“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
Just after the Declaration of Independence was adopted in 1776, a committee of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin worked to design a great seal for the United States – and it included that powerful phrase on the reverse.
While we don’t know who originally wrote it, we can closely trace its roots to the ideological groundwork laid by Jonathan Mayhew in his widely-read, but mostly forgotten, 1750 sermon on resisting tyranny.
Preceding the War for Independence by decades, Mayhew challenged the traditional notion of blind obedience to authority, basing his argument on both scripture and reason. His ideas not only shaped the ideological foundation for resistance to British rule, but also laid the groundwork for broader principles of liberty and self-government.
Resistance to Tyranny: A Moral Duty
Mayhew began by dismantling the argument that submission to government is an unconditional duty. Instead, he argued that rulers hold their authority solely when acting within the limits of the powers entrusted to them.
He pointed out that obedience is owed only when government acts justly and within its lawful bounds. However, when rulers abandon these limits and exercise power contrary to the people’s rights and liberties, obedience not only ceases to be required – it becomes a moral obligation to resist.
According to Mayhew, resistance was not merely an option but a duty – a direct responsibility to uphold justice and protect the natural rights of individuals. He argued that God, as the ultimate lawgiver, would never require submission to rulers who violated His laws and oppressed His people.
This bold stance anticipated the Declaration of Independence, which later proclaimed the necessity of dissolving allegiance to a government that becomes destructive to the ends of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Mayhew’s assertion that resistance is required whenever these are under threat resonated throughout the American Revolution.
The Gift of Self-Defense
Central to Mayhew’s argument was the idea that the right of self-defense is a birthright, and inseparable from human nature. Especially when faced with despotic rulers, he argued it would be “highly criminal” to refuse to exercise this right, to not make “use of the means, and the only means, which God has put into their power, for mutual and self-defence.”
In Mayhew’s view, people who permit oppression by failing to resist are complicit in their own enslavement. This principle resonated deeply with the revolutionary generation, who would later draw upon it in their struggle for independence.
Mayhew’s emphasis on self-defense as a God-given, natural right was foundational to the American Revolution. It framed resistance not as an act of unlawful rebellion but as a moral imperative to preserve liberty, echoing the broader Enlightenment idea that rights precede, and supersede, government authority.
John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson, writing the 1775 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, echoed Mayhew’s principles. They proclaimed that the colonists were justified in resisting British oppression, not as rebels, but as defenders of their natural rights.
They asserted that armed resistance was a solemn duty, writing, “We are reduced to the alternative of choosing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force. The latter is our choice.”
Lessons from Mayhew and the Revolutionaries
Mayhew’s sermon, though ostensibly a critique of Charles I and the abuses of 17th-century England, served as a timeless warning to rulers everywhere. “It is to be hoped,” Mayhew said, that all of this “will prove a standing memento that Britain will not be slaves; and a warning to all corrupt councellors and ministers, not to go too far in advising to arbitrary, despotic measures”
His admonition to tyrants – that oppressive rulers should tread carefully – was later echoed by Thomas Jefferson, who famously wrote that “a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.” Jefferson understood, as Mayhew did, that resistance serves as a necessary reminder to rulers that their authority has limits.
The same spirit of resistance was evident in the Peoples’ Nullification of the Stamp Act in 1765.
John Hancock captured this sentiment when he wrote that the American people “will never be made slaves of by a submission to the damned act.” This uncompromising stance reflects how deeply Mayhew’s ideas permeated the revolutionary mindset.
Defiance of the Establishment
Mayhew’s revolutionary rhetoric drew sharp criticism from the establishment of his time. They labeled him a dangerous radical, accusing him of stirring up rebellion.
John Adams, who later described Jonathan Mayhew as a “Whig of the first magnitude,” lamented how loyalist clergy and the press “bespatter[ed] him all over with their filth” in newspapers and pamphlets, accusing him with “equal falsehood and malice” of every imaginable evil.
In a preface to the publication of his sermon, he dismissed these attacks with characteristic wit, writing that he neither read their criticisms nor cared for their opinions.
“The author of this discourse has been credibly informed, that some persons, both formerly and lately, have wrote either at, or about him – or something; (be cannot well tell what) in the common news papers, which he does not often read. He, therefore, takes this opportunity to assure the writers of that rank, and in that form, once for all, that they may slander him as much as they please, without his notice, and, very probably, without his knowledge.”
Mayhew’s Enduring Legacy
The sermon laid the ideological groundwork for what would become the justification for resistance throughout the American Revolution. John Adams noted this in a letter to Wlliam Tudor, Sr:
“If the Orators on the 4th. of July, really wish to investigate the principles and Feelings which produced the Revolution, they ought to Study this Pamphlet and Dr Mayhew’s Sermon on Passive Obedience and Non Resistance.”
Mayhew’s insistence that resistance to tyranny is a moral duty influenced not only his contemporaries, but also future generations of liberty advocates.
His ideas remind us that liberty requires vigilance, courage, and a willingness to stand against tyranny.
As the Declaration of Independence later affirmed, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.”
Jonathan Mayhew’s arguments against blind obedience to authority and his call for active resistance to oppression remain as relevant today as they were in 1750.
