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 BX 7260 .E3 A6 1889 
 Allen, Alexander V. G. 
 
 1908. 
 Jonathan Edwards 
 
 1841 
 
Digitized by the Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/jonathanedwarOOalle 
 

 JONATHAN EDWARDS 
 
 BY 
 
 ALEXANDER V. G. ALLEN, D. D. 
 
 paOFESSOB IN THE EPISCOPAL TUEOLOGICAL SCHOOL, LN CAAIUBIDGE, MASS. 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1889 
 
Copyright, 1889, 
 Bt ALEXANDER V. G. ALLEN. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Company. 
 
The edition of Edwards' works to which refer- 
 ences are made is known as the Worcester edition, 
 in four volumes, published in New York in 1847. 
 I have drawn freely from his Life by Dr. S. E. 
 Dwight published in 1830. Valuable as this work 
 is, it does not constitute an adequate biography. 
 Much that would throw light upon Edwards' his- 
 tory is withheld from publication. It is greatly to 
 be regretted also that there is no complete edition 
 of his works. But in the method which I have fol- 
 lowed I have not lacked for abundance of material. 
 I have endeavored to reproduce Edwards from his 
 books, making his treatises, in their chronological 
 order, contribute to his portraiture as a man and 
 as a theologian, a task which has not been hereto- 
 fore attempted. I have thought that something 
 more than a mere recountal of facts was demanded 
 in order to justify the endeavor co rewrite his life. 
 What we most desire to know is, what he thought 
 and how he came to think as he did. The aim of 
 my work is a critical one, with this inquiry always 
 in view. Criticism, however, should be sympa- 
 thetic to a certain extent with its object, or it will 
 
VI PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 lack insight and appreciation. I have not found 
 myseK devoid of sympathy with one who has filled 
 so large a place in the minds of the New England 
 people. Edwards is always and everywhere inter- 
 esting, whatever we may think of his theology. 
 On literary and historical grounds alone, no one 
 can fail to be impressed with his imposing figure 
 as he moves through the wilds of the new world. 
 The distance of time from that early period in our 
 history lends its enchantment to the view, enhan- 
 cing the sense of vastness and mystery which en- 
 velops him. Our great American historian, Mr. 
 Bancroft, has justly remarked: "He that would 
 know the workings of the New England mind in 
 the middle of the last century and the throbbings 
 of its heart, must give his days and nights to the 
 study of Jonathan Edwards." He that would un- 
 derstand, it might be added, the significance of 
 later New England thought, must make Edwards 
 the first object of his study. 
 Caivibridge, March 22, 1889. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FIRST PERIOD. 
 
 THE PARISH ^HNISTER, 1703-1735. 
 
 Page 
 I. Childhood. — Eakly Life. — Notes on the ISItnd . 1 
 
 II. Resolutions. — Diary. — Conversion ... 21 
 ni. Settlement at Northampton. — Marriage. — 
 
 Domestic Life 38 
 
 IV. Edwards as a Reformer. — Sermons on Depend- 
 ence AND Spiritual Light. — Special and Com- 
 mon Grace 52 
 
 V. The Moral Government of God. — Future Pun- 
 ishment. — Justification by Faith . • . . 78 
 VI. Edwards as a Preacher. — His Imprecatory 
 
 Sermons 103 
 
 SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 THE GREAT AWAKENING, 1735-1750. 
 
 I. Revival at Northampton. — Narrative of Sur- 
 prising Conversions 133 
 
 II. The Great Awakening. — Distinguishing Marks 
 
 OF A Work of the Spirit of God . . . 161 
 
 III. Evils and Abuses of the Great Awakening. — 
 
 Thoughts on the Revival 177 
 
 rV. Treatise on the Religious Affections . . 218 
 
 V. Union in Prayer. — David Brainerd . . . 232 
 VI. Dismissal from Northampton. — Qualifications 
 
 for Full Communion 248 
 
VIU CONTENTS. 
 
 THIRD PERIOD. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN, 1750-1758. 
 
 I. Removal to Stockbridge as JVIissionary to the 
 
 Indians 273 
 
 II. The Freedom of the Will 281 
 
 III. Defence of the Doctrine of Original Sin . . 302 
 
 IV. Treatise on the Nature of True Virtue . 313 
 V. God's Last End in the Creation .... 327 
 
 VI. The Doctrine of the Trinity .... 338 
 
 Conclusion 377 
 
 Bibliography 391 
 
 Index . 395 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 1631. None but church members admitted as freemen. 
 
 1633. Settlement of East Windsor. 
 
 1648. Cambridge Platform. Adoption of Westminster Con- 
 fession. 
 
 1650. Descartes died. 
 
 1654. Settlement of Northampton. 
 
 1654. Approval of magistrates required in order to settle a 
 minister. 
 
 1662. Synod at Boston adopted the Half-way Covenant. 
 
 1669-1758. Rev. Timothy Edwards. 
 
 1677. Spinoza died. 
 
 1679. Reformatory Synod in Boston. 
 
 1684. Withdrawal of the charters. 
 
 1685. Accession of James II. 
 
 1686. Sir Edmond Andros landed in Boston. 
 1688-1691. Witchcraft delusion. 
 
 1688. Accession of William and Mary. 
 
 1691. The new charter. 
 
 1692. Episcopalians, Baptists, and Quakers exempted from 
 
 tax for support of Congregational churches in Mas- 
 sachusetts. 
 
 1701. Society for Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 
 Parts. 
 
 1701. Charter for college at Say brook, afterwards Yale 
 College. 
 
 1702-1714. Queen Anne. 
 
 1703. Jonathan Edwards bom. 
 
 1703-1791. John Wesley. 
 
I 
 
 X CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 
 
 1705. Plea of Cotton Mather for increased efficiency of 
 councils. 
 
 1706-1790. Benjamin Franklin. 
 
 1707-1709. Controversy on the Lord's Supper as a convert- 
 ing ordinance. 
 
 1708. Say brook Platform in Connecticut. 
 
 1713. Order of Queen Anne establishing bishoprics in Amer- 
 ica. 
 
 1714-1727. George I. 
 
 1715. Malfebranche died. 
 
 1716. Leibnitz died. 
 
 1719-1720. Edwards graduated from Yale College. 
 1722. Edwards licensed to preach. 
 1722. Secession of Congregational ministers in Connecticut 
 
 to the Episcopal Church. 
 
 1724. Edwards a tutor at Yale. 
 
 1725. Proposed reformatory synod forbidden by the king. 
 
 1726. Edwards ordained at Northampton. 
 1726-1728. Berkeley at Newport. 
 1727-1760. George II. 
 1731. Edwards' sermon on Man's Dependence. 
 
 1734. Edwards' sermon on Spiritual Light. 
 
 1735. First revival at Northampton. 
 
 1735. Wesley sailed for Georgia. 
 
 1736. Bishop Butler's Analogy. 
 
 1736. Edwards' Narrative of Surprising Conversions. 
 
 1838. Date of Wesley's conversion. 
 
 1738. Whitefield in Georgia. 
 
 1738. Publication of Edwards' sermons on Justification, etc. 
 
 1739-1741. Whitefield's second visit to America. 
 
 1740. The Great Awakening. 
 
 1741. Edwards' sermon at Enfield. 
 
 1741. Publication of Edwards' Distinguishing Marks, etc. 
 
 1742. Edwards' Thoughts on the Revival. 
 1744-1748. Whitefield's third visit. 
 
 1744-1749. War with Indians and French, known as King 
 George's War. » 
 
 I 
 
 ( 
 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. xi 
 
 1746. Publication of Edwards on the Religious Affections. 
 
 1746. College of New Jersey founded, afterwards Princeton 
 
 College. 
 
 1747. David Brainerd died. 
 1749. Troubles at Northampton. 
 
 1749. Publication of Edwards' Qualifications for Full Com- 
 
 munion. 
 
 1750. Edwards' dismissal from Northampton. 
 
 1750. Decline of Half-way Covenant. 
 
 1751. Edwards removes to Stockbridge. 
 
 1752. Edwards' Reply to Williams. 
 
 1754. Publication of The Freedom of the Will. 
 
 1755. Treatises of Edwards written on Virtue and End of 
 
 the Creation. 
 
 1757. Edwards called to Princeton. 
 
 1758. Publication of Edwards' treatise on Original Sin. 
 1758. Edwards died. 
 
( 
 
 i 
 
JONATHAN EDWARDS. 
 
 FIKST PERIOD. 
 
 THE PARISH MINISTER. 1703-1735. 
 ♦ 
 I. 
 
 CHILDHOOD. — EARLY LIFE. — NOTES ON THE 
 
 MIND. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards was born October 5, 1703, 
 in tlie town of East Windsor, Connecticut. His 
 father's family is said to be Welsh in its origin. 
 The earliest known ancestor was a clergyman of 
 the Church of England, whose widow, having re- 
 married, emigrated to this country with her son, 
 William Edwards, about 1640. The son of WH- 
 liam was Richard Edwards, of Hartford, Conn., a 
 prosperous merchant, who also sustained a high 
 religious character. His oldest son, Timothy, the 
 father of Jonathan Edwards, was born in 1669, 
 and graduated at Harvard College in 1691. He 
 received the two degrees of bachelor and master of 
 arts on the same day, — " an uncommon mark of 
 respect paid to his extraordinary proficiency in 
 learning." Having finished his preparatory theo- 
 logical studies, he was ordained " to the ministry 
 
2 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 of the Gospel " in the East Parish of Windsor in 
 1694. In the same year he was married to Esther 
 Stoddard, a daughter of the celebrated Solomon 
 Stoddard, minister of the church in Northampton. 
 
 Edwards' father was regarded as a man of more 
 than usual scholarship and learning. In the ab- 
 sence of preparatory schools he was in the habit 
 of fitting students for college, and had gained the 
 reputation of a successful teacher. He gave to 
 his daughters the same training with the young 
 men who studied under his care ; and if the latter 
 went to college, the girls were sent to Boston to 
 finish their education. For over sixty years Timo- 
 othy Edwards maintained himself in good rej)ute 
 with his congregation. As a preacher, it is said 
 that his people gave him the credit of learning and 
 animation, while for his son Jonathan they reserved 
 the epithet " profound." The father is spoken of 
 as a man of " polished manners, particularly atten- 
 tive to his dress and to projjriety of exterior, never 
 appearing in public but in the full dress of a cler- 
 gyman." The details of domestic affairs he rele- 
 gated to his wife, in order that he might occupy 
 himself with his studies. 
 
 But to his mother Jonathan Edwards was 
 chiefly indebted for his intellectual inheritance. 
 She is said to have received a superior education 
 in Boston. She is described as "tall, dignified, 
 and commanding in appearance, affable and gentle 
 in her manner, and regarded as surpassing her 
 husband in native vigor of understanding." Re- 
 
INTELLECTUAL PRECOCITY. 3 
 
 markable judgment and prudence, extensive infor- 
 mation, thorougli knowledge of the Serijjtures and 
 of theology, singidar conscientiousness and piety, 
 — these are virtues attributed to the mother which 
 reappear in the son. These also came as if by 
 natural descent to a daughter of Solomon Stod- 
 dard. That she did not " join the church " until 
 her son was twelve years old, is a circiunstance 
 which points to an intellectual independence which 
 no amount of precedent or prestige could intimi- 
 date. In this mental characteristic the son resem- 
 bled his mother. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards was the fifth child and the 
 only son in a family of eleven children. He was 
 educated with his sisters, the older daughters as- 
 sisting the father in the superintendence of his 
 studies. A few of his letters remain, written wdiile 
 he was a boy, but they disclose little of his char- 
 acter. He appears as docile and receptive, an 
 affectionate and sensitive nature, responding 
 quicldy and very deeply to the influences of his 
 childhood. He was interested in his studies, ambi- 
 tious to excel, and particularly a keen observer of 
 the mysteries of the outward world and eager to 
 discern its laws. Everything points to him as a 
 child of rare intellectual precocity. When not 
 mo^'e than twelve years old he wrote a letter in a 
 bantering style refuting the idea of the material- 
 ity of the sold. At about the same age he wrote 
 an elaborate and instructive account of the habits 
 of the field spider, based upon his ow^n observa- 
 
4 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 tion. He was not quite thirteen when he entered 
 Yale College, then in an inchoate condition and 
 not yet fixed in a permanent home. The course 
 of instruction at this time must have been a broken 
 and imperfect one. Such as it was, Edwards fol- 
 lowed it faithfully, now at New Haven and then 
 at Wethersfield, whither a part of the students 
 emigrated in consequence of some disturbance in 
 which he seems to have shared. A letter to his 
 father from the rector of the college speaks of his 
 " promising abilities and great advances in learn- 
 ing." He was not quite seventeen when he grad- 
 uated, taking with his degree the highest honors 
 the institution could offer. 
 
 One characteristic of Edwards as a student, 
 which he retained through life, was the habit of 
 writing as a means of mental culture. An inward 
 necessity compelled him also to give expression to 
 his thought. He began while in college to arrange 
 his thoughts in orderly fashion, classifying his 
 manuscripts or note-books under the titles of The 
 Mind, Natural Science, The Scriptures, with a 
 fourth collection called Miscellanies. Even at this 
 early age, somewhere between the years of four- 
 teen and seventeen, he was projecting a great trea- 
 tise, which he proposed to publish. The Notes on 
 the Mind and on Natural Science are to be re- 
 garded as the materials he was enthusiastically 
 collecting for a work intended to embrace almost 
 the entire scope of human learning. He carefully 
 wrote out the rules which were to guide him in its 
 
INFLUENCE OF LOCKE. 5 
 
 composition. Thoughts were ah'eacly stirring with- 
 in liim which he felt would awaken opposition. 
 In his rules for guidance he appears as if pre- 
 paring to besiege the fortress of pubUc opinion, 
 and must be cautious lest his attempt should end 
 in defeat. 
 
 The intellectual impulse came from the philoso- 
 phy of Locke, whose Essay on the Human Under- 
 standing Edwards read when he was but fourteen 
 years old. The impression it left upon his mind 
 was a deep and in some respects an abiding one. 
 But even in his early adherence to the sensational 
 philosophy he was still hunseK, independent, ac- 
 cepting or rejecting in accordance with an inward 
 dictum which sprang from the depth of his being. 
 Locke was after all rather the occasion than the 
 inspiring cause of his intellectual activity. Had 
 he read Descartes instead, he might have reached 
 the same conclusion. Although Edwards came to 
 his intellectual maturity before his religious ex- 
 perience had developed into what he called " con- 
 version," yet his intellect was bound from the fii'st 
 to the idea of God. There is a peculiar charm in 
 these early manuscripts written loefore his theology 
 had received its final stamp. At times he seems 
 as if almost losing himseK in the realm of pure 
 speculation. But the underlying motive in his 
 Notes on the Mind or Natural Science is theolog- 
 ical, not philosophical. The religious impulse may 
 appear as fused with the intellectual activity, yet 
 it is always there, and always the strongest element 
 
6 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 in his tlioug'lit. Science and metaphysics do not 
 interest him as ends in themselves, but as subordi- 
 nated to a theological purpose. The God conscious- 
 ness was the deepest substratum of his being, — 
 his natural heritage from Puritan antecedents, 
 coloring or qualifying every intellectual conviction 
 he attained. 
 
 We turn, then, to these Notes on the Mind, in 
 which the boy is seen revelling in the dawning 
 sense of fresh creative power. ^ The point which 
 he first proceeds to elaborate is entitled Excel- 
 lency. Of this he writes : " There has nothing 
 been more without a definition than excellency, 
 although it be what we are more concerned with 
 than anything else whatsoever. Yea, we are con- 
 cerned with nothing else. But what is this excel- 
 lency ? Wherein is one thing excellent and an- 
 other evil, one beautifid and another deformed?" 
 In answering the inquiry he accepted the current 
 
 ^ It is impossible to give here a complete summary of these 
 Notes on the Mind. It may be said of them in general that there 
 is hardly a speculative principle in Edwards' later writings which 
 they do not contain in its germinal form. They discuss the na- 
 ture of the will and of freedom, abstract and innate ideas : there 
 are passages which imply realism, and others a decided nominal- 
 ism. They present a theory of causation resembling that of the 
 late Mr. J. S. Mill, and anticipate Hume's law of the association 
 of ideas. The Notes on Natural Science, if written as is supposed 
 between the age of fourteen and sixteen, present Edwards as an 
 intellectual prodigy which has no parallel. Tliey indicate a mar- 
 vellous insight into the gaps of knowledge, and an instructive sense 
 of how they are to be filled, which seems like prophetic divination. 
 Cf. D wight. Life of Edwards, p. 53 ; and pp. 702-761, where 
 they are given in full. 
 
NOTES ON THE MIND, 7 
 
 statement that excellence consists in harmony, 
 symmetry, or proportion. But he complains of 
 this statement as affording no explanation. What 
 he seeks to know is, why proportion is more excel- 
 lent than disproportion, or why it gives greater 
 pleasure to the mind. In the attempt to satisfy 
 his mind on this point he was led to sound the 
 depths of his youthful experience in order to reach 
 some ultimate principle. He found this principle 
 in the conviction that life in* itseK, simple exist- 
 ence, is the highest good, and therefore the 
 foundation of moral excellence. He took his 
 stand at the antipodes of pessimistic schemes or 
 theories of the universe. He is at the furthest 
 remove from the tired mood of Oriental dream- 
 ers, from the spirit of Buddhism with its primary 
 postidate that existence is an evil. He represents 
 the concentrated vitality and aggressiveness of 
 the occidental peoples, — of the Anglo-Saxon race 
 in particular, of which he was a consimunate 
 flower blossoming in a new world. The simple 
 energy and potency of life is here deified, as it 
 were, as if demanding in itseK alone supreme 
 adoration. He argues for the truth of this prin- 
 ciple, from the possession of a deep inward con- 
 viction. He has striven in vain to conceive a state 
 of nothingness. The very attempt to realize it in 
 his mind throws him into confusion and convulsion. 
 He speaks of nothing as " that which the sleeping 
 rocks do dream of." The thought of the possible 
 annihilation of that which has once existed fills 
 
8 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 Mm with horror. Existence then, in itself, must 
 be the highest g'ood, the greatest blessing. 
 
 From this principle he proceeds to deduce the 
 conclusion that similarity, proportion, harmony, 
 jDartake of the nature of excellence, since they are 
 agreeable to. that which has existence, Tliese 
 things are in accordance with the law implanted in 
 our being. Beyond this statement it is not nec- 
 essary to go. The simple gift of perception, with 
 which intelligent being is endowed, is in itseK a 
 pleasure and a blessing, and perception is pleased 
 in beholding harmony and proportion wherever he 
 looks. All beings or existences appear to stand in 
 certain relationships, and in the fulfilment of these 
 relationsliips lies the fulness of a real life. What- 
 ever contradicts harmony, or weakens or contra- 
 'dicts relationships, diminishes the fulness of exist- 
 ence, and approaches the state of nothingness, 
 which is the greatest evil. To approve, then, of 
 this primary law of one's being wliich demands the 
 realization of harmony and j)roportion, is to recog- 
 nize the principle of all excellence. 
 
 He carries the argument up to the divine exist- 
 ence. God is excellent simply because He exists, 
 for " existence is that into which all excellence is 
 to be resolved." Because God has an infinite 
 amount or quantity of existence, He possesses in 
 consequence an infinite excellence. The physical 
 and the sjiiritual are here merged into one. In 
 proportion to the dimensions of existence is the 
 quantity of excellence. God, by the mere reason 
 
NATURE OF EXCELLENCE. 9 
 
 of His greatness, is the more excellent. "It is im- 
 possible that God should be otherwise than excel- 
 lent, for He is the infinite, universal, and all-com- 
 prehending existence. . . . He is in Himself, if I 
 may so say, an infinite quantity of existence." So 
 vast and preponderating is His existence that when 
 we speak of existence in general, it is enough to 
 think of Him. " In comparison with Him, all 
 others must be considered as nothing. . . . As to 
 bodies, we have shown in another place that they 
 have no proper being of their own. And as to 
 spirits, they are the communications of the Great 
 Original Spirit ; and doubtless, in metaphysical 
 strictness and propriety He is, and there is none 
 else. . . . All excellence and beauty is derived 
 from Hhn in the same manner as all being. And 
 all other excellence is in strictness only a shadow, 
 of His." 
 
 The supreme law of existence is the law of love. 
 While Deity is pleased with the perception of 
 excellency as He witnesses existence in harmony 
 with existence tliroughout the universe, yet the 
 chief happiness of God lies in His love, or His con- 
 sent to His own infinite existence. Herein lies the 
 difference between the creature and the creator, 
 that, if the creature would be in harmony with ex- 
 istence, he must above all things be in harmony 
 with God, consenting to the law of the Divine ex- 
 istence, which is God's love for Himself. Love, 
 therefore, is the highest excellency. The secret 
 harmony between the various parts of the universe 
 
10 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 is only an image of mutual love. In God this 
 essential principle operates from all eternity, as in 
 the mutual love of the Father and the Son. In 
 the Holy Spirit which binds together the Father 
 and the Son is to be seen God's infinite beauty, or, 
 in the writer's abstract expression, God's infinite 
 consent to his own being, which is being in gen- 
 eral. The love of God to the creation is the com- 
 munication of Himself in his Spirit. If it seems 
 as though this love of God to Himself carried too 
 much the aspect of self-love, we must remember 
 that " this love includes in it, or rather is the same 
 as, a love to everything, as they are all communi- 
 cations of Himself." Under the influence of this 
 principle the universe is transfigured as with the 
 light of divine love. 
 
 " We are to conceive of the divine excellence as in- 
 finite general love, that which reaches all, proportion- 
 ately with perfect purity and sweetness ; yea, it includes 
 the true love of all creatures, for that is His spirit, or, 
 which is the same thing. His love. And if we take no- 
 tice, when we are in the best frames meditating on the 
 divine excellence, our ideal of that tranquillity and 
 peace which seems to be overspread and cast abroad upon 
 the whole earth and universe naturally dissolves itself 
 into the idea of a general love and delight everywhere 
 diffused." 1 
 
 The answer to the inquiry as to the nature of 
 excellence has been given at some length because 
 
 1 Dwight, Life, etc., p. 701. 
 
GENIAL OUTLOOK. 11 
 
 of its importance, and because it is apt to be over- 
 looked in attempts to explain the genesis of Ed- 
 wards' thougbt. Dr. Dwigbt, wbo edited the 
 Notes on the Mind from the original manuscript, 
 did not follow the order of time in which they 
 were wi'itten, and has placed the treatment of ex- 
 cellence at the close of the treatise, although it is 
 numbered One, and was therefore the first sub- 
 ject on which he committed his views to writing, 
 and must have been uppermost in his mind. The 
 reflections of the boy of sixteen must not be un- 
 derrated as if they were immature, or as if they 
 had afterwards disappeared from his consciousness. 
 When, at the age of fifty, he wrote his dissertation 
 on The Nature of True Virtue, he reproduced his 
 early conviction with no substantial change. In 
 later years, it is true, the genial outlook upon the 
 universe which marked his j^outh is no longer 
 maintained, and he may never have regained the 
 beautiful vision which dawned upon the first 
 opening of his mind. The devotion to a moral 
 ideal had its dark side, which came into an exag- 
 gerated prominence during the time of his pasto- 
 ral activity. But beneath the mutations of his 
 mental history may still be traced the under- 
 current of his youthful conviction that moral 
 excellence must be grounded in God, must be 
 identified with existence itself, in order that 
 it may be seen as the only reality in a world of 
 shadows. 
 
 In his treatment of excellence Edwards appears 
 
12 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 as in agreement with Plato's conception of God as 
 the idea of the good. There is also in his tone a 
 still stronger reminder of Spinoza, — the doctrine 
 of the one substance, of which the universe is the 
 manifestation. In some respects also he approxi- 
 mates in these Notes on the Mind to the famous 
 doctrine of Malebranche that we see all things in 
 God ; as when it is emphatically asserted that 
 "the universe exists only in the mind of God." 
 Truth is defined as the agreement of our ideas 
 with existence^ or, since God and existence are the 
 same, as the agreement of our ideas with the ideas 
 of God. Hence it may be said that God is truth 
 itself. Of the inspiration which prophets had, it 
 is remarked that it was in a sense intuitive. " The 
 prophet, in the thing which he sees, has a clear 
 view of its perfect agreement with the excellencies 
 of the divine nature. All the Deity appears in 
 the thing, and in everything pertaining to it. . . . 
 He perceives as immediately that God is there as 
 we perceive one another's presence when we are 
 talking face to face." 
 
 With views like these of God, of existence, of 
 truth, it is not surprising that Edwards believed 
 that "corporeal things could exist no otherwise 
 than mentally." Among the earliest statements 
 in the Notes on the Mind, we read : " Our per- 
 ceptions or ideas, that we passively receive by our 
 bodies, are communicated to us immediately by 
 God." Edwards may have reached this conclu- 
 sion by combining his idea of God, as universal 
 
TRANSITION TO IDEALISM. 13 
 
 existence, with the principle derived from Locke 
 that all ideas begin from external sensation. He 
 emphatically affirms this principle when he says, 
 " There never can be any idea, thought, or act of 
 the mind unless the mind first received some ideas 
 from sensation, or some other way equivalent 
 wherein the mind is wholly passive in receiving 
 them." ^ With Edwards' premises, the transition 
 seems an easy one from the popular belief in the 
 externality of the objects of our senses to a dis- 
 belief in the existence of matter. The question 
 which he was asking himself was one which Locke 
 had not answered, and had declared himself una- 
 ble to answer, confessing it to be a mystery, — 
 What is that substance, or thing in itself, concealed 
 behind attributes and qualities, whose existence is 
 revealed by perceptions of color or extension, but 
 which cannot be resolved into these qualities ? Is 
 it " a something, we know not what " ? Edwards 
 refused to acquiesce in this confession of an im- 
 personal and unkno^\ai something. " Men," he 
 says, " are wont to content themselves by saying 
 merely that it is something ; but that something is 
 He in whom all things consist." Sensations pro- 
 duced by external objects are thus at once resolved 
 into ideas coming directly to the mind from God. 
 All through the Notes on the Mind, phrases like 
 these are recurrino: : " Bodies have no existence 
 of their own." " All existence is mental ; the ex- 
 istence of all things is ideal." " The brain exists 
 
 1 Dwight, Life, etc., Appendix, p. 666. 
 
14 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 only mentally, or in idea." " Instead of matter 
 being the only proper substance, and more sub- 
 stantial than anything else because it is hard and 
 solid, yet it is truly nothing at all, strictly and in 
 itself considered." " The universe exists nowhere 
 but in the divine mind." The popular concep- 
 tion of space is gross and misleading. " Space 
 is necessary, eternal, infinite, and omnipresent. 
 But I had as good speak plain. I have already 
 said as much as that space is God." And to give 
 a final summary of the whole question : — 
 
 " And indeed the secret lies here, — that which 
 truly is the substance of all bodies is the infinitely 
 exact and precise and perfectly stable Idea in God's 
 mind, together with His stable will that the same shall 
 gradually be communicated to us, and to other minds, 
 according to certain fixed and exact established methods 
 and laws ; or, in somewhat different language, the in- 
 finitely exact and precise Divine Idea, together with an 
 answerable, perfectly exact, precise, and stable will, with 
 respect to correspondent communications to created 
 minds and effects on their minds." 
 
 One cannot read this extraordinary production 
 of Edwards' youth without noticing its numerous 
 and striking coincidences with Berkeley's system 
 of philosophic idealism. But when the question is 
 raised whether he had read Berkeley, we become 
 aware that a thick veil of obscurity rests upon these 
 labors of his early years which we strive in vain to 
 withdraw. In recent years there has grown up 
 what may be regarded as a history of opinion on 
 
INDEBTEDNESS TO BERKELEY. 15 
 
 this difficult point. On the one hand it is main- 
 tained, that he had no acquaintance with the writ- 
 ings of Berkeley,^ and that it is not necessary to 
 suppose such an acquaintance in order to explain 
 this reproduction, almost complete, of a philosophy 
 which is identified with Berkeley's name.^ On the 
 other hand, those who hold that Edwards may have 
 read Berkeley's works can bring no direct evidence 
 to substantiate their opinion.^ Berkeley's earlier 
 writings, — the New Theory of Vision, the Prin- 
 ciples of Human Knowledge, and the Dialogues, 
 had been published by the year 1713. It is pos- 
 sible, therefore, that they may have reached this 
 country before 1719, when Edwards graduated from 
 Yale College. But we are assured on good author- 
 ity that " there is no evidence that a copy of any 
 
 ^ This is the view of Dr. Dwig^ht, in his careful Life of Ed- 
 wards^ p. 40. 
 
 2 Professor Noah Porter, D. D. , ^ Discourse at Yale College on 
 the 200<A Birthday of Bishop Berkeley, 1885. "Surrounded as it 
 were by similar logical and spiritual impulses, Jonathan Edwards 
 drew the same conclusions as Berkeley had done, from the same 
 data in Locke's Essays, p. 71." So also Professor M. C. Tyler in 
 History of American Literature, ii. p. 183: "The peculiar opin- 
 ions which Edwards held in common -with Berkeley were reached 
 by him through an independent process of reasoning, and some- 
 what in the same way that they were reached by Berkeley." 
 
 ^ Professor Eraser, the biographer of Berkeley and editor of 
 his complete works, first advanced the opinion that Edwards was 
 indebted to Berkeley. Professor Fisher, of Yale College, also 
 thinks it not improbable that copies of Berkeley's works had 
 come into Edwards' hands, and found in him an eager and con- 
 genial disciple. Cf. Dicussions in History and Philosophy, p. 
 231. 
 
16 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 of these works referred to was known at the col- 
 lege, and there is reason to believe that they were 
 not then accessible." ^ We seem to come near 
 finding the missing link in the fact that Dr. Sam- 
 uel Johnson, afterwards President of King's Col- 
 lege, New York, a personal friend of Berkeley and 
 an ardent follower of his teaching, was a tutor at 
 Yale College while Edwards was a student. But 
 the conjecture that Edwards may have become 
 acquainted with Berkeleyanism through Johnson 
 fails us when it is put to the test. For Edwards 
 was at Wethersfield while Johnson remained at 
 New Haven, and was among those disaffected to- 
 ward Johnson as a tutor .^ Nor is there any evi- 
 dence that Johnson was at this time acquainted 
 with Berkeley's writings.^ A recent writer has 
 suggested another explanation, which deserves at- 
 tention, — that the Notes on the Mind were writ- 
 ten later than Dr. Dwight, the biographer of Ed- 
 
 1 Professor Porter, Historical Discourse, etc., on Berkeley, 
 p. 71. 
 
 2 Professor Fisher, Discussions, etc., p. 231. 
 
 ^ Professor Porter remarks : ' ' Dr. Johnson is said to have first 
 become interested in Berkeley's idealism when he went to Eng- 
 land in 1723 for episcopal ordination." Discourse, etc., p. 71. 
 Dr. E. E. Beardsley, in his Life of Johnson, throws no light on the 
 time when Johnson first became a disciple of Berkeley. But he 
 thinks the Berkeleyan philosophy had been heard of at Yale so 
 early as 1714, when Johnson graduated ; — " Something had been 
 heard of a new philosophy that was attracting attention in Eng- 
 land ; but the young men were cautioned against receiving it, 
 and told that it would corrupt the pure religion of the country 
 and bring in another system of divinity," p. 5. 
 
EDWARDS AND BERKELEY. 17 
 
 wards, supposes.^ The chief evidence on which 
 Dr. D wight relied to fix their date is the pecu- 
 liarity of Edwards' handwriting, which in youth 
 was round and legible, and at the age of twenty 
 became angidar and less distinct. But this is 
 surely slender evidence on which to build an im- 
 portant conclusion. Only a careful reediting of 
 the manuscripts could determine this point. If 
 the Notes on the Mind, begun while Edwards was 
 in college, were continued for several years after 
 he left college, this might give the desired time or 
 opportunity to become acquainted with Berkeley's 
 ^vritings. There is e\ddence, indeed, that so late 
 as 1725, when he had reached the age of twenty- 
 two, his mind was still working in the direction 
 toward which the reading of Locke had impelled 
 
 1 Georges Lyon, VIdealisme en Angleterre au XVIIF Steele, 
 Paris, 1888, pp. 430, 431. M. Lyon also offers the sug-gestive 
 hint that Edwards may have had some knowledge of Male- 
 branche, either directly or through his English interpreters. 
 Edwards' affinity with Malebranche is closer than with Berkeley. 
 There is a divergence between Edwards and Berkeley on the im- 
 portant principle of causation, which shows that some motive was 
 influential with the American youth which did not operate with 
 Berkeley. Berkeley also denounces as absurd the statement to 
 which Edwards assents, that space is God. Cf. Principles of 
 Human Knowledge, London ed., 1820, i. p. 34. It is possible that 
 Edwards may have had a knowledge of Malebranche, for two 
 translations of the Recherche de la Verite' had been published in 
 England so early as 1694. By 1704 had also appeared Norris' 
 Theory of an Ideal World, in which Malebranche was worked up 
 by an English mind. It would explain Edwards' transition from 
 Locke if he had seen these works. M. Lyon's interesting and 
 valuable work contains a fresh study of Edwards, and puts his 
 philosophy in a clear light. 
 
18 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 liim, and was still imdetermined whether to push 
 the doctrine of Berkeley to a further conclusion. 
 " The very thing I now want," he writes in his Jour- 
 nal for February 12, 1725, " to give me a clearer 
 and more immediate view of the perfections and 
 glory of God, is as cleai^ a knowledge of the man- 
 ner of God's exerting Himself with respect to spirit 
 and mind as I have of His operations concerning 
 matter and bodies." When Edwards wrote this 
 sentence he was about ready to abandon philoso- 
 phy, and turn to theology as the more congenial 
 study. He gives no intimation of the conclusion 
 he reached on this vital issue. But even then he 
 must have inclined to regard the relation of God 
 in each case as the same. Beyond that j)oint his 
 speculations did not go. 
 
 It seems on the whole a reasonable conclusion 
 that the Notes on the Mind were, some of them 
 at least, written later than is generally supposed. 
 It is also easier and more natural to think that 
 Edwards had some knowledge of Berkeley's writ- 
 ings. The reading of the Notes gives the impres- 
 sion that he is stepping into a heritage of thought 
 rather than discovering principles for the first 
 time. He seems to be more concerned also with 
 the application of the new doctrine than with its 
 demonstration or exposition. But if we adopt this 
 opinion that Edwards was acquainted with Berke- 
 ley's thought, we have raised another and a grave 
 difficulty. Why is he silent on the name of Berke- 
 ley, making no mention of him anywhere in liis 
 
ABANDONMENT OF PHILOSOPHY. 19 
 
 works ? He paid an ample tribute to Locke, but 
 if lie bad read Berkeley lie must bave known tbat 
 tliere lay tbe greater indebtedness. He certainly 
 could not have remained io*norant tbroug-bout bis 
 life of tbe nature of Berkeley's teaching, and bow 
 closely bis youthful speculation bad followed him. 
 There is a difficulty and a mystery here upon 
 which little or no light is thrown by Edwards' 
 biogTapbers. Surmise, suspicion, tentative hypoth- 
 eses might be offered, but there is no space for 
 their discussion. The manuscripts of Edwards, if 
 carefully reedited, might give the desired informa- 
 tion. The soul of this marvellous boy went through 
 great changes and perturbations of thought of 
 which there is no published record.^ At some 
 moment he deliberately turned bis back upon phi- 
 losophy, when, if be bad chosen to pursue it, it 
 seems as if be could scarce have had his equal. 
 He not only turned away from it, but he accus- 
 tomed himself to speak of it in the underrating 
 manner of the popular preacher. Perhaps phi- 
 losophy had been to him as the scaffolding to the 
 
 ^ Frank as these early writings of Edwards may seem, they 
 contain intimations of a reserved and even secretive tempera- 
 ment. He has recourse now and then to shorthand, in which he 
 buried in oblivion his most intimate thought or feeling. He 
 charges himself not to allow it to appear as if he were familiar 
 with books or conversant with the learned world. He seems to 
 feel that he has a secret teaching which will create opposition 
 when revealed, and clash with the prejudices and fashion of the 
 age. On one occasion, after writing in shorthand, he concludes 
 with the remark, " Remember to act according to Proverbs xii. 
 23, — A prudent man concealeth knowledge.'' ' 
 
20 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 real structure, a thing to be removed from sight 
 when it had served its purpose. 
 
 It may have been a reason why Edwards aban- 
 doned his project of publishing a treatise on the 
 human mind that he felt it would be unwise, in a 
 practical and cautious age, to unsettle the minds 
 of men by remote speculations which only the few 
 could appreciate, which to the majority must seem 
 fantastic and absurd. In his Notes, after dwelling 
 upon the statement that the brain exists only in 
 idea, he confesses : " We have got so far beyond 
 those things for which language was chiefly con- 
 trived that, unless we use extreme caution, we can- 
 not speak, unless we speak unintelligibly, without 
 literally contradicting ourselves." But he also 
 comes to the satisfactory conclusion that, although 
 the external world is immaterial and the universe 
 exists no where but in the mind, " yet we may speak 
 in the old way, and as properly and as truly as ever. 
 . . . Although the place of bodies means only the 
 possibility of mutual communications, and space is 
 God, yet the language of Scripture is not improper 
 which speaks of God as in heaven and we upon the 
 earth, or of God's indwelling in the hearts of His 
 people." 
 
 It may have been also that Edwards perceived 
 deep incongruities and contradiction in the depth 
 of his soul, which he felt himeK unable to reconcile. 
 One ruling principle of his career as a practical 
 theologian was the Angus tinian idea of God as 
 absolute and arbitrary will. But this conception 
 
SPINOZA AND AUGUSTINE. 21 
 
 finds only a faint expression in The Notes on the 
 Mind, and indeed was not his conscious posses- 
 sion until he had experienced what is known as 
 conversion. Before that crisis in his life, he con- 
 ceives of God as Plato, or Spinoza, or Hegel had 
 done, — the idea of the good, the one substance, 
 the absolute thought unfolding itself or embodying 
 itseK in a visible and glorious order. And indeed 
 these remained the poles of Edwards' thought 
 throughout his life, — Spinozism on the one hand, 
 Augustinianism on the other. Like Augustine, he 
 abandoned philosophy for the absorbing devotion 
 to Divine and arbitrary will, which better suited his 
 practical career as a reformer, concerned mainly 
 with the well-being of the churches. But the 
 other element of his thought, though subordinated, 
 was not annihilated. It appears in all his writings, 
 — an element seemingly incongruous, and difficult 
 to reconcile with his other teaching. It reappeared 
 in his later years with something of the beauty 
 which had fascinated the vision of his youth. 
 
 II. 
 
 RESOLUTIONS, DIARY, CONVERSION. 
 
 The call of Edwards was not to metaphysical 
 studies or to natural science, great as was the pro- 
 ficiency he showed in each. It was in the sphere 
 of religion and the inner life of the spirit that his 
 distinctive quality was most clearly revealed. To 
 
22 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 the life of tlie spirit he was anointed from Ms 
 birth. Born and brought up in a typical Puritan 
 household where religion wa§ the very atmosphere 
 and the church the leading interest in life, he did 
 not react from the severity or narrowness of his 
 training. His conversion may be said to begin 
 with the dawn of consciousness, if it did not begin 
 before his birth. From a very early period he 
 showed susceptibility to religious impressions. He 
 was accustomed as a child to go by himself to se- 
 cret places in the woods for the purpose of prayer, 
 and was wont to be greatly affected. His father's 
 parish was the scene of occasional " attentions to 
 religion," as they were called ; and of these, while 
 yet a boy, he speaks as if they involved the only 
 realities of life. He was the subject of no sensuous 
 religious influences such as might appeal to a child- 
 ish imagination, — no dim religious light from 
 windows filled with glorious color, no long-drawn 
 aisles culminating in the mystery of the altar, no 
 rich involutions of musical harmony, no accompani- 
 ment of the rolling organ, no inspiration from an 
 imposing architecture. For some reason the plain 
 meetino-house at East Windsor was unfinished in 
 Edwards' boyhood. Not even seats were provided 
 for the worshippers, who were driven to accommo- 
 date themselves on sills and sleepers. And yet 
 never was a child imbibing deeper reverence for 
 spiritual things. His soul revelled in the mystery 
 of the Divine existence ; and he grew into the 
 knowledge of the majesty and the glory of God. 
 
SPIRITUAL CONFLICTS. 23 
 
 No exact date can be fixed for his conversion ; 
 even tlie time wlien lie " joined the church " is un- 
 known. But we know the years in which he was 
 passing through the spiritual struggles out of 
 which he was to emerge a man of God, recognizing 
 the call of God and answering it with the entire 
 devotion of his will. This period of conflict, of 
 aspiration, of resolution, and of consecration fol- 
 lows upon his graduation from college in 1719 at 
 the age of sixteen. For two years he remained at 
 New Haven, in order, as was then the custom, to 
 carry on his theological studies. He was then 
 called to New York to take charge of a Presbyte- 
 rian church newly organized, where he remained 
 for eight months, preaching to the acceptance of 
 the congregation and leaving them with reluctance. 
 Returning to his father's house, he was soon after 
 made a tutor in Yale College, an office which he 
 held for two years (1724-1726), helping to over- 
 come the shock to the coUege and the community 
 caused by the secession of its rector Mr. Cutler, 
 Mr. Johnson one of its tutors, and others to the 
 Episcopal Church. He was, says Dr. Stiles, one of 
 the pillar tutors^ and the glory of the college at 
 this critical period. His tutorial renown was great 
 and excellent. He filled and sustained his office 
 with great ability, dignity, and honor. " For the 
 honor of literature these thinos ou^ht not to be 
 forgotten." 
 
 From 1720 to 1726, from the age of seventeen 
 to the age of twenty-three, runs the period during 
 
24 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 which he wrote his Resohitions and the greater 
 j)art of liis religious Diary. These are no ordi- 
 nary resohitions, and this is no common diary. It 
 is, when we read them, as if we stood behind the 
 veil witnessing the evolution of a great soul. Like 
 Luther, he appears as in search for some high end, 
 of whose nature he is not clearly conscious. But 
 he will be content with nothing but the highest re- 
 sult which it is open to man to achieve, or for God 
 of his^race to imj^art. Referring to this period of 
 his life some twenty years later, he remarks, "I 
 made seeking my salvation the main business of 
 my life." What was it exactly for which he was 
 in search ? In some respects his experience is like 
 that of all spiritual minds. And yet there are fine 
 shades of distinction in these records of religious 
 conflict which are worth discriminating. Luther 
 labored for the assurance of divine forgiveness ; 
 Edwards, for the vision of the divine glory, for the 
 assurance of his oneness in spirit with the ineffable 
 holiness and majesty of God. We may trace in 
 his experience the unmistakable marks of the mys- 
 tic in every age, — union with God, absorption as 
 it were into the inmost essence of the divine. He 
 •finds expression in the intense language of the 
 Psalmist : " My soul hreaketh for the longing it 
 hath ; my soul waiteth for the Lord^ more than 
 they vaho watch for the morning.'''' 
 
 The seeking and the waiting were at last re- 
 warded. He was reading one day the wprds of 
 Scripture, " Now unto the King eternal, immortal, 
 
MYSTIC RAPTURES. 25 
 
 invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory 
 forever, Amen," when there came to him for the 
 first time a sort of inward, sweet delight in God 
 and divine things. A sense of the divine glory 
 was, as it were, diffused through him. He thought 
 how happy he should be if he might be rapt up to 
 God in heaven, and be, as it were, swallowed up in 
 him forever. He began to have an inward, sweet 
 sense of Christ and the work of redemption. The 
 Book of Canticles attracted him as a fit expression 
 for his mood. It seemed to him as if he were in 
 a kind of vision, alone in the mountains or some 
 solitary wilderness, conversing sweetly with Christ 
 and wrapt and swallowed up in God. He told liis 
 father the things he was experiencing, and was af- 
 fected by the discourse they had together. Walk- 
 ing once in at solitary place in his father's pasture, 
 there came to him again a sweet sense of the con- 
 junction of the majesty and the grace of God. 
 
 " After this my sense of divine things gradually in- 
 creased and became more and more lively, and had more 
 of that inward sweetness. The appearance of every- 
 thing altered : there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, 
 sweet cast or appearance of divine glory in almost every- 
 thing. God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and 
 love, seemed to appear in everything, — in the sun, moon, 
 and stars ; in clouds and blue sky ; in the grass, flowers, 
 trees ; in the water and all nature, which used greatly 
 to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon 
 for continuance, and in the day spent much time in^view- 
 ing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God 
 
 A 
 
26 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 in these things ; in the mean time singing forth, with a 
 low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Re- 
 deemer. . . . Before, I used to be uncommonly terrified 
 with thunder, and to be struck with terror when I saw a 
 thunder-storm arising ; but now, on the contrary, it re- 
 joiced me. I felt God, so to speak, at the first appear- 
 ance of a thunder-storm ; and used to take the oppor- 
 tunity, at such times, to fix myself in order to view the 
 clouds and see the lightnings play, and hear the majes- 
 tic and awful voice of God's thunder, which oftentimes 
 was exceedingly entertaining, leading me to sweet con- 
 templations of my great and glorious God. ... I some- 
 times said to myself I do certainly know that I love 
 holiness ; it appeared to me that there was nothing in it 
 but what was ravishingly lovely, the highest beauty and 
 amiableness, — a divine beauty, far purer than anything 
 upon earth. . . . The soul of a true Christian appeared 
 like a little white flower as we see in the opening of the 
 year ; low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom 
 to receive the pleasant beams of the sun's glory ; rejoic- 
 ing as it were in a calm rapture, diffusing around a 
 sweet fragrancy ; standing peacefully and lovingly in the 
 midst of other flowers round about, all in like manner 
 opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun." 
 
 This spiritual and. mystic rapture does not end 
 in words or in emotion. The first thing which he 
 does is to write out Resolutions for the government 
 of his conduct. He proceeds at once to sketch the 
 conception of a perfect character. The moral ideal 
 springs up spontaneously within him. The Reso- 
 lutions express the essence of a virginal soul, — the 
 desire for the divine image in the soul of man. 
 
THE MORAL IDEAL. 27 
 
 The germ of Edwards* theology is also apparent 
 here, which, conceiving the will as predominant in 
 God, conceives man also as an answering will, aim- 
 ing to renounce itseK in God ; but it is a coming 
 to the knowledge of God which evokes the process, 
 which forces him to ask what are the actions, what 
 the character, which alone correspond with the 
 privilege of one who has been admitted into the 
 inner shrine of the divine glory. 
 
 " On January 12, 1723, I made a solemn dedication 
 of myself to God and wrote it down ; giving up myself 
 and all that I had to God, to be for the future in no 
 respect my own ; to act as one that had no right to him- 
 self in any respect ; and solemnly vowed to take God 
 for my whole portion and felicity, looking on nothing 
 else as any part oi my happiness, nor acting as if it were ; 
 and his law for the constant rule of my obedience, en- 
 gaging to fight with all my might against the world, the 
 flesh, and the devU, to the end of my life." 
 
 In accordance with this renunciation of self, 
 Edwards resolves, in the first place, always to do 
 whatever he thinks is most for the glory of God 
 and his own good, without consideration of the 
 time, whether now or never so many myriads of 
 ages hence ; no matter how great or how many 
 the difficulties he meets with, to do his duty and 
 what is most for the good of mankind in general. 
 He is never to lose a moment of time, to live while 
 he lives with all liis might. He will do nothing 
 out of revenge, nor suffer anger toward irrational 
 beings, nor speak evil of any one unless to accom- 
 
28 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 plish some real good. He must maintain the 
 strictest temj^erance in eating and drinking, be 
 faithful to every trust, do always what he can to- 
 ward making or preserving peace, and in narra- 
 tions never speak anything but pure and simple 
 verity. He is to c^iltivate also a temper which is 
 
 ^ good and sweet and benevolent to all, quiet and 
 peccable, contented and easy, compassionate and 
 
 . generous, humble and meek, submissive and oblig- 
 ing, charitable and even, patient, moderate, forgiv- 
 ing, and sincere. In order to a completer victory 
 over all evil in himself, he will take it for granted 
 that no one is so evil as himself ; he will identify 
 himself with all other men, and act as if their evil 
 was his own, as if he had committed the same sins 
 and had the same infirmities, so that the knowledge 
 of their failings will promote in him nothing but 
 a sense of shame. It shall be a rule with him 
 never to do anything which he should condemn as 
 wrong in others. Whenever he does any conspic- 
 uously evil action, he determines to trace it back 
 to its source, in order to more successfully over- 
 coming it. Mingled with these res()lutions are 
 others of a more specific and local to^e. He re- 
 solves never to utter anything that is sportive or a 
 matter of laughter on the Lord's day : when he 
 thinks of any theorem in divinity to be solved, im- 
 mediately to do what he can toward solving it ; to 
 study the Scriptures constantly and frequently ; not 
 to allow the least sign of fretting or uneasiness at 
 his father or mother, or to any one of the family. 
 
RESOLUTIONS. 29 
 
 He is constantly to examine himself as to his be- 
 havior at the end of every day, every week, every 
 month, every year. All such things as weaken 
 his sense of assurance of the divine favor he casts 
 away. Moments when his sense of assurance is 
 at its best, he will s^e as opportunities for fresh 
 consecration of himself. 
 
 As we linger over these Resolutions, which por- 
 tray the ideal of hupaan character and excelleifce 
 as Edwards conceived it in his youth, we find him 
 still influenced by the commoner notions of per- 
 sonal advantage and safety to be achieved here- 
 after. The sanctions of his deeds he looks for in 
 another world ; the test to which he subjects them 
 is the hour and moment of death, when things are 
 most clearly seen - in their true relations. He will 
 act in this world as he thinks he shall judge would 
 have been best and most prudent when he comes 
 into the future world ; he will act in every respect 
 as he thinks he should wish he had done if he 
 should at last be damned. There is, too, the daring 
 ambition of a youth conscious of great capacity, 
 and thinking it not unfit that his ambition should 
 spur him on in the race for spiritual excellence 
 and reward. He has frequently heard persons in 
 old age say how they would live if they were to 
 live their lives over again. He resolves that he will 
 live just as he can think he would wish he had 
 done, supposing he were to live to old age. Nay, 
 even " on the sup2:)osition that there never was to he 
 hut one individual in the worlds at any one time. 
 
30 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 in all resjoects of a right stamjj^ having Chris^ 
 tianity always shining in its true lustre., a?id aj)- 
 pearing excellent and lovely from whatever i^art 
 and under whatever character viewed ; resolved 
 to act just as I would do if I strove with all my 
 might to he that one who should live in my time^ 
 The Diary of Edwards, which covers the years 
 when he was forming his resolutions, serves as a 
 commentary on the difficulties he encountered in 
 keeping his will true to the highest standard. 
 There is the usual record of alternations between 
 failures and successes, seasons of depression and 
 of exaltation. The depressions and the failures are 
 attributed to the withdrawal of the Sj)irit of God, 
 as if liis relation to the soul were not an organic 
 one, but fitful and capricious. The Diary has cer- 
 tain personal touches, apart from their religious 
 interest, which throw light on his character. His 
 subtlety in making distinctions is apparent in what 
 he says about revenge. On one occasion he ac- 
 cused himself of having felt a certain satisfaction 
 in what he had done, because it might lead some 
 persons to repent of their conduct. If he were 
 satisfied with their repentance because they had a 
 seft^e of their error, it would be right. But to 
 have a satisfaction in their repentance because of 
 the evil that is brought upon them would be re- 
 venge. He observes that "old men seldom have 
 any advantage of new discoveries, because they are 
 beside the way of thinking to which they have been 
 so long used." Hence he resolves that he will not 
 
DEFERENCE TO TRADITION. 31 
 
 be affected by limitations of the lower nature, but 
 " if ever lie lives to years he will be impartial to 
 hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries and 
 receive them if rational, how long soever he may 
 have been used to another way of thinking." None 
 the less, in an entry for February 21, 1725, he 
 seems to reflect upon the course of the clergy in 
 C«^necticut, whose secession to Episcopacy had 
 made such a stir in the colony, as if their action 
 had not been well considered, or as if it showed a 
 lack of deference for authority and tradition. " If 
 ever I am inclined to turn to the opinion of any 
 other sect, resolved, beside the most deliberate con- 
 sideration, earnest prayer, etc., privately to desire 
 all the help that can be afforded me from some 
 of the most judicious men in the country, together 
 with the prayers of wise and holy men, however 
 strongly persuaded I may seem to be that I am 
 in the right." 
 
 The ascetic tendency which entered so largely into 
 the composition of the New England character finds 
 full expression in the early experience of Edwards,. 
 He esteems it as " an advantage that the duties of 
 rehgion are difficult, and that many difficulties are 
 sometimes to be gone through in the way of duty.*" 
 At the age of twenty, he records his intention to live 
 in continual mortification without ceasing, and even 
 to weary himself thereby, and never to expect or 
 desire any worldly ease or pleasure. He charges 
 himself not to be uneasy about his state or condi- 
 tion, not to be envious or jealous when he sees that 
 
32 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 others are prosperous and honored and the world 
 is smooth to them ; rather to rejoice in all such 
 things for others ; while for himseK, he is not to 
 expect or desire these things, but to depend on af- 
 fliction, and betake himself entirely to another sort 
 of happiness. In his stoical desire for spiritual 
 independence and completeness, he would strip 
 himself of those things whose tenure is uncertain, 
 so as not to be afflicted with fear of losing them, 
 nor pleased and excited with the expectation of 
 gaining them. The question arises, whether any 
 delight or satisfaction should be allowed which 
 ministers to any other than a religious end. At 
 first he gives a tentative answer in the affirmative, 
 for the reason that otherwise we should never re- 
 joice at the sight of friends, or have any pleasure 
 in our food, — a pleasure which contributes to the 
 animal spirits and a good digestion. But the final 
 answer is, never to allow any joy or sorrow but 
 what helps religion. He complains of himself 
 that he has become accustomed after working a 
 great while to look forward to rest as if it were 
 his due, and to expect to be released from labor 
 after a certain time even if not really tired or 
 weary. But if he did not expect ease, he should 
 go on with the same vigor at his business without 
 vacation times to rest. ^ The suggestion comes to 
 him that too vigorous application to religion may 
 be prejudicial to health ; but he will know this by 
 his own experience before he abandons his aim. 
 He believes that great mortifications and acts of 
 
ASCETIC TENDENCY. 33 
 
 self-denial bring him the greatest comfort. He 
 applies his principle rigidly to his habits of eating. 
 By sparingness of diet he shall gain time, and be 
 able to think more clearly. These hints from his 
 Diary point to the untiring worker of later years 
 who did not know how to take rest, finding relief 
 only in continuous labor. 
 
 Edwards did not suffer at this time from any 
 disquieting seK-consciousness as to the power of 
 the human will to accomplish its highest resolves. 
 There are allusions to the divine grace through 
 which all human excellence is achieved, but these 
 allusions have a commonplace reminder, as if they 
 were said because they ought to be said. There 
 is the recognition of a need of absolute dependence 
 upon divine power, but he complains that he does 
 not yet realize its need as he ought. " I find a 
 want of dependence on God, to look to Him for 
 success, and to have my eyes unto Him for His 
 gracious disposal of the matter ; for want of a 
 sense of God's particular influence in ordering and 
 directing all affairs, of whatever nature, however 
 naturally or fortuitously they may seem to suc- 
 ceed." He had at one time felt repugnance to the 
 princi^ile of man's inability to accomplish any good 
 work, for he records in his journal, under the date 
 of March 6, 1722, that he has been regarding " the 
 doctrines of election, free grace, our inability to do 
 anything without the grace of God, and that holi- 
 ness is entirely throughout the work of the Spirit 
 of God, with greater pleasure than ever before." 
 
34 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 Neither in the Resohitions nor in the Journal 
 do we meet the deep, all-pervading sense of sin 
 which we should naturally expect from one who 
 afterwards made it so prominent in his theology. 
 There are traces of the sense of sin and guilt in 
 these records of early experience, but it is not the 
 l^rominent feature : it is subordinate to the aspira- 
 tion after an ideal, or to the methods by which the 
 aspiration maybe achieved. Forgiveness is not the 
 word which becomes a key to unlock the secret of 
 
 / his spiritual history. There are some, like Luther, 
 who begin their religious experience with the bur- 
 den of a sinfid conscience, — a burden which when 
 it has disapj^eared, as at the foot of the cross, is 
 gone never to return. And there are others, wor- 
 shippers of an ideal, who attach themselves with- 
 out reserve to God, thirsting for the righteous- 
 
 \ ness which union with the divine demands. With 
 these, the sense of sin may come later, growing out 
 of a deeper love, out of the consciousness of failure 
 to fulfil the standard of a perfect law. That such 
 was Edwards' experience is intimated in a beauti- 
 ful passage from his Treatise on the Religious 
 Affections : — 
 
 " A true saint is Hke a little child in this respect : he 
 never had any godly sorrow before he was born again, 
 but since has it often in exercise ; as a little child before 
 it is born, and while it remains in darkness, never cries ; 
 but as soon as it sees the light of day it begins to cry, 
 and thenceforward is often crying. Although Christ 
 hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows so that 
 
THE SENSE OF SIN. 35 
 
 we are freed from the sorrow of punishment, and may 
 now sweetly feed ujDon the comforts Christ hath pur- 
 chased for us, yet that hinders not but that our feeding 
 on these comforts should be attended with the sorrow of 
 repentance, as of old the children of Israel were com- 
 manded evermore to feed upon the paschal lamb Avith 
 bitter herbs. True saints are spoken of in Scripture, 
 not only as those who have mourned for sin, but as those 
 who do mourn, whose manner it is still to mourn : 
 ' Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be com- 
 forted.' " 
 
 There is another point in which the Diary is 
 prophetic of work to be accomplished in the fu- 
 ture. Several of the entries relate to the process 
 which is called conversion. At this time neither 
 the name, nor the process for which it stood, were 
 as familiar as they have since become. In these 
 allusions Edwards appears uncertain about his 
 spiritual condition, because he is not clear as to 
 what conversion requires. He determines that he 
 will be constantly looking within, to the end that 
 he may not be deceived as to whether he has a 
 genuine interest in Christ. He makes it a point 
 for future investigation to look most nicely and 
 diligently into the opinions of our old divines con- 
 cerning co7iversion. " The chief thing that now 
 makes me in any measure question my good estate 
 is my not having experienced conversion in those 
 particular steps wherein the people of New Eng- 
 land, and anciently the dissenters of old England, 
 used to experience it. Wherefore have resolved 
 
36 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 never to leave off searcliing till I have satisfyingly 
 found out the very bottom and foundation, the real 
 reason why they used to be converted in those 
 steps." All this is interesting in view of the fact 
 that Edwards did more than any writer who pre- 
 ceded or followed him in determining the nature 
 and the mode of conversion. 
 
 After years of concern about his inward state, 
 yet so late as 1725 Edwards was still uncertain as 
 to whether he had been converted. Nor in later 
 life, as he reviewed these years of struggle and 
 anxiety, was he able to describe with clearness the 
 process through which he had passed. His con- 
 version must be left, where he has left it, in mys- 
 tery and obscurity. No mind, however subtle or 
 introvertive, can trace the genesis of spiritual life, 
 or analyze the steps by which the soul enters into 
 union with God. But in Edwards' case, as in that 
 of so many others, the process is confused and 
 complicated by extraneous elements. An intel- 
 lectual transition waited upon the sj^iritual process 
 of which he gives no hint in his journal. He was 
 tending away from the dreams of his youth, which 
 reveal such extraordinary affiliations with Plato, 
 with the Platonist fathers of the early church, or 
 even with Spinoza, toward the Augustinian con- 
 ception of God as unconditioned and arbitrary 
 will. The change resulted in putting him in sjan- 
 pathy with the tenets of Calvinistic theology. He 
 shows no appreciation of the significance of the 
 transition, but he records the fact and its momen- 
 
CONVERSION. 37 
 
 tons consequences. " From my cliildlioocl up, my 
 mind had been full of objections against the doc- 
 trine of God's sovereignty, in choosing whom He 
 would to eternal life, and rejecting whom He 
 pleased, leaving them eternally to perish and be 
 everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear 
 like a horrible doctrine to me." But the moment 
 came to him when he rejected the natural, instinc- 
 tive working of the conscience as carrying no 
 sacred force. This inward repulsion might be only 
 the carnal mood of the natural unconverted man ; 
 nay, even it might be a presumption in favor of the 
 obnoxious tenet. Edwards no longer questioned 
 the truth of the doctrine because it was repel- 
 lent. What he aspired after was its reception 
 with a willing and rejoicing mind. And somehow, 
 he cannot tell exactly how, he finally attained this 
 result. \ 
 
 '* I remember the time very weU when I seemed to 
 be convinced and fully satisfied as to this sovereignty of 
 God, and his justice in thus eternally disposing of men 
 according to his sovereign pleasure ; but never could 
 give an account how or by what means I was thus con- 
 vinced, not in the least imagining at the time, nor a 
 long time after, that there was any extraordinary influ- 
 ence of God's spirit in it, but only that now I saw fur- 
 ther, and my mind apprehended the justice and reason- 
 ableness of it. However, my mind rested in it, and it 
 put an end to all these cavils and questionings. . . . 
 God's absolute sovereignty and justice with respect to 
 salvation is what my mind seems to rest assured of, as 
 
 T-^ 
 
38 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 much as of anything that I see with my eyes ; at least 
 it is so at times. But I have often, since that first con- 
 viction, had quite another kind of sense of God's sover- 
 eignty than I had then. I have often had not only a 
 conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine has 
 very often appeared exceedingly pleasant, bright, and 
 sweet. But my first conviction was not so." 
 
 So Edwards entered into the heritage of his fa- 
 thers and made the Puritan consciousness his own. 
 There are traces of an inward rebellion which was 
 suppressed. There is reason to believe that his 
 success was not so complete as he fancied in eradi- 
 cating his earlier thought. But the critical point 
 of the transition is not explained. It is buried out 
 of sight in silence and darkness. 
 
 III. 
 
 SETTLEMENT AT NORTHAMPTON. — MARRIAGE. — 
 DOMESTIC LIFE. 
 
 On the 15th of February, 1727, Edwards was 
 ordained at Northampton as the colleague of his 
 grandfather, the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, then in 
 his eighty-fourth year. The town of NorthamjDton, 
 a beautiful sj^ot on the banks of the Connecticut, 
 had been founded in 1654. The first minister 
 was Mr. Eleazar Mather, a brother of the cele- 
 brated Increase Mather. After his early death 
 came Mr. Stoddard, who held the pastorate from 
 1672 to 1729. He was one of the great men of 
 
CALL TO NORTUAMPTON. 89 
 
 early New England history. Edwards speaks of 
 him as " a very great man, of strong powers of 
 mind, of great grace, and a great authority, of a 
 masterly countenance, speech, and behavior." Mr. 
 Stoddard lived in the days when, as Hutchinson 
 remarks, " the elders continued to be consulted 
 in every affair of importance. The share they 
 held in temporal affairs added to the weight they 
 had acquired from their spiritual employments, 
 and they were in high esteem." But for Mr. 
 Stoddard there was felt somethins: more than the 
 usual respect and veneration. " The officers and 
 leaders of Northampton," says Edwards, "imi- 
 tated his manners, which were dogmatic, and 
 thought it an excellency to be like him." Many 
 of the people, he adds, esteemed all his sayings as 
 oracles, and looked upon him " almost as a sort of 
 deity." The Indians of the neighborhood, inter- 
 preting this admiration in their own way, spoke 
 of Mr. Stoddard as " the Englishman's God." 
 
 It was not an easy task even for Edwards to 
 follow such a pastor. Other circumstances in- 
 creased the difficulty of the situation. The village 
 of Northampton had grown rapidly in wealth and 
 importance. Many of its inhabitants were marked 
 by cultivation of mind, and refinement of man- 
 ner. They were also characterized by a certain 
 high-spiritedness which made them a turbulent 
 people, not easy to control. They rejoiced in their 
 reputation as a kno\ving people, and many of them 
 
40 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 having been promoted to places of public trust 
 there had been much to feed their pride. There 
 was also an unfortunate division among them: 
 the court party, as it might be called, had wealth, 
 land, and authority ; while the country party, not 
 so well endowed, was jealous of them, afraid of 
 their having too much power in town and church. 
 All this was not auspicious for the harmony of 
 Edwards' pastorate. But we do not hear of these 
 sinister aspects of the situation in the early years 
 of his ministry. They were the dark possibilities 
 of the future. On the other hand, from every 
 point of view the settlement at Northampton 
 seemed most fitting and desirable. The father and 
 mother of the young minister had many friends in 
 the parish, for whose sake he was welcomed. Mr. 
 Stoddard must have felt a peculiar satisfaction in 
 the new relationship, as if his own mantle would 
 descend to his successor after his departure. The 
 church at Northampton, although on the distant 
 borders of the rising civilization, was a large and 
 important one, being estimated as the strongest 
 church in wealth and numbers outside of Boston. 
 It was a suitable sphere for one who had already 
 achieved some reputation as a scholar and preacher. 
 Edwards contributed to the lustre of the town, 
 while the congregation felt a justifiable pride in 
 his powers. 
 
 He was at this time twenty-four years of age. 
 In personal appearance he was tall, being upwards 
 of six feet in height, with a slender form, and of 
 
PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 41 
 
 great seriousness and gravity of manner. His 
 face was of a feminine cast, implying at once a 
 capacity for both sweetness and severity, — the 
 Johannine type of countenance, we should say, 
 just as his spirit is that of St. Jolin, rather than 
 that of Peter or of Paid. It is a face which be- 
 speaks a delicate and nervous organization. The 
 life which he laid out for liimseK, according to the 
 ministerial standards of the day, was the life of a 
 student, who would not allow his time to be frit- 
 tered away in useless employments. He visited 
 the people in cases only of necessity. Thirteen 
 hours of study daily is said to have been his rule. 
 His custom at first was to write two sermons every 
 week, one of which was delivered on Sunday, the 
 other at the weekly evening lecture. It is prob- 
 able that he kept up the habit of writing his ser- 
 mons in the early years of his ministry. His un- 
 pubhshed manuscripts show that he must have 
 abandoned this practice, however, in later years, 
 substituting plans or outlines carefully prepared. 
 He was not, therefore, a mere reader of sermons, 
 according to the general impression. On special 
 occasions, his sermons were written in full. The 
 tradition in regard to the sermon at Enfield makes 
 it to have been read very closely from the manu- 
 script. His manner in the pulpit is described as 
 quiet exceedingly, wdth little or no gesture ; a voice 
 not loud, but distinct and penetrating. He could 
 not have been called at any time a popular 
 preacher in the ordinary sense ; but he must have 
 
42 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 been very interesting to his congregation, — an in- 
 terest which can still be felt in whatever he wrote. 
 It is sometimes said of sermons like those of 
 Whitefield, which now appear so dull as to be al- 
 most unreadable, that they depended for their 
 power on the living speaker. Edwards' sermons 
 also must have gained from his remarkable pres- 
 ence and personality. But, unlike most sermons, 
 the fire of life and reality still burns in them. 
 
 From the first, Edwards was determined to do 
 something more than the prescribed routine work 
 of the pulpit. He sought, above all, a wider and 
 more intimate knowledge of the Bible. To this 
 end he kept a manuscript for notes on Scripture, 
 which gradually became of large dimensions. He 
 also followed out his resolution to be always solv- 
 ing difficult problems in divinity, his efforts in this 
 line also going into manuscripts and notes. In 
 his only diversion, his solitary rides and walks, 
 he carried his thoughts with him, generally also 
 pen and ink, having fixed beforehand the subject 
 of his meditations. Returning from his rides he 
 would bring with him various artificial remem- 
 brancers, such as small pieces of paper pinned to 
 his coat, and on going to his study write out the 
 reflections associated with them. His life was one 
 of protracted, intense application, living by rule 
 in regard to food, curtailing sleep, with little real 
 recreation, and governed by the purpose, as we 
 have already seen, of never indidgmg any weak 
 desire for rest. He could not have carried a 
 
METHODS OF WORK. 43 
 
 large library with him to Northampton. He read 
 what he could get, borrowing some books, buying 
 others, and knowing clearly just what books were 
 necessary, if he could only get them. The con- 
 nection of Northampton mth Boston was a close 
 one. Edwards managed to find out in some way 
 what was g:oino- on in the world. He soon learned 
 that the times were changing, even though the 
 change went on more slowly in the remote and 
 isolated province of the Massachusetts Bay. 
 
 We are studying the life of a Protestant theolo- 
 gian, the peer of his predecessors in any age of the 
 church in intellectual power and acumen, as well 
 as in a vast expanding influence. Let us turn 
 then, as by a natural transition, to his marriage 
 and his domestic life. If we were studying the 
 lives of St. Augustine, or St. Jerome, or St. Ber- 
 nard of Clairvaux, or St. Thomas of Aquin, we 
 should think of them in their monastic cells de- 
 nouncing the ties of human love and of the fam- 
 ily relation, as unfit or even degrading for those 
 who belong to the sacred order of the clergy. Of 
 Edwards we must think as having wife and chil- 
 dren, finding repose and consolation, and not only 
 so, but inspiration/^nd strength, in the bosom of 
 his family. He, too, is a genuine ascetic at heart ; 
 but his asceticism, however it may have erred, is 
 of a higher type than the ancient or mediaeval 
 forms. It is of the heroic cast which orders life 
 with reference to the highest end. If he abstains 
 from amusements, from excess of food, from many 
 
44 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 hours spent in sleep, it is not because he believes 
 such abstinence scores so much to his merit, but 
 because he has a work to do, and like his Master 
 is sorely straitened until it be accomplished. 
 
 Hardly had Edwards become settled in his par- 
 ish at Northampton when he bethought himself of 
 a wife. Nor was there apparently any doubt in 
 his mind as to where he should turn to find the 
 heart which beat in sympathy with his own. 
 While living in New Haven he had first heard of 
 Sarah Pierrepont, then a young girl of thirteen 
 years. Her ancestry was a distinguished one in 
 colonial annals, as also in England, whence her 
 paternal grandfather had emigrated to Roxbury, in 
 Massachusetts. She was descended through her 
 mother from the Rev. Thomas Hooker, called the 
 father of the Connecticut churches, generally 
 designated as the great Mr. Hooker, of whom it 
 had been said that, if any man in his age came in 
 the spirit of John the Baptist, Hooker was the 
 man. Her father also was an eminent divine, con- 
 nected with Yale College in various capacities of 
 founder, trustee, and for a time professor of moral 
 philosophy. Some connection with that produc- 
 tion known as the Sayhrook Platform is also 
 ascribed to him. Sarah Pierrepont is spoken of 
 as possessing a rare and lustrous beauty both of 
 form and features. Her ]3ortrait, taken by an 
 English painter, presents, says Dr. Dwight, " a 
 form and features not often rivalled, with a pecu- 
 liar loveliness of expression, the combined result 
 
 \ 
 
SARAH PIERREPONT. 45 
 
 of goodness and intelligence." Her beauty and 
 attractiveness are alluded to by Dr. Hopkins, of 
 Newport, who speaks of her, after she had passed 
 the age of youth, as more than ordinarily beauti- 
 ful. But her beauty, which throws a charm and 
 softness over the severity of ancient Puritanism, 
 was not all that recoromended her in Edwards' eyes. 
 She j)roved to be a woman of strong character, en- 
 dowed with a natural religious enthusiasm, with a 
 decidedly mystic bent to the piety that belonged 
 to her from childhood. Her strongest attraction 
 in the eyes of her future husband, when he first 
 heard of her, was the natural ease with which she 
 achieved and maintained so intimate a relationship 
 with Deity. In this connection belongs the mem- 
 orable passage written by Edwards at the age of 
 twenty, while Sarah Pierrepont was thirteen, — a 
 passage which Dr. Chalmers is said to have ad- 
 mired for its eloquence : — 
 
 "They say there is a young lady in New Haven 
 who is beloved of that great Being who made and rules 
 the world, and that there are certain seasons in which 
 this great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes 
 to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, 
 and that she hardly cares for anything except to medi- 
 tate on Him ; that she expects after a while to be received 
 up where He is, to be raised up out of the world and 
 caught up into heaven ; being assured that He loves her 
 too well to let her remain at a distance from Him al- 
 ways. There she is to dwell with Him, and to be rav- 
 ished with His love and delight forever. Therefore, if 
 
46 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 you present all the world before her, with the richest of 
 its treasures, she disregards and cares not for it, and is 
 unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange 
 sweetness in her mind, and singular purity in her affec- 
 tions ; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct ; 
 and you could not persuade her to do anything wrong 
 or sinful, if you would give her all the w^orld, lest she 
 should offend this great Being. She is of a wonderful 
 calmness, and universal benevolence of mind ; especially 
 after this great God has manifested Himself to her mind. 
 She will sometimes go about from place to place sing- 
 ing sweetly ; and seems to be always full of joy and 
 pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be 
 alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to 
 have some one invisible always conversing with her." 
 
 Such was Sarali Pierrepont, to whom Edwards 
 wrote from Northampton entreating her to a speedy 
 marriage. His tone is as urgent as the heart of a 
 maiden could desire. " Patience," he writes to her, 
 " is commonly esteemed a virtue, but in this case 
 I may almost regard it as a vice." ^ The marriage 
 took place in 1727, only a few months after his 
 ordination, the bride having attained the age of 
 seventeen. Before turning to Edwards as the 
 laborious pastor, involved in a long and fierce con- 
 troversy, carrying the burden on his shoulders, as 
 it were, of all the New England churches, one may 
 be pardoned for lingering a moment on this scene 
 at the opening of his career, when the young min- 
 ister and his wife took up their residence in the 
 
 1 Appleton's Amer. Encyc, 1st ed., art. Edwards. 
 
THE MINISTER'S WIFE. 47 
 
 beautiful village of Northampton. As a minister's 
 wife Mrs. Edwards fulfilled the somewhat exigent 
 ideal which the ways of a Puritan minister de- 
 manded. She became the administrator of the 
 household affairs, saving her husband from all un- 
 necessary knowledge and annoyance. She studied 
 economy as a religious duty, bearing in mind the 
 words of Christ, that nothing he lost. " She paid," 
 says Dr. Hopkins, "a becoming deference to her 
 husband ; she spared no pains in conforming to 
 his inclinations, and rendering everything in the 
 family agreeable and pleasant, accounting it her 
 greatest glory, and that wherein she could best 
 serve God and her generation, to be the means in 
 this way of promoting his usefulness and happi- 
 ness. And no person of discernment could be 
 conversant in the family without observing and 
 admiring the perfect harmony, the mutual love 
 and esteem, that subsisted between them." ^ She 
 had been " educated in the midst of polished life, 
 familiar from childhood with the rides of decorum 
 and good breeding, affable and easy in her man- 
 ners, and governed by the f eehngs of liberality and 
 benevolence." ^ As her husband's reputation grew 
 throughout the colony, her name became every- 
 where associated with his, but also as of a person 
 to be knowai and revered on her own account. It 
 was said of her by a somewhat witty divine, that it 
 was understood she had learned a shorter way to 
 
 ^ Hopkins' Life of Edwards, quoted in Dwiglit, p. 123. * 
 2 Dwight, p. 130. 
 
