CHESTER
COUNTY, NEW YORK

(August 23, 1831), as related in The New York Spectator, reported that a judge refused to admit the evidence of a man who declared he did not believe in God, on the grounds that the witness had destroyed beforehand all confidence of the court in his testimony. The newspaper explained:

The court of commons pleas of Chester county (New York), a few days since rejected a witness who declared his disbelief in the existence of God. The presiding judge remarked, that he had not before been aware that there was a man living who did not believe in the existence of God; that this belief constituted the sanction of all testimony in a court of justice: and that he knew of no cause in a Christian country, where a witness had been permitted to testify without such belief.2672