.


SCI LIBRARY

The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson

By Subject


MORAL PRINCIPLES / CALVINISTS



The wishes expressed in your last favor, that I may continue in life and health until I become a Calvinist at least in his exclamation of, " mon Dieu! jusqu'a' quand!" would make me immortal. I can never join Calvin in addressing his God. He was indeed an atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points, is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent Governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme Him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. Indeed, I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to atheism by their general dogma, that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a God. Now one-sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christians: the other five-sixths then, who do not believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation, are without a knowledge of the existence of a God!

to John Adams, 11 April 1823