* "But I would not forcibly suppress this book ["Age ofReason"]; much less would I punish (O my God, be suchwickedness far from me, or leave me destitute of thy favourin the midst of this perjured and sanguinary generation!)much less would I punish, by fine or imprisonment, from anypossible consideration, the publisher or author of thesepages."—Letter of Gilbert Wakefield to Sir John Scott,Attorney General, 1798. For evidence of Unitarianintolerance see the discourse of W, J. Fox on "The Duties ofChristians towards Deists" (Collected Works, vol. i.). Inthis discourse, October 24, 1819, on the prosecution ofCarlile for publishing the "Age of Reason," Mr. Foxexpresses his regret that the first prosecution should havebeen conducted by a Unitarian. "Goaded," he says, "by thecalumny which would identify them with those who yet rejectthe Saviour, they have, in repelling so unjust anaccusation, caught too much of the tone of their opponents,and given the most undesirable proof of their affinity toother Christians by that unfairness towards the disbelieverwhich does not become any Christian." Ultimately Mr. Foxbecame the champion of all the principles of "The Age ofReason" and "The Rights of Man."
The prig perished; in his place stood a martyr of the freedom bound up with the work he had assailed. Paine's other assailant, the Bishop of Llandaff, having bent before Pitt, and episcopally censured the humane side he once espoused, Gilbert Wakefield answered him with a boldness that brought on him two years' imprisonment When he came out of prison (1801) he was received with enthusiasm by all of Paine's friends, who had forgotten the wrong so bravely atoned for. Had he not died in the same year, at the age of forty-five, Gilbert Wakefield might have become a standard-bearer of the freethinkers.
Paine's recovery after such prolonged and perilous suffering was a sort of resurrection. In April (1796) he leaves Monroe's house for the country, and with the returning life of nature his strength is steadily recovered. What to the man whose years of anguish, imprisonment, disease, at last pass away, must have been the paths and hedgerows of Versailles, where he now meets the springtide, and the more healing sunshine of affection! Risen from his thorny bed of pain—
"The meanest floweret of the vale,The simplest note that swells the gale,The common sun, the air, the skies,To him are opening paradise."
So had it been even if nature alone had surrounded him. But Paine had been restored by the tenderness and devotion of friends. Had it not been for friendship he could hardly have been saved. We are little able, in the present day, to appreciate the reverence and affection with which Thomas Paine was regarded by those who saw in him the greatest apostle of liberty in the world. Elihu Palmer spoke a very general belief when he declared Paine "probably the most useful man that ever existed upon the face of the earth." This may sound wild enough on the ears of those to whom Liberty has become a familiar drudge. There was a time when she was an ideal Rachel, to win whom many years of terrible service were not too much; but now in the garish day she is our prosaic Leah,—a serviceable creature in her way, but quite unromantic. In Paris there were ladies and gentlemen who had known something of the cost of Liberty,—Colonel and Mrs. Monroe, Sir Robert and Lady Smith, Madame Lafayette, Mr. and Mrs. Barlow, M. and Madame De Bonneville. They had known what it was to watch through anxious nights with terrors surrounding them. He who had suffered most was to them a sacred person. He had come out of the succession of ordeals, so weak in body, so wounded by American ingratitude, so sore at heart, that no delicate child needed more tender care. Set those ladies and their charge a thousand years back in the poetic past, and they become Morgan le Fay, and the Lady Nimue, who bear the wounded warrior away to their Avalon, there to be healed of his grievous hurts. Men say their Arthur is dead, but their love is stronger than death. And though the service of these friends might at first have been reverential, it had ended with attachment, so great was Paine's power, so wonderful and pathetic his memories, so charming the play of his wit, so full his response to kindness.
One especially great happiness awaited him when he became convalescent. Sir Robert Smith, a wealthy banker in Paris, made his acquaintance, and he discovered that Lady Smith was no other than "The Little Corner of the World," whose letters had carried sunbeams into his prison.* An intimate friendship was at once established with Sir Robert and his lady, in whose house, probably at Versailles, Paine was a guest after leaving the Monroes. To Lady Smith, on discovering her, Paine addressed a poem,—"The Castle in the Air to the Little Corner of the World":
* Sir Robert Smith (Smythe in the Peerage List) was born in1744, and married, first, Miss Blake of London (1776). Thename of the second Lady Smith, Paine's friend, before hermarriage I have not ascertained."In the region of clouds, where the whirlwinds arise,My Castle of Fancy was built;The turrets reflected the blue from the skies,And the windows with sunbeams were gilt."The rainbow sometimes, in its beautiful state,Enamelled the mansion around;And the figures that fancy in clouds can createSupplied me with gardens and ground."I had grottos, and fountains, and orange-tree groves,I had all that enchantment has told;I had sweet shady walks for the gods and their loves,I had mountains of coral and gold."But a storm that I felt not had risen and rolled,While wrapped in a slumber I lay;And when I looked out in the morning, behold,My Castle was carried away."It passed over rivers and valleys and groves,The world it was all in my view;I thought of my friends, of their fates, of their loves,And often, full often, of you."At length it came over a beautiful scene,That nature in silence had made;The place was but small, but't was sweetly serene,And chequered with sunshine and shade."I gazed and I envied with painful good will,And grew tired of my seat in the air;When all of a sudden my Castle stood still,As if some attraction were there."Like a lark from the sky it came fluttering down,And placed me exactly in view,When whom should I meet in this charming retreatThis corner of calmness, but—you."Delighted to find you in honour and ease,I felt no more sorrow nor pain;But the wind coming fair, I ascended the breeze,And went back with my Castle again."
