Fast and Humiliation Proclamations were Calvinist in origin

Jefferson and Virginia looked to Calvinists for fast and Humiliation Proclamations:

"With the help, therefore, of Rushworth, whom we rummaged over for the resolutionary precedents and forms of the Puritans of that day, preserved by him, we made up a resolution, somewhat modernizing their phrases, for appointing the 1st day of June, on which the Port Bill was to commence, for a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, to implore Heaven to avert from us the evils of civil war, to inspire us with firmness in support of our rights, and to turn the hearts of the king and Parliament to moderation and justice."

--Jefferson's Autobiography

Calvin's influence in this country is no less than awesome.

Throckmorton on Dissent

Here's a good one from Warren Throckmorton attacking a Christian nationalist:

"Without banishment due to the intolerance of the dominant Puritans, [Roger] Williams would not have established religious freedom in Rhode Island...The America given to us by the founders is much closer to Roger Williams’ Rhode Island than John Winthrops’ city on a hill. That is a good thing and a story worth telling and retelling."

What's funny about the above quote if it wasn't sad is Williams didn't establish religious freedom in Rhode Island. He persecuted Jews, Catholics, atheists and agnostics. In fact, the founders formed a nation with more religious freedom than Rhode Island did. 

Here's another distortion Throckmorton makes about this article:

"For instance, Metaxas briefly describes the Flushing Remonstrance and Roger Williams’ settlement in Rhode Island. The Flushing document was a petition to the leader of New Netherland settlement Peter Stuyvesant asking for relief from his ban on Quakers. Metaxas rightly heralds this action. However, Metaxas fails to set it in context. Despite the noble purpose, the petition failed and Stuyvesant cracked down on dissent. He jailed two leaders of the petition effort. Others recanted their dissent in the face of punishment."

It's Throckmorton who doesn't put it in context nor does he explain why Stuyvesant cracked down on the dissent, which wasn't dissent at all. Those people violated the laws of Holland and even those of the Toleration Act of 1689. In fact, New Holland commended Stuyvesant's actions. The Quakers were disturbing the peace, preaching in the streets. History proves Stuyvesant was an upright man.

Throckmorton, like the other secularists, fail to understand what dissent really is.

Nature's God is indisputably Jesus Christ and Jehovah

Unfortunately, people write things like this for such an awesome day like July 4th, where God blessed this nation so greatly. It says:

"The Declaration of Independence is not a Christian document. It's a generically theistic document. It mentions a God of some sort in 4 different places. It doesn't mention Jesus, the Trinity, or quote verses and chapters of scripture for its authority."

Yet, the same men who signed the declaration of independence wrote this below just 45 days earlier:

"The Congress...desirous...to have people of all ranks and degrees duly impressed with a solemn sense of God's superintending providence, and of their duty devoutly to rely.... on His aid and direction... do earnestly recommend...a day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer; that we may with united hearts confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions and, by a sincere repentance and amendment of life,...and through the Merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain His pardon and forgiveness."
Journals of Congress (1905), Vol. IV, pp. 208-209, May 17, 1776. [Bold mine]

What does a man say to this? Just what John Calvin told the world about Heshusius:

"The slanderer himself was undeserving of an answer."

Bill Fortenberry's book on Benjamin Franklin

Mr. Fortenberry believes Benjamin Franklin was a Christian. I suppose everyone has a right to their opinion, but his assertion is not my main contention because I always assumed like everyone else the case was cut and dry. I appreciate the time Mr. Fortenberry took to compile all of Franklin's views on Christianity and his interpretation of Franklin's words. Because there are no clear smoking guns on his faith like in the case of Thomas Jefferson, his faith is up for serious debate. However I disagree with many observations in the book. Some of his comments concerning Franklin's beliefs include:

"Here Franklin provides a brilliantly simple argument against Calvinism..Franklin solved this dichotomy by presenting the third option of a sovereign God having the power to give men freedom. His [Franklin's] question, "Is not even his infinite Power sufficient for this?" places the Calvinist in a quandry.

It could never be a quandry(sp) especially as to salvation there is no question whatsoever what the new testament says, with many scriptures affirming man's inability to choose God:

"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.."

John 6:44.

