A potential threat to Lincoln’s electoral chances was his reputation as a religious skeptic. Isaac Snodgrass urged fellow townsmen to vote against him because of his alleged deism. The father of James H. Matheny, Lincoln’s close friend, loved Lincoln wholeheartedly but was a strong Methodist and therefore hesitated to vote for him. Lincoln’s religious views were in fact unconventional. After discussing with his New Salem friends such iconoclastic works as Constantine de Volney’s The Ruins; or, A Survey of the Revolutions of Empires, and Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason and Common Sense, Lincoln wrote an essay in a similar vein. When he told his political backer, Samuel Hill, that he intended to publish it, Hill snatched the manuscript from his hands and flung it into the fire. According to Jesse Fell, Lincoln “held opinions utterly at variance with what are usually taught in the Churches,” and his views, “would place him entirely outside the Christian pale.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