Chapter III: Religion and Morals (1)

Franklin's father and mother were Massachusetts Puritans who, while not conspicuously religious, attended steadily to their religious duties. They lived in Milk Street, Boston, near the Old South Church, and little Benjamin was carried across the street the day he was born and baptized in that venerable building.

He was born on Sunday, January 6, 1706 (Old Style), and if it had occurred in one of the Massachusetts towns where the minister was very strict, baptism might have been refused, for some of the Puritans were so severe in their views of Sabbath-keeping that they said a child born on the Sabbath must have been conceived on the Sabbath, and was therefore hopelessly unregenerate.[5]

These good men would have found their theory fully justified in Franklin, for he became a terrible example of the results of Sabbath birth and begetting. As soon as opportunity offered he became a most persistent Sabbath-breaker. While he lived with his parents he was compelled to go to church; but when apprenticed to his elder brother, and living away from home, he devoted Sunday to reading and study. He would slip off to the printing-office and spend nearly the whole day there alone with his books; and during a large part of his life Sunday was to him a day precious for its opportunities for study rather than for its opportunities for worship.

His persistence in Sabbath-breaking was fortified by his entire loss of faith in the prevailing religion.

"I had been religiously educated as a Presbyterian; and tho'
some of the dogmas of that persuasion, such as _the eternal
decrees of God_, _election_, _reprobation_, etc., appeared to me
unintelligible, others doubtful, and I early absented myself
from the public assemblies of the sect, Sunday being my studying
day, I never was without some religious principles. I never
doubted, for instance, the existence of the Deity; that he made
the world and governed it by his Providence; that the most
acceptable service of God was the doing good to man; that our
souls are immortal; and that all crime will be punished and
virtue rewarded, either here or hereafter." (Bigelow's Works of
Franklin, vol. i. p. 172.)

It will be observed that he speaks of himself as having been educated a Presbyterian, a term which in his time was applied to the Puritans of Massachusetts. We find Thomas Jefferson also describing the New Englanders as Presbyterians, and in colonial times the Quakers in Pennsylvania used the same term when speaking of them. But they were not Presbyterians in the sense in which the word is now used, and their religion is usually described as Congregationalism.

In the earlier part of his Autobiography Franklin describes more particularly how he was led away from the faith of his parents. Among his father's books were some sermons delivered on the Boyle foundation, which was a fund established at Oxford, England, by Robert Boyle for the purpose of having discourses delivered to prove the truth of Christianity. Franklin read some of these sermons when he was only fifteen years old, and was very much interested in the attacks made in them on the deists, the forerunners of the modern Unitarians. He thought that the arguments of the deists which were quoted to be refuted were much stronger than the attempts to refute them.

Shaftesbury and Collins were the most famous deistical writers of that time. Their books were in effect a denial of the miraculous part of Christianity, and whoever accepted their arguments was left with a belief only in God and the immortality of the soul, with Christianity a code of morals and beautiful sentiments instead of a revealed religion. From reading quotations from these authors Franklin was soon led to read their works entire, and they profoundly interested him. Like their successors, the Unitarians, they were full of religious liberty and liberal, broad ideas on all subjects, and Franklin's mind tended by nature in that direction.

It seems that Franklin's brother James was also a liberal. He had been employed to print a little newspaper, called the _Boston Gazette_, and when this work was taken from him, he started a newspaper of his own, called the _New England Courant_. His apprentice, Benjamin, delivered copies of it to the subscribers, and before long began to write for it.

The _Courant_, under the guidance of James Franklin and his friends, devoted itself to ridiculing the government and religion of Massachusetts. A description of it, supposed to have been written by Cotton Mather, tells us that it was "full-freighted with nonsense, unmanliness, raillery, profaneness, immorality, arrogance, calumnies, lies, contradictions, and what not, all tending to quarrels and divisions and to debauch and corrupt the minds and manners of New England." Among other things, the _Courant_, as Increase Mather informs us, was guilty of saying that "if the ministers of God approve of a thing, it is a sign it is of the devil; which is a horrid thing to be related." Its printer and editor was warned that he would soon, though a young man, have to appear before the judgment-seat of God to answer for things so vile and abominable.

Some of the Puritan ministers, under the lead of Cotton Mather, were at that time trying to introduce inoculation as a preventive of small-pox, and for this the _Courant_ attacked them. It attempted to make a sensation out of everything. Increase Mather boasted that he had ceased to take it. To which the _Courant_ replied that it was true he was no longer a subscriber, but that he sent his grandson every week to buy it. It was a sensational journal, and probably the first of its kind in this country. People bought and read it for the sake of its audacity. It was an instance of liberalism gone mad and degenerated into mere radicalism and negation.

