Christian government

“ Every good, ignorant, orthodox Christian places his Bible above laws and constitutions. Every good, sincere and ignorant Catholic puts pope above king and president, as well as above the legally expressed will of a majority of his countrymen. Every Christian believes God to be the source of all authority. I believe that the authority to govern comes from the consent of the governed. Man is the source of power, and to protect and increase human happiness should be the object of government. ”

“ They who have so great a reverence for human government, who respect in the nation an ultimate irresponsible power, ought, [pg 135] if they were consistent, when they acknowledge Christ as having come in the flesh, to acknowledge His government in the kingdom which He has set up. All that his country is to the patriot, the Church is to the Christian, but in so much higher a degree, as the object for which Christ came is above the needs and cares of this present life. ”

“ How much better are modern Pagan nations? These evils have been extinguished in the ratio of the circulation and influence of the Bible. The relation between the state and its citizens the Bible recognizes as of divine appointment; the foundation of civil government is the will of God. Government is an ordinance of God. “The powers that be are ordained of God.” The great author of our rights, life, liberty, peace, order, public morals and religion, has not left these interests to chance, anarchy or the social compact. ”

“ New dignities, new organizations, new institutions for the government of the Church successively arose. All societies must have a government. This is a law recognized in the nature of things. So Christian society must be organized and ruled according to the necessities of the times; and the Scriptures do not say what these shall be,--they are imperative and definite only in matters of faith and morals. To guard the faith, to purify the morals according to the Christian standard, overseers, officers, rulers are required. ”

“ The government that maintains liberty of conscience as one of its fundamental principles, and under which Christianity is recognized as the common law, has just claims upon the Christian citizen for the vigilant exercise of all political rights. ”

“ In a word, do we claim too prominent a place for religious principle in the administration of public affairs, when we avow our desire that the rulers of a people, who are the nominal, and in a free government the real, representatives of the people, should be daily and practically aware, that they are accountable to a higher Power, thus realizing, if not in the highest and most Christian sense, yet in the literal signification, the picture of a good ruler drawn by the prophet, who, in the name of the almighty Ruler, declares, "He that ruleth over men, must be just—ruling in the fear of God!" ”

“ It would be monstrous if her teaching were modified, if her powers of self-government were restricted, to suit the ambitions or the so-called common sense of a lay ruler. The Church stands to the State in the relation of the head to the members, of the soul to the body, of the sun to the moon. The State exists to provide the material foundations of the Christian society, to protect the Church, to extend her sphere and to constrain those who rebel against her law. ”

“ Christianityin its true sense puts an end to government. So it was understood at its very commencement; it was for that cause that Christ was crucified, So it has always been understood by people who were not under the necessity of justifying a Christian government. Only from the time that the heads of government assumed an external and nominal Christianity, men began to invent all the impossible, cunningly devised theories by means of which Christianity can be reconciled with government. ”

“ It is a fact which entitles to the hope that your nation will revive the law of Christ, even on earth. However, the guarantee which your Constitution affords to religious liberty is but a negative part of a Christian government. There are, besides that, positive duties to be fulfilled. ”

“ Men who believe in the principles of Jesus Christ associate themselves together in a Christian church.
The Government.—Everywhere we find men uniting for mutual protection against their enemies, the guarding of property, the settling of disputes between individuals, the administration of justice and the exercise of other powers. This government may take different forms from the one man power in a monarchy to that of the most liberal democracy. ”

“ Our only hope is in the work of the Christian church through all its agencies, social, ecclesiastical and educational, moulding out of the glorious material so abundantly at its disposal, a band of men who shall convert the seats of power into seats of righteousness, and make government and purity synonymous terms. ”

“ Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government. ”

“ It stands for the inalienable, universal rights of men. Essentially democratic, its government is administered by the common consent of the governed, wherein and whereby man governed by his creator is self-governed. The church is the mouthpiece of Christian Science, — its law and gospel are according to Christ Jesus; its rules are health, holiness, and immortality, — equal rights and privileges, equality of the sexes, rotation in office. ”

“ No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity; and was amoung the efficacious doctrines which gave it triumph over the polytheism of the ancients, sickened with the absurdities of their own theology. Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius. ”

“ So entirely have political ideas and jealousies infected our mode of judging of spiritual things—to such a degree is our peculiar civil liberty made the standard of Church government—that it is necessary to insist again and again on what to Christians ought to be a first principle, viz., that "all power and jurisdiction in the Church, like the Church herself, ought to rest not upon natural and human authority, but on the divine authority of Christ. ”

“ But without pretending that the church enjoins any particular form of civil polity, or maintaining the infallibility or impeccability of the people, either collectively or individually, a calmer study of history, and the recent experience of our own country, have restored me to my early faith in popular forms of government, or democracy as organized under our American system, which, though it has its dangers and attendant evils, is, wherever practicable, the form of government that, upon the whole, best conforms to those great Catholic principles on which the church herself is founded. ”

“ It is in your power to elect able, honest, and virtuous men to office, and to reunite the principles of government with the principles of religion.
Will you respond to the offer which is made you in this country and the nineteenth century, and perfect and complete what may not unlikely be the last opportunity for achieving temporal prosperity in harmony with Catholic justice? ”

