Amid his circle of cultured and kindly friends Paine had dreamed of a lifting of the last cloud from his life, so long overcast. His eyes were strained to greet that shining sail that should bring him a response to his letter of September to Washington, in his heart being a great hope that his apparent wrong would be explained as a miserable mistake, and that old friendship restored. As the reader knows, the hope was grievously disappointed. The famous public letter to Washington (August 3d), which was not published in France, has already been considered, in advance of its chronological place. It will be found, however, of more significance if read in connection with the unhappy situation, in which all of Paine's friends, and all Americans in Paris, had been brought by the Jay treaty. From their point of view the deliverance of Paine to prison and the guillotine was only one incident in a long-planned and systematic treason, aimed at the life of the French republic. Jefferson in America, and Paine in France, represented the faith and hope of republicans that the treason would be overtaken by retribution and reversal. * Soon after Jefferson became President Paine wrote to him, suggesting that Sir Robert's firm might be safely depended on as the medium of American financial transactions in Europe. CHAPTER XIII. THEOPHILANTHROPY In the ever-recurring controversies concerning Paine and his "Age of Reason" we have heard many triumphal claims. Christianity and the Church, it is said, have advanced and expanded, unharmed by such criticisms. This is true. But there are several fallacies implied in this mode of dealing with the religious movement caused by Paine's work. It assumes that Paine was an enemy of all that now passes under the name of Christianity--a title claimed by nearly a hundred and fifty different organizations, with some of which (as the Unitarians, Universalists, Broad Church, and Hick-site Friends) he would largely sympathize. It further assumes that he was hostile to all churches, and desired or anticipated their destruction. Such is not the fact. Paine desired and anticipated their reformation, which has steadily progressed. At the close of the "Age of Reason" he exhorts the clergy to "preach something that is edifying, and from texts that are known to be true."