At least here is something talking about natural law. But if you could go into detail and explain what are rights and how do derive them from the Bible alone because otherwise how would sola scriptura protestants find them. Because you need to show that something is a right in the first place under Christianity, and many things the enlightenment thought up are not "god given rights" God told Christians to obey Caesar who usurped power from a constitutional Republic after all to have the authority of a king. So I don't see how you would have a right to freedom or representation or a voice in government if God said that Caesar an absolute monarch is to be obeyed.
The concept of natural law within the Christian framework is articulated by Saint Paul in the pages of the Bible, specifically 2 Romans,
For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;
Basically, he observed that even though Gentiles (such as the Romans) obviously did not follow and in most cases probably weren't aware of Mosaic Law (the highest law that matters to any Jew), still abided by core elements of that Mosaic Law, demonstrating that there must be at least some universal laws endowed in the hearts of men everywhere by their Creator and which they innately understood & followed even if they have yet to encounter & formally adopt the revealed divine truth (be it through the Ten Commandments or Jesus and his Apostles).
For example, the Romans were huge on the family & treating one's parents with the utmost respect and honor, long before they would have heard of the 4th/5th Commandment (where 'honor thy father & mother' goes varies a bit by sect). They also shared the Jews' understanding of alcohol on a basic level - fine in moderation and not something to be banned entirely, but horrible in excess - and Roman philosophers like Lucretius condemned alcoholism before the birth of Christ or the Romans' replacement of the Hasmoneans in Judea with the Herodians, while Mark Antony's alcoholism was one of the many vices held against him by his enemies. Since it is apparent that certain laws transcend borders, cultures and dynasties, and all things were made by God, then it's logical (and while it was mostly Catholics who were big on using reason to improve one's understanding of God's works, not all Protestants were of an anti-intellectual bent either) to conclude that God must have made these laws and set them above the jurisdiction of whatever lines Caesar draws on a map. And since God made men in His own image, it is further only reasonable to also conclude that to live by the natural law is to manifest that Godly image and strive to live like Christ, as Christians are called to do.
It would be impossible to explain the theories of Saint Augustine (who it should be noted is not only revered by Catholics, but also greatly respected by many Protestants - especially Calvinists, whose core idea of predestination started with him) & Thomas Aquinas in great detail over the course of a single forum post, so if you want that, as trite as it may sound I would have to advise you to do your own research into the thoughts of those Christian sages and draw your own conclusions. Suffice to say, however, that men like these did not only cite each other but also the Bible to justify their theories. For yet another example, a famous saying of Aquinas' is that 'an unjust law is no law at all', which he derived from an earlier saying of Augustine's and extrapolated that the conditions to determine a law's legitimacy reflect the conditions of the natural law itself:
1) It serves the common good (refer to the example of the shared Judaic & Roman condemnation of alcoholism, which they both understood to be socially destructive);
2) It is within the legitimate authority of the lawmaker to issue this law (God's authority is universal so there's no problem there, the same can't be said of Caesar's authority);
3) The burden of this law applies equally, none are specially exempted from it (again, Paul noted that the Romans and other Gentiles were already obeying the natural law despite not being Jews and thus subject to the divinely-revealed Mosaic Law).
These theories are based on yet more pages of the Bible, in this case the Book of Isaiah being the most relevant. Isaiah 1:17 calls on believers to seek justice & protect the oppressed, Isaiah 10 starts with a stern divine condemnation of oppression and specifically calls out the issuance of unjust laws & decrees as an offense in God's eye, and Isaiah 58 defines actively loosening the bonds of injustice and breaking the yoke of the oppressed as the sort of 'fasting' which He approves of. And so on, so forth.
To add to what Free-Stater 101 said already, Jesus' mention of rendering unto Caesar comes after he has identified the Pharisees' denarius as bearing the image of Caesar. But in the Christian worldview, all men bear the image of God in which they were created. While Caesar may have minted that coin, he obviously did not create the human race. Thus indeed, let each be rendered unto their maker: give the coin which Caesar made to him as is only fair, but then let all men give themselves over to God's law & judgment by the same standard, Caesar himself most certainly included.
