The church must inescapably deal with the problem of tyranny when it arises, but we must ask what the church is really dealing with. Ultimately, what is the church confronting when it faces the issue of tyranny? We may say we are dealing with wicked men. We may go a step further and say we are not dealing with mere flesh and blood but are confronting principalities and powers, even Satan himself. But ultimately we are dealing with God. He is the great first cause of all things. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it, "it is with Him that we have to do." If we face the question of the problems of tyranny squarely, we cannot possibly do so apart from the recognition of its source and its place in the providential purposes of a sovereign God who works all things according to His purpose.

The existence of evil, even the evil of tyranny, is not an argument against but rather an argument in favor of the reality of the moral government of God. It is because God is sovereign, because he does hold men accountable for all their actions, because His government is real, that He not only claims the right but exercises the prerogative of punishing sin not only in the life to come but also in this present life. If God is God, if He is the only God, then the totality of His moral government automatically follows. Thus, God Himself declares through the mouth of Isaiah, "I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: . . . I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things" (Isaiah 45:7). Similarly, when calamity threatens Samaria, Amos boldly declares, "Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not he afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD bath not done it?" (Amos 3:6). Clearly the problem of tyranny involves the issue of our relationship to the sovereign God of history.

As Christians we cannot separate the issue of tyranny from the recognition of the existence and moral government of God. We must constantly remember that the main issue is not ill fortune, and neither is it the evil or the power of the oppressor. All these are secondary. They are but the means that God uses to accomplish His righteous purposes in history. We must remember that against the judgments of God there is no national defense. We must call to mind that against His chastisements there are no successful resistance movements. In such struggles the arm of flesh will surely fail us, and it is not basically a matter of organized might. As Solomon declares, "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, . . . but time and chance happeneth to them all" (Eccl. 9:11). Solomon is teaching that such struggles are not decided by mere human factors but that the battle is the Lord's, and although this may appear to men as chance, it is but the timely working out of God's decrees. It is only when we have this clearly in focus that we can begin to deal with the issue of resistance to tyranny.

Any strategy of resistance to tyranny will have to deal with the fact that tyranny is a curse of God. It must recognize that to rail against God's righteous judgments is merely to perpetuate and aggravate them. It must start with a humble submission to His will, a reverential fear of His judgments, and a full recognition of the righteousness of His moral government. Although we may marvel at the iniquities that men commit, at the fury of the "Commune" or the depravity of "Bolshevism," although the utter evil of God's instruments may astound us until with Habakkuk we are compelled to cry out to the just and Holy God, "Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous than he?" (Hab. 1:13); yet we must always remember that He styles Nebuchadnezzar his servant and terms Assyria the rod of His anger. It is still with Him that we have to do.

Ultimately, the only solution there can be to the problem of tyranny is to solve the problem of how we can turn God's curse into blessing; how we can transmute His anger into favor. The question becomes one of how can we appease His anger and stay His wrath.

What can shield a man, or a people, or a nation from the curse of God? Ever since the fall by the sin of' one man, death and curse have been universal. All have sinned and come short, there is none that doeth good, no not one, and so by both original and actual sin all men and all societies bring judgment and wrath down upon themselves. One of the forms of this wrath is that God sends tyrants as He so clearly warned in I Samuel 8. Men need a covering, an atonement, to shield them from the wrath of God. They need a Daysman, a Mediator, to intercede on their behalf with an offended and omnipotent Deity. In short, men need the blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant. They need to be Justified before God. And the Biblical, the Protestant, the Reformed answer to this need is that men need to be justified by faith in Christ Jesus. But faith is inexorably linked in the divine economy with repentance and the latter is again just as inescapably linked with reformation. The same golden chain that links election to effectual calling, regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification also links faith with good works, and the new nature with the fruits of repentance. If we would have a covering from the wrath of God and from His curse including the curse of tyrannical government, the road leads inexorably to justification by faith, repentance, and reformation. And we come to the very same conclusion whether we examine the issue in its negative or in its positive aspects. Whether we are seeking to avoid God's righteous curse or whether we are seeking to bring down His blessing, including the blessings of peace, liberty, and just government, either way the answer is reformation. For if I Samuel 8 teaches that the fruit of apostasy is tyranny and unjust, coercive government, Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28:1-14 assert that God's blessing will attend a faithful, covenant keeping people. In the Abrahamic Covenant, the covenantal blessing that God will be a God and a Father to us and our seed after us is linked with the covenantal command to "walk before me and be thou perfect."

