order of council. James would no longer print the paper, but it should
be issued in the name of Benjamin. So Benjamin's papers of
apprenticeship were cancelled, lest it should be said that James was
still publishing the paper through his apprentice. And, in order to
retain Benjamin's services, James secured from him secret articles of
apprenticeship. A little essay on "Hat Honor" which appeared in the
_Courant_ soon afterwards is supposed to have been written by Benjamin
and is certainly in his style.
"In old Time it was no disrespect for Men and Women to be called
by their own Names: _Adam_ was never called _Master_ Adam; we
never read of Noah _Esquire_, Lot _Knight_ and _Baronet_, nor
the _Right Honourable_ Abraham, Viscount of Mesopotamia, _Baron_
of Canaan; no, no, they were plain Men, honest Country Grasiers,
that took care of their Families and Flocks. Moses was a great
Prophet, and _Aaron_ a priest of the Lord; but we never read of
the _Reverend_ Moses, nor the Right Reverend Father in God
Aaron, by Divine Providence, _Lord Arch-Bishop_ of Israel; Thou
never sawest _Madam_ Rebecca in the Bible, my _Lady_ Rachel: nor
Mary, tho' a Princess of the Blood after the death of _Joseph_,
called the Princess Dowager of Nazareth."
This was funny, irreverent, and reckless, and shows a mind entirely out
of sympathy with its surroundings. In after-years Franklin wrote several
humorous parodies on the Scriptures, but none that was quite so shocking
to religious people as this one.
The _Courant_, however, was not again molested; but Franklin quarrelled
with his brother James, and was severely beaten by him. Feeling that
James dare not make public the secret articles of apprenticeship, he
resolved to leave him, and was soon on his way to Philadelphia, as has
been already related.
He had been at war with the religion of his native province, and, though
not yet eighteen years old, had written most violent attacks upon it. It
is not likely that he would have prospered if he had remained in Boston,
for the majority of the people were against him and he was entirely out
of sympathy with the prevailing tone of thought. He would have become a
social outcast devoted to mere abuse and negation. A hundred years
afterwards the little party of deists who gave support to the _Courant_
increased so rapidly that their opinions, under the name of
Unitarianism, became the most influential religion of Massachusetts.[6]
If Franklin had been born in that later time he would doubtless have
grown and flourished on his native soil along with Emerson and Channing,
Lowell and Holmes, and with them have risen to greatness. But previous
to the Revolution his superb faculties, which required the utmost
liberty for their expansion, would have been starved and stunted in the
atmosphere of intolerance and repression which prevailed in
Massachusetts.
After he left Boston, his dislike for the religion of that place, and,
indeed, for all revealed religion, seems to have increased. In London we
find him writing the pamphlet "Liberty and Necessity," described in the
previous chapter, and adopting what was in effect the position of
Voltaire,--namely, an admission of the existence of some sort of God,
but a denial of the immortality of the soul. He went even beyond
Voltaire in holding that, inasmuch as God was omnipotent and all-wise,
and had created the universe, whatever existed must be right, and vice
and virtue were empty distinctions.
I have already told how this pamphlet brought him to the notice of a
certain Dr. Lyons, who had himself written a sceptical book, and who
introduced Franklin to other philosophers of the same sort who met at
an inn called The Horns. But, in spite of their influence, Franklin
began to doubt the principles he had laid down in his pamphlet. He had
gone so far in negation that a reaction was started in his mind. He tore
up most of the hundred copies of "Liberty and Necessity," believing it
to be of an evil tendency. Like most of his writings, however, it
possessed a vital force of its own, and some one printed a second
edition of it.
His morals at this time were, according to his own account, fairly good.
He asserts that he was neither dishonest nor unjust, and we can readily
believe him, for these were not faults of his character. In his
Autobiography he says that he passed through this dangerous period of
his life "without any willful gross immorality or injustice that might
have been expected from my want of religion." In the first draft of the
Autobiography he added, "some foolish intrigues with low women excepted,
which from the expense were rather more prejudicial to me than to them."
But in the revision these words were crossed out.[7]
On the voyage from London to Philadelphia he kept a journal, and in it
entered a plan which he had formed for regulating his future conduct, no
doubt after much reflection while at sea. Towards the close of his life
he said of it, "It is the more remarkable as being formed when I was so
young and yet being pretty faithfully adhered to quite thro' to old
age." This plan was not found in the journal, but a paper which is
supposed to contain it was discovered and printed by Parton in his "Life
of Franklin." It recommends extreme frugality until he can pay his
debts, truth-telling, sincerity, devotion to business, avoidance of all
projects for becoming suddenly rich, with a resolve to speak ill of no
man, but rather to excuse faults. Revealed religion had, he says, no
weight with him; but he had become convinced that "truth, sincerity, and
integrity in dealings between man and man were of the utmost importance
to the felicity of life."