The word "unless" means just what it says; no one can choose Christ without the Father allowing it. Therefore man has no freewill to believe in God. God must initiate salvation by changing the heart to repent and believe.

Yes, God has the power to give men freedom, but Franklin never understood salvation starts before God created the earth:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved."

--Ephesians 1:3-6

Theoretically, no one can choose because God chose who He wanted already.  

Fortenberry questions if God could give man freewill. He did. Adam had freewill and he failed. God's perfect, immortal representative failed and sin passed to all men. Read Romans 5-9. 

Franklin and Fortenberry claim that "God requires of Christians are such that they all produce happiness in this life."

This statement appears unbiblical in that happiness comes from knowing what Christ did for you, not about happiness in life. There are many Christians throughout the centuries which have been always miserable in their physical circumstances, but their hearts are filled with joy. John 13:17 is about joy in the Lord, not of circumstances in this world.

Fortenberry claims the Westminster Confession does not refer to the new birth because children are saved by birth. This is an argument from silence. It is true because the Confession is correct. Children are saved at birth, but the Confession also refers to the new birth which does elicit an emotional response of some sort.

Fortenberry then admits Franklin believed as Locke did, viz, that all that is required is belief that Jesus is the messiah. In John 6 to 17 Jesus is clearly telling the disciples  over and over by various examples that He is God and to believe it.

Franklin claims that creeds and confessions of faith should not be required for salvation. This has always been the view of heretics and immature Christians. Not all of them, but most. They use this to depart from the essentials of the faith, especially when the creeds are so obvious, even quoting scripture verses for support.

On p. 112 fortenberry defends Franklin attacking the church for ostracizing heretics, yet Paul did the same thing.

Fortenberry then goes on to show Franklin and the southern baptists deny original sin, rejecting Rom 5:12-21. Condemnation is clearly guilt because it is linked to Adam.

To compare Franklin with John MacArthur is strange to say, in that most, if not all Christians, believe Jesus's lordship in everything. Franklin's view of conversion is questioned because he was making excuses for himself, speaking of children and such, but Whitefield knew he wasn't saved and told him to repent and turn to Christ. In fact, pastor and evangelist Greg Laurie testified he didn't feel anything accepting Christ, but days later, he felt great joy in Christ. 

Calling yourself a Christian and Jesus Christ as "Our saviour" means nothing. Saying "My Saviour" is quite different. Although writing "God called the four Apostles out of the fisheries" is clearly calling Jesus God. Whether or not it's authentic is debatable. On p. 227 Fortenberry claims Whitefield believed every Christian had to have an emotional experience to be a Christian. Not so if he believed children were saved.

The final point made in this book is doubting essential biblical truths, like Franklin did about the person of Christ that can still make one a Christian if all the minimum to believe is Jesus is Messiah. The gospel of John refutes that notion, along with 1 John, because Jesus tells the disciples over and over that He is God, period! He tells Philip "if you've seen me, you've seen the Father." A born again believer will not doubt that Jesus Christ is God. Neither will there be doubts about the deity of the holy spirit. 

Even President Andrew Jackson was a Christian

Old Hickory wasn't a founding father, although he did fight in the Revolution at age thirteen. 4 out of the first 7 presidents.

“Sir, I am in the hands of a merciful God. I have full confidence in His goodness and mercy…The Bible is true. I have tried to conform to its spirit as near as possible. Upon that sacred volume I rest my hope for eternal salvation, through the merits and blood of our blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
[May 29th, 1845, just a few weeks before he died]

Another powerful evangelical, Samuel Cooper

Cooper was hated so much by the British, they put a warrant out for his arrest. Like his father before him, Cooper was a Calvinist, only not a rigid one. Had I been there I would have reminded Cooper, John Hancock and Samuel Adams that the bible is the most rigid book or books there is. Moreover, Cooper used theological words only Calvinists or partial Calvinists used:

"Our divine Redeemer has taught us to regard the rule of duty, rather than the acceptance of our services..Cyrus the Persian was no more a true believer in the true Jehovah than Naaman the Syrian: yet he was an elect servant of God..and fulfilled the divine predictions and decrees."

--A sermon preached to the Ancient and Honourable Artillery Company: in Boston, New-England, June 3. 1751. 