The folly of what today passes for conservatism should be thoroughly evident to discerning Christians and was thoroughly rebuked by that uncompromising prophet of God's truth, Robert Lewis Dabney, in the last century. Conservatives generally try to build without adequate foundations and wind up with castles in the sky, ethereal houses of cards without any solid underpinnings. Robert Welch (founder of the John Birch Society) for example has consistently (inconsistently?) tried to marry his liberal theology with the political conclusions of conservatism. While providing radical resistance to the programs of the National Council of Churches, he is one with their theology. The hopelessness of supporting such weighty matters forged from an entirely different theology, on a theology of skepticism and infidelity which has consistently produced different fruit elsewhere, never seems to be recognized. Dabney thoroughly diagnosed the reasons for the weakness of conclusions held on such grounds, when he wrote of Yankee Conservatism:

"This is a party which never conserves anything. Its history has been that it demurs to each aggression of the progressive party, and aims to save its credit by a respectable amount of growling, but always acquiesces at last in the innovation. What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted principles of conservatism; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which will to-morrow be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn. American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. This pretended salt hath utterly lost its savor: wherewith shall it be salted? Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom. It always-when about to enter a protest-very blandly informs the wild beast whose path it essays to stop, that its "bark is worse than its bite," and that it only means to save its manners by enacting its decent role of resistance. The only practical purpose which it now subserves in American politics is to give enough exercise to Radicalism to keep it ‘in wind,’ and to prevent its becoming pursy and lazy from having nothing to whip. No doubt, after a few years, when women's suffrage shall have become an accomplished fact, conservatism will tacitly admit it into its creed, and thenceforward plume itself upon its wise firmness in opposing with similar weapons the extreme of baby suffrage; and when that too shall have been \von, it will be heard declaring that the integrity of the American Constitution requires at least the refusal of suffrage to asses. There it will assume, with great dignity, its final position." (Robert L. Dabney, Discussions, Vol. 4 (Ross House Publishers, Vallecito, CA,[1897] 1979, p. 496.)

All of which should serve to teach us of the absolute necessity for proper theological foundations for any resistance to tyranny. The case of Cromwell is a good case in point in that respect. Cromwell has to be regarded as one of the most eminent foes of tyranny in the history of the English nation. Cromwell was consistent and he never swerved in his constant opposition to all civil and religious tyranny. The great object of his life's labors was the destruction of the House of Stuart, to him the very epitome of' tyranny. And to that end he fought anyone and everyone, Calvinist and Papist alike. When the Scotch Covenanters allied themselves with Charles Stuart, who had hypocritically sworn to the covenant, he fought and defeated the forces of' Scotch Presbyterianism. When Ireland became a base for a Stuart threat to retake the throne of England, then the Irish Papists felt the weight of his sword. When English Presbyterianism, in control of the Long Parliament, threatened religious liberty, he dismissed them at the point of the sword. And in a day and age when the Protestant nations of Europe were few and a Catholic League remained a constant threat, Cromwell went to war with Calvinist Holland when the House of Orange foolishly allied itself with the cause of the House of Stuart.

Cromwell's aims were consistent, and his means to those ends extremely effective, and yet he failed. In a very real sense the Restoration was inevitable. In spite of all he had, what Cromwell lacked was indispensable. He lacked a national theological concensus undergirding his position. Ultimately, he could only maintain with the sword the liberty that he had so nobly won with the sword. Ironically, the forces of tyranny could be kept at bay only with the rule of the major-generals, even as Cromwell, the champion of liberty, was progressively being branded as a tyrant and usurper by the very people who had experienced the deliverance that his sword had wrought. This is a lesson that American foreign policy has vet to learn as it continues to pave the way for Soviet imperialism by destroying the Trujillos, Batistas, Somozas, etc., in a gain attempt to reproduce American institutions where there is no national theological consensus to support them.

