The Age Of Reason
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''The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology'' is a work by English and American political activist
Thomas Paine Thomas Paine (born Thomas Pain; – In the contemporary record as noted by Conway, Paine's birth date is given as January 29, 1736–37. Common practice was to use a dash or a slash to separate the old-style year from the new-style year. In th ...
, arguing for the philosophical position of
deism Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin ''deus'', meaning "god") is the Philosophy, philosophical position and Rationalism, rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that Empirical evi ...
. It follows in the tradition of 18th-century British deism, and challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the
Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
. It was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807. It was a best-seller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. British audiences, fearing increased
political radicalism Radical politics denotes the intent to transform or replace the principles of a society or political system, often through social change, structural change, revolution or radical reform. The process of adopting radical views is termed radicali ...
as a result of the
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
, received it with more hostility. ''The Age of Reason'' presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the
Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of
revelation In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. Background Inspiration – such as that bestowed by God on the ...
, leading him to reject
miracle A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific lawsOne dictionary define"Miracle"as: "A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divin ...
s and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature, rather than a divinely-inspired text. In ''The Age of Reason'', he promotes
natural religion Natural religion most frequently means the "religion of nature", in which God, the soul, spirits, and all objects of the supernatural are considered as part of nature and not separate from it. Conversely, it is also used in philosophy to describe s ...
and argues for the existence of a
creator god A creator deity or creator god (often called the Creator) is a deity responsible for the creation of the Earth, world, and universe in human religion and mythology. In monotheism, the single God is often also the creator. A number of monolatris ...
. Most of Paine's arguments had long been available to the
educated Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Va ...
elite In political and sociological theory, the elite (french: élite, from la, eligere, to select or to sort out) are a small group of powerful people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth, privilege, political power, or skill in a group. D ...
, but by presenting them in an engaging and irreverent style, he made deism appealing and accessible to
the masses ''The Masses'' was a graphically innovative magazine of socialist politics published monthly in the United States from 1911 until 1917, when federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription. It was ...
. Originally distributed as unbound
pamphlet A pamphlet is an unbound book (that is, without a hard cover or binding). Pamphlets may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths, called a ''leaflet'' or it may consist of a ...
s, the book was also cheap, putting it within the reach of a large number of buyers. Fearing the spread of what it viewed as potentially-revolutionary ideas, the British government prosecuted printers and booksellers who tried to publish and distribute it. Nevertheless, Paine's work inspired and guided many
free thinkers Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought) is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and that beliefs should instead be reached by other metho ...
.


Historical context


Intellectual context: 18th-century British deism

Paine's book followed in the tradition of early 18th-century British deism. Those deists, while maintaining individual positions, still shared several sets of assumptions and arguments that Paine articulated in ''The Age of Reason''. The most important position that united the early deists was their call for "free rational inquiry" into all subjects, especially religion. Saying that early Christianity was founded on
freedom of conscience Freedom of thought (also called freedom of conscience) is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact, viewpoint, or thought, independent of others' viewpoints. Overview Every person attempts to have a cognitive proficiency by ...
, they demanded
religious toleration Religious toleration may signify "no more than forbearance and the permission given by the adherents of a dominant religion for other religions to exist, even though the latter are looked on with disapproval as inferior, mistaken, or harmful". ...
and an end to religious persecution. They also demanded that debate rest on reason and rationality. Deists embraced a Newtonian worldview and believed that all things in the universe, even God, must obey the laws of nature. Without a concept of
natural law Natural law ( la, ius naturale, ''lex naturalis'') is a system of law based on a close observation of human nature, and based on values intrinsic to human nature that can be deduced and applied independently of positive law (the express enacte ...
, the deists argued, explanations of the workings of nature would descend into irrationality. This belief in natural law drove their skepticism of
miracle A miracle is an event that is inexplicable by natural or scientific lawsOne dictionary define"Miracle"as: "A surprising and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore considered to be the work of a divin ...
s. Because miracles had to be observed to be validated, deists rejected the accounts laid out in the Bible of God's miracles and argued that such evidence was neither sufficient nor necessary to prove the existence of God. Along these lines, deistic writings insisted that God, as the
first cause The unmoved mover ( grc, ὃ οὐ κινούμενον κινεῖ, ho ou kinoúmenon kineî, that which moves without being moved) or prime mover ( la, primum movens) is a concept advanced by Aristotle as a primary cause (or first uncaused cau ...
or
prime mover Prime mover may refer to: Philosophy *Unmoved mover, a concept in Aristotle's writings Engineering * Prime mover (engine), motor, a machine that converts various other forms of energy (chemical, electrical, fluid pressure/flow, etc) into energy ...
, had created and designed the universe with natural laws as part of his plan. They held that God does not repeatedly alter his plan by suspending natural laws to intervene (miraculously) in human affairs. Deists also rejected the claim that there was only one revealed religious truth or "one true faith". Religion had to be "simple, apparent, ordinary, and universal" if it was to be the logical product of a benevolent God. They, therefore, distinguished between "revealed religions", which they rejected, such as Christianity, and "natural religion", a set of universal beliefs derived from the natural world that demonstrated God's existence (and so they were not
atheists Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no d ...
). While some deists accepted
revelation In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. Background Inspiration – such as that bestowed by God on the ...
, most argued that revelation's restriction to small groups or even a single person limited its explanatory power. Moreover, many found the Christian revelations in particular to be contradictory and irreconcilable. According to those writers, revelation could reinforce the evidence for God's existence already apparent in the natural world but more often led to superstition among the masses. Most deists argued that priests had deliberately corrupted Christianity for their own gain by promoting the acceptance of miracles, unnecessary rituals, and illogical and dangerous doctrines (accusations typically referred to as " priestcraft"). The worst of the doctrines was
original sin Original sin is the Christian doctrine that holds that humans, through the fact of birth, inherit a tainted nature in need of regeneration and a proclivity to sinful conduct. The biblical basis for the belief is generally found in Genesis 3 (t ...
. By convincing people that they required a priest's help to overcome their innate sinfulness, deists argued, religious leaders had enslaved the human population. Deists therefore typically viewed themselves as intellectual liberators.


