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Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), the president of Yale, was an influential author and educator.  He was the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, the famous New England minister and president of Princeton.  It was during his presidency at Yale that a powerful revival ensued at the New Haven campus with a large percentage of the class, not only professing Christ, but entering the ministry.  On July 4th, 1798, President Dwight declared:

"Religion and liberty are the meat and the drink of the body politic.  Withdraw one of them and it languishes, consumes, and dies ... Without religion we may possibly retain the freedom of savages, bears, and wolves, but not the freedom of New England.  If our religion were gone, our state of society would perish with it, and nothing would be left." ¹

Timothy Dwight stated:

"Where there is no religion, there is no morality ... With the loss of religion .... the ultimate foundation of confidence is blown up; and the security of life, liberty and property are buried in ruins." ²

"The Bible is a window in this prison of hope, through which we look into eternity." ³

"Perhaps no one who has persisted in his efforts to gain eternal life was ever finally deserted by the Spirit of grace." 4

¹ July 4th, 1798, in an address as the President of Yale College.  Annals of America (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica 1968), Vol. I, pp. 33-36.  Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart'N Home, Inc., 1991), 1.11.  See also: Peter Marshall and David Manuel, From Sea to Shining Sea (Old Tappan, NJ:
Fleming H. Revell Company, 1986).

² Charles Roy Keller, The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942), p. 36.  Quoted from Timothy Dwight, Travels; in New England and New York (New Haven, 1821-1822), Vol. IV, pp. 403-404.  David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1991), p. 246.

³ Tryon Edwards, D.D., The New Dictionary of Thoughts - A Cyclopedia of Quotations (Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1852, The Standard Book Company, 1963), p. 44.

4 Stephen E. Berk, Calvinism Versus Democracy (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1974), p. 94.  Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart'N Home, Inc., 1991), 5.14.