Men Will Be Men: Religious and Enlightenment Ideas in the Declaration

Kody Cooper and Justin Dyer recently published the path-breaking Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics [1], in the course of which it becomes manifest that the Declaration of Independence, albeit the birth of a nation as Lincoln understood, is far from being the origin of an idea. In fact, we may readily observe that the Declaration appears in media res. Accordingly, the relationship of religious and Enlightenment ideas to the Declaration must be unfolded against a backdrop considerably wider than the Declaration itself. For, in truth, it should not surprise us to find that religious liberty is rather a predicate to than a consequence of the ideas of either the Enlightenment or the Declaration. Here, therefore, I attempt to demonstrate that particular insight in its practical and theoretical dimensions.

To begin with the practical, we may consider Samuel Adams, Jr., of whom Stacy Schiff has written, “It is impossible with Adams to determine where piety ended and politics began; the watermark of Puritanism shines through everything he wrote.”[2] And we might interpolate, “everything he did.” What Adams did, however, and that incontestably, was to defend political liberty, while exercising religious liberty (which did not exclude a fund of anti-popery!). From that observation we may open the reasonable question:just how far did the claim to religious liberty provide the ground upon which the idea of political liberty could stand?

Schiff again wrote of Adams:

Religion played a central role in his life and his thinking, as it would in the Revolution. It was no accident that so many Boston town meetings were conducted in houses of prayer, or that republicanism, as envisaged in Massachusetts Bay, traced the independent-minded, egalitarian, community-based lines of Puritanism. Men who preferred a church without a bishop came naturally to the idea of a state without a king. Adams’s piety would be made to sound dangerous, as in some respects it was: natural rights and principled defiance resonated deeply with his faith. [2022. pp.29-30]

I invoke Adams illustratively rather than as an exception. He illustrates large numbers of the revolutionary generation who reasoned both from religion and “philosophy” in elaborating the rights claims that drove toward the Declaration of Independence. Adams knew Cicero, Sallust, Livy, Montesquieu, Hume, Rousseau and Locke’s Human Understanding (Schiff 2022, p. 27) In that, however, the Calvinist Adams was not unlike the Unitarian Jonathan Mayhew who said: 

Having been initiated, in my youth, in the doctrines of civil liberty, as they were taught by such men as Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero and other renowned persons among the ancients, and such as Sidney and Milton, Locke and Hoadley, among the moderns; I liked them, they seemed rational. Having, earlier still learnt from the holy scriptures, that wise, brave and vertuous men were always friends to liberty…[3]

Nor did Mayhew’s Unitarianism prevent his adverting “liberty in Christ as the Son of God:” 

that God gave the Israelites a king [or absolute monarch] in his anger, because they had not sense and virtue enough to like a free commonwealth, and to have himself for their king; that the Son of God carne down from heaven, to make us “free indeed”, and that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

The idea that liberty is where “the spirit of the Lord is” hews close to the target in this discussion. For when Pauline Maier described the Declaration as a “sacred text” she referred less – if at all – to its subsequent veneration than to its deriving from consistent pieties previously expressed. As a practical matter, accordingly, we are forced to observe that revolutionaries both leant upon biblical authority (quoting Deuteronomy more than any other text) and derived inspiration from religion to lead towards the “laws of nature and of nature’s God.” It remains to see how the twin laws (if they are twins) pair in the event.

Before transitioning to that liaison, it would be useful to observe that Sam Adams was radicalized prior to the rise of struggles between the colonies and the Parliament after the accession of George III. His radicalization began with that of his father, Samuel Adams, Sr., who was notably injured in the “land bank” fiasco of the 1740s and thereafter, the lingering effects of which dogged Adams, Jr. throughout his life. As Adams, Jr. stepped into the protest and organizing that morphed into mid-1760s rebellion, he was already defending opposition ground, not with recourse to abstract arguments about taxation or even Parliamentary authority, but the passionate appeal to liberty that had characterized Cato’s Letters under the reign of George II and Robert Walpole in the 1740s. The strident defense of liberty and the entrenched resentment of oligarchical practices tilled the soil in which the seeds of revolution would sprout. Nor is it without significance that Cato’s Letters, which relied so ardently on philosophical claims, nevertheless reposed confidence in a just God. [4]

