15. Doppelgängers
When Ben Franklin began running the Philadelphia print shop of Samuel Keimer in the late 1720s, one of the workers was a young man named George, at eighteen only a few years younger than Ben. Like many others in colonial America, this George had recently come from England. He held the job of compositor, placing the letters properly in the printing frame.
It was an “odd thing,” Ben noted, that George was both an Oxford scholar and an indentured servant.1 He would expect an Oxford education to lead to a comfortable life, but this was not the case with the young print shop laborer, George Webb.
The commonalities between this George and the other George—Whitefield, whom Ben would befriend more than a decade later—are starthng.
Webb had grown up in Gloucester and attended a grammar school there. We’re dependent on Ben’s memory here—he wrote about Webb in his autobiography—and he didn’t offer the name of the school, but if it was St. Mary de Crypt, Webb would have been there about five years before Whitefield.
In addition, Webb “had been distinguished among the scholars for some apparent superiority in performing his part when they exhibited plays.” We know that Whitefield was instructed by a theater teacher who even wrote new dramatic pieces for his students. This suggests that St. Mary’s had an exceptional theater program, something that George Webb might have benefited from.
In another detail that’s more Franklinesque, George Webb was also a gifted writer, belonging to the “Witty Club” at school and writing some verses for the Gloucester newspapers.
Webb then attended Oxford for a year, but he longed for the actor’s life in the big city. He walked away from school—literally—stashing his scholar’s gown in a bush and footing it to London. But the acting career never materialized. Webb “fell in with bad company, soon spent his guineas . . . pawned his clothes and wanted bread.” Roaming the streets in this condition, he saw a handbill offering “immediate entertainment and encouragement” to those who would “bind themselves to serve in America.” Desperate, he signed his life away—or at least several years of it—as an indentured servant. After the ship landed in Philadelphia, the printer Samuel Keimer bought Webb’s four-year contract and put him to work.
This was the way business was done. Ben’s written account shows no criticism of the system of indentured servitude. He himself had been indentured to his brother and had escaped that servitude. The skills he learned as an indentured apprentice had helped him rise to a leadership position and would soon lead to an ownership position. Maybe the same would happen to Webb.
Webb’s story, as remembered by Franklin, was a cautionary tale. In many ways, it was the reverse of Ben’s own story—not rags to riches, but riches to rags. Webb had made some bad decisions and was paying the price—namely, a price of four years. Ben described Webb as “lively, witty, good-natured and a pleasant companion, but idle, thoughtless, and imprudent to the last degree.” We can see here a shadow of Ben’s old friend James Ralph, who also failed to launch an acting career, who was also both witty and imprudent, and who might also have fallen into ruin in London if it weren’t for Ben’s support.
Ben appears drawn to thoughtless thinkers: to lively, witty, good-natured, and pleasant companions who also turn out to be imprudent. Ben suffered much from these relationships, but by the time he wrote about Webb he might have begun to learn caution.
When Ben pulled together the Junto, he included George Webb among a few other print shop workers. Networking for professional advancement, the Junto was a great group for an intelligent young compositor trying to make a new start—all the more so when a friend bought out Webb’s contract, releasing him from servitude. Maybe the riches-to-rags story could have a third act, back to riches.
After Ben started his own business, Webb came looking for a job. There was nothing available at the time, Ben said, but he confided in his old colleague that he might be starting a newspaper soon, and then there would be more work available. It sounds as if Ben even shared some elements of his business plan with Webb, in strict confidence, of course.
That trust was broken when Webb shared those plans with their old boss, Samuel Keimer, who rushed into print with his own poorly published periodical, employing Webb in the task. This in turn launched an intricate strategy of revenge on Franklin’s part, driving Keimer’s paper out of business and then resurrecting it himself.
