2. Interestingly, neither man makes use of the Roger Williams controversy. Wylie may well have been unaware of it, but to say the same of Findley seems impossible. It may be the case that he did not feel that it had resolved the dispute over religious liberty. He may have also been wary of Williams' negative reputation among the stricter Presbyterian communities. Whatever the explanation, the dispute between Wylie and Findley illustrates that the question of religious liberty was not a settled one, even in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

3. Scharf, J. Thomas & Westcott, Thompson, History of Philadelphia: 1609-1884, at 1277 (L.H. Everts & Co. 1884)Google Scholar; Glasgow, W. Melanchthon, The History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America 741 (Hill & Harvey 1888)Google Scholar; Emery, Robert, Church and State in the Early Republic: The Covenanters' Radical Critique, 25 J.L. & Religion 489 (2009–2010)Google Scholar.

4. Scharf & Westcott, supra note 3, at 1277; Glasgow, supra note 3, at 741; Hart, D.G. & Noll, Mark, Dictionary of the Presbyterian and Reformed Tradition in America 211 (Presbyterian & Reformed)Google Scholar. As Hart and Noll point out, this group essentially continues to the present in the “Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, Covenanter Synod.”

5. Boisen, Anton T., Divided Protestantism in a Mid-West County: A Study in the Natural History of Organized Religion, 29 J. Religion 359, 361–62 (10 1940)Google Scholar. Glasgow states that Wylie was a professor of languages at the University of Pennsylvania. Glasgow, supra note 3, at 741; Wylie was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania for 17 years. The Encyclopedia Americana. A Supplemental Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature Reformed Presbyterian Church 339 (Stoddart, J.M. ed. 1889)Google Scholar.

6. Wylie, Samuel Brown, The Two Sons of Oil; Or, the Faithful Witness For Magistracy and Ministry Upon a Scriptural Basis (3d ed., Young, William S. 1859)Google Scholar.

7. Fisk, William L., The Scottish High Church Tradition in America: An Essay in Scotch-Irish Ethnoreligious History 1–28 (Univ. Press Am. 1995)Google Scholar; Kidd, Colin, Conditional Britons: The Scots Covenanting Tradition and the Eighteenth-century British State, 117 English Hist. Rev. 1147 (11 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For background on the Covenanter movement in general, see Hutchinson, Matthew, The Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland, its Origins and History 1680-1876 (Paisely 1893)Google Scholar; Cowan, Ian B., The Scottish Covenanters, 1660-1688 (Victor Gollancz 1976)Google Scholar; Vos, Johannes G., The Scottish Covenanters: Their Origins, History, and Distinctive Doctrines (Blue Banner Productions 1998)Google Scholar. For the Covenanters in North America, see Glasgow, supra note 3; Steele, David, History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, 1 J. Presbyterian Hist. Soc'y 41 (1901)Google Scholar; Carson, David M., A History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America to 1871 (1964) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania) (on file with author)Google Scholar.

8. For the emergence and development of this idea, see Avis, Paul, Moses and the Magistrate: A Study in the Rise of Protestant Legalism, 26 J. Ecclesiastical Hist. 149 (04 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Wylie, supra note 6, at 21-22, 25, 30, 34-35, 87-89.

10. Fisk, supra note 7, at 10-11; Kidd, supra note 7, at 1148; Emery, supra note 3, at 488. These historical documents are still included in the Free Presbyterian Church's publication of the Westminster Confession of faith: Westminster Confession of Faith (Free Presbyterian Publications 2003). Though not holding to the older political views, this version of the Westminster Confession was the one that was assigned in my own seminary training at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS. Thus while archaic, these documents are not forgotten.

