You have been told that he recanted on his deathbed. In other words, that he lived a hypocrite; that he only feigned Infidelity for the sake of being persecuted. A very plausible reason, surely. But this statement has been widely circulated, and that, too, in spite of the fact that every person who was with him during his dying hours pronounced it false,--those who sat by his bedside and heard every word that fell from his lips. It has ever been the custom of the church to make every distinguished individual appear as an endorser of her dogmas. See those insolent priests haunting the death chamber of Voltaire; see the crucifix thrust into the hands of the dying Litre and the dead Sherman; see the frantic efforts made to convince the world that Lincoln changed his religious views and died a Christian. An honest Quaker who visited Paine daily during his last illness testified to having been offered money to publicly state that he recanted. But he refused. Others were doubtless approached in the same manner, and with the same result. Unable to find a deathbed witness base enough to make so foul a charge, the calumny was originated by one who did not see him die. A Christian's brain conceived and bore that infamous falsehood; and black and hideous as the offspring was, nearly every orthodox clergyman was ready to serve it in the capacity of a faithful nurse. And in these nurses' arms it lived and died. Only a little while ago I saw one of them hugging to his breast and endeavoring to resuscitate with holy breath the putrid corpse of this dead lie! But supposing that he did recant, that he acknowledged the divinity of Christ. If he did this he died in the Christian faith. Now does the church treat deathbed penitents in the manner in which Paine has been treated? Has not every criminal that has repented in his last hours, from the dying thief of nineteen hundred years ago to the last murderer sent to Heaven, been held up as an object of admiration? Why, then, denounce Paine for having, as they claim, renounced his Infidelity? O Consistency, thou art, indeed, a jewel! And now, assuming all these charges to be true, he would still have been naught but a poor, drunken Infidel; and while this would have subjected him to much harsh criticism while living, it would have been merely of a local character, and would have ceased when he was no more. Death would have silenced censure, the mantle of charity would have been spread above his grave, and the waves of oblivion would have rolled over his memory long ago. Is it possible that all Christendom would have been so deeply agitated, that the walls of her churches would have echoed every week with the fierce anathemas thundered from a thousand pulpits against the inanimate dust of a poor, drunken Infidel!