His writings were addressed to American, English, and French audiences and gained popularity by reason of his simple diction, convincing arguments, native humor, and secular spirit. If Jonathan Edwards was, as some contend, the greatest theological writer ever produced in America and thus represents the religious spirit of the eighteenth century in America, Franklin's life and writings are important as typifying the other great movement of the American Enlightenment-its secular spirit, the rise of the self-made man.
Franklin was born in humble circumstances in Milk Street in Boston. His mother was the second wife of an English silk dyer who had emigrated (for reasons of religious freedom) from Banbury in Oxfordshire to the New World, where he had set up as a tallow chandler and soap boiler. In his autobiography (the main source for most of our knowledge about his early life) Franklin explains that he was the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations. As the tenth son of a devout Congregationalist, he had at one point been thought of by his father as a tithe to the ministry. Eventually Franklin did become a minister, but not in the sense his father had intended.
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