                        27 page printout

                       LETTERS CONCERNING
                      "THE AGE OF REASON."

                               I.

                     AN ANSWER TO A FRIEND.

                                        PARIS, May 12, 1797.

     IN your letter of the 20th of March, you give me several
quotations from the Bible, which you call the 'word of God,' to
shew me that my opinions on religion are wrong, and I could give
you as many, from the same book to shew that yours are not right;
consequently, then, the Bible decides nothing, because it decides
any way, and every way, one chooses to make it.

     But by what authority do you call the Bible the 'word of God?'
for this is the first point to be settled. It is not your calling
it so that makes it so, any more than the Mahometans calling the
Koran the 'word of God' makes the Koran to be so. The Popish
Councils of Nice and Laodicea, about 350 years after the time the
person called Jesus Christ is said to have lived, voted the books
that now compose what is called the New Testament to be the 'word
of God.' This was done by yeas and nays, as we now vote a law. The
pharisees of the second Temple, after the Jews returned from
captivity in Babylon, did the same by the books that now compose
the Old Testament, and this is all the authority there is, which to
me is no authority at all. I am as capable of judging for myself as
they were, and I think more so, because, as they made a living by
their religion, they had a self-interest in the vote they gave.

     You may have an opinion that a man is inspired, but you cannot
prove it, nor can you have any proof of it yourself, because you
cannot see into his mind in order to know how he comes by his
thoughts; and the same is the case with the word 'revelation.'
There can be no evidence of such a thing, for you can no more prove
revelation than you can prove what another man dreams of, neither
can he prove it himself.

     It is often said in the Bible that God spake unto Moses, but
how do you know that God spake unto Moses? Because, you will say,
the Bible says so. The Koran says, that God spake unto Mahomet, do
you believe that too? No. Why not? Because, you will say, you do
not believe it; and so because you do, and because you don't is all
the reason you can give for believing or disbelieving except that
you will say that Mahomet was an impostor. And how do you know
Moses was not an imposter? For my own part, I believe that all are
impostors who pretend to hold verbal communication with the Deity.
It is the way by which the world has been imposed upon; but if you
think otherwise you have the same right to your opinion that I have
to mine, and must answer for it in the same manner. But all this
does not settle the point, whether the Bible be the 'word of God,'
or not. It is therefore necessary to go a step further. The case
then is: --






                                1yBank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                1

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

     You form your opinion of God from the account given of him in
the Bible; and I form my opinion of the Bible from the wisdom and
goodness of God manifested in the structure of the universe, and in
all works of Creation. The result in these two cases will be, that
you, by taking the Bible for your standard, will have a bad opinion
of God; and I, by taking God for my standard, shall have a bad
opinion of the Bible.

     The Bible represents God to be a changeable, passionate,
vindictive Being; making a world and then drowning it, afterwards
repenting of what he had done, and promising not to do so again.
Setting one nation to cut the throats of another, and stopping the
course of the sun till the butchery should be done. But the works
of God in the Creation preach to us another doctrine. In that vast
volume we see nothing to give us the idea of a changeable,
passionate, vindictive God; everything we there behold impresses us
with a contrary idea, -- that of unchangeableness and of eternal
order, harmony, and goodness. The sun and the seasons return at
their appointed time, and everything in the Creation proclaims that
God is unchangeable. Now, which am I to believe, a book that any
impostor might make and call the 'word of God,' or the Creation
itself which none but an Almighty Power could make? For the Bible
says one thing, and the Creation says the contrary. The Bible
represents God with all the passions of a mortal, and the Creation
proclaims him with all the attributes of a God.

     It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine, and
murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man. That
bloodthirsty man, called the prophet Samuel, makes God to say, (i
Sam. xv. 3,) "Now go and smite Amaleck, and utterly destroy all
that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman,
infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

     That Samuel or some other impostor might say this, is what, at
this distance of time, can neither be proved nor disproved, but in
my opinion it is blasphemy to say, or to believe, that God said it.
All our ideas of the justice and goodness of God revolt at the
impious cruelty of the Bible. It is not a God, just and good, but
a devil, under the name of God, that the Bible describes.

     What makes this pretended order to destroy the Amalekites
appear the worse, is the reason given for it. The Amalekites, four
hundred years before, according to the account in Exodus xvii. (but
which has the appearance of fable from the magical account it gives
of Moses holding up his hands,) had opposed the Israelites coming
into their country, and this the Amalckites had a right to do,
because the Israelites were the invaders, as the Spaniards were the
invaders of Mexico; and this opposition by the Amalekites, at that
time, is given as a reason, that the men, women, infants and
sucklings, sheep and oxen, camels and asses, that were born four
hundred years afterwards, should be put to death; and to complete
the horror, Samuel hewed Agag, the chief of the Amalekites, in
pieces, as you would hew a stick of wood. I will bestow a few
observations on this case.





                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                2

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

     In the first place, nobody knows who the author, or writer, of
the book of Samuel was, and, therefore, the fact itself has no 
other proof than anonymous or hearsay evidence, which is no
evidence at all. In the second place, this anonymous book says,
that this slaughter was done by 'the express command of God:' but
all our ideas of the justice and goodness of God give the lie to
the book, and as I never will believe any book that ascribes
cruelty and injustice to God, I therefore reject the Bible as
unworthy of credit.

     As I have now given you my reasons for believing that the
Bible is not the word of God, that it is a falsehood, I have a
right to ask you your reasons for believing the contrary; but I
know you can give me none, except that you were educated to believe
the Bible; and as the Turks give the same reason for believing the
Koran, it is evident that education makes all the difference, and
that reason and truth have nothing to do in the case. You believe
in the Bible from the accident of birth, and the Turks believe in
the Koran from the same accident, and each calls the other
'infidel.' But leaving the prejudice of education out of the case,
the unprejudiced truth is, that all are infidels who believe
falsely of God, whether they draw their creed from the Bible, or
from the Koran, from the Old Testament, or from the New.

     When you have examined the Bible with the attention that I
have done, (for I do not think you know much about it,) and permit
yourself to have just ideas of God, you will most probably believe
as I do. But I wish you to know that this answer to your letter is
not written for the purpose of changing your opinion. It is written
to satisfy you, and some other friends whom I esteem, that my
disbelief of the Bible is founded on a pure and religious belief in
God; for in my opinion the Bible is a gross libel against the
justice and goodness of God, in almost every part of it.

                                                  THOMAS PAINE.


                          ****     ****

           CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE HON. SAMUEL ADAMS.

     (EDITOR'S NOTE: The Hon. Samuel Adams (1722-1803) was from the
Stamp Act agitation of 1764 to the Declaration of Independence in
1776 the preeminent revolutionary leader in Massachusetts, and
General Gage was given orders to send him over to London, where a
newspaper predicted that his head would appear on Temple Bar. He
was sent by Massachusetts, with his cousin, John Adams, afterwards
President, to the first Continental Congress (1774), where be was
suspected, with justice, of being favorable to separation from
England. When Paine published his famous appeal for American
Independence (January 10, 1776), Samuel Adams was the first member
of the Congress at his side, and a cordial lifelong relation
existed between the two. It is to my mind certain that these two
men were the real pioneers of American Independence, and they were
both inspired therein by their widely different religious
sentiments. Samuel Adams was the son of a deacon of the Old South
Church, Boston, who sent his son to Harvard College with the hope 


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                3

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

that he would graduate into a minister. The son had no taste for
theology, but he made up for it by retaining through all his career
as a lawyer and public man a rigid Puritanism, of which the first
article was hatred of the British system of royalty and prelacy.
While Adams's desire for American independence was largely an
inheritance from New England Puritans, Paine beheld in it a means
of establishing a Republic based on the principles of Quakerism, --
the divine Light in every man by virtue of which all were equal.
Samuel Adams died October 2, 1803. The correspondence here given
was printed in the 'National Intelligencer,' Washington City,
February 2, 1803, as one of a series of Ten Letters addressed to
"The Citizens of the United States" on his return after his fifteen
eventful years in Europe. These Letters were printed in a pamphlet
in London, 1804, by his friend Thomas Clio Rickman, whose task,
however, was achieved under sad intimidation. Rickman's preface
opens with the words: "The following little work would not have
been published, had there been anything in it the least offending
against the government or individuals." Under this deadly fear the
much prosecuted Rickman mutilated Paine's letter to Adams a good
deal. I have been fortunate in being able to print the letter from
Paine's own manuscript, which was recently discovered among the
papers of George Bancroft, the historian, when they passed into the
possession of the Lenox Library, New York, to whose excellent
librarian I owe thanks for this and other favors. -- Editor.
(Conway)]

[To the Editor of the "National Intelligencer," Federal City.]

