"The execution of the law is the life of the law." That was a saying among the Puritans of the seventeenth century. It means that if you don't execute the law, it eventually becomes dead letter. Think about the laws that are antique in the American system. Your local area or state probably have some of these on the books. Don't hitch your horse to this hitching post, no spitting on the sidewalk, etc. The police never enforce them, so hardly anyone even remembers or knows that they exist. They might as well not exist.
Some of those laws are so impractical that there's no reason to enforce them any longer, but God's law-word never expires, unless revoked by the lawgiver Himself. To swear before Him and then violate the oath is to call down serious punishment on oneself. Even if man never knows you swore falsely, God sees all. Therefore, the argument used at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 that a religious test oath could be violated with impunity by ambitious men who would swear to anything to advance their political career was wrong on two counts.
First, the living God would still hold that man to his oath, and so would the people. "What is an oath? It is the calling down on one's head the negative sanctions of God. If a person or covenanted institution disobeys the law of God, then God comes in wrath to punish the rebels. He comes in history. This was the warning of the Old Testament prophets." Political Polytheism, Gary North, p. 41 (Tyler, TX: ICE 1989).
Second, it was a hypocritical argument, for they did require an oath in the U.S. Constitution, the oath to defend and uphold the Constitution. Politicians swear to that all the time, then they violate it with nary a blink of an eye. So they left out the oath to believe in the one, true God and His word, but they replaced it with an oath to support and defend man's word! They used the hypocrisy argument hypocritically, opposing a religious test oath but supporting a humanistic constitutional oath.
What is telling about this decision on the part of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention is the fact that most of the states required a religious test oath before someone could serve in public office. These oaths were typically trinitarian, bible-centered oaths, not sectarian, that is, not based on a certain denomination. In other words, they were distinctly Christian in content. At most, these test oaths might have excluded Roman Catholics because the Reformation's many issues with that church would still have been fresh to those descendants of the reformers. The following are some examples.
Magistrates serving in Pennsylvania had to take this oath: "And I, A.B., profess faith in God the Father and in Jesus Christ his eternal son, the true God, and in the Holy Spirit, one God blessed for evermore; and do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration." By the way, Pennsylvania was founded by Quakers, like William Penn, who had a different concept of the Trinity than other Protestants.
The 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution required representatives to swear to the following: "And each member, before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz:
"I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine inspiration."
"And no further or other religious test shall ever hereafter be required of any civil officer or magistrate in this State."
In New Jersey, religious liberty had to be upheld, and every civil magistrate was required by law to affirm this upon oath to Jesus Christ. Fundamental Constitution for the Province of East New Jersey" (1683). In that same document was stated: "Nor by this article [the religious liberty article] is it intended that any under the notion of liberty shall allow themselves to avow atheism, irreligiousness, or to practice cursing, swearing, drunkenness, profaneness, whoring, adultery, murdering, or any kind of violence, or indulging themselves in stage plays, masks, revels, or such like abuses; ..." Compared to other state laws addressing the beliefs required of public officials, this governing document of early New Jersey had the most extraneous requirements in addition to simply upholding religious liberty.
1701 Delaware Charter: "that all Persons who also profess to believe in Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the World, shall be capable (notwithstanding their other Persuasions and Practices in Point of Conscience and Religion) to serve this Government in any Capacity, both legislatively and executively, he or they solemnly promising, when lawfully required, Allegiance to the King as Sovereign, and Fidelity to the Proprietary and Governor, and taking the Attests as now established by the Law made at Newcastle, in the Year One Thousand and Seven Hundred, entitled, An Act directing the Attests of several Officers and Ministers, as now amended and confirmed this present Assembly."
1776 Delaware Constitution: "ART. 22. Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall take the following oath, or affirmation, if conscientiously scrupulous of taking an oath, to wit:"
"***
"I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration."
1776 Constitution of Maryland: "XXXV. That no other test or qualification ought to be required, on admission to any office of trust or profit, than such oath of support and fidelity to this State, and such oath of office, as shall be directed by this Convention or the Legislature of this State, and a declaration of a belief in the Christian religion."
1776 North Carolina Constitution: "XXXII.(5) That no person, who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State." One of the qualifications for voting in North Carolina was belief in the Christian religion.
1777 Vermont Constitution: "And each member, before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz."
"I ____ do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the Universe, the rewarder of the good and punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the scriptures of the old and new testament to be given by divine inspiration, and own and profess the protestant religion."
"And no further or other religious test shall ever, hereafter, be required of any civil officer or magistrate in this State."
That oath was repeated in the 1786 Vermont Constitution.
So the states, at the time of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, required that public officials be believers in the bible and the God of the bible. However, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 went a different route, enacting an oath that required allegiance to the Constitution, not the God of the bible. Did that act mean the states automatically became unauthorized theocracies? There's no mention of a sovereign God in the document, and there's no reference to biblical law being the law of the American people. Those aspects excluded two points of the biblical covenant, one and three - the sovereign being the God of the bible, and His law being the law of the land. As for point two, hierarchy, the Constitution positively forbids any type of oath to the Trinitarian faith by elected officials. The first amendment forbids any law that would forbid the propagation of heresy or outright anti-Christian faiths. Thus, the fifth covenantal element, continuity/inheritance, is in jeopardy when the Christian character of the nation is allowed to be altered to the detriment of the faith.
The fourth element of the covenant as demonstrated in the oath to defend the Constitution, sanctions, cannot be called biblical except in part. Those serving in the federal government swear not to uphold God's word but man's word in the Constitution. Any swearing, even when done with one hand on the bible, is to call upon the living God of the bible to uphold the humanism enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Thus the Constitution adds insult to injury by not containing an oath to uphold the law of the living God but requiring an oath to defend the Constitution. Just about every aspect of a biblical covenant is denied or positively forbidden by the U.S. Constitution. However, that does not necessarily mean the states cannot continue to hold their officials to a religious test oath. Others will disagree, citing the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
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