How then, do we account for the practices that eventuated in the Declaration of Independence? We can find no better source than John Adams, cousin to Sam. For, where Sam was a “founder of revolution,” John was also a constitutional founder. And he provided his strongest hints of that in the run up to the Declaration of Independence. In January of 1776 he drafted and shepherded to adoption a proclamation of the General Court of Massachusetts. In this manifesto, the General Court declared:

As the Happiness of the People <alone>, is the sole End of Government, So the Consent of the People is the only Foundation of it, in Reason, Morality, and the natural Fitness of things: and therefore every Act of Government, every Exercise of Sovereignty, against, or without, the Consent of the People, is Injustice, Usurpation, and Tyranny. It is a Maxim, that in every Government, there must exist Somewhere, a Supreme, Sovereign, absolute, and uncontroulable Power: But this power resides always in the Body of the People, and it never was, or can be delegated, to one Man, or a few, the great Creator having never given to Men a right to vest others with Authority over them, unlimited either in Duration or Degree. [Emphasis added]

We shall see, hereafter, why I consider this under the heading of the practical rather than the theoretical. For now, note that three things are laid out. First, there is the end, the only end: happiness. Then there is the foundation, explicitly stated as such: consent of the people. Finally, we have the means. Adams invokes the acquisition of knowledge and of virtue, the development of habits, manners, religion and integrity, all of which is to say that people acting in a certain way and under certain constraints can alone express that informed consent that gives rise to the government that seeks the end of happiness. And the connection between the foundation and the means is made entirely explicit:

Piety and Virtue… alone can Secure the Freedom of any People … and Vice and Immorality suppress’d, this Proclamation commend[s] and enjoin[s] it upon the good People of this Colony, that they lead sober, religious and peaceable Lives, avoiding all Blasphemies, Contempt of the holy Scriptures and of the Lords Day and all other Crimes and Misdemeanors, all Debauchery, Prophaneness, Corruption, Venality all riotous and tumultuous Proceedings and all Immoralities whatever: and that they decently and reverently attend the public Worship of God at all Times acknowledging with [Gratitude his merciful …

And in the final clause the proclamation invokes the assistance of the ministers of the Gospel within the colony, who, “hav[ing] during the late Relaxation of the Powers of civil Government, exerted themselves for our Safety, it is hereby recommended to them, still to continue their virtuous Labours for the good of the People, inculcating by their Public Ministry and private Example, the Necessity of Religion, Morality, and good order.” Putting it differently, consent of the people stands upon the bulwark of information, of knowledge, of understanding; it is informed consent. What is to inform the consent are religion, morality, manners – good habits. We are forced to admit the idea that a moral foundation is essential not only to the expression but to the achievement of the ends of the Revolution. In this recognition, we connect with George Washington in his “Farewell Address,” where he said: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

That word, “supports,” that Washington offered raises the ultimate question. Is religion a “support” for – a component of – the principled foundations of free government? Or, does it sustain independent status as a determinant of human conduct even as to politics?

That is the theoretical matter to which we now turn our attention, but we may do so briefly.

Cody and Dyer demonstrate conclusively that American revolutionaries and founders made significant and substantial reference to classical and religious sources. They do not, however, argue that such references involved controlling principles that can be understood apart from the practices of the culture in which they arose. Just such an argument, however, is necessary to establish a theoretical foundation for the claim to religious liberty. That is to say, a theoretical foundation requires that the claim of religious liberty be independent rather than a component of established practices. In the context of the American experience, that transition appeared manifestly (though not for the first time) in James Madison’s declaration that “the obligations to God are prior to the obligations to civil society.” Madison’s substitution of “freedom of conscience” for “toleration” in the Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty drew a bright line between a privilege granted by civil society and a claim defended over and against civil society. For that claim – an “I must” claim – to have warrant against the positive law, it must stand upon ground beyond the reach of the positive law or civil society. That ground is a claim about human nature and constitutes as such the theoretical foundation of religious liberty. At the same time, it establishes the limits of Enlightenment ideas regarding civil society.