Franklin said he “resented” Webb’s betrayal. It’s not clear whether Webb was trying to hurt Ben (for not hiring him) or just scrambling to find work for himself (and acting imprudently to do so). Perhaps Webb saw it as “just business.” That might explain Ben’s business-like response: not verbal vitriol but calculated actions driving Keimer—and his new hire—to ruin.2
Apparently Webb landed on his feet. In the following years there was a George Webb working as a printer in Virginia and South Carolina, and there’s evidence he might have returned to England later.3
Ben refused to hold a grudge. In 1731, he printed a poem by George Webb in pamphlet form. “Batchelor’s Hall” celebrated the building of a new meeting place in north Philadelphia near the Delaware River. “But chiefly that proud Dome on Del’ware’s stream,” Webb wrote. “Of this my humble song, the nobler theme.”4 By all accounts, Franklin’s artistic design of the pamphlet exceeded the poetic value of Webb’s verse. Some think that Webb was part of a new Junto-like group that met at Batchelor’s Hall—along with Franklin. So was the printing of this poem a peace offering, a way of supporting an old colleague again after a spat? Perhaps it was a fond farewell gift, as Webb left for a new job in South Carolina. Or maybe, with his excessive efforts in printing this mediocre poem, Ben was launching a final passive-aggressive cannon shot at a fickle former friend. Look what I could have done for you, if you had just remained loyal.
This is not to suggest that Ben carried over any animosity or regret from Webb to Whitefield. Yet it’s reasonable to think that he made a connection between the two Georges—at least growing up in the same town, possibly going to the same school, and studying drama there. Whitefield had made very different decisions, and he came to Franklin in 1739 at a very different point in life. He didn’t need a mentor or patron, as Webb did, but a teammate in an already successful enterprise.
Still, we must recognize that Ben had been dazzled before by glib-talking would-be actors—and hurt by them. James Ralph, George Webb, and now—would George Whitefield be any different? Business was one thing. Ben had shown that he could do business with anybody. But would he ever let this new George W. be his friend? That might be a challenge.
The Hemphill Affair
Five years before George Whitefield came to town, another preacher showed up in Philadelphia and captured Ben Franklin’s interest.
Ben had married into a family of loyal Anglicans, and thus the Franklins were members of Christ Church on Second Street. But as we’ve seen, Ben was a maverick in religious matters. In Ben’s amalgamated faith, there was still a deep appreciation for the moral discipline of the Puritans he had grown up with. Presbyterians were now the main guardians of Puritan teaching, and so Ben connected with the First Presbyterian Church at Bank and Market, even donating money there. Jedediah Andrews, the long-time senior minister there, sometimes visited Ben and invited him to services. In his autobiography, Ben boasted that he did, in fact, hear Andrews preach occasionally—at one point, even five Sundays in a row! “Had he been, in my opinion, a good preacher, perhaps I might have continued.” These sermons seemed “very dry, uninteresting, and unedifying, since not a single moral principle was inculcated or enforced.” Ben concluded that the aim of this service was to make people Presbyterians rather than “good citizens.”5
This in itself provides fascinating insight into Ben’s personal beliefs. The proper “aim” of a church, as he saw it, was to help people become better citizens, providing moral instruction and encouragement to do so.
Then a new assistant arrived from Ireland and began to preach at First Presbyterian. Samuel Hemphill “delivered with a good voice, and apparently extempore, most excellent discourses,” Franklin wrote. His preaching attracted people of many different denominations, since it was not “the dogmatical kind, but inculcated strongly the practice of virtue.”6
Of course Franklin loved it. It was the best of Ben’s Puritan background without any of that disagreeable theology. But others in the church opposed Hemphill, including the senior minister. In a letter to a colleague, Jedediah Andrews complained about Hemphill’s broad popularity: “free thinkers, Deists, and nothings, getting a scent of him, flocked to him.”7
Ultimately the opponents hauled Hemphill before a church synod, accusing him of heresy. There were numerous problems with this Irish assistant and his teachings. Most prevalent was the fear that he was squeezing out of Christianity everything that made it, well, Christian. Pursuing some modern rationality, Hemphill seemed to deny the power of the blood of Christ, the Spirit of God, and the Lord’s Supper. According to him, Jesus was a model of sacrificial behavior, a teacher of morals. Hemphill’s preaching was popular, the critics charged, because it was the spirit of the age. It just wasn’t biblical. It certainly wasn’t Presbyterian.
The trial began on April 17, 1735, and lasted ten days without a ruling. The synod met again that September to consider the case some more. In the midst of the controversy, Ben Franklin entered the fray. Considering Hemphill a better speaker than writer, Franklin penned several pieces on his behalf, including a mock dialogue he published in the Gazette between two unnamed Presbyterians on opposite sides of the Hemphill affair. This dialogue was classic Franklin—winsome, smart but accessible, and seemingly fair-minded while making a strong case on one side. And anonymous.
