OCTOBER 9, 1780
I am fully of your opinion respecting religious tests; but, though
the people of Massachusetts have not in their new constitution kept quite
clear of them, yet, if we consider what that people were one hundred years
ago, we must allow they have gone great lengths in liberality of sentiment
on religious subjects; and we may hope for greater degrees of perfection,
when their constitution, some years hence, shall be revised. If Christian
preachers had continued to teach as Christ and his Apostles did, without
salaries, and as the Quakers now do, I imagine tests would never have
existed; for I think they were invented, not so much to secure religion
itself, as the emoluments of it. When a religion is good, I conceive that
it will support itself; and, when it cannot support itself, and God does
not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for
the help of the civil power, it is a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad
one. . . .
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: Excerpt of letter written by Benjamin Franklin to
Dr. Richard Price, October 9, 1780. Works of Benjamin Franklin (Sparks
ed.), VIII 505-506, in Bigelow ed, VII, 139, 140. Church and State in the
United States, Volume I, Anson Phelps Stokes, D.D., LL.D., Harper &
Brothers (1950) pp 298)
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