It would be well to recall John Locke’s rather sly handling of the situation confronted by citizens living on the basis of consent but having fallen into hands of a tyrannical administration. When petition and remonstrance fail, he averred, they could appeal to heaven. It is a mistake to think that Locke meant, in this formulation, that a God intervening in the world would save the people. Locke meant only fortuna – or chance! There was no further source from which to draw. Once he built his theory on the sovereignty of parliament – in which Blackstone followed a hundred years later – he could offer nothing beyond the hazard of revolution in defense of natural rights. The agency of a “sovereign people” had no practical significance in his theory beyond the origination of government.

It was, however, very much the agency of a “sovereign people” that the James Otises and James Wilsons of the revolutionary era counted upon most decisively. Otis, even in his energetic attempt to defend “British America” and the union with Great Britain, had still to repose on something beyond the positive law: “Every British Subject in America is, of common Right, by Acts of Parliament, and by the Laws of God and Nature, entitled to all the essential Privileges of Britons.” [5] Such claims are accounted for in more disciplined fashion by the Richard Prices, the Joseph Priestlleys, the Josiah Tuckers and others of the revolutionary era. Price, for example, makes explicit the claim that “IT is evident, that all those Circumstances, on which relative Duties are founded, must be prior, in the Order of Things, to the Duties resulting from them.”[6] And just such an observation is what lay at the bottom of Josiah Tucker’s decision to publish a rebuttal of John Locke’s theory.

Tucker did not reject the Lockeian model of consent and basic natural rights, including religious liberty. But he made a material exception, and here extended quotation is necessary.

Mr. Locke … was a Witness to grievous Persecutions inflicted on the Score of Religion. He saw the Rights of private Judgment exposed to continual Vexations: and he saw likewise, that the Interests of the State were not at all concerned in maintaining that rigid, universal Conformity in Religion, for which the Bigots of those Times so fiercely contended; ”nay, that the Principles of Humanity, Justice, and Truth, as well as the Suggestions of sound Policy, plainly required a more extended Plan of religious Liberty: All this he clearly saw: And hence he inferred, and very justly, that every Man had a Right not only to think, but even to act for himself, in all such religious Matters as did not oppose, or clash with the Interests of civil Society. And had he stopt there, and gone no farther, all would have been right; nay, he would have truly deserved the Thanks of Mankind for pleading their Cause so well.

But, alas! he extended those Ideas, which were true only in what concerns Religion, to Matters of a mere civil Nature, and even to the Origin of civil Government itself; ”as if there had been the same Plea for Liberty of Conscience in disobeying the civil Laws of one’s County, as for not conforming to a Church Establishment, or an Ecclesiastical Institution; ”and that the Rights of private Judgment [I mean the open and public Exercise of those Rights] were equally unalienable and indefeasible in both Respects. Indeed it must be confessed, that, had the Cases been truly parallel, a Non-conformist in the one Case ought to have been tolerated equally with a Non-conformist in the other. And I will add, that the whole Merits of the Question depend on the single Point, whether the Cases are parallel, or not.

