Rush felt that the United States was the work of God: "I do not believe that the Constitution was the offspring of inspiration, but I am as perfectly satisfied that the Union of the United States in its form and adoption is as much the work of a Divine Providence as any of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament". In 1798, after the Constitution's adoption, Rush declared: "The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments." One quote popularly assigned to Rush, however, which portrays him as a medical libertarian: "Unless we put medical freedoms into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship [. . .] To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic and have no place in a republic [. . .] The Constitution of this republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom," is likely a misattribution. No primary source for it has been found, and the words "un-American" and "undercover" are anachronisms, as their usage as such did not appear until after Rush's death.