John Wise, forerunner of the forefathers

 

John Wise was born in Essex, Massachusetts colony in 1652 of an indentured servant father, who had gained passage to Boston by enslaving himself for 7 years.  These were the earliest days of New England when it was entirely agricultural, a far-out place of a guaranteed hard life.  Young John was exceptionally smart and attended the first college of America, Harvard, getting a degree in Divinity and became pastor at Ipswich, just north of Boston. He was a parson pig farmer as well.  He immediately became the community leader.  At one point a number of men on a ship were reported to have been overwhelmed by pirates. Wise led a community prayer and concluded, “Lord if there is no other way to bring these men home safely, allow them to rise up against the pirates and kill them.”  The next day, the crew came walking home, having done just that.

 British kings were always suspicious of the Puritans of Massachusetts, and James II appointed Sir Edmund Andros governor in 1680.  Massachusetts had a legislature, but Andros abolished it and began to tax.  Wise led a protest, got arrested and was defrocked.  Angry Ipswich citizens wrote the crown that their governor was out of control and James II recalled Andros. Thereupon, pig farmer Wise was elected to a commission to reorganize state government. But more than that, he sued the judge who had acted as a puppet for detaining him against habeas corpus of the Magna Carta. Wise won. When the Salem witch trials began Wise penned that they violated due process of law and the trials should be stopped.  He argued that the Bible gives you the right to face your accuser and  testimony cannot be coerced (Prov.18).

In 1710, Increase Mather published a pamphlet advocating a hierarchy to rule churches in Massachusetts.  Wise disagreed and published his own ideas of more democratic and autonomous churches and helped defeat Mather’s proposals.  Seven years later he published A Vindication of the Government of New England Churches, a work that outlined his liberal concepts concerning both civil and church governments. Strongly influenced by Whig political theory, it had a significant influence on patriot leaders of the American Revolution. In Vindication, he claimed that all are God’s children, whether slave or free, worthy of protection by leaders and the law.  He argued that any tax without representation of the people taxed was not right.  He was a very readable author. Wise and Ipswich are sometimes labeled “the birthplace of the American Revolution.” Massachusetts native, President Calvin Coolidge said that Wise’s Vindication was like a text in governing for the Founding Fathers.

Finally we might ask how many pastors do we know today or Christians who would stand up for Rights and protest illegal taxation to the point of being thrown in jail.  Religion and free speech have been protected so long in America.  But elsewhere in the world they often aren’t. One reason they exist in USA is due to men like John Wise.