Daily Inspiration Quote by Jonathan Mayhew

Liberty’s oldest enemy rarely shows up wearing a villain’s cape; it arrives dressed as moral cleanup. Jonathan Mayhew’s line is a scalpel aimed at that timeless rhetorical trick: relabel freedom as “licentiousness” so you can punish it without looking like a tyrant. The genius is the pivot on a single word. “Licentiousness” isn’t just wrongdoing; it’s wrongdoing with a sneer, the charge that people can’t be trusted with their own choices. Once that label sticks, coercion becomes “discipline,” and dissent becomes “decay.”

Mayhew, a New England Congregationalist preaching in the thick air of pre-Revolutionary politics, knew exactly how power justified itself. British authorities and their colonial allies didn’t have to argue against liberty on principle; they could argue against “excess,” “disorder,” “impiety.” That’s the subtext: elites don’t typically confess they want control. They claim they want virtue, stability, public safety. Mayhew warns that the moral argument can be a weapon, especially when preached from pulpit or podium with the confidence of righteousness.

The phrasing “There are men” matters, too. He isn’t condemning everyone who fears chaos; he’s identifying operators - people who strategically blur the line between freedom and vice to narrow the public’s imagination of what self-government can tolerate. It’s a cleric’s suspicion of bad faith, offered as civic instruction: listen closely when authorities start policing language before they start policing bodies. The strike at liberty often begins as a lecture about manners.