<p>Dear TacticalNuke:</p>
<p>It is misleading to imply that the Separation of Church and State was developed in 1802 by Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson's famous statement in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists was preceded by over two hundred and fifty years of statements regarding the Separation between Church and State, the Doctrine of Soul Liberty, the Right of Judgment in Matters of Religion, the Equal Rights of Conscience, the Separation between Religion and Government, the exemption of Religion from the Authority of Government, or whatever you want to call it. The final ruin of the Church State commenced in the early 1770s.</p>
<p>Elisha Williams was preaching the separation of church and state back in 1774 as the Right of Private Judgment in Matters of Religion. Founding Father Samuel Stillman was advocating for it 1779 as the line between the things that belong to Caesar, and those things that belong to God. Thomas Jefferson was not even the first one to draw on the idea of separation or the notion of a wall to designate, illustrate or explain the legal concept of no civil-temporal-government power over the duty which we owe to the Creator. Thomas Jefferson in all likelihood borrowed the "wall of separation" phrase from James Burgh. </p>
<p>James Burgh</p>
<p>James Burgh (1714-1775) was radical Commonwealth Whig who was one of Britain's foremost spokesman for political reform whose writings influenced political thought in revolutionary America. Burgh brought to his writings a dissenter's zeal for religious toleration and a distrust of established churches. Indeed, his antipathy toward ecclesiastical establishments was a logical extension of his staunch defense of religious toleration. </p>
<p>Burgh thought religion was a matter between God and one's conscience; and he contended that two citizens with different religious views are "both equally fit for being employed, in the service of our country." He alerted his audience to the potential crippling influences of established churches. Danger existed, he warned, in "a church's getting too much power into her hands, and turning religion into a mere state-engine."</p>
<p>Therefore, in his work Crito (1766, 1767), Burgh proposed building "an impenetrable wall of separation between things sacred and civil." "an impenetrable wall of separation between things sacred and civil." He dismissed the conventional argument that the public administration of the church was necessary to preserve its salutary influence in society.</p>
<p>*"I will fairly tell you what will be the consequences of your setting up such a mixed-mungrel-spiritual-temporal-secular-ecclesiastical establishment. You will make the dispensers of religion despicable and odious to all men of sense, and will destroy the spirituality, in which consists the: whole value, of religion. </p>
<p>. . . Shew yourselves superior to all these follies and knaveries. Put into the hands of the people the clerical emoluments; and let them give them to whom they will; choosing their public teachers, and maintaining them decently, but moderately, as becomes their spiritual character. We have in our times a proof from the conduct of some among us, in respect of the appointment of their public administrators of religion, that such a scheme will answer all the necessary purposes, and prevent infinite corruption;--ecclesiastical corruption; the most odious of all corruption.</p>
<p>Build an impenetrable wall of separation between things sacred and civil. Do not send a graceless officer, reeking from the anus of his trull, to the performance of a holy rite of religion, as a test for his holding the command of a regiment. To profane, in such a manner, a religion, which you pretend to reverence, is an impiety sufficient to bring down upon your heads, the roof of the sacred building you thus defile." *</p>
<p>Samuel Stillman</p>
<p>One of the founding fathers was a Baptist minister named Samuel Stillman. He voted in favor of giving legal effect to the U. S. Constitution as a delegate to the 1788 Convention of the Commonwealth Of Massachusetts on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution. Stillman had preached, since 1779, the necessity for a line between the things that belong to Caesar, and those things that belong to God. He maintained that the government ought not in any manner to be involved in the salvation of souls and that it had no authority to establish our sentiments in religion or the manner in which we would express them.</p>
<p>The authority for Stillmans principle of no government authority over religious matters was the Saviors directive to Render, therefore, to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. It was most evident to Stillman that the Lord was trying to teach us that there are some matters where the government has no authority. </p>
<p>Conclusion</p>
<p>It is misleading to imply that the Separation of Church and State was first developed or formulated in 1802 by Thomas Jefferson. It was formulated in the early 1500s and Thomas Jefferson was merely one of hundreds of individuals who advocate it.</p>