Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

by Jon Meacham

That there is only one God, and he all perfect. 2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments. 3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself is the sum of religion.68 His own faith, he told Adams, “is known to my God and myself alone.69 Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.” As a young man, Jefferson recalled with pride, he had been “bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.”70 He remained bold to the end. “It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three.…71 But this constitutes the craft, the power, and the profit of the priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of factitious religion, and they would catch no more flies. We should all then, like the Quakers, live without an order of priests, moralize for ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand, nor therefore believe; for I suppose belief to be the assent of the mind to an intelligible proposition.”