Thus, for Example, no Man, not even the supreme Magistrate, has a Right to molest me for worshipping God according to the Dictates of my own Conscience, provided I do nothing in that Respect, which can fairly be construed to hurt the Property of another Man, or disturb the Peace of Society. Therefore I may be a Papist, as well as a Protestant in my speculative Opinions, and yet do nothing, which can, when justly interpreted, be accounted to be injurious to others: Nay I will not scruple to declare, that I may be a Jew, or a Mahometan, a Genteo, or a Confucian, and yet be a loyal Subject to my Prince, an honest Man, and an useful Member of the Community. Therefore, if Toleration were ever to be extended as far as in Reason, and Justice, and good Policy it ought to go, it ought to be so large as to comprehend every religious Sect whatever, whose Doctrines, or rather whose Practice [for ‘tis chiefly by Men’s Practice that we ought to determine, whether any Sect deserves to be tolerated, or not; “therefore I say, whose Practice] proves them worthy to enjoy the Protection of the State. And there is a very particular, and a most important Reason to be given, why this Liberty of Conscience in religious Matters ought to be extended as far as ever the Safety of the State will permit: It is, because in the Affairs of Conscience no Man can act, or be supposed to act as Proxy for another; no Man can be a Deputy, Substitute, or Representative in such a Case; but every Man must think, and act personally for himself. This is the Fact; and in this Sense it is very true, that the Rights of private Judgment-are absolutely unalienable:” But why unalienable?  “It is because they are untransferable: And therefore every Man must of Necessity, after having used the best Lights and Helps he can obtain, be his own Legislator, (under God) his own Governor, and his own Director in the Affairs of Religion.” [7]

This telling argument is significant for acknowledging that the impositions of civil society cannot be evaded by claims of conscience, even while claims of conscience must be impervious to civil direction. Nor would it be an unusual intelligence that wondered whether this does produce an inevitable conundrum of parsing when the civil laws constrain uncivil conduct and when they constrain “uncivil belief.” Montesquieu, of course, argued in Book XII of Spirit of the Laws that there could be no “thought crimes.” And it may suffice to confine all claims of conscience to “thought,” thus including every religion and non-religion (as far as that goes). The difficulty, however, derives from the fact that one acts by his own lights, and if his light cannot be directed aright, there is no recourse but to blow it out when it results in misdirected conduct.

Cody and Dyer implicitly touch upon this conundrum in their work. To accomplish their purpose the authors disentangled the ideas of many of the founders from the ideas, mainly, of Enlightenment thinkers. Their principal premise is that, while Enlightenment theory played a significant role in developing political deliberations in the eighteenth century, that influence is exaggerated by scholarship which interprets the founders merely as epigones of a trending and radical modernism.

The evidence for the thesis is found in plentiful and consistent recourse to classical and Christian principles and modes of analysis. The argument goes well beyond a mere citation, and it focuses instead on the deductive principles which the founders surfaced through natural law analysis. That is to say, the founders demonstrated easy familiarity with metaphysical and moral reasoning, philosophical as well as religious. But Cody and Dyer did not undertake an analysis of the far more sophisticated Hobbesian appropriation of biblical texts for his first law of nature (and which deliberately challenges metaphysical and reasoning): “Let [man] eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.” (1 Peter 3:11 KJV)

Which was interpolated, of course, from: “Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” (Psalm 34:14 KJV)

One would not be mistaken to read “peace” in the biblical text as “happiness.” That the isolated Hobbesian individual was phrased in terms of the biblical command to “do good” strips the social context of “do no evil, pursue peace (among men), and do good” to others, wrests the injunction from Micah 6:8 (“What does God ask of you, O man, but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God”) from its foundation in divine authority (and thereby natural law), and poses it as a counsel of self-interest. In short, Hobbes treated things divine as projections of the most basic human propensity, which is to seek safety.

The real burden of Cody and Dyer’s analysis, therefore, is to demonstrate not that the founders consulted natural law but that they recognized the authority of natural law above any political authority. Hence, structuring a political founding upon natural law evades the most important question, namely, the authority of natural law. And that question inescapably results in the affirmation of the authority of God. That is the upshot of Dr. Price’s observation that, 

It is no less evident, that such Relations or Connections ought to be Matters of public Notoriety, before their respective Duties can be enjoined, and enforced. The Relations between Parent and Child, between Husband and Wife, Master and Servant, Sovereign and Subject, must not only exist,” but the Existence of them ought to be publickly known, before the several Duties of Honour, Fidelity, and Obedience on the one Hand, “and of Protection, affectionate Regard, and providential Care on the other, can be pressed on the Consciences of Mankind with due Force. For the Holy Scriptures do not inform us, who are Parents, and who are Children,” who are Husbands, Masters, or Sovereigns, “nor yet, who are Wives, Servants, or Subjects:” No; this is not their Province, and it would be absurd to expect such Information from them: “But, after these several Relations are become sufficiently known from other Sources of Intelligence, then the Holy Scriptures proceed to inculcate the Duties respectively belonging to each Relation, with proper Motives.”[8]

