The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (icecream ebook reader TXT) ๐
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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 Bibleโs 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 โhis mind is his own churchโ and that man must embrace reason.
While these arguments werenโt 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 Paineโs 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 wasnโt 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 Jeffersonโhimself a Deistโadvising Paine not to publish. Paine listened to Jeffersonโs 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 editionโs 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 Reasonโs harsh receptionโor perhaps, because of it, and the controversy and discussion it causedโit achieved a popularity in England, France, and America that gave it incredible influence in those nationโs perspectives on organized religion.
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- Author: Thomas Paine
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The story of Jesus Christ appearing after he was dead is the story of an apparition, such as timid imaginations can always create in vision, and credulity believe. Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar not many years before, and they generally have their origin in violent deaths, or in execution of innocent persons. In cases of this kind, compassion lends its aid, and benevolently stretches the story. It goes on a little and a little farther, till it becomes a most certain truth. Once start a ghost, and credulity fills up the history of its life, and assigns the cause of its appearance; one tells it one way, another another way, till there are as many stories about the ghost, and about the proprietor of the ghost, as there are about Jesus Christ in these four books.
The story of the appearance of Jesus Christ is told with that strange mixture of the natural and impossible, that distinguishes legendary tale from fact. He is represented as suddenly coming in and going out when the doors are shut, and of vanishing out of sight, and appearing again, as one would conceive of an unsubstantial vision; then again he is hungry, sits down to meat, and eats his supper. But as those who tell stories of this kind never provide for all the cases, so it is here: they have told us, that when he arose he left his grave-clothes behind him; but they have forgotten to provide other clothes for him to appear in afterwards, or to tell us what he did with them when he ascended; whether he stripped all off, or went up clothes and all. In the case of Elijah, they have been careful enough to make him throw down his mantle; how it happened not to be burnt in the chariot of fire, they also have not told us; but as imagination supplies all deficiencies of this kind, we may suppose if we please that it was made of salamanderโs wool.
Those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical history, may suppose that the book called the New Testament has existed ever since the time of Jesus Christ, as they suppose that the books ascribed to Moses have existed ever since the time of Moses. But the fact is historically otherwise; there was no such book as the New Testament till more than three hundred years after the time that Christ is said to have lived.
At what time the books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, began to appear, is altogether a matter of uncertainty. There is not the least shadow of evidence of who the persons were that wrote them, nor at what time they were written; and they might as well have been called by the names of any of the other supposed apostles as by the names they are now called. The originals are not in the possession of any Christian Church existing, any more than the two tables of stone written on, they pretend, by the finger of God, upon Mount Sinai, and given to Moses, are in the possession of the Jews. And even if they were, there is no possibility of proving the handwriting in either case. At the time those four books were written there was no printing, and consequently there could be no publication otherwise than by written copies, which any man might make or alter at pleasure, and call them originals. Can we suppose it is consistent with the wisdom of the Almighty to commit himself and his will to man upon such precarious means as these; or that it is consistent we should pin our faith upon such uncertainties? We cannot make nor alter, nor even imitate, so much as one blade of grass that he has made, and yet we can make or alter words of God as easily as words of man.75
About three hundred and fifty years after the time that Christ is said to have lived, several writings of the kind I am speaking of were scattered in the hands of diverse individuals; and as the church had begun to form itself into an hierarchy, or church government, with temporal powers, it set itself about collecting them into a code, as we now see them, called โThe New Testament.โ They decided by vote, as I have before said in the former part of The Age of Reason, which of those writings, out of the collection they had made, should be the word of God, and which should not. The Robbins of the Jews had decided, by vote, upon the books of the Bible before.
As the object of the church, as is the case in all national establishments of churches, was power and revenue, and terror the means it used, it is consistent to suppose that the most miraculous and wonderful of the writings they had collected stood the best chance of being voted. And as to the authenticity of the books, the vote stands in the place of it; for it can be traced no higher.
Disputes, however, ran high among the people then calling themselves Christians, not only as to points of doctrine, but as to the authenticity of the books. In the contest between the person called St. Augustine, and Fauste, about the year 400, the latter says, โThe books called the Evangelists have been composed long after the times of the apostles, by some obscure men, who, fearing that the world would not give credit to their relation of matters of which they could not be informed, have published them under the names of the apostles; and which are so full of sottishness and discordant relations, that there is neither agreement nor connection between them.โ
And in another place, addressing himself to the advocates of those books, as being the word of
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