Paine was now a happy man. The kindness that rescued him from death was followed by the friendship that beguiled him from horrors of the past. From gentle ladies he learned that beyond the Age of Reason lay the forces that defeat Giant Despair.
"To reason [so he writes to Lady Smith] against feelings is as vain as to reason against fire: it serves only to torture the torture, by adding reproach to horror. All reasoning with ourselves in such cases acts upon us like the reasoning of another person, which, however kindly done, serves but to insult the misery we suffer. If Reason could remove the pain, Reason would have prevented it. If she could not do the one, how is she to perform the other? In all such cases we must look upon Reason as dispossessed of her empire, by a revolt of the mind. She retires to a distance to weep, and the ebony sceptre of Despair rules alone. All that Reason can do is to suggest, to hint a thought, to signify a wish, to cast now and then a kind of bewailing look, to hold up, when she can catch the eye, the miniature shaded portrait of Hope; and though dethroned, and can dictate no more, to wait upon us in the humble station of a handmaid."
The mouth of the rescued and restored captive was filled with song. Several little poems were circulated among his friends, but not printed; among them the following:
"Contentment; or, if you please, Confession.To Mrs. Barlow, on her pleasantly telling the author that, after writing against the superstition of the Scripture religion, he was setting up a religion capable of more bigotry and enthusiasm, and more dangerous to its votaries—that of making a religion of Love.
"O could we always live and love,And always be sincere,I would not wish for heaven above,My heaven would be here."Though many countries I have seen,And more may chance to see,My Little Corner of the WorldIs half the world to me."The other half, as you may guess,America contains;And thus, between them, I possessThe whole world for my pains."I'm then contented with my lot,I can no happier be;For neither world I 'm sure has gotSo rich a man as me."Then send no fiery chariot downTo take me off from hence,But leave me on my heavenly ground—This prayer iscommon sense."Let others choose another plan,I mean no fault to find;The true theology of manIs happiness of mind."
Paine gained great favor with the French government and fame throughout Europe by his pamphlet, "The Decline and Fall of the English System of Finance," in which he predicted the suspension of the Bank of England, which followed the next year. He dated the pamphlet April 8th, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs is shown, in the Archives of that office, to have ordered, on April 27th, a thousand copies. It was translated in all the languages of Europe, and was a terrible retribution for the forged assignats whose distribution in France the English government had considered a fair mode of warfare. This translation "into all the languages of the continent" is mentioned by Ralph Broome, to whom the British government entrusted the task of answering the pamphlet.* As Broome's answer is dated June 4th, this circulation in six or seven weeks is remarkable, The proceeds were devoted by Paine to the relief of prisoners for debt in Newgate, London.**
* "Observations on Mr. Paine's Pamphlet," etc. Broomeescapes the charge of prejudice by speaking of "Mr. Paine,whose abilities I admire and deprecate in a breath." Paine'spamphlet was also replied to by George Chalmers ("Oldys")who had written the slanderous biography.** Richard Carlile's sketch of Paine, p. 20. This largegenerosity to English sufferers appears the morecharacteristic beside the closing paragraph of Paine'spamphlet, "As an individual citizen of America, and as faras an individual can go, I have revenged (if I may use theexpression without any immoral meaning) the piraticaldepredations committed on American commerce by the Englishgovernment. I have retaliated for France on the subject offinance: and I conclude with retorting on Mr. Pitt theexpression he used against France, and say, that the Englishsystem of finance 'is en the verge, nay even in the gulf ofbankruptcy.'"Concerning the false French assignats forged in England,see Louis Blanc's "History of the Revolution," vol. xii.,p. 101.
The concentration of this pamphlet on its immediate subject, which made it so effective, renders it of too little intrinsic interest in the present day to delay us long, especially as it is included in all editions of Paine's works. It possesses, however, much biographical interest as proving the intellectual power of Paine while still but a convalescent. He never wrote any work involving more study and mastery of difficult details. It was this pamphlet, written in Paris, while "Peter Porcupine," in America, was rewriting the slanders of "Oldys," which revolutionized Cobbett's opinion of Paine, and led him to try and undo the injustice he had wrought.
