Benjamin Franklin : $b Representative selections, with introduction, bibliograpy, and notesFranklin, Benjamin
General
Benjamin Franklin : $b Representative selections, with introduction, bibliograpy, and notes
Franklin, Benjamin
Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790
were variations from Calvinism's common path which, when augmented by
English and French liberalism, by the influence of Quakerism and the
frontier, were to give rise to democracy, rationalism, and scientific
deism. The Church of England through the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries had "pursued a liberal latitudinarian policy which, as a mode
of thought, tended to promote deism by emphasizing rational religion and
minimizing revelation."[i-35] It was to be expected that in colonies
created by Puritans (or even Quakers), deism would have a less
spectacular and extensive success than it appears to have had in the
mother country. If militant deism remained an aristocratic cult until
the Revolution,[i-36] scientific rationalism (Newtonianism) long before
this, from the time of Mather, became a common ally of orthodoxy. If a
"religion of nature" may be defined with Tillotson as "obedience to
Natural Law, and the performance of such duties as Natural Light,
without any express and supernatural revelation, doth dictate to man,"
then it was in the colonies, prior to the Revolution, more commonly a
buttress to revealed religion than an equivalent to it.
Lockian sensism and Newtonian science were the chief sources of that
brand of colonial rationalism which at first complemented orthodoxy, and
finally buried it among lost causes. The Marquis de Chastellux was
astounded when he found on a center table in a Massachusetts inn an
"Abridgment of Newton's Philosophy"; whereupon he "put some questions"
to his host "on physics and geometry," with which he "found him well
acquainted."[i-37] Now, even a superficial reading of the eighteenth
century discloses countless allusions to Newton, his popularizers, and
the implications of his physics and cosmology. As Mr. Brasch suggests,
"From the standpoint of the history of science," the extent of the vogue
of Newtonianism "is yet very largely unknown history."[i-38]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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