Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment: Scripture and Experimental Religion (Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World) 3031449347, 9783031449345

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Contents
Abbreviations
Chapter 1: Introduction: Spiritually Discerned
Mather, Edwards, and Experimental Exegesis
Evangelical Enlightenment
Chapter 2: “Search the Scriptures; Search Your Experiences”: Reading the Bible Spiritually from the Reformation to Early Evangelicalism
The Spirit and the Word in the Protestant Reformations
Experimental Religion and Exegesis in Protestant Orthodoxy and Puritanism
Biblical Authority and Scholarship in Seventeenth-Century Protestantism
Nature, Experience, and Exegesis in the Early Enlightenment
Early Awakened Protestant Experientialism and Exegesis
Chapter 3: “Experimental Christians”: Mather’s Philosophical and Biblical Vitalism
“The Spirit of this World”: Mather and His Times
“A Vital Touch”: Experimental Philosophy and Experimental Religion
“The Affectuous way”: Experientialism and Exegesis
Chapter 4: “Evangelical Illustrations”: Mather’s Experimental Exegesis
“I readd it with Tears”: Experimental Reading in Mather’s Life and Ministry
“Observations of experimental Christians”: The Science of Spiritual Exegesis
“Led by Experimental Piety”: Distinguishing Features of Mather’s Experimental Hermeneutic
Organizing and Presenting Experimental Knowledge
Experimental Piety of Awakened Protestantism
Pursuing the Spiritual Sense
Mystic and Esoteric Sources
Mystical Communications
“Needs Experiment, rather than Exposition”: Practicing Scripture
“More Grace than Greek”: Re-enchanting the Bible
Spiritualizing Scripture’s Grammar, History, and Geography
“Under the Covers of the Letter”
Chapter 5: “Complex Spiritual Ideas”: Edwards, the Spiritual Sense, and Scripture
“Remarkable Stirring”: Edwards and His Times
“Flesh and Blood Reveals It Not”: Experience and Spiritual Knowledge
“Vital Communication of God”: The Indwelling Spirit
“We See Him in His Word”: Scripture as Means
“So Inward, and So Affecting”: Harmonizing the Soul to Scripture
“When the Mind Is Enlightened Spiritually”: Knowing Scripture
Chapter 6: “It Wonderfully Enlightens”: Edwards’ Exegesis of Sensation
“Sweet and Powerful Words”: Experiencing Scripture
“The Word and Work of a Divine Mind”: Professing Scripture
“What Could He Mean By Those ‘Wondrous Things’?”: Interpreting Scripture
“A Certain Intenseness”: Preaching Scripture
“The Bible Seems to Be a New Book to Them”: Practicing Scripture
Chapter 7: Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

CHRISTIANITIES IN THE TRANS-ATLANTIC WORLD

Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment Scripture and Experimental Religion

Ryan P. Hoselton

Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World

Series Editors

Crawford Gribben Department of History Queen’s University Belfast Belfast, UK Scott Spurlock Department of Theology and Religious Studies University of Glasgow Glasgow, UK

This series builds upon the recent recovery of interest in religion in the trans-Atlantic. Prepared by established and early career authors, and combining long- and short-form monographs with edited volumes, books in this series offer fresh, lively, illuminating and inter-disciplinary perspectives that work strategically and systematically to address major but under-­ studied or overly simplified themes in the religious and cultural history of the trans-Atlantic, from early modernity to the present day. Guided by its editorial board, which includes in its membership many of the most influential scholars in the history of religion, the series prizes diversity of method and opinion, and reflects the often startling heterogeneity of Christianities in the trans-Atlantic world.

Ryan P. Hoselton

Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment Scripture and Experimental Religion

Ryan P. Hoselton Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg Heidelberg, Germany

ISSN 2634-5838     ISSN 2634-5846 (electronic) Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World ISBN 978-3-031-44934-5    ISBN 978-3-031-44935-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44935-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Für meine liebe Frau, Jaclyn

Acknowledgments

Heidelberg provided an unusual but wonderful setting to write a book about two American colonials. Living this side of the ocean opened transatlantic perspectives that enriched my study of early America and its entanglements in wider intellectual and religious contexts. And the charming, old university town atmosphere offered ample inspiration (and distraction). About a decade ago, a unique and fruitful partnership emerged between the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) and the Faculty of Theology, bringing Jan Stievermann to Heidelberg University to promote teaching and research in American religious history. Among other things, this cooperation supported his initiatives with the Biblia Americana project and the Jonathan Edwards Center Germany. I am indebted to everyone who laid the groundwork for such a unique and auspicious research environment; my project benefited greatly from these institutions and resources. This book originated as a doctoral dissertation at Heidelberg University, and it was funded by the Heidemarie Engelhorn PhD Scholarship through the HCA. I wish to thank the Engelhorn family for their generosity, as well as the founding HCA Director, Detlef Junker, for facilitating this support. I owe especial gratitude to my Doktorvater, Jan Stievermann, who excels both as an advisor and as a friend. His supervision and expertise boosted this project immensely. I am also profoundly grateful for the other two committee members. Christoph Strohm provided invaluable feedback on my treatment of the (post)-Reformation, and Douglas Sweeney assisted me with all things Edwards while extending friendship and encouragement throughout. vii

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As I revised this thesis into a book, several scholars kindly offered constructive feedback on all or parts of the manuscript, including Crawford Gribben, Robert Brown, Thomas Kidd, and the anonymous peer reviewers. I also owe thanks to friends and peers for their useful critiques and engaging interactions, including Sky Johnston, Sam Keeley, Caitlin Smith, Benjamin Pietrenka, David Komline, Heike Jablonski, Daniel Silliman, and Johanna Müller. The following institutions and organizations deserve my appreciation for the opportunities to present my work: Heidelberg University, the American Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History, the University of Notre Dame, Fresno Pacific University, Gateway Seminary, and Yale University. Revised versions of material from the following essays were reproduced here with permission: “‘Flesh and Blood Hath Not Revealed It’: Reformation Exegetical Legacies in Pietism and Early Evangelicalism,” in Multiple Reformations: The Many Faces and Legacies of the Reformation, Jan Stievermann and Randall C. Zachman, eds. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 325–342 (in Chaps. 2 and 3); “Spiritual Meaning and Experimental Piety in the Exegesis of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards,” in Jonathan Edwards and Scripture: Biblical Exegesis in British North America, David P. Barshinger and Douglas A. Sweeney, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 86–105 (in Chap. 5); “Jonathan Edwards, the Inner Witness of the Spirit, and Experiential Exegesis,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 5:2 (Fall 2015): 90–120 (in Chaps. 5 and 6). Many thanks to Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Oxford University Press, and the journal Jonathan Edwards Studies for these permissions. The team at Palgrave deserve special thanks for shepherding this project smoothly to publication, especially Emily Russell and Arunaa Devi. I would also like to thank Crawford Gribben and Scott Spurlock for accepting my book in their series Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World. Finally, my greatest appreciation and affection belong to my family for their support and love: for my wife, Jaclyn, and our three children, Madrid, Augustin, and Anselm. God has blessed me beyond words. I cherish you all so much.

Contents

1

Introduction: Spiritually Discerned  1 Mather, Edwards, and Experimental Exegesis   2 Evangelical Enlightenment   9

2

 “Search the Scriptures; Search Your Experiences”: Reading the Bible Spiritually from the Reformation to Early Evangelicalism 19 The Spirit and the Word in the Protestant Reformations  20 Experimental Religion and Exegesis in Protestant Orthodoxy and Puritanism  29 Biblical Authority and Scholarship in Seventeenth-Century Protestantism  41 Nature, Experience, and Exegesis in the Early Enlightenment  50 Early Awakened Protestant Experientialism and Exegesis  61

3

 “Experimental Christians”: Mather’s Philosophical and Biblical Vitalism 79 “The Spirit of this World”: Mather and His Times  83 “A Vital Touch”: Experimental Philosophy and Experimental Religion  98 “The Affectuous way”: Experientialism and Exegesis 110

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Contents

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 “Evangelical Illustrations”: Mather’s Experimental Exegesis123 “I readd it with Tears”: Experimental Reading in Mather’s Life and Ministry 125 “Observations of experimental Christians”: The Science of Spiritual Exegesis 128 “Led by Experimental Piety”: Distinguishing Features of Mather’s Experimental Hermeneutic 135 Organizing and Presenting Experimental Knowledge 136 Experimental Piety of Awakened Protestantism 139 Pursuing the Spiritual Sense 141 Mystic and Esoteric Sources 144 Mystical Communications 146 “Needs Experiment, rather than Exposition”: Practicing Scripture 155 “More Grace than Greek”: Re-enchanting the Bible 163 Spiritualizing Scripture’s Grammar, History, and Geography 163 “Under the Covers of the Letter” 168

5

 “Complex Spiritual Ideas”: Edwards, the Spiritual Sense, and Scripture175 “Remarkable Stirring”: Edwards and His Times 178 “Flesh and Blood Reveals It Not”: Experience and Spiritual Knowledge 183 “Vital Communication of God”: The Indwelling Spirit 194 “We See Him in His Word”: Scripture as Means 201 “So Inward, and So Affecting”: Harmonizing the Soul to Scripture 211 “When the Mind Is Enlightened Spiritually”: Knowing Scripture 219

6

“It Wonderfully Enlightens”: Edwards’ Exegesis of Sensation233 “Sweet and Powerful Words”: Experiencing Scripture 234 “The Word and Work of a Divine Mind”: Professing Scripture 239 “What Could He Mean By Those ‘Wondrous Things’?”: Interpreting Scripture 243 “A Certain Intenseness”: Preaching Scripture 258 “The Bible Seems to Be a New Book to Them”: Practicing Scripture 268

7

Conclusion283

Index291

Abbreviations

BA Biblia WJE WJEO

Biblia Americana. Ed. Reiner Smolinski, et al. Vols. 1–5, 9–10. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010–. “Biblia Americana” (holograph manuscript). 6 vols. Folio. The Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. The Papers of Cotton Mather. Part I. Reels 10–13. The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Ed. Harry S. Stout, et al. 26 vols. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957–2008. Edwards, Jonathan. The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online. Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University, New Haven, CT. Available online at http://edwards.yale.edu

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Spiritually Discerned

But the naturall man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishnesse unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. —1 Corinthians 2:14

This book explores the early evangelical quest for spiritual enlightenment by the Spirit and the Word. The pursuit originated in the Protestant Reformation, but it assumed new forms in the long eighteenth-century context of the early Enlightenment and transatlantic awakened Protestant reform movements. The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers rejected Roman Catholicism’s notions of authority as arbitrary, and they dismissed its rituals as idolatrous fabrications of sinful human nature with no inherent spiritual basis. They contended that religious authority must derive from the divinely inspired, infallible, and self-authenticating Holy Scriptures. To attain true spiritual knowledge, the Spirit must enlighten the soul by the Word and enable one to experience Scripture’s divine truths personally. All Bible quotations are from the King James Version unless otherwise noted. Abbreviations of biblical books follow the SBL Handbook of Style. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. P. Hoselton, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment, Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44935-2_1

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By the end of the seventeenth century, however, traditional Protestant conceptions of authority, spiritual knowledge, and experiential piety grounded in the Spirit and the Word faced growing resistance. Early Enlightenment philosophers utilized the sharp dichotomy between nature and spirit introduced in the Reformation for their own intellectual and social programs by applying stricter rationalist criteria to religious knowledge and shrinking the boundaries of experience to the natural. At the same time, new scholarly trends emerged that approached the Bible as a historically conditioned text like any other, undermining Protestant attempts to bridge this historical gap through experiential identification with Scripture’s all-encompassing redemptive history and its account of timeless spiritual realities. These shifts contributed to lasting religious transformations over the long eighteenth century and evoked a variety of responses. Some radical skeptics, such as the philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) and the deists, disputed the Bible’s authority and reliability. Others, such as the Anglican Archbishop John Tillotson (1630–1694) and philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), tailored more “enlightened” forms of Christianity by minimizing doctrinal and spiritual readings and instead emphasized the Bible’s universal rational truths and moral principles. However, these desacralizing impulses were not the only responses to the religious and philosophical questions inherited from the Reformation and Scientific Revolution. Many endeavored to reconcile empirical and spiritual knowledge in hopes of advancing highly supernatural projects of religious enlightenment. While these pursuits took a variety of forms, this book examines the efforts of early awakened Protestants to promote experiential knowledge of Scripture as the means of true enlightenment. Awakened Protestants had also capitalized on the enlightened discourses of experience and reason of their times and drew a stark contrast between natural and spiritual knowledge. Their aim, however, was to cultivate the mind’s spiritual awakening by the Spirit and the Word.

Mather, Edwards, and Experimental Exegesis This study focuses on two awakened Protestant exegetes in early America who labored to read Scripture spiritually in the context of the early Enlightenment: Cotton Mather (1663–1728) and Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). Mather and Edwards were arguably the most influential

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Christian ministers and thinkers in British North America. Both descended from illustrious families, pastored prominent churches, produced widely read works, forged influential transatlantic networks, and engaged the pressing intellectual and religious issues of their time. They were also colonial America’s most prolific exegetes. Each deemed biblical interpretation the most important part of their intellectual, devotional, and ministerial endeavors—a fact that has received little critical examination until recently. Much of the scholarship on Mather and Edwards has focused on their philosophical, scientific, and literary achievements with little regard for the exegetical foundations that formed them. Even most histories of biblical interpretation have given early evangelicals such as Mather and Edwards short shrift (if any mention at all), thus overlooking a tradition that has influenced millions of Bible readers around the globe to the present day.1 An understandable reason for disregarding Mather and Edwards is that neither published any major works of exegesis. Beginning in 1693 until his death, Mather wrote a massive commentary on the entire Bible called the “Biblia Americana,” but he failed to secure its publication. Edwards penned most of his exegetical musings in private notebooks, and he died— shortly after assuming the presidency of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton)—before he could finish his two major exegetical projects: “A History of the Work of Redemption” and “The Harmony of the Old and New Testament.” Recent scholarly interest in the Bible’s role in American history and culture has blossomed—reflecting the postsecular turn in the Academy more generally, as religion’s continued influence in modern times has

1   The following works reflect this lacuna: Henning Graf Reventlow, Epochen der Bibelauslegung, 4 vols. (München: C.H.  Beck, 1990−2001); Gerald L.  Bray, Biblical Interpretation: Past & Present (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2000); Alan J. Hauser, Duane F.  Watson, eds., A History of Biblical Interpretation, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003−); William Yarchin, History of Biblical Interpretation: A Reader (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011); and Darren Sarinski, Theology, History, and Biblical Interpretation: Modern Readings (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). A few recent works have attempted to remedy this gap in the literature: see Timothy Larsen, ed., Every Leaf, Line, and Letter: Evangelicals and the Bible from the 1730s to the Present (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2021); and Ryan P. Hoselton, Jan Stievermann, Douglas A. Sweeney, and Michael A.  G. Haykin, eds., The Bible in Early Transatlantic Pietism and Evangelicalism (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2022).

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demanded more critical attention.2 The rediscovery of the importance of biblical exegesis to Mather and Edwards has been a significant part of this development. Scholars have made Mather’s and Edwards’ exegetical writings available in rigorously annotated critical editions,3 enabling pioneering research and re-examination of their lives, theology, and wider contexts. These initiatives have illuminated the manifold ways their biblical practices intertwined with diverse aspects of eighteenth-century life, including theological and philosophical debates, piety, war, gender, slavery, politics, historical method, ethics, human geography, and print cultures.4 Among other noteworthy studies, Reiner Smolinski and Jan 2  See, among others, Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777−1880 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); Gutjahr, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Lisa Gordis, Opening Scripture: Bible Reading and Interpretive Authority in Puritan New England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); David Holland, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Mark A.  Noll, In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492–1783 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Noll, America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794−1911 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022); John Fea, The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Philip Goff, Arthur E.  Farnsley II, and Peter J.  Thuesen, eds., The Bible in American Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); and Seth Perry, Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). 3  BA, 1−5, 9−10. The final three volumes are still in process, and the editors have generously shared drafts of their transcriptions for my research: Ava Chamberlain (Vol. 6: Daniel− Malachi), Ryan P. Hoselton and Douglas A. Sweeney (Vol. 7: Matthew−Luke), Rick Kennedy, Clark Maddux, and Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos (Vol. 8: John−Acts, forthcoming). I use quotation marks when referring to the “Biblia” more generally and when citing the manuscript, and italics, BA, for the published editions. For more on the exegetical sources Mather used, see the editorial introductions and bibliographies to the edited volumes, as well as a notebook Mather started in 1720 titled “Note Book of Authors and Texts Throughout the Bible” (1720), American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, The Papers of Cotton Mather, Part I, Reel 2, Item B. Edwards, WJE, 5 (Apocalyptic Writings), 15 (Notes on Scripture), and 24 (The Blank Bible), all edited by Stephen J. Stein. 4  See especially the essays in Reiner Smolinski and Jan Stievermann, eds., Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana—America’s First Bible Commentary: Essays in Reappraisal (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011); and David P. Barshinger and Douglas A. Sweeney, eds., Jonathan Edwards and Scripture: Biblical Exegesis in British North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

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Stievermann have demonstrated how Mather’s “Biblia” was among the earliest and most extensive undertakings in colonial America to engage the Enlightenment, bringing biblical scholarship into dynamic conversation with major discussions regarding Copernican cosmology, Cartesian mechanism, Newtonian physics, and natural philosophy, while also addressing hotly contested debates over the Bible’s provenance, history, chronology, geography, and divine inspiration.5 Robert Brown contends that Edwards appropriated new modes of critical historical thinking in his defense of Scripture’s reliability, while Douglas Sweeney probes Edwards’ wide-­ ranging engagement with early modern biblical scholarship and outlines his four main interpretive modes: canonical, Christological, redemptive-­ historical, and pedagogical.6 This book builds upon and bridges the burgeoning scholarship on Mather’s and Edwards’ exegesis by bringing them together in a single research project. In particular, it focuses on the intersection between their exegesis and pursuit of experimental knowledge in the context of the early Enlightenment and early awakened Protestantism. Both have featured prominently in many of the same books and essays on early American religious history, and recently there have even been multiple comparative

5  Reiner Smolinski, “Editor’s Introduction,” BA, 1:3–210; Jan Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity: Interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). See also the editorial introductions to the edited volumes and the studies cited in Chaps. 3 and 4 of this book. 6  Robert E. Brown, Jonathan Edwards and the Bible (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002); Douglas A. Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete: Biblical Interpretation and Anglo-­ Protestant Culture on the Edge of the Enlightenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). The literature on Edwards is extensive. See especially Stephen J.  Stein, “Jonathan Edwards and the Rainbow: Biblical Exegesis and Poetic Imagination,” New England Quarterly 47 (1974): 440–56; Stephen R.  C. Nichols, Jonathan Edwards’s Bible: The Relationship of the Old and New Testaments (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013); David P.  Barshinger, Jonathan Edwards and the Psalms: A Redemptive-Historical Vision of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). For a more extensive list of secondary literature on Edwards’ exegesis, see the endnotes to Chap. 1 of Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete, 226–37, esp. notes 1–30, and the citations in Chaps. 5 and 6 of this book.

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essays on their biblical interpretation.7 Nonetheless, a larger-scale examination enables deeper reflection on how their exegetical projects were entangled in wider transformations of religion in the long eighteenth-­ century North Atlantic world. Thus, this study also interacts with scholarship on the post-Reformation era, religion in the early Enlightenment, and early transatlantic awakened Protestantism. At the same time, it is important to keep in mind that Mather and Edwards were first and foremost pastors—their thinking on experience and Scripture was not only embedded in broader Enlightenment philosophical developments but also in the religious circumstances of their churches and communities. To gain a fuller picture, this study thus examines their sermons, popular tracts, private notebooks, and letters alongside their more erudite writings. Their endeavors intersected with both learned and popular cultures. They engaged in highbrow biblical scholarship and philosophical discourses to understand and defend the epistemological status of spiritual experience, while also promoting pious acquaintance with Scripture for the spiritual enlightenment of the laity. Rather than pursue a comparative analysis of Mather’s and Edwards’ interpretations of Scripture, this book explores how their experiential exegesis developed amid broader intellectual and religious transformations and fed their ambitious programs for religious enlightenment. New philosophical frameworks, critical modes of biblical scholarship, and rationalist latitudinarian pieties threatened to destabilize traditional Protestant 7  See Stephen J. Stein, “Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards on the Epistle of James: A Comparative Study,” in Mather and Biblia Americana, Smolinski and Stievermann, eds., 363−82; Michael P. Clark, “The Eschatology of Signs in Cotton Mather’s ‘Biblia Americana’ and Jonathan Edwards’s Case for the Legibility of Providence,” in ibid., 413−38; Ryan P. Hoselton, “‘Flesh and Blood Hath Not Revealed It’: Reformation Exegetical Legacies in Pietism and Early Evangelicalism,” in Multiple Reformations? The Many Faces and Legacies of the Reformation, Jan Stievermann and Randall C. Zachmann, eds. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 325–42; Jan Stievermann and Ryan P. Hoselton, “Spiritual Meaning and Experimental Piety in the Exegesis of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards,” in Edwards and Scripture, Barshinger and Sweeney, eds., 86−105; Ava Chamberlain, “A Fish Tale: Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather on Jonah’s Whale,” in ibid., 144−62; Douglas A.  Sweeney, “The Evangelical Supernatural in Early Modern British Protestantism: Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards on the Miracles of Jesus,” in Bible in Pietism and Evangelicalism, ed. Hoselton et al., 131−47; Kenneth P. Minkema, “Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Relationship Between Historical and Spiritual Exegesis in Early Evangelicalism,” in ibid., 182−99.

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principles regarding the Bible’s self-authenticating authority, divine authorship, the unity of the Old and New Testaments, prophetic and typological fulfillments, the validity of its miracles, the reliability of its histories and textual transmission, and above all the necessity of the Spirit’s illumination to understand it. Furthermore, in response to changing circumstances, disruptive religious ideologies and reform movements emerged over the course of the eighteenth century that created both new possibilities and new challenges. Wishing to guard and renew their Reformed-Puritan tradition in this environment, Mather and Edwards channeled the authority of experiential knowledge to promote religious enlightenment through the Spirit and the Word. Integrating empirical philosophy with experimental Puritan practical divinity, they simultaneously devised philosophical rationales for spiritual knowledge and programs of religious awakening galvanized by experiential engagement with Scripture.8 As with many of their contemporaries, Mather’s and Edwards’ concerns revolved around a critical question: Was it possible to experience the spiritual matters imparted in Scripture, and if so, what did that entail for knowledge and piety? While their responses shared broad similarities, their unique philosophical commitments, contexts, and personal idiosyncrasies distinguished their programs of evangelical enlightenment in notable ways. Mather’s experimental exegesis reflected the experimental philosophy of early Royal Society members such as Robert Boyle, the awakened spirituality of German Pietists, and esoteric traditions fixated on supernatural causation and ontology. Like Boyle, Mather entrusted the experiential observations of reliable and learned gentlemen to compound new knowledge, but he channeled these efforts toward illuminating Scripture with religious experience. Mather’s project was at once scientific and evangelical. By applying the new learning and experiential religion to elucidate 8  Throughout this book, I use the terms experiential and experimental interchangeably—as many did in the early modern period. The term experimental connoted various meanings related to experience, such as knowledge based on firsthand observation, experimental trial, experimental divinity or the science of the soul’s inner spiritual motions, and of course experimental philosophy as an empirical-based acquisition of knowledge. See the Oxford English Dictionary for more on the various usages of “experiential” and “experimental” in the eighteenth century.

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Scripture, he wished to advance both the enlightenment of Christian virtuosos and the revival of piety. At the same time, Mather’s religious empiricism deepened his commitment to an enchanted cosmology of preternatural phenomena and revelatory communications from the spirit world, inclining him to incorporate experimental insights from mystics, occult writers, ecstatic impulses, and anecdotal encounters with spiritual agents such as ghosts to expound Scripture’s meaning. What drove him most, however, were his Puritan and Pietist aspirations to awaken vital religion through experimental acquaintance with the Word. While Edwards shared these aspirations, his engagement with John Locke’s sensationalist psychology and the issues surrounding the evangelical awakenings shaped his thinking in distinct directions. Edwards concerned himself more with the nature and production of spiritual knowledge. Through a creative amalgamation of Puritan experimental divinity and Lockean empiricism, he asserted the need for the new spiritual sense of the Spirit to produce spiritual knowledge by enlivening the mind’s sensory ideas of divine matters revealed in the Word. Edwards’ extension of Lockean empiricism to spiritual knowledge differed from Locke’s own more rationalist form of Christian enlightenment, as reflected in their varying interpretations of 1 Cor 2:14. An avid exegete himself, Locke’s interpretation underscored the sufficiency of human reason for religious knowledge. He held that the “natural man” referred to in the passage was unable to discover gospel mysteries by reason alone, since such matters must be supernaturally revealed. However, Scripture had revealed these mysteries, and human reason was sufficient on its own to understand them without supernatural aid.9 Edwards agreed that the “natural man” could gain a notional understanding of Scripture’s teachings, but the passage spoke of a spiritual knowledge that exceeded natural capacities. Similar to the difference between a notional and sensory knowledge of “honey,” “colors,” or a “sweet perfume,” spiritual experience enabled sensible ideas of “the truth and reality of divine things” in the Word that the “natural man” could never attain. The “experimental knowledge” of the Spirit “wonderfully enlightens” the regenerate mind to understand the Word spiritually, like “a gleam of light that breaks in upon the soul through a

9  John Locke, A Paraphrase and Notes on the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (London, 1706), 12, 16.

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gloomy darkness.”10 Wishing to counter both the limitations of rationalism and the delusions of enthusiasm in the context of the revivals, Edwards promoted an exegesis of sensation rooted in the dynamic interplay between the Spirit, the Word, and experience to engender authentic enlightenment and awakening.

Evangelical Enlightenment Mather and Edwards also answered intellectual challenges to Scripture’s authority by applying new critical modes of historical, evidentialist, and probabilistic reasoning. Some scholars interpret these efforts as signs of secularization, but this reasoning underestimates their enduring and even deepened commitments to supernaturalism. Michael Lee, for instance, traces “the erosion of biblical certainty” in America from Mather and Edwards to nineteenth-century Unitarians. Mather’s and Edwards’ reliance on evidentialist and rational arguments was initially designed to defend traditional understandings of Scripture’s infallibility. Yet in a tragic irony, Lee concludes, their naturalistic methods unintentionally paved the way for growing skepticism and disregard for the Bible’s supernatural authority.11 This is, however, a rather myopic genealogy. There were other trajectories. The renewed interest in the Bible’s significance in the early modern period has been part of an important trend among historians seeking to restore religion to the Enlightenment. By asserting a “religious enlightenment,” a “Christian enlightenment,” or even an “evangelical enlightenment,” many have challenged widely held monocausal narratives that

 WJE, 14:89, 76–78.  Michael J. Lee, The Erosion of Biblical Certainty: Battles Over Authority and Interpretation in America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Lee’s approach closely imitates the historiography of Brad Gregory, who charges the Protestant Reformers with unintentionally laying the groundwork for modern secularism and individualism. See Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012). Their tragic narratives mourning the unintended consequences of Protestantism are quintessential examples of Hayden White’s argument that historians imbue their narratives with various modes of emplotment—in this case the mode of tragedy and the trope of irony. Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-­ Century Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 1−42. 10 11

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ascribe modernity’s rise to non- or anti-religious forces.12 Religious agents also played a key part. Among the main interventions in this turn, scholars have contended that transformations in biblical interpretation were integral to modern processes of desacralization. The Protestant insistence on interpretive literalism combined with the rise of historical-factualist and contextual-philological hermeneutics—whether applied by Scripture’s critics or its orthodox apologists—gradually denuded Scripture of its status as a supernatural and divine revelation. These steps furthered the 12  See, among others, William M. Shea and Peter A. Huff, eds., Knowledge and Belief in America: Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); J.  G. A.  Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: The Enlightenment of Edwards Gibbon, 1737−1764 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Jonathan Sheehan, “Enlightenment, Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization: A Review Essay,” American Historical Review 108 (October 2003): 1061−80; S. J. Barnett, The Enlightenment and Religion: The Myths of Modernity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003); Helena Rosenblatt, “The Christian Enlightenment,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 7: Enlightenment, Reawakening and Revolution, 1660−1815, Stewart J.  Brown and Timothy Tackett, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 283−301; Catherine A. Brekus, “Sarah Osborn’s Enlightenment: Reimagining Eighteenth-­ Century Intellectual History,” in The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past, ed. Catherine A. Brekus (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007): 108−41; David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Michael Hofmann and Carsten Zelle, eds., Aufklärung und Religion: Neue Perspektiven (Erlangen: Wehrhahn, 2010); Jonathan Yeager: Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Sarah Rivett, The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 271−335; Simon Grote, “Review-Essay: Religion and Enlightenment,” Journal of the History of Ideas 75:1 (January 2014): 137−60; Mark Chapman, “A Reasonable Faith: Anglicans and the English Enlightenment,” in Religion und Aufklärung, Albrecht Beutel and Martha Nooke, eds. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 43−60; William J. Bulman and Robert G. Ingram, eds., God in the Enlightenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); and Jason Ā . Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017). Among the most influential proponents of the anti-religious secularization paradigm are Paul Hazard, Peter Gay, and Jonathan Israel. See, among others, Paul Hazard, The European Mind: The Critical Years, 1680−1715 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Knopf, 1966); Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. The Science of Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1969); Jonathan I. Israel, Philosophy and the Making of Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670−1752 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Israel, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).

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decline of allegorical and supernatural interpretations of reality, creating the conditions for the rise of the natural sciences and for growing skepticism toward claims based in spiritual knowledge. The Bible’s significance to the modern West did not dwindle but rather transformed into a resource of cultural heritage. Jonathan Sheehan writes, “No longer tied to God’s Word, the Enlightenment Bible became authoritative by virtue of its connection and relevance to human morality, aesthetics, and history. Instead of theology, culture would be the new rock atop which the legitimacy of the Bible was built.”13 Despite the many merits of these studies, they privilege desacralizing strands and genealogies of the Enlightenment against others. They absorb Scripture’s eighteenth-century conservative apologists into narratives of spiritual decline, portraying them as reactionaries who made a final but unsuccessful stand against the Enlightenment and unintentionally succumbed to the forces of disenchantment. The wider picture is more complex, and it includes projects of religious enlightenment that simultaneously adapted to modern conditions and maintained supernatural beliefs and pieties. Like many others over the eighteenth century, Mather and Edwards did indeed appropriate critical intellectual tools of their time to respond to skeptics on their own terms. But they also viewed their age’s intellectual developments as auspicious providences of God with great potential for advancing and reifying knowledge of the Bible for evangelical ends, and they used the new resources accordingly. Their participation in Enlightenment philosophical and critical scholarship did not ineluctably culminate in rationalist Unitarianism or German higher criticism. Rather, their programs more broadly anticipated the varied confident attempts of nineteenth-century Protestant revivalists and elite scholars alike—such as the Princeton theologians Charles Hodge and B.  B. Warfield—to

13  Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), xiv. See also Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Biblical Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974); Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Michael C. Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

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reconcile reason, nature, and science with a biblically based orthodoxy and vital spirituality.14 By highlighting the ways exegetes such as Mather and Edwards integrated new empiricist philosophies to bolster and revive the quest for true spiritual religion, this study offers a different perspective on religion and the Enlightenment. It avoids the “telos of secularization” that underlies so many histories of the Enlightenment and its aftermath which, as Sarah Rivett observes, cannot account for “how the Enlightenment and evangelicalism not only coexisted but also mutually prospered over the long eighteenth century.” This stance has also led scholars to misconstrue the relationship between Enlightenment and evangelicalism “according to either a causal interpretation (the Enlightenment caused evangelicalism) or an understanding of Enlightenment thought and evangelical practice as formally distinct registers.”15 Rather, both movements arose among shared circumstances and drew from a common pool of ideas, impulses, and ­discourses to promote their respective reformist objectives. As W. R. Ward writes, the “defeat of the Ancients by the Moderns was not the work of the Enlightenment alone.”16 The aim of this book is not to replace triumphalist (or tragic) narratives of the Enlightenment with a triumphalist narrative of evangelicalism. Instead, the objective is to demonstrate—via focused case studies of Mather and Edwards—how religious agents adapted belief and practice in the early Enlightenment era without tying them to a teleological course of secularization. As Charles Taylor has  See Mark A.  Noll, ed., The Princeton Theology, 1821–1921: Science, Scripture, and Theological Method from Archibald Alexander to Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1983); Brett M. Grainger, Church in the Wild: Evangelicals in Antebellum America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). 15  Sarah Rivett, “Early American Religion in a Postsecular Age,” PMLA 128.4 (2013): 993. For instance, David Bebbington’s authoritative survey of evangelicalism claims that the “Evangelical version of Protestantism was created by the Enlightenment.” Bebbington is right that evangelicalism was largely “a product of the confidence of the new age about the validity of experience.” However, the shapers of the movement exploited traditions of experimental piety just as creatively as they did the experimental philosophy of Boyle, Locke, and Newton to advance their programs of reform. D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 74. 16  W. R. Ward, Early Evangelicalism: A Global Intellectual History, 1670−1789 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2. 14

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shown, modern developments did not make secularization inevitable or all-encompassing. Rather, they created new conditions in which non-­ religion became one possible option alongside old and new forms of belief in the modern North Atlantic West.17 Mather’s and Edwards’ experiential exegesis exemplifies how evangelicalism, like other movements in this context, pursued a course of religious belief that—even with many variations, complexities, and tensions—not only assimilated to modern conditions and philosophical frameworks but also flourished in so doing. The quest for evangelical enlightenment constituted one among various projects to bolster Christianity through close dialogue with Enlightenment philosophies. Among other prominent ventures, the Cambridge Platonists applied rationalism and optimistic views of human moral capacities in their opposition to mechanistic philosophies, the French thinker Nicolaus Malebranche (1638–1715) sought to reconcile Cartesian rationalism with Roman Catholic orthodoxy, and the Anglican bishop Joseph Butler (1692–1752) utilized new moral philosophies to refute deism and Hobbesian ethics. Awakened Protestants like Mather and Edwards also engaged with trends in rational, natural, moral, and political philosophies, but their fixation with experiential knowledge and authority distinguished their projects. For them, true religious enlightenment must not only be rational, intellectually grounded, and orthodox, but also something personally experienced. In his influential study from 1989, British historian David Bebbington identified four features that have characterized the evangelical movement spanning the transatlantic awakenings of the 1730s to the modern day: conversionism, Biblicism, crucicentrism, and activism.18 Many since have accepted yet qualified this definition. For example, Thomas Kidd highlights a “new attention to the person of the Holy Spirit, especially in revivals”; Mark Noll foregrounds the commitment to “Christian experience, personally appropriated” and “trust in the Bible above all other authorities”; and Stuart Piggin stresses the “experiential, Biblicist and activist” propensities and the essential interplay of “the Spirit, the Word and the

 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).  Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 2−17.

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world.”19 This present study incorporates these added insights and probes the pivotal interrelationship of the Spirit, Scripture, and experience in early evangelicalism more extensively. Some, however, have recently criticized “doctrinal” and “essentialist” definitions of evangelicalism. Linford Fisher has demonstrated that “evangelical” identity has been heavily contested and fluid over the years, and Douglas Winiarski finds that Bebbington’s quadrilateral definition “masks far more than it illuminates the popular religious cultures of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic.”20 In contrast to institutions and confessional traditions, it is more challenging to identify intrinsic features of historical movements. While avoiding the attempt to define evangelicalism in the abstract, I employ the term in two general and descriptive senses: first, in the way most early modern Protestants used the term “evangelical” to connote a true gospel-oriented Christianity according to the Bible; and second, “early evangelical” refers to a community (or communities) of transatlantic anglophone Protestants and their efforts to promote religious renewal over the long eighteenth century. While some have applied the term to continental Europeans,21 this study confines “evangelical” to the 19  Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), xiv; Mark A.  Noll, “What is ‘Evangelical’?,” in The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology, ed. Gerald R. McDermott (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 19−33; Stuart Piggin, Evangelical Christianity in Australia: Spirit, Word and World (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996), vii. See also George Marsden, ed., Evangelicalism and Modern America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), ix; Timothy Larsen, “Defining and locating evangelicalism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology, Timothy Larsen and Daniel J. Treier, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1−14; Michael A. G. Haykin and Kenneth J.  Stewart, eds., The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2008); and Mark Hutchinson and John Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1−24. 20  Linford D. Fisher, “Evangelicals and Unevangelicals: The Contested History of a Word, 1500−1950,” Religion and Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 26:2 (2016): 185; Douglas L.  Winiarski, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 16. These debates were the focus of a recent conference at Notre Dame, and the revised papers were published in Mark A.  Noll, David W.  Bebbington, and George M. Marsden, eds., Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019). 21   See especially W.  R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Ward, Early Evangelicalism; and Jonathan M. Yeager, “Introduction,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism, ed. Jonathan M. Yeager (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), 1–2.

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anglophone context and uses “awakened Protestant” more broadly to encompass transatlantic evangelicals, Pietists, Moravians, and others who shared in a widespread quest to complete the Reformation, propagate spiritual new birth, and revive vital piety within Protestant Christendom. The mutual perception of authentic religion brought awakened Protestants from varying confessional, ethnic, regional, and linguistic backgrounds together in transatlantic networks and exchanges and fed their construction of imagined communities of true international Christianity.22 Edwards’ place in the historiography of early evangelicalism is well established. He led awakenings in his church and throughout New England, published widely read reports and theological analyses of the revivals, and actively partook in transatlantic networks of Calvinist evangelical leaders such as Thomas Prince, George Whitefield, and John Erskine. Yet some may think it out of place to include Cotton Mather since he died before the Great Awakening of the 1740s. However, if we situate early evangelicalism in the wider scope of transatlantic awakened Protestant reform since the late 1600s, Mather’s importance to this history is evident.23 Mather actively corresponded with Pietist leaders in Germany, England, and the Danish colony of Tranquebar, and he shared many of their interests in reform and renewal. Moreover, his emphasis on vital heart religion and his efforts to foreground basic marks of true Christianity that would unite Protestants of various denominations anticipated key features of the evangelical revivals. For these reasons, a few historians have explicitly labeled Mather as a father of the American evangelical

22  See Mark A. Peterson, “Theopolis Americana: The City-State of Boston, the Republic of Letters, and the Protestant International, 1689–1739,” in Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830, Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault, eds. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 329–70; A. G. Roeber, “The Waters of Rebirth: The Eighteenth Century and Transoceanic Protestant Christianity,” Church History 79, no. 1 (2010): 40−76; Edward E. Andrews, “Tranquebar: Charting the Protestant International in the British Atlantic and Beyond,” WMQ, 74:1 (January 2017): 3−34; and Jan Stievermann, “A ‘Syncretism of Piety’: Imagining Global Protestantism in Early Eighteenth-Century Boston, Tranquebar, and Halle,” Church History 89 (2020): 829−56; Jan Stievermann, “German Lutheran and Reformed Protestants,” in Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism, ed. Yeager, 95–116; Ryan P. Hoselton, “Introduction,” in Bible in Pietism and Evangelicalism, 1−5. 23  Ward has advocated influentially for dating evangelicalism’s origins to the late 1600s. Ward, Early Evangelicalism, 1.

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movement.24 By focusing on Mather’s religious experientialism and biblical exegesis, this book strengthens these historical connections. Like many early awakened Protestants, Mather capitalized on the heightened appeal and authority of experience to manifest the active workings of the Spirit, ignite spiritual knowledge and enlightenment by the Word, and inculcate vital piety for the renewal of Christendom. Chapter 2 sketches pertinent developments from the Reformation to the eighteenth century that shaped the religious and intellectual conditions in which Mather and Edwards came of age and labored. The leaders and heirs of the Reformation largely grounded Protestant belief and piety in the interaction of the Spirit and the Word giving rise to spiritual knowledge and certainty. However, as certain Enlightenment conceptions of experience challenged the epistemic structures of this framework, awakened Protestants like Mather and Edwards utilized their era’s heightened attraction to experiential authority and thought to fortify their traditions intellectually and revive them spiritually by the Word. Chapter 3 examines Mather’s efforts to bolster experimental religion with the help of early experimental philosophy. Taking inspiration from traditions of piety and Royal Society philosophers such as Robert Boyle, he utilized empirical methods to prove and collect knowledge about the spirit world—especially the Holy Spirit’s workings to awaken souls in vital piety. His experimental framework greatly inspired his hermeneutical objectives, as he probed the pious observations of the soul to substantiate and illuminate the Bible for advancing knowledge and heart religion. Chapter 4 explores Mather’s practical efforts to apply experimental exegesis to further religious enlightenment. His religious experimental paradigm advanced his apologetic project to substantiate the Word, his scientific project to amass knowledge of the Word, and his evangelical project to promote vital experimental piety of the Word. Chapter 5 turns to Jonathan Edwards and his creative appropriation of Lockean sensationalist psychology to ascertain and differentiate the epistemological capacities of “natural” and “spiritual” persons when reading the Bible. Whereas the ideas of natural persons were limited to the exercises 24  Richard Lovelace, The American Pietism of Cotton Mather: Origins of American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian University Press, 1979); Rick Kennedy, The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015).

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and effects of the natural senses, spiritual persons enjoyed the new spiritual sense implanted by the Spirit, which gave them new sensory abilities to spiritually experience, perceive, hear, feel, and taste divine things in Scripture. Finally, Chap. 6 treats Edwards’ exegesis of sensation in practice. He determined that spiritual ideas arose from the Spirit stirring the affections and senses to experience the Word. This conviction underlay his pursuits to harmonize his thoughts and affections with the Word, establish experiential certainty of Scripture’s authority and divine origin, interpret Scripture with the guidance of spiritual tastes, awaken souls through affective preaching, and manifest the power of the Spirit and the Word in the transformed lives of awakened believers. While Mather and Edwards engaged theological traditions and contemporary philosophies at a more elite level than most early evangelicals, their examples evince a widespread quest for religious enlightenment in a modern world—a venture they insisted must be philosophically grounded, but above all spiritually vital and biblical.

CHAPTER 2

“Search the Scriptures; Search Your Experiences”: Reading the Bible Spiritually from the Reformation to Early Evangelicalism

“How shall we prove the Spirit?” asked an exasperated Martin Luther (1483–1546) amid his battles with Rome, enthusiasts, and Erasmus over the proper interpretation of Scripture.1 The question would absorb Protestants for generations to come. Seeking a form of knowledge that offered not only certainty but also intimacy with God, they laid increasing weight on the authority of spiritual experience to discern the voice, light, and affections of the Spirit in the Word. While interest in this dynamic interaction among the Spirit, Scripture, and experience long preceded the Reformation—as seen in the writings of early church fathers, Christian mystic traditions, and the devotio moderna movement—it became especially integral to early Protestant efforts to reconstruct the foundations of faith and religious authority independent of the magisterium.2 1  Martin Luther, On the Bondage of the Will [1526], in Luther’s Works, ed. Philip S. Watson (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1957), 33:89 (hereafter LW). 2  For more on the history of biblical interpretation in the early and medieval church, see Magne Sæbo, ed., Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, I: From the Beginnings to the Middle Ages (Until 1300) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996); and Henning Graf Reventlow, Epochen der Bibelauslegung. Band I: Vom Alten Testament bis Origenes (München: C.H.  Beck, 1990), Epochen der Bibelauslegung. Band II: Von der Spätantike bis zum Ausgang des Mittelalters (München: C.H. Beck, 1994).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. P. Hoselton, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment, Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44935-2_2

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Eighteenth-century awakened Protestants, such as Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards, would carry the quest for experiential religion by the Word and Spirit in new times as they labored to revive Protestant Christendom in true and vital religion. This chapter traces the contours of this quest and probes the key traditions and developments that shaped the Bible practices of early evangelicals. It first explores the relationship between religious experience and exegesis in the Protestant Reformation(s), Post-Reformation Protestant Orthodoxy, and transatlantic Puritanism and British dissent. Wishing to counter Catholic “superstitions” and establish Scripture as the normative basis of Christian faith and practice, these Protestants invested considerable interpretive authority in the pneumatological resources enjoyed by every regenerate Christian to understand the Word and to experience its teachings for growth in piety. However, varied conceptualizations of natural and spiritual knowledge within late seventeenth-century Protestant biblical scholarship and the early Enlightenment shifted the grounds of biblical and interpretive authority, as various philosophical circles elevated natural reason and empiricism alongside or above dogmatic theology and spiritual experience. Last, this chapter examines how early awakened Pietists and evangelicals sought to defend their heritage against these challenges while simultaneously seeking to revive the Protestant world by adapting their biblical interpretation and pieties to new intellectual and religious conditions. Laboring to uphold and promote spiritual knowledge of God through the Word in an era allured by the authority of experience, they fused and augmented their traditions of experimental piety with the idioms and methods of experimental philosophy. Their heightened concentration on sensory religious knowledge underlay their appeal to an eighteenth-century audience that increasingly prioritized immanent substantiation and immediacy over deference to transcendence, elevating the individual’s reason, affections, sensations, conscience, impressions, perceptions, and sentiments over inherited traditions and authorities.

The Spirit and the Word in the Protestant Reformations It did not take long for Martin Luther to realize that widespread appeals to the Spirit would deeply complicate his reform efforts. Elevating sola Scriptura above the magisterium may have solved one authority issue, but

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it opened many more as radicals and spiritualists from all directions asserted aberrant doctrines based on eccentric interpretations and new revelatory insights from the Spirit. The magisterial reformers such as Luther, Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), and John Calvin (1509–1564) addressed this crisis by insisting the Word and the Spirit must always go hand in hand—the Spirit must illuminate the mind to understand Scripture, and yet the clear literal meaning of the text must also test the spirits. But why then did they fail to agree on central doctrinal and ecclesial matters among themselves, such as the Eucharist? Luther concluded that Zwingli was led by a different spirit, and they severed ties over their different interpretations of the presence of Christ in the sacramental bread and wine. Despite the reformers’ intentions to unify Christendom around a scripturally based Christianity, controversies over biblical interpretation and practice erupted and interfered. It is impossible to grasp the Reformation era—or early evangelicalism for that matter—without acknowledging Scripture’s pervasive influence on the beliefs and everyday practices of sixteenth-century women and men. As David Steinmetz says, “the Bible was in the fullest sense of the term, a sixteenth-century book”; it “was on the lips of religious martyrs” and “the lips of their executioners.”3 According to Susan Schreiner, the crises of authority in exegesis, doctrine, and spirituality in the Reformation era revolved around a pervasive quest for certainty. This quest anticipated key transformations in early evangelical biblical practices. Scholars have typically viewed the seventeenth century as the period most preoccupied with certainty, but Schreiner traces it back much earlier to “late-medieval concerns about epistemology, immediacy, and experience, as well as humanist historical and legal scholarship, and the religious debates of the sixteenth century.” Whereas in the sixteenth century certainty was approached as a matter of attaining assurance of salvation and overcoming guilt through spiritual means, seventeenth-century thinkers increasingly turned to rational demonstration and empirical evidence against the challenge of philosophical skepticism, “Descartes personified one beginning of modernity because he abandoned the modest skepticism of the humanists and sought rationalistic proofs that would provide intellectual foundations which were clear, distinct, and certain.”4 Early  David C. Steinmetz, Luther in Context (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), 44.  Susan Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise?: The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 12, 11. 3 4

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evangelicals inherited many of the concerns arising from crises of certainty in the Reformation-era debates as well as seventeenth-century philosophical rationalism and empiricism. And like their predecessors, they sought to bring these matters in close interaction with their Bibles. The magisterial reformers shared several fundamental exegetical considerations and principles in common that carried over into later generations of Protestantism. They believed Scripture was self-attesting (autopiston), perspicuous, and self-interpreting (scriptura sui interpres); emphasized the literal sense and expressed a general antipathy toward the quadriga (the fourfold interpretive method designed to unveil the text’s literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses); insisted on interpreting according to the rule of faith; advocated study of the text’s original languages, grammar, history, and context; and relied heavily on the patristic and medieval church exegetical traditions.5 And while they lifted the authority of the Word above all ecclesial institutions, bishops, and councils, they never envisioned exegesis as a private exercise divorced from ecclesial community and ministerial authority. As Luther asserted, the “spirits and dogmas of all men” must be judged externally by “the public ministry of the Word” in “the presence of the Church.”6 However, all these interpretive criteria ultimately proved inadequate and unprofitable without the testimonium spiritus sancti internum. The reformers extended their understanding of the Holy Spirit’s inner witness 5  See Richard A.  Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics. Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1993), 2.1–69, 465–539 (hereafter PRRD); Muller, “Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation: The View from the Middle Ages,” in Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation, Richard A. Muller and John L. Thompson, eds. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 3–16. For more on biblical interpretation and practices in the Reformation era, see, among others, Jaroslav Pelikan, The Reformation Bible and the Bible of the Reformation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); Henning Graf Reventlow, Epochen der Bibelauslegung. Band III: Renaissance, Reformation, Humanismus (München: C.H. Beck, 1997); David Daniell, The Bible in English (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 111–375; Bruce Gordon and Matthew McLean, ed., Shaping the Bible in the Reformation: Books, Scholars, and Their Readers in the Sixteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2012); and Timothy George, ed., The Reformation Commentary on Scripture, 28 vols. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011–). 6  Luther, Bondage, LW 33:91. Here Luther makes his classic distinction between internal and external judgments and explains the need for both when interpreting Scripture.

