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. It follows in the tradition of 18th-century British deism, and challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the Bible. It was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807.
It was a best-seller in the United States, where it caused a deistic revival. British audiences, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French Revolution, received it with more hostility. The Age of Reason presents common deistic arguments; for example, it highlights what Paine saw as corruption of the Christian Church and criticizes its efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason in the place of revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as an ordinary piece of literature, rather than a divinely-inspired text. In The Age of Reason, he promotes natural religion and argues for the existence of a creator God.
Most of Paine's arguments had long been available to the educated elite, but by presenting them in an engaging and irreverent style, he made deism appealing and accessible to the masses. Originally distributed as unbound pamphlets, the book was also cheap, putting it within the reach of a large number of buyers. Fearing the spread of what it viewed as potentially-revolutionary ideas, the British government prosecuted printers and booksellers who tried to publish and distribute it. Nevertheless, Paine's work inspired and guided many free thinkers.
Historical context Intellectual context: 18th-century British deism Paine's book followed in the tradition of early 18th-century British deism. Those deists, while maintaining individual positions, still shared several sets of assumptions and arguments that Paine articulated in The Age of Reason. The most important position that united the early deists was their call for "free rational inquiry" into all subjects, especially religion. Saying that early Christianity was founded on freedom of conscience, they demanded religious toleration and an end to religious persecution. They also demanded that debate rest on reason and rationality. Deists embraced a Newtonian worldview and believed that all things in the universe, even God, must obey the laws of nature. Without a concept of natural law, the deists argued, explanations of the workings of nature would descend into irrationality. This belief in natural law drove their skepticism of miracles. Because miracles had to be observed to be validated, deists rejected the accounts laid out in the Bible of God's miracles and argued that such evidence was neither sufficient nor necessary to prove the existence of God. Along these lines, deistic writings insisted that God, as the first cause or prime mover, had created and designed the universe with natural laws as part of his plan. They held that God does not repeatedly alter his plan by suspending natural laws to intervene (miraculously) in human affairs. Deists also rejected the claim that there was only one revealed religious truth or "one true faith". Religion had to be "simple, apparent, ordinary, and universal" if it was to be the logical product of a benevolent God. They, therefore, distinguished between "revealed religions", which they rejected, such as Christianity, and "natural religion", a set of universal beliefs derived from the natural world that demonstrated God's existence (and so they were not atheists).Herrick, 26–29Kuklick, xiii.
While some deists accepted revelation, most argued that revelation's restriction to small groups or even a single person limited its explanatory power. Moreover, many found the Christian revelations in particular to be contradictory and irreconcilable. According to those writers, revelation could reinforce the evidence for God's existence already apparent in the natural world but more often led to superstition among the masses. Most deists argued that priests had deliberately corrupted Christianity for their own gain by promoting the acceptance of miracles, unnecessary rituals, and illogical and dangerous doctrines (accusations typically referred to as "priestcraft"). The worst of the doctrines was original sin. By convincing people that they required a priest's help to overcome their innate sinfulness, deists argued, religious leaders had enslaved the human population. Deists therefore typically viewed themselves as intellectual liberators.Herrick, 30–39
Political context: French Revolution
By the time Part I of The Age of Reason was published in 1794, many British and French citizens had become disillusioned by the French Revolution. The Reign of Terror had begun, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had been tried and executed and Britain was at war with France. The few British radicals who still supported the French revolution and its ideals were viewed with deep suspicion by their countrymen. The Age of Reason belongs to the later, more radical, stage of the British political reform movement, which openly embraced republicanism and sometimes atheism and was exemplified by such texts as William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). (However, Paine and other deists were not atheists.) By the middle of the decade, the moderate voices had disappeared: Richard Price, the Dissenting minister whose sermon on political liberty had prompted Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), had died in 1791, and Joseph Priestley had been forced to flee to America after a Church–and–King mob burned down his home and church.Butler, Marilyn. Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background 1760–1830. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1981), 49; Bindman, 118. (reference covers entire paragraph)
