"The Age of Reason" by Thomas Paine

http://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/intro.htm

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.

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.

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 people for the belief of such a story. Almost all the extraordinary
men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some
of their gods. It was not a new thing, at that time, to believe a man to have
been celestially begotten; the intercourse of gods with women was then a matter
of familiar opinion. Their Jupiter, according to their accounts, had cohabited
with hundreds: the story, therefore, had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or
obscene; it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people
called Gentiles, or Mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it.
The Jews who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who
had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story.

It is curious to observe how the theory of what is called the Christian church
sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. A direct incorporation took
place in the first instance, by making the reputed founder to be celestially
begotten. The trinity of gods that then followed was no other than a reduction
of the former plurality, which was about twenty or thirty thousand: the statue
of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus; the deification of heroes
changed into the canonization of saints; the Mythologists had gods for
everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything; the church
became as crowded with one, as the Pantheon had been with the other, and Rome
was the place of both. The Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of
the ancient Mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue; and
it yet remains to reason and philosophy to abolish the amphibious fraud.

Nothing that is here said can apply, even with the most distant disrespect, to
the real character of Jesus Christ. He was a virtuous and an amiable man. The
morality that he preached and practised was of the most benevolent kind; and
though similar systems of morality had been preached by Confucius, and by some
of the Greek philosophers, many years before; by the Quakers since; and by many
good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.

Jesus Christ wrote no account of himself, of his birth, parentage, or any thing
else; not a line of what is called the New Testament is of his own writing. The
history of him is altogether the work of other people; and as to the account
given of his resurrection and ascension, it was the necessary counterpart to the
story of his birth. His historians having brought him into the world in a
supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or
the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.

The wretched contrivance with which this latter part is told exceeds every thing
that went before it. The first part, that of the miraculous conception, was not
a thing that admitted of publicity; and therefore the tellers of this part of
the story had this advantage, that though they might not be credited, they could
not be detected. They could not be expected to prove it, because it was not one
of those things that admitted of proof, and it was impossible that the person of
whom it was told could prove it himself.

But the resurrection of a dead person from the grave, and his ascension through
the air, is a thing very different as to the evidence it admits of, to the
invisible conception of a child in the womb. The resurrection and ascension,
supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration,
like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon-day, to all
Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires
that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as
the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could
give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because
that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not
more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say
they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it
appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection, and, as they say, would
not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither
will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as
for Thomas.

It is in vain to attempt to palliate or disguise this matter. The story, so far
as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud and imposition
stamped upon the face of it. Who were the authors of it is as impossible for us
now to know, as it is for us to be assured that the books in which the account
is related were written by the persons whose names they bear; the best surviving
evidence we now have respecting that affair is the Jews. They are regularly
descended from the people who lived in the times this resurrection and ascension
is said to have happened, and they say, it is not true. It has long appeared to
me a strange inconsistency to cite the Jews as a proof of the truth of the
story. It is just the same as if a man were to say, I will prove the truth of
what I have told you by producing the people who say it is false.

That such a person as Jesus Christ existed, and that he was crucified, which was
the mode of execution at that day, are historical relations strictly within the
limits of probability. He preached most excellent morality and the equality of
man; but he preached also against the corruptions and avarice of the Jewish
priests, and this brought upon him the hatred and vengeance of the whole order
of priesthood. The accusation which those priests brought against him was that
of sedition and conspiracy against the Roman government, to which the Jews were
then subject and tributary; and it is not improbable that the Roman government
might have some secret apprehensions of the effects of his doctrine, as well as
the Jewish priests; neither is it improbable that Jesus Christ had in
contemplation the delivery of the Jewish nation from the bondage of the Romans.
Between the two, however, this virtuous reformer and revolutionist lost his
life.

It is upon this plain narrative of facts, together with another case I am going
to mention, that the Christian Mythologists, calling themselves the Christian
Church, have erected their fable, which, for absurdity and extravagance, is not
exceeded by anything that is to be found in the mythology of the ancients.

The ancient Mythologists tell us that the race of Giants made war against
Jupiter, and that one of them threw a hundred rocks against him at one throw;
that Jupiter defeated him with thunder, and confined him afterward under Mount
Etna, and that every time the Giant turns himself Mount Etna belches fire.

It is here easy to see that the circumstance of the mountain, that of its being
a volcano, suggested the idea of the fable; and that the fable is made to fit
and wind itself up with that circumstance.

