James Kent, (1763-1847) a close friend of U S Supreme Court Chief Justice
John Marshall and U S Supreme Court Associate Justice Joseph Story,
Attorney, Jurist, public official, first Professor of Law at Columbia
University, Judge on the New York State Supreme Court, and its chief
Justice, Author of the Commentaries on American Law, (1826-1830) author of
the infamous  People v Ruggles decision in 1811, and along with Joseph
Story, called by some "Father of American Jurisprudence."

While James  Kent disliked Thomas Jefferson, in part for Jefferson's
attacks on the Federalist judiciary but also because of the perceived
threat of Jeffersonian irreligion to public order and morality, his own
personal views regarding religion may not have been so different from
Thomas Jefferson.
"He despised Popery; scorned the fanaticism of certain of the Protestant
sects; and once, in the privacy of his club, had spoken of Christianity
itself as a vulgar superstition from which cultivated men were free. (209)
If he still held that opinion, then his comments on religion from the bench
were sincere only as they expressed an aristocratic conviction that
religious faith is useful as a buttress to social order. To the theory of
the case his hatred of Jefferson and his constant fear of Jacobinical
commotion lend support. Be his private beliefs what they may, whether he
was at heart a child of the Enlightenment or not, as a judge he reverenced
the Virgin and valued so highly the religion of her Son as to write it into
the law of the land."
(209) When visiting French Canada, Kent made caustic comments on the
Catholic religion. He called the "naked" image of Christ on the cross
"disgusting." Once, in describing an enthusiastic Protestant parson, he
called him "a pale distressed looking zealot." For his remark about
Christianity as a vulgar superstition, see William Dunlap's Diary,
September 30, 1797 supra cit.
James Kent, A Study in Conservatism, 1763-1847, by John Theodore Horton. Da
Capo Press, N Y (1969, Copyright 1939, The American Historical Association)
p. 192-93.
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At the very least, the above shows the common trend that people in the
public light have of saying and doing one thing in public while frequently
believing and saying totally different things in private.
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[The] manifest object of the men who framed the institution of this
country, was to have a State without religion and a Church without
politics--that is to say, they meant that one should never be used as an
engine for the purposes of the other.... For that they built up a wall of
complete partition between the two. (Jeremiah S. Black, noted
constitutional advocate, Essays and Speeches, D. Appleton and Co., 1885. As
quoted by Leo Pfeffer, "The Establishment Clause: The Never-Ending
Conflict," in Ronald C. White and Albright G. Zimmerman, An Unsettled
Arena: Religion and the Bill of Rights, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1990, p. 72.)