Political context: French Revolution

By the time Part I of ''The Age of Reason'' was published in 1794, many British and French citizens had become disillusioned by the
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
. The
Reign of Terror The Reign of Terror (french: link=no, la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, ...
had begun,
Louis XVI Louis XVI (''Louis-Auguste''; ; 23 August 175421 January 1793) was the last King of France before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution. He was referred to as ''Citizen Louis Capet'' during the four months just before he was ...
and
Marie Antoinette Marie Antoinette Josèphe Jeanne (; ; née Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria, and was the penultimate child a ...
had been tried and executed and Britain was at war with France. The few British radicals who still supported the French revolution and its ideals were viewed with deep suspicion by their countrymen. ''The Age of Reason'' belongs to the later, more radical, stage of the British political reform movement, which openly embraced
republicanism Republicanism is a political ideology centered on citizenship in a state organized as a republic. Historically, it emphasises the idea of self-rule and ranges from the rule of a representative minority or oligarchy to popular sovereignty. It ...
and sometimes atheism and was exemplified by such texts as
William Godwin William Godwin (3 March 1756 – 7 April 1836) was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism and the first modern proponent of anarchism. Godwin is most famous for ...
's '' Enquiry Concerning Political Justice'' (1793). (However, Paine and other deists were not atheists.) By the middle of the decade, the moderate voices had disappeared:
Richard Price Richard Price (23 February 1723 – 19 April 1791) was a British moral philosopher, Nonconformist minister and mathematician. He was also a political reformer, pamphleteer, active in radical, republican, and liberal causes such as the French ...
, the
Dissenting Dissent is an opinion, philosophy or sentiment of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or policy enforced under the authority of a government, political party or other entity or individual. A dissenting person may be referred to as ...
minister whose sermon on political liberty had prompted Edmund Burke's ''
Reflections on the Revolution in France ''Reflections on the Revolution in France'' is a political pamphlet written by the Irish statesman Edmund Burke and published in November 1790. It is fundamentally a contrast of the French Revolution to that time with the unwritten British Const ...
'' (1790), had died in 1791, and
Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted exp ...
had been forced to flee to America after a Church–and–King mob burned down his home and church. The conservative government, headed by William Pitt, responded to the increasing radicalization by prosecuting several reformers for
seditious libel Sedition and seditious libel were criminal offences under English common law, and are still criminal offences in Canada. Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection a ...
and
treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...
in the famous
1794 Treason Trials The 1794 Treason Trials, arranged by the administration of William Pitt, were intended to cripple the British radical movement of the 1790s. Over thirty radicals were arrested; three were tried for high treason: Thomas Hardy, John Horne Tooke a ...
. Following the trials and an attack on
George III George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Br ...
, conservatives were successful in passing the Seditious Meetings Act and the
Treasonable Practices Act The Treason Act 1795 (sometimes also known as the Treasonable and Seditious Practices Act) (36 Geo. 3 c. 7) was one of the Two Acts introduced by the British government in the wake of the stoning of King George III on his way to open Parl ...
(also known as the "Two Acts" or the "gagging acts"). The 1795 Acts prohibited
freedom of assembly Freedom of peaceful assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right or ability of people to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue, and defend their collective or shared ide ...
for groups such as the radical
London Corresponding Society The London Corresponding Society (LCS) was a federation of local reading and debating clubs that in the decade following the French Revolution agitated for the democratic reform of the British Parliament. In contrast to other reform associati ...
(LCS) and encouraged indictments against radicals for "libelous and seditious" statements. Afraid of prosecution and disenchanted with the French Revolution, many reformers drifted away from the cause. The LCS, which had previously unified religious Dissenters and political reformers, fractured when
Francis Place Francis Place (3 November 1771 in London – 1 January 1854 in London) was an English social reformer. Early life He was an illegitimate son of Simon Place and Mary Gray. His father was originally a journeyman baker. He then became a Marshalse ...
and other leaders helped Paine publish ''The Age of Reason''. The society's more religious members withdrew in protest, and the LCS lost around a fifth of its membership.


Publishing history

In December 1792, Paine's '' Rights of Man, part II'', was declared
seditious Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, establ ...
in Britain, and he was forced to flee to France to avoid arrest. Dismayed by the French revolution's turn toward secularism and atheism, he composed Part I of ''The Age of Reason'' in 1792 and 1793: Although Paine wrote ''The Age of Reason'' for the French, he dedicated it to his "Fellow Citizens of the United States of America", alluding to his bond with the American revolutionaries. It is unclear when exactly Paine drafted Part I although he wrote in the preface to Part II: According to Paine scholars Edward Davidson and William Scheick, he probably wrote the first draft of Part I in late 1793, but Paine biographer David Hawke argues for a date of early 1793.Hawke, 292–94. It is also unclear whether or not a French edition of Part I was published in 1793. François Lanthenas, who translated ''The Age of Reason'' into French in 1794, wrote that it was first published in France in 1793, but no book fitting his description has been positively identified. Barlow published the first English edition of ''The Age of Reason, Part I'' in 1794 in London, selling it for a mere three
pence A penny is a coin ( pennies) or a unit of currency (pl. pence) in various countries. Borrowed from the Carolingian denarius (hence its former abbreviation d.), it is usually the smallest denomination within a currency system. Presently, it is th ...
. Meanwhile, Paine, considered too moderate by the powerful
Jacobin Club , logo = JacobinVignette03.jpg , logo_size = 180px , logo_caption = Seal of the Jacobin Club (1792–1794) , motto = "Live free or die"(french: Vivre libre ou mourir) , successor = Pa ...
of French revolutionaries, was imprisoned for ten months in France. He escaped the
guillotine A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with stocks at th ...
only by accident: the sign marking him out for execution was improperly placed on his cell door. When
James Monroe James Monroe ( ; April 28, 1758July 4, 1831) was an American statesman, lawyer, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825. A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Monroe was ...
, at that time the new American Minister to France, secured his release in 1794, Paine immediately began work on Part II of ''The Age of Reason'' despite his poor health. Part II was first published in a pirated edition by H.D. Symonds in London in October 1795. In 1796, Daniel Isaac Eaton published Parts I and II, and sold them at a cost of one
shilling The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence o ...
and six pence. ( Eaton was later forced to flee to America after being convicted of seditious libel for publishing other radical works.) Paine himself financed the shipping of 15,000 copies of his work to America. Later,
Francis Place Francis Place (3 November 1771 in London – 1 January 1854 in London) was an English social reformer. Early life He was an illegitimate son of Simon Place and Mary Gray. His father was originally a journeyman baker. He then became a Marshalse ...
and Thomas Williams collaborated on an edition, which sold about 2,000 copies. Williams also produced his own edition, but the British government indicted him and confiscated the pamphlets. In the late 1790s, Paine fled from France to the United States, where he wrote Part III of ''The Age of Reason'': ''An Examination of the Passages in the New Testament, Quoted from the Old and Called Prophecies Concerning Jesus Christ''. Fearing unpleasant and even violent reprisals,
Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
convinced him not to publish it in 1802. Five years later, Paine decided to publish despite the backlash he knew would ensue. Following Williams's sentence of one year's hard labor for publishing ''The Age of Reason'' in 1797, no editions were sold openly in Britain until 1818, when
Richard Carlile Richard Carlile (8 December 1790 – 10 February 1843) was an important agitator for the establishment of universal suffrage and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom. Early life Born in Ashburton, Devon, he was the son of a shoemaker wh ...
included it in an edition of Paine's complete works. Carlile charged one shilling and sixpence for the work, and the first run of 1,000 copies sold out in a month. He immediately published a second edition of 3,000 copies. Like Williams, he was prosecuted for seditious libel and
blasphemous libel Blasphemous libel was originally an offence under the common law of England. Today, it is an offence under the common law of Northern Ireland, but has been abolished in England and Wales, and repealed in Canada and New Zealand. It consists of t ...
. The prosecutions surrounding the printing of ''The Age of Reason'' in Britain continued for 30 years after its initial release and encompassed numerous publishers as well as over a hundred booksellers.


