Thomas Jefferson on Religion Notes on Religion, 1776 (Ford 2: 252-68):
And moreover to them who believed their faith was to be counted as righteousness. Not
that faith without works was to save them; St. James c. 2 says expressly the contrary; and
all make the fundamental pillars of Christianity to be faith and repentance. So that a
reformation of life (included under repentance) was essential, and defects in this would
be made up by their faith; i.e. their faith should be counted for righteousness…
St. Paul says—Rom 2:13: “the Gentiles have the law written in their hearts,” i.e. the law
of nature…
The epistles were written to persons already Christians. A person might be a Christian
then before they were written. Consequently the fundamentals of Christianity were to be
found in the preaching of our Saviour, which is related in the gospels. These
fundamentals are to be found in the epistles here and there, and promiscuously mixed
with other truths. But these other truths are not to be made fundamentals. They serve for
edification indeed and explaining to us matters in worship and morality, but being written
occasionally it will readily be seen that their explanations are adapted to the notions and
customs of the people they were written to. But yet every sentence in them (though the
writers were inspired) must not be taken up and made a fundamental, without assent to
which a man is not to be admitted a member of the Christian church here, or to his
kingdom hereafter…
In the middle ages of Christianity opposition to the State opinions was hushed. The
consequence was, Christianity became loaded with all the Romish follies. Nothing but
free argument, raillery and even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion…
Another plea for Episcopal government in religion in England is its similarity to the
political government by a king. No bishop, no king. This then with us is a plea for
government by a presbytery which resembles republican government. The clergy have
ever seen this. The bishops were always mere tools of the crown…
St. Peter gave the title of clergy to all God’s people till Pope Higinus and ye succeeding
prelates took it from them and appropriated it to priests only…
Bishops were elected by the hands of the whole church…
A modern bishop to be moulded into a primitive one must be elected by the people,
undiocest, unrevenued, unlorded…
Why require those things in order to ecclesiastical communion which Christ does not
require in order to life eternal? How can that be the church of Christ which excludes such
persons from its communion as he will one day receive into the kingdom of heaven? [see
Matthew 25]
The care of every man’s soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it?
Well what if he neglect the care of his health or estate, which more nearly relate to the
state. Will the magistrate make a law that he shall not be poor or sick? Laws provide
against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against
their wills…
I cannot give up my guidance to the magistrate, because he knows no more of the way to
heaven than I do, and is less concerned to direct me right than I am to go right. If the
Jews had followed their kings, among so many, what number would have led them to
idolatry?
Faith is not faith without believing. No man can conform his faith to the dictates of
another. The life and essence of religion consists in the internal persuasion or belief of the
mind. External forms of worship, when against our belief are hypocrisy and impiety…
A church is “a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord,
in order to the public worshipping of God in such a manner as they judge acceptable to
him and effectual to the salvation of their souls.” It is voluntary because no man is by
nature bound to any church…
Christ has said that “wheresoever two or three are gathered together in his name he will
be in the midst of them.” This is his definition of a society. He does not make it essential
that a bishop or presbyter govern them…
Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid
from the power of great men to whom she is rarely known and seldom welcome. She has
no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men. Error has indeed often
prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist
to error…
Why have Christians been distinguished above all people who have ever lived, for
persecutions? Is it because of the genius of their religion? No, its genius is the reverse. It
is the refusing toleration to those of a different opinion which has produced all the
bustles and wars on account of religion. It was the misfortune of mankind that during the
darker centuries the Christian priests following their ambition and avarice combining
with the magistrate to divide the spoils of the people, could establish the notion that
schismatics might be ousted of their possessions and destroyed. This notion we have not
yet cleared ourselves from. In this case no wonder the oppressed should rebel, and they
will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to
them and all partial distinctions, exclusions and incapacitations removed.
Notes on the State of Virginia, 1784 (P 208-213)
Query XVII. The different religions received into that state?