It now so turned out that Paine was able to repay all the kindnesses he had received. The relations between the French government and Monroe, already strained, as we have seen, became in the spring of 1796 almost intolerable. The Jay treaty seemed to the French so incredible that, even after it was ratified, they believed that the Representatives would refuse the appropriation needed for its execution. But when tidings came that this effort of the House of Representatives had been crushed by a menacedcoup d'état, the ideal America fell in France, and was broken in fragments. Monroe could now hardly have remained save on the credit of Paine with the French. There was, of course, a fresh accession of wrath towards England for this appropriation of the French alliance. Paine had been only the first sacrifice on the altar of the new alliance; now all English families and all Americans in Paris except himself were likely to become its victims. The English-speaking residents there made one little colony, and Paine was sponsor for them all. His fatal blow at English credit proved the formidable power of the man whom Washington had delivered up to Robespierre in the interest of Pitt. So Paine's popularity reached its climax; the American Legation found through him amodus vivendiwith the French government; the families which had received and nursed him in his weakness found in his intimacy their best credential. Mrs. Joel Barlow especially, while her husband was in Algeria, on the service of the American government, might have found her stay in Paris unpleasant but for Paine s friendship. The importance of his guarantee to the banker, Sir Robert Smith, appears by the following note, written at Versailles, August 13th:
"Citizen Minister: The citizen Robert Smith, a very particular friend of mine, wishes to obtain a passport to go to Hamburg, and I will be obliged to you to do him that favor. Himself and family have lived several years in France, for he likes neither the government nor the climate of England. He has large property in England, but his Banker in that country has refused sending him remittances. This makes it necessary for him to go to Hamburg, because from there he can draw his money out of his Banker's hands, which he cannot do whilst in France. His family remains in France.—Salut et fraternité.
"Thomas Paine."
Amid his circle of cultured and kindly friends Paine had dreamed of a lifting of the last cloud from his life, so long overcast. His eyes were strained to greet that shining sail that should bring him a response to his letter of September to Washington, in his heart being a great hope that his apparent wrong would be explained as a miserable mistake, and that old friendship restored. As the reader knows, the hope was grievously disappointed. The famous public letter to Washington (August 3d), which was not published in France, has already been considered, in advance of its chronological place. It will be found, however, of more significance if read in connection with the unhappy situation, in which all of Paine's friends, and all Americans in Paris, had been brought by the Jay treaty. From their point of view the deliverance of Paine to prison and the guillotine was only one incident in a long-planned and systematic treason, aimed at the life of the French republic. Jefferson in America, and Paine in France, represented the faith and hope of republicans that the treason would be overtaken by retribution and reversal.
* Soon after Jefferson became President Paine wrote to him,suggesting that Sir Robert's firm might be safely dependedon as the medium of American financial transactions inEurope.
In the ever-recurring controversies concerning Paine and his "Age of Reason" we have heard many triumphal claims. Christianity and the Church, it is said, have advanced and expanded, unharmed by such criticisms. This is true. But there are several fallacies implied in this mode of dealing with the religious movement caused by Paine's work. It assumes that Paine was an enemy of all that now passes under the name of Christianity—a title claimed by nearly a hundred and fifty different organizations, with some of which (as the Unitarians, Universalists, Broad Church, and Hick-site Friends) he would largely sympathize. It further assumes that he was hostile to all churches, and desired or anticipated their destruction. Such is not the fact. Paine desired and anticipated their reformation, which has steadily progressed. At the close of the "Age of Reason" he exhorts the clergy to "preach something that is edifying, and from texts that are known to be true."
"The Bible of the creation is inexhaustible in texts. Every part of science, whether connected with the geometry of the universe, with the systems of animal and vegetable life, or with the properties of inanimate matter, is a text for devotion as well as for philosophy—for gratitude as for human improvement. It will perhaps be said, that, if such a revolution in the system of religion takes place, every preacher ought to be a philosopher.Most certainly. And every house of devotion a school of science. It has been by wandering, from the immutable laws of science, and the right use of reason, and setting up an invented thing called revealed religion, that so many wild and blasphemous conceits nave been formed of the Almighty. The Jews have made him the assassin of the human species, to make room for the religion of the Jews. The Christians have made him the murderer of himself, and the founder of a new religion, to supersede and expel the Jewish religion. And to find pretence and admission for these things they must have supposed his power and his wisdom imperfect, or his will changeable; and the changeableness of the will is the imperfection of the judgment. The philosopher knows that the laws of the Creator have never changed with respect either to the principles of science, or the properties of matter. Why then is it to be supposed they have changed with respect to man?"
