The American Republican gazette — Concord, N.H., 1803-04-07 00:00:00, page 1

Up to This Day.
JOHN PETTEE, Jun.
POSTRIDER,
INFORMS his customers to the Republican
Gazette, that he has made out their ac
counts to No. 113, at which time it is hoped
they will famr bim with a fettlemeat, that
he may be able to account with the Printer,
and by the continuance of his old cuftopers
and the encouragement of new ones may be
able to pursue his route as ufual—lt is believ
ed that a rich and enlightened public will not
fail to lend their aid in fopport of a press de
voted so much to the people, and without
which we Ihould be ignorant of the most im
portant faas.-—N. B. A receipt from the
Printer will be a discharge to customers.
NOTICE.
ft, THE Customers who took pa
pers of Mr. Clark and Mr. Smith, previous to
Mr. Blaifdel's riding, are informed that their
accounts to No. 85 are now io the bands of the
Printer—the present mail-post has a copy of
the fame, and will remit to the printer whate
ver sums may be paid.—Q If those accounts
are not paid, immediately, they will be put
into OTHER hands —„ They must be paid.
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MORE ABOUT TH. PAINE,
[Much, very much, has already been said '
■ ‘and published about this extraordina-;
ry man : Yet me presume the three let
ters which will follow, will be read,
cxtenfvely, not only with candid at
tention, but with pleasure and profit
too—by all classes of citizens.
Is Thomas Paine an Infidel ? —ls he in
, reality a man dangerous to the Cause
of the True Religion of" Jesus
of Nazareth ?" While the fiery
bigot and dejigning hypocrite would
66 burn him at the flake" for his opin
ion; we trust the Believer will
find his faith more flrengthened and
confirmed, and his fears of Paine's
» infidelity fubjide, when he reads the
excellent letter of the Rev. Mr. Gem
mel, an eminent Clergyman, rejiding
in (we b,lieve) Pennsylvania. Let
it no longer befaid that " Tom Paine
will defray Religion ;'yea, that di
vine Religion against which even the
\ gates of hell Jhall never prevail !]
three Tetters. ? ,
First —Samuel Adams to Thos. Paine.
•. SIR, »s,a Nro. 30th, 1892.
I Have frequently with pleasure re
fle&ed on your services to my na
tive, and your adopted, country.— —
Your Common Sense and your Crisis
unquestionably awakened the public
mind, and lelthe people loudly to
call for a declaration of out national
independence, I therefore esteemed
, you as a warm friend to the liberty,
and lasting welfare of the human race.
But when I heard, that you had turn-,
ed your mind toa defence of infidel
ity, I felt myfelf much astonished, and
more grieved, that you had attempted
1 a measure so injurious to the feelings,
and so repugnant to the true interest
of so great a part of the citizens of the
United States. The people of New-
England, if you will allow me to use a
1
AMERICAN REPUBLICAN GAZETTE.
* Error of Opinion may be tolerated, where Reason is left free to combat it.-(ffi We federal OMMBSfrflnlpßott OfSafety.."— Jeftnon.
THURSDAY, APRIL ~ 1803.]
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LIBERTY AND THE CONSTITUTION.
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED AT CONCORD, (NEWHAMPSHIRE,) BY E. RUSSELL.
scripture phrase, are faft returning to
their firft love. Will you excite a- 4
mong them the spirit of angry contro
versy, at a time, when they are liftep
ing to unity and peace ? lam told
that some of our newspapers have an
nounced your intention to publish a;
additional pamphlet upon the princt
ples ofyour Age of Reason. Doyou
think thatyourpen, or the pen of any
other man, can unchrjftianize the mass
of our citizens, or hive ,ou hopes of
converting a few of them to assist you
in so bad a cause ? We ought to think
ourselves happy in the enjoyment of
opinion without the danger of perse
cution by civil or ecclesiastical law.
Our friend, the present President
of the United States, has been calum
niated for his liberal sentiments, by
men who have attributed that liberal
ity to a latent design to promote the
cause of infideljty. This, and all o
ther slanders have been made without
a shadow of proof. Neither religion
nor liberty, can long subsist in the
tumult of altercation, and amidst the
nojfe and violence of fadion.*
Felix qui tautus. Adieu.
SAMUEL ADAMS.
Mr. Thomas Paine.
Second —T. Paine to Samuel Adams:
My dear arid venerable Friend,
I received with great pleasure your
Ifriendly & affectionate letter of Nov.
30th, and I thank you also for the
franknefs of it. Between men in pur
suit of truth, and whose object is the
happiriefs of man both here and here
after, there ought to be no reserve.—
Even error has a claim to indulgence,
if not to refped, when it is believed to
be truth. lam obliged to you for
your affectionate remembrance of
what you stile my services, in awak
ening the public mind to a declaration
of independence and Supporting it as.
ter it was declared. I also, like you,
have often looked back on those times
and have thought, that if independ
ence had not been declared at the time
it was, the public mind could not have
been brought up to it afterwards. It
will immediately occur to you, who
were so intimately acquainted With the
situation of things at that time, that I
allude to the black times of seventy fix
—for though I know, and you my
friend also know, they were no other
than the natural consequences of the
military blunders of that campaign,
the country might have viewed them as
proceeding from a natural inability
to support its cause against the enemy,
and have funk under the despondency
of that rhifconceived idea. This was
the impression against which it was ne
ceflary the country should be strong
ly animated.