The first settlers in this country were emigrants from England, of the English church, just
at a point of time when it was flushed with complete victory over the religious of all other
persuasions. Possessed, as they became, of the powers of making, administering, and
executing the laws, they shewed equal intolerance in this country with their Presbyterian
brethren, who had emigrated to the northern government. The poor Quakers were flying
from persecution in England. They cast their eyes on these new countries as asylums of
civil and religious freedom; but they found them free only for the reigning sect. Several
acts of the Virginia assembly of 1659, 1662, and 1693, had made it penal in parents to
refuse to have their children baptized; had prohibited the unlawful assembling of
Quakers; had made it penal for any master of a vessel to bring a Quaker into the state;
had ordered those already here, and such as should come thereafter, to be imprisoned till
they should abjure the country; provided a milder punishment for their first and second
return, but death for their third; had inhibited all persons from suffering their meetings in
or near their houses, entertaining them individually, or disposing of books which
supported their tenets. If no capital execution took place here, as did in New-England, it
was not owing to the moderation of the church, or spirit of the legislature, as may be
inferred from the law itself; but to historical circumstances which have not been handed
down to us. The Anglicans retained full possession of the country about a century. Other
opinions began then to creep in, and the great care of the government to support their
own church, having begotten an equal degree of indolence in its clergy, two-thirds of the
people had become dissenters at the commencement of the present revolution. The laws
indeed were still oppressive on them, but the spirit of the one party had subsided into
moderation, and of the other had risen to a degree of determination which commanded
respect.
The present state of our laws on the subject of religion is this. The convention of May
1776, in their declaration of rights, declared it to be a truth, and a natural right, that the
exercise of religion should be free; but when they proceeded to form on that declaration
the ordinance of government, instead of taking up every principle declared in the bill of
rights, and guarding it by legislative sanction, they passed over that which asserted our
religious rights, leaving them as they found them. The same convention, however, when
they met as a member of the general assembly in October 1776, repealed all acts of
parliament which had rendered criminal the maintaining any opinions in matters of
religion, the forbearing to repair to church, and the exercising any mode of worship; and
suspended the laws giving salaries to the clergy, which suspension was made perpetual in
October 1779. Statutory oppressions in religion being thus wiped away, we remain at
present under those only imposed by the common law, or by our own acts of assembly.
At the common law, heresy was a capital offence, punishable by burning. Its definition
was left to the ecclesiastical judges, before whom the conviction was, till the statute of
the 1 El. c. 1. circumscribed it, by declaring, that nothing should be deemed heresy, but
what had been so determined by authority of the canonical scriptures, or by one of the
four first general councils, or by some other council having for the grounds of their
declaration the express and plain words of the scriptures. Heresy, thus circumscribed,
being an offence at the common law, our act of assembly of October 1777, c. 17. gives
cognizance of it to the general court, by declaring, that the jurisdiction of that court shall
be general in all matters at the common law. The execution is by the writ De hæretico
comburendo. By our own act of assembly of 1705, c. 30, if a person brought up in the
Christian religion denies the being of a God, or the Trinity, or asserts there are more Gods
than one, or denies the Christian religion to be true, or the scriptures to be of divine
authority, he is punishable on the first offence by incapacity to hold any office or
employment ecclesiastical, civil, or military; on the second by disability to sue, to take
any gift or legacy, to be guardian, executor, or administrator, and by three years
imprisonment, without bail. A father's right to the custody of his own children being
founded in law on his right of guardianship, this being taken away, they may of course be
severed from him, and put, by the authority of a court, into more orthodox hands. This is
a summary view of that religious slavery, under which a people have been willing to
remain, who have lavished their lives and fortunes for the establishment of their civil
freedom.
The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the
acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority
over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we
never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The
legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it
does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither
picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot
be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by
making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him
obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only
effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will support the true religion, by
bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the
natural enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government permitted
free enquiry, Christianity could never have been introduced. Had not free enquiry been
indulged, at the æra of the reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have
been purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will be protected, and
new ones encouraged. Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our
bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was
once forbidden as a medicine, and the potatoe as an article of food. Government is just as
infallible too when it fixes systems in physics. Galileo was sent to the inquisition for
affirming that the earth was a sphere: the government had declared it to be as flat as a
trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error however at length
prevailed, the earth became a globe, and Descartes declared it was whirled round its axis
by a vortex. The government in which he lived was wise enough to see that this was no
question of civil jurisdiction, or we should all have been involved by authority in vortices
In fact, the vortices have been exploded, and the Newtonian principle of gravitation is
now more firmly established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the
government to step in, and to make it an article of necessary faith. Reason and
experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which
needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion:
whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by
private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity.
But is uniformity of opinion desireable? No more than of face and stature. Introduce the
bed of Procrustes then, and as there is danger that the large men may beat the small, make
us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter. Difference of opinion is
advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over
each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children,
since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we
have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion?
To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and
error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people.
That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one
of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see
the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we
cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments.