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in providing certainty of salvation to hermeneutical certainty, insisting on the necessity of the Spirit’s indwelling and illumination to also confirm and guide the reader’s mind and heart in understanding, believing, and experiencing the spiritual realities of the biblical text. Many explicated John 14:16–17 to draw out the dual role of the Spirit as the “Comforter” who instilled assurance of salvation and the “Spirit of truth” who enabled greater certainty and knowledge of the Word.7 Luther affirmed the necessity of experiencing the Spirit’s indwelling guidance for interpretation in The Magnificat (1521): “No one can correctly understand God or His Word unless he has received such understanding immediately from the Holy Spirit. But no one can receive it from the Holy Spirit without experiencing, proving, and feeling it. In such experience the Holy Spirit instructs us as in His own school, outside of which nothing is learned but empty words and prattle.”8 Similarly, Zwingli declared in a sermon titled On the Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God (1522), “We need not human interpreters, but his anointing, which is the Spirit, teaches us all things.” He explained that in his youth he relied on “human teaching,” but then “I came to the point where led by the Word and Spirit of God I saw the need to set aside all these things and learn the doctrine of God direct from his own Word. Then I began to ask God for light and the Scriptures became far clearer to me.” He concluded the sermon by listing twelve essential elements to “come to a true understanding of the Word of God and to a personal experience” of the Spirit’s teaching, such as praying  Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise, 86. See Martin Luther, Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 14−16, in LW, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1961), 24:110−32. 8  Luther, The Magnificat, in LW, trans. A. T. W. Steinhaeuser, 21:299. For the German, see Martin Luther, Das Magnificat verdeutschet und ausgelegt, in D.  Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1897), 7:546 (hereafter WA). For more on Luther’s exegesis and theology of Scripture, see, among others, Friedrich Beißer, Claritas Scripturae bei Martin Luther (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966); Werner Führer, Das Wort Gottes in Luthers Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1984); Reventlow, Epochen, 3:68–90; and Siegfried Raeder, “The Exegetical and Hermeneutical Work of Martin Luther,” in Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation, II: From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Magne Sæbo (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 363–405. Recent scholarship has also labored to connect Luther more directly to the mystic tradition; see Volker Leppin, Die fremde Reformation: Luthers mystische Wurzeln (München: C. H. Beck, 2017). 7

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to God inwardly, relinquishing dependence on human abilities, being filled, strengthened, assured, and comforted by God, humbling oneself, welcoming conviction of sin by the Word, and cherishing and taking joy in the Word.9 Although Luther and Zwingli never abandoned their optimism that the Spirit led regenerate Christians in knowledge and certainty of the Word, their hopes that it would unify Protestants were quelled. Before long, disparate radical groups capitalized on the vast possibilities of advancing new doctrines and practices based on experiential knowledge from the Spirit. In 1522, the Zwickau Prophets arrived in Wittenberg claiming spiritual inspiration for their peculiar new teachings. Luther’s senior colleague at the University of Wittenberg, Andreas Karlstadt (1486–1541), cited the Spirit’s inner testimony in justifying more extreme reforms. Spiritualists such as Thomas Müntzer (d. 1525) and Sebastian Franck (1499–1543) elevated the Spirit’s inner light and revelations over Holy Scripture, leading the former to adopt apocalyptic views and radicalize the lay masses in the abortive Peasant’s War of 1524–1525.10 Around the same time, Luther found himself entangled in a doctrinal controversy over the Eucharist with Zwingli, Karlstadt, and Caspar Schwenckenfeld (1490–1561), all defending their exegetical positions with appeals to inner pneumatic persuasion.11 In response to these crises, the magisterial reformers became preoccupied with establishing hermeneutical certainty and authority based on passages like 1 Cor 2:1–15 and John 14:16–17 that affirmed their experiential Spirit-led interpretive judgments and doctrinal formulations.12 Although this move failed to unify Christendom and resolve their doctrinal controversies, it provided an epistemological basis for various Protestant groups to promote uniformity in belief and practice within their own confessional traditions. The exegetical debates of the Reformation “always involved the spiritual claim to experiential knowledge,” pointing to “a much wider current 9  Ulrich Zwingli, On the Certainty and Clarity of the Word, in Zwingli and Bullinger, trans. and ed. G. W. Bromiley (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953), 88, 91, 93–95. 10  For more on the exegesis of Müntzer and Franck, see Reventlow, Epochen, 3:140–58, 3:167–78. 11  Martin Luther, Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments, 1525, in LW, ed. Conrad Bergendoff, 40:73−223; Luther, Wider die himmlischen Propheten, von den Bildern und Sacrament. 1525, in WA, 18:22−214. 12  Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise, 96.

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of early modern spirituality” in which diverse groups shared a yearning for “the kind of knowledge of God that was deeply felt within the ‘heart’ and capable of transforming the soul.”13 Despite significant doctrinal differences, early modern religious leaders across the spectrum—from Luther to the humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), Zwingli to the Catholic mystic Francisco de Osuna (d. 1540), and from William Tyndale (1494–1536) to Sebastian Franck—regarded inner spiritual experience as a powerful instrument for guidance in biblical interpretation and certainty in doctrinal and spiritual knowledge. Franck expressed widely held anti-­ Scholastic, mystical religious impulses in professing that “the kingdom of God is not knowledge or art, but power, experience, and feeling which alone are the true knowledge and art. This God effects inwardly in the hearts of believers through his Spirit.” Hence, inner “experience is like a key to Scripture,” illuminating the text’s spiritual meaning and delivering an immediate sense of its transformative power and truth in the mind and heart of the reader.14 The Reformed tradition—the lineage of Mather and Edwards—was born amid these early modern currents and discussions surrounding exegetical, doctrinal, and spiritual authority. Calvin and his Genevan “company of pastors”15 entered the scene aware of the looming challenges confronting the Protestant reform efforts, and they also sought to promote true religious and ecclesial reformation by appealing to the inextricable authority of the Spirit and the Word. Although his language was typically more guarded than the radicals and even his fellow magisterial reformers, Calvin ascribed an essential role to inward spiritual experience in his conception of the relationship between the Spirit’s inner witness, exegesis, and certainty in belief. To attain a “saving knowledge of God”  Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise, 209, 211, 256.  Sebastian Franck, 280 Paradoxes or Wondrous Sayings, trans. E.  J. Furcha (Lewiston/ Queenstown: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), 209; quoted by Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise, 252–53. 15  For more on this group and their reform efforts, see Scott M.  Manetsch, Calvin’s Company of Pastors: Pastoral Care and the Emerging Reformed Church, 1536–1609 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Some scholars have argued that Beza and the English Puritan tradition departed from Calvin’s understanding of soteriology and assurance by laying greater weight on inward religious experience. I find this claim overstated. Cf. R. T. Kendall Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); Charles Lloyd Cohen, God’s Caress: The Psychology of Puritan Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 9−12. 13 14

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and “banish all doubt,” wrote Calvin, believers must “seek our conviction in a higher place than human reasons, judgments, or conjectures, that is, in the secret testimony of the Spirit.”16 For Calvin, sin had so devastatingly polluted the natural mind and heart that fallen humans could not properly know and believe Scripture: “bare and external proof of the Word of God should have been amply sufficient to engender faith, did not our blindness and perversity prevent it.” Consequently, “without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the Word can do nothing.” The fallen natural mind was “like a veil cast over us, it hinders us from attaining the mysteries of God” in Scripture which were “‘revealed to babes alone’ [Matt 11:25; Luke 10:21].” The natural mind cannot grasp Scripture’s arcane spiritual dimensions, “‘For flesh and blood does not reveal this’ [Matt 16:17], ‘but the natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit’; rather God’s teaching is ‘foolishness to him … because it must be spiritually discerned’ [1 Cor 2:14].”17 Calvin saw the dual roles of the Spirit’s indwelling presence in bestowing assurance of belief and knowledge of the Word—consisting in both the illumination of the mind and experiential knowledge of the heart—as inseparable pillars to his understanding of true faith as an experiential certainty of salvation. “Faith is much higher than human understanding,” Calvin maintained, and “it will not be enough for the mind to be illumined by the Spirit of God unless the heart is also strengthened and supported by his power. In this matter the Schoolmen go completely astray, 16  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. XX of The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 1:92, 74, 78. For more on Calvin’s exegesis and understanding of spiritual knowledge, see, among others, Werner Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957); Gottfried W.  Locher, “Testimonium internum: Calvins Lehre vom Heilige Geist und das hermeneutische Problem,” Theologische Studien 81 (1964), 4–30; Alexandre Ganoczy and Stefan Scheld, Die Hermeneutik Calvins: Geistliche Voraussetzungen und Grungzüge (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1983); Peter Opitz, Calvins Theologische Hermeneutik (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchner Verlag, 1994); “The Exegetical and Hermeneutical Work of John Oecolampadius, Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin,” in HBOT, ed. Sæbo, 2:407–451; Willem Balke, “Revelation and Experience in Calvin’s Theology,” in Toward the Future of Reformed Theology: Tasks, Topics, Traditions, ed. David Willis and Michael Welker (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 346−65; and Donald K.  McKim, ed., Calvin and the Bible (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 17  Calvin, Institutes, 1:580–82.

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who in considering faith identify it with a bare and simple assent arising out of knowledge, and leave out confidence and assurance of heart.” For Calvin, faith was chiefly a matter of the heart, and insofar as “the heart’s distrust is greater than the mind’s blindness,” the Spirit’s “power is much more clearly manifested” in giving believers “confirmation of the heart” than merely “real understanding” to the mind. He extended his stress on assurance of the heart in faith to reading and understanding Scripture: “the Word of God is not received by faith if it flits about in the top of the brain, but when it takes root in the depth of the heart.” The Spirit sealed the Bible’s promises and precepts in the heart and thus enabled regenerate readers to “taste that truth of God” in Scripture to apprehend its spiritual realities experientially: For the soul, illumined by him, takes on a new keenness, as it were, to contemplate the heavenly mysteries, whose splendor had previously blinded it. And man’s understanding, thus beamed by the light of the Holy Spirit, then at last truly begins to taste those things which belong to the Kingdom of God, having formerly been quite foolish and dull in tasting them. … Indeed, the Word of God is like the sun, shining upon all those to whom it is proclaimed, but with no effect among the blind. Now, all of us are blind by nature in this respect. Accordingly, it cannot penetrate into our minds unless the Spirit, as the inner teacher, through his illumination makes entry for it.18

Wishing to avoid giving any sanction to enthusiasm or unbridled subjectivity, Calvin denied the possibility of new revelations and stressed that the Spirit’s inner testimony worked exclusively in cooperation with Scripture: “the Word is the instrument by which the Lord dispenses the illumination of his Spirit to believers.”19 Faced with the “fear of deception” that plagued many Reformation-era thinkers—and despite his general reticence toward experiential claims—Calvin ascribed significant weight to internal spiritual experience to discern the presence and guidance of the Spirit in believing and understanding Scripture.20 The  Calvin, Institutes, 1:581, 583–84, 581.  Calvin, Institutes, 1:96. 20  Schreiner, “‘The Spiritual Man Judges All Things’: Calvin and the Exegetical Debates About Certainty in the Reformation,” in Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation, Muller and Thompson, eds. 212; Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise, 111–12. 18 19

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believer’s assurance lay not in natural “proofs” but rather in a “feeling that can be born only of heavenly revelation”; Calvin affirmed, “I speak of nothing other than what each believer experiences within himself.” Scripture only “seriously affects” men and women “when it is sealed upon our hearts through the Spirit.” The “same Spirit,” Calvin explained, “who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded.”21 For Calvin, while doctrinal authority ultimately rested in the Spirit and the Word, the regenerate human agent was deeply ­dependent on experiential knowledge of the heart to believe and understand what could only be “spiritually discerned” in Scripture. Calvin’s views on experiential religion and exegesis were a key dimension of his theological program to reform pure worship. For Calvin, false religion was not fundamentally a matter of evil and demonic supernatural forces but rather the sinful idolatry and inventions of the human heart. Scholars have discussed at length how Calvin’s thinking contributed to the “disenchantment” of the world.22 Whereas in earlier times the sacred pervaded all dimensions of society, Calvin and his followers (along with many others in the early modern period) more sharply differentiated between the spheres of nature and spirit and thus anticipated social realities of the secular and sacred divide in the modern West. According to Carlos Eire, it is more accurate to interpret this historical trajectory as a desacralization rather than secularization. The Reformation did not undermine the realness of the sacred but rather “redefined its scope and essence,” thus “making it more purely spiritual and therefore less accessible through the material world. … And this shift in perspective, which can rightly be called a process of desacralization, changed the world more profoundly and irreversibly than any other paradigm shift brought about by scientists at that

 Calvin, Institutes, 1:80, 79.  See, among others, Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, 1904−1905], trans. by Talcott Parsons (London: Allen & Unwin, 1930); Robert Scribner, “The Reformation, Popular Magic, and the ‘Disenchantment’ of the World,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23:3 (Winter 1993): 475−94; and Gregory, Unintended Reformation. 21 22

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time.”23 Changing conceptions of experience and exegesis were integrally wrapped up in this paradigm shift of nature and spirit, furnishing a critical precondition for the early Enlightenment and the early evangelical movement alike. The Protestant rejection of the quadriga and the restriction of spiritual knowledge of Scripture to the Spirit’s experiential workings on the heart was critical to this process.

Experimental Religion and Exegesis in Protestant Orthodoxy and Puritanism Seventeenth-century theologians and church leaders in the Protestant Orthodox tradition furthered the exegetical practices and principles of the early reformers.24 However, faced with intensified challenges from Catholic writers and the formidable task of constructing an exegetical basis for Protestant doctrinal confessions and practical piety, Lutheran and Reformed writers such as Matthias Flacius Illyricus (1520–1575), William Perkins (1558–1602), William Ames (1576–1633), Johann Gerhard 23  Carlos M.  N. Eire, Reformations: The Early Modern World, 1450−1650 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 317, 747. Eire prefers the term desacralization to disenchantment and secularization, as “desacralization is a process of subtraction from within, of Christians eagerly reducing the scope of the supernatural on earth, rather than a process of erosion by external factors of any kind, be they political, social, economic, cultural, or intellectual.” He does not deny the influence of external factors but wishes to demonstrate how Protestants themselves “were aggressive agents in the process of desacralization.” Ibid., 748. For a fuller study on this transformation, see Carlos Eire, War Against the Idols (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Eire’s approach complements the framework of this study which aims to show how the transformations of piety in early evangelicalism (in continuity with the Reformation) represented an active and dynamic force of modernization rather than a mere unintended consequence of secularizing processes. 24  For more on Protestant Orthodoxy and exegesis, see Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2; “Biblical Interpretation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” in Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, ed. Donald K.  McKim (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), 22–44; Johann Anselm Steiger, “The Development of the Reformation Legacy: Hermeneutics and Interpretation of the Sacred Scripture in the Age of Orthodoxy,” in HBOT, ed. Sæbo, 2:691–757; Steiger, Philologia Sacra: Zur Exegese der Heiligen Schrift im Protestantismus des 16. bis 18. Jahrhunderts (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Theologie Verlag, 2011); Carl R. Trueman, “Scripture and Exegesis in Early Modern Reformed Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Theology, 1600−1800, Ulrich L. Lehner, Richard A. Muller, and A. G. Roeber, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 179−94; and Benjamin T. G. Mayes, “Scripture and Exegesis in Early Modern Lutheranism,” in ibid., 283−97.

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(1582–1637), Johannes Cocceius (1603–1669), and Petrus van Mastricht (1630–1706) expanded on the precise nature of the relationship among certainty, experience, and the Spirit’s inner workings and its implications for differentiating between natural and spiritual knowledge. Catholic leaders carrying out the counter-reforms of the Council of Trent (1545–1563) along with their formidable successors such as Robert Bellarmine (1562–1621) criticized Protestants for dividing Christendom with their principles of sola scriptura and perspicuity. They needed only to point to the damaging innovations of radical sects as proof that the Scriptures were too obscure for ordinary lay believers to interpret. The Lutheran theologian Johann Gerhard responded to such exegetical challenges and articulated characteristic Protestant views on the central matters of contention in his work De Interpretatione Scripturae Sacrae (1610). Displaying a continued preoccupation with certainty, Gerhard asked: “How may we know for certain that we can rightly understand Scripture? Can anyone then interpret Scripture according to his own thoughts?”25 He acknowledged that Catholics and Protestants both answered this question negatively and both pled the necessity of the Spirit’s illumination, but in different ways. His Catholic opponents maintained that the Scriptures were too “dark” for ordinary men and women to understand and therefore required the Spirit to illuminate the text through the Pope, cardinals, priests, traditions, and councils. Gerhard, however, refused to sacrifice Scripture’s perspicuity: “Scripture is so plain and clear that every person can with certainty and confidence learn from it what is necessary for his salvation.”26 For Gerhard, the problem lay not in the darkness of Scripture but rather the darkness of fallen human understanding. All individuals 25  Johann Gerhard, Tractatus de legitima scripturae sacrae interpretatione (1610): Lateinsich-Deutsch, ed. Johann Anselm Steiger (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-­ Holzboog, 2007), 85. This volume contains the Latin (1610) and German (1612) editions; all quotations are my translations of the German: Von Außlegung der Heiligen Schrifft, trans. and ed. Johann Berners (Franckfurt am Mayn: Erasmo Kempffern, 1612). For more on Gerhard’s biblical interpretation, see Henning Graf Reventlow, Epochen der Bibelauslegung. Band IV: Von der Aufklärung bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (München: C.H.  Beck, 2001), 4:21–30; and Reinhard Kirste, Das Zeugnis des Geistes und das Zeugnis der Schrift: das testimonium spiritus sancti internum als hermeneutisch-polemischer Zentralbegriff bei Johann Gerhard in der Auseinandersetzung mit Robert Bellarmins Schriftverständnis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976). William Ames was another avid opponent of Bellarmine’s views on Scripture, as seen in his work, Scriptum Elenchticum contra Papistas vid. Bellarminus Enervatus in 4 Tomos Divisus (1625–1629). 26  Gerhard, Tractatus, 27.

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therefore needed the Spirit’s illumination of the mind and heart to understand the Word. His next step in this argument addressed a main preoccupation of seventeenth-­century hermeneutics: the relationship between natural and spiritual knowledge. Referencing Luther, Gerhard affirmed that the “illumination of the Spirit is necessary to understand all of Holy Scripture,” but there was an important “difference between knowledge of the letter and knowledge of the spirit.” Due to humankind’s “miserable fall into sin,” Gerhard explained citing 1 Cor 2:14, the “natural man cannot understand what is of the Spirit of God.” Without “divine illumination,” the “secrets of Scripture” were a “closed and sealed up book” to the “innate natural power of our minds.” To “receive this divine and super-natural light of the Holy Spirit,” readers must pray to the “heavenly Father” to give them the Spirit through the Son; and once obtained, “one must ask the Holy Spirit to write on the heart and inwardly seal what is held before us outwardly in the Word.” Gerhard commended King David’s prayer in Ps 119:18—a passage commonly cited by Protestant exegetes—as a model for readers seeking spiritual knowledge: “open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wonderous things out of thy Law.”27 Nonetheless, borrowing Luther’s term, Gerhard held that a “Füncklein” still remained in the human mind, a “little spark” of “natural light” that enabled knowledge of “earthly and natural things as well as worldly wisdom.”28 The difference between natural and spiritual knowledge determined what readers could and could not perceive in Scripture: Moreover, in saying the illumination of the Holy Spirit is necessary to understand Scripture, we have chiefly meant to understand the secrets of the faith to be found in Scripture. Admittedly, Scripture contains several things that do not exceed human understanding. For example, the natural light of human reason can understand the external letter of the histories, but it cannot rightly and salvifically discern the secrets of the faith without the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Those not enlightened by the Holy Spirit can indeed recognize lessons in Scripture as well as historical beliefs through the external letters of the Word—but they cannot have a full, certain, proper, and salvific knowledge of them without the Holy Spirit, who must enlighten one inwardly.29  Gerhard, Tractatus, 87–91.  Gerhard, Tractatus, 89–91. 29  Gerhard, Tractatus, 97. 27 28

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As was characteristic of many Protestant Orthodox writers, Gerhard frequently described the difference between natural and spiritual knowledge with stark oppositions: letter versus spirit, external versus internal, common versus secret and mysterious, natural versus supernatural, earthly versus heavenly, human versus divine, profane versus holy and salvific, head versus heart, temporal versus eternal, and so on. Everyone had the ability to attain the first kind of knowledge in interpreting Scripture’s historical and grammatical meaning, but only those indwelled by the Spirit could spiritually discern Scripture’s divine secrets with a saving knowledge. Another challenge that prompted theologians in the period of early orthodoxy (ca. 1565–1640) to expand on the relationship between natural and spiritual knowledge lay in the Protestant emphasis on literal interpretation and the insistence on the singular meaning of the text. Peter Harrison has argued that the Protestant rejection of allegory for literalism in biblical exegesis was a crucial precondition of the rise of natural science since it divested the natural world of symbolic meaning and thereby facilitated the reordering of nature as something distinct from the sacred. The unintended consequence was a growing desacralization of biblical exegesis, since figural and typological interpretation no longer bridged the worlds of the Bible and modern readers.30 However, while some followed the secularizing trajectory Harrison traces, most seventeenth- and eighteenth-­century Protestants continued to see their reading of Scripture as a deeply spiritual exercise. And while they dismissed what they regarded as arbitrary allegorizing, they still sought a spiritual, experiential, and practical understanding of the literal meaning by the guidance of the Spirit. According to Richard Muller, Protestant Orthodox writers discovered that abandoning the quadriga had limited their interpretive flexibility in moving between text and doctrine, creating difficulties for interpreters seeking to ground orthodox beliefs—like the Trinity or the hypostatic union of Christ—in a grammatical reading of Scripture.31 In search of a constructive hermeneutic that reinforced and furthered Reformation doctrine and spirituality, many followed the Cambridge theologian and clergyman William Perkins in combining an emphasis on the Spirit’s inner witness with complementary hermeneutic devices and principles that made 30  Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science. Harrison’s study interacts with the Puritanism and science thesis; see his footnotes on pp. 5−7 for more literature on this topic. 31  Muller, PRRD, 2.466.

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the interpretive process more fluid.32 Perkins greatly influenced the ­exegetical practices of New England’s first-generation Puritan leaders such as John Cotton (1584–1652), Thomas Hooker (1586–1647), John Winthrop (1587–1649), Richard Mather (1596–1669), and Thomas Shepard (1605–1649). This network of Puritan leaders tailored their exegetical principles around the conviction that true reform rested in transformed, holy lives. Thus, their articulations of the relationship among the Spirit’s inner testimony, the saint’s religious experience, and the single literal sense of the Word accentuated the need for readers and hearers to attain direct inner communication with God through Scripture that produced true saving knowledge, assurance of faith, affectionate worship, and conformity to God’s will. The Puritans bequeathed this sentiment to early awakened Protestants such as Mather and Edwards. In his widely read manual on preaching, The Arte of Prophecying (1592, trans. 1607), Perkins defined interpretation as “the Opening of the words and sentences of Scripture, that one entire and naturall sense may appeare.” He insisted that the quadriga “must be exploded and rejected,” for there “is one onelie sense, and the same is the literall.” His objective was not to divest spiritual meaning from interpretation but rather arbitrary allegorizations and human interpolations, aiming to make exegesis more conducive to discovering the intended meaning of the Spirit. As the Bible’s divine author, the Spirit was the “principall interpreter of the Scripture,” 32  For more on William Perkins, see D. K. McKim, “Perkins, William (1558–1602),” in Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, ed. McKim, 815–19; the introductory essays in William Perkins, A Commentary on Galatians, ed. Gerald T. Sheppard (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1989); and Andrew Ballitch, The Gloss and the Text: William Perkins on Interpreting Scripture with Scripture (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2020). For more on the role of the Holy Spirit in Puritanism, see Geoffrey F. Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Nuttall, however, overstates the innovativeness of seventeenth-century Puritan representations of the relationship between the Spirit and Christian experience. He not only misrepresents Calvin as holding that “the Holy Spirit is a necessity of thought rather than something known in experience,” but he also misleadingly downplays the role of the Spirit in medieval theology as well as post-Reformation continental Lutheran and Reformed Orthodoxy. Nuttall, Holy Spirit, 6–7. For more on the Puritans and the Bible, see Gerald R.  Cragg, Freedom and Authority: A Study of English Thought in the Early Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975), especially 127–58; Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1994); and Andrew Cambers, Godly Reading: Print, Manuscript and Puritanism in England, 1580–1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

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for “he that makes the law, is the best and the highest interpreter of the law.” Thus, the human interpreter’s task did not consist in adding new senses to the text but rather in uncovering the Spirit’s meaning already contained in it—its “one entire and naturall sense”—and readers could only achieve this goal with the Spirit’s inner guidance.33 As Lisa Gordis explains, “In postulating that proper reading resulted not from the Christian’s own efforts but rather from the light of the Spirit within him,” Perkins and other Puritan ministers “denied the problem of subjective and potentially erring reading by erasing themselves as subjects. They considered themselves not interpreters so much as conduits of the Holy Spirit’s interpretive power.”34 Hence, the first step of interpretation was to pray “earnestly” for God to “open the meaning of the Scriptures to us that are blind”—to recite David’s prayer in Ps 119:18: “Open mine eies, that I may see the wonderfull things of thy Law.”35 Echoing Calvin, Perkins bridged the separation between the fallen human interpreter and the “excellencie,” “perfection,” “sufficiencie,” and “puritie” of the Word by extending the Spirit’s inner work of producing certainty in belief to guidance in biblical interpretation. He listed several “strong proofes” supporting the authority and veracity of the biblical canon, but only one “doth make a man certainlie to know” its truthfulness—namely, “the inward testimony of the holy Ghost speaking in the Scriptures.” The Spirit “doth worke in our hearts a certaine full perswasion of the Scriptures, when we are exercised in hearing, reading, and meditating of them.” This experiential certainty in belief was attended with interpretive discernment of spiritual truths: “The Eelect having the Spirit of God doe first discerne the voyce of Christ speaking in the Scriptures. Moreover, that voyce, which they doe discerne, they doe approove” and “believe.” The Spirit opened “the words and sentences of Scripture” to a person by opening the eyes to see and ears to hear “the voyce of the holy Ghost” and of Christ “speaking in the Scriptures.”36

33  William Perkins, The Arte of Prophecying: Or, A Treatise Concerning the Sacred and Onely True Manner and Methode of Preaching, trans. by Thomas Tuke (London: Felix Kyngston, 1607), 30–31. Perkins affirmed his indebtedness for this work to the early church father Augustine, the humanist Desiderius Erasmus, and continental Protestant writers such as Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Theodore Beza, and Franciscus Junius. Perkins, Arte, 148. 34  Gordis, Opening Scripture, 23. 35  Perkins, Arte, 28. 36  Perkins, Arte, 5, 17, 19, 18.

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For Perkins, tying Scripture’s canonical authority to the Spirit’s authorship grounded not only the self-authenticating prerogative of Scripture but also the necessity of self-interpreting methods: the “supreame and absolute means of interpretation is the Scripture it selfe,” not external authorities such as church tradition, the arts, or human reason.37 The reader did not need the quadriga to derive doctrinal statements and spiritual meaning as long as one was enabled by the Spirit’s illumination to perceive the divine author’s unified voice throughout the whole Bible. As William Ames stated in The Marrow of Theology (1623), a standard theology manual in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Harvard and Yale, the “Scriptures need no explanation through light brought from outside” since they “give light to themselves.” However, interpreters were blind to Scripture’s light without the Spirit: “the special light of the Spirit must be sought for in the Scriptures by the godly.”38 Once “divine illumination from within the reader thus closed the gap between reader and author,” the interpreter could move confidently between text, doctrine, and application.39 Convinced that the Spirit authored all of Scripture, Puritan readers looked to the Spirit not merely to guide them in understanding a text but ultimately to know and encounter God in it. They approached the interpretive process as a communicative act between God and the regenerate reader, mediated by nothing other than the Spirit and the Word. In his popular devotional tract A Way to the Tree of Life: Discovered in Sundry Directions for the Profitable Reading of the Scriptures (1647), John White (1575–1648) referred to the interaction between the voice of God in Scripture and the reader as a “holy conference,” ascribing the communicative link to the Spirit’s inner testimony and illumination: “acknowledging our owne blindnesse, and inability, of our selves, to search into the deep Mysteries revealed in the Word … we  Perkins, Arte, 30, 31, 32.  William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, trans. and ed. John D. Eusden (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1997), 188. For more on Ames and his legacy in Puritan New England, see Keith L. Sprunger, The Learned Doctor William Ames (Urbana, Il: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 254–58. Perry Miller demonstrates the pervasive influence of Ames’ theology in New England, namely his voluntarism, technometry, Ramist logic, and understanding of theology as “the doctrine of living to God.” See Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1939). 39  Gordis, Opening Scripture, 23. Gordis contrasts this hermeneutic approach with Roland Barthes’ assertion that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” Image-Music-Text, trans. by Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997), 148. 37 38

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beg earnestly the assistance of Gods Spirit, to open our eyes, Psal. 119.18. to make us to understand the way of his precepts … being assured, that as there is no other meanes to reveale unto us the mind of God, but his Spirit, 1 Cor. 2.11.”40 The Spirit as the divine author revealed God’s character, will, glory, and salvation to the reader, and in response the reader absorbed the words through meditation and prayer and lived them out through obedience and praise. This communicative dynamic was often tied to an elaborate covenantal exegesis, in which many read Genesis to Revelation not as a distant history but as a cosmic unified drama of redemption that unfolded God’s promises to save his elect people. As observers and characters in this story, they read Scripture not merely to gain information but to establish a covenantal bond between God and the individual. The Puritans believed that a self-­ interpreting approach best facilitated this covenantal communicative bond between God and the reader since it removed extraneous authorities and interpolations that hindered direct contact with God in Scripture. Thus, for Perkins, the chief “meanes subordinated” to the self-interpretation of Scripture ultimately served to bring readers closer to God. They consisted of “the Analogie of faith,” which he understood as a doctrinal summation arising from a panoramic view of Scripture, “the circumstances of the place propounded,” referring to a passage’s context, “and the comparing of places together.” Perkins termed this last method “collation”—often referred to as the analogy of Scripture—a practice he found especially conducive to allow the meaning of the text to “more evidentlie appeare” in accordance with the “mind and meaning of the holy Ghost.” Especially when confronted with “crypticall or hidden places” which “are difficult and darke,” readers must interpret the text in light of the analogy of faith and other clearer passages.41 For Perkins, collation ensured that the text’s meaning was not imposed by the human reader but exposed by the Spirit’s guidance, and its subtle design to remove the reader’s subjectivity from the interpretive process was meant to carry over into the act of preaching. “Humane wisedome must bee concealed” and yield to the “Demonstration of the Spirit,” which occurred when the “Minister of the word doth in the time of preaching so behave himselfe, that all, even ignorant persons & unbeleevers may judge, 40  John White, A Way to the Tree of Life: Discovered in Sundry Directions for the Profitable Reading of the Scriptures (London: Printed by M. F. for R. Royston, 1647), 8. 41  Perkins, Arte, 31–32, 32, 46.

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that it is not so much hee that speaketh, as the Spirit of God in him and by him.” After being enlightened by the Spirit to perceive meaning in the text that could only be “spiritually discerned” (1 Cor 2:14), the minister must preach accordingly: “Which things also we speake, not in the words, which mans wisedome teacheth, but which the holy Ghost teacheth, comparing spirituall things with spirituall things” (1 Cor 2:13).42 To achieve this rhetorical demonstration, the minister cannot merely “understand the Scriptures” but also must nurture an “inward sense and experience of the word in his heart,” for “he must first be godly affected himselfe, who would stirre up godly affections in other men.” Only those who have an “inward feeling of the doctrine to be delivered” have performed and completed the interpretive process properly; they could now profitably open and apply God’s Word to ignite the spiritual thoughts and emotions of the saints and consequently cultivate them in holiness.43 Although their exegetical principles—such as collation, the emphasis on the literal and singular sense, and the reliance on the Spirit’s inner guidance—appeared conservative and restricting, they believed that these principles in fact facilitated rich and fruit-bearing experiential religion because they more directly bonded the mind and heart to the Spirit. Despite their reticence toward the quadriga, in practice many nonetheless allowed room for interpretive flexibility when navigating between the text’s explicative and applicative meanings to uncover the Spirit’s intention and derive spiritual import for the Christian life. After all, Perkins conceded, “allegorie is onely a certaine manner of uttering the same sense” as the literal, while “Anagoge and Tropologie are waies, whereby the sense may be applied.”44 For the most part, however, most Puritan interpreters sought to balance creativity with sobriety to avoid imposing outside meanings and arbitrary allegories on the natural sense of the text. The spiritualized approach to biblical interpretation and preaching advocated by Perkins and the extended network of seventeenth-century Puritan theologians and ministers—including many of the Westminster divines, first-generation New England ministers, and even Ames’ disciples in the Netherlands such as Cocceius and Mastricht along with other  Perkins, Arte, 132–34.  Perkins, Arte, 137, 140. Ames elaborated on how ministers demonstrate the power of the Spirit in preaching in a “Sermon on First Corinthians,” in The Philosophical and Theological Treatises of William Ames, trans. and ed. Lee W.  Gibbs (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mullen Press, 2013), 266–76. 44  Perkins, Arte, 31. 42 43

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continental admirers of the Puritans—shaped the experiential piety of Puritan practical divinity.45 In comparison to early English reformers such as John Hooper (1495–1555), William Fulke (1538–1589), and Thomas Cartwright (1535–1603), it marked a shift of focus from pursuing reform chiefly through church polity (battling over liturgy, vestments etc.) to experiential religion (focusing on conscience, personal holiness, inner assurance, affections, and devotional practices).46 Their agenda for pious reform molded lay reading practices, as outlined in widely read devotional manuals such as Lewis Bayly’s The Practise of Piety (1611), in which he counseled believers to “reade a Chapter in the Word of God: then meditate a while with thy selfe how many excellent things thou canst remember out of it.”47 These excellent things included “good counsels,” “exhortations, to good works and to holy life,” and the many “blessings God promiseth” to “Christian vertues.” Summoning readers to then “apply these things to thine owne heart,” he urged them to approach Scripture as a personal letter from God rather than a textual artifact: “read not these Chapters, as matters of historical discourse: but as if they were so many Letters or 45  The first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) states: “we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word.” The Humble Advice of the Assembly of Divines, Now by Authority of Parliament Sitting at Westminster (London: Printed for the Company of Stationers, 1647), 5. For more on Ames’ relationship with theologians and ministers in the Netherlands, see Sprunger, Ames, 209–46. For more on the connections between movements of piety in English Puritanism and European Protestantism, see F. Ernest Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism (Leiden: Brill, 1965). Anthony Milton argues that English Puritanism appealed not so much to the continental Reformed churches themselves but to reform movements within them, especially in the Netherlands and Hungary. Anthony Milton, “Puritanism and the Continental Reformed Churches,” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, John Coffey and Paul C.  H. Lim, eds. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 109–126. 46  Reventlow, Epochen, 4:35. Several Puritans during the Laudian era, such as Richard Sibbes, deemed much of the Puritan movement’s liturgical and formal precisionism as pertaining to adiaphorous matters and they focused more on experiential religion as the chief means of true reform. This point does not mean to diminish the continuity between sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Puritanism, but merely to stress a shift in emphasis. 47  Lewis Bayly, The Practise of Pietie (London: Printed for John Hodgetts, 1619), 244. Its popularity extended beyond England, appearing in at least 164 editions in eleven languages. Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 319.

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Epistles sent downe from God out of heaven unto thee.”48 These principles applied to ministers and lay believers alike. As White made clear: “the constant and daily study of the Scriptures is required, not onely of the Ministers of the word … (although indeed it concernes them above others) but besides of all.” In light of “mens ignorance in matters appertaining to godlinesse,” devotional reading of Scripture was of “great necessity” for everyone to attain “the knowledg [sic] of the Mysteries of godlinesse,” which consisted in “the knowledge of those things which are the grounds of Faith, the Rules of practice, and the power of God to salvation, Rom. 1.16.”49 Puritan interpreters were convinced that the key to godly and happy living rested in obtaining spiritual knowledge through reading the Scriptures with enlightened eyes and ears, inward holy affections, and prayerful obedience. The first-generation New England ministers brought these exegetical principles with them to the New World, convinced that such biblical piety and spiritual knowledge would brighten the light of their “city on a hill” for all the world to see and imitate.50 To carry out their mission, the ministers depended on the Spirit’s regenerative and inner sanctifying work to saturate New Englanders with an experiential knowledge of Scripture. As John Cotton exhorted, “Now the Word of God, though it be a Divine testimony in regard of the truths taught in it, and in regard that God delivered them; yet the application of them … is not of Divine force, as a divine

48  Bayly, Practise of Pietie, 245–46. For more on Puritan practical divinity, see Charles E.  Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-­ Century New England (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1982), especially 157−61 on New England Bible reading practices; Hambrick-Stowe, “Practical Divinity and Spirituality,” in Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, Coffey and Lim, eds. 191–205; David R. Como, Blown By the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Anti-­ nomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 117–37; and David D. Hall: The Puritans: A Transatlantic History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), 109−143. 49  White, Tree of Life, 126–27. 50  For one example of the legacy of Perkins’ approach to interpretation and preaching in New England divinity, see Rudolph P. Almasy, “Richard Hooker, Reformed Sermon Making, and the Use of Scripture,” in Richard Hooker and Reformed Orthodoxy, W.  Bradford Littlejohn and Scott N.  Kindred-Barnes, eds. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 155−74.

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testimony unless the Spirit breathe in them, and apply them to me.”51 In a sermon entitled Of Ineffectual Hearing the Word (1641) on John 5:37 (“Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape”), Thomas Shepard urged that the key to effectually hearing God’s Word rested in the internal operation of the Holy Spirit to enliven it in the believer’s heart: “many men may a long time together know and heare the Word of God written and spoken, yet never hear the Lord speaking that Word, no not so much as one word, tittle or syllable. … This was the estate of the Jews” during Jesus’ day to whom the text referred, “and this is the estate of all unregenerate men,” including many sitting in the pews of New England. He elaborated, “There is Gods external or outward word, containing letters and syllables” which everyone had the ability to hear, and there “is Gods internal word and voice, which secretly speaks to the heart, even by the external word,” a voice reserved only for the regenerate to discern. The ­experiential difference between hearing and reading the external letters of Scripture and hearing the internal voice of God in them was like the “difference between seeing” a “painted Sun on the wall” and “the Sun and Starres themselves, wherein is an admirable glory: go to a painted Sun, it gives you no heat, nor cheriseth you not; so it is here.”52 Perceiving and hearing God’s voice in the Scriptures served to restore the relational affection and communion between God and humans before the fall into sin: “We are far from God, and therefore we cannot hear him: draw near to him when you come to the external Word when you come to heare the Word, heare it as the voice of God; You heard the Word as the Word of God, which you felt in you.” As with the external Word, Shepard found his own words too finite to convey the ineffability of knowing God experientially in Scripture: “I am not able to expresse the infinite unknown sweetnesse, and mercy, and presence of God, that you shall finde thus coming.”53 As the later chapters demonstrate, Mather and Edwards drew deeply from Reformed and Puritan biblical interpretation and devotional practices, but the intellectual context in which they appropriated these principles presented new challenges. 51  John Cotton, Mr. Cotton’s Rejoynder, in The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638: A Documentary History, ed. David D.  Hall, 2nd ed. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 141. Quoted in Gordis, Opening Scripture, 170–71. See Edward H. Davidson, “John Cotton’s Biblical Exegesis: Method and Purpose,” Early American Literature 17 (1982): 119−38. 52  Thomas Shepard, Of Ineffectual Hearing the Word [1642], in Subjection to Christ (London: Rothwell, 1652), 156–57. 53  Shepard, Ineffectual Hearing, 189.

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Biblical Authority and Scholarship in Seventeenth-Century Protestantism In the mid- to late seventeenth century, traditional Protestant understandings of biblical authority and the relationship between natural and spiritual knowledge encountered new challenges that would condition the way colonial evangelicals appropriated their heritage. As Stephen Foster and others have argued, civil, intellectual, and religious life in colonial New England is best understood not as a distinct American tradition but rather as progressing on a parallel continuum with early seventeenth-century European cultural, intellectual, and religious developments—especially English Puritanism.54 Addressing an integral aspect of how early American religious identity correlated with the English Puritan movement, Lisa Gordis has shown how first-generation New England ministers inherited not only the craft and expertise of English Puritan interpretive practices but also some of the inherent challenges of interpretive authority that accompanied them. Like Perkins, many first-generation New England ministers concealed their natural learning and publicly attributed their exegetical conclusions chiefly to the Spirit’s guidance. However, problems arose when the laity imitated their ministers’ approach, claimed equal interpretive authority based on the Spirit’s illumination, and then challenged their teachings. Faced with the specter of controversies in interpretive authority surrounding Roger Williams’ criticisms of the clergy, the Antinomian crisis and Anne Hutchinson’s claims to interpretive insights by the Spirit, and the debates concerning baptism and church membership that led to the Cambridge Platform (1648), second-generation New England ministers increasingly based their interpretive authority in their natural learning alongside the Spirit’s guidance. As Gordis explains, the ministers’ shift in approach was “no exuberant grasp of power, but rather a chastened and qualified attempt to create an orderly interpretive community” when ubiquitous claims to interpretive authority based on “the Holy Spirit proved insufficient as a unifying force.”55 In Mather’s and Edwards’ generations these issues became all the more acute, as 54  Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570–1700 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991). Recent studies have reinforced this transatlantic continuum. See Michael Winship, Hot Protestants: A History of Puritanism in England and America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019); and Hall: Puritans: A Transatlantic History. 55  Gordis, Opening Scripture, 11.

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latitudinarian and evangelical-oriented ministers divided over whether to base their exegetical and ministerial authority in new standards of natural learning and rationality or the Spirit’s empowerment. Like many, Mather and Edwards wanted to have it both ways. Alongside clerical challenges in interpretive authority, new conceptions of natural knowledge also brought increasing pressure on the Protestant Orthodox approach to spiritual knowledge and interpretation. If the main hermeneutical challenge of early orthodoxy (ca. 1565–1640) was to ground orthodox belief and practice in the literal sense of the text, the challenge for Protestant exegetes of the high orthodox era (ca. 1640–1700) was to maintain the spiritual and theological authority of Scripture in light of transformations in historical and philological scholarship. According to Richard Muller, the period’s increased emphasis on the Bible’s original historical context instilled an “increasing sense of the cultural as well as historical distance between the text in its original languages and the dogmatic theologian,” which consequently “created an enormous pressure upon the still precritical understanding of the ‘literal sense’ advocated by early orthodoxy and upon the use of such churchly, dogmatic tools as the analogy of Scripture and the analogy of faith in the interpretation of Scripture.” This trajectory intensified in the period of late orthodoxy (ca. 1700–1790), which encompassed Mather’s and Edwards’ time, when “pressure was brought to bear on traditional dogmatics and dogmatic exegesis not only by Socinian, rationalist, and deist critics of orthodoxy, but by the nominally orthodox or at least orthodox-trained exegetes.” The latter’s “application of text-critical and historical-critical methods resulted in conclusions about the meaning of the text that were incompatible with the older results of grammatical, theological exegesis, whether of the Reformers or of the orthodox.”56 Whereas early Protestant Orthodox  Muller, PRRD, 2.465–69. For more on the historical development of higher critical approaches to Scripture, see, among others, Hans-Joachim Kraus, Geschichte der historisch-­ kritischen Erforschung des Alten Testaments, 2nd ed. (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchner Verlag, 1969); Frei, Eclipse; Henning Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World, trans. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984); Klaus Scholder, The Birth of Modern Critical Theology: Origins and Problems of Biblical Criticism in the Seventeenth Century, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1990); Sheehan, Enlightenment Bible; Legaspi, Death of Scripture; and Nicholas Hardy, Criticism and Confession: The Bible in the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017). 56

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and Puritan exegetes prioritized the spiritual dimension of the interpretive process while maintaining an essential yet subordinate role for natural learning, a growing number of biblical scholars disrupted this balance by elevating the authority of natural reason, experience, and historical-critical approaches above the spiritual—if not always in theory then often in practice. While early Puritan exegetes devised hermeneutical methods that fostered a close experiential relationship between the reader and Scripture, some late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century exegetes emphasized methods that distanced the interpreter from the text. Hoping to set themselves apart from radical mystics and enthusiasts, Protestant Orthodox theologians had always assigned a central role to natural learning and faculties in biblical interpretation.57 Johann Gerhard affirmed that when a biblical text remained “dark” after comparing it with other texts and applying the “rule of faith,” readers should employ “Grammatica” and “Rhetorica” to illuminate the meaning of the words and literary devices, “Dialectica” to understand the text’s arrangement and context, and “Physica” to research other natural matters.58 William Ames likewise urged interpreters to study the Scriptures “by the same means required for other human writings, i.e., skill and experience in logic, rhetoric, grammar, and the languages.”59 Ames and many other Puritan divines framed natural knowledge within an expansive philosophy of technometry in which true understanding existed in God archetypally and in humans ectypally.60 However, whereas natural knowledge “of other 57  As Johann Anselm Steiger asserts, “the common conviction that Orthodoxy discarded the rigorous philological alignment of theology coined by Humanism and that only in Pietism was philology recalled again, testifies to ignorance of the Orthodox exegetical literature.” Steiger rightly challenges common misrepresentations of exegesis in the era of Orthodoxy, especially “the claim that serious scholarly (that is, historical) exegesis only became scientifically critical in the age of Enlightenment.” He submits that representatives of this view take more interest in looking “for signs of the dawning of modernity in past eras” and tracing “the prehistory of one’s own way of thinking” than in following the sources. Steiger, “Interpretation in the Age of Orthodoxy,” 2:741, 700. 58  Gerhard, Tractatus, 113–15. 59  Ames, Marrow, 188. 60  William Ames, Technometry, trans. and ed. Lee W. Gibbs (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 100–101. For more on the influence of Ramism and technometry in New England, see pages 41–60 in Gibb’s “Introduction.” See also Perry Miller, New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century; Lee W.  Gibbs, “William Ames’s Technometry,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33:4 (Oct.–Dec., 1972), 615–24; and Norman Fiering, Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 25–28, 61, 120–25.

