ff the
restraints of the religion of his father and mother. Nearly all his
associates were what were called Free-thinkers. He could not be blind
to their moral imperfections. Mr. Parton writes,

"His old friend Collins, he remembered, was a Free-thinker,
and Collins had gone astray. Ralph was a Free-thinker, and
Ralph was a great sinner. Keith was a Free-thinker, and
Keith was the greatest liar in Pennsylvania. Benjamin
Franklin was a Free-thinker, and how shamefully he had
behaved to Ralph's mistress, to Mr. Vernon and Miss Read,
whose young life had been blighted through him."[10]

[Footnote 10: Parton's Life of Franklin, Vol. I, p. 168.]

Franklin's creed thus far, consisted only of negations. He had no
belief; he had only unbelief. Indeed he seems to have become quite
ashamed of his treatise upon Liberty and Necessity, published in
London, and felt constrained to write a refutation of it.[11] As this
strange young man in his discontent looked over the religions of
the world, he could find no one that met his views. He therefore
deliberately and thoughtfully sat down to form a religion of his own.
Many such persons have appeared in the lapse of the ages, and almost
invariably they have announced their creeds with the words, "Thus
saith the Lord." But our young printer of twenty-two years, made no
profession whatever, of any divine aid. He simply said, "Thus saith my
thoughts." One would think he could not have much confidence in those
thoughts, when it is remembered that at this time he was writing a
refutation of the opinions, which he had published in London but a few
months before.

[Footnote 11: "My arguments perverted some others, especially Collins
and Ralph. But each of these having wronged me greatly without the
least compunction; and recollecting Keith's conduct towards me, who
was another Free-thinker, and my own towards Vernon and Miss Read,
which at times gave me great trouble, I began to suspect that this
doctrine, though it might be true, was not very useful. My London
pamphlet, printed in 1725, and which had for its motto,

"'Whatever is is right,'

and which from the attributes of God, His infinite wisdom, goodness
and power, concluded that nothing could possibly be wrong in the
world, and that vice and virtue were empty distinctions, no such
things existing, appeared now not so clever a performance, as I once
thought it; and I doubted whether some error