Franklin admired Whitefield as a fellow intellectual but thought Whitefield's plan to run an orphanage in Georgia would lose money. He published several of Whitefield's tracts and was impressed by Whitefield's ability to preach and speak with clarity and enthusiasm to crowds. Franklin was an ecumenist and approved of Whitefield's appeal to members of many denominations, but was not, like Whitefield, an evangelical. In his autobiography, Franklin famously wrote that he was a "thoroughgoing Deist," which precludes the idea that God is personal, though some suggest that Franklin was more traditional in his views, e.g., his speech at the Constitutional Convention where he recited the verse that not a single sparrow falls to the ground without God's notice; how then could the Constitution convention hope to succeed without God's careful oversight?[11] After one of Whitefield's sermons, Franklin noted the: