THE CHURCH THAT JESUS BUILT 4

4. The Form of Church Government

Baptists are backed by the Scriptures in their claim of a congregational or democratic form of church government, all the members having an equal voice in the administrations of the church’s affairs. This form of church government is proved by the following facts:

1. A whole church voted in the election of an apostle to succeed Judas Iscariot (Acts 1:26).
2. 2. A whole church acted together in the election and ordination of the first deacons (Acts 6:2-6).
3. A whole church acted together in sending forth missionaries (Acts 13:1, 2; 14:26, 27).
4. A church as such is authorized to receive members (Romans 14:1).
5. 5. A church as such is authorized to dismiss members for bad conduct (I Cor. 5:13; II Cor. 2:6; II Thess. 3:6).

The Corinthian church expelled from her membership an incestuous man by majority vote. “Sufficient to such a man is this punishment which was inflicted of many” (II Cor. 2:6). The word “many” comes from an original word meaning “majority.” This shows beyond any reasonable doubt the church maintained a democratic form of government.

6. The congregational form of government is supported by the fact a church is complete within itself and is independent. Other congregations are not necessary for the being of a church, but they may contribute to its well-being. In Acts 16:5 we note that members of a church went abroad and established like churches: “And so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily.”
7. The fact Christ recognizes a church as being the highest ecclesiastical tribunal on earth supports the congregational form of government, Matt. 18:17a, 18: “And if he shall neglect to hear them (the one or two witnesses) tell it unto the church…Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This authority was committed to a local congregation as a whole, thus showing that all the members should have a voice in any transaction

That is the Baptist system of church government – all members of a church being equals in a perfect democracy. They may not be equals in material possessions, or talents, or resourcefulness, but in authority under the Lord.

Other forms of church government, as taught by certain denominations, include the episcopal and presbyterial forms. By the episcopal is meant a church governed by bishops; and by presbyterial is meant a church is governed by presbyters or elders. These teachings arose after the close of the apostolic period, hence not taught in the Scriptures. They take away from the churches adopting such such systems their autonomous rights, whereas the congregational form of government necessarily implies three things: first, equality of the members touching their voice in the governing affairs of the congregation; second, independence of each church, as already mentioned; and third, each church is amenable only to the Lord in the conduct of its affairs.

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Mercy Otis Warren – “Conscience of the American Revolution”

American Minute with Bill Federer

Mercy Otis Warren was called “The Conscience of the American Revolution.”

She was wife of Massachusetts House Speaker James Warren, sister of patriot James Otis, and she corresponded with Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton and John Adams.

In 1805, Mercy Otis Warren published a 3 volume History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution.

In Observations on the new Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions, 1788, Mercy Otis Warren wrote:

“The immediate gift of the Creator obliges every one…to resist the first approaches of tyranny, which at this day threaten to sweep away the rights for which the brave Sons of America have fought…

“Behold the insidious efforts of the partisans of arbitrary power…to lock the strong chains of domestic despotism on a country…”

“Save us from anarchy on the one hand, and the jaws of tyranny on the other…”

“It has been observed…that ‘the virtues and vices of a people’ when a revolution happens in their government, are the measure of the liberty or slavery they ought to expect.”

Mercy Otis Warren continued:

“And when asked, what is become of the rich produce of their farms – they may answer in the hapless style of the Man of La Mancha, ‘The steward of my Lord has seized and sent it to Madrid.’

Or, in the more literal language…Government requires that the collectors of the revenue should transmit it to the Federal City.”

In Observations on the new Constitution, 1788, Mercy Otis Warren stated:

“Monarchy is a species of government fit only for a people too much corrupted by luxury, avarice, and a passion for pleasure, to have any love for their country…

Monarchy is…by no means calculated for a nation that is…tenacious of their liberty — animated with a disgust to tyranny — and inspired with the generous feeling of patriotism.”

Mercy Otis Warren concluded:

“The origin of all power is in the people, and they have an incontestable right to check the creatures of their own creation.”

Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams were two of the most influential women of the Revolutionary War era.

Abigail Adams, wife of the 2nd President and mother of the 6th President, wrote to Mercy Otis Warren on NOVEMBER 5, 1775:

“A patriot without religion in my estimation is as great a paradox as an honest Man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men?”

Abigail Adams continued in her letter to Mercy Otis Warren:

“Can he be a patriot who, by an openly vicious conduct, is undermining the very bonds of Society, corrupting the Morals of Youth, and by his bad example injuring the very Country he professes to patronize more than he can possibly compensate by intrepidity, generosity and honour?…

Scriptures tell us ‘righteousness exalteth a Nation.’”

