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On Tuesday, September 11, a small band of brave and fanatical men murdered more than 6,000 Americans. I see two moods developing in the wake of those attacks. Among the people of America, I see patriotism, a spirit of self-help, a willingness to stand up and carry on. Among some of our leaders, unfortunately, I see a different reaction. The FAA has issued a vast new set of burdensome regulations that will do little to improve airline safety, but that will continue to intrude into the constitutional liberties of law-abiding Americans and that may well cripple the airline industry while making air travel much more difficult and expensive. I hear of meetings and events being cancelled for no particular reason, just because of a vague sense of fear that is abroad. A terrorist is someone who seeks to spread terror — that is, an unreasoning fear — among people he hates. Yes, America has suffered a blow. But why should we crawl into a corner and cower because of one spectacular mass-murder? Let us proceed with firmness of purpose and get on with our lives, as Christians and as Americans.
* * *
In one of the rental cars used by the hijackers, the authorities found two notable items: a copy of a flight manual, and a copy of the Koran. The hijackers did what they did because they believed they were serving the cause of God.
I know of no American who believes that it is God's will for you to murder large numbers of innocent people. Many Muslims, although far from all, also reject that doctrine. But why? How do we know that the hijackers were not following God's will?
A Christian might answer: We know because God has told us, Thou shalt not kill. Christ teaches peace, not war; forgiveness, not revenge; turn the other cheek, not retaliation.
I acknowledge this. But that leaves us with another question. If Christians are to follow these commandments, how should they respond to men who order the murder of thousands of Americans?
I do not ask this as a rhetorical question. I see Christians genuinely confused or at least uneasy when it comes to the war that is about to begin, the war of America against those who ordered and supported these acts of mass murder.
In my own church earlier today — I happen to be an Episcopalian — we heard fervent prayers on behalf of the victims and their families, and on behalf of the rescuers of the victims. But no prayer was uttered on behalf of the armed forces of the nation, or the law enforcement agencies, who are working to track down and punish those guilty of these terrible deeds. As I was leaving the church, I overheard a woman behind me saying how disappointed she was that we did not sing any of the old patriotic hymns "that always make [her] cry." Conversations with friends suggest that the situation is similar in many other Christian churches, Protestant and Catholic alike. Christians seem reluctant to do or say anything patriotic or warlike.
A question that every Christian must face sooner or later is whether it is just to use violence against those who harm the innocent. Do not Christ's commandments — "resist not evil" and "turn the other cheek" — tell us clearly enough that our Christian duty is never to use violence against another, however evil that other may be?
Certainly that is what some philosophic critics of Christianity have always maintained. Machiavelli and Rousseau, for example, argued that Christianity (at least as they knew it) is a religion incompatible with good citizenship. As Rousseau put it at the end of his Social Contract, when war breaks out,
The citizens march readily to combat; . . . they do their duty, but without passion for victory. They know how to die rather than to win. . . . Christianity preaches nothing but servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that tyranny always profits from it. True Christians are made to be slaves" (Masters trans. 129-30).
Rousseau's nasty remarks are supported, surprisingly, by respectable conservative scholars such as Walter Berns, who maintains, "The very idea of natural rights is incompatible with Christian doctrine." According to Berns, if you don't put your neighbor's good ahead of your own, you are a bad Christian. But the natural rights doctrine of the founding says that you may put your own preservation first if it conflicts with another's.
If Berns and other scholars like him are correct, you cannot be a good Christian and a good American. George Washington's 1789 letter to the Quakers tactfully but firmly criticizes their refusal to serve in the armed forces. Good citizenship, Washington implies, requires that you be willing to kill the enemies of your country.
