The Scottish and English Religious Roots of the …

   The Scottish and English Religious Roots of the
             American Right to Arms:
Buchanan, Rutherford, Locke, Sidney, and the Duty to
                Overthrow Tyranny

                              ________

                           David B. Kopel

        Many twenty-first century Americans believe that they
        have a God-given right to possess arms as a last resort
        against tyranny. One of the most important sources of
        that belief is the struggle for freedom of conscience in
        the United Kingdom during the reigns of Elizabeth I
        and the Stuarts. A moral right and duty to use force
        against tyranny was explicated by the Scottish
        Presbyterians George Buchanan and Samuel
        Rutherford. The free-thinking English Christians John
        Locke and Algernon Sidney broadened and deepened
        the ideas of Buchanan and Rutherford. The result was
        a sophisticated defense of religious freedom, which was
        to be protected by an armed people ready to resist
        encroachments on their natural, sacred liberties. The
        principle that right to arms is the ultimate guarantor of
        the right to free exercise of religion is one reason why
        the First and Second Amendments are placed next to
        each other in the American Bill of Rights.

        Keywords          Right to Bear Arms; George
                          Buchanan; Samuel Rutherford; John
                          Locke; Algernon Sidney; Tyranny



                  ne of the most important reasons that twenty-first

        O         century Americans are so attached to their guns is
                  that they subscribe to the traditional American
belief that citizens have a God-given right, and a correlative moral



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duty, to overthrow tyranny. Although the right of revolution can
be found in diverse sources from many cultures, the source with the
most influence on the founding of the United States was the
seventeenth-century United Kingdom, where religious philosophers
had articulated an explicitly Christian theory of the moral
imperative for violent revolution against tyranny.

        This article examines the contributions of four religious
philosophers to resistance theory: the first two are the Scottish
Presbyterians George Buchanan and Samuel Rutherford. Their
ideas were deepened and elaborated by two free-thinking English
Christians, John Locke and Algernon Sidney. Locke and Sidney
argued in favor of broad religious freedom, and explicated the
intimate connection between the free exercise of religion, the right
of revolution, and the possession of arms.

George Buchanan

         In 1559-1560, Scotland's Presbyterian "Lords of the
Congregation," under the leadership of John Knox, overthrew
Mary Queen of Scots, and established the Reformed Church as the
state church of Scotland. The revolutionaries took their
justification, in part, from a contemporaneous book by the
Scotsman George Buchanan, which promulgated a right of popular
revolution.1

         In De Jure Regni Apud, Buchanan contrasted a true king
(who achieves power by consent, who does not create law
unilaterally, and who is bound by the law) with a tyrant (who seizes
power, who makes law by fiat, and who claims to be above the
law). According to Buchanan, Romans 13, in which Paul told
Christians to be obedient to government, applied only to true kings,
not to tyrants.2 The primitive Christians had been told not to resist




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because they were "without arms, few in number," and there were
no intermediate magistrates to lead them.3

         A tyrant was nothing more than a powerful criminal, and
should be dealt with accordingly. The law allowed "a thief in the
night to be killed any how, and a thief in the day to be killed if he
uses a weapon in his defence. If nothing but force can drag him
before a court of judicature, you recollect what is the usual practice.
For robbers, too powerful to be reduced by the regular course of
law, we master by war and arms."

        Buchanan's questions and answers proceeded:

        Q: What do you call a war undertaken against the
        public enemy of all mankind,--tyrant?

        A: The justest of all wars.

        Q: But when war is, for a just cause, once proclaimed
        against an open enemy, not only the whole people, but
        also each individual, has a right to kill that enemy.

        A: I own it.4

         Defenders of the old monarchies in the British Isles and
continental Europe found Buchanan's work extremely upsetting.
William Barclay created the term "monarchomach" (king-killer) to
describe Buchanan and the Calvinists who thought like him.5 The
Scottish Calvinists did not like the title, but there is little denying
that they had acknowledged that, under certain circumstances, any
person might have a right, and even a duty, to use force against a
tyrant.




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Samuel Rutherford

         In 1636, England's King Charles I decided to crack down
on the Scottish Presbyterians, and to impose regulations bringing
Scottish practice closer to Anglican practice. His father, James I
(who as a Scottish child has been tutored by Buchanan but despised
Buchanan's philosophy) had advised Charles "no bishop, no king."
So Charles was determined to eradicate religions which were not
under the thumb of the bishops of the Church of England. Charles
started and lost the First Bishops' War and the Second Bishops'
War in 1639-40. The wars radicalized the Scots.