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The Moral Liberal contributing editor, William J. Federer, is the bestselling author of “Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance no Longer Tolerates Religion,” and numerous other books. A frequent radio and television guest, his daily American Minute is broadcast nationally via radio, television, and Internet. Check out all of Bill’s bookshere.

Justice Joseph Story on Original Intent and Religious Freedom

LIBERTY LETTERS WITH STEVE FARRELL

Justice Joseph Story served as a Supreme Court Justice from 1811 through 1845. His Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (first published in 1833) was required reading in U.S. law schools for over a century, being a cornerstone of early American jurisprudence. As such, it was and still is a critical source as to the original intent of the American Founders in penning and passing the First Amendment, and more particularly, regarding the Religious Establishment and Freedom of Religion clauses.

Justice Story writes:

§ 984. Let us now enter upon the consideration of the amendments, which, (it will be found,) principally regard subjects properly belonging to a bill of rights.

§ 985. The first is “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition government for a redress of grievances.”

§ 986. And first, the prohibition of any establishment of religion, and the freedom of religious opinion and worship.

How far any government has a right to interfere in matters touching religion, has been a subject much discussed by writers upon public and political law. The right and the duty of the interference of government, in matters of religion, have been maintained by many distinguished authors, as well those, who were the warmest advocates of free governments, as those, who were attached to governments of a more arbitrary character. Indeed, the right of a society or government to interfere in matters of religion will hardly be contested by any persons, who believe that piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well being of the state, and indispensable to the administration of civil justice. The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion; the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God; the responsibility to him for all our actions, founded upon moral freedom and accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues; — these never can be a matter of indifference in any well ordered community. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive, how any civilized society can well exist without them. And at all events, it is impossible for those, who believe in the truth of Christianity, as a divine revelation, to doubt, that it is the especial duty of government to foster, and encourage it among all the citizens and subjects. This is a point wholly distinct from that of the right of private judgment in matters of religion, and of the freedom of public worship according to the dictates of one’s own conscience.

§ 987. The real difficulty lies in ascertaining the limits, to which government may rightfully go in fostering and encouraging religion. Three cases may easily be supposed. One, where a government affords aid to a particular religion, leaving all persons free to adopt any other; another, where it creates an ecclesiastical establishment for the propagation of the doctrines of a particular sect of that religion, leaving a like freedom to all others; and a third, where it creates such an establishment, and excludes all persons, not belonging to it, either wholly, or in part, from any participation in the public honours, trusts, emoluments, privileges, and immunities of the state. For instance, a government may simply declare, that the Christian religion shall be the religion of the state, and shall be aided, and encouraged in all the varieties of sects belonging to it; or it may declare, that the Catholic or Protestant religion shall be the religion of the state, leaving every man to the free enjoyment of his own religious opinions; or it may establish the doctrines of a particular sect, as of Episcopalians, as the religion of the state, with a like freedom; or it may establish the doctrines of a particular sect, as exclusively the religion of the state, tolerating others to a limited extent, or excluding all, not belonging to it, from all public honours, trusts, emoluments, privileges, and immunities.

§ 988. Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as it is not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.

§ 989. It yet remains a problem to be solved in human affairs, whether say free government can be permanent, where the public worship of God, and the support of religion, constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state in any assignable shape. The future experience of Christendom, and chiefly of the American states, must settle this problem, as yet new in the history of the world, abundant, as it has been, in experiments in the theory of government.

§ 990. But the duty of supporting religion, and especially the Christian religion, is very different from the right to force the consciences of other men, or to punish them for worshipping God in the manner, which, they believe, their accountability to him requires. It has been truly said, that “religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be dictated only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” Mr. Locke himself, who did not doubt the right of government to interfere in matters of religion, and especially to encourage Christianity, has at the same time expressed his opinion of the right of private judgment, and liberty of conscience, in a manner becoming his character, as a sincere friend of civil and religious liberty. “No man, or society of men,” says he, “have any authority to impose their opinions or interpretations on any other, the meanest Christian; since, in matters of religion, every man must know, and believe, and give an account for himself.” The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority, without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural, as well as of revealed religion.

