The New England Purtian Theocracy – The New England Purtian Theonomy

Due to the fact my internet connection at home is presently down, I shall not be able to post all that regularly; however, here is another installment from James Jordan’s article Calvinism and the Judicial Law of Moses:

The Puritan experiments in the New World clearly reveal what their conceptions were. Whatever ambiguity may have afflicted them in England, given the opportunity to start from scratch they turned unanimously to the judicials of Moses for their civil order. We shall look briefly at three of their leaders, and then examine the laws of three colonies, in order to confirm this point.

John Cotton (1584-1652) was one of the most prominent of the Puritan pastors in Massachusetts Bay. He was an unabashed theocrat. Like all Puritan thinkers, he did not interpret theocracy to entail the unification of church and state, but rather saw both institutions as under the one rule of Christ. Greg L. Bahnsen has reprinted Cotton’s most succinct theocratic work, An Abstract of the Laws of New England, as They are Now Established (1641), which is (apparently) the same work as Cotton’s Moses His Judicials (1636). This work consists largely of verbatim quotations from the law of Moses. Although it was not adopted by Massachusetts, it greatly influenced the Bible-based code which was adopted, Nathaniel Ward’s Body of Liberties (1641). The Body of Liberties influenced the Massachusetts Code (1648), and this in turn influenced the constitutions of all the colonial states.

Cotton distinguished between the permanent judicials, which were appendages to the moral law, and temporary judicials, which were appendages to the ceremonial law. Some examples of temporary laws, peculiar to the Israelite state, were:

> the Levirate,
> some aspects of the Jubilee,
> Spirit-inspired Judges and the hereditary monarchy,
> putting away heathen wives,
> the inalienability of family property,
> prohibition on mixed cloth,
> prohibition on yoking ox and ass,
> prohibition on rounding beard,
> the Levitical requirement to drain blood from meat (though the prohibition on drinking fresh blood is permanent).[1]

Another prominent pastor was Thomas Shepard (1605-1649), who ministered at Newtown, Massachusetts, from 1636 until 1649. Shepard provides us with an extended comment on the permanent aspects of the Mosaic judicials:

Thesis 42: The judicial laws, some of them being hedges and fences to safeguard both moral and ceremonial precepts, their binding power was therefore mixed and various, for those which did safeguard any moral law, (which is perpetual,) whether by just punishments or otherwise, do still morally bind all nations[2]; … and hence God would have all nations preserve their fences forever, as he would have that law preserved forever which these safeguard. . . . As, on the contrary, the morals abiding, why should not their judicials and fences remain?[3] The learned generally doubt not to affirm that Moses’ judicials bind all nations, so far forth as they contain any moral equity in them, which moral equity doth appear not only in respect of the end of the law, when it is ordered for common and universal good, but chiefly in respect of the law which they safeguard and fence, which if it be moral, it is most just and equal, that either the same or like judicial fence (according to some fit proportion) should preserve it still, because it is but just and equal that a moral and universal law should be universally preserved . . . .[4]

Several aspects of this quotation are noteworthy. First is Shepard’s assertion that the “just punishments” or something proportionately like them are included in the permanently binding aspects of the Mosaic judicials. Second is his statement that the educated thinkers of his day were in agreement that insofar as the Mosaic judicials contained equity, they were binding on all nations.

Third, Shepard contends that the equity is not contained in the purpose of the moral law, but in the moral law itself. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “equity” is here used in the sense of a recourse to a general principle of justice.[5] To be precise, “Equity of a statute according to its reason and spirit so as to make it apply to cases for which it does not expressly provide.” Thus, what Shepard is saying is that the case laws of the Mosaic system reflect perfectly, in their particular applications, the universal justice of the moral law. Though some of these cases do not apply directly today, they do show concretely how the general principles are to be worked out in particular situations.

Some cases apply directly to all times, such as death for adultery, since adultery is the same in all times and places. Other cases, such as the requirement that a fence be put on the roofs of newly constructed houses, have little relevance to us today as they stand, since our roofs are not flat and we do not use them for social gatherings. There are, however, similar situations and equivalent circumstances in the modern world (such as high porches), and by studying the Mosaic legislation, we can discern how properly to apply the moral law equitably to our modern situation.

It is very important that this concept of equity be understood, for it is this very concept which is employed by the Westminster Confession of Faith in section 19:4. The equity of the Mosaic judicials is permanently binding, even though some of the cases or particular illustrations in the Mosaic law do not appear today.

Shepard also is helpful in delimiting the use of the law of the Older Testament in another way. In A Wholesome Caveat (1648), he notes that there were various forms of government authorized by God in the Older Testament. Thus, as regards the precise form of government, as distinct from its legal matter, none is legislated by Scripture.[6] The other work cited above was published in 1649. These works, written and issued in the same decade as the Westminster Assembly, give us a good idea of what the consensus must have been among the stricter Calvinists at that august assemblage.

