The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the de… - Thomas Paine

It may be considered as an honour to the animal faculties of man to obtain redress by courage and danger, but it is far greater honour to the rational faculties to accomplish the same object by reason, accommodation, and general consent.

When a book, as is the case with the Old and New Testament, is ushered into the world under the title of being the Word of God, it ought to be examined with the utmost strictness, in order to know if it has a well-founded claim to that title or not, and whether we are, or are not, imposed upon; for as no poison is so dangerous as that which poisons the physic, so no falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith.

But though such a belief might, by such means, be rendered almost general among the laity, it is next to impossible to account for the continual persecution carried on by the church, for several hundred years, against the sciences, and against the professors of science, if the church had not some record or tradition that it was originally no other than a pious fraud, or did not foresee that it could not be maintained against the evidence that the structure of the universe afforded. CHAPTER