Thomas Paine
AGE OF REASON
TO MY FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
I PUT the following work under your protection. It contains my
opinions upon Religion. You will do me the justice to remember,
that I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man
to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to
mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of
himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the
right of changing it.
The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is
Reason. I have never used any other, and I trust I never shall.
Your affectionate friend and fellow-citizen,
THOMAS PAINE
Luxembourg, 8th Pluviose, Second Year of the French Republic, one and indivisible.
January 27, O. S. 1794.
AGE OF REASON.
PART FIRST.
IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my
thoughts upon religion. I am well aware of the difficulties that
attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it
to a more advanced period of life. I intended it to be the last
offering I should make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and
that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to
it, could not admit of a question, even by those who might
disapprove the work.
The circumstance that has now taken place in France of the total
abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of
everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and
compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my
intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly
necessary, lest in the general wreck of superstition, of false
systems of government, and false theology, we lose sight of
morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true.
As several of my colleagues and others of my fellow-citizens of
France have given me the example of making their voluntary and
individual profession of faith, I also will make mine; and I do
this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of
man communicates with itself.
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness
beyond this life.
I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious
duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to
make our fellow-creatures happy.
But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other
things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this
work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not
believing them.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by
the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by
the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own
mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian
or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up
to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe
otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to
mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be
mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in
believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to
believe what he does not believe.
It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so
express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man
has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as
to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not
believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every
other crime. He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of
gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins
with a perjury. Can we conceive any thing more destructive to
morality than this?
Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense, in America,
I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system
of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of
religion. The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever
it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so
effectually prohibited by pains and penalties, every discussion
upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion,
that until the system of government should be changed, those
subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world;
but that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system
of religion would follow. Human inventions and priestcraft would
be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed and
unadulterated belief of one God, and no more.
Every national church or religion has established itself by
pretending some special mission from God, communicated to certain
individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their
Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their
Mahomet, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
Each of those churches show certain books, which they call
revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say, that their word of
God was given by God to Moses, face to face; the Christians say,
that their word of God came by divine inspiration: and the Turks
say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel
from Heaven. Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief;
and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before
I proceed further into the subject, offer some other observations
on the word revelation. Revelation, when applied to religion,
means something communicated immediately from God to man.
No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make
such a communication, if he pleases. But admitting, for the sake
of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person,
and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that
person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a
third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a
revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first
person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they
are not obliged to believe it.
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a
revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in
writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first
communication- after this, it is only an account of something
which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though
he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent
on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a
revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it
was made to him.
When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two
tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not
obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for
it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it
than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no
internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good
moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a
legislator, could produce himself, without having recourse to
supernatural intervention.*
*It is, however, necessary to except the declaration which says
that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children; it is
contrary to every principle of moral justice.
When I am told that the Koran was written in Heaven and brought
to Mahomet by an angel, the account comes too near the same kind
of hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as the former. I
did not see the angel myself, and, therefore, I have a right not
to believe it.
When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary, said, or
gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a
man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel
told him so, I have a right to believe them or not; such a
circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare
word for it; but we have not even this- for neither Joseph nor
Mary wrote any such matter themselves; it is only reported by
others that they said so- it is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do
not choose to rest my belief upon such evidence.
It is, however, not difficult to account for the credit that was
given to the story of Jesus Christ being the son of God. He was
born when the heathen mythology had still some fashion and repute
in the world, and that mythology had prepared the ...
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