The New Rochelle Pioneer, 27 May 1899
The Truth About Thomas Paine.
By Wilson MacDonald, Sculptor and President of the Paine Historical Society
The time is not far distant when thousands of patriotic Pilgrims will visit New Rochelle to pay tribute to the memory of the man, who, Washington and Jefferson declared, had done more for the cause of the Independence of America than any other one man in the great Revolution which gave birth to liberty in America! The land that was voted to him for patriotic services; the house in which he lived; the monument erected to his memory; the grave, now the spot from which his body was removed in 1839 will become more sacred than they are to-day.
New Rochelle will be the Mecca of the lovers of justice, truth, patriotism and genius, they will journey to New Rochelle just as Pilgrims visit the tomb of Washington and Jefferson to-day. The name of New Rochelle will reach every place on this earth where liberty is revered; where patriotism and truth are honored.
Thomas Paine was born in the town of Thetford, England, on the 29th day of January, 1737. He came to America by the advice of Dr. Franklyn in 1774. Landing in Philadelphia, he began at once to write and urge the Independence of the “United States of America,” he was the first to give our Country that name. Paine has earned the appelation of the inventor of the United States of America, and not only that, but he joined the Army of Washington and shouldered the musket of a private soldier. He had a printing press while in the army.—He wrote the “Crisis,” and as the numbers were written and printed, Washington ordered them to be read to every company in the service.—Paine’s words aroused the patriots of the Continental Army to frenzy; hundreds of the poor ragged half-paid men who thought of going to their homes remained to fight. It can be truthfully said, that it was the patriotic appeals of Thomas Paine to soldiers and citizens, that held the Continental Army together. Paine went to France during the Revolution and brought back a ship load of clothing for the American troops and also several million francs which were borrowed in France.
These are well known historical facts.
After the English Army were driven from our soil and peace declared and the machinery of the Republic set in motion, Paine went abroad, arriving in France, he was at once chosen a member of the French Assembly. He voted humanely to save the life of the King of France, risking his own life to do an act of justice and mercy; for this he was thrown into prison, with the guillotine in sight; by the merest accident and the exertion of friends he was released and returned to America.
Previous to his return home he wrote the “Age of Reason.” His political works had already appeared, they gained him an enduring fame as the first and greatest political writer of either ancient or modern times.
Leaving the fields of political literature, Paine turned his great ability to the idolatry and ecclesiasticism of the times. The appearance of the book which he named “The Age of Reason” threw the theologians, ministers, priests and powers of the world into a fever of uncontrolable rage, from which there seems to be no recovery: Idolaters, fanatics, “pulpit cappers,” wandering and enthusiastic, street preachers, religious fakirs all join in relating the falsehoods about the great author, simply because he wrote a book that they could not answer or disprove. Many attempts have been made to answer his political and ecclesiastic works. No person has ever succeeded yet in making an impression on the “Age of Reason.” For more than one hundred years the book has endured and now at this late day, the brightest and more inteligent of the ministry, the “highest criticism” have taken the same view of the Bible that Paine took one hundred years ago, Briggs, Hills, Newton and Rainsford, of New York, all clergymen, of distinction and extended reputation. They are the “higher critics”—of “higher criticism.”
They dispute on general terms, what Paine declared specially and unequivocably. If Paine had any sentiments bearing on theology he would be a Unitarian,—one of that sect of anything: When he declared,—he “Believed in one God and no more.” He was therefore a one-God-tarian and the original Unitarian!
We have heard the thunderings of the Pulpit against Paine for the last century—the filth and falsehood, thrown and repeated year after year, from high places. But “truth crushed to the earth, etc.” Governor Roosevelt, in his days of “callow youth” wrote in the life of Governeur Morris,—calling Paine “the filthy little atheist.” The doughty Governor writes further that Paine wrote a book against Jesus Christ,—these statements of the hero of San Juan, are in the main untrue.
Paine states clearly his belief in “his Maker” and in “one God and no more.”—This makes him a Unitarian.—Paine wrote beautifully of Christ, thus admitting his existence and good qualities, but not His divinity. We are quite sure that our fighting Governor is strong and just enough to set himself right—on the follies of youth.
The position of Dr. Briggs, of the “higher criticism” party, which seems to be sustained by Bishop Potter, is fiercely assailed by Dr. De Costa. He said last Sunday:
“The work attributed for the last eighteen centuries is now challenged. Protestants are now engaged in rending the Bible in pieces, declaring that it is not infallible, and that the Old and the New Testament abound in myths and legends. This is the situation which confronts us on the memorable Whitsunday of 1899. At the threshold of the twentieth century theological teachers all over the land are declaring that the Bible was not made infallible by the guidance of God, the Holy Ghost. The very words I take for my text are declared false. I could not select a text from any part of the Bible which would not be challenged by some Protestant.”
