Thomas also has another good quote (at the site) on what religions have in common that benefit us all. When the church loses sight of its uniqueness as an institution we all suffer for it. The church needs to see itself and the state as two separate God created institutions with two separate roles. They are interdependent, but separate entities. When they do what they were made to do the world receives a blessing. When they don't - we have what is happening today in the world.
"When we come to the moral principles on which the government is to be administered, we come to what is proper for all conditions of society... Liberty, truth, probity, honor, are declared to be the four cardinal principles of society. I believe... that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right independent of force." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816. ME 14:490
"[I consider] ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man." --Thomas Jefferson to Augustus B. Woodward, 1824. ME 16:19
"Is it the less dishonest to do what is wrong, because not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813. ME 13:360
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clipped from etext.virginia.edu
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