TPNHA Editor’s Note

TPNHA is leading an international effort to expand and clarify the Paine Canon. We have attempted to mark those works that have come into question and are doubtful that they are the work of Paine. The Canon is expanding as new works and correspondence not previously in collected writings of Paine are located. Those new works are not yet posted here until it is decided how they will be released to the public.

From Richard Gimbel’s pamphlet New Political Writings by Thomas Paine

CONNECTICUT HAS NO CONSTITUTION.

For the declaration of this truth, a respectable citizen has lost his office, and, from circumstances, which would not otherwise have existed, his life – There is something so tragical in the effects of this persecution, that, judging of the feelings of others by our own, we anticipate from the people of Connecticut a deep and deliberate attention to events so powerfully calculated to awaken enquiry, and we anticipate also an award, which, while it embalms the memory of the deceased martyr, will consign to merited FAME the names of those who have produced this mournful catastrophe.

Mr. Judd, we are told, was one of those active whigs, who exposed his life in defence of our rights in times which tried men’s souls. The independence, which he thus in unison with others acquired for his country, he dared on a recent occasion to assert for himself For this the lightening of federal vengeance has fallen on his head; and but for this he might have lived to this day the ornament of his country- But a Superintending power has permitted him to be numbered with the dead. Be it so. He has fallen in an honorable cause; and human nature has surely sink to its lowest state, if the exertions of patriotism, which cost him his life, do not arouse the spirit of liberty that slumbers in Connecticut.

OF THE SABBATH-DAY IN CONNECTICUT

from the September 15, 1804 Prospect.

(Editor’s Note: This article has not been edited for accuracy, as it is not Paine’s work.)

Sample of testing: (IMAGE: On the Sabbath W.png)

The word Sabbath, means REST; that is, cessation from labor, but the stupid Blue Laws (They were called Blue Laws because they were originally printed on blue paper.-Author.) of Connecticut make a labor of rest, for they oblige a person to sit still from sunrise to sunset on a Sabbath-day, which is hard work. Fanaticism made those laws, and hypocrisy pretends to reverence them, for where such laws prevail hypocrisy will prevail also.

One of those laws says, “No person shall run on a Sabbath-day, nor walk in his garden, nor elsewhere; but reverently to and from meeting.” These fanatical hypocrites forgot that God dwells not in temples made with hands, and that the earth is full of His glory.

One of the finest scenes and subjects of religious contemplation is to walk into the woods and fields, and survey the works of the God of the Creation. The wide expanse of heaven, the earth covered with verdure, the lofty forest, the waving corn, the magnificent roll of mighty rivers, and the murmuring melody of the cheerful brooks, are scenes that inspire the mind with gratitude and delight.

But this the gloomy Calvinist of Connecticut must not behold on a Sabbath-day. Entombed within the walls of his dwelling, he shuts from his view the Temple of Creation. The sun shines no joy to him. The gladdening voice of nature calls on him in vain. He is deaf, dumb and blind to everything around that God has made. Such is the Sabbath-day of Connecticut.

From whence could come this miserable notion of devotion? It comes from the gloominess of the Calvinistic creed. If men love darkness rather than light, because their works are evil, the ulcerated mind of a Calvinist, who sees God only in terror, and sits brooding over the scenes of hell and damnation, can have no joy in beholding the glories of the creation. Nothing in that mighty and wondrous system accords with his principles or his devotion.

He sees nothing there that tells him that God created millions on purpose to be damned, and that the children of a span long are born to burn forever in hell. The creation preaches a different doctrine to this. We there see that the care and goodness of God is extended impartially over all the creatures He has made. The worm of the earth shares His protection equally with the elephant of the desert. The grass that springs beneath our feet grows by His bounty as well as the cedars of Lebanon.

Everything in the creation reproaches the Calvinist with unjust ideas of God, and disowns the hardness and ingratitude of his principles. Therefore he shuns the sight of them on a Sabbath-day.

AN ENEMY TO CANT AND IMPOSITION.

To THE MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY, STYLING ITSELF THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY

(Editor’s Note: This article has not been edited for accuracy, as it is not Paine’s work.)

Sample of testing: (IMAGE: To Members of Society W. png)

The New York Gazette of the sixteenth (August) contains the following article-“On Tuesday, a committee of the Missionary Society, consisting chiefly of distinguished Clergymen, had an interview, at the City Hotel, with the chiefs of the Osage tribe of Indians, now in this city (New York) to whom they presented a Bible, together with an address, the object of which was to inform them that this good book contained the will and laws of the GREAT SPIRIT.”

