composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God."

12. If Thomas Paine recanted, why do you pursue him? If he recanted
he died in your belief. For what reason, then, do you denounce his
death as cowardly? If upon his death-bed he renounced the opinions he
had published, the business of defaming him should be done by infidels,
not by Christians. I ask Christians if it is honest to throw away the
testimony of his friends, the evidence of fair and honorable men, and
take the putrid words of avowed and malignant enemies? When Thomas
Paine was dying he was infested by fanatics, by the snaky spies of
bigotry. In the shadows of death were the unclean birds of prey
waiting to tear, with beak and claw, the corpse of him who wrote the
"Rights of Man," and there lurking and crouching in the darkness, were
the jackals and hyenas of superstition, ready to violate his grave.
These birds of prey--these unclean beasts--are the witnesses produced
and relied upon to malign the memory of Thomas Paine. One by one the
instruments of torture have been wrenched from the cruel clutch of the
church, until within the armory of orthodoxy there remains but one
weapon--Slander.

Against the witnesses that I have produced there can be brought just
two--Mary Roscoe and Mary Hinsdale. The first is referred to in the
memoir of Stephen Grellet. She had once been a servant in his house.
Grellet tells what happened between this girl and Paine. According to
this account, Paine asked her if she had ever read any of his writings,
and on being told that she had read very little of them, he inquired
what she thought of them, adding that from such an one as she he
expected a correct answer.

Let us examine this falsehood. Why would Paine expect a correct answer
about his writings from one who read very little of them? Does not such
a statement devour itself? This young lady further said that the "Age
of Reason" was put in her hands, and that the more she read in it, the
more dark and distressed she felt, and that she threw the book into the
fire. Whereupon Mr. Paine remarked: "I wish all had done as you did,
for if the devil ever had any agency in any work, he had in my writing
that book."

The next is Mary Hinsdale. She was a servant in the family of Willet
Hicks. The church is always proving something by a nurse. She, like
Mary Roscoe, was sent to carry some delicacy to Mr. Paine. To this
young lady Paine, according to his acc