The Two Republics
A.T. Jones
1891
The principles exemplified in the Constitution of the United States as respect to separation of church and state, were first announced by Jesus Christ, and were preached to the world by his apostles and the early Christians. “Render to Cesar the things that are Cesar's, and to God, the things that are God's.
For two hundred and fifty years they were opposed by the Roman Empire. But at last that empire was compelled to confess the justice of the principles, and so to acknowledge the victory of Christianity. Then ambitious bishops and political ecclesiastics took advantage of a political crisis to secure control of the civil power, and in the name of Christianity to pervert the victory which Christianity had so nobly won. This created the papacy, a religious despotism, and speedily wrought the ruin of the Roman Empire, and proved a curse to the ages that followed.
Then came Protestantism, casting off the yoke of the papacy, restated the principles of Christianity, regarding the separation of religion (church) and the State. Yet, from Martin Luther to Roger Williams, in every place and in every form, wherever it was possible, professed Protestantism, following the example of the papacy, seized upon the civil power, and used it to restrict and repress the freedom of the mind, and to persecute those who chose to think differently from the religious majority.
Thus upon a test of ages, by paganism, Catholicism, and false Protestantism, there was demonstrated to the world that any connection between religion and the State is debasing to both; that if the religious power rises superior to the civil power, it is ruinous to the State; and that religious and civil rights are both secure, and religion and liberty go forward together only when religion and the State are separate. And in all this there was demonstrated by every proof, the perfect wisdom and absolute justice of the divine principle enunciated by Jesus Christ, that religion and the State must be entirely separate – that to Caesar there is to be rendered only that which is Caesar's, while men must be left free to render to God that which is God's, according to the dictates of the individual conscience.
In the formation of the government and in the Constitution of the United States, the triumph of the principles of Christianity respecting earthly government, was complete. In their completeness, and by the directing providence of God, these divine principles were thus set forth for an example to all nations. Yet instead of these principles' having been maintained in their integrity as established by the fathers of the New Republic, there has been allowed or effected by those who came after, a steady encroachment, little by little, of religion upon the State. Each successive encroachment has been made, by the precedent, only a stepping stone to further encroachment, until now the demand is openly, persistently, and even powerfully made, that the government shall formally and officially abandon this fundamental and characteristic principle, and commit itself to the principle of religious legislation -- legislation in behalf of the name and institutions of a professed Christianity -- which is only to commit itself to the principles of the papacy.
Thus God has made the New Republic, the exemplar to the entire world, of the true governmental principles. To this nation God has committed this sacred trust. How will the nation acquit itself? How will the nation fulfill this divine obligation? Will it maintain the high position which God has given it before all the nations? Or shall it be brought down from its high estate, be shorn of its power and its glory, and, bound and fettered, be led a captive in the ruinous triumph of the papacy? Shall the new order of things prevail? Or shall the old order be restored? These are the living questions of the hour. The fate of the nation and of the world depends upon the answer. The issue out of which the answer must come, even now hangs in the political balance. The answer itself even now trembles upon the tongue of time.
AND WHAT SHALL THE ANSWER BE?
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