To the statement that Christianity has not been impeded by the "Age of Reason," it should be added that its advance has been largely due to modifications rendered necessary by that work. The unmodified dogmas are represented in small and eccentric communities. The advance has been under the Christian name, with which Paine had no concern; but to confuse the word "Christianity" with the substance it labels is inadmissible. England wears the device of St. George and the Dragon; but English culture has reduced the saint and dragon to a fable.
The special wrath with which Paine is still visited, above all other deists put together, or even atheists is a tradition from a so-called Christianity which his work compelled to capitulate. That system is now nearly extinct, and the vendetta it bequeathed should now end. The capitulation began immediately with the publication of the Bishop of Llandaff's "Apology for the Bible," a title that did not fail to attract notice when it appeared (1796). There were more than thirty replies to Paine, but they are mainly taken out of the Bishop's "Apology," to which they add nothing. It is said in religious encyclopedias that Paine was "answered" by one and another writer, but in a strict sense Paine was never answered, unless by the successive surrenders referred to. As Bishop Watson's "Apology" is adopted by most authorities as the sufficient "answer," it may be here accepted as a representative of the rest. Whether Paine's points dealt with by the Bishop are answerable or not, the following facts will prove how uncritical is the prevalent opinion that they were really answered.
Dr. Watson concedes generally to Paine the discovery of some "real difficulties" in the Old Testament, and the exposure, in the Christian grove, of "a few unsightly shrubs, which good men had wisely concealed from public view" (p. 44).* It is not Paine that here calls some "sacred" things unsightly, and charges the clergy with concealing them—it is the Bishop. Among the particular and direct concessions made by the Bishop are the following:
* Corey's edition. Philadelphia, 1796.
1. That Moses may not have written every part of the Pentateuch. Some passages were probably written by later hands, transcribers or editors (pp. 9-11, 15). [If human reason and scholarship are admitted to detach any portions, by what authority can they be denied the right to bring all parts of the Pentateuch, or even the whole Bible, under their human judgment?]
2. The law in Deuteronomy giving parents the right, under certain circumstances, to have their children stoned to death, is excused only as a "humane restriction of a power improper to be lodged with any parent" (p. 13). [Granting the Bishop's untrue assertion, that the same "improper" power was arbitrary among the Romans, Gauls, and Persians, why should it not have been abolished in Israel? And if Dr. Watson possessed the right to call any law established in the Bible "improper," how can Paine be denounced for subjecting other things in the book to moral condemnation? The moral sentiment is not an episcopal prerogative.]
3. The Bishop agrees that it is "the opinion of many learned men and good Christians" that the Bible, though authoritative in religion, is fallible in other respects, "relating the ordinary history of the times" (p. 23). [What but human reason, in the absence of papal authority, is to draw the line between the historical and religious elements in the Bible?]
4. It is conceded that "Samuel did not write any part of the second book bearing his name, and only a part of the first" (p. 24). [One of many blows dealt by this prelate at confidence in the Bible.]
5. It is admitted that Ezra contains a contradiction in the estimate of the numbers who returned from Babylon; it is attributed to a transcriber's mistake of one Hebrew figure for another (p. 30). [Paine's question here had been: "What certainty then can there be in the Bible for anything"? It is no answer to tell him how an error involving a difference of 12,542 people may perhaps have occurred.]
5. It is admitted that David did not write some of the Psalms ascribed to him (p. 131).
7. "It is acknowledged that the order of time is not everywhere observed" [in Jeremiah]; also that this prophet, fearing for his life, suppressed the truth [as directed by King Zedekiah]. "He was under no obligation to tell the whole [truth] to men who were certainly his enemies and no good subjects of the king" (pp. 36, 37). [But how can it be determined how much in Jeremiah is the "word of God," and how much uttered for the casual advantage of himself or his king?]
8. It is admitted that there was no actual fulfilment of Ezekie's prophecy, "No foot of man shall pass through it [Egypt], nor foot of beast shall pass through it, for forty years" (p. 42).
9. The discrepancies between the genealogies of Christ, in Matthew and Luke, are admitted: they are explained by saying that Matthew gives the genealogy of Joseph, and Luke that of Mary; and that Matthew commits "an error" in omitting three generations between Joram and Ozias (p. 48.) [Paine had asked, why might not writers mistaken in the natural genealogy of Christ be mistaken also in his celestial genealogy? To this no answer was attempted.]
Such are some of the Bishop's direct admissions.
