Personally, I am more appalled and offended than I am perplexed.  The thrust of the piece is to foist a Christian lens onto the very idea of being a constitutionalist.   So constitutions are only for Christians? Second, Mr. Thro foists a Christian lens onto our specific Constitution even though the only mention of a god is the Lord associated with the numbering of years marking the time  the Constitution was proposed by the Philadelphia convention — as in what we now call the common era.  Madison was able to discuss human nature without reference to God or to theology.  Why can’t our purported constitutionalist stick to what his sources do and say?  Why does he introduce theology?  

Madison does say men are not angels, but he does not say they are sinners. Why does Madison say that men are not angels? One hypothesis is that it is because they are sinners. Many think this now and thought that at the time. It would have been easy to say so. Another hypothesis is that humans are not angels because there are no angels. That would have been harder to say forthrightly. And Madison does not say that humans are all sinners, or that angels are a fiction. He leaves it an open question — as a good constitutionalist should.