Adams was actually sent to Harvard to prepare him for religious life. His father and ancestors in Braintree had all served as the town deacons in the Congregational Church, and he was expected to be the next "Deacon John." Instead, he chose to be a lawyer, but he never ceased being a fervent believer. He mellowed down in terms of his zealotry, learning to tolerate other Christians. By the time he arrived at Philadelphia, for example, he had ditched the anti-Catholicism he had been brought up with, and which appears in his early writings, and attended Catholic Mass a few times, finding it very moving, even though he found the Latin to be an overall negative.