rbcbob
Puritan Board Graduate
On another post someone wrote:
However Franklin said:
And among the many other evidences he gave us in his writings of his unbelief there is this one:
The mythology and aura that surrounds many of the "Founding Fathers" lives on despite copious writings, in their own hand, to dispel such paterology.
"Franklin was not not a Christian." Like I said, despite the caricatures of him in history, and for all his faults, he may not have been very orthodox, but he was a Christian. As a young man he fell into Deism, late in life in his autobiography, he wrote that at 26 years old he became "thoroughly a Deist." Many people take this recollection of Franklin's as the end all of end all's, and yet pay no attention to what happened in his life after he was 26 years old. Later, through the Grace of God and His use of G. Whitefield in Franklin's life, Franklin returned to the faith.
However Franklin said:
“Mr. Whitefield used, indeed, to pray for my conversion, but he never had the satisfaction of believing that his prayers were heard. Ours was a mere civil friendship, sincere on both sides, and lasted to his death.”- Ben Franklin, Autobiography in Republic of Reason p.38
And among the many other evidences he gave us in his writings of his unbelief there is this one:
“Faith is recommended as a Means of producing Morality … Thus Faith would be a Means of producing Morality, and Morality of Salvation. But that from such Faith alone Salvation may be expected, appears to me to be neither a Christian Doctrine nor a reasonable one.”
– Ben Franklin, Dialogue in Writings, 256
The mythology and aura that surrounds many of the "Founding Fathers" lives on despite copious writings, in their own hand, to dispel such paterology.
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