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 […]
Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus.
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 this religion, having no foundation in what came from him.