Some of the articles attributed to Franklin, and which were in all probability written by him, were violent attacks on Harvard College, setting forth the worthlessness of its stupid graduates, nearly all of whom went into the Church, which is described as a temple of ambition and fraud controlled by money. There is a touch of what would now be called Socialism or Populism in these articles, and it is not surprising to find the author of them afterwards writing a pamphlet in favor of an inflated paper currency.

The government of Massachusetts allowed the _Courant_ to run its wicked course for about a year, and then fell upon it, imprisoning James Franklin for a month in the common jail. Benjamin conducted the journal during the imprisonment of his brother, who was not released until he had humbly apologized. The _Courant_ then went on, and was worse than ever, until an order of council was issued forbidding its publication, because it had mocked religion, brought the Holy Scriptures into contempt, and profanely abused the faithful ministers of God, as well as His Majesty's government and the government of the province.

The friends of James Franklin met and decided that they would evade the 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.

He carried on the joke by telling them to try the Irish bishops, and, if unsuccessful, the Danish and Swedish. If they were refused, which was likely, for human folly was without end, let them imitate the ancient clergy of Scotland, who, having built their Cathedral of St. Andrew, wanted to borrow some bishops from the King of Northumberland to ordain them a bishop for themselves. The king would lend them none. So they laid the mitre, crosier, and robes of a bishop on the altar, and, after earnest prayers for guidance, elected one of their own members. "Arise," they said to him, "go to the altar and receive your office at the hand of God," And thus he became the first bishop of Scotland. "If the British isles," said Franklin, "were sunk in the sea (and the surface of this globe has suffered greater changes) you would probably take some such method as this." And so he went on enlarging on the topic until he had a capital story to tell Madame Helvetius the next time they flirted and dined together in their learned way.

But his most notable escapade in religion, and one in which his sense of humor seems to have failed him, was his abridgment of the Church of England's "Book of Common Prayer." It seems that in the year 1772, while in England as a representative of the colonies, he visited the country-seat of Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord le Despencer, a reformed rake who had turned deist and was taking a gentlemanly interest in religion. He had been, it is said, a companion of John Wilkes, Bubb Doddington, Paul Whitehead, the Earl of Sandwich, and other reckless characters who established themselves as an order of monks at Medmenham Abbey, where they held mock religious ceremonies, and where the trial of the celebrated Chevalier D'Eon was held to prove his disputed sex. An old book, called "Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea," professes to describe the doings of these lively blades.

Lord Despencer and Franklin decided that the prayer-book was entirely too long. Its prolixity kept people from going to church. The aged and infirm did not like to sit so long in cold churches in winter, and even the young and sinful might attend more willingly if the service were shorter.

Franklin was already a dabster at liturgies. Had he not, when only twenty-two, written his own creed and liturgy, compounded of mythology and Christianity? and had he not afterwards, as is supposed, assisted David Williams to prepare the "Apology for Professing the Religion of Nature," with a most reasonable and sensible liturgy annexed? Lord Despencer had also had a little practice in such matters in his mock religious rites at the old abbey. Franklin, who was very fond of him, tells of the delightful days he spent at his country-seat, and adds, "But a pleasanter thing is the kind countenance, the facetious and very intelligent conversation of mine host, who having been for many years engaged in public affairs, seen all parts of Europe, and kept the best company in the world, is himself the best existing."[8] I have no doubt that his lordship's experience had been a varied one; but it is a question whether it was of such a character as to fit him for prayer-book revision. He, however, went seriously to work, and revised all of the book except the catechism and the reading and singing psalms, which he requested Franklin to abridge for him.

The copy which this precious pair went over and marked with a pen is now in the possession of Mr. Howard Edwards, of Philadelphia, and is a most interesting relic. From this copy Lord Despencer had the abridgment printed at his own expense; but it attracted no attention in England. All references to the sacraments and to the divinity of the Saviour were, of course, stricken out and short work made of the Athanasian and the Apostles' Creed. Even the commandments in the catechism had the pen drawn through them, which was rather inconsistent with the importance that Franklin attached to morals as against dogma. But both editors, no doubt, had painful recollections on this subject; and as Franklin would have been somewhat embarrassed by the seventh, he settled the question by disposing of them all.

