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Early American Views
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Thomas Jefferson was probably the greatest thinker of the revolutionary period and one of the most influential men in determining the long-term direction of American society. He was, in my view, the most interesting man the world has yet produced. Of all the things that he wrote about (law, politics, nature, philosophy, ethics, agriculture, architecture, etc.) Jefferson wrote only three book-length tomes: Autobiography, Notes on the State of Virginia, and a version of the gospels using Jesus’ words alone (without the miracles and obvious embellishments) known as The Jefferson Bible.
 Jefferson’s religious views were reviled by the Federalists and the Fundamentalists of his day during the Second Great Awakening.
"‘The election of any man avowing the principles of Mr. Jefferson would destroy religion, introduce immorality and loosen all the bonds of society.’ To vote for Jefferson was ‘no less than a rebellion against God.’" (Rev William Linn, in Randall, 543)
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Jefferson is known primarily as the author of the Declaration of Independence, the formal statement of justification for the American revolution. It’s important to understand that the famous references to god and creator are not based on the God of the Bible. This was the Deist’s god of nature, a creator of indeterminate name. The Declaration also stated that governments were instituted by and between humans with their own consent, not with the authority of God, and not even with God’s participation. The Declaration did not invoke the protection of God or Jesus.
"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate & equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness: that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…" [italics mine] 1776 (Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, from Jefferson, Autobiography, 19)
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I commend to you the context of that famous inscription on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. "I HAVE SWORN ON THE ALTAR OF GOD ETERNAL HOSTILITY AGAINST EVERY FORM OF TYRANNY OVER THE MIND OF MAN." Ironically, he was speaking of the tyranny of organized religions.
"I have a view of the subject [Christianity] which ought to displease neither the rational Christian nor Deists, and would reconcile many to a character they have too hastily rejected. I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irritabile vatum who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting ground to be softened. The delusion into which the X.Y.Z. plot shewed it possible to push the people; the successful experiment made under the prevalence of that delusion on the clause of the constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity thro’ the U.S.; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians & Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted on opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: & enough too in their opinion, & this is the cause of their printing lying pamphlets against me, forging conversations for me with Mazzei, Bishop Madison, &c., which are absolute falsehoods without a circumstance of truth to rest on; falsehoods, too, of which I acquit Mazzei & Bishop Madison, for they are men of truth." [italics mine] 1800 (Jefferson letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Autobiography, 1081-1082)
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[Letter to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse]
"I have received and read with thankfulness and pleasure your denunciation of the abuses of tobacco and wine. Yet, however sound in its principles, I expect it will be but a sermon to the wind. You will find it as difficult to inculcate these sanative precepts on the sensualities of the present day, as to convince an Athanasian that there is but one God. I wish success to both attempts, and am happy to learn from you that the latter, at least, is making progress, and the more rapidly in proportion as our Platonizing Christians make more stir and noise about it. The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.
1. That there is one only God, and he all perfect.
2. That there is a future state of rewards and punishments.
3. That to love God with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself, is the sum of religion.
These are the great points on which he endeavored to reform the religion of the Jews. But compare with these the demoralizing dogmas of Calvin.
1. That there are three Gods.
2. That good works, or the love of our neighbor, are nothing.
3. That faith is every thing, and the more incomprehensible the proposition, the more merit in its faith.
4. That reason in religion is of unlawful use.
5. That God, from the beginning, elected certain individuals to be saved, and certain others to be damned; and that no crimes of former can damn them; no virtues of the latter save.
Now, which of these is the true and charitable Christian? He who believes and acts on the simple doctrines of Jesus? Or the impious dogmatists, as Athanasius and Calvin? Verily I say these are the false shepherds foretold as to enter not by the door into the sheepfold, but to climb up some other way. They are mere usurpers of the Christian name, teaching a counter-religion made up of the deliria of crazy imaginations, as foreign from Christianity as is that of Mahomet. Their blasphemies have driven thinking men into infidelity, who have too hastily rejected the supposed author himself, which the horrors so falsely imputed to him. Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christian. I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian.
But much I fear, that when this great truth shall be re-established, its votaries will fall into the fatal error of fabricating formulas of creed and confessions of faith, the engines which so soon destroyed the religion of Jesus, and made of Christendom a mere Aceldama; that they will give up morals for mysteries, and Jesus for Plato. How much wiser are the Quakers, who, agreeing in the fundamental doctrines of the gospel, schismatize about no mysteries, and, keeping within the pale of common sense, suffer no speculative differences of opinion, any more than of feature, to impair the love of their bretheren. Be this the wisdom of Unitarians, this the holy mantle which shall cover within its charitable circumference all who believe in one God, and who love their neighbor? I conclude my sermon with sincere assurances of my friendly esteem and respect." 1822 (Jefferson, Autobiography, 1458-1459)
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[Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper]
"The atmosphere of our country is unquestionably charged with a threatening cloud of fanaticism, lighter in some parts, denser in others, but too heavy in all. I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration of and freedom of religion, it could have arisen to the height you describe. This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism. The blasphemy and absurdity of the five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation. In Boston, however, and its neighborhood, Unitarianism has advanced to so great strength, as now to humble this haughtiest of all religious sects; insomuch that they condescend to interchange with them and the other sects, the civilities of preaching freely and frequently in each others’ meeting-houses. In Rhode Island, on the other hand, no sectarian preacher will permit an Unitarian to pollute his desk. In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and praying parties, where attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use to a mere earthly lover. In our village of Charlottesville, there is a good degree of religion, with a small spice only of fanaticism. We have four sects, but without either church or meeting-house. The court-house is the common temple, one Sunday in the month to each. Here, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist, meet together, join in hymning their Maker, listen with attention and devotion to each others’ preachers, and all mix in society with perfect harmony. It is not so in the districts where Presbyterianism prevails undividedly. Their ambition and tyranny would tolerate no rival if they had power. Systematical in grasping at an ascendancy over all other sects, they aim, like the Jesuits, at engrossing the education of the country, are hostile to every institution which they do not direct, and jealous at seeing others begin to attend at all to that object. The diffusion of instruction, to which there is now so growing an attention, will be the remote remedy to this fever of fanaticism; while the more proximate one will be the progress of Unitarianism. That this will, ere long, be the religion of the majority from north to south, I have no doubt.
