Henry Frank: "There is nothing in the conclusions of the Higher Criticism that Paine did not anticipate."
"As to his anticipation of the Higher Criticism. that should be placed to his credit."—W. T. Stead.
Henry Yorke (with Paine in England and France): "There is not a verse in it [the Bible] that is not familiar to him."
J. P. Mendum: "As a critic and reviewer of the Bible his 'Age of Reason' is unanswerable."
Sir Leslie Stephen: "Paine's book announced a startling fact, against which all the flimsy collections of conclusive proofs were powerless. It amounted to a proclamation that the creed no longer satisfied the instincts of cultivated scholars. When the defenders of the old orders tried to conjure with the old charms, the magic had gone out of them. In Paine's rough tones they recognized not the mere echo of coffee-house gossip, but the voice of deep popular passion. Once and forever, it was announced that, for the average mass of mankind, the old creed was dead."
Elbert Hubbard: "As Paine's book 'Common Sense,' broke the power of Great Britain in America, and the 'Rights of Man' gave free speech and a free press to England, so did the 'Age of Reason' give pause to the juggernaut of orthodoxy. Thomas Paine was the legitimate ancestor of Hosea Ballou who founded the Universalist church, and of Theodore Parker who made Unitarianism in America an intellectual torch. Channing, Ripley,' Bartol, Martineau, Frothingham, Hale, Curtis, Collyer, Swing, Thomas, Conway, Leonard, Savage, Crapsey, yes—even Emerson, and Thoreau, were spiritual children, all, of Thomas Paine. He blazed the way and made it possible, for men to preach the sweet reasonableness of reason. He was the pioneer in a jungle of superstition."
Abraham Lincoln became and remained a disciple of Thomas Paine.
Chicago Herald (Feb., 1892): "In 1834, at New Salem, Ill., Lincoln read and circulated Vol-ney's 'Ruins' and Paine's 'Age of Reason,' giving to both books the sincere recommendation of his unqualified approval."
Col. Ward H. Lamon (biographer of Lincoln): "He [Lincoln] had made himself familiar with the writings of Paine and Volney—the 'Ruins' of the one, and the 'Age of Reason' of the other,... and then wrote a deliberate essay wherein he reached conclusions similar to theirs."
"In this work he intended to demonstrate: