Does your property belong to God or Caesar? To answer that question, you must answer: Who is sovereign (who is Lord)?
The Pilgrims would have answered those questions simply with “God”. They recognized that they couldn’t be anyone’s slave because they were God’s property. If you do not settle who owns you and your property, what is left of your estate, families, and religious liberty will be confiscated by the humanist state.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
Ephesians 2:10 “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
In Boston, the Revolutionary battle cry was “Liberty and Property!” To resist the Stamp Act in 1765, the organization “The Sons of Liberty” called out in the streets of Boston, “Liberty, Property, and no Stamps!”
Life, Liberty, and Property spoken of as a single unit - influenced by John Locke, English philosopher. He wrote in his treatise “Of Civil Government” that “the great and chief end therefore, of mens uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.”
Conscience the most sacred property
James Madison said in his letters:
In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property. In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own....Conscience is the most sacred of all property;
Property: internal and external
Property is first of all internal:
1. Man has property in his person
2. Man has a property in the free use of his faculties
3. Conscience is the most sacred of all property
External property was something the individual produced from within by his abilities.
No taxation without representation
Ever since the days of the Stamp Act in 1765, the colonists extremely vocal in their denial that the English Parliament had any right to tax their property without their consent.
Samuel Adams in his paper “The Rights of the Colonists as Men, as Christians, and as Subjects”:
In short, it is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property....These may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.
Momentum of Events
December 1773 - Boston Tea Party. Britain resolved to punish Massachusetts by blockading the Port of Boston and abolishing local self-government. Instead of intimidating the other colonies, they rallied in support of Massachusetts
September 5, 1774 - First Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia and drew up a Declaration of Resolves and Grievances. The congress adjourned in October 1774.
One of the delegates of the First Continental Congress was Patrick Henry of Virginia. He returned to Virginia and on March 20, 1775, gave his most famous speech before the Virginia Convention. In it he said:
This
is no time for ceremony. British bayonets will soon control the
country. It is a question of freedom or slavery. For my part I am
willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and provide for
it. We have done everything that could be done to avert the storm that
is now coming on. What has there been in the conduct of the British
ministry for the last ten years to justify hope? Are fleets and armies
necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? These are the
implements of subjugation, sent over to rivet upon us the chains which
the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to
oppose to them? Shall we try argument? We have been trying that for
the last ten years; have we anything new to offer? In vain may we
indulge the fond hope of reconciliation.
There
is no longer room for hope. If we wish to be free, we must fight.
I
repeat it, sir, we must fight. An appeal to arms, and to the God of
Hosts, is all that is left us.
They
tell us, sir, that we are weak, unable to cope with an enemy so
powerful. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or
the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed and a British
guard shall be stationed in every house?
Sir,
we are not weak, if we make proper use of those means which the God of
nature placed in our power. Three millions of people armed in the holy
cause of liberty, and in such a country as we possess, are invincible
by any force which our enemy can send against us. We shall not fight
alone. A just God presides over the destinies of nations.
The
battle, sir, is not to the strong alone. It is to the vigilant, the
active, the brave. It is now too late to retire from the contest.
There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are now
forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston.
The war
is inevitable. And let it come. I repeat it, sir, let it come.
Gentlemen
may cry peace, peace, but there is no peace. Our brethren are already
in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish?
What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be
purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty
God. I know not what course others may take but as for me, give me
liberty or give me death.Patrick Henry's words proved true enough. On April 19, 1775, the Revolutionary War started when the "shot heard round the world" took place at Lexington Green in Massachusetts
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