"The 'Age of Reason' can now be estimated calmly. It was written from the viewpoint of a Quaker who did not believe in revealed religion, but who held that 'all religions are in their nature mild and benign' when not associated with political systems."—Encyclopedia Britannica.
"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."—Age of Reason.
"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 accuses the others of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all."—Ibid.
Paine's reason for rejecting the Bible is as logical as it is apparent. A plurality of so-called divine revelations cannot be harmonized with the attributes ascribed to. Deity. There are many Bibles. The world is divided into various religious systems. The adherents of each system have their sacred book, or Bible. Brahmins have the Vedas and Puranas, Buddhists the Tripitaka, Zoroastrians the Zend Avesta, Confucians the King, Mohammedans the Koran, and Christians the Holy Bible. The adherents of each claim that their book is a revelation from God—that the others are spurious. Now, if the Christian Bible were a revelation—if it were God's only revelation, as affirmed—would he allow these spurious books to be imposed upon mankind and delude the greater portion of his children?
A divine revelation intended for all mankind can be harmonized only with a universal acceptance of this revelation. God, it is affirmed, has made a revelation to the world. Those who receive and accept this revelation are saved; those who fail to receive and accept it are lost. This God, it is claimed, is all-powerful and all-just. If he is all-powerful he can give his children a revelation. If he is all-just he will give this revelation to all. He will not give it to a part of them and allow them to be saved and withhold it from the others and suffer them to be lost. Your house is on fire. Your children are asleep in their rooms. What is your duty? To arouse them and rescue them—to awaken all of them and save all of them. If you awaken and save only a part of them when it is in your power to save them all, you are a fiend. If you stand outside and blow a trumpet and say, "I have warned them, I have done my duty,", and they perish, you are still a fiend. If God does not give his revelation to all; if he does not disclose his divinity to all; in short, if he does not save all, he is the prince of fiends.
If all the world's inhabitants but one accepted the Bible and there was one who could not honestly accept it, its rejection by one human being would prove that it is not from an all-powerful and an all-just God; for an all-powerful God who failed to reach and convince even one of his children would not be an all-just God. Has the Bible been given to all the world? Do all accept it? Three-fourths of the human race reject it; millions have never heard of it.
"The word of God is the creation we behold."—Age of Reason.
"It is only in the creation that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The creation speaketh a universal language, independently of human speech or human languages, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever-existing original which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.
"Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the Scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation."—Ibid.
"The moral duty of man consists in imitating the moral goodness and beneficence of God manifested in the creation towards all his creatures. That seeing as we daily do the goodness of God to all men, it is an example calling upon all men to practice the same towards each other; and, consequently, that everything of persecution and revenge between man and man, and everything of cruelty to animals, is a violation of moral duty."—Ibid.