There are other admissions in his silences and evasions. For instance, having elaborated a theory as to how the error in Ezra might occur, by the close resemblance of Hebrew letters representing widely different numbers, he does not notice Nehemiah's error in the same matter, pointed out by Paine,—a self-contradiction, and also a discrepancy with Ezra, which could not be explained by his theory. He says nothing about several other contradictions alluded to by Paine. The Bishop's evasions are sometimes painful, as when he tries to escape the force of Paine's argument, that Paul himself was not convinced by the evidences of the resurrection which he adduces for others. The Bishop says: "That Paul had so far resisted the evidence which the apostles had given of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, as to be a persecutor of the disciples of Christ, is certain; but I do not remember the place where he declares that he had not believed them." But when Paul says, "I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth," surely this is inconsistent with his belief in the resurrection and ascension. Paul declares that when it was the good pleasure of God "to reveal his Son in me," immediately he entered on his mission. He "was not disobedient to the heavenly vision." Clearly then Paul had not been convinced of the resurrection and ascension until he saw Christ in a vision.
In dealing with Paine's moral charges against the Bible the Bishop has left a confirmation of all that I have said concerning the Christianity of his time. An "infidel" of to-day could need no better moral arguments against the Bible than those framed by the Bishop in its defence. He justifies the massacre of the Canaanites on the ground that they were sacrificers of their own children to idols, cannibals, addicted to unnatural lust Were this true it would be no justification; but as no particle of evidence is adduced in support of these utterly unwarranted and entirely fictitious accusations, the argument now leaves the massacre without any excuse at all. The extermination is not in the Bible based on any such considerations, but simply on a divine command to seize the land and slay its inhabitants. No legal right to the land is suggested in the record; and, as for morality, the only persons spared in Joshua's expedition were a harlot and her household, she having betrayed her country to the invaders, to be afterwards exalted into an ancestress of Christ. Of the cities destroyed by Joshua it is said: "It was of Jehovah to harden their hearts, to come against Israel in battle, that he might utterly destroy them, that they might have no favor, but that he might destroy them, as Jehovah commanded Moses" (Joshua xi., 20). As their hearts were thus in Jehovah's power for hardening, it may be inferred that they were equally in his power for reformation, had they been guilty of the things alleged by the Bishop. With these things before him, and the selection of Rahab for mercy above all the women in Jericho—every woman slain save the harlot who delivered them up to slaughter—the Bishop says: "The destruction of the Canaanites exhibits to all nations, in all ages, a signal proof of God's displeasure against sin."
The Bishop rages against Paine for supposing that the commanded preservation of the Midianite maidens, when all males and married women were slain, was for their "debauchery."
"Prove this, and I will allow that Moses was the horrid monster you make him—prove this, and I will allow that the Bible is what you call it—'a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy'—prove this, or excuse my warmth if I say to you, as Paul said to Elymas the sorcerer, who sought to turn away Sergius Paulus from the faith, 'O full of all subtilty, and of all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?'—I did not, when I began these letters, think that I should have been moved to this severity of rebuke, by anything you could have written; but when so gross a misrepresentation is made of God's proceedings, coolness would be a crime."
And what does my reader suppose is the alternative claimed by the prelate's foaming mouth? The maidens, he declares, were not reserved for debauchery, but for slavery!
Little did the Bishop foresee a time when, of the two suppositions, Paine's might be deemed the more lenient. The subject of slavery was then under discussion in England, and the Bishop is constrained to add, concerning this enslavement of thirty-two thousand maidens, from the massacred families, that slavery is "a custom abhorrent from our manners, but everywhere practised in former times, and still practised in countries where the benignity of the Christian religion has not softened the ferocity of human nature." Thus, Jehovah is represented as not only ordering the wholesale murder of the worshippers of another deity, but an adoption of their "abhorrent" and inhuman customs.
This connection of the deity of the Bible with "the ferocity of human nature" in one place, and its softening in another, justified Paine's solemn rebuke to the clergy of his time.
"Had the cruel and murderous orders with which the Bible is filled, and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and children, in consequence of those orders, been ascribed to some friend whose memory you revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at detecting the falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his injured fame. It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference."
This is fundamentally what the Bishop has to answer, and of course he must resort to the terribleTu quoqueof Bishop Butler, Dr. Watson says he is astonished that "so acute a reasoner" should reproduce the argument.
"You profess yourself to be a deist, and to believe that there is a God, who created the universe, and established the laws of nature, by which it is sustained in existence. You profess that from a contemplation of the works of God you derive a knowledge of his attributes; and you reject the Bible because it ascribes to God things inconsistent (as you suppose) with the attributes which you have discovered to belong to him; in particular, you think it repugnant to his moral justice that he should doom to destruction the crying and smiling infants of the Canaanites. Why do you not maintain it to be repugnant to his moral justice that he should suffer crying or smiling infants to be swallowed up by an earthquake, drowned by an inundation, consumed by fire, starved by a famine, or destroyed by a pestilence?"
