o 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, the 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 Doctor Priestely his little treatise 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 behoves 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 behoves him,
too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the
common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith,
which the laws have left between God and himself. Accept my affectionate
salutations.

Th: Jefferson.

_Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit 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
superstition of the vulgar, nor of the corruptions of Christianity by
the learned among its pro