The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and PrivateJefferson, Thomas
Philosophy
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7 (of 9): Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private
Jefferson, Thomas
United States -- Politics and government -- 1775-1783; United States -- Politics and government -- 1783-1865
Maker, listen with attention and devotion to each others' preachers, and
all mix in society with perfect harmony. It is not so in the districts
where Presbyterianism prevails undividedly. Their ambition and tyranny
would tolerate no rival if they had power. Systematical in grasping
at an ascendency over all other sects, they aim, like the Jesuits, at
engrossing the education of the country, are hostile to every institution
which they do not direct, and jealous at seeing others begin to attend
at all to that object. The diffusion of instruction, to which there is
now so growing an attention, will be the remote remedy to this fever
of fanaticism; while the more proximate one will be the progress of
Unitarianism. That this will, ere long, be the religion of the majority
from north to south, I have no doubt.
In our university you know there is no Professorship of Divinity.
A handle has been made of this, to disseminate an idea that this is
an institution, not merely of no religion, but against all religion.
Occasion was taken at the last meeting of the Visitors, to bring forward
an idea that might silence this calumny, which weighed in the minds
of some honest friends to the institution. In our annual report to the
legislature, after stating the constitutional reasons against a public
establishment of any religious instruction, we suggest the expediency of
encouraging the different religious sects to establish, each for itself,
a professorship of their own tenets, on the confines of the university,
so near as that their students may attend the lectures there, and have
the free use of our library, and every other accommodation we can give
them; preserving, however, their independence of us and of each other.
This fills the chasm objected to ours, as a defect in an institution
professing to give instruction in _all_ useful sciences. I think the
invitation will be accepted, by some sects from candid intentions, and by
others from jealousy and rivalship. And by bringing the sects together,
and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their
asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the
general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality.
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