Bastille Day (1789) It was on this date, July 14, 1789, in the morning, that French citizens stormed and destroyed the hated Bastille prison in Paris, ending a symbol of the human rights abuses by King Louis XVI—who had in fact supported the American colonists in their quest for independence from Great Britain—and beginning the […]

Paine wrote, “the Bible and the Testament are impositions upon the world” and that “religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”

As Dupont explained in his Philosophie de l'univers (1796), he was a Deist.

"On no account should the church allow infidels to have power over the faithful or to be set above them in any way. ... The church is above the state ... kings must be subject to priests." (Thomas Aquinas)