To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to
indulge it while we refuse it ourselves. But every state, says an inquisitor, has established
some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility
of establishments? Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long
subsisted without any establishment at all. The experiment was new and doubtful when
they made it. It has answered beyond conception. They flourish infinitely. Religion is
well supported; of various kinds, indeed, but all good enough; all sufficient to preserve
peace and order: or if a sect arises, whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has
fair play, and reasons and laughs it out of doors, without suffering the state to be troubled
with it. They do not hang more malefactors than we do. They are not more disturbed with
religious dissensions. On the contrary, their harmony is unparalleled, and can be ascribed
to nothing but their unbounded tolerance, because there is no other circumstance in which
they differ from every nation on earth. They have made the happy discovery, that the way
to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them. Let us too give this experiment
fair play, and get rid, while we may, of those tyrannical laws. It is true, we are as yet
secured against them by the spirit of the times. I doubt whether the people of this country
would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years imprisonment for not
comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a
permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind of protection we receive in return
for the rights we give up? Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers
will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and
better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every
essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From
the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to
resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their
rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money,
and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles,
therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us
long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a
convulsion.
To Nehemiah Dodge & Others, A Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, in
the State of Connecticut, 1 January 1802
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that
he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of
government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence
that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make
no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,
thus building a wall of separation between church and state. [Congress thus inhibited
from acts respecting religion, and the Executive authorised only to execute their acts, I
have refrained from presenting even occasional performances of devotion presented
indeed legally where an Executive is the legal head of a national church, but subject here,
as religious exercises only to the voluntary regulations and discipline of each respective
sect.] Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights
of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which
tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in
opposition to his social duties.
Note: The Baptists were leaders in the struggle for religious liberty, which was far from
finished in New England. The bracketed section in the second paragraph had been
blocked off for deletion, though it was not actually deleted in his draft of the letter. It is
included here for completeness. Reflecting upon Jefferson’s knowledge that his letter was
far from a mere personal correspondence, he deleted the block, he says in the margin, to
avoid offending members of his party in the eastern states.
To Rev. Samuel Miller, 23 January 1808
Sir, —I have duly received your favor of the 18th and am thankful to you for having
written it, because it is more agreeable to prevent than to refuse what I do not think
myself authorized to comply with. I consider the government of the U S. as interdicted by
the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline,
or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting
the establishment, or free exercise, of religion, but from that also which reserves to the
states the powers not delegated to the U.S. Certainly no power to prescribe any religious
exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the general
government It must then rest with the states, as far as it can be in any human authority.
But it is only proposed that I should recommend, not prescribe a day of fasting & prayer.
That is, that I should indirectly assume to the U.S. an authority over religious exercises
which the Constitution has directly precluded them from. It must be meant too that this
recommendation is to carry some authority, and to be sanctioned by some penalty on
those who disregard it; not indeed of fine and imprisonment, but of some degree of
proscription perhaps in public opinion. And does the change in the nature of the penalty
make the recommendation the less a law of conduct for those to whom it is directed? I do
not believe it is for the interest of religion to invite the civil magistrate to direct its
exercises, its discipline, or its doctrines; nor of the religious societies that the general
government should be invested with the power of effecting any uniformity of time or
matter among them. Fasting & prayer are religious exercises. The enjoining them an act
of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these
exercises, & the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and this
right can never be safer than in their own hands, where the constitution has deposited it.
I am aware that the practice of my predecessors may be quoted. But I have ever believed
that the example of state executives led to the assumption of that authority by the general
government, without due examination, which would have discovered that what might be
a right in a state government, was a violation of that right when assumed by another. Be
this as it may, every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, & mine
tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the U S. and no
authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.
I again express my satisfaction that you have been so good as to give me an opportunity
of explaining myself in a private letter, in which I could give my reasons more in detail
than might have been done in a public answer: and I pray you to accept the assurances of
my high esteem & respect.
To James Fishback, 27 September 1809 (L&B 12:315):
Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the
observation of those moral precepts only in which all nations agree (for all forbid us to
murder, steal, plunder, or bear false witness,) and that we should not intermeddle with the
particular dogmas in which all religions differ, and which are totally unconnected with
morality. In all of them we see good men, and as many in one as another. The varieties in
the structure and action of the human mind as in those of the body, are the work of our
Creator, against which it cannot be a religious duty to erect the standard of uniformity.
The practice of morality being necessary for the well-being of society, he has taken care
to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the
subtleties of our brain. We all agree in the obligation of the moral precepts of Jesus, and
nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in his discourses. It is, then, a
matter of principle with me to avoid disturbing the tranquility of others by the expression
of any opinion on the innocent questions on which we schismatize.
To John Adams, 22 August 1813 (L&B 13:350):
It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic
mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the
three are not one; … But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests.
Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of factitious religion, and they would catch no more
flies. We should all, then, like the Quakers, live without an order of priests, moralize for
ourselves, and say nothing about what no man can understand, nor therefore believe; for I
suppose belief to be the assent of the mind to an intelligible proposition.
