The Life Of Thomas Paine Volume II Part 17

(p. 23). [What but human reason, in the absence of papal authority, is to draw the line between the historical and religious elements in the Bible?]

4. It is conceded that "Samuel did not write any part of the second book bearing his name, and only a part of the first" (p. 24). [One of many blows dealt by this prelate at confidence in the Bible.]

5. It is admitted that Ezra contains a contradiction in the estimate of the numbers who returned from Babylon; it is attributed to a transcriber's mistake of one Hebrew figure for another (p. 30). [Paine's question here had been: "What certainty then can there be in the Bible for anything"? It is no answer to tell him how an error involving a difference of 12,542 people may perhaps have occurred.]

5. It is admitted that David did not write some of the Psalms ascribed to him (p. 131).

7. "It is acknowledged that the order of time is not everywhere observed" [in Jeremiah]; also that this prophet, fearing for his life, suppressed the truth [as directed by King Zedekiah]. "He was under no obligation to tell the whole [truth] to men who were certainly his enemies and no good subjects of the king" (pp. 36, 37). [But how can it be determined how much in Jeremiah is the "word of G.o.d," and how much uttered for the casual advantage of himself or his king?]

8. It is admitted that there was no actual fulfilment of Ezekie's prophecy, "No foot of man shall pa.s.s through it [Egypt], nor foot of beast shall pa.s.s through it, for forty years" (p. 42).

9. The discrepancies between the genealogies of Christ, in Matthew and Luke, are admitted: they are explained by saying that Matthew gives the genealogy of Joseph, and Luke that of Mary; and that Matthew commits "an error" in omitting three generations between Joram and Ozias (p.

48.) [Paine had asked, why might not writers mistaken in the natural genealogy of Christ be mistaken also in his celestial genealogy? To this no answer was attempted.]

Such are some of the Bishop's direct admissions.

There are other admissions in his silences and evasions. For instance, having elaborated a theory as to how the error in Ezra might occur, by the close resemblance of Hebrew letters representing widely different numbers, he does not notice Nehemiah's error in the same matter, pointed out by Paine,--a self-contradiction, and also a discrepancy with Ezra, which could not be explained by his theory. He says nothing about several other contradictions alluded to by Paine. The Bishop's evasions are sometimes painful, as when he tries to escape the force of Paine's argument, that Paul himself was not convinced by the evidences of the resurrection which he adduces for others. The Bishop says: "That Paul had so far resisted the evidence which the apostles had given of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, as to be a persecutor of the disciples of Christ, is certain; but I do not remember the place where he declares that he had not believed them." But when Paul says, "I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth," surely this is inconsistent with his belief in the resurrection and ascension. Paul declares that when it was the good pleasure of G.o.d "to reveal his Son in me," immediately he entered on his mission. He "was not disobedient to the heavenly vision."

Clearly then Paul had not been convinced of the resurrection and ascension until he saw Christ in a vision.

In dealing with Paine's moral charges against the Bible the Bishop has left a confirmation of all that I have said concerning the Christianity of his time. An "infidel" of to-day could need no better moral arguments against the Bible than those framed by the Bishop in its defence. He justifies the ma.s.sacre of the Canaanites on the ground that they were sacrificers of their own children to idols, cannibals, addicted to unnatural l.u.s.t Were this true it would be no justification; but as no particle of evidence is adduced in support of these utterly unwarranted and entirely fict.i.tious accusations, the argument now leaves the ma.s.sacre without any excuse at all. The extermination is not in the Bible based on any such considerations, but simply on a divine command to seize the land and slay its inhabitants. No legal right to the land is suggested in the record; and, as for morality, the only persons spared in Joshua's expedition were a harlot and her household, she having betrayed her country to the invaders, to be afterwards exalted into an ancestress of Christ. Of the cities destroyed by Joshua it is said: "It was of Jehovah to harden their hearts, to come against Israel in battle, that he might utterly destroy them, that they might have no favor, but that he might destroy them, as Jehovah commanded Moses"

(Joshua xi., 20). As their hearts were thus in Jehovah's power for hardening, it may be inferred that they were equally in his power for reformation, had they been guilty of the things alleged by the Bishop.

