The founders of the United States deemed moral citizens essential to the perpetuation of the republic, yet they created a secular national government that lacked any power to regulate morality. Ensuring a virtuous population became primarily the responsibility of the churches and reform groups that relied not on coercion but on moral suasion. Some states did regulate various forms of personal morality, but only on very rare occasions before the Civil War did Congress pass moral legislation.

That changed after the war because the Christian lobby convinced the federal government to accept a far greater role in regulating moral behavior. . . . Giving appropriate attention to the role played by conservative Christians adds complexity to the historical narrative of the creation of the twentieth-century state.

Gaines M. Foster, Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865-1920, 6.

The laws of our nature are sure sooner or later to assert themselves, and constrain an opposite belief. A pendulum when at rest hangs perpendicularly to the horizon. It may by extraneous force be made to hang at any degree of inclination. But as soon as such force is removed, it is sure to swing back to its normal position. Under the control of a metaphysical theory, a man may deny the existence of the external world, or the obligation of the moral law; and his disbelief may be sincere, and for a time persistent; but the moment the speculative reasons for his disbelief are absent from his mind, it of necessity reverts to its original and natural convictions. It is also possible that a man’s hand may be so hardened or cauterized as to lose the sense of touch. But that would not prove that the hand in man is not normally the great organ of touch. So it is possible that the moral nature of a man may be so disorganized by vice or by a false philosophy as to have its testimony for the existence of God effectually silenced. This, however, would prove nothing as to what that testimony really is. Besides this, insensibility and the consequent unbelief cannot last. Whatever rouses the moral nature, whether it be danger, or suffering, or the approach of death, banishes unbelief in a moment. Men pass from skepticism to faith, in many cases, instantaneously; not of course by a process of argument, but by the existence of a state of consciousness with which skepticism is irreconcilable, and in the presence of which it cannot exist. This fact is illustrated continually, not only in the case of the uneducated and superstitious, but even in the case of men of the highest culture. The simple fact of Scripture and experience is, that the moral law as written upon the heart is indelible; and the moral law in its nature implies a lawgiver, one from whom that law emanates, and by whom it will be enforced. And, therefore, so long as men are moral creatures, they will and must believe the existence of a Being on whom they are dependent, and to whom they are responsible for their character and their conduct. To this extent, and in this sense, therefore, it is to be admitted that the knowledge of God is innate and intuitive; that men no more need to be taught that there is a God, than they need to be taught there is such a thing as sin. But as men are ignorant of the nature and extent of sin, while aware of its existence, until instructed by the Word of God, and enlightened by his Spirit; so they greatly need the same sources of instruction to give them any adequate knowledge of the nature of God, and of their relations to him.

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, 199.

There is no satisfactory way of accounting for the universal belief in the existence of God, except that such belief is founded on the very constitution of our nature.

Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, 198.

It is evident from the entire passage in Matthew 23 that the note of denunciation mingles with that of lamentation, and the note of wrath and judgement mingles with that of tenderness, sorrow, and weeping. This fact should serve as a salutary reminder to the preacher that this prophetic note of denunciation, if it is employed at all, must be employed with great caution, and then only if those intense spiritual emotions, which are clearly present in the soul of Christ, are also, in a measure, present in the soul of the preacher as he pleads with men ‘in Christ’s stead’.

John Carrick, The Imperative of Preaching, 39.

In each historical covenantal administration, the shared faith of God’s people has attached to the particularities of each successive covenant.

STEPHEN G. MYERS, GOD TO US – COVENANT THEOLOGY IN SCRIPTURE, 166.

True preaching always involves explicatio et applicatio verbi Dei (the explication and application of the Word of God).

John Carrick, The Imperative of Preaching, 29.

In each of the individual, historical covenantal administrations, the intended end of God’s covenantal work is stated in terms of “the Immanuel principle”—“I shall be your God and you shall be My people.” With these words, God promises to be Immanuel (which means “God with us”) to His people. God first articulates this principle to Abraham in Genesis 17:7. He has Moses reiterate it to the Israelites prior to the exodus in Exodus 6:7. The Immanuel principle then is connected with the Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7:14 and, after the exile, gives shape to the new covenant that the prophets proclaim to Israel in Ezekiel 36:28 and Jeremiah 31:33. Finally, 2 Corinthians 6:16 uses it to articulate what God is doing in the New Testament church, even as Revelation 21:3 proclaims it as the glorious bliss of the new heavens and the new earth. Running throughout all of the biblical covenants, there is this striking unity of purpose. God will have His people.

STEPHEN G. MYERS, GOD TO US – COVENANT THEOLOGY IN SCRIPTURE, 163.

In Romans 16:20, Paul uses the specific imagery of Genesis 3:15 to describe what God is doing, right that moment, in and through His church. In 1 John 3:8, John speaks of Jesus as coming specifically to destroy the works of the devil. In Hebrews 2:14, the Scriptures speak of Jesus Christ as the destroyer of the devil himself. In Revelation 12, John uses the imagery of Genesis 3:15 to encapsulate and represent the entire progress of redemptive history. Repeatedly, the Scriptures evoke Genesis 3:15 to crystallize what God has been doing, and what He presently is doing, in His redemptive work.

STEPHEN G. MYERS, GOD TO US – COVENANT THEOLOGY IN SCRIPTURE, 162.

As for us, we prefer to listen to Augustine, when he says: “To declare publicly what you have received is not arrogance, but faith; it isn’t haughtiness, but devotion.” (On the Words of the Lord according to Luke, Sermon 28).

Synopsis of a Purer Theology, Vol. 1, 369.