The Encyclopedia Britannica says that "the 'Age of Reason' contains many passages of earnest and even lofty eloquence in favor of a pure morality."
"Its tone throughout is noble and reverent."—Rufus Rockwell.
Chapman Cohen: "Assuming Paine to be alive today, with his opinions unchanged, how much fault would he find with the teachings of many preachers? Very little I fancy. But does this mean, or would it mean, that Paine had become converted to Christianity? Not a bit of it. It would only mean that Christianity had become converted to Paine. In its most advanced form today, Christianity is little more than the eighteenth century Deism it so bitterly opposed, with a liberal dash of the word 'Christ.'"
"What has become of the Bible that Paine attacked? So far as the mere paper and type is concerned it is still here. But so tar as belief is concerned, it is Paine's Bible that is believed in by the majority of educated Christians."
Rev. Dr. E. L. Rexford: "If Paine were now living he would be looked upon by all enlightened clergymen and laymen as a very conservative critic of the Christian religion."
Rev. George Burman Foster (Gottingen and Chicago Universities): "What was radical in regard to the Bible in his day would be conservative today."
Rev. S. Fletcher Williams (England): "His principles were right, and today an increasing number of religious teachers and religious minded men stand only where he stood a century ago."
Dr. T. A. Bland: "The principles of the 'Age of Reason' are embodied in sermons—orthodox and radical—all over the country."
John Maddock:—
"The work of Paine was done so well
The Church is now the Infidel."
"He triumphed—Bibles are revised,
Creeds change, and faiths decay,
The facts his bitter foes despised
Their children prize today."
—C. Fannie Aliyn.