http://lonang.com/commentaries/conlaw/organizing/laws-of-nature-and-natures-god/THE LINK TO ENGLISH COMMON LAW
The supremacy of God’s law was generally recognized in the English common law. Sir William Blackstone, the preeminent English legal authority widely followed by the American founders, recognized the binding legal nature of the law of God as understood in its basic principles. Blackstone maintained that English law (and therefore, American law) had its roots in the laws of God.
Blackstone recognized that “law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action.” He identified the essential legal relationship that exists between God and his creation by observing, “Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being.”20 God was acknowledged as the lawgiver and therefore the one who laid down certain immutable rules of action, that is, of right and wrong conduct.
Recognizing the relevance of the creation and the Bible, Blackstone noted that “[u]pon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.”21 In other words, the law of God whether written in God’s creation (nature) or in the Bible (revelation), spoke with a unified voice. Moreover, this law is absolute: any law of man to the contrary is of no effect.
Various individuals, peoples, and governments have interpreted God’s laws differently at different times.22 The framers of the American system of government, however, were in one accord in “presuppos[ing] the existence of a God, the moral ruler of the universe, and a rule of right and wrong, of just and unjust, binding upon man, preceding all institutions of human society and government.”23 In other words, the framers recognized that God laid down rules that governed the universe and nations and that these laws could be sufficiently understood because they are communicated by a God who wants people to know them.24 They presupposed a God who is not silent.
President John Quincy Adams, writing in 1839, looked back at the founding period and recognized the true meaning of the Declaration’s reliance on the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” He observed that the American people’s “charter was the Declaration of Independence. Their rights, the natural rights of mankind. Their government, such as should be instituted by the people, under the solemn mutual pledges of perpetual union, founded on the self-evident truths proclaimed in the Declaration.”25
