, Mayhew did believe in the primacy of natural law and in the necessity of its protection by any ruler or government who sought to claim the loyalty of their subjects. But he often seemed to locate its source as being explicitly scriptural. “The apostle’s argument for submission to rulers,” he thus affirmed,

Is wholly built and grounded upon a presumption that they do in fact answer this character; and is of no force at all upon supposition of the contrary. If rulers are a terror to good works, and not to the evil; if they are not ministers for good to society, but for evil and distress, by violence and oppression; if they execute wrath upon sober, peaceable persons, who do their duty as members of society […] it is plain that the apostle’s argument for submission does not reach them; they are not the same, but different persons from those whom he characterizes; and who must be obeyed according to his reasoning.

Though it seemed to amount to the same thing – i.e. the coupling of political legitimacy to outward respect for a set of freedoms and behaviors – Locke’s identification of the rights in question was more abstract and theoretical than Mayhew’s.

The former’s conception of the social contract was built upon the supposition that at some point in the early history of mankind there existed a state of nature in which every individual was sovereign, and that humanity’s extrication from this condition was voluntary and conditional. Logical this may have been, but even for the literate Anglo-American of the late 18^th century it was a rather heady concept. By comparison, Mayhew posited the existence of essentially the same relationship between ruler and subject using scripture as a moral and structural basis. In so doing, rather than ask his audience to accept a theory of sovereignty and human social dynamics almost wholly unconnected to their daily lived existence, he effectively tied the success of his theory of authority and legitimacy to the status of the Bible as the last and definitive word of Lord. The resulting relationship – possessing three focal points (ruler, subject, and God) instead of two (ruler and subject) – could not have but struck the members of Mayhew’s congregation somewhat closer to home than the abstract conjecture of a long-dead Englishmen. This isn’t to say that Locke was unknown in contemporary British America. Certain segments of the middle and upper classes thereof would soon enough prove exceptionally responsive to the kinds of claims that Locke had attempted to advance in 1689, and as a whole Americans were as conscious of the significance and value of their rights as any subject of the British Crown. That being said, 1750 was a fair distance even from 1765, let alone the tumultuous 1770s. Having little reason to concern themselves with the origin of their sovereign rights or the legitimacy of their rulers, the majority of Mayhew’s fellow colonists, or his fellow residents of Boston, or even his fellow attendees of the Old West Church were doubtless better attuned to their faith at the time that Discourse was first delivered than to much more than the basic contours of Lockean political philosophy.

Clearly Mayhew was an exception to this tendency, or else he arrived at almost exactly the same conclusion as John Locke by some miraculous coincidence. In light of his education at Harvard College and at Aberdeen in Scotland – and his obvious interest in the kinds of questions Locke sought to answer at the end of the previous century – the former would seem the likeliest explanation. Bearing this in mind, Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission might fairly be characterized – at least in part – as an attempt by Jonathan Mayhew to make Lockean social contract theory digestible for an otherwise uninitiated audience by fusing it to the unquestionable moral authority of scripture. The advantage of this approach would seem quite plain. Rather than ask the members of his flock to first understand that humanity exited the state of nature by its own volition – thus provisionally delegating sovereignty rather than ceding it forever – Mayhew need only have depended upon the piety each of them had acquired over a lifetime of moral education. Thus he could successfully claim, without necessarily having to explain why, that,

Rulers have no authority from God to do mischief. They are not God’s ordinance, or God ministers, in any other sense than as it is by his permission and providence, that they are exalted to bear rule; and as magistracy duly exercised and authority duly applied, in the enacting and executing good laws,–laws attempered and accommodated to the common welfare of the subjects, must be supposed to be aggregable to the will of the beneficent author and supreme Lord of the universe; whose kingdom ruleth over all; and whose tender mercies are over all his works.

God here carried the weight of moral condemnation in a way that “natural law” almost certainly could not. Particularly according to the sensibilities of mid-18^th century New England Congregationalism, there could be no uncertainty as to the love God held for those who did good in his name, the depth of his desire for humanity to live in peace and harmony, and the magnitude of his wrath towards those who did injury to their fellow man in pursuit of greed, ambition, or power. Mayhew’s genius – if genius be an apt descriptor – was in harnessing this basic assumption about the nature of God to an argument against unquestioning submissiveness to political authority.

Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission, Part II: Faith

Even a cursory examination of Jonathan Mayhew’s September 30^th, 1750 sermon makes abundantly clear that there are two sides to the effort put forth therein. One is explicitly religious, the other unflinchingly political. And while they are most certainly intertwined, with one flowing out of and feeding into the other, it is nevertheless possible – and for the purpose of the present discussion, preferable – to distinguish and explore them each in turn. To that end, and in recognition of Mayhew's role as a minister, let us begin by discussing the primarily religious dimension of his Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission.

The pastor of Boston’s Old West Church, it here bears recalling, was a member of the Congregationalist faith. His perspective on matters theological and moral, in consequence, was generally defined by both an embrace of autonomy and self-sufficiency – embodied by the independence of the individual congregation – and a rejection of hierarchy and centralization. As Mayhew was descended from English Puritan migrants who came to America in the 1630s seeking a reprieve from the repressive policies of Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud, this very much stands to reason. Though the Congregationalists of colonial Massachusetts had arguably lost some of the rigidity of their forebears, they remained dedicated to the notion that the multiplication of clerical offices and councils – in the form of bishops and archbishops, synods and conferences – succeeded only in fostering corruption and autocracy.

These tenets are very much in evidence within the themes and motifs that Mayhew chose to emphasize in his sermon. The commemoration of the execution of Charles I being the subject at hand, Mayhew sough to deny the validity of the king’s status as a martyr by giving evidence of his having done nothing to earn the esteem of God as a consequence of his supposedly just and pious rule. Naturally, Mayhew’s status as a Non-Conformist Protestant inclined him to conceive of a standard of merit for God’s esteem somewhat at odds with that which was nurtured by the supporters of King Charles the Martyr. In fairness, however, a number of his criticisms were rather generously devised – for the perspective of the likely celebrants of January 30^th, at any rate. The support and affection which Charles evinced during his life for Catholicism, for example, was seized upon more than once by Mayhew as proof of the king’s unsuitability for sainthood.

Charles had married a Catholic princess of the royal house of France, Mayhew offered – one Henrietta Maria (1609-1669), described by Mayhew as, “A true daughter of that true mother of harlots [,]” – and respectfully requested dispensation from the Pope to do so. Later, during the period that Parliament was prorogued and the king governed on his own authority, he, “Took all opportunities to encourage the papists, and to promote them to the highest offices of honor and trust [,]” and was otherwise so, “Well affected” towards the Catholic faith that he would have been, “Very willing to unite Lambeth and Rome.” Lambeth, as it happened, was the district of London in which the Archbishop of Canterbury resided. Mayhew’s accusation, therefore, was that Charles was so comfortable with Catholic practice and doctrine – or otherwise so fond of the Catholics in his family and his retinue – that he would have agreed to reverse the English Reformation and merge the Church of England back into the Catholic fold. Building upon this fairly scurrilous accusation, Mayhew further claimed that Charles had, “Abetted the horrid massacre in Ireland, in which two hundred thousand Protestants were butchered by the roman catholics [,] and that he, “Assisted in the extirpating the French protestants at Rochelle [.]” While the specific attribution of these gruesome incidents to the intention of Charles is somewhat arguable – the Irish Protestants in question were killed by their Catholic neighbors during a period of disorder that followed a Catholic uprising in 1641 while the Huguenots who controlled the French city of La Rochelle surrendered to the forces of Louis XIII (1601-1643) after three failed relief expeditions dispatched from England – Mayhew’s aim was clearly not. In presenting these examples, he doubtless hoped his audience would begin to wonder how Charles I could possibly have been declared a saint by the Church of England when his actions had so injured English Protestants and offered such aid to the Catholic faith.

Though it might seem rather misguided now to attribute so much importance to a few gestures of goodwill and tolerance, Mayhew was most certainly correct in assuming in 1750 that most of the people who either heard or read his sermon would feel as he did about the apparent religious sympathies of Charles I. Throughout much of the 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th centuries, Roman Catholicism was subject to intense suspicion and institutional persecution in England, Scotland, and Ireland. From the time of the first schism between the English Church and Rome – begun by Henry VIII (1491-1547) and solidified under Elizabeth I (1533-1603) – the civil rights of Catholics were severely and repeatedly curtailed and more than one conspiracy resulted from Catholic-led attempts to reverse the effects of the English Reformation – i.e. the Throckmorton Plot (1583), the Babington Plot (1587), the Gunpowder Plot (1605), etc. By 1750 it was accordingly the height of orthodoxy in mainstream British socio-political discourse to express disdain for Catholicism, to decry it as a religion of slavery and autocracy, and to characterize its adherents as plotters and heretics. This was as true among people like Mayhew and the members of his congregation – who would themselves have been subject to many of the same civil restrictions under British law as professed Roman Catholics – as it was among the mainline Anglicans who recognized January 30^th, their many doctrinal differences notwithstanding.

