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下文摘自:http://www.iusb.edu/%7Ejournal/1999/Paper9.html
Several of the Founding Fathers (US) held an accepted belief in general principles of religion. As Ben Franklin (本杰明.富兰克林)noted in a letter to Ezra Stiles in 1790:
Here is my creed. I believe in One God, the Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render Him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion.12 These general principles of religion presented a belief structure independent of interpretation. Simple religion, as far as Jefferson(托玛斯.杰弗逊) and Franklin were concerned, represented what all could agree upon. Jefferson’s axiom that ‘‘What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong,’’13 formed the basic framework of amiability that ultimately characterized his theology.
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