Dr. Watson did not, of course, know that he was following Bishop Butler in laying the foundations of atheism, though such was the case. As was said in my chapter on the "Age of Reason," this dilemma did not really apply to Paine, His deity was inferred, despite all the disorders in nature, exclusively from its apprehensible order without, and from the reason and moral nature of man. He had not dealt with the problem of evil, except implicitly, in his defence of the divine goodness, which is inconsistent with the responsibility of his deity for natural evils, or for anything that would be condemned by reason and conscience if done by man. It was thus the Christian prelate who had abandoned the primitive faith in the divine humanity for a natural deism, while the man he calls a "child of the devil" was defending the divine humanity.
This then was the way in which Paine was "answered," for I am not aware of any important addition to the Bishop's "Apology" by other opponents. I cannot see how any Christian of the present time can regard it otherwise than as a capitulation of the system it was supposed to defend, however secure he may regard the Christianity of to-day. It subjects the Bible to the judgment of human reason for the determination of its authorship, the integrity of its text, and the correction of admitted errors in authorship, chronology, and genealogy; it admits the fallibility of the writers in matters of fact; it admits that some of the moral laws of the Old Testament are "improper" and others, like slavery, belonging to "the ferocity of human nature"; it admits the non-fulfilment of one prophet's prediction, and the self-interested suppression of truth by another; and it admits that "good men" were engaged in concealing these "unsightly" things. Here are gates thrown open for the whole "Age of Reason."
The unorthodoxy of the Bishop's "Apology" does not rest on the judgment of the present writer alone. If Gilbert Wakefield presently had to reflect on his denunciations of Paine from the inside of a prison, the Bishop of Llandaff had occasion to appreciate Paine's ideas on "mental lying" as the Christian infidelity. The Bishop, born in the same year (1737) with the two heretics he attacked—Gibbon and Paine—began his career as a professor of chemistry at Cambridge (1764), but seven years later became Regius professor of divinity there. His posthumous papers present a remarkable picture of the church in his time. In replying to Gibbon he studied first principles, and assumed a brave stand against all intellectual and religious coercion. On the episcopal bench he advocated a liberal policy toward France. In undertaking to answer Paine he became himself unsettled; and at the very moment when unsophisticated orthodoxy was hailing him as its champion, the sagacious magnates of Church and State proscribed him. He learned that the king had described him as "impracticable"; with bitterness of soul he saw prelates of inferior rank and ability promoted over his head. He tried the effect of a political recantation, in one of his charges; and when Williams was imprisoned for publishing the "Age of Reason," and Gilbert Wakefield for rebuking his "Charge," this former champion of free speech dared not utter a protest. But by this servility he gained nothing. He seems to have at length made up his mind that if he was to be punished for his liberalism he would enjoy it. While preaching on "Revealed Religion" he saw the Bishop of London shaking his head. In 18111, five years before his death, he writes this significant note: "I have treated my divinity as I, twenty-five years ago, treated my chemical papers: I have lighted my fire with the labour of a great portion of my life."*
* Patrick Henry's Answer to the "Age of Reason" shared thelike fate. "When, during the first two years of hisretirement, Thomas Paine's 'Age of Reason' made itsappearance, the old statesman was moved to write out asomewhat elaborate treatise in defence of the truth ofChristianity. This treatise it was his purpose to havepublished. 'He read the manuscript to his family as heprogressed with it, and completed it a short time before hisdeath' (1799). When it was finished, however, 'beingdiffident about his own work,' and impressed also by thegreat ability of the replies to Paine which were thenappearing in England, 'he directed his wife to destroy' whathe had written. She 'complied literally with hisdirections,' and thus put beyond the chance of publication awork which seemed, to some who heard it, 'the most eloquentand unanswerable argument in defence of the Bible which wasever written.'"—Fontaine MS. quoted in Tyler's "PatrickHenry."
Next to the "Age of Reason," the book that did most to advance Paine's principles in England was, as I believe, Dr. Watson's "Apology for the Bible." Dean Swift had warned the clergy that if they began to reason with objectors to the creeds they would awaken skepticism. Dr. Watson fulfilled this prediction. He pointed out, as Gilbert Wakefield did, some exegetical and verbal errors in Paine's book, but they no more affected its main purpose and argument than the grammatical mistakes in "Common Sense" diminished its force in the American Revolution. David Dale, the great manufacturer at Paisley, distributed three thousand copies of the "Apology" among his workmen. The books carried among them extracts from Paine, and the Bishop's admissions. Robert Owen married Dale's daughter, and presently found the Paisley workmen a ripe harvest for his rationalism and radicalism.
