RP Pastor James R. WiIlson is more than slightly ahead of his time, as seen in the following excerpts from his book, Political Danger.

From “Essay on Tolerance”

There is perhaps no word in the English language more abused than the word “tolerance.” If a writer is found vigorously supporting any cause which he believes to be right, and endeavoring to show that the opposite must be wrong, he is immediately styled intolerant. This is more especially the case in matters of religion. If he is firmly persuaded that the system of doctrines he believes is the system of the Bible, he is considered a bigot. If he endeavors to demonstrate that anything is error, he is marked for intolerance. (p 141)

Does “tolerance” mean dispensing with God’s law?

Is it meant by tolerance, that the divine law in every case, or in some cases, ought to be dispensed with? that there is no divine law? or if there be, that it ought not to be acted upon? What is this thing called tolerance? Again, what is intolerance? Is it a contending that God has a right to rule—that He has actually given laws—and that they ought to be obeyed? Is the man an intolerant man who contends that God has given laws to the universe? Some men would exclude religion from having any place in the world; but the modern vocabulary of tolerance and intolerance seems disposed to exclude the Almighty Himself from having any rule in His own creation. (p. 142)

From “Civil Government”

Civil government is an ordinance instituted by the God of Heaven, as the Creator and moral governor of the world.

There is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God (Rom. 13:1). He (the civil ruler) is God’s minister (Rom. 13:4). Civil power, whether viewed as the object of knowledge and research and as embodying in itself the great and immutable principles of moral order in society, or as invested in civil officers authorized to act in its administration, is from God.

It emanates from Him as the Supreme ruler of those moral subjects whom He creates, upholds and governs. It must be viewed as springing from the moral attributes of God, on the hypothesis of His creating beings possessing such moral constitutions as those of men. It respects man not as an individual merely, but as endowed with social faculties and propensities whose powers cannot be evolved and whose happiness cannot be complete, but in a state of society.

The Creator, having imparted to man his whole moral and social constitution, must from the very nature of his attributes, place him under the obligation of such an institution as is favorable to the development of the whole, moral excellency of which his nature is susceptible. Such an institution is civil government. It grows out of the very relation that naturally and necessarily exists between God and intellectual, moral creatures, and the relations existing among these creatures towards one another.

This view of the subject, given us by the inspired apostle, discovers the absurdity of the claims of tyrants and usurpers, who wage war with the human family, with the inherent rights of men, with the moral laws of God, and even with God Himself; and yet claim to be of God, ordained of God; as though God could be the Author of tyranny and usurpation; and had authorized them to trample underfoot every moral precept written on the constitution of man, and recorded more distinctly and emphatically in the Holy Scriptures. Such claims the Holy Ghost, in the Apocalypse, instructs us to consider as blasphemy. “And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and I saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy” (Rev. 13:1)…On every one of these heads is written the name of blasphemy.

The head characterizes the beast. Why inscribed with this motto? Why does blasphemy constitute the essence of all these governments? That it does so, no Bible believer can doubt; for they are all so labelled by the Holy Ghost. They claim to be of God and His ordinance and pretend that all their deeds of iniquity are authorized by Him…Thus they open their mouths in blasphemy against Heaven, by pretending that, by the grace of God, they have received their authority from Him, to oppress the nations and practice all their evil deeds. Thus they assert that their power is from God, while in fact the devil gives them their power and their seat and authority (Rev. 13:2). How could they blaspheme with greater emphasis?

That power that is from God bears not the sword in vain; he is an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil. He is a terror to evildoers and a praise to them that do well—God’s minister, attending continually to this very thing (Rom. 13:3-6). When government in its origin and administration is the very reverse of all this, and yet pretends to be the ordinance of God, how greatly does it attempt to dishonor Him!

Again, all power is of God—the powers that be are ordained of God—and instructs us that they err, who consider all civil power as originating from the people and not from God. Those who set up governments without any reference to the authority of the Lord God Omnipotent, and without admitting the truth that He reigneth, rebel against Jehovah.

What! all power of God, and God not acknowledged by the power! What! the powers that be ordained of God, and yet no mention of His authority in those constitutions that form the basis on which the superstructure of the commonwealths is erected!…

Tyrants, to suit their nefarious designs upon the human race, ascribe all their public crimes and the whole structure of their iniquitous, blooderected thrones, to Heaven; while infidel nations rebel against God by ascribing in the pride of their hearts all authority to themselves. We are the fountain, say they. This is great Babylon, that we have built for the honor of our might, and for the glory of our majesty.

