The Jefferson Lies (8 page)

Part of Jefferson's daily routine at the college included morning and evening prayers from the
Book of Common Prayer
with lengthy Scripture readings. Scottish instructor Dr. William Small, the son of a Presbyterian minister, was Jefferson's favorite instructor. Jefferson later acknowledged: “It was my great good fortune, and what probably fixed the destinies of my life, that Dr. William Small of Scotland, was then professor.”
⁵

Interestingly, many of the best instructors in early America were Scottish clergymen. As noted historian George Marsden affirmed, “[I]t is not much of an exaggeration to say that outside of New England, the Scots were the educators of eighteenth-century America.”
⁶
These Scottish instructors regularly tutored students in what was known as the Scottish Common Sense philosophy—a method under which not only Jefferson but also other notable Virginia Founding Fathers were trained, including George Washington, James Madison, George Mason, Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, and Thomas Nelson. Gaillard Hunt, head of the manuscript division of the Library of Congress, reported:

One reason why the ruling class in Virginia acted with such unanimity [during the Revolution] . . . was that a large proportion of them had received the same kind of education. This usually came first from clergymen.
⁷

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The Scottish Common Sense approach was developed by the Reverend Thomas Reid (1710–1796) to counter the skepticism of stridently secular European writers and philosophers such as Hume, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Malby. Reid's approach argued that common sense should shape philosophy rather than philosophy shaping common sense. He asserted that normal, everyday language could express philosophical principles in a way that could be understood by ordinary individuals rather than just so-called elite thinkers and philosophers.

The principle tenets of Scottish Common Sense philosophy were straightforward:

1. There is a God

2. God placed into every individual a conscience—a moral sense written on his or her heart (cf. Jeremiah 31:33; Romans 2:14–15; Hebrews 8:10; 10:16; etc.)

3. God established “first principles” in areas such as law, government, education, politics, and economics, and these first principles could be discovered by the use of common sense

4. There is no conflict between reason and revelation. Both come directly from God, and revelation fortifies and clarifies reason

This is the philosophy under which Jefferson was educated at William and Mary. After completing his studies there, Jefferson entered five years of legal training with distinguished attorney and judge George Wythe, who later became a signer of the Declaration of Independence. A central subject of Jefferson's legal studies was English jurist Sir William Blackstone's four-volume
Commentaries on the Laws of England
(1765–1769).

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That work was an important legal textbook not only for Jefferson but for all American law students. Founding Father James Iredell, a ratifier of the US Constitution who was placed on the US Supreme Court by President George Washington, affirmed that
Blackstone's Commentaries
was “the manual of almost every student of law in the United States.”
⁸
Jefferson affirmed that American lawyers used
Blackstone's
with the same dedication and reverence that Muslims used the Koran.
⁹

In this indispensable legal text, Blackstone forcefully expounded the four prime tenets of Scottish Common Sense philosophy:

Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator. . . . This will of his Maker is called the law of nature. . . . These are the eternal immutable laws of good and evil to which the Creator Himself in all His dispensations conforms, and which He has enabled human reason to discover so far as they are necessary for the conduct of human actions. . . . And if our reason were always . . . clear and perfect, . . . the task would be pleasant and easy; we should need no other guide but this. But every man now finds the contrary in his own experience: that his reason is corrupt and his understanding full of ignorance and error. This has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of Divine Providence, which . . . hath been pleased at sundry times and in divers manners to discover and enforce its laws by an immediate and direct revelation. The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or Divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures. . . . Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.
¹⁰

These same four Scottish Common Sense tenets were subsequently included by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence.

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Even though Jefferson's own personal education at the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary levels consistently incorporated religious instruction, today's writers repeatedly insist that it was the secular European Enlightenment rather than Scottish Common Sense that was the greatest influence on Jefferson's thinking. For example:

In Europe, the Enlightenment centered around the salons of Paris and was famous for the “philosophes”—popular philosophers—such as Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau. . . . American political leaders like Jefferson . . . were heavily influenced by Enlightenment thinking.
¹¹

The European Enlightenment was an intellectual movement that subjected theological, philosophical, scientific and political dogma to critical analysis. . . . Deism was popular among many Enlightenment thinkers, including Thomas Jefferson.
¹²

[T]he Declaration of Independence . . . remains the best example of Enlightenment thought.
¹³

Far too many of today's writers, consumed by the spirit of Academic Collectivism, regularly regurgitate each other's claims that Jefferson's philosophy and the Declaration were products of the secular European Enlightenment. Yet Jefferson himself forcefully disagreed, and when some in his day had suggested that he based the Declaration on the writings of other philosophers, he responded, “[W]hether I had gathered my ideas from reading or reflection I do not know. I know only that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it.”
¹⁴

In fact, he specifically asserted that the Declaration of Independence was “an expression of the
American
mind”
¹⁵
(emphasis added) rather than a lexicon of European ideas. He even proclaimed that “the comparisons of our governments with those of Europe are like a comparison of heaven and hell.”
¹⁶

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This is not to say that the Enlightenment had no influence in the American Founding; it certainly did. However, the crucial distinction regularly overlooked (or ignored) by many of today's writers and academics is the fact that Enlightenment writers can be divided into two distinct groups: those with an overtly Christian viewpoint (such as Baron Puffendorf, Hugo Grotius, Richard Hooker, and William Blackstone), and those with an overtly secular viewpoint (such as Voltaire, Denis Diderot, David Hume, Claude Adrien Helvetius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sir Nicholas Malby, and Guillaume Thomas François Raynal).