Although revealed religion seemed of no importance to him, he had begun
to think that, "though certain actions might not be bad because they
were forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them, yet probably
those actions might be forbidden because they were bad for us or
commanded because they were beneficial to us in their own natures, all
the circumstances of things considered."
It was in this way that he avoided and confuted his own argument in the
pamphlet "Liberty and Necessity." He had maintained in it that God must
necessarily have created both good and evil. And as he had created evil,
it could not be considered as something contrary to his will, and
therefore forbidden and wrong in the sense in which it is usually
described. If it was contrary to his will it could not exist, for it was
impossible to conceive of an omnipotent being allowing anything to exist
contrary to his will, and least of all anything which was evil as well
as contrary to his will. What we call evil, therefore, must be no worse
than good, because both are created by an all-wise, omnipotent being.
This argument has puzzled many serious and earnest minds in all ages,
and Franklin could never entirely give it up. But he avoided it by
saying that "probably" certain actions "might be forbidden," because,
"all the circumstances of things considered," they were bad for us, or
they might be commanded because they were beneficial to us. In other
words, God created evil as well as good; but for some reason which we do
not understand he has forbidden us to do evil and has commanded us to do
good. Or, he has so arranged things that what we call evil is injurious
to us and what we call good is beneficial to us.
This was his eminently practical way of solving the great problem of the
existence of evil. It will be said, of course, that it was simply
exchanging one mystery for another, and that one was as incomprehensible
as the other. To which he would probably have replied that his mystery
was the pleasanter one, and, being less of an empty, dry negation and
giving less encouragement to vice, was more comforting to live under,
"all the circumstances of things considered."
He says that he felt himself the more confirmed in this course because
his old friends Collins and Ralph, whom he had perverted to his first
way of thinking, went wrong, and injured him greatly without the least
compunction. He also recollected the contemptible conduct of Governor
Keith towards him, and Keith was another free-thinker. His own conduct
while under the influence of arguments like those in "Liberty and
Necessity" had been by no means above reproach. He had wronged Miss
Read, whose affections he had won, and he had embezzled Mr. Vernon's
money. So he began to suspect, he tells us, that his early doctrine,
"tho' it might be true, was not very useful."
When back again in Philadelphia and beginning to prosper a little, he
set himself more seriously to the task of working out some form of
religion that would suit him. He must needs go to the bottom of the
subject; and in this, as in other matters, nothing satisfied him unless
he had made it himself. In the year 1728, when he was twenty-two years
old, he framed a creed, a most curious compound, which can be given no
other name than Franklin's creed.
Having rejected his former negative belief as not sufficiently practical
for his purposes, and having once started creed-building, he was led on
into all sorts of ideas, which it must be confessed were no better than
those of older creed-makers, and as difficult to believe as anything in
revealed religion. But he would have none but his own, and its
preparation was, of course, part of that mental training which,
consciously or unconsciously, was going on all the time.
He began by saying that he believed in one Supreme Being, the author and
father of the gods,--for in his system there were beings superior to
man, though inferior to God. These gods, he thought, were probably
immortal, or possibly were changed and others put in their places. Each
of them had a glorious sun, attended by a beautiful and admirable system
of planets. God the Infinite Father, required no praise or worship from
man, being infinitely above it; but as there was a natural principle in
man which inclined him to devotion, it seemed right that he should
worship something.
He went on to say that God had in him some of the human passions, and
was "not above caring for us, being pleased with our praise and offended
when we slight him or neglect his glory;" which was a direct
contradiction of what he had previously said about the Creator being
infinitely above praise or worship. "As I should be happy," says this
bumptious youth of twenty-two, "to have so wise, good, and powerful a
Being my friend, let me consider in what manner I shall make myself most
acceptable to him."
This good and powerful Being would, he thought, be delighted to see him
virtuous, because virtue makes men happy, and the great Being would be
pleased to see him happy. So he constructed a sort of liturgy, prefacing
it with the suggestion that he ought to begin it with "a countenance
that expresses a filial respect, mixed with a kind of smiling that
signifies inward joy and satisfaction and admiration,"--a piece of
formalism which was rather worse than anything that has been invented by
the ecclesiastics he so much despised. At one point in the liturgy he
was to sing Milton's hymn to the Creator; at another point "to read part
of some such book as Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation, or Blackmore
on the Creation." Then followed his prayers, of which the following are
specimens:
"O Creator, O Father, I believe that thou art Good, and that
thou art pleased with the pleasure of thy children.
"Praised be thy name for ever."
* * * * *
"That I may be preserved from Atheism, and Infidelity, Impiety
and Profaneness, and in my Addresses to thee carefully avoid
Irreverence and Ostentation, Formality and odious Hypocrisy.
