Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause; and I was not without hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy of the present age would have put an effectual stop to contentions of this kind.

Letter to Sir Edward Newenham (22 June 1792) as published in The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources (1939) as edited by John Clement Fitzpatrick