Of the term Christian there is no positive ground for a parallel, because it is one of no definite meaning. We call ourselves, as a nation, Christians; yet we are divided into a hundred forms of religion, and many of them in the articles of faith contradictory and antagonistic. Yet, in the fundamental principles of morality, we are, in common with all civilized races, agreed. The Christian religion happens to belong to the highest civilization, and we frequently use the term as synonymous with the morality of this civilization. But when we come to define strictly according to the theological import of the word, there are many of us who are not Christians. In the former sense, Mr. Paine and Junius were Christians; in the latter sense, they were not. And now for the proof. Junius says, in Letter 15, to the Duke of Grafton: "It is not, indeed, the least of the thousand contradictions which attend you, that a man marked to the world by the grossest violation of ceremony and decorum, should be the first servant of a court in which prayers are morality, and kneeling is religion." For this, and his attacks on the priesthood, and his frequently putting piety in antithesis to morality, he was at last accused of being an impious and irreligious man. He now puts Philo Junius forward to explain his religious views, who says, in Letter 54: "These candid critics never remember any thing he says in honor of our holy religion, though it is true that one of his leading arguments is made to rest 'upon the internal evidence which the purest of all religions carries with it.' I quote his words, and conclude from them that he is a true and hearty Christian—in substance, not in ceremony—though possibly he may not agree with my reverend lords the bishops, or with the head of the Church, 'that prayers are morality, or that kneeling is religion.'"
That is, Junius was a Christian who, upon moral principles, did not say his prayers, and who thought that forms were no part of religion. In other words, if the highest morality was Christianity, he claimed to be a Christian, and would not stoop "to reconcile the sanctimonious forms of religion with the utter destruction of morality."
This, too, was Mr. Paine's Christianity. In a national and moral sense he uses the term with approbation, but when in a theological sense he disowns it. He says, in Crisis, ii: "This ingratitude may suit a tory, or the unchristian peevishness of a fallen Quaker, but none else." In Crisis, i, he says: "I wish, with all the devotion of a Christian, that the names of whig and tory may never more be mentioned." To the Quakers he says: "Call not coldness of soul religion, nor put the bigot in the place of the Christian." In Common Sense he says: "For myself, I fully and conscientiously believe that it is the will of the Almighty that there should be a diversity of religious opinions among us. It affords a larger field for our Christian kindness." And again: "This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe.... In this extensive quarter of the globe, we forget the narrow limits of three hundred and sixty miles (the extent of England), and carry our friendship on a larger scale; we claim brotherhood with every European Christian, and triumph in the generosity of the sentiment."
The above are a few of the many passages in which he indorses Christianity. But Christian here means only its moral phase or principles, and these principles exalted by the feeling of universal brotherhood. But in a theological sense he uses the term very differently, and by keeping this fact in view, he is readily understood, and there is only the contradiction which the use of the word by common consent carries with it. In the Age of Reason, Conclusion, he says: "Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity."
They both had the same views of Jesus. Mr. Paine says in the Age of Reason, part i: "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 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, and by the Quakers since, and by many good men in all ages, it has not been exceeded by any.... 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 the priesthood." And between the Romans and the Jews "this virtuous reformer and revolutionist lost his life."
Junius, near the close of his last letter but one, boldly affirms Jesus a man. He says: "The holy author of our religion was seen in the company of sinners, but it was his gracious purpose to convert them from their sins. Another man [the king], who, in the ceremonies of our faith, might give lessons to the great enemy of it [the devil] upon different principles, keeps much the same company."
Neither Mr. Paine nor Junius were superstitious. And first of Paine. In Crisis, i, he says: "I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up, to military destruction, a people," etc.
Junius says, in Letter 36, note: "Every coward pretends to be planet-struck." And in Letter 49, satirizing Lord Bute, he says: "When that noxious planet approaches England, he never fails to bring plague and pestilence along with him." In Letter 67 he says: "Superstition is certainly not the characteristic of this age; yet some men are bigoted in politics who are infidels in religion. I do not despair of making them ashamed of their credulity."