Covenants Part VIII, Charters and Oaths
In the
Previous lesson we talked about more complex concepts like legal title, beneficial interest, what a freeman was and was not. Here we return to the idea of covenants as social contracts and again the idea of oaths in the formation of binding unions.
Charters and Oaths
What drew men and women to cross an ocean in leaky boats, facing untold hardships and risking their lives and the lives of their families, to settle an untamed wilderness? What call were they answering?
At first, it was well-nigh impossible to find settlers to colonize this new land called America, until the signing of the colonial charters by Charles I, and eventually, Charles II. Those Charters were unique amongst the colonies of America, even for Great Britain.
They were fashioned after the Bishopric of Durham and waived certain privileges of the kings of England. Their error, as seen by the ruling or controlling elite, needed fixing and were not to be repeated again.
Since William of Normandy took Harold's lands and chattels and choses in action, by right of "judgment in arms" in 1066 with his success at Hastings, the civil freedoms of freemen had been constantly under attack. Except for the occasional revolt, there was no real progress back toward the natural liberty enjoyed by the freeman before the "will and order" of William and his "Doomesday Book". With that book of estate registration he established his systems of "legal titles" to land and levies of property tax, called tribute in earlier times. [1]
[1] Legal title is only an apparent title that carries no beneficial interest or right to the use of the property. Use of the property often requires the payment of a use tax. See Chapter 2. of the book The Covenants of the gods,
The memory of a system of government once enjoyed by freemen who required no central government and was often more effective in the securing of liberty and justice was all but stamped out and forgotten by authoritarian kings and the Church that crowned them. No real hope for freedom arose in that land until the translation of the Bible into English in 1382, awakening the precepts like the "perfect law of liberty" and the possibility of a "government of the People, by the People and for the People"1.
Men again began to understand the plan of God for man and the governments preached by Christ, Moses, and Abraham. With new found knowledge and some memory of the not too distant past, some men began to preach and work for a system of self government available to the virtuous, charitable, and brave hearts.
Both the system they had found themselves laboring for and under, the King's men and the "Legal" Church, were a clear contradiction of what they read for themselves without the filtering of an orthodox interpretation. They still had some remembrance of there own ear;y history. There were stories passed down about how they had governed themselves without kings and rulers for hundreds of years with the assistance of the "Servant" Church`2
Now they read for themselves how the ancients of Israel lived free from kings and parliaments, tithing to ministers only "according to their service"3 granting freewill offerings. The head of each house was prince on his own land, enjoying the beneficial interest of his labor and land, the milk and honey, having been delivered from bondage of the government of Egypt by Moses and the government of the Pharisees and even Rome by Christ.[2]
[2] Both early Israel and the early Church have been identified as viable republics. see Chapter 7. of the book The Covenants of the gods, Republic vs Democracy,
The people began to read about the sin of the people calling for a central leader with executive powers, a king to fight their battles and to judge them or appoint judges like the other nations,4 and if they did fall prey to such ruling elite that their leaders should do nothing to return them to that bondage in Egypt5 where the people labored for the governing powers, forced to contribute a portion of their labor every year.
[3]
[3] They applied to the Pharaoh for welfare and were compelled to agree to 20% income tax on their labor. They would not have needed to do that but they had sold their own brother into slavery. See Chapter 4. of the book The Covenants of the gods
Employ vs Enslave
John the Baptist had preached a kingdom that operated by faith, hope, and charity. Christ said that kingdom was at hand and appointed men to preach it and serve it. He came to set the captives free in spirit and in truth. His teachings opposed contract by application or oath and exercising authorities to provide benefits.6
We were to love our neighbor as Moses had said and not covet our neighbor's goods, especially through the powers of governments we create for ourselves.
The first century Church, serving the congregations of the people, did the same as those ancient public servants of Israel and prospered while under Roman persecution and even through a great dearth7 in their world due to corruption and foolishness. The early Church thrived under that same system of governance forgotten by the people, but now recalled under the fresh and independent examination of scriptures.
The people longed again for that freedom. From Runnymede to the Roundheads and Whigs rebellions against tyranny became a costly affair for kings and the people alike. Only the bravest of men, with virtue and dedication, dared to preach the true Gospel of the Kingdom of God at hand, as opposed to the kingdoms of elite men ruling the people. In the face of the authoritarian Church, suffering the pains of speaking the truth often meant the burning stake for their efforts. Even the dead were not immune from the ruling elite's fear of the truth, and were exhumed to face their fires posthumously.