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arts … are inborn in us” and therefore “can be developed through sense perception, observation, experience, and induction,” the “basic principles of theology”—even though they may “be advanced by study and industry”—do not exist “in us by nature” and therefore require reliance on divine communication.61 In the beginning of creation, theological and spiritual understanding— which Ames understood as knowledge pertaining to one’s final moral and existential end in pursuing the art of “living to God”—was “easily accessible to man” through the direct communication of divine emanations to the human mind. But ever “since man has fallen,” such knowledge “has been so obscure and darkened.” Depraved human minds lost the ability to obtain knowledge leading to virtue and piety, but God “resolved this for us” by giving humankind the Scriptures which reveal the full “principles of goodness, that is, the principles of honesty, piety, justice, and equity” so that men and women could once again fulfill their ultimate end and live to the glory of God. However, these “principles of goodness revealed in the Holy Scriptures” could only be “inwardly known,” which was only possible once “after careful analysis of these Scriptures has been made, the eyes of his mind have been opened at the same time by the Holy Spirit.” Even though natural means on their own could not lead interpreters to attain spiritual knowledge, they nonetheless proved “very useful to investigate the remaining principles” as a supplement to the Spirit’s inner enlightenment.62 As long as natural learning and even Aristotelian philosophy remained within its proper boundaries and did not replace Scripture and theology in “directing our morals, will, and life,” Ames and other early Puritans regarded it as a complementary and critical companion for biblical interpretation.63 With these boundaries in mind, Ames approvingly incorporated the experimental approach of his contemporary Francis Bacon (1561–1626) in his hermeneutics, dividing natural analysis of the text into four steps, “sense perception,” “observation,” “induction,” and

 Ames, Marrow, 77–78.  Ames, Technometry, 103–104. 63  Ames, Technometry, 113. 61 62

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“experience,” the last of which served to “test” and confirm the first three steps.64 While natural learning typically remained within certain exegetical boundaries for Gerhard, Ames, and other early Protestant Orthodox theologians, orthodox and heterodox exegetes alike of the mid- to late seventeenth century increasingly strained these limits by assigning greater authority to critical methods in establishing not only the contextual meaning but also the historical reliability and textual integrity of Scripture. Scholarly advancements within Protestant and Catholic biblical scholarship—arising in large part from exegetical controversies as well as close dialogue with the Rabbinic exegetical tradition—had long prepared the tools for this shift. Confident that historia profana ultimately served to corroborate and elucidate historia sacra, scholars freely utilized geography, chronology, history, and philology to illuminate the text. This mentality inspired erudite works such as Edward Leigh’s Critica Sacra (1639, 1641), Samuel Bochart’s Geographia Sacra (1646), and the Polyglot Bibles of the 1500s and 1600s produced in Alcalá, Antwerp, Paris, and London.65 It also fueled the work of Christian Hebraists such as Johannes Buxtorf the Elder (1564–1629) and Johannes Buxtorf the Younger (1599–1664), who devoted considerable attention to philological, historical, and Orientalist research in defending the integrity of Scripture in their debates with the French Protestant exegete Louis Cappel (1585–1658) and others concerning the origin of the Hebrew vowel points (a topic to which Cotton Mather devoted his MA thesis at Harvard).66 However, the 64  Ames, Technometry, 104–105. Lee notes that “Ames’s synthesis of Aristotelian empiricism (whereby the principles and precepts of the arts are gathered from created things) and Neoplatonic idealism (wherein the principles and precepts of art are archetypal ideas in the mind of God) was by no means totally alien either to the empiricism and idealism of Locke and Berkeley or to the new experimental science propounded by Bacon.” These themes dominated the seventeenth century and there was no clear-cut opposition between religious belief and Enlightenment epistemologies. Even more, contrary to the common representation of Edwards (most strongly expressed by Perry Miller) as totally replacing technologia with Lockean empiricism, Lee argues the Puritan technologia remained “one important and abiding source of certain idealist and empiricist strains in his philosophical thought.” Lee, “Introduction,” in Ames, Technometry, 50, 54. 65  Adrian Schenker, “The Polyglot Bible of Antwerp, Paris and London: 1568–1658,” in HBOT, ed. Sæbo, 2:774–84. 66  Reventlow, Epochen, 4:79–82.

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rift between the Buxtorfs and Cappel over the condition of the presentday biblical texts signaled forthcoming challenges that natural learning would pose to the Protestant Orthodox conception of spiritual certainty grounded in the Spirit and the Word. According to Stephen Burnett, “Perhaps the most important new insight into the biblical text gained by Christian Hebraists in the seventeenth century, was that the Hebrew Bible text had a transmission history and that it was subject to the same kinds of textual corruption as secular texts.”67 Early Protestant Orthodox writers had also advocated interpretive methods for the Bible that applied for any other book, but these tools were always secondary aids to spiritual interpretation and they held no ultimate authority to judge the integrity of the sacred text. This ordering became increasingly destabilized, however, when scholars placed greater weight on rational and empirical standards to determine the text’s credibility and contextualized meaning. Roman Catholics such as Jean Morin (1591–1659) and Richard Simon (1638–1712)68 readily advocated the notion of Scripture’s corruptible transmission history to further substantiate the Council of Trent’s assertion of ecclesial interpretive authority against the Protestant insistence on the Bible’s self-attesting authority. Protestants, however, such as Cappel, Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), and Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736), adopted this position at the risk of shifting the grounds of biblical authority to external historical and rational criteria, thus compromising a key foundation of the Protestant Reformation. Like Cappel and Le Clerc, Grotius approached the Hebrew Scriptures primarily on their own historical-contextual terms rather than through the lens of New Testament teaching. He reduced Old Testament Christological exegesis to sparse and broad adumbrations of Christ’s redemption, and he considerably minimized prophetic and mystical interpretation, biblical miracles, and biblical typology in favor of historical-contextual 67  Stephen G. Burnett, “Later Christian Hebraists,” in HBOT, ed. Sæbo, 2:789; Burnett, Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500–1660): Authors, Books, and the Transmission of Jewish Learning (Leiden: Brill, 2012). 68  For more on Richard Simon, see John D. Woodbridge, “Richard Simon’s Reaction to Spinoza’s ‘Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,’” in Spinoza in der Frühzeit seiner religiösen Wirkung, ed. Karlfried Gründer and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider, 1984), 201–226; J. A. I. Champion, “Père Richard Simon and English Biblical Criticism, 1680–1700,” in Everything Connects: In Conference with Richard H.  Popkin: Essays in His Honor, James E. Force and David S. Katz, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 1999); and John W. Rogerson, “Early Roman Catholic Critics,” in HBOT, ed. Sæbo, 2:838–43.

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explanations. Although he rejected traditional Protestant views of the Bible’s divine inspiration and subjected its reliability (especially the historical and wisdom literature) to reason, Grotius never saw himself as an enemy to piety. He believed a latitudinarian exegetical approach shorn of dogmatic and confessional interference would better promote Christian unity on Scripture’s most fundamental tenets—such as love of neighbor.69 Brian Walton (1600–1661), the editor of the London Polyglot (1653–1657), was instrumental in introducing this textual approach into the mainstream of English Protestant biblical scholarship. With the assistance of textual scholars such as Henry Hammond (1605–1660) and the Westminster divine John Lightfoot (1602–1675), the London Polyglot manifested the latest advancements in print technology as well as the fruits of textual scholarship from the humanist tradition of Erasmus and Grotius. By setting textual variants in nine different languages side by side to identify errors in present-day copies and highlight Scripture’s authentic original words and teachings, the London Polyglot facilitated a “doctrinal minimalism” akin to Grotius and later English Latitudinarianism.70 Even more, Walton’s “attempt to restore the Bible to ancient history,” Peter Miller writes, “and the parallels he drew between Biblical and classical texts exposed Scripture to the scourge of skepticism.”71 Although still far from later developed historical-critical approaches, the research methods and theology behind Grotius’ historicism and studies such as the London Polyglot represented important developments in that direction that would reshape the interrelationship among certainty, piety, and exegesis. The reaction of the English Puritan dissenter John Owen (1616–1683) to these trends elucidates the main issues at stake. Owen contested Walton’s theoretical approach, as articulated in the Prolegomena to the London Polyglot, on the grounds that it undermined confidence in Scripture’s veracity and therefore real certainty in belief:

69  For more on the exegesis of the Dutch Arminian jurist and scholar Hugo Grotius, see Reventlow, Epochen, 3:211–25; Reventlow, “Humanistic Exegesis: The Famous Hugo Grotius,” in Creative Biblical Exegesis, Benjamin Uffenheimer and Henning Graf Reventlow, eds. (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1988), 175–91; and H.  J. M.  Nellen, “Tension Between Church Doctrines and Critical Exegesis of the Old Testament,” in HBOT, ed. Sæbo, 2:808–17. 70  Peter N.  Miller, “The ‘Antiquarianization’ of Biblical Scholarship and the London Polyglot Bible (1653–1657),” Journal of the History of Ideas 62:3 (July, 2001), 467, 474. 71  Miller, “‘Antiquarianization,’” 478.

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It is not imaginable what prejudice the sacred truth of the Scripture, preserved by the infinite love and care of God, hath already suffered hereby, and what it may further suffer, for my part, I cannot but think to tremble. Lay but these two principles together, namely, that the [vowel] points are a late invention of some Judaical Rabbins … and that it is lawful to gather various lections by the help of translations, where there are no diversities in our present copies, which are owned in the Prolegomena to the Biblia Polyglotta, and for my own part I must needs cry out … not seeing any means of being delivered from utter uncertainty in and about all sacred truth.72

Owen judged these “dangerous and careless attempts of men, to rectify our present copies of the Bible,” incompatible with belief in God as its sovereign author. If the “Word is come forth unto us from God,” then it cannot contain “the least mixture or intervention of any medium obnoxious to fallibility.”73 He conceded there “is no doubt but that the copies we now enjoy of the Old Testament there are some diverse readings, or various lections.” However, he refused to allow these textual disparities in contemporary copies to judge the authority and integrity of God’s self-­ authenticating Word: “But yet we affirm that the whole Word of God, in every Letter and Tittle, as given from him by inspiration, is preserved without corruption. Where there is any variety it is always in things of less, indeed of no importance. God by his providence preserving the whole entire, suffered this lesser variety to fall out, in or among the copies we have.” Citing 1 Pet 1:20–21, Owen argued that certainty ultimately rested not in external proofs but in the Spirit’s authorship and providential preservation of Scripture: “the Providence of God has manifested itself no less concerned in the preservation of the writings than the doctrine contained in them.”74 72  John Owen, Of the Divine Originall, Authority, Self-evidencing Light, and Power of the Scriptures (Oxford: Henry Hall, 1659), Dedicatory, unpaginated. John Owen served as chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, and he was the primary architect of The Savoy Declaration (1658), the Independent adaptation of the Westminster Confession which enjoyed widespread acceptance among New England Congregationalists. For more on Owen and especially his exegesis, see, among others, Crawford Gribben, John Owen and English Puritanism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Gribben, “Reading the Bible: John Owen and Early Evangelical ‘Biblicism,’” in Bible in Pietism and Evangelicalism, ed. Hoselton et  al., 73−90; and Andrew M.  Leslie, The Light of Grace: John Owen on the Authority of Scripture and Christian Faith (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015). 73  Owen, Divine Originall, 10–11. 74  Owen, Divine Originall, 12–14.

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Owen foresaw the challenges to piety and biblical authority that such critical approaches enabled and would increasingly create. Two decades later in The Reason of Faith (1677), Owen sought to defend the superiority of supernatural and infallibilist belief in Scripture against these new trends—not only practiced by rationalist Arminians and Socinians but also within the orthodox camp—that rested greater weight on external arguments: “I have tasted of their new wine and desire it not, because I know the old to be better.”75 For Owen, grounding faith in Scripture chiefly on evidential and probabilistic arguments could at best produce fallible belief and moral assurance, and most importantly, it had no power to enable readers to perceive, obey, and experience the Bible’s spiritual realities. “I believe” Scripture, wrote Owen, not “upon rational, scientifical principles, because such a divine revelation is not capable of such a demonstration,” but rather “with faith divine and supernatural, resting on and resolved in the authority and veracity of God himself, evidencing themselves unto my mind, my soul, and conscience, by this revelation itself.”76 Such supernatural belief in Scripture required the “internal subjective testimony of the Holy Ghost,” which “gives believers a spiritual sense of the power and reality of the things believed,” and “on account of this spiritual experience is our perception of spiritual things so often expressed by acts of sense, as tasting, seeing, feeling, and the like means of assurance in things natural.”77 Owen’s notion of the spiritual sense—endued by the Spirit through regeneration and the inner witness—consisted of both a new “visive faculty” that illuminated the mind to perceive spiritual realities in Scripture and an experiential knowledge of the heart that gave assurance and delight in them.78 In a companion treatise, The Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God (1678), Owen elaborated on how this understanding of religious knowledge should apply in biblical interpretation: “our right understanding the mind of God in the Scriptures” was not “the result of our own reason and understanding merely in their natural

75  John Owen, The Reason of Faith, in The Works of John Owen, vol. 4, ed. William Goold (Johnstone & Hunter, 1850–53; reprinted, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2004), 4–109, 15. 76  Owen, Reason of Faith, 70. 77  Owen, Reason of Faith, 64. 78  Owen, Reason of Faith, 56. For more on how Owen’s notion of a “visive faculty” relates to Edwards’ Christology, see Kyle C. Strobel, Jonathan Edwards’s Theology: A Reinterpretation (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 128–30.

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actings, but as they are elevated, enlightened, guided, conducted, by an internal efficacious work of the Spirit of God upon them.”79 Owen’s meticulous Scholastic reasoning and affective Puritan piety would have satisfied his Reformed Orthodox predecessors and like-minded contemporaries, but it appeared ever more antiquated to those seeking to reconcile biblical interpretation and Christian practice with new circumstances. To Owen’s dismay, growing numbers of orthodox Protestant biblical scholars relished the taste of the new wine and promoted the status of natural learning from a secondary aide to a new epistemic authority capable of advancing irrefutable proofs and demonstrable certainty of Scripture’s veracity and divine inspiration.80 It would misrepresent these individuals, however, to say they succumbed to pressures of the early Enlightenment by aligning themselves with its emerging rational and empirical criteria. Rather, to varying degrees, most of these orthodox biblical scholars (including Mather and Edwards) saw the advancements in natural learning as auspicious providences for the defense and furtherance of scriptural knowledge and thus of enduring belief in changing times.81

Nature, Experience, and Exegesis in the Early Enlightenment Intertwined with transformations in interpretive authority and epistemology within Protestant Orthodoxy, new early Enlightenment-era conceptions of nature and experience coincided with the emergence of the modern “self” with dramatic implications for the relationship between spiritual experience and Scripture.82 The publication of René Descartes’ 79  John Owen, The Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God as Revealed in His Word, with Assurance Therein, in The Works of John Owen, vol. 4, ed. William Goold (Johnstone & Hunter, 1850–53; reprinted, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 2004), 118–226, 126. 80  See Steiger, “Interpretation in the Age of Orthodoxy,” 2:751. 81  Examples of this optimism in harnessing the latest methods and advancements in natural learning for both the explication and defense of Scripture include John Edwards, Discourse concerning the Authority, Stile, and Perfection of the Old and New Testament (London, 1693–95); Edmund Dickinson, Physica Vetus & Vera (London, 1702); Nehemiah Grew, Cosmologia Sacra (London, 1710); and Robert Hooke, Lectures and Discourses Earthquakes and Subterraneous Eruptions (London, 1705). See Reiner Smolinski, “Editor’s Introduction,” BA, 1:94. 82  See Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989).

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Discourse on Method (1637)—which challenged scholastic understandings of nature by positing autonomous human reason as the basis of knowledge—sparked vigorous philosophical and exegetical debates among Dutch Calvinists. The followers of Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676) attacked Socinians, Remonstrants, and even Cocceians for embracing a Cartesian hermeneutic that prioritized reason over the authority of the Spirit’s illumination.83 Enlightenment-era ideas and debates were deeply embedded in religious contexts and discourses. As scholars have shown, there were strong connections between religious and scientific uses of the term “experimental” in seventeenth-century England. According to Peter Harrison, religious understandings of “experiment” anticipated its scientific use (as associated with the experimental philosophy of the Royal Society) in key respects, namely, in the conception of experiment as a test or trial, and in the stark opposition drawn between firsthand experimental knowledge and speculative knowledge, book knowledge, and knowledge based on inherited authority. This correlation helps explain why some early eighteenth-century religious thinkers such as Mather and Edwards saw experimental religious knowledge as compatible with and substantiated by experimental philosophy.84 Others, however, deemed them incompatible. Early Enlightenment figures from across the spectrum conceptualized nature and experience in more immanentist terms that reduced or eliminated the role of transcendent divine intervention in creation. There arose new definitions, methods, and criteria for what constituted experiential knowledge that undermined claims to interpretive certainty and authority based on spiritual experience. Steven Shapin outlines four interrelated changes in how many influential seventeenth-century thinkers—primarily affiliated with the Scientific Revolution—conceived the natural world in ways that 83  Charles H.  Parker, Global Calvinism: Conversion and Commerce in the Dutch Empire, 1600–1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022), 247–49. 84  Peter Harrison, “Experimental Religion and Experimental Science in Early Modern England,” Intellectual History Review 21:4 (2011): 413−33, especially 416. See also Harrison, “Sentiments of Devotion and Experimental Philosophy in Seventeenth-Century England,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 44:1 (Winter 2014): 113−33; Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 83−116, 157−58; and Joanna Picciotto, Labors of Innocence in Early Modern England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

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deviated from the traditional Aristotelian and Scholastic natural philosophy: first was “the mechanization of nature”; second, the “depersonalization of natural knowledge,” i.e., the insistence on objective separation between “human subjects and the natural objects of their knowledge”; third, the “mechanization of knowledge making,” i.e., the insistence on natural methods that eliminate “human passions and interests” from the process of knowledge acquisition; and fourth, “the aspiration to use the resulting reformed natural knowledge to achieve moral, social, and political ends.” The new standards of warranting natural knowledge led to “remarkable innovations in the modes of identifying, securing, validating, organizing, and communicating experience.”85 The Enlightenment insistence on disinterested objectivity combined with the confinement of experiential knowledge to the realm of nature subverted the authority of spiritual illumination and experience and shifted the grounds of certainty to empirical and rational demonstration.86 To varying degrees, radical freethinkers such as Baruch Spinoza and Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), heterodox groups such as the Socinians and deists, and representatives of the moderate Enlightenment such as John Locke all applied immanentist rational and empirical criteria along with new moral philosophical ideals in bold ways to biblical interpretation with the hope of decontaminating piety of spiritual enthusiasm, arbitrary dogmatism, and spurious religious authority. In his controversial work Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), Spinoza extended his radical views on natural philosophy to biblical interpretation. He criticized any interpretive claim based on the Holy Spirit as a pretense for oppressive clerical authority: “[T]hose who postulate the need for a supernatural light to interpret the minds of the prophets and Apostles truly seem to be lacking

85  Steve Shapin, The Scientific Revolution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 13, 12; also Shapin and Simon Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and The Experimental Life (1985; rev. ed., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). 86  For more on the variety and complexity of the relationship between biblical interpretation and shifting conceptions of nature in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Kevin Killeen and Peter J.  Forshaw, eds., The Word and the World: Biblical Exegesis and Early Modern Science (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

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in natural light themselves.”87 To overcome the delusion “that the most profound mysteries are hidden in Holy Scripture,” one must divest Scripture of supernatural mystery and subject it to natural reason: The method of interpreting Scripture, does not differ from the correct method of interpreting nature, but rather is wholly consonant with it. The correct method of interpreting nature consists above all in constructing a natural history, from which we derive the definitions of natural things, as from certain data. Likewise, to interpret Scripture, we need to assemble a genuine history of it and to deduce the thinking of the Bible’s authors by valid inferences from this history, as from certain data and principles.88

However, in direct contrast to Protestant Orthodoxy, Spinoza did not equate right interpretation of the text with the truth and knowledge of God: “It is one thing to understand Scripture and the minds of the prophets and quite another to understand the mind of God.”89 He thus took a bold step beyond the historicism of Grotius to sever the meaning of the biblical text from its veracity. Even so, Spinoza still believed that Scripture could inspire true religion, but this entailed a thorough revision of the relationship between piety and biblical interpretation. By elevating the interpretive powers of reason, Spinoza sought to empower the individual against the suppression and divisiveness that inevitably ensued from appeals to supernatural authority: “And as the highest authority to interpret Scripture rests with each individual, the rule of interpretation must be nothing other than the natural light of reason which is common to all men, and not some light above 87  Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, ed. Jonathan Israel, trans. Michael Silverthorne (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 112–13. For more on Spinoza’s thought and exegesis, see Richard H. Popkin, “Some New Light on the Roots of Spinoza’s Science of Bible Study,” in Spinoza and the Sciences, Marjorie Grene and Debra Nails, eds. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1986), 171–88; “Spinoza and Biblical Scholarship,” in The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, ed. Don Garrett (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 383–407; and J.  Samuel Preus, Spinoza and the Irrelevance of Biblical Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). See also Margaret Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans (London: Allen Unwin, 1981); and Israel, Philosophy and the Making of Modernity; Israel, Radical Enlightenment. 88  Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 98. 89  Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 168. See Stephen Nadler, “The Bible Hermeneutics of Baruch de Spinoza,” in HBOT, ed. Sæbo, 2:834–35.

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nature or any external authority.” One did not need spiritually enlightened eyes and ears to discern and experience the Bible’s arcane doctrines and precepts; rather, its “teachings of true piety are expressed in the most everyday language” for everyone to grasp. He thus dismissed any attempt to derive spiritual and moral import from Scripture on matters such as the nature and will of God that were not “eternal” and “universal” truths commonly accessible to all through natural reason. Instead, “We must first seek from the biblical history that which is most universal” and “affirmed by all the biblical prophets as eternal doctrine for supreme value for all men: for example, that there is a God, one and omnipotent, who alone is to be adored and cares for all men, loving most those who worship Him and love their neighbour as themselves, etc.” Spinoza rejected several Christian doctrines on this basis, permitting interpreters to “proceed to other less universal things which concern matters of daily life” only if the interpretation arose from careful contextual analysis and “fully accords with natural reason.” Although most of Spinoza’s contemporaries rejected his radical conclusions, many increasingly came to agree with his approach that the right “method for interpreting Scripture … requires no other light than that of natural reason.”90 In England, political and cultural circumstances coincided with burgeoning early Enlightenment intellectual currents to further undermine Reformed conceptions of spiritual knowledge and piety and give rise to what Michael Winship has termed the “new Restoration piety.”91 In  Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, 116, 111, 102, 104, 111.  Michael P. Winship, Seers of God: Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early Enlightenment (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 44. Isabel Rivers concludes, “The re-establishment of the Church of England at the Restoration in effect guaranteed the dominance of moral, rational religion and the defeat of Reformation orthodoxy,” in Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660–1780. Vol. I: Whichcote to Wesley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1. Others have challenged this interpretation, however, arguing that Reformed Protestantism had a continuing presence into the eighteenth century and transformed rather than diminished in the face of new circumstances in England and its colonies. See Dewey J. Wallace Jr. Shapers of English Calvinism, 1660–1714: Variety, Persistence, and Transformation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). For more on biblical interpretation, scholarship, and uses of the Bible in early modern England, see Kevin Killeen, Helen Smith, and Rachel Willie, eds., The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530−1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 90 91

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reaction to the social upheaval of the Interregnum (1640s and 1650s)—in which a Puritan and Parliamentarian alliance executed King Charles I but failed to establish their vision of an English Reformed Protestant Christendom—many English thinkers grounded political and social order as well as religious belief and practice in other forms of authority than the Spirit. Restoration Anglicans, as well as many enlightened dissenters, promoted a religion that prioritized reason over spiritual illumination, order and universal laws over mysterious providentialism, and natural ability over supernatural empowerment. The Royal Society (est. 1660) buttressed this turn, setting new standards for intellectual and religious agendas based on rational enquiry, experimental philosophy, and natural theology. A fellow of the Royal Society himself, the influential latitudinarian Archbishop John Tillotson embodied the transformative effects these intellectual and cultural shifts had on exegesis and ministry, combining moderation in theology and piety with a rational, moralistic, plain, and dispassionate preaching style that appealed more to the light of nature than revealed and spiritual knowledge. Tillotson’s writings and sermons were bestsellers in early eighteenth-century New England and greatly influenced the thinking and rhetoric of learned ministers.92 The varying ways English writers sought to reconcile new currents in natural philosophy with biblical revelation reflect the manifold shades of the English Enlightenment and its effects on religious belief and

92  Winship, Seers of God, 42, 29–52. See also Gerard Reedy, The Bible and Reason: Anglicans and Scripture in Late Seventeenth-Century England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985); Norman Fiering, “The First American Enlightenment: Tillotson, Leverett, and Philosophical Anglicanism,” New England Quarterly 54:3 (1981): 307−44; and Chapman, “Reasonable Faith.” Christopher Haigh has shown how Restoration-era Nonconformists also embraced rationalism and resisted Anglican attempts to discredit them as irrational enthusiasts. Haigh, “The Church of England, the Nonconformists and Reason: Another Restoration Controversy,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 69:3 (July 2018), 531−56.

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practice.93 Broadly speaking, thinkers increasingly shared an antipathy to Reformed Protestant notions such as the postlapsarian corruption of natural faculties, the Bible’s self-attesting authority, and the need for the Spirit’s regeneration for righteousness and spiritual knowledge. In their place, they affirmed a confidence in reason, a willingness to subject the Bible’s authority to external historical and scientific criteria, and a moralistic hermeneutic that reduced Scripture’s teachings to universal principles. On a more radical level, Thomas Hobbes in his controversial work Leviathan (1651) affirmed the authority and veracity of Scripture only insofar as it agreed with natural reason (and the decrees of the state Church under an absolute political sovereign). Hobbes raised doubts about Mosaic authorship and the historicity of Job, argued that Old Testament historical books were written after Israel’s return from exile (which largely inspired Spinoza), and submitted that the Bible’s moral laws were binding only if they conformed with natural moral laws knowable through reason.94 William Whiston (1667–1752), Isaac Newton’s successor at Cambridge who eventually lost his position for espousing Arianism, represented a growing trend in using Cartesian mechanical philosophy to explain 93  For more on the Enlightenment and transformations in religious belief in seventeenthand eighteenth-century England, see Gerald R. Cragg, From Puritanism to the Age of Reason: A Study of Changes in Religious Thought Within the Church of England, 1660–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950); Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England, vol. 2, From Andrewes to Baxter and Fox, 1603–1690 (1975, reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996); John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion: The Age of Enlightenment in England, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Peter Harrison, “Religion” and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science; B. W. Young, Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England: Theological Debate from Locke to Burke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998); J.  C. D.  Clark, English Society 1660–1832: Religion, Ideology, and Politics During the Ancien Régime, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlightenment (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000); Phyllis Mack, Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); James E. Bradley, “The Changing Shape of Religious Ideas in Enlightened England,” in Seeing Things Their Way: Intellectual History and the Return of Religion, Alister Chapman, John Coffey, and Brad S. Gregory, eds. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 175–201; and Ruth Savage, ed., Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain: New Case Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 94  For more on Hobbes, see Reventlow, Epochen, 4:39–57; and Paul D. Cook, Hobbes and Christianity: Reassessing the Bible in Leviathan (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).

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biblical miracles and prophecies, as seen in his works A New Theory of the Earth (1696) and The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies (1708). The deist writers, however, took perhaps the most aggressive stance against spiritual approaches to biblical interpretation, asserting the primacy of natural reason to judge Scripture’s authority and meaning. John Locke never identified himself with deism, but many deists credited his theory of knowledge based on sense experience—as articulated most fully in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)—for their theoretical basis.95 Parallel to his agenda to harness natural law theory to empower the individual against authoritarian governments, he sought to employ natural philosophy to empower the individual’s rational and experiential capacities against the superstitions and received traditions of arbitrary religious authorities. For Locke, one could have “equal to mathematical certainty” of the knowledge of God’s existence through careful ratiocination beginning with certain intuitive knowledge of one’s own existence. However, while Locke taught that knowledge of everything else came by sensation, he denied the possibility of direct and certain experiential knowledge of God and spiritual matters because the capacities of the human senses were restricted to the natural realm. Spiritual ideas and propositions may come from divine revelation, but reason must still ultimately judge their veracity.96 A son of Puritans and a former student at Christ Church, Oxford, under John Owen’s tenure as dean, Locke came to reject the Protestant Orthodox emphasis on spiritual illumination and deemed natural human reason sufficient to interpret holy writ. In The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), Locke presented the Scriptures as a historically conditioned collection of writings designed by God for the instruction of the illiterate bulk of mankind in the way to salvation; and therefore generally and in necessary points to be understood in the plain direct meaning of the words and phrases, such as they may be supposed to have had in the mouths of the speakers, who used them according to the language of that time and 95  John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). For more on Locke as a biblical interpreter, see Reventlow, Epochen, 4:57–71, Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World, 243–85; and A.  W. Wainwright, “Locke, John,” in McKim, Dictionary of Major Biblical Interpreters, 668–71. 96  Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 619. For fuller context, read Book 4.9–11, pp. 618–39.

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country wherein they lived, without such learned, artificial, and forced senses of them, as are sought out, and put upon them in most of the systems of divinity.

Denying that Adam’s fall into sin impaired the innate abilities of his posterity, Locke argued that human nature still possessed the capacity to comprehend and believe what God revealed in Scripture for one’s salvation and moral restoration.97 For Locke, even though biblical revelation served to reveal matters of faith “beyond the Discovery of our natural Faculties, and above Reason,” reason ultimately determined revelation’s veracity and meaning: “Whatever GOD hath revealed, is certainly true; no Doubt can be made of it. This is the proper Object of Faith: But whether it be a divine Revelation, or no, Reason must judge; which can never permit the Mind to reject a greater Evidence to embrace what is less evident, nor allow it to entertain Probability in opposition to Knowledge and Certainty.”98 Unlike the deists, Locke retained his belief in the Bible’s authority. However, his moralistic exegetical approach along with his willingness to ground epistemic and interpretive certainty ultimately in reason “prepared the tools for overturning that authority.”99 Locke’s philosophy informed his exegesis. Whereas Puritan exegetes approached a passage such as 1 Cor 2 primarily to promote an experiential spiritual knowledge of Scripture via the Spirit’s inner illumination, Locke restricted the applicative meaning to deductions from historical-­contextual analysis. For Locke, the text’s chief referential meaning did not point to a mystical dynamic among the reader, Spirit, and the Word but rather a contextually situated polemic by Paul to contrast the divine originality of his apostolic revelation with Greek teachings in Corinth’s milieu. The “natural man” in 1 Cor 2:14 referred to one who relied on the “wisdom of this world” without revelation—“i.e. the Knowledge, Arts and Sciences attainable by Man’s natural Parts and Faculties”—while the “spiritual 97  John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, ed. I.  T. Ramsey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), 25, 32. 98  Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 694–95. 99  Henning Graf Reventlow, “English Deism and Anti-Deist Apologetic,” in HBOT, ed. Sæbo, 2:855. For more on Locke’s defense of the authority of Scripture, see Victor Nuovo, “Locke’s Proof of the Divine Authority of Scripture,” in Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain, ed. Savage, 56–76. For more on deism and the Bible, see Diego Lucci, Scripture and Deism: The Biblical Criticism of the Eighteenth-Century British Deists (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008).

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man” was he who “founds his Faith and Religion on Divine Revelation.”100 The difference did not consist in the natural versus spiritual abilities of unregenerate and regenerate readers of Scripture, but between what can and cannot be known through natural abilities with or without revelation. The “mystery” and “hidden wisdom” of vs. 7 was not about knowledge that natural minds could not apprehend but rather previously concealed knowledge of the gospel that had now been revealed. Locke thus maintained the need for divine revelation for matters that natural reason on its own could not discover, but his rationalist hermeneutic no longer had any need of the Spirit’s regeneration and inner spiritual illumination to believe and discern it. Although deist roots lie further back than the late 1600s, deists in this period such as Matthew Tindal (1657–1733), John Toland (1670–1722), and Anthony Collins (1676–1729) combined Lockean epistemology and Spinozist sympathies with especially dramatic results for Christian belief and practice. Dismissing orthodox doctrines such as the Trinity, original sin, and the atonement, deists identified true religion with moral living and human happiness rather than spiritual experience. They tested and applied these principles in radical ways in their interpretation of Scripture. Toland summed up his main argument in his controversial work Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) in the subtitle: “there is nothing in the Gospel contrary to Reason, nor above it: And that no Christian Doctrine can be properly call’d a mystery.” Toland sought to rid Christian belief of supernatural mystery, convinced that simple reason supplied all one needed for true faith—which he strictly defined as “knowledge and assent”—and moral reform. “For being educated, from my cradle, in the grossest superstition and idolatry,” he wrote, “God was pleased to make my own reason … the happy instruments of my conversion.” Similar to Locke, Toland believed there was no need for supernatural empowerment to understand Scripture since the New Testament had sufficiently revealed all the Old Testament mysteries and made them legible to rational minds. Because Christians over the centuries obscured the simplicity of Scripture by adding mysterious pagan traditions and rites to it, Toland reasoned, it was imperative to restore original New Testament Christian belief and practice by promoting rational and simple interpretation of the Bible. His exegetical goal consisted first and foremost in following Jesus’ teachings of moral and rational religion: “Jesus Christ … fully and clearly preached the purest  Locke, Paraphrase on Corinthians, 12, 16.

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morals, he taught reasonable worship. … So having stripped the truth of all those external types and ceremonies which made it difficult before, he rendered it easy and obvious to the meanest capacities.”101 In his Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724), Anthony Collins recited many of Toland’s points, but he directed his aim especially at the unity of the Old and New Testaments. The veracity of Scripture rested on the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies in Christ, Collins reasoned, leaving readers to deduce their own conclusion from his attempt to demonstrate that they were not fulfilled literally and historically but only figuratively. He thus interpreted the promised child in Isa 7:14, for example, as referring to Isaiah’s own son and not ultimately to Christ.102 To varying degrees, the exegesis of figures such as Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, the English Latitudinarians, and the deists reflected what Charles Taylor has identified as four features of an “anthropocentric shift” at the turn of the eighteenth century that reduced “the role and place of the transcendent.” And while these shifts were deeply tied to changes in the rise of natural philosophy, Taylor argues, they also reflected new conceptions of moral order that further disenchanted and narrowed religious belief to ideals of human moralism and happiness. The first involved a shift in emphasis from teleological religion to the pursuit of the common good of the individual and society (this correlated with the waning of Aristotelian metaphysics and the rise of new rationalist philosophies). Second, reliance on the natural capacities of human reason and self-discipline through education and virtuous practice eclipsed dependence on God’s intervening grace for righteousness, happiness, and well-being. Third, with the heightened reliance on reason came the rejection of mystery. And fourth was the rejection of “the idea that God was planning a transformation of human beings, which would take them beyond the limitations which inhere in their present condition,” entailing the dismissal of any need for the Spirit’s regeneration, sanctification, and illumination.103 While the immediate impact and representativeness of these early Enlightenment approaches to exegesis should not be overstated, the anthropocentric shift marks an important transformation and trajectory in 101  John Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious (London: 1696; repr. London: Routledge, 1995), 128, viii–ix, 151. See Reventlow, “English Deism,” 861. For another important deist work on Scripture, see Matthew Tindal’s Christianity as Old as Creation: or, the Gospel, a Republication of the Religion of Nature (London, 1730). 102  Reventlow, “English Deism,” 862–64. 103  Taylor, Secular Age, 221–24.

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the narrative of piety that this chapter has been tracing—namely, how biblical interpreters from the Reformation to early evangelicalism understood the interrelationship among Scripture, experiential knowledge, and the Spirit’s supernatural assistance. Reliance on the Spirit to attain spiritual knowledge of Scripture was firmly embedded in the Protestant exegetical tradition and practices of piety. However, this authority along with the possibility of spiritual experiential knowledge and certainty faced increasing resistance—whether explicitly or merely in practice—in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Contrary to the standard modern humanist narrative, the impetus for this shift was not the novel discovery of reason, natural philosophy, more sophisticated learning, or even critical interpretive methods per se. As already shown, sixteenth- and seventeenth-­ century Protestant and Catholic biblical scholars took great interest in the scientific, historical, and philological dimensions of Scripture long before the deists. Rather, it lies chiefly in the way seventeenth- and early eighteenth-­ century thinkers operating with diverse new frameworks— mechanical philosophy, natural law theory, skepticism, British empiricism, rationalist philosophies, new moral philosophies, deism, and more—conceptualized reason, experience, nature, knowledge, morality, and human psychology in more immanentist terms. They deemed natural human reason and sense experience (though divinely endowed at creation) sufficient for attaining knowledge and human flourishing without reliance on transcendent authority and spiritual empowerment. The aim behind the exegesis of figures such as Grotius, Spinoza, and Locke was not to attack religious belief itself but rather “the entrenchment of forms of inequality, domination and exploitation through their identification with the untouchable, sacred structure of things.”104 These thinkers applied rationalist approaches to Scripture as a means to shatter this entrenchment and cultivate a non-mystical, this-worldly, moralistic piety.

Early Awakened Protestant Experientialism and Exegesis In contrast to common portrayals of the intersection between the early Enlightenment and early evangelicalism as either separate phenomena altogether or as a one-sided causal relationship—i.e., the Enlightenment birthed evangelicalism—this study follows a growing body of scholarship  Taylor, Secular Age, 149.

104

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that approaches them as coinciding, overlapping, conflicting, yet also in some ways complementary forces of modernization that emerged amid shared social conditions and intellectual transformations.105 Enlightenment philosophes and early evangelicals alike adapted to wider transatlantic social, intellectual, political, and economic developments that increasingly emphasized the individual over traditional hierarchies and inherited authorities. Catherine Brekus aptly summarizes some of the central transformations that impacted the lived experiences of the early eighteenth-­ century Americans: “The rise of merchant capitalism sanctioned economic liberty and self-interest; a consumer revolution gave people greater freedom to make choices about their material lives than ever before; the 1689 Act of Toleration in Britain guaranteed Protestants (though not Catholics) the right to worship freely without fear of state violence or persecution; technological advances led to improvements in the standard of living; scientific discoveries inspired a new faith in human progress; and ordinary people insisted that they had the right to govern themselves.”106 Enlightenment thinkers and awakened Protestants both partook in a widespread reformist spirit, displayed an aversion to received tradition for its own sake, utilized learned discursive conventions of the era, and disrupted confessional church boundaries by stressing universal maxims over distinct ecclesiological polities and doctrinal subtleties.

105  See, among others, Ward, Protestant Evangelical Awakening; Ward, Early Evangelicalism; and Rivett, “Early American Religion in a Postsecular Age,” 993. For further studies on the rise of evangelicalism, see Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain; Susan O’Brien, “A Transatlantic Community of Saints: The Great Awakening and the First Evangelical Network, 1735–1755,” The American Historical Review 91:4 (Oct. 1986), 811–32; Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991); Michael J. Crawford, Seasons of Grace: Colonial New England’s Revival Tradition in Its British Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003); Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Hindmarsh, The Spirit of Early Evangelicalism: True Religion in a Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); Kidd, Great Awakening; John Coffey, ed., Heart Religion: Evangelical Piety in England and Ireland, 1690−1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); and Winiarski, Darkness Falls. 106  Catherine A. Brekus, Sarah Osborn’s World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 7. See also Ned C.  Landsman, From Colonials to Provincials: American Thought and Culture, 1680–1760 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).

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They also ascribed greater authority to experience to bolster their intellectual, social, and religious agendas. Contrary to common assumptions, scholars have shown how thinkers in the so-called Age of Reason rested greater weight on experience than reason. Whereas many today associate the word “experience” with feelings, acquired skills, and everyday life occurrences, it also had an engrained scientific connotation in the eighteenth century.107 Reliable knowledge became less affiliated with inherited tradition and dogmas and more with empirical evidence, observation, ­sensation, and experimental trial, and many extended these criteria to biblical interpretation. However, while certain Enlightenment circles desacralized experiential knowledge and pursued a more strictly non-mystical exegesis, early evangelicals such as Mather and Edwards maintained the validity of the individual’s spiritual sensations and illuminated knowledge when reading Scripture. This effort aligned Anglophone evangelicals with other awakened Protestant reform movements such as Pietism and Moravianism. For them, the experiences of the soul produced evidence and knowledge that was just as real as knowledge derived from the physical senses. Spiritual experience substantiated the Spirit’s operations in the world, the divine origin and authority of Scripture, and the awakened status of souls. Their determination to reconcile human experience with the domain of the spirit amid these shifting conditions marks a key facet of how early evangelicals partook in a more widespread modern “drive to a new form of religious life, more personal, committed, devoted; more christocentric; one which will largely replace the older forms which centered on collective ritual; the drive, moreover, to wreak this change for everyone, not just certain religious elites.”108 Indeed, early evangelicals perceived considerable precedent in their Protestant heritage for the hunger after a personal, interior, spiritual, experiential knowledge of Scripture—in this respect there is tremendous continuity between leading Reformation, Protestant Orthodox, Puritan, and early evangelical exegetes. The latter, however, strove to renew their tradition by adapting it to the idioms, learned conventions, and tastes of their eighteenth-century context that increasingly turned toward immanentist standards of knowledge and authority.

107  Roy Porter, The Enlightenment, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 2, 15; Brekus, “Sarah Osborn’s Enlightenment,” 112, 123−24. 108  Taylor, A Secular Age, 541.

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Early evangelicals readily embraced the new science and appropriated it for their own religious purposes. As Bruce Hindmarsh writes, “evangelical devotion” cultivated “a fundamentally worshipful response to the natural world and a readiness to perceive God’s continued presence in the world revealed by science.”109 They imbibed popular writings in Newtonian philosophy and physico-theology to animate their praise for the Creator’s wisdom and power, often relying on these works to counter mechanistic and materialist philosophies that threatened the compatibility of empiricism and spiritual existence. W. R. Ward has shown how the drive to maintain this unity of spirit and experience lured many to alchemy, Paracelsianism, hermeticism, Kabbalah, and various strands of mysticism. These quasi-­ scientific esoteric traditions permeated the thought world of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century awakened Protestants and buttressed their dual interests to “vitalize” nature and piety alike amid intellectual conditions that increasingly desacralized the world.110 However, these esoteric traditions lost prestige among evangelicals by the mid- to late eighteenth century.111 The temporal distance between Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards reflects this shift, as Mather’s thought and exegesis interacted much more extensively with esoteric sources than Edwards’. Nonetheless, Edwards and his mid-eighteenth-century evangelical contemporaries retained the vitalist-experiential impulse to trace evidence of the Spirit in the cosmos, enliven piety, and generate spiritual knowledge of the Word. Evangelical piety became entangled in a wider ascent of individualism, activistic reform, and popular cultures. As Mark Noll writes, “The eighteenth-­century emergence of the modern ‘individual’ was a product of wide ranging economic, social, political, and intellectual changes that sometimes created great uncertainties for traditional Christian faith. Yet the evangelical religion promoted by revival also did its part to differentiate individuals from inherited forms, customs, habits, and hierarchies.”112 Early evangelicals embraced more vigorous forms and tactics of voluntary religion, especially in the wake of the Toleration Act of 1689. They stressed  Hindmarsh, Spirit of Early Evangelicalism, 104.  Ward, Early Evangelicalism, 7−23. 111  Hindmarsh, Spirit of Early Evangelicalism, 101−179. 112  Noll, In the Beginning Was the Word, 190. 109 110

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broad essentials of evangelical faith, paralleling the Enlightenment preoccupation with universalizing principles as well as the trend toward doctrinal minimalism seen in other religious reform groups such as the continental Pietists and English Latitudinarians. Ministers utilized a style of homiletics that favored a view of human psychology as primarily impassioned and dispositional (corresponding to the popular emotive hymnody of evangelicals such as Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley), and they employed discriminate preaching to appeal to differences in class, vocation, age, gender, and ethnicity, and, most importantly, to distinguish between the converted and unconverted. Evangelicals downplayed inherited institutional ecclesial identities, hierarchies, and customs while stressing authentic individual faith and transdenominational networks unified in the mission to revive Christendom. Underscoring the necessity of experiencing spiritual rebirth, many resisted theological systems (largely directed against Aristotelianism and Scholasticism) and definitions of faith as mere assent. Last, they appealed more directly to the individual’s sensory faculties to enkindle spiritual knowledge, experiential certainty, and vital piety. Their biblical interpretation was closely intertwined with these priorities. Evangelicals looked to reinvigorate their traditions of piety and exegesis in a context in which rising consumer markets transformed lived experience, leading thinkers cast doubt on (or at least marginalized) the possibility of spiritual experience and knowledge, and the interests of the individual increasingly eclipsed deference to received religious tradition. The varied dimensions of this undertaking display some important ways evangelicals assimilated their reading of Scripture to their times. For one, popular dissenting commentaries such as Matthew Henry’s (1662–1714) Exposition on the Old and New Testament (1707–1710) and Philip Doddridge’s (1702–1751) Family Expositor (1738–1756) were tailored to new commercial market trends and populist sentiments, empowering lay believers as readers of Scripture. Looking at religious print cultures in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Ian Green has persuasively challenged the notion that the turbulence of the Interregnum or early Enlightenment philosophies resulted in any demise of the Bible’s prominence. Production and consumption of Bible study aids surged between ca. 1680 and 1740 and closely intertwined with “the appearance of

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commercial ventures by enterprising publishers.”113 Henry’s and Doddridge’s commentaries enjoyed great success in this market by repackaging Reformed exegesis for a popular readership. Their exegesis retained an emphasis on Calvinist pneumatology and distinctive features of Puritan experimental piety, but they customized it for “common Readers” who lacked “the benefit of a learned Education” by stressing accessibility to the plain meaning of the text and facilitating a “more pleasant and improving” reading experience.114 For Henry, Scripture should not be read as a “Methodical System or Body of Divinity,” but rather as diverse genres of writings intended to communicate God’s laws and truths in a comprehensible and approachable manner. Henry’s primary aim therefore was “to give what I thought the genuine sense” of the text, and “to make it as plain as I could to ordinary capacities” to “make the reading of the Scripture more easy, pleasant, and profitable.” While he commended critical and scholarly exegetical aids, he opted to cast his interpretations “into a continued discourse” to engage a broader readership and make Scripture easier to “read through for ones own or other’s instruction.”115 He catered to ordinary capacities for the sake of promoting religion that was above all practical and experimental, and his commentaries yielded tremendous influence on the biblicist and practice-oriented piety of early evangelicals.116 Designed primarily for individual and family devotional use, these commentaries found a 113  Ian Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 104. Green contrasts his findings with Christopher Hill, English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution. See also Isabel Rivers, Vanity Fair and the Celestial City: Dissenting, Methodist, and Evangelical Literary Culture in England 1720–1800 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 213−47; and Rivers, “Biblical Aids, Editions, Translations, and Commentaries by Dissenters, Methodists, and Church of England Evangelicals in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Bible in Pietism and Evangelicalism, ed. Hoselton et al., 36−52. 114  Philip Doddridge, The Family Expositor, Vol. 1 (London: John Wilson, 1756), Preface, i–ii. It is worth noting that alongside the “Reverends” and “Sirs,” many lay men and women were included in the long “List of Subscribers Names” section to purchase the commentary volumes. See Robert Strivens, Phillip Doddridge and the Shaping of Evangelical Dissent (New York: Routledge, 2015), and Tessa Whitehouse, The Textual Culture of English Protestant Dissent 1720−1800 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 177−94. 115  Matthew Henry, An Exposition of the Five Books of Moses (London: T. Parkhurst, 1707), Preface. See Scott Mandelbrote, “A Family Bible? The Henrys and Dissenting Readings of the Bible, 1650–1750,” in Dissent and the Bible in Britain, c. 1650–1950, Scott Mandelbrote and Michael Ledger-Lomas, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 38–56. 116  Hindmarsh, Spirit of Early Evangelicalism, 27−32.

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receptive audience in New England, where “a combination of Protestant zeal and high levels of literacy encouraged individual interpretation of the Bible as a normative experience.”117 A second dimension involves a greater interest in apologetics. As scholars have shown, the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century heirs of Protestant Orthodox biblical scholarship (especially in England and Germany) became increasingly entangled in efforts to defend the Bible against radical skeptics.118 While evangelical exegetes did not lead the vanguard of this enterprise, many readily imbibed and commended this scholarship and, to varying degrees, drew from it for their own purposes.119 Refusing to concede that natural philosophy and critical biblical scholarship corroborated the skeptical conclusions of the deists, they rested greater weight on evidentialist demonstration and rationalist argumentation to establish Scripture’s historical reliability and textual integrity. These tactics represent how “evangelicals defended their faith against the skeptical and liberal strains of the enlightenment by appropriating an enlightened language of experience, certainty, evidence, and sensation as their own.”120 However, to represent their apologetic concerns merely as a fear-­ driven reaction to new Enlightenment “pressures” would paint an incomplete picture. Rather, these concerns manifest their participation in their era’s growing preoccupation with reconciling religious belief with more immanentist understandings of knowledge, authority, and human faculties. While they continued to base their sermons, writings, and exegesis in transcendent authority—“thus saith the Lord”—they also increasingly appealed to the individual’s reason, experience, emotions, and sentiment to corroborate and more effectively deliver their message at the horizontal level. In a letter advising her friend on how to counter skeptics, Sarah 117  Green, Print and Protestantism, 164. For more on literacy and Scripture reading practices in seventeenth-century New England, see David D.  Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 21−70. 118  Frei, Eclipse, 105–23; Sheehan, Enlightenment Bible, 31–53; Steiger, “Hermeneutics and Interpretation in the Age of Orthodoxy,” 2:751–57. Though Steiger may be overstating it when he writes that “apologetics within late Orthodoxy ranked above fundamental hermeneutical work” (752), their heightened preoccupation with apologetics greatly shaped their exegetical program. 119   Doddridge, for example, included notes and references for secondary literature throughout his commentary to guide “young students” in “studying the evidences and contents, both of natural and revealed religion.” Doddridge, Family Expositor, Preface, iv. 120  Brekus, Osborn’s World, 9.