The most curious mutilation, however, was in the Te Deum, most of which was struck out, presumably by Lord Despencer. The Venite was treated in a similar way by Franklin. The beautiful canticle, "All ye Works of the Lord," which is sometimes used in place of the Te Deum, was entirely marked out. As this canticle is the nearest approach in the prayer-book to anything like the religion of nature, it is strange that it should have suffered. But Franklin, though of picturesque life and character, interested in music as a theory, a writer of verse as an exercise, and a lover of the harmony of a delicately balanced prose sentence, had, nevertheless, not the faintest trace of poetry in his nature.

The book, which is now a very rare and costly relic, a single copy selling for over a thousand dollars, was known in America as "Franklin's Prayer-Book," and he was usually credited with the whole revision, although he expressly declared in a letter on the subject that he had abridged only the catechism and the reading and singing psalms. But he seems to have approved of the whole work, for he wrote the preface which explains the alterations. A few years after the Revolution, when the American Church was reorganizing itself, the "Book of Common Prayer" was revised and abbreviated by competent hands; and from a letter written by Bishop White it would seem that he had examined the "Franklin Prayer-Book," and was willing to adopt its arrangement of the calendar of holy days.[9]

The preface which Franklin wrote for the abridgment was an exquisitely pious little essay. It was written as though coming from Lord Despencer, "a Protestant of the Church of England," and a "sincere lover of social worship." His lordship also held "in the highest veneration the doctrines of Jesus Christ," which was a gratifying assurance.

When Franklin was about twenty-two or twenty-three and wrote his curious creed and liturgy, he seems to have been in that not altogether desirable state of mind which is sometimes vulgarly described as "getting religion." He was not the sort of man to be carried away by one of those religious revival excitements of which we have seen so many in our time, but he was as near that state as a person of his intellect could be.

Preaching to him and direct effort at his conversion would, of course, have had no effect on such an original disposition. The revival which he experienced was one which he started for himself, and, besides his creed and liturgy, it consisted of an attempt to arrive at moral perfection.

"I wished to live," he says, "without committing any fault at
any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination,
custom, or company might lead me into. As I knew or thought I
knew what was right and wrong, I did not see why I might not
always do the one and avoid the other."

So he prepared his moral code of all the virtues he thought necessary, with his comments thereon, and it speaks for itself:

"1. TEMPERANCE.--Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.

"2. SILENCE.--Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself;
avoid trifling conversation.

"3. ORDER.--Let all your things have their places; let each part
of your business have its time.

"4. RESOLUTION.--Resolve to perform what you ought; perform
without fail what you resolve.

"5. FRUGALITY.--Make no expense but to do good to others or
yourself; i. e. waste nothing.

"6. INDUSTRY.--Lose no time; be always employed in something
useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.

"7. SINCERITY.--Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and
justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.

"8. JUSTICE.--Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the
benefits that are your duty.

"9. MODERATION.--Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so
much as you think they deserve.

"10. CLEANLINESS.--Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, clothes,
or habitation.

"11. TRANQUILLITY.--Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents
common or unavoidable.

"12. CHASTITY.--Rarely use venery but for health or offspring,
never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or
another's peace or reputation.

"13. HUMILITY.--Imitate Jesus and Socrates."

He thought that he could gradually acquire the habit of keeping all these virtues, and instead of attempting the whole at once, he fixed his attention on one at a time, and when he thought he was master of that, proceeded to the next, and so on. He had arranged them in the order he thought would most facilitate their gradual acquisition, beginning with temperance and proceeding to silence; for the mastery of those which were easiest would help him to attain the more difficult. He has, therefore, left us at liberty to judge which were his most persistent sins.

He had a little book with a page for each virtue, and columns arranged for the days of the week, so that he could give himself marks for failure or success. He began by devoting a week to each virtue, by which arrangement he could go through the complete course in thirteen weeks, or four courses in a year.

His intense moral earnestness and introspection were doubtless inherited from his New England origin. But when he was in the midst of all this creed- and code-making, he records of himself:

"That hard to be governed passion of youth had hurried me
frequently into intrigues with low women that fell in my way,
which were attended with some expense and great inconvenience,
besides a continual risk to my health by a distemper, which of
all things I dreaded, though by great good luck I escaped it."