In this circumstance Price adduced and distinguished the correlative senses of liberty that derive from such considerations.  Priestly, however, wondered,

It is hard to say, what could have been the Doctor’s Motive for dividing Human Liberty into four Parts; for, in reality, there are either not so many Sorts of Liberty, or a great many more. Physical Liberty, which is the Foundation of the rest, is, as the Doctor well observes, that Principle of Spontaneity, or Self-Determination, which constitutes us Agents; or which gives us a Command over our Actions, rendering them properly ours, and not Effects of the Operation of any foreign Cause. Therefore possessing, or enjoying this Power within ourselves, we apply it to various Purposes, according as Duty, Interest, or Inclination call it forth: Consequently if every distinct, or possible Application of it is to be considered as the Exertion of a distinct Species of Liberty, we may be said to have Sorts without Number. But the Doctor himself … joins Religious and Civil Liberty in the same Class. And he also observes that there is one general Idea that runs through them all, the Idea of Self-Direction, or Self-Government.[9]

This idea of self-direction, accordingly, constitutes the nub of the theoretical question, and it is illuminated by the otherwise perplexing enumeration of the natural rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” What is perplexing in the enumeration is precisely the appearance that the three identified rights correspond to three distinct functions.

Now, whether “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” constitutes a series of distinct functions or two functions (life and liberty) with a dependent apposition (pursuit of happiness) connected to the second comprises the entire theoretical inquiry. John Adams, as we have seen, had already anticipated this inquiry upon introducing “pursuit of happiness” in the Proclamation of the General Court Of Massachusetts and, subsequently, in his Thoughts On Government, prior to the emergence of the Declaration of Independence.[10] Effectively, he argued that “pursuit of happiness” is the performance of the function of liberty towards moral excellence. That is the same as to say that liberty, a function of self-direction that admits the necessity of options or choices, is nonetheless not indifferent to the choices made. While acknowledging that the function – or endowment of soul – is susceptible to varieties of performance, he nonetheless maintains that, within the variance, there is rightful and wrongful performance. The human person is paradoxically required to lean one way or the other – to act with liberty – but only in one direction does so well.

What produces the paradox is human fallibility conjoined with the requirement for the human person to conduct him or herself by his or her own lights. While it may appear that liberty is the openness to error (choose how one will, one must choose), it is rather the case that one functions (conducts himself rather than being compelled by necessity) truly at liberty only when one chooses well – pursues happiness. Hobbes created the leading edge of Enlightenment thought when he sought to convert the biblical “seek peace” from the other-regarding to the self-regarding, seeking to displace recourse to metaphysical (hence moral) reasoning. Hobbes sought to replace the “I must” with the “I will,” which could readily be made congruent with civil authority.

It is not a mistake to acknowledge that the “I will” exists. It is only a mistake to deny the forcefulness of the “I must.” Montesquieu sought to demonstrate this in the first book of Spirit of the Laws when he refuted the Hobbesian argument as confounding the circumstances of civil society with nature. In civil society the requisites of positive law are no less compromised by error than the individual “I will,” and will perforce conflict with every “I must.” Montesquieu characterizes this relationship in the form of four laws – natural, divine, philosophical, and civil. They are presented in descending order, the second and third operating as corrective of the errors in the fourth in the light of the unwavering first law. This means that humans are compelled to “move” (to conduct themselves by their own lights) but can do so with excellence only when they adhere to a standard beyond their particular horizon.

In the context of the Declaration, religion and the Enlightenment, this means that the Declaration is formed of moral alloys, with firmness and stability provided by “the laws of nature and of nature’s God,” and flexibility and adaptability (what we may be tempted to call realism) supplied by Enlightenment ideas of utility. In that relationship Enlightenment ideas serve without shaping the political experience under the Declaration. For the substantial reality of that experience confirms a truth seldom recognized, which is that what may be (but is seldom) said of human beings in the best of circumstances is precisely what is so casually said of human beings in the worst of circumstances – namely, men will be men.

