Time & Perspective Quote by James McHenry

“Bibles are strong entrenchments” is martial language smuggled into moral instruction, and that’s the tell. McHenry, a revolutionary-era politician and former Secretary of War, reaches for fortifications because he’s writing for citizens who still think in terms of defense, territory, and enemies. The Bible isn’t just a book here; it’s a bulwark in the cultural landscape, a piece of civic infrastructure meant to hold the line against internal decay.

The clever move is that McHenry doesn’t primarily argue that Scripture prevents sin. He argues it prevents the comfortable kind of sin: wickedness with a “quiet conscience.” That’s a psychological theory of social order. People will do plenty of damage if they can narrate it as normal, deserved, or invisible. A widely shared Bible culture, in his view, makes self-justification harder. It plants a moral vocabulary inside the mind that keeps prosecuting the case even when no court is watching.

The subtext is political: a republic can’t police everyone, so it must cultivate citizens who police themselves. This is the era’s anxiety in miniature - the fear that liberty without internal restraint becomes license, and that the new nation’s experiment will collapse under private appetites. It also hints at a power play: if “Bibles abound,” whose interpretation sets the terms of conscience? “Entrenchments” protect, but they also exclude, drawing boundaries around belonging and respectability. McHenry’s intent is civic stability, but he reveals how quickly morality becomes a governance tool.