of respect, as I found them more or less mixed with other articles which, without any tendency to inspire, promote or confirm morality, served principally to divide us and make us unfriendly to one another. This respect to all, with an opinion that the worst had some good effects, induced me to avoid all discourse that might tend to lessen the good opinion another might have of his own religion.
This liturgy he seems to have practiced for twenty years, while at the same time he held a pew in the Presbyterian church. The pretension of one church to be exclusively right and others wrong, he used to liken to “man travelling in foggy weather; those at some distance before him were wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, and also the people in the fields on each side; but near him all appears clear, though in truth he is as much in the fog as any of them.”
This was his self-made religion, which satisfied him so much that he ceased disquieting himself with doubts and metaphysical speculations. Meanwhile at the age of twenty- two he had established a printing-office and worked industriously. But his self-made religion did not at once have the moral effect he desired it to produce. His intercourse with low women continued, and about a year after he had written his creed and liturgy an illegitimate son was born to him. As he became settled in business, he looked round for a wife—this, too, in a somewhat businesslike way. He became engaged to a Miss Godfrey, but the matter fell through because the girl could not bring any money with her. He looked further round, but to no purpose. Finally he returned to his first attachment, Deborah Read, the young woman who had watched him munching his roll, with whom at a later period he had exchanged promises, and whom he had then abandoned. Franklin met her again, the old
