A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers

January 30, 1750 | Jonathan Mayhew | Boston, Massachusetts Bay

This is an excerpt. What was left out, and why, is set out at the foot of the page.

Headnote, written for Huzzah

Mayhew preached this at the West Church in Boston on the Lord's Day after 30 January 1749/50, the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, which the Church of England kept as a fast for a king it had canonised as a martyr. He was not yet thirty. The sermon was published at the request of his hearers, and it made him famous well beyond Boston: Aberdeen gave him a doctorate of divinity the following year, and Thomas Hollis had his writings reprinted in England alongside Otis and John Adams.

The subject is Romans 13, the passage that had been used for a century and a half to make obedience to rulers a Christian duty without limit. Mayhew does not deny the text and does not soften it. He takes the apostle's own reasons and follows them. Paul grounds the duty of submission on what magistrates are for: they are a terror to evil works and not to good, they are ministers of God for the public benefit. Mayhew's move is to ask what that argument proves when the ruler is the opposite of what the argument describes. If the whole reason for obeying is the good of society, then where obedience produces the ruin of society the reason is gone, and with it the duty.

That is the hinge of the thing, and it is worth being precise about how narrow it is. Mayhew is not arguing for a right of private judgment against every law one dislikes. He says so in a footnote, and he says it again in the last paragraph printed here, where he warns against men who aim at popularity under the disguise of patriotism, tells his hearers to pay all due regard to the king, and calls government sacred. The case is for a whole nation, abused past bearing, acting unanimously. But once the ground of obedience has been made conditional on what the ruler does, the condition can be tested by anyone who can read.

Twenty five years later the argument is in Langdon's election sermon at Watertown as settled doctrine, and the year after that it is in the Declaration. Mayhew did not live to see it. He died at Boston on 19 July 1766, aged forty five, weeks after preaching on the repeal of the Stamp Act.

The document

It is evident that the affair of civil government may properly fall under a moral and religious consideration, at least so far forth as it relates to the general nature and end of magistracy, and to the grounds and extent of that submission which persons of a private character ought to yield to those who are vested with authority. This must be allowed by all who acknowledge the divine original of Christianity. For, although there be a sense, and a very plain and important sense, in which Christ's kingdom is not of this world, his inspired apostles have, nevertheless, laid down some general principles concerning the office of civil rulers, and the duty of subjects, together with the reason and obligation of that duty. And from hence it follows, that it is proper for all who acknowledge the authority of Jesus Christ, and the inspiration of his apostles, to endeavor to understand what is in fact the doctrine which they have delivered concerning this matter. It is the duty of Christian magistrates to inform themselves what it is which their religion teaches concerning the nature and design of their office. And it is equally the duty of all Christian people to inform themselves what it is which their religion teaches concerning that subjection which they owe to the higher powers. It is for these reasons that I have attempted to examine into the Scripture account of this matter, in order to lay it before you with the same freedom which I constantly use with relation to other doctrines and precepts of Christianity ; not doubting but you will judge upon everything offered to your consideration with the same spirit of freedom and liberty with which it is spoken.

[A large part of the sermon is omitted here. See the note at the foot of this page.]

Thus, upon a careful review of the apostle's reasoning in this passage, it appears that his arguments to enforce submission are of such a nature as to conclude only in favor of submission to such rulers as he himself describes ; i. e., such as rule for the good of society, which is the only end of their institution. Common tyrants and public oppressors are not entitled to obedience from their subjects by virtue of anything here laid down by the inspired apostle.

If it be our duty, for example, to obey our king merely for this reason, that he rules for the public welfare (which is the only argument the apostle makes use of), it follows, by a parity of reason, that when he turns tyrant, and makes his subjects his prey to devour and destroy, instead of his charge to defend and cherish, we are bound to throw off our allegiance to him, and to resist ; and that according to the tenor of the apostle's argument in this passage. Not to discontinue our allegiance in this case 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. It is true the apostle puts no case of such a tyrannical prince ; but, by his grounding his argument for submission wholly upon the good of civil society, it is plain he implicitly authorizes, and even requires us to make resistance, whenever this shall be necessary to the public safety and happiness.

