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MORAL
PRINCIPLES / AND CONSTITUTIONS
I received, my dear friend, your letter
covering the Constitution for your Equinoctial republics, just as I
was setting out for this place. I brought it with me, and have read
it with great satisfaction. I suppose it well formed for those for
whom it was intended, and the excellence of every government is its
adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it. For us it
would not do. Distinguishing between the structure of the government
and the moral principles on which you prescribe its administration,
with the latter we concur cordially, with the former we should not.
We of the United States, you know, are constitutionally and
conscientiously democrats. We consider society as one of the natural
wants with which man has been created; that he has been endowed with
faculties and qualities to effect its satisfaction by concurrence of
others having the same want; that when, by the exercise of these
faculties, he has procured a state of society, it is one of his
acquisitions which he has a right to regulate and control, jointly
indeed with all those who have concurred in the procurement, whom he
cannot exclude from its use or direction more than they him. We
think experience has proved it safer, for the mass of individuals
composing the society, to reserve to themselves personally the
exercise of all rightful powers to which they are competent, and to
delegate those to which they are not competent to deputies named,
and removable for un faithful conduct, by themselves immediately. …You
first set down as zeros all individuals not having lands, which are
the greater number in every society of long standing. Those holding
lands are permitted to manage in person the small affairs of their
commune or corporation, and to elect a deputy for the canton; in
which election; too, every one's vote is to be an unit, a plurality,
or a fraction, in proportion to his landed possessions. The
assemblies of cantons, then, elect for the districts; those of
districts for circles; and those of circles for the national
assemblies. Some of these highest councils, too, are in a
considerable degree self-elected, the regency partially, the
judiciary entirely, and some are for life. Whenever, therefore, an
esprit de corps, or of party, gets possession of them, which
experience shows to be inevitable, there are no means of breaking it
up, for they will never elect but those of their own spirit. Juries
are allowed in criminal cases only. I acknowledge myself strong in
affection to our own form, yet both of us act and think from the
same motive, we both consider the people as our children, and love
them with parental affection. But you love them as infants whom you
are afraid to trust with out nurses; and I as adults whom I freely
leave to self-government. |
Pierre
Samuel Dupont de Nemours
24 Apr 1816 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / AND LAW
The question you propose, whether
circumstances do not sometimes occur, which make it a duty in
officers of high trust, to assume authorities beyond the law, is
easy of solution in principle, but sometimes embarrassing in
practice. A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one
of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The
laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when
in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a
scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law
itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying
them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means. When,
in the battle of Germantown, General Washington's army was annoyed
from Chew's house, he did not hesitate to plant his cannon against
it, although the property of a citizen. When he besieged Yorktown,
he leveled the suburbs, feeling that the laws of property must be
postponed to the safety of the nation. While the army was before
York, the Governor of Virginia took horses, carriages, provisions
and even men by force, to enable that army to stay together till it
could master the public enemy; and he was justified. A ship at sea
in distress for provisions, meets another having abundance, yet
refusing a supply; the law of self-preservation authorizes the
distressed to take a supply by force. In all these cases, the
unwritten laws of necessity, of self-preservation, and of the public
safety, control the written laws of meum and tuum.
Further to exemplify the principle, I will state an hypothetical
case. Suppose it had been made known to the Executive of the Union
in the autumn of 1805, that we might have the Floridas for a
reasonable sum, that that sum had not indeed been so appropriated by
law, but that Congress were to meet within three weeks, and might
appropriate it on the first or second day of their session. Ought
he, for so great an advantage to his country, to have risked himself
by transcending the law and making the purchase? The public
advantage offered, in this supposed case, was indeed immense; but a
reverence for law, and the probability that the advantage might
still be legally accomplished by a delay of only three
weeks, were powerful reasons against hazarding the act But suppose
it foreseen that a John Randolph would find means to protract the
proceeding on it by Congress, until the ensuing spring, by which
time new circumstances would change the mind of the other party.
Ought the Executive, in that case, and with that foreknowledge, to
have secured the good to his country, and to have trusted to their
justice for the transgression of the law? I think he ought, and that
the act would have been approved. After the affair of the
Chesapeake, we thought war a very possible result. Our magazines
were illy provided with some necessary articles, nor had any
appropriations been made for their purchase. We ventured, however,
to provide them, and to place our country in safety; and stating the
case to Congress, they sanctioned. the act.
