Sydney Fisher - The True Benjamin Franklin

The most curious mutilation, however, was in the Te Deum, most of which was struck out, presumably by Lord Despencer. The Venite was treated in a similar way by Franklin. The beautiful canticle, “All ye Works of the Lord,” which is sometimes used in place of the Te Deum, was entirely marked out. As this canticle is the nearest approach in the prayer-book to anything like the religion of nature, it is strange that it should have suffered. But Franklin, though of picturesque life and character, interested in music as a theory, a writer of verse as an exercise, and a lover of the harmony of a delicately balanced prose sentence, had, nevertheless, not the faintest trace of poetry in his nature.

The book, which is now a very rare and costly relic, a single copy selling for over a thousand dollars, was known in America as “Franklin’s Prayer-Book,” and he was usually credited with the whole revision, although he expressly declared in a letter on the subject that he had abridged only the catechism and the reading and singing psalms. But he seems to have approved of the whole work, for he wrote the preface which explains the alterations. A few years after the Revolution, when the American Church was reorganizing itself, the “Book of Common Prayer” was revised and abbreviated by competent hands; and from a letter written by Bishop White it would seem that he had examined the “Franklin Prayer-Book,” and was willing to adopt its arrangement of the calendar of holy days. 9 9 H. W. Smith’s Life of Rev. William Smith, vol. ii. p. 174.

The preface which Franklin wrote for the abridgment was an exquisitely pious little essay. It was written as though coming from Lord Despencer, “a Protestant of the Church of England,” and a “sincere lover of social worship.” His lordship also held “in the highest veneration the doctrines of Jesus Christ,” which was a gratifying assurance.

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Vol. iv. p. 271.

Pennsylvania: Colony and Commonwealth, p. 80.

Pennsylvania: Colony and Commonwealth, p. 141.

Pennsylvania: Colony and Commonwealth, pp. 374-377, 381.

Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. i. p. 210.

Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times, vol. i. p. 222.

Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. i. p. 180.

Bigelow’s Works of Franklin, vol. v. p. 209.

H. W. Smith’s Life of Rev. William Smith, vol. ii. p. 174.