Text: How shocking Jefferson's vitriolic attacks on ministers of God, especially those who meddled in politics, seem to late-twentieth-century sensibility. Christ saw no need for priests, Jefferson wrote. They were not necessary "for the salvation of souls." He suggested to John Adams, his friend after they had left politics, that "we should all, then, like the Quakers, live without an order of priests," and "moralize for ourselves, following the oracle of conscience." The Š irritable tribe of priests had subverted the pure morality of primitive Christianity to serve their own selfish interests, according to Jefferson. They "perverted" Christianity "into an engine for enslaving mankind, a mere contrivance to filtch wealth and power to themselves." On another occasion he labeled this as the priestly quest for "pence and power," which "revolts those who think for themselves." The clergy stood condemned, along with monarchy and the nobility, as the people's enemies. Like kings and aristocrats "in every country and in every age," Jefferson wrote, "the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own." [The Godless Constitution, Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore]

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