Haying recognized the vanity of resistance to tyranny with out proper theological foundations, without a proper ideological consensus among the people to undergird such resistance, we can begin to examine the feasibility of any proposed "Reformation from the top down." And the obvious answer is that it can only succeed where the proper foundation has already been laid. This does not necessarily mean that it may never be attempted without such a consensus, but the ultimate hopelessness of such an attempt should be weighed by any responsible civil magistrate before he embarks on such a course. Things can go from bad to worse!

It is of course always true that civil magistrates are ministers of God and responsible to their Creator, and must someday give account of their official actions to the Righteous Judge. Like Christ's ministers in the church, although pastors are chosen by the people and elders are the representatives of the people in the courts of the church, they are preeminently the servants of Jesus Christ and absolutely subject to his will as their Sovereign Lord. But ministers are not little popes and elders not junior satraps. Churches are ruled by constitutions, not men, and ultimately by the written word and the Living Word, Jesus Christ its Head. Similarly, unless a civil magistrate is providentially placed in the position of being absolute in his rule, of being a golden head such as Nebuchadnezzar, a godly magistrate is limited in any attempts to produce a reformation by the constitutional restraints on his authority and functions. In other words, a theonomist in the White House does not herald America's redemption from her present ills. The constitutional system of checks and balances on the President's authority, the legitimate scope of the Supreme Court and the Congress, as well as the issue of State's Rights, all combine to make any such President totally ineffective without a national theological concensus in favor of God's law as revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Without a troop of Cromwellian major-generals, such a President could effect no national transformation, even outwardly, in the face of overwhelming antinomianism.

As others have pointed out, the cases of Hezekiah and Josiah are clear-cut cases of reformation from the top down, and they were successful. And as the Apostle Paul taught, all these things were written for our example and they ought not to be slighted as Biblical models of good reformations. But it is imperative that we note that there was a solid foundation for such reformations. Both kings were doing their strict duty

according to the constitutional responsibilities of their office. They were not introducing anything new or illegitimate but were reforming all things according to the nation's constitution, according to the terms of the covenant that the nation made with Jahweh at Sinai.

One may argue on the basis that neither of these reformations was of an enduring nature, that they lacked a true national theological consensus required for effective topdown reformation, but here we must be careful. God only is the judge of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Men are not omniscient, and so our Lord teaches that we are to judge men by their outward fruits. If the tree is good it will inevitably yield good fruit, and vice versa. If nothing else can be learned from the Old Side and New Side controversy in the Presbyterian schism of the 1740s, it is the sinfulness of the rash charges of attributing motives. The Old Side ministers thoroughly rebuked the New Side for their practice of condemning all their opponents as unconverted. (See Charles Hodge, Constitutional History Of The Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, American Presbyterian Press, [1851] 1983). As the Old Side correctly pointed out, a man could be judged only by his faith and practice, that is, by his doctrine and his actions. If these could meet the test of scripture, then it would be the height of slander to condemn him as an unconverted hypocrite. It is by his external actions that a man is judged by both the civil and the ecclesiastical elders, and that is all they can properly concern themselves with.

This is certainly the basis on which Hezekiah and Josiah proceeded. The nation was still formally in covenant with Jahweh, and the people were still outwardly and constitutionally His people. They called forth the fruits that were consistent with such a profession and applied the legal penalties to all breaches of the covenant. To do more was not within the proper scope of their office and to have done less would have been to violate their oaths of office and their sacred duty under the Sinaitic Covenant. They had a solid constitional basis and outward national consensus for their reformations. They did their duty under the covenant and received God's covenantal blessings. No civil magistrate should ever do less.

But, when there is no such basis or consensus, it would be folly to try to force such a reformation. Here, the examples of both Joseph and Daniel should be carefully appreciated. Both these men were knowledgeable and godly men who rose to positions of great power, influence, and authority in essentially pagan empires. The scriptures totally vindicate both men from any charge of sin with respect to their public actions as recorded in sacred history. Yet there is no evidence at all in the sacred record that either man ever attempted any reformation whatsoever in the nations that each respectively ruled as a result of their faithful commitment to Jahweh, the God of Israel. To have attempted such a reformation would obviously have exceeded their constitutional authority and would probably have been to court martyrdom. Martyrdom has its place when we are called to it by the God who is sovereign over all life, but we have no right to court it foolishly, especially by insisting on casting our pearls before swine.

