The Two-horned Beast by T. M. Steward

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 29, 1863

The Two-horned Beast.

By T. M. Steward

[BRO. WHITE: This piece I wrote in reply to a piece printed in the Lafayette County Independent against my sermon on the two-horned beast. I sent it to their office, and they would not receive it into their paper. Quite a number of the people here take the Review, and if you will give it a place in our paper, you will oblige me and others. Yours, striving for life. T. M. STEWARD.]

To the Editor of the Lafayette County Independent, Darlington, Wis.: I want to correct some misrepresentations in your issue of Aug. 15th. We claim no right, neither do we wish, to distort the history of the past, to make an application of the two-horned beast to this government. The government is here, and its character is established, and perfectly corresponds to the symbol of the beast of Rev. xiii, 11. And whatever cause prompted our forefathers in coming to this country, it still remains a fact that they did come.

You say, "Our brother stated that the New England Puritans were driven to this country by the persecution of Catholics."

Here you mistake. I did say that under the oppressive reign of the beast (the civil power of England), they achieved the wonderful project of launching out on the trackless ocean, and braved the surges of the mighty deep to find an asylum for themselves and their children, and by the aid of divine providence they landed on Plymouth Rock.

Now this I regard as true, and will give you a quotation from the Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, p. 993: "The persecutions carried on against the Puritans during the reign of Elizabeth, and the Stuarts, served to lay the foundation of a new empire, and eventually a vast republic, in this western world. Hither, as into a wilderness, they fled from the face of their persecutors, and being protected in the free exercise of their religion, continued to increase, until at length they became an independent nation." This is my idea exactly.

Again you say, "He states that they were the founders of civil liberty in this country."

Now why not take it just as I stated it? My statement all can remember. There they planted the standard of equal rights. That this is true, I submit to history. These facts may be found interspersed among all our school readers. I will give one quotation: "One of the most prominent features which distinguished our forefathers, was their determined resistance to oppression. They seemed born and brought up, for the high and special purpose of showing to the world that the civil and religious rights of man, the rights of self-government, of conscience and independent thought, are not merely things to be talked of and woven into theories, but to be adopted with the whole strength and ardor of the mind, and felt in the profoundness of the heart, and carried out into the general life, and made the foundation of practical usefulness, and visible beauty and true nobility."

Again you ask if "our brother is to be understood as saying that the constitution declares all men free and equal?" No; neither did I say it, unless by a slip of the tongue. I did repeat what may be found in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

You say, "He stated that Congress passed a law soon after the adoption of the constitution, prohibiting the traffic in slaves after twenty years."

Here you are again in error. My statement was that those who hold slaves were given twenty years to adjust their business and arrange for the emancipation of their slaves; for at the termination of twenty years the slave traffic would be regarded as piracy. I will give a quotation from W. O. Blake's History of Slavery, p. 399: "The unrestrained power of Congress to enact navigation laws, was conceded to the northern merchants, and to the Carolina rice planters, as an equivalent, twenty years continuance of the African slave trade. This was the third great compromise of the constitution. * If this third compromise differed from the other two by involving not merely a political, but a moral sacrifice, there was this partial compensation about it; that it was not permanent, like the others, but expired at the end of twenty years by its own limitation." See also Hildreth's History of the United States, and Political History of the United States.

That they intended slavery to cease at the end of the twenty years, is evident from another quotation from the same book, p. 402. "Cotemporary history proves that it was the belief of at least a large portion of the delegates that slavery could not long survive the stoppage of the slave trade, which was expected to (and did) occur in 1808." See Art. 5 of Amendments to the Constitution. "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In the constitution slaves are called persons. So they can claim protection from this article.

Again you say, "He stated that the constitution guaranteed the full exercise of conscience. Where does he find that law?"

I find it in the Amendments to the Constitution, Art. 1. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The congressional committee of 1830, on the intent of the constitution report: "The constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christian, and gives no more authority to adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary individual than of a whole community."

Again you ask, "By what logic does he claim to be absolved from all obligation to human law?"

My logic is this: when human law conflicts with divine law, or God's law, I regard my obligation to God paramount to all human obligation. "Whether it be right to hearken unto men more than unto God, judge ye."

That this government is controlled by two powers, civil and religious combined, no man that knows anything about the relations of church and state, will deny. Still with all you have said, we have the two-horned beast, a fair symbol of this government.

T. M. S.