The God Machine Read Online Free PDF Page B

had endeared him to Franklin, no doubt, Penn surmised. That odious printer seemed to be behind every charity, every club, indeed every scheme to raise money in the city. Now he was talking of opening a hospital where they would treat common riffraff for free!
    “See what he writes,” Andrews said, drawing a newspaper from his coat. “It's a conversation between two local Presbyterians, Mr. S.—Franklin himself—and Mr. T They're complaining about how the newfangled preacher talks too much of good works. Mr. T asks, ‘Isn't faith,rather than virtue, the path to salvation?’ And Mr. S. says, 'A virtuous heretic shall be saved before a wicked Christian.' It's intolerable.”
    “It's no newly forged faith that compels him, I assure you. I hear he's struck a printer's bargain with the preacher. Given Hemphill's popularity, permission to print his sermons will no doubt recoup a tidy sum. Franklin's no fool.”
    “I fear, Proprietor, Franklin may be poking fun at you as well,” said Andrews. “This business with Chief Lappawinsoe.”
    “What are you saying?” Thomas Penn stopped in his tracks.
    “Well, so I've heard. There's talk that the treaty you're invoking with the Lenape is somehow…” He paused, pursed his lips. “… less than fully ratified, if you will, and yet Chief Lappawinsoe is abiding by it. Honorably. Like a virtuous heretic.”
    Thomas Penn bristled. He and the other colonial administrators claimed they were in possession of a deed dating back to the 1680s in which the Lenape-Delaware Indians had promised to sell a portion of land beginning between the junction of the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers, “as far west as a man could walk in a day and a half.”
    At best the document was an unsigned, ungratified treaty; at worst, an outright forgery. In truth, Penn's land agents had already sold vast areas of the Lehigh Valley. They needed to vacate the land of the Indians before it could be properly settled.
    Since Chief Lappawinsoe and other Lenape leaders believed the treaty was genuine, and because they assumed that about forty miles was the most a man could walk through the wilderness in a day and a half, they had agreed to honor the treaty.
    “I stand by the deed,” Penn replied. “It's legal and binding. As my father used to say: ‘My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot; for I owe my conscience to no mortal man.’ Besides,” he added with a grin, “I have a plan for the Lenape. It's Franklin I'm worried about. What did he do when you censured Sam Hemphill? You did, didn't you?”
    “Hemphill was unanimously censured. And suspended,” said Andrews. “And in protest, Franklin resigned from the church.”
    “He was never much of a churchgoing man,” Penn sniffed in response. “They say he's taken the vows of a Freemason.”
    “His
Gazette
no longer lampoons that insidious cult. Or labels their rituals and secrets a hoax.”
    “I'm sure his assaults did much to foment the induction. Indeed, I have heard, through other members of the Craft, that he's searching for the Gospel of Judas.”
    “The Gospel of Judas? That Gnostic text! But why?”
    “They say that he knows of a version set down at the time of the Twelve. You realize what this would mean to your Church, I assume. If it's found.”
    “To all Christians, Proprietor. Heresy!”
    “His goading is becoming insufferable.” He waved his white hand by his head. It had grown late and the insects were gathering. “Like the mosquitoes at Pennsbury. Let's go in.”
    They moved from the kitchen gardens toward the main house. As they walked, Penn tried to blot out the image of Edwards hobbling behind him. If his father, the Quaker, were alive to see him now, hobnobbing with this… Thomas Penn frowned… this Presbyterian toad. But he couldn't afford to be fussy. He needed to forge an alliance with all those at odds with that odious printer. Franklin was becoming increasingly dangerous.He was constantly publishing