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Osborn (1714–1796) professed that she knew “by the evidences of a work of grace wrought in my soul” and “by his word and Spirit” that “religion is no imaginary thing, but a substantial reality.”121 Like Osborn, evangelicals bore witness to the realness of Christianity and the Word on the basis of their own experiences. Thus, a third dimension—and the one most pertinent for this study— pertains to how evangelicals fused their traditions of piety and exegesis with a more emotive view of human psychology and an amplified optimism in the capacities of experience. Wishing to spark religious renewal and certainty in belief, evangelicals tailored their rhetoric to the sensory faculties of their audiences.122 On the one hand, they entreated human reason and common experience, and on the other hand they appealed to interior feelings, tastes, and sensations. In An Humble Attempt Toward the Revival of Practical Religion Among Christians (1731), the influential dissenting pastor and hymn writer Isaac Watts (1674–1748) advised ministers, “Remember that you have to do with the understanding, reason, and memory of man, with the heart and conscience, with the will and affections; and therefore you must use every method of speech, which may be more proper to engage and employ, each of these faculties or powers of human nature, on the side of religion and in the interests of God and the gospel.”123 In another work, rather than simply invoke creedal or clerical authority to seal his argument, Watts attempted to convince his readers by inviting them to “enter into ourselves, and consider our own inward sensations, and what passes within us.”124 Appeals to the intermingled authority of individual experience and Scripture gained increasing prominence among awakened Protestants. In 1738, when John Wesley (1703–1791) disputed with the Moravian Peter Böhler about whether a Christian could attain a palpable assurance of salvation, he was ultimately persuaded by “Scripture and experience”—a defining moment that set him on a quest for a discernible salvation in which he soon after found his “heart strangely

121  Sarah Osborn, The Nature, Certainty and Evidence of True Christianity (1755), in Sarah Osborn’s Collected Writings, ed. Catherine A. Brekus (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017), 109. 122  See Rivers, Reason, Grace, and Sentiment, 190–91. 123  Isaac Watts, An Humble Attempt Toward the Revival of Practical Religion Among Christians (London: E. Matthews, 1731), 67–68. 124  Isaac Watts, The Doctrine of the Passions Explained and Improved (London: 1729), 29.

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warmed.”125 A few years later, the revivalist George Whitefield (1714–1770) countered Wesley’s critique of the doctrine of predestination, urging Christians to “Search the Scriptures; search your Experiences” to arrive at the truth.126 The German Pietist biblical scholar Jacob Siegmund Baumgarten (1706–1757) exemplified how many awakened Protestants had extended the dual attraction to external and internal experiential appeals to biblical exegesis. Merging Enlightenment empiricism and traditions of experimental piety, he raised the status of both external and internal evidences in proving Scripture’s reliability and divine authority. He thus harnessed not only external demonstrable proofs for philosophical and apologetic arguments but also those derived “aus der eigenen Erfarung” (“from one’s own experience”) to bolster the individual’s own faith and assurance. He explained, “The first proof from one’s own experience is” when “the propounded teachings, concepts, and propositions in Holy Scripture exactly agree with perceptible judgments derived from one’s sentiments,” and “second, when we are sensible of the supernatural changes produced in our disposition through the teachings and sayings of Holy Scripture.”127 By resting Scripture’s truth and meaning more explicitly on the correspondence between the reader’s sentiments and the text and on the empirical spiritual effects produced in one’s temperament, Baumgarten and others lent greater power to the individual’s religious experiential abilities to interpret Scripture and establish certainty in it. Early evangelical populist impulses and the thirst for experimental piety coincided with their emphasis on Scripture as plain and accessible to the ordinary capacities of individuals. While the early Protestant reformers had emphasized vernacularization of the Bible, experiential religion, and the Spirit’s guidance in interpretation, these principles had not yet translated into popular Bible reading cultures due to various factors such as social hierarchies, limited literacy, and restrictive print cultures. Knowledge of Scripture was primarily mediated to lay believers through sermons and catechisms. When Puritanism and Pietism popularized Bible reading as a personal devotional practice, Protestants not only produced popular 125  John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1988), 248−49. 126  George Whitefield, Sermons on Various Important Subjects (Boston, 1741), ix. 127  Jacob Siegmund Baumgarten, Theologische Lehrsätze von den Grundwarheiten der christlichen Lehre (Halle, 1747), 299 (translations mine). See Steiger, “Interpretation in the Age of Orthodoxy,” 2:754–55.

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reading aids but also laid greater stress on the plainness of Scripture (not just its clarity) and the natural, experiential, and spiritual capacities of ordinary regenerate Christians to understand it. As Doddridge stated, “the New Testament is a book written with the most consummate knowledge of human nature … the general sense and design of it is plain to every honest reader, even at the first perusal.”128 John Wesley worried that readers would find his commentary superfluous when Matthew Henry’s already seemed sufficiently “plain” enough, justifying the publication of his Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765) by promoting his interpretations as even “plainner” and thus more accessible to the ordinary reader.129 Despite their confidence in natural abilities, evangelicals— unlike enlightened humanists—still believed that supernatural assistance was needed. Such assistance was available for any ordinary believer. In their hymn “Before Reading the Scriptures,” John and Charles Wesley summoned Christians to call upon God to open the Word: While in Thy Word we search for Thee… Open our Eyes, and let us see, The Wonders of thy Law…. Open the Scriptures now; reveal. All which for us Thou art; Talk with us, Lord, and let us feel. The Kindling in our Heart…. Come, Holy Ghost, (for, mov’d by Thee, Thy Prophets wrote and spoke:) Unlock the Truth, Thyself the Key, Unseal the Sacred Book.130 By relying on the Spirit who inspired holy Scripture, even the unlearned could gain entry to its wonders and encounter God.

Evangelicals drew a stark binary contrast between the kinds of knowledge attainable to the capacities of natural and spiritual persons. While this distinction was neither unambiguous nor new to their time, it had nonetheless assumed a pronounced force in determining how Enlightenment and evangelical figures utilized biblical interpretation to advance conflicting  Doddridge, Family Expositor, Preface, vi.  John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (Bristol: William Pine, 1765), Preface, iv–v. 130  John Wesley and Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems (London, 1740), 41−42. 128 129

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yet also parallel agendas. On the one hand, Enlightenment leaders entrusted the universal natural capacities of human nature to demystify Scripture, question religious authorities, reduce strife and separation over miniscule doctrinal and exegetical distinctions, and pursue moral reform. On the other hand, although many shapers of the transatlantic awakenings shared similar sentiments and likewise capitalized on natural learning to explicate Scripture—some engaging avidly in historical, philosophical, scientific, and philological study—they ascribed greater interpretive importance to spiritual experience as the means for moral and religious reform. Figures such as Philipp Jakob Spener (1635–1705), August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760), George Whitefield, John Wesley, and Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards exploited the distinction between natural and spiritual experiential knowledge with tremendous rhetorical force to stimulate religious renewal, promote the new birth and true holiness, separate wheat from chaff, and prompt serious reflection about one’s spiritual status. The era’s deepened preoccupation with the potential of human nature and empirical knowledge put the natura–spiritual distinction in sharper relief, and the binary became a central motif and litmus test for evangelical preachers promoting authentic religion. Whitefield’s rhetoric in a sermon on 1 Cor 2:2–4, The Knowledge of Jesus Christ, The Best Knowledge, was characteristic, portraying natural knowledge as “bare” to prompt his hearers to attain a fuller, participatory, and crucicentric “experimental knowledge” of Christ: “By which word know [from vs. 2], we are not to understand a bare historical knowledge; … but the word know, means to know, so as to approve of [Christ]. … It signifies to know him, so as to embrace him in all his offices; to take him to be our Prophet, Priest, and King. … It implies an experimental knowledge of his crucifixion, so as to feel the power of it, and be crucified unto the world.”131 In his commentary on 1 Cor 2, Wesley interpreted the “natural man” of vs. 14 as “Every man who hath not the Spirit” and can only obtain knowledge “by his Senses and Natural Understanding.” Natural persons failed to understand Scripture spiritually because “he has not the Will, so neither has he the Power.” In contrast, the “spiritual man” of vs. 15 obtained spiritual 131  George Whitefield, The Knowledge of Jesus Christ, The Best Knowledge (London, 1739). Emphasis original. See also similar sermons such as The Nature and Necessity of Our New Birth in Christ Jesus (London, 1737, rev. edition 1741, Boston) and The Indwelling of the Spirit, the Common Privilege of all Believers (London, 1739).

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knowledge of Scripture via “Spiritual Senses,” enabling him to understand matters that “can only be discerned by the Aid of that Spirit.”132 Like many of their Protestant Orthodox predecessors, evangelicals rooted true spiritual knowledge in a dynamic experiential interaction among the individual, the Spirit, and Scripture. They fused this tradition, however, with rising populist sentiments, empirical philosophies,133 a vitalistic captivation with the sensory knowledge of the Spirit, and a drive for spiritual renewal. Their exegesis of Scripture manifested this fusion, as preachers and commentators entreated their hearers and readers to attain experiential certainty and knowledge through a sensible spiritual encounter with Scripture. Early continental Pietists made the natural–spiritual distinction a defining motif of their movement for religious renewal by the Word in ways that anticipated, paralleled, and often inspired their Anglophone evangelical counterparts.134 Their approach to the relationship between interpretation and piety represented an amalgamation of their Reformation tradition, Puritan devotional writings such as Bayly’s The Practise of Pietie, and works of mystical interior religion such as Johann Arndt’s (1555–1621) Vier Bücher von wahrem Christentumb (1605–1610). However, they likewise adapted these traditions to their late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-­ century context as they appropriated these sources for their religious and

132  John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (London: Printed by William Bowyer, 1755), 428. See also John Wesley, “Sermon X: ‘The Witness of the Spirit,’ Discourse I” and “Sermon XI: ‘The Witness of the Spirit,’ Discourse II,” [1746] in The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 5 ([1771]; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1991), 111−23, 123−34. 133  For more on how early evangelicals interacted with empiricism and especially the thought of John Locke, see Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 47−65. 134  For more on the relationship between continental Pietism and Anglophone early evangelicalism, see, among others, F. Ernest Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism; Stoeffler, German Pietism During the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: E.  J. Brill, 1973); and F.  Ernest Stoeffler, ed., Continental Pietism and Early American Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976); Geoffrey G. Nuttall, “Continental Pietism and the Evangelical Movement in Britain,” in Pietismus und Reveil, J. Van den Berg and J. P. Van Dooren, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 1978); Ward, Protestant Evangelical Awakening; and Early Evangelicalism; Scott Kisker, “Pietist Connections with English Anglicans and Evangelicals,” in A Companion to German Pietism, 1660−1800, ed. Douglas H. Shantz (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 225−55; J. Steven O’Malley, “Pietism and Transatlantic Revivals,” in ibid., 256−89; Jan Stievermann, “German Lutheran and Reformed Protestants,” in Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism, ed. Yeager, 95–116; and Hoselton et al., ed., Bible in Pietism and Evangelicalism.

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social reform agendas.135 In perhaps the most foundational and formative text of the movement, Pia Desideria (1675), Spener stressed the need to “bring the Word of God more abundantly among us,” combining a lay-­ oriented notion of the universal priesthood of all believers with an emphasis on private lay reading of Scripture as a regular devotional practice. To this end, Pietists advocated Bible study meetings outside the regular church gathering to further experiential religion.136 Contrasting their program with Aristotelian, system-oriented Protestant Scholasticism, early Pietists emphasized simple or plain (“einfältig”) reading of Scripture adapted to the capacities of ordinary readers. For them, simplicity rather than philosophical opacity provided the key to profound knowledge of the Word. Simplicity denoted both the accessibility of Scripture and the necessary disposition of the reader to grasp it.137 They produced popular lay-oriented manuals on how to interpret Scripture, such as Spener’s Das nötige und nützliche Lesen der Heiligen Schrift (1695), Francke’s Einleitung zur Lesung der H.  Schrift (1694) and Einfältiger Unterricht, wie man die H. Schrift lesen solle (1694), and Anton Wilhelm 135  For more on the historical roots and early stages of Pietism, see especially Martin Brecht, ed., Geschichte des Pietismus, Band 1: Der Pietismus vom Siebzehnten bis zum Frühen Achtzehnten Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993). For more on Pietism and biblical exegesis, see Kurt Aland, ed., Pietismus und Bibel (Witten, Germany: Luther-Verlag, 1970); Reventlow, Epochen, 4:126–226; Martin Brecht, “Die Bedeutung der Bibel im deutschen Pietismus,” in Geschichte des Pietismus: Glaubenswelt und Lebenswelten, ed. Hartmut Lehmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004); Douglas H. Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 204–36; Shantz, “Bible Editions, Translations, and Commentaries in German Pietism,” in Bible in Pietism and Evangelicalism, ed. Hoselton et al., 17−35; Johannes Wallmann, “Scriptural Understanding and Interpretation in Pietism,” in HBOT, ed. Sæbo, 2:902–25; and Susanne Luther, “Schriftverständnis im Pietismus,” and Thomas Hahn-Bruckart, “Bibel,” in Pietismus Handbuch, Wolfgang Breul and Thomas Hahn-Bruckart, eds. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021), 349−59 and 420−27. There is also a good deal of scholarship on Pietism and the Enlightenment; see, among others, Martin Griel, “Pietism, Enlightenment, and Modernity,” in Companion to German Pietism, ed. Shantz, 348−92. 136  …“das Wort Gottes reichlicher unter uns zu bringen.” “…daß also die Leut zu der privat Lection angetrieben würden, wäre rathsam.” Philipp Jakob Spener, Pia Desideria, ed. Kurt Aland (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1964), 53, 55. See Andreas Deppermann, Johann Jakob Schütz und die Anfänge des Pietismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 65−66; and Ruth Albrecht, “Lay Appropriations and Female Interpretations of the Bible in German Pietism,” in Bible in Pietism and Evangelicalism, ed. Hoselton et al., 148−65. 137  Thomas Tillmann, Hermeneutik und Bibelexegese beim jungen Goethe (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006), 21−22.

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Böhme’s Plain Directions for Reading the Holy Scripture (1708, 2nd ed. 1721). While these manuals simplified traditional methods such as collation, the analogy of faith, and contextual reading for a broader readership, they chiefly focused on identifying and equipping the spiritual interpretive resources of those indwelt by the Spirit. “It is not enough that we hear the Word with our outward ear,” Spener wrote, “but we must let it penetrate to our heart, so that we may hear the Holy Spirit speak there, that is, with vibrant emotion,” and “feel the sealing of the Spirit and the power of the Word.”138 These manuals regularly underlined the difference between the natural abilities and methods used to comprehend the exterior letter of the text and the spiritual abilities and methods required to access the interior meaning.139 Francke contrasted the Schale (“the shell”) of Scripture and its spiritual Kern (“the core”), devoting an entire manual, as the subtitle states, to “plain instruction on how one properly searches, finds, and savors Christ as the Kern [core] of the entire Holy Scripture, in order to nourish and satisfy his soul, and obtain eternal life.”140 Francke structured his widely read exegetical manual Manuductio ad Lectionem Scripturae Sacrae (1693) around the contrast between natural and spiritual interpretation, devoting the first section to hermeneutical methods that determine the “letter” of Scripture, such as historical, grammatical, and logical study, and the second section to methods that unveil the Spirit’s intended meaning, such as exegetical, doctrinal, porismatic (inferential), and practical study. Citing 1 Cor 2, he sharply differentiated between the interpretive capacities of natural and spiritual readers. For 138  Philip Jacob Spener, Pia Desideria [1675], ed. and trans. Theodore G.  Tappert (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1964), 117. 139  Martin Schmidt, “Philip Jakob Spener und die Bibel,” in Pietismus und Bibel, ed. Kurt Aland, 19. 140   August Hermann Francke, Christus der Kern Heiliger Schrift. Oder, Einfältige Anweisung, Wie man Christum als den Kern der gantzen heil. Schrifft recht suchen, finden, schmäcken, und damit seine Seele nähren, sättigen, und zum ewigen Leben erhalten solle [1702], in August Hermann Francke: Schriften zur biblischen Hermeneutik I, ed. Erhard Peschke (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), 208–339. See also Erhard Peschke, “August Hermann Francke und die Bibel,” in Pietismus und Bibel, 59−87; Markus Matthias, “Die Grundlegung der pietistischen Hermeneutik bei August Hermann Francke,” in Hermeneutik, Methodenlehre, Exegese. Zur Theorie der Interpretation in der Frühen Neuzeit, Günter Frank and Stephan Meier-Oeser, eds. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-holzboog, 2011), 189−202; and Constantin Plaul, “August Hermann Francke. Manuductio ad lectionem Scripturae Sacrae (1693) and Praelectiones Hermeneuticae (1717),” in Handbuch der Bibelhermeneutiken, ed. Oda Wischmeyer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 663−76.

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example, while a natural reader could say true things about the Fifth Commandment (Exod 20) that came close to the Spirit’s intention, they could not “spiritually discern” its fuller meaning and implications, such as how to love one’s neighbor out of faith, or the evil roots and effects of malice. Such things could only be understood by experience.141 External and internal hermeneutical aids alone did not suffice—readers must not merely aim for “theoretical and historical” knowledge of the text via “natural reason” but must aspire to “practical and spiritual knowledge.”142 For Francke, this knowledge required the reader to identify with the ­psychological and emotional situation of the biblical author. The same Spirit who stirred the author’s holy affections to write divinely inspired Scripture also roused corresponding affections in the reader to inculcate an experiential knowledge of its spiritual and applicative import.143 Francke used 2 Tim 1:8 as an example. After examining the passage’s words and context, he culled several practical and spiritual inferences from the author’s affections. Just as the Apostle Paul displayed such hope and assurance in the gospel and a desire to comfort others while in prison, so can the Spirit inspire solatio interno (“inward consolation”) in and through believers today. Participating in the Apostle’s existential situation and affections enabled readers personally to experience perseverance in faith amid affliction, resulting in a more sincere love for Christ.144 Eighteenth-century Anglophone evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic read the Bible in a similar experiential manner. By means of what Bruce Hindmarsh has termed “evangelical figuration,” they adopted Scripture’s language as their own, substituted themselves in its narratives, and personalized its salvation history.145 Inspired by Whitefield’s preaching, the New England farmer Nathan Cole (1711–1783) found relief for his soul after a long struggle. Following a dramatic sensory encounter with 141  Francke, Manuductio ad lectionem Scripturae Sacrae, in Schriften zur biblischen Hermeneutik I, ed. Peschke, 61–62, 72. 142  Francke, Manuductio, 62. “Requiritur animus ad theoreticam tantum & historicam, sed practicam & spiritualem cognitionem adspirans, ne sit lectio scripturæ, ut Aristotelis lectio, ubi contentus est, qui sensum, rationis naturalis, ope, intimius perspexit.” 143  Francke, Manuductio, 87−88. 144  Francke, Manuductio, 75–76. 145  Bruce Hindmarsh, “Lectio Evangelica: Figural Interpretation and Early Evangelical Bible Reading,” in Evangelicals and the Bible, ed. Larsen, 32−54; and Hindmarsh, “‘At any price give me the Book of God!’ Devotional Intent and Bible Reading for the Early Evangelicals,” in Bible in Pietism and Evangelicalism, ed. Hoselton et al., 223−41.

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God, his “distress was gone, and I was filled with a pineing desire to see Christs own words in the Bible. … I opened it and the first place I saw was the 15th Chap: John—on Christs own words and they spake to my very heart.” His direct experience of Scripture’s power lifted all his doubts “about the truth of Gods word.” Now able to see “the whole train of Scriptures all in a Connection,” he “felt just as the Apostles felt the truth of the word when they writ it, every leaf line and letter smiled in my face.”146 The English Baptist poet Anne Dutton (1692–1765) engaged in similar experiential readings. Reflecting on Scripture’s description of Canaan’s fruitfulness from passages such as Num 14:7, Ps 106:24, Exod 3:8, Deut 11:11–12, she entered the land in a spiritual manner. “Being now got into Canaan, I may give a Hint of the Goodness of the Land,” and like all that “was literally true of literal Canaan, so did I find it eminently true, in a spiritual Sense, concerning this Land of Promise, I was now in Possession of.” She interspersed biblical language to describe her newfound spiritual dwelling, in which her soul’s sensations experienced the spiritual world that physical Canaan typified: “Here I … delightfully drink of the River, the Streams whereof made glad the City of God, Psa. xxxvi. 8. and xlvi. 4,” and “a pleasant Thing it was for my spiritual Eyes to behold the Sun, Eccles. xi. 7. Or, the Glory of God … shining in the Face of jesus christ, 2 Cor. iv. 6.” Such a world could only be known by spiritual experience, “It’s only that Eye that has seen it, that can take in the true Idea of it: That Palate alone that has tasted it, knows its Sweetness. Let them then that are spiritual, judge of the Goodness of Immanuel’s Land, from what themselves have tasted of its Milk and Honey.”147 While gaining certainty and assurance was important for early evangelicals, they ultimately pursued experiential interactions with the Bible in hopes of attaining firsthand and present connection with the spiritual realities of what they read in ancient holy writ. The transformations in exegesis and piety traced in this chapter situate the biblical practices and cultures of early evangelicals in wider historical, religious, and transatlantic context and shed light on important changes in American colonial life. As Noll writes, “The great shift of the mid-­ eighteenth century concerned lay believers who appropriated Scripture for 146  Nathan Cole, “Spiritual Travels,” in Roger Lundin and Mark A. Noll, eds., Voices from the Heart: Four Centuries of American Piety (Grand Rapids, MI: 1987), 84. 147  Anne Dutton, A Brief Account of the Gracious Dealings of God (London: J.  Hart, 1750), 84−85.

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their own control. That development, through which the communal Bible of Protestant Christendom became the personal Bible of spiritually empowered individuals, redirected colonial culture.”148 Wishing to set themselves apart from Catholic superstitions and speculative philosophies, (post-) Reformation Protestant thinkers intensively preoccupied themselves with the true nature of spiritual knowledge and defined it as a dynamic interaction among the Spirit, the Word, and experience. Their sharp dichotomies between spirit and nature may have unintentionally created the conditions that allowed others to conceptualize nature in ways that challenged traditional pieties. But to cast this trajectory in a myopic narrative of secularization overlooks the religious groups that not only adapted but even thrived in the early Enlightenment by capitalizing on the natural–spiritual binary and exploiting the authority of experience for their own projects of reform and enlightenment.149 As a closer examination of Cotton Mather’s and Jonathan Edwards’ biblical interpretation will show in the coming chapters, early evangelicals fused their traditions of exegesis and experimental piety with Enlightenment empiricist philosophies and their era’s immanentist emphasis on the sensory faculties of the individual. This commingling of experimental piety and experimental philosophy greatly shaped how they received their exegetical traditions, interpreted and practiced Scripture, engaged their thought world, and promoted religious vitality and renewal.

 Noll, In the Beginning Was the Word, 178.  As noted in the “Introduction,” this secularization trajectory is stressed to varying degrees in Frei, Eclipse; Harrison, Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science; Sheehan, Enlightenment Bible; Gregory, Unintended Reformation; Legaspi, Death of Scripture; and Lee, Erosion of Biblical Certainty. 148 149

CHAPTER 3

“Experimental Christians”: Mather’s Philosophical and Biblical Vitalism

Cotton Mather (1663–1728) was the most copious and learned biblical exegete in colonial New England.1 Like his Puritan forefathers, he labored to bring biblical scholarship in service of experimental religion. He read the Word with the theological lens of his Reformed Protestant tradition, which was above all Trinitarian, covenantalist, Christocentric, and practical-oriented. At the same time, he frequently wandered outside his camp for inspiration from diverse sources: including Protestant exegetes of various theological and denominational backgrounds, early church fathers, rabbinical scholars, mystics, Catholics, occult writers, and poets. Though  For Mather’s biography and thought, see especially David Levin, Cotton Mather: The Young Life of the Lord’s Remembrancer, 1663−1703 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978); Lovelace, American Pietism of Cotton Mather; Kenneth Silverman, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (New York: Harper and Row, 1984); Robert Middlekauff, The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596−1728 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 191−368; and Kennedy, The First American Evangelical. Mather’s son Samuel left behind a hagiography of his father, Samuel Mather, The Life of the very Reverend and Learned Cotton Mather, D.D. & F.R.S., Late Pastor of the North Church in Boston (Boston: Samuel Gerrish, 1729). For a fuller list, see Smolinski, “Editor’s Introduction,” in BA, 1:7−8, fn. 10. For an assortment of his writings, see Reiner Smolinski and Kenneth P. Minkema,eds., A Cotton Mather Reader (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022). 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. P. Hoselton, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment, Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44935-2_3

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he never once crossed the ocean, he was deeply immersed in the intellectual and religious currents of the wider North Atlantic world and did all an American colonial could to engage the latest European fashions in philosophy, science, biblical scholarship, and religious reform. He found the times he lived in invigorating, but also precarious. He deemed the fruits of the new learning auspicious providences for the advancement of Christian knowledge and God’s kingdom, but he worried that they would be squandered in the vain pursuits of man. Especially unsettling for Mather was the increasing audacity of those who used the new learning to advocate mechanistic and materialist philosophies, question Christian orthodoxy, minimize God’s immediate supernatural action in creation, undermine spiritual experience, and compromise the authority and divine inspiration of Scripture. Like other early awakened Protestants, Mather participated in the wider evidentialist-apologetic turn to guard the faith once delivered. But his mode was not merely defensive. More definitive for his agenda was his constructive aim to harness the new learning (and the old) to revitalize Christian piety. “Is there no Possibility, for me,” he reflected in his Diary in 1716, to “contrive a System of the Sciences wherein they shall be rescued from Vanity and Corruption, and become consecrated unto the glorious Intention of living unto God, and the real and only Wisdome?”2 When executed properly, natural philosophy testified to the power and grandeur of the sovereign Creator and encouraged vital Christian practice. Mather referred in this entry to his work of physico-theology, The Christian Philosopher, which he sent to London in 1715 (published in 1721).3 The book was likely culled, however, from his much more ambitious yet

2  Mather, The Diary of Cotton Mather, ed. W. C. Ford (New York: F. Ungar Publishing, 1957), 2:339−40. 3  Mather, The Christian Philosopher [1721], ed. Winton U. Solberg (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

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heretofore unpublished project to channel human learning for the edification and education of Bible readers: the “Biblia Americana.”4 Conceived in the summer of 1693 and maintained until his death in 1728, Mather esteemed his Bible commentary “one of the greatest Works, that ever I undertook in my Life.” His title for the project, “BIBLIA AMERICANA,” reflected his determination to put his parochial New World outpost on the map of the republic of letters. This venture, as he described in his Diary, would bring “all the Learning of the World … gloriously subservient unto the Illustration of the Scripture.” He envisioned a work of “laborious Ingenuitie,” furnishing readers with “golden Keyes” for unlocking the “precious Word.” Most important of all, he deemed it a “Work of the Lord.”5 He set out to assemble not only the best insights from other Bible commentaries but also of natural philosophy, history, philology, geography, and more to divulge Scripture’s treasures for a lettered audience. However, these insights served a higher purpose than mere entertainment and erudition. He ultimately wished to utilize the new learning to shore up both the authority of Scripture and experiential religion. He pursued this undertaking in a context in which the 4  See Smolinski, “Editor’s Introduction,” BA, 1:59−61. For the literature on Mather’s “Biblia” and his exegesis, see the citations in the Introduction, as well as Reiner Smolinski, “Authority and Interpretation: Cotton Mather’s Response to the European Spinozists,” in Shaping the Stuart World, 1603−1714: The Atlantic Connection, ed. Wiep Van Bunge and Wim Klever (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 191−211; Smolinski, “How to Go to Heaven, or How Heaven Goes? Natural Science and Interpretation in Cotton Mather’s ‘Biblia Americana’ (1693−1728),” New England Quarterly 81.2 (2008): 278−329; Harry C. Maddux, “God’s Responsibility: Narrative Choice and Providential History in Mather’s Biblia Americana Commentary on Ezra,” Early American Literature 42 (2007): 305−21; Mitchell R. Breitwieser, “All on an American Table: Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana,” American Literary History 25:2 (Summer 2013): 381−405; Edward M.  Griffin, “A Singular Man: Cotton Mather Reappraised,” Early American Literature 50:2 (May 2015): 475–94; Jan Stievermann, “Reading Canticles in the Tradition of New England Millennialism: John Cotton and Cotton Mather’s Commentaries on the Song of Songs,” in Prophecy and Eschatology in the Transatlantic World, 1550−1800, ed. Andrew Crome (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 213−38; “The Debate Over Prophetic Evidence for the Authority of the Bible in Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana,” in Bible in American Life, ed. Goff, Farnsley II, and Thuesen, 48−62; and Grace Sarah Harwood, “‘Perhaps No One General Answer Will Do’: Cotton Mather’s Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels in ‘Biblia Americana’” (PhD diss., Georgia State University, 2018). 5  Mather, Diary, 2:169−71. His son, Samuel Mather, praised the “Biblia” as “by far the greatest amassment of Learning that has ever been brought together to illustrate the oracles of God.” S. Mather, Life of Cotton Mather, 73.

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philosophical validity of Christian experience came under question and thinkers and ministers increasingly turned to rationalism and moralism. At times it seemed like he too succumbed to these temptations. But his chief aim throughout remained the promotion of vital experimental religion. As the “Biblia” and other writings show, Mather’s confidence in the authority of Christian experience grew over time. His experientialism was sown in the soil of Puritan practical divinity and pneumatology, but it also took shape in close interaction with experimental philosophies, transatlantic awakened Protestant reform, and various esoteric and mystic traditions. Mather asserted the reality of the spirit world with a new forcefulness against mechanistic and materialist philosophies, believing that empirical evidence of its existence implied the need and urgency for piety. Similar to Neoplatonism, Kabbalah, hermeticism, and alchemical traditions, Mather’s vitalist cosmology predicated the existence of a dynamic and supernatural life force that animated both the visible and invisible worlds. Mather’s vitalism was, however, thoroughly evangelical-oriented and concentrated on the promotion of vibrant, Christocentric heart religion.6 He longed above all else for spiritual renewal—for a remarkable work of the Spirit that would not only awaken souls to spiritual life but even restore the prophetic and miraculous gifts of the Apostolic age as the kingdom of God drew near. But Mather’s enchanted world was not medieval. Like many of his contemporaries, he believed he could reconcile a vitalist cosmology with the new learning. He spoke of the spirit world using a new philosophical framework that harmonized the Copernican system, Newtonianism, and experimental philosophy with his belief in God’s supernatural and immediate actions in creation, the interventions of angels and demons, and the revitalizing operations of the Spirit. The evidence for spiritual existence lay not only in Scripture but also impartial observation and sense experience. He believed the new experimental philosophy substantiated the spirit world and by extension the experimental and vital spiritual motions of the soul. He thus readily exploited the philosophical prestige of experimental philosophy and integrated its logic to bestow upon religious experience a scientific-like authority that could be reliably probed and observed for knowledge and spiritual growth. Extending his confidence in experiential religion to his reading of Scripture, he 6

 See Ward, Early Evangelicalism, 7−23.

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capitalized on its potential to open the meaning of the Word and inculcate spiritual knowledge, verify the Bible’s reliability and authority, and above all spark vital piety and Christian renewal.

“The Spirit of this World”: Mather and His Times Cotton Mather was the eldest son of Increase Mather (1639–1723), the most powerful minister in New England and long-time President of Harvard College. He was also the namesake of New England’s preeminent first-generation patriarchs and spiritual visionaries, his grandfathers John Cotton and Richard Mather. After receiving his BA (1678) and MA (1681) from Harvard, Boston’s North Church called him in 1683 to join his father as co-pastor, where he ministered until his death. Cotton labored his entire life to uphold and build upon the Puritan faith of his forefathers, and his aspirations kept him busy. Alongside his full schedule of pastoral work at one of the largest Protestant congregations in the New World, he pursued a zealous daily regimen of personal and family devotions.7 A man of many interests, he produced over 400 publications on a range of topics, comprising numerous sermons and devotional tracts, polemical and theological writings, and scientific and medical treatises. Among his more well-­ known writings is his controversial defense and analysis of the Salem Witch Trials, Wonders of the Invisible World (1693); a church history of New England, Magnalia Christi Americana (1702); a treatise on ethics, Bonifacius (1710); a physico-theological treatise, The Christian Philosopher (1721), which was the most advanced British colonial engagement with the new science at that time; an apology for New England Congregationalism, Ratio disciplinae fratrum Nov-Anglorum (1726); and a manual on ministry, Manuductio ad Ministerium (1726).8 He also read widely and profusely. Within British North America, his family library was rivaled only by Harvard’s in size, a blessing for which he regularly thanked God in his Diary.9 He maintained an extensive correspondence 7  Mather’s disciplined devotional life is evident throughout his Diary; see also Lovelace, American Pietism, Chap. 4. 8  Thomas J. Holmes, Cotton Mather: A Bibliography of his Works, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940; Reprinted, Newton, MA: Crofton, 1974). 9  See Julius H.  Tuttle, “The Libraries of the Mathers,” Publications of the American Antiquarian Society, New Series, 20 (1920): 269–356; William H. Bond and Hugh Amory, eds., The Printed Catalogue of the Harvard College Library 1723–1790 (Boston: The Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1996).

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with leading divines and thinkers in Britain and continental Europe (especially the Halle Pietists), forging networks and mediating information and ideas between Protestants in the Old World and the New.10 Accordingly, Mather was the most internationally known New England minister of his time. For his academic labors, the University of Glasgow awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1710, and in 1713 the Royal Society of London elected him a Fellow (FRS) for his physico-theological contributions, the “Curiosa Americana,” to its scientific journal, Philosophical Transactions. While Mather’s legacy never matched that of Jonathan Edwards, his footprint was substantial. His writings enjoyed numerous reprints, and religious leaders revered him as a model of piety and ministry long after his death.11 Mather was determined to guard the old ways, but times had changed over the course of his life. He adapted with them. The New England Way of the first generations—which relied on the harmony between a godly commonwealth and the independent Congregationalist churches to uphold their respective political and religious covenantal responsibilities before God—became increasingly less viable at the turn of the eighteenth 10  Kenneth Silverman, ed., Selected Letters of Cotton Mather (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1971). For Mather’s connections to German Pietism, see Kuno Francke, “The Beginning of Cotton Mather’s Correspondence with August Hermann Francke,” Philological Quarterly 5 (1926): 193−95; “Cotton Mather and August Hermann Francke,” Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 5 (1896): 57−67; “Further Documents Concerning Cotton Mather and August Hermann Francke,” Americana Germanica 1 (1897): 31−66; Ernst Benz, “Pietist and Puritan Sources of Early Protestant World Missions (Cotton Mather and A. H. Francke),” Church History 20:2 (June, 1951), 28−55; Benz, “Ecumenical Relations between Boston Puritanism and German Pietism (Cotton Mather and August Hermann Francke),” The Harvard Theological Review 54.3 (1961): 159−93; Lovelace, American Pietism, 32−40; Ward, Early Evangelicalism, 92−93; Wolfgang Splitter, “The Fact and Fiction of Cotton Mather’s Correspondence with German Pietist August Hermann Francke,” New England Quarterly 83.1 (2010): 102−22; Oliver Scheiding, “The World as Parish: Cotton Mather, August Hermann Francke, and Transatlantic Religious Networks,” in Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana, ed. Smolinski and Stievermann, 131−66. Cotton Mather, The Heavenly Conversation (Boston, 1710), Preface; Nuncia Bona et Terra Longinqua: A Brief Account of Some Good & Great Things A Doing For the Kingdom of God, In the Midst of Europe (Boston: B.  Greene, 1715); India Christiana (Boston: B. Greene, 1721), 56−87. 11  See, for example, the preface from Thomas Prince in S. Mather, Life of Cotton Mather; and Isaac Watts, An Humble Attempt Toward the Revival of Practical Religion Among Christians… (London: E.  Matthews, 1731), 114−15. For a reception history of Mather’s writings, see E. Brooks Holifield, “The Abridging of Cotton Mather,” in Mather and Biblia Americana, Smolinski and Stievermann, eds., 83−109.

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century.12 The revocation of the Massachusetts Bay charter in 1684, the reforms under the Dominion of New England, and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 all brought New England’s affairs into more direct relationship with England, and colonists from the 1690s onward experienced the widespread political, religious, and cultural influences of Anglicization. The Act of Toleration of 1689 required New England’s Congregationalist establishment to coexist with Anglicans and various Protestant dissenters, and the new 1691 Charter of Massachusetts Bay further curtailed its hegemony. The first-generation Puritans’ parochial and precisionist experiment to pursue church reform from afar gave way to a cosmopolitan identification with a broader and more ecumenical “Protestant interest” in league with Britain against Catholic powers.13 Boston elites increasingly aspired to London’s cultural and commercial prominence, and intellectual trends in Europe made greater headway at Harvard College and among learned circles (in ways Mather disapproved).14 Religious circumstances from within also brought about change. Despite the earlier innovation of the half-way covenant, ministers during Mather’s lifetime continued to face challenges of waning church membership, reluctance among churchgoers to partake of the Lord’s Supper, and what many perceived as an alarming decline of piety. Some church leaders, in hopes of overcoming these obstacles and reviving their appeal, departed from traditional norms of New England Congregationalism. Churches such as Brattle Street in Boston (1698) imitated Anglican church architecture and liturgy and took other measures to reduce sectarianism. The 12  For more on this transitional period, see, among others, Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1953); Landsman, Colonials to Provincials; E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2003); and Carla Gardina Pestana, Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 159−86. 13  Thomas Kidd, The Protestant Interest: New England After Puritanism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); Mather, Suspiria Vinctorum: Some Account of the Condition to which the Protestant Interest in the World is at this Day Reduced (Boston: T. Fleet, 1726). 14  See Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636−1936 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1936); Norman Fiering, Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1981); John Corrigan, The Prism of Piety: Catholick Congregational Clergy at the Beginning of the Enlightenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Kenneth P.  Minkema, “Reforming Harvard: Cotton Mather on Education at Cambridge,” The New England Quarterly 87:2 (June 2014): 319−40.

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influential Northampton minister Solomon Stoddard (grandfather of Jonathan Edwards and husband of Cotton Mather’s aunt by her previous marriage) and others did away with public relations of conversion as a prerequisite for membership and expanded access to baptism and the Lord’s Supper—igniting a feud with Increase and Cotton.15 In the early 1690s, ministers and magistrates felt more powerless than ever to reform New England. Many believed Satan himself was attacking their project, instigating the infamous Salem Witch Trials that left twenty executed.16 In significant respects, Mather’s thought and practices in this period aligned him with transatlantic awakened Protestant reform movements such as German Pietism and anticipated the mid-eighteenth-century Anglophone evangelical revivals. A recent biographer even labeled Mather the “first American evangelical.”17 Mather’s own use of the term “evangelical” followed the “Reformational” meaning, Linford Fisher explains, and Mather employed it as “a descriptor to indicate authentic Christianity” insofar as it conformed to “true-gospel-order.”18 While Mather did not self-identify as an “evangelical” in the way historians and practitioners use the term today (a usage which did not appear until later in the eighteenth century), his life and labors converged with the movement’s beginnings in key ways. Similar to the societies for the “Reformation of Manners” in England and Halle Pietists in Germany, he employed moral suasion and pioneered voluntary societies to reform vices and promote the good—such as benevolence to the poor, labor equity, care for orphans and widows, thriving family life, and charitable education for children as well as Africans and Native Americans. He organized private religious meetings devoted to

15  Silverman, Life and Times, 146−56; Benjamin Colman, A Manifesto Or Declaration, Set forth by the Undertakers of the New Church Now erected in Boston in New England, November 17th 1699 (Boston: B. Green, 1699); Mather lays out his ecclesiology in his Ratio Disciplinae Fratrum Nov-Anglorum (Boston: S. Gerrish, 1726). He originally wrote it in 1701 closer to the Brattle Street affair. 16  The literature on the trials is extensive; however, two recent studies include Emerson W. Baker, A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), and Benjamin C. Ray, Satan and Salem: The Witch-Hunt Crisis of 1692 (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2015). 17  Kennedy, First American Evangelical, 78−105. 18  Fisher, “Evangelicals and Unevangelicals,” 193−94. See also Frank Lambert, Inventing the “Great Awakening” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

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prayer and Bible study outside the regular gatherings of the church.19 He tempered the preparationism of earlier Puritan divines and adopted a more Christocentric and evangelical homiletic, admonishing parishioners to not get bogged down in legal obligations and covenantal fulfillments but come directly and immediately to Christ and close with him in faith.20 He advocated unity and cooperation across denominational lines and heartily supported the United Brethren, an alliance his father helped form in 1691 between Congregationalists and Presbyterians (which ultimately foundered). On a grander scale, he contributed to the emergence of an imagined “Protestant international” community of cosmopolitan and missions-minded reformers seeking to renew and unite Protestants to propagate true evangelical religion in the world.21 He grounded this unity 19  See Lovelace, American Pietism, Chap. 6, and a sampling of works from Mather such as Methods and Motives for Societies to Suppress Disorders (Boston, 1703); Lex Mercatoria: Or, The Just Rules of Commerce Declared (Boston: Timothy Green, 1705); The Negro Christianized (Boston: B.  Green, 1706); Family Religion: Excited and Assisted (Boston, 1707), Bonifacius: An Essay Upon the Good [1710], ed. David Levine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966); Orphanotrophium: Or, Orphans Well-provided for (Boston: B. Green, 1711); The Resort of Piety … An Essay Offered unto a Society of Young Men, United in the Intentions of Early Piety (Boston, 1716); Piety and Equity United (Boston: John Allen, 1717); Nuncia Bona e Terra Longinqua; Religious Societies: Proposals for the revival of dying religion (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1724); and for his comments on the societies for religion and education of black people see his Diary, 2:24, 379, 500, 663, and Diary, 1:176−77, in which he devised formal “Orders” for a religious society for black people which were later published in a 1706 broadside. For more on how Mather’s thinking about Native Americans and blacks intersected with his exegesis, see Jan Stievermann, “The Geneaology of Races and the Problem of Slavery in Cotton Mather’s ‘Biblia Americana,’” in Mather and Biblia Americana, ed. Smolinski and Stievermann, 515−76. 20  See Middlekauff, The Mathers, Chaps. 13 and 14; Lovelace, American Pietism, Chap. 3; and Cotton Mather, The Call of the Gospel (Boston, 1686), Unum Necessarium: Awakenings for the Unregenerate (Boston, 1693), A Conquest over the Grand Excuse (Boston: Timothy Green, 1706), The Greatest Concern in the World (Boston: Timothy Green, 1707), The Everlasting Gospel. The Gospel of Justification (Boston, 1710); Heavenly Conversation; A Soul Well-Anchored (Boston: B. Green, 1712); Free-Grace, Maintained and Improved (Boston, 1716); The Salvation of the Soul Considered (Boston: B. Green, 1720); and The Converted Sinner (Boston, 1724). 21  For more on Mather’s global networks and his vision for international Protestantism, see Peterson, “Theopolis Americana”; Andrews, “Tranquebar: Charting the Protestant International”; Stievermann, “Imagining Global Protestantism”; and Nan Goodman, Puritan Cosmopolis: The Law of Nations and the Early American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 135−62. For Mather’s ecumenical connection with French Protestants, see Catherine Randall, From a Far Country: Camisards and Huguenots in the Atlantic World (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 80−100.

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upon doctrinally minimalistic “Maxims of Piety,” basic foundations of the faith that transcended contentious doctrinal subtleties and distinctions in ecclesiastical polity.22 He called for greater measures in evangelism and missions and supported efforts among the Native Americans and those of the Pietists in the East Indies.23 Moreover, he emphasized the ­compatibility of rationality and faith and emulated the discursive practices of the new learning to represent and commend Christianity in an enlightened age.24 In sum, although Mather’s theology remained thoroughly Puritan, his modes, emphases, language, and practices adapted to the shifts of his religious, cultural, and intellectual environment. Less reliant on a collective sense of New England in which the ministers and society shared mutual expectations about ministerial authority, Mather focused his efforts on winning individuals and investing in networks and intellectual projects that would influence global Protestantism for evangelical ends. He minimized doctrinal complexities and sectarianism and stressed the attractiveness of heart religion, advocated voluntary activism, emphasized human initiative in conversion, appealed to the individual’s reason and moral duty, and selectively invoked the new learning to fortify evangelical religion. He also magnified the authority and allure of experience. In his sermon Christianity Demonstrated (1710), he entreated his hearers to observe the sensible effects of Christianity’s teachings in their souls to corroborate its truthfulness: “A Work of Grace brings a Man Experimentally to feel the Main Truths which the Christian Religion is composed of. A Godly Man has, and feels, that in him, which he knows could not be there, if things were not according to the Report, which the Christian Religion has given 22  See Middlekauff, The Mathers, Chap. 12; Cotton Mather, Blessed Unions (Boston: B. Green, 1692); Stone Cut Out of the Mountain (Boston, 1716); Malachi. Or, The Everlasting Gospel, Preached unto the Nations (Boston: T.C., 1717); Brethren Dwelling Together in Unity (Boston: S.  Gerrish, 1718). In 1717 Mather even preached the ordination sermon for a Baptist minister in Boston and expressed regret for the persecution from earlier generations against Baptists and other Dissenters. 23  See Benz, “Pietist and Puritan Sources”; Hermann Wellenreuther, “Pietismus und Mission: Vom 17. bis zum Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts,” in Geschichte des Pietismus, vol. 4: Glaubenswelt und Lebenswelt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), 168−76; Cotton Mather, A Letter about the Present State of Christianity Among the Christianized Indians of New England (Boston: Timothy Greene, 1705); and India Christiana. 24  Cotton Mather, Reasonable Religion (Boston: T.  Greene, 1700); Reason Satisfied (Boston: J. Allen, 1712); and A Man of Reason: A Brief Essay to demonstrate that All Men Should Harken to Reason (Boston: John Edwards, 1718).

