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 30th 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
30th 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 30th 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.
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