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. Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this?
He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and, in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury.
When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. My own mind is my own church.Īll 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.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.īut, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them. I believe in one God, and no more and I hope for happiness beyond this life. The circumstance that has now taken place in France, of the total abolition of the whole national order of priesthood, and of everything appertaining to compulsive systems of religion, and compulsive articles of faith, has not only precipitated my intention, but rendered a work of this kind exceedingly necessary, lest, in the general wreck of superstition, of false systems of government, and false theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true.Īs several of my colleagues, and others of my fellow-citizens of France, have given me the example of making their voluntary and individual profession of faith, I also will make mine and I do this with all that sincerity and frankness with which the mind of man communicates with itself. I intended it to be the last offering I should make to my fellow-citizens of all nations, and that at a time when the purity of the motive that induced me to it could not admit of a question, even by those who might disapprove the work. IT has been my intention, for several years past, to publish my thoughts upon religion I am well aware of the difficulties that attend the subject, and from that consideration, had reserved it to a more advanced period of life.
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Download for ereaders (below donate buttons) This book has 144 pages in the PDF version, and this edition is taken from 'The Writings of Thomas Paine' Collected and Edited by Moncure Daniel Conway, Vol.
№ 5 in Neil deGrasse Tyson's Essential Book List. It follows in the tradition of 18th-century British deism, and challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the Bible. The Age of Reason Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology is a work by English and American political activist Thomas Paine, arguing for the philosophical position of deism.
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