It's interesting Cooper quotes Isaiah 45, where he calls Israel "mine elect." So Cooper understood how God chooses people to be saved before they are born. More proof Cooper believed in predestination. His entire sermon revolves around predestination.

Evangelical Colonial Pastor, Samuel West

West wrote:

Let us rejoice...to the great Redeemer; to whom every knee should bow...in ascribing blessing and honor and glory and power, to him who sitteth on the throne and to the lamb forever and ever.
Amen.

--A Sermon Delivered Upon the Late National Thanksgiving, February 19, 1795.

The word "Redeemer" is an evangelical word meaning "bought" as buying back as a ransom found in Mark 10:45, "a ransom for many." Not only does the verse reject universal atonement, but the verse rejects the heterodox notion of the atonement Mayhew and Chauncy believed in.

West was not unitarian, rather he was an orthodox Christian, who believed in the atonement:

Reading his Ordination West was an Orthodox Christian:

This..Christ..as our high priest who offered himself up to God a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the world.. he is to be preached up as the only Mediator between God and man..that he came to redeem us both from the penal consequences of Adam's first transgression..to increase our knowledge of the doctrines of, the gospel..that through his atoning blood and perfect righteousness..Can anyone imagine faithfully that he preaches Christ, who very seldom in his discourses mentions his name; and who never insists on the doctrine of atonement, with which the new testament so much abounds? Shall gospel ministers leave out the principle end of Christ's coming..?

 Due to his proper belief in the atonement, West believed in Christ's divinity:

"We might here, with very little reserve, adopt our language which our divine Saviour applies to John the Baptist."

--A Sermon on the Death of Washington.

Because of his view of the atonement, West's view of Christ's divinity was not distorted as of the unitarians.

William Livingston, the moderator of the Presbyterian church of New York

From my limited knowledge, this is the first time indisputable evidence has been presented to show High Federalist statesman and founding father William Livingston was a Calvinist in faith like his brother Philip, within the Presbyterian Church of New York. Although Col. Alexander Hamilton hadn't formed the Federalist Party yet, Hamilton highly respected Livingston. Moreover, Livingston's involvement in Calvinist doctrine did not diminish, but increased as he got older. Livingston, who was vetted as a possible VP for George Washington, was 9 years older than the first president.

Below, the proof of the Calvinism of William Livingston:

"New York, Sept. 18, 1755.

It was then again asked by Mr. William Livingston in order to prevent disputes whether we all understood each other and whether it was not a unanimous vote for Mr. B to which all answered they understood it as a unanimous vote...In consequence of this choice application was made to the Rev. Mr. B, on the 20th of August at his church at Jamaica before a presbytery then there held by Mr. Livingston, the New York churches delegate for the removal of the said Mr. B, from his said congregation at Jamaica to that of New York in virtue of their call to him."

--AN EARLY DOCUMENT CONCERNING THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CONGREGATION OF NEW YORK

Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society (1901-1930)

Vol. 1, No. 3 (MARCH A. D. 1902), pp. 238-9.

Amazing! Livingston was one of the highest Calvinist leaders in New York and not just a messager boy, rather he was a man of power and influence. Livingston was a high ranking Presbyterian in 1755, just three years after writing in the Independent Reflector publication. Here is where Livingston puts his name to the Reformed faith:

"[W]e declare freely against..making the Westminster Confession a test of admission into the church, at least to private members, which some of our [Scotch] brethren have constantly been driving at. From this they were carried away with an ungrounded jealousy and opinion that we did not befriend the established doctrines and discipline of the church; which is so far from being true with regard to us, that we beg leave to assure you, we have no objection to the Westminster Confession, Shorter and Longer Catechisms and acknowledge the same to contain a true and perfect scripture doctrine of salvation..."

--p.244. Out of over 100 names listed, Livingston is sixth on the list.

It wasn't just Livingston who was against creeds. Many Calvinists were against them because they were man made and could interfere with God's revelation.

Here is another group of Presbyterians combating the Anglican establishment in 1769 and Livingston is on the list. On p. 501-502, he was nominated Moderator for their next meeting, which included selected Baptists. P. 503 says Livingston is a member of the Presbyterian church. 

The Society of Dissenters founded at New York in 1769
The American Historical Review
Vol. 6, No. 3 (Apr., 1901), pp. 499-500.