§ 991. The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus sought to cut off the means of religious persecution, (the vice and pest of former ages,) and the power of subverting the rights of conscience in matters of religion, which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age. The history of the parent country had afforded the most solemn warnings and melancholy instructions on this head; and even New-England, the land of the persecuted puritans, as well as other colonies, where the Church of England had maintained its superiority, had furnished a chapter, as full of dark bigotry and intolerance, as any, which could be found to disgrace the pages of foreign annals. Apostacy, heresy, and nonconformity have been standard crimes for public appeals, to kindle the flames of persecution, and apologize for the most atrocious triumphs over innocence and virtue.

§ 992. It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects, thus exemplified in our domestic, as well as in foreign annals, that it was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject. The situation, too, of the different states equally proclaimed the policy, as well as the necessity, of such an exclusion. In some of the states, episcopalians constituted the predominant sect; in others, presbyterians; in others, congregationalists; in others, quakers; and in others again, there was a close numerical rivalry among contending sects. It was impossible, that there should not arise perpetual strife and perpetual jealousy on the subject of ecclesiastical ascendancy, if the national government were left free to create a religious establishment. The only security was in extirpating the power. But this alone would have been an imperfect security, if it had not been followed up by a declaration of the right of the free exercise of religion, and a prohibition (as we have seen) of all religious tests. Thus, the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state governments, to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice, and the state constitutions; and the Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national councils, without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship. (1)

This is a far cry from what is taught in our schools today and insisted upon by many a so-called modern expert who collectively labor – it seems – for a cause the very opposite of the Founder’s original intent – and while so doing, taking aim at, indeed making into PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE, free religious expression in public life. Such speech – consistent with the very Nature of man as a spiritual being – was supposed to be protected as a God-given, Inalienable Right, not crushed with the iron fist of socialism, humanism, and atheism! – And as to religion, in general, as Story notes, it was to be encouraged. The First Amendment then being a legal written check upon Congress, a legal prohibition if you will, on passing ANY bill—ANY bill into law that would interfere with this free expression in ANY forum (public or private) period. —And again, a prohibition against any law that might tend to hinder the prosperity of religion in general. Finally, as to the Establishment Clause, it had one clear purpose, and ONE ONLY, being a prohibition against a national church—avoiding that great evil and enemy to true religion and civic virtue.

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Footnote: Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States; with a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, before the Adoption of the Constitution. Abridged by the Author, for the Use of Colleges and High Schools (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, and Company/Cambridge: Brown, Shattuck, and Co., 1833), pp. iii-viii, 693-703.

Pastors Refuse to Sign State-Issued Marriage Certificates!

