Beginning in August 1780, The Royal Georgia Gazette published a series of nine essays written by the Reverend John Joachim Zubly.  In writing these essays Zubly used the pseudonym of Helvetius. Zubly’s choice of pseudonym was in part based on his respect for the work of Emmerich de Vattel.  Zubly wrote in his second Helvetius essay that Vattel was an impartial observer and “a very great man…the respect for whom and his country has induced me to adopt the signature of Helvetius.”[i]

Zubly’s opposition to the American Revolution as expressed in his Helvetius essays is the topic of this paper.  This paper will show that Zubly’s conception of federal theology formed the heart of his argument against the American Revolution and that his Helvetius essays were a practical application of his theological views.  This paper will first provide evidence that the lost Helvetius essay, “Number V” has been found and that this essay was Zubly’s case for opposing the revolution based on the Holy Scriptures.  This paper will then place Zubly religious thought within a particular Calvinist and Puritan tradition.  From this tradition, this paper will identify those elements of federal theology that Zubly used in the Helvetius essays, especially in essays “Number IV” and “Number V.”   Then this paper will present a comparison of Zubly’s case from “holy writ” with a sermon of a prominent member of the New England clergy in order to illustrate how differing theological principles led to different positions on the American Revolution.

Table 1 provides a list of Zubly’s Helvetius essays.  The first thing to notice is that there are nine Helvetius essays listed in the table.  Prior to the research for this paper it was thought that Zubly had written only seven essays under the pseudonym Helvetius.[ii]  The research for this paper uncovered two additional essays.  Essays “Number VIII” and “Number IX” are the newly discovered essays.  “Number VIII” appeared in the February 22, 1781, issue of The Royal Georgia Gazette and consisted of Zubly’s 1776 speculations on what might be the various outcomes of the various possible actions of the British and the Americans.  “Number IX” appeared in the May 24, 1781, issue and in that essay Zubly compared the “situation, means, hopes, and prospects” of the colonies in January 1776 with that of the colonies in January 1781.[iii]

Each essay that appeared in The Royal Georgia Gazette, was titled using a method whereby the first essay’s title was “Number I”, the second essay’s title was “Number II”, etc.  There is no known surviving copy of The Royal Georgia Gazette that has one of Zubly’s Helvetius essays with the title “Number V”.  This paper makes the claim that Zubly’s essay “Number V” has been located.  The evidence for that claim will now be presented.

TABLE 1:  The Nine Helvetius Essays

RGG =  The Royal Georgia Gazette; SCGA = The South-Carolina and Georgia Almanack for the year of Our Lord 1781.

            Table 1 shows that the fifth essay was printed in The South-Carolina and Georgia Almanack for the year of Our Lord 1781 under the title “On Rebellion.”  The author of this “On Rebellion” essay was Helvetius.[iv]  Regarding essay “Number V” two questions need to be answered.  The first question is, was there a fifth essay?  The second question is, if there was a fifth essay, what evidence is there that the “On Rebellion” essay is that fifth essay? 

In the first four essays Zubly presented a case, based on the law of nations, that the Americans were not engaged in a legal revolution but were perpetrating an illegal rebellion that violated the laws of nature and reason.   In “Number VI”, Zubly referred to the four essays in which he made this secular case when he wrote,  “In my former numbers I have insinuated that unlawful resistance to lawful government is rebellion.”  Also, in “Number VI”, Zubly wrote, “I have also produced a case from holy writ, by which what is deemed rebellion in scripture is most clearly determined.”[v]  The first four essays do not refer to scripture and do not make a case from scripture.  Therefore, this case from scripture must have been made in an essay other than one of the first four.  The text of “Number VI” provides us with the evidence that there was an essay “Number V” and that this essay was one in which Zubly made his “case from holy writ.” 

Table 2 shows the essays that were published in 1780.  Some of the essays included a date at the end of the essay.  If a date appeared at the end of the essay, it is in the table under the column “Essay Date.”  The column “RGG Issue Number” shows the issue number of The Royal Georgia Gazette in which the essay appeared.  The column “Publication Date” shows the date of the newspaper.  If there was a “Number V” then it was likely to have been printed or intended to be printed in one of The Royal Georgia Gazette issue numbers 81 or 82. 