To John Adams, 12 October 1813 (P 540-3):
To compare the morals of the old, with those of the new testament, would require an
attentive study of the former, a search thro’ all its books for its precepts, and through all
its history for its practices, and the principles they prove. As commentaries too on these,
the philosophy of the Hebrews must be enquired into, their Mishna, their Gemara,
Cabbala, Jezirah, Sohar, Cosri, and their Talmud must be examined and understood, in
order to do them full justice. Brucker, it should seem, has gone deeply into these
Repositories of their ethics, and Enfield, his epitomiser, concludes in these words. “Ethics
were so little studied among the Jews, that, in their whole compilation called the Talmud,
there is only one treatise on moral subjects. Their books of Morals chiefly consisted in a
minute enumeration of duties. From the law of Moses were deduced 613 precepts, which
were divided into two classes, affirmative and negative, 248 in the former, and 365 in the
latter. It may serve to give the reader some idea of the low state of moral philosophy
among the Jews in the Middle age, to add, that of the 248 affirmative precepts, only 3
were considered as obligatory upon women; and that, in order to obtain salvation, it was
judged sufficient to fulfill any one single law in the hour of death; the observance of the
rest being deemed necessary, only to increase the felicity of the future life. What a
wretched depravity of sentiment and manners must have prevailed before such corrupt
maxims could have obtained credit! It is impossible to collect from these writings a
consistent series of moral Doctrine.” Enfield, B. 4. chap. 3. It was the reformation of this
“wretched depravity” of morals which Jesus undertook. In extracting the pure principles
which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have
been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of
riches and power to them. We must dismiss the Platonists and Plotinists, the Stagyrites
and Gamalielites, the Eclectics the Gnostics and Scholastics, their essences and
emanations, their Logos and Demi-urgos, Aeons and Daemons male and female, with a
long train of Etc. Etc. Etc. or, shall I say at once, of Nonsense. We must reduce our
volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus,
paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not
understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his
dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves.
There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which
has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting
verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging, the matter which is evidently his,
and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an octavo
of 46 pages of pure and unsophisticated doctrines, such as were professed and acted on
by the unlettered Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers, and the Christians of the first century.
Their Platonising successors indeed, in after times, in order to legitimate the corruptions
which they had incorporated into the doctrines of Jesus, found it necessary to disavow the
primitive Christians, who had taken their principles from the mouth of Jesus himself, of
his Apostles, and the Fathers cotemporary with them. They excommunicated their
followers as heretics, branding them with the opprobrious name of Ebionites or Beggars.
To Thomas Law, 13 June 1814 (P 540-3):
DEAR SIR, —The copy of your Second Thoughts on Instinctive Impulses, with the letter
accompanying it, was received just as I was setting out on a journey to this place, two or
three days’ distant from Monticello. I brought it with me and read it with great
satisfaction, and with the more as it contained exactly my own creed on the foundation of
morality in man. It is really curious that on a question so fundamental, such a variety of
opinions should have prevailed among men, and those, too, of the most exemplary virtue
and first order of understanding. It shows how necessary was the care of the Creator in
making the moral principle so much a part of our constitution as that no errors of
reasoning or of speculation might lead us astray from its observance in practice. Of all the
theories on this question, the most whimsical seems to have been that of Wollaston, who
considers truth as the foundation of morality. The thief who steals your guinea does
wrong only inasmuch as he acts a lie in using your guinea as if it were his own. Truth is
certainly a branch of morality, and a very important one to society. But presented as its
foundation, it is as if a tree taken up by the roots, had its stem reversed in the air, and one
of its branches planted in the ground. Some have made the love of God the foundation of
morality. This, too, is but a branch of our moral duties, which are generally divided into
duties to God and duties to man. If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a
belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to
say, as some do, that no such being exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of
most of those we act on, to-wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of
them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections
from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to
Atheism. Diderot, D’Alembert, D’Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among
the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than
the love of God.