Who will join and stand in defiance of government intrusion? Pastors Refuse to Sign State-Issued Marriage Certificates! Posted: 25 Jun 2015 10:45 PM PDT Don Boys, Ph.D. http://donboys.cstnews.com/pastors-refuse-to-sign-state-issued-marriage-certificates The Bible teaches that “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” Heb. 13:4. That verse is true whether it is believed or not. Marriage is God’s business, but was taken over by the state with the consent of pastors; however, the state should have nothing to do with marriage. Nothing. Hundreds of pastors are refusing to sign state-issued marriage certificates! In the Garden of Eden, God set the pattern for all future marriages with one man and one woman constituting a family. A God-approved marriage is publicly declared, heterosexual, monogamous, physical, and permanent. After God established marriage, man’s wicked heart soon twisted God’s plan when Lamech (who became a murderer) took two wives, and marriage has been going downhill ever since. I thought only a few of my fellow preachers believed that marriage was a family affair without any involvement of the government but I was wrong. According to Life Way Research, one in four U.S. pastors think it is wrong for them to sign a state marriage certificate! Moreover, a prominent conservative but unofficial Catholic magazine, First Things, takes that position and more than 400 pastors and laypersons have signed a pledge to “no longer serve as agents of the state in marriage.”  Ministers who have taken the pledge are Roman Catholic, Baptist, Church of God, Episcopal, Church of Christ, Universal Life, Bible Churches, Nazarene, Methodist, and others. They will no longer sign state marriage certificates but will recommend that couples have a civil ceremony as well as religious ceremony. Conversely, I think preachers need to tell the state that a church wedding is sufficient with no state permission required and no civil ceremony is required. Most pastors end a wedding ceremony saying, “By the power vested in me by the state, I now pronounce you man and wife.” Wait a minute, how can that be justified from Scripture? Does a preacher teach a class, preach a sermon, or counsel a family or anything else by powers vested by the state?  According to the American Jurisprudence Encyclopedia, a pastor performing a wedding “is a public civil officer, …not at all to be distinguished from a judge of the superior court….” That makes such pastors tools of the state. What if a state decided that there were too many Fundamentalists and Evangelicals running around and wanted to “thin them out” by forbidding them marriage licenses, would any preacher in America be willing to obey that law? Only the weakest preachers would comply. Real men of God would tell state authorities to go back to the statehouse and continue to do their thing but leave the church house alone. Such preachers would continue to marry their young couples in defiance of such oppressive laws. Even influential laymen have declared that the state should get out of the marriage business. David Boaz, Vice President of the libertarian Cato Institute, asked, “Why should the government be in the business of decreeing who can and cannot be married?” Conservative talk show host Larry Elder  declared the state should “leave marriage to non-governmental institutions like churches, synagogues, mosques and other houses of worship or private institutions.” He said that marriage licenses made as much sense as licensing barbers or taxi-cab drivers. Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, radio talker Glenn Beck, and law professor Doug Kmiec (a Roman Catholic layman) have joined the chorus, advocating no state marriages. Kmiec said, “If the state got out of the marriage business. . . . then the question of who can and cannot be married would be entirely determined in your voluntarily chosen faith community.” The state of marriage in the U.S. is a mess and I never thought I would ever support the atheists except in their repenting and trusting Christ, but here I am supporting their position on marriage!  Atheists sued Indiana because atheists were forbidden to perform marriages. Of course, they have the right to perform their own marriages. The fact is, all governments should get out of all marriage entanglement totally and leave all marriages to the churches, sects, etc. I suppose if the state wanted to marry hedonists, humanists, and heretics they could do as they are doing now. No government has constitutional authority to approve or disapprove religion, but government at all levels always seeks more power and screams like a banshee when power slips (or is jerked) from their hands. States continue to reach for or hold onto power for the sake of power. They often look silly in their grab for control as in California. In September of 2008, California prohibited the use of bride and groom in any state wedding ceremony! Moreover, their schoolbooks may no longer use the terms husband and wife. Of course, you know why. Such terms might offend those who practice perversion. My, my, aren’t public officials super-sensitive to their citizens? Well, they are not sensitive to normal, decent, citizens. If you are a white, heterosexual, creationist, Bible-believing Christian, (you know, the kind of people that founded and grounded this great nation), you must change what you have always been taught or move out of the state! And people are doing that by the thousands! The California high court declared that the legal definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman was unconstitutional so the marriage license was changed to Party A and Party B as in Alfred and Bill or Alice and Betty. Yes, I know it was nutty and a little slutty, but after all, California is the land of fruits and nuts with an abundance of nuts. Bride and Groom were no longer legal until sane people threw a fit and reversed it. No court or authority can change the meaning of words. Marriage is what it is as defined by God in the Garden so when a court seeks to nullify God’s definition, they are seeking to do something that cannot be done. It can be debated, decided, and declared but not done. The facts don’t change: marriage is between a man and woman who choose to commit to a lifetime together. No court or legislature can change that. The above silliness is one of many reasons why the state should have nothing to do with marriage. But many are concerned about a non-state marriage being acceptable and legal. Acceptable and legal to whom? The union of man and woman is a law of nature. Such laws are unchangeable while human laws always change or pass away.  Natural marriages in England, Iraq, Brazil, or any state are considered marriages in any U.S. state, so why should marriages in any U.S. church not be considered acceptable and legal? You don’t have to have a state-issued marriage certificate; and no preacher should use one thereby denying power to the state that God never intended it to have. As long as your family and your church are satisfied with your public commitment to each other, that should be sufficient. Get the government totally out of marriages. (First of nine columns dealing with no state involvement in marriage. Next column: “Marriages From Ancient Times Were Family, Not State Approved!”) http://bit.ly/1iMLVfY  Watch these 8 minute videos of my lecture at the University of North Dakota: “A Christian Challenges New Atheists to Put Up or Shut Up!” (Dr. Don Boys is a former member of the Indiana House of Representatives, author of 15 books, frequent guest on television and radio talk shows, and wrote columns for USA Todayfor 8 years. His shocking books, ISLAM: America’s Trojan Horse!; Christian Resistance: An Idea Whose Time Has Come–Again!; and The God Haters are all available at Amazon.com. These columns go to newspapers, magazines, television, and radio stations and may be used without change from title through the end tag. His web sites are www.cstnews.com andwww.Muslimfact.com and www.thegodhaters.com. Contact Don for an interview or talk show.)