[4]
[4] John Wycliffe (1328-1384), translated The Bible into English. October 8, 1427, by the order of the Council of Constance, his body was exhumed, his bones burned, and the ashes strewn on the River Swift. Thousands were burned alive for disagreeing with what had become the status quo of kings and churches. Lollards, Fratricelli,
Only the stoutest of hearts and the most dedicated of souls could see any hope in the wilderness of the Americas where savages and the elements brought hardship, deprivation and often death.
The seventeenth century Americans came here looking for the "religious and civil" freedoms that were all but totally gone from Europe. They did not gain their freedom by the so-called American revolution, but had earned it by perseverance, hard work and the grace of God. When they spoke of "religious freedom" and "civil freedoms" it meant more than most pew warmers and flag wavers think today. They began to understand just how deep Christ's teachings went and what responsibilities accompanied a free society. They began to understand the practicalities of the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.
Millions came here risking all to obtain those freedoms, God-given rights and responsibilities, while most of Europe remained complacent, content, or too timid to reach out for such liberty and freedom. Those freedoms, once so well understood, so cherished and purchased at such great prices, are all but gone from the lives and minds of most Americans. It is withered laurels that crown the illusion of affluence, licensed liberty, blurred memories, and holidays.
I believe that the spirit that loves rights and responsibility, that cherishes freedom and liberty, is still alive here in America and the world today, buried in the hearts, minds and souls of many, yet, as always, in a minority of the people.
Those who will seek the hidden and suppressed knowledge, make the commitment and do the deeds required of a free society shall again restore a nation to the perfect law of liberty. It will not be a nation dominant but a nation within a nation, like a rock island jutting out of a sea of turmoil and tempest.
From its earliest preaching, true Christianity brought with it social upheaval, fundamental political change and social and political persecution.
"In no relation can the religious motive in English expansion be neglected without doing violence to the record… Still more significant in English expansion than the work of preachers in quest of souls to save, were the labors of laymen from the religious sects of every variety who fled to the wilderness in search of a haven all their own."8
"…Faith in Christ inspired the missionaries… and... colonists who subdued the waste places of the new world…"9
But what is faith in Christ? What was the first Century Church really doing? Why did Jesus preach a kingdom10, tell us to do the same11 and appoint a kingdom?12What kind of government was Israel in its early uncorrupted days when the people possessed the land where ever they went, and there was no king or parliament to make laws and rule over the people? Did Jesus want us to exercise authority one over the other with our vote or elect men to make laws for us, exercise authority, be our benefactors13 and be entitled to a share of our labor like Egypt14
The answer is no.
He preached a government. But it was not like the governments of the Gentiles or other nations. It was a government that was at hand and could be operated in both the midst of the Roman Empire or the wilderness. It was a government as old as Man himself but often forgotten or overlooked by men from generation to generation. It was the kingdom of God on earth.15
The Dominion of Man
The concerns of men and women and their pitfalls have not changed from the beginning of man's walk on earth. How he lives and by whom he lives are his constant choice. By which government, the civil powers devised by men, or by God's kingdom at hand?
Genesis 1:26 "And God said, Let us make man ... and let them have dominion ..."
Numbers 14:24 "But my servant ... hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went; and his seed shall possess it."
God gave dominion to men and those who serve Him must possess the land16 as the King of England sent his subjects to posses the land on his behalf.
No one actually owns the land or wilderness, for God made the land and it is His. But upon improving land it becomes proper that the use of the land and the benefits produced by that sweat should become the rightful possession of the one who invested his life and labor in the endeavor of dressing and keeping it.
"Also I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and led you forty years through the wilderness, to possess the land ..." Amos 2:10
What is the concern here is the dominion of God on earth as represented by those who remain faithful children and servants to the Father who created them. His kingdom has stood upon the earth from the beginning and has been passed down through generations of obedient servants.
Daniel 4:34 "... mine understanding returned unto me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honoured him that liveth for ever, whose dominion [is] an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom [is] from generation to generation:"
How does His kingdom work? How can we implement it? Does it have structure? Can it be a system based on freedom?
The Corporate Kingdom
Exodus 20:12 "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee."
Governments are the product of the invested interest and rights of those who participate in their creation and maintenance. All Lawful governments are forms of corporations and systems of trust and faith.
"Now the commercial corporation for colonization,… was in reality a kind of autonomous state. Like the state, it had a constitution, a superior law binding constituent and officers."
