Daily Inspiration Quote by Jonathan Mayhew

Mayhew’s line detonates where you’d least expect it: inside the language of Christian obedience. He’s not rejecting scripture; he’s repossessing it. By calling it “the apostle’s argument,” he signals fidelity to Paul’s authority (a must for an 18th-century clergyman), then executes a reversal so clean it feels like legal jiu-jitsu: the very text often used to demand submission becomes evidence for resistance.

The key phrase is “so far from proving.” Mayhew anticipates the familiar proof-texting of Romans 13, where rulers are treated as God’s instruments and subjects as dutiful sheep. His subtext is that this reading is politically convenient, not theologically honest. He narrows the definition of legitimate rule to “the public good” and “the design of their office,” importing a civic contract into a biblical frame. Authority isn’t a mystical aura; it’s a job description. When rulers violate that purpose, they aren’t merely bad leaders - they’re counterfeit rulers, forfeiting the moral claim to obedience.

Context does the rest. Preaching in the shadow of British imperial power and colonial anxiety, Mayhew offers congregants a way to oppose tyranny without sounding like traitors or radicals. He makes resistance feel not only permissible but pious. The brilliance is rhetorical: he keeps the vocabulary of order (“duty,” “submit,” “office”) while smuggling in a revolutionary premise - that obedience is conditional, and legitimacy is measurable.

It’s sermon as political technology: a theological permission slip for dissent, drafted in the safest ink available.