11. They were even referred to as “the anti-government party.” Kidd, supra note 7, at 1156; Fisk, supra note 7, at 51.

12. See Howie, John, The Scots Worthies (Banner of Truth 1996)Google Scholar.

13. Wylie, supra note 6, at 1.

14. Fisk, supra note 7, at 4-6; Emery, supra note 3, at 487-88. While it is outside the bounds of this paper, it should be noted that though they differ in their understandings of the radical nature of the doctrine, both Michael Walzer and David VanDrunen have identified the Covenanter doctrine of God's two kingdoms as being essentially the same as John Calvin and the consensus Reformed view; an incorrect assessment. See Walzer, Michael, The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Widenfeld & Nicolson 1966)Google Scholar; and VanDrunen, David, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought 67–275 (Eerdmans 2010)Google Scholar. For an alternative understanding of the doctrine of “the two kingdoms” which more fully represents the sources, see Avis, Paul D., The Church in the Theology of the Reformers 131–50 (Wipf & Stock 1981)Google Scholar; Wright, William J., Martin Luther's Understanding of God's Two Kingdoms: A Response to the Challenge of Skepticism (Baker Academic 2010)Google Scholar; and my own, Wedgeworth, Steven, Two Kingdoms Critique, in Credenda/Agenda, http://www.credenda.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=218:two-kingdoms-critique&catid=96&Itemid=122 (last visited Dec. 22, 2011)Google Scholar.

15. Wylie, supra note 6, at Preface.

16. Wylie, supra note 6, at 9, 19-20, 25-26.

17. Id. at 37.

18. Id., at 26, 34-37.

19. Id. at 12-13.

20. Id. at 25.

21. Id. at 13.

22. Id. at 14.

23. Id. at 26.

24. Id. at 26, 27, 29.

25. Id., at 33.

26. Id., at 36.

27. Id. at 47.

28. Hence Fisk, supra note 7, at 4. Fisk also notes that Jonathan Swift had early identified this view as “popery,” id. at 13 and that the Covenanters were rumored to be “Jesuits in disguise.” Id. at 19.

29. Wylie, supra note 6, at 11.

30. Id. at 14.

31. Id. at 15.

32. Id. at 12, 21.

33. Id., at 21.

34. Id.

35. Id., at 22.

36. Id. at 22.

37. Id. at 30.

38. Id. Emery is incorrect when he says “the Covenanters were not ‘theonomists,’” because “they, like all other reformed protestants of the time, believed that the ‘moral’ law as implied by the Decalogue was the rule of action for Christians.” Emery, supra note 3, at 491. Wylie says that the “judicial law” of Israel was a part of the “moral law” and even refutes the objection that the laws of Israel were merely typical. Wylie, supra note 6, at 87-89. Also, Kidd notes that the earlier Covenanters had proclaimed that the right use of the light of nature was lost after man's fall into sin. Kidd, supra note 7, at 1170. The term “theonomist” usually refers to a group of Presbyterians who, between the 1960s and 1990s, published literature defending the idea that the Mosaic law should be applied in the modern context and was still morally binding. Though not a unified group, some theonomists did in fact reference the Covenanters and restate the claim that the U.S. Constitution is fundamentally non-Christian. See North, Gary, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Inst. Christian Economics 1989)Google Scholar. North's dedicatory note reads, “This book is dedicated to the members, living and dead, of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (“Covenantors”) who for 190 years have smelled a rat in Philadelphia.” Id. at vi.

39. Wylie, supra note 6, at 31.

40. Id. at 41.

41. This is the case in the medieval papal sovereignty doctrine found in documents like Unam Sanctam according to Wylie. See Denzinger, Henricus, Enchiridion Symbolorum 218–20 (Herder 1948)Google Scholar; see also Watts, J.A., Spiritual and Temporal Powers, in Burns, J.H., The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought c.350-c.1450, at 367–423 (Cambridge Univ. Press 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. Wylie, supra note 6, at 47.

43. Id. at 47-48.

44. Id. at 48-49. Wylie also states that it will do no good to find an individual state constitution that is adequately Christian because all state constitutions are subordinate to the Federal Constitution. Wylie thus espouses something of a strong “federalist” or “unionist” view of the Constitution.

45. Id. at 49.

46. Id. at 51.

47. Id. at 53-54.

48. Id. at 55.

49. Id. at 57. Emery explains that the Scottish Covenanters believed nations to be moral personae in the strong sense and to exist in a personal relationship to God, complete with moral culpability, and that the covenants entered into by nations extended to their descendants until lawfully amended. Emery, supra note 3, at 490. Wylie preached a sermon “The Obligations of the Covenants” where in which he explained this view, even going so far as to connect the act of covenanting with God's divine nature. Wylie, Samuel Brown, minister, Reformed Presbyterian Church of the United States, The Obligations of the Covenants, A Discourse, Delivered 06 27, 1803 (3d ed., Stephen Young 1816), available at http://www.covenanter.org/Wylie/obligationofcovenants.htmGoogle Scholar.

