"Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and amiable man. The morality that he preached was of the most benevolent kind; and though similar Systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some of the Greek philosophers, many years before; by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.... But he preached also against the Jewish priests; and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order of priesthood."--_Age of Reason_. History repeats itself. What is alleged to have been the fate of Jesus was, in a measure, the fate of Thomas Paine. The penning of his honest thoughts on religion caused his good name to be consigned to everlasting infamy on earth and his soul doomed to endless misery in hell. The Jews who are said to have demanded the crucifixion of Jesus on Calvary and the Catholics who burned Bruno at Rome are not more deserving of execration than are the Protestant assassins of Paine's character in England and America. Referring to Paine's examination and analysis of the Bible and his criticisms of the church presented in the "Age of Reason," William Thurston Brown, in a lecture, said: "He brought to that, examination and analysis what almost no other mind in all the ages has brought: a mind absolutely free, a soul absolutely incorruptible, a character unstained by one act of compromise or treachery to friend or foe, a nature devoted, as few natures in all history have been, to the truth, and, more than all, a sense of the relation of moral and intellectual integrity to personal character and social well-being never surpassed and seldom equaled." S. Kyd (counselor for Thomas Williams, imprisoned for publishing the "Age of Reason"): "I defy the prosecution to find in the 'Age of Reason' a single passage inconsistent with the most chaste, the most correct system of morals." Prof. W. F. Jamieson: "I read from this famous book, the 'Age of Reason,' as pure sentiments as were ever penned by mortal man." "When I was a boy I was often told that the writings of Thomas Paine 'were not fit for anybody to read.' My pastor said so, as did my Sunday school teachers and my parents. None of these had ever read them or knew anything about them....I believed them, and might still do so, had I not accidentally encountered a copy of the 'Age of Reason.' Upon reading it I found it to be as conventional as anything I had ever read in church or Sunday school, to say nothing of its more lofty reasoning."--_Franklin Steiner_. The Encyclopedia Britannica says that "the 'Age of Reason' contains many passages of earnest and even lofty eloquence in favor of a pure morality." "Its tone throughout is noble and reverent."--_Rufus Rockwell._