On 7/24/2015 3:15 AM, dsi1 wrote:
Fundamentalist Christians are currently working overtime to convince the
American public that the founding fathers intended to establish this
country on "biblical principles," but history simply does not support
their view. The men mentioned above and others who were instrumental in
the founding of our nation were in no sense Bible-believing Christians.
Thomas Jefferson, in fact, was fiercely anti-cleric. In a letter to
Horatio Spafford in 1814, Jefferson said, "In every country and every
age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance
with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his
own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than
by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest
religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to
all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes" (George Seldes,
The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey Citadel Press, 1983, p. 371).
In a letter to Mrs. Harrison Smith, he wrote, "It is in our lives, and
not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the
world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must
have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities.
My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had
never been a priest" (August 6, 1816).