“That very Constitution which the singular goodness of God enabled us to establish does not so much as recognize His being! Yes, my brethren, it is a lamentable truth; a truth at the mention of which, shame should crimson our faces, that, like Jeshurun of old, we have waxed fat and kicked. ‘Of the Rock that begat us, we have been unmindful; we have forgotten His works, and the wonders that He hath shown us.’ Oh my country! Torn from thy history be the disgraceful page which records thy unthankfulness!

While many, on various pretenses, have criminated the Federal Constitution one objection has urged itself forcibly on the pious mind. That no notice whatever should be taken of that God who planteth a nation and plucketh it up at His pleasure, is an omission which no pretext whatever can palliate....But from the Constitution of the United States, it is impossible to ascertain what God we worship, or whether we own a God at all. It is a very insufficient apology to plead that the devotion which political institutions offer to the Supreme Being is, in most cases, a matter of mere form; for the hypocrisy of one man, or set of men, is surely no excuse for the infidelity of another. Should the citizens of America be as irreligious as her Constitution, we will have reason to tremble, lest the Governor of the universe, who will not be treated with indignity by a people any more than by individuals, overturn from its foundations the fabric we have been rearing, and crush us to atoms in the wreck.” — John M. Mason, A Sermon, Preached September 20th, 1793; a Day Set Apart, in the City of New-York, For Public Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, on Account of a Malignant and Mortal Fever Prevailing in the City of Philadelphia (1793)