n their power the injustice I
had sustained, invited me publickly and unanimously to return into the
Convention, and which I accepted, to shew I could bear an injury without
permitting it to injure my principles or my disposition. It is not
because right principles have been violated, that they are to be
abandoned.

I have seen, since I have been at liberty, several publications written,
some in America, and some in England, as answers to the former part of
"The Age of Reason." If the authors of these can amuse themselves by so
doing, I shall not interrupt them, They may write against the work, and
against me, as much as they please; they do me more service than they
intend, and I can have no objection that they write on. They will find,
however, by this Second Part, without its being written as an answer to
them, that they must return to their work, and spin their cobweb over
again. The first is brushed away by accident.

They will now find that I have furnished myself with a Bible and
Testament; and I can say also that I have found them to be much worse
books than I had conceived. If I have erred in any thing, in the former
part of the Age of Reason, it has been by speaking better of some parts
than they deserved.

I observe, that all my opponents resort, more or less, to what they call
Scripture Evidence and Bible authority, to help them out. They are
so little masters of the subject, as to confound a dispute about
authenticity with a dispute about doctrines; I will, however, put them
right, that if they should be disposed to write any more, they may know
how to begin.

THOMAS PAINE. October, 1795.

CHAPTER I - THE OLD TESTAMENT

IT has often been said that any thing may be proved from the Bible; but
before any thing can be admitted as proved by Bible, the Bible itself
must be proved to be true; for if the Bible be not true, or the truth of
it be doubtful, it ceases to have authority, and cannot be admitted as
proof of any thing.

It has been the practice of all Christian commentators on the Bible, and
of all Christian priests and preachers, to impose the Bible on the
world as a mass of truth, and as the word of God; they have disputed
and wrangled, and have anathematized each other about the supposeable
meaning of particular parts and passages therein; one has said and
insisted that such a passage meant such a thing, another that it meant
directly the contrary, and a third, that it meant neither one n