In our university you know there is no Professorship of Divinity. A handle has been made of this, to disseminate an idea that this is an institution, not merely of no religion, but against all religion. Occasion was taken at the last meeting of the Visitors, to bring forward an idea that might silence this calumny, which weighed on the minds of some honest friends to the institution. In our annual report to the legislature, after stating the constitutional reasons against a public establishment of any religious instruction, we suggest the expediency of encouraging the different religious sects to establish, each for itself, a professorship of their own tenets, on the confines of the university, so near as that their students may attend the lectures there, and have the free use of our library, and every other accommodation we can give them; preserving, however their independence of us and of each other. This fills the chasm objected to ours, as a defect in an institution professing to give instruction in all useful sciences. I think the invitation will be accepted by some sects from candid intentions, and by others from jealousy and rivalship. And by bringing the sects together, and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality." 1822 (Jefferson, Autobiography, 1463-1465)
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"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than of blind-folded fear. You will naturally examine first the religion of your own country. Read the Bible then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus." 1787 (Jefferson, Letter to Peter Carr, Autobiography, 902)
[Regarding science] "It is always better to have no ideas, than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. In my mind, theories are more easily demolished than rebuilt." 1788 (Jefferson, Letter to Rev James Madison, Autobiography, 924)
"I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence." 1820 (Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, Autobiography, 1444)
"To the corruptions of [the Christian church] I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other." 1803 (Italics in original, Jefferson, Letter to Dr Benjamin Rush, Autobiography, 1122)
"I am moreover averse to the communication of my religious tenets to the public; because it would countenance the presumption of those who have endeavored to draw them before that tribunal, ad to seduce public opinion to erect itself into that inquisition over the rights of conscience, which the laws have so justly proscribed." 1803 (Jefferson, Letter to Dr Benjamin Rush, Autobiography, 1123)
"[Jesus’ doctrines] have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatizing followers who have found an interest in sophisticating & perverting the simple doctrines he taught by engrafting on them the mysticism of a Grecian sophist, frittering them into subtleties, & obscuring them with jargon, until they have caused good men to reject the whole in disgust, & to view Jesus himself as an impostor." 1803 (Italics in original, Jefferson, Letter to Dr Benjamin Rush, Autobiography, 1125)
"But I never will…bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of enquiry into the religious opinions of others. On the contrary we are bound, you, I, and every one, to make common cause, even with error itself, to maintain the common right of freedom of conscience. We ought…to hew down the daring and dangerous efforts of those who would seduce the public opinion to substutute itself into that tyranny over religious faith which the laws have so justlyabdicated." 1803 (Jefferson, Extracts, 330)
"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe…that three are one, and one is three [the Trinity]…But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of [artificial] religion, and they would catch no more flies. We should all then, like the quakers, live without an order of priests, moralise for ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand, nor therefore believe; for I suppose belief to be the assent of the mind to an intelligible proposition." 1813 (Jefferson, Extracts, 347)
"For altho’ we have freedom of religious opinion by law, we are yet under the inquisition of public opinion…Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against…the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus." 1816 (Jefferson, Extracts, 375)
"Government, as well as religion, has furnished it’s schisms, it’s persecutions, and it’s devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people. It has it’s hierarchy of emprors, kings, princes and nobles, as that has of popes, cardials, archbishops, bishhops, and priests." 1815 (Jefferson, Extracts, 363-364)
"Of this band of dupes and impostors [Jesus’ disciples], Paul was the…first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus…The serious enemies are the priests of the differet religious sects, to whose spells on the human miind it’s improvement is ominous…[The Calvinists] pant to reestablish by law that holy inquisition, which they can now only infuse into public opinion." 1820 (Jefferson, Extracts, 392-393)
"I rejoice that in this blessed country of free enquiry and belief, which has surrendered it’s creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of one only God is reviving, and I trust that there is no [young American] who will not die an Unitarian." 1822 (Jefferson, Extracts, 405,406)
"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will…restore to us the…genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors [Jesus]." 1823 (Jefferson, Extracts, 412,413)
"What an effort, my dear Sir, of bigotry in Politics & Religion have we gone through? The barbarians really flattered themselves they should be able to bring back the times of Vandalism, when ignorance put everything into the hands of power & priestcraft. All advances in science were proscribed as innovations. They pretended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors… Those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy,-the most sublime & benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man,-endeavored to crush your well-earnt & well-deserved fame…We can no longer say there is nothing new under the sun. For this whole chapter in the history of man is new." (Jefferson, Letter to Dr. Joseph Priestly, 1801, Autobiography, 1085-1086)
