"He disproves the miracles of the New Testament. His 'Inquiry Concerning Virtue' and his 'Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour' are interesting as novels to me."
"I prefer the novels," interrupted John.
"Perhaps you do; but Shaftesbury is one of the most ingenious and pleasant writers known. He does not discard religion; he assails spurious religion only."
"And spurious religion is all religion that he do not believe in, I suppose," suggested John, "come from above or below? When a man does not believe the Bible he tries to show it up; and so when a man do not believe any religion but his own, he tries to explode all others."
"Read Shaftesbury, and judge for yourself," added Benjamin. "You will fall in love with him, as I have. He is one of the most graceful and fascinating writers I know of."
"Perhaps I will read him sometime," replied John. "I must go now; and when I am ready for it I will call for the book."
We have not time to follow the companionship of these two youth. It was intimate, and Benjamin succeeded in making a Shaftesbury disciple of John, so that one was about as much of an unbeliever as the other. In his "Autobiography," Benjamin confesses that he "was made a doubter by reading Shaftesbury and Collins," although he began to dissent from his father, as we have already seen, in his boyhood, when he read the religious tracts of Boyle.
We know that Benjamin was charged with being an atheist by his brother. True, it was when his brother was angry because he left him; still, he would not have been likely to make such a statement to others without some foundation for it. Franklin himself gives one reason for his leaving Boston (in his "Autobiography"): "My indiscreet disputations about religion began to make me pointed at with horror by good people as an infidel and atheist."
Another admission in his "Autobiography" reflects upon this subject:
"The time I allotted for writing exercises and for reading, was at night, or before work began in the morning, or on Sundays, when I contrived to be in the printing house, avoiding as much as I could the constant attendance upon public worship, which my father used to exact of me when I was under his care, and which I still continued to consider a duty, though I could not afford time to practise it."