The theological works Author:Thomas Paine Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A LETTER; BEIXG AN ANSWER TO A FRIEND. On The 'publication Of THE AGE OF REASON. Paris, May 12, 1797. In your letter of the 20th of March, you... more » gave me several quotations from the Bible, which you call the word of God, to show m that my opinions on religion are wrong, and 1 could give you as many, from the same book, to show that yours are not right; consequently, then, the Bible decides nothing, because it decidea any way, and every way, one chooses to make it. But by what authority do you cull the Bible the word of God ? for this is the first point to be settled. It is not your calling it so that makes it so, any more than the Mahometans calling tho Koran the word of God makes the Koran to be so. The Popish Councils of Nice and Laodicea, about 350 years after the time that the person called Jesus Christ is said to have lived, voted the books, that now compose what is called the New Testament,, to be the word of God. This was done by yeas and niys, as we now vote a law. The Pharisees of the second Temple, after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, did the same by the books that now compose the Old Testament, and this is all the authority there is, which to me is no authority at all. I am as capable of judging for myself as they were, and I think more so, because, as they made a living by their religion,, they- had a !£ interest in the rote they gave. You may have an opinion that a man is inspired, but you cannot prove it, nor can you have any proof of it yourself, because you cannot see into his mind in order to know how he comes bj his thoughts, and the same is the case with the word revelation.— There can be no evidence of such a thing, for you can no more prove revelation, than you can prove what another man dreams of, neither can he prove it hi...« less