[Outlining a promised letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush on his view of the Christian system.] "I should first take a general view of the moral doctrines of the most remarkable of the antient [sic] philosophers, of whose ethics we have sufficient information to make an estimate, say of Pythagoras, Epicurus, Epictetus, Socrates, Cicero, Seneca, Antonius. I should do justice to the branches of morality they have treated well; but point out the importance of those in which they are deficient. I should then take a view of the deism and ethics of the Jews, and show in what a degraded state they were, and the necessity they presented of a reformation. I should proceed to a view of the life, character, & doctrines of Jesus, who sensible of incorrectness of their ideas of the Deity, and of morality, endeavored to bring them to the principles of a pure deism, and juster notions of the attributes of God, to reform their moral doctrines to the standard of reason, justice & philanthropy, and to inculcate the belief of a future state. This view would purposely omit the question of his divinity, & even his inspiration. To do him justice, it would be necessary to remark the disadvantages his doctrines have to encounter, not having been committed to writing by himself, but by the most unlettered of men, by memory, long after they had heard them from him; when much was forgotten, much misunderstood, & presented in very paradoxical shapes…His character & doctrines have received still greater injury from those who pretend to be his special disciples, and who have disfigured and sophisticated his actions & precepts, form views of personal interest, so as to induce the unthinking part of mankind to throw off the whole system in disgust, and to pass sentence as a impostor on the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man." 1803 (Jefferson, Letter to Dr. Joseph Priestly, Autobiography, 1121)
"The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors." 1823 (Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, Autobiography, 1469)
[Letter to John Adams] "From the law of Moses were deduced 613 precepts, which were divided into two classes, affirmative and negative, 248 in the former, and 365 in the latter. It may serve to give the reader some idea of the low state of moral philosophy among the Jews in the Middle age, to add, that of the 248 affirmative precepts, only 3 were considered as obligatory upon women; and that, in order to obtain salvation, it was judged sufficient to fulfill any one single law in the hour of death; the observance of the rest being deemed necessary, only to increase the felicity of the future life. What a wretched depravity of sentiment and manners must have prevailed before such corrupt maxims could have obtained credit!…It was the reformation of this ‘wretched depravity’ of morals which Jesus undertook. In extracting the pure principles which he taught, we should have to strip off the artificial vestments in which they have been muffled by priests, who have travestied them into various forms, as instruments of riches and power to them…We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the Amphibologisms into which they have been led by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging, the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill. The result is an 8vo of 46 pages of pure and unsophisticated doctrines, such as were professed and acted on by the unlettered apostles, the Apostolic fathers, and the Christians of the 1st century. Their Platonising successors indeed, in after times, in order to legitimate the corruptions which they had incorporated into the doctrines of Jesus, found it necessary to disavow the primitive Christians, who had taken their principles from the mouth of Jesus himself, of his Apostles, and the Fathers contemporary with them. They excommunicated their followers as heretics, branding them with the opprobrious name of Ebionites or Beggars…We must leave therefore to others, younger and more learned than we are, to prepare this euthanasia for Platonic Christianity, and it’s restoration to the primitive simplicity of it’s founder. I think you give a just outline of the theism of the three religions when you say that the principle of the Hebrew was the fear, of the Gentile the honor, and of the Christian the love of God." 1813 (Jefferson, Autobiography, 1301-1302)
"I, too, have made a wee-little book from the same materials, which I call the Philosophy of Jesus; it is a paradigma of his doctrines, made by cutting the texts out of the book, and arranging them on the pages of a blank book, in a certain order of time or subject. A more beautiful or precious morsel of ethics I have never seen; it is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel, while they draw all their characteristic dogmas from what its author never said nor saw. They have compounded from the heathen mysteries a system beyond the comprehension of man, of which the great reformer of the vicious ethics and deism of the Jews, were he to return on earth, would not recognize one feature." 1816 (Jefferson, Letter to Charles Thomson, Autobiography, 1372-1373)
"…the priests indeed have heretofore thought proper to ascribe to me religious, or rather anti-religious sentiments, of their own fabric, but such as soothed their resentments against the act of Virginia for establishing religious freedom. They wished him to be thought atheist, deist, or devil, who could advocate freedom from their religious dictations. But I have ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences, for which we were accountable to him, and not to the priests. I never told my own religion, nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another’s creed. I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives…For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read. By the same test the world must judge me. But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there. These therefore, they brand with such nick-names as their enmity chooses gratuitously to impute…notwithstanding the slanders of the saints, my fellow citizens have thought me worthy of trusts. The imputations of irreligion having spent their force; they think an imputation of change might now be turned to account as a holster for their duperies. I shall leave them, as heretofore, to grope on in the dark." 1816 (Jefferson, Letter to Mrs. S.H. Smith, Autobiography, 1404)
We can gain some insight into Jefferson’s thinking as a young law student by reading a section of his notes in a letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper. The excerpt basically establishes the chain of sources necessary to dismiss the claim that English (and, hence, American) common law is based on either the Bible or a Judeo-Christian ethic. It’s too long and technical to quote here, but Jefferson’s opinion that this idea was fraudulent can be summed up by one introductory phrase,
"…I promised you a sample from my common-place book, of the pious disposition of the English judges, to connive at the frauds of the clergy, a disposition which has even rendered them faithful allies in practice." 1814 (Jefferson, Autobiography, 1321)
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The Father of Our Country was careful about offending his countrymen, but he was no hypocrite. The fables about his religion are many, but mostly, his particular religious views are a puzzle.
