HKB
M. Faÿ has sought, without convincing documentary evidence, to interpret Franklin's philosophic mind in terms of Pythagoreanism.[i-386] We may find that these views are over simple and historically inadequate--even wrong.
Franklin was reared "piously in the Dissenting way"[i-387] by a "pious and prudent" Calvinistic father who died as he lived, with "entire Dependence on his Redeemer."[i-388] "Religiously educated as a Presbyterian,"[i-389] young Benjamin was taught that Major est Scripturae auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenü capacitas. He was nurtured on the Bible and "books in polemic divinity," and he regularly attended services at the Old South Church. Doubtless without reflection he was led to identify goodness with the church and its worship. He was a part of New England's bibliolatry. Not long before he was apprenticed to his brother James he read Cotton Mather's Bonifacius--An Essay upon the Good that is to be Devised and Designed by those who desire to Answer the Great End of Life, and to do good while they live, and Defoe's Essays upon Several Projects: or Effectual Ways for Advancing the Interests of the Nation*. He confessed in 1784 that *Bonifacius "gave me such a turn of thinking, as to have an influence on my conduct through life; for I have always set a greater value on the character of a doer of good than on any other kind of reputation."[i-390] Mather, as an exponent of Christian charity, urged that man help his neighbors "with a rapturous assiduity,"[i-391] that he may discover the "ravishing satisfaction which he might find in relieving the distresses of a poor miserable neighbor."[i-392] It is ironic that Mather should have apparently aided a young man to divorce himself from the strenuous subtleties of theology. (Franklin was too young to gather that Mather circumspectly warned against a covenant of works, and hence was Pauline in his advocacy of charity rather than of humanitarianism.) And from Defoe's Essays Franklin received more than a penchant for projects. Like Mather, Defoe observed that "God Almighty has commanded us to relieve and help one another in distress."[i-393] Defoe seemed to young Franklin to dwell on fellow-service--to promise that the good man need not have understood all of the dogma of Old South meetinghouse.
Apprenticed to James, Franklin admitted that he "now had access to better books."[i-394] Whatever the extent of James's library in 1718, by 1722 the New England Courant collection included Burnet's History of the Reformation*, Theory of the Earth, the Spectator papers, The Guardian, Art of Thinking [Du Port Royal], *The Tale of a Tub, and the writings of Tillotson.[i-395] After reading most probably in these, and, as we are told, in Tryon's Way to Health, Xenophon's Memorabilia, digests of some of Boyle's lectures, Anthony Collins, Locke, and Shaftesbury, Franklin became in his Calvinist religion a "real doubter."[i-396] He became at the age of sixteen, as a result of reading Boyle's Lectures,[i-397] a "thorough Deist."[i-398] We cannot be certain of the Lectures read by Franklin, but we may observe Bentley's Folly of Atheism (1692) and Derham's Physico-Theology (1711-1712), which are representative of the series provided for by Boyle. Like Mather's The Christian Philosopher (1721)[i-399] they both employ science and rationalism to reinforce (never as equivalent to or substitute for) scriptural theology. Fed by Newtonian physics, Bentley discovers in gravity "the great basis of all mechanism," the "immediate fiat and finger of God, and the executions of the divine law."[i-400] Gravity, "the powerful cement which holds together this magnificent structure of the world,"[i-401] is the result of the Deity "who always acts geometrically." Borrowing from Cockburne, Ray, Bentley, and Fénelon, Derham offers likewise to prove the existence and operations of the Workman from his Work.[i-402]