The Το κυλον of others is founded in a different faculty, that of taste, which is not even a
branch of morality. We have indeed an innate sense of what we call beautiful, but that is
exercised chiefly on subjects addressed to the fancy, whether through the eye in visible
forms, as landscape, animal figure, dress, drapery, architecture, the composition of colors,
&c., or to the imagination directly, as imagery, style, or measure in prose or poetry, or
whatever else constitutes the domain of criticism or taste, a faculty entirely distinct from
the moral one. Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly
substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as
constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves we stand on the ground of
identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to
a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring
also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its
counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to
self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others. Accordingly, it is against this
enemy that are erected the batteries of moralists and religionists, as the only obstacle to
the practice of morality. Take from man his selfish propensities, and he can have nothing
to seduce him from the practice of virtue. Or subdue those propensities by education,
instruction or restraint, and virtue remains without a competitor. Egoism, in a broader
sense, has been thus presented as the source of moral action. It has been said that we feed
the hungry, clothe the naked, bind up the wounds of the man beaten by thieves, pour oil
and wine into them, set him on our own beast and bring him to the inn, because we
receive ourselves pleasure from these acts. So Helvetius, one of the best men on earth,
and the most ingenious advocate of this principle, after defining “interest” to mean not
merely that which is pecuniary, but whatever may procure us pleasure or withdraw us
from pain, [de l’esprit 2, 1,] says, [ib. 2, 2,] “the humane man is he to whom the sight of
misfortune is insupportable, and who to rescue himself from this spectacle, is forced to
succor the unfortunate object.” This indeed is true. But it is one step short of the ultimate
question. These good acts give us pleasure, but how happens it that they give us pleasure?
Because nature hath implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a
moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses,
and protests against the language of Helvetius, [ib. 2, 5,] “what other motive than selfinterest could determine a man to generous actions? It is as impossible for him to love
what is good for the sake of good, as to love evil for the sake of evil.” The Creator would
indeed have been a bungling artist, had he intended man for a social animal, without
planting in him social dispositions. It is true they are not planted in every man, because
there is no rule without exceptions; but it is false reasoning which converts exceptions
into the general rule. Some men are born without the organs of sight, or of hearing, or
without hands. Yet it would be wrong to say that man is born without these faculties, and
sight, hearing, and hands may with truth enter into the general definition of man.
The want or imperfection of the moral sense in some men, like the want or imperfection
of the senses of sight and hearing in others, is no proof that it is a general characteristic of
the species. When it is wanting, we endeavor to supply the defect by education, by
appeals to reason and calculation, by presenting to the being so unhappily conformed,
other motives to do good and to eschew evil, such as the love, or the hatred, or rejection
of those among whom he lives, and whose society is necessary to his happiness and even
existence; demonstrations by sound calculation that honesty promotes interest in the long
run; the rewards and penalties established by the laws; and ultimately the prospects of a
future state of retribution for the evil as well as the good done while here. These are the
correctives which are supplied by education, and which exercise the functions of the
moralist, the preacher, and legislator; and they lead into a course of correct action all
those whose disparity is not too profound to be eradicated. Some have argued against the
existence of a moral sense, by saying that if nature had given us such a sense, impelling
us to virtuous actions, and warning us against those which are vicious, then nature would
also have designated, by some particular ear-marks, the two sets of actions which are, in
themselves, the one virtuous and the other vicious. Whereas, we find, in fact, that the
same actions are deemed virtuous in one country and vicious in another. The answer is
that nature has constituted utility to man the standard and best of virtue. Men living in
different countries, under different circumstances, different habits and regimens, may
have different utilities; the same act, therefore, may be useful, and consequently virtuous
in one country which is injurious and vicious in another differently circumstanced.
sincerely, then, believe with you in the general existence of a moral instinct. I think it the
brightest gem with which the human character is studded, and the want of it as more
degrading than the most hideous of the bodily deformities. I am happy in reviewing the
roll of associates in this principle which you present in your second letter, some of which
I had not before met with. To these might be added Lord Kaims, one of the ablest of our
advocates, who goes so far as to say, in his Principles of Natural Religion, that a man
owes no duty to which he is not urged by some impulsive feeling. This is correct, if
referred to the standard of general feeling in the given case, and not to the feeling of a
single individual. Perhaps I may misquote him, it being fifty years since I read his book.
To Miles King, 26 September 1814 (L&B 14:197-8):
He has formed us moral agents. Not that, in the perfection of His state, He can feel pain
or pleasure in anything we may do; He is far above our power; but that we may promote
the happiness of those with whom He has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards
all, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their
freedom of conscience, as we value our own. I must ever believe that religion
substantially good which produces an honest life, and we have been authorized by One
whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its fruit. Our particular principles
of religion are a subject of accountability to our God alone. I inquire after no man’s, and
trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine,
our friends or our foes, are exactly the right. Nay, we have heard it said that there is not a
Quaker or a Baptist, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, a Catholic or a Protestant in
heaven; that, on entering that gate, we leave those badges of schism behind, and find
ourselves united in those principles only in which God has united us all.
