“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.”
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.
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Thomas Jefferson 456
3rd President of the United States of America 1743–1826Related quotes
Source: 14 December 1941, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–1944
Obwohl die Juden auch nicht vor Angriffen auf das Christentum zurückschrecken, werden sie noch von denen geschützt, die das Priesterkleid tragen. Das Christentum der ersten Zeit war ein anderes als das heutige.
Die ersten Christen waren Kämpfer, die ihr Volk von der jüdischen Schmach befreien wollten. Dann stahl sich der Jude in diese Gemeinschaft ein und machte aus dem ursprünglich reinen Christentum ein Gespött der Menschheit. Die ersten Christen waren bereit, für die Erhaltung der christlichen Lehre zu sterben.
04/21/1932, speech in the Hercules Hall in Nuremberg ("Kampf dem Weltfeind", Stürmer publishing house, Nuremberg, 1938)
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)
General Conclusions, Part I : Containing Considerations addressed to Unbelievers and especially to Mr. Gibbon
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)
Part I : The History of Opinions Relating to Jesus Christ, § III : The Supremacy was always ascribed to the Father before the Council Of Nice
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)
Context: Most of the early Christian writers thought the text "I and my Father are one," was to be understood of an unity or harmony of disposition only. Thus Tertullian observes, that the expression is unum, one thing, not one person; and he explains it to mean unity, likeness, conjunction, and of the love that the Father bore to the Son. Origen says, "let him consider that text, 'all that believed were of one heart and of one soul,' and then he will understand this, 'I and my Father are one.'"
The Deception: At the Masked Ball (p. 37)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)
Source: Books, Beyond Order (2021), p. 191
“Christianity is not so much the advent of a better doctrine as of a perfect character.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 132.
