Principles of Liberty (Five)

Principle Number Five

By William L. Pressgrove

“All things were created by God, therefore upon Him all mankind are equally dependent, and to Him they are equally responsible.”

The writings of the Founding Fathers are full of references to their beliefs concerning God. They studied the writings of John Locke amongst others. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding he pointed out;

It defies the most elementary aspects of reason and experience to presuppose that everything in existence developed as a resulted of fortuitous circumstance. The mind, for example, will not accept the proposition that the forces of nature, churning about among themselves, would ever produce a watch, or even a lead pencil, let alone the marvelous intricacies of the human eye, the ear, or even the simplest of the organisms found in nature. (as quoted in The 5000 Year Leap, Skousen pp. 95-96)

The Founders of the country were so sure of their beliefs they based the form of government for this country on those beliefs. By the same token, they warned the people that the government they formed would not work if the citizenry ever became indifferent to that belief in God. John Adams stated, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (as quoted in The 5000 Year Leap, p. 56)

There are those in our day that think that this foundation is no longer needed. They think that religion should play no part in government that man is sufficiently intelligent to govern by shear good will toward each other. With just a little thought of how humans treat each other, even when they profess a belief in God, is enough to remind us that human reason is insufficient to produce the benevolence required for government to work. Without a belief and the prevailing doctrine that there will be consequences in a future life for our actions in this life, there is no reason for us to treat each other with anything that resembles human kindness. What would be the use? You could be kind to others only to have them take advantage of you for that very kindness. How long do you think people would try to be kind to others if that were the case?

On the other hand, if the overriding belief is that man is dependent of deity for all that he has and by the same token, is responsible to deity for all that he does, then they will more likely to treat each other better because they understanding that all mankind will be held accountable for our actions in the hereafter. That is the understanding that the Founding Fathers had and it is also what John Adams meant when he said that the Constitution was wholly inadequate to govern an immoral and irreligious people.

This is the very foundation of the Constitution. These beliefs undergird all the laws of the Constitution. However, that leaves room for a discussion concerning the constitutionality of the many of the laws that have been enacted under that Constitution which undermine the very beliefs that brought it into existence, but that will have to wait for another time. It is sufficient to say that this country’s constitution was founded on religious principles based on a solid belief in God.