48 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 heaven tlian her husband. There was nothing 
 morbid or sad about her reUgion ; she had no de- 
 pressing experiences ; her piety, Hke her character, 
 was a joyous one, bringing with it light and glad- 
 ness. She made the home at Northampton a cen- 
 tre of genial and attractive hospitality, till it be- 
 came ahnost like a sanctuary to which multitudes 
 resorted, as in the course of years Edwards came 
 to be looked up to as a spiritual teacher and guide. 
 The famous Whitefield, who spent several days at 
 Northampton, has left his impressions of his visit 
 in his diary, — a record, it is needless to say, which 
 also throws light on his own character : — 
 
 " On the Sabbath felt wonderful satisfaction in being 
 at the house of Mr. Edwards. He is a son himself and 
 hath also a daughter of Abraham for his wife. A 
 sweeter couple I have not seen. Their children were 
 dressed, not in silks and satins, but plain, as becomes the 
 children of those who in all things ought to be examples 
 of Christian simplicity. She is a woman adorned with 
 a meek and quiet spirit, and talked so feelingly and so 
 solidly of the things of God, and seemed to be such an 
 helpmeet to her, husband, that she caused me to renew 
 those prayers which for some months I have put up to 
 God, that He would send me a daughter of Abraham to 
 be my wife. I find upon many accounts it is my duty 
 to marry. Lord, I desire to have no choice of my own. 
 Thou knowest my circumstances." ^ 
 
 1 Tracy, The Great Awakening, p. 99. "He had not yet 
 learned, if lie ever did," adds Mr. Tracy, "that God is not 
 pleased to make ' sweet couples ' out of persons who have no 
 choice of their own.' ' 
 
FAMILY LIFE. 49 
 
 As in most New England families of this period, 
 the children were numerous, and Mrs. Edwards, in 
 addition to her other duties, became responsible 
 for their training and discipline. In this respect 
 also she was admirable, seldom punishing, and in 
 speaking using gentle and pleasant words. She 
 addressed herself to the reason of the children, 
 was in the habit of speaking but once, and was 
 cheerfully obeyed. It was the children's manner 
 to rise when their parents entered the room and 
 remain standing until they were seated. Quarrel- 
 ling and contention were unknown among them. 
 She prayed regularly with them, bearing them also 
 on her heart before God, and that even before they 
 were born. She aimed to bring each young will 
 into submission to the will of its parents, in order 
 that it might afterwards become submissive to the 
 will of God. She had also relations to sustain to 
 the parish. Here, too, her influence was great, and 
 the ideal of character which she aimed to embody 
 in herself a high one. She not only made no 
 trouble by indiscreet remarks, but set herseK as 
 an example in the regidation of the tongue. Such 
 a woman was sure also to exert an attractive spell 
 over her husband. What her influence was, and 
 how largely it controlled his attitude, will be seen 
 hereafter. 
 
 For two years after Edwards became his col- 
 league, Mr. Stoddard continued to officiate half 
 the day on Sundays. On February 11, 1729, he 
 departed from his earthly labors. A peculiar in- 
 
60 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 terest attaches to him in consequence of his teach- 
 ing in regard to the Lord's Supper. He thought 
 the rite was far too greatly neglected in the Puritan 
 churches. In advocating its importance he spoke 
 of it as possessing a converting power. His views 
 of the church approximated that conception of it, 
 as an organic institution, which is found in Presby- 
 terianism rather than in Congregationalism, which 
 constitutes also a bond of kinship between the older 
 Puritanism and the Anglican church, against which 
 for other reasons it had revolted. Mr. Stoddard 
 can be easily conceived in some other role than 
 that of a Puritan minister. He held, it is true, 
 the ordinary Calvinistic theology, but he held it 
 with a difference which was his ovm. He was tlie 
 author of several books, in which his soul shines 
 still as that of a kindly, humane, and honest man, 
 to whom life and its issues are very real, whose 
 wisdom is drawn from experience and not from 
 speculative discussion in the schools. He made 
 prominent a doctrine which was afterwards dis- 
 owned as mystical or irrational, — the imputation 
 of Christ's righteousness as the ground of the sin- 
 ner's hope and confidence. 
 
 It was fortunate for Edwards that he should 
 have been associated in his early ministry with 
 such a man. Though he finally rejected Mr. Stod- 
 dard's idea of the Lord's Supper as a converting 
 ordinance, as well as his conception of the church, 
 yet the influence of the elder pastor and his writ- 
 ings remained, a leaven of practical wisdom and 
 
RELIGIOUS PERPLEXITIES. 51 
 
 of certain theological tendencies, which still dis- 
 tinguish Edwards from many of his followers. Be- 
 fore the death of Mr. Stoddard, there occurred at 
 Northampton a season of unusual devotion to reli- 
 gion. Mr. Stoddard had become experienced in 
 dealing with persons " under concern " about their 
 salvation. A little work w^hich he had written, 
 called A Guide to Christ, etc., had been compiled 
 for the help of young ministers. In it we may 
 study the questions which the younger pastor was 
 propounding to himseK in his first years in the 
 ministry. They illustrate the dark and sombre 
 mood which marks the opening of the eighteenth 
 century in New England. Among the questions 
 proposed for solution are such as these: Whether 
 God works a preparation in the soul before it goes 
 to Christ in faith ; whether men should be encour- 
 aged in the use of means toward their conversion ; 
 in what conversion consists ; how God can be the 
 author of it and yet man prepare himseK for it ; 
 how decrees are compatible with human liberty; 
 in what lies the unpardonable sin ; whether a man 
 is ever justified in thinking that he has sinned 
 away the day of grace ; whether the threatened 
 punishments for sin are out of proportion to its 
 guilt ; whether God is under any obligation to 
 hear and answer the prayers of those who are un- 
 converted. With such sad, mysterious question- 
 ings as these, the mind of the New England people, 
 or a large portion of them, continued for genera- 
 tions to be agitated. 
 
62 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 IV. 
 
 EDWAKDS, AS A REFORMER. SERMONS ON DE- 
 PENDENCE AND SPIRITUAL LIGHT. — SPECIAL 
 AND COMMON GRACE. 
 
 The condition of tlie churches in New England 
 at the time when Edwards arose demands a few 
 words of explanation as an introduction to his 
 theology. It was a period of decline and of dete- 
 rioration, of many attempts at reform which only 
 ended in failure. The lamentations over the situ- 
 ation are heard from the time of the withdrawal 
 of the charter in 1684, or the closing years of the 
 reign of Charles II. They began as soon as it 
 was evident that the unique and beautiful experi- 
 ment of the Puritan fathers was over, when the 
 theocracy which had inspired such heroism as the 
 world had not seen before was hastening to its 
 downfall. Such an event was a catastrophe of the 
 direst kind in New England history. It seemed 
 to falsify great hopes and aspirations. It was as 
 if God had turned away from favoring an enter- 
 prise which had His glory in view as its sole ob- 
 ject and justificastion. Sore perplexity and con- 
 fusion befel the religious mmd in proportion to 
 the jrreatnes^f its venture ctf faith. In his His- 
 tory of Massachusetts, Hutchinson remarks that 
 the moral decline or det#U)ration has been exag- 
 gerated. We need not demur to this statement 
 from one who speaks with so much authority, with 
 
WITCHCRAFT DELUSION. 53 
 
 an almost contem2:)oraneous knowledge of tlie time. 
 But it is not, after all, a question of how great was 
 the decline, but as to how the situation was re- 
 garded by the religious leaders who represent the 
 feelinof of the hour. In their view it was a time 
 of such religious coldness and apathy as to call 
 for the judgment of Heaven, if in some way the 
 evil could not be averted by diligent reform. And 
 indeed it was believed that the Divine judgment 
 had already been visited upon the people for their 
 deflection from the ways of their fathers. The 
 ffi4iing that God was incensed gave rise to a pre- 
 vailing consciousness of a great wrong existent in 
 the community which must needs be discovered, 
 and atoned for by deep repentance. The sense of 
 sin, to use -the religious expression, became deeper 
 and more pervading. 
 
 There are some things, some acts, which speak 
 louder than woYds, louder than the decisions of 
 synods or the writings of private individuals, and 
 by these is more truly interpreted the real condi- 
 tion of the moment. The spread of the delusion 
 about witchcraft, with its attendant horrors, was 
 only possible at this dark hour, with its morbid 
 superstitious fears. So far as it was believed that 
 God, for some mysterious reason, had withdrawn 
 His favor, so far also was it possible to believe that 
 restraint was removed from the enmity of evil 
 spirits, that devils were allowed to ravage the com- 
 munity at their will. The witchcraft delusion 
 would have been impossible a generation earlier 
 
54 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 or later than its actual date in tlie closing years of 
 the seventeenth century. It was the culmination 
 of the fears and misgivings which had been long 
 gathering momentum for some such tangible out- 
 break. And possibly also, as affording vent for 
 the superstitious excitement, it may have been the 
 turning point of a new era. 
 
 Whatever may have been the extent of the 
 moral or religious decline which is so generally 
 bemoaned in the years that followed the with- 
 drawal of the charter from Massachusetts, no one 
 can read the records of the time without being 
 convinced that there was a decline, — that morals, 
 religious fervor, interest in public worship, were 
 not sustained at the same high pitch as in the best 
 days of the theocracy. The religious faith or 
 creed of Puritanism was also endangered by rival 
 or hostile creeds, which were now free to be intro- 
 duced and to grow as they could find supporters. 
 The days of repression and persecution were over. 
 There was surely enough material for reforming 
 synods if only they could get at the root of the 
 difficulty. The chief recommendation which all 
 concur in making is the revival and more vigorous 
 maintenance of the ancient discipline. But how 
 could that, which had declined from no apparent 
 reason but want of faith or interest, be revived 
 again without some great motive to faith which 
 did not yet appear ? The situation would indeed 
 have been a hopeless one, if it were not that the 
 complaints and lamentations were in themselves 
 
RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 65 
 
 the manifestation of a certain dissatisfaction and 
 unrest, symbols of the birth, as it were, of some 
 new ideal, heralds of a coming change. This 
 change or reformation, when its advent was ac- 
 complished, must bear some proportion to the 
 long and bitter pains and agonies which had pre- 
 ceded it. 
 
 In the confusion of thettime, the ends to be 
 achieved were not clearly seen. Now that they 
 have been long since accomplished, it is easy to 
 see the rationale of the process, and whither it was 
 tending. First, it was necessary to reaffirm the 
 principle of Puritanism in such an emphatic way 
 as to reach, if possible, the reason and the con- 
 science. In the second place, it was incumbent 
 to readjust the relations of state and church which 
 had become involved in so much confusion. The 
 latter of these ends was the more important prac- 
 tical issue, although it was the theological prin- 
 ciple which made the practical issue possible of 
 attainment. The dissatisfaction of the time pro- 
 ceeded in great pai-t from the condition of the 
 churches, deprived of the sympathy or support of 
 the state, and not having achieved the principle by 
 which the church could exist and thrive through 
 an independent life of its own. And further, the 
 churches in New England had mutilated their 
 peculiar constitution, diminishing its native vigor 
 in order to adjust it to the relations with the state. 
 The HaK-way Covenani, the concession of the 
 church in order to a more pliable connection with 
 
56 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 the state, was still in force after the state had been 
 practically divorced from the church, — a continual 
 source of weakness and depression. At this junc- 
 ture Edwards arose to do his peculiar work. If 
 it seem to any as if the story we are about to 
 relate were a petty or a local one merely, without 
 universal relations, it may be said that we stand 
 here at the beginning of a new cycle in human his- 
 tory, in which Edwards is the leader, — a cycle 
 whose scope and duration include the Church of 
 Scotland, and ultimately the Church of England, 
 as well as the church in America. Modern ec- 
 clesiastical history may be said to date from tlie 
 impetus given by Edwards, so far as he reversed 
 the teaching of Wy cliff e, on which the relations 
 of church and state had been based for four hun- 
 dred years. The religious world as we see it to- 
 day is still regulated by the principles which he 
 was the first to enunciate in their fulness and 
 vigor. To his theology we now turn, asking the 
 interest of the reader in perusing a chapter of 
 human thought, the like of which cannot be read 
 elsewhere in history. 
 
 It was in the year 1731 that Edwards had the 
 honor of being invited to appear as a preacher in 
 the "public lecture" in the provincial town of Bos- 
 ton. The occasion was a representative one to the 
 young minister from Northamj)ton ; we may take 
 it for granted that his sermon also had a repre- 
 sentative character, — that like an ancient prophet 
 he felt called to deliver his burden. The subject 
 
SERMON ON DEPENDENCE. 57 
 
 of Ills sermon was the absolute dependence of man 
 upon God, — its more exact heading, God glori- 
 fied in Man's Dependence.^ The sermon produced 
 a profound impression. Its publication was not 
 only demanded, but the ministers of Boston, with 
 others, felt called upon to bear their testimony to 
 Edwards' worth ; — they had " quickly found hiin 
 to be a workman that need not be ashamed, despite 
 his j^outh ; they thank the great Head of the church 
 who has been pleased to raise up such men for the 
 defence of evangelical truth ; they express the hope 
 that the college in the neighboring colony of Con- 
 necticut may be a fruitful mother of many such 
 sons ; and they congratulate the happy church at 
 Northampton on whom Providence has bestowed so 
 rich a gift." 
 
 This event was as significant in Edwards' life 
 and in the history of New England theology as 
 when Schleiermacher preached his discourse upon 
 the same subject, which marks the date of the 
 ecclesiastical reaction of the nineteenth century. 
 Of Edwards, too, it might .be said, as the great 
 German preacher had then remarked of Spinoza, 
 " that the Infinite was his beginning and his end ; 
 the universal his only and eternal love." The two 
 sermons, however, have but little in common ex- 
 cept the title. Edwards does not seek to show 
 that an instinct of dependence is rooted in the 
 sold, forming an essential element in the human 
 consciousness, or that its development is important 
 1 Works, vol. iv. p. 1C9, Worcester editiou. 
 
58 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 to a complete human culture. He looks at his sub- 
 ject from the divine point of view, not from the 
 human. Hmnan dependence is both true and de- 
 sirable, because it tends to humiliate man and to 
 promote the glory of God. But none the less was 
 Edwards' sermon an epochal one. Those who lis- 
 tened to it must have felt that a great champion 
 had appeared to defend the old discredited theol- 
 ogy. The doctrine of human dependence which 
 formed the main idea of the sermon was ordinary 
 enough to a Puritan congregation, but the mode of 
 Edwards' assertion of it was new. There is an 
 emphasis of certainty, an intensity of tone, as 
 though there were some invisible combatant to be 
 overcome, — an excitement in the air as if some 
 new issue had arisen. If we interpret the sermon, 
 it w^as the preacher's challenge to the age, — to the 
 fashionable Arminianism which was denying or 
 ignoring the divine sovereignty, which was magni- 
 fying man at the expense of God, which was cheap- 
 ening the gift of divine grace by extending it to 
 all, instead of the few whom God had chosen. 
 
 At a time, then, when the prevailing Deism rep- 
 resented God as if a passive agent, governing the 
 world by general laws and second causes, as well 
 as far removed from the scene of human activity, 
 Edwards presented Deity as immaneiit and effi- 
 cient will. The stress of his conception is on God 
 as will, rather than as idea or reason. The power 
 which is disj^layed in every act or exercise of the 
 human will which tends to overcome sin or 
 
THE DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY. 59 
 
 strengtlien right principle is notliing less than the 
 power of God. The deliverance of man from evil 
 is an act of immediate divine efficiency. It is not 
 only from God, bnt the process of redemption is 
 God. When it is said that those who are saved 
 have their good in God, this means that they have 
 a kind of participation in God. God pnts his 
 beanty npon them, — a sort of effusion of God is 
 poured out upon the soul. It is not so much that 
 the Spirit of God works good in the soul, but the 
 good is in itself the Spirit of God, — the two are 
 one and the same. The goodness and the right- 
 eousness in the world are therefore more than 
 mere moral qualities or attributes : they are alive, 
 as it were, in efficient Deity ; they are the imma- 
 nent God, and not the changing modes of hmnan 
 conduct. 
 
 Closely connected with this teaching about the 
 divine efficiency is Edwards' assertion of the 
 divine sovereignty. The word in itself is not ob- 
 noxious. In the earlier Calvinism, sovereignty had 
 included the call or election of nations to some 
 high struggle for liberty or moral advance. But 
 the word as Edwards uses it becomes synonymous 
 with the tenet of an individual election to life, or 
 reprobation to death. In this form Edwards as- 
 serts it as the cardinal principle of his theology. 
 He believes that he has biblical evidence in its 
 support, for when he defuies it he prefers to do 
 so in words of Scripture ; — the divine sovereignty 
 means "that God has mercy on whom He will 
 
60 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 have mercy, and whom He will, He harcleneth." 
 •^•It also follows from the doctrine df sovereignty, as 
 he conceives it, that God was under no obligation 
 to do anything for man. That He vouchsafes to 
 save men at all is an act on His part of pure gra- 
 tuitous condescension. It is also of mere grace 
 that the redemption is applied to some and not 
 to all. 
 
 At this point we must pause for a moment to 
 inquire into the process by which such a profound 
 and speculative mind should have reached this 
 conclusion. Unfortunately Edwards does not ex- 
 plain the process. The foundations of this cardi- 
 nal principle in his theology seem to be sunk in 
 an abysmal darkness, which he makes no attempt 
 to sound. Between the time when as a youth he 
 was writing his Notes on the Mind, and his ap- 
 pearance at the Boston lecture, there is a gap in 
 his mental history, which must be filled out from 
 a general knowledge of his thought. His early 
 philosophy, as we have seen, was thoroughly Berke- 
 leyan in its character. So far as the outer world 
 is concerned, God was conceived as the universal 
 substance underlying all external phenomena. It 
 was God's immediate action on the mind, in ac- 
 cordance with His fixed and stable will, which gives 
 to the mind the idea of an external world. Things 
 in themselves have no existence but only in the 
 mind of God. God is and there is none else. 
 But does God's immediate efBciency apply also to 
 the thoughts and exercises of the human soul ? 
 
DENIAL OF HUMAN FREEDOM. 61 
 
 Upon tliis point Edwards hesitated. He expresses 
 himself to the effect that liis thought needs to be as 
 clear on God's relation to the mind as it is in re- 
 gard to His relation to the outer world. Nowhere 
 in his published works does he, however, take up 
 the subject for a full discussion. But there can 
 hardly be a doubt as to the conviction toward 
 which he was tending as a youthful tliinker, — the 
 conviction which underlies his conception of sov- 
 ereignty, and which affords the unfailing clue to 
 his purpose. He must have believed that God's 
 relation to the mind and will of man was in har- 
 mony with His relation to visible nature. In the 
 invisible sphere of man's moral or intellectual ex- 
 istence, God was still the universal substance ; it 
 was He that alone existed and there is none else. 
 
 This very significant transition seems to have 
 taken place in Edwards' mind as he contemplated 
 the phenomena of the human will. Here his depen- 
 dence upon Locke helped to lead him into a prac- 
 tical denial of the freedom of the human will. He 
 thought it was sufficient freedom to concede to 
 man, if he were conceived as having the power of 
 acting in accordance with his inclination. He 
 therefore denied to the human will any self-deter- 
 mining power — the power to the contrary accord- 
 ing to which a man is free to revise his action. 
 At a very early age he had come to the conclusion 
 that God determines the will. He felt the mor^ 
 unhampered in making this conviction the ruling 
 principle of his theology because he was at the 
 
62 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 same time convinced that man was still responsible 
 for his o^vn acts, even if they were done thi'ough 
 (him by another. The self-determination of the 
 /will was not essential to the quality of human acts. 
 /Praise and blame attached to the act in itself, 
 [ and not to its origin in a will which possessed 
 power to the contrary. 
 
 But when Edwards had reached this momentous 
 conclusion he was in danger of making the world 
 of human experience a mere lifeless machine, un- 
 less somewhere there did exist the power to the 
 contrary, unless what he had denied to man he 
 were to attribute in an increased degree to God. 
 The materialism, the atheism, the religious indif- 
 ference of the age, would be overcome most suc- 
 cessfully by asserting the freedom of the will of 
 God in the fullest sense, as including self-determi- 
 nation or the power to the contrary, so far as the 
 issues of human life were concerned. The Divine 
 will must not be hampered or thwarted by the chains 
 of necessity. God must be conceived as having the 
 ability to reverse His action. Hence followed Ed- 
 wai*ds' idea of sovereignty as by inexorable logic. 
 If God chooses to redeem men from sin, He is un- 
 der no necessity to do so. If He chooses to save 
 one man rather than another, it was because He 
 was pleased to do so gf His arbitrary will. To rep- 
 resent Him as willing to save all alike would be to 
 deny to Him a sphere where the freedom of His 
 will can be disj^layed in the view of all. In no 
 other way can the power to the contrary which in- 
 
DEFINITION OF SOVEREIGNTY. 63 
 
 heres in the divine will be exhibited so manifestly, 
 so unmistakably, as in His having mercy on whom 
 He loill ■ have mercy ^ while whom He icill, He 
 hardeneth. The existence of evil in the world is a 
 proof of the divine sovereignty. God was under 
 no obligation to keep man from sinning. He de- 
 creed to permit the fall, and to order events to its 
 accomplislunent. By His deai'ee, evef y individual 
 of Adam's posterity was involved in his sin. In 
 all this God was free and sovereign. " When men 
 have fallen and become sinful, God in His sov- 
 ereignty has a right to determine about their de- 
 liverance as He pleases, — whether He will redeem 
 any or no, or redeem some and leave the others. 
 If He chooses to redeem any. His sovereignty is 
 involved in His freedom to take whom He pleases, 
 and to leave whom He pleases to perish.'*^ 
 
 With this doctrine of sovereignty Edwards 
 threw down a challenge to the world of his time. 
 We have seen how in his youth his soul had been 
 filled with an unbounded enthusiasm as he took 
 the idea of God as the only substance, the one uni- 
 versal Being. His spirit must have been turned 
 with indignation when, entering his ministerial 
 career, he looked abroad upon the low level of an 
 age which talked and acted as if God were not in 
 its thought ; as he witnessed the spectacle of a re- 
 ligion which almost seemed as if it could dispense 
 with God, so higldy did it exalt the independent 
 
 1 Sermon On God's Sovereignty, vol. iv. p. 549. Cf . also vol. iv. 
 pp. 230, 231, 232, and 254. 
 
64 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 faculties of human nature, which spoke of the 
 sober performance of moral duty as if it were a 
 substitute for the passionate devotion to a Being, 
 with its moments of spiritual joy and elevation. 
 The motive of his sermon on Dependence ap- 
 pears in its closing paragraph or application : 
 " Those doctrines and schemes of divinity thrtt are 
 in any respeet opposite to such an absolute and 
 universal dependence on God derogate from His 
 glory, and thwart the design of the contrivance for 
 our redemption." 
 
 In asserting the divine sovereignty as necessa- 
 rily involving the principle of predestination, Ed- 
 wards had only done what under similar circum- 
 stances Augustine had also done in the ancient 
 church, or Calvin in the age of the Reformation. 
 But Edwards inclines to go beyond his predecessors. 
 While the world to his view and theirs presents 
 humanity as divided into two great classes of the 
 elect and the non-elect, yet he was not content to 
 consider the non-elect as left by God to their own 
 devices. God does not merely pass over them, as 
 if in negative fashion, leaving them to the opera- 
 tion of general laws which secure their destruc- 
 tion. The grace divine, which is onh^ another 
 name for immanent, efficient Deity, includes within 
 the range of its activity the evil and the good 
 alike. Wherever he looks, the world is, as it were, 
 ablaze with the fires of omnipotent, energizing 
 will. To the distinction between the elect and the 
 non-elect corresponds another distinction between 
 
SPECIAL AND COMMON GRACE. QS 
 
 God's special grace and His common grace. The 
 first secures salvation ; the other underlies the 
 world of affairs, of every-day hfe, of moral du- 
 ties, the world of society and human institutions. 
 The common grace of God carries with it no sav- 
 ing efficacy ; none the less it is essential to the 
 ordering of the world, in order that God's special 
 grace may have the freer course. 
 
 This distinction between special and common 
 grace is so important in Edwards' theology that 
 it deserves particidar consideration ; for it con- 
 stitutes in some measure an original feature in 
 his thought. It brings the whole world, and not 
 merely a part of it, into the sphere of the Divine 
 energizing. It also forced Edwards to revise the 
 ordinary theological nomenclature of his time. To 
 the sphere of God's special grace he confines the 
 use of the word supernatural^ W^le the realm of 
 the natural includes the operations of his common 
 grace. In ordinary use, the word supernatural 
 meant the miraculous interposition of God, as 
 contrasted wi^h the course of ordinary life. But 
 Edwards had risen above the necessity of attach- 
 ing supreme importance to miracle as the highest 
 evidence of God's activity in the world. In plain 
 truth, he takes little or no interest in miracles. 
 He makes them hold a subordinate place, as com- 
 pared with the internal evidences of the truth of 
 Christ's religion.^ By supernatural he means the 
 
 1 Cf . Original Sin, vol. ii. p. 477 ; also Work of the Spirit of 
 God, vol. i. p. 557. 
 
66 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 spiritual, as something above and distinct from the 
 natural life of man. In this use of the term, he 
 is in accord with Schleiermacher and Coleridge, 
 who led the revolt of modern religious thought 
 against the appeal to miracle as the final and high- 
 est evidence for Christian truth. 
 
 But the difference between Edwards and these 
 modern theologians is also as striking as the 
 agreement. In the realm of the natural he in- 
 closes so large a part of human life as to leave 
 almost no place or opportunity for the spiritual 
 or supernatural. The natural does not pass over 
 into the spiritual through moral conflict or pur- 
 pose ; the law of the spiritual or supernatural is 
 not presented as a gradual transmutation of the 
 natural. The two are separated as by an infinite 
 gulf. They are as distinct as light and darkness; 
 the natural is the absence of light, as light ceases 
 in a room when the candle is withdrawn. In the 
 sphere of the natural life is included, as has been 
 said, ahnost the whole scope of human activity. 
 Even conscience, which has been called the voice 
 of God in the soul, is not regarded by Edwards 
 as belonging to the spiritual order. The moralities 
 of common life, the duti^ and the virtues which 
 human society involves or which constitute its 
 bond of unity, the art and purpose of human 
 government, the amenities and affections of the 
 domestic circle, — these and most other things that 
 can be thought or mentioned are placed by him 
 on the inferior plane of the natural, higher in 
 
SUPERNATURAL LIGHT. 67 
 
 rank but in essential quality not different from the 
 habits and instincts of the brute creation. 
 
 What, then, is this saving special grace, which 
 seems to be in contrast with ahnost all that we 
 know as good, which may be in opposition to all 
 that we esteem most dear ? Edwards may have 
 felt that he had ruled out so much from the spirit- 
 ual that a supreme effort was required of him to 
 demonstrate the existence and the reality of the 
 supernatural. He responds to the inquiry or the 
 doubt in one of the most beautiful and most elo- 
 quent of his sermons. Its early date is significant 
 as showing that his theology had matured into its 
 final form during his first years at Northampton. 
 Like his sermon on Dependence, its publication 
 was called for, and it appeared in 1734, when 
 Edwards had attained the age of thirty-one. The 
 full title of the sermon as it stands in his Works 
 is : A Divine and Supernatural Light immediately 
 imparted to the Soul, shown to be both a Scriptural 
 and Rational Doctrine. His text was the words 
 of Christ to Peter : — " And Jesus answered and 
 said unto him. Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona ; for 
 flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but- 
 my Fathgt^lChich is in heaven." The emphasis is 
 Edwards' own when he says, — " What I would 
 make the subject of the present discourse from 
 these words is, that there is such a thing as a 
 spiritual and divine light immediately imparted 
 to the soul by God, of a different nature from any 
 that is obtained by natural means." 
 
68 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 A sermon so remarkable as this has not escaped 
 the notice of those who have made any study of 
 Edwards' theology. It resembles so closely the 
 later transcendental thought of New England as 
 almost to bridge the distance between Edwards 
 and Emerson. A recent American critic, speaking 
 from a literary point of view, has called attention 
 to the word sweetness as being Edwards' character- 
 istic word. But there is another word which re- 
 curs quite as often in his writings, and that, too, in 
 the most important connections, — the word light. 
 It is more than an illustration of his thought : 
 light is a word that controls his thought. In com- 
 paring the essential qtiality of revelation to light, 
 Edwards is widely separated from those who have 
 conceived revelation mainly as law addressed to 
 the conscience. We have here an element in his 
 thought which he assumes without discussion as 
 if unconscious of its deep significance — a relic, it 
 may be, of his earlier attitude before he aban- 
 doned the pursuit of philosophy. In this respect 
 he differs fundamentally from his predecessors in 
 the Calvinistic churches, with whom the legal ten- 
 dency is predominant.^ 
 
 Closely related as Edwards' thought is to tran- 
 scendental modes of speech, there is yet, however, 
 
 ^ Edwards' view of revelation gives to the reason an essen- 
 tially religious function, making possible also free theological 
 inquiry. His view is expanded by the late Bishop Ewing of 
 Argyle in Revelation Considered as Light, — a work which, like 
 Campbell On the Atonement, may be regarded as developing the 
 Edwardian theology. 
 
THE IMMEDIATE VISION. 69 
 
 a gr^at difference. He does not admit that the 
 human reason has in itself a divine quality, or that 
 it is a spark of the divine reason, forming a part 
 of the divine image in man. There is nothing in 
 human nature, as it exists since the fall, which has 
 anything in common with the divine nature. It is 
 only when the divine and supernatural light has 
 been imparted that the reason is purified and 
 quickened to behold the transcendent beauty and 
 glory of God. Edwards assumes, as a first prin-| 
 ciple, that when God speaks to man His word 
 must be very different from man's word. There 
 is such an excellency and sublimity, such divine 
 perfection, in the speech of God, that the words of 
 the wisest of men must appear mean and base in 
 comparison. The divine word is like a fire, and as 
 a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. Into 
 the meaning, the transcendent beauty and glory, 
 the joy and sweetness, of the divine word, they 
 penetrate directly and intuitively in whom a divine 
 and supernatural light is shining. Reason does 
 not give this light, though the light cannot come 
 where reason does not exist. Scripture is power- 
 less also to impart it, though it cannot shine where 
 there is no knowledge of Scripture. It reveals no 
 new truth which is not already in the Bible. In 
 this way it differs from inspiration, which is the 
 unique mode of conveying new truth to the world 
 as by prophets or evangelists. And yet this divine 
 and supernatural light is something higher and 
 more to be valued than inspiration, or the power 
 
70 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 of prophecy or of miracle. Inspiration is a lower 
 gift, for it is capable of being imparted to those 
 who have no supernatural light, — a Balaam or a 
 Saul. But this divine light is not the mere exter- 
 nal power of God : it is of God's own inmost es- 
 sence, it comes immediately and directly from Him ; 
 it is not the acting of God upon the soul from 
 without, but a vital and personal force dwelling 
 within the soul, as if henceforth an organic ele- 
 ment in its life ; it is the Spirit of God communi- 
 cating Himself to man. ^ 
 
 The effect of this divine and supernatural light 
 is to give the soul an insight into the truth of the 
 Christian revelation, revealing a view of things 
 that are most exquisitely beautiful. Others who 
 have it not may yet have an intelligent opinion 
 about di\T[ne things, as a man may have some 
 knowledge or opinion about sweet things who has 
 not tasted them. But the taste of divine things, 
 the realizing sense of what they are, belongs only 
 to those whom God immediately enlightens. This 
 light within them — Edwards will not call it the " in-» 
 ner light," for he has prejudices against Quaker- 
 ism — may come to those to whom miracles would 
 have no weight as evidence of the truth. The his- 
 torical testimony of miracles must be weighed by 
 those who have the necessary learning or leisure. 
 But the divine light may come to children and to 
 weak women, bringing with it its own evidence of 
 divinity. " The evidence that they, who are spirit- 
 ually enlightened, have of the truth of the things 
 
THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 71 
 
 of religion, is a kind of intuitive and immediate 
 evidence.^ They believe the doctrines of God's 
 word to be divine because they see divinity in 
 them." This light within changes the nature of 
 the soul, assimilating it to the di\'ine nature. This 
 light, and this light only, has its fruit in holiness 
 of life. 
 
 But tliis divine and supernatural light must be 
 considered from another point of view. As Ed- 
 wards thought, it came to but a few, — the major- 
 ity of the race were doomed to live without it. 
 The first man had enjoy6(f^its full possession at 
 his creation. But when he sinned, by rebelling 
 against the divine will, the supernatural light had 
 been withdrawn ; and since then, so far as it had 
 been vouchsafed to man, it had been as individuals 
 only, by a free and gracious act of the divine sov- 
 ereignty. In all this, Edwards' teaching resembles 
 the mediaeval theology which had conceived the 
 divine and supernatural light as not forming a 
 necessary part of the constitution of man, but 
 rather as the donum sv'pernaturale^ — something 
 superadded to his constitution by which man is 
 made capable of communion with God. While 
 the supernatural element is essential to the perfec- 
 
 ^ In his Notes on the M'nc? Edwards had written of Inspiration: 
 " The evidence of immediate inspiration that the prophets had, 
 when they were immediately inspired by the Spirit of God with 
 any truth, is an absolute sort of certainty ; and the knowledge is 
 in a sense intuitive, much in the same manner as faith, and spirit- 
 ual knowledge of the truth of religion. ' ' — Dwig'ht, Life of Ed- 
 wards, p. 691, 
 
72 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 tion and wellbeing of human nature, yet it is not 
 essential to the constitution of human nature. One 
 may have everything needful to his being man, 
 and yet lack its possession. 
 
 It might be supposed at this point that the situ- 
 ation was not a desperate one. There is still left 
 to man the large and noble sphere of the natural, 
 — the world of political or social or domestic life. 
 In this sphere there still remain lofty and unselfish 
 ideals, tasking man's highest powers, calling forth 
 patriotism and heroism, and all the manifestations 
 of disinterested love. The divine and supernat- 
 ural light may after all be but a delusion, and the 
 natural life the only reality. Such, indeed, has 
 been the inference drawn by the positivist or hu- 
 manitarian schools. But such an inference was, 
 from Edwards' point of view, not only remote but 
 impossible. The withdrawal of the supernatural 
 light from Adam and his descendants was a catas- 
 trophe in human history which the imagination 
 can only imperfectly describe or conceive. It must 
 be spoken of as "a fatal catastrophe, a turning of 
 all things upside down, and the succession of a 
 state of the most odious and dreadful confusion." 
 It is a state of darkness, woful corruption, and 
 ruin ; nothing but flesh without the spirit ; dark- 
 ness, " as light ceases in a room when the candle 
 is withdrawn." Others also have used similar 
 comparisons. Human life without the guidance of 
 divine light is like a ship without its rudder, drift- 
 ing to its destruction. But the situation, as Ed- 
 
THE PREDETERMINED WILL. 73 
 
 wards was forced to describe it, is worse than any 
 sucli metaphor can portray. Because man is pos- 
 sessed of a will, and since the will, as Edwards 
 conceives it, cannot exist in a state of indifference 
 but is determined from without, and that not in 
 its subordinate volitions only, but in its predomi- 
 nant choice, it follows that the human will now 
 rages as violently against God as, under the influ- 
 ence of divine light, it cleaves vehemently to Him. 
 We reach here the negative aspects of Edwards' 
 theology, — aspects the most a23palling wliich can 
 be found in any system of philosophical or relig- 
 ious thought. The explanation of this awful con- 
 ception of humanity and its destiny is to be found 
 again in his denial of the freedom of the human 
 will. Others, too, in the history of the church, an 
 Augustine or a Calvin, had made the same denial, 
 but no one before Edwards had grounded the de- 
 nial in a system of philosophy which called for 
 consistent application, and certainly no one before 
 Edwards had dared to face the consequences which 
 the denial involved. If the will by its very nature 
 existed in a determined state, and that not for God 
 but against Him, then it followed that in the will 
 of every natural man there was all manner of 
 wickedness, the seeds of the greatest and blackest 
 crimes, wickedness against man and against God. 
 This wickedness is not merely a potential or pos- 
 sible thing : there is in every man, in virtue of 
 his birth or creation, actual wickedness without 
 measure or without number ; wickedness perverse, 
 
74 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 incorrigible, and inflexible, that will not yield to 
 tbreatenings or promises, to awakenings or encour- 
 agements, to judgments or mercies, to terror or to 
 love. The natural man, even the little child, is as 
 full of enmity against God as any viper or venom- 
 ous beast is full of poison. Every man by nature 
 has a heart like the heart of a devil. Men are by 
 nature enemies to God, and would dethrone Him if 
 they could. 
 
 A view like this was not reached by a study of 
 the contents of the hiuimn consciousness : it was 
 not the result of either experience or observation 
 on a minute or an extended scale. It was an ab- 
 stract conclusion, deduced from the abstract prii^- 
 ciple that the human will could not exist in a state 
 of indifference or equilibrium; for indifference or 
 indecision pointed to a seK-determining power, and 
 a self-determining power conceded to man was a 
 practical atheism, since God was then left at the 
 mercy of man, waiting to see which way his will 
 would turn, and consequently unable to foresee or 
 decree all things from eternity. But if the will 
 of every man was determined from his birth, then 
 a will determined to evil must be conceived and 
 described as such. Edwards, however, seems to 
 feel the difficulty implied in his abstract conclu- 
 sion. He represents men as saying that they are 
 conscious of no such enormity of wickedness, or 
 that they are aware of no desire to dethro iie God 
 from the government of the universe. To this he 
 replies by his theory of God's common grace^ 
 
THE COMMON GRACE. 75 
 
 which is God's sovereignty over wicked men, as 
 His special grace is His sovereignty over His favor- 
 ite and dear children.^ 
 
 The common grace of God operates in two ways, 
 — either by assistance or restraint. According to 
 the first of these ways, the divine will may stimu- 
 late the natural human powers to the performance 
 of what they otherwise would be unable or unwill- 
 ing to do. This assisting grace may carry a man 
 so far in the direction of truth or order that the 
 result may almost resemble the work of saving or 
 special grace. The action of the natural conscience 
 i^ay be thus increased in all the grades of human 
 endeavor, as in political, social, or family order, 
 until God makes the world a habitable or endur- 
 able place for spiritual men. But it is primarily 
 God's restraining grace which prevents the world 
 from going rapidly to its destruction, as it would 
 otherwise surely do. Thus in the present order the 
 intensity of human wickedness is so repressed that 
 men do not realize the depth of their enmity to God. 
 For this reason also they remain ignorant of the 
 malice that is in them, and seem to themselves better 
 than they are. The Divine efficiency is supreme 
 in the natural order as it is in the spiritual order. 
 It extends to all human customs, training and edu- 
 cation, home influences, the voice of conscience, 
 the fears of evil, sensitiveness to reputation, tem- 
 poral interests, the light of nature. By means of 
 these and other checks, God restrains the working 
 
 1 Cf. vol. iii. pp 72, 135 ; vol. iv. p. 55. 
 
76 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 of human evil until the dispensation closes and the 
 restraint is no longer needed ; or rather until the 
 glory of the divine justice shall be better mani- 
 fested by removing the restrictions which the di- 
 vine economy now imposes. 
 
 To the eye of Edwards' imagination, as also to 
 the eye of his reason, this world has become the 
 scene of wellnigh universal tragedy. The situa- 
 tion is in some ways enhanced because of the pre- 
 vailing unconsciousness of the tragedy which life 
 involves. On the one hand is humanity, hating, 
 resisting, defying God, ain;iing at His dethrone- 
 ment, ready to rejoice even in the thought of His 
 extinction ; on the other hand is God, exerting the 
 might of omnipotence to hold humanity in check 
 until the moment comes when He lets go His hold, 
 and precipitates the quivering mass of angry, boil- 
 ing hatred into the glowing fires of an endless 
 hell. Edwards does not draw back as he contem- 
 plates the scene. He studies it in detail, aiming 
 to make it more real to the imagination, portray- 
 ing it in language which for its boldness has not 
 been surpassed. One hardly dares follow him, as 
 his imagination takes wing, with the desire to see 
 the worst, and to convey some conception of what 
 he sees. The idea of tragedy in the ancient world 
 implied in the evolution of a blind and cruel fate, 
 the dreams and nightmares of the middle ages, the 
 pictures which Dante has drawn of souls in hell, 
 the visions of Milton describing the conscious- 
 ness of demons, — none of these surpass, perhaps 
 
HUMANITY UNDER RESTRAINT. 77 
 
 they do not equal, the horror which one encounters 
 in the sermons of Jonathan Edwards. For Ed- 
 wards was a powerful preacher, addressing a con- 
 gregation with the conviction that it was his duty 
 to make them see and feel the truth of his con- 
 ceptions. ' His language takes a personal form, 
 urging the reality upon each individual conscience. 
 
 There may be an appeal in his tone, since there is 
 for some a possible deliverance. But even of this 
 deliverance it is an indispensable condition that 
 men should acknowledge their hatred of God, their 
 accumidated guilt, which has justly exposed them 
 to the divine wrath. He imagines a man demur- 
 ring to this charge of hatred, and denying that he 
 has ever felt any desire to kill God. But if, says 
 the preacher, the life of God were in your reach 
 and you knew it, it would not be safe for an hour. 
 Such thoughts as these would then arise in your 
 heart : " I have the opportunity now to be set at 
 liberty, and need henceforth have no fear of God's 
 displeasure ; He has never done justly by me ; He 
 has no claim on my forbearance ; I can rid myself 
 of Him without danger." No man knows his own 
 heart who does not realize that such thoughts as 
 these, and even others too horrible and dreadful to 
 be mentioned, would rise within him if such an 
 opportunity were presented.^ 
 
 Or, again, he paints a solitary man standing out 
 against the background of infinite power com- 
 bined with infinite anger. " If you continue in 
 ^ Sermons, vol. iv. p. 48. 
 
78 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 your enmity," lie urges on sucli an one, " a little 
 longer, there will be a mutual enmity between you 
 and God to all eternity. It may not have reached 
 this point as yet, but at any moment death may 
 intervene, and then reconciliation is impossible for- 
 ever. As you hate God, He will hate yoii forever. 
 He will become a perfect enemy, with a perfect 
 hatred, without any love, or pity, or mercy. He 
 will be moved by no cries, by no entreaties of a 
 mediator. But tliis enmity will be mutual ; for 
 after death your own enmity will have no restraint, 
 but it will break out and rage without control. 
 When you come to be a fii-ebrand of hell, you 
 will be all on a blaze with spite and malice toward 
 God. Then you will appear as you are, a viper 
 indeed, spitting poison at God, and venting your 
 rage and malice in fearful blasphemies. And this 
 not from any new corrugation, but because God has 
 withdrawn His restraining hand from the old cor- 
 ruption." 
 
 V. 
 
 THE MORAL GOVERNMENT OF GOD. — FUTURE 
 PUNISHMENT. — JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. 
 
 In turning from the universal ruin in which 
 humanity is involved, to the deliverance which 
 God is working, we meet another ruling principle 
 in Edwards' theology, — the doctrine of God as 
 the moral govei^nor of the world. This doctrine, 
 
SOVEREIGNTY AND MORAL GOVERNMENT. 79 
 
 like that of the divine sovereignty, was deeply im- 
 bedded in the Puritan consciousness. Closely as 
 the two resemble each other, they are also sharply 
 distinguished. The idea of God as a moral gov- 
 ernor introduces the conception of law as regulat- 
 ing the divine procedure ; while sovereignty implies 
 the arbitrary will, the free choice to which none 
 can dictate. Sovereignty implies freedom from 
 law, while moral government implies subjection to 
 law. Although these ideas are plainly contradic- 
 tory to each other, yet it is this very contradiction 
 which gave life to Calvinistic theology, necessi- 
 tating as it did an inward conflict, raising issues 
 which, within the limits of the Calvinistic churches, 
 were never quite satisfactorily adjusted. The idea 
 of God as a moral governor acts as a check upon 
 the idea of His sovereignty, reducing to some 
 extent the arbitrary display of power, forcing, as 
 it were, the divine will to yield to the require- 
 ments of the divine justice. But where the line 
 was to be drawn remained an open question. In 
 proportion as sovereignty was urged and enforced 
 would the idea of a moral government of the 
 world be weakened. In the history of religion, 
 the divine sovereignty, which is the earlier concep- 
 tion, appears as yielding to the growing conviction 
 that God governs the world in accordance with 
 law. Such had been the course of Jewish history. 
 In Calvinism also, in proportion as this same 
 truth was felt to be necessary, had the original 
 severity of the system been mollified, till election 
 
80 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 and decrees had passed into a subordinate position 
 and gave but little embarrassment. 
 
 The modification which Edwards was working 
 in New England theology sprang partly from his 
 vigorous reassertion of the doctrine of divine sov- 
 ereignty at a period when this conviction was be- 
 coming a subordinate one in the religious mind. 
 From Edwards' time the New England clergy were 
 classed as old or moderate Calvinists on the one 
 hand, and as new or consistent Calvinists, with 
 reference mainly to this distinction. The increased 
 severity of Edwards' theology, whether scientific 
 or practical, was owing to the deeper emphasis he 
 laid ^pon the arbitrary, unconditioned will of God. 
 We may see the situation at a glance, when we 
 remember that the ruin of the world is attributed 
 to divine sovereignty, while the deliverance, so far 
 as it ^<5^s, involves the necessity of an appeal to 
 moral law. 
 
 But there were motives which forced Edwards 
 to give prominence, as far as he was able, to the 
 idea of God as a moral or constitutional governor 
 of the world. While he never forgot that the doc- 
 trines he was maintaining must rest on Scripture 
 for their authority, yet he also recognized the rea- 
 son as a*source of strength upon which he always 
 felt at liberty to draw in their defence. The rela- 
 tion between reason and Scripture he never seems 
 to have formally considered ; but in most of his 
 treatises, if we regard him as making the two 
 practically coordinate, we shall do no great in jus- 
 
INROADS OF ARMINIANISM. 81 
 
 tice to his thought. Like every mystic, like An- 
 selm, whom he most resembles in his combination 
 of mysticism with dialectics, he had an almost un- 
 bounded confidence in the powers of the human 
 reason. It was also his fortune to live in an age 
 in wliich the appeal was generally taken to the rea- 
 son, whether by the friends or the foes of the re- 
 ceived theology. But when it came to making an 
 appeal to the reason in defence of his theological 
 tenets, the divine sovereignty did not serve his 
 purpose so well as the resort to the necessities of a 
 divine moral government which coidd be expounded 
 in accordance with the analogies of human order. 
 
 Among the theological tenets, which were begin- \ 
 ning to be questioned so early as Edwards' time, 
 may be inckided the doctrines of endless punish- 
 ment, the Trinity, the atonement, justification by 
 faith, or the imputation of Christ's righteousness / 
 as the ground of salvation. Upon these doctrines 
 Edwards appears as meditating in his first years 
 at Northampton. In their defence he rests mainly 
 upon the rulino\ principle of God's moral gover- > 
 norship of the world. Another motive which in- 
 spires him in this defence is a desire to save the 
 ©tiurches from the inroads of Arminianism. About 
 the year 1734 that fatal error, as he regarded it, 
 was disturbing the peace of New England. As a 
 deeper seriousness appeared to be settling down 
 upon the people, Arminianism was offering what 
 seemed to him a shallow comfort to the soul. The 
 excitement at this time must have been intense 
 
82 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 in the parish at Northampton and the surrounding 
 country over the subtle progress of a doctrine 
 which seemed to imply that there was no need for 
 anxiety about the soul's deliverance from impend- 
 ing ruin ; that religion Consisted simply in devoilt 
 observance of church ordinances, and the perform- 
 ance of the duties of life, — ^"things which every one 
 had the power to fulfil. It would seem as if fami- 
 lies were divided upon this issue, as if a root of 
 bitterness springing up was threatening serious 
 trouble and confusion. It was under these circum- 
 stances that Edwards proposed to himself the task 
 of defending the traditional faith. In giving a 
 brief account of his position upon the disputed 
 theological tenets, regard will be had chiefly to that 
 which is most important and striking in his thought. 
 Any complete resmne or analysis of his works bear- 
 ing on these subjects is unnecessary, as it is, within 
 the limits of this volume, impossible. 
 
 The doctrine of endless punishment Edwards 
 regarded as so essential* that if it were denied, the 
 foundations, not only of Christian belief but of 
 common morality, would be overthrown. He ex- 
 presses amazement that the great Archbishop Til- 
 lotson, who has made such a figure among the new- 
 fashioned divines, should have advanced an opinion 
 calculated to weaken faith in such an important 
 truth. If this doctrine were to be abandoned as 
 untrue, there would be no evidence left that God is 
 the moral governor of the universe. The concep- 
 tion which Edwards had formed of himianity, as 
 % 
 
HE WARDS AND PUNISHMENT, 83 
 
 deprived since its creation of any divine supernat- 
 ural principle, made it impossible for liim to liold 
 that the law of God as a moral governor could be 
 written within the heart to such an extent that 
 the divine penalties against sin could be realized 
 through the conscience in this present world. He 
 makes no appeal to the himian consciousness, 
 wherein is contained, as if in miniature, the picture 
 of God in his relatLon to all that is not God. Since 
 the conscience of the natural man does not partici- 
 pate in divine supernatural light, what else could 
 he hold than that this world is no theatre for the 
 display of divine justice? The present is rather 
 a confused, mysterious dispensation in which God 
 is carrying on His strange work. It is in vain to 
 point men to the traces of the divine moral govern- 
 ment written in the order of human society. There 
 is, to be sure, a certain artificial or external corre- 
 spondence between the divine and the natural, — 
 Edwards never failed to see this analogy, — but it 
 does not go far enough or deep enough to become 
 the basis of a belief in the moral government of 
 the world by God. Everything here has been so 
 involved in confusion and catastrophe by God's 
 withdrawal from humanity, that it is to another 
 world we must look for the evidence that God rules 
 this world in the interest of eternal justice. 
 
 It is quite noticeable that, in his treatise on God's 
 Moral Government, Edwards appears as having 
 brooded over the scepticism of the Book of Ec- 
 clesiastes, — tliat liis strongest arguments for the 
 
84 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 necessity of endless punishment should be drawn 
 from the mixed conditions of human life therein 
 described. There had been devout psalmists in 
 the same dark era of elewish history who had felt 
 the same scepticism, but without drawing the same 
 conclusions ; who, when they went into the house of 
 God, discerned how even in this world the reward 
 is with the righteous. But Edwards writes : — 
 
 " For unless thore be such a state (of future rewards 
 and punishments) it will certainly follow that God in 
 fact maintains no moral government over the world of 
 mankind. For otherwise it is apparent that there is no 
 such thing as rewarding or punishing mankind accord- 
 ing to any visible rule, or, indeed, according to any order 
 or method whatsoever. . . . Nothing is more manifest 
 than that in this world there is no such thing as a regu- 
 lar equal disposing of rewards and punishments of men 
 according to their moral estate. There is nothing in 
 God's disposals towards men in this world to make His 
 distributive justice and judicial equity manifest or visi- 
 ble, but all things are in the greatest confusion." ^ 
 
 One of Edwards' earlier sermons, which he es- 
 teemed as among the most effective he had ever 
 
 ^ Of God's Moral Government, i. 572. Edwards is oblivious to 
 the fact that the sense of God as a moral governor had grown up 
 among the Jewish people, not only without an appeal to /a future 
 state of rewards and punishments, but with no definite recognition 
 even of the sanctions of a future life. It is interesting in this 
 connection to recall the aphorisms of Emerson on this subject, 
 such as : " No evil exists in society but has its check which coex- 
 ists ; " " Punishment not follows but accompanies crime ; ' ' 
 " Base action makes you base, holy action hallows you." — Cabot, 
 Life of Emerson, vol. i. pp. 219, 332. 
 
INFINITE SIN. 85 
 
 preached, is entitled The Justice of God in the 
 Damnation of Sinners. To tliis sermon we turn 
 for the argument with which he met the rising un- 
 belief before it had as yet formulated its dogma 
 that endless punishment was incompatible with 
 either the justice or the mercy of God. A sum- 
 mary of his argument runs as follows. Every sin 
 deserves punislnnent in proportion to its extent. 
 If there be a sin infinitely heinous, it is justice 
 which metes out to such a sin an infinite punish- 
 ment. The deerree of o'uilt involved in a sin is 
 measured by our oblio^ations to the contrary. The 
 greater obligation we are under to love, or honor, 
 or obey, so the greater is the sin when we refuse 
 to render the love, the honor, or the obedience. Our 
 obligation to these duties, in the case of any person, 
 is in proportion to his loveliness, his honorableness, 
 and his authority. In these things God excels 
 all other beings ; He is infinitely lovely, infinitely 
 honorable, and of infinite authority. Therefore 
 sin against God must be a crime infinitely heinous 
 and demanding infinite punishment.^ 
 
 ^ In the above statement lies the gist of Edwards' argument. 
 But he goes on to remark that the justice is more clearly appar- 
 ent when it is considered that sinful men are not only gixilty in 
 one particular but are full of sin, of principles and acts of sin, 
 till their guilt is like a mountain grown up to heaven. In this 
 connection occurs the famous passage in which is asserted the 
 doctrine of total depravity. The method by which he reaches 
 this conclusion is, as we have seen, an a priori or abstract method, 
 following the maintenance of the abstract principle that the hu- 
 man will is from birth controlled by a predominant choice of evil. 
 "They (sinful men) are totally corrupt in every part, in all their 
 
86 TBf PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 TliiS argument of Edwards, wliicli has been often 
 repeated^ cannot be regarded as entirely satisfac- 
 tory. But wliile the mind demurs to his statement, 
 there is in it also a certain element of truth, Avhich 
 we recognize when presented in some other form. 
 Had he said that all sin was under the eternal con- 
 demnation of God, no one could have objected. 
 But when he identifies the sinful person with the 
 sin, he goes beyond Scripture as also beyond rea- 
 son. Then the objection is immediately raised 
 that a person committing an infinite sin should at 
 least be aware of its infinite enormity, committing 
 the sin with the full consciousness of its guilt. 
 But Edwards does not trouble himself with* the 
 utterance of the consciousness. The infinite sin 
 may be committed unconsciously ; indeed, it has 
 been already committed by the unconscious child 
 at its birth. 
 
 There is an objection, however, which he felt 
 obliged to meet, — a common objection at the time 
 to the prevailing Calvinism, — that the decrees of 
 God have made sin necessary ; that the corruption 
 of human nature being unavoidable reduces the 
 degree of its guilt. In meeting this objection he 
 argues that men, in their relations with each other, 
 
 faculties and all the principles of their nature, their understand- 
 'ing-s, and their wills ; and in all their dispositions and affections, 
 their heads, their hearts, are totally depraved ; all the membei'S 
 of their bodies are only instruments of sin ; and all their senses, 
 seeing', hearing, tasting, are only inlets and outlets of sin, channels 
 of corruption." Cf. sermon on The Justice of God, etc., vol. iv. 
 p. 230. 
 
HUMAN ACCOUNTABILITY. 87 
 
 make no siicli allowances. They treat their fellow- 
 men as if the necessity or certainty of their evil 
 actions were compatible with full responsibility ; 
 they freely attribute to their fellows an original 
 perverse disposition, as if this aggravated their 
 guilt. Why, then, should the case be different with 
 God? One can hardly believe that such an argu- 
 ment could be seriously urged. But the inherent 
 weakness of his theology was here exposed, and he 
 resorted to any expedient to meet the difficulty. 
 He was forced to appeal to the divine sovereignty 
 as a last refuge, when appeal to God's moral gov- 
 ernment was no longer possible. He is not sure 
 that he understands all which the divine sover- 
 eignty implies ; but of this he feels sure, that God 
 in the exercise of His sovereign will may not only 
 permit sin, but by permission may dispose and 
 order it : for the only alternative is blind and un- 
 designing chance.^ At this point in his theology, 
 upon which everything hinges, he takes refuge in 
 darkness, not in light. What he needed, what 
 he was sincerely striving after, was some formula 
 which, while expressing the relationship of human 
 sinfidness to the order and nature of things, shoidd 
 not impute to God complicity with or responsibil- 
 ity for its origin. But this he could not do so 
 long as he denied the self -determining power of 
 the human will. The desired formula may not yet 
 have been reached ; but in some respects this ques- 
 tion of the ages is nearer a truer solution in prd- 
 1 Sermon On Gocfs Justice, etc, vol. iv. pp. 230, 231. 
 
 i 
 
88 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 portion as its rightful place is conceded to human- 
 ity, and freedom of the will allowed to be its in- 
 alienable prerogative. It may ultimately appear 
 that the possibility of sin eternally exists as the 
 reverse or opposite implied in righteousness ; that 
 the doing of a righteous act involves the contem- 
 poraneous recognition of the sin and its condemna- 
 tion. Thus sin may come into actual existence 
 through the human will, which approves the wrong 
 instead of the right ; while the divine will and the 
 divine righteousness make sin an object of eternal 
 condemnation.^ The difficulties of the subject are 
 great. It is incumbent on us to recognize them 
 when criticising a great thinker wdio was strug- 
 gling in the toils. None the less is it necessary to 
 insist that his failure was a momentous one, that 
 if not his words, yet his thought points directly to 
 God as the author of evil. 
 
 Under the principle of God's moral government, 
 and not of his sovereignty, falls what is known in 
 theology as the doctrine of atonement. '^From the 
 point of view of sovereignty there would be no 
 necessity for atonement. In Mohammedanism, 
 where sovereignty is the supreme and sole theo- 
 logical principle, no need is felt for satisfying the 
 divine justice. God may pardon whom He will, on 
 whatever grounds His sovereign will may dictate. 
 It had therefore constituted a great advance in 
 Latin theology, as also an evidence of its immeas- 
 
 ^ Cf. Royce, Religion of Philosophy, p. 449, for an admirable 
 statement of this point. 
 
AN S ELM ON THE ATONEMENT. 89 
 
 urable superiority to Moliammedanism, wlien An- 
 selm for the first time, in a clear and emphatic 
 manner, had asserted an inward necessity in the 
 being of God that His justice should receive satis- 
 faction for the affront which had been offered to it 
 by human sinfulness. So deep was this necessity, 
 as Anselm conceived it, that even the doctrines 
 of the Trinity and of the Incarnation had been 
 interpreted with reference to tliis end. God had 
 become man in order that as God-man he might 
 fidfil the requirements of the divine justice. It 
 seems also to have been assumed by Anselm, 
 though upon this point there may be some doubt, 
 that punislmient or suffering in some form consti- 
 tuted the inmost quality of the offering which sat- 
 isfied the justice of God. 
 
 Such had been substantially the view which Cal- 
 vin had received by tradition, but to which he had 
 also accorded a vital place in his theology. As 
 such it had prevailed in the Reformed or Puri- 
 tan chiu'ches, and was now announced again ^ith 
 equal emphasis by Edwards. In his treatise, en- 
 titled Of Satisfaction for Sin, he repeats the prem- 
 ises of Anselm and draws the same conclusion. 
 His mode of presenting the subject possesses no 
 special significance in the way of originality of 
 treatment, though it is characterized by the fresh- 
 ness and intensity of utterance which marks the 
 independent thinker. And yet this small treatise 
 on the atonement is among the most remarkable 
 of Edwards' writings, as containing the germ of a 
 
90 TEE' PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 departure from received views of the atonement, — 
 a profound hint which had been overlooked for 
 generations, until in our own age it gave birth to 
 a thoughtful and spiritual discussion of the great 
 theme, such as it had never before received in any 
 age of the church. 
 
 Edwards lived at a time when the belief was 
 beginning to prevail that God pardoned a sin- 
 ner simply on condition of his repentance, — that 
 therefore no necessity existed for such a costly pro- 
 pitiation of the divine justice as was involved in 
 the sufferings and death of Clirist. Edwards, of 
 course, rejected such a view, on the ground that 
 such repentance would be inadequate as a compen- 
 sation for sin. But while rejecting it he admitted 
 also that, if there could be an adequate repentance 
 or sorrow, it would be an equivalent for an infinite 
 punislunent. It is requisite, so he argues, that 
 God should 2)unish sin with an infinite punish- 
 ment, "unless there be something in some measure 
 to balance this desert, — either some answerable 
 repentance and sorrow for it, or other compensa- 
 tion." ^ It did not occur to him that Christ, in- 
 stead of bearing the penalty of an infinite j)unish- 
 ment, might be conceived as offering an infinite 
 repentance and sorrow which would cover all 
 human transgression. He made the extraordinary 
 admission of the acceptability before God's justice 
 of such a repentance, and then passed it by as if 
 something irrelevant which demanded no further 
 
 1 Of Satisfaction for Sin, vol. i. p. 583. 
 
McLEOD CAMPBELL 91 
 
 notice. But the idea, which flashed before him 
 and disappeared, was like an open vision to Camp- 
 bell, a theologian of Scotland, — the land where 
 Edwards' influence has been felt as in no other 
 country, — who, in his great work on the atonement, 
 took up the theory of an adequate repentance ac- 
 complished by Christ, making it a means of eman- 
 cipation from what had become to him not only a 
 narrow but a false theology. As working out a 
 thought which Edwards had originated and sanc- 
 tioned, Campbell may perhaps be regarded as 
 showino: what manner of man Edwards himself 
 might have been at a later day.^ 
 
 But with Edwards, as we have seen, the mediae- 
 val, the feudal conception of Deity as an absolute 
 sovereign, was a controlling principle from which 
 he could not escape. God, he argues, is as capable 
 of receiving satisfaction as He is of receiving in- 
 jury. The injury done to the honor of His maj- 
 esty calls loudly for reparation. Humanity had 
 inc\jrred a debt to God which must be paid to the 
 uttermost farthing. Such a debt infinite in amount 
 must be paid, if paid at all, by an infinite being. 
 
 ^ Dr. Campbell, in coraparrng' Edwards -with Owen, a distin- 
 guished theologian of the seventeenth century held in high re- 
 pute especially among Independents, remarks: "Owen's clear 
 intellect and Edwards' no less unquestionable power of distinct 
 and discriminating thought, combined with a calmer and more 
 weighty and more solemn tone of spirit," etc. Cf. Nature of the 
 Atonement, p. 51. And again : " The pages of Edwards especially 
 I have read with so solemn and deep an interest as listening to 
 a great and holy man." p. 54. 
 
92 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 Clirist therefore bore tlie punislinient of sin, suf- 
 fering, in the place of the elect for whom He died, 
 a penalty which was the equivalent of their endless 
 misery. The satisfaction which Christ renders to 
 the divine justice, while it consists in a deep and 
 bitter sense of the horror and heinousness of sin, 
 becomes to the imagination a more fearful thing 
 because it is undergone apart from any alleviatioiil 
 of the divine love : God withdraws from Him in 
 the agcfeiy upon the cross, leaving Him alone in 
 the power of Satan, to realize all that the lost may 
 suif er jn hell. 
 
 The question, to whom are the benefits of 
 Christ's atonement applicable, and how are they 
 to be obtained, leads to the discussion of the doc- 
 trine of Justification by Faith. At a later stage 
 in New England theology the controversy arose as 
 to whether Christ died for all or only for the elect. 
 Edwards assumes the latter conclusion, as if an 
 axiom in theology. The elect among humanity, as 
 he regards them, differ in so vital a manner from 
 tlue non-elect that they almost constitute a differ- 
 ent race, as if God were evolving out of the mass 
 of human Beings a certain higher order or grade 
 of existence. The prominence assigned to elec- 
 tion essentially modifies, therefore, the doctrine of 
 justification. The locus classicus on this great 
 doctrine, — '' Therefore, being justified by faith, we 
 have peace with God through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord," is not the text of Edwards' discourse. He 
 chooses rather a cognate passage in Paul's epistles, 
 
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH, 93 
 
 which brings out a somewhat different shade of 
 meaning: — "But to him that worketh not, but 
 believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his 
 faith is counted for righteousness." In Luther's 
 conception, who first proclaimed the doctrine, it is 
 the word fii It h which unseals the mystery of God's 
 dealings with the human soid. Hence the pro- 
 found inwardness of the German theology since 
 Luther's time, which has sought to unfold the 
 contents of the human consciousness, as if fherein 
 also were to be traced the natural workings of a 
 divine spirit. But with Edwards it is not fsiith,^as 
 represe]iting an inward process, on which the em- 
 phaS)K falls. The doctrine of justification is, in his 
 view, but another confirmation of the principle 
 announced in his Boston sermon, — the entire and 
 absolute dependence of man upon God, It is not 
 by him that worketh, but by God that justifieth 
 the ungodly. 
 
 And still there is something significant in Ed- 
 wards' devoting a treatise to Justification by Faith. 
 It seems ahnost like a relic of an earlier theology, 
 something intruded into . an uncongenial sphere. 
 The phrase itself was passing into disuse. Under 
 the influence of what is known in philosophy as 
 Nominalism, the principle of individualism^^as 
 applied to redemption, and each man stood by 
 himself and for himself in the process of salva- 
 tion. The earlier conception of unputation, by 
 which in virtue of a membership in Christ the 
 merits and righteousness of the Head of the race 
 
94 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 may be claimed as tlieir own by every member of 
 His body, had begun to seem as unreasonable as it 
 was obnoxious. Edwards was then reaffirming in 
 the unsympathetic hearing of liis generation the 
 doctrines of realism, — the solidarity of all men in 
 Adam, the first man, who is of the earth earthy ; 
 and the solidarity of the redeemed in Christ, the 
 second man, who is the Lord from heaven. Against 
 the popular tendency which held that each man 
 must suffer his own punislunent, or stand in the 
 lot of his own righteousness at the end of the 
 days, Edwards maintained that Cln'ist had borne 
 the punishment and achieved the righteousness, 
 by which believers in Him were exempted from 
 the endless fate which threatened them, and might 
 claim His achievements as their title to eternal 
 life. 
 
 So vital was this relationship to Christ, as Ed- 
 wards conceived it, that it became with him an 
 underlying truth, in the light of which Scripture 
 must be interpreted. The Arminians urged that 
 the Bible was full of passages or exhortations 
 which implied that men were rewarded by God 
 for the merit of their own virtue and obedience. 
 Every man shall receive his own reward accord-' 
 ing to his oton labor. He who gives to drink a 
 cup of cold loater only in the name of a disciple 
 shall in no wise lose his reward. Thou hast a 
 few names even in Sardis tchich have not defiled 
 their garments ; and they shall walk with me in 
 white because they are worthy. To these instances, 
 
IMPUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS. 95 
 
 and others like them, Edwards replies that beneath 
 the obedience and the virtue lies the merit of Christ. 
 This alone gives to human deeds their efficacy in 
 the sight of God. " That little holiness and those 
 feeble acts of love and grace receive an exceeding 
 value in God's sight, because He beholds those 
 who perform them as in Christ, and as it were 
 members of one so infinitely worthy in His eyes." 
 The obedience of the saints is as if the obedience 
 of Christ ; their sufferings fill up the measure of 
 the sufferings of Christ. 
 
 Difficult or obscure as this teaching may appear, 
 it has always had a representation in the church. 
 It found an early expression in the profoundest 
 of the ancient fathers, as when it was> said that 
 humanity had suffered and died in Christ, and 
 with Him had risen again to a higher life. It was 
 a teaching which had survived the Middle Ages, 
 taking on, though it did, a perverted form in the 
 belief that the merits of departed saints were 
 capable of a transfer to the living, in view of 
 some consideration offered to the treasury of the 
 church. With Luther it had been revived in a 
 purer form, and under the designation of imputa- 
 tion had been accepted in the churches of the Ref- 
 ormation without dissent. Edwards also held it, 
 but with a certain emphasis of his own, which 
 made it subserve at the same time the doctrine of 
 the divine sovereignty, or of man's absolute depen- 
 dence upon God. The following quotation illus- 
 
96 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 trates in a characteristic way one leading motive 
 in giving prominence to the doctrine : — 
 
 " Seeing we are such infinitely sinful and abominable 
 creatures in God's sight, and by our infinite guih have 
 brought ourselves into such wretched and deplorable cir- 
 cumstances, and all our righteousnesses are nothing, and 
 ten thousand times worse than nothing, if God looks 
 upon them as they be in themselves, is it not immensely 
 more worthy of the infinite majesty and glory of God 
 to deliver and make happy such poor, filthy worms, such 
 wretched vagabonds and captives, without any money 
 or price of theirs, or any manner of expectation of any 
 excellency or virtue in them, in any wise to recommend 
 them ? Will it not betray a foolish, exalting opinion of 
 ourselves, and a mean one of God, to have a thought of 
 offering anything of ours to recommend us to the favor 
 of being brought from wallowing like filthy swine in 
 the mire of our sins, and from the enmity and misery 
 of devils in the lowest hell to the state of God's dear 
 children, in the everlasting arms of His love, in heav- 
 enly glory ; or to imagine that this is the constitution of 
 God, that we should bring our filthy rags, and offer 
 them to Him as the price of this." ^ 
 
 The doctrine of justification by faith gained 
 nothing in attractiveness by its association with 
 Edwards' conception of the divine sovereignty. 
 But there were also other reasons which 23revented 
 him from seeing, as he might have done, the full 
 force of the truth which he was advocating. He 
 regards the relation of an elect humanity to Christ 
 ^ Justification by Faith, vol. iv. p. 131. 
 
CHRIHT AND HUMANITY. 97 
 
 as an unique as well as vital one ; but he does not 
 attempt to define the relationship, or to seek for it 
 an eternal basis in the very nature of man's relation- 
 ship to God. There is a curious and somewhat 
 indefinite allusion, in his treatise on Justification,^ 
 to those who dislike such expressions as " coming 
 to Christ," or "receiving Christ," or being "in 
 Clirist." These persons a<re also alluded to as clis- 
 cjusted with the word " union " when applied to the 
 intimate bond which exists between Christ and the 
 sold ; they regarded these expressions as obscure 
 metaphors which might at one time have had some 
 meaning, but as now no longer intelligible. Ed- 
 wards treats these objectors with a certain amount 
 of deference, as if anxious to say nothing wliich 
 woidd alienate them still further, as if he would 
 gain their consent to his argument by any reason- 
 able concession to their prejudice. But what may 
 be noted as singidar, and as calling for an explana- 
 tion, is the fact that he seems to be indifferent to 
 the exact phraseology of the metaphors, which he 
 admits them to be ; he is willing to use other words 
 if they are preferred ; he will speak of a relation 
 to Christ, instead of union with Him. He regards 
 it as foreign to his purpose to determine regard- 
 ing the nature of the union with Christ, and re- 
 fuses to be dragged into controversy over it. One 
 would have supposed that it was essential to his 
 argument to determine this very thing, whether 
 Christ stands in an eternal organic relationship to 
 1 Vol. iv. pp. 70 ff. 
 
98 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 the soul, and what the ground of this relationship 
 is. It is not that Edwards does not believe in thi» 
 relationship ; on the contrary it is the comparison 
 of the vine and the branches, or the marriage 
 union between husband and wife, which sets forth 
 to his mind the relation between Christ and his 
 disciples. But why is he so cautious and so re- 
 served at this critical juncture ? He even quotes 
 a passage from Archbishop Tillotson to the effect 
 that the union between Christ and true Christians 
 is a vital one, and not merely relative ; and he 
 remarks of TiUotson that he is " one of the great- 
 est divines on the other side of the question in 
 hand." The inference is, that if Tillotson held 
 to a vital union and not a mere relation of some 
 lesser kind, the idea cannot be altogether disgust- 
 ing, or irrational, or dangerous. 
 
 The passage we are criticising is a curious one. 
 Perhaps it is more : it may be prophetic in its very 
 obscurity of the coming disruption in the New 
 England churches ; as if we stood at the remote 
 sources of the schism, and were watching the be- 
 ginnings of disaffection with the doctrine of the 
 Trinity. If this supposition be right, then Ed- 
 wards was silent at a time when he should have 
 spoken. Whatever may have been the motive of 
 his silence, or of his unusual moderation and de- 
 ference towards those who oppose him, he cannot 
 be suspected of any want of faith in the fuU 
 deity of Christ. It is perhaps the most reasona- 
 ble explanation, that he was silent because he saw 
 
NECESSITY FOR THE INCARNATION. 99 
 
 no inward significance in that relationship between 
 God and man by which Christ becomes necessa- 
 rily the Head of a redeemed humanity. The doc- 
 trine of the Trinity, as he then held it, threw no 
 light upon the creation as subsisting in Christ. He 
 subordinated the Trinity and the Incarnation to the 
 necessity of an atonement. It must have been at 
 this stage of his mental progress, that he wrote: 
 " The necessity of Christ's satisfaction to divine 
 justice is, as it were, the centre and hinge of all 
 doctrines of pure revelation. Other doctrines are 
 of little importance comparatively except as they 
 have respect to this." ^ And again, even the doc- 
 trine of the Trinity is held in abeyance to the 
 divine sovereignty ; — ••' It seems to have been very 
 much on this account that it was requisite that 
 the doctrine of the Trinity itself shoidd be revealed 
 to us ; that, by a discovery of the concern of the 
 several divine persons in the gi'eat affair of our 
 salvation, we might the better understand and see 
 how all our dependence in this affair is on God, 
 and our sufficiency all in Him and not in our- 
 selves." ^ 
 
 Passages like these, when taken also in connec- 
 tion with the general tendency of Edwards' thought, 
 indicate that the Incarnation must depend, in the 
 
 1 Mysteries of Scripture, vol. iii. p. 542. Cf . also Work of Re- 
 demption, where the Incarnation is subordinated to the Atone- 
 ment : " He was born to that end that He might die ; and there- 
 fore He did, as it were, begin to die as soon as He was born." — 
 Vol. i. p. 412. 
 
 '■^ Justification by Faith, vol. iv. pp. 130, 154. 
 
