" When a God of this kind
[168] is established there is no difficulty about miracles, and it is on
miracles that Paley bases the case for Christianity--all other arguments
are subsidiary. And his proof of the New Testament miracles is that the
apostles who were eye-witnesses believed in them, for otherwise they
would not have acted and suffered in the cause of their new religion.
Paley's defence is the performance of an able legal adviser to the
Almighty.
The list of the English deistic writers of the eighteenth century closes
with one whose name is more familiar than any of his predecessors,
Thomas Paine. A Norfolk man, he migrated to America and played a leading
part in the Revolution. Then he returned to England and in 1791
published his Rights of Man in two parts. I have been considering,
almost exclusively, freedom of thought in religion, because it may be
taken as the thermometer for freedom of thought in general. At this
period it was as dangerous to publish revolutionary opinions in politics
as in theology. Paine was an enthusiastic admirer of the American
Constitution and a supporter of the French Revolution (in which also he
was to play a part). His Rights of Man is an indictment of the
monarchical form of government, and a plea for representative democracy.
It had an enormous
[169] sale, a cheap edition was issued, and the government, finding that
it was accessible to the poorer classes, decided to prosecute.
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