But The Greatest Of All Reformers Of The Depraved Religion Of His Own Country Was Jesus Of Nazareth.

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But the greatest of all reformers of the depraved religion of his own
country was Jesus of Nazareth. Abstracting what is really his from the
rubbish in which it is buried, easily distinguished by its lustre from the
dross of his biographers, and as separable as the diamond from the
dunghill, we have the outlines of a system of the most sublime morality
which has ever fallen from the lips of man; outlines which it is
lamentable he did not live to fill up... The establishment of the
innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the
rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from
artificial systems*, invented by ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by a
single word ever uttered by him, is a most desirable object...
*eg. The immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation
of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible
ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity; original
sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, etc.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Short, October 31 (Halloween), 1819

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