To Mrs. M. Harrison Smith, 6 August 1816 (L&B 15:59-61):
I recognize the same motive of goodness in the solicitude you express on the rumor
supposed to proceed from a letter of mine to Charles Thomson, on the subject of the
Christian religion. It is true that, in writing to the translator of the Bible and Testament,
that subject was mentioned; but equally so that no adherence to any particular mode of
Christianity was there expressed, nor any change of opinions suggested. A change from
what? the priests indeed have heretofore thought proper to ascribe to me religious, or
rather anti-religious sentiments, of their own fabric, but such as soothed the resentments
against the act of Virginia for establishing religious freedom. They wished him to be
thought atheist, deist, or devil, who could advocate freedom from their religious
dictations. But I have ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our
consciences, for which we were accountable to Him, and not to the priests. I never told
my own religion, nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor
wished to change another’s creed. I have ever judged of the religion of others by their
lives…For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By
the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They
must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is
that there never would have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial
structures they have built on the purest of moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from
it pence and power, revolt those who think for themselves, and who read in that system
only what is really there. These, therefore, they brand with such nick-names as their
enmity chooses gratuitously to impute.
To George Logan, 12 November 1816 (Ford 12:43):
When we see religion split into so many thousands of sects, and I may say Christianity
itself divided into its thousands also, who are disputing, anathemizing and where the laws
permit burning and torturing one another for abstractions which no one of them
understand, and which are indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind, into
which of the chambers of this Bedlam would a man wish to thrust himself. The sum of all
religion as expressed by its best preacher, “fear God and love thy neighbor,” contains no
mystery, needs no explanation. But this won’t do. It gives no scope to make dupes;
priests could not live by it.
To Ezra Styles, Esq., 25 June 1819 (L&B 15: 203-4):
In that branch of religion which regards the morality of life, and the duties of a social
being, which teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves, and to do good to all men, I
am sure that you and I do not differ. We probably differ on the dogmas of theology, the
foundation of all sectarianism, and on which no two sects dream alike; for if they did they
would then be of the same. You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by
myself, so far as I know. I am not a Jew, and therefore do not adopt their theology, which
supposes the God of infinite justice to punish the sins of their fathers upon their children,
unto the third and fourth generation; and the benevolent and sublime Reformer of that
religion [Judaism] has told us only that God is good and perfect, but has not defined Him.
I am, therefore, of His theology, believing that we have neither words nor ideas adequate
to that definition. And if we could all, after this example, leave the subject as
undefinable, we should all be of one sect, doers of good, and eschewers of evil. No
doctrines of His lead to schism. It is the speculations of crazy theologists which have
made a Babel of a religion the most moral and sublime ever preached to man, and
calculated to heal, and not to create differences. These religious animosities I impute to
those who call themselves His ministers, and who engraft their casuistries on the stock of
His simple precepts. I am sometimes more angry with them than is authorized by the
blessed charities which He preaches.
To William Short, 13 April 1820 (L&B 15:244-5):
At the request of another friend, I had given him a copy. He lent it to his friend to read,
who copied it, and in a few months it appeared in the Theological Magazine of London.
Happily that repository is scarcely known in this country, and the syllabus, therefore, is
still a secret, and in your hands I am sure it will continue so.
But while this syllabus is meant to place the character of Jesus in its true and high light,
as no imposter Himself, but a great reformer of the Hebrew code of religion, it is not to
be understood that I am with Him [Jesus] in all His doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes
the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of
sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it, etc. It is the innocence of his
character, the purity and sublimity of his moral precepts, the eloquences of his
inculcations, the beauty of the apologues in which he conveys them, that I so much
admire; sometimes, indeed, needing indulgence to eastern hyperbolism. My eulogies, too,
may be founded on a postulate which all may not be ready to grant. Among the sayings
and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine
imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of
so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as
to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same
being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to him the former, and leave
the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of
dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corruptor of the doctrines
of Jesus. These palpable interpolations and falsifications of His doctrines, led me to try to
sift them apart. I found the work obvious and easy, and that His past composed the most
beautiful morsel of morality which has been given to us by man. The syllabus is therefore
of His doctrines, not all of mine. I read them as I do those of other ancient and modern
moralists, with a mixture of approbation and dissent.
To William Short, 4 August 1820 (L&B 15:257-9):
My aim in that [letter of April 13] was to justify the character of Jesus against the fictions
of His pseudo-followers, which have exposed Him to the inference of being an impostor.
For if we could believe that He really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the
charlatanisms which His biographers father on Him, and admit the misconstructions,
interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and fanatics of the later ages,
the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind, that He was an impostor. I give
no credit to their falsifications of His actions and doctrines, and to rescue His character,
the postulate in my letter asked only what is granted in reading every other historian.
