The Age of Reason | Page 7

a special revelation to any
particular tribe, or divine authority in any particular creed of church; and the centenary of
this much-abused publication has been celebrated by a great conservative champion of
Church and State, Mr. Balfour, who, in his "Foundations of Belief," affirms that
"inspiration" cannot be denied to the great Oriental teachers, unless grapes may be
gathered from thorns.
The centenary of the complete publication of "The Age of Reason," (October 25, 1795),
was also celebrated at the Church Congress, Norwich, on October 10, 1895, when
Professor Bonney, F.R.S., Canon of Manchester, read a paper in which he said: "I cannot
deny that the increase of scientific knowledge has deprived parts of the earlier books of
the Bible of the historical value which was generally attributed to them by our forefathers.
The story of Creation in the Book of Genesis, unless we play fast and loose either with
words or with science, cannot be brought into harmony with what we have learnt from
geology. Its ethnological statements are imperfect, if not sometimes inaccurate. The
stories of the Fall, of the Flood, and of the Tower of Babel, are incredible in their present
form. Some historical element may underlie many of the traditions in the first eleven
chapters in that book, but this we cannot hope to recover." Canon Bonney proceeded to
say of the New Testament also, that the Gospels are not so far as we know, strictly
contemporaneous records, so we must admit the possibility of variations and even
inaccuracies in details being introduced by oral tradition." The Canon thinks the interval
too short for these importations to be serious, but that any question of this kind is left
open proves the Age of Reason fully upon us. Reason alone can determine how many
texts are as spurious as the three heavenly witnesses (i John v. 7), and like it "serious"
enough to have cost good men their lives, and persecutors their charities. When men
interpolate, it is because they believe their interpolation seriously needed. It will be seen
by a note in

Part II.
of the work, that Paine calls attention to an interpolation introduced into the first
American edition without indication of its being an editorial footnote. This footnote was:
"The book of Luke was carried by a majority of one only. Vide Moshelm's Ecc. History."
Dr. Priestley, then in America, answered Paine's work, and in quoting less than a page
from the "Age of Reason" he made three alterations, -- one of which changed "church
mythologists" into "Christian mythologists," -- and also raised the editorial footnote into
the text, omitting the reference to Mosheim. Having done this, Priestley writes: "As to the
gospel of Luke being carried by a majority of one only, it is a legend, if not of Mr. Paine's
own invention, of no better authority whatever." And so on with further castigation of the
author for what he never wrote, and which he himself (Priestley) was the unconscious
means of introducing into the text within the year of Paine's publication.
If this could be done, unintentionally by a conscientious and exact man, and one not
unfriendly to Paine, if such a writer as Priestley could make four mistakes in citing half a
page, it will appear not very wonderful when I state that in a modern popular edition of
"The Age of Reason," including both parts, I have noted about five hundred deviations
from the original. These were mainly the accumulated efforts of friendly editors to
improve Paine's grammar or spelling; some were misprints, or developed out of such; and
some resulted from the sale in London of a copy of Part Second surreptitiously made
from the manuscript. These facts add significance to Paine's footnote (itself altered in
some editions!), in which he says: "If this has happened within such a short space of time,
notwithstanding the aid of printing, which prevents the alteration of copies individually;
what may not have happened in a much greater length of time, when there was no
printing, and when any man who could write, could make a written copy, and call it an
original, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
Nothing appears to me more striking, as an illustration of the far-reaching effects of
traditional prejudice, than the errors into which some of our ablest contemporary scholars
have fallen by reason of their not having studied Paine. Professor Huxley, for instance,
speaking of the freethinkers of the eighteenth century, admires the acuteness, common
sense, wit, and the broad humanity of the best of them, but says "there is rarely much to
be said for their work as an example of the adequate treatment of a grave and difficult
investigation," and that they shared with their adversaries "to the full the fatal weakness
of a priori