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; and to tell him that all this is a mystery, is
only making an excuse for the incredibility of it.

How different is this to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The
true deist has but one Deity; and his religion consists in contemplating
the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in
endeavouring to imitate him in every thing moral, scientifical, and
mechanical.

The religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true Deism, in
the moral and benign part thereof, is that professed by the quakers: but
they have contracted themselves too much by leaving the works of God out
of their system. Though I reverence their philanthropy, I can not help
smiling at the conceit, that if the taste of a quaker could have been
consulted at the creation, what a silent and drab-colored creation it
would have been! Not a flower would have blossomed its gaieties, nor a
bird been permitted to sing.

Quitting these reflections, I proceed to other matters. After I had
made myself master of the use of the globes, and of the orrery, [NOTE by
Paine: As this book may fall into the bands of persons who do not know
what an orrery is, it is for their information I add this note, as the
name gives no idea of the uses of the thing. The orrery has its name
from the person who invented it. It is a machinery of clock-work,
representing the universe in miniature: and in which the revolution of
the earth round itself and round the sun, the revolution of the moon
round the earth, the revolution of the planets round the sun, their
relative distances from the sun, as the center of the whole system,
their relative distances from each other, and their different
magnitudes, are represented as they really exist in what we call the
heavens.--Author.] and conceived an idea of the infinity of space, and
of the eternal divisibility of matter, and obtained, at least, a general
knowledge of what was called natural philosophy, I began to compare, or,
as I have before said, to confront, the internal evidence those things
afford with the christian system of faith.

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 is
so worked up therewith, from what is called the Mosaic account of the
creation, t