TABLE 2:  The Search for Number V[vi]

We do have evidence that there were some difficulties encountered in printing the essays.  In issue 83 of The Royal Georgia Gazette there is a letter from Helvetius to James Johnston, the publisher of that newspaper.  In this letter, Helvetius noted that his “last number, dated Sept. 13” was not printed because the paper chose to use the available space to print important news about the war.  “Number VI” also appeared in issue 83.  “Number VI” is dated September 13.[vii]  Was “Number VI” the essay that was not printed because of the war news?  If so, then that would mean that it was likely that “Number V” was printed in issue number 81 and “Number VI” was the “last number” mentioned in the letter and was bumped from issue number 82 to issue number 83.  This reading of the evidence may be accurate.  However, the missing issues, numbers 81 and 82, prevent us from knowing for sure. 

This paper proposes the following reading of the evidence.  When he wrote the Helvetius essays, Zubly was living in Charleston.  He had left Savannah for Charleston in May 1779 and would not return until April 1781. Zubly had to send the essays from Charleston to the paper in Savannah.  When Zubly sent “Number VI” he did so along with the letter that appeared in issue 83.  The “previous number” referred to in the letter was “Number V” and that essay was also dated September 13.  When Zubly discovered that “Number V” was not printed in The Royal Georgia Gazette, he took the essay to the offices of The South-Carolina and Georgia Almanack.  The offices of this publication were in Charleston.  The publisher of this almanac was John Tobler, brother of Zubly’s first wife, Anne, who was the mother of all of Zubly’s children.[viii]  Tobler published “Number V” in his almanac for 1781 as “On Rebellion”. 

If this reading of the evidence has any credibility then the text of “On Rebellion” should provide evidence that this essay belongs with the essays published in The Royal Georgia Gazette. The text of “On Rebellion” referred to previous essays in which the author made a case based on non-scriptural sources.  The “On Rebellion” Helvetius wrote, “In a proceeding number I have shown how this question must be decided upon principles of the laws of nations.”[ix]  From this statement, it is clear that “On Rebellion,” was not a stand-alone essay but rather was part of a series of essays.  Also, the topic of those other essays referred to in “On Rebellion” was the same as the topic of the first four essays published in The Royal Georgia Gazette.  In the essay “On Rebellion” Helvetius made a case from scripture that the Americans were engaged in an illegal rebellion:  “I shall now barely lay before my readers the express words of the inspired historians.”[x] Thus, the topic of “On Rebellion” was the same as what the topic of our investigation above determined that “Number V” should have been.  This evidence indicates that “On Rebellion” was the missing “Number V” essay.  Additionally, “On Rebellion” fits within the flow of argument of the essays printed in The Royal Georgia Gazette.  Not only does “On Rebellion” continue Zubly’s criticism of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense begun in “Number IV” but when Zubly’s argument is considered in light of federal theology, the place of “On Rebellion” as part of Zubly’s Helvetius essays is assured.

Over breakfast on the morning of March 19, 1773, Zubly and a Mr. Martin “disputed much about Mr Bellamy’s Scheme.”  Mr. Martin commented upon Zubly’s recently published, The Nature of that Faith without which it is impossible to please God.  He said that Zubly had managed to scold Bellamy but that Zubly failed to provide an answer to Bellamy’s argument.  In his breakfast conversation with Mr. Martin, Zubly “spoke of scholastick Divinity with disapprobation,” apparently, though, without much effect on Mr. Martin.  Zubly finally asked Mr. Martin, probably out of some sense of frustration, “how many Schoolmen he had read.”[xi]

