THE PILGRIMS
The Pilgrims were Puritans. Both were men of action. As the scriptures say, "faith without works is dead." But not only is faith without works dead, but knowledge without action is futile. There is a popular misconception even today that knowledge by itself is sufficient. This fallacy, failing to see that there is NO SUBSTITUTE FOR ACTION, assumes that if the facts are all known and the truth can be brought out, everything will take care of itself. That this is patently absurd both history and common sense will readily bear out. Congress has been investigating communist subversion for decades but has done little about it. Everybody knows Gus Hall. Everybody knows that the State Department is loaded with security risks. But nothing is ever done about it. The destruction of this republic by treason and subversion will be one of the best documented facts in history. THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR ACTION.

The Puritans inherited and further developed theories of the rights of the people and the duty of resisting and overthrowing wicked and tyrannical government. They also put them into practice. They were men of action. Some Puritans, to regain their lost rights and liberties, became Pilgrims, a noteworthy action that laid the foundation for this republic. Two decades later their Puritan brethren in England fought a victorious civil war under the great Cromwell, leading their king to the scaffold to re-establish their liberties, an action that their sons repeated in 1688. A century later the descendents of the Pilgrims, learning the lessons of history, fired the shot heard round the world.

REVOLUTION
Revolution has become a dirty word, especially since the Marxists have had a near monopoly on it for over a century. It was not always so. The Puritans proudly hailed their overthrow of James II as the Glorious Revolution. Neither did our founding fathers scorn to describe the events of 1776 as the American Revolution. Up until the French Revolution, the first prototype of a communist revolution in western civilization, the word revolution remained respectable. After that holocaust of terror, madness and desecration the meaning of the word was forever changed. The confusion and ambivalence surrounding the word have continued to this day. For instance, people today who totally abhor revolution for the above mentioned reasons have no difficulty enjoying the Fourth or sympathizing with the Budapest freedom fighters of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Obviously the issues involved need to be clarified. Most of those who are still struck with horror at the thought of the Bolshevik Revolution took comfort in the recent anti-communist revolution in Chile. Although the word revolution is the common denominator in all these events, clearly the issue lies much deeper. Revolution, war against one's government, is like war, neither intrinsically nor necessarily evil. (See issue No. 8, Resistance I-War). Revolution, like war, is under the law of God and must be judged by that standard.

LEGALITY
God, the great Lawgiver, is not the author of confusion. Neither are his people prone to lawlessness or anarchy. The men who precipitated the American Revolution were convinced of the legality of their actions. They were concerned with law and the maintenance of law. To them submission to illegal statutes and lawless actions of the British administration was in itself lawlessness and sin. The maintenance of legality and law meant resisting all illegal actions by force if necessary and the breaking of all illegal laws. They were free men ruled by law and not by the arbitrary whims of a despot.

The concern of the colonists with the legal issues at stake, with the preservation of law and with a militant defense of that bastion of liberty, the law, was evidenced in many ways.

Rushdoony says, "Finally, one of the revealing facts concerning the revolutionary era is that the sale of English law books, Blackstone and Coke in particular, was very great in the colonies, nearly 2500 copies of Blackstone's Commentaries having been sold in the ten years prior to the Revolution." (This Independent Republic p. 32) Mullett says, "…it is of interest to note the preponderance of lawyers among the colonial pamphleteers, a factor which Burke in his speech on American taxation remarked as explaining the character of the opposition to British policy. 'In no other country perhaps in the world', he said, 'is the law so genera/ a study'." (Fundamental Law And The American Revolution, p. 8)

The legality of the colonial resistance, the legal justness of their cause and the correctness of their use, interpretation and application of the law was recognized and affirmed by some of the leading British statesmen.

And Edmund Burke…urged conciliation with the Colonies by restoring to them the full constitutional protections to which all English subjects were entitled. . ." (McWhorter: Res Publica p. 186-187).