Thus, in the person of its first clerical assailant, began the march of the "Age of Reason" in England. In the Bishop's humiliations for his concessions to truth, were illustrated what Paine had said of his system's falsity and fraudulence. After the Bishop had observed the Bishop of London manifesting disapproval of his sermon on "Revealed Religion" he went home and wrote: "What is this thing called Orthodoxy, which mars the fortunes of honest men? It is a sacred thing to which every denomination of Christians lays exclusive claim, but to which no man, no assembly of men, since the apostolic age, can prove a title." There is now a Bishop of London who might not acknowledge the claim even for the apostolic age. The principles, apart from the particular criticisms, of Paine's book have established themselves in the English Church. They were affirmed by Bishop Wilson in clear language: "Christian duties are founded on reason, not on the sovereignty of God commanding what he pleases: God cannot command us what is not fit to be believed or done, all his commands being founded in the necessities of our nature." It was on this principle that Paine declared that things in the Bible, "not fit to be believed or done," could not be divine commands.
His book, like its author, was outlawed, but men more heretical are now buried in Westminster Abbey, and the lost bones of Thomas Paine are really reposing in those tombs. It was he who compelled the hard and heartless Bibliolatry of his time to repair to illiterate conventicles, and the lovers of humanity, true followers of the man of Nazareth, to abandon the crumbling castle of dogma, preserving its creeds as archaic bric-a-brac. As his "Rights of Man" is now the political constitution of England, his "Age of Reason" is in the growing constitution of its Church,—the most powerful organization in Christendom because the freest and most inclusive.
The excitement caused in England by the "Age of Reason," and the large number of attempted replies to it, were duly remarked by theMoniteurand other French journals. The book awakened much attention in France, and its principles were reproduced in a little French book entitled: "Manuel des Théoantropophiles." This appeared in September, 1796. In January, 1797, Paine, with five families, founded in Paris the church of Theo-philanthropy,—a word, as he stated in a letter to Erskine "compounded of three Greek words, signifying God, Love, and Man. The explanation given to this word isLovers of God and Man, or Adorers of God and Friends of Man." The society opened "in the street Denis, No. 34, corner of Lombard Street." "The Theophilanthropists believe in the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul." The inaugural discourse was given by Paine. It opens with these words: "Religion has two principal enemies, Fanaticism and Infidelity, or that which is called atheism. The first requires to be combated by reason and morality, the other by natural philosophy." The discourse is chiefly an argument for a divine existence based on motion, which, he maintains, is not a property of matter. It proves a Being "at the summit of all things." At the close he says:
"The society is at present in its infancy, and its means are small; but I wish to hold in view the subject I allude to, and instead of teaching the philosophical branches of learning as ornamental branches only, as they have hitherto been taught, to teach them in a manner that shall combine theological knowledge with scientific instruction. To do this to the best advantage, some instruments will be necessary for the purpose of explanation, of which the society is not yet possessed. But as the views of the Society extend to public good, as well as to that of the individual, and as its principles can have no enemies, means may be devised to procure them. If we unite to the present instruction a series of lectures on the ground I have mentioned, we shall, in the first place, render theology the most entertaining of all studies. In the next place, we shall give scientific instruction to those who could not otherwise obtain it. The mechanic of every profession will there be taught the mathematical principles necessary to render him proficient in his art. The cultivator will there see developed the principles of vegetation; while, at the same time, they will be led to see the hand of God in all these things."
A volume of 214 pages put forth at the close of the year shows that the Theophilanthropists sang theistic and humanitarian hymns, and read Odes; also that ethical readings were introduced from the Bible, and from the Chinese, Hindu, and Greek authors. A library was established (rue Neuve-Etienne-l'Estrapade, No. 25) at which was issued (1797), "Instruction Élémentaire sur la Morale religieuse,"—this being declared to be morality based on religion.
Thus Paine, pioneer in many things, helped to found the first theistic and ethical society.
It may now be recognized as a foundation of the Religion of Humanity. It was a great point with Paine that belief in the divine existence was the one doctrine common to all religions. On this rock the Church of Man was to be built Having vainly endeavored to found the international Republic he must repair to an ideal moral and human world. Robespierre and Pitt being unfraternal he will bring into harmony the sages of all races. It is a notable instance of Paine's unwillingness to bring a personal grievance into the sacred presence of Humanity that one of the four festivals of Theophilanthropy was in honor of Washington, while its catholicity was represented in a like honor to St. Vincent de Paul. The others so honored were Socrates and Rousseau. These selections were no doubt mainly due to the French members, but they could hardly have been made without Paine's agreement. It is creditable to them all that, at a time when France believed itself wronged by Washington, his services to liberty should alone have been remembered. The flowers of all races, as represented in literature or in history, found emblematic association with the divine life in nature through the flowers that were heaped on a simple altar, as they now are in many churches and chapels. The walls were decorated with ethical mottoes, enjoining domestic kindness and public benevolence.
