day no. 16,048: the utmost of my endeavor

The youth of Athens were accustomed to taking the following oath in the temple of Aglaura:

"I will fight for religion, for the laws, for the altars, and for our possessions, either alone, or with others; and will do the utmost of my endeavour to leave to posterity our country, at the least, in as good estate as I found it." -- Junius Brutus, Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos

It reminds me of Nehemiah's charge,

"And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses." - Nehemiah 4:14

Men are duty bound to fight for what God has given them responsibility over. They are under a moral obligation to give their lives in order to try to save the lives of those they are obligated to love: wife, children, nation, and Lord. Whether this means fighting the private temptation of selfishness in wanting to stay behind or the public temptation of timidity in wanting to fall back from the front line, it will always require fighting of some kind.

Gratitude requires its benefactors to battle. Grit embodies appreciation and secures for future generations the blessings it freely acknowledges by binding itself to serve in its defense.

We must work hard to honor our ancestors in order to bless our descendants.

"A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.: -- Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay

day no. 16,047: because He rose up and because He sat down

Luke 24:5-6

And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”

Because He is risen, we can sit down and rest knowing that He lived, died, and rose again on our behalf.

Hebrews 10:12

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God

Because He sits at the right hand of the Father, we can stand up and get to work knowing that He intercedes on our behalf.

day no. 16,046: tyrants lop the tops

"A tyrant lops off those ears which grow higher than the rest of the corn, especially where virtue makes them most conspicuously eminent." -- Junius Brutus, Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos

Tyrants like things level.They call it as "equality," but it amounts to leveling. It isn't aimed at raising everyone to the highest goals, but lowering everyone to the lowest denominator. Tyrants hate exceptional men. Tyrants thrive in a kingdom of sycophants and thus create the kind of pecking order they can manage. Since they are utterly outmatched in every capacity other than their willingness to indulge themselves, they can only accomplish this by eliminating those who excel or, where possible, the ambition of excellence altogether.

This observation in Vindiciae immediately called to mind a similar sentiment expressed by C. S. Lewis in Screwtape...

“What I want to fix your attention on is the vast, overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence—moral, cultural, social, or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how Democracy (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient Dictatorships, and by the same methods? You remember how one of the Greek Dictators (they called them ‘tyrants’ then) sent an envoy to another Dictator to ask his advice about the principles of government. The second Dictator led the envoy into a field of corn, and there he snicked off with his cane the top of every stalk that rose an inch or so above the general level. The moral was plain. Allow no pre-eminence among your subjects. Let no man live who is wiser, or better, or more famous, or even handsomer than the mass. Cut them all down to a level; all slaves, all ciphers, all nobodies. All equals. Thus Tyrants could practise, in a sense, ‘democracy’. But now ‘democracy’ can do the same work without any other tyranny than her own. No one need now go through the field with a cane. The little stalks will now of themselves bite the tops off the big ones. The big ones are beginning to bite off their own in their desire to Be Like Stalks.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters: Screwtape Proposes a Toast

In order to equalize God’s creative diversity you must neutralize His diverse creativity. So, while it may appear to be "working" at times, it cannot ultimately work. More to the point, that's biting off a bit more than they can chew.

day no. 16,045: bully-bane

"The tyrant hates and suspects discreet and wise men, and fears no opposition more than virtue as being conscious of his own vicious courses, and esteeming his own security to consist principally in a general corruption of all estates introduces multiplicity of taverns, gaming houses, masks, stage plays, brothel houses, and all other licentious superfluities that might effeminate and bastardize noble spirits." -- Junius Brutus, Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos

A tyrant's only move is to get better men to cuck themselves.

A tyrant cannot go toe-to-toe with a virtuous man, so he must persuade better men to emasculate themselves and spend their strength on puerile entertainments. A tyrant depends on the complicity of better men. He cannot overpower them per se, but he can tempt them, like Delilah, to forfeit their power. He has not hope of knocking them down in open battle, so he must, like Balaam, provide them with a reason to lay down. He must bastardize better men. He must lower the bar beneath his abilities in order to reign over them since he cannot rise to theirs.

Noble men then are the bane of bullies.

Because tyranny is evil, it can only corrupt and because it builds it's kingdom on a negation, it cannot stand under the weight of men who refuse to lie down. 

Psalm 106:30

Phinehas stood up.

day no. 16,044: tradition! or traditionalism?

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."

-- Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition

Tradition is the voice of our ancestors guiding us through their wisdom. Traditionalism is the habits of our ancestors adopted without wisdom. Where the first generation believes, the second assumes, and the third abandons; traditionalism is that second generation operating on the assumptions of their forefathers without, unfortunately, any of their faith. Tradition, however, is the second generation adopting the principles of the past by adapting them to the circumstances of the present. Because it lives in spirit, it can adapt in form, whereas traditionalism is only alive in form without any of the original spirit left in it.

day no. 16,043: the hard work of the wicked will benefit only the elect in the long run

Ecclesiastes 2:24-26

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

God uses the creative industry of the wicked to build an inheritance for the righteous.

Deuteronomy 6:10-15

And when the LORD your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you—with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant—and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. It is the LORD your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear. You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you—for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God—lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and he destroy you from off the face of the earth.

God gave Israel a land full of cities they had not constructed, homes they had not built, wells they had not dug, and fields they had not plowed,

God will one day give the entire earth and all the refined fruits thereof to the meek. At that point, all that the wicked genuinely achieved will be left to the righteous. All that the wicked discover, they lose. All that they conquer, they surrender and will be reopened under new management in the world to come.

All the hard work of the wicked will only benefit the elect in the long run.

day no. 16,042: rights and decrees come before kings

"Seeing then that kings are ordained by God and established by the people to procure and provide for the good of those who are committed unto them, and that this good or profit be principally expressed in two things, to wit, in the administration of justice to their subjects and in the managing of armies for the repulsing their enemies, certainly, we must infer and conclude from this that the prince who applied himself to nothing but his peculiar profits and pleasures or to those ends which most readily conduce thereunto, who condemns and pervert all laws, who uses his subjects more cruelly than the barbarous enemy would do, he may truly and really be called a tyrant" -- Junius Brutus, Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos

Kings are God's servants. They are deacons appointed to serve His people. When they leverage their position of service as a means of forcing others to serve them or when they abandon the duties attending their office, they are in defiance of their God and King. They are rebelling and the people of the kingdom are obedient to Christ in defying them.

Proverbs 31:4-9

It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted. Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress; let them drink and forget their poverty and remember their misery no more. Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.

"If laws be superior to the king and that the king be tied in the same respect of obedience to the laws as the servant is to his master, who will be so senseless, who will not rather obey the law than the king or will not readily yield his best assistance against those who seek to violate or infringe them? ...The king is not lord over the laws." -- Junius Brutus, Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos

Kings are subject to God’s decrees and must be upright when it comes to protecting the God-given rights of his subjects. Kings who do not subject themselves to God’s laws will be the objects of His wrath.

"It will be replied that it is unworthy the majesty of kings to have their wills bridled by laws. But I will say that nothing is more royal than to have our unruly desires ruled by good laws." -- Junius Brutus, Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos

Proverbs 20:28

Steadfast love and faithfulness preserve the king,

and by steadfast love his throne is upheld.

Love and faithfulness keep the King! The king who upholds the law has a throne which is upheld by the Lawgiver.