Fundamental Orders by David Barton

The “Fundamental Orders” explained why that document had been created: Well knowing when a people are gathered together, the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people, there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God. 18 That constitution next declared the colonists’ desire to: Enter into combination and confederation together to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess which, according to the truth of the said Gospel, is now practiced amongst us.

Later that year 1639, when the colonists of Exeter, New Hampshire, established a government, that document similarly declared: Considering with ourselves the holy will of God, and our own necessity that we should not live without wholesome laws and civil government among us, of which we are altogether destitute; do in the name of Christ and in the sight of God combine ourselves together to erect and set up among us such government as shall be to our best discerning agreeable to the will of God.

In 1643, the colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Plymouth, and New Haven joined together to form the New England Confederation America’s first “united” government. These colonies banded together because, as that document explained, each had similar goals: We all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. In 1669, John Locke assisted in the drafting of the Carolina constitution under which no man could be a citizen unless he acknowledged God, was a member of a church, and used no “reproachful, reviling, or abusive language” against any religion.

When Quaker minister William Penn established the 1682 “Frame of Government of Pennsylvania,” he prefaced the document with a lengthy exegesis of the spiritual and Biblical nature of civil government, chronicling its general progress and referring to numerous Scripture references. Penn’s introduction is recommended as excellent supplementary reading.