SOURCE: "Thomas Paine," in Thomas Paine: Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes, American Book Company, 1944, pp. xi-cxviii.

In the following chapter from his book, Clark examines the various religious influences on Paine's thought.

Focusing on the significance of Paine's Quaker heritage, Clark examines it in conjunction with the rationalist, Newtonian concept of nature.]

I. Religious and Ethical Ideas

Broadly speaking, Paine's importance rests on the fact that he was an idealist, a man who envisaged a happier way of life for all men in the future, who thought in the light of first principles such as the equality and sacredness of all souls before God, and who, since he believed that in the past the life of the common people had been miserable, demanded a sharp break with the past, with tradition. During Paine's first years in America, as we shall see, while he was feeling his...