“ Without stopping to discuss the bold assertion in the last sentence, we may remark that the real teaching of this passage is that Christians ought to be indifferent to politics, quietly accepting whatever government they find in power; for if the powers that be are ordained of God, or in other words, if might is right, all forms of government are equally entitled to obedience so long as they actually exist. ”

“ The hypothesis insinuates that all men have not gifts and skill rightly to rule their own houses, much less to govern the church. 2. Experience tells us, that the multitude of the people are generally destitute of such knowledge, wisdom, prudence, learning, and other necessary qualifications for the right carrying on of church government.
Conclusion. Therefore Christ makes not the community of the faithful the first subject of the power of church government. ”

“ Would the government, if it were accepted by the church, understand it as implying its obligation to respect and protect all churches equally as representing the spiritual order, or as asserting its freedom to govern and oppress all at will, the true church as the false? ”

“ My principles are, that the Church shall not meddle with politics, and Government will not meddle with religion. ”

“ Some, overlooking the twofold agency, partly civil, partly ecclesiastical, by which the Most High promotes his own ends and the well being of his creatures, have resolved each into the other, making religion an affair of the state, and civil government a matter for ecclesiastical influence ”

“ The early Christians uniformly held that they, as Christians, belonged to a kingdom which was in, but not of, the world--a kingdom for which no earthly potentate had right or power to legislate; and this living faith loosened the bond of allegiance and dissolved the sense of obligation as to all human authority, and was the negation of the lawfulness of temporal government over the subjects of the kingdom for which they recognized no king but Christ. ”

“ The Gospel is offered without money and without price to all flesh, and the testimony that we bear to the world is that Jesus died for all, and that through the shedding of his blood, salvation may come unto all men who will believe and yield obedience unto the requirements of his Gospel. The government which is inaugurated and established among men by the preaching of the Gospel, and the administration of its holy ordinances, is a government of peace, love and goodwill to men, prompting those who receive it to do good unto all, but especially unto the household of faith. ”

“ And as political institutions are the asylums of the Church in this life, though civil government is distinct from the spiritual kingdom of Christ, our Author instructs us respecting it as a signal blessing of God, which the Church ought to acknowledge with gratitude of heart, till we are called out of this transitory state to the heavenly inheritance, where God will be all in all. ”

“ In order for the United States to form an image of the beast, the religious power must so control the civil government that the authority of the state will also be employed by the church to accomplish her own ends. ”

“ There is much speaking about the separation of Church and State, and yet, on close examination, we shall see that there was, and there is, scarcely one single government entirely free from the direct or indirect influence of one or other religious denominations; scarcely one which would not at least bear a predilection, if not countenance with favour, one or another creed—but creed, and always creed. ”

“ In conclusion, therefore, let me urge every soul who desires to be truly Christian to no longer separate Christianity from politics, but to make it the base upon which to build the future political structure. ”

“ They are sound and liberal, and based on the great principle of the public good being the end of all government—the principle that kings reign, not for themselves, but for their people; while, in all their administration, they ought to be swayed and regulated by the laws of an authority higher than their own, by a regard to the Will of God as their rule, and the Glory of God, to which all else must ever be subordinate, as their supreme aim. ”

“ There was once a time when the philosophy of the Gospel governed States; then it was that that power and divine virtue of Christian wisdom had penetrated into the laws, institutions and manners of peoples—indeed into all the ranks and relations of the State; when the religion instituted by Jesus Christ, firmly established in that degree of dignity which was befitting, flourished everywhere, in the favor of rulers and under the due protection of magistrates ”

“ For your satisfaction, I will present some of my views concerning the kingdom of God, and leave the subject for others to elaborate.
Erroneous traditions and the powers of darkness have such sway over mankind, that, when we speak of a theocracy on the earth, the people are frightened. The government of the "Holy Catholic Church," from which all the Protestant churches are offshoots, is professedly theocratic, though it is directly opposed to the theocracy described in the Bible. ”

“ That it shall be administered with prudence and equity, and so as to answer the great end of government, which is the establishment of the kingdom: He shall order it, and settle it, with justice and judgment. Every thing is, and shall be, well managed, in the kingdom of Christ, and none of his subjects shall ever have cause to complain. ”

“ And when we say that we believe that the constitution of our country was established by a divine inspiration, working through the men who formulated it, we should remember that we stand committed to this doctrine of government by the people; and to such of us who hold to a divine inspiration in our constitution, that principle of our government is God-ordained. ”

“ A truly wise and equitable government, so far from coalescing with the priesthood of any religion or superstition for mutual support against the justice of equal rights, would not allow itself to know anything whatever about theology and its train of distracting, misery-creating delusions. ”

“ And since the Church alone has, through the grace of God, received the means necessary to realize such end, she has her fixed laws, special spheres of action, and a certain method, fixed and conformable to her nature, of governing Christian peoples. But the exercise of such governing power is difficult, and leaves room for numberless conflicts, inasmuch as the Church rules peoples scattered through every portion of the earth, differing in race and customs, who, living under the sway of the laws of their respective countries, owe obedience alike to the civil and religious authorities. ”