Jonathan Mayhew Biography Quotes 18 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family
Jonathan Mayhew was born in 1720 on Martha's Vineyard, part of a family long associated with religious leadership and civic stewardship in New England. He was the son of the missionary Experience Mayhew, who devoted his life to evangelizing among Wampanoag communities and authored the notable work Indian Converts. Through his father he descended from Thomas Mayhew, an early proprietor and leader of Martha's Vineyard, so the expectation of service and the habit of speaking to the moral life of a community surrounded him from childhood. This island upbringing, steeped in a mix of Puritan piety, practical governance, and intercultural ministry, shaped his sensibility before he ever entered the pulpit.

Education and Ordination
Mayhew studied at Harvard College, where the curriculum of classical languages, moral philosophy, and divinity training prepared him for the ministry while also exposing him to Enlightenment ideas. He was ordained in 1747 as pastor of Boston's West Church, a congregation in the growing West End. His move from Martha's Vineyard to Boston placed him on a larger stage, one where pulpit eloquence could ripple into public life and where theological debates often overlapped with political questions. The ordination at West Church, at a relatively young age, announced him as a rising voice among New England's Congregational clergy.

Ministry at West Church
From the outset, Mayhew distinguished himself by clarity of thought, moral urgency, and a style of preaching that blended learned citation with pointed application. He rejected the sterner doctrines of Calvinism in favor of what contemporaries called a more liberal or rational Christianity. He emphasized conscience, virtue, and the use of reason in religion, a stance that aligned him with Boston ministers such as Charles Chauncy. In sermons and pastoral letters he encouraged public benevolence as much as private devotion, insisting that true religion shaped just character and, by extension, just society. The West Church became known for its engaged and somewhat independent outlook under his guidance.

Political Theology and the 1750 Discourse
Mayhew's most famous sermon, A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers, was preached in 1750 on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I. Drawing on scripture and natural law, he argued that political authority is ordained for the public good and that resistance to tyrannical power can be a moral duty. His reading of Romans 13 was both bold and scholarly, asserting that obedience to rulers is not absolute when rulers violate the ends for which government is instituted. The sermon circulated widely in New England and in London, where it was printed and discussed, and it influenced younger colonists who would soon question imperial policy. John Adams later singled out Mayhew as a formative preacher of liberty, placing him among the intellectual forerunners of the American Revolution.

War, Empire, and Civic Duty
During the French and Indian War, Mayhew delivered thanksgiving and fast-day sermons that balanced gratitude for military successes with warnings against moral complacency. He praised British constitutional liberties and the Protestant cause while urging colonial leaders to govern with restraint and equity. As postwar policies shifted, he emphasized that allegiance to crown and parliament was consistent with a vigilant defense of rights. This approach helped articulate a middle path that many Bostonians initially sought: loyalty combined with principled critique.

Controversy with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel
In 1763, Mayhew published a substantial critique of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, challenging what he viewed as misuse of a missionary charter to extend ecclesiastical influence in the colonies. He feared the introduction of bishops and a formal Anglican establishment in America, which he believed would threaten liberty of conscience and local church governance. The work sparked a transatlantic debate. Anglican leaders, including Archbishop Thomas Secker, defended the Society, while Mayhew replied in pamphlets and sermons with meticulous appeals to charters, statutes, and colonial experience. In Boston, his arguments drew rejoinders from Church of England clergy such as Henry Caner. The controversy elevated Mayhew's profile as both theologian and constitutional thinker and linked questions of church order with broader issues of imperial authority.

Transatlantic Networks and Publication
Mayhew's sermons and pamphlets gained readership well beyond Massachusetts. The London philanthropist Thomas Hollis took a keen interest in colonial defenses of liberty, sponsoring the publication of Mayhew's writings and circulating them among British dissenters, parliamentarians, and scholars. Through such channels, Mayhew became part of a wider conversation about toleration, constitutional limits, and the relationship of church and state. His ability to translate theological principles into civic language made his work legible in both pulpits and legislative chambers.

Boston Circles and Political Opposition
In Boston, Mayhew moved among a cohort of civic-minded leaders. Figures such as James Otis and Samuel Adams advanced arguments in law and town meetings that paralleled themes in Mayhew's preaching: representation, the rule of law, and the dangers of arbitrary power. As royal governors and officials, including Francis Bernard and Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, defended new revenue measures and tighter enforcement, Mayhew joined in public criticism, especially of policies that seemed to erode long-standing colonial rights. While he was not a politician, his pulpit set moral terms for debate and lent theological backing to constitutional resistance, particularly as the Stamp Act crisis unfolded.

Theology of Liberty
Central to Mayhew's thought was the conviction that civil society rests on a moral compact oriented toward the common good. Magistrates and citizens alike are accountable to this end, and religious liberty is not merely a private exemption but a public good that strengthens the bonds of trust. He fused Reformed covenantal ideas with the language of natural rights, producing a political theology that many colonists found both familiar and invigorating. He insisted that piety without justice is hollow and that civic virtue without conscience lacks foundation.

Final Years and Death
The mid-1760s were years of unrelenting labor for Mayhew, marked by preaching, pamphleteering, and pastoral care as Boston weathered imperial strains. He continued to defend colonial rights while affirming loyalty to constitutional monarchy, a balance that was growing harder to maintain. In 1766 he died suddenly in Boston, his passing widely mourned by parishioners and civic leaders. Contemporary accounts described the cause as apoplexy. His colleague and successor at West Church, Simeon Howard, carried forward the congregation's commitment to liberty and public virtue.

Legacy
Jonathan Mayhew left no political office or legal code, but he helped supply the moral vocabulary by which ordinary citizens judged power. His reinterpretation of scriptural obedience, his defense of liberty of conscience, and his careful distinction between authority and tyranny provided intellectual scaffolding for colonial resistance that soon became revolutionary. John Adams placed him in the lineage of voices that awakened America to the responsibilities of freedom. Through the printing press, aided by patrons like Thomas Hollis, his sermons continued to inform debates on both sides of the Atlantic. In New England churches and in town meetings, the echo of Mayhew's pulpit remained audible: a call to marry faith with reason, devotion with duty, and loyalty with a vigilant love of liberty.

Our collection contains 18 quotes who is written by Jonathan, under the main topics: Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Justice - Freedom - Honesty & Integrity.