I now come to the second part of
your letter, on which I shall be as
frank with you as you are with me.—
66 But (fay you) when I heard you had
turned your mind to a defence of in
fidelity, I felt myfelf much astonished,
&c." What, my good friend, do you
call believing in God, infidelity ? for
that is the great point maintained in
the Age of Reason against all divided
beliefs and allegoric^ divinities. The
I Bifhop of Laudaff, (Dodor Watson)
j not only acknowledges this, but pays
'THE
me some compliments upon it in his
answer to the second part of that work.
" There is (fays he) a philosophical fu
blimit, infome of your ideas whenfpeak.
mg o j the Creator of the Univerfa'
What, then, (my much esteemed
friend, for I do noc refpe& you the
flefs because we differ, and that per
haps not much,in religious sentiments)
what, I aft, is this thing called infidel
ity ? If we go back to your ancestors
and mine, three or four hundred years
ago, for we must have had fathers and
grand fathers or we fhculd not be
here, we shall find them praying to
faints and virgins, and believing in
purgatory and transubstantiation, and
therefore all of us are infidels accord
ing to our forefathers' belief. If we
go back to times more ancient, we
shall again be infidels according to the
belief of some other forefathers.
The case, my friend, is, that the
world has been overrun with fables
and creeds of human invention, with
fe&aries of whole'nations, against o
ther nations, and fedaries of these sec
taries in each of them against each o
ther. Every fe&ary, except the qua
kers, has been a persecutor. Those
who fled from persecution, persecut
ed in their turn, and it is this confu
fion of creeds that has filled the world
with persecution and deluged it with
blood. Even ,he depredations on
your commerce ty^be Barbaff pow.
ers, sprang from the crusades of the
church against those powers. It was
a war of creed against creed, each
boasting of God tor its author, and
reviling each other @th the name of
infidel. If I do not Relieve as you
believe, it proves that sou do not be
lieve as I believe, and ibis is all that
it proves.
Theie is howeve/brie point of un
ion wherein all religions meet, and
that is in the firft article of every
man's creed, and of every nation's
creed, that has any creed at all—lbe
lieve in God. —Those who rest here,
and there are millions who do, cannot
be wrong as far as their creed goes.
Those who choose to go further may
be wrong, for it is impossible that all
can be right, since there is so much
contradiction among them. The firft
therefore are, in my opinion, on the
fafeft tide.
I presume you are To far acquaint
ed with ecclesiastical hiftory as to
know, & the Bilhop who has answer
ed me has beg obliged to acknowl.
edge the faft, the books that com
pose the New Testament were voted
by yeas animafi to be the word of
God, as yqu now vote a law, by the
popifh councils of Nice &Laodicea,
about 10 years ago. With refpe&
to the faq there is no dispute, neither
do I iqpntibn it for the fake of con
troversy. This vote may appear au
thority enough to some, arid not au
thority enough to others. It is prop,
er however that every body flwuld
know the fad.'
With refpeH to the Age of Retfon,
w^fch you so much condemn, and that
Irelieve without having read it, for
voil fay only that .yoy heard pf it, I
will inform you of a circumfance be
caute you cannot know it by other
I have said in the firft page of the
firft part of that work, that it had long
been my intention to publish my^
thoughts upon religion, but that I had
reserved it to a later time of life. I
have now to inform you why I wrote
it and published it at the time I did.\
In the firft place, I saw my life in/
continual danger. My friends were
falling as faft as the gullotine could
jcut their heads off; and as I every #,
day expected the fame fate, I resolved
to begin my work. I appeared to , .
myfelf to be on my death bed, for
death was on every fide of me, and I
had no time to lose. This accounts
for my writing at the time I did, and
so nicely did the time and the intent
'tion meet, that I had not finished the
firft part of that work more than fix
hours before I was arrested and taken
to prison. Joel Barlow was with me
and knows the fad.
In the second place, the people of
France were running headlong into
Atheism, and I had the work translat
ed and published in their own lan
guage, to flop them in that career, &:
fix them to the firft article (as I have
said before) of every man screed, who
has any creed at all, I believe in God«
I endangered my life in the firft place,
by opposing in the convention the ex
ecution of the king, and labouring tol
ihew they were trying the monarchy,
and not the man, and that the crimes
imputed to him were the crimes of thel
monarchical iyftem ; and I endanger
ed it a second time by opposing Athe
ism, and yetfome of your priests, forl
I do not believe that all are perverse,
cry out in the war-whoop of monar
chical priest craft, What an infidel!!
What a wicked man is Tho's Paine!
They might as well add, for he be
lieves in God, and is against fheding
„blood.
But all this war-whoops the pulpit
has some concealed obje&. Religion/
is not the cause, but is the stalking- |
horse. They put it forward co con.
ceal themselves behind it. It is not
a secret that there has been a party
composed of the leaders of the Fede-j
ralifts, for I do not include all Fede-'
ralifts with their leaders, who have
been working by various means for
several years past, to overturn the
Federal cenftitution established on the/
representative system, and place gov-{
ernment in the new world on the cor
rupt system of the old. To accom
plilh that, a large standing army was
necessary, and as a pretence for such
an army, the danger ofa foreign inva
sion must be bellowed forth, from the
pulpit, from the press, and by their
public orators.
l am not of a disposition inclined to
suspicion It is, in its nature, a
mean and a cowardly passion, and
upon the whole, even admitting error
into the case, it is better, I am sure it
is more generous to be wrong on the
fide of confidence, than on the fide of'
suspicion. But ! know as a fa&, that
the English government distributes
annually fifteen hundred pounds Ser
ling among the Presbyterian mini fters
in England, and one theufand among
those of Ireland, and when I hear a
the Grange difeourfes of some ofyour
ministers and profeffors of colleges,!
Volume lll.—Number 113.
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