CHAPTER XVI. APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING TO THE SYSTEM OF THE CHRISTIANS

CHAPTER XVII. OF THE MEANS EMPLOYED IN ALL TIME, AND ALMOST UNIVERSALLY, TO DECEIVE THE PEOPLES

RECAPITULATION

THE AGE OF REASON — PART II

PREFACE

CHAPTER I. THE OLD TESTAMENT

CHAPTER II. THE NEW TESTAMENT

CHAPTER III. CONCLUSION

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

WITH SOME RESULTS OF RECENT RESEARCHES.

In the opening year, 1793, when revolutionary France had beheaded its

king, the wrath turned next upon the King of kings, by whose grace

every tyrant claimed to reign. But eventualities had brought among them

a great English and American heart—Thomas Paine. He had pleaded for

Louis Capet—“Kill the king but spare the man.” Now he

pleaded,—“Disbelieve in the King of kings, but do not confuse with that

idol the Father of Mankind!”

In Paine’s Preface to the Second Part of “The Age of Reason” he

describes himself as writing the First Part near the close of the year

1793. “I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has

since appeared, before a guard came about three in the morning, with an

order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety General,

for putting me in arrestation.” This was on the morning of December 28.

But it is necessary to weigh the words just quoted—“in the state it has

since appeared.” For on August 5, 1794, Francois Lanthenas, in an

appeal for Paine’s liberation, wrote as follows: “I deliver to Merlin

de Thionville a copy of the last work of T. Payne [The Age of Reason],

formerly our colleague, and in custody since the decree excluding

foreigners from the national representation. This book was written by

the author in the beginning of the year ’93 (old style). I undertook

its translation before the revolution against priests, and it was

published in French about the same time. Couthon, to whom I sent it,

seemed offended with me for having translated this work.”

Under the frown of Couthon, one of the most atrocious colleagues of

Robespierre, this early publication seems to have been so effectually

suppressed that no copy bearing that date, 1793, can be found in France

or elsewhere. In Paine’s letter to Samuel Adams, printed in the present

volume, he says that he had it translated into French, to stay the

progress of atheism, and that he endangered his life “by opposing

atheism.” The time indicated by Lanthenas as that in which he submitted

the work to Couthon would appear to be the latter part of March, 1793,

the fury against the priesthood having reached its climax in the

decrees against them of March 19 and 26. If the moral deformity of

Couthon, even greater than that of his body, be remembered, and the

readiness with which death was inflicted for the most theoretical

opinion not approved by the “Mountain,” it will appear probable that

the offence given Couthon by Paine’s book involved danger to him and

his translator. On May 31, when the Girondins were accused, the name of

Lanthenas was included, and he barely escaped; and on the same day

Danton persuaded Paine not to appear in the Convention, as his life

might be in danger. Whether this was because of the “Age of Reason,”

with its fling at the “Goddess Nature” or not, the statements of author

and translator are harmonized by the fact that Paine prepared the

manuscript, with considerable additions and changes, for publication in

English, as he has stated in the Preface to Part II.

A comparison of the French and English versions, sentence by sentence,

proved to me that the translation sent by Lanthenas to Merlin de

Thionville in 1794 is the same as that he sent to Couthon in 1793. This

discovery was the means of recovering several interesting sentences of

the original work. I have given as footnotes translations of such

clauses and phrases of the French work as appeared to be important.

Those familiar with the translations of Lanthenas need not be reminded

that he was too much of a literalist to depart from the manuscript

before him, and indeed he did not even venture to alter it in an

instance (presently considered) where it was obviously needed. Nor

would Lanthenas have omitted any of the paragraphs lacking in his

translation. This original work was divided into seventeen chapters,

and these I have restored, translating their headings into English. The

“Age of Reason” is thus for the first time given to the world with

nearly its original completeness.

It should be remembered that Paine could not have read the proof of his

“Age of Reason” (Part I.) which went through the press while he was in

prison. To this must be ascribed the permanence of some sentences as

abbreviated in the haste he has described. A notable instance is the

dropping out of his estimate of Jesus the words rendered by Lanthenas

“trop peu imite, trop oublie, trop meconnu.” The addition of these

words to Paine’s tribute makes it the more notable that almost the only

recognition of the human character and life of Jesus by any theological

writer of that generation came from one long branded as an infidel.

To the inability of the prisoner to give his work any revision must be

attributed the preservation in it of the singular error already alluded

to, as one that Lanthenas, but for his extreme fidelity, would have

corrected. This is Paine’s repeated mention of six planets, and

enumeration of them, twelve years after the discovery of Uranus. Paine

was a devoted student of astronomy, and it cannot for a moment be

supposed that he had not participated in the universal welcome of

Herschel’s discovery. The omission of any allusion to it convinces me

that the astronomical episode was printed from a manuscript written

before 1781, when Uranus was discovered. Unfamiliar with French in

1793, Paine might not have discovered the erratum in Lanthenas’

translation, and, having no time for copying, he would naturally use as

much as possible of the same manuscript in preparing his work for

English readers. But he had no opportunity of revision, and there

remains an erratum which, if my conjecture be correct, casts a

significant light on the paragraphs in which he alludes to the

preparation of the work. He states that soon after his publication of

“Common Sense” (1776), he “saw the exceeding probability that a

revolution in the system of government would be followed by a

revolution in the system of religion,” and that “man would return to

the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God and no more.” He

tells Samuel Adams that it had long been his intention to publish his

thoughts upon religion, and he had made a similar remark to John Adams

in 1776. Like the Quakers among whom he was reared Paine could then

readily use the phrase “word of God” for anything in the Bible which

approved itself to his “inner light,” and as he had drawn from the

first Book of Samuel a divine condemnation of monarchy, John Adams, a

Unitarian, asked him if he believed in the inspiration of the Old

Testament. Paine replied that he did not, and at a later period meant

to publish his views on the subject. There is little doubt that he

wrote from time to time on religious points, during the American war,

without publishing his thoughts, just as he worked on the problem of

steam navigation, in which he had invented a practicable method (ten

years before John Fitch made his discovery) without publishing it. At

any rate it appears to me certain that the part of “The Age of Reason”

connected with Paine’s favorite science, astronomy, was written before

1781, when Uranus was discovered.

Paine’s theism, however invested with biblical and Christian

phraseology, was a birthright. It appears clear from several allusions

in “The Age of Reason” to the Quakers that in his early life, or before

the middle of the eighteenth century, the people so called were

substantially Deists. An interesting confirmation of Paine’s statements

concerning them appears as I write in an account sent by Count Leo

Tolstoi to the London ‘Times’ of the Russian sect called Dukhobortsy

(The Times, October 23, 1895). This sect sprang up in the last century,

and the narrative says:

“The first seeds of the teaching called afterwards ‘Dukhoborcheskaya’

were sown by a foreigner, a Quaker, who came to Russia. The fundamental

idea of his Quaker teaching was that in the soul of man dwells God

himself, and that He himself guides man by His inner word. God lives in

nature physically and in man’s soul spiritually. To Christ, as to an

historical personage, the Dukhobortsy do not ascribe great

importance... Christ was God’s son, but only in the sense in which we

call, ourselves ‘sons of God.’ The purpose of Christ’s sufferings was

no other than to show us an example of suffering for truth. The Quakers

who, in 1818, visited the Dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon

these religious subjects; and when they heard from them their opinion

about Jesus Christ (that he was a man), exclaimed ‘Darkness!’ From the

Old and New Testaments,’ they say, ‘we take only what is useful,’

mostly the moral teaching.... The moral ideas of the Dukhobortsy are

the following:—All men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions,

whatsoever they may be, are worth nothing. This idea of men’s equality

the Dukhoborts have directed further, against the State authority....

Amongst themselves they hold subordination, and much more, a

monarchical Government, to be contrary to their ideas.”

Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism carried to Russia long before the

birth of Elias Hicks, who recovered it from Paine, to whom the American

Quakers refused burial among them. Although Paine arraigned the union

of Church and State, his ideal Republic was religious; it was based on

a conception of equality based on the divine son-ship of every man.

This faith underlay equally his burden against claims to divine

partiality by a “Chosen People,” a Priesthood, a Monarch “by the grace

of God,” or an Aristocracy. Paine’s “Reason” is only an expansion of

the Quaker’s “inner light”; and the greater impression, as compared

with previous republican and deistic writings made by his “Rights of

Man” and “Age of Reason” (really volumes of one work), is partly

explained by the apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor

of George Fox.

Paine’s mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive.

That he should have waited until his fifty-seventh year before

publishing his religious convictions was due to a desire to work out

some positive and practicable system to take the place of that which he

believed was crumbling. The English engineer Hall, who assisted Paine

in making the model of his iron bridge, wrote to his friends in

England, in 1786: “My employer has Common Sense enough to disbelieve

most of the common systematic theories of Divinity, but does not seem

to establish any for himself.” But five years later Paine was able to

lay the corner-stone of his temple: “With respect to religion itself,

without regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal

family of mankind to the ‘Divine object of all adoration, it is man

bringing to his Maker the fruits of his heart; and though those fruits

may differ from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful

tribute of every one, is accepted.” (“Rights of Man.” See my edition of

Paine’s Writings, ii., p. 326.) Here we have a reappearance of George

Fox confuting the doctor in America who “denied the light and Spirit of

God to be in every one; and affirmed that it was not in the Indians.

Whereupon I called an Indian to us, and asked him ‘whether or not, when

he lied, or did wrong to anyone, there was not something in him that

reproved him for it?’ He said, ‘There was such a thing in him that did

so reprove him; and he was ashamed when he had done wrong, or spoken

wrong.’ So we shamed the doctor before the governor and the people.”

(Journal of George Fox, September 1672.)

Paine, who coined the phrase “Religion of Humanity” (The Crisis, vii.,

1778), did but logically defend it in “The Age of Reason,” by denying a

special revelation to any particular tribe, or divine authority in any

particular creed of church; and the centenary of this much-abused

publication has been celebrated by a great conservative champion of

Church and State, Mr. Balfour, who, in his “Foundations of Belief,”

affirms that “inspiration” cannot be denied to the great Oriental

teachers, unless grapes may be gathered from thorns.

The centenary of the complete publication of “The Age of Reason,”

(October 25, 1795), was also celebrated at the Church Congress,

Norwich, on October 10, 1895, when Professor Bonney, F.R.S., Canon of

Manchester, read a paper in which he said: “I cannot deny that the

increase of scientific knowledge has deprived parts of the earlier

books of the Bible of the historical value which was generally

attributed to them by our forefathers. The story of Creation in the

Book of Genesis, unless we play fast and loose either with words or

with science, cannot be brought into harmony with what we have learnt

from geology. Its ethnological statements are imperfect, if not

sometimes inaccurate. The stories of the Fall, of the Flood, and of the

Tower of Babel, are incredible in their present form. Some historical

element may underlie many of the traditions in the first eleven

chapters in that book, but this we cannot hope to recover.” Canon

Bonney proceeded to say of the New Testament also, that “the Gospels

are not so far as we know, strictly contemporaneous records, so we must

admit the possibility of variations and even inaccuracies in details

being introduced by oral tradition.” The Canon thinks the interval too

short for these importations to be serious, but that any question of

this kind is left open proves the Age of Reason fully upon us. Reason

alone can determine how many texts are as spurious as the three

heavenly witnesses (i John v. 7), and like it “serious” enough to have

cost good men their lives, and persecutors their charities. When men

interpolate, it is because they believe their interpolation seriously

needed. It will be seen by a note in Part II. of the work, that Paine

calls attention to an interpolation introduced into the first American

edition without indication of its being an editorial footnote. This

footnote was: “The book of Luke was carried by a majority of one only.

Vide Moshelm’s Ecc. History.” Dr. Priestley, then in America, answered

Paine’s work, and in quoting less than a page from the “Age of Reason”

he made three alterations,—one of which changed “church mythologists”

into “Christian mythologists,”—and also raised the editorial footnote

into the text, omitting the reference to Mosheim. Having done this,

Priestley writes: “As to the gospel of Luke being carried by a majority

of one only, it is a legend, if not of Mr. Paine’s own invention, of no

better authority whatever.” And so on with further castigation of the

author for what he never wrote, and which he himself (Priestley) was

the unconscious means of introducing into the text within the year of

Paine’s publication.

If this could be done, unintentionally by a conscientious and exact

man, and one not unfriendly to Paine, if such a writer as Priestley

could make four mistakes in citing half a page, it will appear not very

wonderful when I state that in a modern popular edition of “The Age of

Reason,” including both parts, I have noted about five hundred

deviations from the original. These were mainly the accumulated efforts

of friendly editors to improve Paine’s grammar or spelling; some were

misprints, or developed out of such; and some resulted from the sale in

London of a copy of Part Second surreptitiously made from the

manuscript. These facts add significance to Paine’s footnote (itself

altered in some editions!), in which he says: “If this has happened

within such a short space of time, notwithstanding the aid of printing,

which prevents the alteration of copies individually; what may not have

happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no printing,

and when any man who could write, could make a written copy, and call

it an original, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.”

Nothing appears to me more striking, as an illustration of the

far-reaching effects of traditional prejudice, than the errors into

which some of our ablest contemporary scholars have fallen by reason of

their not having studied Paine. Professor Huxley, for instance,

speaking of the freethinkers of the eighteenth century, admires the

acuteness, common sense, wit, and the broad humanity of the best of

them, but says “there is rarely much to be said for their work as an

example of the adequate treatment of a grave and difficult

investigation,” and that they shared with their adversaries “to the

full the fatal weakness of a priori philosophizing.” [NOTE: Science and

Christian Tradition, p. 18 (Lon. ed., 1894).] Professor Huxley does not

name Paine, evidently because he knows nothing about him. Yet Paine

represents the turning-point of the historical freethinking movement;

he renounced the ‘a priori’ method, refused to pronounce anything

impossible outside pure mathematics, rested everything on evidence, and

really founded the Huxleyan school. He plagiarized by anticipation many

things from the rationalistic leaders of our time, from Strauss and

Baur (being the first to expatiate on “Christian Mythology”), from

Renan (being the first to attempt recovery of the human Jesus), and

notably from Huxley, who has repeated Paine’s arguments on the

untrustworthiness of the biblical manuscripts and canon, on the

inconsistencies of the narratives of Christ’s resurrection, and various

other points. None can be more loyal to the memory of Huxley than the

present writer, and it is even because of my sense of his grand

leadership that he is here mentioned as a typical instance of the

extent to which the very elect of free-thought may be unconsciously

victimized by the phantasm with which they are contending. He says that

Butler overthrew freethinkers of the eighteenth century type, but Paine

was of the nineteenth century type; and it was precisely because of his

critical method that he excited more animosity than his deistical

predecessors. He compelled the apologists to defend the biblical

narratives in detail, and thus implicitly acknowledge the tribunal of

reason and knowledge to which they were summoned. The ultimate answer

by police was a confession of judgment. A hundred years ago England was

suppressing Paine’s works, and many an honest Englishman has gone to

prison for printing and circulating his “Age of Reason.” The same views

are now freely expressed; they are heard in the seats of learning, and

even in the Church Congress; but the suppression of Paine, begun by

bigotry and ignorance, is continued in the long indifference of the

representatives of our Age of Reason to their pioneer and founder. It

is a grievous loss to them and to their cause. It is impossible to

understand the religious history of England, and of America, without

studying the phases of their evolution represented in the writings of

Thomas Paine, in the controversies that grew out of them with such

practical accompaniments as the foundation of the Theophilanthropist

Church in Paris and New York, and of the great rationalist wing of

Quakerism in America.

