No doubt that certain groups came to this country to escape religious persecution , there were also examples of many enclaves of twisted dogmas that built their own fresh theological shrines to intolerance on these shores , that Jefferson simply would not stand. Those were the Calvinist that polluted the landscape of reason in his eyes , which I have had the great pleasure of enjoining one here on this thread called "Elect" .
In Jefferson's eyes these railing self-appointed "chosen ones were to him more atheists and contrary to the true teachings of the Nazerene, than they were Christians . Quakers had always a fond place in Jefferson's eye , living more simply the "intent" & true spirit of the teaching .
He swore an oath and obeyed a creed of being at constant enmity with such mediocrity , knavism and obscurist with their doctrines of predestination and the chosen elect of god ...he was quite clear in refusing to worship along side Calvin , and refered to that idea of God as daemonic as he thought Calvin himself.
sullivan-county.com
Jefferson's Credo
I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
-- Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Sept. 23, 1800
Jefferson may have been on a search throughout his many letters with friends and associates which we know him by ,
he was clear as a bell in his mission to expose those who he called pseudo christians who
"disfigured the simple religion of Jesus ...and the sublime doctrines of the sermon on the Mount"
That Jefferson was a minimalist and content with the infinite aesthetic delights and disciplines of materialist/deism , which did not detract for his love and deep cherishing of the essential teachings and example of Jesus, or the true eloquence and pure heart of that collection of doctrines Of one loving unitarian God , the young rabbai intended to convey so clearly . Jefferson's ideal would be the open , honest investigation of all religions cores , and would not turn away nor fear that challenge. If one approaches any subject with reason and tolerance & a centered unspoiled intellect, there will be some truth revealed . Nature just works that way , some may call it "Divine or Supernatural" but Jefferson saw not the need to.... the diversity of creation, the infinite discoveries made possible by the cultivation of reason and to defy those muddied garbled doctrines that discouraged the enlightening of the mind was his calling .
He begins by calling the apostle Paul "the great Coryphaeus" (greek chorus, ie background noise)...and first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus. That Jefferson was a Deist and a materialist , there can be no doubt and if there were a spiritualist side to that , one would call it Unitarian , as Jesus spoke of often himself and made it so
clear that there was only One God , not three.
It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist; he takes the side of Spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance towards forgiveness of sin; I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it, etc. It is the innocence of his character, the purity and sublimity of his moral precepts, the eloquences of his inculcations, the beauty of the apologues in which he conveys them, that I so much admire; sometimes, indeed, needing indulgence to eastern hyperbolism. My eulogies, too, may be founded on a postulate which all may not be ready to grant. Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. I separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to him the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of his disciples. Of this band of dupes and impostors, Paul was the great Coryphaeus, and first corruptor of the doctrines of Jesus. |