"The colonies were 'companies.' 'The legal instrument for realization of that design was a charter granted by 'the dominionitive authority of the king' uniting the sponsors of the enterprise in 'one body politic and corporate,' known as the Trustees for establishing the colony…"
"Thus every essential element long afterward found in the government of the American state appeared in the chartered corporation that started English civilization in America."17
"All corporations, of whatever kind, are molded and controlled, both as to what they may do and the manner in which they may do it, by their charters or acts of incorporation, which to them are the laws of their being, which they can neither dispense with nor alter."18
Charter. "An instrument emanating from the sovereign power, in the nature of a grant, either to the whole nation, or to a class or portion of the people, to a corporation, or to a colony or a dependency, assuring them of certain rights, liberties, or powers… is granted by the sovereign…"19
George Washington, in his General Order of July 9, 1776 speaks of rights and liberties already possessed and to be defended as Christians when he said, "The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor so to live, and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country."
Rights and Liberties are attached to the land and the men who stand upon it. Freedom was not granted by the Charters but the opportunity to obtain freedom was. A door was left open for those who had the courage to go through it. This was a vast unclaimed land. Neither paper proclamations in parliament nor boasting in the taverns could subdue it. Men and women came here by the thousands seeking civil and religious freedom.
They did not seek the comfort, entitlements, protections and restrictions of a feudal or federal state but the responsibility, burdens and rights of the state of freedom under the perfect law of liberty. Some were backed by Companies who were compelled to allow them the chance to obtain an allodial title in land of their own after proving up land for those investors.
Some independently set out to establish their own autonomous community plantations or "Hundreds" as they were sometimes called. The ruling elite would spend the next 400 years gathering in their lost chicks.
The colonies of America were Republics long before the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. Cromwell as the Lord High Protector of England's own short lived republic in Great Britain sent troops to the colonies when the rights of individual freemen were threatened by the usurpation of ambitious men who were not willing to give up the ideas and precepts of royal elitism despite the fact that Charles I had already done so in America in hopes of diluting the resistance in England to his own exercising authority.
Until the colonial charters were signed, ridding that kingdom of troublesome rebels, there seemed to be no relief from the encroachment of government authority on the once free people of Britain. Nor could the king be free of the people's desire to control the tyranny of government. In those charters the individual colonies were called "a republic." But what kind of republics were they? They were not utopias but refuges of individual responsibility where no law could be made "except by the consent of the freeman."
"The term republic, res publica, signifies the state independently of its form of government."20
"Natural law was the first defense of colonial liberty." Also, "There was a secondary line upon which much skirmishing took place and which some Americans regarded as the main field of battle. The colonial charters seemed to offer an impregnable defense against abuses of parliamentary power because they were supposed to be compacts between the king and people of the colonies; which, while confirming royal authority in America, denied by implication the right of Parliament to intervene in colonial affairs. Charters were grants of the king and made no mention of the parliament. They were even thought to hold good against the King, for it was believed that the King derived all the power he enjoyed in the colonies from the compacts he had made with the settlers. Some colonists went so far to claim that they were granted by the 'King of Kings'-and therefore 'no earthly Potentate can take them away.'"21
There may be many who would disagree with this statement but I would suggest that when the powers that would be began to manipulate American perception of history22 information concerning the Charters was the first to go.
Those early Separatist and members of the "Ancient Church" worked for these colonial companies but "were given land grants after their seven years servitude to the 'Merchants Adventurer's' was over." They labored for seven years, risked death and suffered great hardships so that they could become" lawful freemen" living on untaxable land.
This was their goal.
"The oath of fealty and homage necessarily accompanied the numerous grants of land" by the kings since the arrival of the Normans but this was neglected and overlooked in the Americas for these Separatists and Bible readers would have refused , if it had been required.
Remember that neither the Americas nor the kings were homogenous groups. Charles I's Reign ended with the plop of his head in a basket. Charles II, known as 'Good Time Charley',' was the son of a Catholic and the head of the Church of England. Charles II granted the Pennsylvania Charter in payment of debt to William Pen(nington). A debt he could not have paid otherwise. When William went to collect the debt he refused to take off his hat in the presence of the King, which could have lost him his head. The king said that one of them should remove his hat, so the king obliged with the doffing of his own bonnet and agreed to the Charter.
