ce of a Deity and a future state of rewards
and punishments, but he adds that although he continued to adhere
to his first--the Presbyterian--sect, some of its dogmas appeared to
him unintelligible, and others doubtful. "I early absented myself
from the public assemblies of the sect; and I seldom attended any
public worship; Sunday being my studying day."

Such being Franklin's own practice, and such his own description
of it as to public worship, it seems worthy of note that it was he
who in the American Convention brought forward a motion for daily
prayers. "I have lived, Sir," said he, "a long time, and the
longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that
God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to
the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can
rise without his aid?" But in spite of this most earnest appeal
the motion was rejected, since, as we are told, "the Convention,
except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary."

The accomplished American biographer, by whom this last incident
is recorded, expresses in the same passage deep regret that Dr.
Franklin did not bestow more attention than he seems to have done
on the evidences of Christianity. And indeed there are several
indications that he was less well acquainted with points of
Christian faith and discipline than with almost any other subject.
One of these indications, and surely a most strange one, occurs in
the Private Diary which he kept at Passy during part of 1784. It
appears that two young American gentlemen had come over to London
with the view of entering Holy Orders, but that the Archbishop of
Canterbury refused them Ordination unless they would take the Oath
of Allegiance. In this dilemma Franklin actually applied to the
Pope's Nuncio at Paris to ascertain whether a Roman Catholic
Bishop in America might not perform the ceremony for them as
Protestants, and he transcribes as remarkable the natural reply:
"The Nuncio says the thing is impossible unless the gentlemen
become Roman Catholics."

The religious scepticism or indifference of Franklin, which his
present biographers justly lament, was, however, in his own day, a
recommendation and a merit with the French philosophists. On the
other hand, his hostility to England endeared him to the Fr