Both these men owed not only their positions but their lives to remarkable dispensations of divine providence, and it would have been a presumptuous tempting of the Most High to have embarked on a rash and suicidal course of building castles in the sky. Both men were models of faithful ministers, wise stewards, and diligent servants bringing honor to their God and submitting graciously to those powers and authorities that God in His providence had chosen to place them under. They performed the functions of their office with such honesty and truth, such equity and justice, such remarkable intellect, wisdom, and nobility of character, that they brought honor to themselves and the God they served. They were living examples of Paul's admonitions in Romans 13 and in I Timothy 6. God was greatly pleased with them and we should be also. In short, there is no Biblical requirement to abuse one's legitimate authority in a vain attempt to promote a reformation by authoritative fiat without a shred of constitutional basis or national consensus.

While we are on the aforementioned subject, it is fitting to examine carefully the nature of authority. As we have seen. the matters of resistance to tyranny and of godly reformation are closely related to questions of authority. And here we must carefully distinguish between the revealed and secret wills of God (Dent. 29:29). God's revealed will is that the murderer must be put to death. God's secret will may be that the murderer, like Cain, should escape all merely human retribution. And how does all this work out in practice in human history as God's eternal decrees are being worked out in time and space? Well, God calls and raises up civil elders, magistrates, to whom he gives the power of the sword and clothes with His authority to take human life within the terms of his law. And He places further restrictions by giving rules of evidence such as a plurality of witnesses to establish guilt in a capital crime. Then, if in God's providence He has raised up faithful rulers subject to His revealed will, and He providentially provides the proper testimony and evidence to obtain a conviction, it obviously was His secret will that that particular murder should be officially executed for his sin. But in spite of the revealed will of God that requires his death, if any other than a lawful magistrate upon due process should take his life, that in itself would not be vindicatory justice but merely compounding the act of murder. Now the problems of resistance to tyranny and of reformation must be approached exactly the same way.

God's revealed will may place the curse of His displeasure on tyrants and usurpers, but this in no way is sufficient to undergird a movement of resistance. Like the woman taken in adultery, tyrants may well deserve to be stoned to death. But who has the moral authority to throw the first stone? Certainly not the guilty subjects who have brought God's wrath and curse down on their society by their wickedness! We must always remember that although the tyrant may be worthy of death, he is still, like the arch traitor Judas Iscariot, God's instrument to fulfil God's secret counsel. We must be careful not to jump the gun lest we be found to be opposing the counsels of the Most High. In due time when He is finished with His purposes in an instrument, then and then alone will He personally raise up an avenger, an Ehud, who will dispatch the tyrant. But He will raise up an avenger that will meet all the requirements of His revealed will. An avenger clothed with the proper legal and moral authority who can without sin exact the full penalty of God's righteous judgment on such sins. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay, and He does, and Reformed Christians should shudder to attempt to steal that prerogative from the Almighty'

Now these exact principles also apply to the question of reformation. It is God's revealed will that all things be conformed to His revealed will, to the pattern of the mount. But not all have the prerequisite authority to impose such changes on society. It is precisely here that Hezekiah and Josiah saw their duty and that Joseph and Daniel saw their limitations. The latter faithfully served God in their appointed callings and waited until, in God's secret counsel, better things should be brought to pass. And they both waited in faith and in hope, trusting in God's covenant promises. Joseph gave command concerning his bones, awaiting the day that the land of Canaan would be restored to the heirs of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Daniel awaited the day that the saints would inherit the kingdom. We must always remember the godly examples of the latter as well as of the former. We too must be subject to God's timing in His purposes in history.

Christians are called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. As such, they ought to be the most excellent of citizens. They ought to be pillars of stability in the body politic and paragons of patriotism, at least in any reasonably just society. And in a society somewhat less than just, they could reasonably be expected to be found in the forefront of any reform movement. They even could be expected to provide principled leadership in any struggle against despotism and tyranny. Yet, in this area especially, it seems that professing Christians have been all too prone to rash and unprincipled resistance to the pettiest of tyranny, all in the sacred name of patriotism. Just what is true of patriotism and just what scriptural obligations does it really lay on all faithful disciples of Jesus the Christ?

