Table of Contents
Acknowledgements Introduction Thomas Paine: A Brief Chronology A Note on the Text
The Age of Reason
- Part 1 Selections from Part 2 Selections from Part 3
Appendix A: Additional Writings on Religion by Thomas Paine
- A Letter, Being an Answer to a Friend on the Publication of The Age of Reason (1797)
- “The Existence of God.” A Discourse Delivered at the Society of Theophilanthropists (1797)
- “An Answer to the Bishop of Llandaff” (1797-1800)
- “Worship and Church Bells: A Letter to Camille Jordan” (1797)
- Exchange of Letters with Samuel Adams (1802-03)
- “Of the Word Religion, and Other Words of Uncertain Signification” (1804)
- “My Private Thoughts on a Future State” (1807)
Appendix B: The Religious Context of The Age of Reason
- From Anthony Collins, A Discourse of Free-Thinking (1713)
- From David Hume, “Of Miracles” (1748)
- From Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach, Of the Confused and Contradictory Ideas of Theology (1770)
- Thomas Jefferson, An Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1779) and A Letter to Peter Carr (1787)
- From William Paley, Natural Theology (1802)
Appendix C: Responses to The Age of Reason
- From “A Layman” [Thomas Williams], The Age of Infidelity: In Answer to Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason (1794)
- From Gilbert Wakefield, An Examination of The Age of Reason (1794)
- From “Anonymous” [Elihu Palmer], The Examiners Examined: Being a Defense of The Age of Reason (1794)
- From Joseph Priestley, An Answer to Mr. Paine’s Age of Reason (1794)
- From Uzal Ogden, An Antidote to Deism (1795)
- From Richard Watson, An Apology for the Bible (1796)
Suggestions for Further Reading