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To: Clemenza
""In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." --- Thomas Jefferson"

You are so wrapped up in your anti-Catholic fervor that you have lost the objectivity necessary to fully comprehend Jefferson's point. He contemptuously referred to all clergy as priests. In an 1820 letter to William Short, Jefferson wrote: "the serious enemies are the priests of the different religious sects, to whose spells on the human mind its improvement is ominous." Upon the disestablishment of religion in Massachusetts, he wrote to John Adams, "I join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character."

Jefferson's hatred of Calvinism was intense. He never ceased to denounce the "blasphemous absurdity of the five points of Calvin." Three years before his death he writes John Adams: "His [Calvin's] religion was demonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points is ... a demon 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".

To Dr. Cooper, November 2, 1822, Jefferson writes: "I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration and freedom of religion, it [fanaticism] could have arisen to the height you describe. This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism. The blasphemy of the five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation".

Now go research what Jefferson wrote about "Natural Law".

92 posted on 03/20/2010 10:28:39 PM PDT by Natural Law
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To: Natural Law

“You are so wrapped up in your anti-Catholic fervor that you have lost the objectivity necessary to fully comprehend Jefferson’s point. He contemptuously referred to all clergy as priests.”

Don’t forget, some of our brothers are at different capacities to read. Their fervor for hate blinds them to their own ignorance and limitations.


94 posted on 03/20/2010 11:41:22 PM PDT by rbmillerjr (I'm praying for Palin....if not I'll vote 4 conservatives...Mitt won't get my vote)
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To: Natural Law

Interesting quotes - thanks.


107 posted on 03/21/2010 8:02:15 AM PDT by Lorica
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