It was primarily the Christian writers, not the secular ones, upon which Jefferson and the other Founders relied. In fact, political researchers have conclusively documented that the four Enlightenment writers cited most frequently during the Founding Era were Charles Montesquieu, William Blackstone, John Locke, and David Hume.
¹⁷
Of the four, only Hume is from the secular group.

But if the Founders relied primarily on Christian thinkers rather than secular thinkers, then why was Hume the fourth most cited? After all, unlike the other three, he openly declared, “I expected in entering on my literary course that all the Christians . . . should be my enemies.”
¹⁸

So why Hume? Because the Founders regularly cited him in order to
refute
his political theories rather than endorse them. John Adams described him as an atheist, deist, and libertine,
¹⁹
James Madison placed him among “bungling lawgivers,”
²⁰
and John Quincy Adams denounced Hume as “the Atheist Jacobite.”
²¹
Hume and his writings were also roundly criticized by other Founders, including John Witherspoon,
²²
Benjamin Rush,
²³
and Patrick Henry.
²⁴

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But what about Jefferson? If Jefferson was indeed antireligious, then perhaps he would be drawn toward Hume as a kindred spirit. Such was definitely not the case. To the contrary, Jefferson found Hume “endeavoring to mislead, by either the suppression of a truth or by giving it a false coloring.”
²⁵
He even regretted the early influence that Hume had once had upon him, candidly lamenting:

I remember well the enthusiasm with which I devoured it [Hume's work] when young, and the length of time, the research, and reflection which were necessary to eradicate the poison it had instilled into my mind.
²⁶

Jefferson was similarly forthright in his criticism of other secular Enlightenment writers, including Guillaume Thomas François Raynal (known as Abbé Raynal). Jefferson described his works as “a mass of errors and misconceptions from beginning to end,” containing “a great deal of falsehood”
²⁷
and being “wrong exactly in the same proportion.”
²⁸
He even described Raynal as “a mere shrimp.”
²⁹
Such vehement denunciations of leading secular Enlightenment writers are certainly not consistent with a Jefferson who was supposedly greatly influenced by them.

So if secular Enlightenment writers were not a primary force in shaping Jefferson's thinking, then who was? Jefferson himself answered that question, declaring that “Bacon, Newton and Locke . . . [are] my trinity of the three greatest men the world had ever produced.”
³⁰

Francis Bacon, a British philosopher, attorney, and statesman, called the“Father of Modern Science,”
³¹
is known for developing the process of inductive thinking and creating the scientific method. Historians have declared that “[T]he intellect of Bacon was one of the most powerful and searching ever possessed by man.”
³²
Bacon was by no means secular; rather, he was quite the opposite. In his noted work
De Interpretatione Naturae Prooemium
(1603), he declared that his threefold goal was to discover truth, serve his country, and serve the church. He asserted that the vigorous pursuit of truth would always lead one directly to God:

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[A] little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.
³³

Bacon was famous for penning many religious works, including
Essays, Ten in Number, Combined with Sacred Meditations and the Colors of Good and Evil
(1597);
The Proficiencies and Advancement of Learning, Divine and Human
(1605);
On the Unity in Religion
(1612);
On Atheism
(1612);
Of Praise
(1612); as well as a translation of some of the psalms (1625). This outspoken and famous Christian writer and philosopher who never separated God or religion from science or government was the first of Jefferson's triumvirate of the world's greatest individuals.

The second in his list was Isaac Newton, an English statesman, mathematician, and scientist, credited with birthing modern calculus and discovering the laws of universal gravitation. Newton did extensive work in physics, astronomy, and optics and was the first scientist to be knighted for his work. Strikingly, however:

He spent more time on theology than on science; indeed, he wrote about 1.3 million words on Biblical subjects. . . . Newton's understanding of God came primarily from the Bible, which he studied for days and weeks at a time. . . . Newton's theology profoundly influenced his scientific method. . . . His God was not merely a philosopher's impersonal First Cause; He was the God in the Bible Who freely creates and rules the world, Who speaks and acts in history.
³⁴

Among Newton's many theological works were his
Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John
(1733) and
Notes on Early Church History
(c. 1680) among many others. And throughout his scientific works, Newton also maintained a distinctly Biblical Creationist view—such as in his 1687
Principia
(considered “the greatest scientific book ever written”
³⁵
) in which he stated:

40

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One.
³⁶

This Christian theologian and philosopher was the second of Jefferson's trinity of personal heroes.

The third was English philosopher and political theorist John Locke. Locke was intimately involved with politics in England and also played a large role in shaping America, including writing the 1669 constitution for the Carolina Colony.
³⁷
He also penned numerous works on education, philosophy, government, empiricism, and religion.