Jefferson emphatically wanted no establishment of religious authority or tests of belief. By contrast, the Delaware state constitution, written and adopted just thirty-five miles to the south in that same summer of 1776, required anyone holding office to “profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and . . . acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”15
