of superstition has always
horrified the church. By some unaccountable infatuation, belief has
been and still is considered of immense importance. All religions have
been based upon the idea that God will forever reward the true
believer, and eternally damn the man who doubts or denies. Belief is
regarded as the one essential thing. To practice justice, to love
mercy, is not enough; you must believe in some incomprehensible creed.
You must say: "Once one is three, and three times one is one." The man
who practiced every virtue, but failed to believe, was execrated.
Nothing so outrages the feelings of the church as a moral unbeliever,
nothing so horrible as a charitable atheist.

When Paine was born the world was religious, the pulpit was the real
throne, and the churches were making every effort to crush out of the
brain the idea that it had the right to think. He again made up his
mind to sacrifice himself. He commenced with the assertion "That any
system of religion that had anything in it that shocks the mind of a
child can not be a true system." What a beautiful, what a tender
sentiment! No wonder the church began to hate him. He believed in one
God, and no more. After his life he hoped for happiness. He believed
that true religion consisted in doing justice, loving mercy; in
endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy, and in offering to God
the fruit of the heart. He denied the inspiration of the scriptures.
This was his crime.

He contended that it is a contradiction in terms to call anything a
revelation that comes to us at secondhand, either verbally or in
writing. He asserted that revelation is necessarily limited to the
first communication, and that after that it is only an account of
something which another person says was a revelation to him. We have
only his word for it, as it was never made to us. This argument never
had been, and probably never will be answered. He denied the divine
origin of Christ and showed conclusively that the pretended prophecies
of the Old Testament lead no reference to Him whatever. And yet he
believed that Christ was a virtuous and amiable man; that the morality
he taught and practiced was of the most benevolent and elevated
character, and that it had not been exceeded by any. Upon this point
he entertained the same sentiments now held by the Unitarians, and in
fact by all the most enlightened Christians.

In his time the church believed and taught that ev