Volume II Part 14 (1/2)
So between the deists and the Christians there was, as Leslie Stephen says, a ”coether till Wesley from one side, and Thoe”
”History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century”
While ”The Age of Reason” is thus, in one aspect, the product of its tiun far back indeed as Celsus,--its intellectual originality is none the less remarkable Paine is more complete master of the comparative method than Tindal in his ”Christianity as old as the Creation” In his studies of ”Christian Mythology” (his phrase), one is surprised by anticipations of Baur and Strauss These are all theby reason of his ho the liabilities of ancient manuscripts to manipulation, he mentions in his second Part that in the first, printed less than two years before, there was already a sentence he never wrote; and contrasts this with the book of nature wherein no blade of grass can be iuishes the historical Jesus froh none had previously done this He isthan the early deists in his explanations of the scriptural marvels which he discredits There was not the invariable alternative of imposture hich the orthodoxy of his time had been accustomed to deal He does indeed suspect Moses with his rod of conjuring, and thinks no better of those who pretended knowledge of future events; but the incredible narratives are traditions, fables, and occasionally ”downright lies”
The sentence imported into Paine's Part First is: ”The book of Luke was carried by one voice only” I find the words added as a footnote in the Philadelphia edition, 1794, p 33 While Paine in Paris was utilizing the ascent of the footnote to his text, Dr Priestley in Pennsylvania was using it to show Paine's untrustworthiness (”Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever,” p 73) But it would appear, though neither discovered it, that Paine's critic was the real offender In quoting the page, before answering it, Priestley incorporated in the text the footnote of an Aine such editorial folly, but all the sa the Paine Mythology
”It is not difficult to discover the progress by which even sirow into a lie, and at last be told as a fact; and wherever we can find a charitable reason for a thing of this kind we ought not to indulge a severe one”
Paine's use of the word ”lies” in this connection is an archaism
Carlyle told me that his father always spoke of such tales as ”The Arabian Nights” as ”downright lies”; by which he no doubtsuch, and without any moral Elsewhere Paine uses ”lie” as synonymous with ”fabulous”; when he means by the hat it would now imply, ”wilful” is prefixed In the Gospels he finds ”inventions” of Christian Mythologists--tales founded on vague ruination mistaken for history,--fathered upon disciples who did not write them
His treatment of the narrative of Christ's resurrection may be selected as an example of his method He rejects Paul's testimony, and his five hundred witnesses to Christ's reappearance, because the evidence did not convince Paul hi, or otherwise converted He finds disagree the resurrection, which, while proving there was no concerted imposture, show that the accounts were not written by witnesses of the events; for in this case they would agree more nearly He finds in the narratives of Christ's reappearances,--”suddenly co out of sight and appearing again,”--and the lack of details, as to his dress, etc, the fahost-story, which is apt to be told in different ways ”Stories of this kind had been told of the assassination of Julius Caesar, not in in violent deaths, or in the 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 further, till it becohost, and credulity fills up its life and assigns the cause of its appearance” The ious iht The secrecy and privacy of the alleged appearances of Christ after death are, he re the world
In 1778 Lessing set forth his ”New Hypothesis of the Evangelists,” that they had independently built on a basis derived from some earlier Gospel of the Hebrews,--a theory now confirments of that lost Memoir, collected by Dr Nicholson of the Bodleian Library
It is tolerably certain that Paine was unacquainted with Lessing's work, when he became convinced, by variations in the accounts of the resurrection, that some earlier narrative ”became afterwards the foundation of the four books ascribed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,”--these being, traditionally eye-witnesses
Paine admits the power of the deity to make a revelation He therefore deals with each of theto his plan of bringing the Bible to judge the Bible Such an investigation, written with lucid style and quaint illustration, without one ti froreat, could not have failed to give the ”Age of Reason” long life, even had these been its only qualities Four years before the book appeared, Burke said in Parliament: ”Who, born within the last forty years, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and Tindal, and Chubb, and Morgan, and the whole race who call themselves freethinkers?” Paine was, in one sense, of this intellectual pedigree; and had his book been only a digest and expansion of previous negative criticish restateer life; the ”Age of Reason”books But there was an immortal soul in Paine's book It is to the consideration of this its unique life, which has defied the darts of criticism for a century, and survived its own faults and limitations, thatturn
II Paine's book is the uprising of the huion of Inhumanity
This assertion may be met with a chorus of denials that there was, or is, in Christendo the existence for which he hoped, no heavenly anthem would be such music in his ears as a chorus of storion of Inhumanity is so extinct as to be incredible Nevertheless, the Religion of Inhuainst Paine a God of battles, of poator of race hatreds and exterminations; an establisher of slavery; a coical beliefs; a sender of lying spirits to deceive ues; a creator of s under a certainty of their eternal torture by devils and fires of his own creation This apotheosis of Inhued to survive froain a throne in the Bible by killing off all who did not accept its authority to the letter, and because it was represented by actual inhureat obstruction of Science and Civilization was that the Bible was quoted in sanction of war, crusades against alien religions, radation of reason, exaltation of credulity, punishment of opinion and unbiblical discovery, contempt of human virtues and human nature, and costly ceremonies before an invisible majesty, which, exacted fro of huainst this consecrated Inhues, dissentients here and there; but the Revolution began with Paine
Nor was this accidental He was just the onenecessary for this particular work
The higher clergy, occupied with the old textual controversy, proudly instructing Paine in Hebrew or Greek idionorance in the norance had been too carefully educated to even is the word, and theand the French Convention What to scholastics, for whom humanities meant ancient classics, were the murders and massacres of primitive tribes, declared to be the word and work of God?
