Posted on 07/04/2010 9:13:20 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Thomas Paine's political writings, I am singular enough to believe, have done more harm than his irreligious ones. He understood neither government nor religion. From a malignant heart he wrote virulent declamations, which the enthusiastic fury of the times intimidated all men, even Mr. Burke, from answering as he ought. His deism, as it appears to me, has promoted rather than retarded the cause of revolution in America, and indeed in Europe. His billingsgate, stolen from Blount's Oracles of Reason, from Bolingbroke., Voltaire, Berenger, &c., will never discredit Christianity, which will hold its ground in some degree as long as human nature shall have any thing moral or intellectual left in it. The Christian religion, as I understand it, is the brightness of the glory and the express portrait of the character of the eternal, self-existent, independent, benevolent, all powerful and all merciful creator, preserver, and father of the universe, the first good, first perfect, and first fair. It will last as long as the world. Neither savage nor civilized man, without a revelation, could ever have discovered or invented it. Ask me not, then, whether I am a Catholic or Protestant, Calvinist or Arminian. As far as they are Christians, I wish to be a fellow-disciple with them all.
~ Letter from John Adams to Benjamin Rush
*PING*
I have to go back and read again, but I think that Paine’s discussion of government put differences between British and American sensibilities in fairly stark contrast, and, in a way, showed the evolution in thinking from a sort of British moral relativism (what with the King being able to dissolve parliaments at will)to an American moral absolutism about the importance of individual liberty. No mistake should be made about both our ability to change and how liberty has been eroded in America.
Point made, I have to go back and figure out just what John Adams was complaining about in Thomas Paine.
John’s criticism of Paine had nothing to do with his writings during (our) Revolution. This letter was written in 1810 and was speaking of Paine’s later writings such as “Age of Reason,” where he harshly criticizes Christians.
Paine was sort of the Richard Dawkins of his day.
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