The interpretation of 'render unto Caesar' that you're arguing for - that men were commanded to slavishly obey the earthly authorities represented by Caesar - is so extreme and servile that not even the Orthodox, the most consistently statist of the major Christian denominations, support it. If they did, they wouldn't have made people like
Mark of Ephesus saints for standing against the secular powers' wishes in defense of divine truth, even though the stakes were much higher for Christendom then than in the American Revolution. Jesus himself rejected it, because if he didn't, he would have bowed to the demands of the Jewish high priests or at least to Caesar's representative Pontius Pilate; instead when Pilate starts rambling about how he has the power to release or crucify Christ, Christ reminds him that even Caesar must answer to a higher authority still. In fact it's an interpretation that I can only find support for in the words of absolute monarchs (real and wanna-be) and their sycophants from the Early Modern period, like
this excerpt from a speech by James I to Parliament:
The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth; for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself are called gods. There be three principal similitudes that illustrate the state of monarchy: one taken out of the word of God; and the two other out of the grounds of policy and philosophy. In the Scriptures kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to the divine power. Kings are also compared to fathers of families: for a king is truly Parens patriae, the politique father of his people. And lastly, kings are compared to the head of this microcosm of the body of man.
Kings are justly called gods, for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of divine power upon earth: for if you will consider the attributes to God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a king. God hath power to create or destroy make or unmake at his pleasure, to give life or send death, to judge all and to be judged nor accountable to none; to raise low things and to make high things low at his pleasure, and to God are both souls and body due. And the like power have kings: they make and unmake their subjects, they have power of raising and casting down, of life and of death, judges over all their subjects and in all causes and yet accountable to none but God only. . . .
I conclude then this point touching the power of kings with this axiom of divinity, That as to dispute what God may do is blasphemy....so is it sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power. But just kings will ever be willing to declare what they will do, if they will not incur the curse of God. I will not be content that my power be disputed upon; but I shall ever be willing to make the reason appear of all my doings, and rule my actions according to my laws.
Which, on top of being erroneous (how God deals with Pharaoh in Exodus exemplifies what He thinks of so-called 'god-kings'), is downright blasphemous. Describing kings as gods who casually wield power over life & death like God Himself and deserve a similar or even the same degree of reverence as He does obviously violates the First Commandment, and again, was a concept rejected by Jesus himself in Pilate's court. Now you might argue that the above interpretation of 'render unto Caesar' I gave is self-serving, but I would argue to the contrary; that in fact it serves the many and honors God, while the absolutist interpretation is the one which serves only the self (specifically, the king arguing that he should have absolute power because he is like God or literally a lesser god himself) and violates every single one of the three precepts which determine whether or not a law is just according to Aquinas.
Again though can you show where the things that the enlightenment thinkers called rights were recognized as such by any Christian before the American or French revolution?
I just gave you examples in my previous post. John Lilburne outlined the concept of
'freeborn rights' more than a century before the ARW. The same John Milton from before articulated the right of the people to overthrow & execute a tyrant for trampling on their God-given rights in
The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, explicitly naming the right to 'to dispose and œconomize in the Land which God hath giv'n them, as Maisters of Family in thir own house and free inheritance' as the inalienable root of all liberty without which people cannot be free men, merely slaves - again this was from 1649, little more than a century before the American Revolution. And going centuries back to the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 (the study of which was popularized in America by the Revolution) you had
John Ball, a proto-Protestant heretic (specifically a Lollard), famously proclaiming:
When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondsmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who would have had any bond and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may, if ye will, cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty. I counsel you therefore well to bethink yourselves, and to take good hearts unto you, that after the manner of a good husband that tilleth his ground, and riddeth out thereof such evil weeds as choke and destroy the good corn, you may destroy first the great lords of the realm, and after, the judges and lawyers, and questmongers, and all other who have undertaken to be against the commons. For so shall you procure peace and surety to yourselves in time to come; and by dispatching out of the way the great men, there shall be an equality in liberty, and no difference in degrees of nobility; but like dignity and equal authority in all things brought in among you.