100 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 last resort, on the divine sovereignty as its ground 
 and justification. For sovereignty implies, as lie 
 construed it, that when man had sinned God was 
 under no obligation to save him from the ruin 
 yvhich sin had wrought. If God should decide to 
 save any at all. He was absolutely free to save 
 whom He chose. It is only those whom God elects 
 to whom Christ stands related in the intimate bond 
 of union symbolized by the figure of the vine and 
 the branches. There was, therefore, no eternal 
 necessity for the Incarnation in the nature of 
 things. It is reduced to a contingent event de- 
 pending on the arbitrary will of God. Plence 
 Edwards felt restrained when the question arose 
 as to the nature and ground of that union with 
 /Christ, which many had come to dislike as indicat- 
 ;^''" ing some mystical, obscure relationship no longer 
 possessing any significance to the eye of faith or 
 reason. He did not feel called upon, when treating 
 of justification by faith, to carry the process back 
 to its final origin in an arbitrary will. Elsewhere, 
 as when treating of God's sovereignty, or of the 
 origin of sin, he pushes the argument to its ex- 
 treme conclusion. But there was something in the 
 doctrine of justification by faith which pointed in 
 another direction, away from a sovereign or arbi- 
 trary will to some etei'nal, divine constitution of 
 things, of which the divine will was the executive 
 expression. As St. Paul had presented the great 
 doetrine after emerging from Judaism, it included 
 an organic relationship of every soul to Christ ; 
 
CONCEPTION OF HUMAN NATURE. 101 
 
 there was a certain divine root in every man's be- 
 ing which, when discerned by faith, made it pos- 
 sible for him to believe that, however active or 
 dominant the power of sin within him, yet his 
 whole nature was not identified with sin ; that in 
 his true self as constituted in Christ, there was a 
 righteousness which he might claim as his own, 
 though he had not yet achieved it. This led him 
 to exclaim : " If, then, I do that which I would not, 
 it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in 
 me." And again he declares that the true life 
 within him was not only lived by faith in the Son 
 of God, but that the divine Son, was actually living 
 in him. 
 
 Edwards' treatise on Justification is most inter- 
 esting, because it discloses his mind as strongly 
 attracted to such an attitude, and yet prevented 
 from discerning its full significance by his doctrine 
 of sovereign election. In his conception of human 
 nature every man is completely identified with evil, 
 until divine grace arbitrarily restores a supernat- 
 ural gift which was lost at the fall. So long as 
 he was held in bondage to these doctrines, it was 
 hardly possible that he should rise to the acknowl- 
 edgment of an eternal necessity for the Incarna- 
 tion. Had he attempted to reach such a conclusion 
 from his own premises, it would have been incum- 
 bent on him to represent the fall of man as if it 
 were a step forward and upward in the history 
 of human development. A tendency, indeed, to 
 this mode of speaking finds expression in a ser- 
 
102 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 mon entitled The Wisdom Displayed in Salvation. 
 Here it is practically alleged tliat the situation is a 
 higher one in consequence of the fall than it could 
 otherwise have been. The relish of good is also 
 greater by the knowledge man now has of evil. 
 These contraries of good and evil heighten the 
 sense of one another. If man had not fallen he 
 would have had all liis happiness of God by his 
 own righteousness, while now he may claim to 
 stand in the righteousness of Christ. And still 
 further, the union between God and man is a 
 closer one ; there is a more intimate intercourse 
 and relationship.^ Thoughts like these are not in- 
 congruous with the conclusion which some have 
 drawn, that God decreed the introduction of sin 
 into the world as the means of a higher develop- 
 ment. While Edwards does not draw this conclu- 
 sion, and might have rejected it as unsatisfactory 
 or untrue, yet his desire to magnify the Augustin- 
 I ian doctrine of original sin leads him nearer than 
 / he is aware to the interpretation of the fall as up- 
 ward and not downward ; or to the language of a 
 mediaeval mystic, Hugo St. Victor, who apostro- 
 phized the sin of Adam asjfelix culpa. 
 
 There had been those in the ancient church who 
 had discerned the significance which the manifesta- 
 tion of God in the flesh must have, apart from its 
 relation to sin, as the keystone of the creation and 
 the crown of humanity. Even in the Middle Ages 
 an occasional protest may be heard to the same 
 1 Cf . Wisdom of God, etc., vol. iv. pp. 154, 155. 
 
THE ETERNAL SON. 103 
 
 effect, — that Christ is the completion of the crea- 
 tion, fulfilling an eternal purpose, and not merely 
 an -ali^erthought, with a purely remedial mission. 
 But Edwards is not in the number of these. 
 Christ, according to his assertion, comes into re- 
 lation with humanity in consequence of the fall. 
 Had there been no sin, there would have been no 
 necessity for an incarnation. Because of this lim- 
 ited, narrow view of the relationship of Christ to 
 humanity, Edwards was powerless to stem the tide 
 of Arminian aggression. Standing as he did where 
 the ways began to divide, he could not present 
 Christ as the Son of God in whom the sonship of 
 men inheres by an eternal constitution. But on 
 this subject a change came over his thought in his 
 later years, too late to modify his theology, but yet 
 significant still as expressing the latent spirit and 
 aim of the man. 
 
 VI. 
 
 EDWARDS AS A PREACHER. — HIS IMPRECATORY 
 
 SERMONS. 
 
 Among the sermons of Edwards there are a few 
 to which attention may be directed as supplement- 
 ing the general statement of his theology. Ed- 
 wards made no distinction between a scientific and 
 a practical theology. His sermons are heavily 
 freighted with the residts of his speculative thought. 
 Of his life work it may be said that, instead of en- 
 
104 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 deavoring to create a scientific theology wliich 
 might be recast or interpreted by sacred rhetoric 
 into a practical, effective form, he was occupied 
 with the effort to give a scientific cast to what was 
 originally a practical or regulative theology. One 
 of the peculiar characteristics which marked his 
 preaching grew out of a tendency to make the 
 prevailing theology consistent with itself by a 
 thorough enforcement of the principle in which it 
 had originated, or which constituted its reason or 
 justification. In this respect he did not go so far 
 as some of his successors. A certain mental sanity 
 kept him from pushing his principles to any ab- 
 surd or fantastic conclusion. None the less relent- 
 less was he in their application, until life and its 
 multifarious interests were interpreted by the light 
 of an abstract idea. 
 
 But despite the defects of his method, or the 
 severity which is the predominant tone of his 
 preaching, there is shown also at times a marvel- 
 lous tenderness. He had the power of inspired 
 appeal and exhortation. Refinement, dignity, and 
 strength, and always and everywhere a fresh and 
 intense interest in his theme, make his sermons 
 not only readable, but still forcible and impres- 
 sive, as if the preacher were even yet 'standing in 
 our midst. The deeper one goes into the spirit 
 of the hour or studies its issues, the more it be- 
 comes apparent that he had a mission to his age. 
 The exposition of this prophetic burden is reserved 
 for the second period of his life. But this con- 
 
THE INTELLECT IN RELIGION. 105 
 
 sciousness of a mission is shown from the first in a 
 supreme confidence which marks his utterance ; an 
 authoritative certainty of manner, as of one speak- 
 ing from direct insight or by divine authority. 
 Above the preacher, above the thinker, there tow- 
 ered also the majestic purity of the man, entirely 
 sincere and devoted, — a character that seems well- 
 nigh flawless ; so that in his own age he was, if pos- 
 sible, more deeply revered as a Christian man than 
 as the dauntless, unwearied champion of the Puri- 
 tan theology. It is not attempted here to give a 
 complete picture of Edwards as a preacher. A 
 few points only are selected for illustration which 
 are closely related to his theology, or serve to ex- 
 plain the working of his mind. 
 
 The intellectual element, which has been a marked 
 characteristic of the religion of New England peo- 
 ple, appears as their most legitimate heritage when 
 we read a sermon of Edwards on the Importance 
 of the Knowledge of Divine Truth. ^ The sermon 
 fitly opens the volume of his works which is de- 
 voted to his more elaborate discourses. No an- 
 cient Gnostic could have urged more strongly the 
 importance of a specidative knowledge of theology. 
 The necessity for pure knowledge is enforced al- 
 most in the spirit of Socrates or Plato, or as in the 
 writings of the ancient fathers who had been in- 
 fluenced by Greek philosophy, as if, without specu- 
 
 ^ The date of the sermon is given as 1739. With it may be 
 compared a short essay or paper on The Mysteries of Scripture, 
 vol. iii. p. 537. 
 
106 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 lative knowledge, obedience or salvation were im- 
 possible. A knowledge of tlie things of divinity is 
 absolutely necessary. Without speculative knowl- 
 edge we can have no practical or spiritual knowl- 
 edge. What are called the means of grace, such 
 as preaching or the sacraments, can have no force 
 or validity except by conveying knowledge. The 
 Bible is essentially a book of instructions, which 
 can be of no jirofit except as it conveys knowledge 
 to the mind. " He that doth not understand can 
 receive no faith nor any other grace." Even love 
 demands knowledge as its foundation, for an ob- 
 ject cannot be loved which is unknown. 
 
 Edwards does not write thus without a special 
 motive. He is resisting his old enemies the Ar- 
 minians, " fashionable divines of the age," who 
 are decrying a speculative knowledge of Christian 
 truth as unimportant compared with the practice 
 of Christian duty. He has found, as he thinks, 
 the secret of their indifference to theology in their 
 conception of virtue as consisting in benevolence 
 towards men, and not rather in love towards God. 
 To know God, then, becomes the highest, the most 
 pressing, of all obligations. He recommends the 
 pursuit of the knowledge of God to his hearers 
 by every variety of argument and appeal. He is 
 tempted to depreciate philosophy, as he thinks of 
 the transcendent claims of divinity. Let the phi- 
 losophers differ among themselves as they may, it 
 makes little difference to the Christian which may 
 be in the right. But he warns his hearers not to 
 
IMPORTANCE OF TnEOLOGY. 107 
 
 apply this principle to theology. Divine truth is 
 not a matter for ministers only, who may dispute 
 among themselves as they can. It is of infinite 
 importance to the common people to know what 
 kind of a being God is, all that relates to His es- 
 sence or His attributes ; the doctrines also which 
 relate to Christ, His incarnation. His mediation 
 and satisfaction ; the doctrine of justification, or 
 the application of redemption in effectual calling. 
 
 To this end he pleads with his hearers to make 
 diligent and laborious study of the Bible. It is 
 not a cursory reading which will ever lead to 
 thorough knowledge. Let them not be content 
 with what they hear from the preacher or may 
 gain in conversation, but search the Scriptures for 
 themselves, using the same diligence with which 
 men are wont to dig in mines of gold and silver. 
 The incentives to this pursuit of divinity grow 
 upon the preacher as his mind dwells upon the 
 theme. It will be a noble way of improving the 
 time ; it will help people to a knowledge of their 
 duty ; it will enable them to defend the doctrines 
 of religion when attacked by their adversaries. 
 Incidentally we get a glimpse of the social life 
 which Edwards is anxious to improve. If the 
 people will only attend to this great study, they 
 will find something profitable with which to em- 
 ploy themselves during the long winter evenings, — 
 something besides going about from house to house 
 spending the hours in unprofitable conversation, 
 with no other object than to amuse themselves or 
 
108 
 
 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 wear away the time. Some diversion is doubtless 
 lawful ; but it is wrong to spend so many long- 
 evenings in sitting and talldng and chatting in one 
 another's chimney-corners ; there is danger of fool- 
 ish and sinful conversation, of venting their jeal- 
 ousies and evil surmises against their neighbors. 
 He recommends them to procure and diligently 
 use other books than the Bible, which will stimu- 
 late their minds as well as further the same great 
 purpose. He has noticed in his pastoral calls 
 among the people that they have a few books, in- 
 deed, which now and then on Sabbath days they 
 read ; but they have had them so long and read 
 them so often that they are weary of them, and it 
 is now become a dull story, a mere task to read 
 them. He remarks that there are many excellent 
 books extant which would afford them pleasant 
 and profitable entertainment in their leisure hours. 
 He laments that, through their unwillingness to be 
 at a little expense, they do not furnish themselves 
 with helps of this nature. For the rest, let con- 
 versation with others be improved to the same 
 end. But the preacher is too wise not to see dan- 
 gers and abuses in the course which he is recom- 
 mending. In concluding he warns his hearers to 
 avoid ostentation, and not study divinity for the 
 sake of applause, or merely to enable them to dis- 
 pute with their neighbors. Let them look to God, 
 realizing their ignorance in His sight and the need 
 of divine illumination. And finally, if they will 
 only practise according to what knowledge they 
 
A PRACTICAL CONTRADICTION. 109 
 
 have, they will be on the way to further knowledge. 
 This the Psalmist approves : / understand more 
 than the ancients because I keep thy precepts. 
 This also Christ affirms : If any man will do His 
 will^ he shall knoiu of the doctrine. 
 
 It is a remarkable feature of Edwards' preach- 
 ing which calls for explanation or comment, that 
 though he is a philosophical necessitarian, denying 
 the freedom of the will in its ordinary acceptation, 
 yet his sermons abound in appeal and in pathetic 
 exhortations, as if the will had the power of choos- 
 ing between the motives of self or God. It has, 
 indeed, been often remarked in regard to one of 
 his notable sermons with the title, Pressing into 
 the Kingdom of God, that it is thoroughly incon- 
 sistent with his doctrine of the certainty or neces- 
 sity of human actions. In this sermon he insists 
 on the use of means as indispensably necessary 
 to those who are seeking for reconciliation with 
 God. He brings to bear upon the will all conceiv- 
 able motives to an immediate decision, as if at any 
 moment it might exert its self -determining power. 
 To press into the kingdom of God is represented as 
 involving strength of desire, firmness of resolution, 
 greatness of endeavor, engagedness and earnest- 
 ness directly concerned with this special business. 
 
 That there is here an emphatic contradiction re- 
 quires no proof. What is more to the purpose is 
 to show, if possible, why Edwards himself did not 
 feel the contradiction, — why he should not have 
 been embarrassed when making an appeal to the 
 
110 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 will. There is a hint in liis earliest writings which 
 may throw some light on this obscure mental pro- 
 cess. After having demonstrated that the world 
 has no external reality but exists only in the mind 
 of God, he remarks that we must continue to speak 
 in the old way about things, because of the neces- 
 sities springing from the defects of human lan- 
 guage. We may infer, then, that though he does 
 not believe in the freedom of the will he sees no 
 impropriety in using ' the customary language. 
 This also is the method of Scripture and of the 
 common usage of life. Here, too, language has 
 assumed its final shape, and cannot be bent to con- 
 formity with any speculative principle. 
 
 Other reasons may be assigned which throw 
 light upon this fundamental inconsistency. While 
 Edwards believed that human actions are but links 
 in the chain of necessity, that God determines 
 the will or that the will is governed by motives 
 instead of possessing the power to choose between 
 motives or to create a motive to itself, yet he also 
 held that the will might be called free, inasmuch 
 as freedom consists in the power of a man to act 
 according to his inclination. He therefore seems 
 to have felt that his admission that the will was 
 free in the sense in which he defined freedom, war- 
 ranted him in using the vocabulary of those who, 
 like the Arminians, conceived of freedom in a 
 widely different, in a real and vaster sense. It is 
 a singular case of delusion, of bondage to the mere 
 jugglery of words. The Edwardian notion of free- 
 
THINGS ARE WHAT THEY ARE. Ill 
 
 dom stands as a hollow, grinning ghost, or as a 
 mere deus ex machina ready to relieve the theo- 
 loofical situation when the stress became unendur- 
 able. 
 
 But it is one of the subtle revenges which the 
 reality inflicts upon a thinker who is seeking to 
 evade it, that it creeps into his thought and moulds 
 it unconsciously, even against his will. Bishop 
 Butler gave expression to this recondite truth 
 when he said, " Things are what they are, and the 
 consequences of them will be what they will be." 
 The emphasis which Edwards laid upon the will 
 as the principal factor in man as we^ as in God, 
 gave prominence to the will in matters of religion 
 or of common life ; and things being what they are, 
 the consequences of them were what they always 
 must be. Edwards was unconsciously making a 
 powerful appeal to the will, and the human will 
 responded in prolonged and mighty efforts to se- 
 cure the great ends of life as Edwards w^as present- 
 ing them. The conscious self-direction of the will 
 became the characteristic of New England Puri- 
 tanism, constituting streng*th and nobility of char- 
 acter, standing out also in sharp contrast to the 
 milder methods which affirm the principle of an 
 unconscious growth as the law of the religious life. 
 Some such qualification of the working of Edwards' 
 theology is demanded if we care to understand 
 and do justice to New England history. Not that 
 Edwards escaped the consequences of his denial of 
 a fundamental truth. It will be shown, directly. 
 
112 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 how his error followed him. But before we turn 
 to this unfortunate and even calamitous result of 
 an evil theory, we may present him as making his 
 appeal in pathetic and affectionate language, urg- 
 ing men to seek an interest in Christ and to 
 hasten to escape from impending danger. 
 
 The effect of Edwards' preaching, then, upon 
 the minds of many who listened to him, was re- 
 duced to an urgent, absorbing appeal to the will. 
 Some, it is true, may have been paralyzed by the 
 fearful motives which he invoked, so frightened by 
 the horrors of the dangers described, as to weaken 
 the capacity for action. Some of an intellectual 
 cast of mind may have been entangled by snags 
 from which they could not get free, eddying about 
 in an uncertain, aimless way. But there were 
 those also who, in this process of spiritual evolu- 
 tion, felt goaded to greater and sublimer efforts in 
 proportion as the horror of the situation was im- 
 pressed upon their imagination. These, in accord- 
 ance with the preacher's exliortation, struggled 
 with desperate determination until they took the 
 kingdom of God by violence. Those who succeeded 
 were from one point of view an illustration of the 
 selection of the fittest. Instead of being demoral- 
 ized, they were incited to more vigorous effort, as 
 they considered the extreme necessity of the case, 
 the imminent danger of eternal destruction, the 
 shortness of the time, the uncertainty of the oppor- 
 tunity, the difficulties to be encountered, the possi- 
 bility of overcoming, the exceeding excellence of 
 
THE PREACHER'S EXHORTATION. 113 
 
 the reward. The preacher advises those who have 
 undertaken to make the conquest of God s 'kingdom 
 to keep their eye fixed upon the plain issue of the 
 struggle, and not to fight shadows by the way. It 
 will be a mistake and weaken them in the conflict 
 if they are questioning about God's secret decrees, 
 searching for signs by which they may read God's 
 mind before its accomjilishment. Let them cease 
 to be distressed with fears that they are not elected, 
 or have committed the unpardonable sin, or that 
 for them the day of grace is over. When men 
 complain that strong desires and thorough earnest- 
 ness are not theirs to command, it is answered that 
 God ordinarily works by means ; that it is in their 
 power to attend on the ordinances of religion and 
 to strive against the corruption of their hearts, 
 their dulness, and the other difficulties in their way. 
 Earnestness of mind will follow earnestness of 
 endeavor ; and if there be painful striving, it will 
 not be long before earnestness and desire will take 
 possession of the soid. 
 
 All this may sound commonplace and familiar. 
 And yet we are walking here in a field which is 
 strown with the perplexities of a bygone age. 
 There is one objection in particular, which the 
 preacher strives to meet, which has a remote air, as 
 if it never could have been real or genuine. Some, 
 he remarks, may object that if they are earnest and 
 take a great deal of pains they shall be in danger 
 of trusting to what they do, and thus come to de- 
 pend on a righteousness of their own. In this ob- 
 
114 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 jection Oalvinism is seen as the opposite extreme 
 to Komanism, which makes religion consist so 
 largely in outward works. If the Romanist feared 
 that he should not do enough to secure salvation, 
 the Calvinist is fearful lest he shall do too much, 
 and thus come to depend upon his doing. Ed- 
 wards disposes of the objection with no great dif- 
 ficulty, denying that there is any danger corre- 
 sponding to such a fear. Instead of its being true 
 that the more they do the more they will de- 
 pend on their doing, the reverse is true, — the less 
 will they be likely to rest in their doing, and the 
 sooner will they see the vanity of all their works. 
 But the objection really went deeper than Edwards 
 perceived. It grew out of the inmost mood of the 
 Calvinistic theology. Not only so, but not long 
 after Edwards' time there arose the sect of the 
 Sandemanians, who asserted as their fundamental 
 principle the deadliness of all doings, the necessity 
 for inactivity in order to let God do His work in 
 the soul. Sandeman, the best representative of 
 the sect, was a highly educated man, a Scotchman, 
 earnest and intense as Edwards himseK. He had 
 drawn an inference which gave New England Cal- 
 vinists an uneasy consciousness in the generation 
 that followed Edwards. It was fortunate for Ed- 
 wards that he lived before Sandeman appeared.^ 
 
 But even in Edwards' most affecting appeals 
 there still lurks the sense of the divine sovereignty, 
 
 ^ Cf. Sandeman, Theron and Aspasia, in which his thesis is 
 worked out with skill and with considerable grace of style. 
 
UNCERTAINTY OF THE RESULT, 115 
 
 which orders even salvation in accordance with 
 arbitrary ^vill. He urges his hearers to sacrifice 
 everything in this work of pressing into the king- 
 dom of God, to forget the things behind, to labor 
 for a heart to go on and to hold out to the end. 
 But he also cautions them : " Remember that if 
 ever God bestows His mercy on you. He will use 
 His sovereign pleasure about the time when. He 
 will bestow it on some in a little time, and on 
 others not till they have sought it long. If other 
 persons are soon enlightened and comforted, while 
 you long remain in darkness, there is no other way 
 but for you to wait ; God will act arbitrarily in this 
 matter, and you cannot help it. You must even be 
 content to wait, in a way of laborious and earnest 
 striving, till His time comes." But even so there is 
 no certainty of the result. " If you stop striving 
 and sit still, you surely die ; if you go forward 
 you may live." God has not bound Himself to any- 
 thing that a person does while destitute of faith 
 and out of Christ, no matter how hard or how long 
 he may strive ; but there is a great 2^'^obability 
 that those who hearken to this counsel, who press 
 onward and persevere, will at length by violence 
 take the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 The effects of Edwards' denial of the freedom 
 of the will may be traced in a group of sermons to 
 which it is now necessary to turn, painful though 
 the necessity be. They may be caUed his impre- 
 catory sermons. Out of the forty sermons included 
 in the fourth volume of his works, they form a 
 
116 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 large proportion, being eiglit in number. Tliey 
 are written out in full, — an indication that tliey 
 were the deliberate utterance of the preacher. It 
 has been said, by way of extenuation for their 
 severity, not to say cruelty, that they were de- 
 livered under peculiar circumstances. Attention 
 has also been called to the hardness and cruelty of 
 the age, which, if not justifying their vehemence, 
 created a different standard of speech, in accord- 
 ance with which they should be judged rather than 
 by the gentler, more sentimental standard of a 
 later time. It is quite possible, too, that they 
 were demanded by the prevailing taste, that they 
 were relished and admired by those who listened 
 to them. It was a remark of the last century, that 
 in matters of religion men take pleasure in being 
 terrified, and admire the preacher who can rouse 
 the most dark and awful feelings. But in this 
 respect, even in the last century, there must have 
 been a limit to human endurance. 
 
 When all allowances have been made that should 
 be made, these sermons ^i;ill possess an unique char- 
 acter in homiletic literature. They are marked by 
 a vehemence not only unrestrained, but which 
 seemed to be justified or demanded by the funda- 
 mental principles of the preacher's theology. Why 
 should Edwards, of all other men, have taught in , 
 such an extreme form the doctrine of endless pun- 
 ishment, — a form unsurpassed, if not unequalled, 
 in the whole range of Christian literature ? The 
 explanation must be sought, not in his character, 
 
TOTAL DEPRAVITY. 117 
 
 * 
 
 not altogether in the conditions of the time, but in 
 his theoretical denial of the freedom of the will. 
 It has not been by accident that he has been chiefly 
 known and is still chiefly remembered by his elabo- 
 rate work on the Will. Even if we could not see 
 clearly the connection, we might suspect there was 
 some relation between what was obnoxious in his 
 preaching and what was irrational in his theology. 
 But the connection is not remote or obscure. 
 
 It was the residt of Edwards' attitude on the 
 subject of the wiU that he was forced to conceive 
 the will as constituting the most essential or dis- 
 tinctive quality of hmnanity ; and as the will of 
 every man who is born into the world is fixed and 
 determined toward evil, there was nothing to hinder 
 him, there was indeed every motive to force him, 
 into the identification of every individual man with 
 unqualified and infinite wickedness. Men have not 
 only a tendency to sin, but their very nature is iden- 
 tical with sin. Every man is born with a predom- 
 inant choice for evil, which controls all lesser vo- 
 litions and vitiates every r- "^ of his life. There is 
 no border land which the will may cross from a 
 state of indifference or indecision to one of con- 
 scious purpose ; no twilight of the soul in which 
 its forces gather undiscerned for some great reso- 
 lution. There is no divine root of goodness in 
 human nature which may be depended on to resist 
 the evil tendency. Those who are determined to- 
 ward evil are wholly evil, corrupt in every part of 
 their being, totally corrupt in all their faculties 
 
118 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 and dispositions and affections ; all their senses 
 being mere inlets and outlets of sin, channels of 
 corruption. 
 
 If sin, then, were already cursed by God, why 
 should not the preacher be free to curse what 
 God had cursed? Why should he be more re- 
 strained when speaking of sinful men than when 
 speaking of sin in the abstract ? Even the little 
 child, notwithstanding its innocence and winning 
 ways, was but the incarna^tion of evil, unmitigated 
 and undiluted. How much worse were mature 
 men, with whom the predominant choice of evil 
 had been exemplified in almost countless acts of 
 sin ! This was Edwards' conviction, and he be- 
 lieved it his duty to proclaim it in a fearless and 
 unmistakable way. It was a mistaken kindness to 
 speak softly or indifferently. And besides, in view 
 of Arminian laxity, there were special reasons for 
 giving prominence to his convictions. The incip- 
 ient tendency toward a denial of the doctrine of 
 endless punishment was an urgent motive for its 
 more emphatic proclamation. Devotion to God, 
 if not to man, required that the divine justice in 
 the punishment of the sinner should be maintained 
 at whatever cost to the natural affections. If the 
 sinner were wholly evil, so that the deepest root of 
 his being was grafted in sin, then the sinner de- 
 served to be denounced in such language as men 
 reserve for that which excites their strongest and 
 most righteous indignation. In the performance 
 of his task Edwards was facilitated by the autoc- 
 
USEFULNESS OF THE WICKED. 119 
 
 racy freely accorded to the Puritan clergy in an 
 earlier stage of New England history, which, al- 
 though it had begun to decline, had not by any 
 means disappeared. 
 
 One of the strongest of these imprecatory ser- 
 mons, whose argument is condensed in its title, 
 Wicked Men Usefid in their Destruction Only, il- 
 lustrates a peculiar phase of Edwards' thought. It 
 has often been noticed that a certain pantheistic 
 tendency attaches to the extreme forms of the doc- 
 trine of divine sovereignty. There are various 
 types and phases of pantheism, as there are of 
 monotheism. To that form of the belief which 
 attempts the deification of nature, or of all that is, 
 Edwards had no direct leaning. Nor to the Bud- 
 dhistic temper, which treats the world of outward 
 things as an illusion destined to cease, had he any 
 inclination. In the shape, also, which pantheism 
 sometimes assumes, that final annihilation waits 
 upon all which does not realize absorption into 
 God, there was something which to Edwards was 
 repulsive. To his mind, the outward world was 
 real only as being the expression of the stable wiU 
 of God. Annihilation is impossible because he 
 entertains a profound reverence for being or exist- 
 ence, so that he who is once possessed of mil, and 
 whose will is determined by God, is born to exist 
 forever. But this evil wiU, whether in men or 
 angels, though it seems to act in defiance of God, 
 is no dualistic factor in the universe : it still 
 serves the one divine will quite as really as if de- 
 
120 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 voted to the righteous service of God. All men 
 alike, whether sinners or saints, are useful in the 
 divine economy. " There can be but two ways in 
 which man can be useful, either in acting or in 
 being acted iqjon and disposed of." ^ The latter 
 constitutes the usefulness of the wicked. They 
 .are the material upon which the divine justice 
 operates. Without their existence, God's justice 
 would have remained inactive, as a potency without 
 opportunity for exercise or manifestation. God 
 may be said to need the wicked in order to the 
 activity of His justice, as much as the righteous 
 in order to the display of His love. When men 
 objected that they were useful to their fellows in 
 the various walks of life, that they were not wholly 
 bad, since they aimed to live for one another, for 
 their friends, their neighbors, or the public weal, 
 — nay, that they might even be of service to the 
 church by the promotion of civil order, — to such 
 pleas Edwards replied, that so long as men did 
 not perform these duties designedly, with a con- 
 scious direction of the will toward God, they were 
 not useful as men or as rational creatures, but use- 
 ful only as irrational things are useful, as the tim- 
 ber and stone of which a house is built. However 
 great their service, it was of no more value in 
 God's eyes than the actions of the brute creation. 
 Their only real usefulness lay in being reserved 
 as vessels of dishonor, through which God glori- 
 fied His majesty. 
 
 1 Vol. iv. p. 301. 
 
A TERRIFIC CLIMAX. 121 
 
 In order to overcome the indifferent mood in 
 which people might listen to the preaching of end- 
 less punishment, Edwards expatiates at length 
 upon its nature ; he shows how intolerable it will 
 be, how it is without remedy or relaxation or mit- 
 igation, how it is as unavoidable as it will be in- 
 tolerable. Every evasion or loophole of escape, 
 every fond imagination of a possible release, is 
 shown to be futile and vain. No individual, think- 
 ing himself so obscure as to be beneath notice, 
 may hope to elude attention, or to crawl into 
 heaven unobserved : neither annihilation nor resto- 
 ration after ages of suffering are equivalent substi- 
 tutes for the punishment of an infinite sin, which 
 calls for infinite penalty. The fertility of Edwards' 
 mind is displayed in the supply of images with 
 which he presses home upon his hearers his awful 
 theme. His imagination attempts to measure the 
 significance of the word eternal. The thought 
 of these terrific sermons reaches its climax when 
 the saints in glory are represented as callous to the 
 sufferings of the lost. For there is one last hope, 
 one last refuge to which sinful humanity is driven 
 to cling, when confronting the desperate situation. 
 If God be, as He is said to be, without pity, as He 
 executes eternal judgment on His foes ; if it be that 
 His heart is full of burning anger against those who 
 have defied Him, so that the possibility of appeal- 
 ing to His love is forever closed, may it not be that 
 those who have the good fortune to be saved, the 
 parents, the friends, the lovers of their kind, will 
 
122 THE PARI 811 MINISTER. 
 
 still retain something of their common humanity, 
 — the natural compassion or sympathy which will 
 reduce their own pleasure in heaven when they wit- 
 ness the agony of souls in hell ? To this pathetic 
 hope, which in the lowest extremity still trusts in 
 humanity when there is no basis for trust in God, 
 Edwards replies by affirming in substance that the 
 hmnanity of the saints is absorbed or annihilated 
 in God. They, too, will look upon the scene with- 
 out flinching ; their serenity will not only be un- 
 disturbed, but their happiness will be the deeper 
 because of the contrast afforded by this ever-pres- 
 ent spectacle of woe. " There will be no remain- 
 ing difficulties about the justice of God, about the 
 absolute decrees of God, or an}i:hing pertaining 
 to the dispensations of God towards men. Divine 
 justice in the destruction of the wicked will then 
 appear as light without darkness, and will shine 
 as the sun without the clouds." Those who are 
 saved will then be thinking, not of man, but of 
 God, how God is glorifying His justice on the ves- 
 sels of dishonor, or glorifying His grace on the 
 vessels of mercy. Even fathers and mothers will 
 then rejoice and praise God as they witness eternal 
 justice poured out upon their own offspring. If 
 this seems strange or impossible, it must be re- 
 membered that the circumstances of our nature will 
 then be changed. What is virtue here will be no 
 virtue there. Now virtue shows itself by natural 
 affection, but natural affection is no virtue of the 
 saints in glory. However the saints in heaven may 
 
NATURAL AFFECTION IN HEAVEN. 123 
 
 have loved the damned while here, especially those 
 who were near and dear to them in this world, they 
 will have no love to them hereafter. Virtue will 
 then be exercised in some other and higher manner.^ 
 It is not that God and the saints will be unable 
 to realize the sufferins^s of the lost. Althouo-h the 
 saints look upon the smoke of their torments and 
 the raging of the fires of their burning afar off, 
 they will yet measure the misery and the agony 
 more truly than any of us do here. " God also is 
 everywhere present with His all-seeing eye. He 
 is in heaven and in hell, and in and through every 
 part of His creation. He is where every devil is, 
 and where every damned soul is ; He is present by 
 His power and by His essence. He not only 
 knows as well as those in heaven who see at a dis- 
 tance, but he knows as perfectly as those who feel 
 the misery. He seeth into the inmost recesses of 
 the hearts of those miserable spirits, for He up- 
 holds them in being." ^ While the joy which the 
 saints feel, as they contemplate the sufferings of 
 the lost, springs partly from their devotion to God's 
 glory and their desire to see His justice vindicated, 
 yet it also springs from the deeper realization of 
 their own happiness. They are lost in adoring 
 wonder at the mystery of the love which elected 
 and redeemed them. The sight of hell torments 
 will exalt the happiness of the saints forever. 
 They will prize their own blessedness and God's 
 love the more when they see the doleful condition 
 1 Vol. iv. pp. 291, 294. 2 Vol. iv. p. 291. 
 
124 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 of the damned, and how dreadful it is to suffer the 
 anger of God. It will give the saints a deeper 
 sense of the distinguishing love of God, who has 
 made so great a difference between themselves and 
 others, who are now lost, but who were no worse 
 than themselves and have deserved no worse of 
 God. When they shall behold all this, how will 
 heaven ring with their praises ; with what love and 
 ecstasy will they sing the song of the redeemed ! ^ 
 
 The preacher does not hesitate to avow his 
 belief that the great majority of mankind have 
 been lost. To this conclusion he was driven by 
 observation and experience, by theoretic considera- 
 tions, by the enforcement of a high ideal. Again 
 and ag^in he reiterates the statement that out of 
 the great mass of mankind only a few will be 
 saved. " The bigger part of men who have died 
 heretofore have gone to hell." The whole heathen 
 world is hopelessly doomed. In the Christian 
 world the prospect is little better for large masses 
 of men under the dominion of idolatry and super- 
 stition. The majority of each passing generation 
 is lost. In every congregation there are many 
 whose damnation is sure.^ 
 
 Edwards defended his manner of preaching, on 
 the ground that, if these things were true, it was 
 only kindness to a congregation to present them, 
 
 1 Cf . vol. iv. p. 307 ; also ch. iii. of Miscell. Observations, 
 vol. iv. p. 612. 
 
 2 Cf. vol. i. pp. 78, 537 ; vol. ii. p. 499 ; vol. iii. pp. 448, 449; 
 vol. iv. pp. 316, 386, 583. 
 
LAW AND GOSPEL. 125 
 
 and that, too, in what he calls the " liveliest " man- 
 ner. When ministers preach of hell in a cold 
 manner, though they may say in words that it 
 is infinitely terrible, they contradict themselves. 
 The main work of ministers is to preach the gospel. 
 A minister would miss it very much if he should 
 insist too much on the terrors of the law and neg- 
 lect the gosj^el ; but yet the law is very much to be 
 insisted on, and the preaching of the gospel is like 
 to be in vain mthout it.^ But no one can read 
 these imprecatory sermons without feeling that the 
 preacher goes beyond the requirements of duty or 
 of rhetoric. There enters into them a personal 
 tone, as if he spoke in the divine name to curse the 
 enemies of God. He is almost over-zealous for the 
 honor of the Lord of Hosts. He reflects the spirit 
 of the old dispensation, — Shall not I hate them^ 
 O Lord^ that hate Thee^ and rise up against them 
 that rise up against Thee ? Yea^ I hate them right 
 sore, as if they icere mine enemies. "You have 
 often seen a spider or some other noisome insect 
 when thrown into the midst of a fierce fire, and 
 have seen how immediately it 3aelds to the force of 
 the flames : there is no long struggle, no fighting 
 against the fire, no strength exerted to oppose the 
 heat, or to fly from it, but it immediately stretches 
 forth itself and yields ; and the fire takes posses- 
 sion of it, and at once it becomes full of fire and is 
 burned into a bright coal. Here is a little image 
 of what you will be the subjects of in hell." ^ And 
 
 1 Cf. Marks of the Work of the Spirit, etc., vol. i. p 538. 
 
 2 Vol. iv. p. 264. 
 
126 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 again he seems to lose patience, to grow provoked, 
 because men still resist liis intense earnestness of 
 appeal. He closes a sermon with these words : 
 " You who now hear of hell and the WTath of the 
 great God, and sit here in these seats so easy and 
 quiet and go away so careless, — by and by you will 
 shake and tremble, and cry out and shriek, and 
 gnash your teeth, and will be thoroughly convinced 
 of the vast weight and importance of these great 
 things which you now despise. You wiU not then 
 need to hear sermons in order to make you sen- 
 sible." 1 
 
 But if it be painful to read these sermons of 
 Edwards, what must it have bcL to have heard 
 them ! The traditions stiU linger in New England 
 of the effect they produced. One man has recorded 
 that, as he listened to him when discoursing of the 
 day of judgment, he fully anticipated that the 
 dreadful day woidd begin when the sermon should 
 come to an end ! He was the greatest preacher of 
 his age. It is only at rare intervals that a man 
 endowed with such a power appears. His effec- 
 tiveness did not lie in voice and gesture. He was 
 accustomed to lean, it is said, upon one arm, fas- 
 tening his eyes upon some distant point in the 
 meeting-house. But beneath the qniet manner 
 were the filces #f a volcano. His gravity of char- 
 acter, his profundity of spiritual insight, his in- 
 tense realism as if the ideal were the only real, his 
 burning devotion, his vivid imagin?^^'on, his master- 
 1 Vol. iv. p. 265. 
 
SERMON AT ENFIELD. 127 
 
 f ul will, — these entered into his sermons. He was 
 almost too great a man to let loose upon other men 
 in their ordinary condition. He was like some 
 organ of vast capacity whose strongest stops or 
 combinations should never have been drawn. The 
 account has been left to us of the impression he 
 produced in the little village of Enfield, in Con- 
 necticut, where he went to preach one Sunday 
 morning in the month of Jidy, 1741. The congre- 
 gation had assembled in its usual mood, with no 
 special interest or expectation. The effect of the 
 sermon was as if some supernatural apparition had 
 frightened the people beyond control. They were 
 convidsed in tears of agony and distress. Amid 
 their tears and outcries the preacher pauses, bid- 
 ding them to be quiet in order that he may be 
 heard.^ This was the sermon which, if New Eng- 
 land has forgiven, it has never been able to forget. 
 Its title was, — Sinners in the Hands of an Angry 
 God. The text was a weird passage from the 
 book of Deuteronomy, — Their foot shall slide in 
 due time. The wicked are here represented as, 
 equally with the righteous, a manifestation of the 
 one living, eternal will. They illustrate an attri- 
 
 ^ Cf. Trumbull's History of Connecticut^ vol. ii. p. 145. Accord- 
 ing' to another account, Edwards preached th)«? same sermon on an 
 occasion when he was called to take the place of Whitefield, wlio 
 had failed to appear when a multitude were gathered to hear 
 him. Although unknown to most of his audience in person, and 
 with the disappointment of the assembly to overcome, he pro- 
 duced an effect h Whitefield could not have surpassed. Cf . 
 Rev. J. W. Alexander, Centen. Discourse of New Jersey College. 
 
128 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 bute of the divine nature. The justice of God is 
 visible in their continuance in life : it will only be 
 more visible hereafter. God now holds them in this 
 life as long as it suits His pur]3ose ; He holds them 
 on the slippery declining* ground, on the edge of a 
 pit where they could not stand alone without His 
 helj). They are ah^eady under a sentence of con- 
 demnation. When God lets go they will drop. God 
 does not keep them from sliding to their fate be- 
 cause he has any consideration for them. He is 
 even more angry with many of those now living, 
 It *' yea, doubtless with many that are now in this con- 
 / \ gregation," than He is with many of those who are 
 \ 1 in hell. For these the wrath of God is burning, the 
 pit is prepared, the fire is ready, the furnace is hot, 
 the flames do rage and glow. The devils are wait- 
 ing and watching for them, like lions restrained that 
 are greedy for their prey. "The unconverted are 
 now walking over the pit of hell on a rotten cover- 
 ing, and there are innumerable places in this cov- 
 ering so weak that they will not bear their weight, 
 ^ and these places are not seen." These do not real- 
 ize what will be their fate. Though they know 
 that the majority of men are lost, they flatter 
 themselves with a prospect of peace and safety. 
 They do not realize that the wrath of God against 
 them is like great waters dammed up for the pres- 
 ent, but rising higher and higher ; that " God holds 
 them over the pit of hell much as one holds a spi- 
 der or some loathsome insect over the fire ; that 
 they are ten thousand times more abominable in 
 
PERSONAL NARRATIVE. 129 
 
 His eyes than a venomous serpent is in ours." And 
 there is no reason to be given why those sitting 
 in the presence of the preacher have not dropped 
 into hell since they rose in the morning, or since 
 they have been sitting there in God's house, but 
 God's mere arbitrary will, — the uncovenanted, un- 
 obliged forbearance of an incensed God. In some 
 of his sermons, Edwards warned his hearers not to 
 abuse his preaching to their discouragement. But 
 in this discourse there is no qualification ; it is one 
 constant strain of imprecation against sinful hu- 
 manity from beginning to close. And the sermon 
 ends with the words : — 
 
 " If we knew that there was one person and but one, 
 in the whole congregation, that was to be the subject of 
 this misery, what an awful thing it would be to think 
 of ! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would 
 it be to see such a person ! How might all the rest of 
 the congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over 
 him ! But, alas ! instead of one, how many it is likely 
 will remember this discourse in hell ! And it would be 
 a wonder if some that are now present should not be in 
 hell in a very short time, before this year is out. And 
 it would be no wonder if some persons that now sit here 
 in some seats of this meeting-house, in health and quiet 
 and secure, should he there before to^norroiu morning.''^ 
 
 The Personal Narrative of Edwards, which cov- 
 ers the earlier years of his ministry, discloses the 
 preacher as endeavoring, by meditation and an 
 ever-deepening experience, to make real to himself 
 
130 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 the doctrines he was preaching to others. He 
 records that the gospel seemed to him like the 
 richest treasure. Even seeing the name of Christ 
 causes his heart to burn within him. He often 
 recalls the affecting and delightful text, A man 
 shall he as an hicUng-jjlace from the wind and a 
 covert from the tertipest. He likes to think of 
 himself as a child taking hold of Christ, to be led 
 by Him through the wilderness. Once, as he rode 
 out into the woods in the year 1737, and alighted 
 in a retired place, he had a view of Christ, as a 
 mediator, of His sweet grace and love and conde- 
 scension, a view wherein the person of Christ ap- 
 peared of such transcendent excellence, as great 
 even above the heavens, that he was overcome, and 
 remained for an hour in a flood of tears and weep- 
 ing aloud. The holiness of God appeared to him 
 as the most lovely of His attributes. He had 
 learned also to delight in His sovereignty, in His 
 showing mercy to whom He would show mercy. 
 It was a pleasure to ask of Him this sovereign 
 mercy. But these religious raptures were also ac- 
 companied by affecting views of his own sinful- 
 ness and vileness. The sense of his wickedness 
 and the badness of his heart was stronger after his 
 conversion than before. His wickedness seemed 
 to surpass that of all others. No language was 
 too strong for the purposes of seK-condemnation. 
 His heart seemed to him like an abyss infinitely 
 deeper than hell. He constantly longed for a 
 broken heart and to lie low before God. He could 
 
COMMUNION WITH NATURE. 131 
 
 not bear to think of being no more humble than 
 other Christians. " Others speak of their longing 
 to be ' hmnbled to the dust ; ' that may be a proper 
 expression for them, but I always think of myself, 
 that I ought, and it is an expression that has long 
 been natural for me to use in prayer, ' to lie infi- 
 nitely low before God.' " If h«if preached to others 
 the necessity of dependence upon God's gi'ace and 
 strength, of standing, only in the righteousness of 
 Christ, and of adoring the sovereignty which pre- 
 sides over the universe, it was not as mere tenets 
 of a sound doctrine. He had come for liimself to 
 have this sense of absolute dependelice ; he ab- 
 horred his own righteousness ; the thought of any 
 goodness in himself was detestable to him. Once 
 more, in 1739, he was overcome and burst forth into 
 loud weeping as he thought how meet and suitable 
 it was that God should govern the world, ordering 
 all things according to His own pleasure. 
 
 It is suggestive to note that these high expe- 
 riences are always recorded as coming to Jiim when 
 he is alone with nature, as when he ride^ through 
 retired and lonely roads, or, leaving his horse, 
 plunges into the still depths of the forest. This 
 sympathy with nature had shown itself when he 
 was a child, leading him into solitary places in the 
 woods in order to communion with God in prayer. 
 In his youth also he had displayed a marvellous 
 aptitude for reading the secrets of the external 
 world. Though he had abandoned the study of 
 ^ Dwight, Life of Edwards, p. 133. 
 
132 THE PARISH MINISTER. 
 
 natural science when lie turned to theology, liis 
 days were still bound together by natural piety. 
 In the contrast also which nature offered with its 
 unconscious life, where there is no continuous strain 
 and effort of anxious purpose, he could find com- 
 fort and relief, — a closer communion with God 
 than when scrutinizing the workings of the intense 
 and concentrated will. 
 
SECOND PERIOD. 
 
 TfiE GREAT AWAKENING. 1735-1750. 
 
 — *— 
 
 I. 
 
 KEVIVAL AT NORTHAMPTON. NARRATIVE OF 
 
 SURPRISING CONVERSIONS. 
 
 The preaching of Edwards, of which ilhistra- 
 tions have been given, could at no time have been 
 listened to with indifference. If on the one hand 
 it may have provoked intense resistance, on the 
 other hand, when received as true, it must have 
 been followed by some extraordinary attestation of 
 its power, or, in the current phraseology, have been 
 remarkably blessed. The time had now come for 
 that great ecclesiastical reaction or revival, which- 
 ever we may term it, for which synods had been 
 laboring, though ineffectually, for nearly fifty years. 
 The lamentations of clergy and laity over the low 
 estate of the church, the aspirations for a church re- 
 stored to its pristine earnestness, as in the early days 
 of New England history, — these were prophetic of 
 the event which now came to pass under the in- 
 spiration of Edwards' influence. To him belongs 
 the credit of initiating a movement which, begin- 
 ning at Northampfon, was to spread over New 
 
134 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 England and tlirougliout the colonies in America, — 
 wliich was to penetrate into Scotland and England, 
 stimulating and giving form to ideas which were 
 already fermenting in the mind of Wesley.^ 
 
 The impulse of the Great Awakening was a 
 theological conviction which first took shape in 
 Edwards' mind, — a belief in the immediate action 
 of the Divine Spirit upon the human soul. When 
 Edwards as a youth was meditating upon the di- 
 vine immanence as constituting the reality of the 
 outward world, he was prej^aring himself for his 
 distinctive task. At some later stage of his history 
 (the exact moment is unkno^vn, as the process is un- 
 described), he took a step which carried him beyond 
 Berkeley by appl3dng the Berkeleyan principle to 
 the human mind. God was then seen to be hold- 
 ing as direct and immediate a relationship to the 
 sold as he held to the external world. This prin- 
 ciple became the foundation of Edwards' doctrine 
 of conversion. 
 
 1 In her Life of Wesley, p. 196, Miss Wedgwood remarks : 
 '* A great awakening to the interests of eternity, as they would 
 then he called, had already taken place in America, an account 
 of which, written by Jonathan Edwards, under whose preaching 
 it had originated, was read by Wesley during a walk from Lon- 
 don to Oxford (173!^). ' Surely this is the Lord's doing, and it is 
 marvellous in our eyes,' he writes in his journal after the perusal. 
 Nothing equal to the sudden and general emotion described by 
 Edwards had as yet occurred in his own country, and he doubtless 
 was led to desire earnestly that England might not lag behind 
 America in the path of gfrace." Three months after this date 
 occurs the first instance of "bodily effects" under Wesley's 
 preaching. 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF CONVERSION. 135 
 
 But the origin of the principle may be traced 
 still further back until we come to the peculiar 
 ideas wliich Calvin had stamped upon the churches 
 owning allegiance to his authority. While Calvin 
 had separated God and man to such an extent as 
 to make almost impossible a communication be- 
 tween the divine and the human, he had endeav- 
 ored to compensate for this deficiency in his theol- 
 ogy by attaching greater importance to the office 
 and work of the Holy Spirit. Luther had con- 
 nected God and man through the medium of de- 
 vout feeling, so that the word of God in Scripture 
 became the reflex of human experience. Calvin 
 regarded Scripture as an arbitrary and external 
 revelation of the divine will. In order to bring 
 the mind to a recognition of the truth of Scripture, 
 he presupposed an activity of the Holy Spirit, 
 which bore testimony in the heart to the truth of 
 the written Word. This element in Calvin's teach- 
 ing does not appear at once as directly operative 
 in the theology of the Reformed churches. It first 
 became an effective principle, not in the Presby- 
 terian communions of Scotland or England, but 
 in the more extreme form of Calvinism known as 
 Independency. And it was not in England, but in 
 the Puritan churches of the New England theoc- 
 racy, that the custom first became a general one, 
 of requiring a statement of the experience wrought 
 by the Holy Spirit within the soul, as a condition 
 of church membership. In so doing the Puritans 
 of New England had introduced a theological as 
 
136 TnE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 well as a practical idea, which, however obnoxious 
 it may have been in its workings, was none the less 
 of profound significance for the future of religion 
 and theology. It was destined to spread to Eng- 
 land, and to revive the spirit of Presbyterianism ; 
 it was to be the means of bringing the Calvinistic 
 theology into line with the inwardness of German 
 theology. It was this doctrine which was taken 
 up by Edwards, and was combined with his specu- 
 lative principles of the immediacy of the divine 
 action, whether in the external world or in the 
 sphere of human thought and feeling. 
 
 It was therefore no accidental circumstance that 
 the first great instance of what are called revivals 
 should have been witnessed in America and kot in 
 England. The idea of revivals is the gift of 
 American to foreign Calvinism. Methodism also 
 appears as indebted to Puritanism chiefly for this 
 leading characteristic of its system of religious cul- 
 ture. When the Puritan churches arose from 
 their depression, whether in England or America, 
 they found the principle of their restoration in a 
 seed of life after their own kind, which had long 
 remained dormant, but which was first quickened 
 into vital power in the mind of Edwards. It is for 
 this reason, among others, that he deserves recog- 
 nition as a theologian who has sensibly affected the 
 interests of scientific and of practical theology. 
 That he had not entirely measured the significance 
 of the principle, or that it was still accompanied by 
 some imperfection in its statement ; that it needed 
 
THE IMMEDIATE DIVINE INFLUENCE. 137 
 
 to be supplemented with other truth in order to its 
 clearer and more consistent presentation, — this 
 will be apparent as we follow him in his progress 
 through the issues created by the Great Awaken- 
 ing. But yet he stands supreme among Protestant 
 theologians, at least in the Reformed churches, for 
 firm adlierence to the principle despite all obstacles 
 and discouragements. We must go back to the 
 mystics of the Middle Ages, or to the fathers of the 
 ancient church, to find a predecessor for Edwards 
 who apprehended and urged this truth with equal 
 power. It is true that Fox and Barclay among the 
 Quakers had taught the same essential doctrine. 
 If Edwards surpasses them, it is because he 
 grounds his conviction upon a philosophical basis, 
 and expounds it in more scientific manner. But 
 while his doctrine is that of the " inner light," it 
 assumes a different form. From one point of view 
 more effective because associated with his thought 
 of God as energizing will, it suffers by its restric- 
 tion to the elect, instead of being the prerogative 
 of a common humanity. 
 
 There had been movements marked by religious 
 fervor, here and there among the churches, for 
 many years before Edwards appeared. So far as 
 they received a name, they were spoken of as occa- 
 sions of increased attention to religion. They had 
 been known in East Windsor under the ministry 
 of Edwards' father. Mr. Stoddard counted five of 
 them during his ministry at Northampton, compar- 
 ing them to seasons of harvest. Small as they may 
 
138 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 have been, tliey were the harbingers of the great 
 agency which was to create an independent life 
 in the churches. The country could not there- 
 fore have been taken wholly by surprise when the 
 e^^traordinary movement began at Northampton 
 which fastened upon that remote town the interest 
 of the provinces. The event has been described 
 by Edwards, in his Narrative of Surprising Con- 
 versions, with local touches that bring the scene 
 vividly before us. The Narrative reads as if it were 
 intended to be a philosoi3hical account of what had 
 occurred, and not a mere enthusiastic report with 
 a design to enkindle enthusiasm *in the reader. It 
 was written at the request of one of the Boston 
 clergy, and was not long in finding its way into Scot- 
 land and England. The importance of the Narra- 
 tive justifies some detailed account of its contents. 
 The people of Northampton, as Edwards thinks 
 it necessary to remark, were not in any respect 
 different from other people in the province. They 
 were as sober, orderly, and good sort of people as 
 in any part of New England. But the town had 
 its peculiarities, its advantages and disadvantages. 
 The " families dwelling more compactly together 
 than in any town of such a bigness in those parts 
 of the country " was a reason why its corruptions 
 and its reformations were more swiftly proj)agated. 
 The isolation of the town in a corner of the country 
 had served as a barrier against vice as well as er- 
 ror and variety of opinion. It was also Edwards' 
 opinion, at least at this time, that the people were 
 
DESCRIPTION OF THE SITUATION. 139 
 
 chiefly remarkable for religion and for attainments 
 in Christian experience, circumstances which were 
 chiefly owing to the influence of his grandfather 
 and predecessor. But shortly after Mr. Stoddard's 
 death in 1729 there came a time of extraordinary 
 dulness in religion. Licentiousness now besran 
 and continued for some years to prevail. The 
 youth of the town became '' addicted to night- walk- 
 ing and frequenting the tavern ; " the lewd prac- 
 tices of some exceedingly corrupted others. " It 
 was their manner very frequently to get together 
 in conventions of both sexes for mirth and jollity, 
 which they called f rolicks ; and they \«ould spend 
 the greater part of the night in them, without any 
 regard to order in the families which they belonged 
 to ; and indeed family government did much fail 
 in the town. It was become very customary with 
 many of our young people to be indecent in their 
 carriage at meeting, which doubtless would not 
 have prevailed to such a degree had it not been 
 that my grandfather, through his great age (though 
 he retained his powers surprisingly to the last), was 
 not so able to observe them." A spirit of conten- 
 tion also existed between two parties in the to^^^l 
 which created jealousy and opposition in public 
 affairs. A custom which then prevailed made the 
 evening which preceded the Sabbath a part of holy 
 time ; and it was a source of evil that the young 
 people had fallen into the habit of devoting the 
 evening after the Sabbath as a time for mirth and 
 company-keeping, — a practice adapted to dissipate 
 any good influence produced by the public lecture. 
 
140 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 Sucli is the substance of Edwards' preface to 
 Lis Narrative. Its object may have been to show 
 that nothing in the human environment of the 
 church at Northampton could be adduced as ex- 
 plaining the extraordinary movement wliich was 
 now to take place ; that on the contrary it was the 
 work of God alone. But given the circumstances 
 above described, — a town predisposed to religion 
 by all its antecedents ; a moment in its history 
 when no great external interest preoccupied the 
 minds of the people ; an isolated town, far from the 
 centre of activity, in which the want of healthy 
 amusements or excitement to give food to the im- 
 agination had a tendency to breed as a substitute 
 the more vulgar forms of immorality ; and add to 
 these, Edwards' force as a preacher, his unique per- 
 sonality which intensified the effect of his preach- 
 ing, as if by some unexplained magnetic power, 
 — in the light of this conjuncture of favoring 
 circumstances, it is not strange that the religious 
 awakening of New England should have begun at 
 Northampton. These things are not mentioned 
 in order to deny or to depreciate the divineness 
 of the work which Edwards is describing. But 
 it is none the less necessary to bear them in mind. 
 Had Edwards made allowance for them, his judg- 
 ment on the incidents of the movement would 
 have been less open to criticism. 
 
 It was so early as the year 1733 that signs of a 
 change began to appear among the younger pai-t 
 of the people, in consequence of which the pastor 
 
SIGNS OF A CHANGE. 141 
 
 was able to break up the habit of company-keep- 
 ing after the public lecture on Sunday. Instead 
 of this custom, the practice was introduced of 
 spending the Sunday evenings in social religion, 
 the people dividing themselves into several com- 
 panies for the purpose. At this time Edwards 
 began preaching the sermons already mentioned 
 on justification by faith, the justice of God in the 
 damnation of sinners, the excellency of Christ, 
 the duty of pressing into the kingdom of God. 
 All accounts agree in ascribing to these sermons 
 a prominent place among the causes which pro- 
 moted the revival. How highly the people re- 
 garded these particular sermons is shown, as Ed- 
 wards remarks, by a willingness to incur the 
 expense of their publication at a time when the 
 erection of a new meeting-house was already mak- 
 ing a heavy demand upon their finances. One 
 reason for this interest was the fear which had 
 begun to spread that God might withdraw from 
 the land, or that it would be given over to strange 
 doctrine. To the prevalence of this fear, it is 
 needless to say that Edwards had contributed. 
 
 And now many began to be moved and much 
 affected. A young woman who had been one of 
 the greatest " company -keepers " in the whole 
 town became " serious, giving evidence of a heart 
 truly broken and sanctified." Presently upon this 
 a great and universal concern about religion and 
 the eternal world became universal throughout the 
 town, among persons of all degrees and all ages. 
 
142 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 " It was in the latter part of December (1734) 
 that the spirit of God began extraordinarily to set 
 in, and wonderfully to work amongst us." And 
 now all other talk but about spiritual and eternal 
 things was soon thrown by. Conversation upon 
 all occasions turned on these things, so much so 
 that worldly affairs were treated as of very little 
 consequence. Business was followed, but without 
 any special disposition for it ; indeed, there was 
 danger that temporal affairs would be neglected 
 in the interest of religion. The main thing with 
 all of every sort was to get into the kingdom of 
 heaven, or to flee from the wrath to come. There 
 was scarcely a single person in the town, either old 
 or young, that was left unconcerned about the things 
 of the eternal world. Meetings were appointed 
 in private houses, and were wont to be greatly 
 thronged. 
 
 " The work of God as it was carried on, and the 
 number of true saints multipHed, soon made a glorious 
 alteration in the town ; so that in the spring and summer, 
 anno 1735, the town seemed to be full of the presence 
 of God : it was never so full of love, nor so full of joy, 
 and yet so full of distress, as it was then. There were 
 remarkable tokens of God's presence in almost every 
 house. It was a time of joy in families on the account 
 of salvation's being brought unto them, parents rejoicing 
 over their children as being new-born, and husbands 
 over their wives, and wives over their husbands. The 
 goings of God were then seen in His sanctuary^ God's 
 day was a delight, and His tabernacles were amiable. 
 
PHASES OF EXPERIENCE^ 143 
 
 Our public assemblies were then beautiful ; the congre- 
 gation was alive in God's service, every one earnestly 
 intent on the public worship, every hearer eager to 
 drink in the words of the minister as they came from 
 his mouth : the assembly in general were from time to 
 time in tears while the word was preached ; some weep- 
 ing with sorrow and distress, others with joy and love, 
 others with pity and concern for the souls of their neigh- 
 bors. Our public praises were then greatly enlivened ; 
 God was then served in our psalmody in some measure 
 in the beauty of holiness. It has been observable, that 
 there has been scarce any part of divine worship 
 wherein good men amongst us have had grace so drawn 
 forth, and their hearts so lifted up in the ways of God, 
 as in singing His praises : our congregation excelled all 
 that ever I knew in the external part of the duty before, 
 the men generally carrying regularly and well three 
 parts of music and the women a part by themselves ; 
 but now they were evidently wont to sing with unusual 
 elevation of heart and voice, which made the duty pleas- 
 ant indeed." 
 
 The chief interest of the Narrative is the pic-i 
 ture it presents of Edwards himseK, eagerly, 
 studying every phase of the movement, in order 
 to the verification of his theology. He carefully 
 collates and examines the experiences of those 
 affected, as if he were following the actual traces 
 left by a Divine Spirit. He was quick to notice 
 all that confirmed the working hypothesis ^vitli 
 which he came to his task, and yet not incapable 
 of seeing things for which he could find no for- 
 mula. He also notes a rich variety of experience 
 
144 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 where others have labored for a special type. But 
 there is a tendency, even with him, to put a forced 
 interpretation upon what he witnesses, in order 
 that it may accord with a preconceived theory. 
 He does not realize that the experiences he ob- 
 serves may be in some measure but the echo to 
 his own teaching. Believing that his teaching has 
 been the exact reproduction of revealed truth, the 
 process among the people appeared to him as if 
 wholly divine. It seemed to him an exceptional 
 moment in human history, as when a rift in the 
 clouds enables an observer to gaze directly upon 
 phenomena otherwise concealed from his view. 
 He may not have so expressed liimseK, but in re- 
 ality he is seeking to ground his theology in the 
 human consciousness. What we call psychology 
 was to him an unkno^vn science, and yet no mod- 
 ern psychologist could have laid more stress upon 
 the importance of observing the different phases 
 of human experience. In this study, his concep- 
 tion of inspiration or revelation enabled him to 
 move with perfect freedom. The same spirit 
 which clarified the vision of apostles or prophets 
 was now illuminating the minds of the common 
 people with a divine supernatural light. 
 
 The first point upon which Edwards dwells, in 
 describing the manner in which persons are wrought 
 upon, is what may be called the tragic element in 
 the process. Salvation consists in a great deliver- 
 ance. The first stage of awakened consciousness 
 is the realization of an awful danger and the im- 
 
THE TRAGIC ELEMENT. 145 
 
 portance of speedy escape. This stage of fear and 
 anxiety may vary in degree of duration or intensity, 
 but no one is described as attaining peace without 
 some degree of inward trouble. With some the 
 sense of divine displeasure and of the danger of 
 damnation was so great that they could not sleep, 
 or they awakened mth heaviness and distress still 
 abiding on their spirits. These apprehensions of 
 misery and danger for the most part increased the 
 nearer they approached deliverance. A melan- 
 choly distemper at times mixed with these genuine 
 fears. With these cases Edwards remarks that it 
 is difficult to deal. Everything that is said to them 
 they turn the wrong way, or to their own disadvan- 
 tage : there is nothing that the Devil seems to make 
 so great a handle of as a melancholy humor. But 
 aj)art from such cases, there are instances noted of 
 persons whose sense of danger and misery has been 
 so great that a little more would have destroyed 
 them. Others were brought to the borders of de- 
 spair, and it looked to them black as midnight just 
 before the day dawned within their souls. In some, 
 however, the terrors were not so sharp when near 
 comfort as before : their convictions have rather 
 led them to see their own universal depravity and 
 their deadness in sin. With others, again, the 
 awakening process appeared like a great struggle 
 with some hostile power, as of a serpent disturbed 
 or enraged. These have experienced heart-risings 
 against God, murmurings at His ways, and envy 
 toward those who are thought to have been con- 
 
146 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 verted. In dealing with tliem it was much insisted 
 on that they were in danger of quenching the 
 Spirit, or of committing the sin against the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 The second stage in this process of an awaken- 
 ing soul was the realization of an absolute depend- 
 ence on sovereign power and grace, and also the 
 universal need of a divine mediator. To these 
 results the legal strivings, the fears, the anxieties, 
 appeared to tend as if by a necessary law. What 
 Edwards meant by the divine sovereignty we have 
 already seen, and also how he had set forth the 
 necessity for a divine mediation. As he surveyed 
 the field of the Spirit's operation, he saw that 
 many who were struggling for peace with God 
 found great difficulty in its attainment, while some 
 never achieved the desired result. He has enu- 
 merated the difficulties encountered with a minute- 
 ness which it is not necessary to follow. We get 
 a confused picture in which the consciousness of 
 sin in the sight of God leads the sufferer in various 
 ways to seek relief. Persons in this condition 
 wander in a kind of labyrinth, and some wander 
 ten times as long as others before they gain the 
 outlet. Some did not have great terrors, but had 
 a very quick work. Some were under trouble but 
 a few days, others for months and years. The one 
 conclusion to which it is necessary that somehow 
 all must come is the discovery of the justice of 
 God. Those who reach this conclusion express 
 themselves in such ways as this, — that God would 
 
SPIRITUAL METAMORPHOSIS. 147 
 
 be just if He were to bestow mercy on every person 
 in the town, and damn themselves to all eternity. 
 So gTeat has been their sinfulness that they feel 
 that if they were to seek and take the utmost pains 
 all their lives, God might justly cast them into hell. 
 All their labors, prayers, and tears can make no 
 atonement for sin. The sense of sinfulness also 
 finds diversified expression : with some it is par- 
 ticular sins that appear vile and loathsome, with 
 others it is the acknowledgment of a general sin- 
 ful condition. But to all must come the revelation 
 of the divine justice. On the eve of this great 
 discovery there is restlessness, and struggle, and 
 tumult ; as soon as the conviction is reached, there 
 follows an unexpected quietness and composure. 
 It seems to fascinate Edwards' mind as he witnesses 
 this strange metamorphosis from a child of earth 
 and hell to one of the children of God. When a 
 person thinks it is all over with him as he makes 
 this discovery of divine justice, he is actually on 
 the verge of being born again. There is a weird 
 sense of satisfaction even in confessing the di^^ne 
 justice. Some have appeared to revel in it, to have 
 had such a deep feeling of the excellency of God's 
 justice, and such indignation against themselves, 
 that they have spoken of their willingness to be 
 damned. Edwards' comment on this mood indi- 
 cates no sympathy with it. He thinks they cannot 
 have had clear and distinct ideas of damnation, nor 
 does any word in the Bible require such seK-denial 
 as this. What they really mean to say is, that sal- 
 
148 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 vation seems too good for them ; so great has been 
 their sin, that it seems to them inconsistent with 
 the glory of God's majesty that they should be 
 saved. 
 
 There were many, however, who could not arrive 
 at this or any similar state of mind, despite their 
 struggles and tears. What was the message which 
 Edwards proclaimed to these and others who con- 
 tinued for years in a state of distress or agony ? 
 It does not occur to him that there may be even 
 a larger breadth and variety in God's method of 
 dealing with souls than he is capable of discerning. 
 Although he saw more than many of his contem- 
 poraries, he still suffers under a limitation of his 
 vision. He knows nothing of a gradual maturing 
 of the will under a divine education. There is 
 no such thing with him as a quiet, unconscious 
 growth into the kingdom of heaven. For every 
 one is reserved the same tragical process before 
 salvation can be obtained. And the bitterness of 
 the tragedy lies in the uncertainty of the result, as 
 also in the absence of divine sympathy, until suc- 
 cess has been achieved. No one can be sure that 
 the divine love is extended to him in his effort to 
 reach out after God. Edwards is certain that to 
 have preached such a doctrine would have been 
 disastrous. It would have put an end to the 
 awakenings ; it would have established strife and 
 contention with God because He accepted some or 
 rejected others ; it would have blocked the way to 
 that humiliation before the sovereign will, which 
 
GRACIOUS DISCOVERIES. 149 
 
 is assumed to be tlie first step in tlie process of sal- 1 
 vation. We liave met with this difficulty before 
 in Edwards' theology, and it is constantly recur- 
 ring. His doctrine of divine sovereignty was built 
 upon the doctrine of election, and the doctrine of 
 election made it impossible that God should love 
 any but His elect. Hence the only encouragement 
 which could be held out in the storm of the soul's 
 conflict was the abstract principle of the mercy of 
 God in Christ, or the probability of success to 
 those who had strength to hold out until the de- 
 layed relief should come. "^ 
 When the legal distress had done its work, there ' • 
 came a calm to the soul, with special and delight- 
 fid manifestations of the grace of God. Tliis 
 period of what Edwards calls " gi-acious discover- 
 ies " also varies in different persons. Many con- 
 tinue a long time in a course of gracious exercises 
 and experiences before they know themselves to be 
 converted. But his observations lead him to con- 
 clude that those who have had great terrors are 
 more apt to enter suddenly into light and com- 
 fort. It is in this stage that wise direction is most 
 needed. It is impossible here to follow Edwards, 
 as he specifies the different states of religious con- 
 sciousness in which the subsidence of anxiety 
 leaves the soul. He enumerates many distinct 
 varieties, all of which he regards as genuine, 
 remarking that God is further from confining 
 HimseK to certain steps and a particular method 
 than it may be some do imagine. These fleeting 
 
150 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 phases of spiritual experience are all very real to 
 Edwards' view, more real than any similar number 
 of varieties of species in the animal or vegetable 
 kingdom. The one common element that runs 
 through them all is relationsliip by feeling or 
 emotion to an infinite Person. He would never 
 have defined religion, as some have done, to be 
 morality quickened by enthusiasm. Morality is 
 there by a stringent necessity, but it is rather 
 tjpien for granted than placed in the foreground. 
 
 Edwards is specially desirous that his converts 
 should express some conscious relationship to 
 Christ, as well as to God. If his teaching regard- 
 ing justification by faith were true, Christ must 
 of necessity reveal Himself in every soul. On this 
 pointy his satisfaction was not always complete. A 
 certain deistic tone marks the experience of some. 
 " It must needs be confessed that Christ is not 
 always distinctly and explicitly thought of in the 
 first sensible act of grace." But turning over in 
 his mind the confessions of such as these, he finds 
 that they imply the Christ, though His name be 
 not mentioned. 
 
 This period of gracious strivings and discoveries 
 is a confused and mixed period, — a period when 
 souls are coming to the birth, when the blind are 
 fust beginning to see, and, their spiritual senses not 
 being trained, they may see men as trees walking. 
 It is a period when resolutions are formed, and 
 holy longings after God and Christ are nourished. 
 It is now possible to admit a direct and supernat- 
 
SPIRITUAL DIRECTORSHIP. 151 
 
 ural guidance, whicli draws fortli tlie powers of the 
 soul, — the da^vning of a bright day when the soul, 
 turning its face toward the sun, opens out as flow- 
 ers open their leaves under kind and genial influ- 
 ences. 
 
 In his capacity as a spiritual director Ed\\{:ards 
 strove to be prudent, though in after years he saw 
 that he had made mistakes, and lamented his want 
 of experience. He was criticised at this time for 
 pronouncing too positively upon people's condition, 
 — for giving or withholding certificates of conver- 
 sion. It was surely a task full of peril, from 
 which any one might sin-ink, to pronounce judg- 
 ment upon one's fellows, — to assure some that 
 'they had entered into the life that is supernatural, 
 or decide that the experience of others did not 
 warrant a favorable conclusion. But at this time 
 Edwards did not shrink from a task which seemed 
 to him to lie in the way of duty. After he had 
 seen the mischief of rash and premature judg- 
 ments, he would have been content to lay down 
 principles, allowing to the judgment of charity the 
 largest possible scope. As it was, he took a more 
 comprehensive view than others in his age, vastly 
 more comprehensive than was the fashion when 
 revivals had been reduced to a part of the ecclesi- 
 astical machinery. He warned his people against 
 being deceived in their own case, or the case of 
 others ; he insisted that sincerity of life was bet- 
 ter evidence than the manifestation of words. He 
 admits that it is not necessary or possible for all 
 
152 THE GREAT A WAKENING. 
 
 to be aware of the exact moment when the myste- 
 rious change passed over them. He pointed out 
 the difference he had observed in those who gave 
 indubitable evidence of having successfully met the 
 great crisis. With some, converting light was a 
 glorious brightness suddenly shining ; with others, 
 it was like the slow dawning of the day. But in 
 all cases it seemed to him " necessary to suppose 
 that there was an immediate influence of the 
 Spirit of God." One of the means by which the 
 Spirit often worked was in bringing texts of Scrip- 
 ture to the mind. He would not call it an imme- 
 diate revelation without the action of the memory ; 
 but yet there was in it an immediate ^d extraor- 
 dinary influence of the Spirit in leading the 
 thoughts to passages of the Bible, or exciting them 
 in the memory. Another illustration of the Spirit's 
 working was in giving a direct insight into the 
 truth of the great things of religion, an insight 
 more convincing than the reading of many vol- 
 umes of argument would produce. Those who 
 had witnessed this action of the Spirit had seen, 
 tasted, and felt the divinity and the glory of Chris- 
 tian truth ; they might not be able to satisfy an 
 inquirer with their reasons for believing, while yet 
 they have intuitively beheld and immediately felt 
 its reality. And it was a mistake into which many 
 fell, that, because the illumination was in and 
 through the reason, and so in accordance with 
 their natural faculties, that therefore it had only a 
 human origin. 
 
RELIGIOUS JOY AND ECSTASY. 153 
 
 There was anotlier result of the Spirit's action 
 upon which Edwards much insists, — the spiritual 
 delights and joys which follow upon conversion. 
 This had been at times his own experience. With- 
 out some measure of this joy and ecstasy, it seems 
 as though he would have mistrusted the genuine- 
 ness of the Spirit's work. Since God is a su- 
 premely happy Being, the soul united to Him must 
 necessarily share in the divine blessedness. Hence 
 those who are converted express themselves to this 
 effect, speaking of the excellency of that pleasure 
 and delight of soul which they now enjoy ; how it 
 is far more than sufficient to repay them for all 
 the agony tlijsough which they have passed ; how 
 far it exceeds all earthly pleasures, making them 
 seem mean and worthless in comparison. 
 
 " The light and comfort which some of them enjoy 
 gives a new relish to their common blessings, and causes 
 all things about them to appear as it were beautiful and 
 sweet and pleasant to them ; all things abroad, the sun, 
 moon, and stars, the clouds and sky, the heavens and 
 earth, appear as it were with a cast of divine glory and 
 sweetness. The sweetest joy that these good people 
 amongst us express, though it include in it a delightful 
 sense of the safety of their own state, and that they are 
 now out of danger of hell, yet frequently, in times of 
 their highest spiritual entertainment, this seems not to 
 be the chief object of their fixed thought and meditation. 
 The supreme attention of their minds is to the glorious 
 excellences of God in Christ. . . . The joy that many 
 of them speak is that to which none is to be paralleled ; 
 is that which they find when they are lowest in the dust, 
 
154 
 
 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 emptied most of themselves, and as it were annihilating 
 themselves before God, when they are nothing and God 
 is all." 1 
 
 In a time of such intense and almost universal 
 excitement as that which pervaded the town of 
 Northampton in 1734-35, it was to have been ex- 
 pected that there should be phenomena of a phys- 
 ical kind, — a consequence indeed of the religious 
 excitement, but having no essential religious char- 
 acter. There was much less of this kind of nervous 
 manifestation in this first revival at Northampton 
 than in the Great Awakening which followed five 
 years later. This may have been owing in part to 
 the prudence of Edwards, and to the fact that he 
 kept the control of the movement as far as possi- 
 ble in his own hands. But under these favorable 
 circumstances there were some things of a charac- 
 ter to discredit the movement. Many persons, as 
 Edwards remarks, had a mean idea of the great 
 work from what they heard of '' impressions made 
 on the imagination." These impressions consisted 
 of lively pictures of hell, as of some dreadful fur- 
 nace ; or visions of Christ as a person with glori- 
 ous majesty and a sweet and gracious aspect; or of 
 Christ upon the cross with the blood running from 
 his wounds. Edwards doubts if those who had 
 these vivid impressions supposed that any objective 
 character corresponded with them ; he thinks that 
 such impressions were natural enough, and what 
 was to have been expected from human nature un- 
 1 Narrative, etc., vol. iii. p. 255. 
 
