At what age[12] of the Christian church this heresy of _immaterialism_, or masked atheism, crept in, I do not exactly know. But a heresy it certainly is. Jesus taught nothing of it. He told us, indeed, that "God is a spirit," but he has not defined what a spirit is, nor said that it is not _matter_. And the ancient fathers generally, of the three first centuries, held it to be matter, light and thin indeed, an etherial gas; but still matter. Origen says, "Deus se ipse corporalis est; sed graviorum tantum corporum ratione, incorporeus." Tertullian, "quid enim deus nisi corpus?" And again, "quis negabit deum esse corpus? Etsi deus spiritus, spiritus etiam corpus est, sui generis in sua effigie." St. Justin Martyr, "το θειον φαμεν ειναι ασωματον· ουχ 'οτι ασωματον'--επειδη δε το μη κρατεισθαι ὑπο τινος του κρατεισθαι τιμιωτερον εστι δια τουτο καλουμεν αυτον ασωματον." And St. Macarius, speaking of angels, says, "quamvis enim subtilia sint, tamen in substantia, forma et figurâ, secundum tenuitatem naturæ eorum, corpora sunt tenuia." And St. Austin, St. Basil, Lactantius, Tatian, Athenagoras and others, with whose writings I pretend not a familiarity, are said by those who are better acquainted with them, to deliver the same doctrine. (Enfield x. 3, 1.) Turn to your Ocellus d'Argens, 97, 105, and to his Timæus 17, for these quotations. In England, these Immaterialists might have been burnt until the 29 Car. 2, when the writ _de hæretico comburendo_ was abolished; and here until the Revolution, that statute not having extended to us. All heresies being now done away with us, these schismatists are merely atheists, differing from the material atheist only in their belief, that "nothing made something," and from the material deist, who believes that matter alone can operate on matter. Rejecting all organs of information, therefore, but my senses, I rid myself of the pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in speculations hyperphysical and antiphysical, so uselessly occupy and disquiet the mind. A single sense may indeed be sometimes deceived, but rarely; and never all our senses together, with their faculty of reasoning. They evidence realities, and there are enough of these for all the purposes of life, without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence. I am sure that I really know many, many things, and none more surely than that I love you with all my heart, and pray for the continuance of your life until you shall be tired of it yourself. FOOTNOTE: [12] That of Athanasius and the Council of Nicæa, anno. 324. TO MR. JARVIS. MONTICELLO, September 28, 1820.