Franklin, besides being in consideration of the proper
qualifications of the person, should add, that of the great services
rendered by his illustrious ancestor, Benjamin Franklin, by the
advancement of science, by inventions useful to man, &c. I am not sure
that we ought to change all our names. And, during the regal government,
sometimes indeed they were given through adulation; but often also as
the reward of the merit of the times, sometimes for services rendered
the colony. Perhaps, too, a name when given, should be deemed a sacred
property.
I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not forgotten.
On the contrary, it is because I have reflected on it, that I find much
more time necessary for it than I can at present dispose of. I have
a view of the subject which ought to displease neither the rational
Christian nor Deist, and would reconcile many to a character they have
too hastily rejected. I do not know that it would reconcile the _genus
irritabile vatum_, who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on
too interesting ground to be softened. The delusion into which the X. Y.
Z. plot showed it possible to push the people; the successful experiment
made under the prevalence of that delusion on the clause of the
constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered
also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite
hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity
through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form
the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the
Episcopalians and Congregationalists.
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