True patriotism recognizes that righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. True love of one's country will prompt one to promote its national righteousness. True patriotism is not concerned with the worldly power, position, and prosperity of the nation, but is concerned with the nation's status in the sight of a holy, just, and righteous God. In this connection, the reader is urged to read Jeremiah 37 and 38, where the false patriot Hananiah tells the people "all is well," while the true patriot Jeremiah calls for national repentance, and is imprisoned for his pains. ( For a more extensive discussion of this see Louis DeBoer, The New Phariseeism, The American Presbyterian Press, pp. 127-133.)

The Hananiahs of the age may sound like the ultimate in Christian patriotism but theirs is a siren song that leads to destruction. The tragedy of Jeremiah's day has been repeated over and over again in human history. In 33 A.D. the "patriotic" Jews, concerned about their place and nation, chose Barabbas over Christ. They preferred a popular "resistance" leader to "the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world." They preferred an uncouth revolutionary to Him who taught, "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's." And their ultimate and total destruction was just and sure, as in 70 A.D., the fanatical, suicidal patriotism of the Zealots drowned Judah and Jerusalem in a sea of Jewish blood as God avenged His Son!

Any true theory of scriptural patriotism and any proper understanding of Biblical resistance to tyranny must take into account the doctrine of Balaam. Balaam, if one recalls, was that prophet of the True God who prostituted his office for the sake of filthy lucre. Like Demas, he forsook his calling because he loved this present world. In his days the children of Israel were on the march into the land of Canaan, into the land that God had covenanted with their patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them. And their progress was irresistible and their arms invincible because God was with them. The generation that apostatized at KadeshBarnea, the race that could not enter in because of unbelief, was gone, dead and buried in the wilderness. A new race had sprung up in God's covenant faithfulness that had the faith, that had renewed the covenant on the plains of Moab, and God, their God, was going to establish them in the land of promise and nothing could stay His hand. Balak, the King of Moab, with more wisdom and insight than displayed by contemporary conservatives and by many professing Christians, realized that the issue to be joined between Israel and Moab was strictly a spiritual one. Acknowledging that the weapons of our warfare are not entirely carnal, he retained Balaam to curse the children of Israel, knowing that if they were cursed of their God they would be easy prey in battle.

But God was with Israel, and in spite of himself, the prophet could under divine direction do no less than pour out one blessing and glorious prophecy upon the other concerning the children of Israel. So at first Balak was entirely frustrated i~ in his attempts to curse Israel and rob her of Jahweh's favor which constituted her supremacy. But Balaam was not so easily frustrated in his pursuit of this world's goods and he ulti

mately was somewhat successful in having Abraham's God curse the children of Israel. Christ rebukes the church in Pergamos for having "them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication" (Rev. 2:14). The result of this original application of the doctrine of Balaam by Balak is recorded for us in

Numbers 25. And had it not been for the righteous and courageous actions of Phinehas by which the plague of God was stayed, the stratagem would surely have succeeded in destroying Israel and removing her as a military threat to Moab. As Balak properly saw, the struggle was a spiritual one, and it was not won by the captains of the host of Israel, neither was it lost by the armies of Moab. The victory belonged to one righteous man, to Phinehas, who stood in the gap that day for Israel.

Now any Biblical doctrine of resistance to tyranny should take careful note of Balaam's strategy. It should note that '1 ~' while the enemies of America promote abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and Sabbath breaking, etc., it will not suffice to debate SALT and START and Pentagon defense budgets, etc. The battle is still the Lord's and the issue is still spiritual. We must hold to the converse of the doctrine of Balaam. We must promote that national righteousness which will bring down the blessing of the Almighty. Phinehas was only one man and God was willing to spare Sodom if but ten righteous men could be found there. Let us repent and reform, reforming our own lives, our families, our churches, and our land, that we may be instrumental in bringing the blessings of peace and liberty to us and to our seed after us.