IMPRESSIONS ON TEE IMAGINATION. 155 
 
 cler such exceptional circumstances. He was dili- 
 gent in teaching persons the difference between 
 what was spiritual and what was imaginary, cau- 
 tioning them to lay no stress on any external 
 things. But he also admits that there have been 
 some few instances of impressions on persons' im- 
 aginations that have seemed mysterious to him, and 
 which he has been at a loss to explain, uncertain 
 whether they may not have involved some objective 
 reality. But the subject is merely alluded to, at 
 this time, in a casual way. We may also dismiss 
 it here, recurring to it again, when it had assumed 
 greater prominence and had become a matter of 
 controversy. 
 
 It has been already remarked that morality as 
 such does not at first occupy a prominent place in 
 Edwards' description of the effects of the revival. 
 He is chiefly concerned with the emotional moods 
 which are aroused by coming into an immediate as 
 well as endearing relation with God. As has also 
 been pointed out when treating of his theology, mo- 
 rality is included in the sphere of common grace, — 
 the grace which may come to all, but which does 
 not bring salvation. Nowhere in his works does 
 Edwards enter into an exposition of the moral law, 
 as enjoined in the second table of the decalogue. 
 He is occupied almost exclusively with the duty 
 towards God. But w^hile morality finds no place 
 in Edwards' systematic theology, except as the 
 declaration of God's will revealed in Scripture, yet 
 in practice there is no lack of emphasis upon the 
 
156 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 moral duties of life. Edwards would not have 
 been a Puritan had he shown indifference to the 
 moral law, by which society is held together, by 
 obedience to which comes self-respect and eartlily 
 prosperity. But he did not discuss ethical pre- 
 cej)ts, or reason about their validity. He took 
 them for granted, as if at least so much must be 
 required in order to the attainment of a higher 
 ideal. 
 
 A beautiful and impressive illustration of the high 
 importance attached to the common duties of life is 
 to be found in the Covenant which Edwards drew 
 up, and which the people of Northampton sub- 
 scribed. Though it belongs to a later stage of the 
 revival, when its necessity was more stringently 
 felt, its introduction here may not be inappropri- 
 ate. There is a reminder in it of a similar cove- 
 nant which Pliny, the Roman governor, describes as 
 forming a part of the worship of God in the primi- 
 tive Christian assemblies. Because of God's great 
 goodness and His gracious presence in the towTi of 
 Northampton during the late spiritual revival, — 
 so runs in substance the preamble to the covenant, 
 — the people present themselves before the Lord, 
 to renounce their evil ways and to put away their 
 abominations from before His eyes. They soleihnly 
 f)roniise and vow before the Lord, in all their con- 
 cerns with their neighbors, to have a strict regard 
 to rules of honesty, justice, and uprightness ; not to 
 overreach or defraud him in any matter, or, either 
 wilfully or through want of care, to injure him in 
 
TAKING THE COVENANT. 157 
 
 any of his honest possessions or rights ; and to have 
 a tender respect, not only to their o^vn interest, but 
 to his ; and particularly never to give him cause of 
 offence by wilf idly or negligently forbearing to pay 
 their just debts ; wherever they may be conscious 
 of having in the past wronged their neighbor in his 
 outward estate, never to rest till they have made 
 that restitution which the rules of moral equity re- 
 quire. They promise to avoid all backbiting, evil- 
 speaking, and slandering, as also everytliing that 
 feeds a spirit of bitterness or ill-will «^^ secret 
 grudge ; not to ridicide a neighbor's failings, or 
 needlessly insist on his faults ; to do nothing in a 
 spirit of revenge. And further, they will not allow 
 their private interest or honor, or the desire for 
 victory against a contrary party, to lead them into 
 any course of which their consciences woidd re- 
 proach them as hurtfid to religion or the interests 
 of Christ's kingdom ; and particularly, in public 
 affairs, not to allow the interests of party or the 
 desire of worldly ambition to lead them counter 
 to the interest of true religion. Those who are 
 young promise to allow themselves in no diver- 
 sions or pastimes, meetings or companies, which 
 would hinder a devout spirit engaged in religion, 
 to avoid everything that tends to lasciviousness, 
 and which they believe will not be aj^proved by 
 the infinitely pure and holy eye of God. They 
 finally consecrate themselves to perform mth great 
 watchfulness the duties entailed by family rela- 
 tionships, whether parents and children, husbands 
 
158 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 and wives, brothers and sisters, masters, mistresses, 
 and servants.^ 
 
 Among the results of this extraordinary dispen- 
 sation, as Edwards calls it, was the large addition 
 to the ranks of the church, raising the number of 
 communicants to about six hundred and twenty. 
 The unusual spectacle was presented of persons 
 thronging into the church, nearly one hundred 
 being received at one time and sixty at another, 
 whose explicit profession of Christianity was very 
 affecting to the congregation. Of these, Edwards 
 remarks significantly, that he had sufficient evi- 
 dence of their conversion, though it was not the 
 custom at Northampton, as it was in some churches 
 in the country, to make a credible relation of 
 their inward experience the ground of admission to 
 the Lord's Supper. In the space of six months 
 the number of those converted was upwards of 
 three hundred, of whom as many as one half were 
 men. This also seemed to Edwards a remarkable 
 fact, inasmuch as he remembered to have heard 
 Mr. Stoddard say that in his time many more 
 women were converted than men. He was also 
 struck with the large nmnber of children who pro- 
 fessed what he regarded as a genuine experience. 
 Among them was a child of four years, whose case 
 seemed to him so wonderful that he has related it 
 at length, thinking that otherwise it would be in- 
 credible ; and incredible it does appear, despite the 
 detail of his statement. 
 
 ^ Dwight, Life of Edwards, pp. 166-168. 
 
RELIGIOUS MELANCHOLIA. 159 
 
 The excitement of the movement began to de- 
 cline in the spring of the year 1735. "In the 
 latter part of May it began to be very sensible that 
 the Spirit of God was gradually withdrawing from 
 us, and after this time Satan seemed to be more let 
 loose and raged in a dreadful manner." The first 
 instance which illustrated his malignity was the 
 case of a gentleman of high standing in the town, 
 who fell into melancholia, and in this condition 
 committed suicide. The people of Northampton 
 were extraordinarily affected by this event, being 
 as it were struck with astonishment. " After this, 
 midtitudes in this and other towns seemed to have 
 it strongly suggested to them and pressed upon 
 them to do as this person had done. And many 
 that seemed to be under no melancholy, some pious 
 persons that had no special darkness or doubts 
 about the goodness of their state, nor were under 
 any special trouble or concern of mind about any- 
 thing spiritual or temporal, yet had it urged upon 
 them, as if somebody had spoken to them, ' Cut your 
 own throat ! note is a good opportunity. Now ! 
 now ! ' So that they were obliged to fight with all 
 their might to resist it, and yet no reason suggested 
 to them why they should do it." 
 
 We may be thankful to Edwards for the frank- 
 ness with which he describes the e\'il symptoms 
 attending the movement in its decline. They in- 
 dicate the exhaustion of the nervous system after 
 the prolonged tension of the struggle or tragedy 
 through which the people had been passing. A 
 
160 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 morbid state had been induced where men are seen 
 treading the ground which borders on insanity, 
 where irrational suggestions and blind impulses 
 threaten the supremacy of the will. But this frank 
 avowal of the evils accompanying an excitement 
 which was largely physical in its nature should 
 not be abused to the spiritual discredit of the 
 movement. Society was in the throes of a new 
 birth. A step forward was to be taken which was 
 to change the face of the social as well as the re- 
 ligious order. In such moments abnormal ele- 
 ments are sure to be found, mingling with, even 
 appearing to grow out of, what is sound and true. 
 It is quite possible that Edwards' extraordinary 
 personality, combined with his " terrific " preach- 
 ing, should be held responsible in some measure 
 for these morbid tendencies. But to attribute 
 them to this cause alone is to lose the deeper sig- 
 nificance of the fact, that similar phenomena have 
 always attended those epochs when humanity is 
 seen striving in some unusual way to realize the 
 spiritual as distinct from and above the natural. 
 Indeed, as we think of the sources from which great 
 princi23les have so often taken their rise, or recall 
 the disfigurements connected with revolutions that 
 have advanced the truth, we are tempted to repeat 
 the cry. Can any good come out of Nazareth? 
 But in all this we are anticipating a controversy 
 which the opponents of the revival waged against 
 its friends and leaders. 
 
II. 
 
 THE GREAT AWAKENING. — DISTINGUISHING MARKS 
 OF A WORK OF THE SPIRIT OF GOD. 
 
 From the first, Edwards had regarded the re- 
 vival at Northampton as the forerunner of some 
 greater work. What had gone on under his vision 
 seemed so exceptional in its character as to point 
 toward the accomplishment of some vast organic 
 change. If the movement had seemed to decline, 
 it was in appearance only. In its aj)parent sub- 
 sidence it was like a fire that was slumbering. At 
 last the smoiddering embers broke forth in a great 
 conflagration. 
 
 It is not necessary to describe at leng-th what 
 has received the name of the Great Awakenino;. 
 The account given of the first revival at Northamp- 
 ton will suffice to show its substantial character in 
 the one hundred and fifty towns or more into which 
 it extended. Edwards has left a brief account of 
 its rise in his own parish in a letter to a Boston 
 correspondent.^ In some respects it differed from 
 the first movement, more particularly in the matter 
 of " bodily effects," such as faintings, outcries, and 
 convulsions, which now became a common occur- 
 
 1 Cf . Dwight, Life of Edwards, pp. 160, ff. For a description 
 of the movement as a whole, ef . Tracy, The Great Awakening ; a 
 History of the Revival of Religion in the time of Edwards and 
 Whitejieldj Boston, 1842, — a work of great interest and value. 
 
1G2 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 rence, disturbing the order of public worship. Tlie 
 irrational purpose which aimed to bring young 
 children under the influence of religious excite- 
 ment was also more pronomiced, nor does Edwards 
 feel its incongruity. But what is chiefly impor- 
 tant to note is, that the magnitude of the event was 
 an adequate setting for the greatness of mind and 
 character which Edwards now reveals. He stands 
 forth as the originator, the director, the champion, 
 of the movement. As such he was recoo-nized at 
 home and abroad. The deep response of religious 
 sentiment originally evoked by his preaching called 
 forth all his powers for its direction or defence. 
 To the works which he now put forth in rapid suc- 
 cession we must turn our attention. They consti- 
 tute the most important literature of the revival. 
 Most of them were rej^ublished in Scotland or 
 England. They have an air as if of supreme mas- 
 tery of the situation. The reply to the enemies or 
 critics of the movement is marked by the eloquence 
 springing from the consciousness of a great cause. 
 While his style is never free from cmnbrous sen- 
 tences and awkward involutions, there are passages 
 continually occurring which remind one of the 
 masters of modern English. 
 
 The first in this series of apologetic treatises is 
 entitled The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of 
 the Spirit of God. It was an expanded sermon, 
 which had been delivered in 1741 at New Haven, 
 from the text, " Beloved, believe not every spirit ; 
 but try the spirits whether they are of God ; be- 
 
ANALOGY OF M0NA8TICISM. 163 
 
 cause many false prophets are gone out into the 
 world." In this treatise Edwards appears as com- 
 mitting himself unreservedly to the divine origin 
 and the divine character of the revival. It is true 
 that so early as 1741 the worst features of the 
 movement had not been developed. But evil ten- 
 dencies were at work, which those saw most clearly 
 who had no sjTnpathy with the movement, or who 
 disowned the idea that it was divine. If it seems 
 to any like a derogation from the greatness of Ed- 
 wards that he should have been entirely carried 
 away by a movement which involved so many ir- 
 rational if not superstitious elements, wherev the 
 puerile, the extravagant, and the false were so 
 largely mingled with what was true, yet in this 
 respect he is not an exception, but illustrates di- 
 rectly the rule in accordance ^\^th which men have 
 risen to greatness in the church. " It is the hig-her 
 order of minds," as a recent m^iter has remarked, 
 " those endowed with the fire and sensibility of 
 genius, whom religion seizes with an attractive 
 force, and carries away with a bewildering enthu- 
 siasm." So also in the ancient church, the most 
 eminent of the fathers, Athanasius and Basil, 
 Jerome and Augustine, had been identified with 
 the evils and the superstitions of monasticism, as 
 it swept like a wave over the church of the fourth 
 and fifth centuries. Those who were in opposition 
 m both cases were men of an inferior stamp, ex- 
 cept in a certain mediocrity of common sense. 
 But it will appear before we close our study of the 
 
164 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 movement tliat Edwards was also going through 
 a process of growth, of intellectual and sj^iritual 
 purification, so that when the movement was over 
 he is not standing exactly where he stood when it 
 began. 
 
 In his treatise on the Distinguishing Marks by 
 which a work of the Spirit of God is to be known 
 or tested, Edwards dwells at first in a general way 
 on the principles at issue in any movement which 
 claims to be of God. He meets in a negative 
 fashion the various objections which have been or 
 may be urged. Nothing, he argues, can be con- 
 tended against any religious movement from the 
 fact that it is unusual or extraordinary. God is 
 spoken of in Scripture as doing a strange work. 
 There is reason to believe also, from prophecies in 
 the Bible, that His greatest, most extraordinary 
 work would take place in the latter ages of the 
 world. Nor can any one conclude anything against 
 such a work from " bodily effects," such as tears, 
 groans, outcries, convulsions, or the failure of 
 strength. Indeed it is only natural, in view of the 
 close relation of body and spirit, that such things 
 should be. So also in Scripture the jailer fell 
 down before Paul and Silas in distress and trem- 
 bling. The Psalmist exclaimed, under convictions 
 of conscience and a sense of the guilt of sin : 
 " When I kept silence my bones waxed old through 
 my roaring all the day long ; for day and night 
 Thy hand was heavy on me." The disciples in the 
 storm on the lake cried out for fear. The spouse 
 
THE IMAGINATION IN RELIGION. 165 
 
 in the Canticles is overpowered with the love o£ 
 Christ, and sj)eaks of herself as sick with love. 
 Again, it is no argument against the work that it 
 occasions a great deal of noise about religion. So 
 it was also in the apostles' days, when they were 
 charged with turning the world upside down. The 
 vivid picturings of the imagination, which many 
 disliked, Edwards does not find unreasonable. 
 " Such is our nature that we cannot think of 
 things in\'isible without a degree of imagination." 
 He is even inclined to maintain a principle which 
 may become the ground of the crudest anthropo- 
 morphism, — the necessity of an image in the mind 
 in order to realize the spiritual and invisible. If 
 the imagination is the gift of God, he thinks it 
 may be expected that He will make use of it ^or 
 divine purposes, especially in those who are igno- 
 rant and must be dealt with as babes. It is not 
 strange or unnatural that those upon whom the 
 Spirit of God is working should go into ecstasy 
 and have visions, as though they were rapt up into 
 heaven and saw glorious sights. Such instances 
 he himseK has known. Some may interpret them 
 wrongly, or lay too much weight upon them, but 
 nevertheless they may be wrought by the Spirit of 
 God, however indirect or incidental His operation. 
 And again, if some thought lightly of the revival 
 because it seemed to be propagated by the conta- 
 gion of example, Edwards contends that the word 
 of God may operate through example and make it 
 effectual. A work may be from God also, and yet 
 
166 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 its subjects may be guilty of great imprudences 
 and irregularities. Errors in judgment and delu- 
 sions of Satan may be intermixed with what is 
 divine. It was so also in the apostles' days, as in 
 the church atX'orinth. And even if some who 
 seem to have been wrought upon fall away into 
 gross errors or scandalous practices, this is no ar- 
 gument that a work is not of God. Some of the 
 opponents of the revival had attributed the move- 
 ment to the preaching of the terrors of law and of 
 endless punishment. This also Edwards defends 
 as a legitimate method, indeed the only honorable 
 method, of procedure. If these things were true, 
 they could not be preached too strongly. 
 
 As to the positive features of a work of God, 
 they are such as these : the awakening of the con- 
 science to a sense of sin and need of a Saviour ; 
 the confirmation of men in the belief in Jesus as 
 the Son of God ; the increased importance attached 
 to the truths of the Bible, and its more fr^uent 
 use. To turn men from darkness to light, to im- 
 part a spirit of divine love or Christian humilia- 
 tion, — these are things which the evil spirit would 
 not do, nor could he if he would. " 
 
 But the interest of this treatise does not lie in 
 this general consideration of the subject. What- 
 ever Edwards ^vl'ote had always some very defuiite 
 bearing, some concrete relation to the issues of the 
 time. It is when we come to the last section of 
 his book, wliich is headed " Practical Inferences," 
 that we touch the vital questions to which the revi- 
 
BODILY EFFECTS. 167 
 
 val had given birth. The first of these is the 
 " bodily effects," the outcries, faintings, and convul- 
 sions, which caused many sensible men to look 
 upon the movement as of purely human origin, or 
 as having its rise in diseased or abnormal condi- 
 tions of mind or body. Upon this point Edwards' 
 voice has no uncertain sound. He appeals to his 
 large experience as the ground of his conviction 
 that the " bodily effects " are wrought incidentally 
 by the Spirit of God, and are evidence of His un- 
 usual presence and power in the congregation. He 
 has no desire to check this feature of the revival. 
 It is no mark of confusion,-- but rather the sign of 
 a higher order which God is evolving. These un- 
 common appearances have been manifested by 
 those who have been in great distress from an ap- 
 prehension of their sin and misery ; or else by 
 those who have been overcome with a sweet sense 
 of the greatness, wonderfidness, and excellency of 
 divine things. In very few cases has there been 
 any appearance of feigning or affecting such man- 
 ifestations, and in very many cases it woidd have 
 been utterly impossible to suppress them. 
 
 " Not but that I think the persons thus extraordinarily 
 moved should endeavor to refrain from such outward 
 manifestations, what they well can, and should refrain 
 to their utmost at the time of their solemn worship. But 
 if God is pleased to convince the consciences of persons, 
 so that they cannot avoid great outward manifestations, 
 even to interrupting and breaking off those public means 
 they were attending, I do not think this is confusion or 
 
168 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 an unhappy interruption, any more than if a company 
 should meet on the field to pray for rain and should be 
 broken off from their exercise by a plentiful shower. 
 Would to God that all the public assemblies in the land 
 were broken off from their public exercises with such 
 confusion as this the next Sabbath day ! We need not be 
 sorry for breaking the order of means by obtaining the 
 end to which that order is directed. He who is going to 
 fetch a treasure need not be sorry that he is stopped by 
 meeting the treasure in the midst of his journey." 
 
 Edwards gives an intimation, however, in pass- 
 ing, to the effect that he does not suppose that the 
 degree of the Spirit's influence is to be determined 
 by the degree of effect on men's bodies ; or that 
 those are always the best experiences which show 
 tbe greatest influence on the body. The caution 
 was needed, but he does not enlarge ujion it. He 
 is at present preoccupied with another purj)ose, — 
 to affirm strongly that this work is of God, despite 
 all its extravagances ; or else we may as well throw 
 by our Bibles and give up revealed religion alto- 
 gether. The imprudences, irregidarities, and the 
 mixture of delusion are things to be expected and 
 taken for granted. " As in the first creation, feod 
 did not make a complete world at once, but there 
 was a great deal of imperfection, darkness, and 
 mixture of chaos and confusion, after God first 
 said, ' Let there be light,' before the whole stood 
 forth in perfect form." So in the deliverance of 
 the chosen people from Egypt the false wonders 
 were for a time mixed up mth the true. When 
 
INTERMINGLING OF EVIL WITH GOOD. 169 
 
 the sons of God came to present themselves before 
 the Lord, Satan came also among them. When 
 daylight first appears after a night of darkness, we 
 must expect to have darkness mixed with light for 
 a while before the perfect day and the sun in his 
 streno'th. The fruits of the earth are oreen before 
 they are ripe, and come to their perfection grad- 
 ually ; and so, Christ tells us, is the kingdom of 
 God. The errors that have attended the work are 
 the less to be wondered at because it is mainly 
 young persons who have been the subjects of the 
 work. And further, the situation has been so ex- 
 traordinary that even ministers have not always 
 known how to conduct themselves. But, on the 
 whole, judging from his own experience at North- 
 ampton, there has been less of enthusiastic wild- 
 ness and extravagance than in the earlier revival of 
 1735. He closes his book Avith a pathetic charge 
 to those who are indifferent to the work, and then 
 offers some suggestions to its friends. 
 
 To the first of these classes he speaks with that 
 unique power of direct appeal wliich made him the 
 foremost preacher of his day. So intense is his 
 conviction that Jehovah has bowed the heavens 
 and come down, and appeared wonderfidly in the 
 land, that those opposed to him must have almost 
 wanted to feel, despite their reason, that they were 
 in the wrong. Those silent ministers who stood by, 
 waiting to see what would come out of the move- 
 ment, he accused of standing in the way of God. 
 He assures those Who are offended by stumbling- 
 
170 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 blocks, that these rocks of offence are likely to in- 
 crease rather than diminish ; and Blessed is he 
 ivhosoever is not offended in me. He is afraid 
 that these prudent persons, who stand at a distance 
 and look on, will miss the most precious opportu- 
 nity of obtaining light and grace which God ever 
 gave in New England. He warns those who speak 
 contemptuously of these things to beware lest they 
 commit the unpardonable sin. But whether they 
 resist or not, God will have His way in the long run, 
 and make all men know that the great Jehovah 
 has actually been in New England. 
 
 To the friends of the wo7'h he finally appeals, 
 urging them to avoid as far as possible all occasion 
 of reproach. He thinks that some of them have 
 erred in giving too much heed to impulses and 
 strong impressions on their minds, as if they were 
 signs from heaven revealing to them the will of 
 God. The disposition to attach value to these im- 
 pulses and impressions he attributes in some meas- 
 ure to a wrong conception wliich many entertain, 
 that in the approaching happy days of the church 
 the extraordinary gifts of the apostolic age will 
 be restored. While Edwards admitted and justi- 
 fied the " bodily effects," he stood like a rock in 
 resisting this tendency, which many exhibited, to 
 concede value or reality to impidses and impres- 
 sions. Whitefield, it is well known, magnified the 
 importance of these impulses ; he sought for them 
 in prayer, and professed to be guided by them. 
 When he visited Northampton in 1740, Edwards 
 
IMPULSES AND IMPRESSIONS. 171 
 
 took occasion, both in private and in company with 
 others, to remonstrate with him for giving too much 
 heed to these things. It was Edwards' opinion 
 that Whitefield, though he received his remon- 
 strance kindly, did not from that time regard him 
 as an intimate and confidential friend, as he might 
 otherwise have done.^ 
 
 It may seem like an inconsistency in Edwards 
 to have admitted the " bodily effects " while deny- 
 ing the validity of impulses. But there is some- 
 thing also to be said in his behalf. The subject 
 will be resumed in a later chapter, when Edwards' 
 attitude will appear more clearly. But in regard 
 to impressions on the mind which revealed the will 
 of God, his reasoning was clear and powerful. 
 Not only so, but his eloquence in resisting them 
 rises to its gTeatest height. AU that was most 
 profound and distinctive in his theology lay be- 
 neath his repugnance to what seemed to him as un- 
 spiritual as it was irrational. The extraordinary 
 gifts of the Spirit, such as marked the apostolic 
 
 1 Cf. Dwight, Life of Edwards, p. 147. The practice of the 
 brothers Charles and John Wesley in this respect differed from 
 that of Whitefield. But they differed also from each other in re- 
 gard to " bodily eifeets." John Wesley approved them. It is 
 said that Charles, however, on one occasion notified his cong-rega- 
 tion that any one who was convulsed should be carried out, and 
 this notice insured perfect quiet. But both Charles and John 
 were agreed in accepting the Moravian method of solving doubts 
 as to some course of action by opening the Bible at hazard and 
 regarding the passage on which the eye first alighted as a revela- 
 tion of God's will in the matter. Cf. Wedgwood, Life of Wes- 
 ley, p. 193 ; Southey, Life of Wesley, vol. i. p. 216. 
 
172 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 age, even the inspiration of propliets and evange- 
 lists, these are of a different nature from, as well as 
 inferior to, those gracious influences of the Spirit 
 which mark the Christian calling. " God commu- 
 nicates His own nature to the soul, in sa\^ng grace 
 in the heart, more than in all miraculous gifts." 
 Salvation is promised to the possession of divine 
 grace, but not of inspiration. A man may have 
 these extraordinary gifts and yet be abominable to 
 God. Spiritual life in the soul is given by God only 
 to his favorites and dear children, while inspiration 
 may be thrown out, as it were, to dogs and swine, 
 — a Balaam, Said, and Judas. Many wicked men 
 at the day of judgment will plead that they have 
 proj)hesied, and cast out devils, and done many 
 wonderful works. '' The greatest privilege of 
 prophets and apostles was not their being inspired 
 and working miracles, but their eminent holiness. 
 The grace that was in their hearts was a thousand 
 times more their dignity and honor than their mi- 
 raculous gifts. . . . The apostle Paul abounded in 
 visions, revelations, and miraculous gifts, above aU 
 the apostles ; but yet he esteems all things but loss 
 for the excellency of the spiritual knowledge of 
 Christ. . . . To have grace in the heart is a 
 higher privilege than the blessed virgin lierseK 
 had in having the body of the second person in 
 the Trinity conceived in her womb by the power 
 of the Highest overshadomng her. ' And it came 
 to pass, as He spake these things, a certain woman 
 of the company lift up her voice and said unto 
 
MIRACLES AND INSPIRATION. 173 
 
 Him, Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the 
 2)aps which Thou hast sucked ! But He said, Yea, 
 rather blessed are they that hear the word of God 
 and keep it.' " It is the influence of the Holy 
 Spirit, or divine charity in the heart, which is the 
 greatest privilege and glory of the highest arch- 
 angel in heaven ; this is the thing by which the 
 creature has fellowship with the Father and the 
 Son, and becomes j^artaker of the divine nature in 
 its beauty and happiness. 
 
 " The glory of the approaching happy state of the 
 church does not at all require these extraordinary gifts. 
 As that state of the church will be the nearest of any 
 to its perfect state in heaven, so I believe it will be like 
 it in this, that all extraordinary gifts shall have ceased 
 and vanished away. . . . The apostle speaks of these 
 gifts of inspiration as childish things in comparison of 
 the influence of the Spirit in divine love ; things given 
 to the church only to support it in its minority, . . . 
 which should vanish away when the church came to a 
 state of manhood. Therefore I do not exjDect a restora- 
 tion of these miraculous gifts in the approaching glo- 
 rious times of the church, nor do I desire it. It af>pears 
 to me that it would add nothing to the glory of those 
 times, but rather diminish from it. For my part, I had 
 rather enjoy the sweet influences of the Spirit, showing 
 Christ's spiritual, divine beauty, infinite grace, and dy- 
 ing love, drawing forth the holy exercises of faith, divine 
 love, sweet complacence, and humble joy in God one 
 quarter of aii: hour, than to have prophetical visions and 
 revelations the whole year." ^ 
 
 ^ Distinguishing Marks, etc., vol. i. pp. 556, 558. 
 
174 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 In the light of these words, what Edwards 
 thought about the " bodily affections " grows 
 clearer. While he held that such things were 
 incidental merely to the communication of the 
 divine grace, yet it may be that he clung to them 
 the more strongly in proportion as his idealism 
 threatened to snap the bond which connects the 
 spiritual with its physical embodiment. But it is 
 in these passages above quoted that we have his 
 deepest conviction, his most characteristic thought. 
 And these forcible and beautiful utterances, assert- 
 ing the superiority of the spiritual as if ineffably 
 higher than all mechanical gifts or outward signs 
 or manifestations of power, have unportant and 
 far-reaching relations. They may be taken as 
 marking an epoch in the history of religious prog- 
 ress. Their spirit has passed into the theology 
 of New England, forming, as it were, a bulwark 
 against mediaeval religion with its tendency to 
 deify the material and the outward, or to sanction 
 the worship of the body rather than the spirit of 
 Christ. They have become the charter of relig- 
 ious idealism as contrasted with religious material- 
 ism. They stand out in sharp contrast also with 
 reactionary religious movements in our own day, 
 notably that led by Edward Irving, whose object 
 was to restore to the modern church the gifts of 
 the apostolic age, such as prophesyings, speaking 
 with tongues, or miraculous cures of disease, as if 
 these were the highest reaches of faith, the evi- 
 dences most needed or desired in order to attest 
 the vitality and certitude of Christian belief. 
 
IMPORTANCE OF HUMAN LEARNING. 175 
 
 One inference from his attitude on tliis subject 
 Edwards immediately proceeded to draw. Itine- 
 rant preachers were then beginning to travel about 
 the country, proclaiming that human learning was 
 not necessary to the work of the ministry. The 
 phrase, " lowly preaching," was coming into vogue 
 as compared with the ministrations of an educated 
 clergy. Against the itinerants, who decried theo- 
 logical culture and depended upon inspiration, 
 Edwards urged his hearers not to despise human 
 learning. But he does not stop to argue the point. 
 It was too manifest to be denied, that God might 
 make great use of human learning. And if so, 
 then study, the means by which it was to be 
 acquired, should not be neglected. " Though hav- 
 ing the heart full of the powerful influences of 
 the Spirit of God may at some times enable per- 
 sons to speak profitably, yet this will not warrant 
 us to cast ourselves down from the pinnacle of the 
 temple, depending upon it that the angel of the 
 Lord will bear us up, and keep us from dashing 
 our foot against a stone, when there is another 
 way to go down, though it be not so quick." He 
 also urged that method in sermons should not be 
 neglected, since it tends greatly to help the un- 
 derstanding and memory. And another thing he 
 would beg the dear children of God more fully to 
 consider is, how far and upon what grounds they 
 are warranted b}'' Scripture in passing judgment 
 upon other professing Christians as hy])ocrites, 
 and ignorant of real religion. It is God alone 
 
176 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 who knowetli tlie hearts of the children of men. 
 To his own master every man standeth or falleth. 
 Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord 
 Cometh. Let tares and wheat grow together till 
 the harvest. They greatly err who take upon 
 themselves to determine who are sincere and who 
 are not. His own experience has taught him that 
 the heart of man is more unsearchable than he 
 had once supposed. "I am less charitable and 
 less uncharitable than once I was. I find more 
 things in wicked men that may counterfeit and 
 make a fair show of piety ; and more ways that 
 the remaining corruption of the godly may make 
 them appear like carnal men than once I knew 
 of." And fuially he admits that it would be 
 wise to consider that excellent rule of prudence 
 which Christ has left us, not to i^ut a piece of neio 
 cloth into cm old garment. In former years, he 
 thinks there was too great confinement within one 
 stated method and form of procedure, which had a 
 tendency to cause religion to degenerate into for- 
 mality. And now whatever has the appearance of 
 great innovation may shock and surprise the minds 
 of people, setting them to talking and disputing, 
 perplexing many with doubts ' and scruples, and 
 so hinder the progress of religion. That which is 
 much beside the common practice, unless it be a 
 thing in its own nature of considerable importance, 
 had better be avoided. Let them follow the ex- 
 ample of St. Paul, who made it a rule to become 
 all things to all men, that he might by all means 
 save some. 
 
m. 
 
 EVILS AND ABUSES OF THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 — " THOUGHTS ON THE REVIVAL." 
 
 The Distinguishing Marks had been written in 
 1741, before the Awakening had reached its great- 
 est headway as a movement, before it had engen- 
 dered the abuses which were destropng not only 
 the peace, but threatened the very life, of the New 
 England churches. In 1742 it became evident 
 that something must be done to guide and control 
 the movement if it were not to issue in religious 
 anarchy. In ecclesiastical parlance, it was "an 
 unhappy time " for the churches during the years 
 from 1742 to 1745. So grievous were the evils 
 that some have thought the subsequent slumber of 
 the American churches for nearly seventy years 
 may have been owing to the reaction which they 
 produced. These evils sprang from the extrava- 
 gant assertion or misapplication of the principle 
 for wliich Edwards stood as the foremost champion. 
 The doctrine of the immediate contact of the Holy 
 Spirit with the hmnan heart — a principle in whose 
 defence he never wavered — was the source, or to 
 speak more correctly the occasion, from whence 
 came the confusion, the di\dsions and separations, 
 the superstitions, which disfigaired a movement 
 which he believed to be di\^ne. What Luther had 
 feared, when he first heard of the teachings of the 
 
 *^ 
 
178 THE GREAT A WAKENING. 
 
 Zwickau prophets, had actually come to pass in the 
 New England churches. What the early Puritans 
 themselves had dreaded as the necessary outcome 
 of Quaker preaching was now resulting from the 
 influential utterance of similar views by one the 
 most honored in their own ranks. 
 
 It is better not to obscure the issue by seeking 
 some other cause for the confusion. Edwards 
 himself recognized that this principle of the im- 
 mediate divine influence not onl^^ave birth to the 
 disorder, but was likely to result in still greater 
 disorder before the work was over. But, unlike 
 Luther, Edwards refused to abandon the princi- 
 ple, though he was becoming keenly alive to the 
 mischief which its misaipjH'ehension was working. 
 In the presence of the Zwickau prophets, Luther 
 denied the truth of the immediacy of the divine 
 action, falling back upon the Word and the Sacra- 
 ments as the external channels of the divine com- 
 munication. Edwards adhered to his conviction, 
 and labored to purify it from abuse and misinter- 
 pretation. 
 
 The history of these years, from 1742 to 1745, 
 may be studied elsewhere.^ It is only as Edwards 
 is concerned that we propose to follow it. But a 
 general summary of the situation may be given, in 
 order to a clearer appreciation of his work as a 
 religiSjjus teacher and reformer. One of the most 
 embarrassing features of the revival, with which 
 the clergy were called to deal, was the disturbances 
 ^ Cf . Tracy, Great Awakening, pp. 286, ff. 
 
EVILS OF THE REVIVAL. 179 
 
 in the congi^egations on Sunday caused by the 
 " bodily effects," — the faintings and fallings, the 
 weeping and shouting, the trances, the convulsions. 
 This was bad enough. But a worse effect followed 
 from the popular idea that these things were the 
 best evidence of the Spirit's presence and power. 
 Religious exj^eriences came to be tested by the 
 " bodily effects." There was a rivalry among the 
 people as to who shoidd display the most striking 
 manifestations. Even at Northampton, among a 
 people of whom Edwards was proud as having had 
 an excellent training under Mr. Stoddard in spirit- 
 ual things, and who were noted>tfor their large and 
 varied experiences, as well as by their wisdom and 
 sobriety, even here the delusion extended. People 
 came from abroad who had seen*displays of power 
 to which Northampton had hitherto been a stran- 
 ger ; and the work, which had before been compar- 
 atively pure, now degenerated into this unspiritual 
 rivalry. The revival had issued everywhere in a 
 sharp distinction between the converted and the 
 unconverted. Those who believed themselves con- 
 verted were not only puffed up with pride, but 
 undertook to judge the condition of others in the 
 light of their own experience. This practice was 
 most fruitful in bitter results. The converted drew 
 off from the unconverted, avoiding those who were 
 regarded as still in darkness, and addressing each 
 other as brother or sister. Itinerant lay preach- 
 ers, as well as itinerants among the clergy, now 
 appeared on the scene to add to the disorder. 
 
180 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 They were uneducated in many instances, trusting 
 to impulses and impressions, wliicli they held to be 
 the dit-ect result of the voice of the Spirit within 
 them ; they appealed to the feelings of those al- 
 ready excited by irrational and noisy exhorting ; 
 and, worst of all, they undertook to pronounce 
 upon the spiritual condition of the pastors of the 
 various churches in the towns which they visited. 
 It is mainly to Whitefield that this principle of 
 c6nfusion must be attributed. He had allowed 
 himseK to intrude into parishes, to condemn their 
 ministers as unconverted, and had in many cases 
 advised the people to separate from their ministry. 
 It is only proper to add that Whitefield saw his 
 errors and acknowledged them, but not before he 
 had been the author of a great mischief. The re- 
 port was bruited about that he intended to bring 
 over young men from England to take the place of 
 unconverted ministers.^ Separatist congregations 
 
 ^ This report gave rise to a prolonged personal controversy be- 
 tween Edwards and Rev. Mr. Clap, rector of Yale College. It 
 seems that Whitefield had told Edwards that he intended to bring 
 over from England into New Jersey and Pennsylvania a number 
 of young men to be ordained by the two Mr. Tennents. This was 
 in 1740. Some time afterwards, when the excitement over White- 
 field's course in New England was at its height, Edwards hap- 
 pened to be riding on horseback to Boston in company with 
 Rector Clap, to whom he imparted this information of White- 
 field's former intention in regard to New Jersey, and added, 
 perhaps incautiously, that he supposed him to have a similar 
 intention in regard to New England. On the strength of this 
 conversation, Rector Clap declared publicly, that Edwards had 
 informed him that Wliitefield had told Edwards that he intended 
 to bring over young men from England, etc., to supply the places 
 
OPPOSITION TO THE REVIVAL. 181 
 
 were springing up all over New England, based 
 upon' the ancient Montanist principle that it was 
 the, will of God to have a pure church, in whiclr* 
 the converted should be separated from the uncon- 
 verted. ^ All the errors of the revival were em- 
 bodied in these separatist congregations, — reliance 
 upon impressions as gaiides to conduct, and to the 
 knowledge of their own and each other's condi- 
 tions ; disowning of the ministers and churches of 
 the land as lacking the attestation of the Spirit ; 
 approval of lay exhorting as having the only evi- 
 dence of a divine presence.^ 
 
 Those opposed to the revival now put forth a 
 vigorous opposition. The colleges at Cambridge 
 and New Haven pronoimced against the movement, 
 and did much to stay the disorder by the influence 
 of prescriptive authority. The opposition was led 
 by Dr. Chauncy, of the First Church in Boston, in 
 bold and able treatises,^ in which he condemned the 
 
 of the New England clergy. Such a report, of course, was fuel 
 to the excitement. Edwards denied the veracity of Rector Clap's 
 statement. Many letters passed between the two, in which the 
 Rector of Yale College was finaUy worsted. The controversy 
 has no value beyond illustrating the tenacity with which Edwards 
 hung on to an opponent until he had silenced liim. The corre- 
 spondence was published, and may be found in the Hbrary of the 
 Massachusetts Historical Society. 
 
 1 Cf. Tracy, etc, p. 317, for the Confession of Faith of one of 
 these separatist churches at Mansfield. 
 
 •^ In 1743 Chauncy published a reply to Edwards' Distinguish- 
 ing Marks, etc., under the title, The Late Eeligious Commotions in 
 New England Considered. He seems to have been fond of issu- 
 ing his works anonymously. In this case he signs himself "A 
 lover of truth and peace." Edwards makes no allusion to him 
 by name in his works written in defence of the revival. 
 
182 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 whole movement as a delusion, — the bodily effects 
 as evidence of human weakness rather than di\Tlne 
 power ; * and denounced the intrusions into quiet 
 villages, and the separations from the established 
 order, as the greatest evil with which New Eng- 
 land could be visited. Religion, with him and 
 those who agreed with him, consisted in responding 
 to the divine will by a^imple life of obedience to 
 the moral precepts of the gospel. Emotions and 
 high experiences he rejected,'' along with impulses 
 and impressions, as having a common origin in a 
 debased abnormal condition. The Arminians, and 
 their sympathizers among the old Calvinists who 
 did not follow with Edwards, appear as the con- 
 servative power in the churches, resisting changes 
 which were dissolving the ancient Puritan order. 
 The General Convention of Congregational Minis- 
 ters in the Province of Massachusetts Bay put 
 forth in 1743 their testimony " against errors in 
 doctrine and disorders in practice which have of 
 late obtained in various parts of the land." In 
 Connecticut the evils of the time were met by an 
 effort to enforce the principles of the Say brook 
 Platform, in which Congregationahsm availed it- 
 self of Presbyterian discipline as a better method 
 of resisting disorder than the principle of the inde- 
 pendence of the local congregation. 
 
 It is characteristic of Edwards that, in rising to 
 the emergency, he does not fall back upon external 
 authority, or any adventitious methods which might 
 serve a temporary convenience. He graj^ples with 
 
APPEAL TO NEW ENGLAND. 183 
 
 the piunciple at Issue, making his appeal to the 
 pure reason. Hitherto his writings had Jbeen ad- 
 dressed in the first instance to a congregation from 
 the pulpit. In his Thoughts upon the Revival in 
 New England he speaks to all the clergy and peo- 
 ple in the provinces of the new world. No high 
 ecclesiastical official, no successor of Augustine in * 
 the chair of Canterbury, not even Gregory the 
 Great when he sp^e with authority to Western 
 Christendom, reproving and exhorting as by di- 
 vine right, — none of these surpassed Edwards 
 when he rose in the consciousness of his strength, 
 clothed with the majesty of what he held for vital 
 and eternal truth, to instruct and to warn the peo- 
 ple of New England as to their duty in a great 
 crisis. His leading aim is to show what are the 
 things which should be avoided or corrected in 
 order to the furtherance of this work of God. 
 He confesses that things have never yet been set 
 agoing in their right channel ; that if they liad been, 
 the work would have so prevailed as to carry all 
 before it, and to have triumphed over New Eng- 
 land as its conquest. He apologizes for assmning 
 so high and important a role, on the score of his 
 youth (he was then in his fortieth year) ; he 
 speaks of himself, in the conventional phraseology, 
 as an " inferior worm ; " he is anxious not to ap- 
 pear as taking too much upon him, as if he were 
 dictating or determining the duty of his fathers or 
 superiors or the civil rulers. But it is a day when 
 great liberty is allowed to the press, when every 
 
184 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 author may freely speak his mind concerning the 
 management of civil affairs, as in the war then 
 raging with Spain. When he considers the sad 
 jangling and confusion that has attended the revi- 
 val, it seems plain that somebody should speak his 
 mind, and that not in a way to inflame and increase 
 the uproar, but to bring the bitter contention to an 
 end. If he is right, he hoj^es his work will be re- 
 ceived as a manifestation of the mind and will of 
 God. If any wiU hold forth further light to him 
 he will thankfully receive it. He feels his need of 
 greater wisdom, and makes it his rule to lay hold 
 of light, though it come from a child or an enemy. 
 
 Edwards' book, with the title. Thoughts on the 
 Revival, was published in 1742. It not only bears 
 the traces of being written in haste, but it lacks 
 unity of impression, owing to the conflicting mo- 
 tives which impelled him to his task. To defend 
 the movement as divine, while pointing out its 
 flagrant abuses, was no easy task. But the defence 
 of the work comes first in the order of treatment, 
 for on this point Edwards had an overwhelming 
 conviction that demanded a full and earnest ut- 
 terance. 
 
 One of the arguments on which he most relies 
 to prove the movement from God is the great 
 transformation it has worked amono^ the churches. 
 " Who that saw the state of things in New Eng- 
 land a few years ago," he exclaims, " would have 
 thought that in so little a time there would be such 
 a change ! " Notwithstanding all the imprudences 
 
RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATION. 185 
 
 and sinful irregularities, it was manifest and noto- 
 rious that throughout the land there had been an 
 increase of a spirit of seriousness. The fruits of 
 this seriousness were seen in a disposition to treat 
 religion as a matter of great importance, to per- 
 form the external duties of religion in a more sol- 
 emn and decent manner. There had been an 
 awakening of the conscience of the people, which 
 had led to deeper views of human sinfulness. 
 There was a strange alteration almost all over 
 New England amongst young people. A powerful 
 invisible influence must have been at work which 
 had induced them to forsake their devious ways, 
 when hitherto they had clung to them despite the 
 warnings of the ministers, or the vigilance of the 
 civil magistrates. They had now abandoned their 
 frolicking, their night-walking, their impure lan- 
 guage and lewd songs. And among all, whether 
 old or young, there was to be seen a change in 
 their habits of drinking, tavern -haunting, profane 
 speaking, and extravagance of apparel. Notoriously 
 vicious persons have been reformed. The wealthy, 
 the fashionable, the gay, great beaus and fine ladies, 
 have relinquished their vanities. Through the 
 greater part of New England the Bible has come 
 into much greater esteem than it had formerly 
 been, as also other books of piety. The Lord's 
 day has come to be more religiously observed. 
 Much had been done in making up differences, in 
 offering restitution, and in the confession of faults 
 one to another, — probably more within these two 
 
186 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 years tlian had been done in thirty years before. 
 And in view of all this, was it not strange that, in 
 a Christian, orthodox country, and in such a land 
 of light, there should be many at a loss whether 
 the worh is of God, or of the devil ? For this is 
 certain, that it is a great and wonderful event, a 
 strange revolution, an unexpected, surprising over- 
 turning of things, such as has never been seen in 
 New England, and scarce ever has been heard of 
 in any land. If it is a work of God, it is a most 
 glorious work, or, if a work of the devil, then a 
 most awful calamity. There is but one alternative. 
 God and the devil may work together at the same 
 time and in the same land ; but they cannot work 
 together in producing the same event. 
 
 For these reasons he calls upon the magistrates, 
 as well as the clergy, to acknowledge God in this 
 work, and to put their hand to its promotion, if 
 they would not expose themselves to the curse of 
 God. He recommends also that the press should 
 be utilized to this end. They that handle the pen 
 of the writer should come up to the help of \h^ 
 Lord. He warns those who are publishing pam- 
 phlets, in which they endeavor to discourage or 
 hinder the work, that God may go forth as fire to 
 consume all that stands in His way, and so burn up 
 those pamphlets ; and there may be danger that 
 the fire which is kindled in them may scorch the 
 authors. He intimates that jealousy or envy may 
 be among the motives which influence the minis- 
 ters to show themselves out of humor, or sullenly 
 
THE OLD REGIME. 1^7 
 
 refuse to acknowledge the work. Let tkem not 
 decline to give the honor that belongs to others 
 because they are young or inferior to themselves, 
 or may appear unworthy that so much honor shoidd 
 be put upon them. But among the clergy who may 
 be thus tempted he includes himself, for he had 
 experienced .the trial of seeing a young man in his 
 pulpit at Northampton whose moving power on the 
 congregation proved greater than his own. There 
 is a hint in all this that the old regime was coming 
 to an end, when the minister might grow old in his 
 parish with the increasing reverence of his people, 
 even though the fire of a fervent oratory had de- 
 clined. But Edwards was inclined to acquiesce in 
 the change. " It is our wisest and best way to 
 bow to the great God in this work, and to be en- 
 tirely resigned to Him \vith respect to the manner 
 in which He carries it on." 
 
 Among the reasons which explain the error of 
 those who have had ill thoughts in regard to the 
 revival, Edwards assigns the neglect of the Bible, 
 — the sole ride by which such things should be 
 judged. They follow, instead, their li j^riori no- 
 tions, or they make philosophy instead of Scrip- 
 ture their ride, and so reach the conclusion that 
 religion is running out into transports and high 
 flights of the affections. These persons separate 
 the affections from the will, as if they did not 
 belong to the noblest part of the soul, so that 
 the relation of the affections to Cliristianity is 
 regarded as something adventitious or accidental. 
 
188 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 Those gentlemen who hold such a view labor, he 
 thinks, under a great mistake both in their philos- 
 ophy and divinity. The religious affections apper- 
 tain to the essence of Christianity ; the very life 
 and soul of all true religion consists in them. The 
 affections, he argues, should not be separated from 
 the will as though they were two distinct faculties. 
 Acts of the will are simply acts of the affections. 
 The soul wills one thing rather than another, no 
 otherwise than as it loves one thing more than 
 another. The greater, therefore, and the higher 
 the exercises of love toward God and of self-ab- 
 horrence for sin, so much higher is Christ's reli- 
 gion, and the virtue which He raises in the soul. 
 
 But another cause which helj)s to explain the 
 disaffection toward the revival is to be found in 
 the failure to discriminate between the evil and 
 the good which are associated in the movement. 
 Because of this want of discrimination, things are 
 condemned as abuses which Edwards refuses to 
 condemn. Among these was the style of preach- 
 ing then coming into fashion, — what Edwards calls 
 a very affectionate manner of sj^eaking, with great 
 appearance of earnestness both in voice and ges- 
 ture. It was objected that this method of preach- 
 ing stirred the affections without reaching the 
 understanding. Edwards admits the importance 
 of clear and distinct explanation of the doctrines 
 of religion, — a method in which lay his own 
 strength, in great part, as a preacher. But it is 
 evident that in meeting this objection he is dis- 
 
AFFECTIONATE MODE OF PREACHING. 180 
 
 tractecl by contrary impulses. It would have been 
 a more congenial task to have upheld the impor- 
 tance of the scientific, speculative aspects of Chris- 
 tian truth. But on the other hand he recognizes in 
 the objection the desire to eliminate the emotions 
 from the sphere of practical piety, and in the 
 emotions he considers the cliief part of religion to 
 consist. Hence he maintains the correctness and 
 necessity of this mode of preaching which appeals 
 to the affections. He endeavors, by a subtle dis- 
 tinction, to show that the affections cannot really 
 be excited except by light in the understanding. 
 We are to infer, therefore, that this affectionate 
 mode of preaching must somehow reach the mind 
 before it stirs tlie passions. The mind may be 
 enlightened without a learned handling of the doc- 
 trinal points of religion. Edwards now goes so 
 far as to maintain that speculative knowledge of 
 divinity is not what is chiefly needed at this time, 
 but rather warmth of devotion. The age, he 
 thinks, abounds in this kind of knowledge. '' Was 
 there ever an age," he exclaims, " wherein streng-th 
 and penetration of reason, extent of learning, ex- 
 actness of distinction, correctness of style, clear- 
 ness of expression, did so abound? And yet was 
 there ever an age in which there was so little sense 
 of the evil of sin, so little love to God, or holiness 
 of life? What the people need is, not to have * 
 their heads stored, so much as to have their hearts 
 touched." Here, also. Scripture comes to his assist- 
 ance. It seems to be foretold that in the latter days 
 
190 THE GREAT AWAKENING, 
 
 there will be a loud and earnest preaching of the 
 gospel. O Jerusalem^ that bring^H good tidings^ 
 lift up thy voice with strength^ cry aloud^ spare 
 not^ is the divine injunction. This is to be the 
 way with the church at the supreme moment when 
 the Christ mystical is about to be brought forth. 
 
 The next abuse mentioned, which Edwards will 
 not admit as such, is preaching terror to the peo- 
 ple when they are already under great terrors, 
 instead of preaching comfort. He admits of 
 course that something else besides terror is to be 
 pre^hed. But before a sinner's conversion through 
 repentance and faith, there is no danger, he thinks, 
 of overdoing the terrors of the law. To bring in 
 the gospel too soon would be to undo the previous 
 distress. The phase of distress and terrors is 
 the moment of the minister's opportunity. He 
 must strike while the iron is hot ; then only will 
 the work be thorouglily d6ne. He himself is not 
 afraid to tell sinners, who are most sensible of their 
 misery, that their case is a thousand times worse 
 than they imagine ; for this is the truth. If all 
 this should lead in some cases to religious melan- 
 choly, it is not the fault of the ministers. The 
 same objection might be urged against the Bible 
 as against awakening preaching. There are hun- 
 dreds and probably thousands of instances of per- 
 sons who have murdered themselves under religious 
 melancholy, which would not have been the case if 
 they had remained in heathen darkness. 
 
 That which more especially gave offence to 
 
CHILDREN IN THE REVIVAL. 191 
 
 many was the frightening of poor, innocent chil- 
 dren with talk of hell fire and eternal damnation. 
 This, also, Edwards maintains, is not an abuse. 
 Those who complain of the ministers who follow 
 this method raise a loud cry, as if such conduct 
 were intolerable. But this complaint only betrays 
 weakness and inconsideration. Here follows the 
 passage which has been remembered against Ed- 
 wards to our own day : — 
 
 " As innocent as young children seem to be to us, yet, 
 if they are out of Christ, they are not so in God's sight, 
 but are young vipers, and infinitely more hateful than 
 vipers, and are in a most miserable condition as well as 
 grown persons ; and they are naturally very senseless 
 and stupid, being horn as the tvild ass's colt, and need 
 much to awaken them." ♦ 
 
 Upon this point Edwards makes no qualifica- 
 tion whatever. In theory and in practice he ex- 
 tended the revival to the case of children. He 
 himself presided over children's meetings. He 
 thought that God really descended from heaven to 
 be amongst them. He declares that he has seen 
 the happy effects of dealing plainly with them in 
 the concerns of their souls, nor has he ever known 
 any ill consequences to result frcm such a method. 
 Indeed, God in this work has shown a remarkable 
 regard to little cliildren. Let men take care that 
 they do not despise the religion of children, as 
 did the scribes and high priests who complained 
 of the children when they cried Hosanna in the 
 temple, to whom also Jesus had replied : " Have 
 
192 THE GREAT A WAKENING. 
 
 ye never read, Out of tlie moutli of babes and 
 sucklings thou bast perfected praise ? " 
 
 Much also was said against frequent religious 
 meetings, and spending too great an amount of 
 time in religion. This objection Edwards meets 
 with ease and in his usual manner. He affirms, as 
 a matter of course, that people ought not to neg- 
 lect the business of their daily calling. But hav- 
 ing admitted the princij^le, he seeks in some de- 
 gree to counteract its force. He urges that it may 
 not be so improper after all, if, while people are 
 seeking eternal riches and immortal glory, they 
 should in some measure suffer in their temporal 
 concerns. On extraordinary occasions a whole 
 nation spends time and money in the ceremonies 
 of a public rejoicing. Why, then, should we be so 
 exact with God as to think it a crime if we in- 
 jure our temporal interests in His service ? But, 
 whichever way he looks, he has the best of the ar- 
 gument. He is sure that of late, more time has 
 been gained than lost ; more time has been saved 
 from frolicking and tavern-haunting, unprofitable 
 visits, vain talk and needless diversions, than has 
 been spent in extraordinary religion ; " and prob- 
 ably five times as much has been saved in persons' 
 estates, at the taverns and in their apparel, as has 
 been spent by religious meetings." 
 
 There was one other accompaniment of the re- 
 vival which its opponents regarded as an abuse 
 and delusion, which Edwards still refuses to con- 
 demn. Once more we must revert to the " bodily 
 
PHYSICAL MANIFESTATIONS. 193 
 
 effects " which waited upon the movement, as Ed- 
 wards believed, by a divine appointment. It has 
 been already remarked that he clung to these 
 manifestations, impelled as it were by some inward 
 necessity. In 'his Thoughts on the Revival he 
 resumes the subject, placing it in the foreground 
 of his treatment, determined, as it would seem, to 
 have it out mth his opponents. It is a subject 
 which is confessedly difficult and mysterious, nor 
 is his attitude wholly free from contradiction. 
 But he guards himself as far as possible from mis- 
 apprehension. These bodily affections and high 
 transports, he affirms, have nothing to do with true 
 religion, which consists only in a right state of 
 mind and correct moral conduct. They are to be 
 regarded as incidental, not to be sought after or 
 encouraged, not to be valued as a sign of the di- 
 vine favor. " The degree of the influence of the 
 Spirit of God on particular persons is by no 
 means to be judged of by the degree of external 
 aj)pearances." But, taking the movement as a 
 whole, these effects are also probable tokens of 
 God's presence. Where they exist, they are argai- 
 ments for the success of the preaching. A great 
 crying out in a congregation, in consequence of the 
 powerful presentation of the truth, seems to him a 
 thing to rejoice in, much more than if there were 
 only an appearance of solemn attention and a show 
 of affection by weeping. '' To rejoice that the 
 work is carried on calmly, without much ado, is 
 in effect to rejoice that it is carried on with less 
 
194 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 power, or that there is not so much of the influence 
 of God's Spirit." 
 
 He regards it also as a specious objection against 
 the work., that there have been cases where the 
 body is injured, or the health impaired. Did not 
 Jacob wrestle with God for a blessing, and gain 
 the blessing, though he was sent away halting upon 
 his thigh, and went lame ever after ? Is it strange 
 that if God pleases a little to withdraw the veil, to 
 let in light upon the soul, giving a view of the 
 things of another world in their transcendent and 
 infinite greatness, that human nature, which is as 
 the grass, a shaking leaf, a weak withering flower, 
 should totter under such a discovery ? When 
 Daniel saw the majesty of Christy there was no 
 strength left in him ; when John the apostle saw 
 Him, he fell at His feet as one dead. The prophet 
 Habbakuk, when he saw the awfulness of the di- 
 vine manifestation, exclaims, " When I heard, my 
 belly trembled, my lips quivered at the voice, rot- 
 tenness entered into my bones." The Psalmist 
 also was affected as persons of late have been : 
 " I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for 
 thy commandments." God may be pleased at 
 times to make the cup of blessing to run over. 
 " It has been with the disciples of Christ, for a long 
 time, a time of great emptiness upon spiritual ac- 
 counts ; they have gone hungry, and have been 
 toiling in vain during a dark season, a time of 
 night with the church of God ; as it was with the 
 disciples of old, when they had toiled all night for 
 
DEFECT IN EDWARDS' ATTITUDE. 195 
 
 sometliing to eat and had taken nothing. But now, 
 the morning being come, Jesus appeared to his dis- 
 ciples, and takes a compassionate notice of their 
 wants, and says to them, Children^ have ye any 
 meat? and gives them such abundance of food 
 that they are not able to draw their net ; yea, their 
 net breaks, their vessel is overloaded and begins to 
 sink." In this process God may not only weaken 
 the body, but may take the life also. In this way 
 it has been supposed that the life of Moses was 
 taken. Indeed, God may so impair the frame of 
 the body, and particularly of the brain, that per- 
 sons shall be deprived of the use of the reason. 
 And if God does give such discoveries of Himself 
 as to lead to this result, the blessing is greater 
 than the calamity, even though the life should be 
 taken away ; yea, even though the soul should not 
 be immediately taken away, but should be for 
 years in a deep sleep, or be deprived of the use of 
 its faculties before it should pass into glory. Con- 
 sidering what a number of persons have been over- 
 powered of late, it is remarkable that their lives 
 should have been preserved, and that the instances 
 of those who have been deprived of their reason 
 should have been so few.^ 
 
 In accounting for Edwards' attitude on this sub- 
 ject, it has been already suggested that a system 
 like his, of such transcendent idealism, needed 
 some tangible or physical counterpoise, in order 
 that it might not be detached altogether from the 
 
 1 Thoughts, etc., vol. iii. pp. 282-285. 
 
196 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 external world, and so be in danger of terminating 
 in unreality. It is one of the characteristics of his 
 system that he makes no attempt to trace an or- 
 ganic relationship between man and nature. The 
 external world existed only mentally and in the 
 mind of God. The purpose of nature in relation 
 to man, its necessity to his spiritual existence, the 
 conflict of man with nature, the victory which is 
 reached through perpetual struggle, and is mani- 
 fested in the ever-increasing transmutation of the 
 natural into the spiritual, — these are thoughts 
 which j&nd no expression in his works. He had 
 reacted against the low materialistic tendency of 
 the age which glorified the miracle as the highest 
 evidence for the validity of a spiritual revelation. 
 He had adopted a definition of the supernatural 
 which did not include the miracle, finding the 
 evidence for the truth of spiritual things in the 
 inward consciousness, the insight or intuition of 
 the soul. But he saw no significance for the mir- 
 acle as in itself a spiritual process, — as in the tri- 
 umph of Christ's perfected humanity over the law 
 of necessity in nature. His earnest defence of the 
 bodily manifestations may be taken as an intima- 
 tion that he felt the need of some element which 
 his system did not afford. He might have found 
 the desired relief, — the response of nature to the 
 invocation of the Spirit, — had he been willing to 
 lay supreme emphasis on moral practice as the test 
 of the Spirit's presence and power. But from this 
 mode of escape he had shut himself off by placing 
 
MRS, EDWARDS IN THE REVIVAL. 197 
 
 conscience, together with the greater part of the 
 moral sphere of human life, under the control of 
 God's common grace, which carries with it no 
 saving efficacy. And yet at times he was on the 
 eve of accepting this mode of deliverance : he hov- 
 ers about the ethical result as the tangible evi- 
 dence of the life of God in the soul. And, indeed, 
 though he never retracted his testimony in behaK 
 of bodily manifestations, it was to this conclusion 
 that he seems to have been gravitating as he closed 
 the long discussion. 
 
 There is, however, another explanation of Ed- 
 wards' relation to this subject, which is too inter- 
 esting and important to be passed over without a 
 brief allusion. We cannot be wrong in assigning 
 to Mrs. Edwards a place in the Great Awakening 
 hardly inferior to that occupied by her husband. 
 The young girl whom at the age of thirteen he 
 had eulogized as a favorite of Heaven, whose rare 
 beauty had satisfied his fastidious taste, was still 
 exercising as a mature woman the same attractive 
 influence over his mind and heart. There is abun- 
 dant evidence of the speU which she exerted over 
 those around her by the beauty of her person, and 
 the sino^ular and refined loveliness of her manner, 
 as also of the character which inspired it. Her 
 reputation had gone abroad in the colony, she was 
 even said to surpass her husband in her endow- 
 ment of Christian graces. Like him, she was a 
 mystic devotee, with a natural capacity for the 
 highest fervors of devotion. It was her experience 
 
198 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 — which seemed to Edwards as genuine as it was 
 remarkable — which would have compelled him to 
 believe, even against his will, that the divine vis- 
 itation might overpower the human body. At his 
 request she wrote a statement of these vicissitudes 
 of her inner life,^ to which Edwards often alludes, 
 and which he finally incorporated in his own 
 words, though not mentioning her by name, in his 
 Thoughts on the Revival in New England. He 
 j)resents it to his readers as if it were decisive of 
 the question at issue. 
 
 Apart from its religious significance, Mrs. Ed- 
 wards' statement is valuable as throwino^ lig-ht 
 upon her husband's personal history, as well as her 
 own. Indeed, it must be confessed that the pure 
 womanliness of her statement, the traces of femi- 
 nine pride in her husband, her jealousy for his 
 reputation, and her desire to retain undiminished 
 his respect and love, are more interesting to the 
 ordinary reader than the expressions of mystic 
 rapture with which it abounds. It was towards 
 the close of the year 1738, and at the age of 
 twenty-nine, that " she was led under an uncommon 
 discovery of God's excellency and in a high exer- 
 cise of love to God, and of rest and joy in Him, to 
 make a new and most solemn dedication of herself 
 to His service and glory, — an entire renunciation 
 of the world, and a resignation of all to God." The 
 occasion which led her to long for a deeper resig- 
 nation and a more entire renunciation of the world 
 ^ Dwight, Life of Edwards, pp. 171-190. 
 
MRS. EDWARDS' SELF-RENUNCIATION. 199 
 
 was a casual suggestion of Mr. Edwards that she 
 had failed in some measure in point of prudence 
 in a conversation with Mr. Williams, of Hadley. 
 As she looked into her mind, she found that it 
 seemed to bereave her of quietness and calm not 
 to have the good opinion of her husband. She 
 saw that two things interfered with an act of com- 
 plete renunciation, — the desire to keep her own 
 good name and fair reputation among men, and es- 
 pecially the esteem and just treatment of the peo- 
 ple of the town, and more especially the esteem and 
 love and kind treatment of her husband. And 
 again, on another occasion, she had felt that the eye 
 of God was upon her to observe how she was af- 
 fected by the respect shown to Mr. Edwards, who 
 had then been sent for to preach at Leicester. 
 She was sensible that the incident had ministered 
 to her pride in her husband, rather than to a pure 
 interest in the extension of God's work. When 
 she heard that Mr. Buel, a young man recently 
 ordained, was coming to Northampton to take Mr. 
 Edwards' place during his absence, she had a 
 struggle with herseK before she was willing to 
 pray that God woidd bless his labors. She gained, 
 as she thought, the resig-nation and the submission 
 for which she longed, although Mr. Buell's preach- 
 ing was attended by greater success than had at- 
 tended her husband's preaching before he went to 
 Leicester. Even if God were never ao'ain to bless 
 the labors of Mr. Edwards, or were to make use 
 of Mr. Buell to the enlivening of every saint and 
 
200 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 tlie conversion of every sinner in the town, slie 
 thought her resignation woukl enable her to re- 
 joice in the result. She was not only willing that 
 her pride in Mr. Edwards should be humbled, but 
 the moment came when she felt that she would be 
 able to bear, if God so willed it, these two greatest 
 evils, — the ill-treatment of the town and the ill- 
 will of her husband. " I was carried above even 
 these things," so she writes, " and could feel that, 
 if I were exposed to them both, they would seejn 
 comparatively nothing." 
 
 We may doubt if she had succeeded so com- 
 pletely as she thought to have done ; for ever and 
 anon in her confession she repeats how entirely 
 willing she had become that " God should employ 
 some other instrument than Mr. Edwards in ad- 
 vancing the work of grace in Northampton." It 
 may have been also that her sensitive instincts di- 
 vined afar off the impending calamity for her 
 family ; she may have been foreboding and pre- 
 paring for an event which would call forth the re- 
 quirements of stoical fortitude, when, her husband's 
 power as a preacher having declined, and his hold 
 upon his congregation lost, they should be driven 
 forth as it were into that wilderness which, in her 
 imagination, she had descried, amid the scorn and 
 contumely of the people. But however this may 
 be, none the less did she have her reward for her 
 consecration to what she believed to be the di- 
 vine will. For a period of nearly three years she 
 remained in a state of such spiritual exhilaration 
 
MRS. EDWARDS^ EXPERIENCE. 201 
 
 as lifted her above the world, and brought her into 
 intimate communion with Heaven. Although ni a 
 condition of firm health, she was constantly over- 
 come by the power of her emotions and the vivid- 
 ness of her applstrehensions of divine things, so 
 much so as to faint, or to be deprived of her 
 strength. At other times she rose up leaping with 
 joy and exultation. The depth of her sense of 
 assurance of her o^vn salvation surpassed anything 
 her husband had experienced. Her soul seemed 
 to be on the eve of sundering its tie with the body. 
 
 " I had a constant, clear, and Hvely sense of the heav- 
 enly sweetness of Christ's excellent and transcendent 
 love, of His nearness to me and of my dearness to Him ; 
 with an inexpressibly sweet calmness of soul in an entire 
 rest in Him. 1 seemed to myself to perceive a glow of 
 divine love come clown from the heart of Christ m 
 heaven into my heart in a constant stream, like a stream 
 or pencil of sweet light. What I felt each minute of 
 this time was worth more than all the outward comfort 
 and pleasure which I had enjoyed in my whole life put 
 together. ... To my own miagination my soul seemed 
 to be gone out of me to God and Christ in heaven. God 
 and Christ were so present and so near me, that I 
 seemed removed from myself. ... I had an over- 
 whelming sense of the glory of God as the great Eter- 
 nal All. I knew that I certainly should go to Him, 
 and should as it were drop into the Divine Being and 
 be swallowed up in God." 
 
 Edwards' comment upon his wife's experience 
 may be read at lengiih in his Thoughts on the 
 
202 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 Revival. He was so afraid that lie should he 
 misled hy it, that he scrutinizes it with the cool 
 manner of a disinterested observer. As he stud- 
 ied it, it seemed to answer every test which he ap- 
 plied. Mrs. Edwards was led into no extremes 
 of behavior ; she retained her good judgment and 
 sound common sense. She followed no impulses ; 
 she was the subject of no impressiojis. Her high 
 experience seemed to strengthen and purify her 
 Christian character. She was free from censo- 
 riousness, with no disposition to judge of others : 
 she was filled with charity and humility. She did 
 not neglect the necessary business of a secular call- 
 ing in order to spend time in the exercises of devo- 
 tion, but rather realized, in worldly business j)er- 
 formed with alacrity, the service of God, and as it 
 were a substitute for prayer. What she had felt 
 could be, therefore, nothing else than the resj^onse 
 to the exalted expressions of Scripture : T7ie 
 peace of God which passeth all understanding ; 
 the joy and peace in helieving^ which is unspealc- 
 ahle and full of glory. " Now if such things," he 
 exclaims, " are enthusiasm and the fruits of a dis- 
 tempered brain, let my brain be evermore pos- 
 sessed of that happy distemper ! If this be dis- 
 traction, I pray God that the world of mankind 
 may be all seized with this benign, meek, benefi- 
 cent, beatifical, glorious distraction." 
 
 A critical student, concerned only with what is 
 unique in psychological manifestations, might be 
 inclined to inquire, whether, in all this, Mrs. Ed- 
 
CRITICISM OF THE REVIVAL. 203 
 
 wards may not have been adapting herself nncon- 
 sciously to her husband's views, striving in a sjnrit 
 of devotion and loyalty to embody her husband's 
 ideal of what a saint on earth should be. To some 
 extent this may be true. But no such suspicion 
 crossed his mind. He staked the whole question 
 at issue on his wife's experience. It is quite pos- 
 sible that hers was the stronger influence. 
 
 To the task of exposing the abuses of the revi- 
 val Edwards seems to come with reluctance. He 
 lingers on the gloriousness of the work, the rea- 
 sons why all should unite in promoting it. But 
 when he has once committed himself to the busi- 
 ness of criticism, he shows the same disposition to 
 thoroughness of treatment which characterizes all 
 his writings. His tone is kindly, for he is address- 
 ing the friends of the movement rather than its 
 foes. But he lays his axe at the root of the tree. 
 
 The first evil which he attacked went under the 
 name of imindses or impressions} He declares 
 that one of the wrong principles which had given 
 rise to grave errors was the notion " that it is 
 God's manner in these days to guide His saints by 
 inspiration or immediate revelation, to make known 
 
 1 Edwards' Thoughts on the Revival was republished in Eng- 
 land by Wesley with the title, Thoughts Concerning the Present 
 Revival of Religion in New England, by Jonathan Edwards. 
 Abridged by John Wesley, A. M. London, 1745. It is charac- 
 teristic of the nature of the abridgment that, while the discussion 
 of "bodily effects" is retained, all that relates to "impulses and 
 impressions ' ' is omitted. 
 
204 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 to tliem what shall come to pass hereafter, or what 
 it is His will they should do." That people should 
 have been misled into such a notion was a thing 
 to have been expected. To admit the immediate 
 action of the divine Spirit in the soul seemed to 
 warrant the vulgar conclusion that the future 
 would now be revealed, and their course of duty 
 under all circumstances made plain. What else, 
 they might have argued, did they need more than 
 this, — an infallible directory within ? In what 
 other way could the divine Spirit, which was dis- 
 tinct and different from the human, manifest itself 
 as an inward reality, unless by doing that which 
 the human spirit could not do? Edwards himself 
 had at first sounded a wrong note when, in his 
 Narrative of Surprising Conversions, he attrib- 
 uted importance to the circumstance that, in the 
 process of an awakening soul, passages of Scripture 
 suddenly came to the mind as if suggested by the 
 Holy Spirit. But he now deprecates this idea as 
 part of the same delusion as the impulses and im- 
 pressions. 
 
 But while Edwards has emancipated himself 
 from all complicity with the various manifestations 
 of this evil principle, we search his pages in vain 
 for a satisfactory enunciation of the method by 
 which the root of the evil is to be reached. He is 
 sure that the principle is wrong, that it has a ten- 
 dency to supplant Scripture, to bring in confusion, 
 to nourish pride, to draw off the mind from the 
 one thing needful. Why cannot men be content 
 
THE HUMAN AND THE DIVINE. 205 
 
 with the divine oracles ? Why should they desire 
 to make Scripture speak more than it does ? There 
 is nothing necessarily spiritual in this idea of spe- 
 cial direction. Even if God were to reveal anything 
 by a voice from heaven, there is in it nothing of 
 the nature of true grace ; it is but a common in- 
 fluence of the Spirit ; it is but dross and dung in 
 comparison with the gracious leading that a real 
 saint possesses. As much as this God gave to Ba- 
 laam, revealing to him what he shoidd say or do. 
 But there is a more excellent way than inspiration 
 in wliich the Spirit of God leads the sons of God, 
 — their transformation by the renewal of their 
 mind, proving to them what is the good and accept- 
 able and perfect will of God. 
 
 All this is as true as it is admirably said. What- 
 ever the deficiences of Edwards' theory may have 
 been, a true instinct warned, him away from all 
 hnpulses and imjyressions^ as having a tendency 
 toward the degradation of the spiritual, or to a sen- 
 suous confounding of the spiritual with the mate- 
 rial. To suppose that these physical or external 
 impressions were in any way caused by God, was 
 " a low, miserable notion of spiritual sense." If he 
 had only felt at liberty to develop this principle, 
 his attitude would have been clear and consistent. 
 Tlie grace divine could then have been conceived 
 as the implantation in the soul of an attraction 
 toward the good, mingling insensibly with the 
 springs of human action, yet so as to be wholly di- 
 vine, while seeming to be wholly human. The 
 
206 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 love of the good would then become the basis of 
 faith in the spiritual, the very essence of God 
 within the soul. Edwards was inclined to such a 
 view of the divine action, but fears of Arminian- 
 ism prevented its full acceptance. He has before 
 him the Arminian statement that " the manner of 
 the Spirit of God is to cooperate in a silent, secret, 
 and undiscernible way with the use of means and 
 our own endeavors, so that there is no distinguish- 
 ing by sense between the influences of the Spirit 
 of God and the natural operations of the faculties 
 of our own minds." ^ But if he admitted this 
 principle, how could he maintain, what lay so close 
 to his heart, that the great revival was an excep- 
 tional moment in history when God was working 
 more powerfully than was His usual manner, in a 
 way unique and spasmodic, producing even phys- 
 ical manifestations as in the great upheaval of the 
 apostolic age? And still further, if he admitted 
 such a view, it would have required a reconstruc- 
 tion of his ideas of humanity, a practical abandon- 
 ment of the distinction between elect and non-elect, 
 a modification of his views of original sin and the 
 freedom of the will. In fact every feature of his 
 theology was involved in the issue to which he had 
 now been brought. That issue was no other than 
 the momentous inquiry as to the relation between 
 the divine and the humai\, — whether they were by 
 nature incompatible with and foreign to each other, 
 or whether they tended to flow together by an in- 
 
 ^ Religious Affections, vol. iii. p. 29. 
 
