The Laws of Nature's God
 Blackstone
explained how God equipped man to discover and obey the law
of nature. First, God gave man reason, the ability, we might
say, to determine causes and effects. So, for example, we
might observe that acts like murder and theft produce bad
consequences, and so conclude that these acts are bad.
Second, Blackstone said, God made man in such a way that man
cannot be truly happy unless he follows God's law. Thus, our
own self-interest, our own desire to be happy, tends to make
us do what is right and avoid doing what is wrong. This
inner drive to obtain happiness by doing what is right both
stimulates our logical reasoning to discover what is right
and depends on our ability to employ logic to determine the
right path in any given situation.
But,
Blackstone said, our ability to reason logically is not "as
in our first ancestor before his transgression, clear and
perfect, unruffled by passions, unclouded by prejudice,
[or] unimpaired by disease or intemperance . . . ."
Because man's "reason is corrupt, and his understanding full
of ignorance and error," Blackstone observed that God had
not left the discovery of His natural law to man's reasoning
powers alone. Rather, "in compassion to the frailty, the
imperfection, and the blindness of human reason," God has
been pleased, "to discover and enforce [His] laws by
an immediate and direct revelation. The doctrines thus
delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are
to be found only in the holy scriptures." So the second
pillar on which the Founders based our freedom and
independence - "the Laws of Nature's God" - is the
Bible.
"Upon
these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of
revelation," Blackstone said, "depend all human laws."
Blackstone explained that the natural law discovered by
man's reason and the Bible were one and the same thing, but
the Bible was "of infinitely more authenticity than that
moral system which is framed by ethical writers," because
the Bible is "expressly declared . . . by God himself; the
other is only what, by the assistance of human reason, we
imagine to be that law."
The Right to the Pursuit of Happiness
The
simplest statement of God's laws of right and wrong are the
Ten Commandments. And it's easy to understand how these
rules protect our God-given rights. For example, the right
to life is protected by the commandment against murder. The
right to property is protected by the commandments against
theft and covetousness. In fact, each of the last six
commandments, which tell us how to treat others, reflect
what Jesus taught was the second greatest commandment, that
we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Matthew 22:39.
(The greatest commandment, Jesus said, was to "love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with
all thy mind." Matthew 22:37. All ten of the commandments
fall into one of these two categories, how to love God and
love our neighbor.)
If
God's laws exist to protect man's rights, and obeying these
"eternal immutable principles of good and evil" is what
leads to our "own true and substantial happiness," as
Blackstone said, can you see what the right to the Pursuit
of Happiness must mean? When our founders echoed Blackstone
by declaring that man is created with an unalienable right
to the Pursuit of Happiness, they claimed the right to be
free from a government that forbids us from doing what God
commands or just allows, and from a government that commands
or even just allows what God forbids. If government stopped
us from obeying God's laws, it would block our path to
happiness. Likewise, if government forced or even allowed us
to disobey God's laws, someone else's rights would get
violated by our disobedience.
Blackstone's
reasoning leads to a fundamental truth our Founders
understood but which we have mostly forgotten today. What
we call "rights" arise from the prohibitions of moral
rules. The Declaration establishes that the true source
of human rights are God's moral
rules.
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The Ten
Commandments
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1.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
2.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven
image.
3.
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in
vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that
taketh his name in vain.
4.
Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5.
Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may
be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee.
Exodus
20:3-17
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6.
Thou shalt not kill.
7.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
8.
Thou shalt not steal.
9.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbor.
10.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou
shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his
manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor
his ass, nor anything that is thy
neighbors.
Note
- The 10th commandment refering to servants does
not condone slavery, nor did Jefferson's
original
draft
of
the Declaration. The original draft contained a
28th complaint stating that slavery violated the
most sacred rights of life and liberty.
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John
Locke
Secular
Enlightenment Deist?
The
18th century is known as "The Enlightenment" or
"Age of Reason" because of its many advances in
science and philosophy. But Enlightenment thinkers
fell into two camps. The first believed that man's
reason was pure and was leading him toward
perfection. Because this group rejected God, either
completely or in part, they were called "secular."
Secular philosophers who did believe there was a
God believed that, after God created the world, He
took no part in the affairs of men. These were the
Deists, and while they believed there was a God,
they rejected the idea that he had spoken to man
through the Bible.
Today,
those who wish to lead America away from God's
rules try to hide any knowledge of Blackstone.
Instead, they claim the Declaration is based solely
on Locke, and that Locke was a Deist.
In
fact, Jefferson's use of the right to the "Pursuit
of Happiness" establishes conclusively that
Blackstone, not Locke, is the immediate authority
for the Declaration's ideas.
Even
so, Locke's writings place him squarely with
Blackstone in the second camp of Enlightenment
thinkers, those who believed the Bible and
recognized that there were two sides to what man
called "reason." The good side was like a candle,
placed in man by God to illuminate man's sense of
right and wrong, and give man an inherent knowledge
of the existence of God. The bad side was man's
intellectual capacity to employ logic, which also
came from God, but like man's other faculties, was
corrupted when man rejected God and fell into sin.
Locke expressly quoted the Bible as the authority
for his views. And while he was alive, Locke
rejected attempts by Deists to include him in their
number.
For
a thorough discussion of how Locke's philosophy
originates in the Bible and relates to the
Declaration, read Gary T, Amos' book
Defending
the Declaration.
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