"Help me, O Father.
"That I may be just in all my Dealings and temperate in my
pleasures, full of Candour and Ingenuity, Humanity and
Benevolence.
"Help me, O Father."
He was doing the best he could, poor boy! but as a writer of liturgies
he was not a success. His own liturgy, however, seems to have suited
him, and it is generally supposed that he used it for a great many
years, probably until he was forty years old. He had it all written out
in a little volume, which was, in truth, Franklin's prayer-book in the
fullest sense of the word.
Later in life he appears to have dropped the eccentric parts of it and
confined himself to a more simple statement. At exactly what period he
made this change is not known. But when he was eighty-four years old,
and within a few weeks of his death, Ezra Stiles, the President of Yale
College, in a letter asking him to sit for his portrait for the college,
requested his opinion on religion. In his reply Franklin said, that as
to the portrait he was willing it should be painted, but the artist
should waste no time, or the man of eighty-four might slip through his
fingers. He then gave his creed, which was that there was one God, who
governed the world, who should be worshipped, to whom the most
acceptable service was doing good to man, and who would deal justly with
the immortal souls of men.
"As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of whom you particularly
desire, I think his system of morals and his religion, as he
left them to us, the best the world ever saw, or is like to see;
but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and
I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some
doubts as to his Divinity; though it is a question I do not
dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless
to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of
knowing the truth with less trouble. I see no harm, however, in
its being believed, if that belief has the good consequence, as
probably it has, of making his doctrines more respected and more
observed; especially as I do not perceive that the Supreme takes
it amiss, by distinguishing the unbelievers in his government of
the world with any peculiar marks of his displeasure.
"I shall only add, respecting myself, having experienced the
goodness of that Being in conducting me prosperously through a
long life, I have no doubt of its continuance in the next,
though without the smallest conceit of meriting such goodness.
"P. S. I confide, that you will not expose me to criticisms and
censures by publishing any part of this communication to you. I
have ever let others enjoy their religious sentiments, without
reflecting on them for those that appeared to me unsupportable
or even absurd. All sects here, and we have a great variety,
have experienced my good will in assisting them with
subscriptions for the building their new places of worship; and,
as I have never opposed any of their doctrines, I hope to go out
of the world in peace with them all."
So Franklin's belief at the close of his life was deism, which was the
same faith that he had professed when a boy. From boyish deism he had
passed to youthful negation, and from negation returned to deism again.
He also in his old age argued out his belief in immortality from the
operations he had observed in nature, where nothing is lost; why then
should the soul not live?
In the convention that framed the National Constitution in 1787, when
there was great conflict of opinion among the members and it seemed
doubtful whether an agreement could be reached, he moved that prayers be
said by some clergyman every morning, but the motion was lost. In a
general way he professed to favor all religions. A false religion, he
said, was better than none; for if men were so bad with religion, what
would they be without it?
Commenting on the death of his brother John, he said,--
"He who plucks out a tooth, parts with it freely, since the pain
goes with it; and he who quits the whole body parts at once with
all pains, and possibilities of pains and diseases, which it was
liable to or capable of making him suffer. Our friend and we
were invited abroad on a party of pleasure, which is to last
forever. His chair was ready first, and he is gone before us. We
could not all conveniently start together; and why should you
and I be grieved at this, since we are soon to follow and know
where to find him?"
He not infrequently expressed his views on the future life in a light
vein:
"With regard to future bliss, I cannot help imagining that
multitudes of the zealously orthodox of different sects who at
the last day may flock together in hopes of seeing each other
damned, will be disappointed and obliged to rest content with
their own salvation."
His wife was an Episcopalian, a member of Christ Church in Philadelphia,
and he always encouraged her, as well as his daughter, to attend the
services of that church.
"Go constantly to church," he wrote to his daughter after he had
started on one of his missions to England, "whoever preaches.
The act of devotion in the common prayer book is your principal
business there, and if properly attended to, will do more
towards mending the heart than sermons generally can do. For
they were composed by men of much greater piety and wisdom than
our common composers of sermons can pretend to be; and
therefore, I wish you would never miss the prayer days; yet I do
not mean that you should despise sermons even of the preachers
you dislike; for the discourse is often much better than the
man, as sweet and clear waters come through very dirty earth."
It does not appear that he himself attended the services of Christ
Church, for to the end of his life he was always inclined to use Sunday
as a day for study, as he had done when a boy. At one time, soon after
he had adopted his curious creed, he was prevailed upon to attend the
preaching of a Presbyterian minister for five Sundays successively. But
finding that this preacher devoted himself entirely to the explanation
of doctrine instead of morals, he left him, and returned, he says, to
his own little liturgy.