Structure and major arguments

''The Age of Reason'' is divided into three sections. In Part I, Paine outlines his major arguments and personal creed. In Parts II and III he analyzes specific portions of the Bible to demonstrate that it is not the revealed word of God.


Analysis

At the beginning of Part I of the ''Age of Reason'', Paine lays out his personal belief: Paine's creed encapsulates many of the major themes of the rest of his text: a firm belief in a creator-God; a skepticism regarding most supernatural claims (miracles are specifically mentioned later in the text); a conviction that virtues should be derived from a consideration for others rather than oneself; an animus against corrupt religious institutions; and an emphasis on the individual's right of conscience.


Reason and revelation

Paine begins ''The Age of Reason'' by attacking
revelation In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. Background Inspiration – such as that bestowed by God on the ...
.
Revelation In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities. Background Inspiration – such as that bestowed by God on the ...
, he maintains, can be verified only by the individual receivers of the message and so is weak evidence for God's existence. Paine rejects prophecies and miracles: "it is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it." He also points out that the Christian revelations appear to have altered over time to adjust for changing political circumstances. Urging his readers to employ reason rather, than to rely on revelation, Paine argues that the only reliable, unchanging, and universal evidence of God's existence is the natural world. "The Bible of the Deist," he contends, should not be a human invention, such as the Bible, but rather a divine invention—it should be "creation". Paine takes that argument even further by maintaining that the same rules of logic and standards of evidence that govern the analysis of secular texts should be applied to the Bible. In Part II of ''The Age of Reason'', he does just that by pointing out numerous contradictions in the Bible. For example, Paine notes, "The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related in the New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with Jesus Christ, and carrying him to the top of a high mountain, and to the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promising to him all the kingdoms of the World. How happened it that he did not discover America, or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty highness has any interest? "


Analysis of the Bible

After establishing that he would refrain from using extra-Biblical sources to inform his criticism, but would instead apply the Bible's own words against itself, Paine questions the sacredness of the Bible and analyzes it as one would any other book. For example, in his analysis of the
Book of Proverbs The Book of Proverbs ( he, מִשְלֵי, , "Proverbs (of Solomon)") is a book in the third section (called Ketuvim) of the Hebrew Bible and a book of the Christian Old Testament. When translated into Greek and Latin, the title took on different ...
he argues that its sayings are "inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the Spaniards, and not more wise and economical than those of the American
Franklin Franklin may refer to: People * Franklin (given name) * Franklin (surname) * Franklin (class), a member of a historical English social class Places Australia * Franklin, Tasmania, a township * Division of Franklin, federal electoral d ...
." Describing the Bible as "fabulous mythology," Paine questions whether or not it was revealed to its writers and doubts that the original writers can ever be known (for example, he dismisses the idea that
Moses Moses hbo, מֹשֶׁה, Mōše; also known as Moshe or Moshe Rabbeinu (Mishnaic Hebrew: מֹשֶׁה רַבֵּינוּ, ); syr, ܡܘܫܐ, Mūše; ar, موسى, Mūsā; grc, Mωϋσῆς, Mōÿsēs () is considered the most important pro ...
wrote the
Pentateuch The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the sa ...
or that the Gospel's authors are known). Using methods that would not become common in Biblical scholarship until the 19th century, Paine tested the Bible for internal consistency, questioned its historical accuracy, and concluded that it was not divinely inspired. Paine also argues that the
Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. The ...
must be false because it depicts a tyrannical God. The "history of wickedness" pervading the Old Testament convinced Paine that it was simply another set of human-authored myths. He deplores people's credulity: "Brought up in habits of superstition," he wrote, "people in general know not how much wickedness there is in this pretended word of God." Citing
Numbers 31 Numbers 31 is the 31st chapter of the Book of Numbers, the fourth book of the Pentateuch (Torah), the central part of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), a sacred text in Judaism and Christianity. Scholars such as Israel Knohl and Dennis T. Olson ...
:13–47 as an example, in which Moses orders the slaughter of thousands of boys and women and sanctions the rape of thousands of girls at God's behest, Paine calls the Bible a "book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty!"


