"
"Read Shaftesbury, and judge for yourself," added Benjamin. "You will
fall in love with him, as I have. He is one of the most graceful and
fascinating writers I know of."
"Perhaps I will read him sometime," replied John. "I must go now; and
when I am ready for it I will call for the book."
We have not time to follow the companionship of these two youth. It
was intimate, and Benjamin succeeded in making a Shaftesbury disciple
of John, so that one was about as much of an unbeliever as the other.
In his "Autobiography," Benjamin confesses that he "_was made a
doubter by reading Shaftesbury and Collins_," although he began to
dissent from his father, as we have already seen, in his boyhood, when
he read the religious tracts of Boyle.
We know that Benjamin was charged with being an atheist by his
brother. True, it was when his brother was angry because he left him;
still, he would not have been likely to make such a statement to
others without some foundation for it. Franklin himself gives one
reason for his leaving Boston (in his "Autobiography"): "My indiscreet
disputations about religion began to make me pointed at with horror by
good people as an infidel and atheist."
Another admission in his "Autobiography" reflects upon this subject:
"The time I allotted for writing exercises and for reading, was at
night, or before work began in the morning, _or on Sundays_, when I
contrived to be in the printing house, avoiding as much as I could the
constant attendance upon public worship, which my father used to exact
of me when I was under his care, and which I still continued to
consider a duty, though I could not afford time to practise it.
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