I abuse the priests, indeed, who have so much abused the pure and holy doctrines of their master, and who have laid me under no obligation of reticence as to the tricks of their trade… the artificial structures they have erected, to make them the instruments of wealth, power, and preeminence to themselves.
Thomas Jefferson Quotes
The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves… these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ.
The loathsome combination of Church and State.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared […]
No man complains of his neighbor for ill management of his affairs, for an error in sowing his land, or marrying his daughter, for consuming his substance in taverns… in all these he has liberty; but if he does not frequent the church, or then conform in ceremonies, there is an immediate uproar.
Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as they came from his lips, the whole civilised world would now have been Christian.
Creeds have been the bane of the Christian church… made of Christendom a slaughter-house.
Article I Section 16 Free exercise of religion; no establishment of religion. That religion or the duty which we owe to our creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion […]
I was glad to find in your book a formal contradiction at length of the judiciary usurpation of legislative powers; for such the judges have usurped in their repeated decisions, that Christianity is a part of the common law. The proof of the contrary which you have adduced is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common […]
The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation, is ever more dangerous. Jesus had to work on the perilous confines of reason and religion; and a step to the right or left might place him within the grasp of the priests of the superstition, a bloodthirsty race, as cruel and remorseless as the […]
