[WT Sharpe]

.....Late in 1775, in his short article entitled "A Serious Thought," he [Thomas Paine] had looked forward to the day when God "shall have blest us, and made us a people dependent only upon Him, then may our gratitude be shown by an act of continental legislation, which shall put a stop to the importation of Negroes for sale, soften the hard fate of those already here, and in time procure their freedom." Five years later, as Clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly, Paine wrote the "Preamble to the Act Passed by the Pennsylvania Assembly March 1, 1780," which provided for the gradual emancipation of Negro slaves in the state. It was the first legislative measure passed in America for the emancipation of slaves.
..........— Philip S. Foner (1910–1994), American Marxist labor historian and teacher. From the Introduction to the Citadel Press edition (1989) of The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine. The Age of Reason; Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology, in which Paine criticized the Bible as more "the word of a demon than the Word of God," was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807.