#20 The Sage of the Convention (2)
IDENTITY POLITICS | Mark Boonstra: "I conclude, that believing a Providence we have the Foundation of all true Religion; for we should love and revere that Deity for His Goodness.." -Benjamin Franklin
“Love your Enemies, for they tell you your Faults. He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals. There never was a good war or a bad peace. When you’re down to nothing, God is up to something.” -Benjamin Franklin
Upon returning to Philadelphia from London, Franklin founded the Junto, a debating society whose members would write essays and discuss issues of morality, politics, and philosophy. That society eventually developed into the American Philosophical Society, founded in 1743.
After forming his own Philadelphia printing business, Franklin’s thoughts soon returned to his beloved Deborah. Unfortunately, she had heard little from Franklin during his time abroad, and was persuaded during his absence to marry a potter, John Rogers. But the coupling was an unhappy one, and Rogers, who was later rumored to have another wife in London, abandoned Deborah and fled from his debtors to the West Indies; he was rumored but not certain to have died there. Franklin and Deborah rekindled their romance, but the fact of her marriage to Rogers, the uncertainty of his continued taking of breath, and the possibility of another Rogers wife, complicated the legal niceties of their relationship going forward. So, in 1730, the once-nearly-betrothed couple entered into a common-law marriage that roughly coincided in time with the birth of Franklin’s eldest son, William. The couple had two additional children, one of whom, Francis Folger Franklin, died of smallpox at the age of four. With Franklin’s assistance, William later was appointed royal governor of New Jersey, where his continued loyalty to the British crown would put him at odds with his father.
In 1729, Franklin acquired the Pennsylvania Gazette and soon began writing under a pen name, Richard Saunders; those writings, together with proverbs, aphorisms, witticisms, and other homespun wisdom that both originated with Franklin and was adapted from others, formed Franklin’s widely-acclaimed Poor Richard’s Almanack. Franklin also chartered the first subscription library in North America, which became the Library Company of Philadelphia. Over the next several years, he amassed real estate and business ventures, and organized the volunteer Union Fire Company. By this time, Franklin, as a man of God but one with little regard for religious ceremony or sectarian division, had become a freemason, joining the Masonic Lodge of St. John in Philadelphia. The principle tenet of freemasonry is a belief in a Supreme Being. Franklin soon helped draft his lodge’s bylaws, and, in 1734, became grand master of Pennsylvania. He also edited and published the first masonic book in the Americas, a reprint of James Anderson’s Constitutions of the Free-Masons. He remained a freemason for the rest of his life; during a later stay in France, he served as grand master of the Lodge Les Neuf Soeurs from 1779 until 1781.
Franklin also found his way back to the church pews. He initially was just an occasional attendee of services at the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia; he found the messages of its pastor, Rev. Jedediah Andrews, to be “very dry, uninteresting and unedifying, since not a single moral Principle was inculcated or enforced, their Aim seeming to be rather to make us Presbyterians than good Citizens.” His dissatisfaction with Rev. Andrews’s sermons eventually caused him to cease attending. Instead, Franklin returned to using the liturgy that he had himself authored.
In 1732, Franklin penned an essay entitled, On the Providence of God in the Government of the World, in which he wrote:
I conclude, that believing a Providence we have the Foundation of all true Religion; for we should love and revere that Deity for his Goodness and thank him for his Benefits; we should adore him for his Wisdom, fear him for his Power, and pray to him for his Favour and Protection; and this Religion will be a Powerful Regulater of our Actions, give us Peace and Tranquility within our own Minds, and render us Benevolent, Useful and Beneficial to others.
Then, in 1734, a young Irish minister from the Ulster Presbytery of Strabane, Rev. Samuel Hemphill, arrived in Philadelphia as Rev. Andrews’s assistant. Franklin found Rev. Hemphill’s sermons to be enlightening and welcoming, and was so drawn to them that he became a regular attendee of Sunday services; he noted that he “became one of his constant hearers, his sermons pleasing me, as they had little of the dogmatical kind, but inculcated strongly the practice of virtue, or what in the religious stile are called good works.” Perhaps for the same reasons, Rev. Hemphill found himself out of favor with the more orthodox elements at First Presbyterian, which attacked him for delivering sermons composed by others. Franklin rose in Rev. Hemphill’s defense, declaring that he would rather hear good sermons composed by others than bad sermons of one’s own crafting. He authored a spirited defense in a series of writings, including his A Defense of Mr. Hemphill’s Observations, which Franklin published in his Pennsylvania Gazette in 1735. Franklin’s effort failed, however, and Rev. Hemphill departed Philadelphia. The experience served only to bolster Franklin’s long-standing view that the essence of religion lies in adhering to its moral principles, and caused him, while still financially supporting its ministers, to quit the church.
In 1736, Franklin became the clerk of the Assembly of Pennsylvania, and then, after serving as a councilman and justice of the peace, was himself elected to the Assembly and named postmaster of Philadelphia.
Within a few years, he had invented the Franklin stove (along with numerous other creations, such as bifocal glasses and the lightning rod), and charted the Gulf Stream. He had also begun experiments with electricity that culminated in his famed kite experiment, using the spire of Christ (Episcopal) Church in Philadelphia—the birthplace of the Episcopal Church in America—which later led to his being awarded the Copley medal. And he composed music; learned to play the violin, harp, and guitar; was an avid chess player; and studied Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish. In consultation with Rev. Richard Peters, then the assistant rector (and, later, the rector) of Christ Church, he also proposed a plan for an academy that later developed into the University of Pennsylvania. He was awarded honorary degrees from Harvard College, Yale College, and the College of William and Mary.
In 1749, Franklin wrote another essay, this one entitled, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, in which he said:
History will also afford frequent Opportunities of showing the Necessity of a Publick Religion, from its Usefulness to the Publick; the Advantage of a Religious Character among private Persons; the Mischiefs of Superstition, &c. and the Excellency of the Christian Religion above all others antient or modern.
In 1754, Franklin was named deputy postmaster for the continent and attended a Congress of the colonies, which was held in Albany, New York. His Pennsylvania Gazette advocated for the Albany Congress with the motto, “Unite or Die,” accompanied by a severed serpentine design. At the Congress, and with great foresight, Franklin propounded the first coherent scheme to create a federal union of the thirteen colonies, albeit while maintaining ties with the motherland. When that effort failed, the march toward independence was on.
Next Up: The Sage of the Convention (Part 3)
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Enjoyable read! Thanks!