References

[1]  Kody W. Cooper and Justin Buckley Dyer. 2022. The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics: Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[2]  Stacy Schiff. 2022. The Revolutionary Samuel Adams. New York: Little Brown and Company. P. 8.

[3] Jonathan Mayhew, “The Snare broken. A Thanksgiving- Discourse, PREACHED At the Desire of the West Church IN BOSTON, N. E. Friday May Z3, 1766. OCCASIONED BY THE REPEAL OF The Stamp-Act. BY JONATHAN MAYHEW, D. D. Pastor of said Church. BOTSON. ‘Printed and Sold by R. & S. DR APE R, in Newbury Street ; Edes  & Gill, in Queen-Street ; and T. & J. Fleet, in Cornhill. 1766.  Published in Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, i edited by Ellis Sandoz, 2nd ed. 1998. P. 258.

[4] See, especially, Cato’s Letters, An Essay on the First Principles of Government, and on the Nature of Political, Civil, and Religious Liberty, Section V. “Of Religious Liberty, And Toleration in General”:

THE most important question concerning the extent of civil government is, whether the civil magistrate ought to extend his authority to matters of religion; and the only method of deciding this important question, as it appears to me, is to have recourse at once to first principles, and the ultimate rule concerning every thing that respects a society; viz. whether such interference of the civil magistrate appear to be for the public good. And as all arguments a priori, in matters of policy, are apt to be fallacious, fact and experience seem to be our only safe guides. Now these, as far as our knowledge of history extends, declare clearly for no interference in this case at all, or, at least, for as little as is possible. Those societies have ever enjoyed the most happiness, and have been, ceteris paribus, in the most flourishing state, where the civil magistrates have meddled the least with religion, and where they have the most closely confined their attention to what immediately affects the civil interests of their fellow citizens. Pensylvania flourished much more than New England, or than any other of the English settlements in North America, evidently in consequence of giving more liberty in matters of religion, at its first establishment.

Not that I think religion will ever be a matter of indifference in civil society: that is impossible, if the word be understood in its greatest latitude, and by religion we mean that principle whereby men are influenced by the dread of evil, or the hope of reward from any unknown and invisible causes, whether the good or evil be expected to take place in this world or another; comprehending enthusiasm, superstition, and every species of false religion, as well as the true. Nor is such an event at all desirable; nay, the more just motives men have to the same good actions, the better; but religious motives may still operate in favour of the civil laws, without such a connection as has been formed between them in ecclesiastical establishments; and, I think, this end would be answered even better without that connection.

What is practice today becomes precedent tomorrow.

[5] Otis, James, 1725–1783. [Works. Selections] Collected political writings of James Otis/edited and with an introduction by Richard Samuelson. © 2015 by Liberty Fund, Inc.

[6] Extracts From Dr. Price’s Famous Treatise, Observations On The Nature Of Civil Liberty, &C. A New Edition, 12Mo. Preface To The Fifth Edition. CHAP. IV. “The Doctrine Of Scripture Relative To The Obedience Due From Subjects To Their Sovereigns; Together With The Grounds Of, And Reasons For The Duty.” Liberty and American Experience in the Eighteenth Century, Edited and with an Introduction by David Womersley, © 2006 by Liberty Fund.

[7]  Josiah Tucker, A Treatise Concerning Civil Government in Three Parts (London: T. Cadell, 1781).

[8]  The Doctrine Of Scripture Relative To The Obedience Due From Subjects To Their Sovereigns; Together With The Grounds Of, And Reasons For The Duty.

[9] Cf., Extracts, Chap. IV, “On the Nature of Civil Liberty, &c.”

[10] Adams, John, 1735-1826. Thoughts on government: applicable to the present state of the American colonies. : In a letter from a gentleman to his friend. Wythe, George, 1726-1806. Printed by John Dunlap, MDCCLXXVI. [1776]. 28 pages.