conviction, liberal doctrines are capable of improvement. _There are
proselytes from atheism, but none from superstition._" "When once a man
is determined to believe, the very absurdity of the doctrine confirms
him in his faith."

* * * * *

But Junius, like Paine, was a _religious_ man. In Letter 56, he says: "I
know such a man; my lord, I know you both, _and, with the blessing of
God_ (_for I, too, am religious_), the people of England shall know you
as well as I do."

As Mr. Paine has been misunderstood by the religious world, and as so
much has been said against his religion that a prejudice deep and bitter
now rests on the world against him, I will give a couple of extracts
from his Rights of Man on this point. I confess that my own prejudices
were so great against him (and I thought myself quite liberal), that
they would not suffer me to read his works till quite recently. Such is
the tyranny of religious instruction. The first extract is from the
first part. In a note, he says: "There is a single idea, which, if it
strikes rightly upon the mind, either in a legal or a religious sense,
will prevent any man, or any body of men, or any government, from going
wrong on the subject of religion; which is, that before any human
institutions of government were known in the world, there existed, if I
may so express it, a compact between God and man from the beginning of
time; and that, as the relation and condition which man in his
individual person stands in toward his Maker can not be changed by any
human laws or human authority, that religious devotion, which is a part
of this compact, can not so much as be made a subject of human laws; and
that all laws must conform themselves to the prior-existing compact, and
not assume to make the compact conform to the laws, which, besides being
human, are subsequent thereto. The first act of man, when he looked
around and saw himself a creature which he did not make, and a world
furnished for his reception, must have been devotion; and devotion must
ever continue sacred to every individual man, as it appears right to
him, and governments do mischief by interfering."

The next extract is from part second, near its close, and I would call
the attention of the reader to the beauty of the allegory:

"But as religion is very improperly made a political machine, and the
reality of it is thereby destroyed, I will conclude this work with
stating in wha