Every individual falls far short of the glory of God. Even the agnostic are capable of contributing to the betterment of mankind. Thomas Paine is one of these profound individuals. Thomas Paine was a great humanist, political activist and a great philosopher thinker. Living in a society influenced greatly by Christian teachings, it's not surprising that despite his living on the edge of Christendom, he reveled in it. After being marked as unsuccessful man due to his previous jobs and activity, he migrated to America in 1774 with a help of Benjamin Franklin.

While living in France in 1792, he was convicted and imprisoned for Seditious libel, which relates to speech and organization against the established order of the community. Most people, however, are unaware of his long struggles against organized religion and Christianity. In 1794 Paine wrote a radical book of a different kind, one destined to become a classic of atheist free thought, "The Age of Reason". It is suppose to be an expose of the Bible, it ostensibly points out the "numerous contradictions, errors of fact, and absurdities" contained in the Old and New Testament. Paine, while being influenced heavily by St. Thomas Aquinas influence on the renaissance, never seemed to give tribute to it.

Constantly at war with his surroundings, Paine even points to thinking that his will and his mind are his church and that he doesn’t need a religious institution to believe in God or in after life. However, Thomas Paine also professed he did not believe in any [organized] Church he knew of. He said "My mind is my own church". He died in New York on 1809 and the interesting fact here is that only six people attended his funeral. Not too many people wanted to be associated with him due to him being a political activist who openly kept uncovering the veil of many political affairs and was not afraid to speak about it.

What a guy.

I am really on the fence as to what the heck was going on with some of the founding Fathers. Thomas Paine was a 33rd Degree Freemason and reportedly initiated in the House of the Orient in France.

This would make him a member of the Bavarian Illuminati. “Common Sense” is encoded with (((their))) Gematria signature too.

Anyways, just passing along some info.

Without Paine's Common Sense, the United States probably would never have come into existence.

Paine mixed appeals to logic (as the title suggests) with a stirring sense of moral and spiritual obligation. The combination made Common Sense perhaps the best-selling book in American history, and helped bring the new nation into being.

O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted 'round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Sense (I hear your complaints, but not everything at Wikipedia is corrupted):

Common Sense[1] is a 47-page pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1775–1776 advocating independence from Great Britain to people in the Thirteen Colonies. Writing in clear and persuasive prose, Paine collected various moral and political arguments to encourage common people in the Colonies to fight for egalitarian government. It was published anonymously on January 10, 1776,[2] at the beginning of the American Revolution and became an immediate sensation.

It was sold and distributed widely and read aloud at taverns and meeting places. In proportion to the population of the colonies at that time (2.5 million), it had the largest sale and circulation of any book published in American history.[3] As of 2006, it remains the all-time best-selling American title and is still in print today.[4]

“Time makes more converts than reason.”

You can read it here. https://americainclass.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Common-Sense-_-Full-Text.pdf