To make the point as clear as possible, I will turn to Machiavelli. He writes:
Pondering, then, why it can be that in those ancient times people were greater lovers of liberty than in these, I believe that it came from the same cause that makes men now less strong. That I believe is the difference between our education and the ancient, founded on the difference between our religion and the ancient. Ours, because it shows us the truth and the true way, makes us esteem less the honor of the world. . . . Our religion has glorified humble and contemplative men rather than active ones. It has, then, set up as the highest good humility, abjectness, and contempt for human things. . . . Though our religion asks that you have fortitude within you, it prefers that you be adapted to suffering rather than to doing something strong. This way of living, then, has made the world weak and turned it over as prey to wicked men, who can in security control it, since the generality of men, in order to go to heaven, think more about enduring their injuries than avenging them. (Discourses II.2, trans. Allan Gilbert, modified by TGW.)
Leo Strauss argues that, for Machiavelli,
the highest good is God who [in the form of Christ] assumed humility and weakness and thus consecrated humility and weakness. . . . The unarmed heaven demands an unarmed earth, an unarmed emperor, and an unarmed heart.
Moreover, Machiavelli argues, Christianity also leads to theocratic despotism, the rule of priests, for it "subordinates the earthly fatherland to the heavenly fatherland and thus subordinates the power temporal to the power spiritual.1
Much of what Machiavelli wrote about Christianity was true in his day. It did, as he charged, make men weak in this world. It made them readier to die for salvation than be strong on behalf of justice. It subjected men to the petty tyranny of priests. It celebrated feminine qualities at the expense of manliness and spiritedness. It undercut men's loyalty to their countries by insisting that their higher loyalty was to the Church of Rome. It did, all too often, lead to the triumph of bad men over good by teaching the doctrine of non-resistance to evil. The Christianity of Machiavelli's day was strong in only one area, which Machiavelli calls pious cruelty. This was the one place where Christian spiritedness was thought to be legitimate, indeed unrestrained. According to historian William Lecky, "Philip II and Isabella the Catholic inflicted more suffering in obedience to their consciences than Nero and Domitian in obedience to their lusts."2
In sum, if these critics of Christianity are right, Christianity is utterly incapable of supporting the cause of political liberty or even the cause of justice on earth because of its hostility or indifference to the qualities that make men strong and free, such as courage, cleverness, deceptiveness, and in general the ability to destroy one's enemies, and because of its preoccupation with doctrinal purity, humility, and self-sacrifice at the expense of self-assertion, pride, and common sense.3
Machiavelli's critique of Christianity is well known. What is not so well known is that he also pointed the way to a different understanding of Christianity — a superior understanding, in the opinion of American Christians from around 1700 to well into the twentieth century. Machiavelli wrote, at the end of the passage just quoted,
Though it may appear that the world has grown effeminate and heaven disarmed, this without doubt comes chiefly from the worthlessness of men, who have interpreted our religion according to sloth and not according to virtue. For if they would consider that it allows us the exaltation and defense of the fatherland, they would see that it intends that we love and honor her and prepare ourselves to be such that we can defend her.
Machiavelli holds open the possibility that the defects of the Christianity of his day were due to "false interpretazioni."
The Protestant Affirmation of Individual Responsibility
There were three important changes in the self-understanding of Christians in colonial America that prepared the way for the success of democracy in America. Taken together, these changes convincingly answer the critique of Rousseau and Machiavelli.
First was the Protestant rebellion from the authority of Rome. Politically, the most important feature of Protestantism was the claim that each individual was responsible for his own relation to God. I quote an American preacher of 1730:
freedom in churches is a liberty to judge of the meaning of these revelations, and . . . the free choice of our own pastors and ways of discipline and worship; and our consciences in these things not subjected to any power on earth.4
The historian Lecky brings out this point vividly:
A religion which prescribes to the distracted mind unreasoning faith in an infallible Church [viz., Catholicism] . . . has ever had an especial attraction to a feminine mind. A religion which recognizes no authority between man and his Creator, which asserts at once the dignity and the duty of private judgment, and which, while deepening immeasurably the sense of individual responsibility, denudes religion of meretricious [artificial] ornaments [viz., Protestantism] . . . is pre-eminently a religion of men. Puritanism is the most masculine form that Christianity has yet assumed. . . . Catholicism commonly softens, while Protestantism strengthens, the character. . . . Loyalty and humility, which are especially feminine, flourish chiefly in the first; liberty and self-assertion in the second.5
David Ramsay, a Founder and early historian of the American Revolution, spoke similarly:
The religion of the colonists also nurtured a love for liberty. They were chiefly protestants, and all protestantism is founded on a strong claim to natural liberty, and the right of private judgment. A majority of them were of that class of men, who, in England, are called Dissenters. Their tenets, being the protestantism of the protestant religion, are hostile to all interference of authority, in matters of opinion, and predispose to a jealousy for civil liberty.6
If Lecky and Ramsay are right, then Protestantism forms strong and independent characters. But it does not yet as such produce dedicated citizens, as long as Christians turn their backs on this world for the sake of a heavenly fatherland in the next.