The conservative government, headed by William Pitt, responded to the increasing radicalization by prosecuting several reformers for seditious libel and treason in the famous 1794 Treason Trials. Following the trials and an attack on George III, conservatives were successful in passing the Seditious Meetings Act and the Treasonable Practices Act (also known as the "Two Acts" or the "gagging acts"). The 1795 Acts prohibited freedom of assembly for groups such as the radical London Corresponding Society (LCS) and encouraged indictments against radicals for "libelous and seditious" statements. Afraid of prosecution and disenchanted with the French Revolution, many reformers drifted away from the cause. The LCS, which had previously unified religious Dissenters and political reformers, fractured when Francis Place and other leaders helped Paine publish The Age of Reason. The society's more religious members withdrew in protest, and the LCS lost around a fifth of its membership.Thompson, 148
Publishing history In December 1792, Paine's Rights of Man, part II, was declared seditious in Britain, and he was forced to flee to France to avoid arrest. Dismayed by the French revolution's turn toward secularism and atheism, he composed Part I of The Age of Reason in 1792 and 1793:
Although Paine wrote The Age of Reason for the French, he dedicated it to his "Fellow Citizens of the United States of America", alluding to his bond with the American revolutionaries.Smylie, 210
It is unclear when exactly Paine drafted Part I although he wrote in the preface to Part II:
According to Paine scholars Edward Davidson and William Scheick, he probably wrote the first draft of Part I in late 1793, but Paine biographer David Hawke argues for a date of early 1793.Hawke, 292–94. It is also unclear whether or not a French edition of Part I was published in 1793. François Lanthenas, who translated The Age of Reason into French in 1794, wrote that it was first published in France in 1793, but no book fitting his description has been positively identified.See Gimbel for a discussion of one possible copy of the 1793 French text. Barlow published the first English edition of The Age of Reason, Part I in 1794 in London, selling it for a mere three pence.
Meanwhile, Paine, considered too moderate by the powerful Jacobin Club of French revolutionaries, was imprisoned for ten months in France. He escaped the guillotine only by accident: the sign marking him out for execution was improperly placed on his cell door.Kuklick, xix–xxi. When James Monroe, at that time the new American Minister to France, secured his release in 1794,Foot and Kramnick. 1987. The Thomas Paine Reader, p. 16. Paine immediately began work on Part II of The Age of Reason despite his poor health. Part II was first published in a pirated edition by H.D. Symonds in London in October 1795. In 1796, Daniel Isaac Eaton published Parts I and II, and sold them at a cost of one shilling and six pence. (Eaton was later forced to flee to America after being convicted of seditious libel for publishing other radical works.)Smith, 108. Paine himself financed the shipping of 15,000 copies of his work to America. Later, Francis Place and Thomas Williams collaborated on an edition, which sold about 2,000 copies. Williams also produced his own edition, but the British government indicted him and confiscated the pamphlets.
In the late 1790s, Paine fled from France to the United States, where he wrote Part III of The Age of Reason: An Examination of the Passages in the New Testament, Quoted from the Old and Called Prophecies Concerning Jesus Christ. Fearing unpleasant and even violent reprisals, Thomas Jefferson convinced him not to publish it in 1802. Five years later, Paine decided to publish despite the backlash he knew would ensue.
Following Williams' sentence of one year's hard labor for publishing The Age of Reason in 1797, no editions were sold openly in Britain until 1818, when Richard Carlile included it in an edition of Paine's complete works. Carlile charged one shilling and sixpence for the work, and the first run of 1,000 copies sold out in a month. He immediately published a second edition of 3,000 copies. Like Williams, he was prosecuted for seditious libel and blasphemous libel. The prosecutions surrounding the printing of The Age of Reason in Britain continued for 30 years after its initial release and encompassed numerous publishers as well as over a hundred booksellers.Bronowski, Jacob. William Blake and the Age of Revolution. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (1965), 81Wiener, 108–09.
Structure and major arguments The Age of Reason is divided into three sections. In Part I, Paine outlines his major arguments and personal creed. In Parts II and III he analyzes specific portions of the Bible to demonstrate that it is not the revealed word of God.
Analysis
At the beginning of Part I of the Age of Reason, Paine lays out his personal belief:
Paine's creed encapsulates many of the major themes of the rest of his text: a firm belief in a creator-God; a skepticism regarding most supernatural claims (miracles are specifically mentioned later in the text); a conviction that virtues should be derived from a consideration for others rather than oneself; an animus against corrupt religious institutions; and an emphasis on the individual's right of conscience.As Walter Woll has noted in his book on Paine, there are "remarkable similarities" between Paine's creed and his friend Benjamin Franklin's creed: "I believe in one God, the 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, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this." Woll, 138, note 1
Reason and revelation