The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (icecream ebook reader TXT) 📕
Description
The Age of Reason is an important work in the American Deist movement. Paine worked on it continually for more than a decade, publishing it in three parts from 1794 through 1807. It quickly became a best-seller in post-Revolution America, spurring a revival in Deism as an alternative to the prevailing Christian influence.
In clear, simple, and often funny language, Paine attempts to dissect the Bible’s supposed inaccuracies and hypocrisies. He portrays the Bible as a human construct, full of illogic, errors, and internal inconsistencies, as opposed to it being a text born of divine inspiration. On those arguments he pivots to decrying not just Christianity, but organized religion as a whole, as a human invention created to terrorize and enslave. Instead of accepting organized religion, he states that “his mind is his own church” and that man must embrace reason.
While these arguments weren’t new to the wealthy and educated class of the era, they were new to the poor masses. The book was at first distributed as cheap unbound pamphlets, making it easily accessible to the poor; and Paine’s simple language was written in way the poor could understand and sympathize with. This made the powerful very nervous, and, fearing that the book could cause a potential revolution, Paine and his publishers were suppressed.
Paine wrote The Age of Reason while living in Paris. In France, its thesis wasn’t revolutionary enough for the bloodthirsty Jacobins; he was imprisoned there for ten months and only escaped execution through a stroke of luck. Meanwhile in Britain, the government considered the pamphlets seditious. British booksellers and publishers involved in printing and distributing the pamphlets were repeatedly tried for seditious and blasphemous libel, with some even receiving sentences of hard labor.
Paine began writing Part III after escaping France for America, but even the American elite thought the book too scandalous, with Thomas Jefferson—himself a Deist—advising Paine not to publish. Paine listened to Jefferson’s advice and held off publishing Part III for five years before publishing extracts as separate pamphlets. For that reason, Part III is not a concrete publication, but rather an arrangement of several loosely-related pamphlets organized at the discretion of an edition’s editor.
Once it was in the hands of Americans, it sparked a revival in Deism in the United States before being viciously attacked from all sides. Paine earned a reputation as an agitator and blasphemer that stuck to him for the rest of his life.
Despite The Age of Reason’s harsh reception—or perhaps, because of it, and the controversy and discussion it caused—it achieved a popularity in England, France, and America that gave it incredible influence in those nation’s perspectives on organized religion.
Read free book «The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (icecream ebook reader TXT) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Thomas Paine
Read book online «The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (icecream ebook reader TXT) 📕». Author - Thomas Paine
Upon the whole, Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy, are appendages that belong to fabulous and not to true religion. They are the means by which so many “Lo heres!” and “Lo theres!” have been spread about the world, and religion been made into a trade. The success of one impostor gave encouragement to another, and the quieting salvo of doing some good by keeping up a pious fraud protected them from remorse.
RecapitulationHaving now extended the subject to a greater length than I first intended, I shall bring it to a close by abstracting a summary from the whole.
First, That the idea or belief of a word of God existing in print, or in writing, or in speech, is inconsistent in itself for the reasons already assigned. These reasons, among many others, are the want of an universal language; the mutability of language; the errors to which translations are subject; the possibility of totally suppressing such a word; the probability of altering it, or of fabricating the whole, and imposing it upon the world.
Secondly, That the Creation we behold is the real and ever existing word of God, in which we cannot be deceived. It proclaimeth his power, it demonstrates his wisdom, it manifests his goodness and beneficence.
Thirdly, That the moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. That seeing as we daily do the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practise the same towards each other; and, consequently, that everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty.
I trouble not myself about the manner of future existence. I content myself with believing, even to positive conviction, that the power that gave me existence is able to continue it, in any form and manner he pleases, either with or without this body; and it appears more probable to me that I shall continue to exist hereafter than that I should have had existence, as I now have, before that existence began.
It is certain that, in one point, all nations of the earth and all religions agree. All believe in a God. The things in which they disgrace are the redundancies annexed to that belief; and therefore, if ever an universal religion should prevail, it will not be believing anything new, but in getting rid of redundancies, and believing as man believed at first.45 Adam, if ever there was such a man, was created a Deist; but in the meantime, let every man follow, as he has a right to do, the religion and worship he prefers.
Part II PrefaceI have mentioned in the former part of The Age of Reason that it had long been my intention to publish my thoughts upon Religion; but that I had originally reserved it to a later period in life, intending it to be the last work I should undertake. The circumstances, however, which existed in France in the latter end of the year 1793, determined me to delay it no longer. The just and humane principles of the Revolution which Philosophy had first diffused, had been departed from. The Idea, always dangerous to Society as it is derogatory to the Almighty—that priests could forgive sins—though it seemed to exist no longer, had blunted the feelings of humanity, and callously prepared men for the commission of all crimes. The intolerant spirit of church persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals, styled Revolutionary, supplied the place of an Inquisition; and the Guillotine of the Stake. I saw many of my most intimate friends destroyed; others daily carried to prison; and I had reason to believe, and had also intimations given me, that the same danger was approaching myself.
Under these disadvantages, I began the former part of The Age of Reason; I had, besides, neither Bible nor Testament46 to refer to, though I was writing against both; nor could I procure any; notwithstanding which I have produced a work that no Bible Believer, though writing at his ease and with a Library of Church Books about him, can refute. Towards the latter end of December of that year, a motion was made and carried, to exclude foreigners from the Convention. There were but two, Anacharsis Cloots and myself; and I saw I was particularly pointed at by Bourdon de l’Oise, in his speech on that motion.
Conceiving, after this, that I had but a few days of liberty, I sat down and brought the work to a close as speedily as possible; and I had not finished it more than six hours, in the state it has since appeared,47 before a guard came there, about three in the morning, with an order signed by the two Committees of Public Safety and Surety General, for putting me in arrestation as a foreigner, and conveying me to the prison of the Luxembourg. I contrived, in my way there, to call on Joel Barlow, and I put the Manuscript of the work into his hands, as more safe than in my possession in prison; and not knowing what might be the fate in France either of the writer or the work, I addressed it to the protection of the citizens of the United States.
It is justice that I say, that the guard who executed this order, and the interpreter to the Committee of General Surety, who accompanied
Comments (0)