"Accordingly, when Americans were told that they had no constitutional basis for their claim of execution from parliamentary authority, they answered, 'Our Charters have done it absolutely.' 'And if one protests,' remarked a Tory, 'the answer is, You are an Enemy to America, and ought to have your brains beat out.' Pennsylvania Journal and Weekly Advertiser, September 4, 1766, Supplement."22
Note: The First Charter of Carolina. 1662. CHARLES II "18th. P. And because it may happen that some of the people and inhabitants of the said Province, cannot in their private opinions, conform to the publick exercise of religion, according to the liturgy form and ceremonies of the Church of England, or take and subscribe the oath and articles, made and established in that behalf, and for that the same, by reason of the remote distances of these places, will, we hope, be no breach of the unity and uniformity established in this nation; ..."
Who were these people who would not subscribe to oaths and articles and why did the king only 'hope for no breach'. Those are not the words of a lord in a contract where he holds all the cards. There was authority slipping [and had slipped] from these Kings. These Charters did not grant freedom but they allowed for the opportunity to obtain free dominion = freedom. This was a period of great unrest in the world and England had proposed the Oath of Supremacy in order to insure loyalty. Catholics were required to take it before entering Virginia according to the Charter of Virginia in 1606.
There were many who would not take oaths including Quakers and Separatists.
Why?
It was simple and obvious. They had read the Bible.
Matthew 5:34-37 "But I say unto you, Swear not at all; ... for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. James 5:12 But above all things, my brethren, swear not,... lest ye fall into condemnation."
The King did not own America or its land. What his Charters did was allow his once subject citizenry to own land in a brave new world. They could claim land for themselves which by the Law would make them free again. Or they could continue to settle for a "legal title". Many of those early American pilgrims knew better and did better than Americans do today.
Good-by Bondage, Hello Freedom
When the Separatists or Pilgrims departed from the shores of England they said, "Good-bye Babylon. Good-bye Rome." The Common Law and the Holy Bible was the foundation of this Republic in the 1600's. The government's authority was insignificant although it arose from the Common Law of the Land. Modern religionists have back-slidden away from a true understanding of the Gospels that drove men to obtain such freedoms at such great prices.
It is now Roman Law that dominates the legal system and the courts. In Black's law dictionary, found in every law office of the US democracy, there is hardly a page that does not make reference to its Latin origins or its legal principles.
"Civil Law," "Roman Law" and "Roman Civil Law" are convertible phrases, meaning the same system of jurisprudence."24
I would encourage everyone to read Rome vs US:
The Constitution plainly states, in the ninth amendment:: "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
The Tenth amendment states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
What does it take to keep those rights? What does it take to remove those rights from our reach?
See The Covenants of the gods on the net:
John Adams said that when the grantees of the "Massachusetts Bay Charter carried it to America they 'got out of the English realm, dominions, state, empire, call it by what name you will, and out of the legal jurisdiction of the Parliament. The king might, by his writ or proclamation, have commanded him to return; but he did not."25
Had he called them back his foothold in America would have been gone.
America was not the earliest Christian Republic. Christianity as taught by Christ and practiced by the early Church, was a republic. In Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", he praised "the union and discipline of the Christian republic." He also pointed out that "it gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman Empire."26
It was the true Christians struggling to follow the ordinances of Jesus Christ that created an impenetrable barrier to the tyranny of George the III. But where are they now?
If you want your rights back you must first take your responsibilities back. You must do it individually and, and collectively.
How is this done with a world so immersed in the baptism of power, control and regulations, to say nothing of debt and bankruptcy? What is a government "not like the gentiles who exercise authority one over the other"? What is the system that operates on the "perfect law of Liberty"?
Is it a gathering of people whose interest is in being of service rather than being served, who are concerned about their neighbor's rights as they are about their own, e.g. love their neighbors as themselves and who "seek first the kingdom of Heaven and its righteousness" which Jesus said was at hand???
But how did it work as a viable state in the heart of the Roman empire? What did it look like? How did it work?
The answer is surprisingly simple but one of the best kept secrets of our time.
Active Footnotes:
[1] Legal title is only an apparent title that carries no beneficial interest or right to the use of the property. Use of the property often requires the payment of a use tax. See Chapter 2. of the book The Covenants of the gods, Law vs Legal
http://www.hisholychurch.info/study/gods/cog2lvl.php
[2] Both early Israel and the early Church have been identified as viable republics. see Chapter 7. of the book The Covenants of the gods, Republic vs Democracy,
http://www.hisholychurch.info/study/gods/cog7rvd.php
[3] They applied to the Pharaoh for welfare and were compelled to agree to 20% income tax on their labor. They would not have needed to do that but they had sold their own brother into slavery. See Chapter 4. of the book The Covenants of the gods Employ vs Enslave http://www.hisholychurch.info/study/gods/cog4eve.php
Footnotes:
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