Infidelity, And The French And American Revolutions In Their Relations To Thomas Paine.
Infidels can not free themselves from the bands which tie the universe to its God. Every effort has been fruitless. Not one writer among all their hosts has been lucky enough to avoid the use of Christian terms that are in direct antagonism with their speculation and positions. It will be interesting to review, occasionally, their literature.
Speaking of Thomas Paine, Mr. Ingersoll says: “Every American with the divine mantle of charity, should cover all his faults.” What use has Col. Ingersoll or any other infidel for the word divine? The term is thus defined: Pertaining to the true God; (from the Latin divinus; from deus, a god) proceeding from God; appropriated to God; or celebrating His praise; excellent in the supreme degree; apparently above what is human; godlike; heavenly; holy; sacred; spiritual. As a noun: one versed in divine things or divinity; a theologian; a minister of the gospel; a priest; a clergyman. Zell's Encyclopedia.
Again, Mr. Ingersoll says, “Upon the head of his father, God had never poured the divine petroleum of authority.” So much the better for the race. What would infidels do if they had the authority? “Hume is called a model man, a man as nearly perfect as the nature of human frailty will permit.” He maintained that pleasure or profit is the test of morals; that “the lack of honesty is of a piece with the lack of strength of body;” that “suicide is lawful and commendable;” that “female infidelity, when known, is a small thing; when unknown, nothing;” “that adultery must be practiced if men would obtain all the advantages of this life; and that if generally practiced it would, in time, cease to be scandalous, and if practiced frequently and secretly would come to be thought no crime at all.”
Lord Herbert taught that the “indulgence of lust and anger is no more to be blamed than thirst or drowsiness.”
Voltaire contended “for the unlimited gratification of the sexual appetites, and was a sensualist of the lowest type; nevertheless he had the amazing good sense to wish that he had never been born.”
Rousseau was, by his confession, a habitual liar and thief, and debauchee; a man so utterly vile that he took advantage of the hospitality of friends to plot their domestic ruin; a man so destitute of natural affection that he committed his base-born children to the charity of the public. To use his own language, “guilty without remorse, he soon become so without measure.”
Thomas Paine was, according to the verdict of history, “addicted to intemperance in his last years, given to violence and abusiveness, had disreputable associates, lived with a woman who was not his wife, and left to her whatever remnant of fortune he had.”
What would such godless infidels give us if the Almighty God should “pour the petroleum of authority upon their heads?” But, in all candor, what use has Col. Ingersoll for the idea of authority coming from God? Can't he keep in his own ruts. “The divine petroleum of authority was never poured upon the head of Thomas Paine's father.” Well, so much the better for the reputation of God. But why does Mr. Ingersoll use the term God, and have so much to say of Him? Let us hear him. He says, whoever is a friend of man is also a friend of God—if there is one. Yes! “is there is one.” This reminds me of an old infidel who was struggling with the cramp colic, and just as a minister was approaching his bedside he turned himself over in the bed and said, O Lord, if there is any Lord, save my soul, if I've got any soul. The minister walked out. What is the condition of those minds which modify their declarations with the saying “if there is any Lord,” “if there is one,” “if I've got any soul.” How much more manly is it to own the great universal and instinctive [pg 180] or inate truth, that there is a Master, God, or great first Living Intelligence, and cease acting foolishly.
Once more, the colonel, speaking of Thomas Paine's work, says, “He was with the army. He shared its defeats, its dangers, and its glory. When the situation became desperate, when gloom settled upon all, he gave them the ‘Crisis.’ It was a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, leading the way to freedom, honor and glory.” What use has the colonel for such language? From whence did it come? Is he sitting upon the bones of Moses and making grimaces at the old prophet while he is adopting his sentences? Infidels blaspheme the name of Moses, and abuse his hyperboles and his facts as well, and, at the same time, go to his quiver to get their very best arrows.
“At the close of the Revolution no one stood higher in America than Thomas Paine.”—Ingersoll.
“At that time the seeds sown by the great infidels were beginning to bear fruit in France.”—Ingersoll.
