Roger Sherman on religious objection both to bearing arms and to "getting substitutes or paying an equivalent"

In reading over accounts of various debates in the First Federal Congress, I came across an interesting description by Congressman Roger Sherman of the nature of the religious objection that some had to bearing arms. The context is debate over proposed wording of a part of the Second Amendment that did not make it into the final version. The proposed amendment stated: "A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, being the best security of a free state; the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but no person, religiously scrupulous, shall be compelled to bear arms." 

Sherman opposed inserting the non-compulsion language into the Constitution, in part because the states would be able to govern the militia and would not so arbitrarily. The point here is not to describe the debates over this language in full but simply to take note of the nature of the religious objection as described by Sherman. That objection, in Sherman's view, extended not only to being personally compelled to bear arms but also to personally obtain a substitute or pay an equivalent. Sherman stated: "It is well-known that those who are religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, are equally scrupulous of getting substitutes or paying an equivalent; many of them would rather die than do either one or the other ...." (Congressional Register, August 17, 1789)

The situations are not entirely parallel, but we can see in this description of religious objections some similarities to the current debates over the HHS contraceptives mandate. Many of those who object to including the coverage explicitly in their plan also object to "getting substitutes or paying an equivalent." Some view this religious moral judgment as wrong or misguided, while others think it inapplicable to the "accommodation" (which the Administration has suggested is going to change yet again). As Sherman's description shows, however, this kind of objection to getting a substitute to do what one cannot do directly is hardly unprecedented.