When Livy and Siculus, for example, tell us things which coincide with our experience of
the order of nature, we credit them on their word, and place their narrations among the
records of credible history. But when they tell us of calves speaking, of statues sweating
blood, and other things against the course of nature, we reject them as fables not
belonging to history. In like manner, when an historian, speaking of a character well
known and established on satisfactory testimony, imputes to it things incompatible with
that character, we reject them without hesitation, and assent only to that of which we
have better evidence. […] So again, the superlative wisdom of Socrates is testified by all
antiquity, and placed on ground not to be questioned. When, therefore, Plato puts into his
mouth such paralogisms, such quibbles on words, and sophisms as a schoolboy would be
ashamed of, we conclude they were the whimsies of Plato’s own foggy brain, and acquit
Socrates of puerilities so unlike his character. (Speaking of Plato, I will add, that no
writer, ancient or modern, has bewildered the world with more ignis fatui, than this
renowned philosopher, in Ethics, in Politics, and Physics.…But Plato’s visions have
furnished a basis for endless systems of mystical theology, and he is therefore all but
adopted as a Christian saint. It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to
throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified. But to return from this
parenthesis.) I say, that this free exercise of reason is all I ask for the vindication of the
character of Jesus. We find in the writings of His biographers matter of two distinct
descriptions. First a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of
superstitions, fanaticisms, and fabrications. Intermixed with these, again, are sublime
ideas of the Supreme Being, aphorisms, and precepts of the purest morality and
benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence, and simplicity of manners,
neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence and
persuasiveness which have not been surpassed. These could not be inventions of the
grovelling authors who relate them.…Can we be at a loss in separating such materials,
and ascribing each to its genuine author? The difference is obvious to the eye and the
understanding, and we may read as we run to each his part; and I will venture to affirm,
that he who, as I have done, will undertake to winnow this grain from the chaff [with the
Jefferson Gospels], will find it not to require a moment’s consideration. The parts fall
asunder of themselves, as would those of an image of metal and clay.
To Rev. Jared Sparks, 4 November 1820 (L&B 15:288):
I hold the precepts of Jesus, as delivered by Himself, to be the most pure, benevolent, and
sublime which have ever been preached to man. I adhere to the principles of the first age;
and consider all subsequent innovations as corruptions of His religion, having no
foundation in what came from Him. The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of
Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere relapses into polytheism, differing
from paganism only by being more unintelligible. The religion of Jesus is founded in the
Unity of God, and this principle chiefly, gave it triumph over the rabble of heathen gods
then acknowledged. Thinking men of all nations rallied readily to the doctrine of one
only God, and embraced it with the pure morals which Jesus inculcated. If the freedom of
religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the
overbearing inquisition of public opinion, truth will prevail over fanaticism, and the
genuine doctrines of Jesus, so long perverted by His pseudo-priests, will again be
restored to their original purity. This reformation will advance with the other
improvements of the human mind, but too late for me to witness it.
To (Unitarian) Rev. Whittemore, 5 June 1822 (HAW 7:245-6):
You ask my opinion on the items of doctrine in your catechism. I have never permitted
myself to meditate a specified creed. These formulas have been the bane and ruin of the
Christian church, its own fatal invention, which, through so many ages, made of
Christendom a slaughter-house, and at this day divides it into casts of inextinguishable
hatred to one another. Witness the present internecine rage of all other sects against the
Unitarians. The religions of antiquity had no particular formulas of creed. Those of the
modern world none, except those of the religionists calling themselves Christians, and
even among these the Quakers have none. And hence, alone, the harmony, the quiet, the
brotherly affections, the exemplary and unschismatising society of the Friends, and I
hope the Unitarians, will follow their happy example. With these sentiments of the
mischiefs of creeds and confessions of faith, I am sure you will excuse my not giving
opinions on the items of any particular one…
To Doctor Benjamin Waterhouse, 26 June 1822 (L&B 15:383-5):
The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
1. That there is only one God, and He all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishment.
3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of
religion.
These are the great points on which He endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews.
But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are nothing.
3. That faith is everything, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more
merit in its faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain
others to be damned; and that no crimes of the former can damn them; no virtues
of the latter save.
Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He who believes and acts on the
simple doctrines of Jesus? Or the impious dogmatists, as Athanasius and Calvin? Verily I
say these are the false shepherds foretold as to enter not by the door into the sheepfold,
but to climb up some other way. They are mere usurpers of the Christian name, teaching
a counter-religion made up of the deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign from
Christianity as is that of Mahomet. Their blasphemies have driven thinking men into
infidelity, who have too hastily rejected the supposed Author himself, with the horrors so
falsely imputed to Him. Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they
came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian. I rejoice
that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and
conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving,
and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a
Unitarian.