ACTION OF DIVINE GRACE. 207 
 
 ward affinity, forming an union In which they can- 
 not be divlclecl or separated, even If they may be 
 distinguished from each other. 
 
 The following passage shows Edwards as at- 
 tempting a sort of compromise with a truth which 
 strangely attracts him, while he cannot accept It : — 
 
 " However all exercises of grace be from the Spirit 
 of God, yet the Spirit of God dwells and acts in the 
 hearts of the saints in some measure after the manner 
 of a vital, natural principle, a principle of new nature In 
 them ; whose exercises are excited by means in some 
 measure as other natural principles are. Though grace 
 be not In the saints as a mere natural princijjle, but 
 as a sovereign agent, and so its exercises are not tied 
 to means by an immutable law of nature, as In mere 
 natural principles ; yet God has so constituted that 
 grace should dwell so in the hearts of the saints that its 
 exercises should have some connection with means, after 
 the manner of a principle of nature." ^ 
 
 Because Edwards failed to reach a satisfactory 
 solution of this fundamental problem, his attitude 
 was an uncertain and Inconsistent one. He could 
 not effectually overcome the evils of the revival, 
 nor meet the argiiments of those who contended 
 for imjndses and impressions as evidences of the 
 Spirit's presence and power. He must be held 
 partly responsible for these very evils. Na}^ more, 
 he was forced Into a worse situation, if that were 
 possible, than those who were following their o^vn 
 Impressions, under the delusion that they were 
 1 Thoughts on the Revival^ iii. p. 378. 
 
208 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 divine. Dr. Chauncy and his sympathizers, who 
 opposed the revival, showed their keenness in fas- 
 tening upon this dekision as its vrdnerable point. 
 They may have been in error in attributing too 
 much to human action, or in reducing the divine 
 Spirit to a mere humble, unrecognized servitor 
 upon the human spirit. Edwards denounces them 
 for refusing to confess the worh as divine : he is 
 fearful lest they should commit the unpardonable 
 sin by denying the presence and activity of the 
 Holy Ghost in the religious contagion which was 
 spreading throughout the land. But what shall 
 we say in reference to the ground which he was 
 driven to take in order to defend his own position ? 
 Assuming, as he did, that the action of the Spirit 
 in the revival was extraordinary, manifested in 
 bodily effects, and always distinguishable from the 
 human activity, he was obliged to admit that the 
 tendency of this divine action was to excite incli- 
 nations which if gratified would lead to confusion. 
 Human judgment and discretion must therefore 
 come to the rescue, in order to prevent the unlim- 
 ited influence of the divine. He illustrates this 
 necessity of checking and curbing the divine influ- 
 ence, by showing how absurd it would be, if those 
 who were moved by the love of souls were to spend 
 all their time, night and day, in warning and ex- 
 horting men, giving themselves no opportunity to 
 drink or sleep. Such a course of action would do 
 ten times more injury than good. And yet, upon 
 Edwards' principles, not to do this presents the 
 
ITINERANT PREACHERS. 209 
 
 extraordinary spectacle of the divine influence con- 
 trolled and kept within bounds by human prudence. 
 But we must believe that Edwards was not wholly 
 satisfied with his own attitude. A mind like his, 
 whose own obstinate self - questionings were more 
 embarrassing than the objections of his opponents, 
 still remains a more profitable as well as interest- 
 ing study than the writings of an antagonist like 
 Chauncy, who had no misgivings when deciding on 
 the course of action to be pursued. We turn away 
 from the consideration of tliis abuse, the impulses 
 and impressions, to another evil which grew out 
 of them, whose result was to subvert the ecclesias- 
 tical order in New England. 
 
 Allusion has been made to the itinerant preach- 
 ers and lay exhorters who went travelling over the 
 comitry, intruding into parishes, censuring the 
 clergy as unconverted, calling upon God either to 
 convert or to remove them, advising their people 
 to form separatist churches in the interest of their 
 own salvation. Such were the Whitefields, the 
 Tennants, the Davenports, and the young men who 
 were inspired by their example. There had grown 
 up in New England, in the hundred years that had 
 elapsed since its settlement, a consolidated eccle- 
 siastical system which was as tyrannical^ in its 
 way as anything from which the Puritans had 
 sought escape in England. "The whole country 
 was divided into parishes, in each of which a 
 
 1 Cf. Tracy, The Great Awakening, p. 414. " The revival gave 
 a mortal wound to parish despotism.' ' 
 
210 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 church was organized and a pastor settled accord- 
 ing to law, with whose rights none was allowed to 
 interfere. The minister of the parish was held 
 responsible for the religious instruction of its in- 
 habitants. The idea grew up very naturally that 
 those who held him thus responsible should not 
 put themselves under other teachers without his 
 leave, and that other teachers ought not to derange 
 his plans of usefulness by breaking in upon his 
 parish contrary to his judgment. The pastor had 
 at least a moral right to control the giving and re- 
 ceiving of religious instructions within the geo- 
 graphical bounds of his parish." ^ For this eccle- 
 siastical S3^stem Edwards had a genuine respect 
 and affection. Such was his own position in the 
 town of Northampton. This feeling partook in 
 some measure of an inherited tradition. Herein 
 he differed from Whitefield, Davenport, and others, 
 who were restrained by no sympathy with New 
 England history, and no desire to uphold the 
 interests of the standing order. But Edwards 
 could not go as far as Chauncy in his opposition 
 to the itinerants. He evidently recognizes them 
 as having a place and a work to do, though he 
 cautions them as liable above all other clergy to 
 spiritual pride. " When a minister is greatly suc- 
 ceeded from time to time, and so draws the eyes 
 of the multitude upon him, and he sees himself 
 flocked after and resorted to as an oracle, and 
 people are ready to adore him and to offer sacri- 
 1 Tracy, p. 41G. 
 
CONDEMNATION OF LAY EXUORTERS. 211 
 
 fice to him, as it was with Paul and Barnabas at 
 Lystra, it is ahnost impossible for a man to avoid 
 taking upon him the airs of a master or some ex- 
 traordinary person." If Edwards had had any 
 such experience himseK, he had resisted the temp- 
 tations to which it led. But the description might 
 be said to apply word for word to Whitefield. 
 
 If Edwards was willing to recognize the itiner- 
 ant clergy, although it was an invasion of the es- 
 tablished order, yet at this point he sharply draws 
 the line and will go no further. He condemns 
 severely the lay exhorters who assume the clerical 
 role. In the same connection he asserts the ne- 
 cessity for an educated ministry. It would be a 
 calamity at all times, and especially at that time, 
 if men without a liberal education, who according 
 to the rule of the prophet had not been taught to 
 heep cattle from their youths were to be admitted 
 to the work of the ministry on the ground of hav- 
 ing had remarkable experiences. These would be 
 the very men to mislead the people with impidses, 
 vain imaginations, and such like extremes. But 
 the time had come when such as these were called 
 for by a large part of the people. The lowly 
 preaching encouraged by the Baptists was making 
 inroads on the favored flocks of the ' educated 
 clergy. It was acceptably received by many as 
 coming closer to their needs, than the sermons 
 which according to right reason should have been 
 the most effective. In this respect the age was 
 changing : an ecclesiastical democracy was assert- 
 
212 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 ing its rights and needs, and in its presence tlie 
 Puritan oligarchy broke down. 
 
 The ground on which Edwards condemns the 
 lay exhorters who intrude into the ministerial field 
 is most interesting to study, for at this point Con- 
 gregationalism and Presbyterianism should be dis- 
 tinguished from the later movement which was led 
 by Wesley. Wesley had his qualms of conscience 
 upon this point, springing from his high -church 
 principles ; but he overcame them, and lay exhort- 
 ing became one of the features of Wesleyan 
 Methodism. Edwards was also a high-churchman 
 from the Puritan point of view, carrying the prin- 
 ciple of church authority to almost extreme results. 
 The high - churchman, whatever his ecclesiastical 
 affiliation, is inclined to limit the divine influence 
 by the bounds of organization, or to make the 
 spread of the truth keep pace with the extension 
 of the institution. The ecclesiastical idea is one 
 to which Edwards never gave much attention ; but 
 he was resting upon it when he objected to admit- 
 ting men to the ministry who did not possess a 
 liberal education, simply on the ground of their 
 having an unusual experience, or as being persons 
 of a good understanding. On this point he ex- 
 claims naively that, if it should become a custom 
 to admit such persons to the ministry, how many 
 lay persons would soon become candidates for the 
 office ! He doubts not but he has become ac- 
 quainted with scores of persons that would have 
 desired it. And then how shall we know where 
 
NECESSITY OF CHURCH ORDER. 213 
 
 to stop ? In other words, the agencies for the dif- 
 fusion of Christianity might surpass the scope of 
 the institution to j^rovide for them. 
 
 The chief ground on which Edwards deprecates 
 the lay exhorters is the necessity of ecclesiastical 
 order. He speaks of order as among the most 
 necessary of external means for promoting the 
 spiritual good of the church. He denounces the 
 erroneous principle that external order, in matters 
 of religion and the use of the means of grace, is 
 a thing of no importance. He has no sympathy 
 with those who condemn these things as ceremo- 
 nies and dead forms, inasmuch as God looks only 
 on the heart. He may have had Hooker's elo- 
 quent words in mind when he writes that order is 
 most requisite even in heaven itself and among 
 angelic intelligences. God has also implanted it, 
 as by a wonderful instinct, throughout the ranks 
 of the animal creation. A church without order 
 is like a city without walls, lacking the means for 
 self-defence. He is willing, however, to admit 
 that some measure of lay exhorting is proper, 
 and may be a duty, if it does not overstep its 
 bounds and infringe on the authority of the clergy. 
 There is a sharp distinction, as he conceives, be- 
 tween preaching and what he prefers to call Chris- 
 tian conversation. Let laymen confine themselves 
 only to the latter. The main characteristic of 
 preaching is authority. Tliis authority only min- 
 isters should exercise. Ministers are clothed with 
 the authority of Christ ; they alone have the power 
 
214 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 to preach the gospel and to speak in His name. 
 They are commanded to speak, rebuke, and exhort 
 with all authority. But private Christians, icJio 
 are no more than mere brethren^ if they exhort, 
 should do so by way of entreaty, and in the most 
 humble manner. And even " if a layman does not 
 assume an authoritative manner, yet if he forsakes 
 his proper calling, and spends his time in going 
 about from house to house to counsel and exhort, 
 he goes beyond his line and violates Christian 
 rules." For teaching is the business of the clergy. 
 All are not apostles or prophets, all are not teach- 
 ers. According, then, to the apostolic command, 
 He that teacheth let him wait on teaching, " It 
 will be a very dangerous thing for laymen, in these 
 respects, to invade the office of a minister ! None 
 ought to carry the ark of God but the Levites 
 only. And because one presumed to touch the 
 ark that was not of the sons of Aaron, therefore 
 the Lord made a breach upon them, and covered 
 their day of rejoicing with a cloud in His anger." 
 No strenuous upholder of the notion of an ajjostolic 
 succession could desire more explicit language than 
 this. 
 
 Such was Edwards' devotion to the principle of 
 church authority that he seems almost willing to 
 limit the spread of the movement., if there is dan- 
 ger of its weakening or overthrowing the power of 
 the clergy. Mingled with these strict principles of 
 ecclesiastical authority, we may discern ti'aces of 
 the aristocratic pride which marked the manner of 
 
THE UNCONVERTED MINISTERS. 215 
 
 the ancient Puritan clergy. It was right, as Ed- 
 wards thought, that " they shoidd have the out- 
 ward appearance and show of authorit}^, in style 
 and behavior, which was proper and fit to be seen 
 in them." Hence he was inwardly shocked at the 
 way in which the " meanest of the people " took 
 upon them to criticise the most eminent ministers, 
 sitting in judgment upon their deficiencies, or pro- 
 nouncing them converted or unconverted. So far 
 as his own relations with the ministers were con- 
 cerned, he had solemnly exhorted and adjured 
 them to recognize the work as divine, and labor 
 zealously for its promotion. If this impossible ad- 
 vice coidd have been received, there would have 
 been an end of the difficidty. But even if the 
 ministers did not accept the work as divine, or if 
 they were really unconverted, yet Edwards does 
 not propose that the mere brethren shall be the 
 ones to take them to task. The power of judging 
 and openly censuring others should be in the 
 hands of particular persons or consistories ap- 
 pointed for the purpose. Upon the question 
 whether it was a duty for people to desert the 
 ministry of those who unqualifiedly and openly 
 condemned the revival, — upon this point Edwards 
 maintains a prudent reticence. For himself he 
 remarks : "I should not think that any person 
 had 230wer to oblige me constantly to attend the 
 ministry of one who did from time to time plainly 
 pray and preach against this work, or speak re- 
 proachfully of it frequently in his public perform- 
 
216 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 ances, after all Christian metliods had been used 
 for a remedy and to no purj^ose." ^ His reserve 
 upon this subject, the burning question of the day, 
 may be construed as indicating a subordinate sym- 
 pathy, not easily reconciled with his view of the 
 importance of ecclesiastical order. 
 
 However definite and rigid may have been Ed- 
 wards' idea of conversion, he was unwilling for 
 himself to pronounce upon the condition of his 
 fellow-ministers. He was even willing to admit 
 that they might be in a state of grace, and yet op- 
 pose the work through prejudice or other reasons. 
 His moderation was in strong contrast with the 
 over-zealous converts who denounced the uncon- 
 verted ministers as if they were guilty of desecrat- 
 ing the church, like the ancient money-changers 
 in the Jewish temple. These zealots, as they may 
 be called, claimed for their justification the words 
 of Christ, that He came to send not peace, but a 
 sword. One of the scourges which they employed 
 in order to drive the unconverted ministers from 
 the temple was the most violent imprecatory lan- 
 guage. Those who indulged in this profane vocab- 
 ulary defended its use on the ground that they 
 only said what was true, — that they must be bold 
 for Christ's sake, and not mince matters in His 
 cause. Edwards complains that the language of 
 common sailors is introduced among Christian peo- 
 
 ^ Compare on this point a letter of Edwards in which he gives 
 advice as to how to deal with repentant separatists. Dwight, 
 p. 204. 
 
METHODS OF THE ZEALOTS. 217 
 
 pie under the cloak of high sanctity. " The words 
 ' devil ' and ' hell ' are almost continually in their 
 mouths." While he admits that every kind and 
 degree of sin is justly characterized as devilish, 
 cursed, hellish, his refined nature, as well as his 
 aristocratic instincts, revolted within him when 
 such epithets were hurled by those whom he calls 
 the meanest of the people against the most emi- 
 nent ministers or magistrates. It was as improper 
 as it would be for a child to say concerning his 
 parents, " that they commit every day hundreds of 
 hellish, damned acts, or that they are cursed dogs, 
 hell-hounds, de\dls." He draws a distinction be- 
 tween characterizing sin in the abstract in these 
 trutliful terms and giving them a concrete applica- 
 tion to individuals. But the zealots made no such 
 distinction. Nor is it greatly to be wondered at 
 that, when such a vocabulary was thought proper 
 for the pulpit, it should find its way to general use 
 among the j^eople. 
 
 Edwards was hardly in a position which could 
 be called consistent, when he advised the zealots to 
 drop their denunciation of the unconverted minis- 
 ters. The zealots maintained that to allow them 
 to remain in their parishes was a " bloqdy, hell-peo- 
 pling charity." Edwards thought it would be no 
 such dreadful danger if they were left undisturbed. 
 It almost seems as if a change were passing over his 
 mind, — as if he were condemning his own practice. 
 He now advises the ministers to be careful " how 
 they discompose and ruffle the minds of those that 
 
218 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 they esteem carnal men, or how great an uproar 
 they raise in the carnal world, and so lay blocks in 
 the way of the propagation of religion." But cer- 
 tainly no one could have rufflled the carnal mind 
 more than Edwards had done, as in his sermon at 
 Enfield. It may be that the caution now exhibited 
 is no evidence of ^ retractation. It was a peculiar- 
 ity of Edwards that he becomes at times so intent 
 upon the, point before him, as to leave all the other 
 pieces upon the board unguarded. One would like 
 to think that the intense fervor of his youth, as 
 well as his inexperience at an exceptional moment, 
 constitute an apology for those features of his 
 earlier preaching which have injured his memory. 
 
 IV. 
 
 TREATISE ON THE RELIGIOUS AFFECTIONS. 
 
 When Edwards published his book on the Re- 
 ligious Affections, in 1746, the Great Awakening 
 as a religious movement had come to an end. To 
 use his own language, the devil had prevailed 
 against what seemed so happy and so promising 
 in its beginning. But the dust and the smoke of 
 the controversy were still in the air ; an endless 
 variety of opinions prevailed as to the nature of 
 true religion. The Religious Affections was writ- 
 ten as a series of sermons in the years 1742 and 
 1743, following immediately the meditations which 
 
" THE RELIGIOUS AFFECTIONS:' 2l9 
 
 had found utterance in his Thoughts on the Re- 
 vival. AYe may be mistaken, but it seems as if 
 Edwards' attitude toward the revival was never 
 again quite the same after he had allowed his mind 
 to dwell on its abuses. It must have pained him 
 beyond measure to witness his ideal dragged as it 
 were in the dust. Under these circumstances he 
 did what so many other lofty souls have done 
 in similar situations. Rather than behold his 
 ideal profaned, he sought to withdraw it beyond 
 the reach of viilgar religionists, — to make it a 
 thing so difficult to attain that very few could be 
 certain that they had achieved the prize. As he 
 looked upon the variety of false experiences, the 
 hypocrisies, the degeneration, which waitecl upon 
 the revival, he was chiefly impressed with the 
 words of Christ : Strait is the gate and narrow 
 is the way that leads to life^ and few there he that 
 find it ; or those other memorable words, Many 
 are called^ hut few are chosen. 
 
 It is this conviction in Edwards' mind which 
 like a sad undertone pervades the Religious Affec- 
 tions, even when not expressed, that has given the 
 book, in the eyes of many, only a painful interest. 
 But the treatise is a masterpiece in its way, — a 
 beautiful and authoritative exposition of Clii'istian 
 experience. It is a work which will not suffer by 
 comparison with the work of great teachers in the- 
 ology, whether ancient or modern. It fulfils the 
 condition of a good book as Milton has defined it, 
 — " the precious life-blood of a master spirit." It 
 
 -/ 
 
220 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 is in reality Edwards' Confessions, as much as if it 
 were directly addressed to Deity. It corresponds 
 also to the Consolation of Philosophy in the midst 
 of failure and disappointment. Some, as they 
 have read, have not been able to forget the dark 
 background in Edwards' mind, — the distinction 
 between the elect and the non-elect, the destiny 
 which awaits the many who are called but are not 
 chosen. To such as these, the Religious Affec- 
 tions is a book which they must avoid as they hope 
 to preserve their faith in God. The subjectivity 
 which characterizes it, the incessant and profound 
 introversion, the variety of delusions which entan- 
 gle a soul on its way to God, — these only add 
 horror to the situation which Edwards may have 
 been able to contemplate with serenity, but to 
 which the modern mind is unequal. It is possible, 
 however, to forget the negative side of Edwards' 
 theology as we study this pure, sublimated ideal of 
 Christian experience. Let the book be taken by 
 itself, as if by some anonymous writer, and its ex- 
 cellence will appear. It is occupied with one great 
 motive, — to distinguish a true from a false experi- 
 ence, to draw the picture of a human soul which 
 under grace has become worthy of union with God. 
 The Religious Affections is Edwards' answer to 
 the question which confronted him in his youth as 
 to the nature of true religion. He then determined, 
 as is recorded in his Resolutions, " that he would 
 look most nicely and diligently into the opinions of 
 our old divines concerning conversion." Such was 
 
THE SIGNS OF CONVERSION. 221 
 
 liis unconscious confession that in the depth of his 
 mind there lay uncertainty as to how the great 
 reality should be defined. Although his book on 
 the Affections has a positive and constructive pur- 
 pose, yet there lingers about it something of the 
 controversial spirit, — the old hostility against the 
 Arminians which had been increased by the revi- 
 val. He devotes considerable space to demonstrat- 
 ing against them that the principal part of relig-ion 
 consists in the affections or emotions.^ But if his 
 dislike to Arminianism remains unchanged, he has 
 also seen something on the Calvinistic side which 
 he dislikes still more, — the evangelical hypocrisy 
 to which the revival had given birth was a greater 
 evil than Arminian legalism. 
 
 The second part of his book is devoted to show- 
 ing that the signs of conversion, upon which so 
 great stress had been laid by many in the Ke\dval, 
 had no necessary connection with true religion. It 
 was to be taken as no sign one way or the other 
 that the religious affections were greatly stirred, or 
 that they produced great effects upon the body. 
 He has not abandoned his former attitude on this 
 
 1 It is sometimes difficult to determine Edwards' meaning 
 wlien he speaks of the affections, for under this term he includes 
 also the will. He does not follow the modern method of classifi- 
 cation according- to which the facilities are divided into intellect, 
 emotions, and will. He made a twofold division, the first of which 
 includes the intellectual powers, and the second is variously named 
 as the affections, the heart, or the will. It is evident that, in the 
 first part of this treatise on the Religious Affections, it is the emo- 
 tions, as we should call them, for whose recognition in religion he 
 is contending. 
 
222 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 point, tliat the action of God on the spirit may 
 overpower the body, but he now condemns those 
 who are looking for hodily effects as a sign of the 
 spirit's action. Persons may be fervent and fluent 
 in talking about religion and yet not possess the 
 reality. Texts of Scripture, suddenly and unac- 
 countably brought to the mind, are no evidence of 
 the Spirit's work. Religious affections of many 
 kinds may exist which are not genuine, but only 
 counterfeits of the true. There may have been a 
 certain order in the phases of experience by which 
 comforts and joys may follow after awakenings 
 and convictions, and yet there may be nothing real \ 
 in it all. People may spend much time in religion, 
 and be greatly moved in the external duties of 
 worship, without having experienced a true conver- 
 sion. The strong sense of assurance of salvation 
 possesses in itself no value. Nor can anything be 
 concluded from the circumstance that those pro- 
 fessing themselves the subject of gracious experi- 
 ences gain the love and win the confidence of true 
 saints. The revival had demonstrated how vast 
 was the field for delusion and mistake in judging 
 of the condition of others. In a word, it was with 
 the things of religion "as it is with blossoms in the 
 spring. There are vast numbers of them upon the 
 trees which all look fair and promising, but many 
 of them never come to anything. And many of 
 these, that in a little time wither up and droj) off 
 and rot under the trees, yet for a while look as 
 beautiful and gay as others." 
 
DEFINITION OF THE SPIRITUAL. 223 
 
 What, then, is the reality ? How shall the spirit- 
 ual as distinct from the natural be defined ? Or, 
 in Edwards' words, what are the distinguishing 
 signs of truly gracious and holy affections ? 
 
 The divine reality is asserted to be something 
 entirely distinct and different from anything that 
 is human. The human and the divine have noth- 
 ing whatever in common. No improvement of 
 natural or human tendencies ever passes by slow 
 stages into the divine. The divine is different in 
 kind from the human. It is in true religion as if 
 a new sense were imparted utterly diverse from 
 any of the other senses. The difference between 
 those who have the spiritual gift and those who 
 have it not is to be compared to the difference 
 between two men, one of whom is born without the 
 natural sense of taste, to whom the quality of 
 sweetness is unknown. Edwards does not, in so 
 many words, define in what the human consists, as 
 distinct from the divine. We might infer that he 
 regards the hmnan as if it were the absence and 
 the negation of the spiritual. There is nothing in 
 his system to prevent the human from being iden- 
 tified with the principle of evil. He does not deny 
 that there is much which is beautiful and even 
 admirable in human nature, — it may bring forth 
 moral fruits of a high order ; it may have graces 
 and charms, and even possess affections which may 
 ■^simidate the divine influences. But these may be 
 the result of what he calls the common influence 
 of the Divine Spirit, — that influence which once 
 
224 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 breathed on the face of the natural world in the 
 chaos of the creation. The common influences of 
 the Spirit are widely diffused. Edwards, as we 
 have seen, was in philosophical language a monist, 
 and in one sense all things are attributable to God. 
 But these effects which are wrought by the com- 
 mon influence of the Spirit may be also wrought 
 by Satanic agency. Up to a certain point, the 
 magicians of Egypt did with their enchantments 
 what Moses did by a divine power. There is no 
 redemptive power in the common influences of the 
 Spirit. They are but the operation of an omnipo- 
 tent force overcoming the human spirit from with- 
 out, for certain idterior purposes in the divine 
 economy. 
 
 In those who are truly spiritual the Spirit of 
 God does not merely act from without, as an in- 
 fluence apart and not their own, but it enters into 
 them as an abiding, indwelling, integral factor of 
 the soul. The Spirit of God even lives in them 
 as in its peculiar home, the bosom of God. The 
 Spirit becomes a seed or spring of life, making the 
 soul a partaker of the beauty of God and the joy 
 of Clu'ist. That which is born of the Spirit is 
 Spirit. But this language reminds him that he 
 verges upon pantheism. The saints, then, do not 
 become actually partakers of the divine essence in 
 the abominable and blasphemous language of here- 
 tics who speak of being " Godded with God." ^ 
 
 ^ Who were the heretics who used this expression which Ed- 
 wards quotes, " Godded with God and Christed with Christ"? 
 
POPULAR CALVINISM. 225 
 
 But tlie protest, whicli is a necessary one, having 
 been made, Edwards continues to use language 
 whicli conveys the same idea. And indeed that 
 is his meaning, whether he owns it or not, — the 
 saints through an indwelling Spirit, which is the 
 highest, fullest essence of Deity, become as it were 
 one with God. This is the Spirit that bears wit- 
 ness with our spirit that we are the children of 
 God. The bond of union is beheld intuitively. 
 The saint feels and sees plainly the union between 
 his soul and God. The Spirit of God bearing wit- 
 ness with our spirit must not, however, be taken 
 to mean the action of two independent, collateral 
 witnesses. The human spirit is passive in the 
 affair, receiving only and declaring the witness of 
 the divine. 
 
 From this abstract and unethical statement of 
 the difference between the spiritual and the natu- 
 ral, the thought moves on to the affirmation that 
 the response of the human affections is to the ex- 
 cellent and amiable nature of divine things as they 
 are in themselves, and not as they have any rela- 
 tion to seK or self-interest. Popular CahHinism 
 exhibited a tendency toward religious selfishness, 
 whose manifestation increased in proportion to the 
 degree of religious activity. In opposition to this 
 tendency, Edwards maintained that affection to- 
 
 And where did Edwards come across it ? It is used in a work by 
 Lowde, New Essays^ a writer engaged in controversy with Nor- 
 ris, the author of the Theory of the Ideal World, and a disciple of 
 Malebranche. Edwards' use of it may point to some familiarity 
 with the controversy. Cf. Lyons, Idealisme, etc., p. 200. 
 
226 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 ward God which arises from self-love is a mere 
 product of the natural man, having in it nothing 
 of the supernatural or divine. The heart must 
 fu'st discern that God is lovely in Himself, and 
 then follows the realization of what the love of 
 such a being toward man must be. Some might 
 be ready to allege against this position the asser- 
 tion of St. John, We love Him because He first 
 loved us, as if God's love to His people were the 
 first foundation of their love to Him. Edwards' 
 interpretation of the passage is hardly a satisfac- 
 tory one. But however these words of Scripture 
 may be taken, they contain no argument against 
 the truth that human love arises primarily from 
 the excellence of divine things as they are in them- 
 selves, and not from any relation they have to hu- 
 man interests.^ 
 
 But in what consists the excellency and loveliness 
 of the divine nature ? What are the tests by which 
 these qualities are to be known ? Questions of tliis 
 kind we need not fear to ask, even when reading a 
 treatise which is concerned with practical piety ; for 
 to Edwards these speculative issues are of supreme 
 and absorbing interest. We may follow him in 
 
 1 Upon this point Edwards' thought varied. In his Notes on 
 the Mind he held that love to God was based upon the recognition 
 of the divine existence apart from its moral excellence. He 
 again maintained this view in his Treatise on Virtue. But in his 
 Treatise on Grace he returns to what he had asserted in the Be- 
 ligious Affections, that the foundation of delight in God is His 
 own perfection. Beneath these variations may be traced diver- 
 gent conceptions of the nature of Deity. 
 
THE MORAL EXCELLENCE OF GOD. 227 
 
 sincere agreement as he distingiiislies between the 
 moral attributes of God and His natural perfec- 
 tions. These last include His infinite greatness, 
 power, and knowledge, as well as His terrible 
 majesty. But the spiritual beauty of the divine 
 nature does not consist primarily in these. Even 
 natural men may have the perception of God's 
 physical perfections : the devils also may believe 
 and tremble. The moral excellence of Deity is in 
 His holiness. And this word, charged with a sense 
 of remote Hebrew origin, a word more frequently 
 used than defined, exactly how much and what 
 does it mean ? According to Edwards, as used of 
 God it includes His righteousness, truth, faithful- 
 ness, and goodness, His purity and His beauty as 
 a moral agent. Holiness when appHed to men 
 comprehends their true excellency as moral beings ; 
 it includes all the true virtues of a good man, Ms 
 love to God, liis gracious love to men, his justice, 
 his charity, his meekness and gentleness. It is 
 of these things that it is said : Thy loord is very 
 pure, therefore thy servant loveth it ; the laio of 
 the Lord is perfect, converting the soul ; the stat- 
 utes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart ; 
 the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlighten- 
 ing the eyes. 
 
 But here one is tempted to ask whether these 
 moral qualities, which are included in the general 
 designation of holiness, do not have some natural 
 foundation also in the constitution of the human 
 soul. Edwards has been so emphatic in declaring 
 
228 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 that there is something new which is imparted by 
 the Spirit in conversion, something entirely dis- 
 tinct from all that is human, that, when we come 
 to the category of moral excellences as they exist 
 in God, we look for something more and other 
 than he furnishes. Righteousness, truth, faitliful- 
 ness, goodness, these are qualities which have their 
 root in human nature, of which the germs may be 
 discerned in those who would not be recognized as 
 converted. Edwards apparently feels the diffi- 
 culty. But in conducting his controversy with the 
 Arminians it was impossible for him to admit that 
 any traces of what he calls the gracious affections 
 should be found in the unawakened. There must 
 be something in those whom God's Spirit has 
 touched wliich is wholly new, totally unlike what 
 existed in them before. To deny this would be 
 equivalent to denying the distinction between the 
 converted and the unconverted ; it would be dis- 
 owning the truth that the Sj^irit dwells in the 
 saints in some unique manner, a manner direct 
 and immediate, integral, and vital ; and the final 
 result would be to deny another fundamental con- 
 viction, — that the divine and the human are ut- 
 terly diverse and incompatible with each other. 
 
 " We cannot rationally doubt but that things that are 
 divine, that appertain to the Supreme Being, are vastly 
 different from things that are human ; that there is a 
 Godlike, higli, and glorious excellency in them, that does 
 so distinguish them from the things which are of men 
 that the difference is ineffable, and therefore such as, if 
 
SPIRITUAL INTUITION. ^ 229 
 
 seen, will have a most convincing, satisfying influence 
 upon any one that they are what they are, viz., divine." 
 
 All this is undoubtedly true, but again one is 
 tempted to ask in what direction lies the difference. 
 Shall we be content to say that the difference is 
 ineffable ? But that would be abnost tantamount 
 to affirming that it is incomprehensible also. Or 
 shall we say that the difference between God and 
 man may be compared in kind to the difference 
 between the speech of some great literary genius 
 and the talk of a little child ? Edwards uses this 
 comparison, but it is not meant to express his en- 
 tire thought. He falls back upon the statement, 
 that God is able to make this ineffable difference 
 manifest to those whom He chooses to enlighten 
 by His spirit. He now reaffirms, what he had as- 
 serted so eloquently in his sermon on The Eeality 
 of Spiritual Light, that in truly spiritual men there 
 is a direct intuitive insight into divine tilings which 
 not only convinces of their reality, but discloses 
 them in all the reach of their ineffable superiority 
 to human things. Not only are the prejudices of 
 the heart dissolved, but the hindrances to the pure 
 speculative reason are removed, so that divine truth 
 stands forth revealed in all its beauty and splendor. 
 It is not by miracles or external evidences that this 
 supreme result is attained, useful as, under certain 
 circumstances, these may be. But even to ignorant 
 men and children, incapable of weighing evidence 
 or appreciating historical research, the same reve- 
 lation may be made, the same profound spiritual 
 
230 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 intuition may disclose the reality of spiritual light. 
 And here for the present Edwards pauses in his 
 treatment of a point possessing vital importance. 
 We are haunted with a painful sense of unreahty 
 in the result of his efforts to escape all human 
 limitations. Unless there be something in God 
 which is very like what is most distinctive in hu- 
 manity, unless the human has its deepest root in 
 the divine, the soul must be baffled in its search 
 after God, sinking back in despair, as if its high- 
 est flight had disclosed only an empty void in the 
 place of Deity. That Edwards may have had 
 some suspicion of failure there is reason for believ- 
 ing. In the later years of his life he returned 
 again to the great search which enthralled his 
 nature. 
 
 Looking at the immediate influence of such a 
 treatise as this on the New England churches, it 
 must be admitted that it was not altogether a 
 healthy one. Edwards had now begun to feel a 
 deep dislike to the prevailing laxity in admitting 
 to the membership of the church, which had been 
 sanctioned by the Half-way Covenant. But the 
 oj)posite evil, which he overlooked, seems almost 
 as great as that against which he was contending. 
 There now grew up, and mainly in consequence 
 of Edwards' teaching, a hesitation about " joining 
 the church," on the ground of unfitness, or the 
 lack of certainty of one's conversion. The intro- 
 versive tendency begat religious weakness and 
 vacillation. The phrase, " not good enough to join 
 
THE INTROVERSIVE TENDENCY. 231 
 
 the church," points to a wrong conception of the 
 church which still lingers in New England, and 
 has proved an obstacle to the church's growth. It 
 has been said that any one who could read Ed- 
 wards on the Affections, and still believe in his 
 own conversion, might well have the highest assur- 
 ance of its reality ! But how few they were who 
 gained this assurance may be inferred from the 
 circumstance that Dr. Hopkins and Dr. Emmons, 
 disciples of Edwards and religious leaders in New 
 England, remained to the last uncertain of their 
 conversion. 
 
 It has been impossible in this brief review of 
 the Religious Affections to give any adequate con- 
 ception of the religious ideal as Edwards portrays 
 it. The defects which have been pointed out do 
 not diminish from its beauty and value as an ex- 
 alted presentation of Christian character. The 
 evil which it may have wrought was surely owing, 
 to some extent, to the nature of the ground into 
 which it fell as seed. The conclusion of the whole 
 matter, as Edwards labors at great length to show, 
 is that Christian character and practice are the 
 only tests of the presence of the divine Spirit. 
 Whatever may have been his mistakes in the ex- 
 citement of the years of the Great Awakening, he 
 emerged from its unhallowed confusion with the 
 conviction that in the life alone can be made man- 
 ifest the sincerity of Christian faith. The Reli- 
 gious Affections shoidd be read as we read the Im- 
 itation of Christ, making allowance for its defect 
 
232 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 in severing the spiritual from the world of human 
 interests and realities. If we can supply what 
 seems to be wanting in Edwards' speculative atti- 
 tude, his book may yet be recovered from the ne- 
 glect of generations. Works on topics kindred to 
 this are not uncommon, but for the most part they 
 are unredeemed from a certain tameness and com- 
 monplace because they lack the combination of in- 
 tellectual po^er with the spiritual imagination, 
 such as Edwards brought to the treatment of his 
 theme. One can understand how an enthusiastic 
 disciple as well as descendant of Edwards shoidd 
 feel impelled to write, " that, were the books on 
 earth destined to a destruction so nearly univer- 
 sal that only one besides the Bible could be saved, 
 the church of Christ, if aiming to preserve the vol- 
 ume of the greatest value to man, that which would 
 best unfold to a bereaved i^osterity the real nature 
 of true religion, would unquestionably select for 
 preservation the treatise on the Affections." ^ 
 
 V. 
 
 " UNION IN PRAYER." — DAVID BRAINERD. 
 
 In the year 1746 a memorial was sent from 
 Scotland inviting the people and the churches in 
 America to combine in one great united effort to 
 gain the blessing of God ; and to bring about, if it 
 
 1 Dwight, Life of Edwards, p. 223. 
 
THE SCOTCH MEMORIAL. 233 
 
 were His will, such a revival of religion as would 
 usher in the millennial reign of Christ. During 
 two years previous to this elate, there had been 
 united prayer for this purpose in many of the 
 churches in Scotland and also in America. It 
 was now proposed to give to this informal move- 
 ment a more organic and universal character, and 
 to this end the memorial signed by twelve Scotch 
 clergymen had been circidated in this country. 
 The proposal commended itself to Edwards. He 
 was now in somewhat intimate relations with the 
 Church of Scotland, carrying on a correspondence 
 with several of its leading ministers. His books, 
 which had been republished there, had gained him 
 great renown among the stricter school of Calvin- 
 ists. It was natural, therefore, that a proposition 
 coming from Scotland should arouse his interest, 
 if for no other reason than that he saw reflected 
 in it the extension of his own peculiar influence. 
 The method by which the great end was to be 
 sought was the setting apart a certain time, on Sat- 
 urday evening and Sunday morning of each week, 
 to be spent in prayer, and also the first Tuesday 
 in each quarter of the year. Individuals were in- 
 vited to pray separately at these stated seasons, as 
 well as in concert, where it was practicable. In 
 order to further the movement, Edwards preached 
 on the subject to his congregation, and out of his 
 sermons there grew another treatise, published in 
 1747, entitled Union in Prayer. It is a book of 
 less interest and value than those we have been re- 
 
234 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 viewing ; but it has importance as presenting his 
 views on the subject of prayer, as also a glimpse 
 of his attempt at a philosophical interpretation of 
 history. 
 
 Edwards had been disappointed in the results of 
 the Great Awakening in America. It had subsided 
 almost as quickly as it had arisen, leaving in its 
 train a crop of evils from which the churches were 
 still suffering. The degree of his disappointment 
 may be measured by the high expectations in which 
 he had indulged as to the probable extension of 
 the movement until it should bring the world, 
 even in his own lifetime, into the love and obedi- 
 ence of Christ. At one time he was so sanguine 
 of this vast achievement, that he indulged at 
 some length in a fanciful speculation in regard to 
 America as the place indicated by prophecy where 
 the Christ spiritual was to be reborn. To the old 
 world had been assigned the honor of bringing 
 forth the historical Christ ; to the new world it 
 would belong to present the Christ mystical, gen- 
 erated after a higher birth, as America's offering 
 in return for what it had received.^ This vision 
 faded away, not to appear again. But he still be- 
 lieved as firmly as ever that there was a day in 
 waiting, for the church, and it might be near, when 
 the glory of God should be made manifest as it 
 had not been since the beginning of Christianity, 
 — a time when, in the language of prophecy, the 
 glory of the Lord should cover the earth as the 
 
 1 Thoughts on the Eevival, pp. 313, ff. 
 
DELAY OF THE D J VINE MANIFESTATION. 235 
 
 waters cover tlie sea. His faith in the coming of 
 that day sustained him in the midst of disappoint- 
 ment. These movements that had come and gone, 
 ending in seeming f aihire, might, after all, be fore- 
 runners of a greater movement ; just as the wind, 
 the earthquake, and the fire on Horeb were fore- 
 runners which heralded the coming of the Lord. 
 He does not attempt to explain the wayi of God 
 in thus delaying the manifestation of His power 
 and presence. But the mystery of the contrast 
 between the present and the future impresses his 
 imagination. The time that is to be, will be the 
 chief time for the bestowment of the divine bless- 
 ing. Before this the Sjnrit of God is given hut 
 very sparingly and hut few are saved. But that 
 future time is represented in Scripture as emi- 
 nently the elect season, the accepted time, and the 
 day of salvation. The comparatively little saving 
 good which there now is in the world, as the fruit 
 of Christ's redemption, is granted, as it were, by 
 way of anticipation, — glimpses of the light before 
 the dawning of the day, or as the first-fruits are 
 gathered in before the harvest. 
 
 But could the coming of such a day as Edwards 
 looked for be accelerated by prayer ? If its time 
 had been determined in the secret counsels of 
 God, could prayer, however united or protracted, 
 change the divine will and hasten the accomplish- 
 ment of the divine purpose? Edwards did not 
 think so. He had already put himself on record 
 to the effect that the object of prayer is not to 
 
236 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 change God's will, but suitably to affect our own 
 hearts, and so prepare us to receive the blessings 
 we ask.^ Indeed, this view of prayer, as mainly if 
 not exclusively subjective in its effect, was the only 
 view compatible with Edwards' idea of Deity. 
 Nor does he anywhere contradict formally this 
 emphatic statement of his belief. His book on 
 Union in Prayer shows him presenting the motives 
 which should induce people to pray for a great 
 specific purpose. He meets objections which are 
 presented as if they came from others, but it is 
 more probable that he was here as elsewhere solv- 
 ing the difficulties which his own mind suggested. 
 It is proper to pray for the general outpouring of 
 the divine Spirit on the world, because there are 
 many signs that such an event is near, — so very 
 near that before the appointed seven years of 
 prayer are ended, the day determined by divine 
 decree may be ushered in. If there should be a 
 universal movement toward prayer, it would be an 
 evidence that God had also decreed the prayer as 
 the condition of fulfilling His decree. " When- 
 ever the time comes that God gives an extraordi- 
 nary spirit of prayer, then the fulfilling this event 
 is nigh. God, in His wonderful grace, is pleased 
 to represent Himself, as it were, at the command 
 of His people, with regard to mercies of this 
 nature." But though Edwards comes as near as 
 he can to the popidar notion regarding prayer, he 
 
 1 Beligious Affections, vol. iii. p. 15; cf., also, vol. ii. p. 514, 
 " On the Decrees." 
 
SUBJECTIVE DOCTRINE OF PRAYER. 237 
 
 is not willing to conceal his conviction. Again 
 we have the subjective doctrine of prayer clearly 
 affirmed withc^nt qualification : " 'though it woidd 
 not be reasonable to suppose that merely such a 
 circumstance of prayer, as many people's praying 
 at the same time, will directly have any influence 
 or prevalence with God to cause Him to be the 
 more ready to hear prayer, yet such ^ circum- 
 stance may reasonably be supposed to have in- 
 fluence on the minds of men." And this, it is 
 argued, is a reason and justification for the uni^n 
 in prayer which has been ]3roposed.^ 
 
 Among the reasons assigned for believing that 
 the day is near when the Spirit shall be poured 
 out from on high are God's recent dealings with 
 New England in its political relations, which are 
 taken as an evidence of His interest in the land 
 and its people, as if He were preserving them for 
 some great consummation. The deliverances 
 which have been wrought during the French war, 
 " God succeeding us against Cape Breton and con- 
 founding the armada from France last year," these 
 wonderful works of God are only to be paralleled 
 by His works of old in the days of Moses, Joshua, 
 or Hezekiah. And it is worthy to be noted, he re- 
 marks, that " God sent that great storm on the 
 
 1 A sermon of Edwards, vol. iv. p. 561, entitled The Most High 
 a Prayer-hearing God, though intended as a popular inducement 
 to the practice of prayer, contains nothing at variance with the 
 views presented above. Edwards was cautious, it would seem, 
 lest he should encourage the notion that prayer may change the 
 will of Go<i» Cf., also, vol. iv. p. 105. 
 
238 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 fleet of our enemies tlie last year, that finally dis- 
 persed and utterly confounded tliem, and caused 
 tliem wholly to give over their designs against us, 
 the very night after our day of public fasting and 
 prayer for our protection and their confusion." 
 
 These deliverances are the more memorable be- 
 cause in other respects, and so far as the condition 
 of the church is concerned, the present is a time 
 of great apostasy and confusion. From a pam- 
 phlet recently j^rinted in London, he has learned 
 that luxury and wickedness of iibnost every kind 
 is well-nigh come to the utmost extremity in Eng- 
 land. The Church of Scotland has lost much of 
 her glory, greatly departing from her ancient 
 purity and excellent order. Lamentable also is 
 the moral and religious state of these American 
 colonies, and of New England in particular. The 
 kind of religion which was first professed and prac- 
 tised has grown out of credit. Fierce and violent 
 contentions abound. The gospel ministry is grow- 
 ing into contempt. Church discipline is weak- 
 ened, and ordinances are disregarded. Wild and 
 extravagant notions, gross delusions of the devil, 
 and strange practices, prevail under the pretexts 
 of great spirituality, or of zeal against formalism. 
 The following passage is interesting as giving Ed- 
 wards' view of his own time. To the minds of 
 many, it would apply mutatis mutandis to our own 
 age. After alluding to the discoveries in the arts 
 and sciences, and to the learned and elaborate trea- 
 tises written in defence of Christianity, in which it 
 
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 239 
 
 seemed to him that the eighteenth century surpassed 
 anything seen in the world before, he remarks : — 
 
 " It is an age, as is supposed, of great light, freedom 
 of thought, and discovery of truth in matters of religion, 
 and detection of the weakness and bigotry of our ances- 
 tors, and of the folly and absurdity of the notions of 
 those that were accounted eminent divines in former 
 generations ; which notions it is imagined, did destroy 
 the very foundations of virtue and religion and enervate 
 all precepts of morality, and in effect annul all differ- 
 ence between virtue and vice ; and yet vice and wicked- 
 ness did never so prevail like an overflowing deluge. 
 It is an age wherein those mean and stingy principles, 
 as they are called, of our forefathers, which as is sup- 
 posed deformed reHgion and led to unworthy thoughts 
 of God, are very much discarded and grown out of 
 credit, and supposed more free, noble, and generous 
 thoughts of the nature of religion and of the Christian 
 scheme are entertained ; but yet never was an age 
 wherein religion in general was so much despised and 
 trampled on, and Jesus Christ and God Almighty so 
 blasphemed and treated with open, daring contempt." ^ 
 
 But the argument that is based upon the con- 
 viction that the world is evil, and therefore that 
 the time is waxing late, might easily be pushed 
 too far. And here Edwards separated himself 
 from many contemporary theologians. It was an 
 opinion prevailing at the time when the proposal 
 was made for united prayer, that the coming of 
 Christ's kingdom must be preceded by extreme 
 calamity to the church of God, and even the tem- 
 ^ Union in Prayer, p. 459. 
 
240 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 porary prevalence of Anticliristian enemies against 
 her. Such a feeling must of course make union in 
 prayer impossible. To hasten the coming of the day 
 of Christ would be to involve those who prayed, their 
 children, and all that they held dear, in a terrible 
 time, a time of extreme suffering and of dreadful 
 persecution. Edwards devoted, therefore, a large 
 part of his work on Union in Prayer to the refuta- 
 tion of this obnoxious belief. His argument is 
 drawn from the prophetical books of the Bible, 
 from obscure hints in the Book of Daniel and the 
 Book of Revelation, which he interprets in the 
 light of history as their fulfilment. Into his ar- 
 gument it is not necessary to enter. The fashion 
 of it has passed away. But the conclusion which 
 he reached was a service rendered to his own and 
 succeeding ages. Much as he felt at liberty to 
 denounce his own time for its ungodliness, it was 
 impossible for him to admit so irrational a fore- 
 boding, which found no countenance in history, and 
 which must neutralize every effort for the exten- 
 sion of Christian work. The argument from 
 Scripture was but incidental to his own good judg- 
 ment, which uttered its verdict in advance. 
 
 One other objection against the Scotch Memorial 
 deserves notice as illustrating Edwards' attitude 
 toward a stereoty|3ed Puritanism inherited from 
 the conflicts of the sixteenth century. There were 
 those who might condemn the observation of stated 
 seasons for united prayer, on the ground that it 
 was only reintroducing the principle of the Chris- 
 
PURITAN WORSHIP. 241 
 
 tian Year as it had been retained in the Church of 
 Enghmd. To do this would be doing what men 
 had no right to do ; what eminent Christians and 
 divines had protested against : it was adding to 
 God's institutions, it laid a bond upon men's con- 
 sciences, and it naturally tended to superstition. 
 Edwards admits the force of this argument. He 
 tacitly condemns the Chrrstian Year as an unwar- 
 rantable burden of human appointment, which, in 
 proportion as it is regarded as sacred, is productive 
 of superstition. But having made this admission 
 he looks at the other side of the question, and 
 finds that much which is already practised in the 
 customary Puritan worship has no authority from 
 Scripture. The only safeguard lies in not regard- 
 ing these things as sacredly fixed as if by divine 
 law. Hence there is no objection to stated seasons 
 for prayer, if this caution be observed, any more 
 than to an annual fast day. And it is added that 
 the Scotch memorializers have been particular to 
 make it apparent that it was not their intention to 
 commit the Puritan churches to any superstitious 
 entanglements in sacred times or seasons. The 
 Puritans were still sensitive, two hundred years 
 after their origin, to anything which approximated 
 the worship of the English Church. 
 
 Edwards seems to share in the same prejudice. 
 The objection is apparently one of his own raising. 
 And yet one cannot avoid the feeling- that he had 
 not so great a repugnance, after all, to this or sim- 
 ilar innovations. Anything which made the wor- 
 
242 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 ship of God seem real and glorious he was pre- 
 pared to welcome. If it had not been for the 
 conservatism of a Puritan people holding tena- 
 ciously to their traditions, it is not impossible that 
 he would have ventured some innovations of his 
 own. It was, for example, one of the Puritan ways 
 to reduce the frequency of celebrating the Lord's 
 Supper. In the Church of Scotland semi-annual 
 communions had taken the place of the old order 
 of the mass which every Sunday had reminded the 
 worshipper of the benefits of the death of Christ, 
 in however distorted or perverse a manner. On 
 this point Edwards' admissions are significant. 
 He laments that the revival had not resulted in an 
 increase of the ministrations of the Lord's Supper; 
 that God's people should not more frequently com- 
 memorate the dying love of their Redeemer than 
 they have been accustomed to do. It was evident 
 from Scripture that the primitive Christians kept 
 the memorial on every Lord's day ; and so he 
 believes it will be again with the church of Christ 
 in the days that are approaching. This desire for 
 more frequent celebrations of the Lord's Supper 
 differentiates him from the Quaker, the spirit of 
 whose theology he had approjDriated. His philo- 
 sophical and spiritualistic idealism seemed to de- 
 mand some external manifestation, as if it needed 
 to be made more tangible and real by the outward 
 visible sign." There are traces in his writings 
 which show that he was not insensible to the pomp 
 and ceremony of worship : only given the inward 
 
DAVID BRAINERD. 243 
 
 spirit, and the outward form could not be too 
 beautiful or glorious. But lie would not have re- 
 versed the method, — an elaborate or sensuous 
 ritual as a means of spiritual hf e. 
 
 We have now reached a point in the biography 
 of Edwards where it becomes necessary to sum up 
 briefly those remoter consequences of the revival, 
 which were imperfectly understood at the time, 
 but which were big with seeming disaster to the 
 fortunes of Edwards and his family. But at this 
 point we must also pause for a moment in order to 
 introduce the story of David Brainerd, — an im- 
 portant episode in the last years of Edwards' pas- 
 torate at Northamj)ton. 
 
 David Brainerd's short life filled a large place 
 in the consciousness of the stricter Calvinistic sort 
 during the last century; nor has the memory of 
 his devoted career entirely faded out in our own 
 day. We may think that the significance attach- 
 ing to his name is an exaggerated one, but the life 
 of Edwards would be incomplete without at least 
 an allusion to him. 
 
 Edwards first met him in 1743 at New Haven, 
 where he had gone to attend the Commencement 
 exercises of Yale College. Some two years before, 
 Brainerd, wliile then a member of the college, had 
 expressed himself disrespectfully, not to say con- 
 temptuously, of the religious character of certain 
 members of the faculty. He had said of them, in 
 fact, that they possessed no more religion than the 
 
244 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 chair on which he was leaning. This language 
 having been reported to the faculty Brainerd had 
 been expelled. He had now returned to New 
 Haven when his class was graduating, in the hope, 
 by humble confession of his fault, that he might 
 receive his degree. Great efforts were made to 
 induce the faculty to accede to his petition. The 
 Rev. Aaron Burr, of New Jersey, came on to New 
 Haven for the purpose of using his influence in 
 his behalf. Edwards also was one among others 
 who attempted to make reconciliation between the 
 offended teachers and their indiscreet pupil. But 
 the degree was refused, nor was it ever accorded to 
 him. It was this incident which first drew out the 
 sympathy of Edwards for one with whom he after- 
 wards became intimately associated. Into the 
 merits of the case we do not propose to enter. 
 Brainerd seems to have behaved well at the time 
 he was seeking his degree. He made, says Ed- 
 wards, " a truly humble and Christian acknowledg- 
 ment of his fault." When his degree was refused 
 " he manifested no disappointment or resentment." 
 It must be remembered that he was at this time 
 a young man with a reputation for high religious 
 attainments, and he came to New Haven from a 
 remote settlement known as Kaunameek, what 
 Edwards calls a howling wilderness, where lie was 
 meeting with unexampled success as a missionary 
 to the Indians. Under ordinary circumstances it 
 would have seemed only natural if the authorities 
 had overlooked his offence, and had granted to 
 
EDWARDS' INTEREST IN BRAINERD. 245 
 
 such an exemplary youth, who represented the 
 fervors of the revival, the degree which he desired 
 in order to enhance his usefulness. But these were 
 not ordinary circumstances. The college had 
 taken its stand against the evils and abuses which 
 the Great Awakening had generated. Brainerd 
 was a typical instance of that spirit of censorious- 
 ness which, following the New Lights, as they 
 were called, was breaking up the harmony and 
 unity of the New England churches. The offence 
 was therefore a serious one, which could not easily 
 be forgiven without conveying the appearance of 
 indifference towards the evils of separatism. 
 
 On the other side there was also much to be 
 said, and more that was deeply felt. Brainerd be- 
 came, as it were, a living martyr for the cause with 
 which the college at New Haven had little or no 
 sympathy. His case became notorious throughout 
 the colonies, lending a fictitious interest to his 
 name ; and the interest was deepened and made 
 abiding by his early death when only thirty years 
 of age. He was an ardent, enthusiastic soid, mov- 
 ing with great impetuosity in whatever he under- 
 took, one whose zeal for religion was even consum- 
 ino- his life. Four years after the degradation 
 which he had received at New Haven (1747), he 
 came again into New England, an invalid in the 
 last stages of consumption. He was now invited 
 by Edwards to take up his abode in his own house. 
 His story from this time is an extremely painful 
 one. The progress of his disease is recorded by 
 
246 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 Edwards, who was watching his case with a morbid 
 interest. There must have been something in 
 Brainerd of high excellence that he should have 
 won the confidence and affection of Edwards. But 
 there is so much that is repellant in the situation 
 that we gladly pass over what appears to belong 
 to a morbid psychology rather than to a genuine 
 religious experience. Edwards professed himself 
 as thankful for the privilege of having conversed 
 so freely with Brainerd in his last days. It was 
 as if he were permitted to gain a new and striking 
 evidence of the reality of the religious affections. 
 He was accumulating, tlirough Brainerd's religious 
 experience on his death-bed, fresh confirmation of 
 the truth of his own theories as against Arminians 
 and deists. As in the case of Mrs. Edwards, he 
 was making an intellectual study of Brainerd's 
 rapturous condition, not suspecting at all that he 
 might be watching in some measure the effects of 
 his own influence. For Brainerd's confessions so 
 entirely accord with all that Edwards had taught 
 as high and desirable in a true conversion, that 
 one cannot avoid the conclusion that he reflected 
 unconsciously the effects of his association with his 
 friend and master. 
 
 But the painful interest of Brainerd's case does 
 not stop here. There must have been something 
 of an attractive spell in the man who could win 
 the affections of a daughter of Jonathan Edwards. 
 This daughter, his second child, whose name was 
 Jerusha, and who had then attained the age of 
 
BRAINERD'S LIFE AND DIARY. 247 
 
 seventeen, was allowed to become the constant at- 
 tendant upon the invalid. She travelled with him 
 on a visit which he made to Boston, and returned 
 with him to Northampton. Edwards speaks of 
 her as the flower of the family, and as a person 
 of much the same spirit with Brainerd. But this 
 betrothal was a strange one, with an unnatural, 
 unearthly character. For nineteen weeks she de- 
 voted herself to attending Brainerd in his illness. 
 She delighted in the task, because she looked on 
 him as an eminent servant of Christ. And yet 
 even her young heart must have been chilled on 
 its human side, when, shortly before his death, 
 Brainerd, in taking his leave of her, spoke of his 
 love for her, but also added that it was his brother 
 John for whom he had the greatest affection of 
 any person on earth. She filled only a subordi- 
 nate place in his heart, and yet was to offer up 
 her young life as a sacrifice to liis service. Only 
 a few months after his death she was called away, 
 leaving an aching void in her father's heart. 
 
 Edwards preached the funeral sermon of Brain- 
 erd, and afterwards edited his diary, adding to it 
 observations and reflections of his own. It was this 
 life of Brainerd by Edwards which is said to have 
 been the means of the conversion of the famous 
 missionary, Henry Martyn. Credit for the mission- 
 ary spirit, which was so rare a gift in the eighteenth 
 century, should be freely accorded to David Brain- 
 erd. But the story of liis connection with Ed- 
 wards resembles the case of Sterling and Carlyle. 
 
248 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 In each instance there is the history of a human 
 soul, which, if we can only see it so, is always in- 
 teresting, wherever we may look at it. But, as in 
 the case of Sterling, there was no special reason 
 for furnishing a biography. Private motives im- 
 pelled Carlyle to the task. Edwards was moved 
 by a desire to furnish irresistible evidence against 
 the Arminians or deists, who denied the validity of 
 religious experiences. 
 
 VI. 
 
 DISMISSAL FROM NORTHAMPTON. — "QUALIFICA- 
 TIONS FOR FULL COMMUNION." 
 
 Edwards may have found support and refresh- 
 ment in his association with Brainerd as with a 
 kindred spirit. And of such consolation he stood 
 in need, for he was now approaching the catas- 
 trophe of his life. The results of the Great Awak- 
 ening were to prove bitter fruit to the pastor at 
 Northampton and his household. The time was 
 at hand when, as Mrs. Edwards had contemplated 
 among the possible contingencies of life, they were 
 to be driven forth from the town, when, after years 
 of devoted service, the unrivalled preacher, the 
 theologian who had not his like or his equal, was 
 to be banished by the almost unanimous voice of 
 the congregation. He had expected, as was then 
 generally the case with New England ministers, 
 
LARGER RESULTS OF THE REVIVAL. 249 
 
 to end his days wdtli the church over which he 
 had been set in his youth. But not only were 
 the sacred ties which bound him to his people 
 broken, — there was a manifestation toward him 
 of anger, of malice, and of contumely, the story 
 of which, even at this distance of time, it is pain- 
 ful to read. Such an event had no precedent in 
 the history of the New England churches. It may 
 help to appreciate the situation if a general sum- 
 mary be given of the effects, near or remote, of 
 the Great Awakening, before treating of the pe- 
 culiar cause which explains the misfortunes of Ed- 
 wards. 
 
 First among these may be ranked the promi- 
 nent place assigned to the emotions, which becomes / 
 an abnost new element in popular Christianity. 
 The appeal to the emotions had been attended, it 
 is true, by gross evils, caricatures, distortions, and 
 perversions of true religion, which had made sen- 
 sible men stand aloof in the conviction that the 
 movement was doing more injury than good. But 
 the good was in the long run to predominate over 
 the evil. To rouse the emotions in the interest of 
 religion was equivalent to asserting the inwardness 
 of religion, instead of leaving it a cold routine of 
 external duties. The emphasis placed upon the 
 affections in religion marks a new step in the de- 
 velopment of the people. Sacerdotal and sacra- 
 mental theories of a divine grace, conveyed through 
 external channels, vanished under the influence 
 of the principle that the divine action on the soul 
 
250 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 is direct and immediate, capable also of imparting 
 such a shcjk to the whole nature as to divert it 
 from its old current into a higher ethical as well 
 as spiritual existence. The appeal to the emotions, 
 in behalf of which Edwards plead so earnestly, 
 not only made possible a religious enthusiasm, but 
 was the indirect cause of other popular enthusi- 
 asms by which great reforms were to be accom- 
 plished. To rouse the emotional nature was to 
 emancipate the powers of the soul which had so 
 long lain dormant that their very existence was 
 unsuspected. Without such a preliminary quick- 
 ening movement as the Great Awakening, it is 
 doubtful if the sentiment of humanity, which has 
 been such a powerful factor in modern civilization, 
 could have made its successful record. The hard- 
 ness and cruelty of the last century, the want of 
 ^ylnpathy with human suffering, the injustices 
 which had long reigned undisturbed, were gradu- 
 ally overcome when men ceased to remain stran- 
 gers to their inmost selves. It will always remain 
 the -peculiar glory of the religious body known as 
 Friends, or Quakers, that their theological prin- 
 ciple made them the first to awake to the evils of 
 human slavery. The Puritans now fall into line 
 with those whom they have despised or persecuted ; 
 'and it is a circumstance to he noted, that a friend 
 and pupil of Edwards, the famous Dr. Hopkins, 
 became the leader in the social reform which ef- 
 fected the abolition of slavery in New England. 
 Another result of the revival in New England 
 
ELECTION AND CONVERSION. 251 
 
 was to make the inward process of conversion tlie 
 foremost consideration in tlie religious conscious- 
 ness. Not but what it had been recognized be- 
 fore, in name as well as in substantial result. But 
 yet the revival so magnified the importance of 
 conversion that it may be regarded as a new 
 and distinct creation of the last century, whose ac- 
 ceptance by the Calvinistic churches has had the 
 effect of subordinating their differences to such an 
 extent as to give them a unity and resemblance 
 which overshadows their divergences. And fur- 
 ther, the idea of conversion, dividing as it did the 
 world into two great classes, was a distinction so 
 tangible, so potent, as to eclipse the distinction be- 
 tween the elect and the non-elect, which from this 
 time was destined, however slowly, to disappear. 
 The necessity of conversion was asserted by the 
 great founder of Methodism, with a vigor and suc- 
 cess which Calvinism could not rival, so long as it 
 was embarrassed by the prior distinction between 
 elect and non-elect, which Wesley totally rejected. 
 Although Edwards had aimed to revive the old 
 distinction, and not without success, yet the at- 
 tempt to retain election, as a coordinate ruling idea 
 in the religious life, threw New England theology 
 into a confusion out of which it was long in 
 emerging. The idea^x)f conversion involved the 
 freedom of the will, and was silently undermining 
 all false distinctions by which human freedom was 
 denied or made inoperative. The question has 
 been asked why revivals should have been un- 
 
252 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 known in tlie American cliurclies after the Great 
 Awakening in 1740, and slioukl not have reap- 
 peared until two generations had passed away. 
 The answers to this inquiry have been various, 
 such as the evils which the Awakening produced, 
 or the political complications which ended in the 
 American Revolution. Both answers contain a 
 germ of truth. But there is another answer still. 
 It took the lifetime of two generations of Puri- 
 tan preachers and theologians to get rid of the 
 distinction between the elect and non-elect. It 
 was not until Hopkins and Emmons had had their 
 day that the new school of Puritanism arose, cor- 
 dially admitting the freedom of the will in terms 
 which Edwards would have regarded as impossi- 
 ble or absurd. 
 
 The excitement and even consternation into 
 which the revival plunged New England is not 
 wholly explained from the religious stand-point 
 alone. As we study the time, it becomes apparent 
 that a change was going on which ^was affecting 
 also the political order, whose -result was to undo 
 the bonds of sympathetic relationship which for 
 ages had united the church and the state. The 
 readjustment of the relation between the church 
 and the world was now attended by the same ac- 
 companiments as had waited upon the Montanistic 
 movement or the Donatist controversy in the an- 
 cient church. These signs of agitation and distress 
 in the ecclesiastical sphere are but the correspond- 
 ents to war in the political sphere, — the necessary 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE WORLD. 253 
 
 evils which accompany a great transition. The 
 interest in studying such a transition does not lie 
 in measuring the extent and bitterness of the agi- 
 tation, which have passed away, but in reaching an 
 adequate idea of the principle at stake, — the form 
 which the reconstruction was assuming. 
 
 There are times when the church and the world 
 are seen drawing more closely together, when it 
 looks as if the church were deteriorating in its 
 effort to embrace mthin itself, as far as possible, 
 the outlying life of humanity. Whether the 
 church actually deteriorates or not, may be an open 
 question. It may lower itself, but if so, for the 
 purpose of raising itself again, bringing with it, in 
 its resurrection to a higher standard, the world 
 which it would not have reached if it had not 
 known how to abase itself in order to its exalta- 
 tion. Puritanism in New England had shared in 
 the oscillations of this vast process. Hardly had 
 the Puritans reached the new world when church 
 and state flowed together in close and harmonious 
 relationship. But^ if the church and the world at 
 times approximate for mutual benefit, it may also 
 be regarded as an equally legitimate process when 
 they draw apart, when the church is seen jealously 
 separating and holding itself aloof from the world, 
 as if fearful of its contamination. The feelins: 
 grows within the church that its ideal is in danger 
 of degradation unless it may go apart by itseK, to 
 nourish the strength of holy things in silence and 
 seclusion. 
 
254 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 Edwards had been the leader in a movement, of 
 wMch this was the outcome, to separate the church 
 from the workl, to raise such barriers between 
 them that their life should flow on separate and 
 apart. He had grown up in the church, as if it 
 were the only necessary sphere for the religious 
 man. From childhood on, his attention was con- 
 centred on the church, as if the state hardly ex- 
 isted, so little attention did he give to its affairs. 
 Throughout his life he was in search of a principle 
 whose acceptance by the church would give to it 
 a vigorous and independent life of its own. There 
 is one notable allusion to the relation which the 
 state should hold to the church, and but one, so 
 far as we know, in Edwards' works. It is found 
 in his Thoughts on the Revival, and is couched 
 after the manner of the Theocracy. He there 
 alludes to the indifference disj^layed by the civil 
 authority to the glorious work that was going on 
 in the churches. At least, he thought, the govern- 
 ment might have proclaimed a day of public 
 thanksgiving for so unspeakable a mercy, or a day 
 of fasting and penitence for past deadness and un- 
 profitableness under the means of grace ; or it 
 might have entered upon consultation as to what 
 should be done to advance so great a reformation. 
 If a new governor comes into the province, those 
 who are in - authority arise and go forth to meet 
 him with addresses and congratulations. Not to 
 do so would be construed as a denial of his author- 
 ity, or a refusal to receive and honor him. And 
 
RELATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. 255 
 
 • 
 
 when the Lord of the universe conies down from 
 heaven in so wonderful a manner, shall the civil 
 riders stand at a distance and be silent and inac- 
 tive ! He would humbly recommend them to con- 
 sider whether their behavior will not be inter- 
 preted by God as a denial of Christ, or whether 
 God is not adjuring them : Be wise noio^ O ye 
 riders ; he instructed^ ye judges of Neio England } 
 But the rulers kept silence notwithstanding Ed- 
 wards' complaint. Nor was the protest which he 
 had made indicative of any deep-seated purpose. 
 He did not feel impelled to write a treatise in 
 order to expound or enforce his meaning. The 
 allusion seems to have been intended rather for 
 rhetorical ends, as if to complete his thought ; or 
 it may have been the conventional echo of an ear- 
 lier age. Church and state were drifting apart, 
 and Edwards not only made no effort to prevent 
 or retard the process, but furnished the formula 
 for their withdrawal and separation. In accord- 
 ance with his sharp and rutliless distinction be- 
 tween common and special grace, the state is de- 
 prived of a truly divine or supernatural character, 
 while the church becomes the exclusive home of 
 the spiritual. The same distinction had run 
 through Christian history from the time of Au- 
 gustine, until Wycliffe ' broke its spell by the an- 
 nunciation of a higher teacliing, — that the state 
 is equally divine mth the church, holding its sacred 
 authority, not mediately, as popes in the .Middle 
 
 ^ Thoughts on the Revival, vol. iii. p. 326. 
 
256 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 • 
 
 Ages had asserted, but immediately from Christ 
 HimseK. Edwards, like Wycliffe, stands at the 
 beginning of a new cycle in the history of the 
 church. But though the outcome of his teaching 
 was to i-everse the thought of Wycliffe, and to sep- 
 arate church and state as if their union were the 
 alliance of things incompatible with each other, he 
 showed no disposition to draw the inference which 
 popes had drawn, which Calvin ajjd the early Puri- 
 tans had also drawn, that because the ecclesiastical 
 was more important than the civil, therefore the 
 state should be subordinated to the church. The 
 state had now become too strong, and it may be 
 because of its clearer recognition of its divine call, 
 to sacrifice its mission at the bidding of the church. 
 The only alternative was to awaken in the church 
 an independent life, so that it should not feel its 
 need of dependence on the state ; to create an in- 
 terest so powerful and absorbing within the eccle- 
 siastical fold as to render the clergy content wdth 
 their restricted sphere. Such was the significance 
 of the doctrine of conversion when viewed in its 
 relation with the dissolution of the Puritan the- 
 ocracy. The church now became not only recon- 
 ciled to its new lot, but soon learned to denounce 
 the old relation as a baneful mingling of the things 
 of Caesar with the things of God. 
 
 It was still another result of the new distinction 
 between the converted and the unconverted that it 
 made impossible any longer the retention of the 
 Half-way Covenant, and especially in the form 
 
THE HALF-WAY COVENANT. 257 
 
 wliicli it had assumed at Northampton. As orig- 
 inally set forth in the Synod of 1657, and again in 
 1662, the HaK-way Covenant had been a conces- 
 sion on the part of the church, mainly in order to 
 its more facile working in relation with the state. 
 When the number of those was increasing who 
 asked for membership in the church in order to a 
 voice in the affairs of the state, but who had not 
 the qualification for church membership in either 
 ability or willingness to make the required profes- 
 sion of religious experience, the church relaxed its 
 requirement, and allowed admission to the civil 
 privileges of membership on the ground of baptism 
 alone. But to those joining the church on this 
 Half-way Covenant, as it was now called, the Lord's 
 Supper was still refused until they should enter 
 into fidl covenant by presenting before the church 
 satisfactory evidence of the Spirit's work within 
 them. But this was not the form of the Half- 
 way Covenant which awoke the distrust and oppo- 
 sition of Edwards. At Northampton a further 
 step had been taken by Mr. Stoddard, Edwards' 
 grandfather and predecessor, who had introduced 
 on his own authority a radical modification of 
 the HaK-way Covenant, in accordance with which 
 baptized persons were admitted to the Lord's 
 Supper without making a credible profession of 
 Christian experience, or even if they knew that 
 they were destitute of any work of divine grace 
 within them. 
 
 Although Mr. Stoddard's attitude had met with 
 
258 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 mucli opposition,^ the custom which he introduced 
 at Northampton had very generally prevailed among 
 the surrounding churches, as well as elsewhere 
 throughout New England. Edwards, when he 
 first went to Northampton, felt instinctive mis- 
 givings as to the method in vogue, but he sup- 
 pressed at the time any impulse to inquire further 
 into the matter for the satisfaction of his mind. 
 After the Revival of 1735, and again after that of 
 1740, he admitted large numbers to the commun- 
 ion without requiring from them any distinct pro- 
 fession of Christian experience. But in his ser- 
 mons on The Religious Affections, he intimated 
 plainly his dislike to a further continuance of the 
 custom. This was in the year 1744. From that 
 time until 1748, no one was presented for admis- 
 sion to the sacred rite of the Lord's Supper. 
 
 ^ Among- those who resisted the innovation at Northampton 
 was the celebrated Dr. Increase Mather, the last great champion 
 of the theocracy. But thoug-h he answered Mr. Stoddard's 
 defence of his position, he felt no great interest in the subject 
 and regarded it as of minor importance. Cf . Stoddard's Guide 
 to Christ (1735), which contains a prefatory epistle by In- 
 crease Mather in which he remarks : " It is known that, in some 
 points not fundamental, I differ from this beloved author." Mr. 
 Stoddard's position was not a clearly defined one, and was easily 
 liable to misapprehension. In his Appeal to the Learned, in which 
 he makes his defence, he remarks: "My business was to an- 
 swer a case of conscience, and direct those that might have 
 scruples about participation of the Lord's Supper because they 
 had not a work of saving conversion, not at all to direct the 
 churches to admit any that were not to rational charity true 
 believers." — p. 27. Cf., also, the New-Englander, vol. xliii. p. 
 615, for an account of Mr. Stoddard's own religious history, 
 which has only recently come to light. 
 
 J 
 
A CASE OF PARISH DISCIPLINE. 259 
 
 Then, in the case of a person who solicited the 
 privilege, Edwards stated what he should require 
 as the terms of full admission to the church. The 
 person in question declined to accept them, and 
 the issue was now broached which resulted in his 
 dismissal. 
 
 It is possible that the difficulties in which Ed- 
 wards was now involved might have assumed a 
 different shape had not affairs been complicated 
 by a peculiar case of discipline in the parish in 
 which Edwards had failed to carry with him the 
 cooperation of the people. As the story runs, a 
 discovery had been made that certain books of an 
 obscene character ^ were in circulation among the 
 young people of the parish of both sexes, the 
 result of which was licentious conversation and 
 immoral practices. The first act of the pastor 
 was a sermon in which the facts were made known 
 to the congregation, — an imj)ressive sermon, which 
 led the officers to unite wdth him in calling for an 
 examination of the offenders. But when Edwards 
 came to read from the pulpit the names of the 
 guilty persons, and of those also who were sum- 
 moned to give their witness in the case, it appeared 
 that almost every family in the church of any 
 consideration was involved. Those who had hith- 
 erto favored an investigation now resisted it. The 
 consequence was that the proposed discipline was 
 
 ^ The siig-g-estion has been made that the books were some of 
 the popular novels of the time, such as Pamela, etc. Cf. Leslie 
 Stephen, Hours in a Library, vol. ii. p. 63. 
 
260 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 dropped, wliile a certain disaffection towards Ed- 
 wards began to be felt which put an end to the 
 extraordinary influence he had hitherto exercised. 
 From this time Edwards laments the ineffective- 
 ness of his preaching. Whether it was that his 
 speculative cast of mind had carried him too far 
 away from the range of the popular interest, his 
 sermons no longer aroused the unconverted. A 
 general decline of religious interest began to pre- 
 vail which he was powerless to overcome. 
 
