The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (icecream ebook reader TXT) đź“•
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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 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.
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- Author: Thomas Paine
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In the second part of the Age of Reason, I have shown that the book ascribed to Isaiah is not only miscellaneous as to matter, but as to authorship; that there are parts in it which could not be written by Isaiah, because they speak of things one hundred and fifty years after he was dead. The instance I have given of this, in that work, corresponds with the subject I am upon, at least a little better than Matthew’s introduction and his quotation.
Isaiah lived, the latter part of his life, in the time of Hezekiah, and it was about one hundred and fifty years from the death of Hezekiah to the first year of the reign of Cyrus, when Cyrus published a proclamation, which is given in the first chapter of the book of Ezra, for the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. It cannot be doubted, at least it ought not to be doubted, that the Jews would feel an affectionate gratitude for this act of benevolent justice; and it is natural that they would express that gratitude in the customary style, bombastical and hyperbolical as it was, which they used on extraordinary occasions, and which was, and still is, in practice with all the eastern nations.
The instance to which I refer, and which is given in the second part of the Age of Reason, is the last verse of the 44th chapter, and the beginning of the 45th, in these words: “That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him: and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two-leaved gates, and the gates shall not be shut.”
This complimentary address is in the present tense, which shows that the things of which Isaiah speaks were in existence at the time of writing it; and, consequently, that the author must have been at least one hundred and fifty years later than Isaiah, and that the book which bears his name is a compilation. The Proverbs called Solomon’s, and the Psalms called David’s, are of the same kind. The two last verses of the second book of Chronicles and three first verses of the chapter of Ezra are word for word the same; which show that the compilers of the Bible mixed the writings of difierent authors together, and put them under some common head.
As we have here an instance, in the 44th and 45th chapters, of the introduction of the name of Cyrus into a book to which it cannot belong, it affords good ground to conclude that the passage in the 42nd chapter, in which the character of Cyrus is given without his name, has been introduced in like manner, and that the person there spoken of is Cyrus. ↩
Whiston, in his Essay on the Old Testament, say that the passage of Zechariah, of which I have spoken, was, in the copies of the Bible of the first century, in the book of Jeremiah, from whence, says he, it was taken and inserted without coherence, in that of Zechariah. Well, let it be so, it does not make the ease a whit the better for the New Testament: but it makes the case a great deal the worse for the Old. Because it shows, as I have mentioned respecting some passages in a book ascribed to Isaiah, that the works of different authors have been so mixed and confounded together, they cannot now be discriminated, except where they are historical, chronological, or biographical, as is the interpolation in Isaiah. It is the name of Cyrus, inserted where it could not be inserted, as he was not in existence till 150 years after the time of Isaiah, that detects the interpolation and the blunder with it.
Whiston was a man of great literary learning, and, what is of much higher degree, of deep scientific learning. He was one of the best and most celebrated mathematicians of his time, for which he was made Professor of Mathematics of the University of Cambridge. He wrote so much in defence of the Old Testament, and of what he calls prophecies of Jesus Christ, that at last he began to suspect the truth of tho Scriptures and wrote against them; for it is only those who examine them, that see the imposition. Those who believe them most are those who know least about them.
Whiston, after writing so much in defence of the Scriptures, was at last prosecuted for writing against them. It was this that gave occasion to Swift, in his ludicrous epigram on Ditton and Whiston, each of which set up to find out tho longitude, to call one good master Ditton, and the other wicked Will Whiston. But as Swiit was a great associate with the Freethinkers of those days, such as Bolingbroke, Pope, and others, who did not believe the books called the Scriptures, there is no certainty whether he wittily called him wicked for defending the Scriptures, or for writing against them. The known character of Swift decides for the former. ↩
Newton, Bishop of Bristol, in England, published a work in three volumes, entitled Dissertations on the Prophesies. The work is tediously written and tiresome to read. He strains hard to make every passage into a prophecy that suits his purpose. Among others, he makes this expression of Moses, “The Lord shall raise thee up a prophet like unto me,” into a prophecy of Christ, who was not born, according to the Bible chronologies, till fifteen hundred and fifty-two years after the time of Moses, whereas it was an immediate successor to Moses, who was then near his end, that is spoken of in the passage above quoted.
This bishop, the
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