50. Wylie, supra note 6, at 58. Wylie does not identify any of the actual U.S. presidents as deists or atheists, though another Covenanter would, as shown in Kabala, James S., “Theocrats” vs. “Infidels”: Marginalized Worldviews and Legislative Prayer in 1830s New York, 51 J. Church & State 82 (2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51. Wylie, supra note 6, at 60.

52. Id. at 60-62. The Covenanters were actually some of the first radical abolitionists, not allowing communion to any slave-holder. See Roth, Randolph A., The First Radical Abolitionists: The Reverend James Milligan and the Reformed Presbyterians of Vermont, 55 New Eng. Q. 540 (12 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53. Wylie, supra note 6, at 62-63. Wylie also states that Covenanters have already made an oath with God, alluding to the covenants, and thus to submit to the Constitution would force them to break that oath. Id.

54. This archaic term functioned as a sort of technical term for the Covenanters by which they simply mean supporting or promoting an established authority. Their view was that anything other than active dissent would be construed as homologation.

55. Wylie, supra note 6, at 65-68.

56. See Caldwell, John, Introduction to William Findley: A Politician in Pennsylvania, 1783-1791 (Red Apple Publg. 2000)Google Scholar, as well as Findley, William, History of the Insurrection in the Four Western Counties of Pennsylvania in the Year M.DCC.XCIV (1794): With a Recital of the Circumstances Specially Connected Therewith, and an Historical Review of the Previous Situation of the Country (Samuel Harrison Smith 1797)Google Scholar.

57. Findley, William, Observations on the “Two Sons of Oil” (Patterson & Hopkins 1812), available at http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Fperson=4598&Itemid=27 [1812 edition]Google Scholar.

58. See Emery, supra note 3, at 492. However, his claim that Findley “asserted the conventional presbyterian view of the relationship of church and state” seems incorrect, particularly in light of Avis, supra note 8; Walzer, supra note 14; and Morgan, Edmund S., Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea 1–32 (Cornell Univ. Press 1963)Google Scholar. It is also worth noting that earlier Scottish Presbyterians had written against religious toleration. See Gillespie, George, Wholsome Severity Reconciled with Christian Liberty Or, The true Resolution of a present Controversy concerning Liberty of Conscience (Christopher Meredith 1644)Google Scholar; Rutherford, Samuel, A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience (R.I. 1649)Google Scholar.

59. See Caldwell, John, Introduction to William Findley, Observations on “The Two Sons of Oil”: Containing a Vindication of the American Constitutions, and Defending the Blessings of Religious Liberty and Toleration, against the Illiberal Strictures of the Rev. Samuel B. Wylie (Caldwell, John ed., Liberty Fund 2007)Google Scholar, as well as Emery, supra note 3, at 492-93.

60. Findley, supra note 55, at iii.

61. For instance, Woodmason, Charles, The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerate 16–17, 46, 95–108 (Hooker, Richard J. ed., Univ. N.C. Press 1953)Google Scholar. Woodmason is hardly objective, so his testimony cannot be received uncritically. In light of Findley's encounters, however, the reports have some plausibility.

62. Findley, supra note 55, at 205.

63. See e.g. id. at 126.

64. Id. at 220.

65. Id. at 118.

66. Id. at 119-20.

67. Id. at 127.

68. Id. at 128.

69. Id. at 132.

70. Id. at 133.

71. Id.

72. Id. at 126.

73. Id. at 134.

74. id. at 134-35.

75. Id. at 126.

76. This last qualification will become more clear in light of Findley's defense of liberty of conscience.

77. Kabala, supra note 50, at 81; see also Kabala, James, A Christian Nation?: Church-State Relations in the Early American Republic, 1787-1846 (2008) (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation Brown University) (on file with author)Google Scholar.

78. Findley, supra note 55, at 120-21.

79. Id. at 121-22.

80. Id. at 124-26, 130, 138-39, 141, 291. Findley here, like earlier critics of the Covenanters in Scotland, asserts that Wylie has more in common with Roman Catholicism than Protestantism. Fisk, supra note 7, at 13, 19.