Church and state

Paine also attacks religious
institution Institutions are humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions a ...
s, indicting priests for their lust for power and wealth and the Church's opposition to scientific investigation. He presents the history of Christianity as one of corruption and oppression. Paine criticizes the tyrannical actions of the Church as he had those of governments in the ''
Rights of Man ''Rights of Man'' (1791), a book by Thomas Paine, including 31 articles, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. Using these points as a base it defends the ...
'' and ''
Common Sense ''Common Sense'' is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political argu ...
'', stating that "the Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient Mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue." That kind of attack distinguishes Paine's book from other deistic works, which were less interested in challenging social and political hierarchies. He argues that the Church and the state are a single corrupt institution that does not act in the best interests of the people and so both must be radically altered: As Jon Mee, a scholar of British radicalism, writes: "Paine believed ... a revolution in religion was the natural corollary, even prerequisite, of a fully successful political revolution." Paine lays out a vision of, in Davidson and Scheick's words, "an age of intellectual freedom, when reason would triumph over superstition, when the natural liberties of humanity would supplant priestcraft and kingship, which were both secondary effects of politically managed foolish legends and religious superstitions." It is this vision that scholars have called Paine's "secular
millennialism Millennialism (from millennium, Latin for "a thousand years") or chiliasm (from the Greek equivalent) is a belief advanced by some religious denominations that a Golden Age or Paradise will occur on Earth prior to the final judgment and future ...
" and it appears in all of his works. He ends the ''Rights of Man'', for example, with the statement: "From what we now see, nothing of reform in the political world ought to be held improbable. It is an age of
revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...
s, in which everything may be looked for." Paine "transformed the millennial Protestant vision of the rule of Christ on earth into a secular image of utopia," emphasizing the possibilities of "progress" and "human perfectibility" that could be achieved by humankind, without God's aid.


Intellectual debts

Although Paine liked to say that he read very little, his writings belied that statement; ''The Age of Reason'' has intellectual roots in the traditions of
David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...
,
Spinoza Baruch (de) Spinoza (born Bento de Espinosa; later as an author and a correspondent ''Benedictus de Spinoza'', anglicized to ''Benedict de Spinoza''; 24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish origin, b ...
, and
Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his ''Pen name, nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his ...
. Since Hume had already made many of the same "moral attacks upon Christianity" that Paine popularized in ''The Age of Reason'', scholars have concluded that Paine probably read Hume's works on religion or had at least heard about them through the
Joseph Johnson Joseph Johnson may refer to: Entertainment *Joseph McMillan Johnson (1912–1990), American film art director *Smokey Johnson (1936–2015), New Orleans jazz musician * N.O. Joe (Joseph Johnson, born 1975), American musician, producer and songwrit ...
circle. Paine would have been particularly drawn to Hume's description of religion as "a positive source of harm to society" that "led men to be factious, ambitious and intolerant." More of an influence on Paine than Hume was Spinoza's ''
Tractatus Theologico-politicus Written by the Dutch philosopher Benedictus Spinoza, the ''Tractatus Theologico-Politicus'' (''TTP'') or ''Theologico-Political Treatise'' was one of the most controversial texts of the early modern period. In it, Spinoza expounds his view ...
'' (1678). Paine would have been exposed to Spinoza's ideas through the works of other 18th-century deists, most notably
Conyers Middleton Conyers Middleton (27 December 1683 – 28 July 1750) was an English clergyman. Mired in controversy and disputes, he was also considered one of the best stylists in English of his time. Early life Middleton was born at Richmond, North Yorkshir ...
. Though these larger philosophical traditions are clear influences on ''The Age of Reason'', Paine owes the greatest intellectual debt to the English deists of the early 18th century, such as
Peter Annet Peter Annet (169318 January 1769) was an English deist and early freethinker. Early life and work Annet is said to have been born at Liverpool. A schoolmaster by profession, he became prominent owing to his attacks on orthodox theologians, as well ...
.
John Toland John Toland (30 November 167011 March 1722) was an Irish people, Irish rationalist philosopher and freethought, freethinker, and occasional satirist, who wrote numerous books and pamphlets on political philosophy and philosophy of religion, whi ...
had argued for the use of reason in interpreting scripture,
Matthew Tindal Matthew Tindal (1657 – 16 August 1733) was an eminent England, English deism, deist author. His works, highly influential at the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment, caused great controversy and challenged the Christians, Christian ...
had argued against revelation, Middleton had described the Bible as mythology and questioned the existence of miracles, Thomas Morgan had disputed the claims of the Old Testament, Thomas Woolston had questioned the believability of miracles and
Thomas Chubb Thomas Chubb (29 September 16798 February 1747) was a lay English Deist writer born near Salisbury. He saw Christ as a divine teacher, but held reason to be sovereign over religion. He questioned the morality of religions, while defending Chris ...
had maintained that Christianity lacked morality. All of those arguments appear in ''The Age of Reason'' albeit less coherently.


Rhetoric and style

The most distinctive feature of ''The Age of Reason'', like all of Paine's works, is its linguistic style. Historian
Eric Foner Eric Foner (; born February 7, 1943) is an American historian. He writes extensively on American political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African-American biography, the American Civil War, Reconstru ...
argues that Paine's works "forged a new political language" designed to bring politics to the people by using a "clear, simple and straightforward" style.Foner, xvi. Paine outlined "a new vision—a utopian image of an egalitarian republican society" and his language reflected these ideals. He originated such phrases as "the rights of man," "the age of reason," "the age of revolution," and "the times that try men's souls." Foner also maintains that with ''The Age of Reason'' Paine "gave deism a new, aggressive, explicitly anti-Christian tone".Foner, 247. He did so by employing " vulgar" (that is, "low" or "popular") language, an irreverent tone, and even religious rhetoric. In a letter to
Elihu Palmer Elihu Palmer (1764 – April 7, 1806) was an author and advocate of deism in the early days of the United States. Life Elihu Palmer was born in Canterbury, Connecticut in 1764. He studied to be a Presbyterian minister at Dartmouth College, where ...
, one of his most loyal followers in America, Paine describes part of his rhetorical philosophy: Paine's rhetoric had broad appeal; his "pithy" lines were "able to bridge working-class and middle-class cultures" and become common quotations.Kuklick, xi–xii. Part of what makes Paine's style so memorable is his effective use of repetition and rhetorical questions in addition to the profusion of "anecdote, irony, parody, satire, feigned confusion, folk matter, concrete vocabulary, and .. appeals to common sense". Paine's conversational style draws the reader into the text. His use of "we" conveys an "illusion that he and the readers share the activity of constructing an argument." By thus emphasizing the presence of the reader and leaving images and arguments half-formed, Paine encourages his readers to complete them independently.