         In 1644, the Scottish Presbyterian Samuel Rutherford
published Lex Rex: or the Law and the Prince. The point of the
title was that the law precedes the king, and that the monarch was
bound to obey the law. The great Anglo-American ideal of "the
rule of law" embodies Rutherford's principal: the government is
bound by the law. The law, not the individual who heads the
government, is the supreme ruler. Further, the true source of law
is not the King's will, but God's will. Accordingly, king-made
"law" which is inconsistent with God's law of natural justice and
goodness is merely a pretended law, not true law.6

        As for Romans and First Peter, in which the apostles Paul
and Peter had told Christians to submit to government, Rutherford
affirmed that God did create civil governments which were owed
obedience. These civil governments were created by God acting
through the consent of the people. A ruler who did not obey God's
commands lost his authority.7

        Rutherford explained that Romans 13 was valid insofar as
governments, which received their power from God, ruled in
accordance with God's law. Tyrannical rule, however, was
contrary to God's grant of power, and was, accordingly, a sinful



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illegitimate power which must not be obeyed: "a power ethical,
politic, or moral, to oppress is not from God, and is not a power,
but a licentious deviation of a power; and is no more from God, but
from sinful nature and the old serpent, than a license to sin."8

         Rutherford used the Scholastic model of questions,
assertions, and arguments. Unlike some other Protestants,
Rutherford built explicitly on the Catholic work of Thomas
Aquinas, on the Parisian scholars (such as Jacques de Almain), and
on the Spanish neo-Thomists (including Francisco de Vitorio and
Francisco Suárez). Like the Scholastics, Rutherford paid great
attention to Aristotle and to the political history of ancient Greece
and Rome.

         He agreed with the Scholastics that man was by natural
birth free. God's natural law did not make one man inherently
subject to a ruler. "Every man by nature is a freeman born, that is,
by nature no man cometh out of the womb under any civil
subjugation to king, prince, or judge, to master, captain, conqueror,
teacher, &c."9 Accordingly, sovereignty was inherent in the
people, and was only conditionally granted to kings by the people.10

         Like Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist resistance theorists
of earlier centuries, Rutherford extrapolated a right of resistance
from the natural law right to self-defense. Moreover, because God
has dominion over life and death, suicide was a crime against God;
a person who did not defend himself "is guilty of self-murder,
because he is deficient in the duty of lawful self-defence."11
Echoing Aquinas's theory of Double Effect, Rutherford stated the
killings in the course of self-defense or defensive wars were not
murder, because there was no murderous intent.12 Like most
Catholic or Calvinist philosophers of the time, Rutherford moved
seamlessly between natural law and the Bible, considering them to
be perfectly compatible.



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         Rutherford acknowledged that Jesus had submitted to
unjust government, by allowing himself to be arrested and
executed. But, said Rutherford, Jesus was acting in response to "a
special commandment imposed on him by his Father." The unique
incident did not create a rule of general applicability.13

         Ensuring that government did not have all the weapons was
one way in which a well-ordered society would preserve a proper
balance of power: "To denude the people of armour because they
may abuse the prince, is to expose them to violence and oppression,
unjustly; for one king may more easily abuse armour than all the
people; one man may more easily fail than a community."14
(Rutherford was using "armour" in the older sense, by which
"arms" and "armour" were interchangeable.) On the final page of
Lex Rex, Rutherford stated that the "public magazine, militia,
armour, forts, and strongholds" did technically belong to the king,
but only in the sense that he was the trustee to see that they "be
employed for the safety of the kingdom." The true owner of the
militia, weapons, and forts was the people.15

        Like the founding Presbyterian John Knox (in Knox's 1554
Admonition to England and 1558 the Letter to the Commonalty),
Rutherford accurately explained that the Old Testament was replete
with revolution and resistance against evil monarchs: David's
campaign against Saul, Elisha "violently" obstructing a king's
messenger, the city of Libnah revolting against King Jehoram,
Jehu's bloody destruction of King Ahab's family, Elijah killing 450
prophets of Ba'al.16

         Rutherford cautioned that a single bad act by a ruler did not
justify revolution. Only if the ruler were systematically destroying
the fundamental structure of society would the tremendous step of
revolution be necessary.17




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         The 1776 American Declaration of Independence agreed,
explaining that "Governments long established should not be
changed for light and transient cause. . . . But when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is
their [the people's] right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government." The Declaration then provided a litany of King
George's abuses which proved the King's intent to destroy civil
society: "a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having
in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these
States."

