¹ Lawrence, D. H., “Benjamin Franklin,” in Buxbaum, M., ed., Critical Essays on Benjamin Franklin (Boston, MA: G. K. & Hall, 1987), 40–50Google Scholar, 40. It should be noted that Lawrence's criticism of Franklin's moral virtue is largely based upon the belief that Franklin “established a set of fixed principles – strictly machine-principles” (ibid., 46). If Franklin was truly trying to create a mechanistic approach to achieve virtue, one would expect extremely precise, if not mathematical, definitions of virtue. Yet Franklin's definitions are far from precise; even allowing strong levels of variation in individual application. This paper argues that this is largely because his understanding of perfection allows humans who are liable to err to achieve virtue in a legitimate manner. Franklin's method can best be understood as a new form of democratic habituation (see Forde, Steven, “Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography and the Education of America,” American Political Science Review 86 (1992), 357–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar) more closely resembling the Aristotelian understanding of moral virtue (see Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, trans. Sachs, Joe (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2002)Google Scholar, 1104a1–3). Virtue must be approximated in the life of the individual and can vary in application based upon the individual's proclivities (ibid., 1106b1–4).

² For examples of similar scholarly comparisons between Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards see Mardsen, George, A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008)Google Scholar; Oberg, Barbara and Stout, Harry, eds., Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the representation of American culture (London: Oxford University Press 1993)Google Scholar; particularly Daniel Walker Howe's illuminating chapter “Franklin, Edwards, and the Problem of Human Nature,” in ibid., 75–100.

³ Forde, Steven, “Benjamin Franklin's ‘Machiavellian’ Civic Virtue,” in Rahe, Paul A., ed., Machiavelli's Liberal Republican Legacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 143–66Google Scholar; Pangle, Lorianne Smith, Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; Pangle, Thomas L., The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

⁴ Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

⁵ Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

⁶ Heimart, Alan, Religion and the American Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Heimart, “Toward the Republic,” in Rutman, Darrett, ed., The Great Awakening (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1970)Google Scholar; Hatch, Nathan, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; Kessler, Sanford, “Tocqueville's Puritans: Christianity and the American Founding,” Journal of Politics, 54, 3 (1992), 776–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Noll, Mark, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992)Google Scholar; Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield, and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL:InterVarsity Press, 2003)Google Scholar; de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America Translated, Edited, and with an Introduction by Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Heclo, Hugh, Christianity and American Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Bloch, Ruth, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756–1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

⁸ Kloppenberg, James. “The Virtues of Liberalism: Christianity, Republicanism, and Ethics in Early American Political Discourse,”Journal of American History, 74, 1 (1987), 9–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kloppenberg, The Virtues of Liberalism (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

⁹ Kammen, Michael, People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar. Kammen directly ties the paradoxical influences upon the American people to the teachings of Benjamin Franklin contrasted with religious teachings of the era (see ibid., 111 ff., also 193 ff.). See also Ceaser, James, Rakove, Jack N., Rosenblum, Nancy L., and Smith, Rogers M., Nature and History in American Political Development: A Debate (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 21.

¹¹ Buxbaum, Melvin, Benjamin Franklin and Zealous Presbyterians (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Williams, John, “The Strange Case of Dr. Franklin and Mr. Whitefield,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 102 (1978), 399–421Google Scholar; Harry Stout, “George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin: Thoughts on a Peculiar Friendship,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, third series, 103 (1991), 9–23; Lambert, Frank, “Subscribing for Profits and Piety: The Friendship of Benjamin Franklin and George White,” William and Mary Quarterly, third series, 50, 3 (1993), 529–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Walters, Kerry, Benjamin Franklin and His Gods (Chicago: The University of Illinois Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

¹² Stout, Harry, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991)Google Scholar; Forde, “Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography”; Baldwin, Charles, “Franklin's Classical American Statesmanship,” Perspectives on Political Science,41, 2 (2012), 67–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Eastman, Carol, A Nation of Speechifiers: Making an American Public after the Revolution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ George Whitefield, Sermons of George Whitefield, at www.reformed.org/documents/Whitefield.html, accessed Aug. 2014, Sermon 7.