"The establishment of Civil and Religious Liberty was the Motive which induced me to the Field [of battle]…" 1783 (Washington, Writings, 27:249)
"Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by a difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought to be deprecated." 1792 (Washington, Writings, 32:190)
"The father of our country, whenever in [Philadelphia]…attended divine service in Christ Church [and] St. Peter’s. His behaviour was always serious and attentive; but as your letter seems to intend an inquiry on the point of kneeling during the service. I [Bishop White] owe it to truth to declare, that I never saw him in the said attitude…I do not believe that any degree of recollection will bring to my mind any fact which would prove General Washington to have been a believer in the Christian revelation…" (Wilson, 189,193)
"…General Washington never received the communion, in the churches of which I am parochial minister." (Wilson, 197)
"…as he had never been a communicant, were he to become one then, it would be imputed to an ostentatious display of religious zeal, arising altogether from his elevated station. Accordingly, [Washington] never afterwards came on the morning of Sacrament Sunday…" (Sprague, 934)
"In 1891, a manuscript book was found which contained copies of prayers from the Episcopal prayer book. This ‘Daily Sacrifice’ was rejected by the Smithsonian Institute when offered for exhibition and is not included, by scholars, in the Writings or Papers of Washington." (Garman, 113) "This Daily Sacrifice is completely unlike anything of Washington’s…. Of course…religious people have never been over-cautious about ascribing texts to convenient authors; but it is rank dishonesty to continue the pretense that this work is Washington’s." (Hughes, 558)
"It is clear that the popular legends about Washington-the Valley Forge and the Morristown stories [kneeling in prayer and Presbyterian communion] and the innumerable tales of Washington at prayer-must be dismissed as totally lacking in any kind of evidence that would hold up in a court of law. All of them…are of ‘doubtful hearsay quality’." (Boller, 22)
"Washington frequently alluded to Providence in his private correspondence. but the name of Christ, in any connection whatsoever, does not appear anywhere in his many letters to friends and associates throughout his life." (Boller, 75)
"In President Washington’s inaugural (1789) and farewell (1796) addresses, there is no mention of Christianity. His references to the ‘Almighty Being’ or the ‘Great Author’ (like ‘Providence’ or the ‘God of Armies’) are general terms useable by any deist or theist of whatever religious persuasion." (Garman, 113)
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"It is very true that the denunciations of the priesthood are fulminated against every advocate for a complete freedom of religion. [Condemnations]…by even the most liberal of them, against atheism, deism, -against every man who disbelieved or doubted the resurrection of Jesus…. For my part, I cannot ‘deal damnation round the land’ on all I judge the foes of God or man." 1813 (Adams, 10:43-44)
"The human understanding [reason] is a revelation from its maker…No prophecies, no miracles are necessary to prove this celestial communication…"1813 (Adams, 10:66)
"Had you [Jefferson] and I been forty days with Moses on Mount Sinai, and admitted to behold the divine Shechinah, and there told that one was three and three one [the Trinity], we might not have had courage to deny it, but we could not have believed it…." 1813 (Adams, 10:66,67)
"[God] created this speck of dirt and the human species for his glory; and with the deliberate design of making nine tenths of our species miserable for ever for his glory. This is the doctrine of Christian theologians, in general, ten to one. Now, my friend [Jefferson], can prophecies or miracles convince you or me that infinite benevolence, wisdom and power, created and preserves for a time, innumerable missions, to make them miserable for ever, for his own glory? Wretch! What is his glory?…Pardon me, my Maker, for these awful questions. My answer to them is always ready. I believe no such things…. The love of God and his creation…are my religion…Howl, snarl, bite, ye Calvinistic, ye [Trinitarian] divines…ye will say I am no Christian; I say ye are no Christians; and there the account is balanced." 1813 (Adams, 10:67)
"We have now…a national Bible Society, to propagate King James’s Bible throughout all nations. Would it not be better to apply these pious subscriptions to purify Christendom from the corruptions of Christianity than to propagate those corruptions in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America?…Conclude not from all this that I have renounced the Christian religion…The ten commandments and the sermon on the mount contain my religion." 1816 (Adams, 10:228-229)
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"Union of Religious Sentiments begets a surprising confidence and Ecclesiastical Establishments tend to great ignorance and Corruption…" 1774 (Madison, Papers, 1:105)
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise every expanded prospect." 1774 (Madison, Papers, 1:112,113)
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"I was…15 when…I began to doubt of Revelation…I soon became a thorough Deist." 1771 (Franklin, Autobiography, 113-114)
"I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and tho’ some of the Dogmas…appeared to me unintelligible…and I early absented myself from the Public Assemblies of the Sect…I never was without some religious Principles; I never doubted, for instance, the Existence of the Deity…that the most acceptable Service of God was the doing Good to Man…"1771 (Franklin, Autobiography, 145)
"I imagine a Man must have a good deal of Vanity who believes…that all the Doctrines he holds, are true; and all he rejects, are false. And perhaps the same may be said of every Sect, Church and Society of man when they assume to themselves that Infallibility which they deny to the Popes and Councils." 1738 (Franklin, Papers, 2:203)
"The Faith you mention has doubtless its use in the World…But I wish it were more productive of Good Works than I have generally seen it: I mean real good Works, Works of Kindness, Charity, Mercy, and Publick Spirit; not Holiday-keeping, Sermon-Reading or Hearing, performing Church Ceremonies, or making long Prayers filled with Flatteries and Compliments, despised by wise Men, and much less capable of pleasing the Diety…Your great Master tho’t much less of these outward Appearances and Professions than many of his modern Disciples. He prefer’d the Doers of the Word to the mere Hearers…but now a days we have scarce a little Parson, that does not think it the Duty of every Man within his reach to sit under his petty Ministrations, and that whoever omits them offends God…"1753 (Franklin, Papers, 4:505-506)
"There are several things in the Old Testament impossible to be given by divine inspiration…" 1784 (Franklin, Writings, 9:267)
"Here is my creed. I believe in one God, creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him is doing good to his other Children. That the soul of Man is immortal…. As to Jesus of Nazareth…I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but…I have…some Doubts as to his Divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble." 1790 (Franklin, Writings, 10:84)
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Tom Paine was one of the most outspoken, influential, and interesting of the founders of the American republic (and a major player in the post-revolutionary French republic), perhaps the man most responsible for popularizing the American revolution through his pamphlet Common Sense. He gets a lot of space here; because he wrote a lot specifically about Bible-based religion. His brilliant work, The Age of Reason, was highly critical of Christianity and the Bible, and he was reviled for it. Undaunted, Paine said,
"…my opponents…are so little masters of the subject as to confound a dispute about authenticity, with a dispute about doctrines." (Paine, Age, 734)
Thomas Jefferson admired him.