"Vulgar" language

The most distinctive element of Paine's style in ''The Age of Reason'' is its "
vulgarity Vulgarity is the quality of being common, coarse, or unrefined. This judgement may refer to language, visual art, social class, or social climbers. John Bayley claims the term can never be self-referential, because to be aware of vulgarity is to ...
". In the 18th century, "vulgarity" was associated with the middling and lower classes and not with obscenity and so when Paine celebrates his "vulgar" style and his critics attack it, the dispute is over class accessibility, not profanity. For example, Paine describes the Fall this way: The irreverent tone that Paine, combined with the vulgar style, set his work apart from its predecessors. It took "deism out of the hands of the aristocracy and intellectuals and roughtit to the people". Paine's rhetorical appeal to "the people" attracted almost as much criticism as his ridicule of the Bible. Bishop Richard Watson, forced to address the new audience in his influential response to Paine, ''An Apology for the Bible'', wrote: "I shall, designedly, write this and the following letters in a popular manner; hoping that thereby they may stand a chance of being perused by that class of readers, for whom your work seems to be particularly calculated, and who are the most likely to be injured by it." However, it was not only the style that concerned Watson and others but also the cheapness of Paine's book. At one
sedition Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, estab ...
trial in the early 1790s, the Attorney–General tried to prohibit Thomas Cooper from publishing his response to Burke's ''Reflections on the Revolution in France'' and argued that "although there was no exception to be taken to his pamphlet when in the hands of the upper classes, yet the government would not allow it to appear at a price which would insure its circulation among the people."


Irreverent tone

Paine's style is not only "vulgar" but also irreverent. For example, he wrote that once one dismisses the false idea of Moses being the author of Genesis, "The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian tales, without the merit of being entertaining." Although many early English deists had relied on ridicule to attack the Bible and Christianity, theirs was a refined wit rather than the broad humor that Paine employed. It was the early Deists of the middling ranks, not the educated elite, who initiated the kind of ridicule Paine would make famous. It was Paine's "ridiculing" tone that most angered Churchmen. As John Redwood, a scholar of deism, puts it: "the age of reason could perhaps more eloquently and adequately be called the age of ridicule, for it was ridicule, not reason, that endangered the Church." Significantly, Watson's ''Apology'' directly chastises Paine for his mocking tone:


Religious influences

Paine's
Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...
upbringing predisposed him to deistic thinking at the same time that it positioned him firmly within the tradition of religious
Dissent Dissent is an opinion, philosophy or sentiment of non-agreement or opposition to a prevailing idea or policy enforced under the authority of a government, political party or other entity or individual. A dissenting person may be referred to as ...
. Paine acknowledged that he was indebted to his Quaker background for his skepticism, but the Quakers' esteem for plain speaking, a value expressed both explicitly and implicitly in ''The Age of Reason'', influenced his writing even more. As the historian E. P. Thompson has put it, Paine "ridiculed the authority of the Bible with arguments which the collier or country girl could understand." His description of the story of the
virgin birth of Jesus The virgin birth of Jesus is the Christian doctrine that Jesus was conceived by his mother, Mary, through the power of the Holy Spirit and without sexual intercourse. It is mentioned only in and , and the modern scholarly consensus is that the ...
demystifies biblical language and is "an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost." Quaker
conversion narrative Broadly speaking, a conversion narrative is a narrative that relates the operation of conversion, usually religious. As a specific aspect of American literary and religious history, the conversion narrative was an important facet of Puritan sacred a ...
s also influenced the style of ''The Age of Reason''. Davidson and Scheick argue that its "introductory statement of purpose, a fervid sense of inward inspiration, a declared expression of conscience, and an evangelical intention to instruct others" resemble the personal confessions of American Quakers. Paine takes advantage of several religious rhetorics beyond those associated with Quakerism in ''The Age of Reason'', most importantly by
millennial Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the Western demographic cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990s to early 2000 ...
language that appealed to his lower-class readers. Claiming that true religious language is universal, Paine uses elements of the Christian rhetorical tradition to undermine the hierarchies perpetuated by religion itself. The sermonic quality of Paine's writing is one of its most recognizable traits.
Sacvan Bercovitch Sacvan Bercovitch (October 4, 1933 – December 8, 2014) was a Canadian literary and cultural critic who spent most of his life teaching and writing in the United States. During an academic career spanning five decades, he was considered to be one ...
, a scholar of the sermon, argues that Paine's writing often resembles that of the
jeremiad A jeremiad is a long literary work, usually in prose, but sometimes in verse, in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society's imminen ...
or "political sermon." He contends that Paine draws on the
Puritan The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Catholic Church, Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become m ...
tradition in which "theology was wedded to politics and politics to the progress of the kingdom of God". One reason that Paine may have been drawn to this style is because he may have briefly been a
Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...
preacher, but that suspicion cannot be verified.


Reception and legacy

''The Age of Reason'' provoked a hostile reaction from most readers and critics, although the intensity of that hostility varied by locality. There were four major factors for this animosity: Paine denied that the Bible was a sacred, inspired text; he argued that Christianity was a human invention; his ability to command a large readership frightened those in power; and his irreverent and satirical style of writing about Christianity and the Bible offended many believers.