It is incumbent on those only who accept of great charges, to risk
themselves on great occasions, when the safety of the nation, or
some of its very high interests are at stake. An officer is bound to
obey orders; yet he would be a bad one who should do it in cases for
which they were not intended, and which involved the most important
consequences. The line of discrimination between cases may be
difficult; but the good officer is bound to draw it at his own
peril, and throw himself on the justice of his country and the
rectitude of his motives. |
J.
B. Colvin
20 Sep 1810 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / AND LAW
By your kind quotation of the dates of my two
letters, I have been enabled to turn to, them. They had completely
vanished from my memory. 'The last is on the subject of religion,
and by its publication will gratify the priesthood with new occasion
of repeating their communications against me. They wish it to be
believed that he can have no religion who advocates its freedom. The
first letter is political. …One of the questions, you know, on
which our parties took different sides, was on the improvability of
the human mind in science, in ethics, in government, etc. Those who
advocated reformation of institutions, pari passu with the
progress of science, maintained that no definite limits could be
assigned to that progress. The enemies of reform, on the other hand,
denied improvement, and advocated steady adherence to the
principles, practices and institutions of our fathers, which they
represented as the consummation of wisdom, and acme of excellence,
beyond which the human mind could never advance. Although in the
passage of your answer alluded to, you expressly disclaim the wish
to influence the freedom of inquiry, you predict that that will
produce nothing more worthy of transmission to posterity than the
principles, institutions and systems of education received from
their ancestors. I do not consider this as your deliberate opinion.
You possess, yourself, too much science, not to see how much is
still ahead of you, unexplained and unexplored. Your own
consciousness must place you as far before our ancestors as in the
rear of our posterity.
About facts you and I cannot differ; because truth is our mutual
guide. And if any opinions you may express should be different from
mine, I shall receive them with the liberality and indulgence which
I ask for my own, and still cherish with warmth the sentiments of
affectionate respect, of which I can with so much truth tender you
the assurance. |
John
Adams
15 Jun 1813 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / AND POLITICAL ECONOMY
Your favor of February 14th has been duly
received, and the MS. of the commentary on Montesquieu is also safe
at hand. I now forward to you the work of Tracy, which you will find
a valuable supplement and corrective to those we already possess on
political economy. It is a little unlucky that its outset is of a
metaphysical character, which may damp the ardor of perusal in some
readers. He has been led to this by a desire to embody this work, as
well as a future one he is preparing on morals, with his former
treatise on Ideology. By-the-bye, it is merely to this work that
Bonaparte alludes in his answer to his Council of State, published
not long since, in which he scouts "the dark and metaphysical
doctrine of Ideology, which, diving into first causes, founds on
this basis a legislation of the people, etc." If, indeed, this
answer be not a forgery, for everything is now forged, even to the
fat of our beef and mutton: yet the speech is not unlike him, and
affords scope for an excellent parody … made known. But the
book will make its way, and will become a standard work. A copy
which I sent to France was under translation by one of the ablest
men of that country.
It is true that I am tired of practical politics, and happier while
reading the history of ancient than of modern times. The total
banishment of all moral principle from the code which governs the
intercourse of nations, the melancholy reflection that after the
mean, wicked and cowardly cunning of the cabinets of the age of
Machiavelli had given place to the integrity and good faith which
dignified the succeeding one of a Chatham and Turgot, that this is
to be swept away again by the daring profligacy and vowed
destitution of all moral principle of a Cartouche and a Black-beard,
sickens my soul unto death. I turn from the contemplation with
loathing, and take refuge in the histories of other times, where, if
they also furnish their Tacquins, their Catilines and Caligulas,
their stories are handed to us under the brand of a Livy, a Sallust
and a Tacitus, and we are comforted with the reflection that the
condemnation of all succeeding generations has confirmed the
censures of the historian, and consigned their memories to
everlasting infamy, a solace we cannot have with the Georges and
Napoleons but by anticipation.
