“As I conceive this doctrine to be a gross misrepresentation of the character and moral government of God, and to affect many other articles in the scheme of Christianity, greatly disfiguring and depraving it; I shall show, in a fuller manner than I mean to do with respect to any other corruption of Christianity, that it has no countenance whatever in reason, or the Scriptures; and, therefore, that the whole doctrine of atonement, with every modification of it, has been a departure from the primitive and genuine doctrine of Christianity.”

— Joseph Priestley, book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

On conventional doctrines of Jesus Christ's atonement for sins, in Part II : Opinions Relating to the Doctrine of Atonement, Introduction
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

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Joseph Priestley47

English theologian, chemist, educator, and political theori… 1733–1804

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“I am sorry… to have occasion to admonish Mr. Gibbon, that he should have distinguished better than he has done between christianity itself, and the corruptions of it. …He should not have taken it for granted, that the doctrine of three persons in one God, or the doctrine of atonement for the sins of all mankind, by the death of one man, were any parts of the christian system; when, if he had read the New Testament for himself, he must have seen the doctrine of the proper unity of God, and also that of his free mercy to the penitent, in almost every page of it.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

“To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Benjamin Rush (12 April 1803) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-40-02-0178-0001 <br class="br">1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801&ndash;1805)

“Mr. Gibbon has much to learn concerning the gospel before he can be properly qualified to write against it. Hitherto he seems to have been acquainted with nothing but the corrupt establishments of what is very improperly called Christianity; whereas it is incumbent upon him to read and study the New Testament for himself. There he will find nothing like Platonism, but doctrines in every respect the reverse of that system of philosophy, which weak and undistinguishing christians afterwards incorporated with it.
Had Mr. Gibbon lived in France, Spain, or Italy, he might with the same reason have ranked the doctrine of transubstantiation, and the worship of saints and angels among the essentials of Christianity, as the doctrines of the trinity and of the atonement.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

“He that denies any of the doctrines that Christ has delivered, to be true, denies him to be sent from God, and consequently to be the Messiah; and so ceases to be a Christian.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

§ 232
The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695)

“A Christian nation has never had the slightest respect for the rights of barbarians; neither has any Christian sect any respect for the rights of other sects. Anciently, the sects discussed with fire and sword, and even now, something happens almost every day to show that the old spirit that was in the Inquisition still slumbers in the Christian breast.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Some Reasons Why (1881)

“No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity … Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to James Smith (1822)
1820s
Context: No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity … Nor was the unity of the Supreme Being ousted from the Christian creed by the force of reason, but by the sword of civil government, wielded at the will of the fanatic Athanasius. The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands of martyrs … The Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such person, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.

“My earlier views on the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Letter to Judge J. A. Wakefield, after the death of Lincoln's son Willie in 1862, as cited in Abraham Lincoln: was he a Christian? (1893), p. 292 http://books.google.com/books?id=x8BHAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA292&dq=%22unsoundness+of+the+Christian+scheme%22, by John Eleazer Remsburg. Historian Merrill Daniel Peterson states in Lincoln in American Memory (1994), p. 227 http://books.google.com/books?id=D_FjY_ARcGoC&lpg=PA227&vq=%22Judge%20J.%20A.%20Wakefield%22&pg=PA227, that the letter has never actually been produced to verify the statement and that there's no correspondence with Wakefield noted in the Collected Works. <br class="br">Misattributed

“Whatever my film work was, it was a departure from the sex symbol previously, who was blonde and more docile than the characters I portrayed as a sex symbol…I think it was a different role for women. Women watch other women, and they are affected by that.”

Raquel Welch (1940–2023) American actress

On how she felt that her early roles were a form of liberation in “Body of Work: Screen Siren Raquel Welch Gets Her Lincoln Center Retrospective” https://observer.com/2012/02/body-of-work-screen-siren-raquel-welch-gets-her-lincoln-center-retrospective/ in The Observer (2012 Feb 7)

“Christianity is not so much the advent of a better doctrine as of a perfect character.”

Horace Bushnell (1802–1876) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 132.

“Christianity is this: A belief in the inspiration of the Scriptures, the atonement, the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, an eternal reward for the believers in Christ, and eternal punishment for the rest of us. Now, take from Christianity its miracles, its absurdities of the atonement and fall of man and the inspiration of the Scriptures, and I have no objection to it as I understand it. I believe, in the main, in the Christianity which I suppose Christ taught, that is, in kindness, gentleness, forgiveness. I do not believe in loving enemies; I have pretty hard work to love my friends.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

"The Brooklyn Divines." Brooklyn Union (Brooklyn, NY), 1883.

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