Common Sense
Oct 25, 2010 7:56:55 GMT 9.5
Post by LorrB on Oct 25, 2010 7:56:55 GMT 9.5
Found this little snippet ... part of a magazine article quoted by Sidney Cook, 33 Deg in a public talk he gave in the USA.
…..When the scattered evidence is collected, we find that influences were working, not only to free America from British domination, but to plant in the free American soil the seeds of a new race, a race founded on the equal rights of man. As a preparation for this movement, Thomas Paine had published a remarkable republican pamphlet, Common Sense, which made a profound impression in America, and caused considerable apprehension in England. This pamphlet was the torch which started the blaze that burned away the bonds between England and America.
It is significant that Thomas Paine was prompted to write Common Sense by an intimate group comprising General Washington, Dr Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson “and other Freemasons whose minds, through the teachings of the symbolic degrees of Masonry, were fitted to reason correctly”. At a time when the Puritan element in America was very tenacious of its religious beliefs, and might be expected to inscribe its dogmas on the corner-stone of the new Constitution, Paine was publishing books and pamphlets free of dogmatism and bigotry, and these undoubtedly paved the way for the Declaration of the Constitution. Washington admitted later, in appealing for help for Paine, that “his writings certainly have had a powerful effect on the public mind”.