legislature, after stating the constitutional reasons against a public establishment of any religious instruction, we suggest the expediency of encouraging the different religious sects to establish, each for itself, a professorship of their own tenets, on the confines of the University, so near as that the students may attend the lectures there, and have the free use our own library, and every other accommodation we can give them; preserving, however, their independence of us and of each other.  This fills the chasm objected to ours, as a defect in an institution professing to give instruction in all useful sciences.  I think the invitation will be accepted, by some sects from candid intentions, and by others from jealousy and rivalship.  And by bringing the sects together, and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religion, a religion of peace, reason, and morality.

The time of opening our University is still as uncertain as ever.  All the pavilions, boarding-houses, and dormitories are done.  Nothing is now wanting but the central building for a library and other general purposes.  For this we have no funds, and the last legislature refused all aid.  We have better hopes of the next.  But all is uncertain.  I have heard with regret of disturbances on the part of the students in your seminary.  The article of discipline is the most difficult in American education.  Premature ideas of independence, too little repressed by parents, beget a spirit of insubordination, which is the great obstacle to science with us, and a principal cause of its decay since the Revolution.  I look to it with dismay in our institution, as a breaker ahead, which I am far from being confident we shall be able to weather.  The advance of age, and tardy pace of the public patronage, may probably spare me the pain of witnessing consequences.

I salute you with constant friendship and respect.

Th:  Jefferson.

LETTER CLXVIII.—­TO JAMES SMITH, December 8, 1822

TO JAMES SMITH.

Monticello, December 8, 1822.

Sir,

I have to thank you for your pamphlets on the subject of Unitarianism, and to express my gratification with your efforts for the revival of primitive Christianity in your quarter.  No historical fact is better established, than that the doctrine of one God, pure and uncompounded, was that of the early ages of Christianity; and was amoung the efficacious doctrines which gave it triumph over the polytheism of the ancients, sickened with the absurdities of their own theology.  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