 Edwards was inclined to attribute the difficulty 
 to the custom of admitting to the inner shrine of 
 the Christian worship those who had made no 
 profession of a Christian purpose. He now pro- 
 posed to discuss the subject in a series of sermons, 
 and asked permission of the church to that effect. 
 The permission was not only refused, but a storm 
 of human rage and furor now broke forth against 
 him, and nothing would allay the angry passions 
 of the people but his final and immediate dismis- 
 sal from his post. In vain he asked permission 
 to be heard, aware as he was that his views 
 were bitterly misrepresented. He finally gained 
 consent to write a book on the Qualifications of 
 Full Communion, which might be read when his 
 voice would not be listened to from the pidpit. 
 But while the work was in preparation the people 
 became impatient that it did not appear, in order 
 that they might hasten his dismissal, which had 
 become a foregone conclusion. When the book 
 appeared but few of them read it. He then deter- 
 
AN ECCLESIASTICAL COUNCIL. 261 
 
 mined by the advice of the surrounding churches 
 to lecture on the subject. But his lectures were 
 thinly attended by his own congregation, though 
 many came from a distance who made up the 
 greater part of his audience. When the question 
 arose of calling an ecclesiastical council for the 
 purpose of hearing the case, there was long and 
 unseemly wrangling, because the church at North- 
 ampton was afraid that, if Edwards went out of 
 the county to invite ministers and churches to sit 
 upon the council, as he was entitled to do, the case 
 might result in his retention of the pastorate ; and 
 they were determined that he should go. When 
 the council met, it was decided by a majority of 
 one that the pastoral relation should be dissolved. 
 But the vote of the church ratifying the decision 
 of the council was two hundred in favor of it, and 
 only twenty who were opposed. The date of Ed- 
 wards' dismissal was June 22, 1750. Although he 
 continued to live in the town for some months 
 after his connection with the church was severed, 
 great reluctance was felt at allowing him to 
 preach, even when the services of no other minis- 
 ter could be obtained. And at last a town meet- 
 ing was called which accomplished its object in the 
 formal vote that he should not again be permitted 
 to enter the pulpit of the church in Northampton. 
 So Jonathan Edwards was turned adrift at the end 
 of twenty-three years of service, and at the age of 
 forty-seven, with a large family of children, and 
 with no means of support, and doubtful if he 
 
202 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 should ever obtain another parish. The spirit of 
 the man under these circumstances shone forth so 
 beautifully that one's sympathies and love go forth 
 toward him as if the scene were still visibly enact- 
 ing before our eyes. He had sat down and counted 
 the cost before he proceeded to action. He knew 
 that to overturn the established usage meant dis- 
 aster to himself and his family. After all, the 
 man was gTeater than the metaphysician or the 
 theologian. In his mature years he is exhibiting 
 the final product in high Christian character, of 
 which he had set before himself the ideal in the 
 Resolutions of his youth. It must have been a 
 strange scene at Northampton when he preached 
 his farewell sermon. The discourse is still trem- 
 vdous with the intense feeling of the hour. The 
 whole man stands forth in it, with his moral indig- 
 nation at a great wrong ; with the solemnity of ac- 
 cusation in which he had no equal ; with the tender 
 pathos in which he takes his leave of the dear 
 children whom God had given him, warning them 
 all of the final meeting at the judgment day, when 
 the case should be reheard before the tribunal of 
 Heaven. 
 
 No attempt can be macle here to review at any 
 length the questions at issue regarding the reor- 
 ganization of the Puritan churches. The confu- 
 sion in this time of transition was so great that no 
 one could do justice to the motives of his opponent. 
 All parties alike complain of misrepresentation. 
 It was Edwards' misfortune that he labored under 
 
EDWARDS' POSITION. 263 
 
 the suspicion of being a separatist. He was 
 charged with seeking to establish a church on 
 principles opposed to those of the standing order ; 
 of demanding the evidence of an inward change 
 on the part of postulants for admission, the stages 
 of which should be sharply defined ; of sitting in 
 judgment on the religious condition of others. In 
 the excited condition of the people, it was almost 
 impossible that he should assuage these hostile 
 suspicions. But in this case as in others the in- 
 domitable will of Edwards rose above all obsta- 
 cles. He was determined to make his position clear. 
 In his Qualifications for Full Communion, written 
 while the controversy was at its height, he resisted 
 that tendency in the Puritan churches, represented 
 by Mr. Stoddard, which endowed the church as 
 an organic institution with a life-giving efficacy. 
 Mr. Stoddard's doctrine of the Lord's Supper 
 might easily be interpreted as giving to the feast 
 of the Holy Communion a magical effect apart 
 from the spiritual fitness of the recipient. Hence 
 he had spoken of the Lord's Supper as a convert- 
 ing ordinance ; he invited persons to the Holy 
 Table even though they knew themselves to be 
 destitute of Christian sincerity. This sacramental 
 tendency was banished from the Puritan churches 
 by Edwards' influence. His book on the subject 
 became a standard authority, holding Congrega^ 
 tionalism to its original principle, that only by a 
 living faith did Christ become the living bread in 
 the sacrament of His body and His blood. A re- 
 
264 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 ply to this work on the Qualifications for Full 
 Communion was made by AYilliams, a neighbor- 
 ing minister and a kinsman of Edwards, which 
 drew forth from him a few years later another 
 large treatise which practically closed the contro- 
 versy. In this work he pursues his antagonist 
 into the hidden recesses of those groundless sus- 
 picions which were rife among the people. He 
 endeavors to clear himself of the charge of set- 
 ting up a separatist church, or of calling for evi- 
 dence of conversion, or of insisting that conversion 
 should assume a uniform character. All that he 
 had insisted upon as a requisite for admission to 
 the Lord's Supper was a simj^le, moderate formula 
 of self-consecration, hardly going beyond the con- 
 firmation vow of the Church of England.^ 
 
 But on the other hand Edwards does not seem 
 to have been aware of the revolution which the 
 popular idea of conversion was working in the 
 churches. As a consequence of that sharp dis- 
 tinction, the baptism of infants was losing its sig- 
 
 ^ Edwards has g-iven two of these formulas in his Reply to 
 Williams, yo\. \. p. 202. The first of them reads: "1 hope I 
 do truly find a heart to give myself wholly to God, according- to 
 the tenor of that covenant of grace which was sealed in my bap- 
 tism, and to walk in a way of that obedience to all the command- 
 ments of God which the covenant of grace requires, as long as 
 I live." The alternative formula reads: "I hope I truly find 
 in my heart a willingness to comply with all the commandments 
 of God, which require me to give myself up wholly to Him and 
 to serve Him with my body and my spirit ; and do accordingly 
 now promise to walk in a way of obedience to all the command- 
 ments of God as long as I live." 
 
INFANT BAPTISM. 
 
 265 
 
 nificance. Until they had been converted, they 
 stood in no relation to God ; they were as far from 
 Him as if they had never come within the scope of 
 Christian influence. Edwards made no effort to 
 meet the difficidty, nor did he feel called upon to 
 examine the subject of infant baptism. He ad- 
 mits Uhat all the baptized are in some sort mem- 
 bers of the chiu'ch. But there he leaves a subject 
 which had no interest for him. He had no doubts 
 about it, as he remarks, but it was " a topic liable 
 to great disputes, and caUed for a large disserta. 
 tion to make it clear." The opponents of Ed- 
 wards on this subject had a clear and yahd 
 position. In maintaining that baptism admitted 
 to all the privileges of church membership,^ they 
 were resisting the evil effects of the doctrine of 
 conversion, which easily degenerated into a bane- 
 ful subjectivity, where the organic character of the 
 church threatened to disappear, where the shifting 
 feelings about one's inner state became the test of 
 one's "kcceptance with God. In adhering to the 
 
 1 Qualifications, etc., vol. i. p. 89. 
 
 2 Among those who actively helped in the expulsion of i^d- 
 wards from Northampton was another kinsman, Ashley, of Deer- 
 field Edwards' bitterest foes seem to have been those of his own 
 household after the flesh. Cf. The Historical Magazine, June 
 1867 for a sermon preached by Ashley containing a defence ot 
 the principle that baptism admits to full church membership and 
 represents an organic relationship to Christ. Ashley suffered for 
 his devotion to this principle, as well as for his opposition to Jl.d- 
 wards. He saw his own congregation divide on the issue, the 
 larger part going to Greenfield to found a church on Edwards 
 idels. It was on this occasion that he preached the sermon. 
 
266 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 Half-way Covenant, they were also struggling 
 against what was called the Anabaptist heresy, 
 which discarded infant baptism altogether, post- 
 poning the performance of the rite until it could 
 gain a real significance by coinciding with the 
 experience of conversion. It had been, indeed, 
 one object of the Half- Way Covenant to overcome 
 the Anabaptist principle by attaching increased 
 importance to baptism. With the rejection of 
 the Half-Way Covenant, and under the influence 
 of the popular notions about conversion, that was 
 now coming to pass which the early Puritan 
 fathers had dreaded. An opportunity was af- 
 forded to the Baptist sect of which it was not slow 
 to take advantage. With this communion most 
 of the separatist organizations in New England 
 threw in their lot, and were lost to the Congrega- 
 tional order. 
 
 There are clearly, then, two sides to this contro- 
 versy. It is not altogether true, as is sometimes 
 remarked, that Edwards was simply restoring the 
 early order of the Puritan churches in New Eng- 
 land. He could not restore that order without 
 restoring also the Theocracy, with which its con- 
 nection was a vital one. Those who were resisting 
 Edwards were also legitimate descendants of the 
 Puritan fathers in the spirit, as also largely in the 
 letter. We are tracing here the rise of the schism 
 in the New England churches which came to an 
 open rupture in the beginning of the present cen- 
 ^ tury. The opponents of Edwards who insisted on 
 
 A 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL DIVISIONS. 267 
 
 the importance of baptism as admitting to full 
 member sliij) in the church, who rejected the dis- 
 tinction between the converted and the uncon- 
 verted, were also representatives of the old Puritan 
 purpose which was seeking some normal connec- 
 tion between the church and the world, keeping 
 the church in a larger and healthier attitude by 
 its relation to the state, insisting on the objective 
 side of Christian truth, and in this spirit vanquish- 
 ing the antinomian spectre as it appeared in 
 Mrs. Hutchinson, or the subjective moods of the 
 Quakers, or the disintegrating tendency of the 
 Anabaptists, who threatened the supremacy of the 
 standing order. 
 
 The world is weary of discussions about the 
 nature of baptism. The only apology for present- 
 ing the subject here is the fact of its historical im- 
 portance, and its close relation to the ecclesiastical 
 divisions which now began to mark the face of 
 New England. Speculations about what might 
 have been, although they are intangible, impon- 
 derable considerations, are nevertheless inevitable 
 to any one who cannot help seeing both sides of 
 a controversy. If the two positions in this embit- 
 tered party strife could have been combined ; if 
 baptism could have been imparted freely to all 
 and accepted as a rite admitting to full member- 
 ship in the church ; while the ratification of the un- 
 conscious vow of infancy was required as a natural 
 step in maturer years, as well as a condition for 
 receiving the Lord's Supper, — the divisions into 
 
268 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 hostile sects might have been to some degree 
 averted. But the churches of the Congregational 
 order, both before and after Edwards' time, nar- 
 rowed the number of recipients of the rite, in the 
 case of infant baptism, to the children of belie\dng 
 parents. There was thus opened a door for the 
 introduction of another church, an older ecclesias- 
 tical order, which rejected no child from its fold, 
 whatever its parentage, asserting of all baptized 
 children that they were divinely and authoritatively 
 declared by baptism to be the " children of God, 
 the members of Christ, and heirs of the kingdom 
 of heaven." For such a church, with such a 
 profession, there was surely a demand. Edwards 
 must have looked upon its declaration of the mean- 
 ing of baptism with a feeling of deep repugnance. 
 And yet it might become the basis of a theology 
 quite as spiritual as his own, and without his limi- 
 tations. 
 
 The controversy on the nature of the church was 
 carried on by Edwards without knowledge of pre- 
 vious discussions which had covered much the same 
 ground in ancient history. His Reply to Williams, 
 as well as his Qualifications for Full Communion, 
 remind one constantly of Augustine's controversy 
 with the Donatists in the fifth century. The para^ 
 bles of the good and bad fish taken in the net, or 
 the tares and the wheat growing in the same field, 
 recurring in both controversies, are the hinge on 
 which the discussions turned. Edwards had some- 
 thing of the Donatist spirit, which was seeking the 
 
EARLY PURITAN IS. 'if. 269 
 
 purity of the cliurch, but he might not have been 
 averse to Augustine's compromise of an eccleslola^ 
 — the little church within the larger church. Au- 
 gustine was also adjusting afresh the relations be- 
 tween the ecclesiastical and the civil power. Here 
 the divergency is wide and real. In the ancient 
 church everything tended toward the union with 
 the state in some organic relationship, — the church, 
 however, possessing the advantage ; while the state 
 trembled in its impotence as it saw the imperial 
 sceptre gradually ceasing to be the symbol of 
 power. But in the eighteenth century the situa- 
 tion was reversed. It was becoming the watch- 
 word of modern Christianity, as it had been among 
 the Donatists, that the church should have no rela- 
 tion to the civil power. The times were with Ed- 
 wards in his efforts to mould the church in accord- 
 ance with the distinction between the converted 
 and the unconverted, — a distinction which should 
 serve to keep the church within its own too narrow 
 sphere. Edwards seemed to be carrying back the 
 Congregational order to its early purity, when a 
 profession of Christian experience was demanded 
 from every postulant for admission to the church. 
 But the difference is greater than the resemblance 
 between his work and that of the Puritan fathers. 
 To the original churches there had opened the at- 
 tractive opportunity of ruling the state and the so- 
 cial order in the name of God. When this oppor- 
 tunity and privilege were withdrawn, there was 
 danger of an unhealthy pietism invading the reK- 
 
270 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 gious circle, which would not only destroy its at- 
 tractiveness for the outer world, but might rob the 
 church itself of a robust manliness, if it did not 
 empty religion of its positive significance. There 
 are not wanting signs of a certain hoUowness and 
 unreality in the speculative thought of Edwards, 
 which may owe their origin in some part to this 
 defect. 
 
 Having made these qualifications, it only re- 
 mains to add that Edwards may be justly called 
 the father of modern Congregationalism. If he 
 seemed to have been defeated by his expulsion 
 from Northampton, his expulsion made the issue 
 clear and he triumphed in his fall. Most of the 
 Puritan churches accepted his principles, banished 
 the Half-way Covenant, and took on the form which 
 they still retain. As one by one they went over 
 to his side, they found it hard to understand how 
 there ever could have existed a different practice. 
 It became the custom to refer to the times of the 
 Theocracy as " those unhappy days when things 
 secular and religious were strangely mixed up in 
 New England." ^ And yet the Congregational 
 churches have never been able to escape alto- 
 gether from the effects of that " unhappy " con- 
 nection^ if so it must be regarded. It has given 
 them a certain distinction, the consciousness of 
 which they prize. They have continued to retain 
 a sense of relationship to the state, and to feel 
 themselves responsible for its welfare. Nor have 
 
 1 Dwight, Life of Edwards, p. 303. 
 
ALIENATION FROM CONGREGATIONALISM. 271 
 
 the cases been rare in wliicli its clergy have given 
 themselves to political and legislative duties, as if 
 a natural and congenial work. 
 
 But if Edwards was the father of modern Con- 
 gregationalism, he came very near disowning liis 
 offspring. In those dark days after his expulsion 
 from his parish, when he did not know which way 
 to turn for a common livelihood, he was approached 
 by one of his Scotch correspondents, who offered 
 to procure for him a church in Scotland. To this 
 correspondent he wrote : " You are pleased very 
 kindly to ask me whether I could sign the West- 
 minster Confession of Faith, and submit to the 
 Presbyterian form of church government. . . . As 
 to my subscribing to the substance of the West- 
 minster Confession, there would-be no difficulty; 
 and as to the Presbjrterian government, I have long 
 been perfectly out of conceit of our unsettled, inde- 
 2:)endent^ confused way of church government in 
 this land ; and the Presbyterian way has ever 
 ajypeared to me most agreeable to the word of God 
 and the reason and nature of things.''^ ^ It is no 
 gratuitous assumption if we view this language as 
 expressing only the alienation of the passing mo- 
 ment. The case of Edwards is similar to that noto- 
 rious instance in the ancient church where Gregory 
 Nazianzen, the Patriarch of Constantinople, was 
 driven from his see by the violence of his enemies. 
 The language in which, from the soreness of his 
 heart, he condemned all general councils and 
 
 ^ Dwiglit, Life of President Edwards, p. 412. 
 
272 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 synods of bisliops as productive only of evil, may 
 be compared vv^ith Edwards' strictures upon the 
 ecclesiastical polity of New England. In both in- 
 stances allowance must be made for human infir- 
 mity.' Congregationalism as a church polity may 
 have its defects and disadvantages ; but it has also 
 merits for those who know to discern and appro- 
 priate them. Among this number Edwards should 
 certainly be ranked. He was born a Congregation- 
 alist, if we may use the expression. The appeal to 
 th£ reason in defence of truth, rather than the 
 prescription of authority, is liis leading character- 
 istic. He was, all his life through, an innovator, 
 following the lead of his speculative faculties, 
 rather than anxious for the conservation of theo- 
 logical formulas. 'His rejection of the church polity, 
 whose workings he stimulated and adorned, is not 
 consistent with the freedom and independence of 
 his own career. 
 
I 
 
 THIED PERIOD. 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 1750-1758. 
 
 I. 
 
 REMOVAL TO STOCKBRIDGE AS MISSIONARY TO 
 THE INDIANS. ^ 
 
 In the straitened circumstances in whicH Ed- 
 wards was placed after his dismissal from North- 
 ampton, he was remembered by his friends in 
 Scotland, who sent generous contributions for his 
 relief.^ It is also touching to read how his wife 
 and daughters endeavored to increase the family 
 income by various feminine pursuits. Toward the 
 close of the year 1750 he received an invitation to 
 become the pastor of the church in Stockbridge, 
 the frontier town of the colony, forty miles west 
 of Northampton. He had already declined to 
 further a movement in Northampton whose object 
 
 1 Among" these Scotch friends and correspondents of Edwards 
 the most distinguished was Dr. John Erskine. He forwarded to 
 him supplies of books, urged him to his great controversial writ- 
 ings, and superintended their publication in Scotland. He has 
 been immortalized by Sir Walter Scott in his Guy Mannering, 
 where he is presented in his old age leaning over the pulpit of 
 Greyfriars. He was the leader of the Evangelical Calvinists in 
 the church of Scotland. It is interesting also to note that he was 
 the great-uncle of the late Mr. Thomas Erskine, of Liulathen. 
 
274 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 had been to establisli there another church of 
 wliich he should become the pastor. He had 
 hardly accepted the invitation to Stockbridge 
 when he received a call from a church in Virginia, 
 which also promised him a generous support. 
 These and similar indications must have been 
 grateful in his despondency, as showing that a 
 career of active usefulness was still open, despite 
 the reflection on his name by his treatment at 
 Northampton. The removal to Stockbridge, how- 
 ever it may have first appeared, was in reality an 
 expansion to him, offering opportunities which had 
 hitherto been denied for the full display of his 
 highest powers. 
 
 He still continued to feel, after his removal 
 there, the effects of the great disruption which had 
 followed his attempts at reform. It was there 
 that he wrote his rejoinder to Williams, who had 
 ventured a reply to his work on the Qualifica- 
 tions for Full Communion. When Edwards un- 
 dertook a task of this kind, he showed his ad- 
 versary no quarter. In this case he brought his 
 subtle exhaustive method to an examination and 
 refutation of every fallacy, every misrepresenta- 
 tion, however slight, in order that the reader who 
 was willing to examine the subject might become 
 fully aware how the case had stood between him 
 and his opponents. But irrational and perverse 
 elements were so mixed up with that disastrous 
 time at Northampton, that one must not expect, 
 and from Edwards least of all, an intelligible ac- 
 
MAJOR BAWLEY'S APOLOGY. 275 
 
 count of the situation. There came to him while 
 at Stockbridge some sort of an apology from his 
 former parishioners, which seemed to him entirely 
 inadequate. His reply ,^ which is addressed to 
 Major Joseph Hawley, shows how deeply the sense 
 of his personal dignity had been affronted, and 
 also the lofty and authoritative tone of the ancient 
 Puritan minister. From the same Joseph Hawley 
 there came personal letters which even to Edwards' 
 exacting mind must have disclosed an adequate 
 repentance. Hawley, who had been active and 
 influential in fomenting the disaffection among 
 the people, had now condemned his own conduct, 
 and with it that of the people with whom he had 
 acted, as sinful and criminal in every respect : as 
 he reflected upon it, he had been confounded and 
 filled with terror. He appeals to the 51st Psalm 
 as the confession of his soul in view of his crime. 
 He calls upon the church at Northampton to con- 
 sider whether it had not been guilty of great sin 
 before God in parting as they did with such a 
 minister as Mr. Edwards. Their words against 
 him he denounces as odious and ungodly and vile, 
 full of unchristian bitterness and of gross slanders. 
 Mr. Hawley had received from Edwards the assur- 
 ance of his forgiveness and prayers. But, not con- 
 tent with this private confession, he published a 
 letter, after Edwards' death,^ in which he gave to 
 the world the confession wliich he had rendered in 
 
 ^ Cf. Bibliotheca Sacra, vol. i. p. 579. 
 2 Dwiglit's Memoir, pp. 421, ff. 
 
276 THE PEILOSOrniCAL THEOLOGIAN, 
 
 private ; and as no remonstrance appeared from 
 the congregation, it may be taken as indicating 
 more than a personal apology. There is now a 
 church at Northampton which is called after the 
 name of the once dishonored pastor ; and the high- 
 est distinction which the town can claim, after one 
 hundred years and more have passed away, is to be 
 identified with the labors and reputation of Jona- 
 than Edwards. 
 
 The family of Edwards when he went to Stock- 
 bridge included ten children, one daughter having 
 died, to whom allusion has been made. Two of 
 the older daughters were married about the time 
 when their father's difficulties were at their height, 
 — Mary at the age of sixteen, and Sarah at the age 
 of twenty-two, — events which must have called off 
 his mind from his troubles, and renewed his inter- 
 est in the changes and chances of this mortal life. 
 Of the daughters who went with him to Stock- 
 bridge, Esther was one, to wdiose beauty inherited 
 from both parents, as well as her intellectual 
 brightness, tradition bears ample testimony. She 
 had attracted the attention of the Rev. Aaron 
 Burr, a noted personage in those aristocratic days, 
 and to Stockbridge the devoted lover followed her, 
 gaining her consent to matrimony in a short court- 
 ship. Mr. Burr was a man of brilliant quahties, 
 who had recently been called to the presidency of 
 Nassau Hall, — what was afterwards to become 
 known as Princeton College. His career was cut 
 prematurely short at the age of forty-two, but not 
 
AARON BURR. 211 
 
 before lie had achieved a reputation for piety and 
 culture which lonsr survived him. He left two 
 children, one of them a boy named after his father, 
 in whom a curious interest has always centred, 
 partly on his own account, and partly also for the 
 thoughts and misgivings which are suggested by 
 the fact that such a man should have been the 
 grandson of Jonathan Edwards. Aaron Burr was 
 the murderer of Alexander Hamilton in a duel ; he 
 became vice-president of the United States ; and 
 his career reached its height for notoriety in a 
 conspiracy against the government, which led to his 
 arrest and trial for treason. He was a man with 
 an unusual, ahnost a weird power of fascination, — 
 to some extent the same charm wliich may be 
 traced in his ancestors, where it had found scope 
 and satisfaction in the things of religion and the 
 church. Diverted from these channels, the fascina- 
 tion reappeared under the aspect of a worldliness 
 as intense as had been the other worldliness of its 
 previous associations. 
 
 Among the younger children of Edwards was a 
 son named Jonathan, six years of age at the time 
 of the removal to Stockbridge, who illustrates in a 
 directer way the principle of heredity. He lived 
 to become a metaphj^sical theologian, following to 
 a great extent in his father's line of thought, but 
 without his father's genius or poetic fire, or that 
 mystic glow which lends interest and beauty to the 
 works of the elder Edwards. There was also an- 
 other son, an infant still in his mother's arms when 
 
 ■0 
 
278 THE PniLOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 the migration took place, who bore the united 
 names of his parents, Pierrepont Edwards. 
 
 The town of Stockbridge, when Edwards went 
 there in 1751, was ahnost exckisively an Indian 
 settlement. Only a smaU amount of land had been 
 allotted to the few white settlers, who were for the 
 most part drawn to the place by plans for the im- 
 provement of the Indians. Though Edwards had 
 received and accepted a call to the church in Stock- 
 bridge, his chief responsibility was for these In- 
 dians, to whom he was appointed missionary by the 
 Board of Commissioners for Indian Affairs resid- 
 ing in Boston, with the concurrence of a society 
 in London which also contributed to his support. 
 These were the days when there existed in Eng- 
 land a romantic interest in the American Indian, 
 — an interest which had drawn Wesley to Georgia, 
 which had inspired Pope to wi^ite his well-known 
 lines ; an interest which Rousseau and his school 
 had also felt, as giving support to their reverence 
 for nature as something higher than either culture 
 or grace. But in America so far, little or nothing 
 had been achieved in the way of converting the 
 Indians either to civilization or religion. Two ar- 
 dent missionaries, or apostles as they have been 
 called, Eliot and Brainerd, had consecrated their 
 lives to this end, but without any permanent re- 
 sult beyond their own manifestation as types of 
 the great Protestant missionaries of the future. 
 
 To this work Edwards was now called at a time 
 of life when it was too late to adapt himself to a 
 
TFIE INDIANS AT STOCKBRIDGE. 279 
 
 task for which he had no special fitness. His duty 
 required him, in addition to preaching twice on 
 Sunday to his white congregation, to preach one 
 sermon to the Indians through an interpreter. 
 How he performed this function may be seen in 
 the plan of one of his sermons, prepared expressly 
 for the purpose.^ It shows an effort at adaptation 
 of statement, but one can hardly think it was suc- 
 cessful. The minute divisions and sub-divisions 
 still remind us of the author of the Freedom of 
 the Will. Edwards, however, may have gained the 
 confidence and love of his Indian auditors by his 
 untiring and disinterested labors in their behalf. 
 In this, too, he was assisted by his family, of whom 
 he speaks in one of his letters as being greatly 
 liked by the Indians, and more particularly liis 
 wife. The moment when he arrived at Stock- 
 brids-e was one of ^reat confusion in Indian af- 
 fairs. There was no lack of money to carry on 
 the work among them, but on the part of some of 
 the white settlers there was a disposition to secure 
 the money for themselves, and leave the Indian to 
 his own devices. The story of Edwards' relations 
 with the Indians reads like an extract from a 
 modern newspaper, detailing the conflict between 
 the enemies and friends of tliis unfortunate peo- 
 ple ; private avarice diverting funds from their 
 appointed course, while an honest, incorruptible 
 man refuses to make himself a party to the trans- 
 
 1 Cf. Grossart, Selections from the Unpublished Writings of Ed- 
 wards, p. 191. * 
 
280 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 action. Edwards was an evil genius to those wlio 
 were using tlie Indians for their private emoki- : 
 ment. Among these was a member of a certain 
 prominent family in the colony, who had done 
 what he could to prevent Edwards' call to Stock- 
 bridge. The account of Edwards' connection with 
 this family suggests some bitter feud, which is left 
 unexplained. When Edwards first proposed to 
 preach against Arminianism in 1734, it was from 
 another member of the same family that he met 
 with strenuous opposition to his project. Still 
 other re]3resentatives of this family, residing in or 
 near Northampton, had abetted the disaffection 
 which led to his dismissal. In Stockbridge he 
 was again confronted with the same hostility. 
 Edwards' fortunes recall those of Athanasius, who 
 seemed to arouse against himself a certain malig- 
 nant hostility, and apparently for no other reason 
 than his unflinching integrity. 
 
 Edwards would not be called a practical man. 
 But no man of affairs could have been better fitted 
 than he was to detect the avariciousness which 
 crippled the Indian mission, and to follow it 
 through all its disguises. He had not studied in 
 vain the tortuous ways of the Arminians in the 
 field of theology. The man who had devoted a 
 volume to exposing the misrepresentations of Wil- 
 liams, or followed up in elaborate letters the in- 
 accurate statement of Rector Clap, had learned 
 how to deal with any adversary, whether in the 
 sphere of ecclesiastical controversy or of practical 
 
 i 
 
THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL. 281 
 
 life. When it came to showing up the true state 
 of Indian affairs, there was no one who coukl stand 
 in comparison with him. In this case it was no 
 ecclesiastical council to whom his appeal was car- 
 ried, but sensible men devoted to a Christian pur- 
 pose, who only asked for the truth. He was sus- 
 tained by those to whom his long correspondence 
 was directed.- For two years or more he carried 
 on the hard fight, till he was rewarded by seeing 
 the man who was the cliief source of the trouble 
 abandon Stockbridge, and leave the field a free 
 one for the friends of truth and righteousness. 
 But in the mean time the Indians had suffered 
 from this struggle over their weKare. PuUed 
 about as they were between contending factions, 
 realizing but little good from the efforts in their 
 behalf, — from this and from other causes, they 
 ceased to regard Stockbridge as their reserve. 
 The peace which had come to Edwards was littk 
 more than a deeper solitude. 
 
 II. 
 
 THE FEEEDOM OF THE WILL. 
 
 Edwards was now at leisure to take up some 
 larger work than any which he had hitherto at- 
 tempted. At this time, also, he seems to have re- 
 verted to the speculations which had interested 
 him when he was a boy in college writing his Notes 
 
282 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 upon the Mind. Bilt the gulf of more than a quar- 
 ter of a century hiy between him and that early 
 dream, so suddenly and strangely relinquished, of 
 interpreting the universe in accordance with the i 
 absolute reason. Meantime his thoughts had been 
 running so long in the grooves of a religious con- 
 troversy which was still unfinished, that he could 
 not escape the fascinations which it offered, — the 
 temptation to make some final and permanent ef- 
 fort for the maintenance of the Calvinistic theol- 
 ogy. So far as he reverted to his early specula- 
 tions, it seems to have been mainly for the purpose 
 of laying a deeper basis for the argument against 
 Arminianism. 
 
 Hitherto he had assaulted the foe chiefly on re- 
 ligious grounds. But it had long been apparent 
 to him that the hinge of the whole controversy was 
 the speculative issue regarding the freedom of the 
 will. Out of the Arminian doctrine that the 
 will was free, in the sense of possessing a self- 
 determining power, grew, as he thought, the arro- 
 gant disposition to despise the Calvinistic notions 
 of God's sovereignty and moral government, the 
 contempt for " the doctrines of grace," the dislike 
 to experimental religion, the cultivation of a moral- 
 ity which read out the divine existence from the 
 sj)here of human interests. Everything vital was 
 at stake in the doctrine of the human wdll. So 
 strongly was he convinced of this that in his most 
 impressive manner he declared himself ready to 
 admit, that if the Arminians could demonstrate 
 
 i 
 
A LITERARY SENSATION. 283 
 
 tlie self -determining power of the will, tliey had an 
 impregnable fortress against every Chi'istian doc- 
 trine which he held most dear. To the task, then, 
 of demolishing this stronghold he devoted himself 
 with the momentum of thought, and energy, and 
 indignation which had been gathering for many 
 years. So intense was the spirit wdth which he 
 labored that in four months he finished the com- 
 position of the work on which, more than on any 
 other of his writings, his world-wide reputation has 
 rested, — a work which produced so deep an im- 
 pression that it still continues to be spoken of as 
 "the one large contribution which America has \ 
 made to the deeper philosophic thought of the 
 world." 
 
 The treatise on the Will was published in 1754, 
 and may be regarded as one of the literary sensa- 
 tions of the last century. It was more than that, 
 — it was, to a large part of the religious world, a 
 veritable shock, staggering alike to the reason and 
 the moral sense. The age was accustomed to sim- 
 ilar views from infidels and free-thinkers such as 
 Hobbes, and Collins, and Hume were reputed to 
 be. There were others, too, calling themselves 
 Christians, such as Hartley, and Tucker, and Priest- 
 ley, who denied the freedom of the will, but with- 
 out awakening the indignation which was caused 
 by Edwards' assertion of the same principle. For 
 here was one who rose up in the name of religion 
 and morality, whose high character was acknowl- 
 edged by all, whose genius was indisputable, whose 
 
284 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 reasoning seemed in\ancible, and who seemed to be 
 clasping hands with materialists and atheists in be- 
 half of the doctrine that the will was not free to 
 choose between good and evil. Edwards' teaching, 
 also, was associated in the public mind with his 
 other beliefs, — the divine sovereignty, decrees of 
 election and reprobation, an everlasting hell which 
 was yawning for the reception of a majority of the 
 human race. It now added an element of inex- 
 pressible horror to the situation if it was also true 
 that the will was not free to choose between good 
 and evil. J 
 
 Edwards' work on the Will was but the cul- ■ 
 mination of the reaction which he had signalled 
 when he preached his Boston sermon on Depend- 
 ence in 1731. His work was received by his fel- 
 low-religionists with exultant testimonies to its 
 power and value. There was among the Calvinists 
 a general conviction that he had annihilated Ar- 
 minianism. From being ashamed of their cause, 
 they now felt themselves forever absolved from the 
 disgraceful necessity of bowing in the house of 
 Rimmon, which had led so many of their number, 
 a Doddridge or a Watts, to admit the seK-determin- 
 ing power of the will. In the enthusiastic words 
 of Jonathan Edwards the Younger ; " Now, there- 
 fore, the Calvinists find themselves placed upon 
 firm and high ground. They fear not the attacks 
 of their opponents. They face them on the ground 
 of reason as well as of Scripture. Kather have 
 they carried the war into Italy and to the very 
 
IMPRESSIVE TESTIMONY. 285 
 
 gates of Rome." ^ Long after its iirst appearance 
 the same testimony continued to be borne. " There 
 is no European divine," said Dr. Chahners, "to 
 whom I make such frequent appeals ; no book of 
 human composition which I more strenuously rec- 
 ommend than his Treatise on the Will, read by me 
 forty-seven years ago, with a conviction that has 
 never since faltered, and which has helped me 
 more than any other uninspired book to find my 
 way through all that might otherwise have proved 
 baffling, and transcendental, and mysterious in 
 the pecidiarities of Calvinism." ^ In a passage 
 frequently quoted, Sir James Mackintosh speaks 
 of Edwards' power of subtle argument as " per- 
 haps unmatched, certainly unsurpassed, among 
 men." ^ Dugald Stewart regarded him as not in- 
 ferior to disputants bred in the best universities of 
 Europe. It is said that in conversation he once 
 remarked that the argmnent of the Freedom of the 
 Will had not been and could not be answered. 
 The late Isaac Taylor, who edited an English edi- 
 tion of the work, esteemed it " a classic in metar 
 physics," though regretting the mixture of the 
 metaphysical with the Scriptural argiunent. He 
 also thought that Edwards had achieved his im- 
 mediate object of demolishing the Arminian notion 
 of contingency, and that his influence had been 
 much greater than those who had yielded to it had 
 
 1 Edwards the Younger, Worlcs^ vol. i. p. 484. 
 
 2 Chalmers, Works, vol. i. p. 318. 
 
 ^ Progress of Ethical Philosophy, p. 108, Am. ed. 
 
286 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 always confessed. Among other things which Ed- 
 wards had taught the world was "to be less flip- 
 pant." ^ A writer in the Christian Spectator for 
 1823 expressed the prevalent opinion when he re- 
 marked that it was curious to observe how few 
 attempts had been made formally to answer any of 
 those larger works in which Edwards put forth his 
 strength. '' Nibbling enough about the points of 
 his arguments there has certainly been, but for the 
 most part it has been extremely chary; and we 
 suspect that the few who have taken hold in ear- 
 nest have in the end found pretty good reason to 
 repent of their temerity." The general impression 
 that Edwards' argument was invincible drove those 
 who resisted his conclusion to making an appeal 
 to the consciousness in opposition to the intellect, 
 as the only available alternative ; or, in the words 
 of Dr. Johnson to Bos well, " We know that we are 
 free and there 's an end on 't." Even so late as 
 1864, a distinguished American writer, Mr. Hazard, 
 introduced his Review of Edwards on the Will by 
 remarking that the soundness of his premises and 
 the cogency of his logic were so generally admitted 
 that " almost by common consent his positions are 
 deemed impregnable, and the hope of subverting 
 them by direct attack abandoned." 
 
 In view of' these tributes of admiration, and 
 many others which could be adduced, it is unnec- 
 essary to remark that a high place must be as- 
 
 1 Introductory Essay to his edition of Freedom of the Willi 
 
 p. XXV. 
 
DEFINITION OF THE WILL. 287 
 
 signed in literature to Edwards on the Will. 
 Like Butler's Analogy, it belongs among the few 
 great books in English theology. It may claim 
 the great and peculiar honor of having first 
 opened up to the world a new subject of interest, 
 — the neglected and almost unknown sphere of 
 the human will in its vast extent and mystery. 
 It attempted to fill an empty niche in the corri- 
 dors of human thought. From an historical point 
 of view, no one can question its significance. 
 Whether its importance is now more than histor- 
 ical, it is fairly open to doubt. The book is a 
 difficult one to read, and this difficulty has been 
 generally supposed to lie in the nature of the sub- 
 ject rather than in the author's method of exposi- 
 tion. But the close scrutiny to which it has been 
 subjected has revealed a confusion in Edwards' 
 mind as one source of the difficulty which the stu- 
 dent encounters.^ The work starts out with a 
 definition of the will as " that by which the mind 
 chooses anything," — a definition which might be 
 allowed to stand, though far from being an ade- 
 quate one. But even to this definition Edwards 
 does not adhere. Hardly is he launched in his 
 argiunent when he is found resting upon another 
 ground, — that the will is that by which the mind 
 
 ^ Among other American critics of Edwards' argument besides 
 the late Mr. Hazard, are Bledsoe, Examinatioyi of Edwards on 
 the Will ; Whedon, The Freedom of the Will as a Basis of Moral 
 Besponsihility ; Tappan, Revieio of Edwards'' Inquiry, etc. In Mr. 
 Martineau's recent work, .1 Study of Religion, there is an admira- 
 ble criticism of Edwards' attitude. Cf . vol. ii. chap. 2. 
 
288 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 desires or inclines to anything ; and this ambigu- 
 ity of the word " choice " runs throughout the 
 treatise. In his Notes on the Mind he had identi- 
 fied inclination with will : to this principle he had 
 clung throughout his career as a practical theolo- 
 gian; it now turns up again in this "speculative 
 treatise, and becomes the basis of his opinion 
 regarding the nature of freedom and of human 
 responsibility. If a man possesses an inclination, 
 however derived, and has the natural power to 
 gratify it, he is free. If his inclination be evil, he 
 is a proper subject of condemnation, or of ap- 
 proval if his inclination be right. But the ability 
 to reverse the inclination, or ^6 choose between the 
 good and the evil, is no prerogative of the will. 
 
 The most striking feature of Edwards' position 
 is its close agreement with the attitude of the phys- 
 ical or materialistic school of philosophy in his 
 own and in a later age. There is no difference 
 between his doctrine and that of the ancient 
 Stoics, or of the famous philosopher Hobbes, who 
 shocked the religious world of his day by his un- 
 spiritual method of dealing with religious tilings.^ 
 
 if 
 
 1 Edwards declared that he had not read HobTics. Hume he 
 seems to have read after his own work was published. One 
 would like to know whether he had read Collins' Philosophic In- 
 quiry Concerning Human Liberty, in which views identical with 
 his own are advocated. It has been remarked that Collins' little 
 work would have made an admirable introduction to Edwards' 
 treatise. Edwards makes no allusion to him, thoug-h his book, 
 must have been widely known. Cf. Professor Fisher's valuable 
 remarks in Discussions, etc., pp. 234, 235. 
 
^k^ THE QUESTION AT ISSUE. 289 
 
 There is no perceptible difference between Edwards 
 and David Hume on the vital question of the na- 
 ture of causation. A cause is defined to be, not 
 only that which has a positive tendency to produce 
 a thino', but it includes also all antecedents with 
 which consequent events are connected, whether 
 they have any positive influence in producing them 
 or not. He assumes that uniform causes are fol- 
 lowed by uniform results. In this respect he is 
 also at one with the late John Stuart Mill, affirm- 
 ing the common principle that the life of hmnan- 
 ity, like that of outward nature, is involved in the 
 meshes of necessity. The invariableness of the 
 order of nature, man as the creature of outward 
 circumstance, the iron chain of necessity which con- 
 trols human character and conduct, — these things, 
 as Mr. Mill has taught them, are paralleled by 
 Edwards' view of a w^orld in which every event in 
 nature or in human experience is decreed by an 
 Infinite Will, and in the nature of the case cannot 
 be other\vise than it is. 
 
 Edwards' argument against the freedom of the 
 human will, in the sense of a power to choose be- 
 tween good and evil, gains its force from the 
 assumption of the thing to be proved. There is 
 no movement in his thought beyond this assum^)- 
 tion that every event must have some external 
 cause. But the question at issue is, whether the 
 will be not itself a creative cause, endowed with 
 the power of initiating acts, of choosing between 
 motives, nay, even of creating a motive to itself. 
 
290 THE PETLOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN, 
 
 The illusion under which Edwards labors is in 
 looking at man as part o£ nature, instead of as a 
 personal being, who, rising above nature, has in 
 himseK the power of new beginnings. It is un- 
 necessary to follow him in the phases of his argu- 
 ment as with matchless subtilty he reiterates the 
 principle that every event must have a cause. It 
 only requires to start with another definition of 
 the will, as, like the divine will, "a creative first 
 cause," — wherein also lies the image of God in 
 the creature, — and Edwards' objections not only 
 fail to overcome this counter principle, but even 
 tend to its confirmation. 
 
 But it is, after all, the religious argument, and 
 not the metaphysical, upon which Edwards' chief 
 reliance depends in refuting the doctrine of the 
 self-determining power of the will. If the will 
 were free to choose between good and evil, then 
 there would be uncertainty as to the result of its 
 choice, and God's foreknowledge of the volitions 
 of moral agents would be impossible. If the 
 Divine Mind could not foreknow with infallible 
 certainty the acts of the creature, how could 
 events be decreed with the infallible certainty of 
 their accomplishment ? The divine action must in 
 consequence be subject to constant revision, the 
 divine immutability give way to infinitely numer- 
 ous changes of intention. But this seemed to 
 Edwards as contradictory to Scripture as it was to 
 reason and to the moral sense. The Bible, as he 
 read it, abounded in the prediction of events at- 
 
THE RELIGIOUS ARGUMENT. 29 
 
 tributecl to God. To admit the possibility of the 
 uncertainty of human actions seemed also to in- 
 volve a tacit atheism. Such an admission limited 
 the divine omniscience, and endangered the omni- 
 potence of God. The divine Being would then be 
 conceived as standing at the mercy of man, wait- 
 ing for the human will to determine its course. 
 For such a deity, too feeble to govern the world 
 which He had made, a Calvinist like Edwards 
 could have no respect. The God of the Armin- 
 ians was to him no God at all. 
 
 The issue which is here raised is a serious one, 
 confronting every earnest thinker. While we are 
 concerned in this discussion, not so much with the 
 replies that have been or may be made to Edwards' 
 position, yet it may be said in passing that we are 
 not necessarily shut up to the alternatives of sacri- 
 ficing human freedom, or limiting the divine omni- 
 science. It is not difficult to conceive that the 
 Infinite Mind may be competent to take into ac- 
 count every use that man may make of his free- 
 dom, and to govern the world accordingly. Even 
 if it were required to conceive the divine omni- 
 science as seK-limited in order to the free develop- 
 ment of the creature, this does not make impossible 
 the divine moral government. It then would be- 
 conie a feature of the world-process as God has 
 ordered it, that the free will of man shall be the 
 means through wliich the divine purpose is to be 
 accomplished. To govern the world, and yet allow 
 full scope to human freedom, is a task more diffi- 
 
292 TEE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 cult, and therefore worthier of God. It is a grave 
 objection to Edwards' conception of the universe 
 that, when God has once decreed the course of hu- 
 man affairs down to its smallest detail, there re- 
 mains no further opportunity for the creative 
 divine activity. The same result would be ob- 
 tained if for God were substituted the action of 
 force or of unchanging law.^ 
 
 It had formed an essential part of Edwards' 
 plan in the treatment of his subject, to show that 
 the Arminian idea of the freedom of will — as 
 implying a self - determining power, or power to 
 choose between good and evil — was not only untrue 
 in itseK, but was not necessary to moral agency. 
 He had done this, apparently to his entire satisfac- 
 tion, in the third part of his book, where he elab- 
 orates his thought at some length. But the 
 scholarly recluse may become so accustomed to his 
 own line of reflection as to be out of touch with 
 the popular mind, which draws inferences from 
 premises of its own, the ground of which lies too 
 deej) to be disturbed by speculative discussion. 
 The popular inference from Edwards' argument 
 was, that he had denied the freedom of the will, 
 and in so doing had shaken the truth of moral ac- 
 countability. In Scotland, where his work had 
 
 ^ Edwards' biblical arg'ument is a defective one. But it in- 
 volves questions of Biblical criticism, — the relation between the 
 revelation and its record, — and cannot here be criticised. Ac- 
 cording" to Edwards, Scripture reads like one continuous chap- 
 ter of fulfilled prophecy. His interpretation of history is in 
 harmony with his view of life, as ordered by divine decrees. 
 
 J 
 
LORD KAMES' CONCLUSION. 293 
 
 been long expected and was eagerly received, this 
 inference was also drawn by the celebrated Lord 
 Karnes, who was entangled in speculations of his 
 own on the same subject, and who hailed Edwards 
 as a kindred sj)irit coming to his relief. Lord 
 Karnes had deduced the natural conclusion that, 
 " if motives are not under our power or direction, 
 we can at bottom have no liberty." He also rea- 
 soned that the human consciousness, which attests 
 a sense of liberty, must be therefore a delusion, 
 implanted in the soul in order to give men a sense 
 of responsibility for their acts. An anonymous 
 pamphlet was also issued in Scotland in which it 
 was maintained that, if Edwards' teaching were 
 true, it was better that it should not be known, as 
 it would endanger the feeling of human account- 
 ability. Edwards seems to have been surprised 
 and indignant when he learned through his friend 
 and correspondent, Dr. Erskine, how his views were 
 interpreted by those Avith whom he had no sympa^ 
 thy. In order to put his meaning beyond the 
 power of misinterpretation, he wrote an open let- 
 ter, which has ever since been appended to his 
 treatise on the Will, in which he defined his atti- 
 tude as:ainst those who understood him to hold that 
 the will was not free. 
 
 How, then, did he discriminate his position from 
 philosophical necessitarians, as they are called, who 
 agreed with him in holding that the will has no 
 power to choose between good and evil ? It is a 
 curious and remarkable case of how a subtle and 
 
294 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 powerful mind may fall into captivity to tlie bond- 
 ao-e of words. Edwards now declared that he 
 held to the freedom of the will, because freedom 
 consisted, not in one's power of choosing- between 
 alternatives, but in his power to pursue his incli- 
 nation without restraint. Because a man's actions 
 were necessitated, or certain to take j^lace just as 
 they did, it did not follow that he acted under 
 compulsion. Indeed, he was quite willing to give 
 up all such words as " necessity " or " inability " 
 when applied to the will. What he contended for 
 was only the certainty that men's actions would 
 take the shape they did, and that without any feel- 
 ing, on their part, of compulsion or restraint. So 
 long as there was no sense of compulsion,'% man 
 was free, no matter liow/ he came by his inclina- 
 tion, or how infallibly certain that his action should 
 be what it was. 
 
 It is rather to the credit of the necessitarians, 
 with whose principles Edwards agreed while he 
 disliked their alliance, that they refused to escape 
 the consequences of their theory by what seems a 
 hollow evasion or mere jugglery with words. Cal- 
 vin also had held consistently to the same convic- 
 tion that the will did not possess the power to 
 choose between good and evil. He had even de- 
 nounced with something of scorn in his tone the 
 manner of those who, while accepting this view, 
 still maintained that a man was free " because he 
 acts voluntarily and not by compulsion." " This 
 is perfectly true," he adds, "but why shoidd so 
 
EDWARDS' IDEA OF FREEDOM. 295 
 
 small a matter have been dignified with so proud 
 a title ? An admirable freedom I — that man is not 
 forced to be the servant of sin, while he is, how- 
 ever, a voluntary slave ; his will being bound by 
 the fetters of sin. I abominate mere verbal dis- 
 putes, by which the church is harassed to no pur- 
 pose ; but I think we ought religiously to eschew 
 terms which imply some absurdity, especially in 
 subjects where error is of pernicious consequence. 
 How few there are who, when they hear free will 
 attributed to man, do not inunediately imagine that 
 he is the master of his mind and will, and can in- 
 cline himself either to good or evil ! " ^ But this 
 small matter, as Calvin rightly deemed it, Edwards 
 chose 10 dignify, in the emergency of his conflict, 
 with the proud title of freedom. There is even a 
 tone of passion in its advocacy. He contends that 
 he differs from necessitarians like Lord Karnes 
 by holding to freedom in the highest sense. " No 
 Arminian, Pelagian, or Epicurean," he exclaimed, 
 " can rise higher in his conception of freedom than 
 the notion of it which I have explained. . . . And 
 I scruple not to say, it is beyond all their wits to 
 invent a higher notion or form a higher imagina- 
 tion of liberty; let them talk of sovereignty of 
 the will, seK-determining power, self-motion, self- 
 direction, arbitrary decision, liberty ad utruinois, 
 power of choosing differently in given cases, etc., 
 as long as they will." But Calvin was right when 
 he foresaw the consequences of dignifying so small 
 
 ; ^ institutes of Christian Religion^ book ii. ch. ii. p. 7. 
 
296 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 a matter witli so proud a title. From a fear of 
 being understood to deny the freedom of the will, 
 coupled as it was in the popular mind with the 
 sense of responsibility, the preachers who followed 
 Edwards magnified his meagre conception of free- 
 dom, and felt justified in using the Arminian 
 nomenclature. In this way Edwards' idea of free- 
 dom became a bridge of transition to a modern 
 Calvinism in which liberty is conceded in the 
 fuller sense as a ]3ower to choose between good 
 and evil. 
 
 But we reach the momentous outcome of Ed- 
 wards' argument when he applies this same idea of 
 freedom to the sovereign will of God. To the con- 
 clusion that this was the only freedom predicable 
 of God, he was driven by the necessities of his 
 thought. He was laboring to show that man is 
 free, although possessing no power to choose be- 
 tween good and evil, — free even though his action 
 be necessary or certain ; and if free, then responsi- 
 ble for his action, and deserving of praise or blame. 
 To establish this point he drew an illustration from 
 the person of Christ, with whom there was a neces- 
 sity to the right and an impossibility to sin, and 
 yet He was morally responsible, and his conduct a 
 proper subject of moral approval. From this very 
 inadequate conception of the personality of Christ, 
 he passed on to the consideration of the being of 
 God. God also is free only to do what is right, 
 — free only in the sense that He has the j^ower to 
 carry out the divine inclination. The divine free- 
 
 I 
 
THE DIVINE FREEDOM DISAPPEARS. 297 
 
 clom is therefore but another name for a divine 
 and eternal necessity. Behind the divine will 
 there lies an immutable divine wisdom, to which 
 the will of God must in the nature of the case con- 
 form. But here one is forced to ask what becomes 
 of the doctrine of the divine sovereignty, which 
 played so large a part in Edwards' earlier writings, 
 which, as he had presented it, implied in the divine 
 will a power to the contrary. How often had he 
 asserted, that God was under no obligation to save 
 man after the fall ; that when, in the exercise of 
 His sovereign will. He had determined to do so, it 
 was still a matter of His arbitrary mil whom He 
 would save and whom He would reject ! " He choos- 
 eth whom He will, and whom He will, He harden- 
 eth." The two doctrines, are plainly incompatible. 
 Sovereignty, as he had preached it, contradicts ne- 
 cessity. The divine sovereignty was the last relic 
 of freedom, when it had been denied elsewhere. 
 But it now appears as having no justification at 
 the bar of reason. Even in Edwards' conscious- 
 ness from the first, it had been a mysterious con- 
 viction, the genesis of which he could not explain. 
 It is plain that a change is now taking place in his 
 mind as to the nature of God, which is funda- 
 mental and revolutionary in its character. The 
 Aug-ustinian idea of God as arbitrary, uncondi- 
 tioned will, is growing weak in the presence of 
 another conception, — the definition of God as the 
 one substance of whose thouoht the world of 
 created things is the necessary manifestation. But 
 
298 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 tliroughout the universe there is no place for the 
 freedom of the will. 
 
 At this point, which is the cuhnination of Eel- 
 wards' argument, there opened before him diverg- 
 ing lines of thought, and which of them he should 
 take depended on whether his interest was stronger 
 in following out the line of speculation about the 
 nature of God and its relation to man, or in trac- 
 ing the origin and history of that evil inclination 
 in humanity which is known as Original Sin. The 
 discussion of the latter topic was required in order 
 to supplement the treatise on the Will. For it is 
 a noticeable feature of this treatise that no effort 
 is made to account for that inclination to evil in 
 every man, which man does not originate within 
 himself, which he is not free to reverse or over- 
 come. Elsewhere Edwards had boldly declared 
 that the will is determined by God. But we do 
 not meet this statement in any such emphatic form 
 in his work on The Will. He preferred to abide 
 by the negative demonstration that the acts of the 
 will are rendered certain by some other cause than 
 the mere power of willing. What that remoter 
 cause may be is not specially considered. He does 
 not go beyond the statement that the will is deter- 
 mined by that motive which, as it stands in the 
 mind, is the strongest, or that the will always is as 
 the greatest apparent good is. In the vast and 
 obscure region of human motives there is disclosed 
 an ample sphere where God may work unfelt or 
 unperceived, where He may so influence or direct 
 
MODERN INVESTIGATIONS. 299 
 
 the agencies which control the will that a man 
 shall do the divine bidding while still acting in 
 accordance with his own inclination. To the nat- 
 ural objection that such a view makes God the 
 author of sin, he offers a brief reply, at the same 
 time remarking that he has not space to consider 
 at length the question of the first entrance of sin 
 into the world. The subject of original sin was 
 then clearly before his mind. But the idea of 
 God had a deeper charm than the nature of man, 
 and its exposition more imperatively demanded his 
 attention. Before writing his work on Original 
 Sin, he stopped to consider the nature of True Vir- 
 tue and the Last End of God in the Creation. 
 
 With one brief remark we must dismiss the 
 treatise on the Freedom of the Will. It no longer 
 holds the same preeminence which was once ac- 
 corded to it. The spell with which it was invested 
 by an almost sacred tradition has been broken. 
 Marred as it is by its controversial purpose, it can- 
 not be regarded as a disinterested effort to reach 
 the truth. It is disfigured also by methods of 
 biblical interpretation which have been discarded 
 by a later scholarship. It has been superseded by 
 the advances made in psychology, — a study which 
 in Edwards' time was still in its infancy, — to 
 whose progress we owe the idea of the education 
 of the will, of which he takes no account whatever. 
 Althouoh the labors of modern students in this 
 field of inquiry regarding the will have by no 
 means resulted in agreement, yet the tendency of 
 
300 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 later investigation lias not been in the direction 
 which Edwards was following, but for the most part 
 tends toward the assertion 'of that freedom which 
 it was his aim to disprove. But none the less does 
 his work still possess a worth which is its o^vn, — 
 that pecuKar quality of his spirit, which gives to 
 all his writings their interest and value. He im- 
 presses the imagination, as does no other writer, 
 with the truth that, in some way unexplained, hu- 
 man freedom, however real or undiminished, must 
 yet move and have its being within the sphere of a 
 divine determinism. While it is true, as Rothe 
 has taught, that moral freedom lies in a mastery 
 over one's motives, in the ability to form and 
 modify them or to react against their influence, 
 yet this process goes on in a world where God is 
 supreme, where the divine will mingles with hu- 
 man action ; or, to adopt the words of Coleridge, 
 " Will any reflecting man admit that his own will 
 is the only and sufficient determinant of all he is 
 and all he does ? Is nothing to be attributed to 
 the harmony of the system to whicli he belongs, 
 and to the preestablished fitness of the objects and ; 
 agents, known and unknown, that surround him as 
 acting on the will, though doubtless witli it like- 
 wise ? — a process which the co-instantaneous yetj 
 reciprocal action of the air and the vital energy of] 
 the lungs in breathing may help to render intel- 
 ligible.'' 1 
 
 From Edwards' point of view, this inward union 
 
 1 Aids to Eejlection, Works, Am. ed., vol. i. p. 150. 
 
THE REAL FREEDOM. 301 
 
 or reconciliation of the divine with the human was 
 an impossibility, since the human is conceived as 
 having in itself no si^iritual affiliation. But if we 
 may be allowed to interpret him, to distinguish 
 what he may have meant to affirm from what he 
 actually teaches, it was his aim to enforce that real 
 freedom which is in harmony with necessity, — 
 that service of God wliich is the only perfect free- 
 dom. The Arminians, against whom he was con- 
 tending, also misrepresented themselves, so as al- 
 most to make it appear as if it were a desirable 
 thing for the will to remain in a state of equili- 
 brium, instead of regarding the liberty of choice 
 as a means of rising to a higher freedom where 
 the power to the contrary disappears, where a state 
 is reached in which the will is fixed in its devo- 
 tion to righteousness beyond the possibility of 
 change. As Edwards contemplated this higher 
 freedom, he rejoiced in the necessity which it in- 
 volved. In this respect he is in agreement with 
 Augustine and Anselm, with Luther and Calvin, 
 with devout souls in every age whose eyes are set 
 on God, with the spirit of all genuine worship, 
 whose essence it is to disown self in order to the 
 enthronement of the divine. 
 
302 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 III. 
 
 DEFENCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF ORIGINAL SIN. 
 
 After the publication of the Freedom of the 
 Will in 1754, Edwards wrote two dissertations, on 
 the Nature of True Virtue, and on God's Last End 
 in the Creation, as well as other treatises or essays 
 which will be described in an ensuing chapter. 
 It was after the preparation of these works that 
 he proceeded to write his book on Original Sin, 
 which was finished in 1757, and was going through 
 the press at the time of his death. For some 
 reason unexplained, he preferred to delay the 
 publication of these earlier dissertations. A ques- 
 tion therefore arises as to the order in which these 
 works should be treated. If we were to follow the 
 movement of Edwards' mind, in which there lay 
 a certain significance, it would be proper to take 
 up these remaining works in the order in which 
 they were written. But as the treatise on Original 
 Sin was published with the sanction of his personal 
 approval, which is lacking in the case of the other 
 treatises, it cannot be amiss to give it the prece- 
 dence. In the case of the other dissertations, there 
 is reason for thinking, that if he had lived he 
 would have recast them in some different shape. 
 Whichever course we take, tliere will be seen the 
 profound suggestiveness of the intellectual and 
 spiritual process in which he was engaged. 
 
MORAL AGENCY. 303 
 
 The connection is a close one between tlie trea- 
 tise on Original Sin and the doctrine of freedom 
 set. forth in the treatise on the Will. Edwards 
 now proceeds to show how man comes into posses- 
 sion of that evil inclination which he is free to fol- 
 low, but not free to reverse or overcome. It is 
 needless to remark that this conception, of freedom 
 implies a low and degTading view of human nature. 
 The younger Edwards, who defended his father's 
 teaching in a logical treatise which won for him 
 great distinction, plainly asserts what this doctrine 
 of the will clearly implies : '.' Beasts, therefore, 
 according to their measure of intelligence, are as 
 free as men. Intelligence, therefore, and not 
 liberty, is the only thing wanting to constitute 
 them moral agents." ^ But Edwards himself has 
 left us in no doubt as to his meaning. The spirit- 
 ual element, he teaches, forms no necessary part of 
 the human constitution. It is something added to 
 man over and above his nature as man, — the 
 donum supernatitrale of mediaeval theology. Vir- 
 tue, though it may be necessary to the perfection 
 and well-being of man, does not belong to man as 
 man. One may have everything needful to his 
 beinsf a man where virtue is excluded.^ For one 
 brief moment Adam, indeed, possessed this spir- 
 itual element, what Edwards calls the divine na^ 
 ture, in conjunction with his himian nature. But 
 
 1 Edwards the Younger, Improvements in Theology, etc., 
 }Vorks, vol. i. p. 483. 
 
 2 Original Sin, ch. ii. p. 477. 
 
304 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 when Adam sinned and became a rebel against 
 God, it was only just that the divine nature should 
 be withdrawn from him, and in consequence from 
 all his posterity. The merely human was then 
 left standing by itseK, superior only in its intelli- 
 gence to the brute creation, or in its greater capac- 
 ity for evil. 
 
 The interesting question now arises. How came 
 Adam to rebel against God, possessed as he was 
 of the spiritual complement to his nature which, 
 it would seem, shoidd have been a strong barrier 
 against a rising inclination to sin ? To this ques- 
 tion theologians from the time of Augustine almost 
 uniformly had replied that Adam formed an ex- 
 ception to his descendants in possessing the self- 
 determining power of the will, and thus originated 
 his sin by his own act. Such also was the answer 
 of the Westminster Assembly of Divines whose 
 Confession was accepted by English Calvinists. 
 At this point Edwards made his first great innova- 
 tion. He denied that Adam had any other free- 
 dom than was possessed by his posterity. He, too, 
 was free only in the sense that he could act accord- 
 ing to his inclination. For if Adam had possessed 
 a self -deter mining power of the will, it would have 
 implied uncertainty as to how he would act, and 
 thus made impossible the divine foreknowledge. 
 There was but one alternative in Edwards' mind, — 
 that God had decreed to permit Adam's sin ; and 
 in his own words, " sin, if it be permitted, will most 
 certainly and infallibly follow.'' ^ Although he 
 
 1 Freedom of the Will, § 9, p. 157. 
 
THE PERSONALITY OF ADAM. 305 
 
 does not like the expression, yet he is willing to 
 admit, if need be, that God is the author of sin. 
 The only qualification which he is anxious to urge 
 is, that the action of God in causing the fall shall 
 appear as indirect and not immediate. He again 
 takes refuge in the land of motives, where the di- 
 vine will may be active, but where its action is not 
 seen. " It was fitting," he remarks, " that the 
 transaction shoidd so take place that it might not 
 appear to be from God as the apparent fountain." ^ 
 Yet, as he also remarks, " God may actually in His 
 Providence so dispose and permit things that the 
 event may be certainly and infallibly connected 
 with such disposal and permission." 
 
 In all this, Edwards emphatically disclaims the 
 inference that God implants or infuses any evil 
 thing in Adam's nature. Let the disclaimer be 
 put to the credit of his heart which prevented him 
 from admitting in words what his thought unplied. 
 The first man, as he has portrayed him, becomes, 
 as to his personality, a shadowy, impossible thing, 
 a type of existence solitary and unclassified, as if 
 neither animal, or man, or angel, — an opportunity 
 as it were for the operation of the divine will, or 
 the manifestation of the divine wisdom. But how 
 does the case stand with his descendants ? We 
 are now told that when Adam sinned by rebellion, 
 it was only just and fitting that God should with- 
 draw from his posterity those superior principles 
 of the divine nature which had been implanted in 
 
 1 Freedom of the Will, p. 161. 
 
306 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 Adam, and wherein consisted the image of God. 
 " The Holy Spirit, that divine inhabitant, now for- 
 sook the house." It was with man as with a room 
 where the light ceases when the candle is with- 
 drawn. Nothing was left but human nature, a 
 state of woful corruption and ruin. But as the co- 
 existence of a divine nature with human nature in 
 the case of Adam had served no purj^ose, unless 
 it were as an advertisement of God's idea of what 
 man should be, the withdrawal of this divine na- 
 ture was like taking away its ideal from humanity. 
 Edwards argues that it was just and proper in God 
 to sever the divine image from man in his fallen 
 estate, and to remove the possibility of the divine 
 communion. But one does not see why it was not 
 quite as fitting that this divine ideal should still be 
 allowed to remain, even though it should serve no 
 other purpose than as a divine protest against the 
 predominance of the animal nature. 
 
 Edwards' argument for original sin is, to a great 
 extent, a familiar one, and needs no rehearsing. 
 His book was intended partly as a reply to a work 
 very popular in the last century, by Dr. John Tay- 
 lor, which proposed to subject this time-honored 
 doctrine to a ""'free and candid examination." Ed- 
 wards regarded Taylor as a specious writer, and 
 seems to have found satisfaction in tearing his 
 " candid examination " to shreds. Both were 
 agreed in admitting the prevalence and heinous- 
 ness of sin. But Dr. Taylor doubted its universal- 
 ity as including infants from the hour of their 
 
REALISM AND NOMINALISM. 307 
 
 birth ; he refused to admit that the general diffu- 
 sion of sin was owing to the corruption of human 
 nature, nor did he think it explained anything to 
 refer the origin of evil to Adam. It was enough 
 to suppose the force of evil example, the weakness 
 of our nature, together with the freedom of the 
 will, in explanation of the sin which originated 
 with every man. Edwards' reply consists in un- 
 rolling upon a larger canvas the picture of human- 
 ity under the universal predominance of sin, draw- 
 ing liis materials from experience and observation, 
 the history of the race, the teaching of Scripture. 
 He urges the inference that human nature must 
 have been corrupted at its original source as the 
 only adequate explanation. But how coidd human 
 nature as a whole have become inwardly depraved 
 unless through the sin of its progenitor who car- 
 ried humanity in himself, and in whom, as at its 
 primal fount, the springs of life had been contam- 
 inated? Until this point had been established, 
 Edwards' argument halted and fell short of its 
 aim. But in seeking to establish this point, he 
 was confronted by the moral sentiment and reason 
 of the age. Was it just that all men should be 
 adjudged guilty of Adam's sin, and doomed to suf- 
 fer its endless consequences ? In the earlier ages 
 of the church, when what is called realism was the 
 prevailing philosophical bias, it had been easy to 
 defend such a doctrine on the ground that all men 
 had sinned in Adam. But the spirit of nominalism, 
 prevailing widely in the eighteenth century, made 
 
308 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 such a statement seem as contrary to the reason as 
 it was repulsive to the moral sense. Nor was the 
 statement more acceptable in its modified form, — 
 that God had decreed a certain relationship Avith 
 Adam, in consequence of which his sin was im- 
 puted to his descendants, even though it were not 
 their own. Such opinions were indignantly chal- 
 lenged as irrational or immoral. Every man stood 
 by himself before God, responsible only for his 
 own guilt, and not punishable for the sin of another. 
 Edwards met the opponents of the doctrine with 
 no compromise of its ancient rigor. Nor was he 
 content merely with an appeal to Scripture. But 
 in calling reason to his aid, he produced an argu- 
 ment so novel and extraordinary in the history of 
 the doctrine that it seems to have struck his read- 
 ers, for the most part, dumb with astonishment. 
 He asserted not only that all men sinned in Adam, 
 but that every man is identical with Adam, and has 
 therefore actually committed Adam's sin. His 
 argument turned on the metaphysical question of * 
 the nature of identity. The mysterious principle, 
 by which a man remains the same being through 
 the mutations of experience, he declares to be no 
 other than " the sovereign constitution and will of 
 God." We have here again the principle of Berke- 
 ley carried beyond the sphere of sense percep- 
 tions to which Berkeley confined it, and regarded 
 as controlling the whole range of human conscious- 
 ness or intellectual activity.^ God is not only the 
 
 ^ There is a passage in the treatise on Original Sin, pt. iv., ch. 
 
NATURE OF IDENTITY. 309 
 
 universal mind which constitutes the substance of. 
 the external world, but He is also the essence which 
 lies behind the phenomena of consciousness or mind. 
 There is no essential difference between the process 
 by which we know the oak to be identical with the 
 acorn, and the self-consciousness by which a man 
 knows himself to be one and the same beinsf from 
 childhood to maturity. The hidden reality or sub- 
 stance in both cases is the immediate and contin- 
 uous action of the stable will of God. Or, to fol- 
 low Edwards' reasoning : " There would be no 
 necessity that the remembrance of what is past 
 should continue to exist but by an arbitrary consti- 
 tution of the Creator. It does not suffice to say," 
 so he continues, " that the nature of the soul will 
 account for the existence of the consciousness of 
 identity, for it is God who gives the soul this na- 
 ture : identity of consciousness depends on a law 
 of nature, and therefore on the sovereign will and 
 agency of God. The oneness of all created sub- 
 stances is a dependent identity. It is God's im- 
 mediate power which upholds every created sub- 
 stance in being. Preservation is but a continuous 
 creation. Present existence is no result of past 
 existence. But in each successive moment is wit- 
 nessed the immediate divine agency. All depen- 
 
 2, p. 479, which contains an allusion, probably, to the Berkeleyan 
 philosophy, though without mentioning it by name. " The course 
 of nature is demonstrated, by late improvements in philosophy, 
 to be indeed what our author himself says it is, viz , nothing but 
 the established order of the agency and operation of the author 
 of nature." 
 
310 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 . dent existence whatsoever is in a constant flux, ever 
 passing and returning; renewed every moment, as 
 the colors of bodies are every moment renewed by 
 the light that shines upon them. And all is con- 
 stantly proceeding from God, as light from the 
 sun." ^ The same law, then, by which a man 
 knows himself as one and the same being, despite 
 the differences of time and appearance, also binds 
 "every nmn to Adam, and creates a common con- 
 sciousness of identity with him in his sin and fall. 
 The sin of Adam, including his guilt, is therefore 
 properly imputed to every man, because by the law 
 of identity it is his own. 
 
 While this argument from the nature of identity 
 did not commend itself to Edwards' contemporaries 
 or followers, his free handling of the subject long 
 continued to be imitated. The doctrine of original 
 sin became the battle-field in New England of a 
 great controversy. In some cases the doctrine was 
 greatly modified, in others almost explained away, 
 while there were those who rejected it altogether. 
 Edwards, of course, is not to be held responsible 
 for every deduction from his premises. But the 
 tendency of an attitude so literal and extreme was 
 to neutralize the earlier meaning of the doctrine, 
 if not to give rise to a new and diverse interpreta- 
 tion. It required but a step from the principle 
 that each individual has an identity of conscious- 
 ness with Adam, to reach the conclusion that each 
 individual is Adam and repeats his experience. 
 1 Vol. ii. p. 490. 
 
DEFINITION OF SIN. 311 
 
 Of every man it might be said, that like Adam he 
 comes into the world attended with the divine na- 
 ture, and like him sins and falls. In this sense the 
 sin of every man becomes original sin. The old 
 feudal conception grows weak which regarded Adam 
 as having a proprietorship in the race of his descend- 
 ants. Instead of being the head of humanity, he 
 becomes rather its generic type on that side of its 
 existence which is of the earth earthy. 
 
 If there is any literary interest in the treatise on 
 Original Sin, it lies in the revelation of Edwards' 
 character. He was penetrated with the mystic's 
 conviction of some far-reaching, deep-seated alien- 
 ation which separates man from God. Out of his 
 ideal of the divine perfection springs his conscious- 
 ness of sin. But his conception of sin is after all 
 lacking in what may be cailed an ethical motive. 
 He defines sin as a negation, — the absence of real- 
 ity. But in this negation he seems to include the 
 infinite gidf which divides the creature from the 
 Creator. All imperfection, finiteness as contrasted 
 w4th the infinite, the interest in earthly things or 
 all which is not God, — these, as well as the lack of 
 entire disinterested devotion, or the darker vices 
 which disfigure human life, enter into Edwards' 
 conception of sin. Naturally, therefore, was he 
 indignant at what seemed the shallow theory of 
 Dr. Taylor, that " corruption and moral evil are 
 not universally prevalent, that good predominates, 
 that virtue k in the ascendant." To Edwards' 
 mind, humanity in itself was identified, with evil. 
 
312 THE rniLOSOPHlCAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 He treats with disdain the objection wliich may be 
 raised, that his view of human nature is derogatory 
 to its sacredness or dignity. He does not conde- 
 scend to its consideration. To another question 
 which arises, whether, under these circumstances, 
 the propagation of the race be not a sin, he replies 
 that such is » the will of God. 
 
 Of this treatise on Original Sin, Mr. Lecky has 
 remarked that it is "one of the most revolting 
 books that have ever proceeded from the pen of 
 man." Where, if it may be put briefly, lies the 
 fallacy of a work which can evoke such a criticism ? 
 There is a passage in the opening pages in which 
 Edwards states the method he proposes to follow : 
 "That is to be looked upon as the true tendency 
 of the natural or innate disposition of man's heart 
 which appears to be its tendency when we consider 
 things as they are in themselves or in their own 
 nature, without the interposition of divine grace." 
 But had he any right, in considering things as they 
 are, to leave out of view the divine action within 
 the soul? Is not God's grace as real as human 
 sinfulness, — the divine interposition as inevitable 
 as Adam's fall? To separate things which accom- 
 pany each other is not to see things as they are. 
 It is to commit the familiar fallacy of supposing 
 that because things may be separated in abstract 
 thought, they are also separated as a matter of fact. 
 The grace of God is as organic in its relation to 
 man as is the evil in his nature. Grace also reigns 
 wherever justice reigns. To draw a picture of hu- 
 
RISE OF ETHICAL SYSTEMS. 313 
 
 manity apart from God, is an injustice alike to 
 God and man. Such an attempt transgresses the 
 limits of a lawful rhetoric, even when seeking to 
 impress the imagination with a sense of the evil of 
 sin. 
 
 IV. 
 
 TREATISE ON THE NATURE OF TRUE VIRTUE. 
 
 The Augustinian or Calvinistic theology was not 
 a favorable soil for the growth of ethical systems. / 
 The study of ethics, indeed, had been made almost 
 impossible by the doctrine of original sin from the 
 time of Augaistine onwards. It was not till the 
 latter part of the seventeenth century, when the 
 traditional interpretation of this ancient dogma 
 was losing its hold on the popular mind, that at- 
 tention began to be given to ethical theories. The 
 deistical and Arminian writers, more particularly 
 of the eighteenth century, who were seeking to vin- 
 dicate for character and conduct a higher place in 
 religion, as if it were the most essential element, 
 found it necessary to seek for some principle which 
 shoidd explain and justify the utterances of the 
 moral nature, and bind them together in the unity 
 of a system. Edwards was watching them in this 
 constructive process, so far as it came under his 
 vision, eager to detect from his own point of view 
 the deficiency of the result. No subject could 
 have been more congenial to the natural bent of 
 
314 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 his mind. It had interested him, as we have seen, 
 from the moment when he became conscious of his 
 intellectual power, occupying the foremost place in 
 his early Notes on the Mind. Had he been free 
 from the trammels of controversy, or the seK-im- 
 posed necessity of making his conclusions square 
 with the narrow principles of his theology ; could 
 he have trusted humanity as redeemed in Christ, 
 it would seem as if he must have won his chief 
 distinction in the field of ethical inquiry. But 
 while his treatise on Virtue has never held the 
 place of honor among his wi^tings, it is worthy of 
 careful study. His conception of virtue, viewed 
 apart from the negations which accompany it, has 
 much that is suMime and inspiring. In making 
 the motive of true virtue consist in devotion to an 
 Infinite Being, he marks the first beginnings of a 
 transition in the Calvinistic churches to a theology 
 in which love is the central principle of the crea- 
 tion, and the law of all created existence. 
 