     TOWARDS the latter end of last December 1 received a letter
from a venerable patriot, Samuel Adams, dated Boston, Nov. 30. It
came by a private hand, which I suppose was the cause of the delay.
I wrote Mr. Adams an answer, dated Jan. 1st, and that I might be
certain of his receiving it, and also that I might know of that
reception, I desired a friend of mine at Washington to put it under
cover to some friend of his at Boston, and desire him to present it
to Mr. Adams. The letter was accordingly put under cover while I
was present, and given to one of the clerks of the post office to
seal and put in the mail. The clerk put it in his pocket book, and
either forgot to put it into the mail, or supposed he had done so
among other letters. The postmaster general, on learning this
mistake, informed me of it last Saturday, and as the cover was then
out of date, the letter was put under a new cover, with the same
request, and forwarded by the post. I felt concern at this
accident, lest Mr. Adams should conclude I was unmindful of his
attention to me; and therefore, lest any further accident should
prevent or delay his receiving it, as well as to relieve myself
from that concern, I give the letter an opportunity of reaching him
by the newspapers. I am the more induced to do this, because some
manuscript copies have been taken of both letters, and therefore
there is a possibility of imperfect copies getting into print; and
besides this, if some of the Federal[ist] printers (for I hope they
are not all base alike) could get hold of a copy, they would make
no scruple of altering it, and publishing it as mine. I therefore
send you the original letter of Mr. Adams, and my own copy of the
answer.

                                                  THOMAS PAINE.


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                4

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

     Federal City.

                          ****    ****

                                   Boston, Nov. 30, 1802.

SIR:
     I have frequently with pleasure reflected on your services to
my native and your adopted country. Your 'Common Sense' and your
'Crisis' unquestionably awakened the public mind, and led the
people loudly to call for a Declaration of our national
Independence. I therefore esteemed you as a warm friend to the
liberty and lasting welfare of the human race. But when I heard
that you had turned your mind to a defence of infidelity, I felt
myself much astonished and more grieved that you had attempted a
measure so injurious to the feelings and so repugnant to the true
interest of so great a part of the citizens of the United States.
The people of New England, if you will allow me to use a scripture
phrase, are fast returning to their first love. Will you excite
among them the spirit of angry controversy, at a time when they are
hastening to unity and peace? I am told that some of our newspapers
have announced your intention to publish an additional pamphlet
upon the principles of 'your Age of Reason.' Do you think that your
pen, or the pen of any other man, can unchristianize the mass of
our citizens, or have you hopes of converting a few of them to
assist you in so bad a cause? We ought to think ourselves happy in
the enjoyment of opinion without the danger of persecution by civil
or ecclesiastical law.

     Our friend, the President of the United States, [Thomas
Jefferson] has been calumniated for his liberal sentiments, by men
who have attributed that liberality to a latent design to promote
the cause of infidelity. This and all other slanders have been made
without a shadow of proof. Neither religion nor liberty can long
subsist in the tumult of altercation, and amidst the noise and
violence of faction.

          Felix qui cautus.
               Adieu.

                                                  SAMUEL ADAMS.
     [To] Mr. THOMAS PAINE.

                          ****     ****

           My DEAR AND VENERABLE FRIEND SAMUEL ADAMS:

     I received with great pleasure your friendly and affectionate
letter of November 30, and I thank you also for the frankness of
it. Between men in pursuit of truth, and whose object is the
Happiness of Man both here and hereafter, there ought to be no
reserve. Even Error has a claim to indulgence, if not to respect,
when it is believed to be truth.

     I am obliged to you for your affectionate remembrance of what
you stile my services in awakening the public mind to a declaration
of Independence, and supporting it after it was declared. I also, 


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                5

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

like you, have often looked back on those times, and have thought
that if independence had not been declared at the time it was, the
public mind could not have been brought up to it afterwards. It
will immediately occur to you, who were so intimately acquainted
with the situation of things at that time, that I allude to the
black times of seventy-six; for though I know, and you my friend
also know, they were no other than the natural consequence of the
military blunders of that campaign, the country might have viewed
them as proceeding from a natural inability to support its Cause
against the enemy, and have sunk under the despondency of that
misconceived Idea. This was the impression against which it was
necessary the Country should be strongly animated.

     I come now to the second part of your letter, on which I shall
be as frank with you as you are with me.

     But, (say you) when I heard you had turned your mind to a
defence of infidelity I felt myself much astonished &c." -- What,
my good friend, do you call believing in God infidelity? for that
is the great point maintained in The 'Age of Reason' against all
divided beliefs and allegorical divinities. [NOTE: The ten
concluding words of this sentence were omitted from Rickman's
edition, the close being "in the work alluded to." -- Editor.] The
bishop of Landaff (Doctor Watson) not only acknowledges this, but
pays me some compliments upon it (in his answer to the second part
of that work). "There is (says he) a philosophical sublimity in
some of your Ideas when speaking of the Creator of the Universe."

     What then (my much esteemed friend for I do not respect you
the less because we differ, and that perhaps not much, in religious
sentiments), what, I ask, is this thing called infidelity? If we go
back to your ancestors and mine three or four hundred years ago,
for we must have had fathers and grandfathers or we should not be
here, we shall find them praying to Saints and Virgins, and
believing in purgatory and transubstantiation; and therefore all of
us are infidels according to our forefathers' belief. If we go back
to times more ancient we shall again be infidels according to the
belief of some other forefathers.

     The case my friend is, that the World has been over-run with
fable and creeds of human invention, with sectaries of whole
Nations against all other Nations, and sectaries of those sectaries
in each of them against each other. Every sectary, except the
quakers, has been a persecutor. Those who fled from persecution
persecuted in their turn, and it is this confusion of creeds that
has filled the World with persecution and deluged it with blood.
Even the depredation on your commerce by the barbary powers sprang
from the Crusades of the church against those powers. It was a war
of creed against creed, each boasting of God for its author, and
reviling each other with the name of Infidel. If I do not believe
as you believe, it proves that you do not believe as I believe, and
this is all that it proves.

     There is however one point of Union wherein all religions
meet, and that is in the first article of every Man's Creed, and of
every Nation's Creed, that has any Creed at all: 'I believe in
God.' Those who rest here, and there are millions who do, cannot be


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                6

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

wrong as far as their Creed goes. Those who chouse to go further
may be wrong, for it is impossible that all can be right, since
there is so much contradiction among them. The first therefore are,
in my opinion, on the safest side.

     I presume you are so far acquainted with ecclesiastical
history as to know, and the bishop who has answered me has been
obliged to acknowledge the fact, that the books that compose the
New Testament were voted by 'Yeas and Nays' to be the Word of God,
as you now vote a law, by the popish Councils of Nice and Laodocia
about 1450 years ago. With respect to the fact there is no dispute,
neither do I mention it for the sake of controversy. This Vote may
appear authority enough to some, and not authority enough to
others. It is proper however that everybody should know the fact.

     [EDITORS NOTE: This (the above) paragraph was omitted by
Rickman with a footnote saying A paragraph of eleven lines is here
omitted, it being a principle with the Editor to offend neither the
government nor individuals. Its insertion is also unnecessary, as
the curious reader will find it answered in a way well worth his
notice by the bishop of Landaff. See his apology for the Bible,
from page 300 to 307." The title "Age of Reason" is also suppressed
in the next paragraph, and elsewhere. -- Editor. (Conway)]

     With respect to 'The Age of Reason,' which you so much
condemn, and that I believe without having read it, for you say
only that you 'heard' of it, I will inform you of a Circumstance,
because you cannot know it by other means.

     I have said in the first page of the First Part of that work
that it had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon
Religion, but that I had reserved it to a later time of life. I
have now to inform you why I wrote it and published it at the time
I did.

     In the first place, I saw my life in continual danger. My
friends were falling as fast as the guillotine could cut their
heads off, and as I every day expected the same fate, I resolved to
begin my Work. I appeared to myself to be on my death-bed, for
death was on every side of me, and I had no time to lose. This
accounts for my writing it at the time I did; and so nicely did the
time and the intention meet, that I had not finished the first part
of that Work more than six hours before I was arrested and taken to
prison. Joel Barlow was with me and knows the fact.

     In the second place, the people of francs were running
headlong into Atheism, and I had the work translated and published
in their own language to stop them in that career, and fix them to
the first article (as I have before said) of every man's Creed who
has any Creed at all, 'I believe in God.' I endangered my own life,
in the first place by opposing in the Convention the execution of
the king, and by laboring to shew they were trying the Monarchy and
not the Man, and that the crimes imputed to him were the crimes of
the monarchical [NOTE: This word (monarchical) is omitted by
Rickman.-- Editor.] system; and I endangered it a second time by
opposing Atheism; and yet some of your priests, for I do not
believe that all are perverse, cry out, in the war-whoop of 


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                7

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

monarchical priestcraft, What an Infidel, what a wicked Man, is
Thomas Paine! They might as well add, for he believes in God and is
against shedding blood.

     But all this 'war-whoo' of the pulpit  [The words "of the
pulpit" omitted by Rickman. -- Editor.]  has some concealed object.
Religion is not the Cause, but is the stalking horse. They put it
forward to conceal themselves behind it. It is not a secret that
there has been a party composed of the leaders of the federalists,
for I do not include all federalists with their leaders, who have
been working by various means for several years past to overturn
the federal Constitution established on the representative system,
and place Government in the new World on the corrupt system of the
old. [The preceding fourteen words omitted by Rickman. -- Editor.] 
To accomplish this, a large standing army was necessary, and as a
pretence for such an army the danger of a foreign invasion must be
bellowed forth from the pulpit, from the press, and by their public
orators.

     I am not of a disposition inclined to suspicion. It is in its
nature a mean and cowardly passion, and upon the whole, even
admitting error into the case, it is better, I am sure it is more
generous, to be wrong on the side of confidence than on the side of
suspicion. [The words "it is better" and "on the side of Confidence
than" are dropped out of the sentence in Rickman's edition. --
Editor.] But I know as a fact that the english Government
distributes annually fifteen hundred pounds sterling among the
presbyterian ministers in England and one thousand among those of
Ireland; [See vol. iii. p. 85, of my edition of 'Paine's Writings';
where the amounts are stated as 1,700 pounds to the dissenting
Ministers in England, and 800 pounds to those of Ireland. -- The
preceding 29 words, and the remainder of this paragraph, are
omitted by Rickman. -- Editor] and when I hear of the strange
discourses of some of your ministers and professors of Colleges, I
cannot, as the quakers say, find freedom in my mind to acquit them.
Their anti-revolutionary doctrines invite suspicion even against
one's will, and in spite of one's charity to believe well of them.

     As you have given me one scripture phrase I will give you
another for those ministers. It is said in Exodus xxii. 28, "Thou
shalt not revile the Gods nor curse the ruler of thy people." But
those ministers, such I mean as Dr. Emmons, [Nathaniel Emmons, D.D.
(1745-1840), fifty-four years minister of the Franklin, Mass.,
Congregational Church. He was a vehement Federalist, and assailant
of President Jefferson. -- Editor.] curse ruler and people both,
for the majority are, politically, the people, and it is those who
have chosen the ruler whom they curse. As to the first part of the
verse, that of not reviling the Gods, it makes no part of my
scripture. I have but one God. [This and the preceding sentence are
omitted by Rickman. -- Editor.]

     Since I began this letter, for I write it by piece-meals as I
have leisure, I have seen the four letters that passed between you
and John Adams. In your first letter you say, "Let divines and
Philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to
'renovate the age' by inculcating in the minds of youth 'the fear
and love of the Deity and universal philanthropy." Why, my dear 


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                8

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

friend, this is exactly my religion, and is the whole of it. That
you may have an Idea that 'The Age of Reason' (for I believe you
have not read it) inculcates this reverential fear and love of the
Deity I will give you a paragraph from it.

     "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."

     As I am fully with you in your first part, that respecting the
Deity, so am I in your second, that of 'universal Philanthropy
which I do not mean merely the sentimental benevolence of wishing
well, but the practical benevolence of doing good. We cannot serve
the Deity in the manner we serve those who cannot do without that
service. He needs no service from us. We can add nothing to
eternity. But it is in our power to render a service 'acceptable'
to him, and that is not by praying, but by endeavoring to make his
creatures happy. A man does not serve God when be prays, for it is
himself he is trying to serve; and as to hiring or paying men to
pray, as if the Deity needed instruction, it is, in my opinion, an
abomination. One good schoolmaster is of more use and of more value
than a load of such persons as Dr. Emmons and some others. [This
and the preceding sentence omitted by Rickman. -- Editor.]

     You, my dear and much respected friend, are now far in the
vale of years; I have yet, I believe, some years in store, for I
have a good state of health and a happy mind, and I take care of
both, by nourishing the first with temperance and the latter with
abundance. This, I believe, you will allow to be the true
philosophy of life. You will see by my third letter to the Citizens
of the United States that I have been exposed to, and preserved
through, many dangers; but instead of buffeting the Deity with
prayers as if I distrusted him, or must dictate to him, [This and
the seventeen preceding words omitted by Rickman. -- Editor.] I
reposed myself on his protection; and you, my friend, will find,
even in your last moments, more consolation in the silence of
resignation than in the murmuring wish of a prayer.

     In every thing which you say in your second letter to John
Adams, respecting our Rights as Men and Citizens in this World, I
am perfectly with you. On other points we have to answer to our
Creator and not to each other. The key of heaven is not in the
keeping of any sect, nor ought the road to it be obstructed by any.
Our relation to each other in this World is as Men, and the Man who
is a friend to Man and to his rights, let his religious opinions be
what they may, is a good citizen, to whom I can give, as I ought to
do, and as every other ought, the right hand of fellow-ship, and to
none with more hearty good will, my dear friend, than to you.

                                                  THOMAS PAINE.

     FEDERAL CITY, January 1, 1803.



                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                                9

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

                          ****     ****

                PROSECUTION OF THE AGE OF REASON.

     [NOTE: "A letter to the Hon. Thomas Erskine, on the
Prosecution of Thomas Williams for publishing the Age of Reason. By
Thomas Paine, Author of Common Sense, Rights of Man, etc. With his
discourse at the Society of the Theophilanthropists. Paris: Printed
for the Author." This pamphlet was carried through Barrois' English
press in Paris, September 1797, and is here reprinted from an
original copy. The Prosecution (Howells' State Trials, vol. 26,)
was not technically instituted by the Crown, though in collusion
with it, a Special Jury being secured. The accusers were the new
"Society for carrying into effect His Majesty's Proclamation
against Vice and Immorality." Erskine, who had defended Paine, on
his trial for the "Rights of Man," and had gained popularity by his
successful defence of others accused of sedition, was sagaciously
retained by the Society, whose means were unlimited, while poor
Williams sent out the following appeal:

     "T. Williams, Bookseller, No. 8 Little Turnstile, Holborn,
Being at this time under a prosecution at 'common law,' for selling
THE AGE OF REASON, and not possessing the means of legal defence,
hopes he will not be deemed obtrusive in making his situation known
to the Friends of Liberty, both civil and religious. His case, he
presumes, requires not a long explanation. It is not whether the
doctrines of the book above named are proper or improper; nor
whether the selling a book in the ordinary course of business can
be considered as an evidence of his own belief; but whether a
system of prosecution, 'on pretence of religion,' in direct
opposition to that liberality of sentiment which, to the honor of
modem times, has been so widely diffused, shall receive
encouragement, by being weakly opposed. SUBSCRIPTIONS will be
received by J. Ashley, shoemaker, No. 6 High Holborn; C. Cooper,
grocer, New Compton-st., Soho; G. Wilkinson, printer, No. 115
Shoreditch; J. Rhynd, printer, Raye-st., Clerkenwell; R. Hodgson.
hatter, No. 29 Brook-st., Holbom."

     So humble were they who collected their coppers to begin the
long war for religious liberty against the powerful league whose
gold had taken away their leader. The defence was undertaken by
Stephen Kyd (once prosecuted for sedition), the solicitor being
John Martin, who served notice on the prosecution that it would be
"required to produce a certain book described in the said
indictment to be the Holy Bible." Erskine declared: "No man
deserves to be on the Rolls of the Court, who dares, as an
Attorney, to put his name to such a notice." This did not deter Kyd
from referring to many of the obscene passages in the book which
the protectors of morality were shielding from criticism. It was
not charged by the prosecution that there was anything of that kind
in Paine's work. Erskine won a victory over Williams with some
results already described in my introduction to "The Age of
Reason." -- Editor. (Conway)]






                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               10

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

                               IV.

                PROSECUTION OF THE AGE OF REASON.

                          INTRODUCTION.

     IT is a matter of surprise to some people to see Mr. Erskine
act as counsel for a crown prosecution commenced against the rights
of opinion. I confess it is none to me, notwithstanding all that
Mr. Erskine has said before; for it is difficult to know when a
lawyer is to be believed: I have always observed that Mr. Erskine,
when contending as counsel for the right of political opinion,
frequently took occasions, and those often dragged in head and
shoulders, to lard, what he called the British Constitution, with
a great deal of praise. Yet the same Mr. Erskine said to me in
conversation, "Were government to begin 'de novo' in England, they
never would establish such a damned absurdity, [it was exactly his
expression) as this is." Ought I then to be surprised at Mr.
Erskine for inconsistency?

