of either my time or information.  In the moment of my late departure from Monticello, I received from Doctor Priestely his little treatise of ‘Socrates and Jesus compared.’  This being a section of the general view I had taken of the field, it became a subject of reflection while on the road, and unoccupied otherwise.  The result was, to arrange in my mind a syllabus, or outline of such an estimate of the comparative merits of Christianity, as I wished to see executed by some one of more leisure and information for the task, than myself.  This I now send you, as the only discharge of my promise I can probably ever execute.  And in confiding it to you, I know it will not be exposed to the malignant perversions of those who make every word from me a text for new misrepresentations and calumnies.  I am moreover averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public; because it would countenance the presumption of those who have endeavored to draw them before that tribunal, and to seduce public opinion to erect itself into that inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the laws have so justly proscribed.  It behoves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.  It behoves him, too, in his own case, to give no example of concession, betraying the common right of independent opinion, by answering questions of faith, which the laws have left between God and himself.  Accept my affectionate salutations.

Th:  Jefferson.

Syllabus of an Estimate of the Merit of the Doctrines of Jesus, compared with those of others.

In a comparative view of the Ethics of the enlightened nations of antiquity, of the Jews, and of Jesus, no notice should be taken of the corruptions of reason among the ancients, to wit, the idolatry and superstition of the vulgar, nor of the corruptions of Christianity by the learned among its professors.

Let a just view be taken of the moral principles inculcated by the most esteemed of the sects of ancient philosophy, or of their individuals; particularly Pythagoras, Socrates, Epicurus, Cicero, Epictetus, Seneca, Antoninus.

I. Philosophers. 1.  Their precepts related chiefly to ourselves, and the government of those passions which, unrestrained, would disturb our tranquillity of mind.* In this branch of philosophy they were really great.

* To explain, I will exhibit the heads of Seneca’s and Cicero’s philosophical works, the most extensive of any we have received from the ancients.  Of ten heads in Seneca, seven relate to ourselves, viz. de ira, consolatio, de tranquillitate, de constantia sapientis, de otio sapientis, de vita beata, de brevitate vitae; two relate to others, de clementia, de beneficiis; and one relates to the government of the world, de pruvidentia.  Of eleven tracts of Cicero, five respect ourselves, viz. definibus, Tusculana, academica, paradoxa, de senectute, one, de officiis, relates partly to ourselves, partly to others; one, de amicitia, relates to others; and four are on different subjects, to wit, de natura deorum, de dimnatione, defato, and somnium Scipionis.