"[Paine and Lord Bollingbroke] were alike in making bitter enemies of the priests and pharisees of their day. Both were honest men; both advocates for human liberty. Paine wrote for a country which permitted him to push his reasoning to whatever length it would go." 1821 (Jefferson, Autobiography, 1451)
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"…I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason." (Paine, Age, 665)
"The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is but little better: whereas natural philosophy, mathematical, and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil pleasure; and in spite of the gloomy dogma of priests and of superstition, the study of those things is the study of the true theology. It teaches man to know and to admire the Creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine origin." (Paine, Age, 771)
"The intellectual part of religion is a private affair between every man and his Maker, and in which no third party has any right to interfere. The practical part consists in our doing good to each other." (Paine, Writings, 249)
"Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe, without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me and for every other person, as for Thomas…The story, so far as relates to the supernatural part, has every mark of fraud…stamped upon the face of it." (Paine, Age, 670-671)
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"No man ought to make a living by Religion. It is dishonest so to do." (Paine, Writings, 250)
"Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God communicated to certain individuals [by a revelation]…as if the way to God was not open to every man alike…Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all." (Paine, Age, 667)
"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life…and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endevouring to make our fellow creatures happy…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. My own mind is my own church." (Paine, Age, 666)
"There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, and making a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and prophaneness of the [fall of Satan] story. (Paine, Age, 674)
"Revelation is a communication of something, which the person, to whom that thing is revealed, did not know before…Revelation, therefore, cannot be applied to any thing done…of which man is himself the actor or the witness; and consequently all the historical an anecdotal part of the bible, which is almost the whole of it, is not within the meaning and compass of the word revelation, and therefore is not the word of God." (Paine, Age, 675-676)
"…the church has set up a system of religion very contradictory to the character of the person whose name it bears. It has set up a religion of pomp and of revenue in pretended imitation of a person whose life was humility and poverty." (Paine, Age, 684)
"The invention of a purgatory, and of the releasing of souls therefrom, by prayers, bought of the church with money; the selling of pardons, dispensations, and indulgences, are revenue laws…those things derive their origin from the proxysm of the crucifixion [theory]…which was, that one person could stand in the place of another…The probability therefore is, that the whole theory or doctrine of…redemption…was originally fabricated on purpose to bring forward and build all those secondary and pecuniary redemptions upon…[but since there is no external evidence for this,] the case can only be referred to the internal evidence which the thing carries of itself; [there’s a strong presumption of it’s being a fabrication based on the idea of pecuniary justice]…If I owe a person money and cannot pay him…another person can take the debt upon himself…But if I have committed a crime, every circumstance of the case is changed. Moral justice cannot take the innocent for the guilty, even if the innocent would offer itself. [Justice] is then no longer justice. It is indiscriminate revenge. This single reflection will show that the doctrine of redemption is founded on a mere pecuniary idea…" (Paine, Age, 684-695)
"…man stands in the same relative condition with his Maker he ever did stand since man existed; and that it is his greatest consolation to think so. Let him believe this, and he will live more consistently and morally than by any other system." (Paine, Age, 685)
"It is by [a man’s] being taught to contemplate himself as an out-law, as an out-cast, as a beggar, as a mumper, as one thrown, as it were on a dunghill, at an immense distance from his Creator, and who must make his approaches by creeping an cringing to intermediate beings, that he conceives either a contemptuous disregard for every thing under the name of religion, or becomes indifferent, or turns, what he calls, devout. In the latter case, he consumes his life in grief, or the affectation of it. His prayers are reproaches. His humility is ingratitude. He calls himself a worm, and the fertile earth a dunghill; and all the blessings of life…vanities. He despises the choicest gift of God to man, the GIFT OF REASON; and having endeavoured to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls it human reason, as if man could give reason to himself." (Paine, Age, 685)
"There is a word of God; there is a revelation. THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOLD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man." (Paine, Age, 686)
"…but human language, is incapable of being used as an universal means of unchangeable and uniform information; and therefore it is not the means that God useth in manifesting himself universally to man. It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The creation speaketh an universal language, independently of human speech or human languAgeIt is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations an to all worlds; and this word of god reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God…Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation." (Paine, Age, 687)
"I recollect not a single passage in all the writings ascribed to the men, called apostles, that convey any idea of what God is." (Paine, Age, 690)
"As to the Christian system of faith, it appears to me as a species of atheism; a sort of religious denial of God. It professes to believe in a man rather than in God. It is a compound made up chiefly of manism with but little deism, and is as near to atheism as twilight is to darkness. It introduces between man and his maker an opaque body which it calls a redeemer; as the moon introduces her opaque self between the earth and the sun, and it produces by this means a religious or an irreligious eclipse of light. It has put the whole orb of reason into shade. (Paine, Age, 690-691)
"That which is now called natural philosophy, embracing the whole circle of science, of which astronomy occupies the chief place, is the story of the works of God and of the power and wisdom of God in his works, and is the true theology. [Christianity] is the study of human opinions and of human fancies concerning God. It is not the study of God himself in the works that he has made, but in the works or writing that man has made…it has abandoned the original and beautiful system of theology, like a beautiful innocent…for the hag of superstition." (Paine, Age, 691)
"It is a fraud of the christian system to call the sciences human inventions; it is only the application of them that is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them: [An Almanac shows that] man is acquainted with the laws by which the heavenly bodies move. But it would be something worse than ignorance, were any church on earth to say, that those laws are an human invention." (Paine, Age, 691-69) 2
