Historical and Theological Foundations of Law: Reformation and Colonial

Volume III - Reformation and ColonialBook Five, The Pinnacle, examines the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformations, whereby the doctrines of justification by grace through faith and the priesthood of all believers led to republican concepts of government by consent of the governed, social contract, God-given rights, and justified resistance against tyranny. Constitutional jurists such as Selden, Milton, Coke, Althusius, Grotius, Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone fused biblical theology with the Common Law. But to take root and grow, the Common Law needed fresh soil. In Book Six, The Beacon, Anglicans established the Common Law in Jamestown and the Southern Colonies, Puritans in the New England colonies, Presbyterians, Quakers, Catholics, and others in the Middle Colonies. In 1776 they took the ultimate republican step of declaring independence. When, in 1787, fifty-five delegates gathered in Independence Hall to draft a Constitution, they did not write on a blank slate. Rather, they were prepared with thousands of years of “echoes of Eden,” Holy Writ, and the Common Law. The event, Washington said, was “in the hands of God.”