"Belief in a cruel God makes a cruel man."—
"My opinion is, that those whose lives have been spent in doing good and endeavoring to make their fellow-mortals happy, will be happy hereafter."—
"One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests."—
"I believe in one God, and no more, and I hope for happiness beyond this life."—
"Man has no property in man"—and "The key of heaven is not in the keeping of any sect!"
Had it not been for Thomas Paine I could not deliver this lecture here to-night..
It is still fashionable to calumniate this man—and yet Channing, Theodore Parker, Longfellow, Emerson, and in fact all the liberal Unitarians and Universalists of the world have adopted the opinions of Thomas Paine.
Let us compare these Infidels with the Christians of their time:
Compare Julian with Constantine,—the murderer of his wife,—the murderer of his son,—and who established Christianity with the same sword he had wet with their blood. Compare him with all the Christian emperors—with all the robbers and murderers and thieves—the parricides and fratricides and matricides that ever wore the imperial purple on the banks of the Tiber or the shores of the Bosphorus.
Let us compare Bruno with the Christians who burned him; and we will compare Spinoza, Voltaire, Diderot, Hume, Jefferson, Paine—with the men who it is claimed have been the visible representatives of God.