In surveying the scenes of which we make a part, I confess that
three frigates taken by our gallant little navy, do not balance in
my mind three armies lost by the treachery, cowardice, or incapacity
of those to whom they were intrusted. I see that our men are good,
and only want generals. We may yet hope, however, that the talents
which always exist among men will show themselves with opportunity,
and that it will be found that this age also can produce able and
honest defenders of their country, at what further expense, however,
of blood and treasure, is yet to be seen. Perhaps this Russian
mediation may cut short the history of the present war, and leave to
us the laurels of the sea, while our enemies are bedecked with those
of the land This would be the reverse of what has been expected, and
perhaps of what was to. be wished. |
William
Duane
(Colonel)
4 Apr 1813 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / AND RELIGION
An eloquent preacher of your religious society,
Richard Motte, in a discourse of much emotion and pathos, is said to
have exclaimed aloud to his congregation, that he did not believe
there was a Quaker, Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist in heaven,
having paused to give his hearers time to stare and to wonder. He
added, that in heaven, God knew no distinctions, but considered all
good men as his children, and as brethren of the same family. I
believe, with the Quaker preacher, that he who steadily observes
those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be
questioned at the gates of heaven, as to the dogmas in which they
all differ. That on entering there, all these are left behind us,
and the Aristides and Gatos, the Penns and Tillotsons, Presbyterians
and Baptists, will find themselves united in all principles which
are in concert with the reason of the supreme mind. Of all the
systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my
observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who
follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he
cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his
doctrines by those who, calling themselves his special followers and
favorites, would make him come into the world to lay snares for all
understandings but theirs. These metaphysical heads, usurping the
judgment seat of God, denounce as his enemies all who cannot
perceive the Geometrical logic of Euclid in the demonstrations of
St. Athanasius, that three are one, and one is three; and yet that
the one is not three nor the three one. In all essential points you
and I are of the same religion; and I am too old to go into
inquiries and changes as to the unessential. |
William
Canby
18 Sep 1813 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF
I must ever believe that religion substantially
good which produces an honest life, and we have been authorized by
One whom you and I equally respect, to judge of the tree by its
fruit. Our particular principles of religion are a subject of
accountability to our God alone. I inquire after no man's, and
trouble none with mine; nor is it given to us in this life to know
whether yours or mine, our friends or our foes, are exactly the
right. Nay, we have heard it said that there is not a Quaker or a
Baptist, a Presbyterian or an Episcopalian, a Catholic or a
Protestant in heaven; that, on entering that gate, we leave those
badges of schism behind, and find ourselves united in those
principles only in which God has united us all. Let us not be uneasy
then about the different roads we may pursue, as believing them the
shortest, to that our last abode; but, following the guidance of a
good conscience, let us be happy in the hope that by these different
paths we shall all meet in the end. |
Miles
King
26 Sep 1814 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF
…If by religion we are to understand sectarian
dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on
that hypothesis is just, "that this would be the best of all
possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." But if the
moral precepts, innate in man, and made a part of his physical
constitution, as necessary for a social being, if the sublime
doctrines of philanthropism and deism taught us by Jesus of
Nazareth, in which all agree, constitute true religion, then,
without it, this would be, as you again say, "something not fit
to be named even, indeed, a hell." |
John
Adams
5 May 1817 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / AND RELIGIOUS HIERARCHIES
I should as soon think of writing for the
reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these
there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one
of which believes all wrong but his own. To under take to bring them
all right, would be like undertaking, single-handed, to fell the
forests of America. …I abuse the priests, indeed, who have so
much abused the pure and holy doctrines of their Master, and who
have laid me under no obligations of reticence as to the tricks of
their trade. The genuine system of Jesus, and the artificial
structures they have erected, to make them the instruments of
wealth, power, and preeminence to themselves, are as distinct things
in my view as light and darkness; and while I have classed them with
soothsayers and necromancers, I place Him among the greatest
reformers of morals, and scourges of priest-craft that have ever
existed. They felt Him as such, and never rested until they had
silenced Him by death.
Government, as well as religion, has furnished its schisms, its
persecutions, and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings
of the people. It has its hierarchy of emperors, kings, princes, and
nobles, as that has of popes, cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and
priests. In short, cannibals are not to be found in the wilds of
America only, but are reveling on the blood of every living people.
|
Charles
Clay, Esq.
