Thomas Paine by Jos. Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 22, 1874

Thomas Paine.

By Jos. Clarke

It is evident that Thomas Paine was educated amid influences which gave him a low and mistaken view of Christianity. This of course unfitted him to discuss its merits, or to judge of its claims and tendency.

With this one-sided, narrow view of the subject, he presumptuously undertook to enlighten mankind upon religious subjects. Here was his second failure. He was wholly ignorant of the workings of true religion. This unfitted him to discuss its merits, or to judge of its authority.

Thomas Paine was evidently an extremist, and was impulsive; without caution, or prudence, or reverence; and however useful or popular he might be as a writer, he could not be trusted as a leader, because of his prejudice on religious subjects. Such a person's ideas should be received with caution.

The unexemplary life and miserable death of Thomas Paine go very far in invalidating his religious principles. His cowardice when in peril and danger, and his tendency to associate with the vicious and low, all mark him as a man of dangerous opinions and principles. His mind seems to have run by fixed habit in defiance of sound logic and common sense.

JOS. CLARKE.