From "The Jefferson Bible." See Library Tab this site.
From the letter, below, Jefferson to Mr. Charles Thompson:
"...I am a REAL CHRISTIAN, that is to say, a
disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who
call ME infidel and THEMSELVES Christians and preachers of the
Gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its
author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen
mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great
reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on
earth, would not recognize one feature."
From the following letter from Jefferson to Dr. Priestly, a friend:
"...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 in which he
wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to
all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he
never claimed any other."
Religious Views of Thomas Jefferson
IN a letter to his daughter, written in 1803, Mr. Jefferson said: “A promise
made to a friend some years ago, but executed only lately, has placed my
religious creed on paper. I have thought it just that my family, by
possessing this, should be enabled to estimate the libels published against
me on this, as on every other possible subject.” The “religious creed” to
which he referred was a comparison of the doctrines of Jesus with those
of others, prepared in fulfillment of a promise made to Dr. Benjamin
Rush. This paper, with the letter to Dr. Rush which accompanied it. is a fit
introduction to the “Jefferson Bible.”
Washington, April 21, 1803.
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, I would give you my views of it. They are the result of a life of
inquiry and 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 in which he
wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to
all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence, and believing he
never claimed any other.
At the short intervals since these conversations, when I could justifiably
abstract my mind from public affairs, this subject has been under my
contemplation; but the more I 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 Dr. Priestly his little treatise
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of “Socrates and 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 I 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
and 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 behooves 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 behooves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of
concession, betraying the right of independent opinion by answering
questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and himself.
Accept my affectionate salutations.
Syllabus of an Estimate of the Doctrines of Jesus,
Compared With Those of Others:
In a comparative view of the ethics of the enlightened nations of
antiquity, of the Jews, and of Jesus, no notice should be taken of the
corruptions of reason among the ancients, to wit, the idolatry and superstitionof
the:; vulgar, nor of 'the corruptions ofChristianity by the learned
among its professors. Let a just view be taken of the moral principles
inculcated by the most esteemed of the sects of ancient philosophy, or of
their individuals; particularly Pythagoras, Socrates, Epicurus, Cicero,
Epictetus, Seneca, Antoninus.
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I. PHILOSOPHERS
1. Their precepts related chiefly to ourselves, and the government of
those passions which, unrestrained, would disturb our tranquility of
mind. In this branch of philosophy they were really great.
2. In developing our duties to others, they were short and defective.
They embraced indeed the circles of kindred and friends, and inculcated
patriotism, or the love of country in the aggregate, as a primary obligation:
towards our neighbors and countrymen they taught justice, but scarcely
viewed them as within the circle of benevolence. Still less have they
inculcated peace, charity, and love to our fellow-men, or embraced with
benevolence the whole family of mankind.
II. JEWS
1. Their system was Deism, that is, the belief in one only God; but
their ideas of him and of his attributes were degrading and injurious.
2. Their ethics were not only imperfect, but often irreconcilable with
the sound dictates of reason and morality, as they respect intercourse
with those around us; and repulsive and anti-social as respecting other
nations. They needed reformation, therefore, in an eminent degree.
III. JESUS
In this state of things among the Jews, Jesus appeared. His parentage
was obscure; his condition poor; his education null; his natural endowments
great; his life correct and innocent. He was meek, benevolent, patient,
firm, disinterested, and of the sublimest eloquence. The disadvantages
under which his doctrines appear are remarkable.
1. LikeSocrates and Epictetus, hewrote nothing himself.
2. But he had not, like them, a Xenophon or an Arrian to write for
him. I name not Plato, who only used the name of Socrates to cover the
whimsies of his own brain.
On the contrary, all the learned of his country, entrenched in its
power and riches, were opposed to him, lest his labors should undermine
their advantages; and the committing to writing of his life and doctrines
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fell on unlettered and ignorant men; who wrote, too, from memory, and
not till long after the transactions had passed.
3. According to the ordinary fate of those who attempt to enlighten and
reform mankind, he fell an early victim to the jealousy and combination of
the altar and the throne, at about 33 years of age, his reason having not
yet attained the maximum of its energy, nor the course of his preaching,
which was but of three years at most, presented occasions for developing
a complete system of morals.
4. Hence the doctrines which he really delivered were defective, as
a whole, and fragments only of what he did deliver have come to us
mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible.
5. They have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of
schismatizing followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating and
perverting the simple doctrines he taught, by engrafting on them the
mysticisms of a Grecian Sophist (Plato), frittering them into subtilties
and obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to
reject the whole in disgust, and to view Jesus himself as an impostor.
Notwithstanding these disadvantages, a system of morals is presented to
us which, if filled up in the true style and spirit of the rich fragments he
left us, would be the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught
by man. The question of his being a member of the Godhead, or in direct
communication with it, claimed for him by some of his followers, and
denied by others, is foreign to the present view, which is merely an
estimate of the intrinsic merits of his doctrines.
1. He corrected the Deism of the Jews, confirming them in their
belief of one only god, and giving them juster notions of his attributes
and government.
2. His moral doctrines, relating to kindred and friends, were more
pure and perfect than those of the most correct of the philosophers, and
greatly more so than 'those of the Jews; and they went far beyond both
in inculcating universal philanthrophy, not only to kindred and friends,
to neighbors and countrymen, but to all mankind, gathering all into one
family, under the bonds of love, charity, peace, common wants and
common aids. A development of this head will evince the peculiar
superiority of the system of Jesus over all others.
3. The precepts of philosophy and of the Hebrew code laid hold of
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action only. He pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man; erected his
tribunal in the region of his thought, and purified the waters at the
fountain head.
4. He taught emphatically the doctrine of a future state, which was
either doubted or disbelieved by the Jews; and wielded it with efficacy as
an important incentive, supplementary to the other motives to moral
conduct.
I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials (The
Gospels) which I call the Philosophy of Jesus. It is a paradigma of his
doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book and arranging them
on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. 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, very different from the Platonists, who
call ME infidel and THEMSELVES Christians and preachers of the
Gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its
author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen
mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great
reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on
earth, would not recognize one feature.
—Jefferson to Mr. Charles Thompson.
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