* Felix Rocquain's fine work, L'Esprit révolutionnaire
avant la Révolution," though not speculative, illustrates
the practical nature of revolution,—an uncivilized and
often retrograde form of evolution.
"Soon after I had published the pamphlet 'Common Sense' in America I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion. The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited by pains and penalties every discussion upon established creeds, and upon first principles of religion, that until the system of government should be changed those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world; but that whenever this should be done a revolution in the system of religion would follow. Human inventions and priestcraft would be detected; and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God and no more."
The historical continuity of the critical negations of Paine with the past is represented in his title. The Revolution of 1688,—the secular arm transferring the throne from one family to another,—brought the monarchical superstition into doubt; straightway the Christian authority was shaken.
One hundred years before Paine's book, appeared Charles Blount's "Oracles of Reason." Macaulay describes Blount as the head of a small school of "infidels," troubled with a desire to make converts; his delight was to worry the priests by asking them how light existed before the sun was made, and where Eve found thread to stitch her fig-leaves. But to this same Blount, Macaulay is constrained to attribute emancipation of the press in England.
Blount's title was taken up in America by Ethan Allen, leader of the "Green Mountain Boys." Allen's "Oracles of Reason" is forgotten; he is remembered by his demand (1775) for the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga, "in the name of Jehovah and the Continental Congress." The last five words of this famous demand would have been a better title for the book. It introduces the nation to a Jehovah qualified by the Continental Congress. Ethan Allen's deity is no longer a King of kings: arbitrariness has disappeared; men are summoned to belief in a governor administering laws inherent in the constitution of a universe co-eternal with himself, and with which he is interdependent. His administration is not for any divine glory, but, in anticipation of our constitutional preamble, to "promote the general welfare." The old Puritan alteration in the Lord's Prayer, "Thy Commonwealth come!" would in Allen's church have been "Thy Republic come!" That is, had he admitted prayer, which to an Executive is of course out of place. It must not, however, be supposed that Ethan Allen is conscious that his system is inspired by the Revolution. His book is a calm, philosophical analysis of New England theology and metaphysics; an attempt to clear away the ancient biblical science and set Newtonian science in its place; to found what he conceives "Natural Religion."
In editing his "Account of Arnold's Campaign in Quebec," John Joseph Henry says in a footnote that Paine borrowed from Allen. But the aged man was, in his horror of Paine's religion, betrayed by his memory. The only connection between the books runs above the consciousness of either writer. There was necessarily some resemblance between negations dealing with the same narratives, but a careful comparison of the books leaves me doubtful whether Paine ever read Allen. His title may have been suggested by Blount, whose "Oracles of Reason" was in the library of his assistant at Bor-dentown, John Hall. The works are distinct in aim, products of different religious climes. Allen is occupied mainly with the metaphysical, Paine with quite other, aspects of their common subject. There is indeed a conscientious originality in the freethinkers who successively availed themselves of the era of liberty secured by Blount. Collins, Bolingbroke, Hume, Toland, Chubb, Woolston, Tindal, Middleton, Annet, Gibbon,—each made an examination for himself, and represents a distinct chapter in the religious history of England. Annet's "Free Inquirer," aimed at enlightenment of the lower classes, proved that free thought was tolerated only as an aristocratic privilege; the author was pilloried, just thirty years before the cheapening of the "Rights of Man" led to Paine's prosecution. Probably Morgan did more than any of the deists to prepare English ground for Paine's sowing, by severely criticising the Bible by a standard of civilized ethics, so far as ethics were civilized in the early eighteenth century. But none of these writers touched the deep chord of religious feeling in, the people. The English-speaking people were timid about venturing too much on questions which divided the learned, and were content to express their protest against the worldliness of the Church and faithlessness to the lowly Saviour, by following pietists and enthusiasts. The learned clergy, generally of the wealthy classes, were largely deistical, but conservative. They gradually perceived that the political and the theological authority rested on the same foundation. So between the deists and the Christians there was, as Leslie Stephen says, a "comfortable compromise, which held together till Wesley from one side, and Thomas Paine from another, forced more serious thoughts on the age."*
* "History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century."
While "The Age of Reason" is thus, in one aspect, the product of its time, the renewal of an old siege—begun far back indeed as Celsus,—its intellectual originality is none the less remarkable. Paine is more complete master of the comparative method than Tindal in his "Christianity as old as the Creation." In his studies of "Christian Mythology" (his phrase), one is surprised by anticipations of Baur and Strauss. These are all the more striking by reason of his homely illustrations. Thus, in discussing the liabilities of ancient manuscripts to manipulation, he mentions in his second Part that in the first, printed less than two years before, there was already a sentence he never wrote; and contrasts this with the book of nature wherein no blade of grass can be imitated or altered.* He distinguishes the historical Jesus from the mythical Christ with nicety, though none had previously done this. He is more discriminating than the early deists in his explanations of the scriptural marvels which he discredits. There was not the invariable alternative of imposture with which the orthodoxy of his time had been accustomed to deal. He does indeed suspect Moses with his rod of conjuring, and thinks no better of those who pretended knowledge of future events; but the incredible narratives are traditions, fables, and occasionally "downright lies."
* The sentence imported into Paine's Part First is: "The
book of Luke was carried by one voice only." I find the
words added as a footnote in the Philadelphia edition, 1794,
p. 33. While Paine in Paris was utilizing the ascent of the
footnote to his text, Dr. Priestley in Pennsylvania was
using it to show Paine's untrustworthiness. ("Letters to a
Philosophical Unbeliever," p. 73.) But it would appear,
though neither discovered it, that Paine's critic was the
real offender. In quoting the page, before answering it,
Priestley incorporated in the text the footnote of an
American editor. Priestley could not of course imagine such
editorial folly, but all the same the reader may here see
the myth-insect already building the Paine Mythology.
"It is not difficult to discover the progress by which even simple supposition, with the aid of credulity, will in time grow into a lie, and at last be told as a fact; and wherever we can find a charitable reason for a thing of this kind we ought not to indulge a severe one." Paine's use of the word "lies" in this connection is an archaism. Carlyle told me that his father always spoke of such tales as "The Arabian Nights" as "downright lies"; by which he no doubt meant fables without any indication of being such, and without any moral. Elsewhere Paine uses "lie" as synonymous with "fabulous"; when he means by the word what it would now imply, "wilful" is prefixed. In the Gospels he finds "inventions" of Christian Mythologists—tales founded on vague rumors, relics of primitive works of imagination mistaken for history,—fathered upon disciples who did not write them.