Thomas Paine on revelation

Wow! Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason is good stuff! I can see how it must have thrilled me to read it as a teenager. In a footnote to a post on October 29, I even used the same word to characterize works of religious revelation that Paine used in 1794:

...Revelation, when applied to religion, means something communicated immediately from God to man.

No one will deny or dispute the power of the Almighty to make such a communication¹, if He pleases. But admitting, for the sake of a case, that something has been revealed to a certain person, and not revealed to any other person, it is revelation to that person only. When he tells it to a second person, a second to a third, a third to a fourth, and so on, it ceases to be a revelation to all those persons. It is revelation to the first person only, and hearsay to every other, and consequently they are not obliged to believe it.

In the October 29 footnote, I had written:

...I don't count the existence of holy books as evidence that God is. They're just hearsay evidence that someone else may have had such a feeling [as I described in my post²]....

I remember that I felt pretty good about labeling the Bible, the Koran, and other works purporting to be the Inspired Word of God as "hearsay." I even thought I was probably being original!

Paine goes on:

It is a contradiction in terms and ideas, to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second-hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication—after this it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner; for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him. When Moses told the children of Israel that he received the two tables of the commandments from the hands of God, they were not obliged to believe him, because they had no other authority for it than his telling them so; and I have no other authority for it than some historian telling me so. The commandments carry no internal evidence of divinity with them; they contain some good moral precepts, such as any man qualified to be a lawgiver, or a legislator, could produce himself, without having recourse to supernational intervention.³

...A thing which everybody is required to believe requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act [the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ] was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part [Jesus's immaculate conception], the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection, and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I, and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.

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1. One won't, that is, if he believes along with Paine that "the Almighty" does exist and has such a power.
2. "That feeling, that surpassing feeling...."
3. Thomas Paine's footnote: "It is, however, necessary to except the declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children; it is contrary to every principle of moral justice. —Author."