          Although not explicitly religious, the Declaration made a
covenantal argument, an argument that the king was violating his
contractual duties which the people had entrusted him to perform:
"that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that
whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."

         Rutherford argued that the people must address
government abuses through methods involving the lowest level of
disruption that was practically possible. Supplication was the first
choice, flight the second option, and use of force was the last resort.

        Similarly, the Declaration of Independence explained that
the Americans had repeatedly asked the British for redress of their
grievances, and been met with constant rebuff.                 The
impracticability of the entire American people fleeing to another
country was too obvious to need mention; accordingly, violent
revolution was justified.

       Rutherford also relied on Roman law, especially the
extremely influential Corpus Juris which had been created under



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the direction of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian. The Corpus Juris
said that "it is lawful to repel violence by violence." Like many
writers of the Middle Ages and Reformation, Rutherford argued
that the principle meant that it was lawful to resist unlawful
tyranny.18

         Rutherford acknowledged that sometimes tyrants were sent
by God to punish a people for their sins. But it was still lawful to
resist tyrants. After all, God sometimes sent famine to punish a
people, but it was lawful in a famine to attempt to grow crops and
obtain food.19

          Servants, Rutherford admitted, were commanded by the
New Testament to patiently endure the buffets of their masters. But
still, said Rutherford, servants could resist if the master tried to kill
them.20

         There was little risk that the right of revolution would lead
to chaos. Just as the Bible clearly explicated the fundamentals of
faith, so that heresy was easy to discern, natural law made tyranny
easily discernable. The well-formed conscience would tell the
people whether obedience to a law was contrary to natural justice,
because "The people have a natural throne of policy in their
conscience to give warning, and materially sentence against the
king as a tyrant, and so by nature are to defend themselves."21 In
some cases, an individual would have the duty to use violence
against a king, such as when a king attempted to force someone to
commit adultery or sodomy.22 For general political oppression, the
proper leaders of resistance were the intermediate governors (e.g.,
the barons, local officials, etc.) rather than the people themselves.23

        Lex Rex was instantly banned in England and Scotland. In
1651, the Scottish Parliament rescinded the national Covenant, and
abolished Presbyterianism. Presbyterians remained an outlaw sect



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in England and Scotland until the Glorious Revolution in 1689. In
1688, Rutherford was charged with high treason, but died before he
could be tried.24

         Despite the ban on Lex Rex, the book was widely read by
Protestant dissidents, and marked a major evolution in Protestant
political thought. More than any other previous English-language
text, Lex Rex developed a theory of the how, when, and why of
revolution.

         A century later, King George III reportedly denounced the
American Revolution as "a Presbyterian rebellion."25 The
sentiment was correct. It was the Presbyterian ideas of Lex Rex,
which were brought into America by the preachers, and which
legitimated, and even mandated, revolution as a Christian duty
against tyrants.

John Locke

        The triumph of the Glorious Revolution allowed the free
publication of two important books: John Locke's Two Treatises of
Government, and Algernon Sidney's Discourses Concerning
Government.

         According to John Adams, the final great stage of English
intellectual confrontation with tyranny--which set the stage for the
American Revolution--took place in the years around the Glorious
Revolution, when the most important writers included John Locke
and Algernon Sidney.26 In 1825, Thomas Jefferson explained that
the ideas in the Declaration of Independence derived from "the
elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke,
Sidney, &c."27 Locke and Sidney were the two writers cited most
by the American revolutionaries.28




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         Rutherford's Lex Rex was transmitted to the American
public mainly through Locke's Two Treatises of Government. The
first treatise refuted Robert Filmer's claim in Patriarcha that
modern monarchs exercised the dominion which God had granted
Adam.29 According to Filmer, resistance to monarchy was immoral
and irreligious; the authority of kings over their subjects was as
absolute as the authority of a father over his children.

