Concerning the agreement among on the founders with reference to Christian principles, perhaps the Lurkers would benefit from a repeat of the excerpt you already provided at post 179?
"The general Principles, on which the Fathers atchieved Independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful assembly of young gentlemen could unite.... And what were these general Principles? I answer [John Adams wrote]-- the general principles of Christianity, in which all those sects were united: And the general Principles of English and American Liberty, in which all those young men united, and which had united all parties in America, in majorities sufficient to assert and maintain her Independence. Now I will avow, that I then believed, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and those principles of Liberty, as unalterable as human nature and the terrestrial, mundane system" (Letter of Adams to Jefferson, June 28, 1813).
Anyhoot, in a recent message to YHAOS -- Reply #223 -- I elaborated the “principles of Christianity” part of Adams’ brief. I’d like to add some comments regarding the “principles of English and American Liberty” part as commonly understood by Americans in the mid-part of the 18th century, around the time of the first Great Awakening, to which Adams refers.
English and American liberty rest not only on Christian ideas, but also on the great Whig political tradition of Great Britain (which actually recapitulates key Christian ideas). The Whig philosopher John Locke was the major ideological driver of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, in which King James II was deposed, and William and Mary ascended to the British Crown. In the next year, William approved the English Bill of Rights. The American colonists were well aware of these developments.
Central to their awareness was the recognition that the Bill of Rights was established on natural law grounds. Christianity itself is a major proponent of natural law. So the Christian colonists could easily associate the ideas of Liberty with natural law.
The British Whig essayists John Trenchard & Thomas Gordon’s Cato’s Letters; or Essays on Liberty, Civil and Religious, and other Important Subjects (a collection of essays published in the London Journal commencing around 1720) were widely circulated in the Colonies and were hugely popular there. I have never been able to find a better explication of the natural law basis of Whig political philosophy than this excerpt from Cato’s Letters:
All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God; nor can they alienate the same by Consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes….Can we say on this basis: Life, Liberty, and Property are divinely constituted natural (i.e., unalienable) human rights here (the latter of which TJ transcribed as “the pursuit of happiness”)?Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.
The fruits of a Man’s honest Industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbiter of his own private Actions and Property….
Note that God is the ultimate guarantor of Life, Liberty, and Equity in this understanding, in addition to being the Creator of men who are born free.
This insight is based on even earlier understandings, such as we see in the statement of John Milton, the great English poet and essayist:
The power of kings and magistrates is nothing else, but what is derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the people, to the common good of them all, in whom the power remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them without a violation of their natural birthright.I maintain that these understandings were of paramount importance to the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
But it’s one thing to declare the sovereignty of free natural-born human beings and to declare their God-given natural rights, and quite another to fit that into a political system. For if there is any “zero-sum game” in nature, it is political power: the more power the state has, the less the people have to direct their own affairs. Practically speaking, without the power, a free people can do nothing, or very little, by or for themselves. Thus they lose their God-given liberty. George Washington was acutely aware of this problem:
Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master!Though Washington — a wise and prudent man — was certainly right about this, in the early 19th century, John C. Calhoun could still say the following with confidence:
…[A]ll powers granted by the Constitution, are derived from the people of the United States; and may be resumed by them when perverted to their injury or oppression; and that every power not granted [to the government] remains with them, and at their will; and that no right of any description can be canceled, abridged, restrained or modified by Congress, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the President or any department, or officer of the United States.And so here we are today, in the early 21st century. To the extent that Christian ideas and the ideas of natural law and natural liberty that informed our amazing system of government at its very root have been under full frontal attack for the past century, is it little wonder that we are increasingly losing our freedoms, our morale, our hope for a better tomorrow?
I’ll just leave it there for now.
Thank you ever so much for writing, dearest sister in Christ — and for your very kind words of encouragement.