The Boston Massacre well plumbs the almost unfathomable depths of the American allegiance to law in the struggles of 1776. In the immediate aftermath of the shooting Bancroft tells us, "…now was to be tested the true character of Boston. All its sons came forth, excited almost to madness,- many were absolutely distracted by the sight of the dead bodies, and of the blood, which ran plentifully in the street, and was imprinted in all directions by the foot-tracks on the snow. "Our hearts", says Warren, "beat to arms; almost resolved by one stroke to avenge the death of our slaughtered brethren." But they stood self-possessed and irresistible, DEMANDING JUSTICE ACCORDING TO THE LAW"

"The town was resolved on bringing the party who had fired to trial…at the same time, it wished that every opportunity of defense should be furnished the prisoners, and with the very general approbation of the people, and at the urgent solicitations of Samuel Adams…John Adams and the younger Ouincy consented to be retained as their counsel." (History of the United States; Vol. VI, pp. 340 & 350, Emphasis mine) So great was the colonial reverence for law and so impartial their extension of their full protection of the law to their worst enemies, that the officer who ordered the firing was acquitted for lack of legal testimony establishing positive identification on that snowy night. To appreciate the greatness of our Revolution compare that with the Reign of Terror in France or the Bolshevik Revolution.

Finally, to appreciate their commitment to law and defense of principle see how many people today can be convinced to pledge their lives, fortunes, and their sacred honor for the legal principles involved in a three pence tax on tea ! ! !

LEGALITY AND REVOLUTION
The revolutionaries of 1776 were eminently concerned with the legality of their revolution. To them a revolution had to be justified by law. They would have been horrified at the use of revolution to circumvent or subvert the righteous claims of the law. Theirs was a revolution to uphold the law in the face of arbitrary lawless despotism. The real revolution had already taken place in England where the British Constitution had been overthrown and lay trampled by the administration of an absolute king ruling with a servile parliament. The Americans fought a conservative counterrevolution to maintain their rights as free Englishmen guaranteed by the British Constitution. They rebelled and warred against the illegal acts and usurpations of both king and parliament. To them George III was the OUTLAW and they the maintainers of law. To them love of law and true obedience to law necessitated that they resist the destruction and subversion of rule by law.

Abraham Lincoln was once quoted on the subject of revolution as saying, "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." This was a far cry from the position of our founding fathers and indicative of the radical subversion of our foundations which precipitated the Civil War. Lincoln's statement is in the spirit of the French Revolution and makes revolution an inherent right that the people can engage in at every whim and fancy. Lincoln's philosophy of revolution makes man his own law and his own standard for revolution. Such is the cry of the contemporary revolutionaries with slogans such as Power to the People, and Revolution Now. The statesmen of 1776 believed in no such inherent right of revolution. Instead they believed in the inherent right to be ruled by God's law and in the inherent duty to maintain that law by force when necessary.

Revolution is a dangerous concept, and those who play with fire often get burnt. Revolution can easily get out of control, as Lincoln's quote demonstrates, which was a very real concern in the American Revolution. Yet Christians should be guided by what is right and not by what is safe. The revolution of 1776 was carefully controlled and hedged in by law. God's law is the standard in all things, and when it requires a militant defense the Lord's people should not fail in their duty.

FUNDAMENTAL LAW
Having established that revolutions must be legal, justified by law, waged in accordance with law and to achieve objectives defined by law, the question necessarily arises WHICH LAW.

That there were escalating levels of law the colonies were keenly aware. At the apex they recognized only the supreme law of God, which they found not only in the Scriptures but also built into God's creation in the laws of nature. This law was eternal, immutable and supreme. Next was constitutional law, which law, to be valid, must be in accordance with the laws of God and nature, and constituted the fundamental law of the realm. Within the framework of the constitution, legislative law, passed by the representatives and with the consent of the people, was the next level of recognized law. But all such law was void, whether consented to or not, if it violated constitutional law. Finally there was administrative law, the regulations and edicts of the king's officers. Not only was this law (?) hedged in by all higher law but it could be completely challenged as being a usurpation of the legislative powers of the representatives of the people. Basically the colonies challenged the despotism exercised over them by legislative (acts of the British Parliament) and administrative (edicts of the king's officers) law in the name of higher law. The colonies appealed to the law of God and the British Constitution as a legal bulwark against the usurpations of the crown.

That the colonists had a well stocked legal arsenal to draw from is also abundantly clear. The colonial pamphleteers lacked little in the way of legal ammunition to precipitate their revolution. The Americans had centuries of legal tradition in British law and the writings of the most eminent of British jurists in England's history on their side. The colonists were contending for the legal, constitutional, inalienable, God-given rights of all Englishmen. As Burke and Pitt clearly saw, if the legal challenge of the colonies failed then the rights and liberties of all Englishmen were forever in jeopardy. The Christian patriots of 1776 were not only steeped in the law of God but they were well grounded in British Constitutionalism. MAGNA CHARTA, HABEUS CORPUS, PETITION OF RIGHT and all the other legal bulwarks of the historic rights and liberties of Englishmen were the batteries that the colonies trained on the arbitrary actions of the British crown. Their precious colonial charters were another citadel, a legal bastion, from which they challenged the very Parliament of Britain.