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of them. And the more a Man does improve in Grace, the stronger he growes in his Adherence to the Christian Religion.”25 Ultimately, he could only rest his final hope for religious renewal of the world in the return of Christ—which he believed was imminent. The thing that counted most, therefore, was the conversion of souls and the sanctification of believers in preparation for this day. His advocacy for an experimental and supernatural engagement with God’s Word was essential to this objective. But few cared about piety, Mather feared. New England’s churches already had right doctrine, but they needed new life. In a Diary entry from 1692, Mather mourned “the abasing Circumstances of the Land” and its churches, begging God to “make a singular Use of mee, in the Awakening of my people.”26 As Perry Miller observed, many preachers of the third generation shared this concern, leading them to concentrate less effort on explicating the intellectual structures of Reformed theology (to which they fully adhered) and more on “summons to action” and “getting results.” However, the secularist teleology and nation-centric genealogy underlying Miller’s narrative misconstrues important elements of this shift. For one, the ministers’ push for a more experiential and active faith was no isolated phenomenon. It had firm precedent in earlier Protestant traditions of piety, and its contextual adaptations took shape in close concurrence and interaction with their wider transatlantic thought world. Moreover, Mather’s ardent invitations to depraved and helpless sinners to pursue conversion should not be seen as a harbinger of the rationalist optimism of Arminianism and Unitarianism but rather the kind of evangelical Calvinism later embodied by the likes of George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards.27 Last, this shift was not confined to New England—these ministers were not inadvertently “becoming Americanized.”28 In calling for a revival of experiential piety and activism, Mather participated in a wider transatlantic movement of awakened Protestant reform. In 1726, Mather preached a jeremiad directed not just at New England but all Protestants everywhere. While he directed much of the blame at Catholicism, the main source for the “Decay of Real and Vital PIETY”  Cotton Mather, Christianity Demonstrated… (Boston: Timothy Green, 1710), 23.  Mather, Diary, 1:146−47. 27  Miller, New England Mind: Colony to Province, 214. See Lovelace, American Pietism, 41−42; Middlekauff, The Mathers, 231−46. Kennedy’s account emphasizing Mather’s evangelical identity undervalues his Calvinistic commitments. Kennedy, First Evangelical, 28, 50. 28  Miller, New England Mind: Colony to Province, 214. 25 26

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came from within. He lamented the “lifeleß Religion” that permeated Protestant churches, where lackluster worship and indifference “choak that Living to God” for which “Sound Doctrine” ultimately existed. The problem was not the correctness of their doctrine but the disposition of their hearts and the vibrancy of their worship. In true jeremiad form, Mather threatened fire and brimstone if the guilty did not reform their ways. But he focused more on urging renewal in piety than on calling New England’s churches to fulfill their covenantal duties, uphold the Congregational Way, and commit themselves to their creeds. Merely being Protestant was not enough. It was a dangerous and real possibility to have sound doctrine but succumb to the “Spirit of this World” and religious “Formality,” to live in spiritual “Slumber” while dismissing true vital religion as “Enthusiasm.” It was one thing for Catholics living in darkness to rebel, but Protestants had the light and therefore had no excuse. He thus called on the faithful to gather in private religious societies and pray fervently for God to “Revive Decay’d PIETY” and pour out the “Quickening Spirit.”29 His sharp differentiation between true and spurious believers based on the vitality of one’s piety echoed the early Pietists and anticipated the rhetoric of the Anglophone evangelical revivalists. Mather’s Puritan and Reformed tradition had long distinguished true religion from false, particularly in contrast to Catholicism and Catholic vestiges in Anglicanism. But unlike earlier Protestants and in step with other Pietists and early evangelicals, Mather minimized ecclesial forms and thorough doctrinal conformity while elevating experiential piety as the main criterion of authentic religion. As he declared in Vital Christianity in 1725 (in which he embraced Quakers as true Christians), “Many People who call themselves Christians, departing so much from the Religion of the Spirit, have almost banished all Real Christianity out of the World.” Rather, “It is the Vital Christianity that is the real Christianity. And there is no Vital Christianity without a Christ living in us.”30 True faith was alive and experiential. Spiritual life came when the Spirit united the soul with the life of Christ. 29  Cotton Mather, Suspiria Vinctorum, 20−21. For more on Mather and the jeremiad, see Winship, Seers of God, 190n. 46; Lovelace, American Pietism, 239−41; Reiner Smolinski, “Israel Redivivus: The Eschatological Limits of Puritan Typology in New England,” The New England Quarterly 63:3 (Sept., 1990): 357−95. 30  Cotton Mather, Vital Christianity: A Brief Essay on the Life of God in the Soul of Man (Charlestown, 1725), “Dedication,” unpaginated.

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And anyone who owned this interior, vital faith, regardless of denominational affiliation, belonged to the people of God. Personal salvation mattered far more than homogeneous adherence to doctrinal minutiae: “O our Evangelized People, ‘Tis the Substantial PIETY of, GOD Reigning in the SOUL, that we Preach, for your Salvation. To Trouble you with Circumstantials in Religion, will be of little use to your Salvation.”31 As he expounded in various sermons and tracts, there were certain “Everlasting MAXIMS OF PIETY” that encapsulated the core of Christianity. They not only furnished the basis of Christian unity but also distinguished hypocrisy from true faith. In Things to be more thought upon (1713), he identified fourteen.32 By 1717 in his treatise Malachi, he reduced the maxims of “Real and Vital PIETY” to three: the first required belief in and devotion to the holy Trinity; the second affirmed salvation in Christ alone; and the third enjoined love of neighbor.33 Mather preached these maxims with a fervency, hoping they would revive and unite Christendom not merely on the basis of a shared creed but ultimately a shared experience of the Spirit. His longing for such renewal connected him with German Pietism, the most dynamic Protestant reform movement of the time. Mather began corresponding with the Halle Pietists around 1709–1710, especially August Hermann Francke and Anton Wilhelm Böhme (1673–1722). Educated at Halle, Böhme moved to England to serve as chaplain and court preacher for Prince George of Denmark, the husband of Queen Anne. Böhme played a pivotal role in mediating literature, news, and collaborations between Pietists and Anglophone religious leaders.34 Mather also exchanged letters with the Tranquebar missionaries Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg (1682–1719) and Johann Ernst Gründler (1677–1720).35 Mather sensed a deep affinity with the Pietists’ zeal for Christian renewal and reform, telling Böhme in a letter from August 6, 1716, “I verily beleeve, the American Puritanism, to  Cotton Mather, The Salvation of the Soul Considered (Boston: B. Green, 1720), 22.  Mather, Things to be more thought upon (Boston, 1713), 94; also Stone Cut Out of the Mountain. 33  Mather, Malachi, 34−35; India Christiana, 52−55. 34  See Daniel L. Brunner: Halle Pietists in England: Anthony William Boehm and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993); Arno Sames, Anton Wilhelm Böhme (1673−1722): Studien zum Ökumenischen Denken und Handeln eines Halleschen Pietisten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989). 35  Silverman, Selected Letters, 92, 215, 260−61; Mather, Diary, 2:23, 332−33, 406−407, 411−13, 563; India Christiana, 62−87. 31 32

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be so much of a Peece with the Frederician Pietism.”36 He even labeled the kind of lively religion he advocated an “American Pietism,” a counterpart to the continental Pietism embodied by August Hermann Francke. It was no “Fanatick” pietism but rather “an Orthodox, a Reformed, an Heavenly” one that shared continuities with the widely read German mystics Johannes Tauler (1300–1361) and Johann Arndt (1555–1621). Through these writers of old, “the Spirit of God breathed Excellent Things upon His chosen in the World,” and Mather observed with exuberance that the Spirit was performing a work in his day as well.37 In his report of Halle’s activities for an American audience, Nuncia Bona (1715), Mather praised Francke and his followers for promoting “True, Real, Vital Piety” and “Glorious Revival” in the world. Thanks to their initiatives in orphan care, education, and Bible printing and distribution, the “Light of Evangelical Piety” was “breaking forth in the Heart of Germany.” Even more, due to Halle’s missionary efforts, the “Fire of God” begun in Halle had spread to the East Indies.38 The Pietist missions in the “EASTERN” Indies and the Anglophone missions in the “WESTERN Indies” gave Mather hope that the Spirit and the Word were reviving the world.39 With great optimism, Mather searched for clues from Scripture and traced evidential signs from natural and supernatural phenomena and political developments around the world to ascertain the final days when Christ would return and establish his heavenly kingdom. Such signs  Mather, Diary, 2:411−13.  Mather, Heavenly Conversation, Preface, unpaginated; Diary, 2:23. 38  Cotton Mather, Nuncia Bona e Terra Longinqua, 2, 8. As Ward notes, the OED shows that Mather was one of the earliest to use the word “revival” in the sense of a communal religious awakening accompanied with conversions and renewal in fervent piety. In the Magnalia, Mather reported how Francis Higginson (1588−1630), a gifted preacher in Leicester (who later emigrated to New England), promoted above all else “a thorough Conversion … among his people.” He attracted large crowds from the area, and thanks to the “Divine Presence” and “Blessing” on his ministry, “there was a notable Revival of Religion among them” and many were converted. Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (London: Parkhurst, 1702), Book III, p. 71; Ward, Early Evangelicalism, 93. To facilitate their calls for increased devotional reading of Scripture, the Pietists produced and distributed millions of Bibles over the eighteenth century at an affordable price. See especially Karl Hildebrand von Canstein, Ohnemaßgeblicher Vorschlag / Wie GOTTES Wort denen Armen zur Erbauung um einen geringen Preiß in die Hände zu bringen (Berlin: Schlechtiger, 1710). Canstein worked closely with Francke. 39  Mather, India Christiana, title page. See Ryan P. Hoselton, “The Bible in Pietist and Evangelical Missions,” in Bible in Pietism and Evangelicalism, ed. Hoselton et al., 109−28. 36 37

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included reports of mass conversions of Jews, the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the demonic attacks on New England, persecutions of the saints such as the French Huguenots following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, and any hints of the Papacy’s decline.40 But the signs he rested his hope upon most were the evidence of the Spirit’s workings to revive the world in spiritual life. He measured this evidence by his own maxims of piety. As he wrote to Böhme, “it is vital Piety embracing the Maxims of the everlasting Gospel, (and your Arndtian and Franckian Charity,) which must unite the People of God.” If they could cooperate to awaken and unite the Protestant world in vital piety, the “Papal Empire will fall before it,” God’s judgment on the nations would abate, and “the Kingdome of God will come on.”41 Mather voiced similar ideas in his letter to Ziegenbalg. If Protestants could unify on the three maxims of “PURE CHRISTIANITY,” he rhapsodized, they might see a true spiritual renewal of the world in their lifetime. Moreover, Mather ventured to “insinuate” with a timid “whisper” that they also might witness and even personally experience the restoration of the Apostolic gifts from the Spirit to assist their revival efforts in preparation for the return of Christ. “The Reformation and Propagation of Religion,” he wrote, “will be accomplished, by Granting over again, those Extraordinary Gifts of the Prophetic Spirit, by which the Holy Spirit” had “first spread and confirmed the Christian Religion in the World.” In Malachi, Mather foretold an “Approaching REVOLUTION,” in which “the Reforming, and Reviving, and Restoring of Christianity, may be accomplished by the Return of the Prophetic SPIRIT which by the Ministry of Angels possessing the children of Men, carried on the Affairs of the Christian Religion in the Primitive Times with supernatural and miraculous Operations for more than Two Hundred Years together.” By 1717, Mather grew hesitant to set a specific date for Christ’s return after experiencing disappointment with his failed predictions in 1697 and 1716. This did not, however, dull his eager anticipation that the final days were imminent—he even ventured a more cautious guess in his Triparadisus that placed the Second Coming in 1736. The churches must therefore be prepared and actively promote renewal as they await the extraordinary outpourings of the Spirit. He told Ziegenbalg, 40  See especially Middlekauff, The Mathers, 320−49; Smolinski, “Introduction,” in Mather, “Triparadisus,” ed. Smolinski, 60−78; and Randall, Camisards and Huguenots in the Atlantic World, 95. 41  Mather, Diary, 2:406−407.

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“Whether the Time appointed by GOD for such an Effusion of the Holy Spirit, may quickly come on, & the Kingdom of GOD be suddenly to appear? For my part, I do not Know. But that it is not very far off, I do Believe.”42 Mather realized, however, that appeals for such spiritual renewal increasingly conflicted with much of the learned culture of his time. Over the course of his life, he encountered intellectual shifts that posed no small challenge to the intellectual structures that supported the Puritan experimental religion of earlier generations. Reiner Smolinski outlines these changes well: The Copernican cosmology and its heliocentric universe had just begun to displace the Ptolemaic geo-centrism that had governed the cosmology of Judeo-Christian believers since ancient times; Cartesianism laying the foundation of the modern empirical sciences had rejected the weight and authority of tradition as proof for all natural and supernatural phenomena described in the Bible; the new philological, historical, and contextual criticism of the Bible had begun to question the textual accuracy, transmission, and verbal inspiration of the Bible; and the new theories about the nature of light, gravity, and atomism posed tremendous problems to literalist readings of the Mosaic creation account.43

As shown in Chap. 2, to this list can be added a growing aspersion and skepticism among certain philosophical circles and moderate churchmen against religious experience as a legitimate basis for knowledge and piety. Mather came of age as these shifts gained greater traction among learned circles, and like many other evangelical-oriented proponents of the new learning, he wished to channel them in the service of faith. “The Languages and the Sciences should be brought into a due subserviency unto PIETY,” he wrote in 1717; “What is not subservient, but rather inimical to the MAXIMS of PIETY should be laid aside.” This applied to any system of ethics or philosophy that “does not help to Restore fallen Man, unto the Image and Service of GOD.”44 His religious tradition had long distinguished between the spheres of natural human knowledge and spiritual knowledge. But it also celebrated both as good and symbiotic gifts from God. By Mather’s time, however, 42  Mather, India Christiana, 68−69, 74; Malachi, 4. See also his essay titled, “I. Vates. Or, some Remarks upon the SPIRIT of PROPHECY,” in BA, 10:818−849. 43  Smolinski, “Editor’s Introduction,” in BA, 1:17. 44  Mather, Malachi, 63.

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Christian thinkers could not take the compatibility of spiritual knowledge and reason for granted, and many increasingly resorted to defending the claims of the former with the rising authority and modes of the latter. They represented what some scholars have labeled a “Christian” or “Evangelical Enlightenment,” complicating reductionist views of the era that paint the Enlightenment as an anti-religious movement and early evangelicalism as simplistic revivalism.45 Mather also confounds this secular–religious binary in his attempt to hold his faith and the new learning together. Hence, when his cosmology revolutionized with the tide from the Ptolemaic system to Copernicanism and Newtonianism, he praised God all the more for his wisdom in designing the universe’s laws and sustaining them at every moment.46 Inspired by the Pietist Joachim Lange’s (1670–1744) work, Medicina Mentis, he regarded the Ramist framework of earlier Puritans such as Ames as a waste of time and advised students not to “Weave any more Cobwebs in your Brains” and move on to more sophisticated and current (yet religiously sound) scientific paradigms.47 He never discarded the authority of biblical revelation and tradition, but his defense of traditional stances grew increasingly Baconian and evidentialist to answer the shifting terms of empirical inquiry.48 And when it came to how new theories in science, philology, and historiography bore on traditional readings of Scripture, he used his “Biblia” as an open forum to weigh their merits and compatibility. He usually demonstrated why the traditional position has the better evidence on its side, but he also showed a readiness to change his mind if the facts were persuasive and did not undermine the Bible’s authority—like when he came to question the originality of the Hebrew vowel points in repudiation of his own MA thesis.49

45  See the relevant literature in the “Introduction.” Rick Kennedy posits that Mather promoted a “biblical enlightenment that tugged against the moderate enlightenment.” Kennedy, First American Evangelical, 106. 46  Mather, Christian Philosopher, 20, 84; BA, 1:343. 47  Mather, Manuductio, 35−37. Joachim Lange, Medicina Mentis (Berlin, 1708). 48  Holifield, Theology in America, 5−8; Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity, 7, 60−69. 49  Mather, “IV. Ezra, or, The Things done by Ezra, for the Restoring & Preserving of the SACRED SCRIPTURES,” in BA, 10:881–88. Smolinski, “Editor’s Introduction,” in BA, 1:77−112; Smolinski, “Authority and Interpretation”; Smolinski, “How to Go to Heaven”; Winton U. Solberg, “Cotton Mather, the ‘Biblia Americana,’ and the Enlightenment,” in Mather and Biblia Americana, ed. Smolinski and Stievermann, 183−201; Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity, 33−74, 107−92.

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At times, Mather’s balancing act between learning and piety seemed to cross boundaries. In 1700, Mather issued a tract entitled Reasonable Religion, urging believers to “prove themselves Real Christians” to manifest the attractiveness and authenticity of their faith before a watching world. However, rather than enjoining them to “Shew your selves Regenerate Christians,” he advised, “Shew your selves Rational Creatures.”50 Christianity was the embodiment of reason, he argued, and if Christians acted rationally they would compel other rational beings to embrace it. After all, reason came from God, he asserted in 1718, and if “we do not keep Reason on the Throne, we go to Dethrone the Infinite GOD Himself,” for “the voice of Reason, is the Voice of GOD.”51 Some scholars have blown such statements out of proportion and have charged Mather with surrendering New England Puritanism to Enlightenment rationalism.52 When viewed in light of his wider corpus and the qualifications he made even within his treatises on reason, these statements were extreme and should be viewed more as rhetorical devices than pronouncements of radical departure from his tradition. He would seldom juxtapose a regenerate and rational Christianity, and his high estimation of “Right Reason” inseparable from faith and divine revelation differed dramatically from the

 Mather, Reasonable Religion, 3−4.  Mather, Man of Reason, 7. See also Mather, Diary, 2:144, and Christian Philosopher, 297. 52  See especially Miller, New England Mind: From Colony to Province, Chap. 25; Winship, Seers of God, 79−82, 93–110. Jeffrey Jeske’s essay, as characteristic of the religious–secular binary of the older historiography, errs in portraying the Enlightenment Mather as gradually displacing the medieval and Puritan Mather and claims his Christian Philosopher and other works evinced an “essential secularity” in its “shifting of attention from God to the creatures,” Jeffrey Jeske, “Cotton Mather: Physico-theologian,” Journal of the History of Ideas 47:4 (Oct.-Dec., 1986): 583−94, quote on p. 592, and see p. 586 for his application of this dichotomy to Mather’s work on the “Biblia.” According to Winton Solberg, Mather’s thinking and especially his Christian Philosopher “heralds the Enlightenment in America,” and while “Mather was no deist,” he furnished “a theoretical basis for religious rationalism.” Winton Solberg, “Science and Religion in Early America: Cotton Mather’s Christian Philosopher,” Church History 56 (1987): 73−92, quotes on 90, 92. Silverman claims Mather comes “close to irreligion” and the God of his Christian Philosopher has more in common with the “Deity of liberal eighteenth-century Protestantism” than the God of the Puritans. Silverman, Life and Times, 250. Philipp Reisner’s claim that Mather reconceives the Spirit’s indwelling operations in terms of Enlightenment rationalism betrays an especially incautious misreading. Philipp Reisner, Cotton Mather als Auflklärer: Glaube und Gesellschaft im Neuengland der Frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012), 36. 50 51

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anthropocentric rationalism of a Spinozist or deist.53 Even so, Mather’s heightened preoccupation with the rationality of Christianity shows his adaptation to his times. He ultimately promoted the importance of vital faith because he believed it was biblical. But he simultaneously voiced that reason and empirical evidence confirmed biblical revelation and therefore men and women need not choose between a life of faithful piety and intellectual integrity. In his 1718 treatise Man of Reason, he challenged Lockean empiricism on the basis that it was both “Irrational” and “Unscriptural” to say “we have no Ideas in our minds, but what are introduced from abroad, by Observation. There are a rich cluster of Ideas which we are born withal, and which are only awakened, and brought into Exercise by Observation.” Moreover, without naming them, he condemned Charles Blount’s “pretended, Oracles of Reason” as well as the deists and Hobbes as the “Wicked Sons of the Leviathan” for ultimately defying reason by abandoning biblical orthodoxy.54 Biblical revelation, right reason, and empirical knowledge must operate in harmony, since these modes of knowledge all came from God. Thus, Mather was no passive bridge between the early Enlightenment and the New World. He toiled with diligence to manage its mediation in a way that sustained his agenda for spreading vital Christian piety. He learned the language of lettered and polite discourse, cited and celebrated the leading lights of his era, backed his arguments with reason and evidence, and flaunted his DD (Doctor of Divinity) and FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society) credentials with pride. However, unlike more latitudinarian proponents of the Christian Enlightenment, Mather’s avid pursuit of learning never dulled or compromised the vitality of his experiential Christianity but only enhanced it. As Pershing Vartanian writes, in Mather’s thought “the New Piety and the New Science” had “emerged together and matured together and each was rooted in the other, thereby exerting a reciprocal influence upon the other.”55 This was largely because he believed the new learning reinforced the authority of experience, which he 53  Mather, Man of Reason, 7. Middlekauff argues that Mather tempered his estimation of reason after 1700 and increasingly stressed its limitations as he witnessed deists and others elevate reason above Scripture: “Mather’s disenchantment with reason was far advanced in 1715.” He overstates his claim, however; Mather’s 1718 tract Man of Reason shows otherwise. See Middlekauff, The Mathers, 279−304, quote on p. 303. 54  Mather, Man of Reason, 3,5. 55  Pershing Vartanian, “Cotton Mather and the Puritan Transition into the Enlightenment,” Early American Literature 7:3 (Winter, 1973): 213−24, quote from p. 217.

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extended to the domain of the spiritual. His tract on meditation from 1702 displays the ease with which he fused experimental philosophy with experimental religion. Here he encouraged readers to learn the practice of “Spiritualizing the most Earthly Objects,” devoting every mundane object in creation and every thought in their mind to spiritual ends. And if Christians faced derision from others for this “Art,” they must remember they have the “unexceptionable Example of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, to recommend it,” who made vines, fields, bread, and wine brim with spiritual meaning and import. It also helped that they had intellectual validation from eminent experimental philosophers, especially “the Incomparable Robert Boyl.”56 Mather’s invocation of Jesus and Robert Boyle to affirm the validity of spiritualizing nature for devotional purposes illustrated just how fluid the boundaries between empirical observation, vitalism, and experimental religion were in his thinking.

“A Vital Touch”: Experimental Philosophy and Experimental Religion “Be sure,” Mather exhorted students of the ministry in his widely read Manuductio ad Ministerium, “the Experimental Philosophy is that, in which alone your Mind can be at all established.”57 Mather’s embrace of experimental philosophy reflected not merely his intellectual commitments but also his adoption of particular cultural conventions of his time. As Steven Shapin has shown, the culture of the Royal Society relied on certain mores and modes for establishing trust in the exchange of knowledge that mirrored standards of virtue and social reputability in British high culture. Natural philosophers fashioned themselves trustworthy gentlemen and presented their findings in a polite and disinterested idiom to build trust with their readers and lend credibility to their claims. Robert Boyle exemplified these discursive practices and constructed an identity as a “reliable truth-teller” on the basis of being a “Christian Virtuoso,” a person who was both a “Christian gentleman and Christian scholar.”58 According to Boyle, “by being addicted to Experimental Philosophy, a Man is rather Assisted, than Indisposed, to be a Good Christian”; indeed a  Cotton Mather, Christianus per Ignem (Boston: B. Green, 1702), 12−13.  Cotton Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerium (Boston: Hancock, 1726), 50. 58  Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), xxviii. 56 57

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“Great Esteem of Experience, and a high Veneration for Religion, should be compatible in the same person.”59 Boyle’s model greatly inspired Mather. Mather modeled his Christian Philosopher on Boyle’s manifesto The Christian Virtuoso (1690), and he relied on these social conventions to evaluate empirical claims and substantiate the empirical knowledge he conveyed. Ultimately, Mather exploited the cultural and intellectual prestige of experimental philosophy to promote the authority of experimental religion—whether he was citing the testimonies of noble gentlemen to prove the reality of apparitions, or presenting the experimental readings of pious Christians to afford deeper insight into the Bible. Mather furnished a reading list for aspiring ministers of the natural philosophers who “nobly serve Religion as well as Philosophy” and embodied the ideals of a gentleman Christian scholar, such as Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, William Derham, John Woodward, John Ray, Nehemiah Grew, or Bernard Nieuwentyt. He especially recommended his own work, The Christian Philosopher, in which he collected and presented the best insights from experimental philosophy in a way that would “Raise those Dispositions of PIETY” in readers. Mather felt the need to guide his readers’ encounter with natural philosophy because it wielded tremendous potential to either build or wreck their faith. When studied properly, it should cultivate “continual Contemplations and agreeable Acknowledgements of the Infinite GOD,” leaving them “ravished” by “His Goodness and His Beauty” in creation. But any sources that tempted them toward deism, mechanism, atheism, and other “Philosophical Romances” that asserted the universe’s self-governance and independence from God must be resisted at all cost. “I would have you see to it,” he warned, “that you be not, like some haughty, and short-sighted, and halfwitted, Smatterers in Philosophy, seduced into the Folly of doubting the Existence or Providence of a Glorious GOD, by a Study, which, if wellpursued, would compel you to come in to a Strong Faith.” The universe may operate according to predictable Newtonian laws rather than irregular providences, and the world may no longer sit at the center, but God still created, caused, and governed it all: That as the World was at first Created, so it has been ever since preserved, by the Immediate Hand of GOD. You will see, That the Influences of one thing upon another in the Course of Nature are purely from the Omnipotent and 59  Robert Boyle, The Christian Virtuoso [1690−91], in The Works of Robert Boyle: Vol. II, 1687−91, ed. Michael Hunter and Edward B.  Davis (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2000), 291.

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Omnipresent GOD, actually forever at Work, according to his own Laws, and putting His Laws in Execution, and as the Universal Cause producing those Effects, whereof the Creatures are but what One may call, The Occasional Causes…. Child, See GOD in every Thing! Own Him, Fear Him, Love Him; Study Philosophy with a perpetual Intention to do so.

Experimental philosophy and biblical faithfulness should go hand in hand. After all, the “wondrous Philosophy” of Scripture by inspiration of the “Prophetic Spirit” had long ago taught what “our Modern Philosophy” was just now discovering—even if many modern philosophers have not acknowledged it.60 This conviction enabled Mather to interpret natural philosophy in light of Scripture, and vice versa. Thus, he not only spiritualized nature but also recast biblical phenomena such as creation, the Noahic flood, and the sun standing still in the idiom of experimental philosophy.61 Like others wishing to avoid the dangers of Hobbesian materialism and Cartesian mechanistic philosophy, Mather enlisted the authority of empiricism to demonstrate the existence of the invisible spirit world and thus prove the existence of God and his immediate workings in creation. This undertaking had both spiritual and scientific dimensions and represented a fusion of his Reformed theology with experimental philosophy and esotericism.62 Mather’s use of these traditions is complex and served various 60  Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerium, 47−52. Mather writes a fuller polemic arguing for God’s existence against atheism in his Christian Philosopher, 308−310. Miller is driven by his secularization paradigm when he says Mather’s Manuductio ad Ministerium “shows signs of disintegration” away from Puritanism toward humanistic “Arminianism, morality, and Unitarianism.” Perry Miller, “The Manuductio ad Ministerium,” in Holmes, Bibliography, II:634−35. The key lies in understanding how Mather, unlike, for instance, Benjamin Franklin, attempted to reconcile reason and Christian experience, the new learning, and orthodox theology. For more on Mather and natural philosophy, see Solberg, “Science and Religion in Early America”; Winship, Seers of God, Chap. 5. 61  BA, 1:303−306, 325−26, 337−402, 417−19, 625−35, 638−40; 3:112−13. 62  For more on the entanglements of esotericism and Enlightenment, see Samuel Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathon: Seventeenth-Century Reactions to the Materialism and Moral Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962); David Levine, “Giants in the Earth: Science and the Occult in Cotton Mather’s Letters to the Royal Society,” William & Mary Quarterly 45 (1988): 751–70; Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), especially Chaps. 4, 5, and 8; Allis P. Coudert, Religion, Magic, and Science in Early Modern Europe and America (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2011); Walter W.  Woodward, Prospero’s America: John Winthrop Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1616−1676 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Monika Neugebauer-Wölk, Renko Geffarth, and Markus Meumann, eds., Aufklärung und Esoterik: Wege in die Moderne (Berlin: Ge Gruyter, 2013); Rivett, Science of the Soul, Chap. 5.

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purposes. He wished to defend the Reformed affirmations of God’s supernatural and providential intervention in the world, and he invoked the new science to fortify these claims on empirical grounds. However, not all of Mather’s esteemed Royal Society natural philosophers were willing to apply experimental probes to the spiritual realm as far as Mather wished. His reading in traditions of Christian piety stretching from early church fathers to Puritans and Pietists often fulfilled this inclination when it came to the science of the soul. But he also availed himself of various esoteric traditions such as Neoplatonism, hermeticism, Paracelsian alchemy, and Kabbalah to plunge further. He repeatedly expressed his caution when citing these sources to distance himself from religious enthusiasm—a ­ major taboo for Puritans and experimental philosophers alike. But the underlying vitalism of these sources and their readiness to apply empirical examination to the invisible world deeply resonated with him. In Mather’s mind, as Stievermann writes, “exploring the mystery of how the divine pneuma revived the dead was as much a pursuit of science as explaining the mechanics of Boyle’s air-pump.” He thus eagerly read and engaged the thought of Neoplatonists such as Henry More (1614–1687) and Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), the Hermeticist physician Jean Fernel (1497–1558) and the alchemist Johann Baptiste van Helmont (1577–1644), and the Christian Kaballah.63 As Brett Grainger has shown, Mather found especially congenial the synthesis of vitalism and piety in the Verus Christianismus (True Christianity) by the German mystic and protoPietist Johann Arndt.64 Above all, however, Mather’s Bible informed and nourished his belief in a cosmos inhabited by angels and demons, amenable to miracles, and in which spiritual forces yielded causal agency on mind and matter.65 Mather’s captivation with the world of spirits began early in his life. In July 1681, he recorded a resolution in his Diary to inculcate “a greater Sense of the Reality of Invisibles.”66 He saw his firm belief in the spiritual realm as inextricably linked with the vitality of his own personal piety.  Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity, 183.  Brett Malcolm Grainger, “Vital Nature and Vital Piety: Johann Arndt and the Evangelical Vitalism of Cotton Mather,” Church History 81:4 (December 2012): 852−72; Ward, Early Evangelicalism, 7−23. 65  Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity, 169−81; Paul Wise, “Cotton Mather and the Invisible World,” in Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana, ed. Smolinski and Stievermann, 227−57. 66  Mather, Diary, 1:23. 63 64

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Acknowledging God’s sovereign hand in all things, the reality of demonic forces, and the existence of the soul kept him vigilant and set his eyes on eternal spiritual matters. His dual commitment to the “Reality of Invisibles” and its empirical demonstration manifested itself in a variety of ways over his lifetime. In an astounding Diary entry from February 1684–1685, Mather recorded a visit from an angel who spoke of the tremendous influence his writings would have in America and Europe.67 Perhaps reflecting back on this episode, he would affirm decades later against skeptics in his Christian Philosopher that “a World of intellectual Beings” (i.e., angels) had firm confirmation from empirical observation. “I do here in the first place most religiously affirm,” he wrote, “that even my Senses have been convinced of such a World, by as clear, plain, full Proofs as ever any Man’s have had of what is obvious in the sensible World.”68 In an essay appended to the “Biblia,” he even countered Boyle’s doubts as to whether natural human faculties could discern and verify the existence of spiritual beings. He asserted that he knew persons (likely including himself among them) “who have had their very Senses convinced, with a sufficient Assurance, that there are such Spirits really existing in the World.”69 His senses also confirmed the reality of demonic forces. In Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689), Mather detailed the experimental tests he conducted on the children of John Goodwin to ascertain the demonic forces tormenting them. Unable to visit the family regularly, Mather hosted the eldest daughter—who, he repeatedly stressed, was otherwise of a rational mind and sober temperament—at his home to gain “Evidence and Argument as a Critical Eye-witness” of the demon’s movements and learn how best to “confute” them. One of the clearest evidences was the torment she would endure at the sight and hearing of the Bible.70 His fusion of empiricism and vitalism pervaded his famous account of the Salem Witch Trials. In Wonders of the Invisible World, he pondered how witches went about “Invisibilizing” their forms and means of causation. Drawing on a concept from Neoplatonism, he wrote, “Witchcraft seems to be the Skill of Applying the Plastic Spirit of the World, unto some 67  Mather, Diary, 1:86−87. David Levine, “When did Cotton Mather See the Angel?” Early American Literature 15 (1980): 271−75. 68  Mather, Christian Philosopher, 306. 69  Cotton Mather, “Appendix,” BA, 10:821. 70  Cotton Mather, Late Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions… (London: Parkhurst, 1691), 18. See Winship, Seers of God, Chap. 6; Silverman, Life and Times, Chap. 4.

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unlawful purposes, by means of a Confederacy with Evil Spirits.”71 The Neoplatonists affirmed the existence of a “plastic nature” to resist philosophies that ascribed all causality to the material and natural world. Asserting a plastic nature—an animating spiritual force that mediated the invisible and visible domains—better accounted for certain phenomena than natural laws. In Mather’s mind, since the plastic spirit linked the invisible and visible worlds, it was possible to trace empirical manifestations in the natural world to gain knowledge of the invisible. In a letter from 1695 to Robert Calef, the most ardent critic of Mather’s defense of the Salem witch trials, Mather wrote, “I have not yett altered my Opinion, That there is a Plastic Spirit permeating the World, which very powerfully operates upon the more corporeal parts of it: and that the Angels, both good and bad, are on the account of their Natures, the most Able of all creatures, to Apply that Spirit unto very many and mighty purposes.” Calef was less convinced. “A plastic spirit. What foreign word is that,” he asked. Mather defended his findings in the Wonders of the Invisible World with Scripture and empiricism. In a section of the letter subtitled “Ocular Demonstration,” he countered Calef’s skepticism and promised he could provide “Thousands of experimental Proofs which have been seen by myself, as well as many scores of other People among ourselves, to make it evident, that wee don’t misunderstand that Scripture, when wee gather all this Power of the Divels from it.”72 For Mather, the “sensible and evident Witchcrafts” afflicting New England reinforced what the Bible said about the existence of good and evil spirits. Moreover, they were demonstrable communications from God—who after all permitted these demonic forces—warning New Englanders of the dreadfulness of evil ways and calling them to turn to him.73 To counter the “horrible Assaults made by the Invisible World” of demons, who with “præternatural Torments” bewitched New Englanders to sign the devil’s book and forfeit their souls, Mather signed his name to 71  Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World… (Boston: Benjamin Harris, 1693), 44. Kindred works blending Puritan thought and empirical philosophy that Mather knew well included Increase Mather, An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (Boston: Samuel Green, 1684), and Richard Baxter, The Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits Fully Evinced … Proving the Immortality of Souls… (London: T. Parkhurst, 1691). Winship shows how Increase’s work closely imitated the experimental style of Robert Boyle; Winship, Seers of God, 64−68. 72  Cotton Mather, “Mather-Calef Paper on Witchcraft,” transcribed and ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 47 (Oct., 1913− Jun., 1914): 240−68, quotes from 149−50. 73  Mather, Wonders, 76; Rivett, Science of the Soul, 260−63.

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“GODS BOOK.” In one of his Bibles, Mather wrote on the first and last pages: “RECEIVED AS THE BOOK OF GOD AND OF LIFE, BY Cotton Mather,” and “EMBRACED AS THE WORD OF CHRIST AND SALVATION, BY Cotton Mather.” In another Bible, he wrote: “ENJOY’D AS THE UNERRING RULE OF BELEEF, AND PRACTICE,” and “RECEIVED AS THE WORD OF GOD, OF TRUTH, AND OF LIFE, BY Cotton Mather,” and so on with a third.74 Signing his name to these affirmations with physical ink communicated to the spiritual realm where his soul’s allegiance lay. Fundamental to Mather’s vitalism was the hope of revitalization and amelioration of both nature and spirit. This hope pervaded his medical treatise, The Angel of Bethesda, in which he posited the existence of the “Nishmath-Chajim” (a neologism from the Hebrew word in Gen 2:7) as the cite of generative life powers in a person. The Nishmath-Chajim paralleled the concept of a plastic spirit linking the natural cosmos and spiritual realm, but for individual creatures. Subsisting as “a Middle Nature, between the Rational Soul, and the Corporeal Mass,” it was the “Vital Ty” between body and soul and mediated the “Communication” and “Impressions” between them.75 Mather especially drew inspiration for this concept from Jean Baptiste van Helmont’s notion of the “Archaus,” an  Mather, Diary, 1:157. In 1690, taking advantage of the scare with the Goodwin children to promote evangelical conversion and piety, Mather authored a tract with advice for young men on how to overcome the devil’s workings; Addresses to Old Men, and Young Men, and Little Children (Boston: R. Pierce, 1690), 46−88. 75  Mather only succeeded to publish one chapter of his Angel of Bethesda, which detailed his notion of the Nishmath-Chajim, Cotton Mather, The Angel of Bethesda… (New London: Timothy Green, 1722), 1. The full edition would not be published until the twentieth century, Cotton Mather, Angel of Bethesda, ed. Gordon W.  Jones (Barre, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1972). Mather included much of his thinking on the Nishmath-Chajim in his treatise on eschatology, the “Triparadisus” (1726/27), which he also was unable to publish in his lifetime, Mather, The Threefold Paradise of Cotton Mather: An Edition of “Triparadisus,” ed. Reiner Smolinski (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1995), 122−26. See Otho T. Beall Jr. and Richard H. Shyrock, Cotton Mather: The First Significant Figure in American Medicine (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1954); Margaret Humphreys Warner, “Vindicating the Minister’s Role: Cotton Mather’s Concept of the Nishmath-Chajim and the Spiritualization of Medicine,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 36 (July 1981): 278−95; Silverman, Life and Times, 405−10; and Grainger, “Vital Nature and Vital Piety.” In contrast to many earlier studies on Mather and science, Philippa Koch’s treatment avoids the secular–religious binary and demonstrated the close interrelationship between Mather’s spiritual and scientific thinking, Philippa Koch, “Experience and the Soul in Eighteenth-Century Medicine,” Church History 85:3 (Sept. 2016): 552−86. 74

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ethereal generative substance in each material object that directed its formation and causation. He also saw parallels and confirmations for his theory from ancient philosophies such as Platonism and Galenism, other occult writers (or, in his words, “Masters of Obscurities”), and respectable scientists such as the Dutch physician Johannes Heurnius (1543–1601). Similar to vitalist concepts found in these writers such as the vis formatrix, the plastic spirit, or the archeus, the Nishmath-Chajim allowed Mather to ascribe supernatural causal explanations to phenomena “that cannot be solved by the Rules of Mechanism.” God designed it with “Marvellous Faculties” and animating powers. It mysteriously formed a baby’s bones in the womb. As the link between soul and body, it governed how the states of each influenced the other—one’s spiritual condition could impact bodily disease for good or ill, and vice versa. It accounted for behaviors of creatures that exceeded reason, such as the animation of bodily motion or the instinct in birds to nest, bees to produce honey, and infants to breastfeed. It also explained the causal mechanism behind the resurrection of the dead, and how the spiritually awakened soul could “act upon a Principle of Love to GOD, and with the Views of Another World.”76 Mather’s vitalism underlay his belief that all things could be revived and improved—whether diseases or Bible reading—by spiritual means and for spiritual ends. He fused this stance with his teleological-oriented Calvinism to devote all things for God’s glory. In a diary entry from May 1683, Mather resolved to not be like the “Generalitie of People” who “suffer their minds to ly like the Field of the Sluggard, overgrown with Weeds.” Rather, he would redeem each mundane moment and object to cultivate his mind with spiritual thoughts that would fuel a constant stream of prayer and worship. He called the practice “my spiritual Alchymie.” In another entry, Mather recorded things he saw while “passing along the Street” that he turned into prayerful “Ejaculations.” For instance, upon seeing “A tall Man,” he prayed: “Lord, give that Man, High Attainments in Christianity: let him fear God, above many.”77 He wrote a tract on Winter Meditations instructing readers how to take advantage of the winter months for their “spiritual and eternal Advantage” rather than vain

76  Mather, Angel of Bethesda, 2−10. See Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity, 183−84, where he discusses Mather’s gloss on Eccl. 11:5 discussing the spirit that forms the baby in the womb, BA, 5:445. 77  Mather, Diary, 1:61−62, 83; Silverman, Cotton Mather, 32−33.

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and lifeless leisure as they had less work in these months.78 He spiritualized natural objects and daily activities such as farming to spur religious formation,79 and he filled his Diary with resolutions on how to maximize his time and energy for spiritual good. His “do-goodism,” famously ridiculed by Benjamin Franklin, was in fact no straight-laced moralism but rather arose from an optimism to improve each moment, thought, and action for God’s glory. His blend of vitalism and experimentalism assured him that the ecstatic religious experiences he enjoyed were authentic, whether it be a visitation from an angel or an intimate sense of God’s presence in prayer. This was especially true of what he termed “Particular Faiths”—a particularly palpable sensation caused by the Spirit or even angels “irradiating” his mind “with a certain powerful, Heart melting, Heavenly Afflatus” that assured him God would answer a specific prayer request. When pondering how he could know this sense of certainty was authentic, he answered that it was ultimately a matter of ineffable experience: “I know it, as I know the Fire to be the Fire; I feel it, but no words of mine can express, how it feels.”80 His confidence in the authenticity of his religious sensations combined with his objective to maximize all things for spiritual ends prompted his desire to channel the best fruits of all human learning as well as his own spiritual experiences for the illumination of Scripture. The most significant dimension of Mather’s vitalism concerned the relationship between pneumatology and the life of the soul. His empirical proofs of the invisible world and notions of a plastic nature and Nishmath-­ Chajim ultimately served to substantiate the renewing and regenerative work of the Spirit. Mather did not equate the Holy Spirit with the plastic nature or Nishmath-Chajim, but he believed these were the principle forces the Spirit acted upon to bring about God’s purposes in the visible and invisible creation. Drawing on the Scottish physico-theologian George Cheyne (1672–1743), Mather concluded his Christian Philosopher asserting that the “Principles” impelling the entire spiritual and material worlds along with all intelligent creatures ultimately have their analogy in the 78  Mather, Diary, 1:169; Winter Meditations: Directions how to Employ the Liesure [sic] of the Winter for the Glory of God (Boston: Benjamin Harris, 1693). 79  See especially Mather, Christianus per Ignem; Agricola. Or The Religious Husbandman… (Boston: T. Fleet, 1727). 80  Mather, Christianus per Ignem, 47; Silverman, Life and Times, 173−90. See also Mather’s gloss on Matthew 17:20 in the “Biblia,” forthcoming in BA vol. 7.

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Trinity. These consisted of “the DESIRE, the OBJECT, and the SENSATION arising from the Congruity between them.” The movements of God the Father were propelled by infinite desire, which only “GOD the SON” in all his divine perfections could sufficiently satisfy as the “Object.” This divine act between the Father and Son generated an infinite “Sensation,” a “Love, a Joy,” or the divine person of the Holy Spirit. While the pattern of this relational divine union in creation was an imperfect form of a perfect reality in the Godhead, it nonetheless explained the causality of mind and motion in creation as ultimately derivative “analogically” from the nature of God. “Thus from what occurs throughout the whole Creation,” Mather wrote, “Reason forms an imperfect Idea of this incomprehensible Mystery.”81 It was divine action that first and foremost explained causal effects in the created universe—an argument Jonathan Edwards would develop further with the help of occasionalist philosophy, as discussed in Chap. 5. Mather’s unpublished treatise on eschatology, the “Triparadisus” (1726–1727), displays the close interconnection between his empiricism, pneumatology, and evangelical vitalism. Asserting the existence of three stages of “PARADISE” for the deceased, Mather designated the second Paradise as a place for “the Departed Souls of Good Men,” which was neither a purgatory nor a state of soul sleep. Rather, these redeemed souls were fully rational and cognitive as they awaited the return of Christ to resurrect them and inhabit the millennial kingdom. Such an assertion, however, presumed the “Immortality of the Soul,” which he defended on the basis of evidential “Testimonies” of ghosts. The witnesses of these apparitions were, like the Goodwin children, reliable and sober-minded persons. Exploiting the polite discursive conventions of English learned culture, Mather thus recorded how an “Ingenious” and “well-disposed Young Gentleman, Mr. Joseph Beacon” saw and conversed with an apparition of his “very pale, ghastly, deadly” brother. In another case, a “virtuous and credible Woman” attested to the mysterious and loud rapping on the door that her daughter claimed was the spirit of a deceased acquaintance. Another “Gentleman” and “Worthy Friend” of Mather’s, “John 81  Mather, Christian Philosopher, 317−18; he bases this thought on George Cheyne, Philosophical Principles of Religion: Natural and Revealed… (London: George Strahan, 1715), 79−85. For Mather’s thought on the Trinity, see, among other works, A Christian Conversing with the Great Mystery of Christianity: The Mystery of the Trinity… (Boston: T. Green, 1709); Things to be more Thought Upon, 29−30; and Blessed Unions.

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Watts Esqr,” related a visit from his dead sister, who urged him to pursue “Serious Piety.” Mather was convinced these ghosts were the manifestations of “Humane Souls” that lived in the second Paradise, thus ultimately proving the soul’s immortality. These redeemed souls, by God’s enablement, took on “an Human Voice, or Shape” to make themselves “sensible” to the living. Mather then harnessed these proofs of the soul’s immortality for evangelical purposes, urging the need for conversion and vital piety in this life to enter the same heavenly Paradise that these souls inhabited after death: “The Promises of a Perpetual Vigour and Verdure to the Principle of PIETY in the Soul, do promise as perpetual a Continuation of the Soul.” The apparition of the sister exhorting her brother in piety proved especially authentic in Mather’s mind, as an evil and deceitful spirit would not do such a thing. These examples manifested how the souls that have been enlivened and regenerated by the Spirit with a “Living Principle” cannot cease.82 As Winship argues, while Mather believed in the reality of prodigies and interventions of angels and demons until his death, after 1700 he increasingly adapted how he spoke of them to the standards of British learned culture.83 However, as Mather tempered the specificity and intensity with which he discussed extraordinary supernatural phenomena, his efforts to prove the Spirit became more concentrated on the manifest vital movements of the soul. For Mather, the greatest purpose of the Spirit in creation was the saving of souls and uniting them to the divine life of Christ, and he hoped with eager anticipation for the Spirit to breathe his vitalizing life into all the world. If one accepted philosophical mechanism, Mather feared, there was no hope for divine renewal of humans from their fallen condition. However, if one accepted the Bible’s teaching and empirical proof of spiritual existence, then the imperative for men and women to pursue conversion and a vibrant life of spiritual growth was obvious. The recovery of the soul from sin was a thoroughly experimental undertaking. “Our nervous Parts are very sensible,” he wrote in the Christian Philosopher, and the “Impressions” made upon the brain via sense experience ultimately filtered to “Thoughts produced in the Soul.” Though created in 82  Mather, Triparadisus, 113−17, 120−21. For more on the intersection between experimental philosophy and ghost narratives in the early modern period, see Michael Dopffel, “Empirical Form and Religious Function: Apparition Narratives of the Early English Enlightenment” (PhD diss., Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, 2018), especially 94−103. 83  Winship, Seers of God, passim.

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God’s image, “Satanick Impressions” introduced sinful thoughts and actions into the soul and corrupted it. But the experience of God’s love and faith in Christ by the Spirit can revive it again. “O my Soul,” he exclaimed, “How worthy to be cultivated with the best Improvements! How worthy to have all possible Endeavours used for thy Recovery from the Depravations which thy Fall from God has brought upon thee!”84 Mather thus pressed upon his hearers the reality of their soul’s existence to dispel any temptation toward materialism: “My Friend, thy Body is but a Cabinet unto a Jewel … A SOUL, A SOUL which has many Incontestible Demonstrations (besides those of well-attested Apparitions,) of its Immortality.” Establishing the soul’s existence led to the logical conclusion that spiritual conversion was the most important pursuit of all. One must therefore experience “the Life of GOD” within and be “Quickned with Influences from Above, which Enliven us.”85 Men and women must be “Born of GOD” and “have Experience of a New Birth, which makes New Creatures of them … wherein they have a New Light, and make a New Choice, and lead a New Life.” The “Sanctifying Work of the Holy SPIRIT upon us” made the soul alive with new and vital capacities for spiritual actions.86 The Spirit implanted new life and new desires in the soul, which Mather likened to the “Embrio of the New Creature.” Having spiritual desires was like a new way of breathing, “Breath is a Sign of Life; when a Soul begins to Breath, it begins to Live,” he declared, and the “Soul that is Livelily Breathing after GOD and after the Blessings of the New Creature, is doubtless Enlivened from GOD.”87 Above all probabilistic arguments and external evidences, experiencing the Spirit’s vital life in the soul furnished the ultimate certainty of Christianity and of one’s salvation. “Tis no Rare thing” to be tempted “unto some Doubts, about the Truth of Christianity,” Mather asserted. But those who enjoyed the Spirit’s inner life had the greatest resource against infidelity: “The SPIRIT of GOD will Enlighten you, as a Witness in a more Immediate way, and fill you with a Lively perswasion, That the Christian Religion can be no other than True from the Beginning. The Holy SPIRIT will Irradiate you, and will Satisfy you. He will do it, not so  Mather, Christian Philosopher, 305−306.  Mather, Salvation of the Soul Considered, 3−4, 7. 86  Cotton Mather, Signatus (Boston: Daniel Henchman, 1727), 8. 87  Cotton Mather, Pia Desideria. Or, The Smoking Flax… (Boston: S.  Kneeland, 1722), 8−10. 84 85

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much in a way of Reasoning, as in a way of Intuition. He will so powerfully, and with such an Energy, bear it in upon you, That JESUS is The Saviour, and your Saviour.” To grow in this assurance, he advised the faithful to vitalize their piety: “Keep the Work of Grace in due Brightness and Vigour; Keep it a Lively Exercise.”88 Such certainty came not by reason but experience. The Spirit’s “Supernatural” and “Immediate Efficacy” on “the Minds of the Faithful” was an ineffable matter and yet perceptible with the senses. Outwardly the Spirit made the “Marks and Signs” of his indwelling “Visible unto us” by producing the fruits of good works, but inwardly the Spirit acts more “Immediately” with a “Mighty Light” for the believer to sense God’s habitation in the soul.89 The Spirit worked in an “Intuitive Way, even by a Vital Touch upon our Hearts” to fill the Christian “with a Perswasion” of God’s love.90 For Mather, these inner experiential movements of the Spirit in the soul yielded special advantages for reading Scripture.

