See the Positive Atheism http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/jeffphony.htm site on the extreme unlikelihood of this quote being authentic. It actually contains some known phrases of Jefferson's, but they are compounded with almost certainly false statements into a highly misrepresentative whole. Jefferson's own opinions on Jesus, God, Christianity and general opinions about them were far more complex than is indicated in this statement.
Misattributed
“Christian — One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife.”
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
H.L. Mencken 281
American journalist and writer 1880–1956Related quotes
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 104.
“One who leans on others cannot serve the God of Truth.”
Pearls of Wisdom
Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 83
How could you talk to a man like that?
Referring to Eamon de Valera in conversation with Michael Hayes, at the debates over the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921
Michael Hayes Papers, P53/299, UCDA
Quoted in Doherty, Gabriel and Keogh, Dermot (2006). Michael Collins and the Making of the Irish State. Mercier Press, p. 153.
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 561.
“The Father willed that these two, the God Christ and the Church, should be one man.”
Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, p. 414
Context: What is the Church? She is the body of Christ. Join to it the Head, and you have one man: The Head and the body make up one man. Who is the head? He who was born of the Virgin Mary. … And what is His body? It is His Spouse, that is, the Church.... The Father willed that these two, the God Christ and the Church, should be one man. All men are one man in Christ, and the unity of the Christians constitutes but one man. And this man is all men, all men are this man; for all are one, since Christ is one.