With these things before him, and the selection of Rahab for mercy above all the women in Jericho--every woman slain save the harlot who delivered them up to slaughter--the Bishop says: "The destruction of the Canaanites exhibits to all nations, in all ages, a signal proof of G.o.d's displeasure against sin."

The Bishop rages against Paine for supposing that the commanded preservation of the Midianite maidens, when all males and married women were slain, was for their "debauchery."

"Prove this, and I will allow that Moses was the horrid monster you make him--prove this, and I will allow that the Bible is what you call it--'a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy'--prove this, or excuse my warmth if I say to you, as Paul said to Elymas the sorcerer, who sought to turn away Sergius Paulus from the faith, 'O full of all subtilty, and of all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?'--I did not, when I began these letters, think that I should have been moved to this severity of rebuke, by anything you could have written; but when so gross a misrepresentation is made of G.o.d's proceedings, coolness would be a crime."

And what does my reader suppose is the alternative claimed by the prelate's foaming mouth? The maidens, he declares, were not reserved for debauchery, but for slavery!

Little did the Bishop foresee a time when, of the two suppositions, Paine's might be deemed the more lenient. The subject of slavery was then under discussion in England, and the Bishop is constrained to add, concerning this enslavement of thirty-two thousand maidens, from the ma.s.sacred families, that slavery is "a custom abhorrent from our manners, but everywhere practised in former times, and still practised in countries where the benignity of the Christian religion has not softened the ferocity of human nature." Thus, Jehovah is represented as not only ordering the wholesale murder of the wors.h.i.+ppers of another deity, but an adoption of their "abhorrent" and inhuman customs.

This connection of the deity of the Bible with "the ferocity of human nature" in one place, and its softening in another, justified Paine's solemn rebuke to the clergy of his time.

"Had the cruel and murderous orders with which the Bible is filled, and the numberless torturing executions of men, women, and children, in consequence of those orders, been ascribed to some friend whose memory you revered, you would have glowed with satisfaction at detecting the falsehood of the charge, and gloried in defending his injured fame.

It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superst.i.tion, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference."

This is fundamentally what the Bishop has to answer, and of course he must resort to the terrible _Tu quoque_ of Bishop Butler, Dr. Watson says he is astonished that "so acute a reasoner" should reproduce the argument.

"You profess yourself to be a deist, and to believe that there is a G.o.d, who created the universe, and established the laws of nature, by which it is sustained in existence. You profess that from a contemplation of the works of G.o.d you derive a knowledge of his attributes; and you reject the Bible because it ascribes to G.o.d things inconsistent (as you suppose) with the attributes which you have discovered to belong to him; in particular, you think it repugnant to his moral justice that he should doom to destruction the crying and smiling infants of the Canaanites. Why do you not maintain it to be repugnant to his moral justice that he should suffer crying or smiling infants to be swallowed up by an earthquake, drowned by an inundation, consumed by fire, starved by a famine, or destroyed by a pestilence?"

Dr. Watson did not, of course, know that he was following Bishop Butler in laying the foundations of atheism, though such was the case. As was said in my chapter on the "Age of Reason," this dilemma did not really apply to Paine, His deity was inferred, despite all the disorders in nature, exclusively from its apprehensible order without, and from the reason and moral nature of man. He had not dealt with the problem of evil, except implicitly, in his defence of the divine goodness, which is inconsistent with the responsibility of his deity for natural evils, or for anything that would be condemned by reason and conscience if done by man. It was thus the Christian prelate who had abandoned the primitive faith in the divine humanity for a natural deism, while the man he calls a "child of the devil" was defending the divine humanity.

This then was the way in which Paine was "answered," for I am not aware of any important addition to the Bishop's "Apology" by other opponents.

I cannot see how any Christian of the present time can regard it otherwise than as a capitulation of the system it was supposed to defend, however secure he may regard the Christianity of to-day. It subjects the Bible to the judgment of human reason for the determination of its authors.h.i.+p, the integrity of its text, and the correction of admitted errors in authors.h.i.+p, chronology, and genealogy; it admits the fallibility of the writers in matters of fact; it admits that some of the moral laws of the Old Testament are "improper" and others, like slavery, belonging to "the ferocity of human nature"; it admits the non-fulfilment of one prophet's prediction, and the self-interested suppression of truth by another; and it admits that "good men" were engaged in concealing these "unsightly" things. Here are gates thrown open for the whole "Age of Reason."