 A peculiar interest attaches to the treatise on 
 Virtue, as being the reproduction of Edwards' 
 earliest thought with no essential modification. 
 Virtue is again identified with the beaijj^ful. It 
 has its primary root in love to God for Himself 
 alone. All true excellence or beauty, all propor- 
 tion and harmony, is traced back to an ultimate 
 foundation in the necessities of pure existence or 
 being. There can be no virtue where the gradation 
 is not preserved between the existence which is in- 
 finite, and that which is created and finite. It is 
 
REVERENCE FOR BEING^ 315 
 
 not the moral character of God that first awakens 
 a moral response in the creation. It is rather the 
 infinite preponderance of existence which Deity 
 possesses, compared with which the amount of 
 created existence is as nothing, that awakens the 
 feeling of reverential awe which is the beginning 
 of true virtue. For being as he calls it, or sub- 
 stance as it might be called, Edwards like Spinoza 
 felt a profound and awful reverence. That which 
 is called great, even in the moral universe, is great 
 because it has more of existence than that which 
 is small. The comparison is that of a large piece 
 of gold to a tiny fragment of the same material. 
 The value depends upon the quantity. In the 
 relative amount of being possessed by the arch- 
 angel and the worm lies the difference which dis- 
 tinguishes and separates them. In the last resort, 
 it is being which is the most sacred and awful of 
 realities. And being possesses sanctity and value 
 because it is the furthest remove from nonentity, 
 which is the greatest evil.^ 
 
 This doctrine of Edwards seems to imply a phys- 
 ical or at least an unetliical basis as the ground 
 of the moral or spiritual. It is not difficult to see 
 
 1 " Being, in what we should call an awful nakedness, not 
 unconnected surely (how can it be ? ) with life and action ; not 
 separated, as it is in Spinoza, from a personal will, but almost as 
 separate from all relations, almost as far removed from humanity 
 as it is in his metaphysics, — is the ground of the divinity of Ed- 
 wards, is the ground also (subject to the exception we have just 
 mentioned) of his ethics."— Maurice, Hist. Modern Phil, p. 473. 
 Cf ., also, Chapter I., First Period, pp. 6-10, ante. 
 
316 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 how he came to identify the two. The physical 
 or the material did not in his view possess any 
 real existence except in the will of God. In 
 God's will lies the only substance. A monism 
 more absolute it is impossible to conceive. As 
 bodies have no real existence, and spirits are but 
 the communication of the Infinite Spirit, it was 
 necessary for him to insist upon the infinite quan- 
 tity of the Divine existence, as contrasted with the 
 human, if he would escape the consequence of his 
 theory which tended to identify all existence with 
 God. So deeply is he impressed with this necessity 
 of his thought, that he reads it into the minds of 
 others even when it would be disowned. He ap- 
 plied it to the doctrine advocated by Hutchinson 
 and the Arminian school, that virtue consisted in 
 love or benevolence to all men, or in regarding the 
 good of all, or of the greatest number, in prefer- 
 ence to the interest of self. He assumes that the 
 reason why these writers give the preference to the 
 greatest number must be on account of the larger 
 quantity of being which all men, taken together, 
 possess when compared with the amount of being 
 in the individual. On this ground he calls upon 
 them to carry out the principle in its application 
 to God. They seem to him inconsistent when they 
 make morality consist in love to men, and do not 
 rather make it consist primarily and even exclu- 
 sively in the love toward God. That Edwards 
 had struck a note of profound significance must 
 be confessed. But it can hardly be called an eth- 
 
EXISTENCE THE ULTIMATE REALITY. 317 
 
 ical principle. It is a principle which underlies 
 religion, if religion be defined as, in its origin, the 
 sense of awe in the presence of the mystery of 
 the universe. But how unethical it is may be 
 illustrated by a passage which Edwards was fond of 
 quoting, — '' The devils also believe and tremble." 
 But he seems to have clung to his position the 
 more strenuously for this reason, — that it enabled 
 a totally depi'aved humanity to discern clearly the 
 ground of its condemnation. Even if the wicked 
 could not appreciate God's moral excellence or 
 rejoice in His beauty, yet they could recognize His 
 infinite greatness, resistance to the attraction of 
 which constitutes evil. In the consummation of 
 things at the last judgment, the verdict against 
 sinners would be sufficiently justified by this prin- 
 ciple alone. 
 
 The ethical principle of Edwards is defective in 
 grounding morality in the immeasurable, incom- 
 prehensible essence of -God. The landmarks dis- 
 appear by which the good in itseK may be recog- 
 nized. His insistence on this principle reveals at 
 the heart of his theology a defect which he had not 
 been able to overcome. Infinite power or force, a 
 physical attribute of Deity, becomes the ultimate 
 reality. Had he carried out his principle, it must 
 have made impossible the Incarnation. For Christ 
 is the revelation of God as a spiritual or moral 
 being. The goodness of God can be revealed in 
 humanity when God in the depth and mystery of 
 His infinite existence is unknown. Though Christ 
 
818 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 emptied Himself of the infinite glory and majesty 
 of tlie divine existence, yet, in making Himself of 
 no reputation, he still revealed in the flesh the es- 
 sential image or quality of God. What else was 
 the significance of the Incarnation but the en- 
 trance of God into humanity, the confinement of 
 Deity as it were within human limits, in order 
 that He might be measured by human capacity, 
 and known and loved as the divine ? The mysti- 
 cism of Edwards here appears as overreaching it- 
 self, till the soul is in danger of being lost in the 
 abyss of the incommensurable. 
 
 But this is not all of Edwards' doctrine concern- 
 ing virtue. The truly virtuous soul, who begins 
 with loving God for His infinite existence, ad- 
 vances to the love of God for His moral excellence. 
 To such a soul God appears as preeminently lov- 
 able, because of the infinite love wherewith He 
 loves Himself supremely. To be in unison with 
 this love is to rest in the ultimate harmony of 
 things. It is to be one with God, for it is to be 
 governed by the same principle, rejoicing in God 
 as God rejoices in Himself. The love for indi- 
 vidual or particular beings, in order to be genuine, 
 must spring out of the love toward God as its mo- 
 tive and sanction. But a difficulty arises here in 
 the interpretation of Edwards' meaning. It was 
 thought by the distinguished Robert Hall that his 
 teaching must result in making individual affec- 
 tions useless, or even pernicious, supposing that 
 they were any longer possible ; for, in order to ob- 
 
THE INDIVIDUAL AFFECTIONS. 319 
 
 serve the right proportion between the love of God 
 and that of the individual, the latter love must be 
 infinitely less than the former, — a distinction of 
 which the human mind was incapable.^ Mr. Hall, 
 also believed that Godwin, the poet Shelley's 
 father-in-law, was indebted to Edwards for his 
 leading arguments against the private affections.^ 
 Edwards' silence on this point is a reason for 
 doubting if he would have sanctioned such an in- 
 ference from his position. There is but one pas- 
 sage in the treatise on Virtue in which he appears 
 to hold that love or benevolence 'must be propor- 
 tioned to the degree of existence. What he does 
 urge is the tendency of love toward God to pro- 
 duce exercises of love toward particular beings as 
 occasion may arise, — that he who has true love to- 
 wards God will be more disposed than others to be 
 moved with benevolence towards individuals. But 
 the ordinary mind draws its own inferences. One 
 can hardly read this treatise without feeling that 
 he is putting God in contrast with man, as if to 
 weigh them in the scales of thought. And the re- 
 sult is, that either the individual affections become 
 impossible, or God is robbed of his infinitude.^ 
 
 1 Hall, Works, p. 284, Bohn ed. 
 
 ^ Godwin, Political Justice, vol. i. p. 301, Amer. ed. 
 
 ^ There is a contradiction in this treatise on Virtue, of which 
 Edwards may not have been aware. If he had said plainly, what 
 his thought implies, that the creature has no existence outside of 
 God, his attitude would have been clear and consistent. But he 
 seems also to grant an infinitesimal portion of an independent ex- 
 istence to humanity. He halts between these two opinions, neither 
 of which is quite acceptable to him. 
 
320 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 That Edwards had not made his meaning clear, 
 or that its perversion was an almost necessary con- 
 sequence of so high an ideal, was shown in the 
 next generation, when his disciple, Dr. Samuel 
 Hopkins, was wrestling with the difficulties created 
 by the treatise on Virtue. Dr. Hopkins drew the 
 inference that to love God for Himself alone re- 
 quired that every man should be willing to be 
 damned, if thereby God's happiness and glory 
 could be promoted. Dr. Hoj^kins was also puz- 
 zled by another difficidty. He assumed that it 
 was fitting for man to love only those who were 
 loved by God. But it was impossible in this world 
 to know with certainty who were God's elect, to 
 whom He vouchsafed His love. Under these cir- 
 cumstances, if one's love went forth to his fellows 
 it must be a sort of hypothetical or tentative affec- 
 tion. The incongruities, the absurdities even, to 
 which Edwards' teaching gave rise, were not alto- 
 gether inherent in his theory, but sprang from its 
 association with the Calvinistic doctrine of election 
 or predestination. If this doctrine be dismissed 
 from view, his conce23tion of virtue bears a close 
 resemblance to the ethics of Spinoza. One might 
 be justified in thinking that Edwards would have 
 approved these propositions from the Etliica : 
 " God loves Himself with an infinite intellectual 
 ''love " (v. 35) ; " The intellectual love of the 
 mind towards God is that very love whereby God 
 loves Himself " (v. 36) ; " The good which every 
 man who follows after virtue desires for himself 
 
SPINOZA AND GOETHE. 321 
 
 lie will also desire for other men, and so much the 
 more in proportion as he has a greater knowledge 
 of God " (iv. 37) ; " He who loves God cannot 
 endeavor that God shoidd love him in return" 
 (v. 19). Transcendent ethical impidses like these 
 were struofoiino; in the bosom of the old New Eno-- 
 land Calvinism, in sharp conflict with the selfish- 
 ness which it naturally engendered. We may 
 smile at the ungainly shape which the principle of 
 disinterested virtue assmned in Hopkins' theology. 
 But the same principle assumes a fair, attractive 
 guise in its large and human presentation by the 
 great German poet. Goethe writes, after reading 
 Spinoza : "A large and free view of the sensible 
 and moral world seemed to open itself before me. 
 But what specially chained me to him was the 
 boundless disinterestedness which shone forth from 
 every proposition. That wondrous word, ' who 
 rightly loves God must not demand that God 
 should love him in return,' with all the prem- 
 ises on which it rests, and all the conclusions that 
 flow from it, entirely filled my thought.^ To be 
 disinterested in all, and most disinterested in love 
 and friendship, was my highest joy, my maxim, 
 my practice ; and so that later petulant saying of 
 
 1 "Mr. Brainerd's religion," says Edwards, "was not selfish 
 and mercenary : his love to God was primarily and principally for 
 the supreme excellency of His own nature, and not built on a 
 preconceived notion that God loved him, had received him into 
 favor, and had done great things for him, or promised great 
 things to him : so his joy was joy in God, and not in himself." 
 — Reflections on the Memoirs of Mr. Brainerd, vol. i. p. 659. 
 
322 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 mine, ' If I love thee, what is that to thee ? ' was 
 spoken from my very heart." ^ 
 
 The resemblance is close between Edwards and 
 Spinoza ; but so also is the divergence great. One 
 of Spinoza's propositions reads, " No one can hate 
 God " (v. 17). It was Goethe's method in per- 
 suasive speech always to address men as if they 
 were already what it was desirable they should be- 
 come. Spinoza had also written : " He who clearly 
 and distinctly understands himself and his emo- 
 tions loves God, and so much the more in pro- 
 portion as he more understands himseK and his 
 emotions " (v. 15). And again : '' The more we 
 understand particular things, the more do we un- 
 derstand God " (v. 24). If the tendency of Spi- 
 noza's ethics was toward moral laxity, in conse- 
 quence of his obliterating the distinction between 
 God and man, Edwards stood at the other extreme, 
 and made virtue so difficult as to be almost impos- 
 sible. The greater part of the treatise on Virtue 
 is devoted to the negative effort of showing that 
 there is no virtue in acts which are prompted by 
 self-love, or the action of the natural conscience. 
 The principle is affirmed and reiterated that "what- 
 ever benevolence or generosity toward mankind, or 
 other virtues or moral qualifications which go by 
 that name, any are . possessed of, that are not at- 
 tended with a love of God which is altogether 
 above them and to which they are subordinate and 
 on which they are dependent, there is nothing of the 
 
 ^ Hedge, Ways of the Spirit, p. 265. 
 
THE CONSCIOUS LOVE OF GOD. 323 
 
 nature of true virtue or religion in them." The 
 private affections, unless they spring from the con- 
 scious love of God, have no moral value. There are 
 instincts in humanity which in some respects resem- 
 ble virtue, but they are only instincts, springing 
 only from self-love. Such is the love of parents 
 for their children, or the pity which is natural to 
 mankind when they see others in distress. Even 
 if the soul of a man should go forth in love and 
 devotion toward the whole race, without regard to 
 God's existence, such love or benevolence would 
 not be of the nature of true virtue. It is as if 
 Edwards stood in an attitude of defiance toward 
 the process of the divine revelation as given in 
 human history or experience. His principle seems 
 a grand and inspiring one, that true virtue must 
 begin and end with loving God supremely. But 
 is not tliis rather the ultimatum, the final goal to 
 which virtue tends, rather than its incipient mo- 
 tive ? The divine training of humanity begins with 
 and leads tln-ough the human in order to end in 
 the divine. Out of the love of children for parents, 
 the divinest of all analogies, there arises the love 
 toward God. ''He that loveth not his brother 
 whom he hath seen, how shall he love God whom 
 he hath not seen ? " 
 
 The moralists of the last century spoke of a 
 moral sense endowed with a direct insight into the 
 nature of virtue, — of a natural conscience capable 
 of approving right and condemning e^dl. Edwards 
 refused to admit that the action of conscience im- 
 
324 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 plied any virtuous principle, inasmuch as it could 
 not rise to tlie love of Being in general, which is 
 God. Even though the conscience approved things 
 that are excellent, or condemned their opposites, 
 this did not imply any spiritual sense or virtuous 
 taste. The natural conscience, when well informed, 
 will approve of true virtue, and condemn the want 
 of it, without seeing the beauty of true virtue. 
 Edwards was impressed with the fact which came 
 under his vision, that there prevailed a striking 
 analogy between the benevolent deeds of the nat- 
 ural man which have no true virtue in them, and 
 the deeds of the virtuous man which are made 
 valid and beautiful by consecration to the divine 
 love. It was certainly incumbent on him to inquire 
 into the analogy in order to detect its full signifi- 
 cance. But he waives the question, as if it had no 
 special bearing on his theme. Why there should 
 be such an analogy, he remarks, it is not needful 
 to inquire. It is sufficient to observe that God is 
 pleased to maintain such an analogy in all His 
 works. Wherever we look, it may be seen that 
 God has established inferior things in an analogy 
 to superior things. Brutes are, in many instances, 
 in analogy to the nature of mankind, and plants 
 to animals. The external world is in analogy in 
 numberless instances to things in the spiritual 
 world. And so also it is with natural men, or the 
 great majority of human kind, in their conduct 
 and character, when compared with the few who 
 are truly virtuous. All that can be said is, that 
 
UNCONSCIOUS GROWTH. 325 
 
 God has been pleased to make this kind of consent 
 and agreement as a beautiful and grateful vision 
 to all intelligent beings, — an image, as it were, of 
 the true spiritual, original beauty which is in God. 
 While the action of the natural conscience does 
 not rise into the sphere of virtue, it still serves a 
 usefid purpose in the divine economy. Gratitude, 
 sympathy, pity, charity, the spirit of public benev- 
 olence, the love of country, the domestic affections, 
 or conjugal or filial love, — these do not have in 
 them the nature of true virtue, and yet they are nec- 
 essary to the order and happiness of social institu- 
 tions. These qualities have in them also a certain 
 negative goodness, implying in greater or less de- 
 gree the absence of moral evil. For these reasons 
 many mistake them for truly virtuous actions. 
 But upon this point Edwards is uncompromising 
 in the rigidity of his attitude. There is no virtue 
 in them unless they are subordinated to the con- 
 scious love of Being in general, which is God. 
 
 It is difficidt to treat Edwards' teaching on this 
 subject with that impartial justice which it de- 
 mands. One is in danger of spurning what is true 
 and sublime in his thought, because of its close 
 conjunction with what oui' moral nature condemns 
 as false. A reaction has long been in process 
 against his ruling conviction, which has not yet 
 reached its limit. So far has the modern mind 
 gone in the opposite direction, that to some the 
 idea of God seems like a waste of energy in the 
 presence of appeals to the moral nature. The 
 
326 THE PUILOSOPniCAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 pliilosopliy of tlie miconscious, if we may so call it, 
 underlies to a great extent oiir modern theology 
 and ethical systems. Upon it rests the larger hojie 
 for the myiiads who have come and gone, doing 
 their work apart from any conscious service of 
 God. As if by tacit assent, the intellect or the 
 conscious will is subordinated to the instincts. To 
 live by the emotions, to grow by unconscious effort, 
 has become the modern ideal. In all this there 
 may be a justifiable protest against the narrowness 
 of the conclusion that God is not where He is not 
 consciously known or served. There are words of 
 Christ Himself, spoken to those who have served 
 Him in unconsciousness, as when He was in hunger 
 or in thirst, in sickness or nakedness, or in prison, 
 which seem to justify what Edwards labored to 
 disprove. " Forasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
 of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it 
 unto me." There is truth in Edwards' position if 
 conscious knowledge be the goal toward which we 
 are moving, which even here we struggle to attain. 
 His error lay in cherishing true virtue as the pre- 
 cious pearl, to the neglect of that other illustration 
 to which Christ compares the life of God in the 
 soul, — the leaven slowly penetrating but destined 
 to revolutionize the world. He neglected the small 
 beginnings, the tedious process, in order to fasten 
 his gaze upon the remote result when the course 
 of aaes should have done its work. He looked to 
 the distant end when the kingdom should be de- 
 livered up to the Father, and God should be all in 
 
MYSTERY OF THE CREATION. 327 
 
 all. So absorbed was he in tbe prospect that he 
 counted humanity as nothing, so far as it still ex- 
 isted unconscious of its destiny, or as an obstacle 
 in the way of the fulfilment of the beatific vision. 
 
 V. 
 
 god's last end in the creation. 
 
 One more treatise remains to be considered, and 
 Edwards' long controversy with the Arminians is 
 over. The title which he gave to liis work. The 
 Last End of God in the Creation, is an interesting 
 one. It suggests the profound and fascinating 
 speculations of Gnostic theosopliies. It recalls the 
 mystic thinkers of the Middle Ages, an Erigena 
 or an Eckart ; the wonderful poetry or the vast 
 reaches of thought in Schelling and the Hegelian 
 philosophy. But Edwards comes to the subject 
 afresh, as if it had never been broached before. 
 One cannot help feeling that in this sphere of de- 
 vout speculation on the hidden mystery and destiny 
 of the creation, he might have been the peer of his 
 predecessors or followers had he only been free to 
 indulge the bent of his poetic-creative genius. But 
 while Edwards is free, so far as the presumptions 
 of traditional theology are concerned, yet the de- 
 mands of a practical theology are always upper- 
 most in his mind. If at times he appears to forget 
 himself and soars in philosophic contemplation, or 
 
328 TEE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 seems as if he would lose himself and revel in the 
 open mystery of God, he soon returns to his direct 
 purpose, which is to give a final blow to the re- 
 motest cause of the Arminian heresy. Until he 
 had done this, his work was not complete. 
 
 All other questions had been leading up to the 
 determination of the final object for which God 
 made the world. Back to this issue were to be 
 traced the fundamental differences which divided 
 the two religious schools. But in one respect these 
 schools were agreed, dominated as they were by 
 the spirit of the eighteenth century, in regarding 
 ha]3piness as the end of existence. Edwards de- 
 fines God as a supremely happy Being, in the most 
 absolute and highest sense j)ossible, so that God is 
 free from everything that is contrary to happiness, 
 — so that in strict propriety of speech there is no 
 such thing as pain, or grief, or trouble in Him.^ 
 In all that God does, He has reference to His own 
 happiness. The Arminians, on the other hand, 
 made the happiness of the creation the ultimate 
 end of God, representing Him even as if indiffer- 
 ent to His own interests or dignity in order to 
 secure the happiness of the creature. This ten- 
 dency to think of happiness as the primary issue 
 lowers the tone of the discussion. Before theology 
 could recover from the degradation into which it 
 fell in the last century, an ethical purpose must be 
 conceived as having supremest sway in the divine 
 existence, and in consequence permeating the vini- 
 verse of created things. 
 
 1 Cf. Freedom of the Will, § 9, eh. 4. 
 
 J 
 
THE DIVINE FELICITY. 329 
 
 Edwards did not deny that God had some refer- 
 ence, in the final end of the creation, to the happi- 
 ness of the creature ; but it must be an indirect 
 and subordinate end, not the ultimate or crowning 
 purpose. It is one part of his aim to reconcile 
 this subordinate reference to the creature with 
 the more important principle that God's supreme 
 end in all things is HimseK alone. Of this Ed- 
 wards was convinced above all, that God had made 
 the world for His own glory. This had been the 
 dearest conviction of his life from the time of his 
 youth onward. Only let God be supremely happy, 
 let Him be lovely in all His glorious beaut}% and 
 it did not matter so much about the world of cre- 
 ated things. But it was also part of Edwards' be- 
 lief that God gave it to some of His creatures to 
 share ^vith Him in His felicity. It was therefore 
 necessary to show that God's purpose in bestomng 
 happiness upon these could be reconciled with His 
 supreme devotion to Himself. 
 
 Two points stand out with great clearness in 
 Edwards' discussion of his theme ; they may be 
 taken as axioms in his mind, so unhesitatingly does 
 he assume them. The first is, that God cannot 
 love anything other than HimseK. He is so great, 
 He comprises in Himself so preponderating an 
 amount of being, that what is left is hardly worth 
 considering. Or, to use Edwards' words, the whole 
 system of created beings, if put in comparison with 
 the Creator, " would be found as the light dust of 
 the balance (which is taken no notice of by him 
 
330 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 that weighs), and as less than nothing and vanity." 
 And in the second place, so far as God has any 
 wlove for the creation, it is because He Himself is 
 diffused therein. The fulness of His own essence 
 has overflowed into an outer world, and that which 
 He loves in created beings is His essence imparted 
 to them. In seeking the creature, God does not go 
 out of Himself, but rather seeks Himself. If God 
 may be said to have any pleasure in the happy 
 state of the creature, it is because and in so far as 
 He Himself exists by emanation in the creature. 
 That which is communicated to the creature, which 
 makes him an object of God's complacency or love, 
 is something divine, something of God. God thus 
 becomes all in all with reference to the felicity of 
 His chosen ones. He continues to pour His own 
 divine essence into them, in j^roportion to their 
 capacity to receive it, until in the final consumma- 
 tion they shall become, as it were, swallowed up in 
 God.i 
 
 Such is Edwards' solution of the question, how 
 God can love Himself supremely and exclusively 
 and yet include the creature in His love. To reach 
 this result he appears as denying any degree of 
 self-dependent existence to the creation. He has, 
 indeed, met the Arminian position, but in so doing 
 has sacrificed all that is not God. Some other 
 inferences are also apparent. If this treatise rep- 
 resented his final judgment, the idea of creation 
 hs an origination de nihilo, the received doctrine 
 1 Vol. ii. pp. 210, 211. 
 
GNOSTICISM AND N EO-PLATONISM. 331 
 
 of the- church, could hardly find a legitimate place 
 in his system. He does not reject it, but he con- 
 stantly substitutes emanation for creation, as if its • 
 fidl equivalent. Throughout this treatise " emana- 
 tion " is the word about which the thought revolves. 
 The book has a Gnostic or Neo-Platonic atmos- 
 phere. The old phrases, such as the overflow of 
 the divine fulness, diffusion of the divine essence, 
 emanation from God compared mth the light and 
 heat which go forth from the sun, — these consti- 
 tute the verbal signs of Edwards' thought. It is 
 possible that he might have avoided them had he 
 kno^vn their earlier association. But they repre- 
 sent tridy the tendency of his mind ; they stand for 
 principles which had been lying for years beneath 
 his practical theology. The distinction between 
 an elect and non - elect humanity, to which the 
 Gnostics also gave great prominence, forced him 
 into a similar philosophical exposition of the 
 ground on which the distinction rested. There 
 were various ways in which the Gnostics repre- 
 sented the final disposition of the non-elect portion 
 of the race. But they are one with Edwards in 
 regarding the elect as containing in varpng de- 
 grees an infusion of the divine essence which 
 makes their salvation possible. 
 
 There is also another marked resemblance be- 
 tween Edwards' thought and the Gnostic theoso- 
 phies. He is not only asking the same questions 
 under similar circumstances and mth substantial 
 agreement in the answer, but he also denies that 
 
332 THE PHILOSOPniCAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 the divine love goes forth to every part of the crea- 
 tion. In the most emphatic manner does he assert, 
 and reiterate the assertion, that the creation exists 
 only for the elect portion of humanity.^ The end 
 of the lower creation is man, and the end of man- 
 kind is the elect, and the end of the elect is God. 
 But he would not willingly reject the expression, 
 however he may empty it of reality, that God loves 
 the world. The expression is a true one, but only 
 when we consider the creation as a system or as a 
 whole. If we cease to consider the interests of the 
 individual man, evidence can be found for the di- 
 vine benevolence in the scheme of the universe. 
 Or, to quote again the words of the younger Ed- 
 wards, commenting on his father's achievement in 
 this argument as another victory over the Armin- 
 ians : " The declarative glory of God is the creation 
 taken, not distributively, but collectively, as a sys- 
 tem raised to a high degree of happiness." ^ 
 
 As to the question, whether the creation was an 
 eternal necessity in the nature of the divine Being, 
 the thought of EdAvards vacillates. He argues 
 that it is fitting and desirable that the divine ac- 
 tivity should be manifested, and that without a 
 creation the divine attributes would have had no 
 exercise. The power which is sufficient for such 
 great things, unless there had been a creation, 
 must have been dormant and useless.^ It is also a 
 good thing in itself that God's glory should be 
 
 1 Cf. End in Creation, pp. 211, 224, 245. 
 
 2 Works, vol. i. p. 481. 3 ^„^ ^j- Creation, vol. ii. p. 204. 
 
ETERNAL CREATION. 333 
 
 known and rejoiced in by a glorious society of 
 created beings. As he thinks of the church of 
 the redeemed, he is ahnost tempted to feel as if 
 it were necessary to the completion of the di\dne 
 happiness, as though God would be sometliing 
 less than God without it. The creation may in 
 some sense be regarded as the midtiplication of 
 the divine Being, just as the fulness of good 
 tliat is in the fountain increases into the river, 
 or as the light flows forth in abundant streams 
 from the sun. But if expressions like these point 
 toward creation as a necessity in God which would 
 almost justify the doctrine of an eternal creation, 
 yet there are other passages in which the opposite 
 is plainly asserted. God's happiness and glory 
 before the creation are represented as capable of 
 receiving no addition, as if He knew Himself and 
 rejoiced in Himself without the exercise of His 
 powers in a continuous creation. One would have 
 supposed that a Deity whose powers, as Edwards 
 asserts, " lay dormant and useless as to any effect " 
 until the creation, must at least have been an im- 
 perfect Deity, if indeed He could be conceived as 
 having existence at all. But in this treatise on 
 God's Last End in the Creation, no effort is made 
 to overcome the contradiction. The deeper ques- 
 tions which concern the nature of being, or of per- 
 sonality or consciousness, are left untouched. But 
 we hasten to add that Edwards confesses himself 
 not entirely satisfied with his statements and con- 
 clusions. Such an admission is so rare in his writ- 
 
334 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 ings that it arrests attention as worthy of special 
 remark. More than once he alludes to the diffi- 
 culty of the subject, the mystery which enshrouds 
 it, the inadequacy of language to express such 
 exalted realities. He still believes in endeavoring 
 to discover what the voice of reason teaches upon 
 these things ; but revelation is the surest guide, 
 and to what Scripture teaches he devotes the re- 
 mainder of the treatise. • 
 
 As we follow him here, it is apj)arent that he is 
 still within the circle of his own reason and cannot 
 go beyond it. He lays down the principles on 
 which he proposes to interpret Scrijiture, but these 
 principles he has first derived from reason. The 
 result is that Scripture adds nothing to the argu- 
 ment : it offers only a large and varied field of 
 illustration. He is more ^particularly impressed 
 with the familiar phrase so common in the Old 
 Testament, that God's providence in the world is 
 manifested for His name's sake. To the study of 
 this phrase — the name of God as the end of the 
 divine activity — he devotes two sections of his 
 treatise. But he does not get beyond the theol- 
 ogy of the Old Testament in studying the mystery 
 of the divine name. God's name's sake is simply 
 His own sake, and His name is identical with His 
 glory. There is a moment, however, when he seems 
 to stand on the eve of a great transition. He re- 
 marks : " I might observe that the phrase the glory 
 of God is sometimes manifestly used to signify the 
 second person in the Trinity. But it is not neces- 
 
THE ETERNAL CHRIST. 335 
 
 sary at this time to consider that matter." The 
 point whose consideration might have relieved him 
 from his perplexity he passes over as irrelevant. 
 He passes over the momentous fact that while it is 
 God's name's sake in the Old Testament, it is the 
 name of Christ that gives significance to the new 
 dispensation. It is strange that he should not 
 have recalled in this connection how the prayers 
 of the Christian church in every age had been of- 
 fered in the name of Christ, till the formula had 
 almost come to be regarded as an essential ending 
 to all petitions. So prominent has been the name 
 of Christ during the Christian ages that, unless 
 there be some eternal organic unity of Christ with 
 God which rests in the very nature of the divine 
 Being, it would seem as if God had been robbed 
 of His glory by One whose special mission it was 
 to proclaim and honor Him, whose meat and drink 
 it was to do the ^vill of Him that sent Him. 
 
 In passing over all that the name of Christ im- 
 plies as not essential to his argument, Edwards 
 rejected the aid which would have saved him from 
 confusion and failure. In the doctrine of the 
 Trinity lay the resolution of the problem he was 
 considering. If the doctrine means anything at 
 all, it must mean everything when discussing the 
 last end of God in the creation. It is of Christ 
 that St. Paul remarks that/b/' Him are all things, 
 as well as hy Him, and that in Him all things con- 
 sist. Because Edwards did not recognize the bear- 
 ings of this doctrine, he is driven to conceive the 
 
336 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 motive of God in tlie end of things as a selfish one. 
 In this treatise, as in his Nature of True Virtue, 
 the apparent effect is to glorify an infinite and 
 celestial selfishness. It is true that God seeks His 
 own glory, and is Himself the final end of His cre- 
 ation. But this truth must in some way be coun- 
 terbalanced by the equally essential truth that God 
 also exists for another, and in existing for an- 
 other, and seeking the glory of another, most truly 
 exists for self and realizes His own peculiar glory. 
 It has been admirably remarked, as a summary 
 of the question at issue, that the divine nature 
 demands, in the eye of thought, either an eternal 
 Christ or an eternal creation. Otherwise the idea 
 of God becomes impossible. Edwards, one is 
 forced to believe, must have come face to face with 
 the dilemma ; but again he is silent where speech 
 was demanded. He had recoiled from deism, as 
 if it were the negation of God. But, if we take 
 this treatise as it stands, he cannot save himself 
 from being wrecked on the opposite shore, — some 
 form of pantheism, which, while seeming to honor 
 the divine name, does so in appearance only, and 
 equally with deism endangers the divine reality. 
 He may have struggled to escape, though he makes 
 no sign, as he approached the dangerous pass, the 
 Scylla and Charybdis of all human speculation on 
 the nature of God. 
 
 The speculative treatises at which we have been 
 glancing were written in rapid succession, under 
 the heavy pressure of the cares of life and amid 
 
CONFESSION OF FAILURE. 337 
 
 tlie weakness of declining strength. Until recent 
 years it was by these works alone that Edwards 
 was known as a philosophical theologian. In the 
 opinion of his literary executors, as they may be 
 called, Dr. Samuel Hopkins and the younger Ed- 
 wards, these works included his final convictions. 
 But we have seen that in this treatise on the Last 
 End of God in the Creation, he had struck some 
 difficulty which he makes no attempt to solve. It 
 is pathetic to find him bemoaning the difficulty 
 and the mystery of his theme. He had flung liim- 
 seK into the infinite abyss confident that a way 
 through the pathless void led up to God. But his 
 later unpublished writings, as we are told, abound 
 in confessions of a sense of the mystery of things. 
 Had his thought, so far as he had completed it, 
 found full expression in these four treatises we 
 have been reviewing, it must be admitted that his 
 work as a speculative thinker had ended in confu- 
 sion, if not in failure. In all these treatises there 
 is seen the tendency to one common conclusion, 
 — that nothing exists but God : His existence, be- 
 ing infinite, must be equivalent to universal exist- 
 ence. By a downward movement from God, hu- 
 manity as well as the whole reahn of nature are 
 swooped up by the sole activity of the one universal 
 will. But Edwards had not attained a position in 
 which he could rest, securely poised amid the winds 
 and storms that agitate the atmosphere of hmnan 
 thought. He had come to the final question which 
 the mind can ask regarding God and His relation 
 to the world, and was not satisfied with the answer. 
 
338 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 As disturbances in the motion of the spheres are 
 said to have suggested the possibility of an undis- 
 covered planet, and even led to the calculation of 
 its size and place, so the perturbations of Edwards' 
 thought point to some supreme object of interest 
 and inquiry, of which no traces are to be found in 
 his collected works, in regard to which his literary 
 executors were silent, and over which his biogra- 
 pher has drawn a deeper veil of obscurity by seem- 
 ing to give a complete survey of his career. That 
 subject was no other than the Christian doctrine 
 of the Trinity. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 
 
 For a long time, possibly so far back as the last 
 century, there has existed a suspicion, under whose 
 various forms there was a common substance, that 
 in i^dwards' writings there existed a " tentative " 
 element which did not express his final conviction. 
 No student of Edwards' collected works can pro- 
 ceed very far with their examination without feel- 
 ing that he wrote, at times, more for the purpose 
 of relieving his own mind than for the edification 
 of the reader. In his solitary life, excluded from 
 the company of his equals, and shut out from 
 much of the highest literature, he became accus- 
 tomed, as it were, to thinking aloud, a feature of 
 his works which does not lend to their elegance of 
 
UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS. 339 
 
 form or to ease in their interpretation. We are 
 also told that he was always writing, thinking with 
 his pen in his hand, stopping by the wayside, or 
 rising at night to record his thoughts. It is not 
 therefore surprising to learn that, voluminous as 
 are his collected works, he should also have left 
 behind him a vast amount of manuscript which, 
 according to the testimony of its curators, sur- 
 passes in extent his published writings. That 
 these manuscripts should contain, as is asserted, a 
 " thorouo-h record of his intellectual life," it is 
 easy to believe, as also that there are among them 
 "papers of great interest and value that have 
 never been given to the public." ^ 
 
 1 Rev. Try on Edwards, D. D., Introduction to Charity and its 
 Fruits. Dr. Edwards further remarks: "These manuscripts 
 have also been carefully preserved and kept together ; and about 
 three years since (1848) were committed to the editor of this 
 work, as sole permanent trustee, by all the then surviving grand- 
 children." A writer in the Independent for 1853, to whom had 
 been given the privilege of examining the manuscripts, speaks of 
 finding among them a series of sermons on the Beatitudes ; a 
 work on Revelation ; a Commentary on the whole Bible (904 
 pages), and a Harmony of the Old and New Testaments, which 
 was incomplete. The outward appearance of the manuscripts 
 illustrated the scarcity of paper and the necessity of economizing 
 it. ' ' He used to make rough blank-books out of odds and ends, 
 backs of letters, scraps of notes sent in from the congregation ; 
 and there is one long parallelogTam of a book made entirely out 
 of strips from the margin of the old London Daily Gazetteer of 
 1743. There is another most curious manuscript, made out of 
 circular scraps of paper, 147 leaves, being in the shape of half 
 moons, intermingled with the patterns of caps and such other 
 like remnants of housewifery." — Cf. Living Age, vol. xxxvi. 
 p. 181. 
 
840 THE rniLOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 In 1854 tlie Rev. A. B. Grossart, a Scottish 
 divine and the accomplished editor of various pub- 
 lications, crossed the Atlantic for the purpose of 
 consulting about a complete and worthy edition of 
 Edwards' works. The way for him having been 
 prepared by correspondence, immediate access was 
 given him to all the manuscripts of Edwards. He 
 found the labor of examining them, as he remarks, 
 " an onerous but very pleasant one," and was re- 
 warded by the discovery of " papers of rare bio- 
 graphical interest and value." The treasure of 
 the whole proved to be a Treatise on Grace, " care- 
 fully finished and prepared for the press." Mr. 
 Grossart was allowed to take out of the country 
 many of Edwards' manuscripts, including some of 
 his letters, and in regard to these he remarks, " I 
 possess already priceless and hitherto unknown 
 materials for a worthy biography." From these 
 materials in his possession he selected enough to 
 form a volume of two hundred and nine large 
 octavo pages. Although he did not deem himself 
 at liberty to publish anything, there seemed " no 
 valid objection " to printing. " In resj)onse to 
 many frequent and urgent requests," this volume 
 of selections was printed at Edinburgh for private 
 circulation, and the edition was limited to three 
 hundred copies.^ 
 
 ^ Selections from the Unpublished Writings of Jonathan Ed- 
 wards, of America. Edited, from the orig-inal MSS., with fac- 
 similes and an Introduction, by the Rev. Alexander B. Grossart, 
 Kinross. Three hundred copies. Printed for private circulation, 
 
STATEMENT OF DR. BUSHNELL. 341 
 
 But there were other papers also of rare vahie, 
 among the manuscripts of Edwards, to which Mr. 
 Grossart makes no allusion. It was in the year 
 1851 that the late Dr. Bushnell called attention to 
 a dissertation on the Trinity which Edwards was 
 reported to have written. " I very much desired 
 in my exposition of the Trinity to present some 
 illustrations from a manuscript dissertation of 
 President Edwards on that subject. Only a few 
 months ago I first heard of the existence of such 
 a manuscript. It was described to me as an ' a 
 priori argument for the Trinity, the contents of 
 which would excite a good deal of surprise ' if 
 communicated to the public. The privilege of ac- 
 cess to the manuscripts is denied to me, on the 
 ground, as I understand, of the nature of the con- 
 tents." ^ That Dr. Bushnell must have had au- 
 thority for his statement is evident on the face of 
 the above quotation. In an article on Edwards, 
 contributed a few years later (about 1855) to 
 Herzog's Keal-Encyclopadie, by the late Prof. C. 
 
 1865. The remarks of Mr. Grossart above quoted are from his 
 introduction to this volume. In addition to the "Treatise on 
 Grace " (pp. 19-56), this volume contains " Annotations on Pas- 
 sages of Holy Scripture from President Edwards' Interleaved 
 Bible" (pp. 59-179); "Directions for Judging of Persons' 
 Experience" (pp. 183-185); and "Sermons" (pp. 189-209). 
 Among the Sermons is the full outline of one preached to the 
 Indians at Stockb ridge in 1753, on the text, "All Scripture is 
 given by inspiration of God," etc. A copy of this work is in 
 the library of Harvard University. There are said to be but two 
 copies in the country. 
 
 1 Bushnell, Christ in Theology^ p. vi. 
 
342 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 E. Stowe, allusion is made to this dissertation on 
 tlie Trinity, as though the writer had himself pe- 
 rused it, and formed his own judgment of its char- 
 acter. " Among the manuscripts of Edwards," he 
 remarks, " there is one on the Trinity which is pre- 
 pared with great care, and is marked by power and 
 boldness and great independence of thought." ^ 
 
 The call of Dr. Bushnell for the publication of 
 the dissertation on the Trinity met with no re- 
 sponse. But whether it was owing to his call or 
 to other causes, a fresh interest was excited in Ed- 
 wards' writings. In 1852 Dr. Tryon Edwards 
 edited from the manuscripts a work of some five 
 hundred pages entitled Charity and its Fruits.^ 
 
 ^ " Unter seinen handschriftlichen Werken ist ein sorgialtig 
 ansgearbeitetes iiber die Lehre von der Trinitat, das mit grosser 
 Selbststaudigkeit des Denkens, Kiilinlieit und Kraft der Gedan- 
 keu abgefasst ist." — Herzog, Beal Encycloplidie, art. "Edwards." 
 
 ^ Charity and its Fruits ; or Christian Love as manifested in the 
 Heart and Life. By Jonathan Edwards, sometime Pastor of the 
 church at Northampton, Mass., and President of the College of 
 New Jersey. Edited from the original manuscripts, with an In- 
 troduction, by Tryon Edwards. New York, 1852. This work 
 consists of a series of sermons delivered at Northampton in 1738, 
 and presents Edwards in his most delightful aspects as a preacher. 
 The volume possesses historical importance, and is also indirectly 
 related to Edwards' views on the Trinity. In the second lecture 
 is contained the important principle, which Edwards afterwards 
 incorporated into his Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the 
 Spirit of God, that the ordinary operations of God's Spirit are 
 higher than His extraordinary gifts, such as inspiration and mira- 
 cles. The fifteenth lecture is closely related to the Treatise on 
 Grace, which is yet to be noticed. It is entitled ' ' The Holy 
 Spirit forever to be communicated to the saints in charity or 
 love." 
 
RUMORS AND SUSPICIONS. 343 
 
 A new edition of Edwards' works was also pro- 
 jected in Scotland, to consist of about fourteen 
 volumes. This edition was expected to remedy 
 the fault of previous editions which had departed 
 in some places from the text, and to contain also 
 the more important treatises existing in manu- 
 script. It was with reference to this project, 
 which never was reaUzed, that Mr. Grossart had 
 visited this country. 
 
 In 1880 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes repeated 
 the caU for the " withheld" or " suppressed" dis- 
 sertation on the Trinity. The suspicion in regard 
 to its contents, at which Dr. BuslmeU had hmted, 
 had now become more defmite. " The writer (Dr. 
 Holmes) is informed on imquestionable authority 
 that there is or was in existence a manuscript of 
 Edwards, in which his views appear to have imder- 
 gone a great change in the direction of Arianism 
 or Sabellianism." 1 The editor of the Hartford 
 Courant reiterated the call for publication, describ- 
 ing the size of the unpublished manuscript, repeat- 
 ing the rimior that it contained a departure from 
 Edwards' published views on the Trinity, and add- 
 ing other mmors to the effect that it contained a 
 modification of his teaching on original sin, even 
 approaching so far as Pelagianism. This last 
 call brought forth a response in the shape of a 
 small treatise entitled Observations concerning the 
 Scripture CEconomy of the Trinity and Covenant 
 1 International Beview, July, 1880. 
 
344 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 of Redemption.^ The liistoiy of tlie manuscript 
 is given, and the reasons why it had not been jjub- 
 lished before, among which there is seen no ground 
 for serious hesitation on account of its alleged de- 
 fection from orthodoxy. The work shows any- 
 thing but a Sabellian or Arian tendency: it is 
 rather Tritheistic, with its formal and as it were 
 algebraic method of presenting the subject. The 
 disappointment felt on its appearance must have 
 been in proportion to the interest which its an- 
 nouncement had created. It was a relief, then, to 
 learn that this was not the dissertation to which 
 Dr. Bushnell had referred, and of which Professor 
 Stowe had remarked that it was worked out with 
 great care, and was marked by power and bold- 
 ness and great independence of thought. In 1881 
 there appeared in the Bibliotheca Sacra two re- 
 markable articles from one who spoke with un- 
 doubted authority.^ These articles, for the time 
 being, put an end to the discussion. From them 
 
 ^ Observations concerning the Scripture (Economy of the Trinity 
 and Covenant of Redemption. By Jonathan Edwards. With an 
 Introduction and Appendix by Egbert C. Smyth. New York : 
 Charles Seribner's Sons. 1880. The notes which Professor Smyth 
 has added have great value in elucidating the text, as well as 
 for the history of theology in New England. He has also given 
 additional extracts, hitherto imknown, from Edwards' MSS., 
 one of them, in particular, of the highest importance. Cf. pp. 
 92-97. 
 
 2 Professor Edwards A. Park, D. D., Bib. Sac, January and 
 April, 1881. To these articles I am greatly indebted, and could 
 not have written this chapter without them. They contain a 
 masterly exposition of Edwards' doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
THE MISSING MANUSCRIPT. 345 
 
 it may be inferred that Edwards wrote a disserta- 
 tion on the Trinity which justified the comments 
 of Professor Stowe. But the manuscript has since 
 been mislaid, and so late as 1881 had not been 
 found. It had been read, however, several years 
 before these articles appeared, by their writer, who 
 had also taken notes of some parts of the argu- 
 ment. No one is better fitted than Professor 
 Park to form a true judgment regarding the miss- 
 ing manuscript, or to report correctly as to its 
 substantial contents. It was divided, we are told, 
 into two parts. The first part corresponded in 
 substance with the Observations concerning the 
 Scripture CEconomy of the Trinity, published in 
 1880 ; the second part corresponded in substance 
 with the third section of the Treatise on Grace, 
 which was printed in Edinburgh, in 1865. In addi- 
 tion to this information, fresh material from Ed- 
 wards' manuscripts is also furnished in the above- 
 mentioned articles in the Bibliotheca Sacra, which 
 possesses the highest value, throwing a light upon 
 the workings of his mind, without w^hich it w^oidd 
 have been impossible to imderstand or to do jus- 
 tice to the labors of his later years. To these sug- 
 gestive hints from his manuscripts, to the Obser- 
 vations on the Trinity, and to the Treatise on 
 Grace, we now turn in the order enumerated. 
 The doctrine of the Trinity has played so large a 
 part in the history of religious thought in New 
 England, that Edw^ards' contribution to the sub- 
 ject must be regarded as still possessing great 
 
346 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 significance, even tliougii it lias been unknown 
 until recent years, and tlie best part of his thought 
 is still secluded in a volume printed for private 
 circulation, or buried in the missing manuscript.^ 
 
 Toward the close of his life, and within perhaps 
 four or five years of his death, Edwards became ac- 
 quainted with one of the most remarkable theolog- 
 ical works of the last century, — The Philosoph- 
 ical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion, 
 unfolded in Geometrical Order by the Chevalier 
 Ramsay, author of the Travels of Cyrus. Glasgow, 
 1747.'^ From a notice which Edwards saw of 
 
 ^ Were it not for Professor Park's conjecture that the missing 
 essay was written somewhere between 1752 and 1754, it might 
 have been inferred from ' ' internal evidence ' ' that it was written 
 after the Nature of True Virtue and The Last End of God in the 
 Creation ; i. e. some two years later (1756). The suggestion is 
 here hazarded that, because these two dissertations needed to be 
 adjusted to the thought contained in the missing essay, or in the 
 Treatise on Grace, Edwards kept them back from the press and 
 proceeded with his work on Original Sin, which was going 
 through the press at the time of his death. No date is assigned 
 for the Observations on the Trinity, or the Treatise on Grace. It 
 may be assumed that they were written after 1752. It is to be 
 noted that Edwards does not allude to any of these treatises above 
 named, in his letter to the Trustees of Princeton College, in which 
 he describes the books he is then projecting (1757). But he 
 makes the significant remark, ' ' I have also many other things in 
 hand, in some of which I have made great progress, which I will 
 not trouble you with an accoimt of. Some of these things, if di- 
 vine providence favor, I should be willing to attempt a publication 
 of.'''' — Dwight, hife of Edwards, p. 570. 
 
 ^ Andrew Michael Ramsay, commonly called the Chevalier 
 Ramsay, was born in Ayr, Scotland, 1686. After studying at Edin- 
 burgh and St. Andrews he went abroad, residing mainly in France, 
 where he died 1743. Among other positions which he held was 
 
EA MS AY'S ''PHILOSOPHICAL PRINCIPLES:' 347 
 
 the work in the Monthly Review, he became aware 
 of its significance and was desirous to purchase 
 it. The book may have been in his possession by 
 1754. Its author must have been a man closely 
 resembling Edwards in the type of his mind, — a 
 speculative thinker aiming at a system of abso- 
 lute Christian thought. But if the Chevalier Ram- 
 say had been familiar with Edwards' books he 
 could not have more directly opposed Edwards' 
 methods and conclusions. His Philosophical Prin- 
 ciples combats the theories of Berkeley and Male- 
 branche, as tending directly toward Pantheism, 
 which he regarded as an immoral fatalism as well 
 as a practical atheism. Predestination, also, and 
 the denial of freedom of the will, he condemned, 
 tracing them to the principle that Deity was the 
 sole efficient cause, — a principle which, as he 
 sought to show, led back ultimately to Spinoza's 
 doctrine of the one substance, with its two attri- 
 butes of thouolit and extension. 
 
 Edwards does not seem to have been influenced 
 at all by these denunciations of his favorite doc- 
 trine. But while these two minds were at the 
 antipodes of speculation on these profound issues, 
 they had also much in common, and at one point 
 
 that of tutor to the children of the Pretender, called James III. ; 
 and it has been thought that the doctorate conferred on him by 
 Oxford was partly owing to his Jacobite relations His Philo- 
 sophical Principles is hardly orthodox from the Roman Catholic 
 stand-point, as it urges a final restoration of all souls to God. A 
 copy of it is in the library of Harvard College, which is rich in 
 the theological literature of the last century. 
 
348 THE PHILOSOPniCAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 tlieir thought tended to coalesce in a common con- 
 viction. Both had been going through a similar 
 theological experience, in that they had recoiled 
 from the deism of the eighteenth century, which 
 relegated God to some remote spot outside of His 
 creation. The Scotchman, however, had first 
 fallen into deism, accepting its postulate of Deity 
 as singleness of essence, and reducing religion to 
 a reverence for and the practice of \4rtue. All re- 
 ligions, as he then thought, contained these simple 
 ideas, but were also full of false theories and evil 
 superstitions, with a complicated ritual which ob- 
 scured the essential truth. Ramsay did not long 
 remain in this position. Under the influence of 
 Poiret, he encountered the fascination of French 
 mysticism, which led him in 1710 to seek an inter- 
 view with Fenelon. The story of his conversion 
 to Roman Catholicism is told in his Life of Fene- 
 lon,^ by whom he was convinced that there was no 
 middle ground between deism and the Catholic 
 faith. After his conversion, as he pursued his 
 great inquiry regarding the nature of God, he 
 discerned that the pantheism in which thoughtful 
 minds were taking refuge from an impossible 
 deism was also but a makeshift, and like deism 
 residted in a loss of the consciousness of the living 
 God. It was at this point that he met Edwards, 
 who had also arrived by a process of his own at 
 conclusions which are closely related to Spinoza's 
 doctrine of the one substance. 
 
 ^ Life of Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon, London, 
 1723, pp. 189-247. 
 
DEISM AND PANTHEISM. 349 
 
 The issue which Ramsay had confronted, and 
 which Edwards must also have seen, even if at a 
 distance, was no passing mood in human thought. 
 It involves the same essential condition in which 
 the early fathers of the Christian church had 
 found themselves when they felt the necessity of 
 reconciling the truth in Stoic pantheism with Jew- 
 ish monotheism. If the idea of God as infinite 
 personality was lost in Stoicism, which conceived 
 of Deity as universally diffused, permeating the 
 universe as all-pervading breath, equally difficult 
 was it to find satisfaction in the deistic conception 
 of the Jew. A Deity idle or dormant, silently re- 
 posing in Himself until he comes forth for the 
 creation, must be a being without relationships, 
 and therefore without consciousness. It was here 
 that Platonism came to the rescue of embarrassed 
 thinkers, with its idea of a Logos which bridged 
 the gulf between pantheism and deism. Or, as 
 transmuted by Christian thought, the true Logos 
 was the Christ, the Son eternally generated from 
 the Father, God's second self, in whom He saw 
 HimseK reflected, between whom and Himself 
 there existed from eternity the activity of divine 
 communication and love. The doctrine of eternal 
 distinctions within the divine essence satisfied the 
 necessity of early Christian thought, as it sought 
 some adequate conception of God. 
 
 The following sentence from Ramsay's book had 
 first arrested the attention of Edwards : — " The 
 Infinite Spirit, by a necessary, immanent, eternal 
 
350 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 activity, produces in HimseK His consubstantial 
 image, equal to Himself in all His perfections, self- 
 origination only excepted ; and from botli pro- 
 ceed a distinct, self-conscious, intelligent, active 
 principle of love, coequal to tlie Father and the 
 Son, called the Holy Ghost. This is the true defi- 
 nition of God in His eternal solitude, or accord- 
 ing to His absolute essence distinct from created 
 nature." This passage Edwards had copied from 
 a notice in the Montlily Review, before he was yet 
 in possession of Ramsay's work. When he had 
 secured the book, he copied out other passages 
 which bear upon this leading thought. Among 
 them are the following sentences : — 
 
 " Such inactive powers as lie dormant during a whole 
 eternity in God, are absolutely incompatible with the 
 perfection of the divine nature, which must be infinitely, 
 eternally, and essentially active. . . . Since God cannot 
 be eternally active from without, He must be eternally 
 active from within. . . . An absolutely infinite mind 
 supposes an absolutely infinite object or idea known. . . , 
 Hence this generation of the Logos or of God's consub- 
 stantial idea is sufficient to complete the perfection of 
 the divine understanding. . . . Thus it is certain that, 
 antecedent to all communicative goodness to anything 
 external, God is good in Himself. . . . He does not, 
 therefore, want to create innumerable myriads of finite 
 objects to assert His essential beneficence and equity ; 
 since he produces within Himself from all eternity an 
 infinite object that exhausts, so to speak, all His capac- 
 ity of loving, beatifying and doing justice. The Deists 
 Socinians, and Unitarians, who deny the doctrine of the 
 
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 351 
 
 Trinity, cannot explain how God is essentially good and 
 just, antecedently to, and independently of, the creation 
 of finite things ; for God cannot be eminently good 
 and just where there is no object of His beneficence 
 \y and equity. /v^. . To complete the idea of perfect felic- 
 ity there must be an object loving as well as an object 
 loved. . . . There is a far greater felicity in loving and 
 in being loved than in loving simply. It is the mutual 
 harmony and correspondence of two distinct beings or 
 persons that makes the completion of love and felicity. 
 Hence God could not have been infinitely and eternally 
 loved if there had not been from all eternity some being 
 distinct from Himself and equal to Himself that loves 
 Him infinitely. The eternal, infinite, and immutable 
 Love which proceeds from the idea God has of Himself 
 is not a simple attribute, mode, or perfection of the di- 
 vine mind ; but a living, active, consubstantial, intelli- 
 gent being or agent. . . . We may represent the divine 
 essence under these three notions, — as an infinitely ac- 
 tive mind that conceives ; or as an infinite idea that is 
 the object of this conception ; or as an infinite love that 
 proceeds from this idea. . . . There are three ; there 
 can be but three ; and all that we can conceive of the 
 Infinite mind may be reduced to these three : infinite 
 Life, Light, and Love. . . . These three distinctions 
 in the Deity are neither three independent minds, . . . 
 nor three attributes of the same substance, . . . but 
 three coeternal, consubstantial, coordinate persons, co- 
 equal in all things, self-origination only excepted. . . . 
 All those who are ignorant of the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 of the generation of the Logos, of the procession of the 
 Eternal Spirit, and of the everlasting commerce among 
 the sacred three, look upon God's still eternity as a state 
 of inaction or indolence." 
 
352 THE PHILOSOPDICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 Exactly how much Edwards may have meant by 
 copying into his note-book passages like these from 
 Ramsay, it is not easy to determine. At least he 
 was interested in the thought they contained ; to a 
 certain extent it must have been new to him. How 
 far its influence may be traced in his later writings 
 remains to be considered. The Observations on 
 the Scriptural QEconomy of the Trinity shows that 
 a profound change was passing over the mind of 
 its author in regard to the nature of the divine 
 existence. Although, as has been remarked, this 
 work created a sense of disappointment when it 
 appeared, yet the disappointment is only an evi- 
 dence how thought has moved since Edwards' day. 
 Had it been published in his lifetime it might have 
 involved him in another controversy, and that with 
 his own household of faith. A passage like the 
 following shows him to be aware that he is making 
 an innovation on views which were widely preva- 
 lent : " It appears to be unreasonable to suppose, 
 as some do, that the Sonship of the second person 
 of the Trinity consists only in the relation He bears 
 to the Father in His mediatorial character." ^ Ed- 
 wards was contending for the Trinity as grounded 
 in the nature of things, or in the necessity of God's 
 
 1 Observations, etc., p. 56. The opinion which Edwards was 
 controverting was advanced by Dr. Thomas Ridgeley in 1731. 
 In 1792 Dr. Samuel Hopkins speaks of it "as gaining ground 
 and spreading of late." Cf. Prof. E C. Smyth, Appendix to 
 Observations, etc., p. 01, for a list of references bearing on this 
 point. But Edwards was also controverting his own earlier view. 
 Cf . the passages where he alludes to the Trinity, ante, p. 99. 
 
THE METHOD OF CALVIN. 353 
 
 being. Although he could not have been ac- 
 quainted with the process of historical theology, 
 yet the working of his mind was leading him into 
 the same path through the mazes of thought, which 
 Origen and Athanasius had also followed. The 
 way in which he was travelling was by no means 
 a familiar one in the Cahdnistic churches, and by 
 many it was regarded with distrust or mislike. 
 The method of Calvin had been for the most part 
 prevalent, which waived aside the doctrine of the 
 eternal generation of the Son as unnecessary or un- 
 j^rofitable, or even as "an absurd fiction." ^ Such 
 a method as Calvin's might answer the practical 
 needs of the church, so long as thought lay dor- 
 mant, or tradition and Scripture possessed an un- 
 questioned authority. In the eighteenth century, 
 when the aj^peal was carried to the reason, the 
 divinity of Christ was endangered by the silence 
 of those who refused to follow the voice of reason 
 as it pointed toward Christ as the eternal Son, 
 wdthout whose coequal and coeternal presence with 
 the Father even the thought of God was becoming 
 impossible. To maintain the divinity of Christ, as 
 
 1 "I do not undertake," says Calvin, "to satisfy those who 
 delight in speculative views. . • . Studying the edification of the 
 church, I have thought it better not to toiich on various topics 
 which could have yielded little profit, while they must have need- 
 lessly burdened and fatigued the reader. For instance, what 
 avails it to discuss, as Lombard does at length, AYhether or not 
 the Father always generates ? This idea of continual generation 
 becomes an absurd fiction from the moment it is seen that from 
 eternity there were three persons in one God." — Qalym, Institutes^ 
 book i. eh. 13. 
 
354 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 was then the custom, solely on the ground that it 
 was essential to His making an adequate atone- 
 ment for sin, was to involve the rejection of His 
 divinity if such a theory of atonement should be- 
 come obnoxious. If the Spirit of God, as popu- 
 larly conceived, was but the divine energy applying 
 the benefits of Christ's atonement, there would be 
 no necessity for His existence as a coequal factor 
 or distinction in the divine essence, when some 
 different and higher view of human nature should 
 have arisen in place of the doctrine of original sin. 
 Such was the process by which, in the mind of the 
 last century, the doctrine of the Trinity was un- 
 dermined. Not to ground the distinctions in the 
 divine essence by some immanent, eternal necessity 
 was to make easy the denial of what has been called 
 the ontological Trinity, and then the rejection of 
 the economical Trinity was not difficult or far 
 away. 
 
 This little treatise of Edwards, then, is far from 
 being unimj)ortant or commonplace. It adds to 
 our estimate of his work as a theologian. He was 
 stemming the theological tide instead of yielding 
 to it. He was asserting a doctrine of the Trinity 
 \vhich implied its eternal necessity in the nature 
 of God, even had there been no fall, no need of 
 an atonement for human redemption. Had his 
 thought been fidly developed, it must have led 
 him to the recognition of Christ as sustaining an 
 organic relation to the world of outward nature. 
 As Christ is the creative wisdom of God in whom 
 
TEE BEAUTY OF CHRIST IN NATURE. 355 
 
 God saw Himself reflected, so the beauty and the 
 glory of Christ is visible in the world of created 
 things. The following exquisite passage deserves 
 no apology for being reproduced at length. It does 
 not belong to the Observations, but has been re- 
 cently recovered from Edwards' manuscripts : — 
 
 " We have shown that the Son of God created the 
 world for this very end, to communicate Himself in an 
 image of His own excellency. He communicates Him- 
 self properly only to spirits, and they only are capable 
 of being proper images of His excellency, for they only 
 are properly helngs, as we have shown. Yet He com- 
 municates a sort of a shadow or glimpse of His excel- 
 lencies to bodies which, as we have shown, are but the 
 shadows of beings and not real beings. He who, by 
 His immediate influence, gives being every moment, and 
 by His spirit actuates the world, because He inclines to 
 communicate Himself and His excellencies, doth doubt- 
 less communicate His excellency to bodies, as far as 
 there is any consent or analogy. And the beauty of 
 face and sweet airs in men are not always the effect of 
 the corresponding excellencies of mind ; yet the beauties 
 of nature are reaUy emanations or shadows of the excelr 
 lency of the Son of God. 
 
 " So that, when we are delighted with flowery mead- 
 ows and gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that 
 we see only the emanations of the sweet benevolence of 
 Jesus Christ. When we behold the fragrant rose and 
 lily, we see His love and purity. So the green trees and 
 fields, and singing of birds, are the emanations of His 
 infinite joy and benignity. The easiness and naturalness 
 of trees and vines are shadows of His beauty and loveli- 
 
356 TEE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 ness. The crystal rivers and murmuring streams are 
 the footsteps of His favor, grace, and beauty. When 
 we behold the light and brightness of the sun, the golden 
 edges of an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we be- 
 hold the adumbrations of His glory and goodness ; and 
 in the blue sky, of his mildness and gentleness. There 
 are also many things wherein we may behold His awful 
 majesty : in the sun in his strength, in comets, in thun- 
 der, in the hovering thunder-clouds, in ragged rocks and 
 the brows of mountains. That beauteous light with 
 which the world is filled in a clear day is a lively shadow 
 of His spotless holiness, and happiness and delight in 
 communicating Himself. And doubtless this is a reason 
 that Christ is compared so often to those things, and 
 called by their names, as the Sun of Righteousness, the 
 morning-star, the rose of Sharon, and lily of the valley, 
 the apple-tree among trees of the wood, a bundle of 
 myrrh, a roe, or a young hart. By this we may dis- 
 cover the beauty of many of those metaphors and similes 
 which to an unphilosojyhical person do seem so uncouth. 
 " In like manner, when we behold the beauty of man's 
 body in its perfection, we still see like emanations of 
 Christ's divine perfections, although they do not always 
 flow from the mental excellencies of the person that has 
 them. But we see the most proper image of the beauty 
 of Christ when we see beauty in the human soul." ^ 
 
 1 Observations, etc., Appendix, pp. 94-97. When this passage 
 was written there is no means of determining- without further 
 appeal to the manuscripts. I should like to think that it belonged 
 to Edwards' later years, and was nearly contemporaneous with 
 his writings on the Trinity. But it may have belonged to his 
 youth, and have been written not long after the Notes on the Mind. 
 For sim^ilar expressions of thought regarding the relation of Christ 
 to the creation, the reader may be referred to Domer, Person of 
 
TREATISE ON GRACE. 357 
 
 This beautiful passage, which illustrates the 
 poetic temperament of Edwards, has also its the- 
 ological significance. He was reproducing t^e 
 Christ of the early church, who is organically re- 
 lated to nature and to man, — the manifestation of 
 the wisdom of God. But he was resuming also, 
 though he may not have known it, the discussion 
 of the Trinity at the point where it was dropped in 
 ancient controversies, developing the doctrine after 
 a manner of his own which deserves the closest at- 
 tention. His Treatise on Grace, however uninter- 
 esting its title, contains perhaps his most important 
 contribution to theological progress. Of this work 
 Mr. Grossart, its Scotch editor, has remarked ; " I 
 shall be surprised if this treatise do not at once 
 take rank with its kindred one on the Religious 
 Affections. There is in it, I think, the massive 
 argumentation of his great work on the Will, but 
 there is in addition a fineness of spiritual insight, 
 a holy fervor, not untinged with the pathetic 
 frenzy of the English Mystics, as of Peter Sterry 
 and Archbishop Leighton, and, especially toward 
 the close, a rapturous exultation ' in the excel- 
 lency and loveliness ' of God ; a glow in iteration of 
 the wonder, and beauty, and blessedness of Divine 
 Love ; and a splendor of assertion of the claims, 
 so to speak, of the Holy Spirit, which it would be 
 difficult to overestimate." The distinctive purpose 
 
 Christ, Eng. trans., vols. i. and ii. Cf., also, Twesten, Vorlesungen, 
 vol. ii pp. 199, ff. , for an admirable statement of how the second 
 person in the Trinity is organically related to the external world. 
 
358 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 of this unknown work, printed only for a limited 
 circulation, will not be exaggerated it be placed 
 in comparison with two other treatises, like it 
 small in extent, but vast in their influence, — 
 works which have created e23ochs in Christian 
 thought and experience, — Athanasius on the In- 
 carnation of the Word, and Anselm's Cur Deus 
 Homo. The work of Athanasius reveals the im- 
 port of the Nicene theology as centring in the 
 Word made flesh, while Anselm formulated the 
 conception of an atonement which became the 
 controlling idea in Latin Christendom. Edwards 
 brings out, as it had not been done before in the 
 whole history of theology, the doctrine of the Holy 
 Spirit — as related on the one hand to the inner 
 mystery of the divine nature, and on the other to 
 the spiritual life of man. 
 
 Among the characteristics of the Treatise on 
 Grace, one of the foremost to arrest attention is 
 the abandonment of the ethical principle laid do^vn 
 in the Nature of True Virtue. Edwards had there 
 asserted in his most positive manner that virtue 
 primarily consists in love to being in general ; in 
 the prospensity, as he calls it, in the impulsion or 
 gravitation, as it were, of the infinitely smaller 
 fragments of being to the infinitely larger mass of 
 being. Or, as he had there said : " True virtue 
 primarily consists, not in love to any particular 
 Beings because of their virtue or beauty, nor in 
 gratitude because they love us, but in a propen- 
 sity and union of heart to Being simply con- 
 
SELF-CONTRADICTION. 359 
 
 sidered."^ But in the Treatise on Grace he 
 writes : " The main ground of true love to God 
 is the excellency of His own nature." These two 
 kinds of love Edwards had designated as the " love 
 of benevolence " and the " love of complacence." 
 In his dissertation on Virtue he placed love of 
 benevolence first, as the primary ground of virtue, 
 to which the love of complacence was secondary 
 or subordinate. He now asserts : " Of these two, a 
 love of complacence is first, and is the foundation 
 of the other ; i. e. if by a love of complacence be 
 meant a relishing, a sweetness in the qualifications 
 of the beloved, and a being pleased and delighted 
 in his excellency. This in the order of nature is 
 before benevolence, because it is the foundation 
 and reason of it. A person must first relish that 
 wherein the amiableness of nature consists, before 
 he can wish well to him on account of that loveli- 
 ness." 2 This passage is bracketed, as it stands in 
 the manuscript, — an indication, it may be, that 
 Edwards was aware of the contradiction, or wished 
 to give the subject fuller consideration. But not 
 to speculate on his purpose in bracketing the pas- 
 sage, or as to what would have been his final con- 
 clusion, it is more important to observe the open- 
 ness of his mind at an age when most men have 
 fixed their conclusions beyond the possibility of 
 change. He seems to be exemplifying here the 
 resolution of his youth, that he will be impartial 
 
 1 Nature of True Virtue, vol. ii. p. 264. 
 
 2 Grossart, Selections, etc., p. 47. 
 
360 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 in hearing and receiving what is rational, how 
 long soever he may have been used to another 
 method of thinking. As to how this extraordinary 
 contradiction is to be accounted for, only a word 
 of suggestion can be offered. The necessities of 
 the controversy against the Arminians, the desire 
 to find a basis for virtue which would include the 
 natural man, the non-elect as well as the elect, 
 forced him to take one view ; when he wrote apart 
 from this necessity, he was irresistibly impelled 
 toward the other. The contradiction reaches down 
 to the depths of Edwards' theology. It conceals 
 an intimation that the distinction between elect 
 and non-elect was not defensible in the last analy- 
 sis of his thought, without some sacrifice of essen- 
 tial truth, which he was unwilling to make. The 
 probability is that on this point we must leave Ed- 
 wards in his self-contradiction, as his only method 
 of maintaining his fundamental tenet. 
 
 It is a leading feature of the Treatise on Grace 
 that it identifies gi^ace with the indwelling God in 
 the soul. As one reads Edwards' glowing words 
 on this subject, the mind travels back through 
 sacramental theologies to the time when the " doc- 
 trines of grace," as they are called, were first for- 
 mulated in the Latin church of the fifth century. 
 In the earlier and higher thought of the fathers 
 before the time of Augustine, a personal Christ or 
 the indwellino^ divine wisdom had been the formula 
 which represented the power of God unto salva- 
 tion. But when an " impersonal grace " was sub- 
 
CONCEPTION OF GRACE. 861 
 
 stituted for the personal life of God in the soul, 
 sacramental agencies were placed foremost as the 
 channels through which an occult spiritual influ- 
 ence was imparted. " Grace " remained a word 
 undefined, despite the various meanings assigned 
 to it, through the Middle Ages and on through the 
 Reformation age. The word " grace " plays a large 
 part in Edwards' theology. But it was impossible 
 that he should be content without attempting its 
 definition. In his conception of grace he has made 
 another important contribution to the advancement 
 of theology which is not included among the so- 
 called " improvements " in wliich the younger Ed- 
 wards ^ has summarized his father's work. To 
 Edwards belongs the honor of reasserting the in- 
 dwelling and personal life of God in the soul, in 
 place of the substitutes which men had de\ased. 
 His own words on this point, contained in his un- 
 published Treatise on Grace, are too emphatic and 
 impressive to be omitted : — 
 
 "The doctrine of a gracious nature being by the 
 immediate influence of the Spirit, is not only taught in 
 the Serif) tures, but is irrefragable to Reason. Indeed, 
 there seems to be a strong disposition in men to dis- 
 believe and oppose the doctrine of immediate influence 
 of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men, or to diminish 
 and make it as small and remote a matter as possible, 
 and put it as far out of sight as may be. Whereas, it 
 seems to me, true virtue and holiness would naturally 
 
 ^ Remarks on the Improvements made in Theology, by Presi- 
 dent Edwards, Works, vol. i. pp. 481-492. 
 
362 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 excite a prejudice (if I may so say) in favor of such a 
 doctrine ; and that the soul, when in the most excellent 
 frame and the most lively exercise of virtue, — love to 
 God and delight in Him, — would naturally and un- 
 avoidably think of God as kindly communicating Him- 
 self to him, and holding communion with him, as though 
 he did, as it were, see God smiling on him, giving to 
 him, and conversing with him ; and that if he did not so 
 think of God, but on the contrary should conceive that 
 there was no immediate communication between God 
 and him, it would tend greatly to quell his holy motions 
 of soul, and be an exceeding damage to his pleasure. 
 
 " No good reason can be given why men should have 
 such an inward disposition to deny any immediate com- 
 munication between God and the creature, or to make as 
 little of it as possible. 'T is a strange disposition that 
 men have to thrust God out of the world, or to put Him 
 as far out of sight as they can, and to have in no respect 
 immediately and sensibly to do with Him. Therefore 
 so many schemes have been drawn to exclude or exten- 
 uate, or remove at a great distance, any influence of the 
 Divine Being in the hearts of men, such as the scheme 
 of the Pelagians, the Socinians, etc. And therefore 
 these doctrines are so much ridiculed that ascribe much 
 to the immediate influence of the Spirit, and called en- 
 thusiasm, fanaticism, whimsey, and distraction ; but no 
 mortal can tell for what." ^ 
 
 It is another feature of the Treatise on Grace 
 that it supplements the deficiencies pointed out in 
 the Last End of God in the Creation. The con- 
 ception of Deity there presented was closely akin 
 
 ^ Grossart, Selections, etc., p. 40. 
 
MYSTERY OF UNION WITH CHRIST. 363 
 
 to tlie Sabellian monad, who dwelt in silence and 
 inactivity until lie came forth for the creation. 
 But the doctrine of eternal distinctions within the 
 divine essence, of a spiritual fellowship from all 
 eternity between the Father and the Son whose 
 mutual bond is the Holy Spirit, is now presented 
 in such an eloquent way, with such deep con\^c- 
 tion, as to leave no doubt that it formed an essen- 
 tial element in Edwards' thought. That it does 
 not, however, appear in his earlier works, has al- 
 ready been noticed. He was silent, as has been 
 sho^vn,^ when he should have spoken, as in his ser- 
 mon on Justification, where he declines to define 
 too closely the organic relationship of the believer 
 with Christ. But the omission is now remedied. 
 " Herein lies the mystery of the vital union that is 
 between Christ and the soul of a believer, which 
 orthodox divines speak so much of, — that is. His 
 Spirit is actually united to the faculties of their 
 souls. . . . And thus it is that the saints are said 
 to live, yet not they, but Christ, lives in them. The 
 very promise of spiritual life in their souls is no 
 other than the spirit of Christ Himself. So that 
 they live by His life as much as the members of 
 the body live by the life of the Lord, and as much 
 as the branches live by the life of the root and 
 stock. ' Because I live ye shall live also.' We 
 are dead, but our life is hid with Christ in God." ^ 
 It is characteristic still fiu-ther of the Treatise 
 
 1 Cf. ante, pp. 97, fP. 
 
 ^ Grossart, Selections, p. 54. 
 