Well, well. To what “mount” have we come at last? Paine sailed to France in 1787. “He was elected to represent the Department of Calais in the National Convention, and took his seat in that radical assembly in 1792.” At this time Col. Ingersoll's church had everything its own way in France. There was no God to respect or devil to fear. “Free thought” ruled—its reign was a reign of night. The goddess of reason was the “twin sister of the Spanish Inquisition.” The soldiers were in power, and great hearts were made to bleed. Three hundred and sixty-six men in the National Convention voted for the death of the king. Three hundred and fifty-five voted against his execution. It is true that Tom Paine was one of the three hundred and fifty-five. A year after the king's execution Tom was put into prison, and remained there nearly two years. When he was released he wrote the second part of the Age of Reason, and in 1802 he came back to America. What he did for American liberty was done while he was a Quaker, and before he wrote his detestable works against the Bible. Let some bold infidel produce just one noble public [pg 181] act that Paine did for our country after he avowed himself an infidel. Will it be done?
The leaders of the French revolution were the disciples of Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot. They were atheists, or infidels. Tom Paine was one of their number, participated in their deliberations, helped to get up the constitution they enacted. What they did is what the infidels of the United States wish to have done. They wiped out Christianity by vote, and forbade the utterance of the name of God to their children. They abolished the Lord's day, and made the week to consist of ten instead of seven days. They took the bells from the churches and cast them into cannons. Chaumette, a leader in the convention, came before the president “leading a courtesan with a troop of her associates.” He lifted her veil, and said, “Mortals! recognize no other divinity than Reason, of which I present to you the loveliest and purest personification.” The president bowed and rendered devout adoration. The same scene was reënacted in the cathedral of Notre Dame, with increased outrages upon God and common-sense. Wrong was reputed right, and the distinction between vice and virtue was banished.
From this time, and onward, the test of attachment to the government was contempt for religion and decency. Those suspected of disloyalty were gathered; one thousand and five hundred women and children were shut up in one prison, without fire, bed, cover, or provisions, for two days. Men escaped by giving up their fortunes, and women escaped by parting with their virtue.
Seventeen thousand perished in Paris during this reign of infidel terror. This ungodly abrogation of religion in France cost the nation three million of lives—think of it! France's most dark and damning record was the fruit of the tenets of the men that Col. Ingersoll lauds to the heavens. They were the fruits of the labors of the men with whom Tom Paine sat, and believed, and voted. “His faith was their faith.”
“It was the Quaker Paine who worked for our independence, and not the infidel Paine. He did nothing in the interests [pg 182] of our national liberty after he avowed his irreligious principles.” Neither was he the first to raise the voice in favor of national liberty. Ten years before he wrote his work entitled “Common Sense,” at the suggestion of Franklin and Dr. Benjamin Rush, which was in 1776, Patrick Henry's voice was heard amid the assembled colonists in Virginia. He said: “Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III.—” Just then some one cried out, “Treason!” After a pause, Henry added,—“may profit by their example.” Years before Tom Paine came to America, even in 1748, it went to record that American legislatures were tending to independence. “They were charged with presumption in declaring their own rights and privileges.” Our independence was predicted near at hand from 1758 and onwards. In 1774, before Paine came from England, the word freedom was ringing out upon the air. “James Otis was hailing the dawn of a new empire” in 1765. In this year there were utterances of such sentiments as tended to evolve the declaration of 1776, and these were heard all over the land from Boston to Charleston, S. C. In 1773 “Samuel Adams insisted that the colonies should have a congress to frame a bill of rights, or to form an independent state, an American commonwealth.” The North Carolinians renounced their allegiance to the king of England in the Mecklenberg declaration, which was made in May, 1775. But Paine's little book, suggested by Dr. Benjamin Rush and Franklin, and called “Common Sense,” was published in 1776. Hildreth, writing of the year 1802, says that “Paine, instead of being esteemed as formerly, as a lover of liberty, whose pen has contributed to hasten the Declaration of Independence, was now detested by large numbers as the libeler of Washington.” In 1795 the Aurora put out the following language, which seems to be that to which Hildreth alludes: “If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation was debauched by Washington; if ever a nation was deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington. Let the history of the federal government instruct mankind, that the mask of patriotism may be worn to [pg 183] conceal the foulest designs against the liberties of the people.” This, gentle reader, was from the pen of the man whom Mr. Ingersoll would immortalize if he could.