     In this prosecution, Mr. Erskine admits the right of
controversy; but says that the Christian religion is not to be
abused. This is somewhat sophistical, because while he admits the
right of controversy, he reserves the right of calling the
controversy abuse: and thus, lawyer-like, undoes by one word what
he says in the other. I will however in this letter keep within the
limits he prescribes; he will find here nothing about the Christian
religion; he will find only a statement of a few cases which shew
the necessity of examining the books handed to us from the Jews, in
order to discover if we have not been imposed upon; together with
some observations on the manner in which the trial of Williams has
been conducted. If Mr. Erskine denies the right of examining those
books, he had better profess himself at once an advocate for the
establishment of an Inquisition, and the re-establishment of the
Star-chamber.

                                             THOMAS PAINE.

                    A LETTER TO MR. ERSKINE.

     OF all the tyrannies that afflict mankind, tyranny in religion
is the worst: Every other species of tyranny is limited to the
world we live in, but this attempts a stride beyond the grave, and
seeks to pursue us into eternity. It is there and not here, it is
to God and not to man, it is to a heavenly and not to an earthly
tribunal, that we are to account for our belief; if then we believe
falsely and dishonorably of the Creator, and that belief is forced
upon us, as far as force can by human laws and human tribunals, on
whom is the criminality of that belief to fall; on those who impose
it, or on those on whom it is imposed?

     A bookseller of the name of Williams has been prosecuted in
London on a charge of blasphemy for publishing a book entitled the
Age of Reason. Blasphemy is a word of vast sound but of equivocal
and almost of indefinite signification, unless we confine it to the
simple idea of hurting or injuring the reputation of any one, which
was its original meaning, As a word, it existed before Christianity
existed, being a Greek word, or Greek anglofied, as all the
etymological dictionaries will show.
                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               11

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

     But behold how various and contradictory has been the
signification and application of this equivocal word: Socrates, who
lived more than four hundred years before the Christian era, was
convicted of blasphemy for preaching against the belief of a
plurality of gods, and for preaching the belief of one god, and was
condemned to suffer death by poison; Jesus Christ was convicted of
blasphemy under the Jewish law, and was crucified. Calling Mahomet
an imposter would be blasphemy in Turkey; and denying the
infallibility of the Pope and the Church would be blasphemy at
Rome. What then is to be understood by this word blasphemy? We see
that in the case of Socrates truth was condemned as blasphemy. Are
we sure that truth is not blasphemy in the present day? Woe however
be to those who make it so, whoever they may be.

     A book called the Bible has been voted by men, and decreed by
human laws, to be the word of God, and the disbelief of this is
called blasphemy. But if the Bible be not the word of God, it is
the laws and the execution of them that is blasphemy, and not the
disbelief. Strange stories are told of the Creator in that book. He
is represented as acting under the influence of every human
passion, even of the most malignant kind. If these stories are
false, we err in believing them to be true, and ought not to
believe them. It is therefore a duty which every man owes to
himself, and reverentially to his Maker, to ascertain by every
possible enquiry whether there be a sufficient evidence to believe
them or not.

     My own opinion is, decidedly, that the evidence does not
warrant the belief, and that we sin in forcing that belief upon
ourselves and upon others. In saying this I have no other object in
view than truth. But that I may not be accused of resting upon bare
assertion, with respect to the equivocal state of the Bible, I will
produce an example, and I will not pick and cull the Bible for the
purpose. I will go fairly to the case., I will take the first two
chapters of Genesis as they stand, and show from thence the truth
of what I say, that is, that the evidence does not warrant the
belief that the Bible is the word of God.

     [In the original pamphlet the first two chapters of Genesis
are here quoted in full.]

     These two chapters are called the Mosaic account of the
creation; and we are told, nobody knows by whom, that Moses was
instructed by God to write that account.

     It has happened that every nation of people has been world-
makers; and each makes the world to begin his own way, as if they
had all been brought up, as Hudibras says, to the trade. There are
hundreds of different opinions and traditions how the world began.
My business, however, in this place, is only with those two
chapters.

     I begin then by saying, that those two chapters, instead of
containing, as has been believed, one continued account of the
creation, written by Moses, contain two different and contradictory
stories of a creation, made by two different persons, and written
in two different stiles of expression. The evidence that shows this


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               12

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

is so clear, when attended to without prejudice, that did we meet
with the same evidence in any Arabic or Chinese account of a
creation, we should not hesitate in pronouncing it a forgery.

     I proceed to distinguish the two stories from each other.

     The first story begins at the first verse of the first
chapter, and ends at the end of the third verse of the second
chapter; for the adverbial conjunction, THUS, with which the second
chapter begins, (as the reader will see,) connects itself to the
last verses of the first chapter, and those three verses belong to,
and make the conclusion of, the first story.

     The second story begins at the fourth verse of the second
chapter, and ends with that chapter. Those two stories have been
confused into one, by cutting off the last three verses of the
first story, and throwing them to the second chapter.

     I go to shew that those stories have been written by two
different persons.

     From the first verse of the first chapter to the end of the
third verse of the second chapter, which makes the whole of the
first story, the word God is used without any epithet or additional
word conjoined with it, as the reader will see: and this stile of
expression is invariably used throughout the whole of this story,
and is repeated no less than thirty-five times, viz. "In the
beginning GOD created the heavens and the earth, and the spirit of
GOD moved on the face of the waters, and GOD said, let there be
light, and GOD saw the light," etc.

     But immediately from the beginning of the fourth verse of the
second chapter, where the second story begins, the style of
expression is always. the Lord God, and this stile of expression is
invariably used to the end of the chapter, and is repeated eleven
times; in the one it is always GOD, and never the 'Lord God,' in
the other it is always the 'Lord God' and never GOD. The first
story contains thirty-four verses, and repeats the single word GOD
thirty-five times. The second story contains twenty-two verses, and
repeats the compound word 'Lord God' eleven times; this difference
of stile, so often repeated, and so uniformly continued, shows,
that those two chapters, containing two different stories, are
written by different persons; it is the same in all the different
editions of the Bible, in all the languages I have seen.

     Having thus shown, from the difference of style, that those
two chapters, divided, as they properly divide themselves, at the
end of the third verse of the second chapter, are the work of two
different persons, I come to shew you, from the contradictory
matters they contain, that they cannot be the work of one person,
and are two different stories.

     It is impossible, unless the writer was a lunatic, without
memory, that one and the same person could say, as is said in i.
27, 28, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God
created he him; male and female created he them: and God blessed
them, and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, and 


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               13

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

replentish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion ever the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and every living
thing that moveth on the face of the earth" -- It is, I say,
impossible that the same person who said this, could afterwards
say, as is said in ii. 5, and there was not a man to till the
ground; and then proceed in verse 7 to give another account of the
making a man for the first time, and afterwards of the making a
woman out of his rib. [The original does not signify rib, but the
"side" (Feminine). -- Editor (Collins)] Again, one and the same
person could not write as is written in i. 29: "Behold I (God) have
given you every herb bearing seed, which is on the face of all the
earth; and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree bearing
seed, to you it shall be for meat;" and afterwards say, as is said
in the second chapter, that the Lord God planted a tree in the
midst of a garden, and forbade man to eat thereof.

     Again, one and the same person could not say, "Thus the
heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them, and
on the seventh day God ended all his work which he had made;" and
immediately after set the Creator to work again, to plant a garden,
to make a man and a woman, etc., as done in the second chapter.

     Here are evidently two different stories contradicting each
other. According to the first, the two sexes, the male and the
female, were made at the same time. According to the second, they
were made at different times; the man first, and the woman
afterwards. According to the first story, they were to have
dominion over all the earth. According to the second, their
dominion was limited to a garden. How large a garden it could be
that one man and one woman could dress and keep in order, I leave
to the prosecutor, the judge, the jury, and Mr. Erskine to
determine.

     The story of the talking serpent, and its tete-a-tete with
Eve; the doleful adventure called the Fall of Man; and how he was
turned out of this fine garden, and how the garden was afterwards
locked up and guarded by a flaming sword, (If any one can tell what
a flaming sword is;) belong altogether to the second story. They
have no connection with the first story. According to the first
there was no Eden; no forbidden tree: the scene was the Whole
earth, and the fruit of all trees were allowed to be eaten.

     In giving this example of the strange state of the Bible, it
cannot be said I have gone out of my way to seek it, for I have
taken the beginning of the book; nor can it be said I have made
more of it than it makes of itself. That there are two stories is
as visible to the eye, when attended to, as that there are two
chapters, and that they have been written by different persons,
nobody knows by whom. If this then is the strange condition the
beginning of the Bible is in, it leads to a just suspicion that the
other parts are no better, and consequently it becomes every man's
duty to examine the case. I have done it for myself, and am
satisfied that the Bible is 'fabulous'.

     Perhaps I shall be told in the cant-language of the day, as I
have often been told by the Bishop of Llandaff and others, of the
great and laudable pains that many pious and learned men have taken


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               14

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

to explain the obscure, and reconcile the contradictory, or as they
say the 'seemingly contradictory,' passages of the Bible. It is
because the Bible needs such an undertaking, that is one of the
first causes to suspect it is NOT the word of God: this single
reflection, when carried home to the mind, is in itself a volume.

     What! does not the Creator of the Universe, the Fountain of
all Wisdom, the Origin of all Science, the Author of all Knowledge,
the God of Order and of Harmony, know how to write? When we
contemplate the vast economy of the creation, when we behold the
unerring regularity of the visible solar system, the perfection
with which all its several parts revolve, and by corresponding
assemblage form a whole; -- when we launch our eye into the
boundless ocean of space, and see ourselves surrounded by
innumerable worlds, not one of which varies from its appointed
place -- when we trace the power of a Creator, from a mite to an
elephant, from an atom to an universe, -- can we suppose that the
mind that could conceive such a design, and the power that executed
it with incomparable perfection, cannot write without
inconsistence, or that a book so written can be the work of such a
power? The writings of Thomas Paine, even of Thomas Paine, need no
commentator to explain, compound, derange, and re-arrange their
several parts, to render them intelligible; he can relate a fact,
or write an essay, without forgetting in one page what he has
written in another: certainly then, did the God of all perfection
condescend to write or dictate a book, that book would be as
perfect as himself is perfect: The Bible is not so, and it is
confessedly not so, by the attempts to amend it.

     Perhaps I shall be told, that though I have produced one
instance, I cannot produce another of equal force. One is
sufficient to call in question the genuineness or authenticity of
any book that pretends to be the word of God; for such a book
would, as before said, be as perfect as its author is perfect.

     I will, however, advance only four chapters further into the
book of Genesis, and produce another example that is sufficient to
invalidate the story to which it belongs.

     We have all heard of Noah's Flood; and it is impossible to
think of the whole human race, -- men, women, children, and
infants, except one family, -- deliberately drowning, without
feeling a painful sensation. That heart must be a heart of flint
that can contemplate such a scene with tranquility. There is
nothing of the ancient Mythology, nor in the religion of any people
we know of upon the globe, that records a sentence of their God, or
of their gods, so tremendously severe and merciless. If the story
be not true, we blasphemously dishonor God by believing it, and
still more so, in forcing, by laws and penalties, that belief upon
others. I go now to show from the face of the story that it carries
the evidence of not being true.

     I know not if the judge, the jury, and Mr. Erskine, who tried
and convicted Williams, ever read the Bible or know anything of its
contents, and therefore I will state the case precisely.




                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               15

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

     There was no such people as Jews or Israelites in the time
that Noah is said to have lived, and consequently there was no such
law as that which is called the Jewish or Mosaic Law. It is
according to the Bible, more than six hundred years from the time
the flood is said to have happened, to the time of Moses, and
consequently the time the flood is said to have happened was more
than six hundred years prior to the Law, called the Law of Moses,
even admitting Moses to have been the giver of that Law, of which
there is great cause to doubt.

     We have here two different epochs, or points of time -- that
of the flood, and that of the Law of Moses -- the former more than
six hundred years prior to the latter. But the maker of the story
of the flood, whoever he was, has betrayed himself by blundering,
for he has reversed the order of the times. He has told the story,
as if the Law of Moses was prior to the flood for he has made God
to say to Noah, Gen. vii. 2, "Of every clean beast, thou shalt take
unto thee by sevens, male and his female, and of beasts that are
'not clean' by two, the male and his female." This is the Mosaic
Law, and could only be said after that Law was given, not before.
There was no such thing as beasts clean and unclean in the time of
Noah. It is no where said they were created so. They were only
'declared' to be so, 'as meats,' by the Mosaic Law, and that to the
Jews only, and there were no such people as Jews in the time of
Noah. This is the blundering condition in which this strange story
stands.

     When we reflect on a sentence so tremendously severe, as that
of consigning the whole human race, eight persons excepted, to
deliberate drowning; a sentence, which represents the Creator in a
more merciless character than any of those whom we call Pagans ever
represented the Creator to be, under the figure of any of their
deities, we ought at least to suspend our belief of it, on a
comparison of the beneficent character of the Creator with the
tremendous severity of the sentence; but when we see the story told
with such an evident contradiction of circumstances, we ought to
set it down for nothing better than a Jewish fable, told by nobody
knows whom, and nobody knows when.

     It is a relief to the genuine and sensible soul of man to find
the story unfounded. It frees us from two painful sensations at
once; that of having hard thoughts of the Creator, on account of
the severity of the sentence; and that of sympathizing in the
horrid tragedy of a drowning world. He who cannot feel the force of
what I mean is not, in my estimation, of character worthy the name
of a human being.

     I have just said there is great cause to doubt, if the law,
called the law of Moses, was given by Moses; the books called the
books of Moses, which contain among other things what is called the
Mosaic law, are put in front of the Bible, in the manner of a
constitution, with a history annexed to it. Had these books been
written by Moses, they would undoubtedly have been the oldest books
in the Bible, and entitled to be placed first, and the law and the
history they contain would be frequently referred to in the books
that follow; but this is not the case. From the time of Othniel,
the first of the judges, (judges iii. 9,) to the end of the book of


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               16

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

judges, which contains a period of four hundred and ten years, this
law, and those books, were not in practice, nor known among the
Jews; nor are they so much as alluded to throughout the whole of
that period. And if the reader will examine 2 Kings xx., xxi. and
2 Chron. xxxiv., he will find that no such law, nor any such books,
were known in the time of the Jewish monarchy, and that the Jews
were Pagans during the whole of that time, and of their judges.

     The first time the law called the law of Moses made its
appearance, was in the time of Josiah, about a thousand years after
Moses was dead; it is then said to have been found by accident. The
account of this finding, or pretended finding, is given 2 Chron.
xxxiv. 14-18: "Hilkiah the priest found the book of the law of the
Lord, given by Moses, and Hilkiah answered and said to Shaphan the
scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord,
and Hilkiah delivered the book to Shaphan, and Shaphan carried the
book to the king, and Shaphan told the king, (Josiah,) saying,
Hilkiah the priest hath given me a book."

     In consequence of this finding, -- which much resembles that
of poor Chatterton finding manuscript poems of Rowley the Monk in
the Cathedral Church at Bristol, or the late finding of manuscripts
of Shakespeare in an old chest, (two well known frauds,) -- Josiah
abolished the Pagan religion of the Jews, massacred all the Pagan
priests, though he himself had been a Pagan, as the reader will see
in 2 Kings, xxiii., And thus established in blood the law that is
there called the law of Moses, and instituted a Passover in
commemoration thereof. The 22d verse, speaking of this passover,
says, "surely there was not holden such a passover from the days of
the judges that judged Israel, nor in all the days of the Kings of
Israel, nor the Kings of Judah;" and ver. 25, in speaking of this
priest-killing Josiah, says, "Like unto him, there was no king
before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with
all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of
Moses; neither after him arose there any like him." This verse,
like the former one, is a general declaration against all the
preceding kings without exception. It is also a declaration against
all that reigned after him, of which there were four, the whole
time of whose reigning make but twenty-two years and six months,
before the Jews were entirely broken up as a nation and their
monarchy destroyed. It is therefore evident that the law called the
law of Moses, of which the Jews talk so much, was promulgated and
established only in the latter time of the Jewish monarchy; and it
is very remarkable, that no sooner had they established it than
they were a destroyed people, as if they were punished of acting an
imposition and affixing the name of the Lord to it, and massacring
their former priests under the pretence of religion. The sum of the
history of the Jews is this -- they continued to be a nation about
a thousand years, they then established a law, which they called
the 'law of the Lord given by Moses,' and were destroyed. This is
not opinion, but historical evidence.

     Levi the Jew, who has written an answer to the 'Age of
Reason,' gives a strange account of the Law of Moses. [A Defence of
the Old Testament, in a series of Letters addressed to Thomas
Paine, etc. By David Levi, author of Lingm Sacra, Letters to Dr.
Priestley, etc. London: 1797. -- Editor.]