Our Lord hated hypocrisy and it was preeminent in His rebukes. There has been a great deal of hypocrisy in much of what passes for principled resistance to tyranny and it really is small wonder that so much of contemporary resistance to the democratic totalitarianism of the welfare state has been an exercise in bitter frustration. Without divine blessing, any such movement is condemned to futility, and God will never bless hypocrisy.

As we have seen, reformation is the stock of the tree from which liberty sprouts. But too many conveniently have forgotten the fundamental truth that reformation begins at home. It is the essence of hypocrisy that the focus is always on another's sins and never on its own. When we are exclusively concerned with the wood in everyone else's eyes and oblivious to the wood in our own, then our basic attitude has already degenerated to crass hypocrisy, irrespective of how efficiently we can apply God's law to anyone and everything else. Our Lord brought this out so clearly in the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. The former, in spite of his extensive knowledge of the scriptures, was an offensive hypocrite because all he could see was the sin of this despised tax gatherer, this corrupt tool of the pagan Roman State. The latter saw his own sin and confessed it before God with penitential tears. The scriptures leave no doubts about which man left God's house a justified man with peace and liberty in his heart.

Now it is the patent stock in trade of "Christian Conservatism" perpetually ad nauseum to call everyone else to repentance. We might call this the doctrine of Selective Depravity. It is always the liberals, the socialists, the communists, the atheists who are called to repentance. It is the sins of the pornographers, of the National Council of Churches, of radical politicians, that are constantly kept in view. By comparison, the membership of such groups are constantly preening themselves as a righteous elite standing for "God and country." One prominent anti-communist evangelist actually pleaded with his following to ignore his homosexuality so that they could get on with the main task of saving the nation from communism. God does not give us knowledge of His will primarily so that we can be better judges of other people's sins but rather that we might more and more conform ourselves to the Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect Servant of Jahweh. Knowledge brings responsibility; therefore, judgment begins with the House of God. Unless we stop acting and assuming and actually demanding that it start with atheists and communists, etc., that is exactly where it  will begin. If the salt has lost its savor it is henceforth useless and it will be cast out. Such pretended salt has utterly lost its ability to staunch the corruption of the body politic.

In that regard Russia is a good case in point. For over a century and a half she has not lacked for powerful revolutionary movements reacting against the corruption and tyranny of her governments. But none of these movements has been viable and has succeeded in advancing the cause of liberty in Russia. Every revolutionary clique has exploited with radical propaganda the abuses and tyranny of the administration that was targeted for overthrow, even as it was prepared to justify its own. Russia can and has changed rulers but what she cannot do is change and produce a free society. As Jeremiah said, "can the leopard change its spots?" The Bolshevik revolution left Russia exactly where she had always been, with a centralized and despotic government controlling the people politically, economically, and religiously. A change of the ruling clique from the Romanovs to the Bolsheviks and from their icons to posters of Marx and Lenin, etc., could affect no real fundamental changes in that society. The land is still characterized by savagery, superstition, and serfdom, and will remain so until righteousness and reformation prevail to deliver her.

Scotland, that most Presbyterian of all nations, found herself beset with many national difficulties in the middle of the seventeenth century. Having as a nation covenanted in the National Covenant and in the Solemn League and Covenant for a thorough and scriptural reformation in both church and state in not only her own realm but in the three kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland, she found her hopes and plans in disarray. The English parliament that had signed the covenant had been prorogued by Cromwell, and when the Scotch had tried to enforce it by arms, they suffered defeats at Worcester and Dunbar. Their land was now occupied by the English and the enemies of the covenant were rife even in their church and state. But they did not rail against God's judgments nor did they resort to venting self-righteous anger at that "conquering usurper," Oliver Cromwell. Rather, they had a very special gathering of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland to consider "Causes of the Lord's Wrath Against Scotland" which they published under that title. It is a remarkable document and deserves our careful attention.

Here is no hypocrisy but rather a baring of the sinful soul before God and a pleading for Him to withdraw His chastising hand. It is a call for a thorough reformation as it systematically catalogs the national sins that have brought God's displeasure on the land. The document begins:

Some General Heads of the Causes Why the Lord Contends With the Land, Agreed upon (after seeking of the Lord) by the Commission of the General Assembly, 1650, with the advice of divers ministers from several parts of the kingdom, met at Edinburgh, October 1651, so far as, for the present they could attain light therein, which they offer and advise to be made use of by all the Lord's people in the land, leaving place to add, as the Lord shall make further discoveries hereafter of the guiltiness of the land, and intending more fully and particularly to enlarge this paper.

