Common Sense

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions set up to terrify and enslave mankind and monopolize power and profit.

I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise They have the same right to their belief as I have to mine But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself Infidelity does not consist in believing or in disbelieving It consists in professing to believe what he does not believe It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime He takes up the trade of a priest for the sake of gain, and in order to qualify himself for that trade, he begins with a perjury Can we conceive anything more destructive to morality than this? Soon after I had published the pamphlet Common Sense in America, I saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion The adulterous connection of church and state, wherever it had taken place, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, had so effectually prohibited by pains and penalties every discussion upon established creeds and upon first principles of religion that until the system of government should be changed, those subjects could not be brought fairly and openly before the world But that whenever this should be done, a revolution in the system of religion would follow Human inventions and priestcraft would be detected, and man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God and no more Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending to some special mission from God, communicated to certain individuals The Jews have their Moses, the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints, and the Turks their Muhammad, as if the way to God was not open to every man alike Each of those churches show certain books, which they call Revelation or the Word of God The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses, face to face The Christians say that their Word of God came by divine inspiration And the Turks say that their Word of God, the Quran, was brought by an angel from heaven Each of these churches accuse the other of unbelief, and for my own part, I disbelieve them all As it is necessary to affix right ideas to words, I will, before I proceed further into this subject, offer some other observations of the word revelation Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication, if he pleases But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him And though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so And I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them They contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver or a legislator could produce himself without having recourse to supernatural intervention Footnote It is, however, necessary to accept the declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children It is contrary to every principle of moral justice End footnote End of section one This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Steve Brown The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine Part First, Section Two When I am told that the Quran was written in heaven and brought to Muhammad by an angel The account comes to near the same kind of hearsay evidence and second-hand authority as the former.

I did not see the angel myself, and therefore I have a right not to believe it.

When also I am told that a woman called the Virgin Mary said or gave out that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband Joseph said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not.

When therefore I turned my thoughts toward matter of government, I had to form a system for myself that accorded with the moral and philosophic principles in which I had been educated.

I saw, or at least I thought I saw, a vast scene opening itself to the world in the affairs of America, and it appeared to me that unless the Americans changed the plan they were pursuing with respect to the government of England and declared themselves independent, they would not only involve themselves in a multiplicity of new difficulties, but shut out the prospect that was then offering itself to mankind through their means.

It was from these motives that I published the work known by the name of Common Sense, which was the first work I ever did publish.

And so far as I can judge of myself, I believe I should never have been known in the world as an author on any subject whatever had it not been for the affairs of America.

Well, the first thing that makes it an Age of Revolutions is that Thomas Paine calls it that in 1791.

Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense, that very influential pamphlet during the American Revolution.

Absolutely.

So there's this idea that he's encapsulating at the very beginning of the French Revolution, really, that there's something bigger happening than any one revolution.

The constitutions of the states and the federal constitution are printed and reprinted in France and really debated a lot.

This is one of the big questions in the early French Revolution is how are we going to restructure our government? And they looked to the United States for answers.

In Spanish America, by contrast, one of the first things that a lot of Spanish Americans are looking at is Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which is an argument for the independence of former colonial possessions.

Were there echoes, for example, of the Declaration of Independence in other places, or did writings in other countries inform what happened in the U.S.?

in colonial congresses and assemblies.

Paine's Common Sense In the midst of this ferment of American opinion, a bold and eloquent pamphleteer broke in upon the hesitating public with a program for absolute independence, without fears and without apologies.

In the early days of 1776, Thomas Paine issued the first of his famous tracts, Common Sense.

passionate attack upon the British monarchy and an equally passionate plea for American liberty.

Casting aside the language of petition with which Americans had hitherto addressed George III, Paine went to the other extreme and assailed him with many a violent epithet.

in colonial congresses and assemblies.

Paine's Common Sense In the midst of this ferment of American opinion, a bold and eloquent pamphleteer broke in upon the hesitating public with a program for absolute independence, without fears and without apologies.

In the early days of 1776, Thomas Paine issued the first of his famous tracts, Common Sense.

passionate attack upon the British monarchy and an equally passionate plea for American liberty.

Casting aside the language of petition with which Americans had hitherto addressed George III, Paine went to the other extreme and assailed him with many a violent epithet.

in country conventions and conferences or committees, in colonial congresses and assemblies.

Paine's Common Sense In the midst of this ferment of American opinion, a bold and eloquent pamphleteer broke in upon the hesitating public with a program for absolute independence, without fears and without apologies.

In the early days of 1776, Thomas Paine issued the first of his famous tracts, common sense, a passionate attack upon the British monarchy and an equally passionate plea for American liberty.

Casting aside the language of petition, with which Americans had hitherto addressed George III, Paine went to the other extreme and assailed him with many a violent epithet.

He condemned monarchy itself as a system which had laid the world in blood and ashes.