William Carver addressed a private letter to Thomas Paine, dated Dec. 2, 1806, and published in the New York Observer Nov. 1, 1877, in which we have the following revelations: “A respectable gentleman from New Rochelle called to see me a few days back, and said that every body was tired of you there and that no one would undertake to board and lodge you. I thought this was the case, as I found you at a tavern in a most miserable situation. You appeared as if you had not been shaved for a fortnight, and as to a shirt, it could not be said that you had one on, it was only the remains of one, and this likewise appeared not to have been off your back for a fortnight, and was nearly the color of tanned leather; and you had the most disagreeable smell possible, just like that of our poor beggars in England. Do you remember the pains I took to clean you? That I got a tub of warm water and soap, and washed you from head to foot, and this I had to do three times before I could get you clean? You say also that you found your own liquors during the time you boarded with me, but you should have said, ‘I found only a small part of the liquor I drank during my stay with you; this part I purchased of John Fellows, which was a demijohn of brandy containing four gallons, and this did not serve me three weeks.’ This can be proved, and I mean not to say anything I can not prove, for I hold this as a precious jewel. It is a well-known fact that you drank one quart of brandy per day, at my expense, during the different times that you have boarded with me, the demijohn alone mentioned excepted, and the last fourteen weeks you were sick. Is not this a supply of liquor for dinner and supper? Now sir, I think I have drawn a complete portrait of your character, yet, to enter upon every minutia, would be to give a history of your life, and to develop the fallacious mask of hypocrisy and deception under which you have acted in your political, as well as moral, capacity of life.” So much for the apostate Quaker's character after the close of the American revolution.
Mr. Lecky, an infidel, says, “It was reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive of practice: amid all the sins and failing; amid all the priestcraft, the persecution and fanaticism which have defaced the church, it has preserved in the character of its founder an enduring principle of regeneration.” If such be the fountain let the stream continue to flow.
Shall We Unchain The Tiger? Or, The Fruits Of Infidelity.
By Eld. A. I. Maynard.
An infidel production was submitted to Benjamin Franklin manuscript; he returned it to the author with a letter, from which the following quotations are extracted: “I would advise you not to attempt unchaining the Tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person.... If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it?” He informs us that he was “an advocate of infidelity in his early youth, a confirmed Deist.” He says his “arguments perverted some other young persons, particularly Collins and Ralph, and when he recollected that they both treated him exceedingly ill without the least remorse, and also remembered the behavior of Keith, another ‘Freethinker,’ and his own conduct toward Vernon and a Miss Reed, which at times gave him great uneasiness, he was led to suspect that his theory, if true, was not very useful.”
Youth and inexperience have been the secret of many young persons being led astray, like Franklin, by infidel speculations; but age and observation have convinced many of them that all infidel speculations are empty and worthless. [pg 185] Look at the history of infidelity in France and Scotland, and then look at liberalism in America, with Col. Ingersoll leading the van. Can't you see that its only tendency is to loosen the restraints of morality and “unchain the Tiger?”
The inconsiderate and inexperienced youth of both sexes, have need of all the motives of religion to lead them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in its practice until it becomes habitual.
Unbeliever, if you read this article, and remember that you have prepared one sentence to cut one cord that helps to hold the Tiger, burn it. Do not unchain the animal. Would you substitute infidelity for Christianity, for the religion of the Bible? Would you do that in this country? The enemies of this religion confess that its code of morals is holy, just and good, its doctrine is dignified and glorious; its tendency is to purity and peace; “it is pure, peaceable, gentle and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits; without partiality, and without hypocrisy.” Montesquieu, the publisher of the Persian letters and president of the parliament of Bordeaux, says: “The Christian religion, which ordains that men should love each other, would, without doubt, have every nation blessed with the best political and civil laws, because these, next to religion, are the greatest good that men can have.”