29 Jan 1815 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
I do then, with sincere zeal, wish an
inviolable preservation of our present federal Constitution,
according to the true sense in which it was adopted by the States,
that in which it was advocated by its friends, and not that which
Its enemies apprehended, who therefore became its enemies. ...I am
for freedom of religion, and against all manoeuvres to bring about a
legal ascendancy of one sect over another: for freedom of the press,
and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force
and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of
our citizens against the conduct of their agents. And I am for
encouraging the progress of science in all its branches; and not for
raising a hue and cry against the sacred name of philosophy; for
awing the human mind by stories of raw-head and bloody bones to a
distrust of its own vision, and to repose implicitly on that of
others; to go backwards instead of forwards to look for improvement;
to believe that government, religion, morality, and every other
science were in the highest perfection in ages of the darkest
ignorance, and that nothing can ever be devised more perfect than
what was established by our forefathers. To these I will add, that I
was a sincere well-wisher to the success of the French revolution,
and still wish it may end in the establishment of a free and
well-ordered republic; but I have not been insensible under the
atrocious depredations they have committed on our commerce. The
first object of my heart is my own country. In that is embarked my
family, my fortune, and my own existence. I have not one farthing of
interest, nor one fibre of attachment out of it, nor a single motive
of preference of any one nation to another, but in proportion as
they are more or less friendly to us. But though deeply feeling the
injuries of France, I did not think war the surest means of
redressing them. I did believe, that a mission sincerely disposed to
preserve peace, would obtain for us a peaceable and honorable
settlement and retribution; and I appeal to you to say, whether this
might not have been obtained, if either of your colleagues had been
of the same sentiment with yourself.
These, my friend, are my principles; they are unquestionably the
principles of the great body of our fellow-citizens, and I know
there is not one of them which is not yours also. . . . And did we
ever expect to see the day, when, breathing nothing but sentiments
of love to our country and its freedom and happiness, our
correspondence must be as secret as if we were hatching its
destruction! |
Elbridge
Gerry
26 Jan 1799 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
…I fear, from the experience of the last
twenty-five years that morals do not of necessity advance hand in
hand with the sciences. |
Monsieur
Correa de Serra
28 Jun 1815 |
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! |
John
Adams
11 Apr 1823 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / EPICUREAN IDEAS
As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean.
I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as
containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and
Rome have left us. Epictetus, indeed, has given us what was good of
the Stoics; all beyond, of their dogmas, being hypocrisy and
grimace. Their great crime was in their calumnies of Epicurus and
misrepresentations of his doctrines; in which we lament to see the
candid character of Cicero engaging as an accomplice. Diffuse,
vapid, rhetorical, but enchanting. His prototype Plato, eloquent as
himself, dealing out mysticisms incomprehensible to the human mind,
has been deified by certain sects usurping the name of Christians;
because, in his foggy conceptions, they found a basis of
impenetrable darkness whereon to rear fabrications as delirious, of
their own invention. These they fathered blasphemously on him whom
they claimed as their founder, but who would disclaim them with the
indignation which their caricatures of his religion so justly
excite. Of Socrates we have nothing genuine but in the Memorabilia
of Xenophon; for Plato makes him one of his collocutors merely to
cover his own whimsies under the mantle of his name; a liberty of
which we are told Socrates himself complained. Seneca is indeed a
fine moralist, disfiguring his work at times with some stoicisms,
and affecting too much of antithesis and point, yet giving us on the
whole a great deal of sound and practical morality. But the greatest
of all the reformers of the depraved religion of his own country,
was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the
rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its luster
from the dross of his biographers, and as separable from that as the
diamond from the dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the
most sublime morality which has ever fallen from the lips of man;
outlines which it is lamentable he did not live to fill up.
