Government corrupted by Vice, and recovered by Righteousness

Samuel Langdon (1723-1797), scholar and Congregational clergyman, was President of Harvard College in the difficult revolutionary years 1774-1780. The interest of his discourse at the critical moment of 1775 is that he shared with more secular thinkers of the period the perspective of classical republicanism but hoped to stave off the almost inevitable decay of civic virtue by the revival to true religion.