And then follow ten articles under which are summed up the sins of the land. Some of these read as follows:

Art. 1. The gross Atheism and ignorance of God, and of his word and works, that is in a great part of the inhabitants of the land, which is such that neither law nor gospel, nor the most common and necessary points of truth are understood or known by many thousands.

Art. 2. Horrible looseness and profanity of conversation in all sorts, against the commandments both of the first and second table, which hath so abounded and increased that scarce hath any of the nations exceeded us therein.

Art. 3. The despising and slighting of Jesus Christ offered in the gospel (which we look on as the chief and mother sin of this nation), and the not valuing and improving the gospel and precious ordinances of Christ unto the establishing and building up of ourselves in the lively faith of Christ and power of godliness, but either neglecting and despising these things altogether, or else resting upon and idolising outward and bare forms, without studying to know in ourselves, or to promote in others, the kingdom of God, which is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; whereby it hath come to pass that persons not rightly qualified have been admitted unto, and continued in, the work of the ministry and elderships, and that public repentance and kirk censures have been grossly slighted, and the sacrament of the Lord's supper fearfully polluted by the promiscuous admitting of many ignorant and scandalous persons thereto; and many wilfully ignorant, and openly and continuedly profane, have been kept in the fellowship of this kirk, contrary to the word of God, and constitutions of this kirk, and that many other sad and fearful consequences have followed unto the profaning of all the ordinances of God, and rendering them for the most part barren and fruitless to us.

Art. 5. The base love of the world, and covetousness, which hath made not only the body of the people but many ministers, more to mind their own things than the things of Jesus Christ; and many masters, rulers, magistrates, officers and soldiers in armies, exceedingly to abuse their power unto the exercising of intolerable oppression of all kinds on the poor, to the grinding of their faces, and making their lives bitter to them; which fountain of covetousness did also produce great insolences and oppressions in our armies in England and Ireland, and the fearful perjuries in the land in the matter of valuation and excise.

Of particular interest are these excerpts from Article 9 condemning a latent hypocrisy and a bitter and railing spirit under these trials.

And finally, this last article:
Deep security, impenitency, obstinacy and incorrigibleness, under all these, and under all the dreadful strokes of God, and tokens of his indignation against us, because of the same; so that whilst he continues to smite, we are so far from humbling ourselves and turning to him, that we wax worse and worse, and sin more and more.

These articles were followed by thirty some pages of fine print cataloging in detail the sins under these ten heads and thoroughly setting forth the testimony of the word of God with respect to each sin. What follows is really amazing, for there is then appended a lengthy confession of their own sins entitled, "A Humble Acknowledgment of the Sins of the Ministry of Scotland." The preface reads as follows:

Although we are not ignorant that mockers of all sorts ma, take occasion by this acknowledgment of the sins of ministers to strengthen themselves in their prejudices at our persons and callings, and turn this unto our reproach, and that some ma%misconstrue our meaning therein, as if we did thereby- intend to render the ministry of this church base and contemptible, which is far from our thoughts, we knowing and being persuaded in ourselves that there are many able, godly, and faithful ministers in the land; yet, being convinced that we are called to humble ourselves, and to justify the Lord in all the contempt that he hath poured upon us-that they who shall know our sins may not stumble at our judgments,-we have thought it our duty to publish this following discovery and acknowledgment of the corruptions and sins of ministers, that it may appear how deep our hand is in the transgression, and that the ministers of Scotland have no small accession to the drawing on of these judgments that are upon the land.

Only in this following acknowledgment we desire it may be considered, That there are here enumerated some sins whereof there be but some few ministers guilty, and others whereof more are guilty, and not a few which are the sins of those whom the Lord hath kept from the more gross corruptions herein mentioned; and that it is not to be wondered at if the ministry of Scotland be yet in a great measure unpurged, considering that there was so wide a door opened for the entering of corrupt persons into the ministry, for the space of above thirty years under the tyranny of prelates, and that also there hath been so many diversions from, and interruptions of endeavours to have a purged ministry in this land.