The majority of the Protestant clergy in the United States, favor the doctrines of the church, not the doctrine of Jesus. The church doctrines are vanishing before our age of science.
Dr. De Costa said further that:
“It is affirmed broadly in the ‘General introduction to the Study of the Holy Scriptures,’ (Dr. Briggs’s book) that what we call the Bible is not really the Bible; that the earlier manuscripts have been lost, and that the real Bible is yet to be discovered. But I wish to show that the scheme of criticism advocated by the distinguished author of the above strikes at what the Episcopal Church ever held sacred and fundamental.”
“So we stand face to face with a serious situation. In substance we have practically the denial of the ability of the Anglican body to guide and teach souls. According to this ‘higher criticism,’ orders can have no real foundation in Scripture. The sacraments are associated with fables and illustrated by myths, while the Word of God affords no standing room except what individual critics may graciously allow.”
The Doctor in his sermon put forth a great many good things and some that were exceedingly weak.
He closes his discourse with a quotation from the gigantic agnostic, the incomparable, logician, orator and Poet, Col. Robert G. Ingersoll. The Doctor, however, don’t quote the Colonel correctly, but yet near enough to save the force and truth of the sentence:
“It has been well said that the ‘higher critics’ are now bivouacked around the smouldering camp fires of Tom Paine.”
If the Doctor had said “Thomas” instead of “Tom,” he would have been strictly correct.
How characteristic it is of humanity, when a man feels that he is hopelessly defeated, he will snap back and say hateful and sarcastic things. Dr. De Costa appears to be no exception to this rule.
It is sad, in many respects to look back on the career and life of Paine; it was one of storms, trials, battles and disasters; he died a broken-hearted, slandered man. He was a martyr to the truth of the principles he wrote and taught,—as was Christ, St. Peter, St. Paul, Galileo, Bruno, Wickliff, Huss, Latimer, Ridley, Servetus and many others who gave up their lives in the cause, which they believed to be true.
Paine was not burned at the stake, nor was he executed. He died peaceably and philosophically on Grove street, New York City, on the 9th of June, 1809. He was buried upon his own farm. Wm. Cobbett dug up his coffin and body in 1839, and took them to England. The last we heard of them was in the custom house probably Liverpool. What became of his body no one knows.
The spirit of either angel or devil seemed to follow him, ill-luck pursued him. He was not executed as Christ and St. Peter were, or burned as were Bruno, Latimer, Huss and Servetus. “Ingratitude more strong than traitors arms quite vanquished him.” He knew and his compatriots in the Revolution knew, that the labors he performed during the struggle for independence and they gave him credit, placing him beside Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams and there he would have remained had he not written “The Age of Reason” for this he was tried by the church, branded, slandered and outraged by the church.
Whatever indiscretions may be charged now against the private character of Paine they were no greater nor half as bad as many clergymen of our day. It is a well known historical truth that all the grand old men of the Revolution were imbibers of wine and “hot stuff too” and in goodly quantities. Paine was a man of an extremely sensitive and nervous organization. “Toddy” affected him much more than it did strong physical organizations like Dr. Franklin, for example. Why, C. Lester Edwards, the historian, told me that he had known Daniel Webster, while on a fishing excursion to drink two bottles of French brandy, from dark until late bedtime and that the God-like Daniel laid down under the table on the sandy beach of New Hampshire and slept off the “excitement.”
Thos. H. Benton United States Senator from Missouri, for 30 years, told me that he remembered to have seen Daniel Webster and Henry Clay at a late dinner once, in Washington, amuse themselves by tossing empty champagne bottles at each other across the table. Col. Benton said that he and John Quincy Adams were sitting at the same table. It is well known that Benton and Adams were very temperate men; it was seldom that they tasted even wine.
It was fortunate that neither Daniel nor Henry had ever written such a powerful and unanswerable book as the “Age of Reason;” had they done so, the major churchman of their day would have blasted their lives with falsehood and covered their graves with the poisoned ivy of slander.
When the great agnostic, Col. Ingersoll, passes out and into the “summer land,” the youthful clergymen who are now being incubated in the theological colleges and are not yet out of the shell, will tell the rising generation what a terrible bad man Col. Ingersoll was in his day, but fortunately we know and coming generations will know what a man Col. Ingersoll is; even the school children know that his life is without a blemish or a stain, that as son, brother, husband, father, citizen and friend he is the peer of any man living or dead.
Col. Ingersoll has opposed the doctrines, the ecclesiasticism, not the morals of the church and therefore the enmity of many of the clergy and laymen.
When we consider the evil fate that has pursued the man and life of Thomas Paine and the fact that even his body was spirited away, we are prepared to believe that the fiendish hands of idolatry and the vile spirit of iconoclasm will tear down the bust of Paine that has just been erected and which will be unveiled on Decoration Day.