¹⁵ Aldridge, Owen, “The Alleged Puritanism of Benjamin Franklin” in Lemay, J.A. Leo, ed., Reappraising Benjamin Franklin (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1991), 362–71, 363Google Scholar; Franklin, Benjamin, Benjamin Franklin Reader, ed. Isaacson, W. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 412Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Franklin, Franklin Reader, 492. Franklin's printing of Whitefield's sermons not only would indicate his reading of them, given the nature of moveable-type printing, but also created a direct financial interest in the fame and success of Whitefield. Thus, in order to promote Franklin's own financial gains, he “kept Whitefield in the news, often with front-page items in The Pennsylvania Gazette, which both promoted the evangelist and helped Franklin to solicit subscriptions for forthcoming Whitefield publications.” Mardsen, A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards, 53. For an examination of the content and influence of Colonial American newspapers see Botein, Stephen, “Printers and the American Revolution,” in Bailyn, B. and Hench, J. B., eds., The Press and the American Revolution (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1980), 23–45Google Scholar; Copeland, David, The Idea of a Free Press: The Enlightenment and Its Unruly Legacy (Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Stout, The Divine Dramatist, 103.

¹⁸ Noll, History of Christianity, 93. For a detailed examination of the influence of both speeches and print in forming a public identity, particularly of nonelite sources, see Eastman, A Nation of Speechifiers.

¹⁹ Franklin, Franklin Reader, 492.

²⁰ Ibid., 497.

²¹ Ibid., 498, added emphasis.

²² Ibid., 499.

²³ Ibid.

²⁴ Ibid., 492.

²⁵ It has appeared odd to some that Franklin would warn others of the danger of written doctrine, yet would himself provide such a warning and positive teaching in his own written work. Weinberger, Jerry, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press 2008), 44Google Scholar, examines this question and concludes that Franklin “wrote in such a way that he did not leave unguarded expressions and erroneous opinions as hostages to his enemies.” Such a position presupposes that Franklin was a careful writer and teacher and insinuates a hermeneutic which necessitates an attentive reading of Franklin. While I applaud Weinberger's method, I disagree with some of his conclusions.

²⁶ Whitefield, Sermons, Sermon 10. It is necessary to recognize that the Christian view of perfection was not monolithic. Two famous English preachers, John Wesley and George Whitefield, disagreed on the conception of perfection. However, the divergence between Whitefield and Wesley was rooted in the more significant theological dispute between Arminianism and Calvinism (Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, 270). Further, their divergence was not over the fundamental conceptions of perfection; both would agree with Whitefield's assertion that “by perfection I mean the humble, gentle, patient love of God and man ruling all the tempers, words, and actions, the whole heart by the whole life” (quoted in ibid., 156). Rather, the disagreement focussed upon its achievability for the Christian in this life.

²⁷ Whitefield, Sermons, 10.

²⁸ Ibid., 10.

²⁹ Quoted in Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival, Volume II, The Banner of Truth Trust (East Peoria, IL: Versa Press, Inc., 1981), 66, present author's emphasis.

³⁰ Ibid., 66.

³¹ Whitefield, 24.

³² Ibid., 24.

³³ Ibid., 24.

³⁴ Ibid., 44.

³⁵ Ibid., 7.

³⁶ Quoted in Gledstone, James, The Life and Travels of George Whitefield (London: Longmans and Green, 1871), 266Google Scholar.

³⁷ Whitefield, 24.

³⁸ Genesis 3:24.

³⁹ Franklin, Franklin Reader, 489.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 491.

⁴¹ Ibid., 81.

⁴² Ibid., 401.

⁴³ Ibid., 479; Forde, “Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography”; Baldwin, Franklin's Classical American Statesmanship.

⁴⁴ Franklin, 389.

⁴⁵ Benjamin Franklin, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, at www.franklinpapers.org, accessed Aug. 2014, letter to Lord Kames, 1760.

⁴⁶ Fiering, Norman, “Benjamin Franklin and the Way to Virtue,” American Quarterly, 30, 2 (1978) 199–223CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 200.

⁴⁷ Descartes, René, Discourse on Method (Chicago: Hackett Publishing, 1988), 32Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Howe, “Franklin, Edwards, and the Problem of Human Nature,” 74.

