CHAPTER 2

The Mayflower Compact of November 11, 1620, was America's first great governmental document, signed by the Pilgrims before they disembarked the Mayflower. This covenant was so revolutionary that it has influenced all other constitutional instruments in America since. It reads:

In ye name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwriten, the loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by ye grace of God, of Great Britaine, France, & Ireland king, defender of ye faith, etc., having undertaken, for ye glorie of God, and advancemente of ye Christian faith, and honour of our king & countrie, a voyage to plant ye first colonie in ye Northerne parts of Virginia,

doe by these presents solemnly & muttually in ye presence of God, and one of another, covenant & combine our selves togeather into a civill body politick, for our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of ye ends aforesaid;

and by vertue hearof to enacte, constitute, and fram such just & equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete & convenient for ye generall good of ye Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

In witnes wherof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd ye 11. of November, in ye year of ye raigne of our soveraigne lord, King James, of England, France, & Ireland ye eighteenth, and by Scotland ye fiftie fourth. Ano:Dom. 1620.

On November 29, 1623, three years after their arrival and two years after the first Thanksgiving, Governor William Bradford made an official proclamation of a day of Thanksgiving:

In as much as the great Father has given us this year an abundant harvest of Indian corn, wheat, peas, beans, squashes, and garden vegetable, and has made the forests to abound with game and the sea with fish and clams, and inasmuch as he has protected us from the ravages of the savages, has spared us from pestilence and disease, has granted us freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience;

Now I, your magistrate, do proclaim that all ye Pilgrims, with your wives and ye little ones, do gather at ye meeting house, on ye hill, between the hours of 9 and 12 in the day time, on Thursday, November ye 29th, of the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and twenty-three, and the third year since ye Pilgrims landed on ye Pilgrim Rock, there to listen to ye pastor and render thanksgiving to ye Almighty God for all His blessings. William Bradford, Ye Governor of Ye Colony.

Notice that William Bradford paralleled serving the Lord to: the good harvest, the game and fish, safety from the savages, and freedom from pestilence or disease. They knew that God had given to them all that they had, and they were going to set aside one day especially for Him.

In Exeter, New Hampshire, August 4, 1639, the colonists defined the purpose for government, stating:

Considering with ourselves the holy will of God and our own necessity, that we should not live without wholesome laws and civil government among us, of which we are altogether destitute, do, in the name of Christ and in the sight of God, combine ourselves together to erect and set up among us such governments as shall be, to our best discerning, agreeable to the will of God...

John Winthrop wrote honestly of his trust in the Lord in his private journal:

I will ever walk humbly before my God, and meekly, mildly, and gently towards all men... To give myself, my life, my wits, my health, my wealth to the service of my God and Saviour. Teach me, O Lord, to put my trust in Thee, then shall I be like Mount Sion that cannot be moved.... Before the week was gone... I waxed exceeding discontent and impatient... Then I acknowledged my unfaithfulness and pride of heart, and turned again to my God, and humbled my soul before Him, and He returned and accepted me, and so I renewed my Covenant of walking with my God.

On May 19, 1643 he organized the New England Confederation among the colonists of New Plymouth, New Haven, Massachusetts & Connecticut. They covenanted together under the Constitution of the New England Confederation:

Whereas we all came to these parts of America with the same end and aim, namely, to advance the kingdome of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to injoy the liberties of the Gospell thereof with purities and peace, and for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the gospell.

We can see early on that the primary purpose for the migration to this country was based solely upon Christ. Jesus was the center of their every move, and they were obviously not ashamed of their beliefs.

The New Haven Colony Charter of April 3, 1644, adopted the rules for governing the courts of New Haven Colony, stating:

The judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses ... [are to] be a rule to all the courts in this jurisdiction ...

On April 25, 1682, William Penn wrote the famous Frame of Government for his new colony. This demonstrated such wisdom that it strongly influenced the charters of the other colonies. In it Penn stated:

The origination and descent of all human power [is] from God. First, to terrify evil doers; secondly, to cherish those who do well ...

Government seems to me to be a part of religion itself a thing sacred in its institutions and ends ...

Government, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad ...

That, therefore, which makes a good constitution must keep it, namely men of wisdom and virtue, qualities that, because they descend not with worldly inheritance, must be carefully propagated by a virtuous education of youth ...

[It is therefore enacted] that all persons ... having children ... shall cause such to be instructed in reading and writing, so that they may be able to read the Scriptures and to write by the time they attain to 12 years of age.

If the children were able to read the scriptures then they themselves would be able to discern right from wrong according to the Bible.

John Locke

John Locke (1632-1704), was an English philosopher whose writings had a profound influence on the Founding Fathers, and in turn, the writing of the Constitution. Of nearly 15,000 items of the Founding Fathers which were reviewed; including books, newspaper articles, pamphlets, monographs, etc., John Locke was the third most frequently quoted author. In his Two Treatises of Government, 1690, he cited 80 references to the Bible in the first treatise and 22 references in the second.

John Locke elaborated on fundamental concepts such as inalienable rights, government by consent, the social compact (a constitution between the people and the government), a separation of powers, parental authority, private property and the right to resist unlawful authority.

Thomas Jefferson was strongly influenced by John Locke, to the extent that his ideas can be seen in the Declaration of Independence. John Locke wrote in The Second Treatise on Civil Government, 1690:

Thus the Law of Nature stands as an eternal rule to all men, legislators as well as others. The rules that they make for other men's actions, must ... be conformable to the Law of Nature, i. e. to the will of God ... No human sanction can be good, or valid against it.

