The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine [books for 8th graders .txt] 📗

It must be borne in mind that throughout this work Paine generally means by “Bible” only the Old Testament, and speaks of the New as the “Testament.” —⁠Conway ↩

This is an allusion to the essay which Paine wrote at an earlier part of 1793. See Introduction. —⁠Conway ↩

These excited Americans do not seem to have understood or reported the most important item in Vadeer’s reply, namely that their application was “unofficial,” i.e. not made through or sanctioned by Gouverneur Morris, American Minister. For the detailed history of all this see vol. III. —⁠Conway ↩

The officer who at Yorktown, Virginia, carried out the sword of Cornwallis for surrender, and satirically offered it to Rochambeau instead of Washington. Paine loaned him £300 when he (O’Hara) left the prison, the money he had concealed in the lock of his cell-door. —⁠Conway ↩

“Demand that Thomas Paine be decreed of accusation, for the interest of America, as well as of France.” ↩

Euclid, according to chronological history, lived three hundred years before Christ, and about one hundred before Archimedes; he was of the city of Alexandria, in Egypt. ↩

An elegant pocket edition of Paine’s Theological Works (London, R. Carlile, 1822) has in its title a picture of Paine, as a Moses in evening dress, unfolding the two tables of his Age of Reason to a farmer from whom the Bishop of Llandaff (who replied to this work) has taken a sheaf and a lamb which he is carrying to a church at the summit of a well stocked hill. —⁠Conway ↩

This tale of the sun standing still upon Motint Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, is one of those fables that detects itself. Such a circumstance could not have happened without being known all over the world. One half would have wondered why the sun did not rise, and the other why it did not set; and the tradition of it would be universal; whereas there is not a nation in the world that knows anything about it. But why must the moon stand still? What occasion could there be for moonlight in the daytime, and that too whilst the sun shined? As a poetical figure, the whole is well enough; it is akin to that in the song of Deborah and Barak, “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera”; but it is inferior to the figurative declaration of Muhammad to the persons who came to expostulate with him on his goings on, “Wert thou,” said he, “to come to me with the sun in thy right hand and the moon in thy left, it should not alter my career.” For Joshua to have exceeded Muhammad, he should have put the sun and moon, one in each pocket, and carried them as Guy Faux carried his dark lantern, and taken them out to shine as he might happen to want them. The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again; the account, however, abstracted from the poetical fancy, shows the ignorance of Joshua, for he should have commanded the earth to have stood still. ↩

The text of Ruth does not imply the unpleasant sense Paine’s words are likely to convey. —⁠Conway ↩

In 2 Kings 14:25, the name of Jonah is mentioned on account of the restoration of a tract of land by Jeroboam; but nothing further is said of him, nor is any allusion made to the book of Jonah, nor to his expedition to Nineveh, nor to his encounter with the whale. ↩

I observed, as I passed along, several broken and senseless passages in the Bible, without thinking them of consequence enough to be introduced in the body of the work; such as that, 1 Samuel 13:1, where it is said, “Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel, Saul chose him three thousand men,” etc. The first part of the verse, that Saul reigned one year has no sense, since it does not tell us what Saul did, nor say anything of what happened at the end of that one year; and it is, besides, mere absurdity to say he reigned one year, when the very next phrase says he had reigned two for if he had reigned two, it was impossible not to have reigned one.

Another instance occurs in Joshua 5 where the writer tells us a story of an angel (for such the table of contents at the head of the chapter calls him) appearing unto Joshua; and the story ends abruptly, and without any conclusion. The story is as follows:⁠—Ver. 13. “And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand; and Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?” Verse 14, “And he said, Nay; but as captain of the host of the Lord am I now come. And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship and said unto him, What saith my Lord unto his servant?” Verse 15, “And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standeth is holy. And Joshua did so.”⁠—And what then? nothing: for here the story ends, and the chapter too.

Either this story is broken off in the middle, or it is a story told by some Jewish humourist in ridicule of Joshua’s pretended mission from God, and the compilers of