ABSTRACT
A Quaker God shaped William Penn's Pennsylvania, a Catholic Lord populated the Chesapeake Bay area of Maryland, and an Episcopalian Deity led the way to the abundance of Virginia. Puritanism itself gradually responded to modern scientific study. Jonathan Edwards's Personal Narrative is a tale of spiritual awakening, a discovery of divine emotion within the self. Americans were discovering the social and scientific complexity of their New World. The Founding Fathers educated men nourished on ideas of Enlightenment and progress, with cultivated tastes and substantial libraries might envy the European nations their arts but not the social institutions that traditionally supported them. The pressure of political events induced Franklin to set aside his autobiography in 1771; three years later the same pressure led him to invite Thomas Paine to leave his native England and settle in Philadelphia.
