The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
MORAL PRINCIPLES / RELIGION AND TRUTH
My dear and ancient friend, An acquaintance of fifty-two years, for I
think ours dates from 1764, calls for an inter-change of notice now
and then, that we remain in existence, the monuments of another age,
and examples of a friendship unaffected by the jarring elements by
which we have been surrounded, of revolutions of government, of party
and of Opinion. I am reminded of this duty by the receipt, through our
friend Doctor Patterson, of your synopsis of the four Evangelists. I
had procured it as soon as I saw it advertised, and had become
familiar with its use; but this copy is the more valued as it comes
from your hand. This work bears the stamp of that accuracy which marks
everything from you, and will be useful to those who, not taking
things on trust, recur for themselves to the fountain of pure morals.
I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials, which I
call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigma of his doctrines, made
by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages
of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more
beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a
document in proof that I am a
real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of
Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and
themselves Christians and preachers of the Gospel, while they draw all
their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw.
They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a System beyond the
comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious
ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not
recognize one feature. If I had time I would add to my little book the
Greek, Latin and French texts, in columns side by side. And I wish I
could subjoin a translation of Gassendi's Syntagma of the doctrines of
Epicurus, which, notwithstanding the calumnies of the Stoics and
caricatures of Cicero, is the most rational system remaining of the
philosophy of the ancients, as frugal of vicious indulgence, and
fruitful of virtue as the hyperbolical extravagances of his rival
sects.
to Charles Thomson, 9 January 1816
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