The Protestant Embrace of Warlike Manliness
Making good citizens required a second change. Americans made that change in a manner long forgotten but well worth remembering.
Early New England Puritanism stressed the Christian virtues of humility, orthodoxy in belief and ceremony, fasting, and self-denial. But at the same time, Puritans were respectful of what human reason can teach, for they regarded reason no less than revelation as a gift of God. At Harvard, they used textbooks based on Aristotle's Ethics. But they had not thought through what this meant.
In 1675 a great war broke out in New England, called King Philip's war, after the Indian chief who started it. The Indians, seeing their former lands swallowed up by the relentless English settlers, decided that the time had come to rise up and throw them off the continent once and for all. They staged a massive attack in which many families and whole towns were slaughtered. In casualties per capita, it was the most destructive war in all of American history.7
The war caused a crisis not only for the lives but also the theology of the Puritans. Two rival interpretations of the war were offered. Both agreed that New Englanders had sinned and that the war was a divine punishment. But what was the sin?
Increase Mather, speaking for the Puritan traditionalists, argued that their sins were
ill entertainment of the ministry . . . ; the apostasy of many from the truth unto heresies and pernicious errors; inordinate affection and sinful conformity to this present evil vain world.
His remedy was for the government to
appoint . . . a day of public humiliation, with fasting and prayer, throughout this whole colony; that we may set ourselves sincerely to seek the Lord, rending our hearts, . . . and pursue the same with a thorough reformation. . . .
The government accordingly undertook measures for "suppression of those proud excesses in apparel, hair, etc. . . ; against such as are false worshippers, especially idolatrous Quakers. . . ." Mather's advice led to laws to imprison Quakers ("and there to have the discipline of the house applied to them"), to punish long hair and luxurious clothing, excessive drinking, swearing, abuse of the Sabbath, disrespect for parents, and more.8
Samuel Nowell presented the alternative view to this establishment Puritanism in his 1678 sermon Abraham in Arms. Nowell says little about the self-restraining and self-denying virtues praised by Mather, or about the decline in orthodoxy or the rise of idolatry. Instead, he speaks of the need to cultivate the art of war. Nowell preaches on a text from Genesis, chapter 14. An army had kidnapped Abram's brother Lot. Abram organized and trained an informal militia, a sort of rival gang, to rescue Lot from the gang that was holding him, in the manner of the Mel Gibson character in the Road Warrior movies. For this exploit, Nowell points out, Abram received a blessing from Melchizedek, a priest of God who was "eminently a type of Jesus Christ." Nowell concludes that
Frequent trainings for the instructing of men in military discipline that they may be ready and expert for war, is a commendable practice, yea a duty which God expecteth of all God's Abrahams in their respective places.9
Nowell mentions the law of nature, "which teacheth man self-preservation," and he quotes Luke 22:36, where Jesus says, "he that hath not a sword, let him sell his garment and buy one." One is reminded of the Jewish thinker Maimonides' remark that the sin of the Jews which led to their captivity was their belief in astrology. Maimonides explains: Astrology taught them that their fate was dependent on the heavens rather than on studying and practicing the art of war.