         Locke's second Treatise developed a secular version of
Rutherford's right of revolution, mixed with other Calvinist theory,
and also with non-religious sources. According to Locke, humans
were granted inalienable rights by God; governments were
instituted to protect those rights; governments which abused rather
than protected rights could legitimately be overthrown.30

         In a nation in which only about ten percent of the
population were Dissenters, and in which the Anglican clergy was
quite uninterested in the rights of other groups, Locke could not
realistically hope that intermediate magistrates would lead a
revolution to establish religious liberty for Protestant Dissenters.31

         Locke differed from Rutherford and other Calvinists in that
Locke believed that tyranny erased the social contract and put the
people back into a state of nature, under which the natural right of
self-defense resumed pre-eminence. Many Calvinists, including
Rutherford, had believed that even under tyranny, revolution had
to be led by established authorities, such as local governments
resisting an oppressive central government.32

         Like George Buchanan--and also like John of Salisbury,
the twelfth-century English Catholic author of an enormously
influential political philosophy book called Policraticus--Locke
unequivocally stated that the right of violent resistance inhered in
every individual. He propounded reasons why such a right would



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not lead to anarchy and constant rebellion: A government with
functioning courts and a legislature will offer an easier means to
redress grievances; people will tend to revolt only when personally
oppressed; they will not revolt unless they expect to win, and will
not expect to win unless the majority feels so threatened that it will
join the revolt; fearing divine punishment for unjustified rebellion,
people will only revolt when convinced in their conscience;
preference for the status quo will lead people to accept minor
abuses; should a revolution succeed, people will probably restore
most of their accustomed forms of government.33

        A well-understood right of revolution would, by making
governments fearful of the risk of revolution, deter government
abuse and thus make revolution unnecessary, in many cases.34 This
same point was made by NRA President Charlton Heston:

        And, so, when they ask you well, indeed you would
        bear arms against Government tyranny? The answer is
        no. That could never happen, precisely because we
        have the Second Amendment. Let me be absolutely
        clear. The Founding Fathers guaranteed this freedom,
        because they knew no tyranny can ever arise among a
        people endowed with the right to keep and bear arms.
        That's why you and your descendants need never fear
        fascism, state-run faith, refugee camps, brain-washing,
        ethnic cleansing, or especially submission to the
        wanton will of criminals.35

        Starting with the undisputed premise that men in a state of
nature have a right of self-defense, Locke agreed with prior
thinkers that overthrowing a tyrant was a form of self-defense.
Unlike many of his predecessors, Locke did not confine this right
to the most extreme cases of oppression. He argued that a
government which used force to destroy one natural right would
necessarily have designs "to take away every thing else."



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Accordingly, a victim need not wait until his life was threatened,
because forceful violations of some rights were anticipatory of
threats to life itself.

         Echoing language from the feudal "trial by combat" (in
which a legal dispute would be settled by a battle between a
champion for each side), Locke described revolution as an "appeal
to Heaven" in which God would grant victory to people fighting for
a just cause. If an aggressor unjustly initiated force against
someone else, and refused to settle the dispute according to legal
appeal, then the aggressor had placed himself in a state of war with
the victim. Thus, "the want of such an appeal gives a man the
Right of War." A victim's forcible resistance to unjust force was
in a sense a judicial, political act, in which Heaven would give
victory to the just. Locke pointed out that in Judges, Jephthah led
the Hebrews against the Amorites, "then Prosecuting, and relying
on his appeal, he leads out his army to battle."36

        To give government absolute power over one's life was a
violation of Christian duty; life belonged only to God.37

        In great contrast to some twenty-first century diplomats,
who consider the violent overthrow of a government as the worst
possible event, Locke insisted that oppression was much worse
than revolution.38

         Two centuries of religious wars had followed the outbreak
of the Reformation. The conventional wisdom of most rulers was
that civil order must be protected by the imposition of religious
uniformity, so that subjects would not disagree about religion. In
A Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke turned the conventional
wisdom on its head. People had a right to follow their conscience,
and consequently a right to use force and revolution against a
government that destroyed their natural right to follow their



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religion. Thus, religious oppression led to violence, as the victims
struggled to remove the "yoke that galls their necks." Accordingly,
complete toleration was the only path to civil peace. Every religion
should be free, and none should be allowed to use state power to
violate the rights of any other.39

         Locke's insight is common sense to twenty-first century
Americans, but it was utterly radical at its time. Some governments
had offered grudging toleration to some religious minorities, but
there had been no political theory explaining that toleration was a
right belonging to individuals and a duty on government--rather
than an expedient which a government might choose.