Epictetus and Epicurus give laws for governing ourselves, Jesus a
supplement of the duties and charities we owe to others. The
establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this
benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of
imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems, invented by
ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a single word ever uttered by
him, is a most desirable object, and one to which Priestley has
successfully devoted his labors and learning. It would in time, it
is to be hoped, effect a quiet euthanasia of the heresies of bigotry
and fanaticism which have so long triumphed over human reason, and
so generally and deeply afflicted mankind; but this work is to be
begun by winnowing the grain from the chaff of the historians of his
life. I have sometimes thought of translating Epictetus (for he has
never been tolerably translated into English) by adding the genuine
doctrines of Epicurus from the Syntagma of Gassendi, and an abstract
from the Evangelists of whatever has the stamp of the eloquence and
fine imagination of Jesus. The last I attempted too hastily some
twelve or fifteen years ago. It was the work of two or three nights
only, at Washington, after getting through the evening task of
reading the letters and papers of the day. But with one foot in the
grave, these are now idle projects for me. My business is to beguile
the wearisomeness of declining life, as I endeavor to do, by the
delights of classical reading and of mathematical truths, and by the
consolations of a sound philosophy, equally indifferent to hope and
fear.
I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true disciple of
our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence to which you say you
are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that "the
indulgence which prevents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater
pain, is to be avoided." Your love of repose will lead, in its
progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind,
an indifference to everything around you, and finally to a debility
of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the
happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure;
fortitude, you know, is one of his four cardinal virtues. That
teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them,
like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will meet and
arrest us at every turn of our road. Weigh this matter well; brace
yourself up. |
William
Short
31 Oct 1819 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / ESPOUSED BY JESUS CHRIST
I now return the sermon you were so kind as to
enclose me, having perused it with attention. …I must also add
that though I concur with the author in considering the moral
precepts of Jesus as more pure, correct, and sublime than those of
the ancient philosophers, yet I do not concur with him in the mode
of proving it. He thinks it necessary to libel and decry the
doctrines of the philosophers; but a man must be blinded, indeed, by
prejudice, who can deny them a great degree of merit. I give them
their just due, and yet maintain that the morality of Jesus, as
taught by himself, and freed from the corruptions of latter times,
is far superior. Their philosophy went chiefly to the government of
our passions, so far as respected ourselves, and the procuring our
own tranquillity. In our duties to others they were short and
deficient. They extended their cares scarcely beyond our kindred and
friends individually, and our country in the abstract. Jesus
embraced with charity and philanthropy our neighbors, our
countrymen, and the whole family of mankind. They confined
themselves to actions; he pressed his sentiments into the region of
our thoughts, and called for purity at the fountain head. |
Edward
Dowse, Esq.
19 Apr 1803 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / ESPOUSED BY JESUS CHRIST
…though I concur with the author in
considering the moral precepts of Jesus as more pure, correct, and
sublime than those of the ancient philosophers, yet I do not concur
with him in the mode of proving it. He thinks it necessary to libel
and decry the doctrines of the philosophers; but a man must be
blinded indeed by prejudice, who can deny them a great degree of
merit. I give them their just due, and yet maintain that the
morality of Jesus, as taught by himself, and freed from the
corruptions of latter times, is far superior. Their philosophy went
chiefly to the government of our passions, so far as respected
ourselves, and the procuring our own tranquillity. In our duties to
others they were short and deficient. They extended their cares
scarcely beyond our kindred and friends individually, and our
country in the abstract. Jesus embraced with charity and
philanthropy our neighbors, our countrymen, and the whole family of
mankind. They confined themselves to actions; he pressed his
sentiments into the region of our thoughts, and called for purity at
the fountain head. In a pamphlet lately published in Philadelphia by
Dr. Priestley, he has treated, with more justice and skill than Mr.
Bennet, a small portion of this subject. His is a comparative view
of Socrates only with Jesus. I have urged him to take up the subject
on a broader scale. |
Edward
Dowse
19 Apr 1803 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / ESPOUSED BY JESUS CHRIST
In some of the delightful conversations with
you, in the evenings of 1798-99, and which served as an anodyne to
the afflictions of the crisis through which our country was then
laboring, the Christian religion was sometimes our topic; and I then
promised you, that one day or other, I would give you my views of
it. They are the result of a life of inquiry and reflection, and
very different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by
those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of
Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of
Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he
wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in
preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human
excellence; and believing he never claimed any other. At the short
intervals since these conversations, when I could justifiably
abstract my mind from public affairs, the subject has been under my
contemplation. But the more I considered it, the more it expanded
beyond the measure of either my time or information. In the moment
of my late departure from Monticello, I received from Doctor
Priestley, his little treatise of "Socrates and Jesus compared."