10 For Nowell and Maimonides, God helps them that help themselves, as Algernon Sidney, followed by Benjamin Franklin, said explicitly.11
It was Nowell's view, not Mather's, that won out among New England Puritans in the succeeding years. From then on, Christian piety in America was no longer a merely private relation between the individual and God. It became inseparable from patriotism and military valor.
Consider these sermon titles from the years that followed: The Man of War (1699). Good Soldiers Described and Animated (1720). An Essay to Revive and Encourage Military Exercises, Skill, and Valour among the Sons of God's People in New England (1732). Martial Wisdom Recommended (1737). The Expediency and Utility of War, in the Present State of Things, Considered (1759). The Importance of Military Skill (1768).12
American preachers sometimes asked themselves: What about the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount? It appears to forbid the very thing that Samuel Nowell and his successors believed essential, namely self-defense and the killing of one's enemies. Winston Churchill formulated the problem beautifully in these words: "It is baffling to reflect that what men call honor does not correspond always to Christian ethics." This is how the Reverend Simeon Howard handled the problem in a 1773 sermon:
When our Saviour forbids us to resist evil, he seems to have had in view only small injuries, for such are those he mentions in the following words, as an illustration of the precept; smiting on the cheek, taking away one's coat, or compelling him to go a mile. And to such injuries it is oftentimes a point of prudence, as well as duty, to submit, rather than contend. But it does not follow, that because we are forbidden to resist such slight attacks, we may not defend ourselves when the assault is of a capital kind. . . . And as we have as good a right to limit the precept which forbids our resisting evil, by the nature and reason of things, as we have to limit these other indefinite expressions.
Should a person, for instance, whose ability and circumstances enable him to do good in the world, to relieve his distressed brethren, and be an example of charity and other virtues, tamely yield up all his interest and become an absolute slave to some unjust and wicked oppressor, when he might by a manly resistance have secured his liberty, would he not be guilty of great unfaithfulness to God, and justly liable to his condemnation?13
Concerning the command to love one's enemies, Nathaniel Whittaker preached in 1777, in his sermon "Antidote against Toryism," that
Every soldier should . . . pray for those he endeavors to destroy, and wish them their best, their eternal good. These are no more inconsistent in a soldier, engaging in battle and doing his best to kill his enemies, than they are in a judge and executioner, who take away a murderer from the earth. . . . How absurd then is the pretense that the gospel of Jesus Christ forbids us to take up arms to defend ourselves! . . . It may with as much reason be said, that to punish a murderer or robber is forbidden by the gospel; which is in effect to say, that the gospel of peace forbids the exercise of love and benevolence in acts absolutely necessary, in this sinful world, for the peace and happiness of society and individuals.14
Samuel Davies, a leading preacher of colonial Virginia, understood this well, as he shows in this incandescent 1758 passage:
When [our enemies] would enslave the freeborn mind and compel us meanly to cringe to usurpation and arbitrary power; . . . what is then the will of God? Must peace then be maintained? Maintained at the expense of property, liberty, life, and everything dear and valuable? . . . No; in such a time even the God of Peace proclaims by His providence, "To arms!" Then the sword is, as it were, consecrated to God; and the art of war becomes a part of our religion. Then happy is he that shall reward our enemies, as they have served us. Blessed is the brave soldier; blessed is the defender of his country and the destroyer of his enemies. . . . But, on the other hand, "Cursed is he that doth the work of the Lord deceitfully; and cursed is he that keepeth back his sword from blood." . . . This denunciation, like the artillery of heaven, is leveled against the mean, sneaking coward who, when God, in the course of His providence, calls him to arms, refuses to obey and consults his own ease and safety more than his duty to God and his country.15
For Davies, and for most Americans ever since, God's will forbids passive acceptance of evil. It commands the spirited resistance to oppression, tyranny, and murder by every necessary means, including violence and war.
We conclude: the second change in American Christianity was its embrace of the spirited virtues and of war as part of Christian duty to oneself, one's family, and one's country.