         The American Founders, of course, heartily agreed with
Locke, and enshrined his doctrine in the First Amendment,
guaranteeing the free exercise of religion, and forbidding the
establishment of a national religion by Congress. America has
thrived as a country very little touched by the religious violence
that tore Europe apart. The American Second Amendment ensures
that the American people will have the means to revolution should
a religious (or other) tyranny somehow arise.

         It is instructive that James Madison placed religion rights
and arms rights next to each other when he wrote the Bill of Rights.
To Locke, and to the American Founders, the right to free exercise
of religion and the right to revolution were inextricably bound
together. In a properly ordered society, the existence of the one
right would bolster the other, and respect for both rights would
minimize the actual need to exercise the right to revolt.

         The path from Locke to the Declaration of Independence
is easy to trace. For example, Locke had written:

        for all power given with trust for the attaining an end,
        being limited by that end, whenever that end is



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        manifestly neglected, or opposed, the trust must
        necessarily be forfeited, and the power devolve into the
        hands of those that gave it, who may place it anew
        where they shall think best for their safety and
        security.40

        Likewise, wrote Locke, after a revolution the people may,
"continue the Legislative in themselves or erect a new Form, or
under the old form place it in new hands, as they think good."41

        Compare Jefferson's more eloquent, but essentially similar
principle in the second paragraph of the Declaration:

        it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it
        [government which destroys natural rights], and to
        institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
        principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to
        them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
        Happiness.

Algernon Sidney

          Algernon Sidney was a descendant of Harry Percy, the
"Hotspur" of Shakespeare's Richard II and Henry IV, Part 1.42
Sidney fought bravely with the Parliamentary forces during the
English Civil War, served in the Rump Parliament, and lived in
exile in France following the Restoration. After 1681, when fears
over the Stuart monarchy's totalitarian ambitions grew intense,
Sidney, who had returned to England, worked assiduously to
organize the overthrow of the Stuarts. In 1683, Sidney was arrested
for treason. He was convicted in a trial which was later regarded as
a travesty of justice. He was not even allowed to see the indictment
against him. Executed on December 7, 1683, he was venerated by
the Americans as one of the greatest martyrs of liberty.43




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        Sidney's Discourses Concerning Government could not
have been published while the Stuarts sat on the British throne, but
the freer atmosphere after the Glorious Revolution allowed
posthumous publication.

        Like Locke's First Treatise, Sidney's Discourses
Concerning Government was a refutation of Robert Filmer's
Patriarcha, which had argued that all kings share in the dominion
which God granted to Adam, and that any resistance to a king, no
matter how tyrannical he may be, is sinful. Filmer did not merely
seek to restore the Dark Ages theory that the king was God's
anointed. Even under the Dark Ages standard, the king was
required to rule according to law and customs of the nation. Filmer
claimed that the king was free of every constraint.

        Sidney tore into Patriarcha line by line.

         The Jewish heroes who had resisted bad governments were
so well-known--now that almost every home contained an English
language Bible--that Sidney could reel off the heroes without need
for explanation: "Moses, Othniel, Ehud, Barak, Gideon, Samson,
Jephthah, Samuel, David, Jehu, the Maccabees, and others."44 Such
men were "perpetually renowned for having led the people by
extraordinary ways . . . to recover their liberties, and avenge
injuries received from foreign or domestick tyrants."45

         Augustine in The City of God had explicated the concept
of Tranquillitas Ordinis--the principle of peace in a just and well-
ordered society. Sidney restated the principle: "That peace is only
to be valued which is accompanied by justice."46 As the title of one
section of Sidney's Discourses summarized, "Popular Governments
are less subject to Civil Disorders than Monarchies; manage them
more ably, and more easily recover out of them."47 Hence, a
violent revolution to instill a popular government would, in the



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long run, lead to more stability and less violence.

