The Higher Law in Its Application to the Fugitive Slave Bill: A Sermon on the Duties Men Owe to God and to Governments, Delivered at the Central Presbyterian Church on Thanksgiving (Classic Reprint) by John C Lord (Paperback / softback, 2015)
Excerpt from The Higher Law in Its Application to the Fugitive Slave Bill: A Sermon on the Duties Men Owe to God and to Governments, Delivered at the Central Presbyterian Church on Thanksgiving The language here cant be misunderstood. Obedience to governments, in the exercise of their legitimate powers, is a religious duty, positively en joined by God himself. The same authority which commands us to render to God the things which are God's, enjoins us, by the same high sanctions, to render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's. The following general principles may be deduced front the sacred Scrip tures, and from the example, as well as the teachings, of our Lord and his Apostles. First. - Government is a divine constitution, established at the beginning by the Creator, which exists of necessity, and. Is of perpetual obligation. Men are born under law, both as it respects the Law of God and the enactments of States. By the ordination of the supreme law, they owe allegiance to the country of their birth, and are naturally and unavoidably the subjects of its government their consent to this is neither asked or given their choice can only respect the mode, never the fact of Government. The mutual compact, of which politicians and lawyers speak, is a mere figment of the imagination, without warrant from the word of God, and contradicted by all the facts in the case. We might as well affirm that men agree to be born, and to be subject to their parents, by a mutual compact, in which the child surrenders certain rights for the sake of parental protection, and the parent covenants to provide and govern on the promise of obedience. The statement in the last case is more absurd than in the first. In the family is found the rudimen tal government, and the fifth commandment has always been understood by Christians as ordaining subjection to magistrates as well as parents. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art techlogy to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
