Paine is straightforward—this essay is about his religious skepticism. He explains his deistic view that although he believes God exists, he does not believe what man has said about God, except what has been revealed through revelation.
He explains that the individual is responsible for their own interpretations of life's events. Though any person could say their experience has "revealed" something, Paine argues that technically, only the subject of a revelation is logically compelled to believe its content. He says sharing religious beliefs with one another is "hear-say," because it isn't technically verifiable.
After that, Paine explains his stance on the Christian Bible. He says that the Deist should take nature as its Bible since the nature of life on earth is truly a religious spectacle. The Bible is a shared revelation, and he expresses an extremely low view of its contents.
He explains that given the history of the documents, only blissful ignorance could keep a religious person away from some basic facts: The Bible's contents are perplexing to no end. Much of the Bible itself was not authored by the people the tradition maintains (for instance, Paine says there is simply no way that Moses wrote the Pentateuch).
Paine writes about the separation of Church and State. Paine argues that the two entities are perfectly unique from each other and that the revolution from monarchy would mean an overthrow of the religious assumptions that defined his society.
