Dear Sir:--In my first letter I promised to prove that the paragraph in the Declaration of Independence, which contains the affirmation of created equality and unalienable rights, has no sanction from the word of God. I now meet my obligation.
The time has come when civil liberty, as revealed in the Bible and in Providence, must be re-examined, understood, and defended against infidel theories of human rights. The slavery question has brought on this conflict; and, strange as it may seem, the South, the land of the slave, is summoned by God to defend the liberty he gives; while the North, the clime of the free, misunderstands and changes the truth of God into a lie,--claiming a liberty he does not give. Wherefore is this? I reply:---
God, when he ordained government over men, gave to the individual man RIGHTS, only as he is under government. He first established the family; hence all other rule is merely the family expanded. The good of the family limited the rights of every member. God required the family, and then the state, so to rule as to give to every member the good which is his, in harmony with the welfare of the whole; and he commanded the individual to seek that good, and NO MORE.
Now, mankind being depraved, government has ever violated its obligation to rule for the benefit of the entire community, and has wielded its power in oppression. Consequently, the governed have ever struggled to secure the good which was their right. But, in this struggle, they have ever been tempted to go beyond the limitation God had made, and to seek supposed good, not given, in rights, prompted by self-will, destructive of the state.
Government thus ever existing in oppression, and people thus ever rising up against despotism, have been the history of mankind.
The Reformation was one of the many convulsions in this long-continued conflict. In its first movements, men claimed the liberty the Bible grants. Soon they ran into licentiousness. God then stayed the further progress of emancipation in Europe, because the spread of the asserted liberty would have made infidelity prevail over that part of the continent where the Reformation was arrested. God preferred Romanism, and other despotisms, modified as they were by the struggle, to rule for a time, than have those countries destroyed under the sway of a licentious freedom.
In this contest the North American colonies had their rise, and they continued the strife with England until they declared themselves independent.
That "Declaration" affirmed not only the liberty sanctioned of the Bible, but also the liberty constituting infidelity. Its first paragraph, to the word "separation," is a noble introduction. Omit, then, what follows, to the sentence beginning "Prudence will dictate," and the paper, thus expurgated, is complete, and is then simply the complaint of the colonies against the government of England, which had oppressed them beyond further submission, and the assertion of their right to be free and independent States.
This declaration was, in that form, nothing more than the affirmation of the right God gives to children, in a family, applied to the colonies, in regard to their mother-country. That is to say, children have, from God, RIGHT, AS CHILDREN, when cruelly treated, to secure the good to which they are entitled, as children, IN THE FAMILY. They may secure this good by becoming part of another family, or by setting up for themselves, if old enough. So the colonies had, from God, right as colonies, when oppressed beyond endurance, to exchange the British family for another, or, if of sufficient age, to establish their own household. The Declaration, then, in that complaint of oppression and affirmation of right, in the colonies, to be independent, asserts liberty sanctioned by the word of God. And therefore the pledge to that Declaration, of "lives, fortune, and sacred honor," was blessed of Heaven, in the triumph of their cause.
But the Declaration, in the part I have omitted, affirms other things, and very different. It asserts facts and rights as appertaining to man, not in the Scriptures, but contrary thereto. Here is the passage:--