On p. 241 of another periodical, Livingston is more Calvinist than "most of those who were his social equals."  Page 242 has Livingston and his friends toasting to "the immortal memories of Oliver Cromwell and John Hampden." How awesome was Cromwell and that happened before his independent reflector publication. Later, it says the most important man in New Jersey from 1776 to 1790 was Livingston and a Calvinist at that.

--The Whigs of Colonial New York

Charles H. Levermore

The American Historical Review

Vol. 1, No. 2 (Jan., 1896), pp. 238-250

It's remarkable, had Livingston been younger, say Washington's age, he could have been VP because John Adams was suspect to a lot of Federalists. Had Livingston stayed in congress two months more in 1776, he would have been one of only seven to sign both the Declaration and Constitution.

Will the real William Livingston please stand up

Presbyterian William Livingston was perhaps the most orthodox Calvinist founding father of them all. Maybe more so than Roger Sherman, John Witherspoon, James Madison, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Dr. Joseph Warren, James Wilson, Gunning Bedford Jr., Richard Stockton, Josiah Bartlett, William Paterson, Oliver Ellsworth, James McHenry, Oliver Wolcott, John Hancock, James Otis, Philip Livingston, Samuel Huntington, Thomas McKean, Hugh Williamson, William Samuel Johnson and many others.

Madison believed in predestination as this blog has previously shown and was taught by Calvinists from grade school to university, but William Livingston takes the cake. However, if you don't do your homework, and limit your material to his work in the Independent Reflector publication of 1752, when Livingston was 27 years old, you won't get the whole story. Later in life, Livingston became a diehard Calvinist, just like his older brother Philip, who was a signer of the declaration of independence.

Here, Livingston defends most of the history of American Calvinism. He defends the Puritans, their doctrine, education, politics, Eleazer Wheelock, Cotton Mather, Jon Eliot and his treatment of the Indians, as well as David Brainerd and his brother, etc. 

"BUT in what sense my lord, did those adventurers abandon their native religion? If your lordship means by their native religion, the doctrines of christianity as contained in the thirty-nine articles of your church;. they were so far from abandoning it, that it were to be wished it to be inviolably preserved by those they left behind. These were the very doctrines which they, in their time, universally believed, constantly taught, and warmly inculcated. These are the doctrines which their posterity, to this day, believe, teach, and inculcate. Nay, they believe, teach and inculcate them, in the same scriptural and unadulterated sense, in which they were believed, taught, and inculcated at the time of the reformation. They believe, teach, and inculcate them, without those sophisticating glories, by which they have since, in the mother-country, been wrested to favor the heresy of Arminius."

--A Letter to the Right Reverend Father in God, John, Lord Bishop of Landaff; occasioned by some passages in His Lordship's sermon, on the 20th of February, 1767, in which the American colonies are loaded with great and undeserved reproach. / By William Livingston. New-York: Printed for the author; and to be sold by Garrat Noel, near the coffee-house, MDCCLXVIII. 1768.

Notice, Livingston doesn't qualify the heresy of arminianism. He affirms all arminianism as heresy, attacking the founder of arminianism. Below, Livingston supports the entire current Christian establishment of New England:

In the New-England colonies particularly, they have from their earliest settlement been peculiarly attentive to the most ample provision of a gospel ministry. Their legislative acts, from the commencement of those colonies, abundantly evince this attention. By these, provision is always made for the establishment and support of the gospel ministry in every, new-erected township; and without such establishment, within three years from the settlement, the grants are liable to an absolute forfeiture. In consequence of this provision, with the divine blessing on their pious endeavours, Christianity has not only been supported, but so faithfully preached, and so zealously inculcated, that I will venture to affirm, there is not a more virtuous, not a more religious people upon the face of the earth [bold face mine].

Livingston writes Christian establishment, nay reformed Christian establishment has a divine blessing. Roger Sherman never wrote anything this Calvinist. Livingston continues in support of punishing Sabbath breakers:

"Nor have those colonies from their first settlement to this day, been without provincial laws, to enforce an attendance on public worship, and punish the profanation of the sabbath."

Here, Livingston commends a Calvinist leading Indians to communion:

"In the year 1689, the indian church, under the care of Mr. John Mayhew, son of
 the above Thomas, consisted of a hundred communicants, walking according to the rule of the scriptures."

