OUR VETERAN, THOMAS PAINE

Ronald J. Glossop

1st Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois, 11 November 2001

I. Introduction

A. Since today is Veterans' Day and since we are having this service in the religious setting of this church, it seems appropriate to focus attention on one of our own most neglected but heroic veterans, Thomas Paine.

B. Thomas Paine was not a Unitarian by name, though he was a friend of Unitarian minister Joseph Priestly as well as others sympathetic with Unitarianism such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. But Thomas Paine was a Unitarian in belief and in behavior and an even more worthy hero for us than Jefferson or Franklin.

II. Paine is a important for us primarily because of his writings.

A. His best known work in this country is his booklet Common Sense, published in January 1776 after the fighting against England had begun in Massachusetts but before there was general support for a war against the mother country. Paine's work apparently was the key factor in persuading the population of the British colonies in North America that they should seek their complete independence from England rather than merely trying to get rid of various particular offensive laws. His writings and ideas are undoubtedly an important factor in the Declaration of Independence, and he seems to have been the first person to use the expression "the United States of America."

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink for the service of his country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap we estimate too lightly; 'tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; & it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated."

C. In Europe his best-known work was the Rights of Man, published in 1791-92. It was one of the most influential writings for the French Revolution, though originally published in England by Paine in response to Edmund Burke's critical Reflections on the Revolution in France.

D. Though he addressed the issue of religion in essays and letters, many of which were published later, his most complete work on the subject was The Age of Reason. The first part of that book was written in 1794 in prison in France where, despite being a hero of the French revolution, he had been put by his previous supporters because of his plea on humanitarian grounds not to behead deposed King Louis XVI. This two-part work espoused a Deistic view of God and astutely attacked the Bible and the organized Church as well as all other "revelations" and organized religions. As a result, when he returned to the United States in 1802 (to quote the Encyclopedia Britannica) "He quickly discovered that his services to the country had been all but forgotten and that he was widely regarded only as the world's greatest infidel."

E. As a writer/editor for the Pennsylvania Magazine in the mid-1770's Paine also published many articles (including one condemning the slave trade and another on the rights of women) as well as a fair amount of poetry. We now have access also to some of his private correspondence, all of which is completely consistent with his public writings.

III. But Paine is a hero for us, a veteran in the truest sense, also because of what he did., often in the face of the greatest adversity. He lived his beliefs even when it was costly to him personally to do so. In fact, he was always in poverty because he was always more interested in promoting the public good than his own fortune. For example, he refused to make money from the extremely successful Common Sense, insisting rather that the price be kept low so that everyone could afford to buy a copy.

A. Paine was born in January 1737 in Thetford in the county of Norfolk in England of a Quaker father and an Anglican mother. At the age of 13 he began assisting his father in the making of corsets made with whalebone, but he also had a great interest in new scientific discoveries. [The Theological Works of Thomas Paine (1824) = TTWOTP, pp. 59-60] He joined the navy briefly and tried teaching school. Then he became an officer responsible for collecting excise taxes and catching smugglers, a job which he lost in 1772 when he tried to persuade the government that the only way to prevent the tax-collectors working under him from taking bribes was to pay them a decent salary.

B. At the age of 37 he had found no employment which satisfied him or sustained him. He had gone bankrupt in business twice. He also had had two brief failed marriages, the first ended by the death of his wife and the other by separation.

C. His life seemed to be going nowhere when he met Benjamin Franklin in London in 1774. Franklin persuaded him to go to America and even provided him with letters of introduction to help him get started. By the end of that year Paine had a regular job as assistant editor of the Pennsylvanian Magazine. Through Franklin he also became personally acquainted with those who would lead the colonies to their independence.

D. As the Revolutionary War got going, Paine served as a volunteer aide-de-camp to General Nathaniel Greene. In 1777 the Continental Congress appointed Paine to be secretary to the Committee for Foreign Affairs. He was forced to resign from that position after he indiscreetly quoted information from secret documents to support his allegation that Silas Deane, a member of the Continental Congress, was seeking to personally profit from French aid to the colonies.

E. In 1779 the General Assembly of Pennsylvania appointed him clerk of its General Assembly. Noting that American troops often weren't getting their pay on time, Paine used some of his own money to start a fund to help the soldiers, and managed to collect more money for that fund when he made a trip to France in an official capacity.

F. When the Revolutionary War ended, Paine was again without a job and money. George Washington supported his petition to Congress for financial assistance based on his contributions to the war effort, but it was defeated by Paine's opponents. Paine did receive some money from the state of Pennsylvania and a farm from the State of New York in New Rochelle, north of New York City. There Paine worked on inventions such as how to construct an iron bridge without piers and how to make a smokeless candle.

G. In 1787 Paine went back to England in order to see his aging father and perhaps also at the same time to get some financial support for his project of building an iron bridge across the Schuylkill River near Philadelphia. But he got side-tracked by writing about public issues such as why England needed to avoid war with France over Holland and then by the phenomenal success of his Rights of Man in response to Burke's book criticizing the French Revolution. He followed this up with other articles attacking monarchy and arguing for public expenditures for public education, public works for the unemployed, and pensions for the aged, all to be paid for by a progressive income tax. In response to his revolutionary ideas the government banned the sale of Rights of Man in England, jailed the publisher, and sought to arrest Paine for treason. Paine managed to escap to France where he had been elected to a seat on the revolutionary National Convention.

H. In France Paine was a great hero until he spoke out against the unrestrained violence directed against the French aristocracy His argument that the king should be banished rather than killed got him imprisoned for eleven months at the end of 1793.