The Catholic View
Someone might wonder whether this reconciliation of Christ's precepts and the needs of the political community was limited to Protestantism. It was not. The analysis that I have just summarized, taken from sermons of colonial America, was anticipated by Thomas Aquinas, widely recognized as the greatest of Catholic theologians.
In the "Treatise on Law," Aquinas discusses whether men are obliged to obey unjust laws (Summa Theologiae, I-II Q96A4). His answer is no, for
"a law that is not just, seems to be no law at all." Wherefore such laws do not bind in conscience, except perhaps in order to avoid scandal or disturbance, for which cause a man should even yield his right, according to Matthew 5:40,41: "If a man . . . take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him; and whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him other two."
Aquinas is saying that if a greater evil would be caused by resistance, then one should submit to the evil. Give the man your cloak, and go the extra mile. But if the evil is substantial, then, he implies, you are by no means required to submit.
Aquinas repeats the point in his question on sedition. Contrary to what one might expect from Rousseau's claims about the effeminate submissiveness of Christianity, Aquinas argues there for the right of revolution against tyranny. For Aquinas "It is [always] lawful to fight, provided it be for the common good" (II-II, Q42A2).
In the question on war, Aquinas explicitly confronts the objection that "war is contrary to a Divine precept, for it is written (Matthew 5:39): 'But I say to you not to resist evil'; and (Rm. 12:19): 'Not revenging yourselves, my dearly beloved, but give place unto wrath.'" Aquinas answers that war is just if commanded by the appropriate authority against "those who deserve it because of some fault" and for "the advancement of good or avoidance of evil." Precepts like Christ's commandment not to resist evil, says Aquinas, are not binding. "Such like precepts, as Augustine observes, should always be borne in readiness of mind, so that we be ready to obey them and, if necessary, to refrain from resistance or self-defense. Nevertheless, it is necessary sometimes for a man to act otherwise for the common good or for the good of those with whom he is fighting" (II-II Q40A1). That is, to put it bluntly, sometimes it is necessary to kill one's enemies, for the sake of the common good. (Aquinas, incidentally, was studied at Harvard in the 1600s.16 That may have been the last time Aquinas studied seriously at Harvard.)
Aquinas had articulated the correct understanding. But his teaching had not adequately taken hold. It took the Protestant reformation to legitimize this aspect of Thomism.
Third Change: The Turn to Liberty
God creates men free. If so, God favors those political regimes that are built on a foundation of freedom. America in 1776 was "conceived in liberty," as Lincoln said. All human beings have a right to liberty because of "the laws of nature and of nature's God." God favors toleration and government by consent of the governed, not repressions of religious heresy by force and violence imposed by despotic authorities.
The symbol of the American understanding of God's view of liberty is the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, printed on the back of the dollar bill. The American Revolution began a novus ordo seclorum, a new order of the ages, and God annuit coeptis, approves our beginning. This written sentiment is pictured symbolically as an unfinished pyramid, labeled "1776," with thirteen layers of stone, over which hovers God's providential eye, overseeing, supporting, judging, perfecting, and completing the shape. Yet that new order was built on a foundation laid in killing and war in defense of self-controlled self-assertion on behalf of the rights of mankind.17
Although Protestants led the way, American Catholics and Jews held a similar view of God's preference for liberty against slavery, as may be seen in the exchange of letters between Washington and the Newport Jews in 1790, and in the statements of John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in America, during the founding era. Carroll both endorsed and appealed to the natural rights of all men in his pleas for full citizen rights for Catholics. He called our rights "the luminous principles on which the rights of conscience and liberty of religion depend." 18 With regard to the supposedly mindless deference of Catholics to priestly authority mentioned in the quotation from Lecky above, my own personal observation is that the most serious Catholics today are those who share the manly spirit of the Protestant Reformation. It takes a strong soul to stand up for the genuine Catholic tradition against the trends of some of today's dominant religious fashions.
