You ask if I mean to publish any thing on the subject of a letter of mine to my friend Charles Thompson? certainly not. I write nothing for publication, and last of all things should it be on the subject of religion. on the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind,...

I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.

in every country and in every age the priest has been hostile to liberty. he is always in alliance with the Despot abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

we must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus ... 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...

of all the systems of morality antient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.

on the subject of religion, a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his maker, in which no other, & far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

No provision in our constitution ought to be dearer to man, than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprizes of the civil authority.

a recollection of our former vassalage in religion & civil government, will unite the zeal of every heart, & the energy of every hand, to preserve that independance in both.

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, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the...

for I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.