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Thomas Jefferson
"A more beautiful or precious
morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real
Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus
THE MORALS OF JESUS
To Dr. Benjamin Rush, with a Syllabus
Washington, Apr. 21, 1803
1803042
DEAR SIR, -- In some of the delightful conversations with you, in the
evenings of 1798-99, and which served as an anodyne to the afflictions of the crisis
through which our country was then laboring, the Christian religion was sometimes our
topic; and I then promised you, that one day or other, would give you my views of it. They
are the result of a life of inquiry & reflection, and very different from that
anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the
corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus
himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached
to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human
excellence; & believing he never claimed any other. At the short intervals since these
conversations, when I could justifiably abstract my mind from public affairs, the subject
has been under my contemplation. But the more considered it, the more it expanded beyond
the measure of either my time or information. In the moment of my late departure from
Monticello, I received from Doctr Priestley, his little treatise of "Socrates &
Jesus compared." This being a section of the general view I had taken of the field,
it became a subject of reflection while on the road, and unoccupied otherwise. The result
was, to arrange in my mind a syllabus, or outline of such an estimate of the comparative
merits of Christianity, as wished to see executed by some one of more leisure and
information for the task, than myself. This I now send you, as the only discharge of my
promise I can probably ever execute. And in confiding it to you, I know it will not be
exposed to the malignant perversions of those who make every word from me a text for new
misrepresentations & calumnies. I am moreover averse to the communication of my
religious tenets to the public; because it would countenance the presumption of those who
have endeavored to draw them before that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect
itself into that inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the laws have so justly
proscribed. It behoves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist
invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances,
become his own. It behoves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession,
betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which
the laws have left between God & himself. Accept my affectionate salutations.
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