A History of American ChristianityBacon, Leonard Woolsey
Religion
A History of American Christianity
Bacon, Leonard Woolsey
United States -- Church history; United States -- Religion
There is nothing in the personal duty of non-resistance of evil, as
inculcated in the New Testament, that conflicts with the functions of
the civil governor--even the function of bearing the sword as God's
minister. Rather, each of these is the complement and counterpart of the
other. Among the early colonial governors no man wielded the sword of
the ruler more effectively than the Quaker Archdale in the Carolinas. It
is when this law of personal duty is assumed as the principle of public
government that the order of society is inverted, and the function of
the magistrate is inevitably taken up by the individual, and the old
wilderness law of blood-revenge is reinstituted. The legislation of
William Penn involved no abdication of the power of the sword by the
civil governor. The enactment, however sparing, of capital laws conceded
by implication every point that is claimed by Christian moralists in
justification of war. But it is hardly to be doubted that the tendency
of Quaker politics so to conduct civil government as that it shall
"resist not evil" is responsible for some of the strange paradoxes in
the later history of Pennsylvania. The commonwealth was founded in good
faith on principles of mutual good will with the Indians and tender
regard for Indian rights, of religious liberty and interconfessional
amity, and of a permanent peace policy. Its history has been
characterized, beyond that of other States, by foul play toward the
Indians and protracted Indian wars, by acrimonious and sometimes bloody
sectarian conflicts, by obstinate insurrections against public
order,[144:1] and by cruel and exterminating war upon honest settlers,
founded on a mere open question of title to territory.[144:2]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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