Read, the young lady who had watched him eating his rolls on his first arrival. At London, where he remained about eighteen months, young Franklin got into all sorts of intrigues with low women, at one time even trying to seduce the mistress of a friend. To Miss Read he wrote only once, to tell her that it would be a long time before he would get back—which was meant and understood to be a breach of the engagement.
On the other hand, he worked industriously, saved some money, read many books, made some valuable acquaintances, wrote some ingenious things and then returned to Philadelphia with a merchant who befriended him. On the voyage he pondered very seriously over the disreputable things he had done. His failings alarmed him, and he looked round for a staff on which to lean. First he became suspicious of his religious views. He had abandoned revealed religion when he was a mere boy. While in London he had written a pamphlet entitled a “Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain,” a very ingenious production, designed to prove that if God is the Maker of the Universe and is all-good and all-wise, whatsoever he does must be good and wise; and if he is all-powerful, there can be nothing existing or acting against or without his consent; that, therefore, all that human creatures do, must be done according to the will of the all-powerful God, and must be good and wise; that, therefore, no freedom of will nor distinction between good and evil—indeed, no evil can exist, and that all creatures must be equally esteemed by the Creator. This acute piece of logic now appeared unsatisfactory to him,—not as if he had detected any flaw in the reasoning, but because he began to suspect, while his doctrine might be correct, it did not work well morally, and was, therefore, as he said, “not very useful.”
It struck him that, not a certain specific religion, but
