Note 128 — Part I (continued 8)

Since Franklin was acquainted with John Ray's Wisdom of God ..., it is not improbable that he was acquainted with his aphorisms published in 1670 (Cambridge), in which this wit occurs. It is also found in Wollaston's Religion of Nature Delineated, but as in Ray, in crude form: "It is as when a man spits at heaven, and the spittle falls back upon his own face" (1725 ed., 132). Remembering that Franklin helped set up this piece while working for Samuel Palmer in 1725, his use of it may not be wholly fortuitous.