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Comparison of Jefferson's Bill with the Virginia Act
The phrases indented and in lighter type were omitted by the Virginia State Legislature when Jefferson's bill was enacted into law. Those words in brackets were added by the legislature. (Minor changes in punctuation are not noted.)--
"SECTION I. Well aware that
the opinions and belief
of men depend not on their own will, but follow
involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds;
that
Almighty God hath created the mind free;
and manifested his supreme will that free it shall
remain by making it altogether insusceptible of
restraint;
that all attempts to influence it by
temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil
incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of
hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from
the plan of the holy author of our religion, who
being lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to
propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his
Almighty power to do[;]
but to exalt it by its
influence on reason alone;
that the impious
presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well
as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible
and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the
faith of others, setting up their own opinions and
modes of thinking as the only true and infallible,
and as such endeavoring to impose them on others,
hath established and maintained false religions over
the greatest part of the world and through all time:
That to compel a man to furnish contributions of
money for the propagation of opinions which he
disbelieves
is sinful and tyrannical;
that even the forcing him to support this or that
teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving
him of the comfortable liberty of giving his
contributions to the particular pastor whose morals
he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels
most persuasive to righteousness; and is withdrawing
from the ministry those temporary rewards, which
proceeding from an approbation of their personal
conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and
unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind;
that our civil rights have no dependence on our
religious opinions, any more than our opinions in
physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing
any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by
laying upon him an incapacity of being called to
offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or
renounce this or that religious opinion, is
depriving him injuriously of those privileges and
advantages to which, in common with his fellow
citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also
to corrupt the principles of that very religion it
is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly
of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will
externally profess and conform to it; that though
indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such
temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay
the bait in their way;
that the opinions of men are
not the object of civil government, nor under its
jurisdiction;
that to suffer the civil magistrate to
intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to
restrain the profession or propagation of principles
on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous
fallacy, which at once destroys all religious
liberty, because he being of course judge of that
tendency will make his opinions the rule of judgment,
and approve or condemn the sentiments of others only
as they shall square with or differ from his own;
that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of
civil government for its officers to interfere when
principles break out into overt acts against peace
and good order; and finally, that truth is great and
will prevail if left to herself; that she is the
proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has
nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human
interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free
argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous
when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
"SECTION II.
[Be it therefore enacted by the] General Assembly,
that no man shall be compelled to frequent or
support any religious worship, place, or ministry
whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested,
or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise
suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief;
but that all men shall be free to profess, and by
argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of
religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish,
enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
"SECTION III. And though we well know that this
Assembly, elected by the people for the ordinary
purposes of legislation only, have no power to
restrain the acts of succeeding Assemblies,
constituted with powers equal to our own, and that
therefore to declare this act [to be] irrevocable would be
of no effect in law; yet we are free to declare, and
do declare, that the rights hereby asserted are of the
natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be
hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its
operation, such act will be an infringement of natural
right."
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Religious Freedom Bill
