Age of Reason I. Chapter VI - Of the True Theology.
by Thomas Paine
But if objects for gratitude and admiration are our desire, do they
not present themselves every hour to our eyes? Do we not see a fair
creation prepared to receive us the instant we are born -- a world
furnished to our hands, that cost us nothing? Is it we that light up
the sun; that pour down the rain; and fill the earth with abundance?
Whether we sleep or wake, the vast machinery of the universe still
goes on. Are these things, and the blessings they indicate in future,
nothing to, us? Can our gross feelings be excited by no other
subjects than tragedy and suicide? Or is the gloomy pride of man
become so intolerable, that nothing can flatter it but a sacrifice of
the Creator?
I know that this bold investigation will alarm many, but it would be
paying too great a compliment to their, credulity to forbear it on
that account. The times and the subject demand it to be done. The
suspicion that the theory of what is called the Christian church is
fabulous, is becoming very extensive in all countries; and it will be
a consolation to men staggering under that suspicion, and doubting
what to believe and what to disbelieve, to see the subject freely
investigated. I therefore pass on to an examination of the books
called the Old and the New Testament.