Notice, Livingston affirms communion as a rule of the scriptures. It's also interesting Livingston calls Yale, Harvard, William and Mary, Penn, Princeton and King's,  as seminaries.

At the end of the letter, Livingston writes, "With this, my lord, I shall humbly take my leave
hoping that for the sake of truth, and the cause of religion, especially remembering how greatly your lordship has been deceived in the present case..."

Contrary to attacking creeds, Livingston defends the thirty-nine articles adhered to by the Puritans. Livingston never rejected the athanasian creed. All he wrote is his creed is easier to understand.

Evidence James Otis was an orthodox Christian

This is from Dreisbach and Hall, The Sacred Rights of Conscience. I don't know how it can be proven Otis wrote this, but it is Calvinist to the core, even giving the Holy Spirit authority over repentance. Maybe Percy Morton wrote it.


A proclamation for a public thanksgiving

[T]he wise and holy Governor of the world has, in his righteousness providence, sent droughts into this colony...we have the greatest reasons to adore and praise the Supreme Disposer of all events, who deals infinitely better with us than we deserve, and amidst all his judgments hath remembered mercy...affording to an ungrateful people...comforts of life...that he would pour his Spirit upon all orders of men...and bring us to a hearty repentance and reformation and purify all his churches and make ours Emmanuel's land; that he would spread the knowledge of the Redeemer throughout the whole earth and fill the world with his glory.

Given under our hands, at the Council-Chamber at Watertown, the fourth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.

By their Honors' command

James Otis.         Percy Morton, Dep Secy.

God Save The People!  

James Otis on Government

In this writing, especially at the bottom, it appears Otis agrees with Thomas Paine and other founding fathers that Israel was mainly a republic in addition to receiving the law at Sinai. Otis believed God started government and the entire nation state were administrators of it. Israel is the only example in context and Otis isn't referring to democracy; he's referring to representative republicanism.


"Has it [government] any solid foundation? Any chief cornerstone. . . ? I think it has an everlasting foundation in the unchangeable will of God, the Author of Nature whose laws never vary. . . . Government. . . . is by no means an arbitrary thing depending merely on compact or human will for its existence. . . . The power of God Almighty is the only power that can properly and strictly be called supreme and absolute. In the order of nature immediately under Him comes the power of a simple democracy, or the power of the whole over the whole. . . . [God is] the only monarch in the universe who has a clear and indisputable right to absolute power because He is the only one who is omniscient as well as omnipotent. . . . The sum of my argument is that civil government is of God, that the administrators of it were originally the whole people."

--James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved (Boston: J. Williams 1766), pp. 11, 12, 13, 98.

Who was Thomas Jefferson's God?

Jon at American creation makes the claim Thomas Jefferson's God was not Jehovah, the God of Israel. The problem is Jefferson never says his God is not the God of Israel. Jefferson let's everyone believe he's a Christian and his three idols: Bacon, Newton and Locke all believed in the God of Abraham.

The founding fathers on voting rights

The Founding fathers have been hammered by liberals for years that they were racists and discriminated against others in a variety of issues. Voting rights is one of them. However, voting is not a right. If it was, ten year olds could vote. People should qualify to vote. Qualification was apart of the hostility against democracy; what liberals enjoy. Contrary to what lib judges that claim the "prevailing opinion of the framers" was that blacks were "so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect …and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit." (Former Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black appointed to the Supreme Court.)