Paine's pamphlet of this year (1797) on "Agrarian Justice" should be considered part of the theophil-anthropic movement. It was written as a proposal to the French government, at a time when readjustment of landed property had been rendered necessary by the Revolution.*
* "Thomas Payne à la Législature et au Directoire: ou laJustice Agraire Opposée à la Loi et aux PrivilègesAgraires."
It was suggested by a sermon printed by the Bishop of Llandaff, on "The wisdom and goodness of God in having made both rich and poor." Paine denies that God made rich and poor: "he made only male and female, and gave them the earth for their inheritance." The earth, though naturally the equal possession of all, has been necessarily appropriated by individuals, because their improvements, which alone render its productiveness adequate to human needs, cannot be detached from the soil. Paine maintains that these private owners do nevertheless owe mankind ground-rent. He therefore proposes a tithe,—not for God, but for man. He advises that at the time when the owner will feel it least,—when property is passing by inheritance from one to another,—the tithe shall be taken from it. Personal property also owes a debt to society, without which wealth could not exist,—as in the case of one alone on an island. By a careful estimate he estimates that a tithe on inheritances would give every person, on reaching majority, fifteen pounds, and after the age of fifty an annuity of ten pounds, leaving a substantial surplus for charity. The practical scheme submitted is enforced by practical rather than theoretical considerations. Property is always imperilled by poverty, especially where wealth and splendor have lost their old fascinations, and awaken emotions of disgust.
"To remove the danger it is necessary to remove the antipathies, and this can only be done by making property productive of a national blessing, extending to every individual When the riches of one man above another shall increase the national fund in the same proportion; when it shall be seen that the prosperity of that fund depends on the prosperity of individuals; when the more riches a man acquires, the better it shall be for the general mass; it is then that antipathies will cease, and property be placed on the permanent basis of national interest and protection.
"I have no property in France to become subject to the plan I propose. What I have, which is not much, is in the United States of America. But I will pay one hundred pounds sterling towards this fund in France, the instant it shall be established; and I will pay the same sum in England, whenever a similar establishment shall take place in that country."
The tithe was to be given to rich and poor alike, including owners of the property tithed, in order that there should be no association of alms with this "agrarian justice."
About this time the priesthood began to raise their heads again. A report favorable to a restoration to them of the churches, the raising of bells, and some national recognition of public worship, was made by Camille Jordan for a committee on the subject The Jesuitical report was especially poetical about church bells, which Paine knew would ring the knell of the Republic. He wrote a theophilanthropic letter to Camille Jordan, from which I quote some paragraphs.
"You claim a privilege incompatible with the Constitution, and with Rights. The Constitution protects equally, as it ought to do, every profession of religion; it gives no exclusive privilege to any. The churches are the common property of all the people; they are national goods, and cannot be given exclusively to any one profession, because the right does not exist of giving to any one that which appertains to all. It would be consistent with right that the churches should be sold, and the money arising therefrom be invested as a fund for the education of children of poor parents of every profession, and, if more than sufficient for this purpose, that the surplus be appropriated to the support of the aged poor. After this every profession can erect its own place of worship, if it choose—support its own priests, if it choose to have any—or perform its worship without priests, as the Quakers do."
"It is a want of feeling to talk of priests and bells whilst so many infants are perishing in the hospitals, and aged and infirm poor in the streets. The abundance that France possesses is sufficient for every want, if rightly applied; but priests and bells, like articles of luxury, ought to be the least articles of consideration."
"No man ought to make a living by religion. It is dishonest to do so. Religion is not an act that can be performed by proxy. One person cannot act religion for another. Every person must perform it for himself; and all that a priest can do is to take from him; he wants nothing but his money, and then to riot in the spoil and laugh at his credulity. The only people who, as a professional sect of Christians, provide for the poor of their society, are people known by the name of Quakers. These men have no priests. They assemble quietly in their places of worship, and do not disturb their neighbors with shows and noise of bells. Religion does not unite itself to show and noise. True religion is without either.'
"One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests. If we look back at what was the condition of France under theancien régimewe cannot acquit the priests of corrupting the morals of the nation."
"Why has the Revolution of France been stained with crimes, while the Revolution of the United States of America was not? Men are physically the same in all countries; it is education that makes them different. Accustom a people to believe that priests, or any other class of men, can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance."
While Thomas Paine was thus founding; in Paris a religion of love to God expressed in love to man, his enemies in England were illustrating by characteristic fruits the dogmas based on a human sacrifice. The ascendency of the priesthood of one church over others, which he was resisting in France, was exemplified across the channel in the prosecution of his publisher, and the confiscation of a thousand pounds which had somehow fallen due to Paine.* The "Age of Reason," amply advertised by its opponents, had reached a vast circulation, and a prosecution of its publisher, Thomas Williams, for blasphemy, was instituted in the King's Bench. Williams being a poor man, the defence was sustained by a subscription.**