The True Benjamin Franklin

by Sydney George Fisher

At the same time the members of the Church of England in the successfully revolted colonies were adapting themselves to the new order of things; but, having no bishops, their clergy were obliged to apply to the English bishops for ordination. They were, of course, refused, and two of them applied to Franklin, who was then in Paris, for advice. It was strange that they should have consulted the philosopher, who regarded bishops and ordinations as mere harmless delusions. But he was a very famous man, the popular representative of their country, and of proverbial shrewdness.

He suggested—doubtless with a sly smile—that the Pope’s nuncio should ordain them. The nuncio, though their theological enemy, believed in the pretty delusion as well as they, and his ordination would be as valid as that of the Archbishop of Canterbury. He asked the nuncio, with whom he was no doubt on terms of jovial intimacy, if he would do it; but that functionary was of course obliged to say that such a thing was impossible, unless the gentlemen should first become Roman Catholics. So the philosopher had another laugh over the vain controversies of man.

He carried on the joke by telling them to try the Irish bishops, and, if unsuccessful, the Danish and Swedish. If they were refused, which was likely, for human folly was without end, let them imitate the ancient clergy of Scotland, who, having built their Cathedral of St. Andrew, wanted to borrow some bishops from the King of Northumberland to ordain them a bishop for themselves. The king would lend them none. So they laid the mitre, crosier, and robes of a bishop on the altar, and, after earnest prayers for guidance, elected one of their own members. “Arise,” they said to him, “go to the altar and receive your office at the hand of God,” And thus he became the first bishop of Scotland. “If the British isles,” said Franklin, “were sunk in the sea (and the surface of this globe has suffered greater changes) you would probably take some such method as this.” And so he went on enlarging on the topic until he had a capital story to tell Madame Helvetius the next time they flirted and dined together in their learned way.

But his most notable escapade in religion, and one in which his sense of humor seems to have failed him, was his abridgment of the Church of England’s “Book of Common Prayer.” It seems that in the year 1772, while in England as a representative of the colonies, he visited the country-seat of Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord le Despencer, a reformed rake who had turned deist and was taking a gentlemanly interest in religion. He had been, it is said, a companion of John Wilkes, Bubb Doddington, Paul Whitehead, the Earl of Sandwich, and other reckless characters who established themselves as an order of monks at Medmenham Abbey, where they held mock religious ceremonies, and where the trial of the celebrated Chevalier D’Eon was held to prove his disputed sex. An old book, called “Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea,” professes to describe the doings of these lively blades.

Lord Despencer and Franklin decided that the prayer-book was entirely too long. Its prolixity kept people from going to church. The aged and infirm did not like to sit so long in cold churches in winter, and even the young and sinful might attend more willingly if the service were shorter.

Franklin was already a dabster at liturgies. Had he not, when only twenty-two, written his own creed and liturgy, compounded of mythology and Christianity? and had he not afterwards, as is supposed, assisted David Williams to prepare the “Apology for Professing the Religion of Nature,” with a most reasonable and sensible liturgy annexed? Lord Despencer had also had a little practice in such matters in his mock religious rites at the old abbey. Franklin, who was very fond of him, tells of the delightful days he spent at his country-seat, and adds, “But a pleasanter thing is the kind countenance, the facetious and very intelligent conversation of mine host, who having been for many years engaged in public affairs, seen all parts of Europe, and kept the best company in the world, is himself the best existing.”[8] I have no doubt that his lordship’s experience had been a varied one; but it is a question whether it was of such a character as to fit him for prayer-book revision. He, however, went seriously to work, and revised all of the book except the catechism and the reading and singing psalms, which he requested Franklin to abridge for him.

The copy which this precious pair went over and marked with a pen is now in the possession of Mr. Howard Edwards, of Philadelphia, and is a most interesting relic. From this copy Lord Despencer had the abridgment printed at his own expense; but it attracted no attention in England. All references to the sacraments and to the divinity of the Saviour were, of course, stricken out and short work made of the Athanasian and the Apostles’ Creed. Even the commandments in the catechism had the pen drawn through them, which was rather inconsistent with the importance that Franklin attached to morals as against dogma. But both editors, no doubt, had painful recollections on this subject; and as Franklin would have been somewhat embarrassed by the seventh, he settled the question by disposing of them all.

The most curious mutilation, however, was in the Te Deum, most of which was struck out, presumably by Lord Despencer. The Venite was treated in a similar way by Franklin. The beautiful canticle, “All ye Works of the Lord,” which is sometimes used in place of the Te Deum, was entirely marked out. As this canticle is the nearest approach in the prayer-book to anything like the religion of nature, it is strange that it should have suffered. But Franklin, though of picturesque life and character, interested in music as a theory, a writer of verse as an exercise, and a lover of the harmony of a delicately balanced prose sentence, had, nevertheless, not the faintest trace of poetry in his nature.