Editing The Age of Reason (section)

==Historical context==
===Intellectual context: 18th-century British deism===
Paine's book followed in the tradition of [[deism#The rise of British deism (1690–1740)|early 18th-century British deism]]. Those deists, while maintaining individual positions, still shared several sets of assumptions and arguments that Paine articulated in ''The Age of Reason''. The most important position that united the early deists was their call for "free rational inquiry" into all subjects, especially religion. Saying that early Christianity was founded on [[freedom of conscience]], they demanded [[religious toleration]] and an end to religious persecution. They also demanded that debate rest on reason and rationality. Deists embraced a [[Isaac Newton#Religious thought|Newtonian]] worldview and believed that all things in the universe, even God, must obey the laws of nature. Without a concept of [[physical law|natural law]], the deists argued, explanations of the workings of nature would descend into irrationality. This belief in natural law drove their skepticism of [[miracle]]s. Because miracles had to be observed to be validated, deists rejected the accounts laid out in the Bible of God's miracles and argued that such evidence was neither sufficient nor necessary to prove the existence of God. Along these lines, deistic writings insisted that God, as the [[first cause]] or [[Cosmological argument|prime mover]], had created and designed the universe with natural laws as part of his plan. They held that God does not repeatedly alter his plan by suspending natural laws to intervene (miraculously) in human affairs. Deists also rejected the claim that there was only one revealed religious truth or "one true faith". Religion had to be "simple, apparent, ordinary, and universal" if it was to be the logical product of a benevolent God. They, therefore, distinguished between "revealed religions", which they rejected, such as Christianity, and "natural religion", a set of universal beliefs derived from the natural world that demonstrated God's existence (and so they were not [[atheism|atheists]]).<ref>Herrick, 26–29</ref>{{sfn|Claeys|1989|pp=178–179}}<ref>Kuklick, xiii.</ref>

While some deists accepted [[revelation]], most argued that revelation's restriction to small groups or even a single person limited its explanatory power. Moreover, many found the Christian revelations in particular to be contradictory and irreconcilable. According to those writers, revelation could reinforce the evidence for God's existence already apparent in the natural world but more often led to superstition among the masses. Most deists argued that priests had deliberately corrupted Christianity for their own gain by promoting the acceptance of miracles, unnecessary rituals, and illogical and dangerous doctrines (accusations typically referred to as "[[Deism#History of religion and the deist mission|priestcraft]]"). The worst of the doctrines was [[original sin]]. By convincing people that they required a priest's help to overcome their innate sinfulness, deists argued, religious leaders had enslaved the human population. Deists therefore typically viewed themselves as intellectual liberators.<ref>Herrick, 30–39</ref>{{sfn|Claeys|1989|pp=178–179}}

===Political context: French Revolution===
[[Image:Cruikshank - The Radical's Arms.png|thumb|alt=A caricature of French revolutionaries, showing two grotesque French peasants celebrating around a guillotine dripping with blood and surrounded by flames.|[[George Cruikshank|George Cruikshank's]] ''The Radical's Arms'' (1819), pillorying the excesses of the French revolution]]

By the time Part I of ''The Age of Reason'' was published in 1794, many British and French citizens had become disillusioned by the [[French Revolution]]. The [[Reign of Terror]] had begun, [[Louis XVI]] and [[Marie Antoinette]] had been tried and executed and [[First Coalition|Britain was at war with France]]. The few British radicals who still supported the French revolution and its ideals were viewed with deep suspicion by their countrymen. ''The Age of Reason'' belongs to the later, more radical, stage of the [[Radicalism (historical)#United Kingdom|British political reform movement]], which openly embraced [[republicanism]] and sometimes atheism and was exemplified by such texts as [[William Godwin]]'s ''[[Enquiry Concerning Political Justice]]'' (1793). (However, Paine and other deists were not atheists.) By the middle of the decade, the moderate voices had disappeared: [[Richard Price]], the [[English Dissenters|Dissenting]] minister whose sermon on political liberty had prompted [[Edmund Burke|Edmund Burke's]] ''[[Reflections on the Revolution in France]]'' (1790), had died in 1791, and [[Joseph Priestley]] had been forced to flee to America after a [[Priestley Riots|Church–and–King mob burned down his home and church]].<ref>Butler, Marilyn. ''Romantics, Rebels and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background 1760–1830''. Oxford: [[Oxford University Press]] (1981), 49; Bindman, 118. (reference covers entire paragraph)</ref>

The conservative government, headed by [[William Pitt the Younger|William Pitt]], responded to the increasing radicalization by prosecuting several reformers for [[seditious libel]] and [[treason]] in the famous [[1794 Treason Trials]]. Following the trials and an attack on [[George III]], conservatives were successful in passing the [[Seditious Meetings Act 1795|Seditious Meetings Act]] and the [[Treasonable Practices Act]] (also known as the "Two Acts" or the "gagging acts"). The 1795 Acts prohibited [[freedom of assembly]] for groups such as the radical [[London Corresponding Society]] (LCS) and encouraged indictments against radicals for "libelous and seditious" statements. Afraid of prosecution and disenchanted with the French Revolution, many reformers drifted away from the cause. The LCS, which had previously unified religious Dissenters and political reformers, fractured when [[Francis Place]] and other leaders helped Paine publish ''The Age of Reason''. The society's more religious members withdrew in protest, and the LCS lost around a fifth of its membership.<ref>Thompson, 148</ref>{{sfn|Claeys|1989|p=190}}