"The line of obedience": a 1775 sermon in Bruton Parish Church

On 9th December 1775, Crown forces engaged Patriot troops in the Battle of Great Bridge. It was the first engagement of the Revolutionary War in Virginia. Only weeks later, on 1st January, the Royal Navy bombarded Norfolk, Virginia, with British landing parties being confronted by Patriot militia. The confrontation resulted in the town being burnt to the ground. On the eve of the shelling of Norfolk, and ending the tumultuous year of 1775, David Griffith - then rector of  Shelburne Parish in Loudoun County, northern Virginia - entered the pulpit of Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburg. 

Griffith had previously publicly indicated his support for the Patriot cause. Now from the pulpit, amidst the realities of armed conflict and political confrontation, preached on a scriptural text at the heart of Anglican political theology, and often invoked by Loyalist clergy, Romans 13:1&2: 

The powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.

The title Griffith gave to the sermon, 'Passive obedience considered', might be thought of as indicating a revolutionary intent, a determination to overthrow the commitments of traditional Anglican political theology. The sermon opens, however, with a recognition of the need for submission to the governing authorities:

It is a truth, fully confirmed by daily experience, that the happiness of mankind depends, in a great measure, on the well ordering of society; on a right administration of justice, and a due submission to wise and equitable laws ... I would wish to have it believed, that I am, by no means, an advocate for anarchy. I am, very fully, convinced of the necessity of subordination in society, in order to its happiness.

Such obedience is not unlimited, what Griffith terms "the line of obedience":

That God requires obedience from his people, to all laws that are equitable: That he expects them to be obedient to magistrates and rulers, when their commands do not contradict his own, is, undoubtedly, true, and abundantly confirmed by his word: But I hope to be excused when I cannot agree with them, that mankind are to follow every dictate of their superiours, without doubting or murmuring. It is a principle so slavish, that no man who considers himself in his true light, as descended from the common parent of his species, can assent to. 

Having defined the rightful but limited obedience of the subject, Griffith applied it to the cause and protest of the colonists:

For whatever may be the wish of individuals, the body of the people are firm in their attachment to the constitution; and all the great representative bodies have warmly declared their loyalty, and an utter aversion to a change of government. In all their petitions and remonstrances, to the King and legislature of Britain, they say their only wish is to have their former privileges and liberties confirmed. While, therefore, an opposition is carried on upon the principle of self-defence. While they contend for the preservation of that power which alone can render them secure and happy: While they do not aim at innovation, or to infringe the rights of others, the colonists cannot, with the least degree of justice, be charged with resisting the ordinances of God.

A rejection of passive obedience and a scriptural defence of limited, constitutional obedience: was Griffith's sermon a rejection of established 18th century Anglican political theology? Rather ironically, words from Loyalist parson Jonathan Boucher would suggest otherwise.  Preaching on the same theme of passive obedience, and seeking to offer a cautious defence of the principle, Boucher admitted that it was not a common-place of 18th century Anglican political theology:

It is really a striking feature of our national history, that, ever since the Revolution, hardly any person of any note has preached or published a sermon, into which it was possible to drag this topic, without declaring against this doctrine.

Three examples demonstrate this, all sermons delivered on 30th January in commemoration of the Royal Martyr, a day when invocation of passive obedience might have been expected. Swift's 1725 sermon cautioned against an exalted reading of the apostolic exhortation in Romans 13:1&2 which would support tyranny:

I must give a caution to those who hear me, that they may not think I am pleading for absolute unlimited power in any one man. It is true, all power is from God, and as the Apostle says, The powers that be are ordained of God; but this is in the same sense, that all we have is from God, our food and raiment, and whatever possession we hold by lawful means. Nothing can be meant in those, or any other words of Scripture, to justify tyrannical power.

Swift encouraged a via media, avoiding the excesses of passive obedience and the road which led to 1649:

One great design of my discourse was to give you warning against running into either extreme of two bad opinions with relation to obedience. As kings are called gods upon earth, so some would allow them an equal power with God over all laws and ordinances; and that the liberty, and property, and life, and religion of the subject, depended wholly upon the breath of the prince; which, however, I hope, was never meant by those who pleaded for passive obedience ... Between these two extremes, it is easy, from what hath been said, to chuse a middle.

In 1734, while Thomas Secker (who three years later would become Bishop of Oxford, before being appointed to Canterbury in 1758) counselled against "sedition and tumult", he rejected any notion of passive obedience for a "proper submission" which allowed for protest and opposition:

Still, it is by no means unlawful, either to represent grievances, or to oppose ill measures. On the contrary, doing these things preserves a government; neglecting them leads to its ruin and had the means of doing them been freely and early allowed, and honestly used, in the times we are now considering, probably none of the mischiefs that followed had ever been known.

Finally, Samuel Horsley (then Bishop of St. David's) in 1793, preaching to the House of Lords, rejected the view that the rightful obedience of the subject, required - as Griffith had stated - by God, was to be distinguished from earlier passive obedience claims:

This divine right of the first magistrate in every polity to the citizen's obedience is not of that sort which it were high treason to claim for the sovereigns of this country: It is quite a distinct thing from the pretended divine right to the inheritance of the crown.

Indeed, in a footnote in the sermon, Horsley identified "passive obedience" as "the opposite doctrine" to "the unqualified doctrine of resistance": he was, in other words, setting forth a middle way between these two doctrines.

Read alongside Swift, Secker, and Horsley, we can see that the colonial understanding of constitutional obedience and rejection of passive obedience exemplified by Griffith's sermon was - as Boucher's words suggest - much closer to the mainstream of 18th century Anglican political theology than is often recognised. These sermons did not represent two distinct, opposing political ideologies, one a Lockean view of consent, the other an ancien regime account of passive obedience. Instead, we see a shared political theology, common to 18th century Anglicanism, shaped by the Revolution of 1688, in which constitutional obedience to the civil magistrate allowed for opposition by subjects against unjust measures and acts. The debate between those Anglicans loyal to the Crown and those loyal to Congress was about how this shared political theology was to be understood and applied in the context of what Griffith (as did many Loyalist parsons) termed this "unnatural contest between Great Britain and her colonies".

(The painting is Alfred Wordsworth Thompson, 'Old Bruton Church, Williamsburg, Virginia, in the Time of Lord Dunmore', 1893.)