In his 1772 pamphlet, The Nature of that Faith, Zubly defended the religious doctrines of James Hervey, David Wilson, Walter Marshall, and William Cudworth against the criticisms of Joseph Bellamy.  Bellamy had published these criticisms in his 1763 work A Blow at the Root Of the Refined Antinomianism Of the present Age.   A Blow at the Root was a continuation of a debate begun in 1759 when Bellamy published a volume titled Theron, Paulinus, and Aspasio or Letters and Dialogues, Upon the Nature of Love to God, Faith in Christ, Assurance of a Title to eternal Life.  The occasion for Bellamy’s Theron, Paulinus, and Aspasio was the publication in 1757 of Hervey’s Theron and Aspasio: or a Series of Dialogues and Letters, upon the most important and interesting subjects. Wilson’s 1762 two volume work, Palaemon’s Creed Reviewed and Examined, and Cudworth’s 1762 work A Defence of Mr. Hervey’s Dialogues Against Mr. Bellamy’s Theron, Paulinus, and Aspasio defended Hervey’s Theron and Aspasio from Bellamy’s criticisms.  Marshall, a seventeenth century Puritan, who died in 1691, wrote The Gospel-Mystery of Sanctification.  This work was published in 1692 and is part of this debate because in his Theron and Aspasio, Hervey, by way of Aspasio, wrote that Gospel-Mystery is next to the Bible in importance.  Hervey had Aspasio saying “It has been made one of the most useful books to my own soul.”[xii] Table 3 lists, in order of publication year, the authors and works involved in this dispute.

TABLE 3:  Authors and Works

            In the fall of 1774, Henry Melchior Muhlenberg, a Lutheran minister from Pennsylvania, described Zubly’s library as “a fine collection of old and new books, the like of which I have seldom seen in America.”[xiv]  Zubly estimated that the number of books in his library were in excess of 2000 volumes. Those who were made uneasy by Zubly’s opposition to independence, “tore in pieces without regard to Bibles or religious books of any kind, & threw in the river” this extensive library. [xv]  The destruction of Zubly’s papers and books has created some challenges for any attempt to reconstruct his religious thought.  It would be helpful to know which if any of the above works Zubly had actually read and what notes he might have made regarding those works.   However, notwithstanding the absence of these materials, we are able to construct some possibilities regarding what Zubly might have read and his views regarding what he had read.

            Since in The Nature of That Faith Zubly quoted directly from A Blow At the Root, it is safe to say that Zubly had a copy of Bellamy’s work, had read it, and opposed the theology in that book.  Zubly himself called into question whether or not he had read the other works when he wrote,  “I am not possessed of the writings he [Bellamy] finds so much fault with.”[xvi]  Did Zubly ever have in his possession these writings and is there evidence that he was familiar with the theology of these works?  The fourth column of Table 3 shows the month and year that the volumes involved in this dispute became available for sale in Savannah.  For example, in the November 17, 1763, issue of The Georgia Gazette, Hervey’s Theron and Aspasio was listed in an advertisement of books for sale at the printer’s office.  Thus, we know that the works of Hervey, Marshall, and Wilson were available in Savannah in the 1760’s.  

            Scrutiny of the dates in column 4 highlights an item of some interest.  Hervey’s Theron and Aspasio first appeared in Savannah in November 1763.  Recalling the discussion above concerning Hervey’s recommendation of Marshall’s Gospel-Mystery found in Theron and Aspasio, the books listed for sale in the March 19, 1764, issue of The Georgia Gazette reveal a possible clue.  Marshall’s Gospel-Mystery is an item in the list of books for sale found in that issue of the paper.  This raises the possibility that someone acted on Hervey’s recommendation after having read Theron and Aspasio when it became available in November 1763, and then requested Marshall’s work, which was delivered in March 1764.  Thus, there is evidence that the works of Hervey, Marshall, and Wilson were available in Savannah, that the theology in those works found an audience in Savannah, and that, based on Zubly’s vigorous defense of this theology in The Nature of that Faith, there were in Savannah supporters of the Calvinist and Puritan tradition represented by those works.  It is within this tradition that Zubly’s understanding of federal theology, his belief that New Divinity preachers such as Bellamy were “schoolmen”, and his opposition to the American Revolution may be understood.[xvii]

Federal theology holds that there are two covenants:  the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.[xviii]  When God created Adam, He established the covenant of works.  God promised to Adam and all his posterity eternal life if Adam would obey God’s law perfectly. Adam violated God’s law, he sinned, and God condemned him and all of his posterity to death.  God then made a second covenant called the covenant of grace.  As Adam was the federal head of the covenant of works, Jesus Christ was the federal head of the covenant of grace.  God sent Christ to fulfill the covenant of works thereby satisfying God and fulfilling man’s obligation from that first covenant.  The covenant of grace required only that man accept Jesus Christ as his savior by way of faith.[xix] 

