Conceptions Of God And Human Nature

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Conceptions of God and Human Nature The quote “God made man in his own image, and man returned the compliment” explains God's image to man as up for open interpretation and varying from believer to believer, which applies to the Puritans and Benjamin Franklin. The Puritans that arrived in New England were frustrated with the Church of England's methods of practice because they were too closely related to Catholicism. The Puritans departed to the New World between the 16th and 17th century, in hope of purifying their religion and creating a society that properly and strictly obeyed God. The Puritan ways heavily influenced life in New England, even for the Franklin family. Benjamin Franklin was raised in a Calvinist family with Puritan foundations, but Franklin later grew to become a worldly individual through his studies and life experiences. Franklin created his own image of God, agreed with reason over religion, and became one of the most significant figures of the Enlightenment. Both Franklin and the Puritans agreed on the existence of God as well as the idea that man should be consistently striving to achieve self-improvement. However, Franklin and the Puritans had opposing conceptions of God and human nature and the relationship between the two through the belief of whether man should accomplish self-improvement from secular or nonsecular motives and the authority of God over humanity. One similarity that exists between the Puritans and Franklin is they both recognized the existence of God. Every aspect in Puritan life was surrounded by the presence of God. Any action done or change occurring in a Puritan's day was attributed to God. In Puritan John Dane's “A Declaration of Remarkable Providences in the Course of My Life,” Dane states that the presence of God is always and forever surrounding him with the quote, “Thus God hath all along preserved and kept me
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