“The Affectuous way”: Experientialism and Exegesis Mather’s blend of experimental philosophy and vital experimental religion greatly shaped the aims and methods of his biblical exegesis. It assured him that the empirical observations of the pious soul could confirm and elucidate the Word similar to how empirical science illuminated the natural world. In 1702, Mather first announced his “Biblia Americana” in his Magnalia Christi Americana. He had worked on it since 1693, and he could now give readers a foretaste of the “Soul-feasting Thoughts” he was setting for them “all upon one Table.” It was nothing short of a “Labour that would resolve to Conquer all things” for the service of the most valuable knowledge of all, as he gathered discoveries from the best thinkers across various fields of learning to “assist the Illustration of the Holy Oracles.” The “Biblia” would thus assemble “all the Improvements which the Latter-ages have made in the Sciences” along with insights from antiquities, biblical typology, prophetic studies, and world history. And for dessert, Mather promised to serve “in One Heap, Thousands of those Remarkable

 Mather, Christianity Demonstrated, 24−26.  Mather, Signatus, 14−16. 90  Cotton Mather, Deus Nobiscum (Boston: S. Gerrish, 1725), 8. 88 89

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Discoveries of the deep things of the Spirit of God.”91 By 1706, Mather had two large folio manuscript volumes prepared for publication, but he could not find a press willing to bring them to light.92 After a roughly five-year break, he continued adding new entries and tried again and again to find a publisher for his “Biblia,” though these attempts also foundered. His next major advertisements—one appended to his Bonifacius (1710) and the other a stand-alone publication titled A New Offer to the Lovers of Religion and Learning (1713/14)—tweaked the vision for the “Biblia” to cater more directly to the interests of his age. On the one hand, he amplified his appeal to the wider learned culture by promising engagement with current intellectual trends and invoking the authority of the experimental philosopher Robert Boyle. “An Age of Light comes on,” he proclaimed in A New Offer, as “Explications and Discoveries are continually growing” in manifold fields of learning. And as the “Celebrated BOYL” implored, the world needed “a Philosophical Genius, well furnished with Critical Learning, and the Principles of true Philosophy” to channel this amassment of new knowledge for the explication of Scripture. Mather could imagine nothing more “Serviceable” or “Entertaining.”93 Realizing it might seem presumptuous for an American far from the centers of European learning to designate himself for this task, he humbly conceded that most of the “Seeds” that produced this American-grown “Tree” (his “Biblia”), along with the “Fruits upon it,” came from Europe. It was as if Europe’s learned elite “Travelled Abroad,” and then “Returned Home” with “their Habit and Language having something of an American Change upon it.” For his educated readers, he compiled old and recent insights alike from diverse fields of knowledge, including philology, antiquities, typology, Talmudic literature, natural philosophy, chronology, geography, history, and chiliasm. Under natural 91  Mather, “General Introduction,” in Magnalia, unpaginated, paragraph 5; Magnalia Christi Americana (Books I and II), ed. Kenneth B.  Murdock (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977), 104. 92  Mather, Diary, 1:563−64. For the history of the production and failed publication of Mather’s “Biblia Americana,” see Jan Stievermann, “Cotton Mather and ‘Biblia Americana,’— America’s First Bible Commentary: General Introduction,” in Mather and Biblia Americana, ed. Smolinski and Stievermann, 1−61. For more on the dates of composition, see Smolinski, “Editor’s Introduction,” BA, 1:50−66. 93  Cotton Mather, A New Offer to the Lovers of Religion and Learning (Boston, 1713/14), 2, 1. Cotton’s son, Samuel, included yet another advertisement for the “Biblia” in his biography, Life of Cotton Mather (1729).

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philosophy he not only included studies on astronomy, botany, and anatomy but also “what relates to the Invisible World of Good or Evil Spirits,” evincing the dynamic interrelationship of biblical revelation, the new science, and mysticism in his thinking.94 On the other hand, Mather once again invoked the authority of experience, but this time to appeal to his readers’ religious interests. The twelfth and final heading of his New Offer guaranteed readers “some Essays to Illustrate the Scriptures from EXPERIMENTAL PIETY, or the Observations of Christian Experience.”95 This component was no tangential accessory to the other scientific categories. Rather, Mather viewed these experimental readings as the crown of his entire project and regarded their empirical nature as operating on a similar plane to observations from experimental philosophy. In this sense, his scientific and religious aims were closely intertwined. Mather in fact deemed the religious experiences of Christians as an equally valid and even more authoritative source of knowledge to illuminate and substantiate the Bible. Appended to the “Biblia” Mather included “An Eßay, for a further COMMENTARY, on the Sacred Scriptures,” in which he stated unequivocally, “That of all the Hermeneutic Instruments, with which we come to the Illustration of the Holy Scriptures, there is none comparable to that of Holiness, and Experimental Piety.” While observations of the natural world shed light on the history and context of Scripture, observations from religious experience yield deeper insight into the equally real and verifiable spiritual dimensions of the text. He wrote, We have call’d in the Help of all Sciences, and Histories, to Illustrate the Oracles of God. But we will now repair to another Fountain of Illustrations, which we may find in the EXPERIENCE of the Faithful. If prudent and pious Men, would carefully observe what they meet withal in their own Experience, and Record what they observe, to confirm the Truth of the Sacred Scriptures, we should often see them expound what they confirm. In the Observations of experimental Christians, we should have notable and glori94  Mather, New Offer, 10−14. For Mather’s techniques as a Bible commentator and compiler, see Rick Kennedy, “Historians as Flower Pickers and Honey Bees: Cotton Mather and the Commonplace-Book Tradition of History,” in Mather and Biblia Americana, ed. Smolinski and Stievermann, 261−76. 95  Mather, New Offer, 14. For more on Mather’s experimental hermeneutics, see Smolinski, “Editor’s Introduction,” BA, 1:172−74; Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and The Problem of Historicity, 381−411.

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ous Expositions of many Things contained in the Book of Truth; and we should have surprising Hints, of what the Spirit of Truth intended, in very many Passages, of which until Then, we shall not see the full Intention.96

Wishing to promote the intellectual validity and authority of religious experience, Mather assigned to it a scientific status that reflected experimental philosophy’s emphases on sober rationality, objectivity, observation, experimental trial, evidential data, and inductive reasoning. Thus, alongside the “Best Thoughts of our Times” based on experimental observations from natural philosophy, Mather promised to fill the “Biblia” with experimental insights that pious Christians “observed in and extracted from the Holy Scriptures that make wise unto Salvation.”97 The main source for Mather’s experiential exegesis was the Puritan and dissenting traditions. As he announced in A New Offer, the majority of pious explications came from “North-British Expositors, who with a penetrating and peculiar Search after Hints for Christian Practice, have been found worthy to Open many Books of the Bible.”98 As Sarah Rivett has shown, Mather participated in a wider turn within his Puritan tradition that blended post-Reformation theology with seventeenth- and eighteenth-­ century empirical philosophies to discern the evidences of God’s gracious intervention in this fallen world—what she terms “the science of the soul.” The testimonies of conversion required for membership in New England Congregational churches especially reflected this fusion, as pastors and members honed experimental methods of firsthand observation and witnessing, recording and collecting data, empirical trial, and logical induction to detect evidences of grace from a convert’s experiences and thereby authenticate one’s status as God’s elect.99 As discussed above, Mather’s readiness to apply experimental methods to trace supernatural phenomena took on a variety of forms. But in the final decades of his life, having adapted his talk about divine prodigies and diabolical manifestations, reason and experience, and supernatural cosmology to the standards of the wider learned culture, he increasingly directed his project of proving the Spirit to probing the soul’s spiritual experiences. This coincided with his heightened measures for promoting renewal of vital piety in global  BA, 10:797−810. Mather makes similar statements in his Manuductio ad Ministerium, 82.  Mather, New Offer, 12, 14. 98  Mather, New Offer, 14. 99  Rivett, Science of the Soul, 5, 172, passim. 96 97

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Christendom. Mather’s innovative extension of soul science to biblical exegesis was a key dimension of this turn. He had long invoked natural philosophy and evidentiary arguments to defend and illuminate Scripture, but ultimately the manifestations of the Spirit’s experiential workings on the soul furnished the greatest verifications of Scripture’s divine inspiration as well as the surest knowledge of its meaning. Parallel to Mather’s use of the discursive and social conventions surrounding experimental philosophy, he endeavored to establish trust in the reliability of experimental readings of Scripture based on the reputable piety of the source. He especially deemed the spiritual acuity of Puritan authors the most dependable resource for such experiential explorations of Scripture. In his Manuductio, he offered singular praise for the Nonconformist minister Matthew Henry, attributing the perceptiveness of his pious insights to the manifest workings of the “SPIRIT which dictated the Sacred Scriptures, operating on the Mind of the Commentator, in the Dispositions and Observations of Experimental Piety.” For similar reasons he commended the commentaries of Puritans such as George Hutcheson (1615–1674) on Job and the Minor Prophets, Joseph Caryl (1602–1673) on Job, William Greenhill (1591–1671) on Ezekiel, Jeremiah Burroughs (1599–1646) on Hosea, John Owen (1616–1683) on Hebrews, Thomas Manton (1620–1677) on James, and William Jenkyn (1613–1685) on Jude.100 The “Biblia” drew from many other Puritans as well, such as John Bunyan (1628–1688), Richard Baxter (1615–1691), John Flavel (1627–1691), and Cotton’s uncle Samuel Mather (1626–1671). Ultimately, however, the reliability of an experimental reading rested in the illumination and guidance of the Spirit, which every lay believer enjoyed regardless of education and social status. Reflecting the Puritan insistence on attaining firsthand knowledge of the Word, Mather thus wished for Bible readers not only to profit from the pious interpretations of others but also to produce new insights from their own experiences. In his Psalterium Americanum, Mather commended for devotional use the “Hints” and spiritual “Affections” pervading Matthew Henry’s practical reflections at the end of each paragraph in his commentary on the Psalms. He then urged readers to imitate Henry’s method and devise their own: “And every Holy Heart who by reason of use may have senses in Exercise to discern such things, may add unto it.”101 In Mather’s unpublished “Essay” 100 101

 Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerium, 83.  Cotton Mather, Psalterium Americanum (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1718), xxiv.

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appended to the “Biblia,” he advocated the methods of another pastor in Boston, his “Excellent Friend” Thomas Bridge (1656–1715), for others to imitate. Bridge “acquainted me with a Method used by himself, in his Course of Reading the Scriptures,” Mather explained, “which was, to Record such Points of his own Experience, as the Scriptures before him, led him still to think of, as Verifications thereof.” He then presented twenty-four experiential reflections on the Gospel of Matthew from Bridge’s notebook to illustrate for his readers how they too could document “Essayes to compare the Oracles of God with their own Experiences.”102 However, while he urged all believers to practice such experiential readings, he restricted the glosses he included in his “Biblia” to reputable ministers and scholars (though sometimes anonymously), perhaps wishing to boost their authority twofold. German Pietism was another significant source for Mather’s experiential hermeneutics. Francke and Böhme had sent Mather some of their writings, including Böhme’s 1708 Latin translation of Arndt’s Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum (1609), titled De vero Christianismo, and Böhme’s 1705 Latin translation of Francke’s history of the Pietist-run orphanage and school, Pietas Hallensis. Mather devoured Böhme’s collection of sermons, Enchiridion Precum, Ad Promovendum Solidioris Pietatis (1707), which he resolved to read “every morning” and translate paragraphs into English. He also studied some of Francke’s exegetical writings, particularly his edition of the Greek New Testament (he complimented the preface in his 1716 letter to Böhme), his Manuductio ad lectionem Scripturae Sacrae (orig. 1693, Mather worked from the 1706 London edition, for which Böhme anonymously wrote the preface and likely orchestrated its publication), and his Programmata diversis temporibus in Academia Hallensi publice proposita, among others. Mather also sent his own works to Halle (like his Magnalia), contributed financially to the Halle orphanage, and even tried (unsuccessfully) to recruit their assistance to publish his “Biblia.” After all, he told Böhme, the “most valuable

102  Mather, “Essay,” BA, 10:799, 803. Mather refers to these readings in his funeral sermon for Thomas Bridge, Benedictus. Good Men described, and the glories of their goodness, declared. … Whereto there is added, an instrument, which he wrote, when he drew near his End, and left as a Legacy to Survivors, relating some of his experiences (Boston: B. Green, 1715), 44.

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Things” in its pages were the insights taken from “such men as your Arndt, and Franck, and others of the like truest Erudition.”103 Mather found that these Pietist works matched his own experiential Christian vitalism and they helped him express its implications for interpreting Scripture. His Diary entry from October 13, 1717, indicates that he had been reading Francke’s Manuductio around this time, as he rehearsed central ideas from the work and applied them to his own reading practices: The holy Spirit of GOD who inspired His Chosen Servants to write the Oracles He has given us in the Scriptures, made heavenly Impressions on the Minds of the Writers, which raised Heavenly Affections in them. When I take a Passage of the Bible under my Consideration, I will nicely observe, what Affection of Piety appears in the Passage, and press after the raising of the same Affection in myself, and not count the full Meaning of the Text until I have done so. I would also, when I would more particularly propose to have my Mind suitably affected, fly to some agreeable Paragraph of the Scripture, with Essays to raise in my own Soul, the Affections which I may apprehend it written withal.

Like Francke, Mather wished to bridge the distance between himself and the ancient text of Scripture by experiencing the same Spirit-enlivened affections that inspired the biblical author’s words. Doing this not only edified his soul but also afforded him greater understanding of the meaning of a given passage. The exercise seemed especially apt for devotional use of the Psalms. “And I would for so sanctifying a Purpose employ the Book Psalms, with a singular Application,” he vowed in his Diary; “This Design must be pursued. It will be elsewhere more largely spoken to.”104 103  Mather, Diary, 2:332−33, 376, 411−13, 563. See August Hermann Francke, Pietas Hallensis, trans. Anton Wilhelm Böhme (London: J. Downing, 1705); Johann Arndt, De vero Christianismo libri quatuor: Ob praestantiam suam olim latine redditi; nunc autem revisi ac emendati, cura & studio Antonii Wilhelmi Boemi, transl. Anton Wilhelm Böhme, 2 vols. (London: J. Downing 1708); Anton Wilhelm Böhme, Enchiridion Precum, Ad Promovendum Solidioris Pietatis Studium Collectum (Londini: J.  Downing, 1707); August Hermann Francke, “Praefatio Nova De vera ratione tractandi Scripturam S.” in ΤΗΣ ΚΑΙΝΗΣ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗΣ ΑΠΑΝΤΑ (Leipzig, 1702); Francke, Manuductio ad lectionem scripturae sacrae Augusti Hermanni Franckii, S. Th. Prof. Hallens: cum nova prefatione, de impedimentis studii theologici (London: J.  Downing, 1706); and Francke, Programmata diversis temporibus in Academia Hallensi publice proposita (Halle, 1714). 104  Mather, Diary, 2:479−80.

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The idea resulted in the publication of Mather’s Psalterium Americanum in 1718, in which he combined his own translations of the Psalms with annotations that he largely culled and adapted from his “Biblia.”105 Mather drew heavily from Francke’s Manuductio in his Biblia “Essay,” and it is likely that he worked on it around the same time as the Diary entry. It is also possible that he then drew several passages from his “Essay” for his introduction to the Psalterium (or vice versa), many of which he also later included in his Manuductio ad Ministerium (1726). The sections in his Psalterium and Manuductio ad Ministerium expanded extensively on the sentiments reflected in his Diary entry and provided his lengthiest discussions about reading Scripture published in his lifetime.106 Echoing Francke’s Manuductio, Mather urged his readers to interpret Scripture in the “Porismatic way; Or, To Read, with a Holy care, to observe and educe, the Doctrines of Godliness” in each passage. The reader first deduced the lessons of piety from the text, then prayed over them, and finally in a state of worshipful ecstasy raised their praises with “lively Ejaculations” to heaven.107 Moreover, like Francke’s “Dileneatio doctrinae de affectibus,” Mather called for reading Scripture in “the Affectuous way.”108 According to Francke, this approach to reading gave rise to three levels of experiential harmonies between the reader’s affections (“affectus ejus, ad quem scribitur”) and (1) the biblical author’s affections (“affectus ipsius Scriptoris Sacri”), (2) the affections of the biblical character being written about (“affectus ejus, de quo sermo est”), and (3) God’s affections as the divine author (“affectus, qui ipsi Deo tribuuntur”).109 While an unregenerate reader had the capacity to identify the author’s affections on a theoretical level, only the spiritually reborn knew them experientially and could thereby share in the spiritual knowledge of the divine author, the Holy Spirit. As discussed in Chap. 2, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, increasing numbers of exegetes insisted that to understand the Bible, 105  See Maddux, “Editor’s Introduction,” in BA, 4:41, 52−53, 56−63. See also Cheryl Rivers, “Cotton Mather’s ‘Biblia Americana’: Psalms and the Nature of Puritan Scholarship” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1977). 106  Aside from the “Biblia,” the other work that discusses exegesis most extensively that he never saw published was his “Triparadisus” (1726/27), which was also taken largely from his “Biblia.” See Mather, Triparadisus, ed. Smolinski, especially 162−93. 107  Mather, Psalterium, xvii. 108  Mather, Psalterium, xxi. 109  Mather, “Essay,” BA, 10:805; see Francke, Manuductio, 105−134, especially 105, 126.

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readers must grasp the author’s historical and contextual situation and ultimately apply reason to identify the true meaning behind the supernatural wrapping—which typically contained a universal moral lesson. Francke and Mather agreed with the need for such historical and philological study, but for them the real key to understanding the author’s meaning rested in the reader’s ability to sympathize with the author’s affections and assume his psychological state and disposition. The only possible way to overcome the experiential chasm between the author and the reader lay in their common experience of the Spirit—the divine author and illuminator.110 This method of reading yielded significant implications for Mather’s theology of Scripture’s divine inspiration. Later in his “Essay,” Mather drew from a widely read work by the English theologian Robert Jenkin (1656–1727), The Reasonableness and Certainty of the Christian Religion, to demonstrate the doctrine’s rationality. Aside from the parts of Scripture dictated by the Spirit through prophetic inspiration, the Spirit also used “Humane Means” and infallibly guided the authors to write according to their knowledge of “Information in Matters of Fact, from their own Senses, or from the Testimony of others; and in Matters of Discourse and Reason, to argue from their own Observations.”111 With diligent study, contemporary readers would conclude that reason, factual evidence, sense experience, and observation confirmed the accuracy of what the authors wrote. However, another means by which the Spirit inspired Scripture was to stir the spiritual affections of the biblical writers. The Spirit guided them to write not only factual information according to history and science but also according to the Spirit’s own spiritual intentions and meanings. And like “Matters of Fact” in Scripture, contemporary readers could corroborate and testify to the reliability and authority of its teachings through their own experience as they sensed the very same affections that the Spirit inspired in the authors. At “the Time of the Inspiration,” Mather explained, the authors “had their Hearts Holily, Graciously, Divinely and suitably Affected with the Matter, which the Spirit of GOD employ’d their Pens to leave upon their Parchments.” Through careful observation, readers could perceive the “Evident Indications of such AFFECTIONS working in the minds of the  Tillmann, Bibelexegese beim jungen Goethe, 32−34.  Mather, “Essay,” BA, 10:813. From Robert Jenkin, The Reasonableness and Certainty of the Christian Religion [1698], 2 vols., 4th ed. (London: W.B., 1715), 2:32. 110 111

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Inspired Writers” throughout the Bible.112 Paraphrasing Francke’s Manuductio, Mather explained that after having identified these affections, the reader must “Labour after an experimental Acquaintance, with such Internal Tempers and Motions, as were in the Minds of the Holy Writers at the Time when they wrote the Scriptures.”113 These included affections such as “Flaming LOVE,” “Lively FAITH,” “Longing DESIRE,” and “Fervent ZEAL” for God, as well as a “Mighty HATRED” and “bitter SORROW” for sin, “Noble COURAGE” in holding to godliness, “Total DESPAIR” of self-reliance, “distressing FEAR” of God’s judgments, “Triumphant JOY” in Christ, and finally “Rapturous ADMIRATION” of God’s glory. Such affections formed the foundation of true piety, Mather asserted, and therefore Bible readers must read with the aim to enkindle these same affections in themselves by first observing them in the Word and then experiencing them in their hearts: Now, Christian, Discover which of these Affections may be most obvious and evident, in the Sentence…. But [sic] Restless until thou find the same Affections beginning to stir in thy own Soul, and marvellously to Harmonize & Symphonize, with what the Holy SPIRIT of GOD raised in His Amanuensis, at the moment of His Writing it. Be not at Rest until thou feel thy Heart-strings quaver, at the Touch upon the Heart of the Sacred Writer, as being brought into an Unison with it, and the Two Souls go up in a Flame together.114

The “Affectuous way” of reading Scripture served various purposes for Mather. For one, the harmony the reader sensed with the biblical author’s affections confirmed that the same Spirit who inspired the Word was at work in their own soul. This in turn authenticated one’s experiences and gave assurance of spiritual rebirth. At the same time, the reader’s experiences of the Spirit substantiated the divine inspiration of the text and thus Scripture’s divine authority. Mather referred to this interpretive process as an “Experiment.” The reader first brought themself “into the Best Frames.” Then after reading a passage and laboring to discern the “Affections of Piety” in it, they turned their soul to the Lord and attempted “to utter the Language of the like Affection.” If the reader had “become affected” by  Mather, Psalterium, xxi−xxii.  Mather, “Essay,” BA, 10:805. Mather, Psalterium, xxvi. 114  Mather, Psalterium, xxii−xxiv. 112 113

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this exercise, then they had succeeded in the experiment and could regard it as “an Infallible Mark of GOD upon thee, assuring thee of an Everlasting” salvation and heavenly inheritance.115 Mather utilized these reading practices to promote conversion. While he conceded Francke’s point that unregenerate readers could not attain affective knowledge of the Word, he nonetheless urged others to try anyway as a means of aiding salvation. Here Mather modified his Puritan tradition’s preparationism by focusing less on the steps preceding conversion and more on enlivening the affections of the soul. He still taught that unbelievers could never initiate their own conversion and must passively wait on the Spirit’s regeneration. Yet the person must also actively strive for saving faith by testing and cultivating their affections. The most effective and reliable experimental trial to this end was to measure and harmonize them with the affections of the biblical authors: A Soul pressing after a true Regeneration, can not readily take a more likely way to arrive unto a Blessed Experience of it, than by waiting upon the Holy SPIRIT of GOD, with proper Trials, whether He will not quicken such Affections in it, as are to be found no where, but in a Soul Regenerated, and Animated and Actuated from Above. Try, O Soul wishing for Quickenings from Heaven, Try, whether upon observing the Heavenly Affections, which are very observable in the Writers of the Word by which we are Born again, and upon Attempting with an Eye on Help from Sovereign Grace, to express the like Affections.

Such a test enabled the reader to detect whether the Spirit had implanted the “Inchoations of a Life” with new “Vital Operations” in the soul. Indeed, there was no other “Exercise” that “will more Prepare and Ripen Men” to partake of salvation.116 Finally, for those who already were regenerate, this experiential kind of reading opened meanings and layers of the Word that were otherwise hidden. Citing Philipp Jacob Spener (originally quoted in Francke’s Manuductio), Mather argued that by assuming the disposition of the

115 116

 Mather, Psalterium, xxvi, xxv.  Mather, Psalterium, xxiv−xxv.

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biblical authors, the reader gained new perceptions into the text.117 By engaging the Word with godly affections and vital piety, readers attained experiential knowledge of and communion with God. A proper reading of Scripture, Mather asserted, should constitute “an Intercourse” between the creature and God, involving “GOD uttering His Voice, and Lo, a mighty Voice!—unto you,” and “your Holy Returning of it, unto Him, in such Echo’s of Devotion!” Hearing God in the Word and communicating back was impossible without the new birth of the Spirit. Hence, as the “Excellent Franckius” expressed, an “Unregenerate Mind is poorly qualified for such an exercise as this,” since such persons lacked the capacity to identify with the spiritual sentiments of the inspired writers. This point held important implications for interpretive authority. Mather wrote, “all the Commentators in the World, are poor Things to interpret the Bible, in comparison of an Illiterate Christian, thus coming with a sanctified Soul, to make his practical Commentary.” Ultimately, experimental piety eclipsed all other “Hermeneutic Instruments for the opening of the Scripture.”118 By identifying and experiencing the Spirit-wrought affections of the biblical writers, a person could better perceive the Spirit’s intended meaning(s) of the text. Consequently, the discoveries and insights into Scripture based in the affective experiences of the lay, uneducated Christian ultimately proved more authoritative than the philological and scientific expertise of elite scholars. This reasoning made little practical impact on Mather’s own thinking about how hierarchies of social and religious authority bore on interpretive practices. There is no evidence that Mather was prepared to relinquish the necessity of a learned clerical establishment and yield to populism. But the fuller democratic implications of this religious experientialism would contribute to transformations in American life in decades to come when ordinary believers—unshackled from the creeds, establishments, learning, traditions, and hierarchies of Christendom systems—increasingly asserted 117  The Spener quote comes from Francke, Manuductio, 110−11. Mather quotes it on p. xxvii of his Psalterium and p. 81 of his Manuductio ad Ministerium, and more fully in his “Essay,” BA, 10:805: Præmissis pijs precibus privatis, in ipsis fontibus sacris, longum contextum et Affectum Scriptorum sacrorum, vel de quibus sermo est, in textu longâ serie, devotâque attentione observent, eumque affectum assumere studeant. Quo pacto, cogitationibus omnibus collectis, atque in rem præsentem ductis, fidei et Imaginis Divinæ varias notas, momenta, circumstantias, cum voluptate maximâ, nec non fructu uberrimo notabunt.” 118  Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerium, 80; Psalterium, xxiv, xxvi. See Francke, Manuductio, 115.

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the authority of the individual’s spiritual experience to interpret and preach the Word.119 But Mather could not foresee these tensions. His energies were focused on capitalizing on the vast potential of experiential religion to renew souls in vital knowledge and piety of the Word in preparation for Christ’s imminent return.

119  See, among others, Nathan O. Hatch, “Sola Scriptura and Novus Ordo Seclorum,” in The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History, ed. Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 59–78; George M. Marsden, “Everyone One’s Own Interpreter?: The Bible, Science, and Authority in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,” in ibid., 79–100; Perry, Bible Culture & Authority in the Early United States; and Noll, America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization.

CHAPTER 4

“Evangelical Illustrations”: Mather’s Experimental Exegesis

According to his son Samuel, Cotton Mather read at least fifteen chapters of Scripture a day since his youth.1 His interest in biblical scholarship also began early. He learned Greek and Hebrew as a boy, and for his master’s thesis at Harvard he tackled the debates over the origins and divine inspiration of the Hebrew vowel points in the Old Testament. As a pastor, he devoted considerable energy to exegetical studies for sermon preparation while continuing to immerse himself in the latest biblical scholarship. In 1693, he resolved to employ the fruit of his studies for a new commentary on the Scriptures titled “Biblia Americana,” a resolution he kept until the final months of his life. As recent studies have shown, Mather’s “Biblia” provides a window into some of the most significant intellectual currents of his time. Wishing to uphold his Reformed Protestant tradition’s affirmation of the Bible’s infallibility and authority, Mather responded to new challenges raised against the historicity, authorship, provenance, geographical accuracy, and philology of the Bible as well as questions about traditional conceptions of prophecy and typology—especially as it related to Christological interpretations of the Old Testament. At the

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 Samuel Mather, Life of Cotton Mather, 7.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. P. Hoselton, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment, Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44935-2_4

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same time, he pursued a constructive agenda to channel these new scholarly techniques and findings to expand knowledge of the Bible.2 It would be mistaken, however, to understand Mather’s engagement in these issues as a sign of secularizing trends while viewing his spiritual and experiential readings as an antiquated appendage of his Puritan past that would diminish as the Enlightenment ran its inevitable course of modernization.3 His experimental hermeneutic shared much in common with his Reformed exegetical heritage, but it was no mere vestige of a bygone dogmatism and traditionalism. Rather, Mather’s religious experientialism transformed amid new conditions in ways that galvanized his spiritual reading of the Bible. On the one hand, he applied similar conceptions of experience held by early Royal Society philosophers to conclude that observations from piety could confirm and illuminate the Bible. On the other hand, like many transatlantic awakened Protestants, he embraced a greater reliance on promoting experimental knowledge of Scripture to renew and reform Protestant Christendom. His confidence in the compatibility and reciprocity of experimental philosophy and experimental religion undergirded his wider exegetical project—at once scientific and evangelical—to multiply spiritual knowledge that enlightened the mind and engendered vital piety. This chapter examines Mather’s experimental exegesis in practice. His interpretations were characterized by considerable fluidity and imaginative fecundity, and they often reflected his own idiosyncrasies and the unwieldy variety of the sources he accumulated over three and a half decades. While appreciating this complexity, this chapter identifies salient patterns, features, and applications of his experimental readings. It first unfolds Mather’s personal engagement with Scripture, which entwined with his vision to compound and promote experimental knowledge of the Bible on 2  See the “Editor’s Introductions” to the critical volumes of the BA, especially Smolinski’s “Editor’s Introduction,” in BA, 1:3−189; Smolinski, “Authority and Interpretation”; Smolinski, “How to Go to Heaven, or How Heaven Goes?”; Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity; and the following essays from Smolinski and Stievermann, eds., Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana: Solberg, “Mather, the ‘Biblia Americana,’ and the Enlightenment,” 183−202; Dopfell, “Between Biblical Literalism and Scientific Inquiry,” 203−26; Wise, “Mather and the Invisible World,” 227−57; and Smolinski, “‘Eager Imitators of the Egyptian Inventions’: Cotton Mather’s Engagement with John Spencer and the Debate about the Pagan Origin of the Mosaic Laws, Rites, and Customs,” 295−335. 3  Michael Lee argues for this trajectory in Chap. 1, subtitled “Cotton Mather Naturalizes the Supernatural.” Lee, Erosion of Biblical Certainty, 25−51.

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a wider scale. It then examines distinctive features that distinguish his experimental hermeneutic from his Protestant Reformed exegetical tradition. The final half probes his experimental exegesis in action, looking closer at his efforts to inspire experiential acquaintance with Scripture’s teachings, and how his experientialism emboldens his spiritualization of the Bible in contrast to more naturalizing and historicizing trends. The details can become dense and dizzying at points. But in view of the bigger picture, his experimental interpretations altogether reflect a wider trend among eighteenth-century awakened Protestants to adapt their biblical practices to promote spiritual enlightenment in new circumstances.

“I readd it with Tears”: Experimental Reading in Mather’s Life and Ministry Mather’s experimental hermeneutic was first and foremost rooted in his personal religious devotion to the God of the Bible. In an early diary entry from February, 1684, Mather reflected during an intense time of meditation and prayer, “why do I beleeve the Scriptures to be the Word of God?” After he settled the matter in his mind, he took his Bible, knelt before God, and “professed unto Him, that I did embrace the precious Book, as His Word; resolving ever therefore to credit all the Revelations of it: that I would love it, prize it, converse with it, as His: that I would bee so aw’d by the Promises, and Threatenings and Histories of it, as to study a Conformitie unto the Precepts of it, while I have my Being.” He penned the diary entry around the same time as the visit from the angel who foretold the great things God would achieve through him—an encounter that helped bolster his confidence in divine revelation. Finding assurance in the Word, he wished to acknowledge its authority in his life and he read it accordingly with the affection and reverence it was due. This posture underlay his experimental readings and greatly shaped his interpretive methods. In August, 1685, Mather began a “Course of Reading the Scriptures, with such a devout Attention, as to fetch at least one Observation, and one Supplication, a Note and a Wish, out of every Verse.” He deemed this reading method among the “most holy and useful Practices” that the “Good Spirit of the Lord has taught mee, in the whole Course of my Life.” It filled his soul with truth and grace, inspired his worship, and yielded good works in his life. He especially observed how it enhanced his reading and

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singing of the Psalms, making it “a more delicious, entertaining, and profitable Exercise” than ever before.4 Throughout his life, Mather’s experiences reading Scripture assured him time and again of its power. On the morning of his wedding day, May 4, 1686, Mather rhapsodized about how the “Lord filled my Soul” with “unutterable Satisfactions, flowing from the sealed Assurances of His Love unto mee.” This deep sense of assurance extended beyond his status as an elect believer to a certitude that the Lord would also bless his marriage. At this moment, his “Heart was particularly melted into Tears.” Later that day, as he waited on the guests to arrive for the ceremony, he pulled out his Bible and began reading the account of the wedding at Cana in John 2. After conjuring up “one Observation, and one Supplication” from each verse in the passage, he “received further Assurances from the Spirit of my Heavenly Lord, that I was Blessed, and should bee Blessed by Him forever.”5 As in this instance, his reading of Scripture communicated more to him than facts about history and doctrine. It evoked spiritual feelings which gave rise to practical instruction for his situation, easing the nerves of a young man about to be married. About eight years later, Mather found himself in desperate supplication to God to preserve his “dangerously sick” daughter Katherine. As he resigned himself to her imminent death, he took his Bible and began to read. The passage that “accidentally fell under my View was, the Story of our Lords raising the little Daughter of the Ruler of the Synagogue” in Luke 8. “Amazed at the Pertinency of this Place,” he wrote, “I readd it with Tears, and then more Tears turn’d up into a Prayer; wherein I freely gave up this Child unto the Lord,” resolved that she would be a vessel of God’s glory whether she lived or died. “But I also begg’d for the Life of the Child in this World,” and he promised to teach her God’s ways if he preserved her life. “Immediately,” he recorded, “the Child fell into a critical and plentiful bleeding, and recovered from that Hour, unto the Admiration of us all.” Guided by the Spirit as he opened his Bible, Mather had entered the drama of Luke 8 and experienced the same grace and power of the Lord who healed a man’s dying daughter many centuries ago. Mather recounted notable parallels between the passage and his situation. Before Jesus healed the daughter of the synagogue ruler, he had healed another woman suffering from ongoing bleeding (which Mather’s 4 5

 Mather, Diary, 1:88−89, 103.  Mather, Diary, 1:126−27.

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daughter also endured). Identifying with the emotions of the parents in the story, Mather wept because like them he thought he had lost his daughter. When Jesus then healed the girl, however, it was immediate, and the parents were “astonished” (Luke 8:56)—a feeling Mather shared as he responded with deep “Admiration” at the Lord’s work in his own daughter’s sudden recovery.6 This way of engaging Scripture saturated Mather’s life and embodied what he meant by knowing the Word not merely by rational comprehension but by experiment. The stories of the wedding at Cana and of Jesus healing the daughter of the synagogue ruler became real and true to him in a vivid way as his own experiences of God correlated with what he read in these accounts. Mather’s biblicist experientialism also pervaded his public ministry. In a devotional tract for sailors, Mather enjoined the commanders to lead their crew in a regimen of spiritual devotions based primarily on reading Scripture: “Let the Word of God be Read, in the Hearing of your People: This, Ordinarily, Twice a Day; A Morning and an Evening Sacrifice.” He believed such a practice would yield marvelous fruits and reverse prejudices that branded sailors as hopelessly disreputable.7 His biblicist experientialism also shaped his stylistic and rhetorical devices, as he regularly pressed his hearers and readers to experience the spiritual and affective dimensions of the Word. In a sermon from 1690, he exhorted older men to go beyond their notional knowledge of religion learned in the catechisms to a vital “Experimental Knowledge” of Christ. He proclaimed with highly sensory language, “We ought so to know the Lord Jesus Christ, as to be very Really sensible of the Beauty and Sweetness that is in Him, and like that woman once,” referring to Mark 5:24–24 and Luke 8:43–48, “we should feel Vertue going forth from Him unto our Souls; or like Paul, find upon our selves the power of what is in the Lord.”8 This kind of vital and palpable knowledge of Christ arose chiefly from how one experienced him in the Word with holy affections. Mather urged others in his sermons and writings to practice experimental readings for themselves. In May 1686, he delivered a sermon from Ps 119:14 titled “Divine Delights.” Wishing for the hearers to cherish the Word as King David did, he preached, “Oh! that the God of Heaven  Mather, Diary, 1:179. Katherine lived until 1716.  Cotton Mather, The Sailors Companion and Counsellour (Boston, 1709), ii−iii. 8  Cotton Mather, Addresses to Old Men, and Young Men, and Little Children (Boston, 1690), 7−8. 6 7

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would effectually perswade every Person here, every Day without fail, to read a Portion in the Bible.” However, reading the Bible in itself was not enough. Growth in holiness and Christian practice hinged on how a person read with a view toward stimulating the heart and soul in rapturous worship. His instructions on how to go about this anticipated what he would later find in Francke’s writings on porismatic and affective reading: “But, I wish that you would read it, not customarily, but with suitable Observations, and Applications, and Ejaculations, during the whole Exercise.” He based his appeal on the evidential fruits from his own reading experiences: “I freely profess unto you, for my own Part, that all the Delights which I have ever enjoy’d for these three and twenty years in the World, are not comparable to those, which a Chapter in the Bible has brought unto mee.”9 Mather’s testimony to his experience served to both verify the realness and exemplify the rewards of experimental Bible reading. Although his experiences were ineffable and personal, he nonetheless trusted that the true saints could participate in like affections as they read the same Bible and were guided by the same Spirit. Mather filled a great deal of his “Biblia” with experiential readings that served to breed spiritual knowledge and affections in the regenerate reader not only for personal edification but also enjoyment. He advertised pious readings as “entertainments” meant to engage and delight the reader’s mind and senses. These glosses were meant to engender a spiritual aesthetic in readers, guiding them to experience the wonders and blissful pleasures in the passage that would otherwise be missed through a mere historical and mundane study.

“Observations of experimental Christians”: The Science of Spiritual Exegesis Mather’s labors to promote experimental reading of Scripture extended beyond his wish for furthering growth in personal holiness. He had a much larger project in mind that was at once apologetic, scientific, and evangelical. Wishing not simply to defend traditional doctrines but also promote true and vital Christianity, he compiled and presented the pious observations of Christian Bible readers as evidence of both the veracity of Scripture’s teachings and the supernatural workings of the Spirit. Furthermore, he applied the “data” gathered from these experiences for 9

 Mather, Diary, 1:127−28.

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the scientific objective of advancing knowledge of the Bible and the world. Finally, and ultimately, this design boosted his evangelical ambitions for the renewal of Christendom in vital piety. Mather devoted his “Essay, for a further COMMENTARY, on the Sacred Scriptures” that he appended to the “Biblia” to these ends. Confident that “the Observations of experimental Christians” yielded vast insight into Scripture’s spiritual meaning, he called on Christians to share their “notable and glorious Expositions” based in their pious experiences. “Alas,” he wondered, “why do no more Men of God præpare such Testimonies for the Lord, which they may leave behind them, & mightily advance the Interests of Holiness in the World? Such Testimonies would be rare Commentaries upon a great Part of the Bible; and incredible would be the Advantage of them.” To “pursue this Holy Design,” Mather proceeded to “exhibit, first a lesser, and then a larger Collection” of such experimental essays. The “lesser” consisted of reflections on the promises of God in Scripture that Mather claimed to have heard in a sermon. The insights were in fact his, likely derived from his Paterna, an autobiography addressed to his children. In the Paterna, he listed six “Instances” from when he was twenty-five years old in which he personally experienced God’s faithfulness to divine promises made in Scripture. He headed each “Instance” with “According to that Promise.” On the next line he cited a passage of Scripture that expressed the promise, and then he recorded a brief reflection on how he experienced the faithfulness of God to this promise. He copied these in the “Essay,” introduced them with a reflection on God’s promises from 2 Cor 1:20, omitted the headings “According to that Promise,” and between the Scripture citation and his pious reflection, he wrote “Experience.”10 From 2 Cor 1:20 he took the phrase “The Promises, YEA, and AMEN,” under closer consideration. He pondered how God’s promises often conflicted with worldly “Rules of common and carnal Prudence.” But the Christian’s experience found divine promises “every Day to be Infallible,” as one “meets with daily Occasion, to say, Amen, upon Gods, Yea, in His faithful Oracles.” The six “Instances” that followed demonstrated this assertion. For example, quoting Ps 91:15, “He shall call upon me, & I will answer Him,” Mather responded that “the Experience of the Christian” will say, “I have many & many a Time found, that my God hath not bid 10  BA, 10:797−98; Mather, Paterna: The Autobiography of Cotton Mather, ed. Ronald A. Bosco (Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1976), 93−94.

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me seek His Face in Vain; I have gott more by Prayer, than by any other Endeavour or Contrivance in the World.” Those who prayed to God knew by experience that God would answer, thus confirming the truth of the passage and confounding worldly wisdom that sought to attain the desired object by human means. He then recorded his “Experience” of Ps 37:5, “Committ thy Way unto the Lord, & He shall bring it to pass,” stating, “I never found my Affairs to prosper better, than when I have, with a Quiet Heart Resigned those Affayrs unto the Management of the Almighty God, who performeth all things for me.” By “Experience,” he also learned the truth of Prov 16:7 that when he prioritized his friendship with God, he more successfully attained peace with his enemies. He found by “Experience,” just as Prov 15:33 taught, that when he humbled himself he gained greater honor from others. The evidences that Mather listed to prove the veracity of these passages were not simply subjective religious sentiments. Several were observable and quantifiable, like his instance based on Mal 3:10, “Lett there be Meat in my House, & prove me now, saith the Lord, if I do not pour you out a Blessing.” Mather displayed by “Experience” that when he faithfully served “the House of my Lord Jesus Christ” (i.e., the church), he had greater tangible success in providing for the well-being of his own household.11 After these short essays, Mather recorded three “larger” collections of experimental readings from other sources. The first he transcribed from the “Memorials” of the deceased Boston minister Thomas Bridge (mentioned in Chap. 3). This collection consisted of twenty-four meditative “Verifications” of verses from the Gospel of Matthew based on Bridge’s “own Experience.” For example, Bridge found it reassuring to know the “Temptations” he endured in his own life were, generally speaking, “the same, that my Blessed Lord suffered” as recorded in Matt 4:1. Also, his own experience confirmed the words of Matt 6:24 (“No Man can serve two Masters”), as he observed that self-professed followers of Christ who conformed to the world in the end “forfeit much of their Reputation among those that are faithful.” Bridge believed the affectionate desire he felt toward his own children when providing for their needs empirically proved what Matt 7:11 taught regarding God’s readiness to provide for the prayerful requests of God’s children: “When I find the Yearnings of my Bowels, towards my Children under their Wants, I have a sensible Evidence, that Prayer evangelically managed is successful.” Moreover, his  BA, 10:797−98.

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own experience of God’s dealings corroborated the underlying principle of Matt 17:27 (“Take up the Fish, that first cometh up, and when thou hast opened his Mouth, thou shalt find a Peece of Money”). Jesus could have made the fish bring a more valuable object, like a pearl, but instead the fish only provided what was needed for the present situation. Bridge observed a similar method in “the Providence of God towards me,” as God has only given him enough provision for his present need. His experience of God’s ways toward him substantiated this biblical truth.12 Mather’s next collections came from two German sources: the first from the 1706 edition of August Hermann Francke’s Manuductio ad Lectionem Scripturae Sacrae, and the second from the Axiomata Philosophiæ Christianæ, written by Christoph Besold (1577–1638). From Francke’s Manuductio, Mather recorded quotes from Augustine, Luther, Spener, and Böhme’s preface.13 The passages were not experimental expositions of Scripture per se but rather meditative instructions for how to read Scripture in a spiritual manner. A single example from Böhme’s preface captures the heart of what the cluster as a whole conveyed. Addressing students of theology, Böhme pressed the need for divine grace to heal their sin-polluted minds so they could “truly taste the mellifluent eloquence of the Holy Spirit” in Scripture and “proceed from the vestibule of the letter and of history to the inner chamber [holy of holies] of the Spirit and the spiritual sense, which is hidden under the coverings of the letters.”14 The close connection between interior heart religion and perceiving the interior sense of Scripture resonated with Mather greatly, and he incorporated several such sentiments throughout his “Biblia” from a variety of sources.15 Mather continued to “exemplify certain Flights of Experimental Piety” from Besold’s Axiomata Philosophiæ Christianæ. He listed fifteen “Axioms” from this work, proclaiming that “If Ingenious & Religious Men would gett into this Way of Thinking, when they Read the Divine Oracles, and come unto them armed with a Disposition for such Thoughts as these, we  BA, 10:799−803.  The preface was written anonymously, so Mather did not mention Böhme explicitly. Also, as mentioned in Chap. 3, Mather used the same quotes cited here from Augustine, Luther, and Spener in his Psalterium and Manuductio ad Ministerium. 14  Translated from Latin, in Mather, “Essay,” in BA, 10:804; Böhme, Praefatio, in Francke, Manuductio, unpaginated. 15  See for example his glosses on Gen 4:12, in BA, 1:515; Prov 7:1, in BA, 5:179−81; Prov 25:11, in BA, 5:305; front matter to Canticles, in BA, 5:466−67; Matt 6:13, in BA, vol. 7 (forthcoming); Acts 10:34, in BA, vol. 8 (forthcoming). 12 13

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should soon see such Admonitions of Piety, laid up for us in these lively Oracles, as the World is hitherto little aware of.”16 Mather’s unqualified commendation of Besold is striking given his background. Born and educated in Tübingen, Besold was a well-known jurist. He also engaged in an influential circle of theosophic-esoteric thinkers who influenced the shapers of Rosicrucianism, a religious order that combined elements of mystical Christianity with hermeticism, alchemy, and teachings of the Kaballah. In 1635, however, Besold converted to Catholicism and devoted his legal writings against the Protestant cause. Omitting this information (or perhaps not knowing it), Mather praised Besold’s work for epitomizing the pious disposition with which Christians should read Scripture. Hence, referencing Luke 2:41–52, he reflected how Jesus’ separation from his parents as a boy in Jerusalem “offers consolation to those who are caught in the temptation of pusillanimity, distrust, and grief,” for if “Christ left his mother in such great pain, is it any wonder if this should happen to us?”17 Through the lens of piety, Besold penetrated deeper than a straightforward reading of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:9–13) to find out how the “seventh petition” (i.e., “deliver us from evil”) ultimately signified “the true abnegation of ourselves. Then man is delivered from all evil. Then he is rescued from himself. And we are the evil from which we strive to be rescued.”18 The focus lay not on praying for protection from the evils of the world or from Satan but on eradicating the evil from one’s own heart. As these examples show, Besold’s “Axioms” opened new practical and mystical layers of meaning directed to the interior life of the soul. The final examples Mather shared came from the anonymously written Contemplationes Idiotae de amore diuino.19 For Mather, the ultimate source of experimental insight into Scripture came from the Spirit, and for that reason he felt free to encourage readers to profit from the pious thoughts of anonymous writers who manifested the breathings of the 16  BA 10:806. Christopher Besoldus, Axiomata Philosophiae Christianae (2 vols., Strasbourg, [1616] 1626−28). 17  Translated from Latin in BA, 10:807, quoting Besold, Axiomata, 1:108−109. 18  Translated from Latin in BA, 10:807, quoting Besold, Axiomata, 1:114. Though not included by Mather, Besold originally wrote “(die wahre Gelassenheit [the true serenity])” after the first sentence in the quotation—a phrase often affiliated with the ideas of Quietism used by many German mystics as well as Pietists to signify a state of mystical tranquility. See Ward, Early Evangelicalism, 41. 19  BA, 10:809. Mather referred to the Contemplationes Idiotae de amore diuino… (Paris, 1519), which was later attributed to the fourteenth-century writer Raymundus Jordanus.

