The Age of Reason · Chapter
Private Thoughts of a Future State explained
Paine reflects on his hope for happiness after death, leaving his fate to the Creator's justice and goodness.
What happens
Paine reflects on his hope for happiness after death, leaving his fate to the Creator's justice and goodness. He criticizes the New Testament's division of humanity into righteous and wicked as absurd, arguing that moral character exists on a spectrum. He offers his own opinion that the good will be happy, the very wicked punished, and the insignificant dropped entirely.
Themes in this chapter
Deism and Natural Theology
Paine emphasizes leaving matters of the afterlife to the Creator's justice and goodness, consistent with deist reliance on reason and natural theology.
Critique of Organized Religion
Paine dismisses the New Testament account of judgment as absurd and fabulous, rejecting its binary moral division.
Characters to notice
- Thomas Paine
Author expressing his personal hope and opinion on a future state.
Key passages
“I consider myself in the hands of my Creator, that he will dispose of me after this life consistently with his justice and goodness.”
Paine trusts that his Creator will treat him justly and kindly after death.
Expresses deist trust in divine justice.
“The moral world, like the physical world, is composed of numerous degrees of character, running imperceptibly one into another, in such a manner that no fixed point of division can be found in either.”
Human moral character is a continuous spectrum, not a simple binary.
Critique of the sheep-and-goats metaphor.