“The greatest achievement ever made in the cause of human progress is the total and final separation of church and state. If we have nothing else to boast of, we could lay claim with justice that the first among the nations we of this country made it an article of organic law that the relations between man and his maker were a private concern, into which other men have no right to intrude. To measure the stride thus made for the Emancipation of the race, we have only to look back over the centuries that have gone before us, and recall the dreadful persecutions in the name of religion that have filled the world.”
(David Dudly Field (1805 - 1894) in describing ‘American Progress in Jurisprudence,’ as quoted in Anson Phelps Stokes, “Church And State In The United States,” Vol. 1., pg. 37)