in his book, on
which the charge was founded, were these: "All hereditary government is
in its nature tyranny." "The time is not very distant when England will
laugh at itself for sending to Holland, Hanover, Zell, or Brunswick for
men" [meaning King William III and King George I] "at the expense of a
million a year who understood neither her laws, her language, nor her
interest, and whose capacities would scarcely have fitted them for the
office of a parish constable. If government could be trusted to such
hands, it must be some easy and simple thing indeed, and materials fit
for all the purposes may be found in every town and village in England."
Erskine was Paine's counsel, and he made a fine oration in defence of
freedom of speech.

"Constraint," he said, "is the natural parent of resistance, and a
pregnant proof that reason is not on the side of those who use it. You
must all remember, gentlemen, Lucian's pleasant story: Jupiter and a
countryman

[170] were walking together, conversing with great freedom and
familiarity upon the subject of heaven and earth. The countryman
listened with attention and acquiescence while Jupiter strove only to
convince him; but happening to hint a doubt, Jupiter turned hastily
around and threatened him with his thunder. 'Ah, ha!' says the
countryman, 'now, Jupiter, I know that you are wrong; you are always
wrong when you appeal to your thunder.' This is the case with me. I can
reason with the people of England, but I cannot fight against the
thunder of authority."

Paine was found guilty and outlawed. He soon committed a new offence by
the publication of an anti-Christian work, The Age of Reason (1794 and
1796), which he began to write in the Paris prison into which he had
been thrown by Robespierre. This book is remarkable as the first
important English publication in which the Christian scheme of salvation
and the Bible are assailed in plain language without any disguise or
reserve. In the second place it was written in such a way as to reach
the masses. And, thirdly, while the criticisms on the Bible are in the
same vein as those of the earlier deists, Paine is the first to present
with force the incongruity of the Christian scheme with the conception
of the universe attained by astronomical science.

[171]

"Though it is not a direct article of the Christian system that this
world that we inhabit is the whole of the inhabitable globe, yet it is
so worked up therewith--from