About this conclusion two things must be said. The names of leading members, those designated to receive subscriptions, include such revolutionary activists as William Smith, Elias Boudinot, and John Lathrop, as well as the evangelist, Jonathan Edwards and the lawyer, Tapping Reeves. No evidence exists that the society ever functioned, and I presume that its good work was swamped by the rising tide of Revolution. Thus, the constitutional question did not co-opt the religious question. The millennial end, however, is nothing other than the triumph of religion on grounds of constitutional liberty much like those addressed to Charles II by Massachusetts in 1662.
Religious liberty is peculiarly friendly to fair and generous disquisition.
Pastor John Robinson in 1620 addressed the Pilgrims departing Delft Haven with an injunction to keep peace with God and man and a promise of God's ordinances to sustain human innovations. Accordingly, it is fair to say that Clark has exaggerated the transformation of American evangelism into political utopianism through the American Revolution. Human nature was relied upon rather than jettisoned in the United States. This reckoning raises the interesting question, therefore, of exactly what bearing should inform the reading of Clark's book. In a word, I believe its true bearing is to reconstruct the seriousness of the language of faith and what I call voiced differences, not as some Golden Age myth but as a continuing if infrequently resorted to resonance in Anglo-American social reflection.