81. Id. at 226.

82. Id. at 227.

83. Id. at 130.

84. Id. at 130-31.

85. Id. at 131.

86. Id. at 125.

87. Id. at 328, 346, 365-66.

88. Id. at 345. Findley cites examples from church history to support his claim that the Protestant Reformers were against religious persecution consistently throughout the entire book, though he seems rather selective in deciding which examples count as “true Protestantism” and which are times when the Reformation had degenerated. See Findley, supra note 55.

89. Wylie, supra note 6, at 52: “Does not this amount to an establishment of religion? … The dispute, then, will not turn upon the point whether religion should be civilly established? (we take it for granted that Americans think so, seeing that they have done it,) but it is concerning what religion ought to be civilly established and protected.” Id.

90. Findley, supra note 54, at 204-05.

91. Id. at 220.

92. See Glasgow, supra note 3, at 742; Kabala, supra note 47, at 86.

93. Emery, supra note 3, at 497.

94. See Worthen, Molly, The Chalcedon Problem: Rousas John Rushdoony and the Origins of Christian Reconstructionism, 77 Church Hist. 399 (2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95. Kidd, supra note 7, at 1175-76.

96. Some might object to the term “Christian” here, arguing that a general theism based on the moral law would suffice. However, Findley has affirmed that all men should worship God and that the moral law requires men to respect divine revelation, Findley, supra note 54, at 162, and that it forbids blasphemy, profaneness, and perhaps even idolatry. Id. at 187. It is because of Findley's own understanding of that revelation, particularly his notion of the spiritual nature of the gospel and the Biblical teaching on liberty of conscience, that he can oppose religious coercion. He even says that worship is not done by representation or proxy, id. at 302, though he does not explain that this is a disputed claim. It certainly seems to rely on a particular version of Protestant theology, over and against medieval notions of vicars and priests.

97. For more on the Covenanters and radical abolition, see Roth, supra note 49. How this relates to their belief that the Mosaic law should be enforced today is not clear, as Findley is quick to point out. Findley, supra note 54, at 228. For a modern “theonomist” view on the relationship of slavery and the Mosaic law, see Jordan, James B., Slavery in Biblical Perspective (1980) (unpublished Th.M thesis, Westminster Theological Seminary) (on file with author)Google Scholar.

98. See Walzer, supra note 14, at 300-26.

99. Id. at 301.

100. Id. at 302.

101. Id. at 305.

102. Id. at 307, 313-15, 317-19.

103. Kabala, supra note 47, at 87.

104. Emery, supra note 3, at 499.

105. Id.

106. Taylor, Charles, A Secular Age 3 (Belknap Harv. 2007)Google Scholar.

107. Id.

108. Id. at 19.

109. Id. at 771.

110. For a more detailed defense of this, see Taylor, , Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Harv. Univ. Press 1989)Google Scholar. For an explanation of Christianity's ability to positively receive foreign ideas and its culture of “inclusion,” see Brague, Remi, Eccentric Culture: A Theory of Western Civilization 92–151 (St. Augustine's Press 2002)Google Scholar; and Brague, Remi, The Legend of the Middle Ages: Philosophical Explorations of Medieval Christianity, Judaism, and Islam 145–58 (Univ. Chi. Press 2009)Google Scholar; also relevant is Murphy, Andrew R., Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America (Pa. State Univ. Press 2001)Google Scholar.

111. Nelson, Eric, The Hebrew Republic (Harv. Univ. Press 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

112. Findley, supra note 54, at 134.

113. Morris, Benjamin F., The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States 269–81 (Am. Vision Press 2007)Google Scholar.

114. Kabala, supra note 47, at 91 -92, 101.

115. Id. at 81, 101.

116. See d'Entreves, A.P., Natural Law: An Historical Survey 120 (Harper Torchbooks 1965)Google Scholar.

117. Would all religions today agree that coercion is contrary to belief? Wylie's ecclesiastical tradition did not. Findley is presuming a certain kind of developed Protestantism which holds to the “interiority” of religion, a view not shared by all religions nor even by all forms of Christianity. For a fuller discussion on religious interiority, see Taylor, supra note 105, at 111-207.

118. Walzer, supra note 14, at 114.

119. Locke, John, A Letter Concerning Toleration 54–65 (J. Brook 1796)Google Scholar; see also Wood, James E. Jr., “No Religious Test Shall Ever Be Required”: Reflections on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, 29 J. Church & State 201 (Spring 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nelson, supra note 106, at 136.