"It is earnestly recommended that all officers and soldiers diligently to attend Divine Service and all officers and soldiers who shall behave indecently or irreverently at any place of Divine worship shall if commissioned officers be brought before a court martial there to be publicly and severely reprimanded by the President, if non-commissioned officers or soldiers, every person so offending shall for his first offence forfeit one sixth of a Dollar to be deducted out of his next pay, for the second offence he shall not only forfeit a like sum but be confined for twenty-four hours and for every like offence shall suffer and pay in like manner, which money so forfeited shall be applied to the use of the sick soldiers of the troops or company to which the offender belongs."[146] The continental congress in its acts for the regulation of the Army issued the above orders. Orders also came from headquarters directing the soldiers actions along religious lines. "All officers see that their men attend upon prayers morning and evening also the service on the Lord's Day with their arms and accouterments ready to march in case of any alarm, that no Drums to be beaten after the parson is on the stage".[147] But the religion of the American soldier was more than an order from the provincial congress or from headquarters. It was an influence which was an important factor in the soldiers life and in the war. In the American Revolution perhaps the religious element was not the paramount factor as it had been in the crusades or the Puritan Revolution giving character to the whole movement, it rather stayed in the back ground and supported the political and military organizations.[148] The pulpit had been a factor in shaping the soldier's life before he left home, it was a day when newspapers and other means of disseminating ideas were not very plentiful and the pulpit was about the only way of reaching the majority of the people. It is said of one minister who was famous for his bold sermons and his purely political discourses although they were delivered from the pulpit he "knows all our best authors and has sometimes cited even in the pulpit passages from Voltaire and Jean Jaques Rousseau".[149]