ngland, and one wonders
whether Edwards's brain was not of ice, so pitiless does it seem.
His treatise denying the freedom of the will has given him a European
reputation comparable with that enjoyed by Franklin in science and
Jefferson in political propaganda. It was really a polemic demonstrating
the sovereignty of God, rather than pure theology or metaphysics.
Edwards goes beyond Augustine and Calvin in asserting the arbitrary will
of the Most High and in "denying to the human will any self-determining
power." He has been refuted by events and tendencies, such as the growth
of historical criticism and the widespread acceptance of the doctrine of
evolution, rather than by the might of any single antagonist. So, too,
the Dred Scott decision of Chief Justice Taney, holding that the slave
was not a citizen, was not so much answered by opponents as it was
superseded by the arbitrament of war. But the idealism of this lonely
thinker has entered deeply and permanently into the spiritual life of
his countrymen, and he will continue to be read by a few of those who
still read Plato and Dante.

"My mother grieves," wrote Benjamin Franklin to his father in 1738,
"that one of her sons is an Arian, another an Arminian. What an Arminian
or an Arian is, I cannot say that I very well know. The truth is I
make such distinctions very little my study." To understand Franklin's
indifference to such distinctions, we must realize how completely he
represents the secularizing tendencies of his age. What a drama of
worldly adventure it all was, this roving life of the tallow-chandler's
son, who runs away from home, walks the streets of Philadelphia with
the famous loaves of bread under his arm, is diligent in business,
slips over to London, where he gives lessons in swimming and in total
abstinence, slips back to Philadelphia and becomes its leading citizen,
fights the long battle of the American colonies in London, sits in the
Continental Congress, sails to Europe to arrange that French Alliance
which brought our Revolution to a successful issue, and comes home at
last, full of years and honors, to a bland and philosophical exit from
the stage!

He broke with every Puritan tradition. The Franklins were relatively
late comers to New England. They sprang from a long line of blacksmiths
at Ecton in Northamptonshire. The seat of the Washingtons was not far
away, and Franklin's latest biographer points out that the pink-coated
huntsmen of the