Faith Of Our Signers P10

Last week I ended talking about Ezra Stiles' letter to Benjamin Franklin first requesting a portrait of him to display at Yale, and then asking a question regarding Franklin’s personal beliefs about Jesus. Franklin replied on March 9, 1790, just five weeks before his death on April 17, 1790. He first told Stiles he was flattered by his request to place a picture of him at Yale (Yale had given Franklin an honorary master's degree), and he sent Stiles some rare items for inclusion in the Yale library.

He then answered Stiles’ question about Jesus and religion: You desire to know something of my religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it. But I cannot take your curiosity amiss and shall endeavor in a few words to gratify it. Here is my creed. I believe in one God, the Creator of the universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That He ought to be worshiped.

That the most acceptable service we render to Him is doing good to His other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conducts in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever sect I meet with them. As to Jesus of Nazareth, my opinion of Whom you particularly desire, I think His system of morals and His religion as He left them to us the best the world ever saw or is like to see;

but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters (non-Anglican Christians) in England, some doubts as to His Divinity, though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it; and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble (that is, I shall die soon, and will then know the truth).

More on this next week for another American Moment.

Sourced from The American Story: The Beginnings by David Barton and Tim Barton.