The Christian Mythologists tell us that their Satan made war against the
Almighty, who defeated him, and confined him afterward, not under a mountain,
but in a pit. It is here easy to see that the first fable suggested the idea of
the second; for the fable of Jupiter and the Giants was told many hundred years
before that of Satan.

Thus far the ancient and the Christian Mythologists differ very little from each
other. But the latter have contrived to carry the matter much farther. They have
contrived to connect the fabulous part of the story of Jesus Christ with the
fable originating from Mount Etna; and in order to make all the parts of the
story tie together, they have taken to their aid the traditions of the Jews; for
the Christian mythology is made up partly from the ancient mythology and partly
from the Jewish traditions.

The Christian Mythologists, after having confined Satan in a pit, were obliged
to let him out again to bring on the sequel of the fable. He is then introduced
into the Garden of Eden, in the shape of a snake or a serpent, and in that shape
he enters into familiar conversation with Eve, who is no way surprised to hear a
snake talk; and the issue of this tete-a-tete is that he persuades her to eat an
apple, and the eating of that apple damns all mankind.

After giving Satan this triumph over the whole creation, one would have supposed
that the Church Mythologists would have been kind enough to send him back again
to the pit; or, if they had not done this, that they would have put a mountain
upon him (for they say that their faith can remove a mountain), or have put him
under a mountain, as the former mythologists had done, to prevent his getting
again among the women and doing more mischief. But instead of this they leave
him at large, without even obliging him to give his parole- the secret of which
is, that they could not do without him; and after being at the trouble of making
him, they bribed him to stay. They promised him ALL the Jews, ALL the Turks by
anticipation, nine-tenths of the world beside, and Mahomet into the bargain.
After this, who can doubt the bountifulness of the Christian Mythology?

Having thus made an insurrection and a battle in Heaven, in which none of the
combatants could be either killed or wounded ? put Satan into the pit ? let him
out again ? giving him a triumph over the whole creation ? damned all mankind by
the eating of an apple, these Christian Mythologists bring the two ends of their
fable together. They represent this virtuous and amiable man, Jesus Christ, to
be at once both God and Man, and also the Son of God, celestially begotten, on
purpose to be sacrificed, because they say that Eve in her longing had eaten an
apple.

Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity, or
detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an examination
of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more derogatory to the
Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his power,
than this story is.

In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were under the
necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan, a power equally as great,
if not greater than they attribute to the Almighty. They have not only given him
the power of liberating himself from the pit, after what they call his fall, but
they have made that power increase afterward to infinity. Before this fall they
represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they represent the rest.
After his fall, he becomes, by their account, omnipresent. He exists everywhere,
and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of space.

Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as defeating, by
stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation, all the power and wisdom
of the Almighty. They represent him as having compelled the Almighty to the
direct necessity either of surrendering the whole of the creation to the
government and sovereignty of this Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption
by coming down upon earth, and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the shape of a
man.

Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is, had they
represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit himself on a cross, in
the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his new transgression, the story would
have been less absurd ? less contradictory. But instead of this, they make the
transgressor triumph, and the Almighty fall.

That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very good lives
under that belief (for credulity is not a crime), is what I have no doubt of. In
the first place, they were educated to believe it, and they would have believed
anything else in the same manner. There are also many who have been so
enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of
God to man, in making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has
forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness of
the story. The more unnatural anything is, the more it is capable of becoming
the object of dismal admiration.

But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they not present
themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair creation prepared to
receive us the instant we are born ? a world furnished to our hands, that cost
us nothing? Is it we that light up the sun, that pour down the rain, and fill
the earth with abundance? Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the
universe still goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in
future, nothing to us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other subjects
than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man become so intolerable,
that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of the Creator?

I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be paying too
great a compliment to their credulity to forbear it on their account; the times
and the subject demand it to be done. The suspicion that the theory of what is
called the Christian Church is fabulous is becoming very extensive in all
countries; and it will be a consolation to men staggering under that suspicion,
and doubting what to believe and what to disbelieve, to see the object freely
investigated. I therefore pass on to an examination of the books called the Old
and New Testament.

