[161] Allen’s book of some 477 pages bore the following pretentious and rambling title: _Reason the only Oracle of Man, or a Compendius System of Natural Religion. Alternately Adorned with Confutations of a Variety of Doctrines incompatible to it; Deduced from the Most Exalted Ideas which we are able to form of the Divine and Human Characters, and from the Universe in General_. _By Ethan Allen, Esq. Bennington, State of Vermont._ The Preface is dated July 2, 1782. Evans records the fact that the entire edition, except about thirty copies, was destroyed by fire, said to have been caused by lightning, an event which the orthodox construed as a judgment from heaven on account of the nature of the book. _Cf._ _American Bibliography_, vol. vi, p. 266. The author’s aim has been interpreted as an effort “to build up a system of natural religion on the basis of a deity expressed in the external universe, as interpreted by the reason of man, in which the author includes the moral consciousness.” (Moncure D. Conway in _Open Court_ [magazine], January 28, 1892, article: “Ethan Allen’s Oracles of Reason,” p. 3119.) [162] _The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles_, vol. iii, p. 345. The comment of Yale’s president is fairly representative: “And the 13th Inst died in Vermont the profane & impious Deist Gen Ethan Allen, Author of the Oracles of Reason, a Book replete with scurrilous Reflexions on Revelation. ‘And in Hell he lift up his Eyes being in Torments.’” (_Ibid._) In 1787, at Litchfield, Connecticut, where Allen’s home had once been, there was published an anonymous sermon, from the text: “And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks which the swine did eat.” (Luke 15: 16.) The sermon was planned to counteract the effect produced by the “prophane, prayerless, graceless infidel,” Allen, through the publication of the book in question. The author, “Common Sense” (apparently Josiah Sherman), adopts for his sermon the caption, “_A Sermon to Swine_,” and explains in the Advertisement the temper of his mood: “By way of apology, I hope Gen. Allen will pardon any reproach that may be supposable, in comparing him to the Prodigal Son, sent by the Citizen into his fields to feed Swine with husks, when he considers, what an infinitely greater reproach he casts upon the holy oracles of God, and upon his Prophets, Apostles and Ministers, and upon the Lord of life and glory himself; at whose tribunal we must all shortly appear; when he represents Him as an impostor and cheat, and all the blessed doctrines of the gospel as falsehood and lies.” (_A Sermon to Swine: From Luke xv: 16 ... Containing a concise, but sufficient answer to General Allen’s Oracles of Reason._ By Common Sense, A. M., Litchfield, 1787.)