My religion is known to my god and myself alone

[This is from my letter to Charles Thomson, January 29, 1817. It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.]

I should regret you had thought the incident with Mr. Delaplaine worth an explanation. He wrote to me on the subject of my letter to you of Jan. 9, 1816, and asked me questions which I answer only to one being. To himself therefore I replied, ‘say nothing of my religion; it is known to my god and myself alone. It’s evidence before the world is to be sought in my life. If that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.’

It is a singular anxiety which some people have that we should all think alike. Would the world be more beautiful were all our faces alike? Were our tempers, our talents, our tastes, our forms, our wishes, aversions and pursuits cast exactly in the same mould? If no varieties existed in the animal, vegetable, or mineral creation, but all were strictly uniform, catholic and orthodox, what a world of physical & moral monotony would it be! These are the absurdities into which those run who usurp the throne of god, & dictate to him what he should have done. May they, with all their metaphysical riddles, appear before that tribunal with as clean hands and hearts as you and I shall. There, suspended in the scales of eternal justice, faith and works will shew their worth by their weight.