The revolutionaries of that day were men of law. But the only law they would recognize and submit to was the law of God and those laws of men that conformed to it. Neither were they radical innovators or malicious destroyers, but rather all was within the legal traditions and the historic constitutionalism of England. They sought to maintain, not to destroy. The motto of William of Orange, "Je maintendrai", became that of Washington, "l will maintain". And by the grace of God maintain they did. With fresh blood and sacrifice they defended the ancient constitutions purchased by the blood and treasure of those that had gone before.

THE BREACHES
Though the colonies stood on principle, the breaches in the ancient bulwarks of English liberty were nonetheless very real, grievous and extensive. The issues were economic, political, and judicial.

On the economic front repression took the form of the Navigation Acts, which forbade all commerce with foreign nations excepting England alone. This was a piece of tyranny destructive of colonial prosperity and hard to be borne, and made the monopoly of the British East India Co, all the more odious. The laws restricting colonial manufacture, designed to ensure a profitable market for British goods, were equally aggravating. As one American remarked, "Prohibiting slitting mills is similar to the Philistines prohibiting smiths in Israel, and shows we are esteemed by our brethren as vassals." The taxes imposed by parliament were considered a political, not an economic, issue. It was not the tax, but the right to tax that was defiantly challenged by the unrepresented colonists. Thus their unremitting resistance to the Stamp Act and all other efforts of taxation of the colonies by parliament. Constitutionally, taxes were only to be levied by the colonial legislatures where the citizens had representation, and anything else was illegal plundering of the property of the citizens. The Boston Tea Party, by destroying the tea, ensured that no tax would be paid and no legal precedent set. The Billeting Act, which coerced citizens into providing free room and board to the king's troops, was not only as an arbitrary piece of tyranny but also as an effort to indirectly tax the colonists.

Judicial tyranny was found in the Writs Of Assistance that circumvented the protection of search warrants. The establishment of the Admiralty Courts operating as judge, jury and executioner, while circumventing the regular judicial process with its built-in constitutional protections, was another colonial grievance. The height of judicial tyranny was the resurrection of an obscure statute of Henry VIII, passed at the height of his bloody and despotic reign, which threatened to drag offending colonists to England to be tried there for treason by a special tribunal. Another naked piece of tyranny was the Riot Act, which declared, "…persons might be tried in any Superior Court, no matter how distant from their homes, and if within sixty days they did not make their appearance…they were to be proclaimed outlaws and to forfeit their lives with all their property." This monstrous statute enforced by the governor of South Carolina drove the people to desperation. The colonies also objected to being governed by parliamentary legislation passed without their consent. Without representation, legislation, like taxation, was unconstitutional. The continual practice of dissolving and dismissing the colonial assemblies when they refused to behave as rubber stamps was another point of vexation that effectively disenfranchised all the colonists. The perpetual violations of the colonial charters and the repeated efforts to repeal, abrogate, or rescind them in whole or in part was to the colonists perhaps the most intolerable of all. These charters guaranteed the colonies self taxation, home rule by representative assemblies, and were the basic constitutions of each respective colony of free Englishmen. To lose them was to become slaves.

CONSPIRACY
As the Declaration of Independence, a basic listing of legal grievances, affirmed, the colonists did not see this long train of unredressed wrongs as being individual and unrelated acts. Rather they saw them as the unfolding of a concerted plan for the total subjugation of the colonies. The Americans of 1776 were convinced that there was a premeditated plot, a genuine conspiracy, to destroy their rights and liberties and rule them as slaves. The conspiracy included the destruction of their religious liberties and the re-establishment of the Church of England to enslave their consciences and rule their souls. Faced with such prospects the colonists truly felt that it had to be either LIBERTY OR DEATH!