More rigorous in his views was John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians. Eliot was one of the most remarkable missionaries of all time, in that he not only brought the good news of personal salvation to his Indian hearers, but also sought to reorganize completely their societies in order to make them prosperous, productive, and happy. His labors, which were ceaseless, ran until his death in 1690 at the age of 86. In a remarkable book, The Christian Commonwealth (1659), he argued from Exodus chapter 18 that society should be organized by households, with elders over groups of ten, of 50, of 100, and so forth. He noted that Jesus operated on this principle in the New Testament (Mark 6:40). Eliot worked out this surprising scheme in great detail, going into relatively fine points regarding at which level in the pyramid capital crimes should be tried, and so forth. If this seems innocuous to us today, it was regarded as “full of seditious principles and notions” by the Governor and Council of Massachusetts when they took it up on March 18, 1660. This extreme denunciation reflects the fact that Charles II had ascended the throne in Britain, and all Puritan thought was suspect. Eliot was required to renounce it, and with wise discretion (Matt. 5:41) he did so. Still in all, his little work shows us to what lengths the careful Puritans were ready to go in order to follow the dictates of God. We must note, then, that if Eliot was to the right of the consensus of his times, that consensus must have been well to the right of what is popular in Reformed circles today.

We turn now to consider the legislation of three of the New England settlements. Revisions were made in English law under the Cromwellian administration, as might be expected. Capp notes that “The Rump [Parliament] actually passed measures establishing the death penalty for adultery, incest, and blasphemy, and severe penalties for swearing and for profanation of the Sabbath.” Despite this, the Calvinistic experiment did not have full opportunity to do things its own way except in the New World, where there were no traditions to overcome, no unbelieving power bloc to contend with, and little social inertia from within the ranks, the New England breed being by and large the stricter sort. In America they had a chance to start from scratch, and it is surely significant that they turned directly to the Mosaic judicials in doing so. We have noted already John Cotton’s input in this, but let us now briefly examine the legal records themselves.

The Records of the New Haven Colony include the following entry, which speaks for itself.

March 2, 1641/2: And according to the fundamental agreement, made, and published by full and general consent, when the plantation began and government was settled, that the judicial law of God given by Moses and expounded in other parts of scripture, so far as it is a hedge and a fence to the moral law, and neither ceremonial nor typical nor had any reference to Canaan, hath an everlasting equity in it, and should be the rule of their proceedings.
Note that the judicial law is that of God, not that of Moses. Note also the recurrence of “equity,” which is here said to be “everlasting.”

Thomas Hutchinson summarizes the laws of Massachusetts Bay Colony. As regards the 1648 Code, referred to above in our discussion of John Cotton, Hutchinson notes that, in common with English law, it penalized with death: murder, sodomy, witchcraft, arson, and the rape of a child under ten years of age. Added to these were: idolatry, blasphemy, kidnapping, adultery (several were executed under this law), willful perjury designed to do another to death, unprovoked cursing or striking of parents by children over 16 years of age. Additionally, many lesser crimes were capital if repeated twice or thrice.[7] Since high treason against the king and rape of an unengaged girl were not capital crimes in the Biblical system, neither were they capital in Massachusetts.[8] Hutchinson also gives an interesting case of the application of Biblical restitution laws: “Josias Plaistowe, for stealing four baskets of corn from the Indians, was ordered to return them eight baskets . . . .” Wertenbaker adds that, according to an order of the General Court on November 4, 1646, incorrigibly delinquent teenagers were to be put to death. This also was according to the Biblical judicials. No Massachusetts teenager was ever actually executed under this law — It seems to have bad its intended sobering influence.

At Plymouth Colony the same situation prevailed. Hutchinson remarks, “Cartwright, who had a chief hand in reducing puritanism to a system, held, that the magistrate was bound to adhere to the judicial law of Moses, and might not punish or pardon otherwise than they prescribed, and him the Massachusetts people followed.” Hutchinson here is speaking specifically of the Plymouth settlement, which was of a slightly different theological stripe than the Massachusetts Bay settlement, but was Puritan all the same.

[1] Modern Theonomists would largely be in agreement with this.

[2] Shepherd recognises that judicial laws can also be moral laws; this is both a Puritan and modern Theonomic view, as reflected in the Westminster Standards quotations from the judicial law of Moses.

[3] Biblical civil law – apart from things circumstantial to Israel – is assumed to bind all nations. This is the teaching of Theonomy.

[4] Shepherd recognises Biblical penal sanctions are just and equitable punishments, thus they cannot be set aside in favour of our own inventions.

[5] Theonomists hold the Westminster Confession’s view that the equity/justice of the civil law remains binding today; that is why we call for Biblical penology as it alone is just: nothing else can be.

[6] Sadly, this pragmatic view was also held by Calvin and Rutherford. However, it is nonsense, as the form of civil government has been set down in Scripture (Ex. 18). This was something that the Cameronians later recognised when they called for a Theocratic Republic to be established in Scotland.

[7] This was a mistake; at this juncture, they acted like autonomists, rather than Theonomists. Modern Theonomy is more consistent.

[8] Here they are behaving like Theonomists again.

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• The Westminster Assembly and the Equity of the Judicial Law by Greg Bahnsen…
• John Gill’s Theonomy
• Separatist Puritans and Theonomic Ethics
• Notes on the Law (1) – New Covenant Theological Perspective

Explore posts in the same categories: Church History, Theonomy and Civil Government