The unorthodoxy of the Bishop's "Apology" does not rest on the judgment of the present writer alone. If Gilbert Wakefield presently had to reflect on his denunciations of Paine from the inside of a prison, the Bishop of Llandaff had occasion to appreciate Paine's ideas on "mental lying" as the Christian infidelity. The Bishop, born in the same year (1737) with the two heretics he attacked--Gibbon and Paine--began his career as a professor of chemistry at Cambridge (1764), but seven years later became Regius professor of divinity there. His posthumous papers present a remarkable picture of the church in his time. In replying to Gibbon he studied first principles, and a.s.sumed a brave stand against all intellectual and religious coercion. On the episcopal bench he advocated a liberal policy toward France. In undertaking to answer Paine he became himself unsettled; and at the very moment when unsophisticated orthodoxy was hailing him as its champion, the sagacious magnates of Church and State proscribed him. He learned that the king had described him as "impracticable"; with bitterness of soul he saw prelates of inferior rank and ability promoted over his head. He tried the effect of a political recantation, in one of his charges; and when Williams was imprisoned for publis.h.i.+ng the "Age of Reason," and Gilbert Wakefield for rebuking his "Charge," this former champion of free speech dared not utter a protest. But by this servility he gained nothing. He seems to have at length made up his mind that if he was to be punished for his liberalism he would enjoy it. While preaching on "Revealed Religion" he saw the Bishop of London shaking his head. In 18111, five years before his death, he writes this significant note: "I have treated my divinity as I, twenty-five years ago, treated my chemical papers: I have lighted my fire with the labour of a great portion of my life."*

* Patrick Henry's Answer to the "Age of Reason" shared the like fate. "When, during the first two years of his retirement, Thomas Paine's 'Age of Reason' made its appearance, the old statesman was moved to write out a somewhat elaborate treatise in defence of the truth of Christianity. This treatise it was his purpose to have published. 'He read the ma.n.u.script to his family as he progressed with it, and completed it a short time before his death' (1799). When it was finished, however, 'being diffident about his own work,' and impressed also by the great ability of the replies to Paine which were then appearing in England, 'he directed his wife to destroy' what he had written. She 'complied literally with his directions,' and thus put beyond the chance of publication a work which seemed, to some who heard it, 'the most eloquent and unanswerable argument in defence of the Bible which was ever written.'"--Fontaine MS. quoted in Tyler's "Patrick Henry."

Next to the "Age of Reason," the book that did most to advance Paine's principles in England was, as I believe, Dr. Watson's "Apology for the Bible." Dean Swift had warned the clergy that if they began to reason with objectors to the creeds they would awaken skepticism. Dr. Watson fulfilled this prediction. He pointed out, as Gilbert Wakefield did, some exegetical and verbal errors in Paine's book, but they no more affected its main purpose and argument than the grammatical mistakes in "Common Sense" diminished its force in the American Revolution. David Dale, the great manufacturer at Paisley, distributed three thousand copies of the "Apology" among his workmen. The books carried among them extracts from Paine, and the Bishop's admissions. Robert Owen married Dale's daughter, and presently found the Paisley workmen a ripe harvest for his rationalism and radicalism.

Thus, in the person of its first clerical a.s.sailant, began the march of the "Age of Reason" in England. In the Bishop's humiliations for his concessions to truth, were ill.u.s.trated what Paine had said of his system's falsity and fraudulence. After the Bishop had observed the Bishop of London manifesting disapproval of his sermon on "Revealed Religion" he went home and wrote: "What is this thing called Orthodoxy, which mars the fortunes of honest men? It is a sacred thing to which every denomination of Christians lays exclusive claim, but to which no man, no a.s.sembly of men, since the apostolic age, can prove a t.i.tle."

There is now a Bishop of London who might not acknowledge the claim even for the apostolic age. The principles, apart from the particular criticisms, of Paine's book have established themselves in the English Church. They were affirmed by Bishop Wilson in clear language: "Christian duties are founded on reason, not on the sovereignty of G.o.d commanding what he pleases: G.o.d cannot command us what is not fit to be believed or done, all his commands being founded in the necessities of our nature." It was on this principle that Paine declared that things in the Bible, "not fit to be believed or done," could not be divine commands.

