Thomas Paine Collection: Common Sense, Rights of Man, Age of Reason, An Essay on Dream, Biblical Blasphemy, Examination Of The Prophecies

by Thomas Paine

"Common Sense was a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine. It was first published anonymously on January 9, 1776, during the American Revolution. Paine wrote it with editorial feedback from Benjamin Rush, who came up with the title. The document denounced British rule and, through its immense popularity, contributed to fomenting the American Revolution... Paine donated the copyright for Common Sense to the states, and as one biographer noted, Paine made nothing of the estimated 150,000 to 600,000 copies that were eventually printed (various sources disagree on the number of printed copies in Paine's lifetime). In fact, he had to pay for the first printing himself." (Source: wikipedia.org)"Rights of Man was written by Thomas Paine in 1791 as a reply to Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke. It has been interpreted as a work defending the French Revolution, but it is also a seminal work embodying the ideas of liberty and human equality." (Source: wikipedia.org)"The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology... critiques institutionalized religion and challenges the inerrancy of the Bible. Published in three parts in 1794, 1795 and 1807, it was a bestseller in America, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. British audiences, however, fearing increased political radicalism as a result of the French revolution, received it with more hostility." (Source: wikipedia.org)Essay on Dream was first published in 1807. Mr. Paine attempts to show by what operation of the mind a Dream is produced in sleep, and applying the same to the account of Dreams in the New Testament.Biblical Blasphemy is a short work summarizing Mr. Paine's Deistic beliefs.Examination of the Prophecies was first published by Mr. Paine in 1807, and was the last of his writings edited by himself. It is evidently extracted from his answer to the bishop of Llandaff, or from his third part of the Age of Reason, both of which, it appears by his will, he left in manuscript.

258 pages, Paperback

Published July 28, 2019

About the author

Thomas Paine was an English-American political activist, author, political theorist and revolutionary. As the author of two highly influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, he inspired the Patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era rhetoric of transnational human rights. He has been called "a corset maker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination".

Born in Thetford, England, in the county of Norfolk, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), the all-time best-selling American book that advocated colonial America's independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis (1776–83), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. Common Sense was so influential that John Adams said, "Without the pen of the author of Common Sense, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain."

Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man (1791), in part a defence of the French Revolution against its critics. His attacks on British writer Edmund Burke led to a trial and conviction in absentia in 1792 for the crime of seditious libel. In 1792, despite not being able to speak French, he was elected to the French National Convention. The Girondists regarded him as an ally. Consequently, the Montagnards, especially Robespierre, regarded him as an enemy.

In December 1793, he was arrested and imprisoned in Paris, then released in 1794. He became notorious because of his pamphlet The Age of Reason (1793–94), in which he advocated deism, promoted reason and freethinking, and argued against institutionalized religion in general and Christian doctrine in particular. He also wrote the pamphlet Agrarian Justice (1795), discussing the origins of property, and introduced the concept of a guaranteed minimum income. In 1802, he returned to America where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.

Reviews

[Peter Talbot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Important read.

Common Sense is a polemic against monarchy and military subjugation that galvanized America on the eve of Revolution. A must read for anyone studying American Federal history.
The Rights of Man furthers this argument against hereditary monarchy and its despotisms against the backdrop of the early states of the French Revolution, again in polemical style echoing the "natural rights" arguments of the enlightenment with an immediate political bent. It is organized as a series of arguments against the anti-Revolutionary work of Edmund Burke and is an important source text for the debate over "natural science" and rights in the preferred republican polity.
The Age of Reason, authored in two parts (the first from Paris at during the Terror; the second fifteen years later after Paine had escaped from the guillotine to New York) is a defense of thorough-going deism against the claims of "revelation", the practices of the church and what Paine develops in debunking Christianity and all "revealed" religions. It's anti-Christian agenda expands the idea that because the authorship of the Old and New Testament are factitious, that confused claims for Divine inspiration in the Bible are fictitious or worse, irreligious. No doubt this work was not one used in the USA's generally anti-secular public school systems to avoid massive objection from "Christian" students and parents. An interesting read, but in its polemical role less than persuasive on many levels, it nonetheless shows the logical extreme of deist belief in a single supreme diety manifest in the "harmony" of mechanical and biological nature. This is a rather hard slog, but a remarkable position that most accurately reflects the "scientific" and anti-clerical mind of many of our founding fathers. As logical argument none of these works bear close reading: they speak as rhetoric and political campaign rather than as speculative or political philosophy.

[Jane Bristol]

THIS SHOULD BE READ BY EVERONE PROBABLY MORE THAN ONCE.
EVEN WITH 'THE DECLINE AND FALL' UNDER THE BELT FROM MY TORTURED YOUTH, I SHOULD NOT GIVEN THIS ON ANOTHER GO. NO.