This is Paine's repeated mention of six planets, and enumeration of them, twelve years after the discovery of Uranus.Paine was a devoted student of astronomy, and it cannot for a moment be supposed that he had not participated in the universal welcome of Herschel's discovery.The omission of any allusion to it convinces me that the astronomical episode was printed from a manuscript written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered.Unfamiliar with French in 1793, Paine might not have discovered the erratum in Lanthenas' translation, and, having no time for copying, he would naturally use as much as possible of the same manuscript in preparing his work for English readers.But he had no opportunity of revision, and there remains an erratum which, if my conjecture be correct, casts a significant light on the paragraphs in which he alludes to the preparation of the work.He states that soon after his publication of "Common Sense" (1776), he "saw the exceeding probability that a revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system of religion," and that "man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of one God and no more." He tells Samuel Adams that it had long been his intention to publish his thoughts upon religion, and he had made a similar remark to John Adams in 1776.Like the Quakers among whom he was reared Paine could then readily use the phrase "word of God" for anything in the Bible which approved itself to his "inner light,"and as he had drawn from the first Book of Samuel a divine condemnation of monarchy, John Adams, a Unitarian, asked him if he believed in the inspiration of the Old Testament.Paine replied that he did not, and at a later period meant to publish his views on the subject.There is little doubt that he wrote from time to time on religious points, during the American war, without publishing his thoughts, just as he worked on the problem of steam navigation, in which he had invented a practicable method (ten years before John Fitch made his discovery) without publishing it.At any rate it appears to me certain that the part of "The Age of Reason" connected with Paine's favorite science, astronomy, was written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered.
Paine's theism, however invested with biblical and Christian phraseology, was a birthright.It appears clear from several allusions in "The Age of Reason" to the Quakers that in his early life, or before the middle of the eighteenth century, the people so called were substantially Deists.
An interesting confirmation of Paine's statements concerning them appears as I write in an account sent by Count Leo Tolstoi to the London 'Times'
of the Russian sect called Dukhobortsy (The Times, October 23, 1895).This sect sprang up in the last century, and the narrative says:
"The first seeds of the teaching called afterwards 'Dukhoborcheskaya'
were sown by a foreigner, a Quaker, who came to Russia.The fundamental idea of his Quaker teaching was that in the soul of man dwells God himself, and that He himself guides man by His inner word.God lives in nature physically and in man's soul spiritually.To Christ, as to an historical personage, the Dukhobortsy do not ascribe great importance...Christ was God's son, but only in the sense in which we call, ourselves 'sons of God.' The purpose of Christ's sufferings was no other than to show us an example of suffering for truth.The Quakers who, in 1818, visited the Dukhobortsy, could not agree with them upon these religious subjects; and when they heard from them their opinion about Jesus Christ (that he was a man), exclaimed 'Darkness!'
From the Old and New Testaments,' they say, 'we take only what is useful,'
mostly the moral teaching....The moral ideas of the Dukhobortsy are the following: -- All men are, by nature, equal; external distinctions, whatsoever they may be, are worth nothing.This idea of men's equality the Dukhoborts have directed further, against the State authority....Amongst themselves they hold subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to be contrary to their ideas." Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism carried to Russia long before the birth of Elias Hicks, who recovered it from Paine, to whom the American Quakers refused burial among them.Although Paine arraigned the union of Church and State, his ideal Republic was religious;it was based on a conception of equality based on the divine son-ship of every man.This faith underlay equally his burden against claims to divine partiality by a "Chosen People," a Priesthood, a Monarch "by the grace of God," or an Aristocracy.Paine's "Reason" is only an expansion of the Quaker's "inner light"; and the greater impression, as compared with previous republican and deistic writings made by his "Rights of Man" and "Age of Reason" (really volumes of one work), is partly explained by the apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor of George Fox.
Paine's mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive.
That he should have waited until his fifty-seventh year before publishing his religious convictions was due to a desire to work out some positive and practicable system to take the place of that which he believed was crumbling.The English engineer Hall, who assisted Paine in making the model of his iron bridge, wrote to his friends in England, in 1786: "My employer has Common Sense enough to disbelieve most of the common systematic theories of Divinity, but does not seem to establish any for himself."But five years later Paine was able to lay the corner-stone of his temple:
