"If the British islands were sunk in the sea (and the surface
of this globe has suffered great changes), you would probably
take some such method as this; and if they persist in denying
your ordination, it is the same thing. A hundred years hence,
when people are more enlightened, it will be wondered at that
men in America, qualified by their learning and piety to pray
for and instruct their neighbors, should not be permitted to
do it till they had made a voyage of six thousand miles out
and home, to ask leave of a cross old gentleman at
Canterbury."

Franklin, however, was in no sense an agnostic. What he could not
understand he did not profess to understand or believe; neither was
he guilty of the presumption of holding that what he could not
understand, he might not have understood if he had been a wiser and
better man. Though impatient of cant and hypocrisy, especially in the
pulpit, he never spoke lightly of the Bible, or of the Church and its
offices. When his daughter Sally was about to marry, he wrote to
her:--

"My dear child, the natural prudence and goodness of heart
God has blest you with, make it less necessary for me to be
particular in giving you advice. I shall therefore only say,
that the more attentively dutiful and tender you are towards
your good mamma, the more you will recommend yourself to me.
But why should I mention _me_, when you have so much higher a
promise in the Commandments, that such conduct will recommend
you to the favor of God? You know I have many enemies, all
indeed on the public account (for I cannot recollect that I
have in a private capacity given just cause of offense to any
one whatever): yet they are enemies, and very bitter ones;
and you must expect their enmity will extend in some degree
to you, so that your slightest indiscretions will be
magnified into crimes, in order the more sensibly to wound
and afflict me. It is therefore the more necessary for you to
be extremely circumspect in all your behavior, that no
advantage may be given to their malevolence.

"Go constantly to church, whoever preaches. The act of
devotion in the Common Prayer Book is your principal business
there, and if properly attended to will do more towards
amending the heart than sermons generally can do. For they
were composed by men of much greater piety and wisdom than