Very soon after my letter to Doctor Priestley, the subject being still in my mind, I had leisure, during an abstraction from business for a day or two, while on the road, to think a little more on it, and to sketch more fully than I had done to him, a syllabus of the matter which I thought should enter into the work.  I wrote it to Doctor Rush; and there ended all my labor on the subject; himself and Doctor Priestley being the only depositories of my secret.  The fate of my letter to Priestley, after his death, was a warning to me on that of Doctor Rush; and at my request, his family were so kind as to quiet me by returning my original letter and syllabus.  By this you will be sensible how much interest I take in keeping myself clear of religious disputes before the public; and especially of seeing my syllabus disembowelled by the Aruspices of the modern Paganism.  Yet I enclose it to you with entire confidence, free to be perused by yourself and Mrs. Adams, but by no one else; and to be returned to me.

You are right in supposing, in one of yours, that I had not read much of Priestley’s Predestination, his no-soul system, or his controversy with Horsley.  But I have read his Corruptions of Christianity, and Early Opinions of Jesus, over and over again; and I rest on them, and on Middleton’s writings, especially his letters from Rome, and to Waterland, as the basis of my own faith.  These writings have never been answered, nor can be answered by quoting historical proofs, as they have done.  For these facts, therefore, I cling to their learning, so much superior to my own.

I now fly off in a tangent to another subject.  Marshall, in the first volume of his history, chapter 3, p. 180, ascribes the petition to the King, of 1774, (1 Journ.  Cong. 67) to the pen of Richard Henry Lee.  I think myself certain, it was not written by him, as well from what I recollect to have heard, as from the internal evidence of style.  He was loose, vague, frothy, rhetorical.  He was a poorer writer than his brother Arthur; and Arthur’s standing may be seen in his Monitor’s Letters, to insure the sale of which, they took the precaution of tacking to them a new edition of the Farmer’s Letters; like Mezentius, who ‘mortua jungebat corpora vivis.’  You were of the committee, and can tell me who wrote this petition; and who wrote the Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, ib. 45.  Of the papers of July 1775, I recollect well that Mr. Dickinson drew the petition to the King, ib. 149; I think Robert R. Livingston drew the Address to the Inhabitants of Great Britain, ib. 152.  Am I right in this?  And who drew the Address to the People of Ireland, ib. 180?  On these questions, I ask of your memory to help mine.  Ever and affectionately yours,

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CXIII.—­TO JOHN W. EPPES, November 6, 1813

TO JOHN W. EPPES.

Monticello, November 6, 1813.