Whatever may be the case with scholars in our time, those of Paine’s

time took the “Age of Reason” very seriously indeed. Beginning with the

learned Dr. Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, a large number of

learned men replied to Paine’s work, and it became a signal for the

commencement of those concessions, on the part of theology, which have

continued to our time; and indeed the so-called “Broad Church” is to

some extent an outcome of “The Age of Reason.” It would too much

enlarge this Introduction to cite here the replies made to Paine

(thirty-six are catalogued in the British Museum), but it may be

remarked that they were notably free, as a rule, from the personalities

that raged in the pulpits. I must venture to quote one passage from his

very learned antagonist, the Rev. Gilbert Wakefield, B.A., “late Fellow

of Jesus College, Cambridge.” Wakefield, who had resided in London

during all the Paine panic, and was well acquainted with the slanders

uttered against the author of “Rights of Man,” indirectly brands them

in answering Paine’s argument that the original and traditional

unbelief of the Jews, among whom the alleged miracles were wrought, is

an important evidence against them. The learned divine writes:

“But the subject before us admits of further illustration from the

example of Mr. Paine himself. In this country, where his opposition to

the corruptions of government has raised him so many adversaries, and

such a swarm of unprincipled hirelings have exerted themselves in

blackening his character and in misrepresenting all the transactions

and incidents of his life, will it not be a most difficult, nay an

impossible task, for posterity, after a lapse of 1700 years, if such a

wreck of modern literature as that of the ancient, should intervene, to

identify the real circumstances, moral and civil, of the man? And will

a true historian, such as the Evangelists, be credited at that future

period against such a predominant incredulity, without large and mighty

accessions of collateral attestation? And how transcendently

extraordinary, I had almost said miraculous, will it be estimated by

candid and reasonable minds, that a writer whose object was a

melioration of condition to the common people, and their deliverance

from oppression, poverty, wretchedness, to the numberless blessings of

upright and equal government, should be reviled, persecuted, and burned

in effigy, with every circumstance of insult and execration, by these

very objects of his benevolent intentions, in every corner of the

kingdom?” After the execution of Louis XVI., for whose life Paine

pleaded so earnestly,—while in England he was denounced as an

accomplice in the deed,—he devoted himself to the preparation of a

Constitution, and also to gathering up his religious compositions and

adding to them. This manuscript I suppose to have been prepared in what

was variously known as White’s Hotel or Philadelphia House, in Paris,

No. 7 Passage des Petits Peres. This compilation of early and fresh

manuscripts (if my theory be correct) was labelled, “The Age of

Reason,” and given for translation to Francois Lanthenas in March 1793.

It is entered, in Qudrard (La France Literaire) under the year 1793,

but with the title “L’Age de la Raison” instead of that which it bore

in 1794, “Le Siecle de la Raison.” The latter, printed “Au Burcau de

l’imprimerie, rue du Theatre-Francais, No. 4,” is said to be by “Thomas

Paine, Citoyen et cultivateur de l’Amerique septentrionale, secretaire

du Congres du departement des affaires etrangeres pendant la guerre

d’Amerique, et auteur des ouvrages intitules: LA SENS COMMUN et LES

DROITS DE L’HOMME.”

When the Revolution was advancing to increasing terrors, Paine,

unwilling to participate in the decrees of a Convention whose sole

legal function was to frame a Constitution, retired to an old mansion

and garden in the Faubourg St. Denis, No. 63. Mr. J.G. Alger, whose

researches in personal details connected with the Revolution are

original and useful, recently showed me in the National Archives at

Paris, some papers connected with the trial of Georgeit, Paine’s

landlord, by which it appears that the present No. 63 is not, as I had

supposed, the house in which Paine resided. Mr. Alger accompanied me to

the neighborhood, but we were not able to identify the house. The

arrest of Georgeit is mentioned by Paine in his essay on

“Forgetfulness” (Writings, iii., 319). When his trial came on one of

the charges was that he had kept in his house “Paine and other

Englishmen,”—Paine being then in prison,—but he (Georgeit) was

acquitted of the paltry accusations brought against him by his Section,

the “Faubourg du Nord.” This Section took in the whole east side of the

Faubourg St. Denis, whereas the present No. 63 is on the west side.

After Georgeit (or Georger) had been arrested, Paine was left alone in

the large mansion (said by Rickman to have been once the hotel of

Madame de Pompadour), and it would appear, by his account, that it was

after the execution (October 31, 1793) Of his friends the Girondins,

and political comrades, that he felt his end at hand, and set about his

last literary bequest to the world,—“The Age of Reason,”—in the state

in which it has since appeared, as he is careful to say. There was

every probability, during the months in which he wrote (November and

December 1793) that he would be executed. His religious testament was

prepared with the blade of the guillotine suspended over him,—a fact

which did not deter pious mythologists from portraying his death-bed

remorse for having written the book.

In editing Part I. of “The Age of Reason,” I follow closely the first

edition, which was printed by Barrois in Paris from the manuscript, no

doubt under the superintendence of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine, on his

way to the Luxembourg, had confided it. Barlow was an American

ex-clergyman, a speculator on whose career French archives cast an

unfavorable light, and one cannot be certain that no liberties were

taken with Paine’s proofs.

I may repeat here what I have stated in the outset of my editorial work

on Paine that my rule is to correct obvious misprints, and also any

punctuation which seems to render the sense less clear. And to that I

will now add that in following Paine’s quotations from the Bible I have

adopted the Plan now generally used in place of his occasionally too

extended writing out of book, chapter, and verse.

Paine was imprisoned in the Luxembourg on December 28, 1793, and

released on November 4, 1794. His liberation was secured by his old

friend, James Monroe (afterwards President), who had succeeded his

(Paine’s) relentless enemy, Gouverneur Morris, as American Minister in

Paris. He was found by Monroe more dead than alive from

semi-starvation, cold, and an abscess contracted in prison, and taken

to the Minister’s own residence. It was not supposed that he could

survive, and he owed his life to the tender care of Mr. and Mrs.

Monroe. It was while thus a prisoner in his room, with death still

hovering over him, that Paine wrote Part Second of “The Age of Reason.”

The work was published in London by H.D. Symonds on October 25, 1795,

and claimed to be “from the Author’s manuscript.” It is marked as

“Entered at Stationers Hall,” and prefaced by an apologetic note of

“The Bookseller to the Public,” whose commonplaces about avoiding both

prejudice and partiality, and considering “both sides,” need not be

quoted. While his volume was going through the press in Paris, Paine

heard of the publication in London, which drew from him the following

hurried note to a London publisher, no doubt Daniel Isaacs Eaton:

“SIR,—I have seen advertised in the London papers the second Edition

[part] of the Age of Reason, printed, the advertisement says, from the

Author’s Manuscript, and entered at Stationers Hall. I have never sent

any manuscript to any person. It is therefore a forgery to say it is

printed from the author’s manuscript; and I suppose is done to give the

Publisher a pretence of Copy Right, which he has no title to.

“I send you a printed copy, which is the only one I have sent to

London. I wish you to make a cheap edition of it. I know not by what

means any copy has got over to London. If any person has made a

manuscript copy I have no doubt but it is full of errors. I wish you

would talk to Mr. ——- upon this subject as I wish to know by what means

this trick has been played, and from whom the publisher has got

possession of any copy.

“T. PAINE.

“PARIS, December 4, 1795”

Eaton’s cheap edition appeared January 1, 1796, with the above letter

on the reverse of the title. The blank in the note was probably

“Symonds” in the original, and possibly that publisher was imposed

upon. Eaton, already in trouble for printing one of Paine’s political

pamphlets, fled to America, and an edition of the “Age of Reason” was

issued under a new title; no publisher appears; it is said to be

“printed for, and sold by all the Booksellers in Great Britain and

Ireland.” It is also said to be “By Thomas Paine, author of several

remarkable performances.” I have never found any copy of this anonymous

edition except the one in my possession. It is evidently the edition

which was suppressed by the prosecution of Williams for selling a copy

of it.

A comparison with Paine’s revised edition reveals a good many clerical

and verbal errors in Symonds, though few that affect the sense. The

worst are in the preface, where, instead of “1793,” the misleading date

“1790” is given as the year at whose close Paine completed Part

First,—an error that spread far and wide and was fastened on by his

calumnious American “biographer,” Cheetham, to prove his inconsistency.

The editors have been fairly demoralized by, and have altered in

different ways, the following sentence of the preface in Symonds: “The

intolerant spirit of religious persecution had transferred itself into

politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of

the Inquisition; and the Guillotine of the State outdid the Fire and

Faggot of the Church.” The rogue who copied this little knew the care

with which Paine weighed words, and that he would never call

persecution “religious,” nor connect the guillotine with the “State,”

nor concede that with all its horrors it had outdone the history of

fire and faggot. What Paine wrote was: “The intolerant spirit of church

persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled

Revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition and the Guillotine,

of the Stake.”