His biographer, Parton, reminds us that his liturgy has no prayer against this vice, and that about a year after the date of the liturgy his illegitimate son William was born. The biographer then goes on to say that Franklin was "too sincere and logical a man to go before his God and ask assistance against a fault which he had not fully resolved to overcome." There is, however, a prayer in the liturgy against lasciviousness. He had not yet paid Mr. Vernon the money he had embezzled, although he was the author of a prayer asking to be delivered from deceit and fraud, and another against unfaithfulness in trust.[10]

It is obvious that this inconsistency is very like human nature, especially youthful human nature. There is nothing wonderful in it. It was simply the struggle which often takes place in boys who are both physically and mentally strong. The only thing unusual is that the person concerned has made a complete revelation of it. Such things are generally deeply concealed from the public. But that curious frankness which was mingled with Franklin's astuteness has in his own case opened wide the doors.

It has been commonly stated in his biographies that he had but one illegitimate child, a son; but from a manuscript letter in the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society, written by John Foxcroft, February 2, 1772, and never heretofore printed, it appears that he had also an illegitimate daughter, married to John Foxcroft:

"PHILAD^A Feby 2d, 1772.

"DEAR SIR

"I have the happiness to acquaint you that your Daughter was
safely brot to Bed the 20^th ulto and presented me with a sweet
little girl, they are both in good spirits and are likely to do
very well.

"I was seized with a Giddyness in my head the Day before
yesterday wch alarms me a good deal as I had 20 oz of blood
taken from me and took physick wch does not seem in the least
to have relieved me.

"I am hardly able to write this. Mrs F joins me in best
affections to yourself and compts to Mrs Stevenson and Mr and
Mrs Huson.

"I am D^r Sir
"Yrs. affectionately
"JOHN FOXCROFT.

"Mrs Franklin, Mrs Bache, little Ben & Family at Burlington are
all well. I had a letter from ye Gov^r yesterday

J. F."

Among the Franklin papers in the State Department at Washington there are copies of a number of letters which Franklin wrote to Foxcroft, and in three of them--October 7, 1772, November 3, 1772, and March 3, 1773--he sends "love to my daughter." There is also in Bigelow's edition of his works[11] a letter in which he refers to Mrs. Foxcroft as his daughter. The letter I have quoted above was written while Franklin was in England as the representative of some of the colonies, and is addressed to him at his Craven Street lodgings. Foxcroft, who was postmaster of Philadelphia, seems to have been on friendly terms with the rest of Franklin's family.

Mrs. Bache, whom Foxcroft mentions in the letter, was Franklin's legitimate daughter, Sarah, who was married. The family at Burlington was the family of the illegitimate son, William, who was the royal governor of New Jersey. This extraordinarily mixed family of legitimates and illegitimates seems to have maintained a certain kind of harmony. The son William, the governor, continued the line through an illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, usually known as Temple Franklin. This condition of affairs enables us to understand the odium in which Franklin was held by many of the upper classes of Philadelphia, even when he was well received by the best people in England and France.

In his writings we constantly find him encouraging early marriages; and he complains of the great number of bachelors and old maids in England. "The accounts you give me," he writes to his wife, "of the marriages of our friends are very agreeable. I love to hear of everything that tends to increase the number of good people." He certainly lived up to his doctrine, and more.

"Men I find to be a sort of beings very badly constructed, as
they are generally more easily provoked than reconciled, more
disposed to do mischief to each other than to make reparation,
much more easily deceived than undeceived, and having more pride
and even pleasure in killing than in begetting one another; for
without a blush they assemble in great armies at noonday to
destroy, and when they have killed as many as they can they
exaggerate the number to augment the fancied glory; but they
creep into corners or cover themselves with the darkness of
night when they mean to beget, as being ashamed of a virtuous
action." (Bigelow's Works of Franklin, vol. vii. p. 464.)

There has always been much speculation as to who was the mother of Franklin's son, William, the governor of New Jersey; but as the gossips of Philadelphia were never able to solve the mystery, it is hardly possible that the antiquarians can succeed. Theodore Parker assumed that he must have been the son of a girl whom Franklin would have married if her parents had consented. Her name is unknown, for Franklin merely describes her as a relative of Mrs. Godfrey, who tried to make the match. Parker had no evidence whatever for his supposition. He merely thought it likely; and, as a Christian minister, it would perhaps have been more to his credit if he had abstained from attacking in this way the reputation of even an unnamed young woman. An English clergyman, Rev. Bennet Allen, writing in the London _Morning Post_, June 1, 1779, when the ill feeling of the Revolution was at its height, says that William's mother was an oyster wench, whom Franklin left to die of disease and hunger in the streets. The gossips, indeed, seem to have always agreed that the woman must have been of very humble origin.

