Happily for us, there was no church strong enough to dictate to the
rest. Fortunately for us, the colonists not only, but the colonies
differed widely in their religious views. There were the Puritans who
hated the Episcopalians, and Episcopalians who hated the Catholics,
and the Catholics who hated both, while the Quakers held them all in
contempt. There they were of every sort, and color, and kind, and how
was it that they came together? They had a common aspiration. They
wanted to form a new nation. More than that, most of them cordially
hated Great Britain; and they pledged each other to forget these
religious prejudices, for a time at least, and agreed that there should
be only one religion until they got through, and that was the religion
of patriotism. They solemnly agreed that the new nation should not
belong to any particular church, but that it should secure the rights of
all.