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POLITICAL SERMONS FROM PASTORS IN THE FOUNDING ERA
PART 30

 

By Pastor Roger Anghis
March 16, 2014
NewsWithViews.com

Preached before the Honorable Council, And the honorable House of Representatives of the Colony of the Massachusetts-Bay, in New-England. MAY 29th, 1776.

Being the Anniversary for the Election of THE honorable COUNCIL FOR the Colony. By Pastor Samuel West of Dartmouth.

Foundation Scriptures:

And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counselors as at the beginning : afterward thou shalt be called the city of righteousness, the faithful city, Isaiah 4:26:

Their children also shall be as aforetime, and their congregations shall be established before me, and I will punish all that oppress them : and their nobles shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them, Jeremiah 30:20- 21.

As free and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of GOD, 1 Peter 2: 16.

The beast that thou sawest, shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition : and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast. Revelation 17:8.

West continues to make a point that there is obedience required to those in authority but he continues to remind them that those in authority are to be doing God’s will. Keep in mind that West’s audience is the House of Representatives for the Colony of Massachusetts. “Subjects are also bound to obey magistrates, for conscience' sake, out of regard to the divine authority, and out of obedience to the will of God; - for if magistrates are the ministers of God, we cannot disobey them without being disobedient to the law of God ; and this extends to all men in authority, from the highest ruler to the lowest officer in the state. To oppose them when in the exercise of lawful authority is an act of disobedience to the Deity, and, as such, will be punished by him. It will, doubtless, be readily granted by every honest man that we ought cheerfully to obey the magistrate, and submit to all such regulations of government as tend to promote the public good; but as this general definition may be liable to be misconstrued, and every man may think himself at liberty to disregard any laws that do not suit his interest, humor, or fancy,”[1] (Emphasis mine)

West is making sure of two things, first, that it is the proper and God ordained to obey those in authority and second, he is letting those in authority know that it is their duty to act according to divine direction. He lays out the reasoning behind his statements but notice that it always is backed by divine requirements: “It is also necessary that the minor part should submit to the major; e. g., when legislators have enacted a set of laws which are highly approved by a large majority of the community as tending to promote the public good, in this case, if a small number of persons are so unhappy as to view the matter in a very different point of light from the public, though they have an undoubted right to show the reasons of their dissent from the judgment of the i3ublic, and may lawfully use all proper arguments to convince the public of what they judge to be an error, yet, if they fail in their attempt, and the majority still continue to approve of the laws that are enacted, it is the duty of those few that dissent peaceably and for conscience' sake to submit to the public judgment, unless something is required of them which they judge would be sinful for them to comply with ; for in that case they ought to obey the dictates of their own consciences rather than any human authority whatever.”[2] (Emphasis mine)

West points out something that American Courts have gotten away from and that is the majority rules. We have seen our Courts completely reverse the meaning of our First Amendment because of the complaints of a scattered few. When prayer was taken out of schools it was because one woman complained, Madeline Murray O’Hair. At that time 97% of Americans claimed to be Christian yet the opinion of 3% of Americans ruled over the 97%. West taught against that type of situation: “And, besides, it is the major part of a community that have the sole right of establishing a constitution and authorizing magistrates; and consequently it is only the major part of the community that can claim the right of altering the constitution, and displacing the magistrates; for certainly common sense will tell us that it requires as great an authority to set aside a constitution as there was at first to establish it. The collective body, not a few individuals, ought to constitute the supreme authority of the state.”[3] (Emphasis mine)

The Founders looked at holding public office as a special right and privilege and the execution of that offices was to be taken with great responsibility: “But when a community is become very numerous, it is very difficult, and in many cases impossible, for all to meet together to regulate the affairs of the state ; hence comes the necessity of appointing delegates to represent the people in a general assembly. And this ought to be looked upon as a sacred and inalienable right, of which a people cannot justly divest themselves, and which no human authority can in equity ever take from them, viz., that no one be obliged to submit to any law except such as are made either by himself or by his representative. If representation and legislation are inseparably connected, it follows, that when great numbers have emigrated into a foreign land, and are so far removed from the parent state that they neither are or can be properly represented by the government from which they have emigrated, that then nature itself points out the necessity of their assuming to themselves the powers of legislation; and they have a right to consider themselves as a separate state from the other, and, as such, to form themselves into a body politic.”[4] (Emphasis mine)


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The last statement here is a call for independence. Noting that the distance from England was great enough that to efficiently govern the Colonies was not possible and that the people themselves had the God given right to govern themselves. This belief is confirmed in his next statement: “In the next place, when a people find themselves cruelly oppressed by the parent state, they have an undoubted right to throw off the yoke, and to assert their liberty, if they find good reason to judge that they have sufficient power and strength to maintain their ground in defending their just rights against their oppressors ; for, in this case, by the law of self-preservation, which is the first law of nature, they have not only an undoubted right, but it is their indispensable duty, if they cannot be redressed any other way, to renounce all submission to the government that has oppressed them, and set up an independent state of their own, even though they may be vastly inferior in numbers to the state that have oppressed them.”[5] (Emphasis mine)

The mindset in the pulpit then was independence now and forever and that should be the mindset in the pulpit today as well.

Click here for part -----> 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31,

Footnotes:

1. Pulpit of the American Revolution, John W. Thorton, The Federalist Papers Project, (Gould and Lincoln, Boston), pp. 278-279.
2. Pulpit of the American Revolution, John W. Thorton, The Federalist Papers Project, (Gould and Lincoln, Boston), pp. 279-280.
3. Pulpit of the American Revolution, John W. Thorton, The Federalist Papers Project, (Gould and Lincoln, Boston), p. 280.
4. Pulpit of the American Revolution, John W. Thorton, The Federalist Papers Project, (Gould and Lincoln, Boston), p. 281.
5. Roger Anghis, Defining America’s Exceptionalism, (Bloomington: Westbow Press, 2012), p.

� 2014 Roger Anghis - All Rights Reserved

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Pastor Roger Anghis is the Founder of RestoreFreeSpeech.org, an organization designed to draw attention to the need of returning free speech rights to churches that was restricted in 1954.

President of The Damascus Project, TheDamascusProject.org, which has a stated purpose of teaching pastors and lay people the need of the churches involvement in the political arena and to teach the historical role of Christianity in the politics of the United States. Married-37 years, 3 children, three grandchildren.

Web site: RestoreFreeSpeech.org

E-Mail: editor@restorefreespeech.org


 

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West continues to make a point that there is obedience required to those in authority but he continues to remind them that those in authority are to be doing God’s will. Keep in mind that West’s audience is the House of Representatives for the Colony of Massachusetts.