Author
Samuel Kendal
Samuel Kendal was an American theologian and clergyman of the early nineteenth century whose writings explored the intersection of religious faith and democratic governance. His work Religion the Only Sure Basis of Free Governments articulated a prominent antebellum argument that republican institutions required moral foundations grounded in Christian theology, reflecting broader debates among American Protestant intellectuals about the relationship between religious virtue and civic order. Kendal's contributions to this discourse positioned him within the tradition of American religious thought that sought to reconcile Enlightenment political theory with evangelical Protestant commitments.
From Religion the Only Sure Basis of Free Governments
To form and cwry into operation a fystem ofgovernment, and habituate a newly emancipated people to rule and order were important objests to be accompliflied. In these, as in the deliverance of the Hebrews, Mofes was under the immediate fupernatural direstion of Heaven. The government was a theocracy j religion the bafis on which the whole struclure refted. Their institutions, civil and religious, happily combined to improve the nation, and to guard it against being corrupted by admitting strangers to an equal participation of all its privileges. In its advancement from boijdage to an independent rank among the nations of the earth, the people were led by the hand of Mofes and Aaron 5 by the civil magiflirate and the minifter of religion. Each was a chofen instrument to carry on the merciful defigns of Providence in refpest to ancient Ifrael ; and each the world hath ever found neceflary…
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