        Sidney was a militia enthusiast, using many examples from
ancient Greece and Rome, and from more recent European history,
to show that a militia fighting for its freedom would defeat
mercenaries merely interested in pay.48

        On the duty of individuals and nations to use force, when
necessary, to protect their own interests, Sidney coined the English
version of the epigram: "God helps those who help themselves."49

        Without a natural right of self-defense, society itself would
cease to exist:

        Nay, all laws must fall, human societies that subsist by
        them must be dissolved, and all innocent persons be
        exposed to the violence of most wicked, if men might
        not justly defend themselves against injustice by their
        own natural right, when the ways prescribed by public
        authority cannot be taken.50

From this right, a right of self-defense against tyrants necessarily
followed.51 To be subject to a tyrant was little different from being
under the power of a pirate.52

         Thus, "those arms were just and pious that were necessary,
and necessary when there was no hope of safety by any other way.
This is the voice of mankind, and is disliked only by princes who
fear deserved punishments, and their flatterers and servants who
share the princes' guilt."53

        The necessary corollary of the right of self-defense against
tyrants was the possession of arms: "he is a fool who knows not
that swords were given to men, that none might be slave, but such
as know not how to use them."54



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         England's situation in the 1680s worried Sidney, for the
old checks and balances were vanishing: "That which might have
easily been performed when the people were armed, and had a
great, strong, virtuous and powerful nobility to lead them, is made
difficult, now they are disarmed, and that nobility abolished."55

         The English were not obliged to live under the same
system of government as their ancestors, because human
understanding had increased. So "if it be lawful for us by the use
of that understanding to build houses, ships, and forts better than
our ancestors, to make such arms as are most fit for our defence,
and to invent printing, with an infinite number of other arts
beneficial to mankind, why have we not the same right in matters
of government . . ."56

        While parts of the New Testament had urged submission
to government, "those precepts were merely temporary, and
directed to the person of the apostles, who were armed only with
the sword of the spirit; that the primitive Christians used prayers
and tears only no longer than whilst they had no other arms." By
becoming Christians, men "had not lost the rights belonging to all
mankind." So "when God had put means into their hands of
defending themselves," then "the Christian valour soon became no
less famous and remarkable than that of the pagans."57

        Sidney disputed Filmer's claim that God, "caused some to
be born with crowns upon their heads, and all others with saddles
upon their backs."58 A few days before Thomas Jefferson died on
July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of
Independence, Jefferson wrote his final letter, which echoed
Sidney's words from a century and a half before:

        The general spread of the light of science has already
        laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass
        of mankind has not been born with saddles on their



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        backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to
        ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.59

Conclusion

                ogether, Algernon Sidney and John Locke showed

        T       that the right of resistance is inseparable from the
                right of religious freedom. It would take a while for
Locke's and Sidney's ideas to be fully accepted in England. Their
true fruition, however, would come in the United States.

         It is true that, today, the average American cannot identify
John Locke or Algernon Sidney. It is also true that if you find an
American who is not a college professor, and who nevertheless
knows who Locke and Sidney are, there is a good chance that the
American is a politically engaged gun owner. More broadly, the
fundamental principles of Locke and Sidney (in part derived from
Buchanan and, especially, from Rutherford) have become a part of
the American creed: religious freedom is a fundamental human
right; tyranny is contrary to natural order; the God that made men
free also made them duty-bound to overthrow tyrants as an act of
self-defense. As intellectual descendants of Buchanan, Rutherford,
Locke, and Sidney, Americans have always believed that there is
an intimate connection between their arms rights and all their other
rights, especially religious ones.

                         _____________




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                                     ENDNOTES
1
           George Buchanan, De Jure Regni apud Scotos; A Dialogue
           Concerning the Rights of the Crown in Scotland, transl., Robert
           MacFarlan (reprint of 1799 edition) (1st pub. 1579; first circulated in
           manuscript in 1559), reprinted in Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or the
           Law and the Prince (Harrisonburg, Va.: Sprinkle Pubs., 1982).

2
           Buchanan, pp. 269-70.

3
           Ibid., p. 272.

4
           Ibid., pp. 280-81.

5
           Robert M. Kingdon, "Calvinism and Resistance Theory, 1550-1580,"
           in The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450-1700, ed., J.H.
           Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 218.

6
           Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or the Law and the Prince
           (Harrisonburg, Va.: Sprinkle Pubs., 1982) (reprint of 1644 London
           edition), questions 24, 26, 27.

7
           Ibid., questions 22, 29-30, 33-34.

8
           Ibid., question 9.

9
           Ibid., question 13.

10
           Ibid., questions 4, 19.

11
           Ibid., questions 30-31, 34, 36.

12
           Ibid., question 30.

13
           Ibid., question 30.

14
           Ibid., question 36.

15
           Ibid., question 44.




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16
      Ibid., questions 4, 32.

