You are so kind as to inquire after my health. The bone of my arm is
well knitted, but my hand and fingers are in a discouraging condition,
kept entirely useless by an oedematous swelling of slow amendment.
God bless you and continue your good health of body and mind.
Th: Jefferson.
LETTER CLXX.--TO JOHN ADAMS, April 11, 1823
TO JOHN ADAMS.
Monticello, April 11, 1823.
Dear Sir,
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! This
gives completely a _gain de cause_ to the disciples of Ocellus, Timasus,
Spinosa, Diderot, and D'Holbach.
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