"…what is called the christian system of faith, including in it the whimsical account of the creation; the strange story of Eve, the snake, and the apple; the amphibious idea of a man-god; the corporeal idea of the death of a god; the mythological idea of a family of gods; and the christian system of arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three, are all irreconcilable, not only to the divine gift of reason that God has given to man, but to the knowledge that man gains of the power and wisdom of God, by the aid of the sciences, and by studying the structure of the universe that God has made." (Paine, Age, 697)
"If the belief of errors not morally bad did no mischief, it would make no part of the moral duty of man to oppose and remove them. There was no moral ill in believing the earth was flat…any more that there was moral virtue in believing it was round…But when a system of religion is made to grow out of a supposed system of creation that is not true, and to unite itself therewith in a manner almost inseparable therefrom the case assumes an entirely different ground. It is then that errors, not morally bad, become fraught with the same mischiefs as if they were. It is then that the truth, though otherwise indifferent in itself, becomes an essential, by becoming the criterion, that either confirms by corresponding evidence, or denies by contradictory evidence, the reality of the religion itself. In this view of the case it is the moral duty of man to obtain every possible evidence, that the structure of the heavens, or any other part of creation affords, with respect to systems of religion. But this, the supporters or partizans of the christian system, as if dreading the result, incessantly opposed, and not only rejected the sciences, but persecuted the professors." (Paine, Age, 698,699)
"…the age of ignorance [dark ages] began with the christian system. There was more knowledge in the world before that period than for many centuries afterwards; and as to religious knowledge, the christian system…was only another species of mythology; and the mythology to which it succeeded, was a corruption of an ancient system of theism." (Paine, Age, 699)
"All the corruptions that have taken place in theology, and in religion, have been produced by admitting of what man calls revealed religion…the most effectual means to prevent all such evils and impositions, is not to admit of any other revelation than that which is manifested in the book of Creation; and to contemplate the Creation, as the only true and real word of God that ever did or ever will exist, and that every thing else, called the word of God is fable and imposition." (Paine, Age, 699)
"It is an inconsistency, scarcely possible to be credited, that any thing should exist under the name of a religion, that held it to be irreligious to study and contemplate the structure of the universe that God has made." (Paine, Age, 700)
"[Pre-reformation Catholicism was a] long chain of despotic ignorance. [As a result of the reformation] the Sciences began to revive, and Liberality, their natural associate, began to appear. This was the only public good the reformation did; for with respect to religious good, it might as well not have taken place." (Paine, Age, 700)
"We see our own earth filled with abundance; but we forget to consider how much of that abundance is owing to the scientific knowledge the vast machinery of the universe has unfolded." (Paine, Age, 710)
"Though it is not a direct article of the christian system that this world that we inhabit is the whole of the habitable creation, yet it its so worked up therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of the creation…that to believe otherwise, that is to believe that God created a plurality of [planets]…renders the christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous; and scatters it in the mind like feathers in the air. The two beliefs cannot be held together in the same mind; and he who thinks that he believes both, has thought but little of either." (Paine, Age, 704)
"From whence then could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his protection should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world, because, they say, one man and one woman had eaten an apple. And on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world…had an Eve, an apple, a serpent, and a redeemer. In this case, the person who is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimes God himself, would have nothing else to do than to travel from world to world, in an endless succession of death, with scarcely a momentary interval of life." (Paine, Age, 710)
"There may be many systems of religion, that so far from being morally bad, are in many respects morally good: but there can be but ONE that is true; and that one, necessarily must, as it ever will, be in all things consistent with the ever existing word of God that we behold in his works. but such is the strange construction of the christian system of faith, that every evidence the heavens affords to man, either directly contradicts it, or renders it absurd." (Paine, Age, 710)
"…what is called a pious fraud, might, at least under particular circumstances, be productive of some good. but the fraud being once established, could not afterwards be explained; for it is with a pious fraud, as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous necessity of going on. The first persons who first preached the christian system…might persuade themselves that it was better than the heathen mythology that then prevailed. From the first preachers, the fraud went on to the second, and to the third, till the idea of its being a pious fraud became lost in the belief of its being true; and that belief came again encouraged by the interest of those who made a livelihood by preaching it." (Paine, Age, 711)
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"Almost all the extraordinary men that lived under the heathen mythology were reputed to be the sons of some of their gods. It was not a new thing at that time to believe a man to have been celestially begotten…[Since Jupiter] cohabited with hundreds: the story…had nothing in it either new, wonderful, or obscene: it was conformable to the opinions that then prevailed among the people called Gentiles, or mythologists, and it was those people only that believed it. The Jews who had kept strictly to the belief of one God, and no more, and who had always rejected the heathen mythology, never credited the story. (Paine, Age, 669)
"It is curious to observe how the theory of…the Christian church, sprung out of the tail of the heathen mythology. [First] by making the founder celestially begotten. The trinity [was] a reduction of the [heathen’s 20,000-30,000 gods]. The statue of Mary succeeded the statue of Diana of Ephesus. The deification of heroes, changed into the canonization of saints. The mythologists had gods for every thing; the Christian[s] had saints for every thing. [In Rome] the church became as crowded with the one, as the pantheon had been with the other…Christian theory is little else than the idolatry of the ancient mythologists, accommodated to the purposes of power and revenue…" (Paine, Age, 669)
"[The Genesis] account of the creation…has all the appearance of being a tradition which the Israelites had among them before they came into Egypt…most probably[y] they did not know, how they came by it. The manner in which the account opens, shews [sic] it to be traditionary. It begins abruptly. It is nobody that speaks. It is nobody that hears. It is addressed to nobody. It has neither first, second, nor third person…It has no voucher. Moses does not take it upon himself by introducing it with the formality he uses on other occasions…the silence and caution that Moses observes, in not authenticating the account, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it, nor believed it." (Paine, Age, 676-677)
