Wednesday, December 7, 2011

John Adams on Christianity and revelation

"The Christian religion, as I understand it, is the brightness of the glory and the express portrait of the character of the eternal, self-existent, independent, benevolent, all powerful and all merciful creator, preserver, and father of the universe, the first good, first perfect, and first fair. It will last as long as the world.  Neither savage nor civilized man, without a revelation, could ever have discovered or invented it.  Ask me not, then, whether I am a Catholic or Protestant, Calvinist or Arminian.  As far as they are Christians, I wish to be a fellow-disciple with them all."

- Letter to Benjamin Rush, January 21, 1810, printed in In God We Trust:  the Religious Beliefs and Ideas of the American Founding Fathers, edited by Norman Cousins (Harper & Bros.: 1958), pg. 101.

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