As to why, then, the Anglican Church would choose to canonize and venerate a man whose sympathies had clearly aligned with people it avowed as its enemies, Mayhew had indeed hit upon a cogent line of inquiry. Sympathetic though contemporary Anglicans may have been, however, to his clear disdain for Catholicism, they surely would not have been so welcoming of the explanation he provided.

On first blush, there indeed seemed to be a number of reasons that might have otherwise disinclined the Anglican Church from heralding Charles I as a saint and martyr. Notwithstanding his aforementioned sympathy for Catholicism and Catholics, he more than once either profaned some aspect of Christian worship or behaved in a way that was unbecoming of a Christian sovereign. Of the latter, Mayhew notably cited the fact that Charles, “Levied many taxes upon the people without the consent of parliament [and] imprisoned great numbers of the principal merchants and gentry for not paying them [,]” and that he, “Erected, or at least revived, several new and arbitrary courts, in which the most unheard-of barbarities were committed with his knowledge and approbation [.]” Non-Conformist Protestants were not alone in suffering the consequences of these actions, particularly as it related to unrepresentative taxation. Indeed, if Parliament was intended to represent the whole of the people of England, then Charles had paid insult to every one of his subjects by attempting to sideline the national legislature and rob it of one of its fundamental prerogatives. A specific piece of evidence Mayhew offered for this attitude came in the form of a response Charles supposedly delivered upon complaint that he was too closely abiding the counsel of corrupt and untrustworthy ministers. Addressing the Parliament whose authority he had effectively sought to usurp, the king was said to reply, “In a rough, domineering, unprincely manner that he wondered any one should be so foolish and insolent as to think that he would part with the meanest of his servants upon their account [.]” Surely this was not behavior befitting of a saint? Surely a ruler who so callously disregards the accustomed liberties of his people could not possibly claim to have some aspect of Christ dwelling within him?

Mayhew, for his part, did not think so. Nor did he believe that Charles’ demonstrated disregard for the sanctity of the Sabbath spoke well of the man’s fitness for veneration. The incident in question he accordingly cited revolved around the publication and promotion of a document originally circulated during the reign of Charles’ father, James I (1566-1625). The so-called Declaration of Sports (1617) was originally issued as a rebuke to early Puritan agitation against what members of that sect perceived to be widespread disregard for one of God’s holy commandments. Rejecting Puritan Sabbatarianism – i.e. the practice of abstaining from all activities on Sundays other than prayer and contemplation – James decreed that a number of activities – including archery, dancing,  and various festival observances – were permissible upon the Sabbath once the individual in question had attended divine service. Trivial though it might now seem – mandating, as it did, whether or not a person could go bowling or skip off to the dancehall after church – the gesture was intended to be one of control. James sought to undercut Puritan claims to moral superiority and used his position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England to do so. The reissue of the Declaration in 1633 at the hands of Charles and the aforementioned William Laud was doubtless motivated by much the same sentiment. Indeed, the king was so keen to encourage a rejection of Puritan censoriousness that he ordered it read by the relevant clergymen after every Church of England service on pain of being removed from their position. Granting that Mayhew had perhaps greater reason to see this action in particular as a kind of personal rebuke – being a descendant of the Puritans whom the Declaration had originally targeted – he managed to frame the issue in terms to which most any Christian was capable of responding. “What of saintship is there [,]” he asked his congregation, “In encouraging people to profane the Lord’s Day?” Once again, it seemed a fair enough counterpoint to the elevation of Charles I that might reasonably have given pause to even some Anglicans.

