nature, equal; external distinctions, whatsoever they may be, are
worth nothing. This idea of men's equality the Dukhoborts have
directed further, against the State authority. ... Amongst themselves
they hold subordination, and much more, a monarchical Government, to
be contrary to their ideas."

Here is an early Hicksite Quakerism
carried to Russia long before the birth of Elias Hicks, who recovered
it from Paine, to whom the American Quakers refused burial among
them. Although Paine arraigned the union of Church and State, his
ideal Republic was religious; it was based on a conception of
equality based on the divine son-ship of every man. This faith
underlay equally his burden against claims to divine partiality by a
"Chosen People," a Priesthood, a Monarch "by the grace of God," or an
Aristocracy. Paine's "Reason" is only an expansion of the Quaker's
"inner light"; and the greater impression, as compared with previous
republican and deistic writings made by his "Rights of Man" and "Age
of Reason" (really volumes of one work), is partly explained by the
apostolic fervor which made him a spiritual, successor of George Fox.

Paine's mind was by no means skeptical, it was eminently instructive.
That he should have waited until his fifty-seventh year before
publishing his religious convictions was due to a desire to work out
some positive and practicable system to take the place of that which
he believed was crumbling. The English engineer Hall, who assisted
Paine in making the model of his iron bridge, wrote to his friends in
England, in 1786: "My employer has Common Sense enough to disbelieve
most of the common systematic theories of Divinity, but does not seem
to establish any for himself." But five years later Paine was able to
lay the corner-stone of his temple: "With respect to religion itself,