Words, s But Paine had seen that war-God at his work In childhood he had seen the hosts of the Defender of the Faith as, dripping with the blood of Culloden and Inverness, they h Thetford; in race of” that deity to the royal invader of America; he had seen the massacres ascribed to Jahve repeated in France, while Robespierre and Couthon were establishi+ng worshi+p of an infra-hu years, aonies, the stay- No Oxonian conductor could avert that stroke, which was not at e idol worshi+pped with human sacrifices The creation of the heart of Paine, historically traceable, is so wonderful, its outcoht have been invested with fable, like some Avatar Of some such man, no doubt, the Hindu poets dreaita_) The warrior, borne to the battlefield in his chariot, finds arrayed against him his kinsmen, friends, preceptors
He bids his charioteer pause; he cannot fight those he loves His charioteer turns: 't is the radiant face of divine Chrishna, his Saviour! Even He has led hirievous contention with kinsmen, and those to whose welfare he was devoted Chrishna instructs his disciple that the war is an illusion; it is the conflict by which, froe, the divine life in the world is preserved ”This imperishable devotion I declared to the sun, the sun delivered it to Manu, Manu to Ikshaku; handed down froes In the lapse of time that devotion was lost It is even the same discipline which I this day communicate to thee, for thou art h many births Mine are known to me; thou knowest not of thine I am made evident by my oer: as often as there is a decline of virtue, and an insurrection of wrong and injustice in the world, I appear”
Paine could not indeed know his former births; and, indeed, each forer Willianition He could hardly see kinser to disown the heretic affiliated on theh in him was the blood of their apostle, who declared salvation a present life, free to all In a profounder sense, Paine was George Fox Here was George Fox disowned, freed from his accidents, naturalized in the earth and humanized in the world of men
Paine is explicable only by the intensity of his Quakeris its own traditions as once the church's cere-house, rolled the burden of that Light that enlighteneth everyall equal, clearing away privilege, whether of priest orall scriptures to its ie to carry, even in childhood, away fro ”survivals,” in habit and doctrine, cooled the fiery gospel for the average tongue
The interlish Church brought the precocious boy's Light into early conflict with his kindred, his little laht up without respect for the conventional syion, or even with pious antipathy to them, is as if born with only one spiritual skin; he will bleed at a touch
”I well re a serreat devotee of the Church, upon the subject of what is called _redemption by the death of the Son of God_ After the ser down the garden steps, (for I perfectly remember the spot), I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to hty act like a passionate e hied that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such serhts that had anything in it of childish levity; it was tofroood to do such an action, and also too al it I believe in the same manner at this ion that has anything in it which shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true systearden; he would not by a denial shock his aunt cocke's faith as his own had been shocked For arden, nor ever was drawn out of it until he found the abstract dog men, whom he reverenced as all God's sons What he used to preach at Dover and Sandwich cannot now be known His ignorance of Greek and Latin, the scholastic ”huyman, and introduced him to hu the poor and ignorant
”Old John Berry, the late Col Hay's servant, told me he knew Paine very hen he was at Dover--had heard hiht him a staymaker by trade”--W Weedon, of Glynde, quoted in Notes and Queries (London), December 29, 1866
Sixteen years later he is in Philadelphia, attending the English Church, in which he had been confirmed There were many deists in that Church, whose laws then as noere sufficiently liberal to include them In his ”Common Sense” (published January 10, 1776) Paine used the reproof of Israel (I Sa John Adams, a Unitarian and monarchist, asked him if he really believed in the inspiration of the Old Testament Paine said he did not, and intended at a later period to publish his opinions on the subject There was nothing inconsistent in Paine's believing that a passage confirh contained in a book whose alleged inspiration throughout he did not accept Such was the Quaker principle Before that, soon after his arrival in the country, when he found African Slavery supported by the Old Testament, Paine had repudiated the authority of that book; he declares it abolished by ”Gospel light,”
which includes reatest crimes When, a year later, on the eve of the Revolution, he writes ”Coion, and it is strictly what the human need of the hour demands Whatever his disbeliefs, he could never sacrifice hurievous sacrifice of the great cause of republican independence, consequently, of religious liberty, had he introduced a theological controversy at the moment when it was of vital importance that the sects should rise above their partition-walls and unite for a great coiously the separatism once co them when he was ”th the Holy Spirit, to utter (1776) his brave cheer for Catholicity
”As to religion, I hold it to be the indispensable duty of all governments to protect all conscientious professors thereof, and I know of no other business which government hath to do therewith Let a man throw aside that narrowness of soul, that selfishness of principle, which the niggards of all professions are so unwilling to part with, and he will be at once delivered of his fears on that head Suspicion is the coood society For myself, I fully and conscientiously believe, that it is the will of the Alious opinions aer field for our Christian kindness Were we all of one way of thinking, our religious dispositions would want matter for probation; and, on this liberal principle, I look on the various deno us to be like children of the sa only in what is called their Christian names”
There was no pedantry whatever about Paine, this obedient son of Huainst sects and parties; he would never quarrel about the botanical label of a tree bearing such fruits as the Declaration of Independence But no man better knew the power of words, and that a botanical error may sometimes result in destructive treatment of the tree For this reason he censured the Quakers for opposing the Revolution on the ground that, in the words of their testioverns, he answers, are not removed by