It was at this point in the progression of Mayhew’s central argument in Discourse that he cast off any semblance of sympathy for or fellow feeling with the membership of the Anglican Church. Having demonstrated that in spite of his plainly illiberal and impious behavior, the Church of England had determined to canonize Charles anyway, declare him a martyr, and designate the day of his execution an occasion for fasting and repentance, Mayhew was given to conclude that the relevant course of action stemmed from two sources having little at all to do with the relevant monarch’s character as a Christian ruler. First, the national attitude at the time of both Charles’s designation as a saint and martyr and the commemoration of his execution was marked by what Mayhew somewhat uncharitably – if not altogether inaccurately – described as a kind of, “Mad and hair brain’d loyalty [,]” to the recently-restored Charles II. At that time, he wrote,

All were desirous of making their court to him; of ingratiating themselves; and of making him forget what had been done in opposition to his father, so as not to revenge it. To effect this, they ran into the most extravagant professions of affection and loyalty to him […] Thus they soothed and flattered their new king, at the expence of their liberties:–And were ready to yield up freely to Charles II, all that enormous power, which they had justly resisted Charles I for usurping to himself.

The veneration of January 30^th, therefore, was in no small part a consequence of the court politics of the 1660s, and Charles I more an instrument of flattery than a deserving object of adoration, worship, or pious contemplation. Convincing though this reasoning may have been, however, it addressed but half the issue. The political climate of the Restoration explained why Charles I had been canonized to begin with, but not why his execution continued to be a mandated occasion for repentance and meditation a century after the thing had occurred.

            It was at this point that Mayhew made known the true object of his sermon. The issue at hand was not just the questionable qualifications of Charles I for martyrdom – though Mayhew and his congregation certainly had cause to find fault with the practice – but rather what the veneration of this man said about the authority that had sanctioned it. After first hinting somewhat snidely that the Anglican Church must have been desperate indeed to desire the elevation of one such as Charles – “One would be apt to suspect that that church must be but poorly stocked with saints and martyrs, which is forced to adopt such enormous sinners into her kalendar, in order to swell the number” – he at last and at length described precisely the rationale that appeared to him most convincing. “In plain english,” he explained,

There seems to have been an impious bargain struck up betwixt the scepter and the surplice, for enslaving both the bodies and souls of men. The king appeared to be willing that the clergy should do what they would,–set up a monstrous hierarchy like that of Rome,­–a monstrous inquisition like that of Spain or Portugal,–or any thing else which their own pride, and the devil’s malice, could prompt them to: Provided always, that the clergy would be tools to the crown; that they would make the people believe, that kings had God’s authority for breaking God’s law; that they had a commission from heaven to seize the estates and lives of their subjects at pleasure; and that it was a damnable sin to resist them, even when they did such things as deserved more than damnation.

The continued recognition of Charles I as a saint and martyr was thus to Mayhew’s reckoning the end result of a corrupt accord between the Crown and the Church. During the king’s life, in return for his indulgence in matters of doctrine and observance, the priests and prelates, “Caused many of the pulpits throughout the nation, to ring with the divine absolute, indefeasible rights of kings [.]” And in death, in return for services rendered, these same clerics made Charles a saint, “Not because he was in his life, a good man, but a good churchman; not because he was a lover of holiness, but the hierarchy; not because he was a friend to Christ, but the Craft.”

            Brazen though the attribution may have been of Charles I’s undeserved veneration to a kind of corrupt bargain between the monarch in question and the Church of England, Mayhew was in truth only hewing to the tenets and the impulses of his faith. As a Congregationalist minister descended from Massachusetts Puritans, he was to a large extent bound to perceive tyranny and mischief as being inherent in any hierarchy built upon matters of faith. Furthermore, in light of the degree to which he and his coreligionists were held in disregard by the mainstream of the Church of England – by way, among other things, of the use of labels like Dissenter and Non-Conformist – it was perhaps only natural that Mayhew should have likewise projected upon ever major decision of the Anglican polity a degree of pettiness and materialism which he believed to be fundamentally un-Christian. In point of fact, Discourse is veritably peppered with such affirmations either of the injustice of non-Anglican persecution or the venality intrinsic to religious hierarchy.

