Note 1 — Chapter XX · EARLY FREETHOUGHT IN THE UNITED STATES

2. The rise of rationalism in the colonies must be traced in the main to the imported English literature of the eighteenth century; for the first Puritan settlements had contained at most only a fraction of freethought; and the conditions, so deadly for all manner even of devout heresy, made avowed unbelief impossible. The superstitions and cruelties of the Puritan clergy, however, must have bred a silent reaction, which prepared a soil for the deism of the next age.1 “The perusal of Shaftesbury and Collins,” writes Franklin with reference to his early youth, “had made me a skeptic,” after being “previously so as to many doctrines of Christianity.”2 This was in his seventeenth or eighteenth year, about 1720, so that the importation of deism had been prompt.3 Throughout life he held to the same opinion, conforming sufficiently to keep on fair terms with his neighbours,4 and avoiding anything like critical propaganda; though on challenge, in the last year of his life, he avowed his negatively deistic position.5