It is to be hoped some humane person will, on account of our people on the frontiers, as well as of the Indians, undeceive them with respect to the present the missionaries have made them, and which they call a good book, containing, they say, the will and laws of the GREAT SPIRIT. Can those missionaries suppose that the assassination of men, women and children, and sucking infants, related in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., and blasphemously said to be done by the command of the Lord, the Great Spirit, can be edifying to our Indian neighbors, or advantageous to us?

Is not the Bible warfare the same kind of warfare as the Indians themselves carry on, that of indiscriminate destruction, and against which humanity shudders? Can the horrid examples and vulgar obscenity with which the Bible abounds improve the morals or civilize the manners of the Indians? Will they learn sobriety and decency from drunken Noah and beastly Lot; or will their daughters be edified by the example of Lot’s daughters?

Will the prisoners they take in war be treated the better by their knowing the horrid story of Samuel’s hewing Agag in pieces like a block of wood, or David’s putting them under harrows of iron?

Will not the shocking accounts of the destruction of the Canaanites, when the Israelites invaded their country, suggest the idea that we may serve them in the same manner, or the accounts stir them up to do the like to our people on the frontiers, and then justify the assassination by the Bible the missionaries have given them? Will those missionary societies never leave off doing mischief?

In the accounts which this missionary committee give of their interview, they make the chief of the Indians to say, that, “as neither he nor his people could read it, he begged that some good white man might be sent to instruct them.”

It is necessary the general Government keep a strict eye over those missionary societies, who, under the pretense of instructing the Indians, send spies into their country to find out the best lands. No society should be permitted to have intercourse with the Indian tribes, nor send any person among them, but with the knowledge and consent of the Government.

The present Administration has brought the Indians into a good disposition, and is improving them in the moral and civil comforts of life; but if these self-created societies be suffered to interfere, and send their speculating missionaries among them, the laudable object of government will be defeated. Priests, we know, are not remarkable for doing anything gratis; they have in general some scheme in everything they do, either to impose on the ignorant, or derange the operations of government.

OF CAIN AND ABEL (Editor’s Note: this article has not been edited for accuracy.)

Sample of testing: (IMAGE: Cain and Abel Palmer.png)

The story of Cain and Abel is told in Genesis iv. Cain was the elder brother and Abel the younger, and Cain killed Abel. The Egyptian story of Typhon and Osiris, and the Jewish story in Genesis of Cain and Abel, have the appearance of being the same story differently told, and that it came originally from Egypt.

In the Egyptian story, Typhon and Osiris are brothers; Typhon is the elder and Osiris the younger, and Typhon kills Osiris. The story is an allegory on Darkness and Light: Typhon, the elder brother, is Darkness because Darkness was supposed to be more ancient than Light: Osiris is the Good Light who rules during the summer months, and brings forth the fruits of the earth, and is the favorite, as Abel is said to have been; for which Typhon hates him; and when the winter comes, and cold and darkness overspread the earth, Typhon is represented as having killed Osiris out of malice, as Cain is said to have killed Abel.

The two stories are alike in their circumstances and their event, and are probably but the same story. What corroborates this opinion is that the fifth chapter of Genesis historically contradicts the reality of the story of Cain and Abel in the fourth chapter; for though the name of Seth, a son of Adam, is mentioned in the fourth chapter, he is spoken of in the fifth chapter as if he was the first born of Adam. The chapter begins thus:

“This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God created He him; male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years and begat a son, in his own likeness and after his image, and called his name Seth.” The rest of the chapter goes on with the genealogy.

Anybody reading this chapter cannot suppose there were any sons born before Seth. The chapter begins with what is called the creation of Adam, and calls itself the book of the generations of Adam, yet no mention is made of such persons as Cain and Abel.

One thing however is evident on the face of these two chapters, which is that the same person is not the writer of both; the most blundering historian could not have committed himself in such a manner.

Though I look on everything in the first ten chapters of Genesis to be fiction, yet fiction historically told should be consistent; whereas these two chapters are not. The Cain and Abel of Genesis appear to be no other than the ancient Egyptian story of Typhon and Osiris, the Darkness and the Light, which answered very well as an allegory without being believed as a Fact.