"Some volumes against deism fell into my hands. They were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lecture. It happened that they produced on me an effect precisely the reverse of what was intended by the writers; for the arguments of the deists, which were cited in order to be refuted, appealed to me much more forcibly than the refutation itself. In a word I soon became a thorough Deist."--_Franklin's Autobiography._ Writing to Ezra Stiles, President of Yale College, when he was eighty-four, he says: "I have with most of the Dissenters in England, doubts as to his [Christ's] divinity." "By heaven we understand a state of happiness, infinite in degree and eternal in duration. I can do nothing to deserve such a reward.... I have not the vanity to think I deserve it, the folly to expect, or the ambition to desire it."--_Franklin's Works, vol. vii., p. 75._ "I wish it [Christianity] were more productive of good works than I have generally seen it. I mean real good works, works of kindness, charity, mercy, and public spirit, not holy-day keeping, sermon hearing and reading, performing church ceremonies, or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments, despised even by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity."--_Ibid._ "Nowadays we have scarcely a little parson that does not think it the duty of every man within his reach to sit under his petty ministration, and that whoever omits this offends God. To such I wish more humility."--_Franklin's Works, vol. vii. pp. 76,77._ "The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion," affirmed Washington (treaty with Tripoli). "Keep the church and the state forever separate," said Grant (Des Moines speech). And yet, in spite of this declaration and this admonition religious liberty has been ignored and a practical union of church and state has been maintained--the exemption of ecclesiastical property from taxation, the employment of chaplains, appropriations for sectarian purposes, religious services, including the use of the Bible, in our public schools, the appointment of religious festivals, the judicial oath and the enforced observance of Sunday as a Sabbath. Concerning these and similar privileges of his time and of our time, Franklin says: "I think they were invented not so much to secure religion as the emoluments of it. When a religion is good I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it, so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one."--_Franklin's Works, vol. viii., p. 506._