These books, beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation (which, by the
by, is a book of riddles that requires a revelation to explain it), are, we are
told, the word of God. It is, therefore, proper for us to know who told us so,
that we may know what credit to give to the report. The answer to this question
is, that nobody can tell, except that we tell one another so. The case, however,
historically appears to be as follows:

When the Church Mythologists established their system, they collected all the
writings they could find, and managed them as they pleased. It is a matter
altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear under
the name of the Old and New Testament are in the same state in which those
collectors say they found them, or whether they added, altered, abridged, or
dressed them up.

Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the collection
they had made should be the WORD OF GOD, and which should not. They rejected
several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as the books called the
Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of votes, were voted to be the
word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all the people, since calling themselves
Christians, had believed otherwise ? for the belief of the one comes from the
vote of the other. Who the people were that did all this, we know nothing of;
they called themselves by the general name of the Church, and this is all we
know of the matter.

As we have no other external evidence or authority for believing these books to
be the word of God than what I have mentioned, which is no evidence or authority
at all, I come, in the next place, to examine the internal evidence contained in
the books themselves.

In the former part of this Essay, I have spoken of revelation; I now proceed
further with that subject, for the purpose of applying it to the books in
question.

Revelation is a communication of something which the person to whom that thing
is revealed did not know before. For if I have done a thing, or seen it done, it
needs no revelation to tell me I have done it, or seen it, nor to enable me to
tell it, or to write it.

Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to anything done upon earth, of which
man himself is the actor or the witness; and consequently all the historical and
anecdotal parts of the Bible, which is almost the whole of it, is not within the
meaning and compass of the word revelation, and, therefore, is not the word of
God.

When Samson ran off with the gate-posts of Gaza, if he ever did so (and whether
he did or not is nothing to us), or when he visited his Delilah, or caught his
foxes, or did any thing else, what has revelation to do with these things? If
they were facts, he could tell them himself, or his secretary, if he kept one,
could write them, if they were worth either telling or writing; and if they were
fictions, revelation could not make them true; and whether true or not, we are
neither the better nor the wiser for knowing them. When we contemplate the
immensity of that Being who directs and governs the incomprehensible WHOLE, of
which the utmost ken of human sight can discover but a part, we ought to feel
shame at calling such paltry stories the word of God.

As to the account of the Creation, with which the Book of Genesis opens, it has
all the appearance of being a tradition which the Israelites had among them
before they came into Egypt; and after their departure from that country they
put it at the head of their history, without telling (as it is most probable)
that they did not know how they came by it. The manner in which the account
opens shows it to be traditionary. It begins abruptly; it is nobody that speaks;
it is nobody that hears; it is addressed to nobody; it has neither first,
second, nor third person; it has every criterion of being a tradition; it has no
voucher. Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing it with the
formality that he uses on other occasions, such as that of saying, "The Lord
spake unto Moses, saying."

Why it has been called the Mosaic account of the Creation, I am at a loss to
conceive. Moses, I believe, was too good a judge of such subjects to put his
name to that account. He had been educated among The Egyptians, who were a
people as well skilled in science, and particularly in astronomy, as any people
of their day; and the silence and caution that Moses observes in not
authenticating the account, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it
nor believed it The case is, that every nation of people has been world-makers,
and the Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as any
of the rest; and as Moses was not an Israelite, he might not choose to
contradict the tradition. The account, however, is harmless; and this is more
than can be said of many other parts of the Bible.

Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and
torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half
the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a
demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to
corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I
detest everything that is cruel.

We scarcely meet with anything, a few phrases excepted, but what deserves either
our abhorrence or our contempt, till we come to the miscellaneous parts of the
Bible. In the anonymous publications, the Psalms, and the Book of Job, more
particularly in the latter, we find a great deal of elevated sentiment
reverentially expressed of the power and benignity of the Almighty; but they
stand on no higher rank than many other compositions on similar subjects, as
well before that time as since.

The Proverbs which are said to be Solomon's, though most probably a collection
(because they discover a knowledge of life which his situation excluded him from
knowing), are an instructive table of ethics. They are inferior in keenness to
the proverbs of the Spaniards, and not more wise and economical than those of
the American Franklin.

All the remaining parts of the Bible, generally known by the name of the
Prophets, are the works of the Jewish poets and itinerant preachers, who mixed
poetry, [NOTE] anecdote, and devotion together ? and those works still retain
the air and style of poetry, though in translation.