Britain

Paine's ''Age of Reason'' sparked enough anger in Britain to initiate not only a series of
government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive, and judiciary. Government is a ...
prosecutions but also a pamphlet war. Around 50 unfavorable replies appeared between 1795 and 1799 alone, and refutations were still being published in 1812. Many of them responded specifically to Paine's attack on the Bible in Part II (when Thomas Williams was prosecuted for printing Part II, it became clear its circulation had far exceeded that of Part I). Although critics responded to Paine's analysis of the Bible, they did not usually address his specific arguments. Instead, they advocated a literal reading of the Bible, citing the Bible's long history as evidence of its authority. They also issued ''
ad hominem ''Ad hominem'' (), short for ''argumentum ad hominem'' (), refers to several types of arguments, most of which are fallacious. Typically, this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other ...
'' attacks against Paine, describing him "as an enemy of proper thought and of the morality of decent, enlightened people".
Dissenters A dissenter (from the Latin ''dissentire'', "to disagree") is one who dissents (disagrees) in matters of opinion, belief, etc. Usage in Christianity Dissent from the Anglican church In the social and religious history of England and Wales, an ...
such as
Joseph Priestley Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted exp ...
, who had endorsed the arguments of the ''
Rights of Man ''Rights of Man'' (1791), a book by Thomas Paine, including 31 articles, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. Using these points as a base it defends the ...
'', turned away from those presented in ''The Age of Reason''. Even the liberal ''
Analytical Review The ''Analytical Review'' was an English periodical that was published from 1788 to 1798, having been established in London by the publisher Joseph Johnson and the writer Thomas Christie. Part of the Republic of Letters, it was a gadfly publicat ...
'' was skeptical of Paine's claims and distanced itself from the book. Paine's deism was simply too radical for these more moderate reformers and they feared being tarred with the brush of extremism. Despite the outpouring of antagonistic replies to ''The Age of Reason'', some scholars have argued that Constantin Volney's deistic ''The Ruins'' (translations of excerpts from the French original appeared in radical papers such as
Thomas Spence Thomas Spence ( 17508 September 1814) was an English RadicalProperty in Land Every One's Rightin 1775. It was re-issued as ''The Real Rights of Man'' in later editions. It was also reissued by, amongst others, Henry Hyndman under the title o ...
's ''Pig's Meat'' and Daniel Isaac Eaton's ''Politics for the People'') was actually more influential than ''The Age of Reason''. According to David Bindman, ''The Ruins'' "achieved a popularity in England comparable to ''Rights of Man'' itself." One minister complained that "the mischief arising from the spreading of such a pernicious publication s ''The Age of Reason''was infinitely greater than any that could spring from limited suffrage and septennial parliaments" (other popular reform causes). It was not until
Richard Carlile Richard Carlile (8 December 1790 – 10 February 1843) was an important agitator for the establishment of universal suffrage and freedom of the press in the United Kingdom. Early life Born in Ashburton, Devon, he was the son of a shoemaker wh ...
's 1818 trial for publishing ''The Age of Reason'' that Paine's text became "the anti-Bible of all lower-class nineteenth-century infidel agitators". Although the book had been selling well before the trial, once Carlile was arrested and charged, 4,000 copies were sold in just a few months. At the trial itself, which created a media frenzy, Carlile read the entirety of ''The Age of Reason'' into the court record, ensuring it an even wider publication. Between 1818 and 1822, Carlile claimed to have "sent into circulation near 20,000 copies of the ''Age of Reason''". Just as in the 1790s, it was the language that most angered the authorities in 1818. As Joss Marsh, in her study of blasphemy in the 19th century, pointed out, "at these trials plain English was reconfigured as itself 'abusive' and 'outrageous.' The ''Age of Reason'' struggle almost tolled the hour when the words 'plain,' 'coarse,' 'common,' and 'vulgar' took on a pejorative meaning." Carlile was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to one year in prison but spent six years instead because he refused any "legal conditions" on his release. Paine's new rhetoric came to dominate popular 19th-century radical journalism, particularly that of
freethinkers Freethought (sometimes spelled free thought) is an epistemological viewpoint which holds that beliefs should not be formed on the basis of authority, tradition, revelation, or dogma, and that beliefs should instead be reached by other methods ...
,
Chartists Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform in the United Kingdom that erupted from 1838 to 1857 and was strongest in 1839, 1842 and 1848. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, w ...
and
Owenites Owenism is the utopian socialist philosophy of 19th-century social reformer Robert Owen and his followers and successors, who are known as Owenites. Owenism aimed for radical reform of society and is considered a forerunner of the cooperative m ...
. Its legacy can be seen in Thomas Jonathan Wooler's radical periodical ''
The Black Dwarf ''The Black Dwarf'' (1817–1824) was a satirical radical journal of early 19th century Britain. It was published by Thomas Jonathan Wooler, starting in January 1817 as an eight-page newspaper, then later becoming a 32-page pamphlet. It was pric ...
'', Carlile's numerous newspapers and journals, the radical works of
William Cobbett William Cobbett (9 March 1763 – 18 June 1835) was an English pamphleteer, journalist, politician, and farmer born in Farnham, Surrey. He was one of an agrarian faction seeking to reform Parliament, abolish "rotten boroughs", restrain foreign ...
, Henry Hetherington's periodicals the ''Penny Papers'' and the '' Poor Man's Guardian'', Chartist
William Lovett William Lovett (8 May 1800 – 8 August 1877) was a British activist and leader of the Chartism, Chartist political movement. He was one of the leading London-based artisan Radicals (UK), radicals of his generation. A proponent of the idea tha ...
's works,
George Holyoake George Jacob Holyoake (13 April 1817 – 22 January 1906) was an English secularist, co-operator and newspaper editor. He coined the terms secularism in 1851 and "jingoism" in 1878. He edited a secularist paper, the ''Reasoner'', from 1846 to Ju ...
"s newspapers and books on
Owenism Owenism is the utopian socialist philosophy of 19th-century social reformer Robert Owen and his followers and successors, who are known as Owenites. Owenism aimed for radical reform of society and is considered a forerunner of the cooperative mov ...
, and freethinker
Charles Bradlaugh Charles Bradlaugh (; 26 September 1833 – 30 January 1891) was an English political activist and atheist. He founded the National Secular Society in 1866, 15 years after George Holyoake had coined the term "secularism" in 1851. In 1880, Brad ...
's ''New Reformer''. A century after the publication of ''The Age of Reason'', Paine's rhetoric was still being used:
George William Foote George William Foote (11 January 1850 – 17 October 1915) was an English secularist, freethinker, republican, writer and journal editor. Early life George William Foote was born in Plymouth, the son of William Thomas Foot (a customs officer) ...
's "''Bible Handbook'' (1888) ... systematically manhandles chapters and verses to bring out 'Contradictions,' 'Absurdities,' 'Atrocities,' and 'Obscenities,' exactly in the manner of Paine's ''Age of Reason''." The periodical '' The Freethinker'' (founded in 1881 by George Foote) argued, like Paine, that the "absurdities of faith" could be "slain with laughter."