An original letter of Paine, in the possession of Joseph Cowen,

ex-M.P., which that gentleman permits me to bring to light, besides

being one of general interest makes clear the circumstances of the

original publication. Although the name of the correspondent does not

appear on the letter, it was certainly written to Col. John Fellows of

New York, who copyrighted Part I. of the “Age of Reason.” He published

the pamphlets of Joel Barlow, to whom Paine confided his manuscript on

his way to prison. Fellows was afterwards Paine’s intimate friend in

New York, and it was chiefly due to him that some portions of the

author’s writings, left in manuscript to Madame Bonneville while she

was a freethinker were rescued from her devout destructiveness after

her return to Catholicism. The letter which Mr. Cowen sends me, is

dated at Paris, January 20, 1797.

“SIR,—Your friend Mr. Caritat being on the point of his departure for

America, I make it the opportunity of writing to you. I received two

letters from you with some pamphlets a considerable time past, in which

you inform me of your entering a copyright of the first part of the Age

of Reason: when I return to America we will settle for that matter.

“As Doctor Franklin has been my intimate friend for thirty years past

you will naturally see the reason of my continuing the connection with

his grandson. I printed here (Paris) about fifteen thousand of the

second part of the Age of Reason, which I sent to Mr. F[ranklin] Bache.

I gave him notice of it in September 1795 and the copy-right by my own

direction was entered by him. The books did not arrive till April

following, but he had advertised it long before.

“I sent to him in August last a manuscript letter of about 70 pages,

from me to Mr. Washington to be printed in a pamphlet. Mr. Barnes of

Philadelphia carried the letter from me over to London to be forwarded

to America. It went by the ship Hope, Cap: Harley, who since his return

from America told me that he put it into the post office at New York

for Bache. I have yet no certain account of its publication. I mention

this that the letter may be enquired after, in case it has not been

published or has not arrived to Mr. Bache. Barnes wrote to me, from

London 29 August informing me that he was offered three hundred pounds

sterling for the manuscript. The offer was refused because it was my

intention it should not appear till it appeared in America, as that,

and not England was the place for its operation.

“You ask me by your letter to Mr. Caritat for a list of my several

works, in order to publish a collection of them. This is an undertaking

I have always reserved for myself. It not only belongs to me of right,

but nobody but myself can do it; and as every author is accountable (at

least in reputation) for his works, he only is the person to do it. If

he neglects it in his life-time the case is altered. It is my intention

to return to America in the course of the present year. I shall then

[do] it by subscription, with historical notes. As this work will

employ many persons in different parts of the Union, I will confer with

you upon the subject, and such part of it as will suit you to

undertake, will be at your choice. I have sustained so much loss, by

disinterestedness and inattention to money matters, and by accidents,

that I am obliged to look closer to my affairs than I have done. The

printer (an Englishman) whom I employed here to print the second part

of ‘the Age of Reason’ made a manuscript copy of the work while he was

printing it, which he sent to London and sold. It was by this means

that an edition of it came out in London.

“We are waiting here for news from America of the state of the federal

elections. You will have heard long before this reaches you that the

French government has refused to receive Mr. Pinckney as minister.

While Mr. Monroe was minister he had the opportunity of softening

matters with this government, for he was in good credit with them tho’

they were in high indignation at the infidelity of the Washington

Administration. It is time that Mr. Washington retire, for he has

played off so much prudent hypocrisy between France and England that

neither government believes anything he says.

“Your friend, etc.,

“THOMAS PAINE.”

It would appear that Symonds’ stolen edition must have got ahead of

that sent by Paine to Franklin Bache, for some of its errors continue

in all modern American editions to the present day, as well as in those

of England. For in England it was only the shilling edition—that

revised by Paine—which was suppressed. Symonds, who ministered to the

half-crown folk, and who was also publisher of replies to Paine, was

left undisturbed about his pirated edition, and the new Society for the

suppression of Vice and Immorality fastened on one Thomas Williams, who

sold pious tracts but was also convicted (June 24, 1797) of having sold

one copy of the “Age of Reason.” Erskine, who had defended Paine at his

trial for the “Rights of Man,” conducted the prosecution of Williams.

He gained the victory from a packed jury, but was not much elated by

it, especially after a certain adventure on his way to Lincoln’s Inn.

He felt his coat clutched and beheld at his feet a woman bathed in

tears. She led him into the small book-shop of Thomas Williams, not yet

called up for judgment, and there he beheld his victim stitching tracts

in a wretched little room, where there were three children, two

suffering with Smallpox. He saw that it would be ruin and even a sort

of murder to take away to prison the husband, who was not a

freethinker, and lamented his publication of the book, and a meeting of

the Society which had retained him was summoned. There was a full

meeting, the Bishop of London (Porteus) in the chair. Erskine reminded

them that Williams was yet to be brought up for sentence, described the

scene he had witnessed, and Williams’ penitence, and, as the book was

now suppressed, asked permission to move for a nominal sentence. Mercy,

he urged, was a part of the Christianity they were defending. Not one

of the Society took his side,—not even “philanthropic” Wilberforce—and

Erskine threw up his brief. This action of Erskine led the Judge to

give Williams only a year in prison instead of the three he said had

been intended.

While Williams was in prison the orthodox colporteurs were circulating

Erskine’s speech on Christianity, but also an anonymous sermon “On the

Existence and Attributes of the Deity,” all of which was from Paine’s

“Age of Reason,” except a brief “Address to the Deity” appended. This

picturesque anomaly was repeated in the circulation of Paine’s

“Discourse to the Theophilanthropists” (their and the author’s names

removed) under the title of “Atheism Refuted.” Both of these pamphlets

are now before me, and beside them a London tract of one page just sent

for my spiritual benefit. This is headed “A Word of Caution.” It begins

by mentioning the “pernicious doctrines of Paine,” the first being

“that there is No GOD” (sic,) then proceeds to adduce evidences of

divine existence taken from Paine’s works. It should be added that this

one dingy page is the only “survival” of the ancient Paine effigy in

the tract form which I have been able to find in recent years, and to

this no Society or Publisher’s name is attached.

The imprisonment of Williams was the beginning of a thirty years’ war

for religious liberty in England, in the course of which occurred many

notable events, such as Eaton receiving homage in his pillory at

Choring Cross, and the whole Carlile family imprisoned,—its head

imprisoned more than nine years for publishing the “Age of Reason.”

This last victory of persecution was suicidal. Gentlemen of wealth, not

adherents of Paine, helped in setting Carlile up in business in Fleet

Street, where free-thinking publications have since been sold without

interruption. But though Liberty triumphed in one sense, the “Age of

Reason.” remained to some extent suppressed among those whose attention

it especially merited. Its original prosecution by a Society for the

Suppression of Vice (a device to, relieve the Crown) amounted to a

libel upon a morally clean book, restricting its perusal in families;

and the fact that the shilling book sold by and among humble people was

alone prosecuted, diffused among the educated an equally false notion

that the “Age of Reason” was vulgar and illiterate. The theologians, as

we have seen, estimated more justly the ability of their antagonist,

the collaborator of Franklin, Rittenhouse, and Clymer, on whom the

University of Pennsylvania had conferred the degree of Master of

Arts,—but the gentry confused Paine with the class described by Burke

as “the swinish multitude.” Skepticism, or its free utterance, was

temporarily driven out of polite circles by its complication with the

out-lawed vindicator of the “Rights of Man.” But that long combat has

now passed away. Time has reduced the “Age of Reason” from a flag of

popular radicalism to a comparatively conservative treatise, so far as

its negations are concerned. An old friend tells me that in his youth

he heard a sermon in which the preacher declared that “Tom Paine was so

wicked that he could not be buried; his bones were thrown into a box

which was bandied about the world till it came to a

button-manufacturer; and now Paine is travelling round the world in the

form of buttons!” This variant of the Wandering Jew myth may now be

regarded as unconscious homage to the author whose metaphorical bones

may be recognized in buttons now fashionable, and some even found

useful in holding clerical vestments together.

But the careful reader will find in Paine’s “Age of Reason” something

beyond negations, and in conclusion I will especially call attention to

the new departure in Theism indicated in a passage corresponding to a

famous aphorism of Kant, indicated by a note in Part II. The discovery

already mentioned, that Part I. was written at least fourteen years

before Part II., led me to compare the two; and it is plain that while

the earlier work is an amplification of Newtonian Deism, based on the

phenomena of planetary motion, the work of 1795 bases belief in God on

“the universal display of himself in the works of the creation and by

that repugnance we feel in ourselves to bad actions, and disposition to

do good ones.” This exaltation of the moral nature of man to be the

foundation of theistic religion, though now familiar, was a hundred

years ago a new affirmation; it has led on a conception of deity

subversive of last-century deism, it has steadily humanized religion,

and its ultimate philosophical and ethical results have not yet been

reached.

