“The state gives orders and coerces, religion teaches and persuades. The state prescribes laws, religion commandments. The state has physical power and uses it when necessary; the power of religion is love and benificence. The one abandons the disobedient and expels him; the other receives him in its bosom and seeks to instruct, or at least to console him.”

—  Moses Mendelssohn

Source: Jerusalem, or on Religious Power and Judaism (1783), p. 45

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German Jewish philosopher and theologian 1729–1786

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