France

''The Age of Reason'', despite having been written for the French, made very little, if any, impact on revolutionary France. Paine wrote that "the people of France were running headlong into atheism and I had the work translated into their own language, to stop them in that career, and fix them to the first article ... of every man's creed who has any creed at all – ''I believe in God''" (emphasis Paine's). Paine's arguments were already common and accessible in France; they had, in a sense, already been rejected. While still in France, Paine formed the Church of Theophilanthropy with five other families, a civil religion that held as its central dogma that man should worship God's wisdom and benevolence and imitate those divine attributes as much as possible. The church had no priest or minister, and the traditional Biblical sermon was replaced by scientific lectures or homilies on the teachings of philosophers. It celebrated four festivals honoring
St. Vincent de Paul Vincent de Paul, CM (24 April 1581 – 27 September 1660), commonly known as Saint Vincent de Paul, was a Occitan French Catholic priest who dedicated himself to serving the poor. In 1622 Vincent was appointed a chaplain to the galleys. Afte ...
,
George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732, 1799) was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of th ...
,
Socrates Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...
, and
Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau (, ; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolu ...
.
Samuel Adams Samuel Adams ( – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and ...
articulated the goals of this church when he wrote that Paine aimed "to renovate the age by inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity and universal philanthropy." The church closed in 1801, when
Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
concluded a
concordat A concordat is a convention between the Holy See and a sovereign state that defines the relationship between the Catholic Church and the state in matters that concern both,René Metz, ''What is Canon Law?'' (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1960 st Ed ...
with the
Vatican Vatican may refer to: Vatican City, the city-state ruled by the pope in Rome, including St. Peter's Basilica, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museum The Holy See * The Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church and sovereign entity recognized ...
.


United States

In the United States, ''The Age of Reason'' initially caused a deistic "revival", but was then viciously attacked and largely forgotten. Paine became so reviled that he could still be maligned as a "filthy little atheist" by
Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
over one hundred years later. At the end of the 18th century, America was ripe for Paine's arguments.
Ethan Allen Ethan Allen ( – February 12, 1789) was an American farmer, businessman, land speculator, philosopher, writer, lay theologian, American Revolutionary War patriot, and politician. He is best known as one of the founders of Vermont and for ...
published the first American defense of deism, ''Reason, The Only Oracle of Man'' (1784), but deism remained primarily a philosophy of the educated elite. Men such as
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading inte ...
and
Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 18 ...
espoused its tenets but at the same time argued that religion served the useful purpose of "social control." It was not until the publication of Paine's more entertaining and popular work that deism reached into the middling and lower classes in America. The public was receptive, in part, because they approved of the secular ideals of the
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
. ''The Age of Reason'' went through 17 editions and sold thousands of copies in the United States.
Elihu Palmer Elihu Palmer (1764 – April 7, 1806) was an author and advocate of deism in the early days of the United States. Life Elihu Palmer was born in Canterbury, Connecticut in 1764. He studied to be a Presbyterian minister at Dartmouth College, where ...
, "a blind renegade minister" and Paine's most loyal follower in America, promoted deism throughout the country. Palmer published what became "the bible of American deism", ''The Principles of Nature'', established deistic societies from Maine to Georgia, built Temples of Reason throughout the nation, and founded two deistic newspapers for which Paine eventually wrote seventeen essays. Foner wrote, "''The Age of Reason'' became the most popular deist work ever written ... Before Paine it had been possible to be both a Christian and a deist; now such a religious outlook became virtually untenable." Paine presented deism to the masses, and, as in Britain, educated elites feared the consequences of such material in the hands of so many. Their fear helped to drive the backlash which soon followed. Almost immediately after this deistic upsurge, the
Second Great Awakening The Second Great Awakening was a Protestant religious revival during the early 19th century in the United States. The Second Great Awakening, which spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching, sparked a number of reform movements. R ...
began. George Spater explains that "the revulsion felt for Paine's ''Age of Reason'' and for other anti-religious thought was so great that a major counter-revolution had been set underway in America before the end of the eighteenth century." By 1796, every student at
Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
was given a copy of Watson's rebuttal of ''The Age of Reason''. In 1815,
Parson Weems Mason Locke Weems (October 11, 1759 – May 23, 1825), usually referred to as Parson Weems, was an American minister, evangelical bookseller and author who wrote (and rewrote and republished) the first biography of George Washington immediately a ...
, an early American novelist and moralist, published ''God's Revenge Against Adultery'', in which one of the major characters "owed his early downfall to reading 'PAINE'S AGE OF REASON'".Qtd. in Samuels, 184. Paine's "libertine" text leads the young man to "bold slanders of the bible" even to the point that he "threw aside his father's good old family bible, and for a surer guide to pleasure took up the AGE OF REASON!" Paine could not publish Part III of ''The Age of Reason'' in America until 1807 because of the deep antipathy against him. Hailed only a few years earlier as a hero of the
American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolut ...
, Paine was now lambasted in the press and called "the scavenger of faction," a "lilly-livered sinical rogue," a "loathsome reptile," a "demi-human archbeast," "an object of disgust, of abhorrence, of absolute loathing to every decent man except the President of the United States homas Jefferson" In October 1805
John Adams John Adams (October 30, 1735 – July 4, 1826) was an American statesman, attorney, diplomat, writer, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the second president of the United States from 1797 to 1801. Befor ...
wrote to his friend
Benjamin Waterhouse Benjamin Waterhouse (March 4, 1754, Newport, Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations – October 2, 1846, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was a physician, co-founder and professor of Harvard Medical School. He is most well known for being ...
, an American physician and scientist: Adams viewed Paine's ''Age of Reason'' not as the embodiment of the Enlightenment but as a "betrayal" of it. Despite all of these attacks, Paine never wavered in his beliefs; when he was dying, a woman came to visit him, claiming that God had instructed her to save his soul. Paine dismissed her in the same tones that he had used in ''The Age of Reason'': "pooh, pooh, it is not true. You were not sent with any such impertinent message ... Pshaw, He would not send such a foolish ugly old woman as you about with His message." ''The Age of Reason'' was largely ignored after 1820, except by radical groups in Britain and freethinkers in America, such as
Robert G. Ingersoll Robert Green Ingersoll (; August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899), nicknamed "the Great Agnostic", was an American lawyer, writer, and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought, who campaigned in defense of agnosticism. Personal life Robert Inge ...
and the American
abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...
Moncure Daniel Conway Moncure Daniel Conway (March 17, 1832 – November 15, 1907) was an American abolitionist minister and radical writer. At various times Methodist, Unitarian, and a Freethinker, he descended from patriotic and patrician families of Virginia and ...
, who edited his works and wrote the first biography of Paine, favorably reviewed by ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''. Not until the publication of
Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...
's ''
The Origin of Species ''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...
'' in 1859, and the large-scale abandonment of the literal reading of the Bible that it caused in Britain did many of Paine's ideas take hold. As writer
Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has p ...
said, "It took a brave man before the Civil War to confess he had read the ''Age of Reason'' ... I read it first when I was a cub pilot, read it with fear and hesitation, but marveling at its fearlessness and wonderful power." Paine's criticisms of the church, the monarchy, and the aristocracy appear most clearly in Twain's ''
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled ''A Yankee in King Arthur's Court''. Some early editions are titled ''A Yankee at the Court of King Arth ...
'' (1889). Paine's text is still published today, one of the few 18th-century religious texts to be widely available. Its message still resonates, evidenced by
Christopher Hitchens Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...
, who stated that "if the rights of man are to be upheld in a dark time, we shall require an age of reason". His 2006 book on the ''Rights of Man'' ends with the claim that "in a time ... when both rights and reason are under several kinds of open and covert attack, the life and writing of Thomas Paine will always be part of the arsenal on which we shall need to depend."


