Kodai Shisho to Sengo
Common Sense“The Ancient Testimony and Principles of the People called Quakers renewed” is a political testimony addressed to the American public by representatives of the Religious Society of Friends. In his response, Thomas Paine examines its stated refusal to take part in changing governments and its simultaneous effort to rally opposition to separation from Great Britain. He makes that contradiction the center of his critique: a document that disclaims political action, he argues, cannot consistently prescribe a political outcome or claim to speak for a whole religious community.
Publication and Political Setting
Paine addresses the representatives of the Religious Society of Friends, or those among them who were involved in publishing the testimony. Its full title identifies it as a renewal of the Quakers’ “ANCIENT TESTIMONY and PRINCIPLES” concerning the king and government, and the commotions then prevailing in America and elsewhere. The address is therefore presented as more than a private statement of religious practice: it concerns political allegiance during a crisis over the relationship between the colonies and Great Britain.
Paine frames his reply as an examination of a political body rather than an attack on religion. He says that people answer to God, not to other people, for their religious beliefs, and that he does not ridicule or cavil at any denomination. His objection is instead that the writers have entered public controversy despite principles of professed quietude. He also disputes their authority to present their position as that of the Quaker body as a whole: he says they have placed themselves in the position of the entire community without proper authority, and that neither they nor he can claim political representation simply by assuming to speak for others.
The Testimony’s Stated Principle
The passage Paine reproduces declares it has been the Quakers’ judgment, from their profession of the light of Christ Jesus in their consciences, that setting up or putting down kings and governments belongs to God’s peculiar prerogative. It says that people should have no hand or contrivance in such changes, should not plot the overthrow of governments, and should pray for the king, the safety of the nation, and the good of all. It also advocates living peaceably under whatever government God has placed over them.
Paine treats these assertions as a standard by which the testimony must be judged. If its authors truly hold that political changes are God’s work and that they should wait humbly for their outcome, he asks why they have issued a political testimony at all. In his reasoning, publishing a directive about the public response to independence is itself a form of political intervention. The act of publication thus becomes evidence against the document’s stated withdrawal from political action.
The Contradiction Over Independence
Paine says the testimony’s later appeal urges people to unite firmly in abhorring writings and measures that seek to break the connection with Great Britain and end subordination to the king and those lawfully placed under him. He sets this call against the earlier claim that the ordering and disposal of kings and governments should be left to God. The issue, as he presents it, is not merely a difference of emphasis: the writers first disclaim a role in political change, then attempt to mobilize the public against a particular change.
To sharpen the inconsistency, Paine argues that political transformations occur through ordinary human means, not miracles. He invokes the example of the Jews’ dispersion, which he says was foretold by their Saviour but effected by arms. If the Quakers refuse to serve as agents on one side of political change, he contends, their own principle should also prevent them from meddling on the other; they should wait silently for the outcome. He challenges them to produce divine authority for the claim that God disapproves of America’s independence from the British court, rather than treating opposition to independence as a conclusion their professed doctrine can support.
Paine also turns their principle against the idea that political outcomes can simply be exempted from human agency. If governments are set up and put down through common human means, he reasons, the testimony cannot condemn one set of political measures as an improper attempt to alter government while presenting its own campaign against separation as consistent with divine passivity. He calls this a glaring inconsistency and argues that the testimony’s conclusion does not follow from its stated doctrine.
Representation, Authority, and Public Consequences
Paine distinguishes the authority to speak as an individual from authority to represent a collective. He says that the Quaker publishers have no proper title to political representation of their religious community, while he too cannot claim to represent all those who agree with the writings and principles opposed by the testimony. His deliberately symmetrical formulation refuses to answer one unauthorized collective claim with another: neither side, in his account, becomes a representative body merely by asserting that role.
He says he does not call on anyone to abhor the testimony as its writers call on the public to abhor writings and measures favouring separation. Instead, he asks readers to read and judge it fairly. That contrast marks the close of his examination: the proper response is scrutiny, not a reciprocal demand for denunciation. He then states two further objections. First, making religion a party to political disputes, he argues, tends to diminish and reproach religion and endangers society. Second, the document presents a body of people as involved in and approving its publication even though many Quakers disavow political testimonies.
The document’s importance in Paine’s reply lies in the gap he exposes between religious quietism and political prescription. Its opposition to breaking with Great Britain is treated not simply as a position on the colonies’ future, but as an act that raises questions about who may speak for a religious community, what political conduct its stated principles permit, and whether an appeal to divine non-interference can be reconciled with efforts to direct public opinion. The pamphlet’s argument ends by asking readers to judge the testimony’s consistency and representative authority rather than accept its religious language as settling the political question.