Freedom of Religion and the Indiana Law

Freedom of Religion and the Indiana Law: On the verge of Government Run Faith by Bro. Jeff Haney

“Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.”  Acts 5:29

Biblically speaking, there are two times, and only two times when it is necessary for the children of God to disregard, disobey, and defy the laws of the land and simply refuse to obey their government:  1.) When the government by law forbids someone from obeying God – Daniel’s praying against the law that forbade it; 2.) When the government by forces someone to disobey God – Hananiah, Azariah, and Meshael, (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) being forced to bow to a false god.  Only when circumstance fit within the framework of those scriptural principles can a child of God rightly and flatly refuse to obey the laws of the government ruling over them.

I have never seen a time in our nation when either one of those scenarios were the case.  To my limited knowledge there has never been a time, when I, anyone I know, or anyone I have heard of, was forced into disobeying the God of the Bible.  Conversely, to my limited knowledge there has never been a time when I, anyone I know, or anyone I have heard of was forbidden from obeying God.  Within the scope of my vision frontwards, backwards and all around I have never seen either of those cases play out in our society . . . until now.

Though not here yet, we are standing on the cliff of Government Run Faith.  Of course we have seen government run health-care on the front porch of the evening news for a while now.  Government regulations grip every industry from education and finance to bean sprouts, pot holes, and outhouses.  If what is happening over the law being passed in Indiana is any indication of the direction and mood of those wanting the government to regulate body fat, and hairstyles, the next big thing is government approved belief.

The central issue in those shouting the accusations of discrimination is the fact that they cannot and will not stand for someone believing a particular behavior is wrong.  As one commentator said, “No one would dare expect a black baker to prepare cupcakes for a KKK rally.”  Why then on earth would someone expect a Bible believing Christian to endorse a gay marriage?

Regardless of how loud it gets said, how long they say it, or how many people chime in, in agreement, the scenario they present of a Christian florist refusing flowers for a gay couple is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be discrimination.  It is discernment, conviction, and belief based on the Word of God not to aid and abet a sin that has always been, and always will be a sin.  It is not bigotry, it is not hatred, it is not intolerance.  We do not provide alcohol to alcoholics, we do not carry people with gambling problems to casinos, we do not drive get away cars for bank-robbers.

Acting upon homosexual attraction is not acceptable to the God of creation. It is not okay, it is not to be embraced, applauded, aided or abetted.  From what God has said to man, it is morally illegal, it is spiritually illegal, it is eternally illegal, it is outright bona fide, sin.  Period.  That is the end of the subject for Christians, and it will never, ever, ever, change.  As I have said before, if God said something different, then every Bible believing Christian in the world would say something different.  We do not take our cues from “how we are born” we take our cues from “What God has said.”

If those who’s tolerance is a one-way street would speak in plain honest language, what they would says is, “You are not allowed to believe what you believe, and you are not allowed to behave according to that belief.  You cannot believe the Bible, you cannot obey the Bible, and you cannot proclaim what you say the Bible says.”  Of course that’s my words in their mouths, but that is what I’m hearing from those who have more heat than light.

According to the direction of the mood of this country, the heart of their heat, and their hate is aimed at regulating what Americans are allowed to believe. It is not socially acceptable to “believe gay marriage is wrong.”  If that course of thinking continues to be fertilized and fed, it will not be long before it is not legally acceptable to continue to “behave” with the conviction that gay marriage is wrong.  Changes are definitely coming, and they are the kind that are not worth making

The Rule of Law v. The Rule of Men—Aristotle

DABBLING IN THE CLASSICS, ARISTOTLE

Therefore he who bids the law rule may be deemed to bid God and Reason alone rule, but he who bids man rule adds an element of the beast; for desire is a wild beast, and passion perverts the minds of rulers, even when they are the best of men. The law is reason unaffected by desire.

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Source: Aristotle. “Politics: Book 3, Part XVI.” Written 350 BC.

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Dabbling in the Classics Copyright © 2014 Steve Farrell and The Moral Liberal.

America – the Great Experiment in Self Governance

American Minute with Bill Federer

He sat next to George Washington in the pew at St. Paul’s Chapel in New York during the religious service following Washington’s Presidential Inauguration.

He helped ratify the U.S. Constitution.

His name was Fisher Ames.

Fisher Ames was a Congressman from Massachusetts where, on August 20, 1789, he proposed as the wording of the First Amendment (Annals of Congress, 1:766):

“Congress shall make no law establishing religion, or to prevent the free exercise thereof, or to infringe the rights of conscience.”

Fisher Ames compared monarchy to a republic, as recorded by Ralph Waldo Emerson in Essays, Second Series, (chapter 7, “Politics,” p. 97, 1844; Library of America, 1983):

“Monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in water.”

Of America’s Republic, Fisher Ames wrote in an article titled “Monitor,” published in The New England Palladium of Boston, 1804, (Works of Fisher Ames, compiled by a number of his friends, Boston: T.B. Wait & Co., 1809, p. 272):

“We now set out with our experimental project, exactly where Rome failed with hers. We now begin, where she ended.”

Warning against the temptation to increase government, Fisher Ames stated in “Speeches on Mr. Madison’s Resolutions” (Works of Fisher Ames, compiled by a number of his friends, Boston: T.B. Wait & Co., 1809, p. 48):

“To control trade by law, instead of leaving it to the better management of the merchants…(is) to play the tyrant in the counting house, and in directing the private expenses of our citizens, are employments equally unworthy of discussion.”

At the Massachusetts Convention, January 15, 1788, Fisher Ames warned that democracy without morals would eventually reduce the nation to the basest of human passions, swallowing freedom:

“A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction.”

Fisher Ames commented in “The Dangers of American Liberty,” 1805 (published in Works of Fisher Ames: with a selection from his speeches and correspondence, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1854, pp. 349):

“The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness, which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be, liberty.”

Russell Kirk described Fisher Ames in The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2001, chapter 3, p. 81-85):

“As time runs on, Ames grows more intense. Democracy cannot last…When property is snatched from hand to hand…then society submits cravenly to the immorality of rule by the sword…

Of all the terrors of democracy, the worst is its destruction of moral habits. ‘A democratic society will soon find its morals…the surly companion of its licentious joys’…

Is there no check upon these excesses?…The press supplies an endless stimulus to popular imagination and passion; the press lives upon heat and coarse drama and incessant restlessness. ‘It has inspired ignorance with presumption’…

‘Constitutions,’ says Ames, ‘are but paper; society is the substratum of government’…

Like Samuel Johnson, (Ames) finds the key to political decency in private morality.”

Aaron McLeod wrote in “Great Conservative Minds: A Condensation of Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind” (October 2005, Alabama Policy Institute, Birmingham, AL, chp. 3, p. 9-10}:

“Ames was pessimistic about the American experiment because he doubted there were sufficient numbers of men with the moral courage and charisma to preserve the country from the passions of the multitudes and the demagogues who master them.

He was convinced that the people as a body cannot reason and are easily swayed by clever speakers and political agents. In his words, ‘few can reason, all can feel’…

Democracy could not last, Ames thundered, ‘for despotism lies at the door; when the tyranny of the majority leads to chaos, society will submit to rule by the sword.’”

Aaron McLeod continued:

“To Ames, what doomed the American experiment was the democratic destruction of morals…

Ames believed that justice and morality in America would fail, and popular rule cannot support justice, without which moral habits fall away.

Neither the free press nor paper constitutions could safe-guard order from these excesses, for the first is merely a stimulus to popular passion and imagination, while the other is a thin bulwark against corruption.

When old prescription and tradition are dismissed, only naked force matters.”

George Washington died December 14, 1799.

Fisher Ames delivered a eulogy “An Oration on the Sublime Virtues of General George Washington,” February 8, 1800, at Boston’s Old South Meeting-House, before the Lieutenant Governor, the Council, and both branches of the Massachusetts Legislature (Boston: Young & Minns, 1800, p. 23):

“Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits…

It is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers.”

Fisher Ames wrote in The Mercury and New-England Palladium of Boston (Vol. XVII, No. 2,8, Tuesday, January 27, 1801, p. 1; John Thornton Kirkland, Works of Fisher Ames, 1809, p. 134-35; The Works of Fisher Ames, compiled by a number of his friends, T.B. Wait & Co., Boston, 1809, p. 134-135; Seth Ames, ed., Works of Fisher Ames, Vol. II, New York: Birt Franklin, 1971, pp. 405-406; Frederick C. Kubicek, Evolution-Guilty As Charged, Shippensburg, PA; Treasure House, 1993, p. 125):

“It has been the custom of late years to put a number of little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons…

Many books for children are…injudiciously compiled…the moral is drawn from the fable they know not why…

Some of the most admired works of this kind abound with a frothy sort of sentiment…the chief merit of which consists in shedding tears and giving away money…

Why then, if these books for children must be retained…should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating and noble.

The reverence for the Sacred Book, that is thus early impressed, lasts long – and probably, if not impressed in infancy never takes firm hold of the mind.

