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and wash thy feet, and tarry all night; and thou shalt rise early in the morning and go on thy way. And the man said, Nay, for I will abide under this tree. But Abraham pressed him greatly; so he turned, and they went into the tent; and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat. And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God, he said unto him, Wherefore dost thou not worship the most high God, creator of heaven and earth? And the man answered and said, I do not worship thy God, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to myself a god, which abideth always in my house, and provideth me with all things. And Abraham's zeal was kindled against the man, and he arose and fell upon him, and drove him forth with blows into the wilderness. And God called upon Abraham, saying, Abraham, where is the stranger? And Abraham answered and said, Lord, he would not worship thee, neither would he call upon thy name; therefore I have driven him out from before my face into the wilderness. And God said, I have borne with him these hundred and ninety and eight years, and nourished him, and clothed him, notwithstanding his rebellion against me; and couldst not thou, who art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night?

3. And Abraham rose and met him, and said, Turn in, I pray thee, and wash thy feet, and tarry all night, and thou shalt arise early in the morning and go on thy way.

4. But the man said, Nay, for I will abide under this tree.

5. And Abraham pressed him greatly; so he turned, and they went into the tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread, and they did eat.

6. And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God, he said unto him, Wherefore dost thou not worship the most high God, creator of heaven and earth?

7. And the man answered and said, I do not worship the God thou speakest of, neither do I call upon his name; for I have made to myself a god, which abideth always in my house, and provideth me with all things.

8. And Abraham's zeal was kindled against the man, and he arose and drove him forth with blows into the wilderness.

9. And at midnight God called upon Abraham saying, Abraham, where is the stranger?

10. And Abraham answered and said, Lord, he would not worship thee, neither would he call upon thy name; therefore I have driven him out before my face into the wilderness.

11. And God said, Have I borne with him these hundred ninety and eight years, and clothed him, notwithstanding his rebellion against me; and couldst not thou, that art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night?

12. And Abraham said, Let not the anger of the Lord wax hot against his servant; lo, I have sinned; forgive me, I pray thee.

13. And Abraham arose, and went forth into the wilderness, and sought diligently for the man, and found him, and returned with him to the tent; and when he had entreated him kindly, he sent him away on the morrow with gifts.

14. And God spake unto Abraham, saying, For this thy sin shall thy seed be afflicted four hundred years in a strange land.

15. But for thy repentance will I deliver them; and they shall come forth with power and gladness of heart, and with much substance.

A comparison of these three several versions will show that the transfusion of the first idea, wherever it arose, with Sadi, Jeremy Taylor, or the Jewish books, that in each change the moral purpose was more perspicuously put forth, and besides the greater appropriateness of the language, the subdivision, and the entire addition of the 12th to the 15th verses, much improved, and enforced the excellence of the principle of toleration. In this view, it becomes of little consequence whence the first

idea was derived; no one can dispute the superiority of the latter version, and no one can claim it in that form as belonging to any other than Franklin. The moral, however, appears to have been thrown away on the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, who, having been a rector of an episcopal church in Maryland before the Revolution, forsook his country, and was rewarded by the royal bounty with an ecclesiastical living. Franklin has not been treated with the same virulence by clergymen generally; among his most enduring and faithful friends through all the vicissitudes of fortune, Dr. Joseph Priestley, the founder of the pneumatic system, and Dr. Richard Price, the apostle of civil liberty, maintained their uniform and constant friendship; and many of less note appear to have coveted to be numbered amongst the adherents of a man who had shed so much lustre on his country and the cause of liberty. It may therefore be fit in this place to bestow a few words on the ethics of Franklin. As Socrates was the first of whom we have knowledge in all antiquity, whose philosophy concentrated all actions, and determined their value by their utility, Franklin appears to have taken the lead in modern times, and was, during many years of his residence in Europe, considered as the founder of modern utilitarianism; and this too was the standard of his religious opinions. It was his practice to avoid disputation or controversy on modes of faith; he censured none, when they did not operate perniciously, and deemed that to be good which produced good. Like Cicero and Sir William Jones, he acquiesced without accepting the dogmas of the prevailing systems, and even conformed in his exterior deportment, and in his family, to the usages of some one or other sect, unbiassed by any. In his youth he became sceptical, but in maturer years perceived that doubt had its extremes as well as credulity; and that as the human faculties are limited, so man cannot penetrate beyond those bounds; that time, space, and the origin, or causes, or what has been called the eternity of things, are all beyond the measure of those faculties; that we judge of all we know by analogy, and where that fails we know nothing. He felt that there was a morality incident to the nature of man, independent of all that is held to be supernatural or miraculous; nature at large and her phenomena, and greatest of all, man himself, the only miracles; that the source of these phenomena was sublime and impenetrable, indicating beneficence and justice, and leading to utility in all things. All religions he considered as human ; none having superiority, but as they promoted the greatest good; but the proper business of man in the world of which he forms a part, and the perfection of his nature, was the promotion of universal happiness, by the prevention or mitigation of evil.

