The Life Of Thomas Paine, Vol. 2. (of 2): With A History of His Literary, Political and Religious Career in America France, and EnglandConway, Moncure Daniel
History
The Life Of Thomas Paine, Vol. 2. (of 2): With A History of His Literary, Political and Religious Career in America France, and England
Conway, Moncure Daniel
Paine, Thomas, 1737-1809
prejudices, it would bring on that prophet of the divine humanity, even
the Christian dove.
Soon after the appearance of Part First of the "Age of Reason" it
was expurgated of its negative criticisms, probably by some English
Unitarians, and published as a sermon, with text from Job xi., 7: "Canst
thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to
perfection?" It was printed anonymously; and were its sixteen pages
read in any orthodox church to-day it would be regarded as admirable.
It might be criticised by left wings as somewhat old-fashioned in the
warmth of its theism. It is fortunate that Paine's name was not appended
to this doubtful use of his work, for it would have been a serious
misrepresentation.*
* "A Lecture on the Existence and Attributes of the Deity,
as Deduced from a Contemplation of His Works. M,DCC,XCV."
The copy in my possession is inscribed with pen: "This was
J. Joyce's copy, and noticed by him as Paine's work." Mr.
Joyce was a Unitarian minister. It is probable that the
suppression of Paine's name was in deference to his
outlawry, and to the dread, by a sect whose legal position
was precarious, of any suspicion of connection with
"Painite" principles.
That his Religion of Humanity took the deistical form was an
evolutionary necessity. English deism was not a religion, but at first a
philosophy, and afterwards a scientific generalization. Its founder, as
a philosophy, Herbert of Cherbury, had created the matrix in which
was formed the Quaker religion of the "inner light," by which Paine's
childhood was nurtured; its founder as a scientific theory of creation,
Sir Isaac Newton, had determined the matrix in which all unorthodox
systems should originate. The real issue was between a sanctified
ancient science and a modern science. The utilitarian English race,
always the stronghold of science, had established the freedom of the
new deism, which thus became the mould into which all unorthodoxies ran.
From the time of Newton, English and American thought and belief have
steadily become Unitarian. The dualism of Jesus, the thousand years
of faith which gave every soul its post in a great war between God
and Satan, without which there would have been no church, has steadily
receded before a monotheism which, under whatever verbal disguises,
makes the deity author of all evil. English Deism prevailed only to be
reconquered into alliance with a tribal god of antiquity, developed
into the tutelar deity of Christendom. And this evolution involved the
transformation of Jesus into Jehovah, deity of a "chosen" or "elect"
people. It was impossible for an apostle of the international republic,
of the human brotherhood, whose Father was degraded by any notion of
favoritism to a race, or to a "first-born son," to accept a name in
which foreign religions had been harried, and Christendom established on
a throne of thinkers' skulls. The philosophical and scientific deism of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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