I've posted in the past letters from Lenni Brenner's book Jefferson and Madison on Separation of Church and State. Tonight, I post one more from one of the Founders and framers of the Constitution.
This is James Madison's leeter to F.L. Schaeffer on December 3, 1821:
I have received, with your letter of November 19th, the copy of your address at the ceremonial of laying the corner-stone of St. Matthew's Church in New York.
It is a pleasing and persuasive example of pious zeal, united with pure benevolence and of a cordial attachment to a particular creed, untinctured with sectarian illiberality. It illustrates the excellence of a system which, by a due distinction, to which the genius and courage of Luther led the way, between what is due and (sic) Caesar and what is due God, best promotes the discharge of both obligations. The experience of the United States is a happy disproof of the error so long rooted in the unenlightened minds of well-meaning Christians, as well as in the corrupt hearts of persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation of relugious and civil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is found most friendly to practical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity.
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