George Washington: "O most Glorious God, in Jesus Christ my merciful and loving Father, I acknowledge and confess my guilt, in the weak and imperfect performance of the duties of this day. I have called on Thee for pardon and forgiveness of sins... Let me live according to those holy rules with Thou hast this day prescribed in Thy holy Word."
James Madison: "Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ."
"Religion is the basis and Foundation of Government."
"We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of the government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
Ethan Allen: When Allen's troops surrounded Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, Allen demanded the surrender of the fort. The bewildered captain asked in whose authority was Allen making such a demand. Allen's reply:
"In the Name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress."
John Adams: "The Christian religion is above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of Wisdom, Virtue, Equity, and Humanity. Let the blackguard Paine (Thomas) say what he will; it is resignation to God, it is goodness itself to man."
"The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount contain my religion..."
George Mason: "My soul, I resign into the hands of my Almighty Creator, whose tender mercies are over all His works, who hateth nothing that He hath made and to the Justice and Wisdom of whose dispensation I willingly and cheerfully submit, humbly hoping from His unbounded mercy and benevolence, through the merits of my blessed Savior, a remission of my sins."
Even Thomas Paine's last words were:
"I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God."
quite odd. I found some differing SOURCED quotes. The question is which set are true representation of what each believed?
George Washington: To the United Baptist Churches in Virginia in May, 1789,
(every man) "ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience."
John Adams wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson:
"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
James Madison from his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments (1785):
"During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
Benjamin Franklin professed in his Autobiography:
"Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a through Deist."
Thomas Paine from his The Age of Reason:
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church. "
"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. "
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