The main points of federal theology that are required for understanding Zubly’s Helvetius essays are:

                     i.       God is omnipotent and has predetermined all events including who will be saved and who will be reprobated.[xx]

                   ii.       No person can know who is saved and who is reprobated, therefore, the gospel should be preached to all in order to make sure that all of those God has chosen as his elect are brought to God through Christ.[xxi]

                  iii.       Men have the freedom to make choices within their own sphere and are morally accountable for those choices.  Men, in their fallen state will choose evil and violate God’s law.  The fallen sinful state of man is “derived and propagated from” Adam.[xxii]   

                 iv.       God will direct history according to the relationship his elect have with him.  Peace, prosperity, and liberty are the benefits that God bestows on his elect when they are with Him through Christ.  War, hunger, and tyranny are the penalties God visits upon his elect when they reject the Gospel.[xxiii]

                   v.       Men, who have been regenerated by accepting the gift of life offered by God through Christ, will exhibit evidence, in their day to day activities.  This evidence will be some sign of obeying the law that was written on the heart of all men at the time of the covenant of works.[xxiv]

Within the Reformed tradition, federal theology was developed to resolve the tensions between the concept of an all-powerful and all knowing God, the first item in the above list, and man’s freedom to sin, the third item in the above list.[xxv]

In the Helvetius essay “Number IV” Zubly identified Paine’s Common Sense “as a national sentiment” of America because it enjoyed “private and public sanction by individuals and legislatures” and because “experience has but too clearly proved how universally it has been adopted.”  Zubly quoted from Common Sense passages that call for the Americans to never forgive or forget the actions of the British during the war.  In Common Sense Paine wrote that the injuries suffered at the hands of the British are those that “Nature cannot forgive.”   God, according to Paine, “has implanted” in the Americans’ hearts the desire for revenge.  “As well can the lover forgive the ravisher of his mistress,” wrote Paine, “as the continent forgive the murders of Britain.”  For Paine these feelings for revenge were the “guardians of his [God’s] image in our hearts,” and were what “distinguish us from the common herd of animals.”   Those who called for peace and eventual reconciliation with the British were, according to Paine, “unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank in life, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant.”[xxvi]

In response to the sentiments of Paine, the common sense of the nation, Zubly replied, “No other brains could have produced so exotick a plant, and no other ground or season could have nursed and fostered it to maturity.”  Zubly noted that “inextinguishable animosity is avowed as a national character, and they glory in it.”  For Zubly it was an “execrable blasphemy” to put the image of God into the heart of “beings thus nearly resembling devils, and superior to beasts by a diabolical temper only!”  Zubly then recommended the writings of the Enlightenment philosopher Emmerich de Vattel over the common sense found in Paine’s work.[xxvii]

In The Law of Nations; or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, Vattel called the law of nature those rules determined “by studying the nature of things” which when followed will “obtain the most perfect happiness” that man may achieve.[xxviii]  According to Zubly, the law that God had given to man was the natural law.  This law had been written on men’s heart, “their conscience also bearing witness” to this fact.[xxix]  Vattel’s Law of Nations, for Zubly, applied reason in the study of nature in order to determine the nature of the natural law. Zubly used Vattel’s Law of Nations as a measuring rod to determine if Paine’s Common Sense and those who supported the revolution, were obeying God’s law as laid down in the covenant of works.  “’The Law of Nature recommends peace, concord, and charity, and obliges to attempt the mildest methods of terminating difference,’” Zubly quoted from Vattel in “Number II” when he argued that the Americans had not exhausted all possible peaceful methods for resolving the crisis.  In answer to Paine’s observations of what separated men from beasts, Zubly, in “Number IV,” quoted Vattel, “A rational being is to terminate his differences by rational methods, whereas to decide them by force is proper to beasts.”[xxx]  In the first four Helvetius essays, Zubly built his case that the Americans were violating God’s law, that natural law that God wrote on the hearts of all men, using what an Enlightenment scholar had determined that law to consist of.  For Zubly, this meant that God’s elect in America, by supporting an illegal rebellion, had shown signs of rejecting God’s covenant of grace. 