THE AGE OF REASON — PART I

CHAPTER I.

THE AUTHOR’S PROFESSION OF FAITH.

It has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my

thoughts upon religion; I am well aware of the difficulties that attend

the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more

advanced period of life. I intended it to be the last offering I should

make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the

purity of the motive that induced me to it could not admit of a

question, even by those who might disapprove the work.

The circumstance that has now taken place in France, of the total

abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything

appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles

of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work

of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest, in the general wreck of

superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we

lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true.

As several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of

France, have given me the example of making their voluntary and

individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do this

with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man

communicates with itself.

I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this

life.

I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties

consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our

fellow-creatures happy.

But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in

addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the

things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the

Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the

Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my

own church.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or

Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify

and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe

otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.

But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally

faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in

disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not

believe.

It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express

it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far

corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his

professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared

himself for the commission of every other crime. He takes up the trade

of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for

that trade, he begins with a perjury. Can we conceive anything more

destructive to morality than this?

Soon after I had published the pamphlet COMMON SENSE, in America, I saw

the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government

would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The

adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place,

whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited,

by pains and penalties, every discussion upon established creeds, and

upon first principles of religion, that until the system of government

should be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and

openly before the world; but that whenever this should be done, a

revolution in the system of religion would follow. Human inventions and

priest-craft would be detected; and man would return to the pure,

unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.

CHAPTER II.

OF MISSIONS AND REVELATIONS.

Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending

some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals. The

Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their

apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God

was not open to every man alike.

Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation,

or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by

God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God

came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God

(the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches

accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them

all.

As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I

proceed further into the subject, offer some observations on the word

‘revelation.’ Revelation when applied to religion, means something

communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a

communication if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case,

that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed

to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he

tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth,

and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is

revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and,

consequently, they are not obliged to believe it.

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation

that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing.

Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After

this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a

revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to

believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same

manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his

word for it that it was made to him.

When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables

of the commandments from the hand of God, they were not obliged to

believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his

telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some

historian telling me so, the commandments carrying no internal evidence

of divinity with them. They contain some good moral precepts such as

any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce

himself, without having recourse to supernatural intervention. [NOTE:

It is, however, necessary to except the declamation which says that God

‘visits the sins of the fathers upon the children’. This is contrary to

every principle of moral justice.—Author.]

When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven, and brought to

Mahomet by an angel, the account comes to near the same kind of hearsay

evidence and second hand authority as the former. I did not see the

angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it.

When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave

out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and

that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I

have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a

much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not

even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter

themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so. It is

hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such

evidence.

It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was given

to the story of Jesus Christ being the Son of God. He was born when the

heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute in the world, and

that mythology had prepared the people for the belief of such a story.

Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology

were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new

thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten;

the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter of familiar

opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited with

hundreds; the story therefore had nothing in it either new, wonderful,

or obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed

among the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those

people only that believed it. The Jews, who had kept strictly to the

belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen

mythology, never credited the story.

It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian

Church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct

incorporation took place in the first instance, by making the reputed

founder to be celestially begotten. The trinity of gods that then

followed was no other than a reduction of the former plurality, which

was about twenty or thirty thousand. The statue of Mary succeeded the

statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes changed into the

canonization of saints. The Mythologists had gods for everything; the

Christian Mythologists had saints for everything. The church became as

crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome

was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the

idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of

power and revenue; and it yet remains to reason and philosophy to

abolish the amphibious fraud.

CHAPTER III.

CONCERNING THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST, AND HIS HISTORY.

Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant

disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous

and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced was of

the most benevolent kind; and though similar systems of morality had

been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many

years before, by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages,

it has not been exceeded by any.

Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or

anything else. Not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his

writing. The history of him is altogether the work of other people; and

as to the account given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the

necessary counterpart to the story of his birth. His historians, having

brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to

take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story

must have fallen to the ground.

The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told, exceeds

everything that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous

conception, was not a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore

the tellers of this part of the story had this advantage, that though

they might not be credited, they could not be detected. They could not

be expected to prove it, because it was not one of those things that

admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of whom it was

told could prove it himself.

But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension

through the air, is a thing very different, as to the evidence it

admits of, to the invisible conception of a child in the womb. The

resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place,

admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension

of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A

thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof

and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the

public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that

could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the

ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small

number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as

proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of

the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did

not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe

without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will

I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other

person, as for Thomas.

It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The

story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of

fraud and imposition stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors

of it is as impossible for us now to know, as it is for us to be

assured that the books in which the account is related were written by

the persons whose names they bear. The best surviving evidence we now

have respecting this affair is the Jews. They are regularly descended

from the people who lived in the time this resurrection and ascension

is said to have happened, and they say ‘it is not true.’ It has long

appeared to me a strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a proof of

the truth of the story. It is just the same as if a man were to say, I

will prove the truth of what I have told you, by producing the people

who say it is false.

That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was crucified,

which was the mode of execution at that day, are historical relations

strictly within the limits of probability. He preached most excellent

morality, and the equality of man; but he preached also against the

corruptions and avarice of the Jewish priests, and this brought upon

him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priest-hood. The

accusation which those priests brought against him was that of sedition

and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which the Jews were

then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that the Roman

government might have some secret apprehension of the effects of his

doctrine as well as the Jewish priests; neither is it improbable that

Jesus Christ had in contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation

from the bondage of the Romans. Between the two, however, this virtuous

reformer and revolutionist lost his life. [NOTE: The French work has

here: “However this may be, for one or the other of these suppositions

this virtuous reformer, this revolutionist, too little imitated, too

much forgotten, too much misunderstood, lost his life.”—Editor.

(Conway)]

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE BASES OF CHRISTIANITY.

It is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case I

am going to mention, that the Christian mythologists, calling

themselves the Christian Church, have erected their fable, which for

absurdity and extravagance is not exceeded by anything that is to be

found in the mythology of the ancients.

The ancient mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made war

against Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks against him

at one throw; that Jupiter defeated him with thunder, and confined him

afterwards under Mount Etna; and that every time the Giant turns

himself, Mount Etna belches fire. It is here easy to see that the

circumstance of the mountain, that of its being a volcano, suggested

the idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit and wind

itself up with that circumstance.

The Christian mythologists tell that their Satan made war against the

Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterwards, not under a

mountain, but in a pit. It is here easy to see that the first fable

suggested the idea of the second; for the fable of Jupiter and the

Giants was told many hundred years before that of Satan.

Thus far the ancient and the Christian mythologists differ very little

from each other. But the latter have contrived to carry the matter much

farther. They have contrived to connect the fabulous part of the story

of Jesus Christ with the fable originating from Mount Etna; and, in

order to make all the parts of the story tie together, they have taken

to their aid the traditions of the Jews; for the Christian mythology is

made up partly from the ancient mythology, and partly from the Jewish

traditions.

The Christian mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were

obliged to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is

then introduced into the garden of Eden in the shape of a snake, or a

serpent, and in that shape he enters into familiar conversation with

Eve, who is no ways surprised to hear a snake talk; and the issue of

this tete-a-tate is, that he persuades her to eat an apple, and the

eating of that apple damns all mankind.

After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have

supposed that the church mythologists would have been kind enough to

send him back again to the pit, or, if they had not done this, that

they would have put a mountain upon him, (for they say that their faith

can remove a mountain) or have put him under a mountain, as the former

mythologists had done, to prevent his getting again among the women,

and doing more mischief. But instead of this, they leave him at large,

without even obliging him to give his parole. The secret of which is,

that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of

making him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews,

ALL the Turks by anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and

Mahomet into the bargain. After this, who can doubt the bountifulness

of the Christian Mythology?

Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in heaven, in which none

of the combatants could be either killed or wounded—put Satan into the

pit—let him out again—given him a triumph over the whole

creation—damned all mankind by the eating of an apple, there Christian

mythologists bring the two ends of their fable together. They represent

this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to be at once both God and

man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on purpose to be

sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing [NOTE: The French

work has: “yielding to an unrestrained appetite.”—Editor.] had eaten an

apple.

CHAPTER V.

EXAMINATION IN DETAIL OF THE PRECEDING BASES.

Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity,

or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an

examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more

derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more

contradictory to his power, than this story is.

In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were

under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan a power

equally as great, if not greater, than they attribute to the Almighty.

They have not only given him the power of liberating himself from the

pit, after what they call his fall, but they have made that power

increase afterwards to infinity. Before this fall they represent him

only as an angel of limited existence, as they represent the rest.

After his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent. He exists

everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of

space.

Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as

defeating by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation, all

the power and wisdom of the Almighty. They represent him as having

compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity either of surrendering

the whole of the creation to the government and sovereignty of this

Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by coming down upon earth,

and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the shape of a man.

Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had

they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself on

a cross in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his new

transgression, the story would have been less absurd, less

contradictory. But, instead of this they make the transgressor triumph,

and the Almighty fall.

That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very

good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I

have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe it,

and they would have believed anything else in the same manner. There

are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they

conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making a sacrifice

of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred

them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of the story.

The more unnatural anything is, the more is it capable of becoming the

object of dismal admiration. [NOTE: The French work has “blind and”

preceding dismal.—Editor.]

CHAPTER VI.

OF THE TRUE THEOLOGY.

But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not

present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair

creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born—a world

furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up

the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance?

Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still goes

on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future,

nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects

than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so

intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the

Creator?

I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be

paying too great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on that

account. The times and the subject demand it to be done. The suspicion

that the theory of what is called the Christian church is fabulous, is

becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will be a consolation

to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubting what to believe

and what to disbelieve, to see the subject freely investigated. I

therefore pass on to an examination of the books called the Old and the

New Testament.

CHAPTER VII.

EXAMINATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

These books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations,

(which, by the bye, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation to

explain it) are, we are told, the word of God. It is, therefore, proper

for us to know who told us so, that we may know what credit to give to

the report. The answer to this question is, that nobody can tell,

except that we tell one another so. The case, however, historically

appears to be as follows:

When the church mythologists established their system, they collected

all the writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. It

is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the

writings as now appear under the name of the Old and the New Testament,

are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them; or

whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up.

Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the

collection they had made, should be the WORD OF GOD, and which should

not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as

the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of

votes, were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all

the people since calling themselves Christians had believed otherwise;

for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. Who the

people were that did all this, we know nothing of. They call themselves

by the general name of the Church; and this is all we know of the

matter.

As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing these

books to be the word of God, than what I have mentioned, which is no

evidence or authority at all, I come, in the next place, to examine the

internal evidence contained in the books themselves.

In the former part of this essay, I have spoken of revelation. I now

proceed further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it to

the books in question.

Revelation is a communication of something, which the person, to whom

that thing is revealed, did not know before. For if I have done a

thing, or seen it done, it needs no revelation to tell me I have done

it, or seen it, nor to enable me to tell it, or to write it.

Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth of

which man is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently all the

historical and anecdotal part of the Bible, which is almost the whole

of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation,

and, therefore, is not the word of God.

When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so,

(and whether he did or not is nothing to us,) or when he visited his

Delilah, or caught his foxes, or did anything else, what has revelation

to do with these things? If they were facts, he could tell them

himself; or his secretary, if he kept one, could write them, if they

were worth either telling or writing; and if they were fictions,

revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are

neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate

the immensity of that Being, who directs and governs the

incomprehensible WHOLE, of which the utmost ken of human sight can

discover but a part, we ought to feel shame at calling such paltry

stories the word of God.

As to the account of the creation, with which the book of Genesis

opens, it has all the appearance of being a tradition which the

Israelites had among them before they came into Egypt; and after their

departure from that country, they put it at the head of their history,

without telling, as it is most probable that they did not know, how

they came by it. The manner in which the account opens, shows it to be

traditionary. It begins abruptly. It is nobody that speaks. It is

nobody that hears. It is addressed to nobody. It has neither first,

second, nor third person. It has every criterion of being a tradition.

It has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing

it with the formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of

saying, “The Lords spake unto Moses, saying.”

Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the creation, I am at a

loss to conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such

subjects to put his name to that account. He had been educated among

the Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and

particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the silence

and caution that Moses observes, in not authenticating the account, is

a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it.—The

case is, that every nation of people has been world-makers, and the

Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as any

of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not chose to

contradict the tradition. The account, however, is harmless; and this

is more than can be said for many other parts of the Bible.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the

cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with

which more than half the Bible [NOTE: It must be borne in mind that by

the “Bible” Paine always means the Old Testament alone.—Editor.] is

filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a

demon, than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has

served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my own part, I

sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.

We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what

deserves either our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the

miscellaneous parts of the Bible. In the anonymous publications, the

Psalms, and the Book of Job, more particularly in the latter, we find a

great deal of elevated sentiment reverentially expressed of the power

and benignity of the Almighty; but they stand on no higher rank than

many other compositions on similar subjects, as well before that time

as since.

The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon’s, though most probably a

collection, (because they discover a knowledge of life, which his

situation excluded him from knowing) are an instructive table of

ethics. They are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the Spaniards,

and not more wise and oeconomical than those of the American Franklin.

All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the name of

the Prophets, are the works of the Jewish poets and itinerant

preachers, who mixed poetry, anecdote, and devotion together—and those

works still retain the air and style of poetry, though in translation.

[NOTE: As there are many readers who do not see that a composition is

poetry, unless it be in rhyme, it is for their information that I add

this note.

Poetry consists principally in two things—imagery and composition. The

composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the manner of

mixing long and short syllables together. Take a long syllable out of a

line of poetry, and put a short one in the room of it, or put a long

syllable where a short one should be, and that line will lose its

poetical harmony. It will have an effect upon the line like that of

misplacing a note in a song.

The imagery in those books called the Prophets appertains altogether to

poetry. It is fictitious, and often extravagant, and not admissible in

any other kind of writing than poetry.

To show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, I will

take ten syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of the

same number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with the

last word. It will then be seen that the composition of those books is

poetical measure. The instance I shall first produce is from Isaiah:—

“Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth

’T is God himself that calls attention forth.

Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to which

I shall add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out the

figure, and showing the intention of the poet.

“O, that mine head were waters and mine eyes

Were fountains flowing like the liquid skies;

Then would I give the mighty flood release

And weep a deluge for the human race.”—Author.]

There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word that

describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes what

we call poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which a later

times have affixed a new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the

word ‘propesying’ meant the art of making poetry. It also meant the art

of playing poetry to a tune upon any instrument of music.

We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns—of prophesying

with harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with every other

instrument of music then in fashion. Were we now to speak of

prophesying with a fiddle, or with a pipe and tabor, the expression

would have no meaning, or would appear ridiculous, and to some people

contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning of the word.

We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he

prophesied; but we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he

prophesied. The case is, there was nothing to tell; for these prophets

were a company of musicians and poets, and Saul joined in the concert,

and this was called prophesying.

The account given of this affair in the book called Samuel, is, that

Saul met a company of prophets; a whole company of them! coming down

with a psaltery, a tabret, a pipe, and a harp, and that they

prophesied, and that he prophesied with them. But it appears

afterwards, that Saul prophesied badly, that is, he performed his part

badly; for it is said that an “evil spirit from God [NOTE: As those men

who call themselves divines and commentators are very fond of puzzling

one another, I leave them to contest the meaning of the first part of

the phrase, that of an evil spirit of God. I keep to my text. I keep to

the meaning of the word prophesy.—Author.] came upon Saul, and he

prophesied.”

Now, were there no other passage in the book called the Bible, than

this, to demonstrate to us that we have lost the original meaning of

the word prophesy, and substituted another meaning in its place, this

alone would be sufficient; for it is impossible to use and apply the

word prophesy, in the place it is here used and applied, if we give to

it the sense which later times have affixed to it. The manner in which

it is here used strips it of all religious meaning, and shews that a

man might then be a prophet, or he might Prophesy, as he may now be a

poet or a musician, without any regard to the morality or the

immorality of his character. The word was originally a term of science,

promiscuously applied to poetry and to music, and not restricted to any

subject upon which poetry and music might be exercised.

Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not because they predicted

anything, but because they composed the poem or song that bears their

name, in celebration of an act already done. David is ranked among the

prophets, for he was a musician, and was also reputed to be (though

perhaps very erroneously) the author of the Psalms. But Abraham, Isaac,

and Jacob are not called prophets; it does not appear from any accounts

we have, that they could either sing, play music, or make poetry.

We are told of the greater and the lesser prophets. They might as well

tell us of the greater and the lesser God; for there cannot be degrees

in prophesying consistently with its modern sense. But there are

degrees in poetry, and there-fore the phrase is reconcilable to the

case, when we understand by it the greater and the lesser poets.

It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations

upon what those men, styled prophets, have written. The axe goes at

once to the root, by showing that the original meaning of the word has

been mistaken, and consequently all the inferences that have been drawn

from those books, the devotional respect that has been paid to them,

and the laboured commentaries that have been written upon them, under

that mistaken meaning, are not worth disputing about.—In many things,

however, the writings of the Jewish poets deserve a better fate than

that of being bound up, as they now are, with the trash that

accompanies them, under the abused name of the Word of God.

If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must

necessarily affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the

utter impossibility of any change taking place, by any means or

accident whatever, in that which we would honour with the name of the

Word of God; and therefore the Word of God cannot exist in any written

or human language.

The continually progressive change to which the meaning of words is

subject, the want of an universal language which renders translation

necessary, the errors to which translations are again subject, the

mistakes of copyists and printers, together with the possibility of

wilful alteration, are of themselves evidences that human language,

whether in speech or in print, cannot be the vehicle of the Word of

God.—The Word of God exists in something else.

Did the book called the Bible excel in purity of ideas and expression

all the books now extant in the world, I would not take it for my rule

of faith, as being the Word of God; because the possibility would

nevertheless exist of my being imposed upon. But when I see throughout

the greatest part of this book scarcely anything but a history of the

grossest vices, and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible

tales, I cannot dishonour my Creator by calling it by his name.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Thus much for the Bible; I now go on to the book called the New

Testament. The new Testament! that is, the ‘new’ Will, as if there

could be two wills of the Creator.

Had it been the object or the intention of Jesus Christ to establish a

new religion, he would undoubtedly have written the system himself, or

procured it to be written in his life time. But there is no publication

extant authenticated with his name. All the books called the New

Testament were written after his death. He was a Jew by birth and by

profession; and he was the son of God in like manner that every other

person is; for the Creator is the Father of All.

The first four books, called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do not give

a history of the life of Jesus Christ, but only detached anecdotes of

him. It appears from these books, that the whole time of his being a

preacher was not more than eighteen months; and it was only during this

short time that those men became acquainted with him. They make mention

of him at the age of twelve years, sitting, they say, among the Jewish

doctors, asking and answering them questions. As this was several years

before their acquaintance with him began, it is most probable they had

this anecdote from his parents. From this time there is no account of

him for about sixteen years. Where he lived, or how he employed himself

during this interval, is not known. Most probably he was working at his

father’s trade, which was that of a carpenter. It does not appear that

he had any school education, and the probability is, that he could not

write, for his parents were extremely poor, as appears from their not

being able to pay for a bed when he was born. [NOTE: One of the few

errors traceable to Paine’s not having a Bible at hand while writing

Part I. There is no indication that the family was poor, but the

reverse may in fact be inferred.—Editor.]

It is somewhat curious that the three persons whose names are the most

universally recorded were of very obscure parentage. Moses was a

foundling; Jesus Christ was born in a stable; and Mahomet was a mule

driver. The first and the last of these men were founders of different

systems of religion; but Jesus Christ founded no new system. He called

men to the practice of moral virtues, and the belief of one God. The

great trait in his character is philanthropy.

The manner in which he was apprehended shows that he was not much

known, at that time; and it shows also that the meetings he then held

with his followers were in secret; and that he had given over or

suspended preaching publicly. Judas could no otherways betray him than

by giving information where he was, and pointing him out to the

officers that went to arrest him; and the reason for employing and

paying Judas to do this could arise only from the causes already

mentioned, that of his not being much known, and living concealed.

The idea of his concealment, not only agrees very ill with his reputed

divinity, but associates with it something of pusillanimity; and his

being betrayed, or in other words, his being apprehended, on the

information of one of his followers, shows that he did not intend to be

apprehended, and consequently that he did not intend to be crucified.

The Christian mythologists tell us that Christ died for the sins of the

world, and that he came on Purpose to die. Would it not then have been

the same if he had died of a fever or of the small pox, of old age, or

of anything else?

The declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon Adam, in case

he ate of the apple, was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but,

thou shale surely die. The sentence was death, and not the manner of

dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any other particular manner of dying,

made no part of the sentence that Adam was to suffer, and consequently,

even upon their own tactic, it could make no part of the sentence that

Christ was to suffer in the room of Adam. A fever would have done as

well as a cross, if there was any occasion for either.

This sentence of death, which, they tell us, was thus passed upon Adam,

must either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live, or

have meant what these mythologists call damnation; and consequently,

the act of dying on the part of Jesus Christ, must, according to their

system, apply as a prevention to one or other of these two things

happening to Adam and to us.

That it does not prevent our dying is evident, because we all die; and

if their accounts of longevity be true, men die faster since the

crucifixion than before: and with respect to the second explanation,

(including with it the natural death of Jesus Christ as a substitute

for the eternal death or damnation of all mankind,) it is impertinently

representing the Creator as coming off, or revoking the sentence, by a

pun or a quibble upon the word death. That manufacturer of, quibbles,

St. Paul, if he wrote the books that bear his name, has helped this

quibble on by making another quibble upon the word Adam. He makes there

to be two Adams; the one who sins in fact, and suffers by proxy; the

other who sins by proxy, and suffers in fact. A religion thus

interlarded with quibble, subterfuge, and pun, has a tendency to

instruct its professors in the practice of these arts. They acquire the

habit without being aware of the cause.

If Jesus Christ was the being which those mythologists tell us he was,

and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they

sometimes use instead of ‘to die,’ the only real suffering he could

have endured would have been ‘to live.’ His existence here was a state

of exilement or transportation from heaven, and the way back to his

original country was to die.—In fine, everything in this strange system

is the reverse of what it pretends to be. It is the reverse of truth,

and I become so tired of examining into its inconsistencies and

absurdities, that I hasten to the conclusion of it, in order to proceed

to something better.

How much, or what parts of the books called the New Testament, were

written by the persons whose names they bear, is what we can know

nothing of, neither are we certain in what language they were

originally written. The matters they now contain may be classed under

two heads: anecdote, and epistolary correspondence.

The four books already mentioned, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are

altogether anecdotal. They relate events after they had taken place.

They tell what Jesus Christ did and said, and what others did and said

to him; and in several instances they relate the same event

differently. Revelation is necessarily out of the question with respect

to those books; not only because of the disagreement of the writers,

but because revelation cannot be applied to the relating of facts by

the persons who saw them done, nor to the relating or recording of any

discourse or conversation by those who heard it. The book called the

Acts of the Apostles (an anonymous work) belongs also to the anecdotal

part.

All the other parts of the New Testament, except the book of enigmas,

called the Revelations, are a collection of letters under the name of

epistles; and the forgery of letters has been such a common practice in

the world, that the probability is at least equal, whether they are

genuine or forged. One thing, however, is much less equivocal, which

is, that out of the matters contained in those books, together with the

assistance of some old stories, the church has set up a system of

religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name

it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended

imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty.

The invention of a purgatory, and of the releasing of souls therefrom,

by prayers, bought of the church with money; the selling of pardons,

dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws, without bearing that

name or carrying that appearance. But the case nevertheless is, that

those things derive their origin from the proxysm of the crucifixion,

and the theory deduced therefrom, which was, that one person could

stand in the place of another, and could perform meritorious services

for him. The probability, therefore, is, that the whole theory or

doctrine of what is called the redemption (which is said to have been

accomplished by the act of one person in the room of another) was

originally fabricated on purpose to bring forward and build all those

secondary and pecuniary redemptions upon; and that the passages in the

books upon which the idea of theory of redemption is built, have been

manufactured and fabricated for that purpose. Why are we to give this

church credit, when she tells us that those books are genuine in every

part, any more than we give her credit for everything else she has told

us; or for the miracles she says she has performed? That she could

fabricate writings is certain, because she could write; and the

composition of the writings in question, is of that kind that anybody

might do it; and that she did fabricate them is not more inconsistent

with probability, than that she should tell us, as she has done, that

she could and did work miracles.

