Paine suffered then, as now he suffers not so much because of what he wrote as from the misinterpretations of others. He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity.
His Bible was the open face of nature, the broad skies, the green hills. He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds -- or on persons devoted to them -- have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life. When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a dirty little atheist he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished. If Paine had ceased his writings with "The Rights of Man" he would have been hailed today as one of the two or three outstanding figures of the Revolution. But "The Age of Reason" cost him glory at the hands of his countrymen -- a greater loss to them than to Tom Paine.
I stand corrected.
And, your silence on my point about Christians being different in colonial times than Christians of today (General Washington, for instance, spoke of "Providence" and not Christ) I will take as agreement.
I missed your point. No, we are not in agreement. A Christian today is not significantly different than a Christian in 1776 who is not significantly different than a Christian in 776.