The ENLIGHTENMENT

Jesus Christ taught his gospel with the description that his "yoke was easy" and his "burden was light,"

hard to imagine that he had Puritanism in mind

Jesus Christ taught his gospel with the description that his It was a religious philosophy so exacting in its demands that when Thomas Shephard's sons died, he believed their deaths were to punish him for sin

"which was no small affliction and heart-breaking to me that I should provoke the Lord to strike at my innocent children for my sake"

declared that man was born to evil and that ultimately even good works could not make a difference in his chances for redemption

Not only could the Puritan be damned if he didn't do something and damned if he did

damnation or salvation was already assured before any of his actions because of predestination

unimaginable toil and suffering of their daily lives

the notion that the life after this one could be worse would have been a formidable burden to shoulder

Into this morass of hardship...

philosophies of the Enlightenment presented themselves as a sweet relief to many

Man could act as a determining agent in his own life

direct contradiction to the Puritan notion that natural man was an enemy of God

Enlightenment philosophers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in particular, believed that man was naturally good

Optimism ruled in place of Puritan pessimism

Isaac Newton proclaimed...

"the universe is not a mystery moving at the whim of an inscrutable God but a mechanism operating by a rational formula that can be understood by any intelligent person"

BEN FRANKLIN

Deists, such as Franklin, felt that nature itself revealed God, independently, and without need of the Holy Bible

Benjamin Franklin touted "the reasonable science of virtue."

"It was up to people, not God, to see that the world functioned for the good of all, not just for those who happened to belong to one religious sect or another"

People should be the doers of good, and good works began to supplant religious faith as a guiding principle

born in Boston

tenth son in a family of fifteen children

Father enrolled him in Boston Grammar School as a preparation for the study of the ministry

hated his father’s occupation and threatened to run away to sea

twelve he was apprenticed to his brother, a printer

-loved books and reading
-learned quickly
-liked to write

brother published Benjamin’s first essay when he printed an editorial left on his desk signed“Silence Dogood"

1723
Franklin broke with his brother and ran away to Philadelphia

serious error trusting Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith, who wanted to be important to everyone and provided Governor Keith“favors,”

found himself alone and without employment in London in 1724

returned to the colonies two years later...

colonies’ print culture
Grew and marked a period of increasing dependence on the printer as a means for information

1730
married Deborah Read, daughter of his first landlady
had two children
one illegitimate child, and Deborah accepted Franklin’s son William into the household

observations on electricity were published in London in 1751 and, despite his disclaimers in the Autobiography, won him the applause of British scientists

1768
first noted his growing sense of alienation and the impossibility of compromise with the mother country
Parliament can make all laws for the colonies or none

“I think the arguments for the latter more numerous and weighty, than those for the former.”

returned to Philadelphia in 1775

-chosen as a representative to the Second Continental Congress
-served on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence

1776

appointed minister to France, where he successfully negotiated a treaty of allegiance and became something of a cult hero

1781

-member of the American
delegation to the Paris peace conference
-signed the Treaty of Paris, which
brought the Revolutionary War to an official end

returned to Philadelphia in 1785

served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention

died in 1790
-one of the most beloved Americans
-Twenty thousand people attended his funeral

The Way to Wealth

Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America

The Autobiography Part One]

Upcoming

• -John Woolman "From The Journal of John
• Woolman" -John Adams and Abigail Adams all Letters
• Review Essay 2 Requirements