Poetry consists principally in two things ? imagery and composition. The
composition of poetry differs from that of prose in the manner of mixing long
and short syllables together. Take a long syllable out of a line of poetry, and
put a short one in the room of it, or put a long syllable where a short one
should be, and that line will lose its poetical harmony. It will have an effect
upon the line like that of misplacing a note in a song. The imagery in these
books, called the Prophets, appertains altogether to poetry. It is fictitious,
and often extravagant, and not admissible in any other kind of writing than
poetry. To show that these writings are composed in poetical numbers, I will
take ten syllables, as they stand in the book, and make a line of the same
number of syllables, (heroic measure) that shall rhyme with the last word. It
will then be seen that the composition of these books is poetical measure. The
instance I shall produce is from Isaiah:

"Hear, O ye heavens, and give ear, O earth!" 'Tis God himself that calls
attention forth.

Another instance I shall quote is from the mournful Jeremiah, to which I shall
add two other lines, for the purpose of carrying out the figure, and showing the
intention of the poet:

"O! that mine head were waters and mine eyes" Were fountains flowing like the
liquid skies; Then would I give the mighty flood release, And weep a deluge for
the human race.

There is not, throughout the whole book called the Bible, any word that
describes to us what we call a poet, nor any word that describes what we call
poetry. The case is, that the word prophet, to which latter times have affixed a
new idea, was the Bible word for poet, and the word prophesying meant the art of
making poetry. It also meant the art of playing poetry to a tune upon any
instrument of music.

We read of prophesying with pipes, tabrets, and horns ? of prophesying with
harps, with psalteries, with cymbals, and with every other instrument of music
then in fashion. Were we now to speak of prophesying with a fiddle, or with a
pipe and tabor, the expression would have no meaning or would appear ridiculous,
and to some people contemptuous, because we have changed the meaning of the
word.

We are told of Saul being among the prophets, and also that he prophesied; but
we are not told what they prophesied, nor what he prophesied. The case is, there
was nothing to tell; for these prophets were a company of musicians and poets,
and Saul joined in the concert, and this was called prophesying.

The account given of this affair in the book called Samuel is, that Saul met a
company of prophets; a whole company of them! coming down with a psaltery, a
tabret, a pipe and a harp, and that they prophesied, and that he prophesied with
them. But it appears afterward, that Saul prophesied badly; that is, he
performed his part badly; for it is said, that an "evil spirit from God" [NOTE]
came upon Saul, and he prophesied.

Now, were there no other passage in the book called the Bible than this, to
demonstrate to us that we have lost the original meaning of the word prophesy,
and substituted another meaning in its place, this alone would be sufficient;
for it is impossible to use and apply the word prophesy, in the place it is here
used and applied, if we give to it the sense which latter times have affixed to
it. The manner in which it is here used strips it of all religious meaning, and
shows that a man might then be a prophet, or he might prophesy, as he may now be
a poet or a musician, without any regard to the morality or immorality of his
character. The word was originally a term of science, promiscuously applied to
poetry and to music, and not restricted to any subject upon which poetry and
music might be exercised.

Deborah and Barak are called prophets, not because they predicted anything, but
because they composed the poem or song that bears their name, in celebration of
an act already done. David is ranked among the prophets, for he was a musician,
and was also reputed to be (though perhaps very erroneously) the author of the
Psalms. But Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not called prophets; it does not
appear from any accounts we have that they could either sing, play music, or
make poetry.

We are told of the greater and the lesser prophets. They might as well tell us
of the greater and the lesser God; for there cannot be degrees in prophesying
consistently with its modern sense. But there are degrees in poetry, and
therefore the phrase is reconcilable to the case, when we understand by it the
greater and the lesser poets.

It is altogether unnecessary, after this, to offer any observations upon what
those men, styled prophets, have written. The axe goes at once to the root, by
showing that the original meaning of the word has been mistaken and consequently
all the inferences that have been drawn from those books, the devotional respect
that has been paid to them, and the labored commentaries that have been written
upon them, under that mistaken meaning, are not worth disputing about. In many
things, however, the writings of the Jewish poets deserve a better fate than
that of being bound up, as they now are with the trash that accompanies them,
under the abused name of the word of God.

If we permit ourselves to conceive right ideas of things, we must necessarily
affix the idea, not only of unchangeableness, but of the utter impossibility of
any change taking place, by any means or accident whatever, in that which we
would honor with the name of the word of God; and therefore the word of God
cannot exist in any written or human language.

Alan

http://lordcerneabbastoo.blogspot.com/2006/01/age-of-reason-by-thomas-paine.html
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