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Spirit—even if these sources came from other confessional traditions and distant eras. He wrote, “If one ascend higher into Antiquity, & converse with the Devotionary Flights, of the more Ancient Pietism, one shall ever now & then find a surprising Illustration, drop unawares from the Pens of the Devout Writers,” upon “whose Hearts, the Spirit that Indicted our Sacred Scriptures, was carrying on His Operations.” He played off the meaning of the title Idiota, meaning “simple,” to show how “agreeable” and “Neat” the pious illustrations of a “very simple” source can be. As the title indicates, these contemplations focused on the love of God. For instance, Mather quoted a reflection on the greatest commandment (Matt 22:36–40): “The love of God and the love of our neighbor; and although there are two commandments, the love is but one; because it is no other love whichever loves our neighbor and [that love] which loves you; otherwise it could not be for you.”20 Mather culled such pious experimental readings from such a range of sources throughout his “Biblia” to display the evidential workings of the Spirit throughout the centuries and across confessional and spatial boundaries. He collected and presented these readings certainly to provide his readers with new knowledge and insights into Scripture, but also to exemplify how they too—via the same Spirit who worked in the authors he cited—could open the Word through their own pious experiences, holy affections, and spiritual illuminations. These instances—along with many other entries in the “Biblia”— exhibit how Mather’s experimental hermeneutic mirrored the techniques and ideals of the empirical philosophy associated with the Royal Society by presenting religious experiences as evidence confirming a claim and as data producing new knowledge. This tactic served the apologetic purpose of defending the experiential religion of his Puritan tradition. Yet it also served a constructive agenda of religious enlightenment. Mather exploited the rising potential and authority of experience to promote his own ideals of piety and advance new possibilities for knowledge of the deep things of God in Scripture and in nature. It revealed God’s designs for creation, his great plan of redemption, the shadows of Christ in the Old Testament, the history and progress of the Kingdom of God, the interior life of the soul, and the impending apocalypse. At the same time, he realized that these experimental readings were increasingly at odds with learned cultures of his time. After listing his own experimental insights on the promises of 20   Translated from Latin in BA, 10:809–10, quoting Contemplationes Idiotae, cap. 29, p. 30.

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God in Scripture in his “Essay,” he conceded that “These and such Promises are meer Fancies, & Whimseyes, unto the foolish Unbeleever.” This remark carried various layers of meaning. For one, it underlined the inability of non-Christians to experience the spiritual realities of the Bible. It also suggested that the scandal and folly of the Christian faith confounded worldly standards of wisdom. Moreover, it displayed Mather’s awareness that Europe’s learned elite might dismiss such experimental and pious readings as philosophically unacceptable. However, while Mather wished to retain the uniqueness of Christianity in contrast to human philosophies, he also made use of the standards of his learned culture to boost the philosophical prestige and validity of experiential religion. The world might deem his experimental readings “meer Fancies,” but he could invoke “the perpetual Experience of Multitudes who Beleeve them” as factual testimony that “demonstrated them to be Faithful Sayings and worthy of all Acceptation.”21 Mather knew that these experiences were ultimately ineffable and thus restricted to regenerate Christians. However, this limitation did not stop him from trying to present them in conformity with the Royal Society’s standard of reproducibility for experimental verification, as he accentuated the multiplicity of firsthand testimonies in support of his readings. By presenting religious experience in this factualist-evidentialist manner, Mather made the ineffable something demonstrable and concrete. Moreover, throughout his “Essay” and the “Biblia” as a whole, Mather relied on the discursive conventions of his learned culture to boost the reliability and authority of his sources for experimental readings. While he expressed his wish for all believers to employ experimental piety to enhance their reading of Scripture, he primarily oriented his appeal in the “Biblia” toward those who were “Ingenious & Religious Men.” Such were also the sources he generally quoted, reflecting the standard assumption of his Anglophone milieu that elite, educated, white males were the most reliable truth-tellers.22 Mather added vital piety to these criteria. A learned gentleman who was also pious could be trusted most of all for the soundness of his experimental claims. Thus in his “Essay,” Mather put forward  BA, 10:799.  There were notable exceptions of course, such as his use of African early church fathers and educated females, as exemplified in his gloss on John 9:6 where he quoted Anna Maria van Schurman (1607−1678), a Dutch writer who promoted the education of women. She was also a mystic who embraced the esoteric teachings of Jean de Labadie (1610−1674). 21 22

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the testimony of his “Excellent Friend,” Thomas Bridge, based on Mather’s personal attestation of his trustworthiness. One could also trust the experimental readings of “the most pious Franckius” who was also an esteemed “Professor,” as well as the “Devout Writers” of the early church on the basis of their sound piety and learnedness.23 Mather applied this technique all over the “Biblia,” introducing his sources for scientific and experimental readings alike with designations such as “good Gentleman,” “Ingenious and Well-Disposed,” “the Learned,” “the Incomparable,” “an Honest and Pious Man,” “the Excellent,” “the Pious,” “the learned and pious,” “my dear and pious,” and so on.24 His use of these stylistic devices served both his religious and intellectual interests. They were designed to convey that his experimental readings were not the mystical fantasies of a religious enthusiast or an uneducated simpleton but rather the valid observations of a trustworthy gentleman.

“Led by Experimental Piety”: Distinguishing Features of Mather’s Experimental Hermeneutic Mather’s interest in experiential applications of Scripture was neither new nor singular, as the variety of sources he quoted in the “Biblia” show. Even much of the content of Mather’s experiential interpretations was relatively unexceptional. For the most part, they treated common themes of Christian living and reflected the practical divinity of his Puritan tradition. Nonetheless, the way he warranted and conceived the role of experience practically shaped his exegesis in distinct ways that differ from most sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestant biblical commentary. His absorption of certain ideals and conventions of early Enlightenment empiricism was one distinctive feature. But there are at least five other interrelated aspects that underpinned his pursuit of religious enlightenment by the Word. As explored further in this section, Mather’s experimental hermeneutic: (1) framed his organization and presentation of knowledge in his Bible commentary, (2) imbibed the language and concerns of the new piety and transatlantic awakened Protestantism, (3)  BA, 10:799, 803, 809.  For such examples, see Mather’s glosses on BA, 2:162, 2:879, 2:1013, 2:1030, 2:1107; BA 3:327, 3:422, 3:753; BA, 4:440; BA, 5:140, 5:179, 5:206, 5:340; Matthew 19:17, Luke 11:52 (in forthcoming BA 7); John 15:23, John 21:15, Acts 10:34 (in forthcoming BA vol. 8); Heb. 11:15, Rev. 11:13, in BA, 10:283, 578, and more. 23 24

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fostered greater fluidity in pursuit of the text’s spiritual sense, (4) incorporated mystical and esoteric traditions, and (5) relied on ecstatic communications from heaven to decipher the Bible’s mysteries on matters such as the nature and timing of the apocalypse. Organizing and Presenting Experimental Knowledge As discussed in Chap. 3, the inspiration for Mather’s design of the “Biblia” came from the vision set forth by the experimental philosopher Robert Boyle. While most other biblical commentaries were organized seriatim with commentary notes following a portion of Scripture, Mather arranged his “Biblia” in the form of questions and answers (still following canonical order). This organizational method facilitated his aspiration to enlarge his reader’s knowledge by amassing a variety of observations and discoveries to illustrate Scripture. He typically reproduced the thoughts of others for his answers, often without naming them and with loose paraphrasing— reflecting common practices of his time. But Mather’s ingenuity and creativity shone forth as the questioner, collector, and presenter. Mather aspired to prove himself a lettered and erudite Christian virtuoso by consolidating vast amounts of learning in one place for the convenience and edification of Bible readers. His stylistic techniques in the “Biblia” connected him with wider trends that wedded religion and enlightenment through new forms of media and cultural practices. Jonathan Sheehan has argued for such a “media-driven concept of the Enlightenment,” which focuses on the “places where the social, cultural, and intellectual horizons of religion and the Enlightenment fused” to transform religion into distinctly modern forms. Diverse philosophical projects such as Johann Friedrich Haug’s Berleburger Bibel (1726) and Pierre Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697) reflect broader developments in media culture that explain how religion and Enlightenment coincided to shape the “fabric of modernity” in the North Atlantic. While the distinct premodern philosophical and theological underpinnings of the “Biblia” should not be minimized, Mather’s incorporation of “new communication tools” and “techniques of data organization and storage” offers another striking example of how new medias reconstructed the transmission and experience of religious knowledge in the early Enlightenment era.25 He employed a  Sheehan, “Enlightenment, Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization,” 1076.

25

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dialogic style to cater to his readers’ varying intellectual capacities and to entertain them with enticing questions.26 Moreover, he presented the answers to his questions not so much as commentary notes but rather as (in terms he often used) observations, findings, insights, hints, clues, illustrations, keys, entertainments, essays, and discoveries. The aim was not simply to use exegetical tools to understand and apply the Bible’s meaning but also to amass observations for compounding knowledge and learning. By setting observations from experimental piety alongside other kinds of observations, religious knowledge functioned as an equally valid form of information as insights from history, natural and experimental philosophy, philology, and other fields. It conveyed that religious knowledge was not merely something one rehearsed in a creed, memorized in a catechism, practiced in ritual, or subjectively experienced. It was also factual information that completed the enlightenment and education of a true virtuoso and necessitated their pious and scientific contribution to its furtherance. Natural discoveries on their own left one’s knowledge of the Bible—and the world—incomplete. Mather’s gloss on Deut 32:13 illustrates his method of collecting both natural and spiritual observations to convey and expand experimental knowledge. Mather asks, “How did Israel, Suck Honey out of the Rock, & Oil out of the Flinty Rock?” He first offered a geographical insight from the prominent French Protestant biblical scholar Samuel Bochart (1599–1667). “Wild Honey,” he wrote, had “abounded in their Land; being found sometimes upon the Ground, sometimes in the hollow Part of Trees, & sometimes in the Clefts of Rocks.” In fact, the “Rock-Honey was the best.” Mather then turned to the ancient Roman agriculturist Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (4–70 AD) to confirm that olive trees (the source of oil) preferred rocky hills. Last, he recorded the observation of the German theologian David Chyträus (1530–1600) that just as the best wine “is produced upon the Rhine, below Mentz, out of the hardest Flints,” so “Olive-trees grow prosperously in stony & barren Places.” These observations not only verified the historical biblical record but also gave readers new information to illuminate the narrative.27 26  For more on Mather’s Q & A methods, see Smolinski, “Editor’s Introduction,” BA, 1:62−64; Minkema, “Editor’s Introduction,” BA, 3:7−8. 27  BA, 2:1234.

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Yet Mather added another experimental insight that served a similar purpose, but this time from a “Hint of Ingenious Piety.” According to this observation, “The Water that followed Israel from the smitten Rock, in the Wilderness,” referencing Exod 17, “may be here called, Honey and Oyl out of Rock.” The author equated the water from Exod 17 to the honey because water signified the experience of “Special Grace,” which like honey was a “mighty Sweetness” to one’s soul and came in “extraordinary Supply in an Extremity of Necessity.” The source of the water, the rock, was ultimately a “Notable & Sensible Type” of Jesus Christ. The New Testament made this typological connection explicit in 1 Cor 10:4, but the experience of Christians reinforced and even expanded it. The experience of “Faith looking to a CHRIST brings Honey & Oyl” with an “Incomparable Sweetness” unto “the Soul.” Knowing the rock was Christ, along with having experienced the sweetness of Christ’s grace in the soul, Mather could thus answer his original question and conclude that the honey and oil had flowed from the rock “by a Miracle.” And as “the Miraculous Wine produced by our SAVIOUR, was the Best Wine that could be,” he reasoned via reference to the wedding at Cana in John 2, it was likely that the water Christ gave the Israelites in the wilderness also had an “uncommon Sweetness” just “like that of Honey & Oyl.” Believers who have known the sweetness of Christ firsthand could better answer the question Mather posed. Mather already explained it with observations from geography and agriculture, but the observation of Christian experience elucidated it even further. Experimental Christians knew the reason why the Israelites could “Suck Honey out of the Rock, & Oil out of the Flinty Rock” was that Christ was the rock, who miraculously poured out on them his special and sweet mercies. Not only did this observation shed light on the true meaning of the passage, it also enlightened the reader to grasp future realities symbolized by the earthly types of honey and oil: “behold here a Figure of what the New Earth shall yield unto its Inhabitants.”28 By incorporating insights from piety in his accretion of observations, Mather conveyed that experimental religion was no relic of a benighted past but a valid knowledge-producing tool that furthered the quest for true enlightenment.

28  BA, 2:1234−35. Mather drew these quotes, interestingly, from the Arminian and Latitudinarian Bishop of Ely, Simon Patrick (1626−1707), A Commentary Upon the Fifth Book of Moses (London, 1700), 611−12.

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Experimental Piety of Awakened Protestantism Second, Mather’s experimental hermeneutic reflected the new piety of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century transatlantic awakened Protestantism in combining religious experientialism with devotional-­ oriented biblicism, conversionism, Christocentrism, interiority and holy affections, and a preoccupation with sensing and proving the vital workings of the Spirit. Mather found creative ways to discover these tenets of evangelical piety in all of Scripture while downplaying what he deemed adiaphorous doctrines. He gave special preference for readings that pertained to the soul’s interior life. For example, as he discussed the vibrant typological connections between Enoch and Christ (perhaps inspired by his uncle Samuel Mather’s Figures and Types of the Old Testament), Mather cited the Halle Pietist and biblical scholar Joachim Lange to interpret what Gen 5:22 meant by “Enoch walked with God” through the lens of spiritual experience: “To have and discern God very close by, and to imitate him, and to dwell with him in familiarity, prayer, and holiness.” Mather dwelt further on this depiction of Enoch to offer a pious typological interpretation about Christ, whose “whole Walk” in the world was consumed with “Thinking on God, ever Speaking of God, alwayes Doing for Him.”29 Like most exegetes, Mather interpreted the verse to mean that God took Enoch before he died physically. However, experimental piety opened further layers beyond the plain literal meaning, revealing Enoch as exemplifying the kind of intimate and vibrant relationship with God that awakened Protestants advocated, and culminating in a pious reflection on Christ. Mather’s experimental hermeneutic thus often functioned in circular fashion. Guided by experience, he read Scripture passages through the lens of awakened Protestant piety, and he then presented these pious interpretations and meditations as authoritative instructions from Holy Scripture. His commentary on Matt 6 shows a similar tactic. Mather turned to his “Excellent Friend, Mr. Boehm” for a “Sweet Paraphrase” on the Lord’s Prayer. Wanting to help readers reach “a little further” than a mere “Perfunctory” recitation of the prayer, he commended Böhme’s thoughts as displaying “an Instructive Instance of a Mind led by Experimental Piety, into the deep Sense of the Scripture.” Mather then quoted six “Notes” from Böhme to this end, such as the “Hint”: “Where you are [Father], there also is the heaven of the saints. Let your heaven be in us!” The key 29  “Deum habere et agnoscere præsentissimum, eumque imitare, et cum eo familiariter, iubiné et Sancte versari.” BA, 1:536. See Samuel Mather, Figures or Types of the Old Testament, 67−68.

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to accessing this “deep Sense” of the passage lay in the interpreter’s intimate experience of God’s presence in the soul. To give his readers this access, Mather spoke directly to their hearts with the hope that these thoughts “may suffice, O PIETY, to excite thy Considerations.”30 Mather’s conviction that experimental piety led the interpreter to the deeper spiritual meaning of the text resulted in interpretations that mirrored his own pious priorities—which also reflected those of other Pietists and early evangelicals. While Puritans such as Perkins and Ames taught readers to orient their piety according to the applicative implications of the literal sense, Mather often conscientiously allowed experience itself to determine the Bible’s true and fuller meaning as long as it did not transgress sound doctrine. To an extent, Mather’s experimental readings in the “Biblia” support Hans Frei’s claim concerning early evangelicalism’s contribution to the eclipse of biblical narrative and biblical realism. According to Frei, precritical interpreters fit their world into the biblical narrative and conformed their understanding and experience of reality to it (comprehending their understandings of history, nature, humanity, truth, ethics, origins and destiny, etc.). However, this relationship was reversed over the course of the eighteenth century through the rise of skeptical philosophies and historical-contextual hermeneutics, as well as the reactionary factualist-­ evidentialist apologetic methods by Scripture’s orthodox defenders. Consequently, increasing numbers of exegetes labored to fit the Bible into—and demonstrate its compatibility with—external historical narratives, scientific and evidential facts, and philosophical frameworks. In continuity with the Reformed tradition, Mather ultimately believed the Bible’s authority was self-authenticating. But he also participated in the evidentialist-­apologetic turn in his efforts to demonstrate the Bible’s harmony with the best and latest scholarship in natural philosophy and history. Mather of course believed he was showing how these findings merely discovered what the Bible taught all along. Frei further contends that early evangelical piety itself contributed to the eclipse of biblical realism by shifting the connective tissue between the Bible and present experience to the subjective “history of the soul’s conversion.” However, Mather espoused the realness of the biblical narrative. His experimental hermeneutic presupposed the comprehensive reality set  BA, Matthew 6:13. Mather paraphrased Böhme in Latin, “Ubi Tu es, ibi etiam sanctorum cælum est. Fac ut cælum tuum sit in Nobis.” From Böhme, Enchiridion Precum, 255−56. In October 1716, Mather wrote in his Diary that he was reading this work devotionally, which may give a clue as to when he wrote these thoughts. Mather, Diary, 2:376. 30

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forth in the Bible’s narrative as understood in a traditional Reformed Protestant covenantalist and redemptive-historical framework. And like other early evangelicals, his devotional engagement with Scripture exhibited striking continuities with “precritical” exegesis. Nonetheless, like other evangelicals Frei named (John Bunyan, George Whitefield, and John Wesley), Mather also frequently based the “crucial evidence” for the histories and teachings of Scripture “not external but internal to the soul” and its pious experiences. Spiritual experience itself often became the “narrative framework” and “meaningful pattern” by which the Bible’s teachings and narratives found signification and realness.31 In this way, Mather’s experimental hermeneutic anticipated a trajectory in evangelicalism in which the authority of personal spiritual experience often superseded confessional traditions and realist-narrative approaches as the dominant interpretive paradigm when engaging Scripture.32 Some educated evangelical ministers such as Mather and Jonathan Edwards labored to hold the authority of experiential exegesis in balance with that of an educated ministry working within a confessional tradition. But not long after Mather’s death, the evangelical awakenings set more dramatic transformations in motion when experiential-biblicist tendencies emboldened awakened believers to challenge these inherited structures and authorities.33 Pursuing the Spiritual Sense Third, Mather’s confidence in experience facilitated a more flexible conceptualization of the spiritual sense of Scripture. While he would not have welcomed an experiential observation that directly contradicted his tradition’s creedal orthodoxy, he often showed a greater interpretive fluidity and lenience for mystical interpretations than his Reformed heritage typically allowed. He justified this stance on the authority of “Incontestable Experience,” as illustrated by his remarks on a commentator’s mystical gloss on the word “usury” in Ps 15:5. Quoting his source, he wrote, 31  Frei, Eclipse, 152−54. For Mather’s participation in the turn to a more “representational-­ factualist model of biblical realism,” see Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity, 5−8, 45−51, 149−92. Bruce Hindmarsh challenges Frei and sees more continuity between early evangelical exegesis and precritical devotional traditions. See Hindmarsh, “Early Evangelical Bible Reading,” 32−54; and Hindmarsh, “Devotional Intent,” 223−41. 32  For a similar trajectory, see Gribben, “Owen and Early Evangelical ‘Biblicism,’” 73−90. 33  See Noll, In the Beginning Was the Word, 177−205; Winiarski, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light, 207−84.

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For the last Clause of, Not giving Money in Usury, my Author first allowing the Literal Sense … then soars up to a more spiritual Sense; an Usury, wherein a Man thinks, that by his own Vertues of Doings, he is profitable to God, and expects an Interest, and Increase, as of Right due unto him. After all the High Attainments in the foregoing Psalm, a Man must receive the Reward, not upon the Account of his own Desert, but still as the Free-­Gift of Grace.

Mather, however, wrestled with the legitimacy of adding this spiritual meaning on top of the literal. In typical Reformed fashion, he asserted the priority of the literal. And in step with his learned culture, he hesitated to speculate further than reason and historical-philological study would permit. Nonetheless, he ultimately sanctioned further spiritual meanings if they were warranted by experience, did not conflict with sound doctrine, and fostered vital piety. He continued, I will not pass my Censure on these High-Flights. I hope, the Lessons of Piety in them, have done me a great deal of good, whether the Text ha’s really given any good Foundation for them or no. I will only say this; They may serve as a Specimen of mystical Interpretations. Whether they will render my Reader, either Inclined to, or Distasted at, such a Strain of Interpreting the Scriptures, I cannot tell. But I will concede thus much. Lett the more Literal Interpretations forever stand undisturbed…. Nevertheless, if such things as are upon Incontestable Experience found in the Dispensations of Grace, toward the Spirits of Men, can be countenanced, by superadding more Mystical Interpretations to the Literal, I know not why they may not stand very well together.34

In contrast to Perkins and many other Reformed exegetes who insisted that the singular literal sense of Scripture was one and the same with its spiritual sense, Mather conscientiously distinguished the two. He grounded the validity of spiritual and mystical readings on the authority of religious experience, which he believed could discover multiple spiritual meanings. More meanings entailed greater knowledge and enlightenment. In response to recent exegetical trends that subordinated the spiritual sense to the text’s historical and philological dimensions—or dismissed it altogether—Mather asserted even more forcefully the existence of a hidden and mystical layer under the letter and history of Scripture that was only accessible via religious experience. Hugo Grotius for one, whom Mather frequently cited for historical insights throughout the “Biblia,” approached  BA, 4:399. Mather drew this from a work titled The Christian Warfare (London, 1680), written under the pseudonym of Theophilus. 34

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a book of Scripture such as the Canticles first and foremost as a historically contextualized nuptial poem or song referring to Solomon and his bride rather than an elaborate allegory of the relationship between Christ and the church. Jean LeClerc and the deists went even further in disenchanting the book.35 Working against such historicizing trends, Mather viewed his own labors to read Scripture spiritually as consistent with challenges Christians faced through the centuries. In his commentary on Canticles, Mather commended the example of Theodoret of Cyrus (393–ca. 460) for criticizing exegetes in his day who reduced the book to a mere “Description of the passionate Love of a Creature.” Like Theodoret centuries ago, Mather wished to read Canticles as “a Divine Work” that pointed readers to deeper spiritual truths. To this end, he commended the pious comments of one contemporary and one patristic author on how to read Canticles spiritually. The first came from Lange, a Pietist: “In the Song of Solomon, which is inaccessible to impure souls,” the author Solomon “describes souls which are holy and married unto eternal Wisdom and makes known their hidden and sweetest exchanges with God.” The second source was from “One of the Ancients” (whom Mather did not name), remarking that “the Reader of the Canticles had need employ Fervent Prayers for the Eyes of a Dove, that in the Reading of the Song he may have none but spiritual Views, & get beyond the Veil of the Letter, to discover the Mysteries contained in it.” Without interior piety of the soul, readers could never discern the spiritual mystery of the Songs of Solomon that lay veiled behind the history and the grammar. To see these spiritual realities, readers needed the “Eyes of the Dove,” that is, the Spirit’s illumination.36 35  See Stievermann, “Editor’s Introduction,” in BA, 5:20−23; Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity, 122−24. 36  BA, 5:466−67. See Theodoret of Cyrus, Explanatio in Canticum Canticorum, Praefatio, in Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Graeca [PG], ed. J. P. Migne (Paris, 1857–1866), 81:29–34. The quote from Lange was in Latin, “In Cantico, impuris Mentibus clauso, sanctas ac æternæ Sophiæ nuptas Mentes describit, earumque secreta et suavissima cum Deo Commercia, pandit.” Lange, Medicina Mentis, 75. Other early church fathers that Mather commonly cited and/or referenced in his “Biblia” include, among others, Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Tertullian, Origen, Justin Martyr, Basil, John Cassian, Irenaeus, Hilary of Poitiers, Clement, Gregory the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, Chrysostom, Eusebius, Cyprian, Athanasius, and Cyril of Alexandria. He also cited medieval mystics such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas a Kempis. Mather often quoted these sources secondhand from other commentaries, especially from the major anthologies of biblical interpretation such as Matthew Poole’s Synopsis criticorum aliorumque Sacræ Scripturæ interpretum et commentatorum, 5 vols. (London, 1669–1676; Frankfurt a. M, 1678–1679); and John Pearson’s Critici Sacri, sive, Doctissimorum virorum in SS. Biblia annotationes & tractatus, 9 vols. (London, 1660; Amsterdam, 1698).

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Mystic and Esoteric Sources Fourth, Mather’s experientialism inspired him to incorporate insights from various esoteric and mystic traditions in his “Biblia.” While his Puritan tradition long stressed interiority, experience, and tracing the workings of God in the world, Mather plunged further in hopes of illuminating Scriptural mysteries via mystical experiences and contemplations. As discussed in Chap. 3, his wish to establish the reality of the spirit world on quasi-scientific grounds drew him to various forms of esotericism, such as Paracelsian alchemy and hermeticism. These interests also found their way into the “Biblia.” Inquiring into the meaning of the verse “your Bones shall florish like an Herb” in Isa 66:14, Mather built a case for the immortality of the body. Drawing from the alchemist writers Jacques Gaffarel (1601–1681) and Pierre Borel (c. 1620–1689), he looked to the chemical “Experience, of a Vegetable called out of its Ashes” to speculate on how the ashes of a human body could feasibly resurrect at Christ’s return. Though Mather qualified these thoughts and voiced his “great Suspicion,” he nonetheless offered them as “Curiosities” that might unveil a mystery in the passage.37 Mather endeavored to improve and redeem mystical sources that deviated from Christian orthodoxy by revising them in accordance with evangelical truths. In his gloss on Luke 11:52, he asked for “Singular Thoughts” on the “Key of Knowledge” that Jesus had condemned the lawyers for holding back from the people. “Perhaps,” he wrote, “by some Illustrations upon this Key, you may fall upon a Key, that may lett you in to the Knowledge of notable Mysteries.” To this end, Mather proceeded to “entertain you with some Observations” from the Observationes Sacrae by the “learned & pious” Campegius Vitringa (1659–1722), a Dutch Reformed theologian and disciple of Johannes Cocceius (1603–1669). According to Vitringa, the “Key of Knowledge” that Jesus probably referred to was the “CABALA,” an ancient esoteric tradition within Judaism. By keeping this “Key” from the people, the lawyers hindered them from “the Kingdome of Heaven” because it pointed to the true Messiah. The “Summ of the Ancient CABALA” was the “Ten Sephiroth,” or “Numerations,” which Vitringa believed “had an Eye to the future Incarnation of the Messiah, and the glorious Mysteries” of Christ’s character. These ten principles in 37  BA, 5:854−55. Mather drew these insights secondhand from John Gregory, Notes and Observations upon severall Passages in Scripture, in The Works of the Reverend and Learned Mr. John Gregory … (London, 1665), 120–24.

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fact formed “the Figure of a Man,” one that looked a lot like Jesus. They consisted of a “Crown,” “Understanding” and “Wisdome” for the head, “Magnificence” and “Severity” for the hands, “Glory” for the belt, “Victory” and “Majesty” on the thighs, “Foundation” at the genitals (pointing to the deeper spiritual meaning of circumcision in reference to Christ’s incarnation), and the “Kingdome” or “Habitation” at the feet. Vitringa elaborated how Christ embodied each of these principles in his incarnation as the messianic king and savior. Mather readily employed such mystical “Entertainments” because it opened mysteries in the Bible and directed readers to pious meditations on Christ.38 Another intriguing example comes from Mather’s commentary on Eph 5:22–32. He asked, “Why should Persons in a Married Estate, consider so Attentively, as the Apostle doth advise them, the Union between the Lord Jesus Christ, and His Church, as a Mystery instructive to them in their Marriage?” Drawing from the famed Cambridge Platonist and Hebraist scholar Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), Mather turned to Neoplatonism and the Kabbalah to elucidate the question. He wished to shed light on the connection between earthly marriage and Christ’s spiritual relationship to the church by contemplating the metaphysical correspondence between the material and spiritual realms. According to “a true and deep Speculation of the Platonists,” he wrote, “Material Things are but Ectypal Resemblances and Imitations of Spiritual Things, which are the Archetypal, Original, and Primitive Beings of all.” Furthermore, citing Johann Reuchlin (1455–1522) and Francis Bacon, he added that the things of earth were not “meer Similitudes” of things in heaven but in fact bore “parallel Signatures imprinted by the God of Heaven,” thus making them share a like nature. This point found further corroboration from the Kabbalah: “Here lies the sounder Part of the Jewish Cabala; and hence an Hebrew Doctor, tells us, The several Worlds were printed with the same Print, and sealed with the same Seal; and that which receiveth the Sigillation here below, is like to the Shape & Form of those things above, which did stamp the Signature upon them.” Mather then applied this mystical cosmology to explain the parallel nature of human marriage and Christ’s marriage with the church: “the Lord Jesus Christ, and His Church, are, Sponsus et Sponsa 38   Mather, “Biblia Americana,” Luke 11:52. He drew from Campegius Vitringa, Observationem Sacrarum Libri Duo… (Franeker, 1689), cap. X, 114−46. For some other examples of alchemical, hermetic, and kabalistic ideas in the “Biblia,” see BA, 1:313−14, 825; 3:264; 4:339−40, 5:190−99, 241, 445, 463−65, 473, 704, 886, 911−12; 9:400, 491.

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Archetypi” (i.e., “archetypal husband and wife”), and “a Man and his Wife, are, Sponsus et Sponsa Ectypi” (i.e., “ectypal husband and wife”). The “Mysteries of the Sephiroth” in the Kaballah taught the truth of Eph 5 long ago when it discussed the “Marriage between Tipheret and Malcuth.” In the Kabbalah, the Tipheret was the sixth emanation of God and represented “The (male) Beauty,” and its counterpart, the Malcuth, was the tenth emanation of God and represented “The (female) Kingdome.” Like other Christian Kabbalists, Mather interpreted the marriage of these two emanations to portray Christ as the groom and the church as the bride.39 While Mather may not have believed that his occult sources arrived at such insights from authentic Christian experience, his vitalistic cosmology inclined him to view them as credible—though imperfect—resources. Even non-Christians could make discoveries of mystical realities through their experiences of the spiritual cosmos, and thus regenerate believers aided by the Spirit could utilize and improve upon their findings to probe deeper into Scripture’s evangelical mysteries. Mystical Communications A fifth distinguishing feature of Mather’s experimental exegesis concerns his fascination with and receptiveness to communications from heaven. His religious-experimental observations typically arose from pious affections, meditative contemplations, practical living, and confirmations of God’s promises in Mather’s life. However, at times they also derived from revelatory ecstatic experiences—something that many in his Reformed tradition would have deemed rank enthusiasm. As seen in Chap. 3, Mather amassed numerous empirical proofs of correspondences with the spirit world, such as his visit with the angel, the demonic assaults on Boston and Salem, his “Particular Faiths,” and testimonies of apparitions. These communications did not merely prove the spiritual realm but also provided knowledge of matters unattainable to natural means alone. This included mysteries in Scripture, like when Mather relied on a revelation from spirits to understand what Jude 9 meant concerning the contention between the archangel and the devil over Moses’ body. He invoked “a strange Conversation”—recorded by the prominent English nonconformist Richard Baxter—in which “Spirits” explained to “one Major Wilky” that 39  BA, 9:490−92. He drew these thoughts from a sermon by Ralph Cudworth, The Union of Christ and the Church in a Shadow (London, 1642), 3−7, 29, 33−34.

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the devil tried to drown the baby Moses in the river to prevent the “great Services” Moses would later achieve for God’s people, but the archangel intervened. Mather commended the account’s authenticity based on “its own Agreeableness.”40 Alongside direct communications with spirits, Mather also recorded several instances when his personal devotions reached a trance-like rapture as he sensed an especially intimate and ineffable communion with the Spirit. He relied on such ecstatic experiences to guide his interpretation of Scripture, especially his apocalypticism. In his 1691 treatise, Things to be Look’d for, Mather examined prophetic numerologies and signs in Scripture as well as historical events such as the fall of the Roman Empire and the dawn of the Reformation in 1517 to calculate the fall of the Antichrist (the Pope) and the imminent return of Christ in 1697. Aware that such predictions had critics and scoffers,41 Mather urged caution while also defending their legitimacy. The best aid for perceiving these mysteries in Scripture, he wrote, was the piety of the heart: “I confess, Apocalyptical Studies, are fittest for those Raised Souls, whose Heartstrings are made of a Little Finer Clay, than other mens; and it is to Them especially I take leave to say, There is a World of Sweetness in Diligent and Regular Studies upon the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus.” But piety alone could not reveal everything about the coming apocalypse. Interpreters also needed the supernatural assistance of angels: “the very Angels of Heaven themselves, afford unto Holy men that (like Them)” love to pursue “such Studies, a Communion that is hardly so to be uttered: Angelical Visions, Angelical Comforts, Angelical Motions, are in a peculiar, though in an Invisible manner vouchsafed unto such men of God.” Presumably speaking from personal experience of such angelic communications, Mather encouraged his readers to search the Bible themselves in this manner for such apocalyptic insights: “the Food of such Studies is marvelously scattered all the Bible over; so that you may almost every where, after some Digging, throw up some unsuspected Intimations of this kind, whereat you will find impossible to forbear crying out, with some Transported Soul, I have found! I have found!”42 Alas, Mather experienced great disappointment when 1697 passed. After his recalculation for 1716 also proved mistaken, he grew more cautious but he still continued to search for signs from the Word, the world,  BA, 10:430.  Smolinski, “Introduction,” in Mather, Triparadisus, 60−62. 42  Mather, Things to be Look’d for… (Cambridge, 1691), 46. 40 41

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and his soul for the coming heavenly kingdom. From 1693 until his death, Mather filled his “Biblia” with apocalyptic insights from a range of exegetes he hoped could furnish useful hints about the final days, including Puritans such as Joseph Mede (1586–1639) and Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680), Anglican clergymen such as Edward Waple (1647–1712), the Newtonian physicist William Whiston, and French Huguenots such as Pierre Jurieu (1637–1713) and Anton Grelot (fl. 1670).43 Mather penned four lengthy essays based on the “Varieties” of observations of “learned and pious Men” to shed light on the identities of the “two witnesses” mentioned in Rev 11. His main sources were Robert Fleming (1660–1716), Jurieu, Goodwin, William Hooke (1601–1678), and an anonymous source (perhaps himself). From them he recorded a variety of interpretive and quasi-prophetic speculations that connected the two witnesses with past, current, and future events in the history of the church to better determine the date when the antichrist would rise and fall and the heavenly kingdom would dawn. He expressed especial enthusiasm with the predictions of Jurieu, who identified the witnesses as the Reformed Christians in France who suffered persecution at the hand of the antichrist after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). But Mather later returned to this essay on multiple occasions to confess his disappointment that Jurieu’s predictions never came to pass—the dead French witnesses 43  The main works Mather used from these authors include, Joseph Mede, Clavis Apocalyptica (London, 1627), translated into English as The Key of the Revelation, searched and demonstrated (London, 1643); Thomas Goodwin, The Exposition of the Famous Divine, Thomas Goodwin, D.D., on the Book of Revelation [1639], in The Works of Thomas Goodwin, D.D., vol. 3 (London, 1681); Edwards Waple, The Book of the Revelation Paraphrased; with Annotations on Each Chapter (London, 1693), which was initially published anonymously; William Whiston, The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies (London, 1708); Pierre Jurieu, The Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies, or, The Approaching Deliverance of the Church (Amsterdam, 1686; London, 1687); and Antonius Grellotus, Prodromus In D.  Joannis Apocalypsin: In quo hactenus minùs bene intellectæ explicantur, dum Opus integrum paratur (Lugduni Batavorum [Leiden], 1675). See also Middlekauff, The Mathers, 320−49; Stephen J. Stein, “Transatlantic Extensions: Apocalyptic in Early New England,” in The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature: Patterns, Antecedents and Repercussions, ed. C. A. Patrides and Joseph Wittreich (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), 266−98; Maddux, “Editor’s Introduction,” in BA, 4:51−55; Clark, “The Eschatology of Signs,” and David Komline, “The Controversy of the Present Time: Arianism, William Whiston, and the Development of Cotton Mather’s Late Eschatology,” in Mather and Biblia Americana, ed. Smolinski and Stievermann, 413−38, 439−60; Jan Stievermann, “Reading Canticles in the Tradition of New England Millennialism,” 213−38; and Stievermann, “Editor’s Introduction,” in BA, 10:143–95.

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never resurrected, and no major earthquake as described in Rev 11:11–13 had occurred.44 Mather’s breakthrough came during a time of prayerful ecstasy in July of 1724, which he recorded in his diary: The glorious Lord has led me into fuller Views than I have ever yett had, and such as I have exceedingly longed for and asked for, of what shall be the true State of Things in His Kingdome. And I am now satisfied, that there is nothing to hinder the immediate Coming of our Saviour, in these Flames, that shall bring an horrible Destruction on this present and wicked World, and bring on the new Heaven, and the new Earth, wherein shall dwell Righteousness. I purpose quickly to write on these things. In the mean time, I would in all holy Conversation and Godliness, mightily endeavor to maintain such a Disposition of Mind, as the tremendous Descent of my glorious Lord, is to be entertained withal.45

This revelatory insight from God inspired Mather’s “Triparadisus” (1726/27), a major treatise (not published in his lifetime) in which he worked out the changes in his thinking with a new “Golden Key to Open 44  For these essays Mather principally drew from Robert Fleming, Discourses on Several Subjects: The First containing a New Account of the Rise and Fall of the Papacy… (London, 1701), 50−56; Jurieu, Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies, passim; Goodwin, Exposition of Revelation, passim; and William Hooke, A Discourse Concerning the Witnesses (London, 1681, published posthumously), 7−19. In response to Jurieu’s failed predictions, Mather wrote, “Alas, more than Thrice Seven Years have Rolled away, since we made these Conjectures; but what Progress ha’s been made in the Revival of the French Witnesses, whose Three Years & an Half, I was willing to begin, from the Slaughter of their Brethren the Vaudois, by the very same Dragoons, that had murdered them! Truly, None at all. Nor has the Fate of the Vaudois also since then, been very encouraging to our Conjectures. Tis true: Almost all Europe ha’s been ever since in an Earthquake, (except one or two short Intervals made by the Infamous Peace of Reswych, and the more Infamous one of Utrecht, which left the Witnesses Dead still, between the Shocks:) and how it will terminate, we do not yett understand.” In the first sentence of this paragraph, Mather crossed out “Twice” and replaced it with “Thrice,” showing he revisited this essay multiple times. BA, 10:562. It is important to note however that Mather did not always cancel out or revise apocalyptic interpretations in the “Biblia” that he later repudiated, hence we must interpret them largely in light of his final word on the matter before his death, his “Triparadisus.” One notable exception is Mather’s long entry in Rev. 22  in the “Biblia,” where he crosses out and revises a great deal of content to accent his new views, particularly on the universal conflagration. 45  Mather, Diary, 2:733. See Smolinski, “Introduction,” in Mather, Triparadisus, 32−33; Smolinski, “Editor’s Introduction,” BA, 1:58−59.

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the Sacred Prophecies.”46 In a dramatic break not only with his own positions but also his father Increase (now deceased), Mather no longer affirmed the future conversion of literal Israel as a necessary precursor for the return of Christ. Rather, the church as the spiritual Israel had replaced literal Israel. He also changed his mind on another matter that puzzled his calculations, namely the question of how and where Christ would pour out his burning fires of judgment on the earth. He formerly traced world events to decipher how Christ could burn places where the saints still lived, but the “fuller Views” he received from heaven taught him that Christ would raise all the saints still living on earth before unleashing the final conflagration. Another aspect of the relationship between Mather’s mysticism and apocalyptic hermeneutics was Mather’s eager anticipation of the restoration of the Apostolic spiritual gifts as the return of Christ drew near. After his first appended “Essay” in the “Biblia” that delineated his experimental hermeneutic, Mather penned “An Appendix. Containing Some GENERAL STORES, of Illustration; and a Furniture which will richly Qualify a Person to be a READER of the BIBLE.” The “Appendix” consisted of thirteen essays on a range of subjects, such as Ezra’s preservation of Scripture in the wake of the Babylonian captivity, Christ in the Pentateuch, the history and nature of ancient Jewish synagogues, the Sibylline Oracles, the Jewish Targums, the music and poetry of the Hebrews, ancient writing practices, and the second return of Christ. The first two essays are most pertinent for Mather’s experimental hermeneutic. The first, “Vates. Or, some Remarks upon the SPIRIT of PROPHECY,” contained lengthy excerpts from The General Delusion of Christians, touching the Ways of God’s revealing Himself, to, and by the Prophets (1713), by John Lacy (1664–1730). A London merchant and former member of Edmund Calamy’s Presbyterian congregation, Lacy attached himself to a group of French Camisard refugees around 1706 and embraced the religious enthusiasm of the French Prophets. He openly practiced prophesy, speaking in tongues, and other ecstatic exercises. In 1711, he claimed God told him to leave his wife and children for a sixteen-year-old prophetess who would give birth to the second Messiah (the scandal that ensued may explain why

 Mather, Triparadisus, 162.

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Lacy published his General Delusion anonymously).47 He translated writings by French Prophets into English, and he wrote his own treatises defending them and advocating the restoration of prophetic gifts, as exemplified in his General Delusion. As Catherine Randall has shown, Mather’s ecstatic religious experientialism, ecumenism, and apocalyptic curiosities attracted him to the Camisards since the late 1680s, and he directly supported and befriended French Protestant refugees in British North America such as the minister Ezéchiel Carré.48 Mather even wrote Lacy in January 1719 to express his admiration for the “sentiments of religion, even of that real and vital piety” that pervaded The General Delusion. Admitting that the way his Puritan tradition had treated so-called “Ecstatics” was both “barbarish” and “full of ignorance,” Mather disclosed his own anticipations for the restoration of the prophetic gifts: Long, long have I been of the opinion that the revival of Christianity, and the arrival of the Kingdom of God, must be by the return of the prophetic spirit unto us, in such angelical possessions as carried on the work of the Gospel in the primitive times, when our ascended Lord gave such gifts unto men, gifts which continued in the Church till towards the coming on of the dark three years and a half, for which long period it has not rained. And I know such in the world as do send up from the dust importunate cries unto Heaven, that the multitude of the Heavenly Host may come down upon us with their influences to accomplish what [appears?] otherwise to be despaired of.

Mather voiced concern that “evil spirits” may have misled Lacy, since so many of his prophecies had miscarried. But he nonetheless affirmed him as a pious brother: “I cannot but love the excellent piety which I suppose working in you.”49 While he did not accept Lacy’s ecstatic revelations undiscerningly, Mather’s experientialism combined with his longing for imminent and supernatural revival inclined him to sources that pushed beyond traditional Protestant conceptions of sola scriptura. 47  See J. Ramsey Michaels, “Introduction,” in [John Lacy], The Spirit of Prophecy Defended, ed. J. Ramsey Michaels (Leiden: Brill, 2003), xxv; Lionel Laborie, Enlightened Enthusiasm: Prophecy and Religious Experience in Early Eighteenth Century England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 230. 48  Randall, From a Far Country, Chap. 6. 49  Silverman, Selected Letters, 270−71.

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Presumably worried about Lacy’s controversial reputation, Mather concealed his knowledge of the author’s identity in the “Appendix” essay: “I have been in a singular Manner beholden to a Nameless and a modest Gentleman.” The excerpts Mather drew from Lacy detailed how the Spirit inspired the prophets and writers of Scripture both through the instrumentation of angelic beings and sensory communications. The Spirit used dreams which were “little short of Ocular Demonstration,” voices and other sounds “unto the Ear of Man,” also “visionary Manifestation[s]” to “shew Things that were beside the usual Course of Nature” such as Christ’s Transfiguration, and “supernatural Impression on the Sense of Tasting.”50 The following paragraphs then examined how the extraordinary miraculous gifts of the Spirit continued even beyond the Apostolic age into the early church, and how they waned but never totally ceased after the third century. Significantly, however, Mather entirely bypassed part four where Lacy defended the “Modern Opinions concerning PROPHECY,” and Mather concluded his essay with a more cautious take on the restoration of the prophetic spirit. Drawing from the Pietists Böhme and Francke, he submitted that if these gifts were to return, the saints must prepare themselves in love and humility so as not to abuse them.51 Yet Mather still remained more optimistic than Böhme and Francke, noting that “Joels Prophecy” (Joel 2:28) foretelling the “Effusions of the Holy SPIRIT” was not fully accomplished at Pentecost, and thus the church should anticipate a “much fuller Accomplishment” when the final days draw near. To ready themselves for these gifts, the saints must grow in vital piety: “Now, with relation to the approaching Age of Wonders, it is to be Remark’d,” that as “these MAXIMS of the everlasting Gospel prevailing in the World, will præpare it for marvellous Communications from the Heavenly World unto it; so in the Evangelical MAXIMS of Piety, we shall be furnished with a sure Guide, that our Feet may not stumble on dark Mountains, in the astonishing Things, that may descend upon us from Above.” Despite his openness to and eager anticipation for the restoration of supernatural gifts and prophetic revelations, he ultimately deemed the “Principle of Piety in the Soul” far more important than “all 50  BA, 10:818, 822−26. John Lacy, The General Delusion of Christians, touching the Ways of God’s revealing Himself, to, and by the Prophets (London, 1713), 37, 48, 59−60, 75. 51  BA, 10:847. Mather quotes Anton Wilhelm Böhme, The Character of Love (London: J. Downing, 1713), 30; August Hermann Francke, Programma De Donis Dei Extraordinariis (programma IX), in Programmata diversis temporibus in Academia Hallensi publice proposita (Halle, 1714), 208. He quotes Francke to drive a similar point in India Christiana, 73.

