fical, 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, the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that
story, the death of the Son of God, that to believe otherwise, that is,
to believe that God created a plurality of worlds, at least as numerous
as what we call stars, 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 can not be held together in the same mind; and he
who thinks that he believes both, has thought but little of either.

Though the belief of a plurality of worlds