The pro-Hemphill character in this imaginary conversation acknowledges that Scripture calls for faith, but only “as a means of producing morality.” It was moral behavior that would produce salvation. “Our Saviour was a teacher of morality or virtue,” he said, adding that people needed to “believe in him as an able and faithful teacher.” The idea that salvation could result from faith alone “appears to me to be neither a Christian doctrine nor a reasonable one.”8
Franklin’s affable style made this exchange very persuasive. But he was still dead wrong. It is certainly a “Christian doctrine” that we are saved by faith alone and not by our deeds. A major theme of the apostle Paul in the epistles to the Romans and Galatians (and elsewhere), salvation by faith alone was a rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation. You can surely debate how “reasonable” this doctrine is—Saint Paul himself acknowledged that the gospel seemed like foolishness to the world (1 Corinthians 1:23)—but it is eminently “Christian.” And Presbyterians, grounded in the Reformation theology of Luther and especially Calvin, had good reason to stand up for the principle of sola fide—faith alone.
Ben overreached here, inserting himself in an ecclesiastical struggle where he had no business. His writings on the Hemphill affair show an impressive knowledge of the Bible, as well as a facility with philosophy and a sweet Socratic style, but this was a case where diehard Presbyterians had to decide what it meant to be Presbyterian.
Ben might argue that he had every right to enter this debate because he attended and supported Hemphill’s church, but his interest in the case was actually much broader. Nowadays we assume that religion and society in general are completely separate spheres of life. Keep improving society, Ben, but since you’re not really a church guy, it’s best to stay out of church business. Yet there was no such division recognized in that time. In the Puritan Boston where Ben grew up, the church was the society. Yes, the church had steadily eased its grip on society, but there was still a powerful connection, and Ben understood this. In his ongoing efforts to create a good society, it made perfect sense to fight for the right of a Presbyterian preacher to flout church rules and promote social morality.
And there was a greater passion at work in Ben Franklin. Remember that he was always inventing things. He kept tinkering with religion, trying to create a belief system that really worked. At the time of the Hemphill affair, he hadn’t even turned thirty yet, but he had already written philosophical treatises, created lists of virtues, and committed himself to self-improvement. Puritanism was present in all those inventions—he was either fighting against it or trying to improve it or both. In general, he loved its work ethic but hated its rigid theology.9 If only he could combine the free thinking of, say, the deists with a Puritan sense of personal responsibility, that might be the perfect faith.
That’s pretty much what Samuel Hemphill was preaching.
So this wasn’t just a social issue for Ben Franklin. It was his Holy Grail. If he could sway some readers, change the tone, and help the Presbyterians step into the eighteenth century, he might just have the religion he had always been looking for.
It didn’t work. In September 1735, the synod stripped Samuel Hemphill of his duties, finding him “unqualified for any future exercise of his ministry.”10 He returned quietly to Ireland.
About two years later, in the London papers he regularly drew from, Ben Franklin would begin reading about another newfangled preacher, George Whitefield. In another year, he would start including news items about Whitefield in the Gazette. A year after that, he would meet George and begin publishing his work. He would also fill his newspaper with letters and articles about this hot new preacher, expressing opinions for and against. Controversy always sold papers.
But was there anything in the Hemphill affair that paved the way for the relationship Ben had with George Whitefield?
There were similarities. Ben describes them both with good voices, speaking extemporaneously and engagingly. It appears that Ben liked them both personally. Both preachers found an audience among those who didn’t usually go to church—the “nothings,” as Jedediah Andrews described them. Both cared little for denominational traditions and openly challenged expectations. As a result, both faced strong opposition from the church establishment. Ben thought both of them should stick to preaching and avoid writing, so as not to provide easy ammunition to the enemy. (Ben might have learned this from Hemphill and applied it to Whitefield.)
Yet the two preachers stand opposite each other in what might be the most important factor—the content of their preaching. For Hemphill, morality was the goal and Jesus was a teacher of virtue. Whitefield urged his hearers to respond to God’s call in faith; good works would be the by-product of a new life in Christ. This was no fine point of distinction. It was the very essence of the message delivered by each of them.
Ben must have recognized this difference eventually. But it’s possible that, in those early reports and interactions with Whitefield, he saw a hint of his old pal Hemphill.