The Christian religion and Masonry have one and the same common origin, both are derived from the worship of the sun. As he had done in his letter of 1806 to Andrew A. Dean (quoted above), in his Origins of Free-Masonry Paine likewise equated Jesus with the sun: The Christian religion and Masonry have one and the same common origin, both are derived from the worship of the sun; the difference between their origin is, that the Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the sun, in which they put a man whom they call Christ in the place of the sun, and pay him the same adoration which was originally paid to the sun, as I have shown in the chapter on the origin of the Christian religion. (Paine, 324) George Washington as FreemasonIn this regard, George Washington himself was a Mason (Mulsow, 193), as was Benjamin Franklin (Popkin, 50). There is no official record of Thomas Jefferson being a Mason, but he was surrounded by Masons in his family and as business and political associates, and he attended a number of Masonic meetings and ceremonies at various lodges. (Beless) It is therefore likely that all three men were familiar with the doctrine outlined by Paine. In the paragraph above comparing Jesus with the sun, Paines last sentence has an asterisk (*) on it that reads: Not published, in reference to the aforementioned chapter concerning Christian origins. One wonders what the chapter contained that prevented it from being published; it is likely from all this evidence that it was something in line with the works of Dupuis and Volney, i.e., mythicism. Not content with censoring the Christian origins chapter, the entire paragraph was also omitted from Paines Freemasonry pamphlet published posthumously by Madame Bonneville in 1810, undoubtedly for fear of offending the masses. As American historian Dr. Bruce Kuklick writes (xxiii), In a time of religious retrenchment in the United States, Paines theology became a matter of censure. In this same vein, when in 1802 Paine went to publish his third part of Age of Reason along with a response to a prominent churchman who had assailed his work, Jefferson requested him not to do so. (Morais, 126) It is therefore easy to understand why any letters from Jefferson to Paine regarding this taboo subject would go unpublished--or be destroyed.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 10:34:35 +0000
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