It will remain a truth that heaven and earth pass away, that all power is of God, that the powers that be are ordained of God—a holy God who will never set His seal to transgression, will never give the sanction of His investiture to thrones of iniquity, never permit any Nebuchad­nezzar to lift up his heart, and harden his mind in pride, without deposing him from his kingly throne, and taking his glory from him: for all power is of God.

Again, all power is of God, i.e., all civil power is of God, as Creator. Before Satan fell—and he fell before man—there were thrones, principalities, powers, and dominions in Heaven. He that is now the prince of the power of the air was once seated on one of these thrones. He was Lucifer, a morning star (Isa. 14:12).

In the celestial hierarchy the power was and is of God for perfecting the glorious system of moral order which regulates the vast concerns of the commonwealth of angels. We call it indeed a hierarchy, but it did not grow out of the plan of redemption; for it existed before that plan commenced its administration, and though now among all other things, it is subjected to the Messiah, the head of the new covenant, yet it was originally administered by God essentially, as Creator.

Before man fell the essence of all civil power in this world resided in the first Adam. He was made head of his wife and endowed with authority, which would have embraced his sons and daughters had they been born to him before his fall. He had subjected to him all sheep and oxen, fowls of the air, fish of the sea.The authority necessary for the exercise of government over subordinate moral agents, and over all earthly property was conferred on him by his Creator. All power is of God. (pp 94-96)

Shaking of the Nations

—The weapons of the enemy—

That system of universal, unlimited and rueful toleration, which now prevails over the face of the whole earth. There can be no hesitation that this is one of the wiles which the cunning and crooked serpent hatched in the midnight darkness of the Tartarian regions, to support the tottering, anti-Christian earth. The great Dragon long acted the part of “Leviathan, the piercing serpent” (Isa. 27:1). While he could, he wielded the sword of persecution—held the hands of his Innocents, and his Hildebrands of Rome, and of his Louises in France, and of his Stuarts in Britain.

The ancient proverb held true: “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church” [Tertullian]. Satan then began to act the part of a crafty general, who attempts to overreach his enemy by stratagem. He invented toleration. The human mind in its present state is frail. It would avoid Scylla—but in doing so, it is swallowed up in Charybdis. Its transitions from one extreme to another are remarkably rapid. It is also fond of novelty. Vain man would be “wise in his own conceit” (Prov. 26:5, 12; 28:11). Hence, from the bloody fields of persecution, Satan led with ease deluded mortals, into the garnished bed of authoritative toleration—the bed of spiritual adultery. This intoxicating potion the prince of darkness put into the hand of “mystery, Babylon the great, mother of harlots and abominations of the earth” (Rev. 17:5). “For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies” (Rev. 18:3). Will not the pious soul mourn that so many professors of religion drink freely of this cup?

Here the Christian reader will be ready to inquire, how shall this formidable weapon be turned against anti-Christ? The inquiry is important. For after this beast, all the world wonders. Before it, nearly all the nations in Christendom bow down in idolatrous adoration. It is interwoven in the very texture of their constitutions. Hence, the sword of persecution cannot any more awake. Before this bloody weapon can be drawn from its scabbard, the constitutional fabrics of the nations must be laid prostrate, in ruins.

This affords the friends of righteousness, and of reformation, an opportunity to publish with safety the victorious truths of our holy religion. The false tongue—that sword of calumny is not, indeed, asleep. Its operation, however, to those who publish salvation and raise their vice in behalf of divine truth, is like the barking of the cur at the rising moon. It shall also have its reward, and from its power the saints shall ’ere long be set free:

In my distress to God I cry’d, and he gave ear to me. From lying lips, and guilty tongue, O Lord my soul set free. What shall be giv’n thee? or what shall be done to thee, false tongue? Ev’n burning coals of juniper, sharp arrows of the strong. (Psalm 120:1-4, Scottish Psalter, 1650)

After this solemn and divine malediction, the righteous need not dread the persecution of false tongues. The sword of steel can no more be bathed in the blood of the saints; for by toleration, even by sinful toleration, it is eternally locked in its sheath.