His book, like its author, was outlawed, but men more heretical are now buried in Westminster Abbey, and the lost bones of Thomas Paine are really reposing in those tombs. It was he who compelled the hard and heartless Bibliolatry of his time to repair to illiterate conventicles, and the lovers of humanity, true followers of the man of Nazareth, to abandon the crumbling castle of dogma, preserving its creeds as archaic bric-a-brac. As his "Rights of Man" is now the political const.i.tution of England, his "Age of Reason" is in the growing const.i.tution of its Church,--the most powerful organization in Christendom because the freest and most inclusive.

The excitement caused in England by the "Age of Reason," and the large number of attempted replies to it, were duly remarked by the _Moniteur_ and other French journals. The book awakened much attention in France, and its principles were reproduced in a little French book ent.i.tled: "Manuel des Theoantropophiles." This appeared in September, 1796. In January, 1797, Paine, with five families, founded in Paris the church of Theo-philanthropy,--a word, as he stated in a letter to Erskine "compounded of three Greek words, signifying G.o.d, Love, and Man. The explanation given to this word is _Lovers of G.o.d and Man, or Adorers of G.o.d and Friends of Man._" The society opened "in the street Denis, No.

34, corner of Lombard Street." "The Theophilanthropists believe in the existence of G.o.d, and the immortality of the soul." The inaugural discourse was given by Paine. It opens with these words: "Religion has two princ.i.p.al enemies, Fanaticism and Infidelity, or that which is called atheism. The first requires to be combated by reason and morality, the other by natural philosophy." The discourse is chiefly an argument for a divine existence based on motion, which, he maintains, is not a property of matter. It proves a Being "at the summit of all things." At the close he says:

"The society is at present in its infancy, and its means are small; but I wish to hold in view the subject I allude to, and instead of teaching the philosophical branches of learning as ornamental branches only, as they have hitherto been taught, to teach them in a manner that shall combine theological knowledge with scientific instruction. To do this to the best advantage, some instruments will be necessary for the purpose of explanation, of which the society is not yet possessed. But as the views of the Society extend to public good, as well as to that of the individual, and as its principles can have no enemies, means may be devised to procure them. If we unite to the present instruction a series of lectures on the ground I have mentioned, we shall, in the first place, render theology the most entertaining of all studies. In the next place, we shall give scientific instruction to those who could not otherwise obtain it. The mechanic of every profession will there be taught the mathematical principles necessary to render him proficient in his art. The cultivator will there see developed the principles of vegetation; while, at the same time, they will be led to see the hand of G.o.d in all these things."

A volume of 214 pages put forth at the close of the year shows that the Theophilanthropists sang theistic and humanitarian hymns, and read Odes; also that ethical readings were introduced from the Bible, and from the Chinese, Hindu, and Greek authors. A library was established (rue Neuve-Etienne-l'Estrapade, No. 25) at which was issued (1797), "Instruction elementaire sur la Morale religieuse,"--this being declared to be morality based on religion.

{1797}

Thus Paine, pioneer in many things, helped to found the first theistic and ethical society.

It may now be recognized as a foundation of the Religion of Humanity. It was a great point with Paine that belief in the divine existence was the one doctrine common to all religions. On this rock the Church of Man was to be built Having vainly endeavored to found the international Republic he must repair to an ideal moral and human world. Robespierre and Pitt being unfraternal he will bring into harmony the sages of all races.

It is a notable instance of Paine's unwillingness to bring a personal grievance into the sacred presence of Humanity that one of the four festivals of Theophilanthropy was in honor of Was.h.i.+ngton, while its catholicity was represented in a like honor to St. Vincent de Paul. The others so honored were Socrates and Rousseau. These selections were no doubt mainly due to the French members, but they could hardly have been made without Paine's agreement. It is creditable to them all that, at a time when France believed itself wronged by Was.h.i.+ngton, his services to liberty should alone have been remembered. The flowers of all races, as represented in literature or in history, found emblematic a.s.sociation with the divine life in nature through the flowers that were heaped on a simple altar, as they now are in many churches and chapels. The walls were decorated with ethical mottoes, enjoining domestic kindness and public benevolence.

Paine's pamphlet of this year (1797) on "Agrarian Justice" should be considered part of the theophil-anthropic movement. It was written as a proposal to the French government, at a time when readjustment of landed property had been rendered necessary by the Revolution.*

* "Thomas Payne a la Legislature et au Directoire: ou la Justice Agraire Opposee a la Loi et aux Privileges Agraires."