But much I fear, that when this great truth shall be re-established, its votaries will fall into
the fatal error of fabricating formulas of creed and confessions of faith, the engines which
so soon destroyed the religion of Jesus, and made of Christendom a mere Aceldama; that
they will give up morals for mysteries, Jesus for Plato. How much wiser are the Quakers,
who, agreeing in the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel, schismatize about no
mysteries, and, keeping within the pale of common sense, suffer no speculative
differences of opinion, any more than of feature, to impair their love of their brethren. Be
this the wisdom of Unitarians, this the holy mantle which shall cover within its charitable
circumference all who believe in one God, and who love their neighbor!
To Doctor Thomas Cooper, 2 November 1822 (Ford 12: 270-1):
In our annual report to the legislature, after stating the constitutional reasons against a
public establishment of any religious instruction, we suggest the expediency of
encouraging the different religious sects to establish, each for itself, a professorship of
their own tenets, on the confines of the university, so near as that their students may
attend the lectures there, and have the free use of our library, and every other
accommodation we can give them; preserving, however, their independence of us and of
each other. This fills the chasm objected to ours, as a defect in an institution professing to
give instruction in all useful sciences. I think the invitation will be accepted, by some
sects from candid intentions, and by others from jealousy and rivalship. And by bringing
the sects together, and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their
asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religion a
religion of peace, reason, and morality.
To John Adams, 11 April 1823 (L&B 15:425):
The wishes expressed in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I
become a Calvinist, at least in his exclamation of “Mon Dieu! jusq’à quand!” would
make me immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing his God. He was indeed an
atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was daemonism. If ever man
worshiped a false God, he did. The Being described in his five points, is not the God
whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent Governor of the
world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no
God at all, than to blaspheme Him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin.
To Michael Megear, 29 May 1823 (L&B 15:434):
I thank you, Sir, for the copy of the letters of Paul and Amicus, which you have been so
kind as to send me, and shall learn from them with satisfaction the peculiar tenets of the
Friends, and particularly their opinions on the incomprehensibilities (otherwise called the
mysteries) of the Trinity. I think with them on many points, and especially on missionary
and Bible societies. While we have so many around us, within the same social pale, who
need instruction and assistance, why carry to a distance, and to strangers what our own
neighbors need? It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see
also that they are faithfully distributed, and duly apportioned to the respective wants of
those receivers. And why give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we
know not, and in countries from which we get no account, when we can do it at short
hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see? I
do not know that it is a duty to disturb by missionaries the religion and peace of other
countries, who may think themselves bound to extinguish by fire and fagot the heresies to
which we give the name of conversions, and quote our own example for it. Were the
Pope, or his holy allies, to send in mission to us some thousands of Jesuit priests to
convert us to their orthodoxy, I suspect that we should deem and treat it as a national
aggression on our peace and faith.
To George Thacher, 26 January 1824 (Ford 12:332-333):
If all Christian sects would rally to the Sermon on the mount, make that the central point
of Union in religion, and the stamp of genuine Christianity, (since it gives us all the
precepts of our duties to one another) why should we further ask, with the text of our
sermon “What think ye of Christ?” And if one should answer “he is a member of the
God-head,” another “he is a being of eternal pre-existence,” a third “he was a man
divinely inspired,” a fourth “he was the Herald of truths reformatory of the religions of
mankind in general, but more immediately of that of his own countrymen, impressing
them with more sublime and more worthy ideas of the Supreme being, teaching them the
doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments, and inculcating the love of
mankind, instead of the anti-social spirit with which the Jews viewed all other nations,”
what right, or what interest has either of these respondents to claim pre-eminence for his
dogma, and, usurping the judgment-seat of God, to condemn all the others to his wrath?
In this case, I say with the wiser heathen deorum injuriæ, diis curæ.
You press me to consent to the publication of my sentiments and suppose they might
have effect even on Sectarian bigotry. But have they not the Gospel? If they hear not that,
and the charities it teacheth, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the
dead. Such is the malignity of religious antipathies that, altho’ the laws will no longer
permit them, with Calvin, to burn those who are not exactly of their Creed, they raise the
Hue & cry of Heresy against them, place them under the ban of public opinion, and shut
them out from all the kind affections of society.
sources:
Ford = Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson
L&B = Lipscomb and Bergh, ed., The Works of Thomas Jefferson
HAW = H.A. Washington, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson
P = Peterson, Merrill D., ed., The Portable Thomas Jefferson (NY: Viking Press, 1975)