Thus toleration, boundless and shameful as it is—even of the open and avowed blasphemers of the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of His eternal sonship, and His eternal generation—such toleration, I say, is overruled by the God of Heaven, for eternally stopping up the floodgates of bloody persecution. To this allusion is made in Revelation 12:15-16: “And the serpent cast out of his mouth water, as a flood, after the woman, that he might cause her to be carried away with the flood. And the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened her mouth and swallowed up the flood which the dragon had cast out of his mouth.” The flood is persecution. The earth is toleration. It is termed “earth” from its origin, by a figure of speech, which puts the cause for the effect. It is generated in the earthly-mindedness of men. (pp. 31-32)

From “African Slavery”

It is not many years since scarcely anyone could be found who professed to maintain that Negro slavery is justifiable, either by any law of God or by any righteous law of man. A little more than twenty years ago, the speaker travelled extensively through the slaveholding states and almost everywhere introduced this topic into conversation with the slaveholding planters, all or very nearly all of whom he found ready promptly to admit that it was an aggravated moral and political evil, that its existence was deeply to be regretted, and that it must, at some future period, produce the most disastrous results.

At that time these views may be affirmed to have been universal in the free states. The writings of Mr. Jefferson and others in the South, strongly denouncing it as an evil, furnished an index to popular southern sentiment in relation to its iniquity. The published opinions of Franklin, Peters and others, and their doings in the formation of manumission societies, were fully in accordance with the sentiments of all the northern states. Leading men in various denominations of professing Christians harmonized with these views of both northern and southern statesmen.

Slavery was entirely abolished by the Reformed Presbyterian Church about the beginning of the present century. In the first edition of the Presbyterian Confession of Faith, testimony was borne against it as an iniquitous practice. The framers of the Methodist Book of Discipline denounced it as grossly immoral.

But far other times have now come over us. Attempts are made, not to palliate it as an evil of small magnitude, but to vindicate it as a duty founded in the law of nature and ratified by the sanction of the holy Scriptures. Statesmen in the halls of legislation have become its open and avowed advocates. Churchmen in ecclesiastical courts meeting in the name of the church’s Head have assisted in maintaining its claims to be considered just, and denounced opposition to it as uncharitable, unrighteous and incendiary.

The pulpit has entered into the advocacy of its claims to the favor both of God and man. In the church many honorable and noble exceptions there are, of ministers of the gospel and of ecclesiastical bodies, that with enlightened zeal magnanimously stand forth in vindication of the rights of the oppressed, against the denunciations of men in high places and against the ungovernable fury of tumultuous rioters.

Though there has been a variety of opinion among the apologists and advocates of slavery, yet it is evident that all these are becoming merged in one—that it is no sin! Indeed, they must all come to this, for it is too manifestly absurd to plead for even a day’s continuance of what is an acknowledged violation of the immutable law of Heaven, even when that violation is sanctioned by the authority of human legislation. (pp. 350-351)

From “Tokens of the Divine Displeasure”

Soon after the assembling of the legislature of the state of New York in January 1832, a motion was made in the house of Assembly to abolish the practice of opening the sessions with prayer to almighty God. It had been the practice of both houses, soon after they were organized, to elect as chaplains all the regular clergy of the city of Albany who were pastors of congregations, to officiate in rotation in commencing the daily business by morning prayer.

For this service, all the chaplains together received as a compensation what was equal to the pay of one member of each house, to be distributed equally among them. The whole sum annually appropriated for this purpose amounted to about 750 dollars. To authorize this expenditure a provision was embodied in the revised statutes of the commonwealth.

The motion to dispense with what was called legislative prayer came from the infidel part of the house and was followed up by a protracted and zealous argument on the part of its friends. It was pleaded that many members did not believe in the duty or efficacy of prayer; that they did not attend respectfully while the prayer was offered up; that not a few absented themselves from the House until it was concluded, and that they must either do so or submit to have imposed on them religious services which they did not approve.

These arguments were drawn from facts. So little reverential deportment in devotional acts as in the legislature of New York, was nowhere else seen…The enemies of the Christian religion used also other arguments than these drawn from facts. They appealed to the genius of the Constitution, which they asserted discarded all religion from civil legislation. They argued that infidels and believers in the truth of revealed religion were placed on an equal footing, and that the employing of the ministers of religion to pray in the House was a violation of those rights of conscience which were guaranteed to Deists by the Constitution.