I. It was in prison that Paine wrote the first part of the Age of Reason, stimulated in part by what he described as "the total abolition [in France] of the whole national order of priesthood, and of every thing appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles of faith." [ TTWOTP, p. 31] He says that in this situation a statement of his religious views is "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." After release from prison he wrote the second part of Age of Reason and other controversial articles such as a plea for more equal distribution in the ownership of agricultural land in France.

J At the age of 65 and not in good health, Paine returned in 1802 to his farm in New Rochelle, New York. By then he was known more as a religious infidel than as a main stimulator and champion of the American Revolution. He died there in 1809, aged 72.

IV. Paine's views on religion were greatly influenced by the Newtonian physics of that day. He believed in God as the great designer of the universe and considered the laws of nature being discovered by physicists such as Newton to be the will of God.

A. This view of the universe meant that miracles were impossible and that, as U.S. philosopher William James put it, God does a wholesale, not a retail business.

B. Consequently, the Christian view of the special character of Jesus and the Church was plainly mistaken, and these ideas about God intervening in the order of nature persisted only because people were not really free to question them. This same reasoning about how God works through the laws of nature also showed the untenability of the idea that the Jews (or any other group) were God's specially chosen people.

C. Paine studied the Bible carefully and critically, and concluded that much of it must be false. Consequently, he argued, it could not possibly be "theWord of God." He noted how the myths of the Bible were often similar to myths of the pagan religions of that time and noted many specific contradictions in Biblical accounts of the creation or the flood. He also studied the Koran, and reached the same conclusion about it. He viewed all organized religion as a fraud, readily discredited if real freedom of thought were allowed.

D. Paine believed that the early Christian Church "sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology." He says, for example, "The [ancient] mythologists had gods for everything; the Christian Mythologists had saints for everything; the church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other; and Rome was the place of both." [TTWOTP, p.54]

E. With regard to Jesus, Paine's view is similar to other Deists of that day. He says that Jesus "was a virtuous and an amiable man. The morality that he preached and practiced 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 [the morality of Jesus] has not been exceeded by any." [TTWOTP, p. 54]

F. With regard to the story of the resurrection of Jesus, Paine observes that if everyone is supposed to believe that this occurred, then the evidence presented should be the same to everyone. It is not appropriate to expect some to believe that such an extraordinary story is true simply because it has been reported to them by a very small group of others. Paine suggests that "doubting Thomas" took the correct skeptical position, namely, that he would not believe that such an event had taken place until the evidence was presented directly to himself. Paine says that he is with Thomas in being skeptical until the evidence is presented directly to him. [TTWOTP, p. 35]

G. There is no doubt that Paine believed in God, and even that God was all-powerful. At one point he says, "What more does man want to know than that the hand, or power, that made these things is divine, is omnipotent?" [TTWOTP, p. 49] Consider also the presupposition of this argument in a letter (more like a booklet) to a Mr. Erskine who opposed Paine by arguing that the Bible as the Word of God needs to be protected by law against detractors such as Paine. "If the Bible be the word of God," Paine argued, "it needs not the wretched aid of prosecutions to support it; and you might with as much propriety make a law to protect the sunshine, as to protect the Bible if the Bible, like the sun, be the work of God. We see that God takes good care of the Creation he has made. He suffers no part of it to be extinguished; and he will take the same care of his word, if he ever gave one." [TTWOTP, p. 133]

H. Here are the eloquent first two paragraphs by the editor (never identified by name anywhere in the book) of The Theological Works of Thomas Paine published in 1824 from which I have often been quoting:

"No writer probably has exposed the impositions practiced upon mankind under the garb of religion with more effect than Thomas Paine; and no one has borne a greater share of obloquy from those who conceive their interests to be connected with a continuance of the fraud. The pulpit and the press have teemed incessantly with the most virulent censures against him. But patient and persevering, temperate and firm, he suffered no error to escape him, and the exposure of the blunders and absurdities of his adversaries is the only revenge which he has condescended to take for the insolent abuse. His object was the happiness of man, and no calumny could divert him from his purpose. He conscientiously believed that human happiness depended on the belief in one God and the practice of moral virtue; and that all religious faith beyond that led to persecution and misery. History gives an awful confirmation of the justness of his opinion. Dr. Bellamy, author of "The History of All Religions," comes to this conclusion at last, that he was "well assured that true religion consists neither in doctrines, nor opinions, but in uprightness of heart."

Religion has been most shamefully perverted, for sinister purposes, and made to consist in the belief of something supernatural and incomprehensible; and these incomprehensible beliefs are made to vary in different countries as may suit those who tyrannize over the minds and consciences of men. Thus, in some countries, he who says, he believes that a certain man, in former times, was translated bodily to heaven, that another took a journey leisurely there in a fiery chariot, and that a third arrested the course of the sun to give him more daylight for human slaughter, is denominated a pious, good man. In other countries, a person to gain the same appellation, must believe that Mahomet, in one night, took a ride to heaven upon his horse Borack, had a long conversation with the angel Gabriel, visited all the planets, and got to bed with his wife before morning; and, upon another occasion, that he cut the moon in two parts, and carried the one half in his pocket to light his army. Whilst on the contrary the philosopher, who, wishing to instruct and render his fellow men happy, honestly declares that he puts no faith in such idle stories, is considered an impious, wicked man." [TTWOTP, p. iii]

"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 many other things inaddition to these, I shall in the progress of this work declare the thing I do not believe, and my reasons for not believeing 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 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." [TTWOTP, pp. 31-32]