They conclude was not an orthodox Christian until the very end of his life after his son died in a duel. The info on page 7 of the article is instructive:

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1920511?seq=7

[If you can’t access the license see the following:

http://tinyurl.com/6brhfu

They noted 1777 to 1792 as a complete period of religious indifference (that’s when he wrote the infamous Mendy letter). Nothing in his private letters indicate any kind of traditional Christian piety during those years.

If the closet you have for that 15 year period (the slave society was founded in 1785, not 95 btw) was he and 31 other fellows founded an antislavery society which used the term “Christian” in an identity sense in its mission statement, that is not enough to establish his orthodoxy.

Keep in mind the Mendy letter and the letter about what he looks for in a wife where he says a “moderate” would satisfy him, that she must believe in God and hate a saint were the only times he was recorded as talking about God at all during that 15 year period. He supposedly made two wisecracks about God not being in the US Constitution during that era; but those quotations turn out to be “unconfirmed” as David Barton would put it.

And Hamilton wasn’t even the member of a Christian Church — his entire life. He was about to join one shortly before he died which again points to an end of life conversion.

The period after 1792 till the early 19th Century Adair and Harvey describe as an opportunistic political religiousity, where he tries to take advantage of the mess of the French Revolution for political purposes.

The smoking guns proving Hamilton’s genuine Christianity don’t exist until the very end of his life.

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You need to change your paradigm away from this false dichotomy — they either believed or denied the Gospel. They actually thought the Bible partially inspired (parts were true parts weren’t) and that man’s reason was the ultimate device for determining valid revelation. Here is John Adams on the Bible’s errancy:

What suspicions of interpolation, and indeed fabrication, might not be confuted if we had the originals! In an age or in ages when fraud, forgery, and perjury were considered as lawful means of propagating truth by philosophers, legislators, and theologians, what may not be suspected?

– John Adams, marginal note in John Disney’s Memoirs (1785) of Arthur Sykes. Haraszti, Prophets of Progress, 296. Taken from James H. Hutson, The Founders on Religion, p. 26.

When and where originated our Ten Commandments? The Tables and The Ark were lost. Authentic copies, in few, if any hands; the ten Precepts could not be observed, and were little remembered.

If the Book of Deuteronomy was compiled, during of after the Babilonian Captivity, from Traditions, the Error or Amendment might come in there.

– John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, Nov. 14, 1813.

http://americancreation.blogspot.com/2008/06/jeffersons-syncretism-adams-belief-in.html

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That’s a problem with this debate. For you it’s all about “salvation” or whether these Founders are in Hell. For all we know every single one of them along with Saddam Hussein and George Carlin could have had a last minute conversion, like the thief on the cross, before they slipped into unconsciousness.

The salvation question utterly unconcerns me. Rather I’m trying to get at what they believed during the course of lifetime.

And likewise, I repeat my assertion if they were formally or nominally associated with some kind of “Christian” identity, this does little to show they were orthodox Trinitarian Christians as Jefferson, J. Adams, Franklin et al. had such a formal and nominal “Christian” identity and you well understand the phenomena of “nominal Christianity” and the “narrow path” as it relates to regeneration and orthodoxy.

We need more pieces of the evidence to put together than just that before making any kind of conclusion or even drawing any kind of presumption.

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http://tinyurl.com/6opvd7

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My point was there are at least three views of Locke’s religious beliefs and you quoted only the part that supported your position. You do it again in post 332 by ignoring the view of Locke’s immediate biographer; preferring to highlight the other two views–this is deliberate distortion by picking and choosing your quotes and references.

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We can certainly agree that John Adams denied that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and almost certainly denied the dual nature of Jesus Christ. I granted already that John Adams was most likely a Unitarian. But I do not yet know whether he denied that Jesus died for his sins, that he repented of his sins, and agreed that without Jesus as his savior there was no way for him to receive eternal life. However, I am sure you will provide all the evidence needed.

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So you keep saying about the Founding Fathers. I gave you the basic criteria for accepting someone as a Christian in my post 319. For you to give proof that someone doesn’t pass the “Christian” test you must find quotes where they deny the Gospel or say “NO” to the first three questions of Church membership. If you don’t have that evidence and the person says he/she is a “Christian” then there is a clear reason to doubt their salvation. Anything else is pure speculation on your part.

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Indeed, Samuel Clarke another giant who influenced America’s Founders was likewise an Arian and an Anglican Divine to boot who held a high position within the Anglican Church.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/clarke/

In 1712, apparently against the advice of some of Queen Anne’s ministers, Clarke published The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity, which was accused of Arianism, the view that Christ is divine but created. The ensuing controversy culminated two years later in his humiliating promise to the Upper House of Convocation not to preach or write on the topic any longer. However, this act of submission did not silence the correct rumors that he, like Newton himself, was still an Arian. How much these suspicions of heterodoxy damaged his ecclesiastical career is unclear. However, Voltaire reports that Bishop Gibson effectively prevented Clarke’s elevation to the see of Canterbury by pointing out that Clarke was indeed the most learned and honest man in the kingdom, but had one defect: he was not a Christian.

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