Thomas Paine was an influential force in the history of the United States. His first pamphlet, Common Sense, is credited with crystallizing sentiment for independence in 1776. He has been called The Father of the American Revolution.

He was also a Deist; he believed in a God, but not organized religion. In his pamphlet The Age of Reason he said the following:

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. 

The Age of Reason

He then had some interesting comments about lying to yourself:

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. 

The Age of Reason

This quote below made me laugh

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst; every other species of tyranny is limited to the world we live in, but this attempts to stride beyond the grave, and seeks to pursue us into eternity.

Paine was criticizing the “Sad Heaven” aspect of religion, which is alive a well in the LDS Church.

The most interesting comments to me were on the subject of revelation

Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication– after that it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it can not be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to ME, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him. 

The Age of Reason

He raises a good point. If I didn’t receive the revelation, I now have to trust somebody else and their interpretation of that revelation. Of course as a person somewhat knowledgeable of LDS theology, I can counter that the Mormon Prophet is commissioned to get revelation for the whole world, which Paine would then reject because it didn’t come to him. Although we are told to pray and get our confirmation of the revelation for ourselves, I have heard others in Church say that you follow the prophets revelations even if you don’t agree.

Maybe Paine was missing one of the gifts of the spirit as outlined in the 46th section of the Doctrine and Covenants. After explaining that some have the gift of knowing that Jesus is the Christ by the gift of the Holy Ghost (revelation) Smith writes

To others it is given to believe on their words, that they also might have eternal life if they continue faithful.

D&C 46:14

It appears that Mormonism[1] rejects Paine’s argument about the source of revelation out of hand, and says that some will not have that gift to receive revelation, but to only believe in their words.

What are your thoughts on Paine’s religious writings? What do think about his arguments against revelation for any other than the original recipient, and Mormonism’s counter argument?

[1] How do you say the equivalent of “Mormonism” while respecting Pres Nelson’s victory for Satan edict? Maybe LDSism? Or Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saintism?