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               17

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

     In speaking of the story of the sun and moon standing still,
that the Israelites might cut the throats of all their enemies, and
hang all their kings, as told in Joshua x., he says, "There is also
another proof of the reality of this miracle, which is, the appeal
that the author of the book of Joshua makes to the book of Jasher:
'Is not this written in the book of Jasher? Hence," continues Levi,
"it is manifest that the book commonly called the book of Jasher
existed and was well known at the time the book of Joshua was
written; and pray, Sir," continues Levi, "what book do you think
this was? Why no other than the law of Moses." Levi like the Bishop
of Llandaff, and many other guess-work commentators, either
forgets, or does not know, what there is in one part of the Bible,
when he is giving his opinion upon another part.

     I did not, however, expect to find so much ignorance in a Jew,
with respect to the history of his nation, though I might not be
surprised at it in a bishop. If Levi will look into the account
given in 2 Sam. i. 15-18, of the Amalekite slaying Saul, and
bringing the crown and bracelets to David, he will find the
following recital: "And David called one of the young men, and
said, go near and fall upon him (the Amalekite,) and he smote him
that he died": "and David lamented with this lamentation over Saul
and over Jonathan his son; also he bade them teach the children the
use of the bow; -- behold it is written in the book of Jasher." If
the book of Jasher were what Levi calls it, the law of Moses,
written by Moses, it is not possible that any thing that David said
or did could be written in that law, since Moses died more than
five hundred years before David was born; and, on the other hand,
admitting the book of Jasher to be the law called the law of Moses,
that law must have been written more than five hundred years after
Moses was dead, or it could not relate anything said or done by
David. Levi may take which of these cases he pleaseth, for both are
against him.

     I am not going in the course of this letter to write a
commentary on the Bible. The two instances I have produced, and
which  are taken from the beginning of the Bible, shew the
necessity of examining it. It is a book that has been read more,
and examined less, than any book that ever existed; Had it come to
us as an Arabic or Chinese book, and said to have been a sacred
book by the people from whom it came, no apology would have been
made for the confused and disorderly state it is in. The tales it
relates of the Creator would have been censured, and our pity
excited for those who believed them. We should have vindicated the
goodness of God against such a book, and preached up the disbelief
of it out of reverence to him. Why then do we not act as honorably
by the Creator in the one case as we would, do in the other? As a
Chinese book we would have examined it; ought we not then to
examine it as a Jewish book? The Chinese are a people who have all
the appearance of far greater antiquity than the Jews, and in point
of permanency there is no comparison. They are also a people of
mild manners and of good morals, except where they have been
corrupted by European commerce. Yet we take the word of a restless
bloody-minded people, as the Jews of Palestine were, when we would
reject the same authority from a better people. We ought to see it
is habit and prejudice that have prevented people from examining
the Bible. Those of the Church of England call it holy, because the


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               18

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

Jews called it so, and because custom and certain Acts of
Parliament call it so, and they read it from custom. Dissenters
read it for the purpose of doctrinal controversy, and are very
fertile in discoveries and inventions. But none of them read it for
the pure purpose of information, and of rendering justice to the
Creator, by examining if the evidence it contains warrants the
belief of its being what it is called. Instead of doing this, they
take it blindfolded, and will have it to be the word of God whether
it be so or not. For my own part, my belief in the perfection of
the Deity will not permit me to believe that a book so manifestly
obscure, disorderly, and contradictory can be his work. I can write
a better book myself. This disbelief in me proceeds from my belief
in the Creator. I cannot pin my faith upon the say so of Hilkiah
the priest, who said he found it, or any part of it, nor upon Sha
han the scribe, nor upon any priest nor any scribe, or man of the
law of the present day.

     As to Acts of Parliament, there are some that say there are
witches and wizards; and the persons who made those acts, (it was
in the time of James I.,) made also some acts which call the Bible
the holy Scriptures, or word of God. But acts of parliament decide
nothing with respect to God; and as these acts of parliament makers
were wrong with respect to witches and wizards, they may also be
wrong with respect to the book in question. It is, therefore,
necessary that the book be examined; it is our duty to examine it;
and to suppress the right of examination is sinful in any
government, or in any judge or jury. The Bible makes God to say to
Moses, Deut. vii. 2, "And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them
before thee, thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them, thou
shalt make no covenant with them, ner shew mercy unto them." Not
all the priests, nor scribes, nor tribunals in the world, nor all
the authority of man, shall make me believe that God ever gave such
a 'Robesperian precept' as that of showing 'no mercy;' and
consequently it is impossible that I, or any person who believes as
reverentially of the Creator as I do, can believe such a book to be
the word of God.

     There have been, and still are, those, who, whilst they
'profess' to believe the Bible to be the word of God, affect to
turn it into ridicule. Taking their profession and conduct
together, they act blasphemously; because they act as if God
himself was not to be believed. The case is exceedingly different
with respect to the 'Age of Reason.' That book is written to shew,
from the bible itself, that there is abundant matter to suspect it
is not the word of God, and that we have been imposed upon, first
by Jews, and after. wards by priests and commentators.

     Not one of those who have attempted to write answers to the
'Age of Reason,' have taken the ground upon which only an answer
could be written. The case in question is not upon any, point of
doctrine, but altogether upon a matter of fact. Is the book called
the Bible the word of God, or is it not? If it can be proved to be
so, it ought to be believed as such; if not, it ought not to be
believed as such. This is the true state of the case. The 'Age of
Reason' produces evidence to shew, and I have in this letter
produced additional evidence, that it is not the word of God. Those



                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               19

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

who take the contrary side, should prove that it is. But this they
have not done, nor attempted to do, and consequently they have done
nothing to the purpose.

     The prosecutors of Williams have shrunk from the point, as the
answerers to the 'Age of Reason,' have done. They have availed
themselves of prejudice instead of proof. If a writing was produced
in a court of judicature, said to be the writing of a certain
person, and upon the reality or non-reality of which some matter at
issue depended, the point to be proved would be, that such writing
was the writing of such person, Or if the issue depended upon
certain words, which some certain person was said to have spoken,
the point to be proved would be, that such words were spoken by
such person; and Mr. Erskine would contend the case upon this
ground. A certain book is said to be the word of God. What is the
proof that it is so? for upon this the whole depends; and if it
cannot be proved to be so, the prosecution fails for want of
evidence.

     The prosecution against Williams charges him with publishing
a book, entitled The 'Age of Reason,' which, it says, is an impious
blasphemous pamphlet, tending to ridicule and bring into contempt
the Holy Scriptures. Nothing is more easy than to find abusive
words, and English prosecutions are famous for this species of
vulgarity. The charge however is sophistical; for the charge, as
growing out of the pamphlet should have stated, not as it now
states, to ridicule and bring into contempt the holy scriptures,
but to shew, that the book called the holy scriptures are not the
holy scriptures. It is one thing if I ridicule a work as being
written by a certain person; but it is quite a different thing if
I write to prove that such work was not written by such person. In
the first case, I attack the person through the work; in the other
case, I defend the honor of the person against the work. This is
what the 'Age of Reason' does, and consequently the charge in the
indictment is sophistically stated. Every one will admit, that if
the Bible be 'not the word of God,' we err in believing it to be
his word, and ought not to believe it. Certainly then, the ground
the prosecution should take would be to prove that the Bible is in
fact what it is called. But this the prosecution has not done, and
cannot do.

     In all cases the prior fact must be proved, before the
subsequent facts can be admitted in evidence. In a prosecution for
adultery, the fact of marriage, which is the prior fact, must be
proved, before the facts to prove adultery can be received. If the
fact of marriage cannot be proved, adultery cannot be proved; and
if the prosecution cannot prove the Bible to be the word of God,
the charge of blasphemy is visionary and groundless.

     In Turkey they might prove, if the case happened, that a
certain book was bought of a certain bookseller, and that the said
book was written against the koran. In Spain and Portugal they
might prove that a certain book was bought of a certain bookseller,
and that the said book was written against the infallibility of the
Pope. Under the ancient Mythology they might have proved that a
certain writing was bought of a certain person, and that the said
writing was against the belief of a plurality of gods, and in the
support of the belief of one God: Socrates was condemned for a work
of this kind.
                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               20

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

     All these are but subsequent facts, and amount to nothing,
unless the prior facts be proved. The prior fact, with respect to
the first case is, Is the koran the word of God? With respect to
the second, Is the infallibility of the Pope a truth? With respect
to the third, Is the belief of a plurality of gods a true belief?
And in like manner with respect to the present prosecution, Is the
book called the 'Bible' the word of God? If the present prosecution
prove no more than could be proved in any or all of these cases, it
proves only as they do, or as an Inquisition would prove; and in
this view of the case, the prosecutors ought at least to leave off
reviling that infernal institution, the Inquisition. The
prosecution however, though it may injure the individual, may
promote the cause of truth; because the manner in which it has been
conducted appears a confession to the world that there is no
evidence to prove that the 'Bible' is the word of God. On what
authority then do we believe the many strange stories that the
Bible tells of God?

