While the orthodox clergy, with a few noble exceptions, have been, to their overlasting shame, mainly responsible for the ignorance and prejudice that have prevailed concerning Thomas Paine, Liberal ministers, many of them, to their eternal honor, have braved public sentiment and dared to do him justice. In an address more than fifty years ago the Rev. Moncure D. Conway paid this tribute to the moral character of Thomas Paine: "In his life, in his justice, in his truth, in his adherence to high principles, I look in vain for a parallel in those times and in these times. I am selecting my words. I know I am to be held accountable for them." Rev. Theodore Parker says: "I think he did more to promote piety and morality among men than a hundred ministers of that age in America." Prof. L. F. Laybarger: "Great was Thomas Paine intellectually, morally he was greater." Col. E. A. Stevens: "May Americans long appreciate the genius and reverence the virtues of their noble benefactor, for he left them a legacy greater than his works--the contemplation of his high-souled, unselfish character." Every person who has charged Paine with immorality has either invented a falsehood or repeated one. The character of Paine; was as blameless as that of Washington. Both men, in their last days, were bitterly assailed by political enemies. With their deaths political censure, for the most part, ceased. But Paine's religious opinions were not forgotten, and could not be forgiven. His "Age of Reason" continued to be read, and remained unanswered, because unanswerable. What "Common Sense" had done to kingcraft in America the "Age of Reason" promised to do to priestcraft throughout the world. In her desperation the church seized her only available weapon, slander. Every inventor of a calumny against Paine was hailed as a defender of the faith. Unscrupulous biographers and historians, like Cheetham and McMaster, to curry favor with the church, have recorded these calumnies as facts; and others, accepting these writers as reliable authorities, have innocently repeated them. Many who have acknowledged Paine's services to mankind have felt compelled to apologize for his supposed errors. Sir Leslie Stephen, who had accepted some of these charges, thus frankly admits that he had been deceived: "I regret to say that I had accepted certain charges against Paine's character, which Mr. Conway has shown to rest upon worse than suspicious evidence.... I fully admit that I was entirely misled by a hasty reliance upon worthless testimony." (_History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 3rd ed., vol. ii, p. 261, note._) William H. Burr: "While the corpse of the philanthropist lay cooling in the ground the English Tory Cheetham wrote a biography full of malignity and detraction."