Since, then, no external evidence can, at this long distance of time,

be produced to prove whether the church fabricated the doctrine called

redemption or not, (for such evidence, whether for or against, would be

subject to the same suspicion of being fabricated,) the case can only

be referred to the internal evidence which the thing carries of itself;

and this affords a very strong presumption of its being a fabrication.

For the internal evidence is, that the theory or doctrine of redemption

has for its basis an idea of pecuniary justice, and not that of moral

justice.

If I owe a person money, and cannot pay him, and he threatens to put me

in prison, another person can take the debt upon himself, and pay it

for me. But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case

is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty even

if the innocent would offer itself. To suppose justice to do this, is

to destroy the principle of its existence, which is the thing itself.

It is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge.

This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is

founded on a mere pecuniary idea corresponding to that of a debt which

another person might pay; and as this pecuniary idea corresponds again

with the system of second redemptions, obtained through the means of

money given to the church for pardons, the probability is that the same

persons fabricated both the one and the other of those theories; and

that, in truth, there is no such thing as redemption; that it is

fabulous; and that man stands in the same relative condition with his

Maker he ever did stand, since man existed; and that it is his greatest

consolation to think so.

Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally,

than by any other system. It is by his being taught to contemplate

himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one

thrown as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his

Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping, and cringing to

intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard

for everything under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or

turns what he calls devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life in

grief, or the affectation of it. His prayers are reproaches. His

humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth

a dunghill; and all the blessings of life by the thankless name of

vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF

REASON; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a

system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human

reason, as if man could give reason to himself.

Yet, with all this strange appearance of humility, and this contempt

for human reason, he ventures into the boldest presumptions. He finds

fault with everything. His selfishness is never satisfied; his

ingratitude is never at an end. He takes on himself to direct the

Almighty what to do, even in the govemment of the universe. He prays

dictatorially. When it is sunshine, he prays for rain, and when it is

rain, he prays for sunshine. He follows the same idea in everything

that he prays for; for what is the amount of all his prayers, but an

attempt to make the Almighty change his mind, and act otherwise than he

does? It is as if he were to say—thou knowest not so well as I.

CHAPTER IX.

IN WHAT THE TRUE REVELATION CONSISTS.

But some perhaps will say—Are we to have no word of God—no revelation?

I answer yes. There is a Word of God; there is a revelation.

THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word,

which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh

universally to man.

Human language is local and changeable, and is therefore incapable of

being used as the means of unchangeable and universal information. The

idea that God sent Jesus Christ to publish, as they say, the glad

tidings to all nations, from one end of the earth unto the other, is

consistent only with the ignorance of those who know nothing of the

extent of the world, and who believed, as those world-saviours

believed, and continued to believe for several centuries, (and that in

contradiction to the discoveries of philosophers and the experience of

navigators,) that the earth was flat like a trencher; and that a man

might walk to the end of it.

But how was Jesus Christ to make anything known to all nations? He

could speak but one language, which was Hebrew; and there are in the

world several hundred languages. Scarcely any two nations speak the

same language, or understand each other; and as to translations, every

man who knows anything of languages, knows that it is impossible to

translate from one language into another, not only without losing a

great part of the original, but frequently of mistaking the sense; and

besides all this, the art of printing was wholly unknown at the time

Christ lived.

It is always necessary that the means that are to accomplish any end be

equal to the accomplishment of that end, or the end cannot be

accomplished. It is in this that the difference between finite and

infinite power and wisdom discovers itself. Man frequently fails in

accomplishing his end, from a natural inability of the power to the

purpose; and frequently from the want of wisdom to apply power

properly. But it is impossible for infinite power and wisdom to fail as

man faileth. The means it useth are always equal to the end: but human

language, more especially as there is not an universal language, is

incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and

uniform information; and therefore it is not the means that God useth

in manifesting himself universally to man.

It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word

of God can unite. The Creation speaketh an universal language,

independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various

as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read.

It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it

cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the

will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself

from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and

to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is

necessary for man to know of God.

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the

creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the

unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do

we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with

which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see

it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In

fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the

scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called

the Creation.

CHAPTER X.

CONCERNING GOD, AND THE LIGHTS CAST ON HIS EXISTENCE AND ATTRIBUTES BY

THE BIBLE.

The only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first

cause, the cause of all things. And, incomprehensibly difficult as it

is for a man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the

belief of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it.

It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no

end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult

beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call

time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be

no time.

In like manner of reasoning, everything we behold carries in itself the

internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an evidence

to himself, that he did not make himself; neither could his father make

himself, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any

tree, plant, or animal make itself; and it is the conviction arising

from this evidence, that carries us on, as it were, by necessity, to

the belief of a first cause eternally existing, of a nature totally

different to any material existence we know of, and by the power of

which all things exist; and this first cause, man calls God.

It is only by the exercise of reason, that man can discover God. Take

away that reason, and he would be incapable of understanding anything;

and in this case it would be just as consistent to read even the book

called the Bible to a horse as to a man. How then is it that those

people pretend to reject reason?

Almost the only parts in the book called the Bible, that convey to us

any idea of God, are some chapters in Job, and the 19th Psalm; I

recollect no other. Those parts are true deistical compositions; for

they treat of the Deity through his works. They take the book of

Creation as the word of God; they refer to no other book; and all the

inferences they make are drawn from that volume.

I insert in this place the 19th Psalm, as paraphrased into English

verse by Addison. I recollect not the prose, and where I write this I

have not the opportunity of seeing it:

The spacious firmament on high,

With all the blue etherial sky,

And spangled heavens, a shining frame,

Their great original proclaim.

The unwearied sun, from day to day,

Does his Creator’s power display,

And publishes to every land

The work of an Almighty hand.

Soon as the evening shades prevail,

The moon takes up the wondrous tale,

And nightly to the list’ning earth

Repeats the story of her birth;

Whilst all the stars that round her burn,

And all the planets, in their turn,

Confirm the tidings as they roll,

And spread the truth from pole to pole.

What though in solemn silence all

Move round this dark terrestrial ball

What though no real voice, nor sound,

Amidst their radiant orbs be found,

In reason’s ear they all rejoice,

And utter forth a glorious voice,

Forever singing as they shine,

THE HAND THAT MADE US IS DIVINE.

What more does man want to know, than that the hand or power that made

these things is divine, is omnipotent? Let him believe this, with the

force it is impossible to repel if he permits his reason to act, and

his rule of moral life will follow of course.

The allusions in Job have all of them the same tendency with this

Psalm; that of deducing or proving a truth that would be otherwise

unknown, from truths already known.

I recollect not enough of the passages in Job to insert them correctly;

but there is one that occurs to me that is applicable to the subject I

am speaking upon. “Canst thou by searching find out God; canst thou

find out the Almighty to perfection?”

I know not how the printers have pointed this passage, for I keep no

Bible; but it contains two distinct questions that admit of distinct

answers.

First, Canst thou by searching find out God? Yes. Because, in the first

place, I know I did not make myself, and yet I have existence; and by

searching into the nature of other things, I find that no other thing

could make itself; and yet millions of other things exist; therefore it

is, that I know, by positive conclusion resulting from this search,

that there is a power superior to all those things, and that power is

God.

Secondly, Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? No. Not only

because the power and wisdom He has manifested in the structure of the

Creation that I behold is to me incomprehensible; but because even this

manifestation, great as it is is probably but a small display of that

immensity of power and wisdom, by which millions of other worlds, to me

invisible by their distance, were created and continue to exist.

It is evident that both of these questions were put to the reason of

the person to whom they are supposed to have been addressed; and it is

only by admitting the first question to be answered affirmatively, that

the second could follow. It would have been unnecessary, and even

absurd, to have put a second question, more difficult than the first,

if the first question had been answered negatively. The two questions

have different objects; the first refers to the existence of God, the

second to his attributes. Reason can discover the one, but it falls

infinitely short in discovering the whole of the other.