Thursday, June 27, 2002


I am ... 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 circumstance, become his own. It behooves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, by answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and himself. Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803

--That guy who wrote the Declaration of Independence.