"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
"The good of the governed is the end, and rewards and punishments are the means, of all government. The government of the supreme and all-perfect Mind, over all his intellectual creation, is by proportioning rewards to piety and virtue, and punishments to disobedience and vice. ... The joys of heaven are prepared, and the horrors of hell in a future state, to render the moral government of the universe perfect and complete. Human government is more or less perfect, as it approaches nearer or diverges further from an imitation of this perfect plan of divine and moral government."
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Source: John Adams (2016). “John Adams: Writings from the New Nation, 1784-1826”, p.813, Library of America
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