The Age of Reason
Despite the outpouring of antagonistic replies to "The Age of Reason", some scholars have argued that Constantin Volney's deistic "The Ruins" (translations of excerpts from the French original appeared in radical papers such as Thomas Spence's "Pig's Meat" and Daniel Isaac Eaton's "Politics for the People") was actually more influential than "The Age of Reason". According to David Bindman, "The Ruins" "achieved a popularity in England comparable to "Rights of Man" itself." One minister complained that "the mischief arising from the spreading of such a pernicious publication [as "The Age of Reason"] was infinitely greater than any that could spring from limited suffrage and septennial parliaments" (other popular reform causes).