Page:New England and the Bavarian Illuminati.djvu/81

 supernaturalism was by no means taken lightly. From the time of its arrival in this country, the Age of Reason produced an amount of excited comment which gave to its appearance and circulation all the elements of a sensation. 1 The natural interest of the public in the appearance of the production was admittedly great; but at least a partial explanation of the attention which the book received is to be found in the fact that its author was able to effect plans to have the work published cheaply abroad and extensively circulated in this country. 2 In any event, whatever may


 * 1 The Age of Reason: Part I, appeared in America in 1794. Cf. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, edited by Moncure Daniel Conway, New York, 1901, p. vii; also advertisements of its offer for sale, Massachusetts Spy (Worcester), Nov. 19, 1794. The Connecticut Courant (Hartford), Jan. 19, and Feb. 9, 1795, contains examples of pained newspaper comment. Wolcott Papers, vol. viii, 7.


 * 2 At least fifteen thousand copies of the second part of the book arrived in America in the spring of 1796, despatched from Paris by Paine, consigned to his Philadelphia friend, Mr. Franklin Bache, Republican printer, editor, and ardent servant of radicalism generally. It was clearly Paine's purpose to influence as many minds in America as possible. Cf. Conway, The Writings of Thomas Paine, vol. iv, p. 15; Paine's letter to Col. Fellows, in New York, explaining the forwarding of the books. This effort to obtain a general circulation of the Age of Reason did not escape the attention of men who were disturbed over the prevailing evidences of irreligion. In a fast day sermon, delivered in April, 1799, the Reverend Daniel Dana, of Newburyport, Massachusetts, called attention to the matter in the following fashion: "... let me mention a fact which ought to excite universal alarm and horror. The well-known and detestable pamphlet of Thomas Paine, written with a professed design to revile the Christian religion, and to diffuse the poison of infidelity, was composed in France, was there printed in English, and an edition containing many thousand of copies, conveyed at a single time into our country, in order to be sold at a cheap rate, or given away, as might best ensure its circulation. What baneful success has attended this vile and insidious effort, you need not be told. That infidelity has had, for several years past, a rapid increase among us, seems a truth generally acknowledged." (Two Sermons, delivered April 25, 1799: the day recommended by the President of the United States for National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer. By Daniel Dana, A. M., pastor of a church in Newburyport, 1799, p. 45). Cf. also ibid., p. 20.