The Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom Also Stated, “To Compel a Man to Furnish Contributions of Money for the Propagation of Opinions which He Disbelieves Is Sinful and Tyrannical”

It [the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom] asserted: “The impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time.” It also stated, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.” And: “Even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion” would be a deprivation of liberty.

--Alf J. Mapp Jr., Thomas Jefferson: America's Paradoxical Patriot (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 176.