This mode of thinking arose either out of a happy temperament, or produced it. Modesty and frankness, with a happy gaiety, were his ordinary characteristics; somewhat reserved, but cheerful abroad, playful and communicative at home; cool in deliberation, dispassionate on all subjects, the most inflexible of men under the persuasion of rectitude and justice.

Among his warmest admirers in Europe were three very uncommon men, of three different nations: Bentham, and Turgot, and Beccaria. Condorcet relates an anecdote of Franklin and Turgot.

When Turgot had determined to make some reforms upon the system of Colbert, and rescue France from the tribute to which she was subjected by a commerce which destroyed the internal industry of France, and where there was no recipro

city, the Perruquiers were at that time a privileged corporation, and it was the policy of the time to preserve their privileges, rather than have to pay an immense number of pensions, if their privileges were taken away. Franklin, speaking to Turgot on the financial point, observed: "You have in France an excellent source of revenue, may recruit your army at the same time, and it will cost you nothing; let the public refrain from frizzing and powdering their hair; the money saved will be preferable to a tax, and enable the people to pay those that are indispensable; then the Perruquiers, being without a vocation, may be embodied in a military corps, the wages of hair-dressing will be saved, and the hair-powder will be converted into provisions."

In the memoirs written by himself, we find his mind was very early disengaged 'from the prevailing superstitions of the day. Among the works which fell under his eye, while employed as a printer at Palmer's, in London, was Wollaston's Sketch of the Religion of Nature; and this work it was which led him to try his own mind by a severe and unbiassed scrutiny; in consequence, he composed a short Essay on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain. Of this tract no traces are to be found, though the tenor and title of the work may be very easily coneeived upon a review of his moral writings, and especially the notes which he was accustomed to commit in a rough, hasty form, as if in haste, lest they should escape him; of these first thoughts and rude sketches, we have several sheets before us, and among which is the first sketch of an essay on Providence, and the original draft of the first letter which appears in the epistolary correspondence of this edition, which was never before published. If it were practicable to presen a fac simile, it would afford an example of the mode in which a few first rough thoughts may be enlarged by correlative ideas, and by progressive improvements reduced into a complete whole.

Time has done some justice, but not as ample as is due, to the character and services of Franklin. While his reputation spread among civilized nations, and his wisdom and sound discretion contributed, above all other men, to the consummation of his country's character and independence; it is melancholy to have to say, that his merits excited the envy, and often the malice, of men associated with him in the common cause. He had at one period to maintain the credit of his country at the court of Versailles, when some of his colleagues were wantonly intruding individual views on the attention of the court; at the same time he was traduced by a private correspondence with members of Congress, the substance of which found its way into debate, and formed fuel for faction: on two occasions he had deemed it necessary to signify his desire of retiring from his station at Versailles, as, being the object of a constant jealousy, he felt pernicious counteraction of his best efforts; but the good sense of a few wise and able men, such as Charles Thompson, soon counteracted those designs against him in Congress, and the Count de Vergennes, by formally declaring that he could not hold correspondence with more than one plenipotentiary from the United States, put an end to the difficulties which had been thrown in the way of the public interest. A public agent of the south at this period charged Dr. Franklin with being a Yankee! !—another of the north represented the Americans at Paris as satellites revolving round the planet Franklin !—and among the accusations which for a long time carried the greatest force was, that he obeyed the orders of Congress implicitly.

One of his colleagues at Paris, a few years ago, reviewing the transactions of that period, in which it was not easy to overlook Franklin, speaks of him in the following article, which, being an effusion conceived in a temper splenetic and resentful, affords, perhaps, the best eulogy that has been offered to the public on his character. It was published in the Boston Patriot.

"Mr. Jefferson has said, that Dr. Franklin was an honour to human nature. And so indeed he was. To all the talents and qualities for the foundation of a great and lasting character, which were held up to the view of the whole world by the University of Oxford, the Royal Society of London, and the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, were added, it is believed, more artificial modes of distinguishing, celebrating, and exaggerating his reputation, than were ever before or since practised in favour of any individual.