SOVEREIGNTY
In every political order something must be sovereign, and in every system of laws something must be absolute. When King John sought to arrogate sovereignty to himself and rule with absolute power, the barons at Runnymede compelled him to sign Magna Charta and transfer sovereignty to that charter. When Charles I sought to be an absolute ruler he was challenged by parliament, but a victorious parliament knew not what to do with the sovereignty it had denied Charles. By default and of necessity it fell to the shoulders of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. When Cromwell died the vacuum created was filled by the Stuart Restoration. Sovereignty must reside somewhere, and it had gone full circle and was back in the hands of an absolute king again. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 corrected that, but sovereignty then fell to parliament which proceeded to act as an absolute government. The American colonists ran smack into the arbitrary despotism of an absolute parliament, and the American Revolution finally decided the question where sovereignty belonged. The American Revolution was fought to defend the sovereignty of law over both king and parliament. They fought to be ruled by law, not men. And the law that they fought to be ruled by, the only law that they would submit to, was God's law. Thus sovereignty was finally placed where it belonged, in the only true God and his law.

MORALITY
At the time of the Revolution America was a God fearing nation, 99 per cent Protestant and better than two thirds Calvinist. They understood and appreciated liberty and revered the law of God, the source of all liberty. England by contrast was rife with crime and corruption. Seats in Parliament were sold to the highest bidder and jerrymandered ridings left millions unrepresented while a favored few could elect a representative. England was rotten and her liberties were buried in vice and bribery. Truly where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
The French Revolution was an exercise in anarchy and lawless terror. From the bloodthirsty massacre of the garrison of the Bastille to the depopulation schemes of the Reign of Terror the land was drenched in innocent blood. Its goals were not to maintain but to overthrow and destroy. It was the epitome of rule by man without the restraint of God's law. Violently anti-Christian, it desecrated the churches, switched to a ten day week to eliminate the Lord's Day and crowned a Paris prostitute as the goddess of reason. It was a rebellion against God and his law and the fruit of conspiracy against Christian civilization.

THE PREACHERS
Not only was the American Revolution a legal one but it was one that was waged from the pulpits of the nation. It was the churches that stirred the fires of liberty, sparked resistance and called for rebellion and finally independence. It was the clergy ,that recruited the troops, from their pulpits, and sustained them in the field by fiery patriotic sermons. The influence of the clergy was decisive in rallying the colonies behind the cause. Colonial governors lamented that sedition flowed from the pulpits, whilst the clergy of Massachusetts refused to read the governor's Thanksgiving proclamation and instead implored God to give them their liberties back. Preachers organized and drilled companies of militia, and the ideology of, the revolution was forged in the pulpits of the land. Whatever else it was, the American Revolution was the fruit of Christian faith. When the Declaration of Independence was being debated in the Continental Congress and a delegate suggested that the time was not ripe, Rev. John Witherspoon exclaimed, "In my judgement the country is not only ripe for the measure but in danger of becoming rotten for the want of it." Election day sermons thundered forth the righteousness of the American cause. The opening gun of the Revolution was Jonathan Mayhew's sermon of Jan. 30, 1750, in which he smashed every argument in favor of unlimited submission and non-resistance to powers. Resistance against wickedness and rebellion against ungodly government was preached as a precious right and a sacred duty. Led by the clergy the Revolution, carried on a ground swell of Christian faith, became a crusade for liberty under God.

Deism and Tom Paine'ism were not representative of the American Revolution but were more logically fulfilled in the French Revolution. These are but the straws the contemporary liberals grasp at to justify their liberalism with the events of 1776. The Revolution established us as ONE NATION UNDER GOD.

CONCLUSION
If Christians cannot distinguish between the American Revolution and the French Revolution, between a John Witherspoon and a Robespierre, between a destructive holocaust and legal resistance to tyranny, between a Marxist war of liberation and a defense of Christian liberty, and between submission to God's law and submission to the arbitrary laws of men, then CHRISTIANS DO NOT DESERVE THEIR LIBERTY. If Christians continue to preach and practice submission to the powers the be, and bow the knee to the law of Baal, then they have sold a birthright as precious as Esau's. If the Christians continue to submit to wickedness in government or elsewhere, then they are no longer the salt of the earth or the light of the world, but rather the blind leading the blind. If the Christians do not maintain and obey the law then who will? Christians, as all men, are under God's law and required to uphold it. If that means defiance and rebellion towards Caesar we are still to render to God that which is God's. May the Lord's people have the courage and the conviction, the militancy and the boldness to obey God even unto death. For the Lord's people there is no choice: either liberty under God and his law or death defending it. If we cannot be ruled by God's law then indeed to die is gain, and to be with Christ is far better. LIBERTY OR DEATH!!! AMEN!