isted, and reason [or mind]
was with God, and that mind was God. This was in the beginning with God.
All things were created by it, and without it was made not one thing
which was made.' Yet this text, so plainly declaring the doctrine of
Jesus, that the world was created by the supreme intelligent being, has
been perverted by modern Christians to build up a second person of their
tritheism, by a mistranslation of the word _Xoyog_. One of its legitimate
meanings, indeed, is 'a word.' But in that sense it makes an unmeaning
jargon: while the other meaning, 'reason,' equally legitimate, explains
rationally the eternal pre-existence of God, and his creation of, the
world. Knowing how incomprehensible it was that 'a word,' the mere
action or articulation of the organs of speech could create a world,
they undertook to make of this articulation a second pre-existing being,
and ascribe to him, and not to God, the creation of the universe. The
atheist here plumes himself on the uselessness of such a God, and the
simpler hypothesis of a self-existent universe. The truth is, that the
greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves
the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a
system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation
in his genuine words. And the day will come, when the mystical
generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of
a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva
in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason,
and freedom of thought, in these United States, will do away all this
artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine
doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors.

So much for your quotation of Calvin's '_Mon Dieu! jusqu'a quand_'in
which, when addressed to the God of Jesus, and our God, I join you
cordially, and await his time and will with more readiness than
reluctance. May we meet there again, in Congress, with our ancient
colleagues, and receive with them the seal of approbation, 'Well done,
good and faithful servants.'

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CLXXI.--TO THE PRESIDENT, June 11, 1823

TO THE PRESIDENT.

Monticello, June 11, 1823.

Dear Sir,

Considering that I had not been to Bedford for a twelvemonth before,
I thought myself singularly unfortunate in so timing my journey, as
to have been absent exactly at the momen