⁴⁹ Both in his autobiography and in the letter to Lord Kames in 1760, Franklin uses virtually the same expression in arguing the value of his work, by stating that his book would be “distinguished” “from the mere exhortation to be good, that does not instruct and indicate the means, but is like the apostle's man of verbal charity, which only without showing to the naked and hungry how or where they might get clothes or victuals, exhorted them to be fed and clothed” (in Franklin, Benjamin Franklin Reader, 476). This is echoed in his letter to Lord Kames, stating, “To exhort People to be good, to be just, to be temperate, &c. without shewing them how they shall become so, seems like the ineffectual Charity mention'd by the Apostle, which consisted in saying to the Hungry, the Cold, and the Naked, be ye fed, be ye warmed, be ye clothed, without shewing them how they should get Food, Fire or Clothing” (Franklin n.d. Letter to Lord Kames May 3, 1760). What is seen in Franklin's writings, which will be explored further within this work, is Franklin's belief that his moral teachings are both different to and a practical improvement on the lessons of Scripture. This is, at least one of the reasons why Franklin sought to reestablish a democratic moral virtue, which has “no mark of any distinguishing tenets of any particular sect … [so] that it might be serviceable to people in all religions … [and] not have any … sect against it.” Franklin, Franklin Reader, 475–6.

⁵⁰ Franklin, Franklin Reader, 402.

⁵¹ Ibid., 479.

⁵² Ibid., 480.

⁵³ Rossiter, Clinton, “The Political Theory of Benjamin Franklin,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 76 (1952), 259–93Google Scholar; Fiering, “Benjamin Franklin and the Way to Virtue”; Lawrence, Benamin Franklin; Forde, “Benjamin Franklin's ‘Machiavellian’ Civic Virtue.”

⁵⁴ Franklin, Franklin Reader, 467.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 40.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 154.

⁵⁷ See footnote 49 for further explanation.

⁵⁸ Franklin, 467.

⁵⁹ Pangle, Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin, 67.

⁶⁰ Forde, “Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography”.

⁶¹ Lawrence, Benjamin Franklin, 46.

⁶² Franklin, Franklin Reader, 468.

⁶³ Ibid., 475.

⁶⁴ Pangle, 70.

⁶⁵ Franklin, Papers.

⁶⁶ Franklin, Franklin Reader, 84.

⁶⁷ Franklin, Papers.

⁶⁸ Franklin, Franklin Reader, 415–16, added emphasis.

⁶⁹ Plato, The Republic of Plato, ed. Allan Bloom (Basic Books 1991), 357d; 863c.

⁷⁰ Franklin, Franklin Reader, 51, original emphasis.

⁷¹ Ibid., 52.

⁷² Ibid., 83.

⁷³ Ibid., 83.

⁷⁴ Ibid., 84.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 451.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 31.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 84.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 83.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 84.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 83.

⁸¹ Ibid., 468.

⁸² Ibid., 471.

⁸³ Ibid., 469.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 461, emphasis added.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 468.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 466.

⁸⁷ Ibid., 469.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 84.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 83.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 84.

⁹¹ Ibid., 72; see also 408.

⁹² Ibid., 84.

⁹³ Ibid., 84.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 84.

⁹⁵ Ibid., 480.

⁹⁶ Ibid., 480.

⁹⁷ Ibid., 84. There seems to be some level of ambiguity in Franklin's understanding of the freedom of action in relation to the constraints of necessity. As Pangle, Political Philosophy, 65, notes, Franklin “seems to be hedging, almost willing to grant that souls are governed by inner necessities that do not leave them free to be more sensible than they are, and yet still not prepared to rule out some modicum of freedom that he never explains. The same ambiguity pervades the Autobiography. Franklin shows great gentleness, great understanding of human faults, characterizing his own faults as errata or inadvertent misprints, yet still holding himself to account for them.”

⁹⁸ Franklin, Franklin Reader, 452.

⁹⁹ Ibid., 452.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 83.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 474.

¹⁰² Ibid., 469.

¹⁰³ Forde, “Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography,” 359.

¹⁰⁴ Franklin, Franklin Reader, 438; see also 351.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., 418.

¹⁰⁶ Ceaser, Nature and History.

¹⁰⁷ Bloch, Visionary Republic; Kloppenberg, The Virtues of Liberalism.

¹⁰⁸ Kammen, People of Paradox.

¹⁰⁹ Pangle, Spirit of Modern Republicanism, 21.

¹¹⁰ Fiering, Benjamin Franklin, 206.

¹¹¹ Forde, “Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography”.