"[Solomon’s proverbs] are inferior in keenness to the proverbs of the Spaniards, and not more wise and œconomical than those of the American Franklin." (Paine, Age, 677)
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"Those three means [that have been employed in all ages, and perhaps in all countries, to impose upon mankind] are, Mystery, Miracle, and Prophecy. The two first are incompatible with true religion, and the third ought always to be suspected…the word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth…Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth and represents it in distortion. Truth never invelops itself in mystery; and the mystery in which it is at any time inveloped, is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself. Religion, therefore, being the belief of a God, and the practice of moral truth, cannot have connection with mystery…When men, whether from policy or pious fraud, set up systems of religion incompatible with the word or works of God in the creation, and not only above, but repugnant to human comprehension, they were under the necessity of inventing, or adopting, a word that should serve as a bar to all questions, enquiries, and speculation. The word mystery answered this purpose; and thus it has happened, that religion, which, in itself, is without mystery, has been corrupted it to to a fog of mysteries…[Mystery ] served to bewilder the mind, [miracle] to puzzle the senses. The one was the lingo; the other the legerdemain." (Paine, Age, 711-713)
"…a miracle is something contrary to the operation and effect of [natural] laws. But unless we know the whole extent of those laws, and…the powers of nature, we are not able to judge whether any thing that may appear to us wonderful, or miraculous, be within, or be beyond, or be contrary to, her natural power of acting…Since…appearances are so capable of deceiving…nothing can be more inconsistent, than to suppose, that the Almighty would make use of…miracles, that would subject the person who performed them to the suspicion of being an impostor, and the persons who related them to be suspected of lying, and the doctrine intended to be supported thereby, to be suspected as a fabulous invention…Of all the modes of evidence that ever were invented to obtain belief to any [religion, the] miracle, however successful the imposition may have been, is the most inconsistent…whenever recourse is had to show [theatrics, to sell a belief], (for a miracle…is a show) it implies a lameness or weakness in the doctrine that is preached. And…it is degrading the Almighty into the character of a show-man, playing tricks to…make the people stare and wonder. It is also the most equivocal sort of evidence…for the belief is not to depend upon the [miraculous thing itself], but upon the [credibility] of the reporter…and therefore the thing, were it true, would have no better chance of being believed than if it were a lie…Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course, but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in that same time; it is therefore at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie." (Paine, Age, ) 714
"…the reality of [miracles] is improbable, and their existence unnecessary. They would not…answer any useful purpose, even if they were true; for it is more difficult to obtain belief to a miracle, than to a principle evidently moral, without any miracle. Moral principle speaks universally for itself. Miracle could be but a thing of the moment, and seen but by a few; after this, it requires a transfer of faith…Instead therefore of admitting the recitals of miracles, as evidence of any system of religion being true; they ought to be considered as symptoms of its being [a fable]." (Paine, Age, 716)
"As mystery and miracle took charge of the past and the present, prophecy took charge of the future…" (Paine, Age, 717)
"[If prophet means] a man, to whom the Almighty communicated some event that would take place in future…it is consistent to believe that the event, so communicated, would be told in terms that could be understood; and not related in such a loose and obscure manner as to be out of the comprehension of those that heard it, and so equivocal as to fit almost any circumstance that might happen afterwards. It is conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty to suppose he would deal in this jesting manner with mankind: yet all the things called prophesies, in…the bible, come under this description." (Paine, Age, 717-718)
"But it is with prophesy, as it is with miracle. It could not answer the purpose even if it were real. [Hearers] could not tell whether the man prophesied or lied, or whether it had been revealed to him or whether he conceit it…or [if something like the prediction happened] nobody could again know whether he foreknew it, or guessed at it, or whether it was accidental. A prophet, therefore is a character useless and unnecessary…" (Paine, Age, 718)
"Upon the whole, mystery, miracle, and prophesy, are appendages that belong to [fables] and not to true religion." (Paine, Age, 718)
[On the corruption of the French Revolution] "The idea, always dangerous to society as it is derogatory to the Almighty, that priests could forgive sins…had blunted the feelings of humanity, and callously prepared men for the commission of all crimes. The intolerant spirit of church persecution had transferred itself into politics; the tribunals stiled revolutionary, supplied the place of an inquisition, and the guillotine of the stake." (Paine, Age, 731)
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"There are matters in [the Bible] said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre…in France, by the English government in the East-Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times…the Israelites came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offense, that they put all those nations to the sword-that they spared neither age nor infancy-that they utterly destroyed men, women, and children-that they left not a soul to breathe…Are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned these things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?" (Paine, Age, 735)
"To charge the commission of things upon the Almighty, which in their own nature, and by every rule of moral justice, are crimes…the assassination of infants, is a matter of serious concern. The bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. To believe therefore, the bible to the true, we must unbelieve all our belief in the moral justice of God; for wherein could crying or smiling infants offend? And to read the bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man." (Paine, Age, 735)
"[Numbers] is a book of lies, wickedness, and blasphemy; for what can be greater blasphemy than to ascribe the wickedness of man to the orders of the Almighty." (Paine, Age, 747)
"[Joshua] is a military history of rapine and murder, as savage and brutal, as those recorded of his predecessor in villany and hypocrisy, Moses; and the blasphemy consists, as in the former books, in ascribing those deeds to the orders of the Almighty." (Paine, Age, 750)