17
      Ibid., question 34.

18
      Ibid., question 2.

19
      Ibid., question 18.

20
      Ibid., questions 23, 30.

21
      Ibid., question 24.

22
      Ibid., question 31.

23
      Ibid., questions 24, 31.

24
      Thomas Murray, "Sketch of the Life of Samuel Rutherford" (1827)
      in Rutherford, xix.

25
      Douglas F. Kelly, The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World:
      The Influence of Calvin on Five Governments form the 16th Through
      18th Centuries (Philipsburg, N.J.: P&R Publishing, 1992), 131. From
      the Anglican monarchist viewpoint, hardline Calvinists were all a
      bunch of troublemakers, and the distinctions between them were not
      very important. Thus, "Presbyterian" was used as epithet both for
      Presbyterians (who were found everywhere in America) and
      Congregationalists (who predominated in New England, and who
      played the leading role in inciting the Revolution).

26
      John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of
      America, vol. 3 (Union, N.J.: The Lawbook Exchange, 2001) (1st pub.
      Philadelphia, 1797), 211.

27
      Thomas Jefferson, letter to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825.

28
      Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Baton
      Rouge: Louisiana Stated University Press, 1988), 143.

29
      Patriarcha was published in 1680, incorporating ideas raised by
      Filmer as early as 1628.




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30
           Kelly, p. 70.

31
           James Tully, "Locke," in Cambridge 1450-1700, 624.

32
           John Coffey, Politics, Religion and the British Revolutions: The
           Mind of Samuel Rutherford (Cambridge, England: Cambridge
           University Press, 2002), 177.

33
           John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge, England:
           Cambridge University Press, 1963), book 2, ch. 19, sects. 223 & 230;
           Tully, 640-41.

34
           Locke, Two Treatises, book 2, ch. 19, sect. 226; Tully, 641-42.

35
           Charlton Heston, Keynote Speech to Annual Convention of the
           National Rifle Association of America, May 2, 1999.

36
           Locke, Two Treatises, book 2, ch. 3.

37
           Ibid., book 2, ch. 4, sect. 23; ch. 11, sect. 135; ch. 13, sect. 149; ch.
           15, sect. 171; ch. 19, sect. 222.

38
           Ibid., book 2, sects. 225, 229-30; ch. 11, sect. 137; ch. 13, sect. 158.

39
           Tully, 651-52; John Locke, "A Letter Concerning Toleration" (1689),
           www.constitution.org/jl/tolerati.htm.

40
           Locke, Two Treatises, book 2, ch. 13, sect. 149.

41
           Ibid., book 2, ch. 19, sect. 243.

42
           Thomas G. West, Foreword to Algernon Sidney, Discourses
           Concerning Government, ed. Thomas G. West (Indianapolis: Liberty
           Fund, 1996), xxvii.

43
           West, Foreword. Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, founded in
           1776, is named for Sidney. As the college's name illustrates, there
           are two possible spellings of Algernon's last name.

44
           Sidney, ch. 1, sect. 3, p. 15.




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45
      Sidney, ch. 2, sect. 24, p. 228.

46
      Ibid., ch. 2, sect. 14, p. 160.

47
      Ibid., ch. 2, sect. 234, p. 217.

48
      Ibid., ch. 2, sect. 21, pp. 195-202.

49
      Ibid., ch. 2, sect. 23, p. 210. In the fable of Hercules and the
      Waggoner, Aesop had written, "The gods help them that help
      themselves," but of course Aesop wrote in Greek.

50
      Ibid., ch. 2, sect. 4, p. 340.

51
      Ibid., ch. 2, sect. 4, pp. 339-40.

52
      Ibid., ch. 3, sect. 46, p. 574.

53
      Ibid., ch. 3, sect. 40, p. 547. The first sentence is a quote from Titus
      Livy, History of Rome, book 9, ch. 1. Livy's history of the Roman
      Republic was one of the most influential books in Europe during the
      Enlightenment.

54
      Ibid., ch. 2, sect. 4, p. 343.

55
      Ibid., ch. 3, sect. 37, p. 527.

56
      Ibid., ch. 3, sect. 7, pp. 357-58.

57
      Ibid., ch. 3, sect. 7, p. 358-59.

58
      Ibid., ch. 3, sect. 33, p. 511.

59
      Thomas Jefferson to Roger Weightman, June 24, 1826, in The
      Portable Thomas Jefferson, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York:
      Penguin, 1977), 585.




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