Hark, by their hymns directed on the road,
The gladsome Shepherds find the nascent God!
And view the infant conscious of his birth,
Smiling bespeak salvation to the earth!
For when the important Aera first drew near
In which the great Messiah should appear
And to accomplish His redeeming love
Resign a while his glorious throne above.39
And as an adult, he could likewise speak openly of Christmas: “I hope the next Christmas will prove happier than the present....”40 “...I may on these accounts venture to hope that you will spend a happy and merry Christmas....”41 And pray as Washington did on Christmas Day, on December 25, 1770. This year Christmas fell on a Tuesday. His entry for this date says, “Went to Pohick Church and returnd to Dinner.” Christmas Sundays in the Anglican tradition were also Sundays when the Lord’s Supper was celebrated.
The Nativity of our Lord, or the Birthday of Christ, Commonly called Christmas-Day. The Collect: Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
And soldiers and congressman together can affirm “the enlightening sounds of the Gospel”42 that declare that “above all ... he hath diffused the glorious light of the gospel, whereby, through the merits of our gracious Redeemer, we may become the heirs of his eternal glory.”43 And so people can prepare for death by writing, as George Washington did in his youth, as he copied a “Form of a Short Will.”
In the Name of God, Amen. The Sixth Day of Oct. In the year of our Lord, 1744, I, A.B. being Sick and Weak of Body but of Sound Judgment and Memory (thanks to God Therefore) Remembering the mortality of my body knowing that it is Determined for all men once to die, Doe make and ordain this my last Will and Testament, That is to say Principally and first of all I recommend my Soul to God Who gave it hoping for salvation in and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, and my body to have buried in a decent manner ....44
Thus “Ministers of the Gospel”45 have the duty to “prepare [men] for the other world.”46 They do this by “instructing the ignorant and reclaiming the devious,”47 “propagating the gospel”48 and seeking “to Christianize”49 non-believers. “Sin”50 and “evil men” exist.51 “Sinners”52 express their “nature”53 through “iniquity,”54 “depravity,”55 “rascality”56 and failure to heed “conscience.”57 Thus, men fail to keep their “duties to God and man.”58
But, because God is “powerful to save,”59 “we must place a confidence in that Providence who rules great events, trusting that out of confusion he will produce order, and, notwithstanding the dark clouds, which may threaten at present, that right will ultimately be established.”60 He is the “the Sovereign Dispenser of life and health”61 and the “Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and Sovereign Arbiter of Nations.”62 He rules from a “throne of grace,”63 extending grace,64 and mercy,65 from a propitious66 heaven for the “professors of Christianity” who seek the “most direct plainest and easiest” “road to heaven.”67
Washington’s copied childhood poem described the work of the cross with these words:
Beneath our form every woe sustain
And by triumphant suffering fix His reign
Should for lost man in tortures yield his breath,
Dying to save us from eternal death!
Oh mystick Union! Salutary grace!
Incarnate God our nature should embrace!
That Deity should stoop to our disguise!
That man recovered should regain the skies!
Dejected Adam! From thy Grave ascend
And view the Serpent’s Deadly Malice end,
Adorring bless th’Almighty’s boundless grace
That gave his son a ransome for thy race!68
As an adult, Washington described the work of the cross with these words: “The blessed religion revealed in the Word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institutions may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest of purposes.”69 (emphasis ours)
But “the seventh, now called the first day”70 of the week” has come. And so, Washington was trained as a fourteen-year-old to determine the annual celebration of Easter each year.71 In 1768, Easter fell on April 3rd. Washington’s diary for that date says, “Went to Pohick church and returnd to Dinner.” The prayer that Washington said that Easter Sunday from the Book of Common Prayer affirmed a hearty belief in the resurrection of Christ:
Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.72
The need for justification before God was implied by Washington when he used phrases like “answerable to God,”73 “so much to answer for,”74 and “justifiable in the eyes of God and men.”75 He declared, “God alone is the Judge of the Hearts of Men, and to him only in this Case, they are answerable.”76 And men have “much to answer for,” since their judge is “the supreme Arbiter of human events.”77 Washington warned of “the aggravated vengeance of heaven,”78 and referenced the “torment of a mental hell,”79 “the powers of hell,”80 as well as the reality of “blessing and curse.”81 Washington’s view of the curse seems to include a curse after death, as suggested by Washington’s phrase “the bitterest curse this side of the grave”82 and his statement that “Conscience again seldom comes to a Mans aid while he is in the zenith of health, and revelling in pomp and luxury upon ill gotten spoils; it is generally the last act of his life and comes too late to be of much service to others here, or to himself hereafter.”83
Thus, Washington and the leaders of the new nation believed that men needed “with united Hearts and Voice unfeignedly [to] confess their Sins before God, and supplicate the all wise and merciful disposer of events,”84 and “to implore the Lord, and Giver of all victory, to pardon our manifold sins and wickedness’s.”85 And “that he would in mercy look down upon us, pardon our sins and receive us into his favor....”86
In view of God’s great Providential care for the nation, Washington asserted that faith and gratitude were necessary, “The Hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations...”87 Washington joyfully wrote to his friend Marquis de Lafayette, drawing on their shared understanding of Christian teaching on sin and forgiveness: “I stand before you as a Culprit: but to repent & be forgiven are the precepts of Heaven: I do the former, do you practice the latter, and it will be participation of a divine attribute.”88
The Gospel message was so well understood that even soldiers utilized words such as “atonement,”89 “forgiveness,”90 and “pardon”91 to describe their work. So these truths called for men to become “Christian soldiers,”92 to be “more of a man and of a Christian,”93 and to seek one’s highest glory by adding to their character “the more distinguished character of Christian.”94 The work of the “Holy Spirit”95 was recognized and so Washington could speak of “all the workings of the spirit within,”96 “a Christian-like spirit,”97 “a true Christian Spirit,”98 and the “pure spirit of Christianity,”99 as well as praying that God would grant “spirit” to his army.100 Thus, there was the duty to be a “true Christian,”101 whose life was manifested not in “profligate morals, etc.,”102 but in “true piety.”103 Christians and Christianity were the friends of government in Washington’s mind: “While just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government its surest support.”104
Christians were to be active in the support of the government since “true religion affords to government its surest support,”105 and “religion and morality are indispensable supports for political happiness.”106 But because “the path of true piety is so plain,”107 no direction for religion per se was provided in the “Magna-Charta” or Constitution of America.108 So as the Christian seeks to live with the desire to be “justifiable in the eyes of God and man,”109 he seeks a “glorious immortality,”110 a “future happiness,”111 and “happiness hereafter”112 in “the world of spirits,”113 “the other world.”114 He knows there is a promised millennium,115 a last trump,116 and that when men die, they are facing a “life eternal.”117 He can sooth his conscience by awaiting the approbation of the Supreme Being.118
CONCLUSION
This summation of Washington’s theology is the Christian Gospel pure and simple. Washington’s expressed beliefs presented here are utterly inconsistent with Deism. Even if the arrangement of Washington’s theological themes assembled here is deficient, the sheer weight of the volume of the Gospel concepts affirmed by Washington and expressed in his own words militate against any claim of Washington’s Deism. The evidence is clear; Washington spoke with consistency and conviction in terms of the Christian Gospel. He could not have been a Deist. There is not a word of unbelief in the Christian faith in the entire body of Washington’s writings. The claim for Washington’s Deism is a myth without a single word of substantiation.
THIRTY TWO
George Washington and Forgiveness:
A Consideration of the Historicity of Two Classic Washington Anecdotes on Forgiveness