Not long afterwards another Presbyterian preacher, a young man named
Hemphill, came to Philadelphia, and as he was very eloquent and
expounded morality rather than doctrine, Franklin was completely
captivated, and became one of his regular hearers. We would naturally
suppose that a Presbyterian minister able to secure the attention of
Franklin was not altogether orthodox, and such proved to be the case. He
was soon tried by the synod for wandering from the faith. Franklin
supported him, wrote pamphlets in his favor, and secured for him the
support of others. But it was soon discovered that the sermons of the
eloquent young man had all been stolen from a volume published in
England. This was, of course, the end of him, and he lost all his
adherents except Franklin, who humorously insisted that he "rather
approved of his giving us sermons composed by others, than bad ones of
his own manufacture; though the latter was the practice of our common
teachers."
Whitefield, the great preacher who towards the middle of the eighteenth
century started such a revival of religion in all the colonies, was, of
course, a man of too much ability to escape the serious regard of
Franklin, who relates that he attended one of his sermons, fully
resolved not to contribute to the collection at the close of it. "I had
in my pocket," he says, "a handful of copper money, three or four silver
dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded, I began to soften
and concluded to give him the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made
me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he
finished so admirably, that I emptied my pocket wholly into the
collector's dish, gold and all."
This seems to have been the only time that Franklin was carried away by
preaching. On another occasion, when Whitefield was preaching in Market
Street, Philadelphia, Franklin, instead of listening to the sermon,
employed himself in estimating the size of the crowd and the power of
the orator's voice. He had often doubted what he had read of generals
haranguing whole armies, but when he found that Whitefield could easily
preach to thirty thousand people and be heard by them all, he was less
inclined to be incredulous.
He and Whitefield became fast friends, and Whitefield stayed at his
house. In replying to his invitation to visit him, Whitefield answered,
"If you make that offer for Christ's sake, you will not miss of the
reward." To which the philosopher replied, "Don't let me be mistaken; it
was not for Christ's sake, but for your sake." Whitefield often prayed
for his host's conversion, but "never," says Franklin, "had the
satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard."
He admitted that Whitefield had an enormous influence, and that the
light-minded and indifferent became religious as the result of his
revivals. Whether the religion thus acquired was really lasting he has
not told us. He was the publisher of Whitefield's sermons and journals,
of which great numbers were sold; but he thought that their publication
was an injury to their author's reputation, which depended principally
upon his wonderful voice and delivery. He commented in his bright way on
a sentence in the journal which said that there was no difference
between a deist and an atheist. "M. B. is a deist," Whitefield said, "I
had almost said an atheist." "He might as well have written," said
Franklin, "chalk, I had almost said charcoal."
In spite of his deism and his jokes about sacred things, he enjoyed most
friendly and even influential relations with religious people, who might
have been supposed to have a horror of him. His conciliatory manner,
dislike of disputes, and general philanthropy led each sect to suppose
that he was on its side, and he made a practice of giving money to them
all without distinction. John Adams said of him,--
"The Catholics thought him almost a Catholic. The Church of
England claimed him as one of them. The Presbyterians thought
him half a Presbyterian, and the Friends believed him a wet
Quaker."
When in England he was the intimate friend of the Bishop of St. Asaph,
stayed at his house, and corresponded in the most affectionate way with
the bishop's daughters. At the outbreak of the Revolution he was sent to
Canada in company with the Rev. John Carroll, of Maryland, in the hope
of winning over that country to the side of the revolted colonies. His
tendency to form strong attachments for religious people again showed
itself, and he and Carroll, who was a Roman Catholic priest, became
life-long friends. Eight years afterwards, in 1784, when he was minister
to France, finding that the papal nuncio was reorganizing the Catholic
Church in America, he urged him to make Carroll a bishop. The suggestion
was adopted, and the first Roman Catholic bishop of the United States
owed his elevation to the influence of a deist.
At the same time the members of the Church of England in the
successfully revolted colonies were adapting themselves to the new order
of things; but, having no bishops, their clergy were obliged to apply to
the English bishops for ordination. They were, of course, refused, and
two of them applied to Franklin, who was then in Paris, for advice. It
was strange that they should have consulted the philosopher, who
regarded bishops and ordinations as mere harmless delusions. But he was
a very famous man, the popular representative of their country, and of
proverbial shrewdness.
He suggested--doubtless with a sly smile--that the Pope's nuncio should
ordain them. The nuncio, though their theological enemy, believed in the
pretty delusion as well as they, and his ordination would be as valid as
that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He asked the nuncio, with whom he
was no doubt on terms of jovial intimacy, if he would do it; but that
functionary was of course obliged to say that such a thing was
impossible, unless the gentlemen should first become Roman Catholics. So
the philosopher had another laugh over the vain controversies of man.