FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN
(17 January, 1706, Boston-17 April, 1790, Philadelphia). Education: Educated briefly at Boston Grammar School and George Brownell's school for writing, 1714-16; apprentice in his father's business (tallow chandler and soap boiler), 1716-18, and to his half-brother, a printer, 1718-23. Career: Printer, writer, philanthropist, scientist, statesman, inventor, and diplomat
Benjamin Franklin was raised a Congregationalist, and for a time his father intended him for the ministry as "the tithe of his sons." Young Franklin's intellect made him seem a suitable candidate for Harvard and the clergy, but his father's limited circumstances-he had seventeen children-prevented him from keeping Benjamin in school.
It is interesting to imagine Benjamin Franklin as a Congregational minister. The rationalism that was so apparent in his later life would have undoubtedly driven Franklin into the camp of Jonathan Mayhew* and Charles Chauncy* as an Arminian. Franklin developed a curiously detached view of religion. In one famous episode, when revivalist George Whitefield* was preaching in Philadelphia, Franklin carefully paced off the dimensions of the crowd so that he could number it accurately. Another time he listened to Whitefield, intending to give nothing to the collection plate. But he was so impressed by the sermon -that he relented and emptied his pockets. Even then, however, he was paying tribute to Whitefield's elocution rather than admitting that his own soul was properly troubled. In so far as Puritanism required doubt, fear, and humility in the presence of the Lord, Franklin was no Puritan at all. In fact he admired pride-that most heinous of Puritan sins-as a virtue. He claimed that it encouraged men and women to live up to their own exalted images of themselves.
So when Benjamin Franklin ran away to Philadelphia at age seventeen, he left Congregational New England far behind. And yet he carried much of Puritanism with him throughout his life. He once remarked that Cotton Mather's· Essays to Do Good, read at an early age, had greatly influenced his life. His moral aphorisms in Poor Richard's Almanac echo Mather's precepts. One might imagine Mather, for example, saying as Franklin did: "It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright," or "Many dishes make diseases." Franklin also inherited the Puritan sense of the importance of time: one must work to "improve" every moment on earth. And he saw providence as an important force in history.
Inventor, diplomat, and philosopher, Benjamin Franklin felt nothing of the grandeur and mystery of the Puritan God, but in his outward life he embraced many Puritan ideals. To evaluate how Puritan his character is is to ask what is the essence of Congregationalism: spiritual experience or the moral life?
Bibliography
A: Leonard W. Labaree, ed., The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 1964); Leo J. A. Lemay and P.M. Zall, eels., (Knoxville. Tenn., 1981); Leonard W. Labaree and William B. Willcox, eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 26 vols. to date (New Haven, 1959-).
B: DAB 6,585-98; Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1938); Ralph Ketcham, Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1966); Esmond Wright, Franklin of Philadelphia (Cambridge, Mass., 1986); William Pencak, "Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, Cotton Mather, and a Puritan God," Pennsylvania History, 53 (1986), 1-25 [on the shared Puritan ideology of Mather and Franklin].
Benjamin Franklin was raised a Congregationalist, and for a time his father intended him for the ministry as "the tithe of his sons." Young Franklin's intellect made him seem a suitable candidate for Harvard and the clergy, but his father's limited circumstances-he had seventeen children-prevented him from keeping Benjamin in school.
It is interesting to imagine Benjamin Franklin as a Congregational minister. The rationalism that was so apparent in his later life would have undoubtedly driven Franklin into the camp of Jonathan Mayhew* and Charles Chauncy* as an Arminian. Franklin developed a curiously detached view of religion. In one famous episode, when revivalist George Whitefield* was preaching in Philadelphia, Franklin carefully paced off the dimensions of the crowd so that he could number it accurately. Another time he listened to Whitefield, intending to give nothing to the collection plate. But he was so impressed by the sermon -that he relented and emptied his pockets. Even then, however, he was paying tribute to Whitefield's elocution rather than admitting that his own soul was properly troubled. In so far as Puritanism required doubt, fear, and humility in the presence of the Lord, Franklin was no Puritan at all. In fact he admired pride-that most heinous of Puritan sins-as a virtue. He claimed that it encouraged men and women to live up to their own exalted images of themselves.
So when Benjamin Franklin ran away to Philadelphia at age seventeen, he left Congregational New England far behind. And yet he carried much of Puritanism with him throughout his life. He once remarked that Cotton Mather's· Essays to Do Good, read at an early age, had greatly influenced his life. His moral aphorisms in Poor Richard's Almanac echo Mather's precepts. One might imagine Mather, for example, saying as Franklin did: "It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright," or "Many dishes make diseases." Franklin also inherited the Puritan sense of the importance of time: one must work to "improve" every moment on earth. And he saw providence as an important force in history.
Inventor, diplomat, and philosopher, Benjamin Franklin felt nothing of the grandeur and mystery of the Puritan God, but in his outward life he embraced many Puritan ideals. To evaluate how Puritan his character is is to ask what is the essence of Congregationalism: spiritual experience or the moral life?
Bibliography
A: Leonard W. Labaree, ed., The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, 1964); Leo J. A. Lemay and P.M. Zall, eels., (Knoxville. Tenn., 1981); Leonard W. Labaree and William B. Willcox, eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 26 vols. to date (New Haven, 1959-).
B: DAB 6,585-98; Carl Van Doren, Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1938); Ralph Ketcham, Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1966); Esmond Wright, Franklin of Philadelphia (Cambridge, Mass., 1986); William Pencak, "Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, Cotton Mather, and a Puritan God," Pennsylvania History, 53 (1986), 1-25 [on the shared Puritan ideology of Mather and Franklin].