Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Founders, Religious Freedom, and the First Amendment's Religion Clauses
- PART I THE FOUNDERS' CHURCH-STATE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES
- PART II THE FOUNDERS AND FIRST AMENDMENT RELIGION CLAUSES
- Conclusion: The Founders and Church-State Jurisprudence
- Appendix A “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” by James Madison, 1785
- Appendix B A Bill “Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion” by Patrick Henry, 1784
- Appendix C A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, 1777
- Index
Appendix C - A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, 1777
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: The Founders, Religious Freedom, and the First Amendment's Religion Clauses
- PART I THE FOUNDERS' CHURCH-STATE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES
- PART II THE FOUNDERS AND FIRST AMENDMENT RELIGION CLAUSES
- Conclusion: The Founders and Church-State Jurisprudence
- Appendix A “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments” by James Madison, 1785
- Appendix B A Bill “Establishing a Provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion” by Patrick Henry, 1784
- Appendix C A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom in Virginia by Thomas Jefferson, 1777
- Index
Summary
Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- God and the FoundersMadison, Washington, and Jefferson, pp. 231 - 234Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009