The Congress of 1776, speaking of religion, declared it was the “only solid basis of public liberty and happiness.” General Washington said it was “one of the great pillars of human happiness, and the firmest prop of the duties of men and citizens.” What could we gain by exchanging it for Deism, or Atheism, or Ingersollism? Infidelity proposes to break down the altars of prayer, take away our Bibles and our days of worship, shut up the doors against all our Sunday-schools and turn more than a million of children into the streets, away from sweet song and moralizing influences, and the pure morals of the gospel of Christ. This would bereave the living of his rule of life, and rob the dying of the antidote of death.
Shall we “unchain the Tiger”—unbelief? What would it bring us in return? Its doctrines are vague speculations, founded on neither data nor evidence; some of its supporters believe in some kind of a God, while some deny every God; some few believe in the immortality of the soul, while a majority, with the French infidels, write over the gates of their cemeteries, “Death is eternal sleep.”
In looking over the various infidel productions I think of the old saying, “Be sure you are right, and then go ahead.” There is no certainty in their speculations. They do not agree even in their so-called moral code, nor, as yet, in their doctrinal speculations.
Lord Herbert and the Earl of Shaftesbury thought that the light of nature would teach all men, without the aid of revelation, to observe the morality of the Bible. Spinosa and Hobbes, one believing in a God, and the other an Atheist, agreed that there was nothing that was either right or wrong in its own nature; and also agreed “that every man had a right to obtain, either by force or fraud, everything which either his reason or his passions prompted him to believe was useful to himself—duties to the State were his only duties.”
Blount, another Freethinker, supposed “that the moral law of nature justified self-murder.” Lord Bolingbroke claimed that it enjoined polygamy; and neither Blount nor Bolingbroke prohibited fornication, or adultery, or incest, except between parents and children.
But the vagueness and uncertainty of the doctrinal speculations of infidelity, and the looseness and immorality of its rules of life, are not the only objections to it. Its tendency, wherever it has been introduced in the history of our world, has been evil, and only evil. France, at the commencement of her revolution in 1789, was an infidel nation. The profligacy of the Catholic priesthood, and the demoralizing example of the Regent, Duke of Orleans, and the infidel publications of Voltaire and his associates, had produced a contempt for religion through every rank of society. The people of France were taught by their literati that the Bible was at war with [pg 187] their liberties; and that they could never expect to overturn the throne till they had, first, broken down the “altar.” here the tiger was unchained!
The lusts and passions of man were set free from the restraints of Christianity, and the bloody history of that nation, in its devotion to infidelity, should convince every man that infidelity only “unchained the tiger”! It did France no good, but much evil. In this state of things France needed revolution, as America did, and had she engaged in it, with as pious reliance upon God, “and with the hearts of her people deeply imbued with the morality of the Bible, the scion of liberty, carried in the honored Lafayette from this country,” would have taken deep root, and spread forth its branches; and ere this time the fairest portion of Europe might have reposed under its shadow. But her principles poisoned her morals, and her immorality disqualified her for freedom. After expending an incredible amount of treasure, and sacrificing more than two million of men, she consented to be ruled by a despot in hope of some protection from her own people, and in hope of some security against the animal which she had unchained.
With such facts before us, let us Americans decide, not merely as Christians, but as “patriots and fathers,” whether we will cling to the pure “Gospel of Jesus Christ,” given to us in the love of Heaven, and in the blood of Jesus, rather than accept in its stead the empty, Godless, Christless, good-for-nothing negative of God and Christ and Christianity. The chief article in the unbeliever's creed is in these words, “I believe in all unbelief.”
Will not our friends take interest enough in the Journal to increase its circulation. There is no reason why it should not be immediately doubled, and thus placed upon a solid basis. It is our intention to make it a thorough defense of the truth, so much so that all will relish it, and remember it with delight.