During the Stamp Act Crisis, Zubly had noted that, the Americans had behaved as Christians.  The reformed Americans, according to Zubly, who obeyed God’s law during that crisis, brought God’s intervention “to set the justice of the American complaints in its true light, and to excite us able and worthy friends to stand up as noble champions for our cause.”  However, the actions of the Americans in the rebellion, according to Zubly, were courting God’s intervention in a different way.   At the end of “Number IV” Zubly used the words found in Psalm 9.12 when he wrote “yet God at last will make inquisition for blood,”[xxxi] making reference to the penalty that the Americans will pay for rejecting God and His law.  This allusion was an appropriate lead in for the next essay, “Number V.”  In that essay, Zubly made the case from “holy writ” that God would punish those who violated his laws.

In Common Sense, Paine used the Biblical story told in 1 Samuel 8 to make a case that a monarchical form of government violated God’s law.  Paine concluded that this story proved that “Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews.”[xxxii]  Zubly would have disagreed completely with this reading of the gospels.  Zubly thought that the gospel did not make any judgement regarding the form of government that man might live under.  “[I]t is a known rule, Evangelium non tollit politias, the gospel makes no alteration in the civil state,”[xxxiii] Zubly wrote.  Instead, according to Zubly, God acts in history based on the elects’ relationship to God.  “Let us lay it down as an unerring rule, that national sins pave the way to national calamities and changes.”[xxxiv]  For Zubly, the form of government that a people live under is the result of two factors:  (1) the conditions of the relationship of God’s elect to God and (2) the form of government suitable to the nature and preferences of the people.  Thus for Zubly, the lesson from “holy writ” was not to be found in 1 Samuel 8, rather the lesson from “holy writ” for the Americans was to be found in the story of the rebellion of the 10 tribes told in 1 King 12 and in 2 Chronicles 10.  In this Biblical story, Jeroboam leads a rebellion against the oppressive King Rehoboam.  According to Zubly both earned the displeasure of God since both acts violated God’s laws.  Zubly determined this by looking at how God acted in history.  Since, Zubly noted, God made sure that “there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all their days,” God disapproved of the actions of both the oppressors and of the rebels.  Additionally, the tribes that rebelled, Zubly explained, suffered even further, “[I]n the revolted tribes there appears nothing more common than a series of violence, idolatry, conspiracy, and murder, of all their rulers.” [xxxv]  

Zubly’s interpretation of the story of the 10 tribes differed significantly from that given by the New England minister Jonathan Edwards the Younger.  This Jonathan Edwards was the son of the senior Jonathan Edwards, who was colonial America’s greatest preacher and theologian.  In a 1775 sermon titled “Submission to Rulers,” Edwards referred to the same Biblical story that Zubly used in “Number V.”  Unlike Zubly, Edwards preached that this Biblical story provided evidence that God approved of the American Revolution.  For Edwards, the story of the ten tribes was one that taught that the scriptures “contain those plain facts which so evidently of themselves justify resistance in some cases” and that this resistance was “pleasing to God.”  Edwards noted of the rebellion of the ten tribes, that “they are never once blamed for this conduct.”  Therefore, Edwards concluded, God approved of this rebellion.[xxxvi]  For Edwards, it was important that God nowhere explicitly condemned the rebellion led by Jeroboam.  For Zubly, however, God condemned both Jeroboam and Rehoboam for violating God’s law.  God’s act of inflicting on their respective kingdoms war, violence, murder, and conspiracy indicated this condemnation. 

In Theron, Paulinus, and Aspasio Bellamy wrote that what was needed to assure that one was saved was “legal proof…a proof that will stand in Law, a Proof the Bible allows to be good.”[xxxvii]  For Zubly, what was new about the New Divinity was that those New England divines, like Bellamy and Edwards, viewed the Bible as a legal document, from which man could, on his own, determine if his actions merited God’s favor.  For Zubly, the divines of the New Divinity had abandoned the over 200 year old reformed tradition of viewing the Gospel in terms of man’s relationship to God through faith in Christ.  According to this tradition, man could not hope to obey God’s law without a proper relationship with God through Christ.  The morality of man’s actions was a result of this relationship with God and would be judged by God, not man.  God would indicate his judgement in history.  Thus, Zubly concluded, the scholastic divines such as Bellamy and Edwards had misled the Americans and as a result “[r]eligion…seems nearly annihilated” in America,  “the people do not want it[the gospel],” [xxxviii] and God was punishing the Americans with British tyranny, death, and destruction.