A word from John Adams

In these perilous times, when both the left and right adduces the Framers to justify this or that outrage, it's important to remember the famously, lovably inconsistent John Adams. This is one of my favorite quotes, excerpted from one of his last letters to Thomas Jefferson, addressing the impossibility of relying on the Bible as a first source:

Books that cannot bear examination certainly outght not to be established as divine inspiration by penal laws...as long as they continue in force as laws the human mind must make an awkward and clumsy progress in its investigations. I wish they were repealed. The substance and essence of Christianity as I understand it is eternal and unchangeable and will bear examination forever but it has been mixed with extraneous ingredients [italics mine], which I think will not bear examination and they ought to be separated.