Engraving of Thomas Paine by William Sharp (1793). Adams claimed in 1805 that the age he and Jefferson were living through was anything but Paine’s “Age of Reason.” But he had little doubt that this man Paine, “such a mongrel between pig and puppy, begotten by a wild boar on a bitch wolf,” had had the greatest influence over all their lives. Never before in history, said Adams, had “the poltroonery of mankind” allowed anyone “to run through such a career of mischief. Call it then the Age of Paine.”