Age of Reason I. Chapter V - Examination in Detail of the Preceding Bases.
by Thomas Paine
Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity,
or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to
an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story
more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom,
more contradictory to his power, than this story is.
In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were
under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call Satan a
power equally as great, if not greater, than they attribute to the
Almighty. They have not only given him the power of liberating
himself from the pit, after what they call his fall, but they have
made that power increase afterwards to infinity. Before this fall
they represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they
represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes, by their account,
omnipresent. He exists everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies
the whole immensity of space.
Not content with this deification of Satan, they represent him as
defeating by stratagem, in the shape of an animal of the creation,
all the power and wisdom of the Almighty. They represent him as
having compelled the Almighty to the direct necessity either of
surrendering the whole of the creation to the government and
sovereignty of this Satan, or of capitulating for its redemption by
coming down upon earth, and exhibiting himself upon a cross in the
shape of a man.
Had the inventors of this story told it the contrary way, that is,
had they represented the Almighty as compelling Satan to exhibit
himself on a cross in the shape of a snake, as a punishment for his
new transgression, the story would have been less absurd, less
contradictory. But, instead of this they make the transgressor
triumph, and the Almighty fall.
That many good men have believed this strange fable, and lived very
good lives under that belief (for credulity is not a crime) is what I
have no doubt of. In the first place, they were educated to believe
it, and they would have believed anything else in the same manner.
There are also many who have been so enthusiastically enraptured by
what they conceived to be the infinite love of God to man, in making
a sacrifice of himself, that the vehemence of the idea has forbidden
and deterred them from examining into the absurdity and profaneness
of the story. The more unnatural anything is, the more is it capable
of becoming the object of dismal admiration. [NOTE: The French work
has "blind and" preceding dismal. -- Editor.]