     This prosecution has been carried on through the medium of
what is called a special jury, and the whole of a special jury is
nominated by the master of the Crown office. Mr. Erskine vaunts
himself upon the bill he brought into parliament with respect to
trials for what the government party calls libels. But if in crown
prosecutions the master of the Crown-office is to continue to
appoint the whole special jury, which he does by nominating the
forty-eight persons from which the solicitor of each party is to
strike out twelve, Mr. Erskine's bill is only vapor and smoke. The
root of the grievance lies in the manner of forming the jury, and
to this Mr. Erskine's bill applies no remedy.

     When the trial of Williams came on, only eleven of the special
jurymen appeared, and the trial was adjourned. In cases where the
whole number do not appear, it is customary to make up the
deficiency by taking jurymen from persons present in court. This in
the law term is called a 'Tales.' Why was not this done in this
case? Reason will suggest, that they did not choose to depend on a
man accidentally taken. When the trial recommenced, the whole of
the special jury appeared, and Williams was convicted: it is folly
to contend a cause where the whole jury is nominated by one of the
parties. I will relate a recent case that explains a great deal
with respect to special juries in crown prosecutions.

     On the trial of Lambert and others, printers and proprietors
of the 'Horning, Chronicle,' for a libel, a special jury was
struck, on the prayer of the Attorney-General, who used to be
called 'Diabolus Regis,' or King's Devil. Only seven or eight of
the special jury appeared, and the Attorney-General not praying a
Tales, the trial stood over to a future day; when it was to be
brought on a second time, the Attorney-General prayed for a new
special jury, but as this was not admissible, the original special
jury was summoned. Only eight of them appeared, on which the
Attorney-General said, "As I cannot, on a second trial, have a
special jury, I will pray a Tales." Four persons were then taken
from the persons present in court, and added to the eight special
jurymen. The jury went out at two o'clock to consult on their
verdict, and the judge (Kenyon) [The judge before whom Paine, in
his absence, was tried Dec. 18, 1792, for writing Part II. of 


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               21

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

Rights of Man." -- Editor.] understanding they were divided, and
likely to be some time in making up their minds, retired from the
bench and went home. At seven, the jury went, attended by an
officer of the court, to the judge's house, and delivered a
verdict, "Guilty of publishing, but with no malicious intention."
The judge said, "I cannot record this verdict: it is no verdict at
all." The jury withdrew, and after sitting in consultation till
five in the morning, brought in a verdict, Not Guilty. Would this
have been the case, had they been all special jurymen nominated by
the Master of the Crown-office? This is one of the cases that ought
to open the eyes of people with respect to the manner of forming
special juries.

     On the trial of Williams, the judge prevented the counsel for
the defendant proceeding in the defence. The prosecution hid
selected a number of passages from the 'Age of Reason' and inserted
them in the indictment. The defending counsel was selecting other
passages to shew that the passage's in the indictment were
conclusions drawn from premises, and unfairly separated therefrom
in the indictment. The judge said, he did not know how to act;
meaning thereby whether to let the counsel proceed in the defence
or not; and asked the jury if they wished to hear the passages read
which the defending counsel had selected. The jury said No, and the
defending counsel was in consequence silenced. Mr. Erskine then,
(Falstaff-like,) having all the field to himself, and no enemy at
hand, laid about him most heroically, and the jury found the
defendant guilty. I know not if Mr. Erskine ran out of court and
hallooed, Huzza for the Bible and the trial by jury!

     Robespierre caused a decree to be passed during the trial of
Brissot and others, that after a trial had lasted three days, (the
whole of which time, in the case of Brissot, was taken up by the
prosecuting party,) the judge should ask the jury (who were then a
packed jury) if they were satisfied? If the jury said YES, the
trial ended, and the jury proceeded to give their verdict, without
hearing the defence of the accused party. It needs no depth of
wisdom to make an application of this case.

     I will now state a case to shew that the trial of Williams is
not a trial according to Kenyon's own explanation of law.

     On a late trial in London (Selthens versus Hoossman) on a
policy of insurance, one of the jurymen, Mr. Dunnage, after hearing
one side of the case, and without hearing the other side, got up
and said, 'it was as legal a policy of insurance as ever was
written.' The judge, who was the same as presided on the trial of
Williams, replied, 'that it was a great misfortune when any
gentleman of the jury makes up his mind on a cause before it was
finished.' Mr. Erskine, who in that cause was counsel for the
defendant, (in this he was against the defendant,) cried out,' it
is worse than a misfortune, it is a fault.' The judge, in his
address to the jury in summing up the evidence, expatiated upon,
and explained the parts which the law assigned to the counsel on
each side, to the witnesses, and to the judge, and said, "When all
this was done, AND NOT UNTIL THEN, it was the business of the jury
to declare what the justice of the case was; and that it was
extremely rash and impudent in any man to draw a conclusion before 


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               22

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

all the premises were laid before them upon which that conclusion
was to be grounded." According then to Kenyon's own doctrine, the
trial of Williams is an irregular trial, the verdict an irregular
verdict, and as such is not recordable.

     As to the special juries, they are but modern; and were
instituted for the purpose of determining cases at law between
merchants; because, as the method of keeping merchants' accounts
differs from that of common tradesmen, and their business, by lying
much in foreign bills of exchange, insurance, etc., is of a
different description to that of common tradesmen, it might happen
that a common jury might not be competent to form a judgment. The
law that instituted special juries, makes it necessary that the
jurors be merchants, or of the degree of 'squires.' A special jury
in London is generally composed of merchants; and in the country,
of men called country squires, that is, fox-hunters, or men
qualified to hunt foxes. The one may decide very well upon a case
of pounds, shillings, and pence, or of the counting-house: and the
other of the jockey-club or the chase. But who would not laugh,
that because such men can decide such cases, they can also be
jurors upon theology? Talk with some London merchants about
scripture, and they will understand you mean scrip, and tell you
how much it is worth at the Stock Exchange. Ask them about
Theology, and they will say they know of no such gentleman upon
'Change. Tell some country squires of the Sun and moon standing
still, the one on the top of a hill, the other in a valley, and
they will swear it is a lie of one's own making, Tell them that God
Almighty ordered a man to make a cake, and bake it with a t--d and
eat it, and they will say it is one of Dean Swift's blackguard
stories. Tell them it is in the Bible, and they will lay a bowl of
punch it is not, and leave it to the parson of the parish to
decide. Ask them also about Theology, and they will say, they know
of no such a one on the turf. An appeal to such juries serves to
bring the Bible into more ridicule than anything the author of the
Age of Reason has written; and the manner in which the trial has
been conducted shows that the prosecutor dares not come to the
point, nor meet the defence of the defendant. But all other cases
apart, on what grounds of right, otherwise than on the right
assumed by an Inquisition, do such prosecutions stand? Religion is
a private affair between every man and his Maker, and no tribunal
or third party has a right to interfere between them. It is not
properly a thing of this world; it is only practiced in this world;
but its object is in a future world; and it is not otherwise an
object of just laws than for the purpose of protecting the equal
rights of all, however various their belief may be. If one man
chose to believe the book called the Bible to be the word of God,
and another, from the convinced idea of the purity and perfection
of God compared with the contradictions the book contains -- from
the lasciviousness of some of its stories, like that of Lot getting
drunk and debauching his two daughters, which is not spoken of as
a crime, and for which the most absurd apologies are made -- from
the immorality of some of its precepts, like that of showing no
mercy -- and from the total want of evidence on the case, -- thinks
he ought not to believe it to be the word of God, each of them has
an equal right; and if the one has a right to give his reasons for
believing it to be so, the other has an equal right to give his
reasons for believing the contrary, Any thing that goes beyond this


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               23

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

rule is an Inquisition. Mr. Erskine talks of his moral education:
Mr. Erskine is very little acquainted with theological subjects, if
he does not know there is such a thing as a 'sincere' and
'religious' belief that the Bible is not the word of God. This is
my belief; it is the belief of thousands far more learned than Mr.
Erskine; and it is a belief that is every day increasing. It is not
infidelity, as Mr. Erskine profanely and abusively calls it; it is
the direct reverse of infidelity. It is a pure religious belief,
founded on the idea of the perfection of the Creator. If the Bible
be the word of God, it needs not the wretched aid of prosecutions
to support it, and you might with as much propriety make a law to
protect the sunshine as to protect the Bible. Is the Bible like the
sun, or the work of God? We see that God takes good care of the
creation he has made. He suffers no part of it to be extinguished:
and he will take the same care of his word, if he ever gave one.
But men ought to be reverentially careful and suspicious how they
ascribe books to him as his word, which from this confused
condition would dishonor a common scribbler, and against which
there is abundant evidence, and every cause to suspect imposition.
Leave the Bible to itself. God will take care of it if he has any
thing to do with it, as he takes care of the sun and the moon,
which need not your laws for their better protection. As the two
instances I have produced in the beginning of this letter, from the
book of Genesis, -- the one respecting the account called the
Mosaic account of the Creation, the other of the Flood, --
sufficiently shew the necessity of examining the Bible, in order to
ascertain what degree of evidence there is for receiving or
rejecting it as a sacred book, I shall not add more upon that
subject; but in order to shew Mr. Erskine that there are religious
establishments for public worship which make no profession of faith
of the books called holy scriptures, nor admit of priests, I will
conclude with an account of a society lately begun in Paris, and
which is very rapidly extending itself.

