Here is an ascii mark-up taken from a part of
Thomas Jefferson's
"Notes on Virginia"

This came from:
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson
Memorial Edition (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors)
20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04.
Volume II; pp 217 - 225

Notes On Virginia
QUERY XVII:
The different religions received into that State?


It includes a few often quoted Words of Jefferson's
cited in Defense of a Church/State Wall of Separation,
but is seldom seen in an extant format.

--------
Thomas Jefferson
Notes On Virginia
Query XVII:
The different religions received into that State?

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The first settlers in this country were emigrants from England, of
the English Church, just at a point of time. when it was flushed
with complete victory over the religious of all other persuasion s.
possessed, as they became, of the powers of making, administering,
and executing the laws; they showed equal intolerance in this
country with their Presbyterian brethren, who had emigrated to the
northern government. The poor Quakers were flying from persecution
in England. They cast their eyes on these new countries as asylums
of civil and religious freedom; but they found them free only for
the reigning sect. Several acts of the Virginia assembly of 1659,
1662, and 1693, had made it penal in parents to refuse to have their
children baptized; had prohibited the unlawful assembling of
Quakers; had made it penal for any master of a vessel to bring a
Quaker into the State; had ordered those already here, and such as
should come thereafter, to be imprisoned till they should abjure the
country; provided a milder punishment for their first and second
return, but death for their third; had inhibited all persons from
suffering their meetings in or near their houses, entertaining them
individually, or disposing of books which supported their tenets. If
no execution took place here, as did in New England, it was not
owing to the moderation of the church, or spirit of the legislature,
as may be inferred from the law itself; but to historical
circumstances which have not been handed down to us. The Anglicans
retained full possession of the country about a century. Other
opinions began then to creep in, and the great care of the
government to support their own church, having begotten an equal
degree of indolence in its clergy, two-thirds of the people had
become dissenters at the commencement of the present revolution. The
laws, indeed, were still oppressive on them, but the spirit of the
one party had subsided into moderation, and of the other had risen
to a degree of determination which commanded respect.

The present state of our laws on the subject of religion is this.
The convention of May 1776, in their declaration of rights, declared
it to be a truth, and a natural right, that the exercise of religion
should be free; but when they proceeded to form on that declaration
the ordinance of government, instead of taking up every principle
declared in the bill of rights, and guarding it by legislative
sanction, they passed over that which asserted our religious rights,
leaving them as they found them. The same convention, however, when
they met as a member of the general assembly in October, 1776,
repealed all acts of Parliament which had rendered criminal the
maintaining any opinions in matters of religion, the forbearing to
repair to church, and the exercising any mode of worship; and
suspended the laws giving salaries to the clergy, which suspension
was made perpetual in October, 1779. Statutory oppressions in
religion being thus wiped away, we remain at present under those
only imposed by the common law, or by our own acts of assembly. At
the common law, heresy was a capital offence, punishable by burning.
Its definition was left to the ecclesiastical judges, before whom
the conviction was, till the statute of the 1 El. c. 1 circumscribed
it, by declaring, that nothing should be deemed heresy, but what had
been so determined by authority of the canonical scriptures, or by
one of the four first general councils, or by other council, having
for the grounds of their declaration the express and plain words of
the scriptures. Heresy, thus circumscribed, being an offence against
the common law, our act of assembly of October 1777, c. 17, gives
cognizance of it to the general court, by declaring that the
jurisdiction of that court shall be general in all matters at the
common law. The execution is by the writ De hoeretico comburendo. By
our own act of assembly of 1705, c. 30, if a person brought up in
the Christian religion denies the being of a God, or the Trinity, or
asserts there are more gods than one, or denies the Christian
religion to be true, or the scriptures to be of divine authority, he
is punishable on the first offence by incapacity to hold any office
or employment ecclesiastical, civil, or military; on the second by
disability to sue, to take any gift or legacy, to be guardian,
executor, or administrator, and by three years' imprisonment without
bail. A father's right to the custody of his own children being
founded in law on his right of guardianship, this being taken away,
they may of course be severed from him, and put by the authority of
a court into more orthodox hands. This is a summary view of that
religious slavery under which a people have been willing to remain,
who have lavished their lives and fortunes for the establishment of
their civil freedom. The error (Furneaux passim) seems not
sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as
the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But
our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as
we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never
submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our
God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as
are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to
say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor
breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice
cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him.
Constraint may make him worse. by making him a hypocrite, but it
will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his
errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free inquiry are the only
effectual agents against error. Give a loose to them, they will
support the true religion by bringing every false one to their
tribunal, to the test of their investigation. They are the natural
enemies of error, and of error only. Had not the Roman government
permitted free inquiry, Christianity could never have been
introduced. Had not free inquiry been indulged at the era of the
Reformation, the corruptions of Christianity could not have been
purged away. If it be restrained now, the present corruptions will
be protected, and new ones encouraged . Was the government to
prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such
keeping as our souls are now. Thus in France the emetic was once
forbidden as a medicine, and the potato as an article of food.
Government is just as infallible, too, when it fixes systems in
physics. Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for affirming that the
earth was a sphere; the government had declared it to be as flat as
a trencher, and Galileo was obliged to abjure his error. This error,
however, at length prevailed, the earth became a globe, and
Descartes declared it was whirled round its axis by a vortex. The
government in which he lived was wise enough to see that this was no
question of civil jurisdiction, or we should all have been involved
by authority in vortices. In fact, the vortices have been exploded,
and the Newtonian principle of gravitation is now more firmly
established, on the basis of reason, than it would be were the
government to step in, and to make it an article of necessary faith.
Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before
them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth
can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make
your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by
private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion?
To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No
more than of face and stature. Introduce the bed of Procrustes then,
and as there is danger that the large men may beat the small, make
us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter.
Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects
perform the office of a censor morum over such other. Is uniformity
attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined,
imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world
fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error
all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a
thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand
different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that
thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we
should wish to see the nine hundred and ninety-nine wandering sects
gathered into the fold of truth. But. against such a majority we
cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only
practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be
indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse
it ourselves. But every State, says an inquisitor, has established
some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a
proof of the infallibility of establishments?

Our sister States of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long
subsisted without any establishment at all. The experiment was new
and doubtful when they made it. It has answered beyond conception.
They flourish infinitely. Religion is well supported; of various
kinds, indeed, but all good enough; all sufficient to preserve peace
and order; or if a sect arises, whose tenets would subvert morals,
good sense has fair play, and reasons and laughs it out of doors,
without suffering the State to be troubled with it. They do not hang
more malefactors than we do. They are not more disturbed with
religious dissensions . On the contrary, their harmony is
unparalleled, and can be ascribed to nothing but their unbounded
tolerance, because there is no other circumstance in which they
differ from every nation on earth. They have made the happy
discovery, that the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no
notice of them. Let us too give this experiment fair play, and get
rid, while we may, of those. tyrannical laws. It is true, we are as
yet secured against them 'by the spirit of the times. I doubt
whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for
heresy, or a three years' imprisonment for not comprehending the
mysteries of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people an
infallible, a permanent reliance? Is it government? Is this the kind
of protection we receive in return for the rights we give up?
Besides, the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers
will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may
commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be
too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right
on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves
united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill.
It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people
for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights
disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of
making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due
respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not
be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us
long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive
or expire in a convulsion. '