From Franklin, the Lightning Rod Known Round the World (New York Times book review):
The clergy turned a disapproving eye on Franklin’s great invention, the lightning rod. Who was he to disturb the instruments of divine wrath? Even Jean-Antoine Nollet, one of France’s foremost lightning researchers, warned that it was "as impious to ward off Heaven’s lightnings as for a child to ward off the chastening rod of its father."
One wonders just how many clergy disapproved of the lightening rod, but still it illustrates a particular mindset about God and man.
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