[A further part of the sermon is omitted here.]

For a nation thus abused to arise unanimously and resist their prince, even to the dethroning him, 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 defence. And it would be highly criminal in them not to make use of this means. It would be stupid tameness and unaccountable folly for whole nations to suffer one unreasonable, ambitious, and cruel man to wanton and riot in their misery. And in such a case, it would, of the two, be more rational to suppose that they that did not resist, than that they who did, would receive to themselves damnation.

[The sermon closes.]

To conclude : Let us all learn to be free and to be loyal ; let us not profess ourselves vassals to the lawless pleasure of any man on earth ; but let us remember, at the same time, government is sacred, and not to be trifled with. It is our happiness to live under the government of a prince who is satisfied with ruling according to law, as every other good prince will. We enjoy under his administration all the liberty that is proper and expedient for us. It becomes us, therefore, to be contented and dutiful subjects. Let us prize our freedom, but not "use our liberty for a cloak of maliciousness." There are men who strike at liberty under the term licentiousness ; there are others who aim at popularity under the disguise of patriotism. Be aware of both. Extremes are dangerous. There is at present amongst us, perhaps, more danger of the latter than of the former ; for which reason I would exhort you to pay all due regard to the government over us, to the king, and all in authority, and to "lead a quiet and peaceable life." And, while I am speaking of loyalty to our earthly prince, suffer me just to put you in mind to be loyal also to the Supreme Ruler of the universe, "by whom kings reign and princes decree justice ;" to which King, eternal, immortal, invisible, even to "the only wise God," be all honor and praise, dominion and thanksgiving, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

What was left out

The discourse runs to about twenty thousand words. Printed here are the opening, two passages from the argument on Romans 13, one passage from the reflections on the resistance to Charles I, and the closing, together about nine hundred and fifty. Because the argument is spread across the whole sermon rather than gathered in one place, the cuts are marked in three separate blocks rather than as a single continuous omission. The two paragraphs in the first marked block are not continuous with each other: a further stage of the apostle's reasoning, and a footnote of Mayhew's own, stand between them in the sermon. What is omitted is the great bulk of it: Mayhew's preface, his verse by verse reading of the whole passage from Romans, the long argument that the apostle is describing an office rather than a person, the four queries on the resistance made to Charles I, the account of that king's reign and death, the attack on the anniversary fast and on the doctrine of his saintship and martyrdom, and Mayhew's own footnotes, one of which is the passage calling it treason against the whole body politic to say that subjects are not proper judges when their governors oppress them. The complete text is linked in the source note below.

Source and provenance

Text set from John Wingate Thornton, The Pulpit of the American Revolution, Boston, 1860, Discourse I, read from the scan at https://archive.org/details/pulpitofamerican00thor. Every passage printed below, together with the title page, was then checked against the 1750 first edition, Boston, printed and sold by D. Fowle in Queen-street and by D. Gookin over-against the South-Meeting-House, read from the page images of the University of California copy at https://archive.org/details/discourseconcern00mayhrich. Only the title page, the opening, the closing and the passages printed here were checked. The rest of the discourse was not collated line by line, because the only machine readable text of the first edition is long-s OCR and is not a witness. Two readings are taken from the 1750 sheets against Thornton. The first edition opens It is evident that the affair of civil government, singular, where Thornton sets affairs; and in the closing paragraph the first edition reads It is our happiness to live under the government of a prince, where Thornton drops the words the government of. Both were read on the page images, at pages 1 and 54, and the first edition is followed in both places. Elsewhere Thornton's spelling and pointing are kept as they stand, including his American forms favor, honor, cloak and authorizes, where the 1750 sets favour, honour, cloke and authorises. Thornton also drops the first edition's commas in Common tyrants, and public oppressors, and sets further and entitled where the first edition sets farther and intitled. None of that changes the sense and none of it is corrected here. Mayhew's own marks for his scripture references are not reproduced. Thornton prints his own footnotes through the sermon, signed Ed., and Mayhew prints footnotes of his own in smaller type, one of which stands in the middle of the second passage below in the first edition; none of that footnote matter is reproduced here, and the passages were selected and read one at a time so that none of it was carried in.

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