Here are some of the conclusions reached in this book: On slavery: Every leading Founder acknowledged that slavery was wrong. Slavery was legal and practiced in every state in 1776; by the end of the founding era, more than a hundred thousand slaves had been freed by the outlawing of slavery in seven of the original thirteen states or by individual acts of manumission, especially in the South. Most important, the ground for the eventual total abolition of slavery was laid in establishment of the equality principle at the center of the American polity by Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, Adams, Washington, and other leading Founders. On the poor: Far from being indifferent to the poor, the Founders regarded the protection of private property rights as a necessary means for the poor to escape the kind of subjugation by the wealthy that they had experienced in Old Europe. And far from throwing the needy into the streets, the Founders maintained government-funded "safety-net" programs for them. Their property rights and welfare policies, which are often scorned today for their supposed indifference to the poor, were arguably more just and compassionate than ours. On women: Women were understood by everyone to be included in the "all men" (all human beings) who are created equal. In New Jersey, women voted in elections routinely during the 1790s and early 1800s, for the first time anywhere in world history. This fact, as we will see, is clearly connected to the Founders' equality principle. So also was the idea, which grew during and after the founding era, that women and men have equal importance, but different roles, in the family and society. The best protection of women's rights, in the minds of both the men and the women of the founding era, was the core private association of a free and civilized society: lifelong marriage and the family. The alternatives—permitting no-fault divorce, pushing women into the job market, and legitimizing the treatment of women (and men) as sex objects—were thought to dehumanize and exploit, not liberate. On the supposedly undemocratic electorate: Far from excluding the poor, the electorate in the founding era was the most democratic of any large nation in history. It included about 85 to 90 percent of free males. Those Founders who defended a property requirement for voting did so, not in opposition to, but on the basis of, the equality principle of the Declaration of Independence. They feared—as we will see, not without reason—that the propertyless poor might become the tools of influential and wealthy demagogues, distorting election results and endangering the survival of liberty. They changed their minds on this point as it became increasingly clear that the poor were not opponents but friends of the rights of mankind, including the right to acquire and possess property. On naturalization and citizenship: The Founders' policy generously welcomed as equal citizens people from many nations and religions. However, there was a concern that immigrants might come in numbers too large, or from countries too despotic, to assimilate to the American way of life. There was also a concern that newcomers would not possess, or be in a position to acquire soon, the principles and habits necessary for democratic citizenship. Naturalization in early America was therefore limited primarily to those who had been formed by Western civilization. Still, the American way of life was informed by the universal principles of the Declaration. So although the Founders expected most immigrants to come from Europe, their principles made it possible for people of every race and continent to become, in Lincoln's phrase, "blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh" of the Founding Fathers who came before them. http://www.vindicatingthefounders.com/preface/

The founding fathers on the supreme court

Alexander Hamilton and James Wilson, and the rest of the founding fathers, believed the congress and the executive can declare the courts ruling as null and void and ignore their decisions. Article 3, Section 1, "The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts as the congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Along with halting all the proceedings of the court, as Wilson says below, the Senate can ignore the president without even responding to his nomination. That includes ambassadors and other ministers.

In federalist 69, Hamilton said presidential power is inferior "to that of the governor of New York." The governor could cast a vote to appoint a judge. And in all caps, Hamilton wrote, "In the national government, if the Senate should be divided, no appointment could be made." The founding fathers realized the ability of the states, via the Senate, to check a nomination was one of the constitution's attractions. They did not want a president with kingly powers of appointment. And New York ratified the constitution.
Nypost.com/byhamiltonsrulesonsupremepicksthesenatesrightandobamaswrong

Wilson below, showing congress can control the supreme court

The Convention found the task too difficult for them, and they left the business as it stands, in the fullest confidence that no danger could possibly ensue, since the proceedings of the Supreme Court are to be regulated by the Congress, which is a faithful representation of the people; and the oppression of government is effectually barred, by declaring that in all criminal cases the trial by jury shall be preserved. [bold face mine]

-- Speech of James Wilson. Pennsylvania, October 6, 1787.

This means the congress can halt the proceedings of the supreme court. I'm not sure if the congress can eliminate the supreme court because it's charter is in the constitution. However, pertaining to nominees, the constitution says the Senate can just ignore the nominee anyway. No need to make a statement on it.

Jefferson on naturalization

May 1779Virginia Papers 2:476–78

Be it enacted by the General Assembly, that all white persons born within the territory of this commonwealth and all who have resided therein two years next before the passing of this act, and all who shall hereafter migrate into the same; and shall before any court of record give satisfactory proof by their own oath or affirmation, that they intend to reside therein, and moreover shall give assurance of fidelity to the commonwealth; and all infants wheresoever born, whose father, if living, or otherwise, whose mother was, a citizen at the time of their birth, or who migrate hither, their father, if living, or otherwise their mother becoming a citizen, or who migrate hither without father or mother,shall be deemed citizens of this commonwealth, until they relinquish that character in manner as herein after expressed: And all others not being citizens of any the United States of America, shall be deemed aliens.