Judge Joseph Story in discussing the Separation Clause in the unamended constitution, Article VI, Section III: "...but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."
"The remaining part of the clause declares, that 'no religious test shall ever be required, as a qualification to any office or public trust, under the United States.' This clause is not introduced merely for the purpose of satisfying the scruples of many respectable persons, who feel an invincible repugnance to any test or affirmation. It had a higher object; to cut off for ever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government. The framers of the constitution were fully sensible of the dangers from this source, marked out in history of other ages and countries; and not wholly unknown to our own. They knew, that bigotry was unceasingly vigilant in its own stratagems, to secure to itself an exclusive ascendancy over the human mind; and that intolerance was ever ready to arm itself with all the terrors of civil power to exterminate those, who doubted its dogmas, or resisted its infallibility.(Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States by Joseph Story Vol III, 1833)Story even flipped on resistance to Jefferson and Separation. He, a second time now, came out AGAINST religion intermixed with government for reasons of the "terrors of civil power", or maybe tyranny, inherent in a government controlled or allied with religion.
I had decided to ignore your replies because you had no real arguments, other than an occasional "cherry pick" that might appear to the uneducated to have some substance. Then I ran across this one, which on the surface also appears to have some substance; but is, in fact, more of the same. All Story does is confirm my continuous argument that the 1st Amendment was meant only as a constraint against the Federal Govenrment. You quoted him as follows:
"It had a higher object; to cut off for ever every pretence of any alliance between church and state in the national government" (my emphasis...you emplasized totally irrevelant passages).
And you called that a "a game, set, and match moment"? Jeesh!!!