By Douglas V. Gibbs
Today, while at church, the pastor (though we are in Psalms 119) made reference to Psalm 32:8-9, and as he recited the verses it came to mind that the wisdom of the verses seemed to carry a parallel to a quote by Benjamin Franklin that I recite often.
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
The parallel to me seemed to be quite compelling. Two separate individual texts that essentially provide the same equation, but from opposite ends. Understanding produces liberty; the absence of it produces a bit in the mouth.
“I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle, lest they come near unto thee.” (Psalm 32:8–9, KJV)
God offers guidance by the eye. A glance, a nod, and the barest signal. But, only to a man who has “understanding” (Heb. bin, discernment). The horse and mule have no bin, so they get the meteg and resen. Bit and bridle. A creature with no inward sense of direction must be steered by outward force. The restraint required is inversely proportional to the understanding present.
Benjamin Franklin’s quote provided the same equation, but in political form.
Substituting some of the terms clarifies what I am trying to say, I think. Understanding → guidance by the eye → liberty. No understanding → bit and bridle → a master’s hand on the rein. Franklin’s “masters” are the bit and bridle. He’s saying a self-governing and virtuous people can be steered by the Eye of God, but a vicious people must be yanked around by the jaw. Same anthropology. Same inverse relationship. Same conclusion.
Ben Franklin wrote the quote I referred to in a letter to the Abbés Chalut and Arnoux on April 17, 1787, which is worth noting, because that was the spring of the Constitutional Convention (but before the convention began), written to French churchmen. He wasn’t being cute; he was stating a load-bearing premise.
Benjamin Franklin, while likely not providing his quote about a virtuous people as a parallel specifically to Psalms 32:8-9 as I might recognize it to be, understood the basic premise of Christian principles and understanding. While those who claim America was founded as a secular system, and then point to Franklin’s deism as evidence of their claim, mean for you to believe that a deist was sort of like an atheist and that’s the kind of men who created the American System, the opposite is true. The claim of deism is a play on words that fails to provide the true context regarding Franklin’s complex religious nature. Franklin was raised in a very religious household, but as an adult never seemed to fit in with the church-going crowds. In his 1725 Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, he came across as deterministic and nearly erased the concept of free will, something that he half-repudiated later. In his 1728 Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion, his writings has him praying to “the Infinite Father.” He wasn’t orthodox, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he was not a believer. If you examine his working vocabulary, biblical references appear often.
It is important to also recognize that he proposed the Great Seal of the United States as Moses stretching his hand over the sea to drown Pharaoh, with the motto “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” When he stood up and called for prayer at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 he quoted Psalm 127:1; “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.”
His own summary of virtue, “doing good to man,” is a compression of Micah 6:8 and the second table of the law.
To Ezra Stiles in 1790, near death, Benjamin Franklin called the moral system of Jesus “the best the World ever saw, or is likely to see,” while confessing doubts about Christ’s divinity. Franklin believed in God, he believed in the biblical values and principles of the Christian religion, and he understood better than most of his contemporaries biblical moral framework – but, he had his doubts about just enough things regarding Christianity that he never totally and completely surrendered himself to be a follower of Jesus Christ.
While his faith in Christ may not have been conventional, Franklin was a firm believer that God’s Hand was on America, and he understood the teachings of the Bible. And he wasn’t alone. John Adams late in his presidency wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In Washington’s Farewell Address in 1796, the Father of the Country said that religion and morality are “indispensable supports” of political prosperity. Franklin’s quote about how only a virtuous people are capable of freedom resides in the same doctrine. It was, in a sense, in line with the overall working assumptions of the entire founding generation.
And, it’s a thread that runs through the whole Bible
The internal-vs-external law motif is everywhere: Jeremiah 31:33 and Hebrews 8:10 (law written on the heart versus tablets of stone), Psalm 119:45 (“I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts”), and most bluntly 1 Timothy 1:9 – “the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient.” Law is the bit. It’s for those who can’t be trusted to steer themselves. You also see the same principle in Judges 21:25 – no king, every man doing right in his own eyes, and then it collapsing into the demand of 1 Samuel 8 for a king “like all the nations.” Liberty without virtue decays into chaos, and chaos trades itself for a master. Israel did it, and the psalm is the warning label.
Again, while I am not necessarily convinced that Franklin was consciously echoing Psalm 32:9 in his quote about a virtuous people, the parallel is definitely present. It may be possible that he may have had Psalm 32:8-9 in mind, and it is more likely that he didn’t. Perhaps, due to his understanding of biblical text, his history of being a voracious reader, and his religious upbringing he may simply have absorbed the same biblical worldview so thoroughly that the logic came out that way. Either answer vindicates my thinking that the two (his quote, and the verse in Psalms) have a connection. And it also confirms what I said about Benjamin Franklin’s “deism” not being some sort of “atheist” as opponents to liberty might suggest. A genuine atheist deist wouldn’t reason in the same kind of grooves that Franklin did. Franklin put the bit and bridle of the psalm into the political vocabulary of the American founding, whether he knew there was a connection or not, and I believe it was precisely because he understood biblical self-evident truths, and because God may have, after all, had a Hand of Inspiration on the man.
Franklin did, admittedly, as he got older view God in ways he didn’t when he was younger. In the 1787 Constitutional Convention he presented the following:
“Mr. President, the small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance and continual reasonings with each other… is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding…
“In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor…
“And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance? I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.”
That passage during the convention explains it all in a nut shell. He told us about his growing conviction with age and his belief in God’s involvement in what they were doing.
And the biblical connections of that speech are amazing. The sparrow is Matthew 10:29 (and Luke 12:6). “One of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.” Franklin paraphrases rather than quotes verbatim, which is telling: he’s reasoning from the text, not just dropping a citation. “Except the Lord build the house” is Psalm 127:1. “Builders of Babel” is Genesis 11, and note he’s using it as a warning, not decoration. He’s saying a political order built without God collapses like the tower. The “superintending Providence” line refers to the Revolution itself. He’s asserting God’s hand was on the war, which is precisely a reminder to us that he believed God’s hand was on things shaping the new country after the war, as well.
The connection between Franklin’s Virtuous People quote and Psalm 32:8-9 was no accident, and Benjamin Franklin was not just some “cold deist” who believed in a secular founding. We know that Franklin was a believer, perhaps “in his own way,” and not someone that is constantly described by secular historians as some kind of secular-deist. He did not see God as being a clockmaker-God who winds the universe and walks away. A God like that doesn’t “graciously answer” prayers or govern “the affairs of men” in real time. Franklin was describing an intervening, providential God – the same God of Psalms 32:8-9.
His operating theology was thoroughly biblical. A God who hears, who intervenes, who governs nations, and who raises and humbles empires. That’s not atheistic secular deism. That’s a man who had read his Bible so long it had become the shape of his thinking.
As a side note regarding the prayer at the service attended by the Constitutional Convention delegates, Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey recorded that when the delegates reconvened the first time since Franklin’s speech, “every unfriendly feeling had been expelled, and a spirit of conciliation had been cultivated.” Two weeks later came the Connecticut Compromise. In short, when Franklin called for the convention to put it in God’s Hands, what followed was a thaw, and a breakthrough. Franklin understood that only a virtuous people are capable of liberty – and when we refuse to remain in the guidance of God’s Eyes, the bit and the bridle (an increase of government tyranny) is not far behind.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
