Intolerable calamities

Walked through one of the four cemeteries in my neighborhood today. Among many heroes of the American Revolutionary War interred here is Reverend Moses Mather. He served as a Patriot in the war, but is most remembered for being snatched out of his church mid-sermon by the British and imprisoned on Long Island for many months before his release in a prisoner exchange. The headstone reads “Death is a debt to nature due which I have paid, and so must you.”

Here’s a section that caught my eye from his essay America’s appeal to the impartial world: 

These unheard of intolerable calamities, spring not of the dust, come not causeless, nor will they end fruitless. They call on the Americans for repentance towards their maker, and vengeance on their adversaries. And can it be a crime to resist? Is it not a duty we owe to our maker, to our country, to ourselves and to posterity? Does not the principle of self-preservation, which is implanted by the author of nature in the human breast, (to operate instantaneous as the lightning, resistless as the shafts of war, to ward off impending danger) urge us to the conflict; add wings to our feet, firmness and unanimity to our hearts, impenetrability to our battalions, and under the influence of its mighty author, will it not render successful and glorious American arms?

It was not a crime to resist in 1775. It is not a crime to resist now.