It is commonly said by historians that 18th century Puritanism underwent a secularization, a lowering of the standards from the high spiritual goals of the early Puritan "errand into the wilderness." I am suggesting something quite different. What happened was not a secularization of religion but the opposite: a sacralization of what had previously been held worldly and low. The three changes I have described meant that there was now something sacred about the dignity of the individual, the virtues of manliness and self-assertion, and the cause of free government. This did not mean that Americans had abandoned their faith. Rather, they continuously and conscientiously reflected on their experience, Biblical texts, earlier theologians and philosophers, and common sense, in their earnest effort to understand what it was that God demanded of them. In their sermons preachers now spoke of "the sacred cause of liberty."19 Liberty became a "sacred cause" in America not because of a repudiation of faith but because faith was now understood to embrace a due and proper concern with the things of this world, including the rights of mankind. These rights, in their view, had been neglected, in part because of deliberate misinterpretations of Christian doctrine by power-seeking priests in alliance with oppressive kings and nobles. 20
Prayers on Behalf of War
As a result of these convictions, Americans did not hesitate during the Revolutionary War to issue prayers calling on God to take our side against that of Britain. For example, the Continental Congress prayed in 1777 for God ". . . to smile upon us in the prosecution of a just and necessary war for the defense and establishment of our inalienable rights and liberties."21
The pro-war and pro-liberty theology of earlier Americans has lived on up to the present day, although it is no longer widely taught in the training of Christian or Jewish clergy. We see the older view in a World War II incident made famous in the movie Patton.
In December 1944, General George Patton's Third Army had successfully driven German forces from France. But the attack on Germany itself was stalled. Troops and trucks were bogged down by persistent rain, snow, clouds, and mud. Patton called Chaplain Msgr. James O'Neill into his headquarters and said,
Chaplain, I want you to publish a prayer for good weather. I'm tired of these soldiers having to fight mud and floods as well as Germans. See if we can't get God to work on our side. . . .
Chaplain James O'Neill: May I say, General, that it usually isn't a customary thing among men of my profession to pray for clear weather to kill fellow men.
Patton: Chaplain, are you teaching me theology or are you the Chaplain of the Third Army? I want a prayer.
O'Neill: Yes, sir.
The tone of Patton's request was perhaps a bit flippant. But his order was based on the premise that God was on the side of America, justice, and liberty against Hitler's regime of tyranny, slavery, and mass murder. The preachers of the American founding, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish, would have agreed.
Apparently Chaplain O'Neill was unaware of the Thomistic tradition of Christian pro-war theology that we summarized earlier. He believed it was against Christian principles to seek God's help in the business of killing. Nevertheless, O'Neill overcame his scruples and wrote this prayer:
Almighty and most merciful God, we humbly beseech thee, of thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers who call upon thee that, armed with thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies, and establish thy justice among men and nations. Amen.
By the time the prayer was printed, the situation on the front had deteriorated dangerously. American soldiers were fighting desperately against the last great German offensive of the war, the Battle of the Bulge. The 101st Airborne Division was surrounded at Bastogne. Patton's Third Army, trying to break through to rescue them and stop the German attack, continued to be hampered by mud and rain. Low clouds prevented air strikes and accurate placement of artillery against the Germans. At this bleak moment, on December 22, Chaplain O'Neill's weather prayer was distributed to every soldier of the Third Army, along with a Christmas greeting from Patton. The next day, "the weather cleared and remained perfect for about six days. Enough to allow the Allies to break the backbone of the German offensive and turn a temporary setback for the Allies into a crushing defeat for the enemy."22
In closing, let us ask God's blessing on those who are about to hunt down America's enemies, smoking them out of their holes and, we pray, shedding their blood. Thank you.