     The society takes the name of Theophilantropes, which would be
rendered in English by the word Theophilanthropists, a word
compounded of three Greek words, signifying God, Love, and Man. The
explanation given to this word is 'Lovers of God and Man,' or
'Adorers of God and Friends of Man,' adorateurs de dieu et amis des
hommes. The society proposes to publish each year a volume,
entitled 'Annee Religieuse des Thdophilantropes,' Year Religious of
the Theophilanthropists. The first volume is just published,
entitled:

           RELIGIOUS YEAR OF THE THEOPHILANTHROPISTS;

                               or

                ADORERS OF GOD AND FRIENDS OF MAN

     Being a collection of the discourses, lectures, hymns, and
canticles, for all the religious and moral festivals of the
Theophilanthropists during the course of the year, whether in their
public temples or in their private families, published by the
author of the Manual of the Theophilanthropists.




                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               24

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

     The volume of this year, which is the first, contains 214
pages of duodecimo. The following is the table of contents: 1.

     1. Precise history of the Theophilanthropists.

     2. Exercises common to all the festivals.

     3. Hymn, No. 1. God of whom the universe speaks.

     4. Discourse upon the existence of God.

     5. Ode. II. The heavens instruct the earth.

     6. Precepts of wisdom, extracted from the book of the
Adorateurs.

     7. Canticle, No. III. God Creator, soul of nature.

     8. Extracts from divers moralists, upon the nature of God, and
upon the physical proofs of his existence.

     9. Canticle, No. IV. Let us bless at our waking the God who
gave us light.

     10. Moral thoughts extracted from the Bible.

     11. Hymn, No. V. Father of the universe.

     12. Contemplation of nature on the first days of the spring.

     13. Ode, No. VI. Lord in thy glory adorable.

     14. Extracts from the moral thoughts of Confucius.

     15. Canticle in praise of actions, and thanks for the works of
the creation.

     16. Continuation from the moral thoughts of Confucius.

     17. Hymn, No. VII. All the universe is full of thy
magnificence.

     18. Extracts from an ancient sage of India upon the duties of
families.

     19. Upon the spring.

     20. Thoughts moral of divers Chinese authors.

     21. Canticle, No. VIII. Every thing celebrates the glory of
the eternal.

     22. Continuation of the moral thoughts of Chinese authors.

     23. Invocation for the country.

     24. Extracts from the moral thoughts of Theognis.


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               25

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

     25. Invocation. Creator of man.

     26. Ode, No. IX. Upon death.

     27. Extracts from the book of the Moral Universal, upon
happiness.

     28. Ode No. X. Supreme Author of Nature.

                          INTRODUCTION.

                            ENTITLED

           PRECISE HISTORY OF THE THEOPHILANTHROPISTS.

     "Towards the month of Vendemiaire, of the year 5, (Sept.
1796,) there appeared at Paris, a small work entitled, Manual of
the Thdoantropophiles, since called, for the sake of easier
pronunciation, Theophilantropes, (Theophilanthropists,) published
by C------. [Chemin-Dupontes. -- Editor.]

     "The worship set forth in this Manual, of which the origin is
from the beginning of the world, was then professed by some
families in the silence of domestic life. But no sooner was the
Manual published, than some persons, respectable for their
knowledge and their manners, saw, in the formation of a Society
open to the public, an easy method of spreading moral religion, and
of leading by degrees great numbers to the knowledge thereof, who
appear to have forgotten it. This consideration ought of itself not
to leave indifferent those persons who know that morality and
religion, which is the most solid support thereof, are necessary to
the maintenance of society, as well as to the happiness of the
individual. These considerations determined the families of the
Theophilanthropists to unite publicly for the exercise of their
worship.

     "The first society of this kind opened in the month of Nivose,
year 5, (Jan. 1797,) in the street Denis, No. 34, corner of
Lombard-street. The care of conducting this society was undertaken
by five fathers of families. They adopted the Manual of the
Theophilanthropists. They agreed to hold their days of public
worship on the days corresponding to Sundays, but without making
this a hindrance to other Societies to choose such other day as
they thought more convenient. Soon after this, more Societies were
opened, of which some celebrate on the decadi, (tenth day,) and
others on the Sunday. It was also resolved that the committee
should meet one hour each week for the purpose of preparing or
examining the discourses and lectures proposed for the next general
assembly; that the general assemblies should be called Fetes
(festivals) religious and moral; that those festivals should be
conducted in principle and form, in a manner, as not to be
considered as the festivals of an exclusive worship; and that in
recalling those who might not be attached to any particular
worship, those festivals might also be attended as moral exercises
by disciples of every sect, and consequently avoid, by scrupulous
care, everything that might make the Society appear under the name
of a sect. The Society adopts neither rites nor priesthood, and it 


                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               26

             LETTERS CONCERNING "THE AGE OF REASON."

will never lose sight of the resolution not to advance any thing,
as a Society, inconvenient to any sect or sects, in any time or
country, and under any government.

     "It will be seen, that It is so much the more easy for the
Society to keep within this circle, because that the dogmas of the
Theophilanthropists are those upon which all the sects have agreed,
that their moral is that upon which there has never been the least
dissent; and that the name they have taken expresses the double end
of all the sects, that of leading to the 'adoration of God and love
of man.'

     "The Theophilanthropists do not call themselves the disciples
of such or such a man. They avail themselves of the wise precepts
that have been transmitted by writers of all countries and in all
ages. The reader will find in the discourses, lectures, hymns, and
canticles, which the Theophilanthropists have adopted for their
religious and moral festivals, and which they present under the
title of Annee Religiouse, extracts from moralists, ancient and
modern, divested of maxims too severe, or too loosely conceived, or
contrary to piety, whether towards God or towards man."

     Next follow the dogmas of the Theophilanthropists, or things
they profess to believe. These are but two, and are thus expressed,
'les Theophilantropes croient 'a l'existence de Dieu, et a
l'immortalite de l'ame.' The Theophilanthropists believe in the
existence of God, and the immortality of the soul.

     The Manual of the Theophilanthropists, a small volume of sixty
pages, duodecimo, is published separately, as is also their
catechism, which is of the same size. The principles of the
Theophilanthropists are the same as those published in the first
part of the 'Age of Reason' in 1793, and in the second part in
1795. The Theophilanthropists, as a Society, are silent upon all
the things they do not profess to believe, as the sacredness of the
books called the Bible, etc. They profess the immortality of the
soul, but they are silent on the immortality of the body, or that
which the church of England calls the resurrection. The author of
the 'Age of Reason' gives reasons for every thing he disbelieves,
as well as for those he believes; and where this cannot be done
with safety, the government is a despotism, and the church an
Inquisition.

     It is more than three years since the first part of the Age of
Reason was published, and more than a year and a half since the
publication of the second part: the Bishop of Llandaff undertook to
write an answer to the second part; and it, was not until after it
was known that the author of the Age of Reason would reply to the
bishop, that the prosecution against the book was set on foot; and
which is said to be carried on by some clergy of the English
Church. If the bishop is one of them, and the object be to prevent
an exposure of the numerous and gross errors he has committed in
his work, (and which he wrote when report said that Thomas Paine
was dead,) it is a confession that be feels the weakness of his
cause, and finds himself unable to maintain it. In this case he has
given me a triumph I did not seek, and Mr. Erskind, the herald of
the prosecution, has proclaimed it.
                                                  THOMAS PAINE.

                         Bank of Wisdom
                  Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
                               27
