The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

by H.W. Brands

This inversion of moral cause and effect came as an epiphany to Franklin. It allowed him to reconcile his skepticism with his practicality. A man had to conform his conduct to prevailing mores if he wished to get ahead; he did not have to conform his convictions to the prevailing theology. With a sigh of relief almost audible from a distance of nearly three centuries, Franklin codified his new thinking in what he called his “Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion,” dated November 20, 1728. Borrowing from Cato, he declared, “I hold: If there is a Power above us (and that there is all nature cries aloud, through all her works), He must delight in virtue, and that which He delights in must be happy.” As the deists did, Franklin measured the immensity of the universe against the minusculity of the earth and the inhabitants thereof, and concluded from this that it was “great vanity in me to suppose that the Supremely Perfect does in the least regard such an inconsiderable nothing as man.” Moreover, this Supremely Perfect had absolutely no need to be worshipped by humans; He was infinitely above such sentiments or actions. Yet if worship filled no divine purpose, it did serve a human need. “I think it seems required of me, and my duty as a man, to pay divine regards to something.”