Endnotes
1 Leo Strauss, Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958; repr. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969), 179-180. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote1return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote1return">(Return)
2 William Lecky, History of European Morals, 3d ed. (New York: Appleton, 1894), 1:151. (Return)
3 Harvey C. Mansfield, Taming the Prince (New York: Free Press, 1989), 124. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote3return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote3return">(Return)
4 Thomas Prince, Election Sermon (1730), in A. W. Plumstead, ed. The Wall and Garden (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968), 208. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote4return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote4return">(Return)
5 Lecky, History of European Morals, 2:368. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote5return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote5return">(Return)
6 Ramsay, The History of the American Revolution (orig. pub. 1789; Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1990), 1:28. Ramsay is paraphrasing Edmund Burke, "Speech on Conciliation with the Colonies" (1775). href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote6return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote6return">(Return)
7 Richard Slotkin and James K. Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment: Puritan Responses to King Philip's War, 1676-1677 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1978), 3. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote7return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote7return"> (Return)
8 Mather, A Brief History of the War (1676), in Slotkin and Folsom, 102-5; the government's response is in Edmund S. Morgan, ed., Puritan Political Ideas (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), 226-33. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote8return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote8return"> (Return)
9 Abraham in Arms (1678), in Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgment, 273-93. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote9return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote9return"> (Return)
10 Letter on Astrology, in Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi, Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook (New York: Free Press, 1963), 229. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote10return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote10return">(Return)
11 Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, ed. Thomas G. West (1698; repr. Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1990), ch. 2, sec. 23. Benjamin Franklin, Writings (New York: Library of America, 1987), 1201 (from Poor Richard, 1736). href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote11return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote11return">(Return)
12 These titles are listed in James Levernier, ed. Souldiery Spiritualized: Seven Sermons . . . , 1674-1774 (Delmar, NY: Scholars Facsimiles, 1979), Appendix B. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote12return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote12return">(Return)
13 Simeon Howard, A Sermon, 1773, in Charles S. Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz, ed., American Political Writing during the Founding Era, 1760-1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1983), 1:193-4, 201, emphasis added. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote13return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote13return">(Return)
14 Nathaniel Whitaker, "Antidote against Toryism" (1777), in Frank Moore, ed., Patriot Preachers of the American Revolution (New York: Charles T. Evans, 1862), 226-7. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote14return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote14return">(Return)
15 Samuel Davies, "The Curse of Cowardice" (1758), in The Annals of America (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968), 2:23-24. The quotation is from Jeremiah. For ref, see Baldwin, 126. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote15return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote15return">(Return)
16 Norman Fiering, Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 66. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote16return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote16return">(Return)
17 For a fuller discussion of the Seal, Thomas G. West, "Religious Liberty: The View from the Founding," in On Faith and Free Government, ed. Daniel Palm (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 21-23. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote17return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote17return">(Return)
18 Carroll, to John Fenno of the Gazette of the U.S., June 10, 1789, in Thomas O. Hanley, ed., The John Carroll Papers (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1976), 1:365-68. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote18return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote18return">(Return)
19 Samuel West, "On the Right to Rebel against Governors" (Boston, 1776), in Hyneman and Lutz, 1:438. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote19return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote19return">(Return)
20 John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, in Works, ed. C. F. Adams (Boston: Little, Brown, 1856), 3:448-64. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote20return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote20return">(Return)
21 Thanksgiving proclamation, Nov. 1, 1777, adopted by the Continental Congress, authored by Samuel Adams, in Adams, Writings, ed. Harry A. Cushing (New York: Putnam's, 1904), 3:414-6. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote21return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote21return">(Return)
22 George S. Patton, Jr., War As I Knew It, annotated by Colonel Paul D. Harkins (orig. pub. 1947; New York: Bantam, 1980), 175-6. The quotations are from a footnote by Harkins. The incident is discussed in greater detail, with two additional weather prayers by Patton himself, in Carlo D'Este, Patton: A Genius for War (New York: Harper Collins, 1995), 685-88. href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote22return" mce_href="http://www.claremont.org/cmsadmin/internet/publications/edit_pub.asp#footnote22return">(Return)
