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THE WORD OF GOD IS THE CREATION WE BEHOTD: And it is in this word, which no human invention can counterfeit or alter, that God speaketh universally to man.
-Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason1
Far from being the atheist that some have portrayed, Thomas Paine was a "scientific deist" who believed that the omnipotence and benevolence of God are evident in the structure of the universe. The epigraph above is one of his most elegant expressions of this view. What is more surprising than Paine's reverence is that The Age of Reason (1794-95) appears to owe much to a tradition of Christian apologetics that originated in a type of writing called physico-theology. More than a hundred years before the appearance of The Age of Reason, physico-theological writ- ers discoursed about the apparently purposeful design of the universe, and rhapsodized on the glories of Creation. In The Age of Reason, Paine adapts themes and poetics that originated in physico-theological writing to argue for the superiority of deism to Christianity.
As a book that was among the last and most popular defenses of deism, The Age of Reason has been the subject of numerous studies, but few have examined the influence of antecedent literature. Studies of The Age of Rea- son by James Smylie, Franklyn K. Prochaska, Michael J. Williams, Richard FT Popkin, Jay E. Smith, and Gregory Claeys attest to the importance of the work.2 Prochaska says, "Few books have created a greater furor in the histo- ry of religion than Thomas Paine's Age of Reason."3 Smith says reaction to The Age of Reason was perhaps "unparalleled in American history."4 Fierbert Moráis, a historian of deism, calls it "the axis about which deistic thought in America rotated."5 The Age of Reason had gone through seventeen American editions by 1796.6 Nearly seventy replies to The Age of Reason had been published by 1800.7 Given the number of replies, it is no great wonder that most studies of The Age of Reason, including all those listed above, have concentrated on reaction to it. The most detailed analysis of the influences that worked on Paine is Edward FT Davidson and William J. Scheick's Paine, Scripture and Authority.8 But they look at The Age of Reason mostly in...