"By heaven we understand a state of happiness, infinite in degree and eternal in duration. I can do nothing to deserve such a reward.... I have not the vanity to think I deserve it, the folly to expect, or the ambition to desire it."—Franklin's Works, vol. vii., p. 75.
"I wish it [Christianity] were more productive of good works than I have generally seen it. I mean real good works, works of kindness, charity, mercy, and public spirit, not holy-day keeping, sermon hearing and reading, performing church ceremonies, or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments, despised even by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."—Ibid.
"Nowadays we have scarcely a little parson that does not think it the duty of every man within his reach to sit under his petty ministration, and that whoever omits this offends God. To such I wish more humility."—Franklin's Works, vol. vii. pp. 76,77.
"The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion," affirmed Washington (treaty with Tripoli). "Keep the church and the state forever separate," said Grant (Des Moines speech). And yet, in spite of this declaration and this admonition religious liberty has been ignored and a practical union of church and state has been maintained—the exemption of ecclesiastical property from taxation, the employment of chaplains, appropriations for sectarian purposes, religious services, including the use of the Bible, in our public schools, the appointment of religious festivals, the judicial oath and the enforced observance of Sunday as a Sabbath. Concerning these and similar privileges of his time and of our time, Franklin says: "I think they were invented not so much to secure religion as the emoluments of it. When a religion is good I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."—Franklin's Works, vol. viii., p. 506.
Theodore Parker, in his "Four Historic Americans," writes as follows concerning Franklin's belief: "If belief in the miraculous revelation of the Old Testament and the New is required to make a man religious, then Franklin had no religion at all. It would be an insult to say that he believed in the popular theology of his time, or of ours, for I find not a line from his pen indicating any such belief."
The eminent statesman John Hay, in an article on "Franklin in France," published after his death in the Century Magazine for January, 1906, ascribes much of Franklin's popularity in France to his espousal of Freethought. He says: "Franklin became the fashion of the season. For the court dabbled a little in liberal ideas. So powerful was the vast impulse of Freethought that then influenced the mind of France—that susceptible French mind, that always answers like the wind harp to the breath of every true human aspiration—that even the highest classes had caught the infection of liberalism." Among Franklin's most intimate companions in France Mr. Hay mentions Voltaire, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, and Condorcet, four of France's most radical Freethinkers.
Dr. Franklin and Dr. Priestley were intimate friends. After Franklin's death Dr. Priestley wrote: "It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers."—Priestley's Autobiography, p. 60.
This great man was himself denounced as an Infidel. He was a Unitarian, and was mobbed and driven from England on account of his heretical opinions and his sympathy with the French Revolution. Franklin's Infidelity must have been very pronounced to have provoked the censure of Dr. Priestley.
There has been published a religious tract, entitled "Don't Unchain the Tiger," which purports to be a letter from Franklin to Paine, advising him not to publish his "Age of Reason." The only thing needed to cause a rejection of this pious fiction is a knowledge of the fact that Franklin had been dead nearly four years when the first page of Paine's book was written. Besides, the opinions expressed in this book were the opinions of Franklin. Paine's biographer, Dr. Conway, says: "Paine's deism differed from Franklin's only in being more fervently religious." Franklin's biographer, James Parton, says: "It ['Age of Reason'] contains not a position which Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson and Theodore Parker would have dissented from."
The Rev. John Snyder, of St. Louis, says: "Paine shared the religious convictions of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin." Concerning the belief of these and other noted men, the Rev. Dr. Swing, of Chicago, says: "Voltaire, Bolingbroke, Pitt, Burke, Washington, Lafayette, Jefferson, Paine and Franklin moved along in a wonderful unity of belief, both political and religious."