The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
MORAL PRINCIPLES / ESPOUSED BY JESUS CHRIST
Yours of the 7th instant has been duly received, with the pamphlet
enclosed, for which I return you my thanks. Nothing can be more
exactly and seriously true than what is there stated: that but a short
time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish
religion, before his principles were departed from by those who
professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for
enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and
State: that the purest system of morals ever before preached to man
has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions,
into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves: that
rational men, not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in
order to force them down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of
infidelity, while themselves are the greatest obstacles to the
advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do, in fact,
constitute the real Anti-Christ.
to Samuel Kercheval, 19 January 1810
|