Monticello, November 2, 1822.

Dear Sir,

Your favor of October the 18th came to hand yesterday.  The atmosphere of our country is unquestionably charged with a threatening cloud of fanaticism, lighter in some parts, denser in others, but too heavy in all.  I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration and freedom of religion, it could have arisen to the height you describe.  This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism.  The blasphemy and absurdity of the five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation.  In Boston, however, and its neighborhood, Unitarianism has advanced to so great strength, as now to humble this haughtiest of all religious sects; insomuch, that they condescend to interchange with them and the other sects, the civilities of preaching freely and frequently in each other’s meeting-houses.  In Rhode Island, on the other hand, no sectarian preacher will permit an Unitarian to pollute his desk.  In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women.  They have their night meetings and praying parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use to a mere earthly lover.  In our village of Charlottesville, there is a good degree of religion, with a small spice only of fanaticism.  We have four sects, but without either church or meeting-house.  The court-house is the common temple, one Sunday in the month to each.  Here, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist, meet together, join in hymning their Maker, listen with attention and devotion to each others’ preachers, and all mix in society with perfect harmony.  It is not so in the districts where Presbyterianism prevails undividedly.  Their ambition and tyranny would tolerate no rival, if they had power.  Systematical in grasping at an ascendancy over all other sects, they aim, like the Jesuits, at engrossing the education of the country, are hostile to every institution which they do not direct, and jealous at seeing others begin to attend at all to that object.  The diffusion of instruction, to which there is now so growing an attention, will be the remote remedy to this fever of fanaticism; while the more proximate one will be the progress of Unitarianism.  That this will, ere long, be the religion of the majority from north to south, I have no doubt.

In our University you know there is no professorship of Divinity.  A handle has been made of this, to disseminate an idea that this is an institution, not merely of no religion, but against all religion.  Occasion was taken at the last meeting of the Visitors, to bring forward an idea that might silence this calumny, which weighed on the minds of some honest friends to the institution.  In our annual report to the