One consideration more is important: In no book is there so good English, so pure and so elegant – and by teaching all the same book they will speak alike, and the Bible will justly remain the standard of language as well as of faith.”

D. James Kennedy summarized Fisher Ames words in “The Great Deception” (Fort Lauderdale, FL: Coral Ridge Ministries, 1989; 1993, p. 3; The Great Deception-a speech delivered December 1, 1992, Ottawa, IL):

“We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education. We’re starting to put more and more textbooks into our schools. We’ve become accustomed of late of putting little books into the hands of children, containing fables and moral lessons.

We’re spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text in our schools. The Bible states these great moral lessons better than any other man-made book.”

At age 46, Fisher Ames was elected Harvard’s president, but he declined due to an illness which eventually led to his death.

On July 4, 1808, exactly 32 years to the day after America declared its Independence, Fisher Ames died at the age of 50.

One of the most famous orators in Congress, Fisher Ames was quoted in the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Bela Bates Edward, editor of Quarterly Observer, Brattleboro, VT: Joseph Steen & Co.; Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co.; New York: Lewis Colby, 1851, p. 78):

“No man ever did or ever will become truly eloquent without being a constant reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language.”

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The Moral Liberal contributing editor, William J. Federer, is the bestselling author of “Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance no Longer Tolerates Religion,” and numerous other books. A frequent radio and television guest, his daily American Minute is broadcast nationally via radio, television, and Internet. Check out all of Bill’s books here.

Author of Liberty or Not?

LIBERTY LETTERS WITH STEVE FARRELL

Is God the author of liberty, or not?

A valid, and need I say, vital question.

But in this age of secularism, humanism, and socialism, just try mixing God and government in the same breath and get ready for the snickers, sneers, hisses, and guffaws for daring to exercise one’s free speech as regards this off-limits, dangerous, homophobic subject.

Yet the right to free speech and freedom of religion is ours, and the question a must for all to at least consider.

A number of years ago, the dean of a Social Science Department scolded me in BIG RED LETTERS, highlighted by a BIG WITH EMOTION lecture, for infusing God and morality (via quoting the Founders) into a paper (and my portion of a group discussion) that focused on the historical foundation of ethics in American government.

The report was “very well written,” he condescendingly noted, “but inappropriate! No American university would accept your approach as valid!” The grade, a GPA destroying D minus.

I had no doubt about his assessment of America’s universities. (1) Admittedly, I half expected the unfair grade from this ‘ethical’ liberal who put political prejudice ahead of academic honesty. I was, after all, outspoken in class, hard-hitting in my school newspaper columns, and decidedly Christian and conservative. Here was his big chance to make an example of me, to frighten others into submission. He took it.

And it hurt, and he won, or so he thought.

But what of it? Early on, I decided that when it came to ‘getting ahead,’ my religion and morality would come first, and so I would be honest, come hell or high water or D minuses.

Pooh! on his humanistic ethics! “Thou shalt not bear false witness,” is an uncompromising command from the Deity—not something to be abandoned to appease such professors, politicians in my case, nor to settle scores and teach Christian conservatives a lesson about ‘how things are” in academia, like it or not, as he chose to do.

With ethics, however, you can do far worse and not think twice about it. Because when it comes to ethics, the ends justify the means; utilitarianism outbids God-given rights; morality (if the word hasn’t been outlawed) mutates into relativism; and so we have the kind of religion the mass murdering French and communist revolutionaries practiced — and in full fellowship, the secular religion of the American courts, where without conscience men and women abandon their oath of office to promote perversity and socialism, the very things at odds with our way of life – well, because ‘it’s ethical.’

And so it is.

That’s why we need something more solid to steady the arc of liberty than ethics; something that can stand the test of time against the unremitting onslaughts of crisis, propaganda, social change, and wars; something that will not give in, nor give up; something that feels no necessity to succumb and adapt and support the loudest voice, the strongest arm, or the golden calf opportunity.

George Washington knew what it was, and so do you.

Providence has connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue. (2)

Virtue, that is, to Higher Laws. Thus, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” (3)

He knew it. He saw and felt God’s miraculous hand aiding the colonists throughout the revolution and guiding her in the establishment of the best constitution the world had ever known.

In his First Inaugural Address, he noted:

No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage. (4)

With that in mind, he understood that

it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States … and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. (5)

He was turning over the watch care of the nation to the Being whose right it is to preside, who was “the Great Author of every public and private good.” (6)

And why did he say this?

These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. (7)

He believed it. He believed it with every fiber of his being. And why should you or I or any haughty and wicked instructor or government official or supposed patriotic legal organization take it upon themselves to suppress the truth about America from the very mouths of the men who founded this nation?

