The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention where I had the honor to preside might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it.

There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily

I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you and the State over which you preside in His holy protection; that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy nation.

A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils

Liberty, when it degrades into licentiousness, begets confusion, and frequently ends in tyranny or some woeful confusion.

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.