In a fast-day sermon of May 1798, the rising young New York minister Samuel Miller described how proper religious observance ensured the health of republican polity: “The native tendency of this divine system is, to check the insolence of power; to restrain the encroachments of oppression; to give energy to the wiser prescriptions of government; to secure liberty with order.”
Source: Knoll, Mark A., “America’s God,” p. 67.