“In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens”, (8) concluded Washington in his Farewell Address.

That is the truth about the issue. No greater enemy of the state is there than those who labor to hide from man a view of whence cometh freedom, or who likewise labor to subvert the moral codes and Higher Laws that the very Author of our Liberty has laid down to keep us free.

Until we come to grips with this, and do and say more then we do and say presently – as is our right and duty, regardless of personal cost – one wonders how much we deserve to be called “citizen,” “child of God,” “honest, and moral man.”

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Get your copy of Steve Farrell’s inspirational novel, Dark Rose.

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Steve Farrell is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Moral Liberal, one of the original pundits with NewsMax.com (1999-2007), and the author of the inspirational novel Dark Rose. Steve also served as Press Agent for Defend Marriage, Managing Editor of Right Magazine, and is currently also serving as the Editor-In-Chief of the Center for Applied Philosophy’s, “Radical Academy,” a restoration project of The Moral Liberal. Steve’s projects at the Moral Liberal include Liberty Letters, Called Unto Liberty, They Were Believers, Founders Corner Library, the Americanist.

James Wilson, founding father, died August 21, 1798

American Minute with Bill Federer

He was one of six founding fathers to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

President Washington appointed him to the Supreme Court.

Born in Scotland, he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, speaking 168 times.

His name was James Wilson and he died AUGUST 21, 1798.

The first law professor of the University of Pennsylvania, James Wilson wrote in his Lectures on Law, 1789-91, that all law comes from God, being divided into four categories:

“law eternal,” “law celestial,” “laws of nature,”

and:

“Law…communicated to us by reason and conscience…has been called natural; as promulgated by the Holy Scriptures, it has been called revealed…

But it should always be remembered, that this law, natural or revealed…flows from the same divine source; it is the law of God.”

“Human law must rest its authority, ultimately, upon the authority of that law, which is divine.”

James Wilson continued:

“Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other.”

James Wilson stated:

“The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.”

James Wilson remarked at Pennsylvania’s ratifying convention, November 26, 1787:

“Governments, in general, have been the result of force, of fraud, and accident.

After a period of 6,000 years has elapsed since the creation, the United States exhibit to the world the first instance, as far as we can learn, of a nation…assembling voluntarily…and deciding calmly concerning that system of government under which they would wish that they and their posterity should live.”

In expounding on the “Will of God,” James Wilson described it as the:

“…efficient cause of moral obligation – of the eminent distinction between right and wrong…(and therefore the) supreme law…

(It is revealed) by our conscience, by our reason, and by the Holy Scriptures.”

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania records in Updegraph v. Commonwealth, 1824:

“The late Judge James Wilson, of the Supreme Court of the United States, Professor of Law in the College in Philadelphia…

for our present form of government we are greatly indebted to his exertions…

In his Course of Lectures (3d Vol. of his Works, 122), he states that…

‘Christianity is part of the common-law.’”

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The Moral Liberal contributing editor, William J. Federer, is the bestselling author of “Backfired: A Nation Born for Religious Tolerance no Longer Tolerates Religion,” and numerous other books. A frequent radio and television guest, his daily American Minute is broadcast nationally via radio, television, and Internet. Check out all of Bill’s bookshere.

Thinking of a career in government? Think again.

What I have been thinking is cut government pay —

THOMAS JEFFERSON LEADERSHIP

Our public oeconomy also is such as to offer drudgery and subsistence only to those entrusted with its administration, a wise & necessary precaution against the degeneracy of the public servants. In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable.

Source: To Jean Nicholas Demeunier, April 29, 1795

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Patrick Lee’s Explanation

Enterprising leaders should look to the private sector.
Demeunier was a French writer and public official who emigrated to America to avoid the bloodshed sweeping France. He was living in New York and wrote to Jefferson inquiring about employment possibilities. Though Jefferson demurred, saying he was too far away and too unfamiliar to be of much help, he offered some observations about work in America.

1. Top government jobs paid a bare minimum and offered plenty of drudgery. This was both “wise & necessary.” It kept capable people from making a career of public employment, both to their detriment and the government’s.
Demeunier had been part of the King’s court in France and had a very privileged life. Jefferson discouraged him from thinking a similar position here held any value or status.

2. Just the oppposite of public employment, the sky was the limit in private enterprise. All honest work in America was “deemed honorable.” This “great advantage” was as available to the immigrant Demeunier as it was to any other resident of any status.