Now, when if ever in our day have you heard of a group of Reformed, or Evangelical, or Fundamentalist ministers publicly in great detail (versus pious platitudes and empty general confessions) confess their own sins and acknowledge that they have greatly contributed to bringing down the displeasure and judgments of God upon the land? Is this why reformation lags and tyranny spreads itself like a green bay tree? Let us labor and pray that in our day also we should be blessed with so godly a response to God's present chastisements on our land.

The Bible is to be our only rule of faith and practice. We take our cosmology from Moses and not from the pronouncements of secular science. By faith we believe that the worlds were framed by the word of God. We are not empiricists. But while we may reject science, falsely so called, yet we do not hesitate to strive hard to establish thorough correlation between special revelation, the inscripturated word, and general revelation, the testimony of the creation. And neither should we hesitate, in the light of the principles we have been examining from God's word, to review the record of human history and see how God has providentially dealt with these matters, and if we can see consistent application of these principles in His dealings with the children of men.

A brief review of all human history quickly establishes the scarcity of two commodities; righteous godly societies walking in the fear of God in subjection to His law, and liberty. If we can establish a connection between the absence of the former and of the latter, then history will become a witness in our case. The connection is not hard to establish. All of the pagan empires of antiquity were ruled by man's law rather than God's law. From Nimrod's Babylonian Society throughout the respective empires of Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and a score of lesser known, there is a uniform absence of godly government and liberty. The principles of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 shine through as clear as the noonday sun in God's dealing with His people as recorded in the Book of Judges. When God's law is forsaken and His covenant cast aside, when every man does that which is right in his own sight, then liberty departs and is replaced with oppression, spoilation, tyranny, and foreign domination.

More recent history continues to confirm the same truths. Although we may find a few occasions where resistance to tyranny obtained at least some temporary results, such as the Magna Charta wrung from King John in 1215 and the Great Privilege obtained by the Dutch people from their government in about the same era, yet without a solid ideological foundation in that society, these soon became empty ciphers in the hands of future corrupt administrations. But, it is in the histories of Holland, England, and America that we can especially trace the workings of these principles. In Holland, then the Spanish Netherlands, we see a nation sliding deeper into oppression and despotism as her ancient liberties were steadily being eroded by the Hapsburgs. What arrested all this was not futile resistance of the Roman Catholic nobles. such as Egmont and Horn, who were executed for merely questioning the royal prerogatives of the tyrant, Philip II, of Spain. It was arrested by a thorough grass-roots reformation that swept through the land till the superstition and heresies of the Church of Rome were well-nigh extinct, and the reformed faith, Calvinist doctrine reigned supreme in the people's hearts and the land was filled with the pure praises and worship of God. On such a foundation the Almighty raised up a champion, William of Orange (The Silent), who initiated the Eighty Years War that culminated in the freedom and independence of the Dutch people and the Reformed faith. We have already mentioned Scotland where a similar reformation extirpated Popery and rid the land of foreign domination by the French and the Vatican.

In England, the Puritan movement ultimately broke the back of the despotic tendencies of both the Tudors and the House of Stuart. Again, this was a grass-roots reformation thoroughly resisted by the entrenched powers in church and state. And although it was slower in its development, less thorough and less pure than the aforementioned reformations, yet with the blessing of the Almighty it was sufficient to hamstring the Tudors and twice to drive the Stuart tyrants off the throne in the English Civil War and again in the Glorious Revolution. The Stuarts were correct in one thing when they contended "No bishop, No king" and a reformation in the church always heralds trouble for a despotic state. Without English Puritanism, there would have been no basis for English liberties, the very liberties that we ourselves have inherited in this nation. A liberty that was successfully maintained in 1776 because at that time in our history, as Bancroft records it, America was 98% Protestant and 66% Calvinist. America's theological high water mark was hit before the Revolutionary War, before the advent of Arminianism, Unitarianism, Universalism, and Deism that were already in evidence at the time of the War of Independence. Her purest expression of the Reformed faith was in the now long extinct Old Side Presbyterianism. If, in these nations, with such godly reformations, liberty came with such struggles and at such costs, let us forever dispel the myth that liberty can ever be established without such a foundation.