Thomas Nixon and Captain Daniel Pelton: "All you have heard of his recanting is false. Being aware that such reports would be raised after his death by fanatics who infested his house at the time it was expected he would die, we, intimate acquaintances of Thomas Paine, since the year 1776, went to his house--he was sitting up in a chair, and apparently in the full vigor and use of all his mental faculties. We interrogated him on his religious opinions, and if he had changed his mind or repented of anything he had said or written on that subject. He answered, 'Not at all.'" Hon. Francis O. Smith, M. C.: "I have just parted with Hon. Richard M. Johnson, now a member of the House of Representatives [afterwards Vice-President of the United States], who told me that he visited Thomas Paine within the fortnight next preceding Paine's death; that he conversed with Paine and expressed a hope that he might recover; that Paine replied that he should shortly die, that he should never go out of his room again, and requested him to say to Mr. Jefferson that he had not changed his religious opinions in the slightest degree." Walter Morton (with Paine when he died): "In his religious opinions he continued to the last as steadfast and tenacious as any sectarian to the definition of his own creed." Dr. Philip Graves: "He [Amasa Woodsworth] told me that he nursed Thomas Paine in his last illness and closed his eyes when he was dead. I asked him if he recanted and called upon God to save him. He replied, 'No. He died as he had taught.'" John Randel, Jr. (orthodox Christian): "The very worthy mechanic, Amasa Woodsworth, who saw Paine daily, told me there was no truth in such report." Gilbert Vale, who interviewed Mr. Woodsworth, says: "As an act of kindness, Mr. Woodsworth visited Mr. Paine every day for six weeks before his death; he frequently sat up with him, and did so on the last two nights of his life.... Mr. Woodsworth assures us that he neither heard nor saw anything to justify the belief of any mental change in the opinions of Mr. Paine previous to his death." The English writer, William Cobbett, a believer in Christianity, who lived for a time in this country, and who made a thorough investigation of the Paine calumnies, says: "Among other things said against this famous man is that he recanted before he died; and that in his last illness he discovered horrible fears of death.... It is a pure, unadulterated falsehood."