This being a section of the general view I had taken of the field,
it became a subject of reflection while on the road, and unoccupied
otherwise. The result was, to arrange in my mind a syllabus, or
outline of such an estimate of the comparative merits of
Christianity, as I wished to see executed by some one of more
leisure and information for the task, than myself. This I now send
you, as the only discharge of my promise I can probably ever
execute. And in confiding it to you, I know it will not be exposed
to the malignant perversions of those who make every word from me a
text for new misrepresentations and calumnies. I am, moreover,
averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public;
because it would countenance the presumption of those who have
endeavored to draw them before that tribunal, and to seduce public
opinion to erect itself into that inquisition over the rights of
conscience, which the laws have so justly proscribed. It behooves
every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist
invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change
of circumstances, become his own. It behooves him, too, in his own
case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common right
of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which the
laws have left between God and himself. |
Benjamin
Rush
21 Apr 1803 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / ESPOUSED BY JESUS CHRIST
Yours of the 7th instant has been duly
received, with the pamphlet enclosed, for which I return you my
thanks. Nothing can be more exactly and seriously true than what is
there stated: that but a short time elapsed after the death of the
great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were
departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and
perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing
their oppressors in Church and State: that the purest system of
morals ever before preached to man has been adulterated and
sophisticated by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance
to filch wealth and power to themselves: that rational men, not
being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them
down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while
themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real
doctrines of Jesus, and do, in fact, constitute the real
Anti-Christ. |
Samuel
Kercheval
19 Jan 1810 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / ESPOUSED BY JESUS CHRIST
The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend
all to the happiness of man.
1. That there is only one God, and he all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself,
is the sum of religion. These are the great points on which he
endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews. But compare with
these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are nothing.
3. That faith is everything, and the more incomprehensible the
proposition, the more merit in its faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be
saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of the
former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.
Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He who
believes and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus? Or the impious
dogmatists, as Athanasius and Calvin? … |
Benjamin
Waterhouse
26 Jun 1822 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / ESPOUSED BY JESUS CHRIST / COMPARED TO ANCIENT
PHILOSOPHERS
I rejoice that you have undertaken the task of
comparing the moral doctrines of Jesus with those of the ancient
Philosophers. You are so much in possession of the whole subject,
that you will do it easier and better than any other person living.
I think you cannot avoid giving, as preliminary to the comparison, a
digest of his moral doctrines, extracted in his own words from the
Evangelists, and leaving out everything relative to his personal
history and character. It would be short and precious. With a view
to do this for my own satisfaction, I had sent to Philadelphia to
get two testaments (Greek) of the same edition, and two English,
with a design to cut out the morsels of morality, and paste them on
the leaves of a book, in the manner you describe as having been
pursued in forming your Harmony. But I shall now get the thing done
by better hands. |
Joseph
Priestley
(Doctor)
29 Jan 1804 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / MORAL SENSE AND CONSCIENCE
God... has formed us moral agents... that we
may promote the happiness of those with whom He has placed us in
society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who
fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and
mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we
value our own. |
Miles
King
1814 |
MORAL
PRINCIPLES / MORAL SENSE AND CONSCIENCE
He who made us would have been a pitiful
bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of
science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not.
What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His
morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object He was endowed
with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this. This sense
is as much a part of his nature, as the sense of hearing, seeing,
feeling; it is the true foundation of morality, and not the …
truth, &c., as fanciful writers have imagined. The moral sense,
or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is
given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force
of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be
strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body.
This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to the guidance of
reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a
less one than what we call common sense. State a moral case to a
ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and
often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by
artificial rules. In this branch, therefore, read good books,
because they will encourage, as well as direct your feelings. The
writings of Sterne, particularly, form the best course of morality
that ever was written. Besides these, … lose no occasion of
exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be
charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly,
courageous, &c. Consider every act of this kind, as an exercise
which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.
|
Peter
Carr
10 Aug 1787 |
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