Having read _An Essay Concerning Human Understanding_,[i-405] Franklin may have remembered that Locke there observed, "Nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with, the clear and self-evident dictates of reason, has a right to be urged or assented to as a matter of faith, wherein reason hath nothing to do."[i-406] Like Collins, Locke urged a deistic rationale: Since then the precepts of Natural Religion are plain, and very intelligible to all mankind, and seldom to come to be controverted; and other revealed truths, which are conveyed to us by books and languages, are liable to the common and natural obscurities and difficulties incident to words; methinks it would become us to be more careful and diligent in observing the former, and less magisterial, positive, and imperious, in imposing our own sense and interpretations of the latter.[i-407] In addition Franklin may have been influenced by Locke's implied Newtonianism; he would suspect the subtleties of the Old South Church when he read: "For the visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of the creation, that a rational creature, who will but seriously reflect on them, cannot miss the discovery of a Deity."[i-408] Like Newton, Locke inferred an infinite and benevolent Geometrician from "the magnificent harmony of the universe." Franklin also read Shaftesbury's _Characteristics_, which Warburton quotes Pope as saying "had done more harm to revealed religion in England than all the works of infidelity put together."[i-409] Although he may have pondered over Shaftesbury's "virtuoso theory of Benevolence," he was not one to be readily convinced of the innate altruism of man. His Puritan heritage linked with an empirical realism prevented him from becoming prey to Shaftesbury's a priori optimism. He was aware of the potential danger of a complacent trust in natural impulses, which often lead to The love of sweet security in sin.