The nearest approach to a discovery has, however, been made by Mr. Paul Leicester Ford, in his essay entitled "Who was the Mother of Franklin's Son?" He found an old pamphlet written during Franklin's very heated controversy with the proprietary party in Pennsylvania when the attempt was made to abolish the proprietorship of the Penn family and make the colony a royal province. The pamphlet, entitled "What is Sauce for a Goose is also Sauce for a Gander," after some general abuse of Franklin, says that the mother of his son was a woman named Barbara, who worked in his house as a servant for ten pounds a year; that he kept her in that position until her death, when he stole her to the grave in silence without a pall, tomb, or monument. This is, of course, a partisan statement only, and reiterates what was probably the current gossip of the time among Franklin's political opponents.

There have also been speculations in Philadelphia as to who was the mother of Franklin's daughter, the wife of John Foxcroft; but they are mere guesses unsupported by evidence.

From what Franklin has told us of the advice given him when a young man by a Quaker friend, he was at that time exceedingly proud, and also occasionally overbearing and insolent, and this is confirmed by various passages in his early life. But in after-years he seems to have completely conquered these faults. He complains, however, that he never could acquire the virtue of order in his business, having a place for everything and everything in its place. This failing seems to have followed him to the end of his life, and was one of the serious complaints made against him when he was ambassador to France.

But he believed himself immensely benefited by his moral code and his method of drilling himself in it.

"It may be well my posterity should be informed that to this
little artifice, with the blessing of God, their ancestor owed
the constant felicity of his life, down to his 79th year in
which this is written.... To Temperance he ascribes his long
continued health, and what is still left to him of a good
constitution; to Industry and Frugality, the early easiness of
his circumstances and acquisition of his fortune, with all that
knowledge that enabled him to be a useful citizen, and obtained
for him some degree of reputation among the learned; to
Sincerity and Justice, the confidence of his country, and the
honorable employs it conferred upon him; and to the joint
influence of the whole mass of the virtues, even in the
imperfect state he was able to acquire then, all that evenness
of temper and that cheerfulness in conversation, which makes his
company still sought for and agreeable even to his younger
acquaintances."

At the same time that he was trying to put into practice his moral code, he conceived the idea of writing a book called "The Art of Virtue," in which he was to make comments on all the virtues, and show how each could be acquired. Most treatises of this sort, he had observed, were mere exhortations to be good; but "The Art of Virtue" would point out the means. He collected notes and hints for this volume during many years, intending that it should be the most important work of his life; "a great and extensive project," he calls it, into which he would throw the whole force of his being, and he expected great results from it. He looked forward to the time when he could drop everything else and devote himself to this mighty project, and he received grandiloquent letters of encouragement from eminent men. His vast experience of life would have made it a fascinating volume, and it is to be regretted that public employments continually called him to other tasks.

A young man such as he was is not infrequently able to improve his morals more effectually by marrying than by writing liturgies and codes. He decided to marry about two years after he had begun to discipline himself in his creed and moral precepts. The step seems to have been first suggested to him by Mrs. Godfrey, to whom, with her husband, he rented part of his house and shop. She had a relative who, she thought, would make a good match for him, and she took opportunities of bringing them often together. The girl was deserving, and Franklin began to court her. But he has described the affair so well himself that it would be useless to try to abbreviate it.

"The old folks encouraged me by continual invitations to supper,
and by leaving us together, till at length it was time to
explain. Mrs. Godfrey managed our little treaty. I let her know
that I expected as much money with their daughter as would pay
off my remaining debt for the printing-house, which I believe
was not then above a hundred pounds. She brought me word they
had no such sum to spare; I said they might mortgage their house
in the loan office. The answer to this, after some days, was,
that they did not approve the match; that, on inquiry of
Bradford, they had been informed the printing business was not a
profitable one; the types would soon be worn out, and more
wanted; that S. Keimer and D. Harry had failed one after the
other, and I should probably soon follow them; and, therefore, I
was forbidden the house and the daughter shut up."

This the young printer thought was a mere artifice, the parents thinking that the pair were too fond of each other to separate, and that they would steal a marriage, in which event the parents could give or withhold what they pleased. He resented this attempt to force his hand, dropped the whole matter, and as a consequence quarrelled with Mrs. Godfrey, who with her husband and children left his house.