Render Unto Caesar...

This is from World Net Daily, about Romans 13. I think this writer has it right, the sermon referenced in the story from Jonathan Mayhew is most interesting. I have never heard this as a sermon topic! The pulpits used to ring out about whatever was current...this was before pietism swept the land, making most Christians irrelevant with our "personal faith."

TESTING THE FAITH By Bob Unruth
Obey? Bible says yes, if government's 'good'
'No civil rulers should be followed if orders inconsistent with God's'

In Romans 13, the Bible instructs Christians to obey the government because God has placed it in power, but several experts and leaders, both historic and modern, have indicated that cannot be interpreted as an unqualified loyalty...

...Tony Perkins, chief of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., said it's certainly correct that Christians should obey the government, when the government is good.

But he said, "You have to realize the government has been undermining its very basis of support by trying to remove the Christian ethic, the Bible, the Ten Commandments from the public square.

"It is not unqualified obedience to the government," he said...

...A sermon by Jonathan Mayhew, from more than 250 years ago, sets out the same perspective.

His sermon has the unwieldy title: "A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers." The work by the Harvard graduate and lifelong Congregationalist minister first was published in Boston in 1750.

The Scripture, he said, "urges the duty of obedience from this topic of argument, that civil rulers, as they are supposed to fulfill the pleasure of God, are the ordinance of God. But how is this an argument for obedience to such rulers as do not perform the pleasure of God, by doing good; but the pleasure of the devil, by doing evil; and such as are not, therefore, God's ministers, but the devil's!"...

"All civil rulers, as such, are the ordinance and ministers of God; and they are all, by the nature of their office, and in their respective spheres and stations, bound to consult the public welfare," he said.

He even went further.

"We may very safely assert these two things in general, without undermining government: One is, That no civil rulers are to be obeyed when they enjoin things that are inconsistent with the commands of God: All such disobedience is lawful and glorious; particularly, if persons refuse to comply with any legal establishment of religion, because it is a gross perversion and corruption (as to doctrine, worship and discipline) of a pure and divine religion, brought from heaven to earth by the Son of God, (the only King and Head of the Christian church) and propagated through the world by his inspired apostles," he said...
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