The Rise and Down Fall of Major Beliefs Puritanism is a branch off of the Church of England. The Puritans wanted to purify the church so they came to America and developed and new type of religion that is a little different from the English. Deism is not a religion and needs a lot of thinking to understand. Thomas Paine explained how Deism was better than Puritanism in his pamphlets of “Common Sense”. During the Enlightenment period Thomas Paine wrote 16 pamphlets and these pamphlets discussed how it was time to change the government, religion and economics. This time was during the revolution and Thomas Paine w