New Jersey Legislature (1777) issued instructions to the delegates from their State to the Continental Congress:
<We hope you will habitually bear in mind that the success of the great cause in which the United States are engaged depends upon the favor and blessing of Almighty God; and therefore you will neglect nothing which is competent to the Assembly of the States for promoting piety and good morals among the people at large.
But especially we desire that you may give attention to this circumstances in the government of the army, taking care that such of the articles of war as forbid profaneness, riot, and debauchery be observed and enforced with al due strictness and severity.
This, we apprehend, is absolutely necessary for the encouragement and maintenance of good discipline, and will be the means of recruiting the army with men of credit and principle,-an object ardently to be wished, but not to be expected if the warmest friends of their country should be deterred from sending their sons and connections into the service, lest they should be tainted with impious and immoral notions and contract vicious habits.> 1777NJ001
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1777NJ001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). New Jersey Legislature, 1777, issued instructions to the delegates from their State to the Continental Congress, which included John Witherspoon and Elias Boudinot. Benjamin Franklin Morris, The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (Philadelphia, PA: L. Johnson & Co., 1863; George W. Childs, 1864), pp. 234-235.