It was suggested by a sermon printed by the Bishop of Llandaff, on "The wisdom and goodness of G.o.d in having made both rich and poor." Paine denies that G.o.d made rich and poor: "he made only male and female, and gave them the earth for their inheritance." The earth, though naturally the equal possession of all, has been necessarily appropriated by individuals, because their improvements, which alone render its productiveness adequate to human needs, cannot be detached from the soil. Paine maintains that these private owners do nevertheless owe mankind ground-rent. He therefore proposes a t.i.the,--not for G.o.d, but for man. He advises that at the time when the owner will feel it least,--when property is pa.s.sing by inheritance from one to another,--the t.i.the shall be taken from it. Personal property also owes a debt to society, without which wealth could not exist,--as in the case of one alone on an island. By a careful estimate he estimates that a t.i.the on inheritances would give every person, on reaching majority, fifteen pounds, and after the age of fifty an annuity of ten pounds, leaving a substantial surplus for charity. The practical scheme submitted is enforced by practical rather than theoretical considerations. Property is always imperilled by poverty, especially where wealth and splendor have lost their old fascinations, and awaken emotions of disgust.

"To remove the danger it is necessary to remove the antipathies, and this can only be done by making property productive of a national blessing, extending to every individual When the riches of one man above another shall increase the national fund in the same proportion; when it shall be seen that the prosperity of that fund depends on the prosperity of individuals; when the more riches a man acquires, the better it shall be for the general ma.s.s; it is then that antipathies will cease, and property be placed on the permanent basis of national interest and protection.

"I have no property in France to become subject to the plan I propose.

What I have, which is not much, is in the United States of America. But I will pay one hundred pounds sterling towards this fund in France, the instant it shall be established; and I will pay the same sum in England, whenever a similar establishment shall take place in that country."

The t.i.the was to be given to rich and poor alike, including owners of the property t.i.thed, in order that there should be no a.s.sociation of alms with this "agrarian justice."

About this time the priesthood began to raise their heads again. A report favorable to a restoration to them of the churches, the raising of bells, and some national recognition of public wors.h.i.+p, was made by Camille Jordan for a committee on the subject The Jesuitical report was especially poetical about church bells, which Paine knew would ring the knell of the Republic. He wrote a theophilanthropic letter to Camille Jordan, from which I quote some paragraphs.

"You claim a privilege incompatible with the Const.i.tution, and with Rights. The Const.i.tution protects equally, as it ought to do, every profession of religion; it gives no exclusive privilege to any. The churches are the common property of all the people; they are national goods, and cannot be given exclusively to any one profession, because the right does not exist of giving to any one that which appertains to all. It would be consistent with right that the churches should be sold, and the money arising therefrom be invested as a fund for the education of children of poor parents of every profession, and, if more than sufficient for this purpose, that the surplus be appropriated to the support of the aged poor. After this every profession can erect its own place of wors.h.i.+p, if it choose--support its own priests, if it choose to have any--or perform its wors.h.i.+p without priests, as the Quakers do."

"It is a want of feeling to talk of priests and bells whilst so many infants are peris.h.i.+ng in the hospitals, and aged and infirm poor in the streets. The abundance that France possesses is sufficient for every want, if rightly applied; but priests and bells, like articles of luxury, ought to be the least articles of consideration."

"No man ought to make a living by religion. It is dishonest to do so.

Religion is not an act that can be performed by proxy. One person cannot act religion for another. Every person must perform it for himself; and all that a priest can do is to take from him; he wants nothing but his money, and then to riot in the spoil and laugh at his credulity. The only people who, as a professional sect of Christians, provide for the poor of their society, are people known by the name of Quakers. These men have no priests. They a.s.semble quietly in their places of wors.h.i.+p, and do not disturb their neighbors with shows and noise of bells.

Religion does not unite itself to show and noise. True religion is without either.'

"One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests. If we look back at what was the condition of France under the _ancien regime_ we cannot acquit the priests of corrupting the morals of the nation."

"Why has the Revolution of France been stained with crimes, while the Revolution of the United States of America was not? Men are physically the same in all countries; it is education that makes them different.