“A January 1776 meeting of the Quakers in New Jersey issued a statement “…touching the commotion now prevailing in these and other parts of America.” This tract urged Americans to nonviolence in their dealings with Britain. Tom Paine, author of Common Sense and himself of Quaker descent, took the Quakers to task for their position and asked them to reexamine their own principles for a lack of consistent thinking. His Epistle to Quakers was published later in the year.’ – Annals of America, Vol. 2, p.385
[Note: Today, in addition to Christians who find convenient safe haven in “God’s will” rather than fight against political oppression, Paine would be remonstrating against politicians of both parties and other open border proponents, administrations who commit us to unwinnable wars, and anyone shying away from current attacks on our Constitution equaling those of King George, III.]
“… Wherefore, this epistle is not so properly addressed to you as a religious but as a political body, dabbling in matters which the professed quietude of your principles instruct you not to meddle with.
… When men have departed from the right way, it is no wonder that they stumble and fall. It is evident from the manner in which ye have managed your testimony that politics is not your proper walk; for however well adapted it might appear to you, it is a jumble of good and bad, unwisely put together, and the conclusion drawn both unnatural and unjust.
The love and desire of peace is not confined to Quakerism; it is the natural wish of all denominations of men. As men laboring to establish an independent constitution of our own, our plan is peace forever. We are tired of contention with Britain, and can see no real end to it but in a final separation. For the sake of introducing an endless and uninterrupted peace, do we bear the evils and the burdens of the present day. We will steadily continue to endeavor to separate and dissolve a connection which has already filled our land with blood, and which will be the fatal cause of future mischiefs to both countries.
We fight neither for revenge nor conquest; neither from pride nor passion; we are not insulting the world with our fleets and armies, nor ravaging the globe for plunder. Beneath the shade of our own vines are we attacked; in our own homes and on our own lands is the violence committed against us. We view our enemies as highwaymen and housebreakers, and having no defense for ourselves in the civil law, are obliged to punish them by military means, and apply the sword, in the very case where you now apply the halter. Perhaps we feel for the ruined and insulted sufferers in every part of the continent with a degree of tenderness which has not yet made its way into your bosom. Call not coldness of soul religion; nor put the bigot in the place of the Christian.
O ye partial ministers of your own acknowledged principles! If the bearing of arms be sinful, the first going to war must be more so, by all the difference between willful attack and unavoidable defense. Wherefore, if ye really preach from conscience and mean not to make a political hobby-horse of your religion, convince the world there of by proclaiming your doctrine to our enemies, for they likewise bear arms. Give us proof of your sincerity by publishing it at St. James’s to the commanders in chief at Boston, to the admirals and captains who are piratically ravaging our coasts, and to all the murdering miscreants who are acting in authority under Him whom ye profess to serve. Had ye the honest soul of Barclay ye would preach repentance to your king; ye would tell the Royal Tyrant his sins, and warn him of eternal ruin. Ye would not spend your partial invectives against the injured and insulted only, but, like faithful ministers, would cry aloud and spare none. Say not that ye are persecuted, neither endeavor to make us the authors of that reproach which ye are bringing upon yourselves; for we testify unto all men that we do not complain against you because ye are Quakers but because ye pretend to be and are not Quakers.
Alas! It seems by the particular tendency of some part of your testimony, and other parts of your conduct, as if all sin was reduced to, and comprehended in, the act of bearing arms, and that by the people only. Ye appear to us to have mistaken party for conscience; because the general tenor of your actions wants uniformity; and it is exceedingly difficult for us to give credit to many of your pretended scruples; because we see them made by the same men who, in the very near instant that they were exclaiming against the mammon of the world, are nevertheless hunting after it with a step as steady as time, and an appetite as keen as death.
The quotation which ye have made from Proverbs that “when a man’s ways please the Lord, he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him,” is very unwisely chosen because it amounts to proof that the King’s ways (whom ye are so desirous of supporting) do NOT please the Lord, otherwise his reign would be in peace.
I now proceed to the latter part of your testimony:
“It hath ever been our judgment and principle, since we were called to profess the light of Christ Jesus, manifested in our consciences unto this day, that the setting up and putting down kings and governments is God’s peculiar prerogative; for causes best known to himself. And that it is not our business to have any hand or contrivance therein; not to be busybodies above our station, much less to plot and contrive the ruin, or overturn of any of them, but to pray for the king, and safety of our nation, and good of all men that we may live a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty, under the government which God is pleased to set over us.”
If these really are your principles why do ye not abide by them? Why do ye not leave that which ye call God’s work to be managed by Himself? These very principles instruct you to wait with patience and humility for the event of all public measures, and to receive that event as the divine will toward you. What occasion is there for you [to publish] your political testimony if you fully believe what it contains? The very publishing of it proves that either you do not believe what ye profess or have not the virtue to practice what ye believe.
The principles of Quakerism have a direct tendency to make a man the quiet and inoffensive subject of any and every government which is set over him. And if the setting up and putting down of kings and governments is God’s peculiar prerogative, he most certainly will not be robbed thereof by us; wherefore, the principle itself leads you to approve of everything which ever happened, or may happen to kings, as being His work. Oliver Cromwell thanks you. Charles, then, died not by the hands of man; and should the present proud imitator of him come to the same untimely end, the writers and publishers of your testimony are bound, by the doctrine it contains, to applaud the fact. Kings are not taken away by miracles, neither are changes in governments.
Wherefore, as ye refuse to be the means on one side, ye ought not to be meddlers on the other; but to wait the issue in silence; and, unless you can produce divine authority to prove that the Almighty; who has created and placed this New World at the greatest distance it could possibly stand, east and west, from every part of the Old, does nevertheless, disapprove of its being independent of the corrupt and abandoned court of Britain; unless, I say, ye can show this, how can ye, on the ground of your principles, justify the exciting and stirring up the people –
“firmly to unite in the abhorrence of all such writings and measures as evince a desire and design to break off the happy connection we have hitherto enjoyed with the Kingdom of Great Britain, and our just and necessary subordination to the King, and those who are lawfully placed in authority under him.”
What a slap in the face is here! The men who, in the very paragraph before have quietly and passively resigned up the ordering, altering, and disposal of kings and governments into the hands of God, are now recalling their principles, and putting in for a share of the business. The inconsistency is too glaring not to be seen; the absurdity too great not to be laughed at; and such as could only have been made by those whose understandings were darkened by the narrow and crabbed spirit of a despairing political party; for ye are not to be considered as the whole body of the Quakers, but only as a factional and fractional part thereof.
“The setting up and putting down of kings” must certainly mean making him a king who is not one, and making him no king who is already one. What has this to do in the present case? We neither mean to set up a king nor to put one down, neither to make nor to unmake, but to have nothing to do with them. Your testimony serves only to dishonor your judgment and had been better left unpublished.
First, because it tends to the reproach of all religion and is of the utmost danger in society, to make it a party to political disputes.
Second, because it exhibits a body of men, numbers of whom disavow the publishing of political testimonies, as being concerned therein and approvers thereof.
Third, because it has a tendency to undo that continental harmony and friendship which yourselves, by your late liberal and charitable donations have lent a hand to establish, and the preservation of which is of the utmost consequence to us all.
I bid you farewell, sincerely wishing that as men and Christians ye may always fully and uninterruptedly enjoy every civil and religious right, and be the means of securing it to others; but that the example which ye have unwisely set of mangling religion with politics may be disavowed by every inhabitant of America.”
[Note: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made you free, and do not be entangled again in the yoke of bondage.” Galatians 5:1; see hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers!“, and “Citizens who are not involved in politics are not only useless but pathetic.” – Plato]