See also

* ''
The American Crisis ''The American Crisis'', or simply ''The Crisis'', is a pamphlet series by eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosopher and author Thomas Paine, originally published from 1776 to 1783 during the American Revolution. Thirteen numbered pamphlets w ...
'' * ''
Common Sense ''Common Sense'' is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political argu ...
'' * ''
Rights of Man ''Rights of Man'' (1791), a book by Thomas Paine, including 31 articles, posits that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard the natural rights of its people. Using these points as a base it defends the ...
'', also written by Thomas Paine *
American philosophy American philosophy is the activity, corpus, and tradition of philosophers affiliated with the United States. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' notes that while it lacks a "core of defining features, American Philosophy can nevert ...


Notes


Bibliography

* Bindman, David.
'My own mind is my own church': Blake, Paine and the French Revolution.
''Reflections of Revolution: Images of Romanticism''. Ed. Alison Yarrington and Kelvin Everest. London: Routledge, 1993. . * * * * Dyck, Ian, ed. ''Citizen of the World: Essays on Thomas Paine''. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. . * Foner, Eric.
Tom Paine and Revolutionary America
'. London: Oxford University Press, 1976. . * Fruchtman, Jr., Jack. ''Thomas Paine and the Religion of Nature''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. . * * Harrison, J. F. C. "Thomas Paine and Millenarian Radicalism." ''Citizen of the World: Essays on Thomas Paine''. Ed. Ian Dyck. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. . * Hawke, David Freeman. ''Paine''. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. . * Herrick, James A.
The Radical Rhetoric of the English Deists: The Discourse of Skepticism, 1680–1750
'. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997. . * Hole, Robert.
Pulpits, politics and public order in England, 1760–1832
'. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. . * Kuklick, Bruce. "Introduction".
Paine: Political Writings
'. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. . * Marsh, Joss.
Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century England
'. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. . * Mee, Jon. ''Dangerous Enthusiasms: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. . * Redwood, John. ''Reason, Ridicule and Religion: The Age of Enlightenment in England, 1660–1750''. London: Thames and Hudson, 1976. . * *
Royle, Edward Edward Royle (born 29 March 1944) is a British academic who is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of York and author of several books on the history of religious ideas, particularly in York and Yorkshire. Career Royle gained his PhD ...
, ed. ''The Infidel Tradition from Paine to Bradlaugh''. London: Macmillan Press Ld., 1976. . * * Smith, Olivia. ''The Politics of Language, 1791–1819''. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984. . * * Spater, George. "Introduction." ''Citizen of the World: Essays on Thomas Paine''. Ed. Ian Dyck. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. . * Thompson, E. P. ''The Making of the English Working Class''. New York: Vintage Books, 1966. . * Walters, Kerry S. ''Rational Infidels: The American Deists''. Durango, CO: Longwood Academic, 1992. . * Watson, Richard.
An Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters, addressed to Thomas Paine
'. Philadelphia: James Carey, 1979. * Wiener, Joel H. "Collaborators of a Sort: Thomas Paine and Richard Carlile." ''Citizen of the World: Essays on Thomas Paine''. Ed. Ian Dyck. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. . * Wilson, David A.
Paine and Cobbett: The Transatlantic Connection
'. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988. . * Woll, Walter. ''Thomas Paine: Motives for Rebellion''. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1992. .


Modern reprints of ''The Age of Reason''

* Paine, Thomas
''The Age of Reason''
Ed. Kerry Walters. Peterborough:
Broadview Press Broadview Press is an independent academic publisher that focuses on the humanities. Founded in 1985 by Don LePan, the company now employs over 30 people, has over 800 titles in print, and publishes approximately 40 titles each year. Broadview's o ...
, 2011. . * Paine, Thomas
''The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition''
World Union of Deists The World Union of Deists (WUD) is the largest and oldest organization in the world promoting the natural religion of Deism. History The ''World Union of Deists'' was founded in Charlottesville, Virginia Virginia, officially the Common ...
, 2009. * Paine, Thomas. ''The Age of Reason''. Ed. Philip Sheldon Foner. New York: Citadel Press, 1974. . * Paine, Thomas. ''Thomas Paine: Collected Writings''. Ed.
Eric Foner Eric Foner (; born February 7, 1943) is an American historian. He writes extensively on American political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African-American biography, the American Civil War, Reconstru ...
. Library of America, 1995. . * Paine, Thomas. ''The Life and Major Writings of Thomas Paine''. Ed.
Philip S. Foner Philip Sheldon Foner (December 14, 1910 – December 13, 1994) was an American labor historian and teacher. Foner was a prolific author and editor of more than 100 books. He is considered a pioneer in his extensive works on the role of radical ...
. Replica Books, 2000. . * Paine, Thomas.
The Thomas Paine Reader
'. Eds.
Michael Foot Michael Mackintosh Foot (23 July 19133 March 2010) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Labour Leader from 1980 to 1983. Foot began his career as a journalist on ''Tribune'' and the ''Evening Standard''. He co-wrote the 1940 p ...
and Isaac Kramnick. New York: Penguin Books, 1987. .


External links

*
''The Age of Reason''
at the
Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

''The Age of Reason'', Parts I, II, and III at ushistory.org
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Age of Reason, The 1794 non-fiction books Deism Books critical of Christianity Books critical of Judaism Books critical of religion Books with atheism-related themes Books by Thomas Paine American philosophy Modern philosophical literature Philosophy of religion literature