364 THE PEILOSOPniCAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 on Grace, that it aims to win a place for the Holy 
 Spirit, not only in the economy of redemption 
 but also in the nature of Godhead, which shall be 
 coequal with that of the Father and the Son. In 
 the Miltonic descriptions of the councils in heaven, 
 where God the Father is represented as deliberat- 
 ing or making covenant with the Son in regard to 
 the deliverance of man, the Divine Spirit finds no 
 equal footing of honor and dignity. So, also, in 
 the ancient church, the work of the Spirit had 
 been left undefined at the Nicene Council, nor did 
 the ensuing discussion of the subject possess the 
 same general or enduring interest as the contro- 
 versy over the equality of the Son with the Father.^ 
 And those who still approach this exalted theme can 
 more readily see the force of the reasoning which 
 demands an Eternal Son, while they experience 
 difficulty in formulating the position which the 
 Spirit holds in the mystery of the Godhead or in 
 the redemption of man. The two largest divisions 
 of the Catholic Church are still and have long been 
 separated by a subtle, it seems to some an ahnost 
 incomprehensible, distinction in regard to the pro- 
 cession of the Holy Spirit. Edwards was conscious 
 that on this subject his mind was moving in ad- 
 vance of the popular thought : " If we suppose no 
 more than used to be supposed about the Holy 
 
 ^ "The doctrine of the Holy Ghost," says Dr. SchafF, "was 
 not in any respect so accurately developed in this period as the 
 doctrine concerning' Christ, and it shows many g-aps. " — Hist, of 
 the Chris. Ch., vol. iii. p. 606. The remark might be extended to 
 cover the later periods of Christian history. 
 
DESCRIPTION OF DIVINE LOVE. Zijiy 
 
 Ghost, the honor of the Holy Ghost in the work 
 of Redemj^tion is not equal in any sense to the 
 Father's and the Son's." ^ 
 
 How, then, did he meet the difficulty ? The an- 
 swer may be given in a brief analysis of the Trea- 
 tise on Grace. In the first place, grace is made 
 identical with charity or divine love. This love is 
 not merely exerted toward men, but rather prima- 
 rily and mainly toward God. Love is the essence 
 of Christianity. When love shall be free from all 
 mixtures which accompany or disfigure its earthly 
 state, it will stand forth in its exaltation as the 
 charity which never faileth. Love is so essential 
 that all religion is but hypocrisy and a vain show 
 without it. From it and comprehended in it are 
 all good dispositions and duties. The love to God 
 is not distinct from the love to man ; they are one 
 and the same principle flowing forth toward dif- 
 ferent objects. But how shall this divine love be 
 defined, seeing that " things of this nature are not 
 l^roperly capable of a definition, they are better 
 felt than defined " ? But the love which has God 
 for its object may be described, if not defined : it 
 is the soul's relish of the supreme excellency of the 
 Divine nature, inclining the heart to God as the 
 chief good. The sa\ang grace in the soul, which 
 radically and sunmiarily consists in divine love, 
 " comes into existence in the soul by the power of 
 God in the influences of the Holy Spirit, the Third 
 Person iji the Blessed Trinity." But the Scripture 
 
 ^ Grossart, Selections, p. 51. 
 
366 THE PHILOSOPniCAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 speaks of this lioly and divine love in the soul as 
 not only from the Spirit, but as being in itself 
 spiritual. It is not called spiritual because it has 
 its seat in the spirit of man as contrasted with liis 
 body. It is called spiritual because of its relation 
 to the Spirit of God. 
 
 At this point Edwards makes the transition 
 which brings him rapidly to the climax of his 
 thought. That love within the soul which consti- 
 tutes saving grace is not merely a result wrought 
 by the influence of the Spirit, it is not merely an 
 attribute of the divine character, but it is an in- 
 finite personality ; it is in itseK nothing less than 
 the very essence of the Spirit of God. Of the 
 Holy Spirit it must be affirmed that in some pecu- 
 liar sense He is love, even as it cannot be predi- 
 cated of the Father and the Son. It is true that 
 the Godliead, or the entire Divine essence, is said to 
 be love. God is love, and he that dicelleth in 
 love dicelleth in God and God in him ; and yet 
 it is added. Hereby we Tinow that we dwell in Hbn 
 because He hath given us of His Spirit. Edwards 
 is careful to insist that the basis of his position is 
 a Scriptural one. " In an inquiry of this nature, 
 I would go no further than I think the Scripture 
 plainly goes before me. The Word of God cer- 
 tainly should be our ride in matters so much above 
 reason and our own notions." And this appears 
 to him to be the teaching of Scripture, that love is 
 the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is love. Love 
 is not an attribute of God, but it is God, — an infi- 
 
LOVE IS THE HOLY SPIRIT. 367 
 
 nite and vital energy wliicli is most truly conceived 
 as personal. Because it indwells in man, it makes 
 liim the temple of the Holy Ghost. " Scripture 
 leads us to tliis conclusion, though it be infinitely 
 above us to conceive how it shovdd be." Just as 
 wisdom or Aoyos is spoken of as the Son of God, 
 after the same manner is love called the Spirit of 
 God. It is said of the Word or Wisdom of God : 
 " Then was I with Him as one brought up mtli 
 Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing alway 
 before Him." Or again, in the Prologue of the 
 Fourth Gospel : "In the beginning was the Logos 
 (or Word J, and the Logos was with God, and Logos 
 was God." Just as the fathers in the ancient 
 church had asserted of reason, however or wher- 
 ever it might be manifested, tliat it was no human 
 quality casually exerted, but evidence of the in- 
 dwelling of the divine reason which is God, so 
 Edwards now speaks of the Spirit. It is the com- 
 mon mode of speech to say that God is love. It 
 indicates some profound change in the basis of 
 thought when the expression is reversed and it is 
 said that love is God. But to such a mode of 
 thinking Edwards had come. And now the quali- 
 fications of his earlier writings tend to disappear 
 as he expounds his conviction that Love, in some 
 pecidiar sense, is an infinite person. Life, and 
 Light, and Love, — these are God. It makes the 
 spiritual nature of man throb as with the pulsar 
 tions of eternity to know that the action of God 
 upon the soul is no impartation of power from 
 
368 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 without, but the presence of the divinity within. 
 In this process the highest place is assigned to the 
 personal indwelling Spirit. When it is said that 
 the Father and the Son love and delight in each 
 other, so that there is perfect and intimate union 
 between them, it must be understood that the bond 
 of tliis felicity is the Holy Spirit. 
 
 " The Holy Si)irit does in some ineffable and incon- 
 ceivable manner proceed and is breathed forth from the 
 Father and the Son, by the Divine essence being wholly 
 poured and flowing out in that infinitely intense, holy, 
 and pure love and delight that continually and un- 
 changeably breathe forth from the Father and the Son, 
 primarily toward each other and secondarily toward the 
 creature, and so flowing forth in a different subsistence 
 or person in a manner to us utterly inexplicable and in- 
 conceivable, and that this is that person poured forth 
 into the hearts of angels and saints. Hence it is to be 
 accounted for that, though we often read in Scripture of 
 the Father loving the Son and the Son loving the Fa- 
 ther, yet we never once read either of the Father or the 
 Son loving the Holy Spirit and the Spirit loving either 
 of them. It is because the Holy Spirit is the Divine 
 Love, the love of the Father and the Son. Hence also 
 it is to be accounted for, that we very often read of the 
 love both of the Father and the Son to men, and partic- 
 ularly their love to the saints ; but we never read of 
 the Holy Ghost loving them, for the Holy Ghost is that 
 love of God and Christ that is breathed foitli primarily 
 toward each other, and flows out secondarily toward the 
 creature. . . . He is the Deity wholly breathed forth 
 
PARTICIPATION IN THE DIVINE NATURE. 369 
 
 in infinite, substantial, intelligent love, . . . and so stand- 
 ing forth a distinct personal subsistence." ^ 
 
 Three inferences are deduced by Edwards from 
 his exposition of the nature and office of the Holy 
 Spirit. In the first place, he believed that he had 
 vindicated the coequality of the Sj^irit with the 
 Father and the Son, as against a prevailing theo- 
 logical tendency which subordinated or obscured 
 His true function. But now, wonderful as is the 
 love of God manifested by the Father in that He 
 so loved the world as to send His Son, wonderful 
 as is the love of the Son in that He so loved the 
 world as to give Himself, yet these manifesta- 
 tions of divine love are followed by a third and 
 higher display of love, for the Holy Spirit is the 
 Love itself of the Father and the Son. " So that, 
 however wonderful the love of the Father and the 
 Son appear to be, so much the more glory belongs 
 to the Holy Spirit in whom subsists that wonder- 
 ful and excellent love." 
 
 In the second place, it is now seen what is meant 
 by man's becoming a partaker of the Divine na- 
 ture. Phrases like this as they occur in Scripture, 
 or similar expressions of his own, abound in Ed- 
 wards' writings. But they are generally accom- 
 panied with quahfications, such as " as if " or " as it 
 were," — indications that Edwards hesitated about 
 committing himself in language which might seem 
 to imply the identification of the human with the 
 divine. But as the need of these qualifications has 
 ^ Grossart, Selections, etc. , p. 47. 
 
370 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 disappeared in consequence of the ethical concep- 
 tion of the Spirit as the inmost essence of God, so 
 Edwards' language tends toward positive, unqual- 
 ified assertion. The Holy Spirit is the fidness of 
 the Godhead, the summiim of all good. " Be- 
 cause this Spirit which is the fulness of God con- 
 sists in the love of God and Christ, therefore we 
 by knowing the love of Christ are said to be filled 
 with all the fulness of God." When we are told 
 that the saints are made partakers of the Divine 
 nature, we are to understand that " they are not 
 only partakers of a nature that may in some sense 
 be called divine because it is conformed to the na- 
 ture of God, but the very Deity does in some 
 sense dwell in them." They partake of the holi- 
 ness wherewith God is holy. Hence the reality of 
 the language of Christ appears when He prays 
 that the "Love wherewith Thou hast loved Me 
 may be in them and I in them." 
 
 And in the third place, Edwards disputes the 
 customary language which speaks of a principle or 
 habit of grace. He does not like such language : 
 it seems in some respects to carry with it a wrong 
 idea, because it does not, as it were, personalize 
 the divine love in ever-fresh and creative divine 
 activity. To speak of a habit of grace is to re- 
 duce grace to an attribute or quality, or to make 
 it a consequence of some previous divine action. 
 And so once more the Berkelej^an principle, in the 
 extreme form in which Edwards held it, reappears 
 in perhaps its strongest expression : — 
 
BERKELEYANISM APPLIED TO SPIRIT. 371 
 
 " The giving one gracious discovery or act of grace, 
 )r a thousand, has no proper natural tendency to cause 
 m abiding habit of grace for the future, nor any other- 
 [vise than by divine constitution and covenant. But all 
 mcceeding acts of grace must be as immediately, and 
 :o all intents and purposes, as much from the immediate 
 icting of the Spirit of God upon the soul as the first ; 
 md if God should take away His spirit out of the soul, 
 ill habits and acts of grace would of themselves cease, 
 is lioht ceases in a room when the candle is carried out. 
 
 o 
 
 Ajid no man has a habit of grace dwelling in him any 
 jtherwise than as he has the Holy Spirit dwelling in 
 bim in His temple, and acting in union with his natural 
 faculties, after the manner of a vital principle. So that, 
 tvhen they act grace, 't is, in the language of the apostle, 
 ' not they but Christ living in them.' " ^ 
 
 The substance of the missing essay, as we are 
 assured on the best authority, is given in these two 
 treatises, — Observations on the Trinity, and the 
 Treatise on Grace. We are therefore in a position 
 to judge whether Edwards' thought contained a 
 departure from received views in the Puritan 
 churches, as also how it stands related to the 
 larger thought of the church in every age. That 
 there is a departure, and a significant one, needs no 
 further demonstration. The missing essay plainly 
 justifies the comment already quoted, that it was 
 worked out with great care, and was marked by 
 great boldness and independence of thought. No 
 student of Edwards' works can help noticing the 
 
 ^ Grossart, p. 55. 
 
372 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 difference in his tone in these treatises under 
 review as compared with his other works. It 
 seems like listening to an interlude in his thought, 
 or as if he had wandered for a moment in distant 
 and unfamiliar fields, and were in danger of for- 
 getting his old haunts, of not returning again to 
 the principles by which his name is kno\\Ti in 
 theology. It need scarcely be said that his view 
 of the Trinity is not Arian or Sabellian, nor does 
 it show any leaning to Pelagianism. He was re- 
 producing to a certain extent what is known as the 
 Nicene or Athanasian theology, whose affiliations, 
 if tliey had been followed out to their legitimate 
 conclusions, would have led him far away from the 
 tenets of Augustine or Calvin. Dr. Bushnell was 
 not far from the truth when he spoke of the miss- 
 ing essay as containing an a priori argument for 
 the doctrine of the Trinity. The stages in the 
 history of the doctrine of the Trinity have been 
 briefly and accurately summarized as, in the early 
 church, a doctrine of reason; in the Middle Ages 
 a mystery, in the eighteenth century a meaningless 
 or irrational dogma ; and again, in the nineteenth 
 century, a doctrine of the reason, a truth essential 
 to the nature of God. In an age when there ex- 
 isted a widespread tendency to reject the doctrine 
 as irrational, and when those who held it betrayed 
 the influence of their environment by avoiding 
 thought upon the subject as dangerous, or taking 
 refuge in Scripture as the only sure foundation for 
 its support, Edwards appears as anticipating that 
 
THE DIVINE REASON IN MAN. 373 
 
 feature of modern theology which finds in the doc- 
 trine of the Trinity the essence of the Christian 
 faith, as well as the formula for the interpretation 
 of Christian experience. 
 
 But if Edwards appears as tending toward the 
 Nicene theology, or even as carrying its develop- 
 ment to a higher result in the doctrine of the Holy 
 Ghost, till his statement approximates the Hege- 
 lian principle of the life of the Spirit, yet one es- 
 sential aspect of that theology he not only failed 
 to grasp, but, it may be, he sternly and to the very 
 last rejected. We read in his Treatise on Grace 
 how the Spirit, which is the mutual love of the 
 Father and the Son, takes up His abode in hiunan 
 souls, and how this love is no mere attribute or 
 quality infused from without, but a divine person- 
 ality within. Why could he not also have main- 
 tained, as ancient fathers had done, as Justin 
 Martyr had so eloquently taught, that the Logos 
 or Divine Reason also indwelt in humanity, so that 
 mankind was constituted in Clu?ist, and shared 
 with Him in the consubstantial image of the 
 Father ? If love may indwell as a personal force 
 in the soul, why not also the Divine Reason, — the 
 light that lighteth every man that cometh into the 
 world ? What is there in man with which the 
 Spirit may fitly associate if it be not this potential 
 image of the Son? Upon what can the Spirit 
 fasten in humanity unless it be this divine princi- 
 ple in the soul, which, deeper and stronger than 
 the evil in every man, binds the soul to Christ as 
 
374 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 its organic head ? It was not tliat Edwards failed 
 to see tills truth, that he did not receive it. As 
 we turn over again the discolored pages of that 
 ancient periodical, the Montlily Review, for the 
 year 1750-51, in which he first met the Christian 
 philosophy of Ramsay, we seem to be brought into 
 closer contact with Edwards' mind. There were 
 passages, over which we may imagine him as bend- 
 ing in serious contemplation, which yet he does not 
 seem to have copied into his note-book. There is 
 one in particular which reads as follows : — 
 
 " The consubstantial Logos united Himself also fi*om 
 the beginning to a finite nature composed of soul and 
 body, that so he might converse with created intelli- 
 gences in a sensible manner ; be their conductor and 
 guide, their model and high priest ; lead them into the 
 central depth of the Divinity, and from thence into all 
 the immense region of nature ; show them by turns the 
 beauties of the original and the pictures ; and teach them 
 the homage finite beings owe to the Infinite." 
 
 In that exquisite quotation from Edwards' man- 
 uscript given above, ^ where he speaks of outward 
 nature reflecting the beauty of Christ, he comes 
 very near speaking of humanity as if it also re- 
 flected the same glorious beauty. But when he 
 reaches the point where we await this confession, 
 he turns aside, unwilling to admit that man as man 
 has any relationship with the Son of God, unless 
 it may be in the lower beauty and grace of the 
 human body. Outward nature may reflect Christ's 
 ( 1 Cf . ante, p. 355. 
 
CHRIST AND HUMANITY. 375 
 
 glory, but as yet humanity does not. Or, in his 
 own lano-uao'e : " From hence it is evident that 
 
 O CI 
 
 man is in a fallen state, and that he has scarcely 
 anything of those sweet graces which are an image 
 of those which are in Christ. For no doubt, see- 
 ing that other creatures have an image of them, 
 according to their capacity, so also the rational 
 and intelligent part of the world once had accord- 
 ing to theirs." 
 
 And so from the consideration of this high 
 theme of the Christian Trinity Edwards turned 
 away to his exposition of the doctrine of original 
 sin. It has already been suggested ^ that he con- 
 templated such a work as a supplement to his 
 Freedom of the Will. He may have been only 
 following out an earlier purpose, when he turned 
 from the mystery of the divine nature to the pro- 
 cess by which humanity had been deprived of its 
 birthright. But the transition may have also an- 
 other significance. It looks as if he were not alto- 
 gether satisfied \vith any of these later dissertations, 
 — on Virtue, the End of the Creation, on Grace, 
 or the Trinity. He may have retained them for 
 revision, or in order to recast their shape, before 
 giving them to the world. He may also have felt 
 that the development of his later thought regard- 
 ing the nature of God, if fully carried out, would 
 lead to results incompatible with those doctrines 
 to whose advocacy he had devoted his life ; or that 
 he was standing on safer grounds when dealing 
 1 Cf. ante, pp. 298, 299. 
 
376 THE PHILOSOPHICAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 witlx humanity in its ruined state than when ex- 
 ploring the inner mystery of the being of God. 
 However it may be, there were grave deficiencies 
 in his dissertations on Virtue and on the End of 
 the Creation, and the same remark applies to his 
 exposition of the Trinity. His thought upon this 
 subject cannot have been a mere episode in his 
 mental history, — there is too much in his earlier 
 writings which points in this direction. But his 
 treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity, great as 
 is its beauty and value in some respects, still re- 
 mains incomplete. He does not emphasize the 
 Eternal Sonship of Christ, nor does this truth find 
 anywhere in his works an adequate exposition. 
 His thought revolved around God in His sover- 
 eignty, or the Holy Spirit who sanctifieth all the 
 peojile of God. In the Sonship of Christ is in- 
 volved humanity with its interests and destiny. 
 But as humanity in itself and as a whole possessed 
 no importance in his eyes, so Christ, who is its 
 head, fills no conspicuous place in his theology. 
 The truth of the Incarnation was weakened, if not 
 neutralized, by the tenets of original sin and pre- 
 destination. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 Edwards' short residence at Stockbriclge is in 
 beautiful contrast with the fever and tumult which 
 marked the last years at Northampton. He speaks 
 of himself as finding " both pleasure and profit " 
 in the performance of tasks congenial to his mind. 
 His worldly affairs were also falling again into com- 
 fortable order after the troubles and damage which 
 his removal had cost him. But while he was ab- 
 sorbed in his work, he seems as if oblivious to the 
 flight of years. He was a living illustration of the 
 words, with which no one could have been more 
 familiar, " Of making many books there is no 
 end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh." 
 His life had been one of prolonged and intense ex- 
 ertion, of that kind also which drains the strength 
 of the vital faculties. He ought to have had many 
 years yet before him. His father, his mother, his 
 grandparents, had lived to an advanced old age. 
 But he had inherited a delicate, nervous constitu- 
 tion, unequal to the strain to which it had been 
 subjected. Several times he had been brought 
 low mth illness, which had interrupted his work. 
 But notwithstanding these warnings that his health 
 had begun to decline, he continued to write his 
 
378 CONCLUSION. 
 
 books, and the more he wrote " the more and wider 
 the field opened before him." In his secluded 
 home he was almost buried to the world. The 
 great movement of life, with its " rushing strain 
 and stir of existence, the immense and magic spell 
 of human affairs," was shut out from his view. 
 But had it swept by his very door, it would have 
 had no charm to him. From his youth he had 
 sacrificed the life that now is, in the conviction 
 that the» life which is most real is to come here- 
 after. 
 
 " He threw on God 
 (He loves the burthen) 
 God's task to make the heavenlj'^ period 
 Perfect the earthen." 
 
 He had yielded himself to the search for God as 
 the only reality : and while he was still eagerly 
 following the search, — 
 
 " This high man, 
 With a g-reat thing- to pursue, 
 Dies ere he knows it." 
 
 In the last year of his life he received a call to 
 become the president of Princeton College. The 
 call was unexpected, and must have reached him at 
 the same time as the tidings of the death of Presi- 
 dent Burr. He had now attained the age of fifty- 
 three, being the elder of his son-in-law by only 
 thirteen years. In a very interesting letter to the 
 trustees, he opened his mind freely in regard to 
 his fitness for the position. Among the obstacles 
 in his way, he mentions the difficulty of finding a 
 
CALL TO PRINCETON. 379 
 
 purchaser for his estate at Stoekbridge, the ex- 
 pense of removing his numerous family, the burden 
 which the proper support of such an office would 
 entail. He also enters into particulars regarding 
 his constitution, remarking that it is a peculiarly 
 unliappy one ; that he is troubled by " a low tide 
 of spirits, often occasioning a kind of childish 
 weakness and contemptibleness of speech and be- 
 havior, with a disagreeable dulness, much unfitting 
 me for conversation, but more especially for the 
 government of a college." He admits a deficiency 
 in some branches of learning, as in the higher 
 mathemathics and the Greek classics. Nor would 
 he care to spend his time in teaching languages, 
 unless it be Hebrew, in order to improve himself 
 while instructing others. 
 
 But the chief cause which induced hesitation 
 and even reluctance in accepting the extended 
 honor was his devotion to his studies, his unwil- 
 lingness to put liimseK where he should be incapa- 
 ble of pursuing them, as would be the case if he 
 were to undertake the office of president as Mr. 
 Burr had conceived and fulfilled it. Among: the 
 projects before him, there were still points of dis- 
 pute with the Arminians which he wished to con- 
 sider. But the thing which interested him most 
 was a " great work " which it lay on his heart and 
 mind to write, — a History of Redemption. It was 
 to be "a body of divinity in an entire new method, 
 being thrown into the form of a history." It was 
 to begin and end with eternity, all great events 
 
880 CONCLUSION. 
 
 and epoclis in time being viewed suh specie eterni- 
 tatis. The tlu'ee worlds — heaven, earth, and hell — 
 were to be the scenes of this grand drama. It was 
 to include also the topics of theology, as living 
 factors each in its own place, but so that " every 
 divine doctrine will appear to the greatest advan- 
 tage, in the brightest light, in the most striking 
 manner, showing the admirable contexture and 
 harmony of the whole." ^ It was to combine 
 poetry and history, philosophy and theology, the 
 features of the Divine Comedy, or the Paradise Lost 
 and Regained, with those of Augustine's City of 
 God. There is no evidence that this was more 
 than a splendid dream which excited Edwards' 
 imagination. He lacked the necessary learning 
 for such a task. More than any other which he 
 had undertaken, did it call for requisites not at his 
 command. We know, however, what its leading 
 characteristic would have been had he lived to 
 complete it. Unlike Gibbon's great picture, there 
 would have been no effort to trace the operation 
 of second causes. The human element, the myste- 
 rious currents and counter-currents in human his- 
 tory, the great works which men have done, — all 
 this would have been passed over as unworthy of 
 attention. History would have appeared as alive 
 with a divine force, — the impulse of an immediate 
 divine presence. Everj^thing would have centred 
 in the accomplishment of redemption, the mystery 
 which angels desire to look into. There would 
 
 ^ Dwight, Life of Edwards, p. 570. 
 
HISTORY OF REDEMPTION. 881 
 
 have been no sharp distinction between the crea- 
 tive act and a divine providence following in its 
 wake. God's providence would be only another 
 name for a continuous creation. As all things 
 were y?'om God, 'so all things tend to God in their 
 conclusion and final issue. ^ 
 
 The call to Princeton was accepted, notwith- 
 standing an unfeigned reluctance on Edwards' 
 j^art to abandon a retirement so fruitful in results, 
 so full of promise for the future. A council was 
 called, according to the custom of the Congrega- 
 tional churches, which, having listened to a pres- 
 entation of the case, decided that it was his duty to 
 take the presidency of the college. When this de- 
 cision was announced, it is said that Edwards fell 
 into tears, a thing unusual for him in the presence 
 of others. Leaving his family behind him, he set 
 out for Princeton in the month of January, 1758. 
 There he was awaited by his daughter Esther, in 
 the freshness of her great sorrow, and by another 
 daughter, Lucy, who remained unmarried. Hardly 
 had he reached his destination when he learned of 
 the death of his aged father. For several successive 
 Sundays he preached in the college hall, but the 
 
 1 Cf . History of Redemption, pp. 556. Tliis treatise of Edwards 
 is composed of a series of sermons preached iu 1739. It may be 
 taken as the first rough draft of his projected work, and as indicat- 
 ing his method. It was first published in Edinburgh, 1777. It 
 has been one of the most widely read of Edwards' writings, as if 
 it had taken the place with his readers which his magnum opus 
 was intended to fill. It adds little, however, to Edwards' thought 
 beyond what has been already given. 
 
382 CONCLUSION. 
 
 only work which he undertook as president was to 
 give out " questions in divinity " to the senior class. 
 When the students came to meet him with their 
 answers, he is said to have impressed them all with 
 satisfaction and with wonder. Aa a preacher also 
 he appeared full of interest and power, as he had 
 done in the early years of his ministry. 
 
 At the time when Edwards reached Princeton 
 the community were in a state of alarm over the 
 spread of the small-pox in the village and its vicin- 
 ity. As Edwards had not had the disease, the 
 situation seemed to justify in his case the preven- 
 tive treatment known as inoculation, in the hope 
 of preserving a life so dear and valuable. The 
 objections to the practice had growTi weaker in the 
 course of years ; it was also said to have been at- 
 tended with good results under the skilful direc- 
 tion of the physicians at Princeton. Edwards him- 
 self proposed its trial, and the corporation of the 
 college consented. He was inoculated on the 13th 
 of February, and so successfully that for a while 
 it was believed that the danger in his case was 
 over. But the hope was a delusive one, and the 
 end was near. As he lay dying, aware that his 
 time was short, his thoughts reverted to the chil- 
 dren who were to be fatherless, and more particu- 
 larly to the absent wife in the distant home at 
 Stockbridge. " Tell her," he said to his daughter, 
 who took down his words, " that the uncommon 
 union which has so long subsisted between us has 
 been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual, and 
 
DEATH. 383 
 
 therefore will continue forever." After this, when 
 he seemed insensible and those around him were 
 already lamenting his departure, he spoke once 
 more : " Trust in God and ye need not fear." 
 His death took place on the 22d of March, 1758, 
 in the fifty-fifth year of his age. Only sixteen 
 days afterwards his daughter Esther followed him 
 out of the world. Nor did Mrs. Edwards long 
 survive. In September of the same year, she died 
 at Philadelphia, where she had gone by way of 
 Princeton to assume the charge of her infant 
 grandchildren. In the graveyard at Princeton 
 they rest together who were lovely and pleasant 
 in their lives, and in their deaths were not divided. 
 The letters which passed among the sorrowing 
 members of the family, beginning with the death 
 of Mr. Burr, are still preserved. They are filled 
 with utterances of resignation to the will of God, 
 but beneath these expressions of religious faith 
 there is seen the intensity of human feeling and 
 of deep, unspeakable anguish. The devotion of 
 human souls to each other is there, though veiled 
 beneath a deep reserve. They had been schooled 
 to an almost Stoical repression of the natural emo- 
 tions. They had dissevered their ideal from earth 
 as too vast and exalted to be realized in this lower 
 sphere. Their eyes were fastened upon a revela- 
 tion of heaven to the world. Even when he was a 
 boy working out the theory of the outward world 
 as ideal or immaterial, Edwards had noted, as if 
 with a feeling of triumph, that such a doctrine did 
 
384 CONCL USION, 
 
 not disturb the conception of heaven as the place 
 where God resides. Later in life he again ex- 
 pressed himself in similar fashion : — 
 
 " God considered with respect to His essence is every- 
 where : He fills both heaven and earth. But yet He is 
 said in some respects to be more especially in some 
 places than in others. . . . Heaven is His dwelling- 
 place above all other places in the universe ; and all 
 those places in which He was said to dwell of old, were 
 but types of this. Heaven is a part of His creation that 
 God has built for this end, to be the place of His glo- 
 rious presence ; and here He will dwell and gloriously 
 manifest Himself to all eternity. 
 
 " All the truly great and good, all the pure and holy 
 and excellent from this world, and it may be from every 
 part of the universe, are constantly tending toward 
 heaven. As the streams tend to the ocean, so all these 
 are tending to the great ocean of infinite purity and 
 bhss." 1 
 
 Over the grave of Edwards the trustees of the 
 college erected a marble monument, with a Latin 
 inscription which speaks of him as second to no 
 mortal man, who as a theologian has scarce had 
 his equal. Other eulogies might be mentioned 
 which seem to vie with each other in expressing 
 the highest admiration which it is lawful to utter. 
 "From the days of Plato," says a writer in the 
 Westminster Review, " there has been no life of 
 more simple and imposing grandeur than that of 
 Jonathan Edwards." " I regard him," said Robert 
 
 1 Charity and its Fruits, pp. 467, 474. 
 
TESTIMONIES TO HIS GREATNESS. 385 
 
 Hall, who knew liim only by liis books, " as the 
 greatest of the sons of men." An eminent Puritan 
 divine, who had seen his face when illimiined with 
 the divine communion, remarked that " he was ac- 
 customed to look upon him as belonging to some 
 superior race of beings." " I have long esteemed 
 him," said Dr. Chalmers, " as the greatest of theo- 
 logians, combining in a degree that is quite unex- 
 ampled the profoundly intellectual with the de- 
 votedly spiritual and sacred, and realizing in his 
 own person a most rare yet most beautifid- har- 
 mony between the simplicity of the Christian 
 pastor on the one hand, and on the other all the 
 strength and prowess of a giant in philosophy." ^ 
 Edwards lived in an age when such impressions 
 could be more easily produced than in our own, 
 when the life was less complex, and the individual 
 coidd play a larger role. Among the great names 
 in America of the last century, the only other which 
 competes in celebrity with his own is that of Ben- 
 jamin Franklin, who labored for this world as 
 assiduously as Edwards for another world. The 
 memorial window in Edwards' honor in the chapel 
 
 ^ In contrast -with these testimonies is the judgment of Presi- 
 dent Stiles, of Yale College, who had a reputation in his day for 
 learning and polite culture, as well as a gift for discerning the 
 foibles of his contemporaries. President Stiles condemned Ed- 
 wards to oblivion. In his Diary for August 7, 1787, he wrote : 
 "When posterity occasionally comes across his writings in the 
 rubbish of libraries, the rare characters who may read and be 
 pleased with them will be looked upon as singular and whim- 
 sical as in these days are admirers of Suarez, Aquinas, or Dion. 
 Areopagita. ' ' 
 
386 CONCLUSION. 
 
 of Yale College, where lie had studied and taught, 
 contains an inscription revealing the secret of the 
 homage which men have agreed to render, even 
 though differing as widely as heaven from earth 
 about the theology which is identified with his 
 name. " lonathan Edwards summi in ecdesia 
 ordinis vatesj^uit, reruni sacrum 'philosophiis qui 
 scecidorum admirationem movet^ Dei cultor riiys- 
 tice amantissimus.^^ There was in him something 
 of the seer or prophet who beholds by direct vis- 
 ion tv^hat others know only by report. We may 
 apply to him his own words : there was in him 
 " a divine and supernatural light," which is seen 
 but rarely among the generations that come and 
 go. When such a light appears, it does not shine 
 for a moment only or for a few : it casts its beams 
 to a distance, illuminating the ages. He was like 
 a star, says a recent writer, throwing its light afar 
 off, — ein weithin leuchtendes Gestirn. 
 
 The divine revelation, as it came through him 
 as its vehicle, was associated with much that was 
 untrue. If we can make allowance for the human 
 equation in his teaching, for the reasoning which 
 however solid or true was based upon false prem- 
 ises, if we can look at the negative side of his the- 
 ology as the local and transitory element of his 
 time, there will then remain an imperishable ele- 
 ment which points to the reality of the divine 
 existence, and of the revelation of God to the 
 world, as no external evidence can do. Indeed, it 
 is only by exposing what was false or distorted in 
 
MAURICE'S ESTIMATE. 387 
 
 his theology that the real man stands forth in the 
 gi-andeur of his proportions. It is impossible to 
 allude here to his influence upon the later history 
 of religious life and thought in New England. If 
 the sketch which has been given of his work be 
 true, he did not do for the old theology what he 
 attempted or desired. It was his aim to rational- 
 ize it, but at every point, under his transcendental 
 touch, it threatened to expand into something very 
 unlike the original. He has had his children ac- 
 cording to the letter of his teaching ; but those 
 who have also protested most loudly against his 
 errors may be also his children after the spirit. 
 Among these may be counted the late Mr. Mau- 
 rice, who was at one with Edwards in that which 
 constitutes his essential quality as a prophet, after 
 all that is unworthy has been eliminated from his 
 message. How deeply Maurice recognized his 
 worth may be seen from the following estimate, 
 given in his History of Philosophy : — 
 
 " In his own country he retains and always must re- 
 tain a great power. We should imagine that all Amer- 
 ican theology and philosophy, whatever changes it may 
 undergo, with whatever foreign elements it may be asso- 
 ciated, must be cast in his mould. New Englanders 
 who try to substitute Berkeley, or Butler, or Male- 
 branche, or Cardillac, or Kant, or Hegel for Edwards, or 
 to form their minds upon any of them, must be forcing 
 themselves into an unnatural position, and must suffer 
 from the effort. On the contrary, if they accept the 
 starting-point of their native teacher and seriously con- 
 
388 CONCLUSION. 
 
 sider what is necessary to make that teacher consistent 
 with himself, — what is necessary that the divine foun- 
 dation upon which he wished to build may not be too 
 weak and narrow for any human or social life to rest 
 upon it, — we should expect great and fruitful results 
 from their inquiries to the land which they must care 
 for most, and therefore to mankind." 
 
 The great wrong which Edwards did, which 
 haunts us as an evil dream throughout his writings, 
 was to assert God at the expense of humanity. 
 Where man should be, there is only a fearful void. 
 The protests which he has evoked have proclaimed 
 the divineness of human nature, the actuality of 
 the redemption in Christ for all the world. Only 
 in the intense light which he threw could the ne- 
 cessity for these protests have been so clearly per- 
 ceived. But those who have made them are more 
 closely related to him in spirit than they are 
 aware or may be willing to admit. It is not too 
 much to say that he is the forerunner of the later 
 New England trancendentalism quite as truly as 
 the author of a modified Calvinism. All who ac- 
 cept the truth, that divine things are known to be 
 divine because humanity is endowed wdth the gift 
 of direct vision into divinity, are accepting what 
 Edwards proclaimed, what constitutes the positive 
 feature of his theology. There are those who 
 have made the transition from the old Calvinism, 
 through the mediation of this principle, to a larger 
 theology as if by a natural process. Among these 
 typical thinkers were Thomas Erskine, McLeod 
 
TRANSITION TO A LARGER THEOLOGY. 389 
 
 Campbell, and Bishop Ewing, in Scotland, or the 
 late Mr. Maurice in England. These and such as 
 these, in whom the God-consciousness is supreme, 
 are the true continuators of the work of Jonathan 
 Edwards. 
 
1 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The first edition of Edwards' works was published in Worces- 
 ter, Mass., in 8 vols., 1809 ; aftem^ards republished in 4 vols. It 
 is still in print, the plates being owned, it is said, by Carter 
 Bros., New York. Dr. Dwig-ht's edition was published in New 
 York in 1829, in 10 vols., the first volume being occupied with 
 the life There is a London edition in 8 vols, by Williams, 1817; 
 vols. 9 and 10 supplementary by Ogle, Edinburgh, 1847. Another 
 London edition in 2 vols., bearing the imprint of Bohn, is still in 
 print, and though cumbrous in forna is in many respects excel- 
 lent. It possesses the only portrait of Edwards which answers to 
 one's idea of the man. 
 
 Articles on Edwards may be found in the collections of Alli- 
 bone, Duyckinck, Griswold, Richardson, and Sprague. The ref- 
 erences in Ueberweg's His. Phil. Am. Tr., and Hagenbach's His. 
 Doc, are valuable. The follo^ving list embraces some of the 
 more important contributions elucidating the thought of Edwards 
 or bearing witness to its influence. 
 
 Atwater, L. H., Edwards and the New Divinity , Princ. Rev., 
 30, 58." , 
 
 Bancroft, George, Art. in Appleton's Amer. Cyc.^ 1st ed., also 
 His. of the U. S., vols. iii. and iv. 
 
 Campbell, J. McLeod, on The Nature of the Atonement. 
 
 Chalmers, Thomas, Christian and Civic Economy of Large 
 Towns, Works, i. 318-322. 
 
 Channing, W. H., Edwards and the Revivalists, Cliris. Exam., 
 43, 74. 
 
 Edwards, Tryon, Review of Charity and its Fruits, New Eng., 
 10, 222 : contains an account of Edwards' MS. 
 
 Fisher, G. P., Discussions in History and Philosophy, pp. 227- 
 252, and His. of the Chris. Ch., chap. viii. 
 
392 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Frazer, A. C, Berkeley in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 
 pp. 138-141, also in edition of Berkeley's Works. 
 
 Gillett, E. H., on Edwards' Dismissal from Northampton, His. 
 Mag., 11, 333. 
 
 Godwin, W., Inquiry concerning Political Justice, vol. i. 301. 
 Am. ed. Philadelphia, 1796. 
 
 Gros^art, A. B., Introd. to Selections from the Unpublished Writ- 
 ings of Edwards. 
 
 Hall, Robert, Works. Bohn ed., p. 284. 
 
 Hazard, Roland G., Review of Edwards on the Will. 
 
 Hodge, Charles, Bib. Hep. and Princeton Rev., v. 30, p. 585, 
 claims Edwards for the old theology of the Westminster Confes- 
 sion. * 
 
 Holmes, O. W., in Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical 
 Club, pp. 362-375, and Internat. Rev., July, 1880. 
 
 Hopkins, Samuel, Memoir of Edwards, — a work which has the 
 quaint charm of Walton's Lives. 
 
 Huxley, T. F., Art. Edwards, Encyc. Brit., 9th ed. 
 
 Lyon, G., L'Ide'alisme en Angleterre au XVIII^ Siecle, pp. 406- 
 439. 
 
 Mackintosh, J., Progress of Ethical Philosophy, Philadelphia, 
 1834, p. 108. 
 
 Magoun, G. F., Edwards as a Reformer, Cong. Qu., 11, 259. 
 
 Maurice, F. D., His. of Mod. Phil, pp. 469-475. 
 
 Miller, Samuel, Life of Edwards, vol- viii., Sparks' Am. Biog. 
 
 Osgood, Samuel, Studies in Christian Biography, pp. 348-377. 
 
 Park, E. A., Edwards^ Doctrine of the Trinity, Bib. Sac, Jan. 
 and Apr. 1881 ; Articles in Bib. Sac. defending Edwards against 
 the claims of Presbyterianism ; The Atonement, etc. ; allusions to 
 in Memoirs of Hopkins and Emmons. 
 
 Parton, J., Life of Aaron Burr. 
 
 Porter, Noah, Edwards^ Peculiarity as a Theologian, New Eng., 
 18, 737. Historical Discourse, on Bp. Berkeley, 1885. 
 
 Rogers, Henry, Introduction to Bohn ed. of Edwards' Works. 
 
 Smith, H. B., allusions to, in Faith and Philosophy ; also His. 
 of the Church, in Chronological Tables. 
 
 Smythe, E. C, Appendix to Edwards' Observations concerning 
 the Trinity. 
 
 Stephen, Leslie, Kssay on, in Hours in a Library^ ii. pp. 44- 
 106. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 393 
 
 Stewaxt, Dugald, Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy, 
 p. 203, ed. 1820. 
 
 Stowe, C. E., Art. Edwards in Herzog's Real-Encyclopddie. 
 
 Strong, A. H., on the influence of Edwards on the "New Theol- 
 ogy," in Philosophy and Religion, p. 167, with other allusions, 
 also, in his Systematic Theology. 
 
 Tarbox, I. N., Edwards and the Half-way Covenant, and Ed- 
 wards as a Man, New Eng., vol. 43. 
 
 Taylor, Isaac, Introduction to his ed. of Edwards on The Will. 
 
 ITiompson, J. P., on Edwards' theology. Bib. Sac, 18, 809. 
 
 Tracy, J., His. of the Bemval in the Time of Edwards and 
 Whitefield. 
 
 Trumbull, His. of Conn. 
 
 Tyler, M. C, His. of Am. Lit. 
 
 Uhden, The New England Theocracy, chap. ix. 
 
 Woolsey, T., Historical Discourse, 1870, at the reunion of the 
 Edwards' family. 
 
1 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Adam, effects of his fall, 72, 101, 103, 
 304; lacked freedom, iii the seuse 
 of power to the contrary, 304 ; per- 
 sonality of, 305 ; every man iden- 
 tical with, 308-310. 
 
 Alexander, J. W., describes effect of 
 Edwards' preaching, 128, note. 
 
 Anselm, Edwards' resemblance to, 
 81 ; his doctrine of atonement, 89 ; 
 on freedom of the will, 301. 
 
 Arminiauism, Edwards' opposition to, 
 ' 58, 81, 82, 94, 103, 106, 221, 228, 282, 
 328 ; its view of freedom. 111, 282, 
 301 ; in the revival, 182 ; conception 
 of the action of the Holy Spirit, 
 200 ft' ; makes the happiness of the 
 creature the end of tlie creation, 
 328. 
 
 Asceticism, Traces of, in Diary, 32, 
 ^33. 
 ^thanasius, his theology, 353, 372 ; on 
 
 ' 'the Incarnation, 358. 
 
 Atonement, the doctrine of, wanting 
 in Mohammedanism, 88 ; Edwards' 
 conception of, 90-92, 146, 352. 
 
 Augustine, his idea of God, 20, 297 ; 
 abandonment of philosophy, 21 ; 
 conception of God, 37 ; celibate 
 ideal of, 44 ; on predestination, 64 ; 
 on freedom, 73 ; connection with 
 
 ''monasticism, 163 ; idea of the 
 churcli, 269 ; on real freedom as re- 
 lated to necessity, 301 ; on grace, 
 360. 
 
 Baptism, Edwards' view of, 265; 
 difference of opinion in regard to, 
 266, 268. 
 
 Beardsley, E. E., on the influence of 
 Berkeleyism at Yale College, 16. 
 
 Berkeley, Edwards' coincidence with, 
 14 ; whether Edwards had read his 
 writings, 15; relation of, to John- 
 eon, 16 ; how he differs from Ed- 
 wards, 17, note ; lat^ relation of 
 Edwards to the philosophy of, 60, 
 61, 110, 308, 309 ; Edwards' modifi- 
 
 cation of the principle of, 134, 308, 
 371 ; combated by Ramsay, 347. 
 
 Boston, Edwards' sermon at, on De- 
 I>endence, 55. 
 
 Brainerd, David, first meeting with 
 Edwards, 243 ; becomes an inmate 
 of Edwards' house, 245 ; quotation 
 from Edwards on his religious life, 
 321. 
 
 Buddhism, essential principle of, con- 
 trasted with Edwards' ruling idea 
 of being, 7. ^ 
 
 Burr, Aaron, intercedes for Brainerd, * 
 244 ; marriage with Esther Edwards, 
 276 ; death, 378. 
 
 Burr, Aaron, grandson of Edwards, 
 277. 
 
 Bushnell, Dr. Horace, calls attention 
 to Edwards' unpublished essay on 
 the Trinity, 341, 344, 372. 
 
 Butler, Bishop, 111, 187. 
 
 Calvin, on predestination, 64; denial 
 of human freedom, 73 ; view of 
 Scripture, 135 ; his doctrine of the 
 Holy Spirit, 135 ; his consistency in 
 holding to his denial of the freedom 
 of the will, 294, 295 ; freedom in 
 necessity, 301 ; quoted on the Trin- 
 ity, 353. 
 
 Calvinism, contradiction in, 79 ; old 
 and new schools of, 80 ; objections 
 urged against, 86; the opposite ex- 
 treme from Romanism, 114 ; its 
 doctrine of the Holy Spirit, 135; 
 its idea of God, 291. 
 
 Campbell, J. McLeod, indebtedness 
 to Edwards on the Atonement, 91. 
 
 Chalmers, Dr. Thomas, his admira- 
 tion for Edwards, 46, 385 ; his opin- 
 ion of the Freedom of the Will, 
 285. 
 
 Chauncy, Charles, opposes the revival, 
 181, 208, 209. 
 
 Christ, relation of believers to, 96-100 ; 
 tendency to denial of His divinity, 
 98; relation of, to the creation, 99, 
 
396 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 103, 355, 356 ; the mystical or spirit- 
 ual, 190, 2iJ4; God as existing for, 
 336. 
 
 Church and State, readjustment of 
 their relation called for, 55 ; Wyc- 
 litfe's view of their relation, 55 ; 
 Edwards' attitude on, 56, 254, 2G9. 
 
 Clap, Rev. Mr., Rector of Yale Col- 
 lege, 180, 280. 
 
 Coleridge, conception of miraclt, 66 ; 
 on the freedom of the will, 300. 
 
 Collins, John Anthony, his doctrine 
 of freedom and necessity resembles 
 Edwards' view, 288, ndte. 
 
 Congregationalism, Edwards the fa- 
 ther of the modern form of, 270 ; 
 his strictness on its polity, 271, 2T2. 
 
 Conscience, does not belong in the 
 sphere of the supernatural, 66, 323, 
 324. 
 
 Conversion, hints relating to, in Diary, 
 etc., 35, 36 ; nature of, in Edwards' 
 case, 37, 38 ; foundation of Edwards' 
 doctrine of, 134 ; process of, de- 
 scribed, 144 ; tragic element inj 144, 
 148; realization of dependence on 
 God, 146 ; uncertainty of divine love, 
 148 ; joyful experience following 
 after the legal phase of, 149 ; phys- 
 ical accomipaniments of, 154, 164, 
 167 ; relation of, to morality, 
 155 ff, 231 ; signs of, 221-225 ; re- 
 sults of the acceptance of the idea 
 of, 251, 264, 265. 
 
 Cutler, and others, secession of, to 
 Episcopal church, 24. 
 
 Deism, Edwards' relation to, 58, 336. 
 
 DWight, S. E., Life of Edwards, 6, 
 note ; arrangement of the Notes 
 on the Mind, 11 ; opinion in regard 
 to Edwards' knowledge of Berkeley, 
 15, 16 ; on Mrs. Edwards' portrait, 
 45. 
 
 Edwards, Esther, her marriage to 
 Rev. Aaron Burr, 276, 277 ; died at 
 Princeton, 383. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, birth, ancestry, 
 1 ; his father, 2 ; his mother, 2, 3 ; 
 character as a child, 3 ; enters Yale 
 College, 4 ; his manuscript notes, 
 4 ; influence of Locke, 5 ; Notes on 
 the Mind, 5, 282, 288, 314; the 
 theological element predominant, 
 6 ; on the nature of excellence, 6 ; 
 his fundamental principle contrasted 
 with Buddhism, 7 ; relation of great- 
 ness of God to His excellence, 9; 
 genial outlook of his youth, 10, 11 ; 
 resemblance to Spinoza and Male- 
 branche, 12; transition to philo- 
 
 sophic idealism, 13 ; coincidence in 
 his thought with Berkeley, 1, 4 ; 
 explanation of this coincidence, 15- 
 20 ; pushes the doctrine of idealism 
 beyond Berkeley, 18 ; Spinoza and 
 Augustine, the poles of his thought, 
 21 ; early religious impressions, 22 ; 
 residence at New Haven after grad- 
 uation, in charge of a Presbyterian 
 church in New York, tutor at Yale, 
 23; Diary and Resolutions, 24 ff ; 
 mystic raptures, 25; moral ideal, 
 27 ff ; spiritual ambition, 30 ; ascetic 
 tendency, 32 ; early view of the free 
 dom of the will, 33 ; sense of sin, 
 not deep in early experience, 34 ; 
 references to conversion, in Diary, 
 etc. , 35 ; uncertainty as to his 
 own conversion, 36 ; repugnance to 
 Calvinistic doctrine of sovereignty, 
 
 37 ; the intellectual revolution, 37, 
 
 38 ; ordination at Northampton, 39 ; 
 personal appearance, 41 ; methods 
 as a student and preacher, 42, 43 ; 
 his description of his wife while a 
 yovmg girl, 46 ; his marriage, 47 ; 
 domestic life, 48, 49 ; advantage ta» 
 from association with Mr. StoddaroP 
 51 ; reverses the principle of Wyc- 
 liffe regarding church and state, 
 56, 254 ; preaches the public lecture 
 in Boston, 56 ; opposes Arminian- 
 ism, 58; asserts the divine .sov- 
 ereignty, 59-64 ; conception of the 
 supernatural, 65, 66 ; sermon on 
 Supernatural Light, 67, 229 ; how 
 he modified the earlier Calvinism, 
 80 ; defends the doctrine of endless 
 punishment, 82-87 ; accepts the An- 
 selmic doctrine gf atonement, 89; 
 suggests a possible departure from 
 Anselm, 91 ; his sermon on Justifi- 
 cation by Faith, 92-96 ; refuses to 
 define the unio mystica, 97, 100; 
 description of, as a preacher, 104, 
 105 ; sermon on the Importance of 
 a knowledge of Divine Faith, 106- 
 108 ; sermon on Pressing into the 
 Kingdom of God, 109 ; his method 
 of appealing to the will, 110 ; 
 his imprecatory sermons, 116 ; 
 preaches at Enfield, 127-129 ; con- 
 tinuation of his personal narrative, 
 130 ; sense of his own sinfulness, 131 ; 
 his preaching leads to the first revi- 
 val at Northampton, 133 ; Narrative 
 of Surprising Conversions, 138-159 ; 
 studying the phases of the revi- 
 val, 143 ; as a religious director, 149, 
 151 ; attaches practical importance 
 to morality, 156 ; how he regarded 
 the first revival, 161 ; describes the 
 
INDEX. 
 
 397 
 
 Great Awakening at Northampton, 
 IGl ff ; Distinguishing Marks of a 
 Work of the Spirit of God, 1G2 ; ap- 
 proves of the physical manifestations 
 of the revival, 1G4, 167, 193, 2'21 ; 
 resists impulses and impressions, 
 170, 203-209 ; asserts importance of 
 theologfeal culture in the minis- 
 try, 175, 211 ; condemns ceusori- 
 ousness, 174, 216 ; publishes his 
 Thoughts on the Revival, 183 ; de- 
 fends the revival, 184-195 ; approves 
 the new method of preaching, 188 ; 
 his metliod in the case of children, 
 191 ; statement of his wife's expe- 
 rience, 198-202 ; discusses the ques- 
 tion of itinerant preacliers and lay 
 exhorters, 209-212 ; asserts necessity 
 of church order, 213 ; publishes Reli- 
 gious Affections, 218 ; treats of signs 
 of conversion, 221 ; in what the 
 reality of the spiritual life consists, 
 223 ; publishes Union in Prayer, 
 232 ; gives a picture of his time, 
 238, 239 ; condemns the prevailing 
 idea of the coming of Antichrist, 
 240 ; condemns the Christian Tear, 
 241 ; desires more frequent celebra- 
 tions of the Lord's Supper, 242 ; liis 
 meeting with David Brainerd, 243 ; 
 his dismissal from Northampton, 
 248-272 ; effect of his teaching on 
 relation between church and state, 
 254 ; opposes tlie Hxlf-way Cove- 
 nant, 258, 270 ; involved in a case 
 of discipline at Northampton, 259 ; 
 his treatise on the Qualifications 
 of Full Communion, 2G0, 263, 268 ; 
 preaches his farewell sermon, 262 ; 
 controversy on Jibe, nature of the 
 church, in reply to Williams, 268, 
 269 ; beconies the father of modern 
 Congregationalism, 270 ; his stric- 
 tures on its church polity, 271 ; his 
 removal to Stockbridge, 273; his 
 controversy with Williams, 274 ; 
 receives an apology from Major 
 Hawley, 275 ; his relation to the 
 Indians at Stockbridge, 278-281; 
 writes the Freedom of the Will, 
 281 ; the treatise makes a literary 
 sensation, 283 ; marks the culmina- 
 tion of a reaction, 284; testimony 
 of its admirers, 285, 280 ; possesses 
 historical importance, 287 ; am- 
 biguity in his use of the word 
 " choice," 288 ; his agreement with 
 the physical school, 288, 289 ; as- 
 sumes the thing to be proved, 289 ;• 
 depends chiefly on the religious ar- 
 gument, 290, 291 ; the popular in- 
 ference from Edwards' argument, 
 
 292, 293 ; how he discriminated his 
 position from tliat of the necessita- 
 rians, 293-296 ; his definition of 
 freedom, 294, 295 ; how regarded 
 by Calvin, 295 ; significance of Ed- 
 wards' uistinction in later New 
 England thought, 296; denies that 
 God possesses freedom in the sense 
 of power to the contrary, 297 ; de- 
 fects of treatise on the Will, 299 ; 
 religious aspect of denial of free- 
 dom, 301 ; wrote his treatise on 
 Original Sin, 303, 313 ; its connec- 
 tion with his work on the Will, 303 ; 
 denies the self-determining power 
 of the will in the case of Adam, 
 304 ; makes God the author of sin, 
 305 ; defends the doctrine of origi- 
 nal sin by a metaphysical argument 
 on the nature of identity, 308-310 ; 
 natural deduction from his prem- 
 ises, 310 ; unethical conception of 
 sin, 311 ; the fallacy in Edwards' 
 argument, 312 ; treatise on the Na- 
 ture of True Virtue, 313-327 ; re- 
 produces his early speculations on 
 the nature of excellence, 314 ; rev- 
 erence for being, as the funda- 
 mental ethical principle, 315 ; de- 
 fect of this principle, 316, 317 ; the 
 love of God for his moral excel- 
 lence, 318 ; difficulties in the iiater- 
 pretation of his thought, 319, 320 ; 
 his teaching compared with that 
 of Spinoza, 320, 321 ; how he dif- 
 fers from Spinoza, 322 ; virtue con- 
 sists in the conscious love of God, 
 323 ; action of the natural con- 
 science, 324 ; modem reaction 
 against Edwards' principle of eth- 
 ics, 326 ; his treatise on the End of 
 God in the Creation, 327-338; de- 
 fines God as a supremely liappy 
 being, 328 ; how God's supreme 
 love for Himself is reconciled with 
 His love for the creature, 329, 330 ; 
 traces of Gnosticism in his thought, 
 331 ; the creation exists for the 
 elect, 332 ; whether the creation is 
 eternal, 333 ; on the phrase " God's 
 name's sake," 334 ; neglects signifi- 
 cance of the name of Christ, 335 ; 
 his speculations result in confusion 
 and sense of failure, 337 ; on the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, 338-376 ; 
 his peculiarity as a thinker, 338 ; 
 voluminousness of his manuscripts, 
 339, 340 ; call for his unpublished 
 essay on the Trinity, 341-344 ; reads 
 Ramsay's Philosophical Principles, 
 347 ff ; why he was attracted to 
 Ramsay, 348 ; his observations on 
 
898 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 the Scriptural (Economy of the 
 Trinity, 3o'2-354 ; approximates the 
 Athanasian statement of the Trinity, 
 353 ; the excellency of Christ seen 
 in the creation, 355 ; his Treatise on 
 Grace, 357-372 ; Mr. Grossart's es- 
 timate of, 357 ; abandons the ethical 
 principle of Treatise on Virtue, 358, 
 359 ; contradiction in his theology, 
 300 ; identifies grace with the in- 
 dwellmg Spirit, 3G0, 3G1 ; place and 
 oflSce of the Spirit in the fellow- 
 ship of the Trinity and in human 
 redemption, 364, 3G5 ; the Spirit de- 
 fined as love, 36G-368 ; c'oequality 
 of the Spirit with the Father and 
 the Son, 309 ; participation in the 
 divine nature, 370 ; disputes the 
 language which speaks of a habit of 
 grace, 371 ; the missing essay on the 
 Trinity, neither Arian or Sabellian, 
 but Athanasian, 372 ; defect in Ed- 
 wards' doctrine of the Trinity, 373- 
 375 ; decline of his health, 377 ; call 
 to Princeton, 378 ; letter to the trus- 
 tees of the college, 379; proposed 
 to write a History of Redemption, 
 380 ; departure for Princeton, 381 ; 
 his death, 383; testimonies to Ed- 
 wards as a man and a theologian, 
 384-386 ; the imperishable element 
 in his teaching, Maurice's estimate 
 of, 387 ; the evil element in his 
 theology, 388 ; his relation to mod- 
 ern theologians, 389. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, the Younger, 
 compared with his father, 277 ; 
 summary of " improvements in 
 theology " made by his father, 284, 
 332, 301 ; as literary executor of his 
 father, 337. 
 
 Edwards, Sarah Pierrepont, her an- 
 cestry, beauty, character, etc., 45; 
 description of by her future hus- 
 band, 46 ; marriage to Edwards, 47 ; 
 management of her family, 48, 49 ; 
 her place in the revival, 197-203 ; 
 admired by the Indians at Stock- 
 bridge, 279 ; died at Philadelphia, 
 383. 
 
 Edwards, Timothy, sketch of, 1, 2 ; 
 revivals in his parish, 137 ; death, 
 382. 
 
 Edwards, Tryon, 339, 342. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., PM wards' affinity 
 with, 68 ; aphorisms of, on evil and 
 punishment, 84, note. 
 
 Endless punishment, 77, 78 ; tendency 
 to denial of, 81 ; Edwards' mode of 
 defending, 83, 84 ; annihilation or 
 restoration, etc., no equivalents for, 
 121 ; method in preaching, 121-124 ; 
 
 the great majority of men will suf- 
 fer, 125. ^ 
 
 Enfield, Edwards' sermon at, 42^ 127, 
 218. 
 
 Episcopal Church, secession to of Cut- 
 ler, Johnson, and others, 24 ; how 
 regarded by Edwards, 31 ; affinity 
 of Mr. Stoddard with, 50 ; its wor- 
 ship, 241 ; doctrine of baptism, 268. 
 
 Erskiue, Dr. John, correspondence 
 with Edwards, 273, 293. 
 
 Erskine, Thomas, of Linlathen, 273, 
 389. 
 
 Fisher, Prof. George P., D. D., opin- 
 ion that Edwards had read Berke- 
 ley, 15, 16, note ; on the resem- 
 blance between Collins and Ed- 
 wards, 288. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, 386. 
 
 Frazer, A. C, on Edwards' indebted- 
 ness to Berkeley, 15. 
 
 Gnosticism in Edwards' thought, 331. 
 
 God (see Sovereignty), Edwards' con- 
 sciousness of, 6, 22, 25, 26 ; excel- 
 lence of, 8, 314, 318; greatness of, 
 as the ground of His excellence, 9, 
 315; as the one substance, 12, 21, 
 60 ; relation of to tlie external 
 world, 13, 14, 20, 309; immanence 
 of, 58, 64, 362 ; providence of, 33, 
 34 ; conceived as will, 59 ; moral 
 government of, 78 ff; justice of, 
 79, 84, 85, 120, 124, 147. 
 
 Goethe, the principle of disinterested 
 virtue, 321. 
 
 Grace, identified with divine efficiency, 
 64 ; special and common distin- 
 guished, 65-75; Edwards' treatise 
 on, 357-372 ; not impersonal, 3G0, 
 361 ; not a habit, but the continu- 
 ous infiuence of the Spirit, 371. 
 
 Great Awakening, extent of, 161 ; 
 Edwards' account of, 162 ; abuses 
 of, 163, 169, 170, 177, 188, 203 ff ; 
 opposition to, 181 ; Edwards' de- 
 fence of, 164, 184 ; physical accom- 
 paniments of, 154, 164, 167, 193- 
 196 ; Mrs. Edwards' place in, 197- 
 203 ; decline of, 218, 234 ; summary 
 of the results of, 249-256. 
 
 Grossart, Rev. A. B., results of ex- 
 amination of Edwards' manuscripts, 
 340, 341 ; estimate of Edwards' 
 treatise on Grace, 357. 
 
 Half - way Covenant, weakened the 
 church, 55 ; Edwards' dislike to, 
 230, 257 ; original purpose of, 55, 
 257, 260 ; rejection of, 270. 
 
 Hall, Rev. Robert, criticism of Ed- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 399 
 
 wards' ethical principle, 318 ; esti- 
 mate of Edwards' character, 385. 
 
 Harvard College, Timothy Edwards, 
 graduate of, 1 ; pronounces against 
 the revival, 181 ; library of, 347. 
 
 Hazard, Rowland G., comment on 
 Edwards' Freedom of the Will, 
 286. 
 
 Heaven, as a locality, 384. 
 
 Hobbes, Thomas, his doctrine of ne- 
 cessity, 288. 
 
 Holmes, Dr. 0. W., calls for Edwards' 
 Essay on the Trinity, 343. 
 
 Holy Spirit, importance assigned to, 
 in Calvinistic churches, 135 ; im- 
 mediate influence of, 152, 177, 204 tf, 
 224, 360, 361 ; as causing physical 
 manifestations, 167, 193 ; does not 
 inspire impulses and impressions, 
 203-209 ; identified with grace, 301, 
 362, 371 ; defined as love, 365 ; co- 
 equality of, with the Father and 
 tlie Son, 369. 
 
 Hooker, Thomas, 45. 
 
 Hopkins, Dr. Samuel, on the attrac- 
 tiveness of Mrs. Edwards, 45; un- 
 certain of his conversion, 231 ; op- 
 position to slavery, 250 ; inferences 
 from Edwards' doctrine of Vir- 
 tue, 320, 321 ; Edwards' literary ex- 
 ecutor, 337 ; on the Trinity, 352, 
 note. 
 
 Hume, David, law of association, 6 ; 
 on causation, 288, 289. 
 
 Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts, 
 quoted on the importance of the 
 elders, 39 ; belief that the moral 
 decline in the churches was exag- 
 gerated, 54. 
 
 Impulses and impressions, 171, 203. 
 
 Incarnation, subordinated to Atone- 
 ment, 89, 99 ; dependent on divine 
 sovereignty, 100 ; significance of, 
 317, 318. 
 
 Indians, The, their opinion of Mr. 
 Stoddard, 40; in Stockbridge, 278; 
 Edwards' relations to, 279. 
 
 Inspiration, as direct insight, 12, 70, 
 71 ; the gift of, inferior to saving 
 grace, 172, 173, 205. 
 
 Irving, Edward, 174. 
 
 Itinerant preachers, 179, 209-211. 
 
 Johnson, Rev. Samuel, D. D., ac- 
 quaintance with Berkeley, relation 
 to Edwards, 16. 
 
 Justification by faith, Edwards' modi- 
 fication of, 93. 
 
 Karnes, Lord, his interpretation of 
 Edwards on the Will, 293, 295. 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H., comment on Ed- 
 wards' treatise on Original Sin, 312. 
 
 Locke, John, influence on Edwards, 
 5 ; liis principle that ideas are de- 
 rived from sensation, 13 ; his con- 
 ception of substance, 13 ; Edwards' 
 dependence on, 61. 
 
 Lord's Supper, Tlie, regarded as a 
 converting ordinance, 50, 51, 257, 
 258; Edwards desires its weekly 
 celebration, 242 ; Edwards' opposi- 
 tion to the practice of admitting 
 unconverted persons to, 258, 259, 
 263, 267. 
 
 Luther, religious experience of, com- 
 pared with that of Edwards, 24, 34 ; • 
 lais doctrine of justification, 95 ; dis- 
 like of the Zwickau prophets, 178 ; 
 conception of freedom, 301. 
 
 Lyon, Georges, suggestion that Ed- 
 wards may be indebted to Male- 
 branche, 17 ; he suggests the possi- 
 bility of a later date for Notes on 
 the Mind, 17 ; Idealisme, 225, note. 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, 285. 
 Malebranche, Edwards' approximation 
 
 to, 12 ; suggestion that Edwards had 
 
 read, 17. 
 Mather, Dr. Increase, in controversy 
 
 with Rev. Solomon Stoddard, 258. 
 Maurice, Rev. F. D., quoted, 315, 387, 
 
 389. 
 Methodism, indebted to Puritanism, 
 
 136; how it differed from Puritan- 
 ism, 212. 
 Mill, J. S., on causation, 6, note; on 
 
 necessity, 289. 
 Milton, John, 76, 219, 364. 
 Miracles, Edwards' conception of, 65, 
 
 m, 70, 229. 
 Mohammedanism, its conception of 
 
 God's sovereignty, 88. 
 Mysticism, marks of, 25 ; combination 
 
 with dialects, 81. 
 
 Nature, communion with God through, 
 132 ; reflectine; the beauty and glory 
 of Christ, 355,'^ 356. 
 
 New England, ascetic element in the 
 people of, 32 ; conversion as known 
 in its early history, 36 ; change in 
 the constitution of its churches, 56 ; 
 intellectual element in religion of, 
 106 ; conscious self-direction of the 
 will, in its religious life, 112. 
 
 Norris, John, Theory of an ideal 
 world, 17, note. 
 
 Northampton, settlement of, 39 ; char- 
 acter of the people of, 40 ; impor- 
 tance of the church of, 41 ; connec- 
 tion with Boston, 43 ; church of, 
 
400 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 congratulated, 57 ; excitement over 
 Ariiiuiiauisin, 82 ; revival iu 1735, 
 133 ; Edwards' description of tlie 
 people of, 138, 139 ; why the revival 
 may have begmi there, 140 ; de- 
 terioration iu the revival, 179 ; 
 peculiar case of discipline at, 259 ; 
 action of the town at the time of 
 Edwards' dismissal, 261 ; movement 
 to establish there another church, 
 273. 
 
 Original Sin, its enormity, 73, 74 ; in- 
 terpreted as total depravity, 85, 
 note ; as extending to children, 
 74 ; Edwards' treatise on, 298, 299, 
 302 ; God the author of, 305 ; the 
 doctrine of, defended by the meta- 
 physical argument of the nature of 
 identity, 308-310. 
 
 Pantheism, forms of, 119; heretical 
 expressions of, condemned, 224 ; 
 danger of, in Edwards' thought, 
 33G ; Ramsay's opposition to, 348 ; 
 contrasted with deism, 349. 
 
 Park, Dr. Edwards A., 344 note ; on 
 Edwards' Essay on the Trinity, 345, 
 346. 
 
 Plato, Edwards' agreement with his 
 idea of God, 12, 37 ; conception of 
 knowledge, 106; influence of, in 
 early church, 349. 
 
 Porter, Prof essor Noah, D. D., explains 
 Edwards' relation to Berkeley, 15, 
 note. 
 
 Prayer, subjective doctrine of, 236. 
 
 Predestination, 62-64 ; effects upon, of 
 the belief in conversion, 251. 
 
 Presbyterianism, revival of the spirit 
 of, 136 ; discipline of, 182 ; com- 
 pared with Methodism, 212; Ed- 
 wards on its form of church govern- 
 ment, 271. 
 
 Puritanism (see Calvinism), the at- 
 mosphere of Edwards' youth, 6, 22 ; 
 Edwards' acceptance of, 38 ; se- 
 verity of, 45 ; ideal of a minister's 
 wife, 47 ; in relation to the Lord's 
 Supper, 50, 242 ; experiment of the 
 theocracy, religious decline, 53, 
 254, 256 ; its creed endangered, 55 ; 
 necessity of reaflBrming the princi- 
 ple of, in order to a reform of its 
 discipline, 56 ; its doctrine of di- 
 vine sovereignty, 79 ; conditions of 
 church membership, 135 ; weakened 
 by the results of the Great Awaken- 
 ing, 182, 209 ; its parochial organi- 
 zation, 209, 210 ; its sensitiveness in 
 regard to modes of worship, 241 ; 
 its doctrine of relation between 
 
 church and state, 253 ff ; rejection 
 of the sacramental principle, 263 ; 
 Edwards' relation to the early ^lew 
 England type of, 269, 270. 
 
 Quakerism, Edwards'prejudice against, 
 70; Puritan dread of, 178, 267; 
 how Edwards diliers from as to ex- 
 ternal rites, 242 ; relation to slavery, 
 250. 
 
 Ramsay, Chevalier, his Philosophical 
 Principles, 346 - 351 ; quotations 
 from, 350, 351. 
 
 Religious Affections, Edwards' treatise 
 on, 218-232 ; quotation from, on 
 sorrow after conversion, 35 ; inti- 
 mates Edwards' dislike to Half-way 
 Covenant, 258. 
 
 Responsibility, 62, 293. 
 
 Revelation, Edwards' early idea of as 
 iimnedlate, 12 ; considered as light, 
 68. 
 
 Revival at Northampton, 133-136 ; pre- 
 vious movements of a similar kind, 
 137 ; how the revival began, 140 ; 
 effects of, 142 ; successive stages of, 
 144 If ; physical manifestations of, 
 154 ; taking the covenant, 156 ; re- 
 sults in large admissions to the 
 church, 158; subsidence of, 159, 
 abnormal tendency in, 159. 
 
 Royce, J., Religion of Philosophy, 88, 
 note. 
 
 Sandeman, asserts the principle of in- 
 activity, 115. 
 
 Saybrook Platform, connection with 
 of Mrs. Edwards' father, 45 ; elfort 
 to enforce the principles of, 182. 
 
 Schleiermacher, his sermons on de- 
 pendence, 57 ; idea of the miracu- 
 lous, 66. 
 
 Scotland, Edwards' influence in, 91, 
 134, 162 ; memorial from, 232, 2.S3 ; 
 Edwards' correspondents in, 271, 
 273; reception of his Freedom of 
 the Will in, 293. 
 
 Scripture, study of, 29, 43, 108 ; Cal- 
 vin's view of, 135. 
 
 Sin (see Original Sin), no pervading 
 sense of, in early experience, 34 ; 
 extent and enormity of, 73 ; rela- 
 tion of, to punishment, 85 ; origin 
 of, 87, 88 ; unpardonable, 113 ; un- 
 ethical conception of, 311. 
 
 Smyth, Prof. E. C, 344, 352, note. 
 
 Sovereignty of God, Edwards' early 
 repugnance to, 37 ; ignored by Ar- 
 minianism, 58 ; Edwards' assertion 
 of, 59, 60, 297 ; relation of, to God's 
 moral government, 79, 81, 87 ; 
 
INDEX. 
 
 401 
 
 connection with Justification by 
 Faith, 96 ; how it atfected Edwards' 
 preaching, 115; in Edwards' later 
 experience, 131 ; in the religious ex- 
 perience of the revival, 149 ; con- 
 tradiction of, in Freedom of the 
 Will, Dy attributing necessity to 
 God, 297. 
 
 Spinoza, resemblance to Edwards, 12, 
 21, 37, 57, 317, 348; the Ethica 
 of, 3-20-322. 
 
 Stiles, Dr. Ezra, his estimate of Ed- 
 wards as a tutor at Yale, 23 ; opin- 
 ion of Edwards' writings, 385. 
 
 Stoddard, Solomon, Timothy Edwards 
 married a daughter of, 2 ; virtues of, 
 reflected in the daughter, 3 ; char- 
 acter of, 39, 40 ; his death, 50 ; his 
 theology, etc., 51 ; revivals in his 
 time, 137 ; condition of North- 
 amptiou after death of, 139 ; his 
 modification of the Half-way Cove- 
 nant, 257, 263. 
 
 Stoicism, 349, 383. 
 
 Stowe, Prof. C. E., 342. 
 
 Taylor, Isaac, 285. 
 
 Taylor, Dr. John, Examination of 
 the Doctrine of Original Sin, 306, 
 311. 
 
 Tillotson, Archbishop, 98. 
 
 Tracy, J., Description of the Great 
 Awakening, 161, 181. 
 
 Transcendentalism, in Edwards' 
 thought, 68. 
 
 Trinity, the doctrine of, 338 ; Ed- 
 wards' first statement of, 10 ; subor- 
 dinated to the atonement, 89, 99 ; 
 tendency to the denial of, 81, 98; 
 Edwards' essay on, 341 ff; Ram- 
 say's statement of, 350, 351 ; neces- 
 sity of eternal distinctions in the 
 Godhead, 352-354 ; fellowship of the 
 Father and the Son in the Spirit, 
 363,368. 
 
 Tyler, M. C, on Edwards' relation to 
 Berkeley, 15. 
 
 Virtue, Nature of, early theory of, 6- 
 11 ; treatise on, 313-327 ; contra- 
 
 diction in Edwards' views of, 358, 
 359. 
 
 Wedgwood, Miss, on Wesley's indebt- 
 edness to Edwards, 134, note; on 
 Wesley's methods, 171. 
 
 Wesley, Charles, 171. 
 
 Wesley, John, reads Edwards' Nar- 
 rative, etc., 134, note; belief in re- 
 gard to impressions, 171 ; edits Ed- 
 wards' Thoughts on the Revival, 
 203 ; sanction of lay preaching, 212 ; 
 rejected the distinction between 
 elect and non-elect, 251. 
 
 Westminster Confession, Edwards 
 willing to subscribe the substance 
 of, 271 ; his departure from, in re- 
 gard to Adam's freedom, 304. 
 
 Whitefield, his sermons, 42 ; descrip- 
 tion of Edwards' household, 49 ; 
 belief in impulses and impressions, 
 170, 171, note ; introduces confusion 
 into New England churches, 180, 
 note, 210. 
 
 Will, The, Edwards' earlier view of, 
 33 ; God conceived as, 59 ; denial of 
 the freedom of, 62, 73, 110, 111; 
 freedom of, in God, 62, 297 ; as ad- 
 dressed by Edwards in preaching, 
 109 ; conscious self - direction of, 
 112 ; Edwards' conception of free- 
 dom of, 111, 294, 295, 303 ; conse- 
 quences of the denial of the free- 
 dom of, 73, 112, 116, 117, 294, 295 ; 
 no unconscious growth of, 148 ; 
 Edwards' treatise on, 281-301. 
 
 Williams, Rev. Solomon, replies to 
 Edwards' Qualifications, 264 ; Ed- 
 wards' rejoinder to, 268, 279, 280. 
 
 Witchcraft delusion, impossible a gen- 
 eration earlier or later, 53. 
 
 Wyclifie, on church and state, 56, 
 256. 
 
 Yale College, inchoate condition of, 
 4; Berkeley's philosophy in, 16; 
 relation of to the revival, 181 ; re- 
 fuses degree to Brainerd, 243-245 ; 
 memorial window to Edwards in 
 chapel of, 386. 
 
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