"Had the cruel and murdering 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 falshood of the charge, and gloried in defending his injured fame. It is because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honour of your Creator, that we listen to the horrid tales of the bible, or hear them with callous indifference…[It may wound the stubbornness of a priest, but it eases the mind of millions to know that the bible is without authority]. It will free them from all those hard thoughts of the Almighty, which priestcraft and the bible had infused into their mind, and which stood in everlasting opposition to all their ideas of his moral justice and benevolence." (Paine, Age, 756)
"The cruelties that the Jews had accustomed themselves to practice on the Canaanites, whose country they had savagely invaded under a pretended gift from God, they afterwards practised as furiously on each other." (Paine, Age, 757)
"A people who, corrupted by, and copying after, such monsters and impostors as Moses and Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, and David, had distinguished themselves above all others, on the face of the known earth, for barbarity and wickedness…the flattering appellation of his chosen people, is no other than a lie, which the priests and leaders of the Jews had invented to cover the baseness of their own characters, and which Christian priests, sometimes as corrupt, and often as cruel, have professed to believe." (Paine, Age, 758)
"When we read the obscene stories [of the Old Testament], the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and for my own part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest every thing that is cruel." (Paine, Age, 677)
"…the outrage offered to the moral justice of God, by supposing him to make the innocent suffer for the guilty, and also the loose morality and low contrivance of supposing him to change himself into the shape of a man, in order to make and excuse to himself for not executing his supposed sentence upon Adam…" (Paine, Age, 697)
"…when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon…called Redemption by the Death of the Son of God…I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man that killed his son when he could not revenge himself any other way; and as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons…God was too good to do such an action, and also too Almighty to be under any necessity of doing it. I believe in the same manner to this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of religion that has any thing in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system." (Paine, Age, 701)
"It seems that if parents of the christian profession were ashamed to tell their children any thing about the principles of their religion. They sometimes instruct them in morals, and talk to them of the goodness of what they call Providence…But the christian story of God the Father putting his son to death, or employing people to do it…cannot be told by a parent to a child; and to tell him that it was done to make mankind happier and better is making the story still worse, as if mankind could be improved by the example of murder…" (Paine, Age, 703)
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"It is not the antiquity of a tale that is any evidence of its truth, on the contrary it is a symptom of its being [a fable]…The origin of every nation is buried in fabulous tradition, and that of the Jews is a much to be suspected as any other." (Paine, Age, 735)
"…the books ascribed to Moses, to Joshua, to Samuel…are books of testimony…and therefore, the whole of our belief, as to the authenticity of those books, rests…upon the certainty that they were written by Moses, Joshua, and Samuel; [and the credibility of] their testimony…we may believe the certainty of the authorship, and yet not the testimony; in the same manner, that we may believe that a certain person gave evidence upon a case [of law] and yet not believe the evidence that he gave. But if it should be found that the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, were not written by [them], every part of the authority and authenticity of those books is gone at once, for there can be no such thing as forged or invented testimony, neither can there be anonymous testimony, more especially as to things incredible…the degree of evidence necessary to establish our belief of things naturally incredible, whether in the bible or elsewhere, is far greater than that which obtains our belief to natural and probable things; and therefore the advocates for the bible have no claim to our belief of the bible, because that we believe things stated in other ancient writings; since that we believe the things stated in those writings no further than they are probable and credible, or because they are self evident like Euclid, or admire them because they are elegant like Homer, or approve because they are sedate like Plato, or judicious like Aristotle." (Paine, Age, 736-737)
"…the persons who, ye say, are the authors, are not the authors, and that ye know not who the authors are. What shadow of pretense have ye now to produce for continuing the blasphemous fraud?" (Paine, Age, 756)
"When we see the studied craft of the scripture-makers, in making every part of this romantic book of school-boy’s eloquence, bend to the monstrous idea of a son of God, begotten by a ghost on the body of a virgin, there is no imposition we are not justified in suspecting them of. Every phrase and circumstance are marked with the barbarous hand of superstitious torture, and forced into meanings it was impossible they could have." (Paine, Age, 774)
"As it is nothing extraordinary that a woman should be with child before she was married, and that the son she might bring forth should be executed even unjustly, I see no reason for not believing that [Mary, Joseph, and Jesus] existed…[It] comes under the common head of, ‘It may be so,’ and what then?…The story…is blasphemously obscene. It gives an account of a young woman engaged to be married, and while under this engagement, she is, to speak plain language, debauched by a ghost, under… impious pretence… Notwithstanding which, Joseph afterwards marries her, cohabits with her as his wife, and in his turn rivals the ghost…This story is, upon the face of it, the same kind of story as that of Jupiter and Leda, or Jupiter and Europa, or any of the amorous adventures of Jupiter; and shews…that the Christian faith is built upon the heathen mythology." (Paine, Age, 792-793)
"It is not then the existence or the non-existence of the persons that I trouble myself about. It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the new testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend." (Paine, Age, 791)
"The new testament, compared with the old, is like a farce of one act, in which there is not room for very numerous violations of the unities internal consistency of the writings]…First…the agreement of all the parts of a story does not prove that story to be true, because the parts may agree and the whole may be false: Secondly, that the disagreement of the parts of a story proves the whole cannot be true. The agreement does not prove truth, but the disagreement proves falshood positively." (Paine, Age, 793)
"Can any man of serious reflection hazard his future happiness upon the belief of a story, naturally impossible, repugnant to every idea of decency, and related by persons already detected of falshood?" (Paine, Age, 796)
"It is a history of the times, and a bad history of the Old Testament is, and also a history of bad men, and bad actions, abounding with bad examples." (Paine, Writings, 9:142)
"I have now gone through the bible as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie, and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow." (Paine, Age, 791)
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