| Atheist: (á · thé · ïst) n. one who lacks a belief in the existence of God. |
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OCTOBER 9, 1780 I am fully of your opinion respecting religious tests; but, though the people of Massachusetts have not in their new constitution kept quite clear of them, yet, if we consider what that people were one hundred years ago, we must allow they have gone great lengths in liberality of sentiment on religious subjects; and we may hope for greater degrees of perfection, when their constitution, some years hence, shall be revised. If Christian preachers had continued to teach as Christ and his Apostles did, without salaries, and as the Quakers now do, I imagine tests would never have existed; for I think they were invented, not so much to secure religion itself, as the emoluments of it. When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one. . . . - Excerpt of letter written by Benjamin Franklin to Dr. Richard Price, October 9, 1780. Works of Benjamin Franklin (Sparks ed.), VIII 505-506, in Bigelow ed, VII, 139, 140. Church and State in the United States, Volume I , Anson Phelps Stokes, D.D., LL.D., Harper & Brothers (1950) pp 298. |