Indeed, Mayhew introduced his January 30^th sermon by ruminating upon both subjects in turn. Explaining to his congregation why it was he turned his mind to the topic of King Charles the Martyr, he noted that the penultimate day of the first month of the year seemed often to be an occasion during which, “The dissenters from the established church [are] represented, not only as schismatics, (with more of triumph than of truth, and of choler than christianity) but also as persons of seditious, traitorous and rebellious principles [.]” Being once such supposed “schismatic,” Mayhew was understandably interested to explore and explain the origins of the observance in question. And, he continued,

GOD be thanked one may, in any part of the british dominions, speak freely (if a decent regard be paid to those in authority) both of government and religion; and even give some broad hints, that he is engaged on the side of Liberty, the BIBLE and Common Sense, in opposition to Tyranny, PRIEST-CRAFT and Non-sense, without being in danger either of the bastile or the inquisition.

It is difficult to say to what degree Mayhew was speaking ironically when he claimed it was possible to speak freely of government and religion without fear “in any part of the british dominions” – whether he believed it to be true, or what he meant precisely by the phrase “a decent regard […] to those in authority.” What is plain, however, is the degree to which he identified the Anglican Church as his enemy. “PRIEST-CRAFT” being in effect a euphemism for the episcopal hierarchy of the Church of England, Mayhew thus Anglicanism as being of a kind with tyranny and nonsense while his cause was one aligned with “Liberty, the BIBLE and Common Sense.”

            The palpable hostility Mayhew here evinced for the Anglican Church was repeated more than once over the length his January 30^th sermon. Characterizing the species of tyranny Charles I attempted to introduce during his reign, for example, as a veritable “drop in the bucket” which, in time, “Like a mighty torrent, or the raging waves of the sea […] bears down all before it, and deluges whole countries and empires [,]” he thereafter cautioned against allowing religious authority to pursue a similar course. To Mayhew’s thinking, it seemed, “People have no security against being unmercifully priest-ridden, but by keeping all imperious BISHOPS, and other CLERGYMEN who love to ‘lord it over God’s heritage,’ from getting their foot into the stirrup at all.” Again, the use of words like “priest,” “bishop,” and “clergymen” were intended to be pejorative references to the hierarchy of the Church of England. Further on in the course of his harangue against the veneration of an undeserving king, Mayhew’s sense of revulsion became bitterer still. Positing, he acerbically claimed, a purely hypothetical scenario – “It is no matter how far it is from any thing which has, in fact, happened in the world” – he proceeded to lay before his audience a particularly venomous critique of the supposed materialism and worldliness of the Anglican priesthood.

            “Suppose then,” he began, “it was allowed, in general, that the clergy were an useful order of men; that they ought to be esteemed very highly in love for their words sake; and to be decently supported by those whom they serve, the labourer being worthy of his reward.” Again, recalling that most dissenting faiths rejected episcopalianism and that Catholicism was a political non-entity in contemporary British life, “clergy” could only be meant to refer to the priesthood of the Church of England. “Suppose farther,” Mayhew continued,

That a number of Reverend and Right Reverend Drones, who worked not; who preached, perhaps, but once a year, and then, not the gospel of Jesus Christ; but the divine rights of tythes;–the dignity of their offices as ambassadors of Christ, the equity of sine cures, and a plurality of benefices;–the excellency of the devotions in that prayer book, which some of them hired chaplains to use for them;–or some favourite point of church tyranny, and antichristian usurpation; suppose such men as these, spending their lives in effeminacy, luxury and idleness; (or when they were not idle, doing that which is worse than idleness; suppose such men) should, merely by the merit or ordination and consecration, and a peculiar, odd habit, claim great respect and reverence from those whom they civilly called the beasts of the laiety [.]

The sheer multitude of insults and aspersions here offered speaks to the depths of Mayhew’s loathing. Not only did he refer to the prelates of the Anglican Church as “Right Reverend Drones,” but he accused them of caring only for tithes – a kind of religious taxation – sinecures – patronage positions entailing little if any actual work – and benefices – grants of land in exchange for spiritual services. He also notably accused them of spending their lives in “effeminacy, luxury and idleness,” and cast doubt upon the efficacy of ordination and consecration as a means of qualifying a given individual to receive the “respect and reverence” of the lay community. The cumulative result of these slights being an image of intense avarice, sloth, and immorality, it would seem little wonder that Mayhew was willing to accuse the Church of England of conspiracy and corruption as it related to the elevation of Charles I to the status of martyr and saint. Being already convinced of the complete lack of righteousness and integrity within the priesthood thereof, it would surely have seemed to him a very short leap indeed to understand the relationship between the executed king and the Anglican Church as being at root transactional and material.