"His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederic the Great or Voltaire, and his character more beloved and esteemed than any or all of them.

"Newton had astonished, perhaps, forty or fifty men in Europe; for not more than that number, probably, at any one time had read him and understood him, by his discoveries and demonstrations; and these being held in admiration in their respective countries, at the head of the philosophers, had spread among scientific people a mysterious wonder at the genius of this, perhaps, the greatest man that ever lived. But his fame was confined to men of letters. The common people knew little, and cared nothing, about such a recluse philosopher. Leibnitz's name was still more confined. Frederic was hated by one half of Europe, as much as Louis XIV. was, and as Napoleon is. Voltaire, whose name was more universal than any of those before mentioned, was considered as a vain profligate wit, and not much esteemed or beloved by anybody, though admired by all who knew his works.

"But Franklin's fame was universal. His name was familiar to government and people; to kings, courtiers, nobility, clergy, and philosophers, as well as plebeians, to such a degree, that there was scarcely a peasant or a citizen, a valet de chambre, coachman, or footman, a lady's chambermaid, or a scullion in the kitchen, who was not familiar with his name, and who did, not consider him as a friend of human kind. When they spoke of him, they seemed to think he was to restore the golden age. They seemed enraptured enough to exclaim,

*Aspice venturo lætentus ut omnia seculo.

"To develope that complication of causes which conspired to produce so singular a phenomenon, is far beyond my means or forces. Perhaps it can never be done without a complete history of the philosophy and politics of the eighteenth century. Such a work would be one of the most important that ever was written; much more interesting to this and future ages, than the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' splendid and useful as it is. La Harpe promised a history of the philosophy of the eighteenth century; but he died, and left us only a few fragments. Four of the finest writers that Great Britain ever produced, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Hume, and Gibbon, whose labours were translated into all languages, and three of the most elegant writers that ever lived in France, whose works were also translated into all languages, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Raynal,-were professed ad

mirers of Mr. Franklin. He was considered as a citizen of the world, a friend to all men, and an enemy to none. His rigorous taciturnity was very favourable to this singular felicity. He conversed only with individuals, and freely only with confidential friends. In company he was totally silent."

This sketch, drawn. by one of his colleagues at Paris, is remarkable for the force of its reluctant acknowledgments, and the preposterous effort to account, in a supernatural, or artificial, or some mysterious way, for his celebrity, and the indiscriminate attachment and praise lavished on him by every condition in human society. There would not seem to be a necessity for any other than the simple and obvious causes of this celebrity; he who was an ornament of human nature," " as indeed he was." One "who possessed all the talents and qualities for the foundation of a great and lasting character," would seem to require no "artificial modes of diffusing, and celebrating his reputation." That it was exaggerated, is in no instance shown; yet the author of the sketch insinuates that "artificial modes were practised, such as were never known before." Who practised them? Franklin never published nor profited by any of his writings, philosophical or political; on the former he seems to have set very little value, and the latter were more profitable to his country than to his purse. The cause is solved by the words of the reluctant eulogist," He was considered a citizen of the world, a friend of all men, and an enemy to none." This is the key of this artificial mystery.

It is due to truth not to withhold the fact, that his distinguished labours for his country were not regarded with the justice due by that country to his services. Very soon after his return from that splendid mission, of which he was the animating soul and the superintending intelligence, he experienced that often repeated and too often verified imputation of ingratitude in republics. During the contest, his all-effective influence regulated and drew forth the resources which formed the only treasury of the revolution. That influence blunted the venom of envy; but peace restored, it burst forth with an acrimony which, had not the venerable Charles Thomson consigned his journal to the flames in a moment of mistaken liberality, would have surprised and confounded posterity. The long concealed spirit of jealousy, and the discretion which had silenced the enemies of the revolution, and encouraged hopes of the royal cause even to the moment when peace was proclaimed, now changed its passivity for action, and singled out the patriarch of independence as the object of their vengeance. In monarchies, gratitude is never expected, and the disregard of services is genial to selfish institutions. It becomes the more odious, and the more remarkable, when it appears in the last position of human society where it should not be suffered or tolerated.

The following is an abstract of a summary of his services, which was offered to the notice of Congress by a friend. In England he combatted the stamp act by his public writings, and in his two celebrated examinations before parliament and in the privy council, which it was allowed led to the repeal of that act.

He opposed the duty act, and though he could not prevent its passing, it was modified, at this instance, by the omission of salt, and other articles.

He wrote and published numerous papers in refutation of the ministerial principles of taxation, and their writers; he conducted two secret negotiations for

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