The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom
Whereas Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion,...
This was not the way that Jefferson began his bill. In the Statute, as enacted, "Whereas" replaces the phrase: "Well aware that the opinions and beliefs of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that." The language of the Statute as passed into law, therefore, begins not with the minds of men, but with the emphasis on "Almighty God."
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