Historical Sermons From The Past: Divine Judgments Upon Tyrants By Jacob Cushing


By David Hall - Posted at The Heidelblog:

Introduction

What is God’s view on certain political matters or events? That is a question often asked, and often mocked. Centuries earlier, however, preachers and their audiences were more sympathetic to the notion that God actually has moral opinions on the acts of human beings. Earlier preachers like Jacob Cushing were not as timid as some today.

Jacob Cushing (1730–1809) was a graduate of Harvard in the mid-eighteenth century, and he served as a pastor in Waltham, Massachusetts, nearly a half century, from 1752 on. He had fifteen sermons published and kept a full diary that supplemented his sermons. This, however, was his only published political treatise (1778) and it commemorated the tyrannical acts at Lexington on April 19, 1775—the first day in America military history that would live in infamy.1

In this sermon based on Deuteronomy 32:43, Cushing begins with a sound foundation—God is not the deity of Deism—rather, he is the God who is involved in his creation and is neither so distant nor impotent as to carry moral suasion.

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