Laws human must be made according to the general laws of Nature, and without contradiction to any positive law of Scripture, otherwise they are ill made.

In 1689, John Locke published his Treatise Of Civil Government in which he asserted:

[The] great and Chief End, therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the preservation of their property ...

For Men being all the Workmanship of one Omnipotent, and infinitely wise Maker: all the Servants of one Sovereign Master, sent into the World by his Order, and about his ... business, they are his Property, whose Workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another's Pleasure ...

God, who hath given the World to Men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best Advantage of Life and Convenience.

In addition to writing paraphrases of the books of Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians and Ephesians, John Locke wrote a seldom mentioned book titled A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity. In it he writes:

He that shall collect all the moral rules of the philosophers and compare them with those contained in the New Testament will find them to come short of the morality delivered by our Saviour and taught by His disciples: a college made up of ignorant but inspired fishermen....

Such a law of morality Jesus Christ has given in the New Testament, but by the latter of these ways, by revelation, we have from Him a full and sufficient rule for our direction, and conformable to that of reason. But the word and obligation of its precepts have their force, and are past doubt to us, by the evidence of His mission.

He was sent by God: His miracles show it; and the authority of God in His precepts can not be questioned. His morality has a sure standard, that revelation vouches, and reason can not gainsay nor question; but both together witness to come from God, the great Lawgiver.

And such a one as this, out of the New Testament, I think, they would never find, nor can anyone say is anywhere else to be found ...

To one who is persuaded that Jesus Christ was sent by God to be a King and a Saviour to those who believe in Him, all His commands become principles; there needs no other proof for the truth of what He says, but that He said it; and then there needs no more but to read the inspired books to be instructed.

John Locke stated:

The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men. It has God for its author; salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter. It is all pure, all sincere; nothing too much; nothing wanting.

New Jersey Colony 1697, Governor Basse proclaimed:

It being very necessary for the good and prosperity of this province that our principal care be, in obedience to the laws of God, to endeavor as much as in us lyeth the extirpation of all sorts of looseness and profanity, and to unite in the fear and love of God and one another ...

Take due care that all laws made and provided for the suppression of vice and encouraging of religion and virtue, particularly the observance of the Lord's day, be duly put into execution.

Boston, Massachusetts, 1765, was the place where the famous Congregational Minister of West Church, named Jonathan Mayhew, gave a patriotic sermon which reflected the colonists' feelings toward King George III's hated Stamp Act. He said:

The king is as much bound by his oath not to infringe the legal rights of the people, as the people are bound to yield subjection to him. From whence it follows that as soon as the prince sets himself above the law, he loses the king in the tyrant. He does, to all intents and proposes, unking himself."

Boston Gazette September 1768, carried an article which read:

If an army should be sent to reduce us to slavery, we will put our lives in our hands and cry to the Judge of all the earth ... Behold, how they come to cast us out of this possession which Thou hast given us to inherit. Help us, Lord, our God, for we rest on Thee, and in Thy name we go against this multitude.

Early in the year of 1773, the men of Marlborough, Massachusetts declared unanimously:

Death is more eligible than slavery. A free-born people are not required by the religion of Jesus Christ to submit to tyranny, but may make use of such power as God has given them to recover and support their laws and liberties ... [We] implore the Ruler above the skies, that He would make bare His arm in defense of His Church and people, and let Israel go.

Josiah Quincy, the American orator of freedom, voiced the Colonists sentiments in 1774:

Blandishments will not fascinate us, nor will threats of a 'halter' intimidate. For, under God, we are determined that wheresoever, whensoever, or howsoever we shall be called to make our exit, we will die free men.

The Colonist grew in their resilience and confidence in God, to the point where one Crown-appointed Governor wrote of the condition to the Board of Trade back in England:

If you ask an American, who is his master? He will tell you he has none, nor any governor but Jesus Christ.

The Committees of Correspondence soon began sounding the cry across the Colonies:

“No King but King Jesus!”

The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, meeting in Boston on October 22, 1774, began to voice their serious concerns, as President John Hancock declared:

We think it is incumbent upon this people to humble themselves before God on account of their sins, for He hath been pleased in His righteous judgement to suffer a great calamity to befall us, as the present controversy between Great Britain and the Colonies.

[And] also to implore the Divine Blessing upon us, that by the assistance of His grace, we may be enabled to reform whatever is amiss among us, that so God may be pleased to continue to us the blessings we enjoy, and remove the tokens of His displeasure, by causing harmony and union to be restored between Great Britain and the Colonies.

The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, in addressing the inhabitants of Massachusetts Bay in 1774, resolved:

Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual.... Continue steadfast, and with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us.

The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts of 1774 reorganized the Massachusetts militia, providing that over one third of all new regiments be made up of "minutemen." The minutemen, known as such because they would be ready to fight at a minute's notice, would drill as citizen soldiers on the parade ground, then go to church to hear exhortation and prayer. Many times the deacon of the church, or even the pastor would lead the drill. They proclaimed, "Our cause is just" and believed it was their Christian duty to defend it.

The Provincial Congress of Massachusetts charged the minutemen:

You ... Are placed by Providence in the post of honor, because it is the post of danger ...

The eyes not only of North America and the whole British Empire, but of all Europe, are upon you. Let us be, therefore, altogether solicitous that no disorderly behavior, nothing unbecoming our characters as Americans, as citizens and Christians, be justly chargeable to us.