It was said that the people sent them there to make laws, not to pray, and that the time of the legislature, which ought to be employed in the transaction of the people’s business, was uselessly thrown away in prayer. But the argument on which they chiefly relied was that the appropriation of the people’s money to pay chaplains was unconstitutional, as it was a direct support of the Christian religion and gave it a preference over infidelity; whereas all such preference was forbidden by the Constitution. They insisted that church and state were connected by these prayers.

All these reasonings, if they may be honored with that name, were mingled with malevolent insinuations and attacks on the religion of Jesus as fanaticism, and unworthy of the countenance of liberal and enlightened men.

In answer to all these infidel vituperations against Christianity, and on behalf of calling on the God of Heaven for His divine aid in the business of legislation and His blessing on its acts, there was little zeal displayed and not much power of argument. When the vote was taken, however, out of more than 100 members, 27 only voted in the infidel ranks, and the usual election of chaplains took place.

The subject was not touched in the Senate, where indeed, as that body is smaller and the members graver and more aged, there had always been more respectful attention to the morning devotions.

Petitions from the infidel part of the community were got up in various parts of the country and presented to the legislature during the same sessions, praying them to abolish legislative prayer and all the laws of the state respecting the sanctification of the Lord’s Day.…

Soon after the opening of the session of the Assembly on the following January 1833, the motion to abolish prayer to God was renewed. When the question came to a vote, it was found that the number of avowed infidels had increased from 27 to 40. The same temper that had been displayed in the former Assembly was manifested in this; and though a majority still voted for the election of chaplains, it was thought prayers were disagreeable to the greater part of both houses.

After a notice had been served on the clergy of the city that they had been elected to serve as chaplains, a meeting of the city ministers was called; and upon solemn deliberation, it was resolved that they would not accept the offered chaplaincy. The vote was unanimous with the exception of one Methodist minister. It was perceived that every year, the Deists would make the legislature of the state a theatre for the dissemination of their demoralizing and ruinous infidelity; while at the same time it was believed that a great majority of the legislature, were it not for the strong sentiment in favor of Christianity in the commonwealth, would much prefer to have no prayer.

It soon appeared that this judgment of the irreligion of the House was not uncharitable; for the law of the revised statutes, providing for the pay of chaplains, was speedily rescinded, only nine members voting in the negative. Since that time, the voice of prayer has not been heard in the New York halls of legislation, and by a solemn legislative act, all reliance on the God of Israel for His Spirit, aid and blessing in conducting its civil affairs has been cast off, and infidelity has obtained a formal triumph.

Thus is exhibited the painful spectacle of a people greatly prospered in the bounty of Heaven; a people who have the oracles of the living God in nearly every family; a people among whom there are thousands of Christian churches; such a people proclaiming by their representatives in the face of the nations that they do not and will not look to the God of Heaven for His favor or protection as a commonwealth.

What Christian, nay, what Pagan nation has ever done a deed like this? “Pass over the isles of Chittim, and see; and send unto Kedar, and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing: Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be ye horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the Lord. For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jer. 2:10-13).

The principle promulgated in the New York legislature was carried out in the departments of government. In 1832, when the land was threatened with an alarming visitation of God, the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church petitioned the president of the United States to proclaim a fast, that the nation might humble itself before God and implore the divine mercy. He refused to act in the case and assigned in substance the same arguments that had been pleaded in the New York legislature against prayer. It was not, he said, constitutional; it was not accordant with the spirit of the civil institutions of the United States for the chief executive magistrate to call upon the people to humble themselves before God.

The civil rulers of the land could not as such do homage to almighty God or invite the people to bow down before their Maker. Individuals could do so; the church might seek the favor of Heaven; it was all proper, but the nation, in its civil capacity, was prohibited from such acts of devotion by constitutional barriers. (pp. 301-305)

A memorial in New York reads:

In Memory of James R. Willson, D. D., for many years minister of the gospel and pastor of the Reformed Presbyterian Church at Coldenham and Newburgh where most of his public ministry was passed. Called to the office of Professor of Theology by the Synod of the church. He devoted himself to the labours of that HIGH CHARGE with untiring assiduity, earnestness and patience until the infirmities of age hastened by his almost unparalleled toil and unsparing zeal in the service of his REDEEMER forced him to the short retirement which preceded his decease. He closed his career on earth at Coldenham, New York, September 29th, 1853, AGED 73 years & 5 months.