From Benjamin Franklin to [John Calder], 21 August 1784
To [John Calder]
Press copy of ALS:8 Library of Congress
Passy, Augt. 21. 1784
Dear Sir
Understanding that my Letter intended for you by General Melvill was lost at the Hotel d’Espagne9 I take this Opportunity by my Grandson to give you the purport of it, as well as I can recollect. I thank’d you for the Pleasure you had procur’d me of the General’s Conversation, whom I found a judicious, sensible, and amiable Man. I was glad to hear that you possess’d a comfortable Retirement, and more so that you had Thoughts of removing to Philadelphia, for that it would make me very happy to have you there. Your Companions1 would be very acceptable to the Library, but I hoped you would long live to enjoy their Company yourself. I agreed with you in Sentiments concerning the Old Testament, and thought the Clause in our Constitutions, which required the Members of Assembly to declare their belief that the whole of it was given by divine Inspiration, had better have been omitted. That I had opposed the Clause; but being overpower’d by Numbers, and fearing more might in future times be grafted on [it, I pre]vailed to have the additional Clause, that no fu[rther or more] extended Profession of Faith should Ever [be exacted.2 I ob]serv’d to you, too, that the Evil of it [was the less, as no In]habitant, nor any Officer of Government, except the Members of Assembly, were oblig’d to make that Declaration. So much for that Letter. To which I may now add that there [are] several Things in the old Testament impossible to be given by divine Inspiration, such as the Approbation ascrib’d to the Angel of the Lord, of that abominably wicked and detestable Action of Jael the Wife of Heber the Kenite.3 If the rest of the Book were like that, I should rather suppose it given by Inspiration from another Quarter, and renounce the whole.
By the way how goes on the Unitarian Church in Essex Street? and the honest Minister of it, is he comfortably supported?4 Your old Colleague, Mr Radcliffe, is he living?5 And what became of Mr Denham? My Grandson, who will have the honour of delivering this to you, may bring me a Line from you and I hope will bring me an Account of your continuing well and happy.
I jogg on still, with as much Health and as few of the Infirmities of old Age as I have any Reason to expect. But whatever is impair’d in my Constitution, my Regard for my old Friends remains firm and intire. You will always have a good Share of it, for I am ever, with great & sincere Esteem, Dear Sir, Your most obedient & most humble Servant
B. Franklin
8. The first page of this fragile press copy is badly faded and has a hole in the middle of the sheet. We supply in brackets the missing text based on Smyth, Writings, IX, 266–7.
9. This happened more than a year earlier; BF learned of it from Calder’s letter of Aug. 28, 1783: XL, 373, 537. The undelivered letter that BF here tries to reconstruct answered Calder’s of March, 1783, which introduced the bearer, Lt. Gen. Robert Melville, and told of the writer’s wish to settle in America: XXXIX, 326–30.
1. I.e., his books, which Calder had referred to as his “principal companions”: XXXIX, 327.
2. Chapter II, Section 10, of the Pa. Constitution required members of that state’s General Assembly to take an oath acknowledging belief in one God and in the divine inspiration of the Old and New Testaments: XXXIX, 328n. BF’s clause was added to the end of that section: “And no further or other religious test shall ever hereafter be required of any civil officer or magistrate in this state”: XXII, 514n; The Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America … (Philadelphia, 1781), p. 92.
3. The story is told in Judges 4:17–24; 5:23–27. Sisera, a Canaanite general defeated by the Israelites, fled the battlefield and ran to the tent of Heber. Jael invited him in to take rest and refreshment, and promised to hide him. Once he fell asleep, she drove a tent stake through his skull. For this act, the angel of the Lord called her blessed among women.
4. For the Essex House Chapel and its minister, Theophilus Lindsey, see XXI, 195–7.
5. Calder had been an assistant to Ebenezer Radcliffe, a pastor of a Presbyterian congregation in Aldgate that dissolved in 1774: XIX, 310–11n. Radcliffe retired from the ministry in 1777 and died in October, 1809: Gent. Mag., LXXXIX (1809), 990, 1170.