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the Gifts” of the Spirit. At the same time, however, his emphasis on experimental piety fed his enthusiasm for the miraculous gifts since he believed pious believers would be the most reliable and effective wielders of these gifts.52 Mather’s final position on the continuation of the prophetic gifts of the Spirit and their relation to his exegesis is thus highly ambiguous. On the one hand, he pronounced that afflatuses from the Spirit, the assistance of angels, and rapturous prayers not only guided his reading of Scripture but also revealed its hidden meanings, especially about the end times. Furthermore, as he anticipated the imminent return of Christ, he speculated with great optimism whether the Spirit might shower the prophetic gifts on him—a hope that attracted him to some highly unorthodox sources such as the French Prophets. On the other hand, he urged caution and stopped short of endorsing contemporary claims for the active use of spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues and prophesying.53 What is clear is that for Mather, until the kingdom of God arrived, the closest way to attain the kind of experiential and mystical knowledge he yearned for was to read the Bible with all the illumination and affection that vital piety  BA, 10:848−49.  One possible exception to this would be Mather’s ambiguous endorsement of the contemporary use of spiritual gifts on the mission field (a subject also treated by Lacy in his General Delusion). In his 1717 letter to the Pietist missionary Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg, Mather evinced the same caution mixed with optimism regarding the restoration of the spiritual gifts. Nonetheless, he urged Ziegenbalg to strive for such gifts in case the Spirit might grant them to enhance his missionary work: “But if by the Extraordinary Prayer with Fasting that shall be Necessary, and beseeching the Lord Thrice, and oftener, you shall ask of it of the Lord, Behold, You may be sensible of His Holy Spirits descending on you, who perhaps will supply you with such Gifts and Helps, as were conferred of old, and are to be Renewed in the Age that is coming on, and will procure for you an easy and speedy Progress in the work before you.” Mather, India Christiana, 73. As Jan Stievermann has observed, the Tranquebar missionaries must have expressed their confusion to Halle about the ecstatic millenarianism of Mather’s letter. Christian Benedict Michaelis (an associate of Francke), responded and counseled the missionaries to take Mather’s embrace of the “extraordinary gifts of the Spirit” (“Extraordinariis Spiritus Prophetici donis”) with “a grain of salt” (“cum grano salis”), and cautiously affirmed the possibility of miraculous occurrences in the final days. Archiv des Evangelisch-Lutherischen Missionswerkes/DHM 4/5b:13; draft version of the letter at Archiv der Franckeschen Stiftung, M 1 C 12:29. The same sentiment comes through in Johann Ernst Gründler’s response to Mather’s letter in 1719, which Mather translated and printed at the end of his India Christiana, 75−87. For more on these exchanges, see Stievermann, “Syncretism of Piety.” 52 53

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could yield. In the second essay of his “Appendix” after the section on Lacy, he penned “The SPIRIT, and PURPOSE, of the Sacred Scriptures.” It consisted of the published pages of The Stone Cut Out of the Mountain— his treatise from 1716 that detailed his maxims of piety—as an example of how piety best empowered and qualified a person to interpret Scripture to the fullest. He prefaced it with just a short paragraph that underscored this point: We are to consider the SACRED SCRIPTURES, as the Book of Life; and as an Holy Mountain containing that Rich Oar, from whence we are to dig the golden MAXIMS, of Living to GOD. An ESSAY to dig and run and shape these golden MAXIMS, well prosecuted, would serve a thousand of the greatest Intentions; and among the rest, it would qualify us to Read the Oracles of GOD, with such an Illuminated Mind, as would be better to us than cart-loads of other Commentaries. And such an Essay is going to be sett before us.54

Mather’s experiential exegesis magnified the already existing tensions between the Puritans’ commitment to guard the canonical boundaries of Scripture and their penchant to trace God’s providential hand and active interventions in creation for meaning and knowledge. Wishing to compound evidence of the spiritual world based on the authority of experience, Mather’s eagerness for mystical knowledge and prophetic gifts along with his willingness to derive apocalyptic insights from rapturous prayers and angelic communications ended up blurring and challenging the canonical borders that he believed his religious experientialism protected. Over the course of the eighteenth century, other forces—such as the diverging agendas of spiritual enthusiasts and deists—reacting to many of the same religious and intellectual conditions as Mather, would greatly compound the pressures on the canonical borders of Scripture with their own conflicting experiential claims.55 As explored further in Chaps. 5 and 6, the revelatory dimension of experiential religion that Mather endorsed— albeit cautiously and ambiguously—also became a highly contested matter between enthusiasts and their critics in the transatlantic revivals. Jonathan Edwards’ denunciation of revelatory and ecstatic experiences was a critical component of his own program of biblical and evangelical enlightenment,  BA, 10:850.  See Holland, Sacred Borders, Chaps. 2 and 3.

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in which he confined authentic religious experience to spiritual sensations and affections.

“Needs Experiment, rather than Exposition”: Practicing Scripture While it is impossible to determine a consistent formula for Mather’s experimental hermeneutic, the various pious readings scattered throughout the “Biblia” shared the underlying assumption that observations from religious experience constituted reliable knowledge that could elucidate Scripture’s spiritual meanings as long as they did not contradict orthodox belief. They also bolstered his simultaneously scientific and evangelical objective to improve and enrich the reader’s knowledge and strengthen certainty in the Bible’s divine origin and authority. Most of all, however, they served the practical aim to foster holy living, enliven the affections, and revive the soul. He pursued this objective not only by filling his commentary with devotional-oriented entries. He also tied the life experiences of Christians intimately to their reading of Scripture, and he encouraged experimental identification and worshipful participation in Scripture’s teachings through interpretive spiritual hymns and poetry. At the most basic level, Mather included numerous applicative reflections in his “Biblia” from the pens of reliable and holy “gentlemen” that embodied his ideals for experiential piety. Like other practical-oriented commentaries, such as Matthew Henry’s Exposition on the Old and New Testament, Mather wished to offer his readers devotional nourishment for their spiritual growth with meditations on Christ, the wonders of Scripture, holiness, and more. Among his favorite and most utilized interpreters for such readings was the Scottish Presbyterian minister George Hutcheson (c. 1615–1674). At the end of his commentary on Job, Mather wrote an essay based (somewhat loosely, as he admitted) on Hutcheson’s pious reflections: There are Expositors of the Sacred Scripture, who have applied themselves to find out the Hints of practical Religion contained in those glorious Oracles. The North-British Expositors have in this Way, deserved well from the Church of God; and among those, Mr. George Hutcheson is a Star of the First Magnitude. In the Expositions of that worthy Man on the Book of JOB, I have observed several Things, which I will here insert, as the Magis Curiosa of that elaborate and valuable Composure. You must excuse me, if

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the Language be not alwayes his; Tis enough, that I have been beholden to him for the Notion.

Mather then revisited each chapter of Job inserting pious thoughts from Hutcheson. Hence when Job says in his despair “My Bed shall comfort me” (Job 7:13), Hutcheson exhorted readers to notice how the “truly Humble, will acknowledge the meanest Mercy” from God in times of trouble. Mather also added lengthy sections of “Hutchesonian Hints” at the end of each Minor Prophet in the “Biblia,” which, as he noted in his commentary on Hosea, were designed “for the Entertainment of the Faithful.”56 Mather applied concrete and practical experiences from Christian life both to illuminate and substantiate the spiritual meanings of a passage. As Middlekauff wrote, “Cotton Mather experienced the world passionately,” and his “inclination was always to translate his private experience into his ideas, especially when that experience bore on worship and religious psychology.”57 His experiences also bore on his exegesis, as exemplified in his comments on Matt 5:9–10. He asked if there “be no Observable Connexion, between the Seventh and the Eighth Beatitudes”—i.e., between Jesus saying that both “peacemakers” (v. 9) and those “persecuted for righteousness’ sake” (v. 10) are blessed. Mather related a recent experience as confirmation of this connection. He had tried to reconcile two disputing parties, but one had a “Cholerick Temper” and “upbraided me” for “I know not what Breach upon him.” Feeling persecuted for playing the innocent and righteous “Part of a Child of God,” the episode “call’d to Mind” pertinent insights into the meaning of the passage— “that not only while we are doing the Part of Peace-makers, but even Because of our doing so; we may be Persecuted, & Reviled.” This episode revealed to him that Jesus did in fact mean to draw a connection between these statements in the sermon. It also gave him occasion to vent: “Such a Base World we live in!”58

56  BA, 4:184, 190, 296−322, quotes from pp.  296 and 303. George Hutcheson, An Exposition on the Book of Job: Being the Sum of CCCXVI Lectures, Preached in the City of Edinburgh (London, 1669), quote from p. 91. The sections on “Hutchesonian Hints” are at the conclusion to all the books of the Minor Prophets in the “Biblia,” taken from George Hutcheson, A Brief Exposition on the XII Small Prophets, 2nd ed. (London, 1657). 57  Middlekauff, The Mathers, 208. 58  Mather, “Biblia Americana,” Matthew 5:9−10.

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His gloss on Ps 131:3 provides another vivid example of bringing life experiences to bear on exegesis. Here Mather reflected how “Christian Asceticks well pursued & observed, would ever now & then afford unto us, a notable Illustration” of “the Intention which the Holy Spirit of God might have in dictating” the Scriptures. The term “ascestics” was typically applied to the early church, denoting the practice of rigorous spiritual disciplines such as prolonged periods of solitude, fasting, prayer, celibacy, and so on. Mather here furnished a contemporary example of how ardent prayer and supplication can elucidate Scripture, which he found in “the private Memorials of one somewhat acquainted with experimental Piety”: In one of my Vigils, I sang the CXXXI Psalm, on this Occasion. That Passage exceedingly affected me; My Soul is even a weaned Child; Lett Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth. I had been crying to God for the good Success of my Important Affair. In the Midst of my Cries, I was become as a weaned Child. I Resigned the whole affair unto the ordering of the Lord, & Resolved that I would be satisfied with whatsoever He shall order. If He will have it miscarry, my weaned Soul saies, I am content! But it was now powerfully sett home upon my Mind, That I might now Hope in the Lord FROM HENCEFORTH, to see a good Issue of the Matter.

Mather’s anonymous author was in fact himself. In the “Biblia,” he presented a modified version of his own diary entry from April 12, 1702, in the third person as if to suggest that this experience was not his own subjective whim but rather observable data that illustrated and verified the spiritual import of the biblical text. At the time of the diary entry, he was deeply worried about the publication of his church history of New England, Magnalia Christi Americana. However, after personally participating in the same prayer and affections of what he believed the Spirit had worked in the author of the Psalm, Mather achieved the same effect: trusting resignation, contentment, and hope in God. Furthermore, with the help of a spiritual impression on his mind, Mather added an extra dimension to his interpretation of the Psalm, believing it warranted his assurance that God would fulfill Mather’s hope in the way Mather wished (in the same vein as his notion of “Particular Faiths”). Later, as he reflected on the event in hindsight as he wrote the “Biblia” entry (which would have been any time after 1706 when he stopped enumerating his entries), he could confirm the soundness of his impression and consequently his

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interpretation, “And in a little while I did so!”59 In other words, he deemed the successful publication of his Magnalia as “a good Issue of the Matter,” and he then took this fulfillment of his hope as empirical validation of the Psalm and as insight into its spiritual meaning. Namely, those who hope in God, even regarding concrete matters of everyday life such as a book publication, will not be let down. Alongside using glosses from pious commentators and life experiences, Mather also pursued experimental readings by incorporating Christian hymns and poetry. He believed that the combination of vital piety and the aesthetic touch of poetry would simultaneously shed unique insight on the meaning of a passage and enhance the reading experience as an exercise in worship. This method followed the principle he voiced in his commentary on Canticles 2:3: “The Delight of conversing with Him, here described, needs Experiment, rather than Exposition.” Interpreting the poetic love between Solomon and his young bride to ultimately signify Christ and the church, Mather exhorted readers to perform the role of the bride in this verse and sit “under His Shadow, with great Delight,” so they too could say, “His Fruit was Sweet unto my Taste.”60 Indeed, the aim of Mather’s experimental hermeneutic was not simply to explain the meaning of a text but to entreat readers to experience it personally. He believed that hymns and poetry enabled Christians to personalize Scripture’s language as one’s own and perform its redemptive narrative, reflecting a widespread biblical practice among early evangelicals that Bruce Hindmarsh has termed “evangelical figuration.”61 Christian hymnody and poetry served the purposes of both exposition and experiment by engaging the senses and affections. In his commentary on Ps 148  in the “Biblia,” Mather observed how “poetical Flights do sometimes notably Illustrate the Sense of the sacred Poetry.” Noting the recent deluge of new versions of the Psalms that attempted this very thing (Mather would add his own with the Psalterium Americanum), Mather singled out a hymn by Isaac Watts that powerfully elucidated the Psalm “for Experiment.” The full title was “The Universal Hallelujah, Or, Psalm  BA, 4:743; Diary, 1:425−26.  BA, 5:530−31. This quote comes from Mather’s second round of commentary notes on Canticles, where he followed a more explicitly Christocentric and covenantalist interpretation based on Johannes Cocceius, Cogitationes de Cantico Canticorum (Leiden, 1665), in Opera omnia, vol. 2, Commentarius in librum Ijobi, Psalmos, Proverbia, Ecclesiasten et Canticum Canticorum, third edition (Amsterdam, 1701). 61  Hindmarsh, “Devotional Intent,” 223−41. 59 60

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148. Paraphras’d.” The fourteen stanzas in the poem corresponded to the fourteen verses of the Psalm. Watts placed Christ right in the first stanza: Praise ye the Lord with joyful Tongue, Ye Pow’rs that guard His Throne; JESUS the Man shall lead the Song, The God inspire the Tune.

The stanzas that followed paralleled the flow of the Psalm by calling on all of God’s creation to worship—from angels to the elements of the earth and skies, and from creatures to all humankind. The shift in content in the final two stanzas was especially noteworthy, as Watts exchanged Israel (v. 14) with “all the Nations round” as the key worshipping actors. By interpreting the Psalm in accordance with Christ’s Great Commission to make disciples of all peoples, Christians from all nations (the identity of Mather’s intended readers) could now experience the fuller spiritual import of the Psalm by participating in the summons to worship: Th’ Eternal Name must fly abroad From Britain to Japan; And the whole Race shall bow to God That owns the Name of Man.

Mather filled the “Biblia” with Christological expositions of the Old Testament. But for this passage, he believed a hymn conveyed the Christocentric meaning more effectively by prompting pious experiential identification and worshipful participation.62 Mather sought another “poetical Illustration” for the phrase “Remember thy Creator” in Eccl 12:1–7. Once again he cited Watts, who had 62  BA, 4:782−83; Isaac Watts, “The Universal Hallelujah, Or, Psalm 148. Paraphras’d.,” in Horæ lyricæ: Poems, chiefly of the lyric kind. In three books. … By I. Watts [1706], second edition (London: J.  Humfreys, 1709), 32−34. Mather corresponded with Watts on multiple occasions, and in the 1720s he defended the use of hymns in congregational worship against critics who argued for exclusive Psalmody. In 1711, Watts sent Mather the expanded 1709 version of his Hymns and Spiritual Songs (see Mather, Diary, 2:142), and Mather owned Watts’ collection of lyrical poems, the Horae Lyricae (1706). Mather likely used the second edition (or later) for this “Biblia” entry since he quoted an updated version with slightly different lyrics than the first edition. See Christopher N. Phillips, “Cotton Mather Brings Isaac Watts’s Hymns to America: Or, How to Perform a Hymn Without Singing It,” New England Quarterly 85.2 (June 2012): 203–21.

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“admirably elixirated his Poetry, with excelling Piety.” In this poem, also titled “Remember thy Creator,” Watts employed less emotive rapture and poetic exultation and instead focused on setting forth the sobering realities of life that pervaded the book of Ecclesiastes: Be wise, and make His Favour sure, Before the mournful Days, When Youth and Mirth are known no more, And Life and Strength decays. No more the Blessings of a Feast Shall relish on the Tongue; The Heavy Ear forgets the Taste And Pleasure of a Song….

The poetry communicated the thrust of the passage far more powerfully than a dispassionate elucidation of the philology or a moralistic application. The poignant reminders of life’s vanity and the inevitable decline of health and vigor were designed to impress on readers the danger of procrastination and the importance of remembering the Creator in their youth. However, it was the concluding stanza that dealt the forceful blow: Laden with Guilt, (a heavy Load) Uncleans’d and unforgiv’n, The Soul returns t’an angry God, To be shutt out from Heav’n.

Whereas the author of Ecclesiastes capped his reflection of life’s vanities with the words “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil” (12:14), Watts amplified the terror of the judgment with an evangelical urgency as a matter of eternal salvation. Not only will the frivolities of life prove vain and hollow in the end, but also those who disregarded their Creator for these vanities can expect eternal wrath crushed under the guilt of their sins. The implicit evangelical message was crystal clear: Ecclesiastes’ admonition to remember one’s Creator meant to turn to Christ in repentance today before it was too late.63

 BA, 5:454−55. Watts, Horae Lyricae, 43−45.

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Mather wrote his own poetry too and deemed poetry writing a means of spiritual growth.64 He devoted an entire section to poetry in his Manuductio ad Ministerium, telling students of ministry, “I cannot wish you a Soul that shall be wholly Unpoetical.” At the same time, he warned them not to substitute sweets for sustenance and advised treating such entertainments as “Sauce rather than Food for you.” Poetry should enhance their ministry and spiritual life rather than distract from it. He thus encouraged students to “try your young Wings now and then to see what Flights you can make,” as it “may sharpen your Sense, and polish your Style, for more important Performances.”65 As with so many other things, Mather wished to improve upon the practice of poetry writing by channeling it for spiritual ends. One end was the elucidation of Scripture. For instance, though he did not claim authorship, it seems he wrote his own poetry to illuminate Rev 5  in the “Biblia.” The first poem pertained to the “new song” in Rev 5:9. “Paraphrase it?” was his question. “Accompany me,” he responded, inviting readers to join in the hymn: Worthy Thou art, O Glorious One, To Know, to Do, to Show, All GOD has purpos’d to be done For His dear Church below. Since Thou hast Bought us by thy Death, From Death, due for our Sins, From the Lawes Curse, and the Lords Wrath, And Satans deadly Sins. From every Kindred graciously And from each Language there, Each People and each Nation, we Chosen and Called are.

64  For a collection of Mather’s poems, see Denise F. Knight, ed., Cotton Mather’s Verse in English (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1989). While this collection does not include his poetry from the “Biblia,” some of the poems are directly based on certain Bible passages and most contain several biblical allusions and ideas. For more on poetry and evangelical piety, see Wendy Raphael Roberts, Awakening Verse: The Poetics of Early American Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020). 65  Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerium, 39, 42.

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Thou Heav’nly Lion hast præferr’d Us to be Kings with Thee; Thou Heav’nly Lamb hast us præpar’d Priests of our God to bee. When Thou shalt the curst Earth Renew And Reign and Judge on it, Then we, O Lord most Just and True, On Thrones by Thee shall sitt.66

Singing the hymn was the best way for readers to understand the passage by experiment. It enabled readers to share in the drama and worshipful affection that the author of Revelation himself experienced as he moved from weeping to rejoicing when the Lion broke the seals of the scroll, and as he described a scene of tens of thousands of angels and beasts and elders surrounding the heavenly throne and singing the glories of the victorious Lamb who was slain to conquer sin and death for all peoples. Mather offered another participatory and experimental reading just a few entries later with a poetic song designed to illuminate the seven “Articles” of praise ascribed to the Lamb in Rev 5:12: “1. Power. 2. Riches. 3. Wisdome. 4. Strength. 5. Honour. 6. Glory. 7. Blessing.” Introducing his hymn in the answer section, he wrote, “We will endeavour to Paraphrase the Song. This brief Paraphrase may give us the Meaning of the Song, yea, bring us into the Comfort of it.” Mather involved his readers in the interpretation by inviting them to sing his hymn. Here is just one of six stanzas (the numbers corresponded to the “Articles” of praise): (5) Homage to thee all Creatures Pay; (6) Thou thy Great Fathers Brightness art. (7) Thy Thankful Saints thee Bless, and say, Take Thou all this! with all their Heart.67

This participatory reading not only taught his readers the meaning of the passage more effectively but also drew them to experience its spiritual comforts.

 BA, 10:492–93.  BA, 10:493–94.

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“More Grace than Greek”: Re-enchanting the Bible Spiritualizing Scripture’s Grammar, History, and Geography Another key practical manifestation of Mather’s experiential hermeneutic included his efforts to spiritualize the grammar, history, and geography of Scripture.68 This endeavor ran contrary to trends in biblical scholarship that prioritized historical-contextual exegesis at the expense of spiritual, typological, and prophetic readings. The exegetical approaches of figures such as Spinoza, Le Clerc, and the deists reduced Scripture’s explicative meaning to the limited and contextualized circumstances of the author and thereby created a chasm between the text and the existential situation of the interpreter. Wishing to bridge this distance and reassert the Bible’s authority and spiritual relevancy for contemporary life, Mather empowered the experiential capacities of the interpreter to identify with the biblical author’s pious affections and determine the hidden spiritual meanings intended by the divine author, the Holy Spirit. In compensating for such historicizing trends, Mather infused all genres of Scripture with spiritual meaning in imaginative ways that displayed the immense interpretive fluidity of his experimental hermeneutic. Jan Stievermann has shown how Mather’s experimental, figurative, and Christocentric readings of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes counterbalanced interpretive trends that historicized the Bible’s wisdom literature and reduced its contemporary relevance to virtuous principles for the domestic, political, and economic spheres (insights which Mather also incorporated in the “Biblia”).69 Mather did the same with the grammar, history, and geography of Scripture. Like other Bible commentators in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Mather showed a readiness to employ philological scholarship to improve upon the translation of the King James Version (many German Pietists were doing the same with Luther’s translation). He made use of several resources to this end, such as Jean D’Espagne’s Shibboleth: Or, the Reformation of severall Places in the Translations of the French and of the English Bible (1655), Robert Gell’s An Essay Toward the Amendment of the last English-Translation of the Bible (1659), and Charles La Cène’s An Essay for a New Translation of the Bible (1701).70 As Sheehan has argued, 68  For more on the relationship between Mather’s historical and spiritual exegesis, see Minkema, “Mather, Edwards, and Historical and Spiritual Exegesis,” 182−99. 69  Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity, 397−411. 70  See Stievermann, “Editor’s Introduction,” BA, 5:13−16.

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philological study of Scripture for some eighteenth-century scholars entailed a disentangling of textual scholarship from theology, which resulted in the remaking of the Bible as an ordinary text rather than Holy Scripture. For Sheehan, this step largely began with Halle Pietism under Francke and Württemberg Pietism under Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752), where a more rigorous historical and philological study of Scripture supplanted the dogmatic-driven exegesis of Lutheran Orthodoxy. Their intention was to establish a more purely biblicist foundation for church reform and pious renewal that was unshackled from the moribund, Aristotelian-based Scholastic theology. Yet the long-term unintended consequence of this early textual criticism led to the destabilization and decline of Scripture’s supernatural authority, as traditional theological frameworks no longer governed critical study of the Bible’s provenance, authorship, textual transmission, history, and translatability—a desacralizing trend that culminated in the German higher-critical exegesis that transformed biblical scholarship from the late eighteenth century onward.71 However, this trajectory certainly did not characterize the entirety of biblical scholarship, as many interpreters pursued critical textual study in constructive interaction with theological and spiritual exegesis, seeing no inherent incompatibility or threat to affirming Scripture’s divine inspiration and authority. As an educated awakened Protestant, Mather engaged in new critical forms of biblical studies hoping to utilize scholarly trends and insights for pious ends. He used philological scholarship to clarify apparent contradictions in Scripture, such as his explanation for the complicated chronology of Judah’s offspring. The account seemed to narrate the events of four generations within a twenty-two-year period, which Mather (with the help of William Whiston) clarified was based on a faulty understanding of the phrase “at that time” (Gen 38:1). Compared with other usages, it should be read as a “Particle of Transition” that in fact referred to “a great Space of Time,” thus resolving the difficulty.72 At the same time, Mather did not restrict the fruits of philological scholarship to the mundane. When Mather pursued a Hebrew or Greek word-study or attempted to improve a translation of the King James Bible to better reflect the original grammar, he often took the opportunity to  Sheehan, Enlightenment Bible, 59−67, 93−117.  Mather, BA 1:285−86; William Whiston, A Short View of the Chronology of the Old Testament, and of the Harmony of the Four Evangelists (Cambridge, 1702), 73−74. See also Lee, Erosion, 46−47. 71 72

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show how the new insight enhanced the pious import of the passage rather than undermined it. One of his main sources to this end was the Anglican scholar and former rector of St Mary Aldermary in London, Robert Gell (1595–1665). In a question on Deut 19:9, “On that If thou keep all these Commandments to do them?”, Mather noted from Gell that the word “Commandments” was singular in the Hebrew and thus “should be read, If thou keep all that Commandment to do it, which I am commanding thee this Day, To love the Lord thy God.” A host of other scholars have confirmed this point, Mather acknowledged. But Gell demonstrated the spiritual significance of the proper rendering, namely that it “leads us directly to that First & Great Commandment” that Jesus taught in the Gospels (Matt 22:36–40). Mather conceded that the “Gentleman ha’s his Whimsey’s & Errors,” but Gell’s pious “hint” in this instance was of great spiritual value: “This discovers Mans wonderful Apostasy from the Love of his God.”73 The updated translation clarified how the core of apostasy lay not in disobeying a set of moral and ritualistic commandments but rather in the heart’s disobedience to the greatest commandment of all: the love of God. In his commentary on Luke 10:31, Mather drew from Gell once again to inquire into the translation of “By Chance”: “Dr. Gell observes, κατα συγκυριαν [kata synkyrian] may be understood, from, κυριος [kū́rios], The Lord, as well as from, συγκυρειν [synkyrein], To happen. We may render it, cum Deo, or Secundum Deum, that is, By Divine Providence.” This translation, “By Divine Providence,” rendered the Greek the complete opposite meaning of “By Chance,” a change that Mather attributed to pious observation: “There’s Piety in the Criticism. It may be more Grace than Greek.”74 What Mather communicated in these instances was that if philological study was to be pursued to “fix” the words of readers’ bounded King James Bibles, then the result better bolster their pious engagement with infallible Holy Scripture rather than destabilize it. Mather similarly harnessed experimental piety to spiritualize the Bible’s geography, as reflected in his essay appended to his commentary on Num 33. While he was certainly not the first exegete to search for deeper religious meanings in the names of places in Scripture, his effort to ground its 73  Mather, BA, 2:1107; Robert Gell, An Essay Toward the Amendment of the Last English-­ Translation of the Bible (London: R.  Norton, 1659), 701−703. For further examples of Mather’s use of Gell, see Mather, BA, 1:666, 671−72, 942, 1053−54, 1080−81; 2:140, 180, 194−95, 274, 431, 885, 913, 1007−1009, 1048, 1070, 1160, 1177; 3:355; 4:292, 419−20, 448, 502, 553, 572, 668; 5:257, 278, 852; Deut. 6:6, 27:25, Luke 10:31. 74  Mather, “Biblia,” Luke 10:31; Gell, Essay, 337.

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legitimacy in experimental piety is noteworthy. “A Religious Gentlewoman,” he wrote, perhaps referring to his wife or one of his daughters, “desirous to Read the Thirty third Chapter in the Book of Numbers, with more Profit than it is commonly readd withal, desired me to Interpret the Names of the Places and Stations there mentioned; with some Instructions raised from them.” He then reflected on the warrant for such a pursuit. He admitted he could not say for certain that “the History” in this passage was designed for “giving these Instructions.” He also wished to distinguish his spiritualizing interpretations from “such Fancies as those of an Everard,” the Hermetic mystic and translator of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, His Divine Pymander, In Seventeen Books (1657). Nonetheless, Mather wrote, “it is for the Honour of the Sacred Scripture, and for the Glory of the Holy Spirit, who ha’s His Deep Things in every Part thereof, to make every Line & Word in the BIBLE as useful to the Intentions of PIETY as may be.” He held that it was perfectly justifiable to pursue his “Embellishment” of the place names in Numbers 33—even if it constituted nothing more than “a Sort of Serious Witticisms”—as long as the exercise resulted in “an Occasion for such Sentiments of Piety as the BIBLE is always a friend unto.” He further rationalized it on the grounds that “such Allusions” to the sentiments of his pious wordplays could be found throughout the Bible. Ultimately, the gains for piety tipped the scales in favor of the spiritual readings. There would be no harm done, only benefits: “The Reviving of such Pious Thoughts in the mind of a Reader, when he comes athwart those Names” would “be no disservice to that Holiness for which these Oracles are calculated.” This thinking reflected Mather’s vitalistic “spiritual Alchymie” (as discussed in Chap. 3) to improve all mundane moments and objects for spiritual advantage and worship. With his conscience cleared, he then proceeded to list forty-three names of stations in Num 33 that the Israelites traveled. For each one he provided a definition and a pious reflection. A handful of instances convey the drift: MIGDOL. A Towre. When I fly to the Scriptures, or to the Mercies, of the Glorious GOD, I am in a Migdol; The Strong Towre which the Righteous run unto. MARAH. Bitterness. How often am I brought unto the Waters of Marah, in Bitter Circumstances! A Glorious CHRIST well-applied, will Sweeten them.

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The Wilderness of SIN, or, Cold. When I feel how cold I am in my Devotions, and in all right Affections, I can’t but bewayl myself as in a Wilderness of Sin. How does the Love of many wax cold in this rueful Wilderness! EBRONAH. A Passing along. This World is a Transitory World; I am in it, but at Ebronah; Tis but a Passing along to an Eternal World.

Mather pursued this quest for spiritual meaning tongue-in-cheek, fully aware it would not meet the learned standards of historical scholarship. At the same time, he affirmed that these pious sentiments were very much real and met the standards of the Spirit, who infused all of Scripture with spiritual meaning for the edification of regenerate readers. By translating physical places of Scripture into spiritual places or psychological states, Mather made a historically and geographically distant part of Scripture very present and real to the reader.75 Another example of Mather’s spiritualization of historical accounts in the Bible was his “Evangelical Illustrations” of the Solomonic temple as described in 1 Kings 6. Once again taking liberties with his sources, Mather “digested a whole Book, written by an Honest & Pious Man,” namely John Bunyan’s Solomon’s Temple spiritualiz’d (1688). Mather loosely paraphrased seventy insights from Bunyan based on highly allegorical interpretations of the temple’s architecture and construction. Here are a few: XXXV.  There was one Pair of Stairs, which were Turning and Winding Stairs, that led from the First to the Middle, & so to the Highest Chambers. Methinks, one may see Repentance to Salvation, written upon them. The Christian keeps Turning, and Rising, till hee getts up into Glory. XL. On these Tables were laid the Instruments with which the Burnt-­Offering was to bee slain: the Ax, the Knives, the Hooks. These may be counted a Type of our Sins; They were the bloody Tools, that slew the Son of God. [Isa. 53.5.] These are in our Hearts; and they should bee laid to our Hearts.76

75  Mather, BA, 2:996–1001. It could be Mather drew selectively from various sources for this entry, but the content primarily seems to be original to him, as they reflect his spiritualizing wordplays in other places, such as his diary entry from February 1683/84, Mather, Diary, 1:82−83. 76  Mather, BA, 3:422−35, quotes from 422, 435, 425−26, 428, 429; John Bunyan, Solomon’s Temple spiritualiz’d (London, 1688).

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These instances embodied what Mather meant by “Evangelical Illustrations.” They allegorized seemingly ordinary objects in the Hebrew temple to brim with gospel truths about what it meant to experience God’s presence—not through a building but through Christ, and not through rituals but with the heart. “Under the Covers of the Letter” Mather invoked a wealth of historical, philological, and scientific scholarship throughout the “Biblia,” but he believed such studies were limited and could only illuminate the surface. An ocean of hidden spiritual meanings lay under the letter and history of Scripture, and experimental piety was the vehicle to access them. One of his favorite sources for spiritual observations was the German Pietists.77 He especially advocated the mystic Johann Arndt as an exemplar par excellence of an interpreter whose pious thoughts revealed secret meanings in the Word that were otherwise inaccessible. Mather wrote, Such Holy Writers of Experimental and Efficacious Piety, as the famous Dr. John Arndt, have much encouraged our Searches after the Administration of the Kingdome of God in the affairs of Piety living to God, as lying hid under the Covers of the Letter of the Scriptural Histories. And indeed, if we do not sinfully carry the Speculation so far as to kill the Letter, we may with vast Profit find the Spirit of Christian Piety covered under the Histories of the Bible.

According to Mather, God had imbued the Scriptures with a “Latent Sense, a Hidden Scope” which contained far “more in them, than we commonly or easily suppose.” Experimental piety was both the tool that dug below Scripture’s surface to the deeper spiritual layers and the key that unlocked its hidden meanings. In his commentary on Genesis, for 77  Aside from Mather’s appended “Essay, for a Further COMMENTARY, on the Sacred Scriptures,” he cited German Pietists throughout his “Biblia” for experimental readings, especially Johann Arndt, Anton Wilhelm Böhme, August Hermann Francke, and Joachim Lange. For references to Arndt, see Mather, BA, 1:322, 515; 3:439, 753; 2:1030; 4:469−70; 5:456, 469; 9:331; Hag 2:6−8; Matt 6:13, 19:17; Luke 9:58, 18:8; John 8:44; Acts 1:1. For Böhme: BA, 1:420, 5:480; 9:91, 164, 293, 566−67; Matt 6:13, John 21:15. For Francke: BA, 1:666, 691; 4:444; 5:179−81: 9:470, 523; Matt 17:21, Acts 10:34. And for Lange, BA 1:477−78, 492−93, 536, 672; 3:806; 5:139, 466, 576.

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example, Mather engaged with experimental observations from leading intellects of the seventeenth century to explain the scientific plausibility of the Noahic flood, including Descartes, Bacon, and Boyle. These thinkers were occupied with proving experimentally whether the element of air could immediately transform into water as a plausible explanation for the vast flooding. However, these matters could be debated days on end without ever arriving at the ultimate spiritual significations of the text. In contrast, Arndt’s pious experimental observations pierced straight to its spiritual import: “in reading of the Flood, our Arndt would have us think on the Flood of Heavenly Grace, which is to drown our Corruptions.” The same search after evangelical mysteries should be pursued when “reading the Life of Abraham,” the “Wars of the Israelites,” the “whole Mosaic Pædagogy,” and more.78 Mather turned to Arndt again for a “Further Glance upon this Mystery in the History of Cain and Abel” in Gen 4:12. Just before this entry, Mather offered two readings that opened other mysteries of the passage. He first cited the early church father Prosper of Aquitaine (390–455) to suggest that the struggle between Cain and Abel represented the differences between the Jews and the Gentiles. He then quoted the Dominican theologian Jacobus Naclantus (d. 1596), who perceived the brothers as typifying the contrast between the elect of God and the non-elect. Mather added a further reflection from Arndt because it connected the interior meaning of the text with interior matters of the soul. On the surface, the struggle between Cain and Abel was about sibling jealousy. But according to Arndt, it ultimately pointed to the “Strife between the Flesh and the Spirit in us.” The story “of Cain and Abel,” Arndt discerned, “is acted and repeated again and again in you. For what is that rivalry between each other, what are those traps of Cain’s, which he builds for Abel? What else, I ask, do they continually point to, but the unremitting struggle of body and spirit?”79 The key bridge between the story and the reader was the shared inner struggle for holiness against the flesh. Mather’s dismissal of mystical speculations that threatened to “kill the Letter” (the literal sense) evinced conservatism on the surface, but in practice his toleration was quite generous. He readily plumbed observations of religious experience to discover highly inventive explications of Scripture,  Mather, BA, 1:515, 322, 663−64, 515.  Mather, BA, 1:514−15. Mather quoted in Latin from Arndt, De Vero Christianismo (London, 1708), 1:32. 78 79

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often basing his justification on the pious bona fides of his sources. This fluidity is on full display in his interpretation of 1 Chr 9:17, where he enjoined a “Remark upon the Throne of Solomon?” Mather answered with a “Peece of Mystical Divinity upon it” from Arndt, which he counted “worth Transcribing” for “the Savoury & Precious Piety thereof,” and “because the Holy Spirit which exceedingly breathes in the writings of that Man, may have more of a reference to such Matters, in many Passages of our Bible, than we may be well aware of.” Through Arndt’s piety, the Spirit wished to reveal that the steps to Solomon’s throne represented “Six Degrees of Humility, in the Ascent whereof, we arrive anon to the Heavenly Solomon, the True King of Peace, and come to enjoy a wonderful Tranquillity.” The steps consisted of various ways of humbling the self, such as preferring the well-being of others before oneself, enduring contempt and censure, and befriending the lowly and despised. These practices in humility ended with the reward of exaltation, when the believer arrived at the heavenly “seat of Solomon” where the true King Jesus Christ sat enthroned in glory. Only here could a person attain peace and inner tranquility, or mystical Gelassenheit.80 The times Mather quoted Arndt in the “Biblia” included some of his fullest statements explaining and promoting the importance of experimental piety for understanding Scripture. Not fully satisfied with his early gloss from the mid-1690s on Ps 39:6, he later revisited the passage after finding a pious meditation from Arndt. He used the occasion to elucidate his experimental hermeneutic: It is most certain that Piety is the most valuable of all our Hermeneutic Instruments. Yea, that without an Impression of Piety upon them, all our Erudition, and so every Illustration that is attempted by us, will be but superficial. We find such a Writer as our excellent Dr. Arndt, from the Tendencies of Piety in his holy Mind, ever now and then enriching | us with an Illustration worth more than an Ingott of Gold. What pious Heart can be untouch’d in Reading his Hints upon Man compared unto, A Shadow!

He then drew various comparative reflections from Arndt likening man to a shadow to illuminate his original question about the verse more fully: “How and why, is every Man, at his Best Estate, altogether Vanity?” For one, just as the existence of a shadow is entirely dependent on the object  Mather, BA, 3:753; Arndt, De Vero Christianismo, 2:243.

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giving it substance, so is man dependent on God. Also, just as a shadow “evanishes at the Departure of the Sun, so is the Condition of Man, whenever the Lord withdraws the Light of Life from him.” Moreover, when the sun is nearer to an object, the shadow is smaller, and when it is farther away, the shadow enlarges—likewise, the closer a person draws near to God, the humbler he is, whereas distance from God makes a person more conceited and vain about their own greatness. Last, as a shadow’s movements depend on the object that made it, so are the motions of humans dependent every step upon God.81 Such reflections illustrated the vast potential of piety for uncovering a profusion of meanings in Scripture. Piety not only unveiled the spiritual meanings under the letter, but it could also illuminate questions about the literal meaning that neither the surrounding context of a passage nor philological and historical study alone could answer. Revisiting a perennial question of biblical commentators, “Why did our Saviour often chuse to call Himself, The Son of Man, rather than, The Son of God?” (Luke 9:58), Mather resorted to experimental piety: “How nobly will the Disposition & Contemplations of Piety, illustrate the Oracles of our God!” His source was once again Arndt, who located the answer in the “Love of God unto Man.” For Arndt, God “so much affected an Union with Man,” that the very “Son of God would become the Son of Man” to “make us the Sons of God.” Thus, Christ ultimately preferred the title “Son of Man” to signify his unity with and the divine love for man.82 One could not arrive at this insight by historical-­ contextual exegesis alone. Mather did not compartmentalize these pious reflections to the subjective realm but regarded them as real-life truths. He also believed these spiritual readings were corroborated rather than undermined by scholarly observation. In a question about King David from 2 Sam 23:15, Mather asked why he longed so passionately to “Drink of the Water of the Well of Bethlehem?” After offering considerations from Jewish and Jesuit exegetes, he concluded that the ultimate reason lay in David’s “longing Desires, for the Appearing of that Messiah,” who David knew would be born in Bethlehem. Thus the “Waters for which hee wished, were not Natural and Literal Waters, but the Spiritual Ones,” a “sublimer & a diviner Water” 81  Mather, BA, 4:469−70. Mather here drew from the English edition translated and edited by Anton Wilhelm Böhme for this quote, Johann Arndt, Of True Christianity (London, 1712−14), 1:514−15. 82  Mather, “Biblia Americana,” Luke 9:58. Arndt, Verus Christianismus, 1:433.

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that Jesus offered freely to those who thirsted after his salvation. Wishing to signify this desire for the spiritual water to come, David poured the natural water on the ground. A change of ink color indicates that Mather later returned to this entry to “confirm” his spiritual interpretation with a passage from A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem (1703)—a work of travel literature from the Oxford scholar Henry Maundrell (1665–1701) to which Mather often turned for geographical and ethnographic insights into the lands of the Bible. Maundrell’s firsthand account observed that the well lacked “any Natural Excellency in its Waters, to make them Desireable,” thus confirming in Mather’s mind his initial point that “Davids Spirit, had a further Aim.”83 While experimental piety alone could access the Spirit’s intention, Mather’s philosophical and pious commitments—namely his vitalistic cosmology and experientialism—also inclined him to utilize natural observations and scholarship to substantiate spiritual interpretations. Mather’s experimental hermeneutic illustrates how evangelical pieties took shape in dialogue with the early Enlightenment. He marveled at the advancements in learning and the amassment of discoveries in natural philosophy, history, philology, and so on, and he wanted desperately to maintain a central place for true religion in this age of progress. As new scholarly paradigms presumed the irreconcilability of the natural and supernatural and the epistemic limitations of the latter, Mather’s religious experientialism attempted to hold them together and reinforce spiritual knowledge. His vision to reconcile religion and enlightenment was different from groups such as the latitudinarians who tempered the mystical-experiential aspects of piety and the deists who revised traditional doctrines to meet radical rationalist standards. Like contemporaneous and subsequent generations of awakened Protestants, Mather employed religious experientialism to advance an intellectually constructive but also spiritually vital, conversion-oriented, Christocentric, and biblical enlightenment. To fulfill his scientific project of advancing religious knowledge and his evangelical project to revive piety in this context, Mather appropriated enlightened language and conceptions of experience and applied them to reading Scripture. The effects on his understanding of spiritual knowledge and exegesis were extensive and complex. He believed observations from experimental piety could illuminate the Spirit’s intended mystical 83  Mather, BA, 3:392−93; Henry Maundrell, A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter A. D. 1697 (Oxford, 1703), 89.

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meaning(s) below the surface of Scripture’s history and grammar, leading him to pursue its spiritual sense with greater fluidity than most in his tradition. His appropriation of new stylistic techniques, forms of media, and linguistic conventions of his learned culture shaped the ways he organized, presented, and authenticated religious experimental knowledge in the “Biblia.” He treated pious observations as evidential data that could substantiate and produce certainty in the Bible’s teachings, prophecies, and records. His elevation of experimental piety and minimization of doctrinal adiaphora drew him to a wide variety of sources in his quest for spiritual insights into Scripture: Protestants of various stripes, Puritans, Pietists, Catholics, early church fathers, medieval mystics, esoteric thinkers, Christian Kabbalists, French prophets, and more. He looked to daily experience, poetry and hymns that teemed with sensory and affective language, ecstatic raptures, and mystical-prophetic communications from God and angels to guide his readings. Like other Pietists and early evangelicals, his renewal-oriented vitalism inspired him to prioritize readings throughout Scripture that centered on Christ, interior heart religion, conversion, overcoming sin, and devotional and moral practices. This design lent itself to making the convert’s experiences a decisive interpretive lens and narrative framework to understand the Bible. Last, looking to bridge the present experience of Christians and the truths and realities of the Bible, he countered historicizing trends in biblical scholarship by infusing the Bible’s histories, geography, grammar, wisdom, and poetry with spiritual meaning and import—even if such meanings strayed far from the literal sense. While the generation of evangelicals who succeeded Mather would not imitate his commentary style, the interplay between pneumatology, experiential knowledge, and exegesis continued to fuel their programs for spiritual renewal in new circumstances—as reflected in the example of revivalist Jonathan Edwards.

CHAPTER 5

“Complex Spiritual Ideas”: Edwards, the Spiritual Sense, and Scripture

Like Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards’ biblical practices and religious experientialism formed amid momentous transformations in philosophy, biblical scholarship, and piety that magnified the experiential and epistefaceted engagement with the Bible has only recently received significant scholarly attention, giving rise to new insights and questions regarding his thought and his times.1 While he embraced the Reformed Protestant 1  Alongside the literature on Edwards’ exegesis cited in the Introduction, see also, among others, Robert E. Brown, “Edwards, Locke, and the Bible,” The Journal of Religion, 79:3 (July, 1999): 361–84; Brown, “The Bible,” in The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards, ed. Sang Hyun Lee (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 87–102; Brown, “The Sacred and the Profane Connected: Edwards, the Bible, and Intellectual Culture,” in Jonathan Edwards at 300: Essays on the Tercentenary of His Birth, Harry S. Stout, Kenneth P.  Minkema, and Caleb J.  D. Maskell, eds. (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005), 38–53; Brown, “Biblical Exegesis,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jonathan Edwards, Douglas A. Sweeney and Jan Stievermann, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021); 370−86; Douglas A. Sweeney, “Jonathan Edwards,” in Historical Handbook of Major Biblical Interpreters, ed. Donald K. McKim (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 309–12; Sweeney, “‘Longing for More of It’?: The Strange Career of Jonathan Edwards’s Exegetical Exertions,” in Jonathan Edwards at 300, 25–37; Sweeney, “Edwards and the Bible,” in Understanding Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to America’s Theologian, ed. Gerald R.  McDermott (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 63–82; Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009); Sweeney, “Exegesis,” in The Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia, ed. Harry S.  Stout (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 208−12; Stephen R.  C. Nichols,

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commitment to Scripture’s perspicuity, self-attesting authority, self-­ interpreting nature, the analogy of faith, and a historical-redemptive framework, he joined Mather in being among the first in British North America to engage seriously in the early developments of critical biblical scholarship. According to Robert Brown, Edwards’ use of historical-­ critical thinking in service of a more evidentialist-oriented apologetic conflicted with his tradition’s affirmation of Scripture’s self-authenticating authority.2 At the same time, Stephen Stein and Stephen Nichols, among others, have argued that Edwards’ innovative notion of the regenerate soul’s spiritual sense produced a subjective and arbitrary spiritual hermeneutic that diverged from the Protestant Reformer’s insistence on Scripture’s singular literal sense.3 Others such as Douglas Sweeney and David Barshinger offer a more moderate assessment, recognizing some idiosyncrasies but ultimately seeing overwhelming continuity between Edwards and his Reformed predecessors. For Sweeney, Edwards “majored in the literal sense,” and the thrust of his biblical interpretation can be categorized into four methods that place him in striking continuity with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Reformed Protestants: canonical (interpreting with an eye to the unity and interconnectedness of the entire “Revelation,” in Oxford Handbook of Edwards, 165−82; David P. Barshinger, “Hermeneutics,” in Edwards Encyclopedia, 288−90; Ryan P. Hoselton, “Jonathan Edwards, the Inner Witness of the Spirit, and Experiential Exegesis, Jonathan Edwards Studies, 5:2 (2015): 90−120. 2  See especially Brown, Edwards and the Bible; and Lee, Erosion of Biblical Certainty, 73−81. Some authors regularly consulted by Edwards for historical, geographical, and linguistic insight into Scripture include, among others, Johann Buxtorf, Abraham Trommius, John Taylor, Ephraim Chambers, Arthur Bedford, William Warburton, Humphrey Prideaux, Pierre Bayle, Nathaniel Lardner, Edwards Wells, Jeremiah Jones, and Theophilus Gale. Stein suggests Edwards may have learned of some of these authors through Mather’s recommendations in the Manuductio ad Ministerium, WJE, 24:70. Robert Brown estimates that about one-third of roughly 700 titles listed in Edwards’ “Catalogue of Books” notebook (which he kept from 1722 to 1757, now published in WJE vol. 26) bear on historical and critical study of the Bible. Brown, “The Bible” (2005), 94. 3  Stephen J.  Stein, “The Quest for the Spiritual Sense: The Biblical Hermeneutics of Jonathan Edwards,” Harvard Theological Review 70 (1977): 99–113; Stein, “‘Like Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver’: The Portrait of Wisdom in Jonathan Edwards’s Commentary on the Book of Proverbs,” Church History 54 (September 1985): 324–37; Stein, “The Spirit and the Word: Jonathan Edwards and Scriptural Exegesis,” in Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, ed. Harry S. Stout and Nathan O. Hatch (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); “Edwards as Biblical Exegete,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Edwards, ed. Stephen J.  Stein (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 181–95; Nichols, Edwards’s Bible.

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Bible), Christological (exploring how every passage points to Christ), redemptive-historical (demonstrating the Bible’s grand narrative of salvation from beginning to end), and pedagogical (mining applicative meaning for the believer’s faith and practice).4 Edwards’ understanding and use of Scripture certainly reflected significant continuities with his Protestant exegetical tradition, yet the contexts of the early Enlightenment and early transatlantic awakened Protestantism shaped it in important respects. While his appropriation of more historical-­ critical and evidentialist thinking is one way he adapted to new circumstances, his far greater concern was the philosophical validity and nature of spiritual knowledge, as well as his evangelical urgency to awaken New England by it. Like Mather and other churchly oriented awakened Protestants (as opposed to separatists), he wished to revive his tradition— not repudiate it—and he utilized recent developments in experimental philosophy in service of this agenda. His encounters with the intellectual trends of his day thus augmented rather than blunted his promotion of a vital spiritual knowledge of Scripture by the Spirit. Whereas Mather’s experientialism reflected the language, methods, and conventions of early Royal Society philosophers such as Robert Boyle, Edwards’ thinking mirrored the empirical philosophy of John Locke. His interest lay more in the relationship between sense experience and the cognitive processes of spiritual knowledge rather than the accumulation of experimental observations. Modifying Lockean sensationalist psychology, he held that spiritual sense experience furnished the mind with spiritual ideas in a similar manner to how the natural senses generated and informed one’s mundane ideas of natural matters. Based on this axiom, Edwards probed the contrastive epistemological capacities of regenerate and unregenerate persons in hopes of establishing and furthering authentic spiritual renewal. His use of sensationalist psychology bolstered his endeavors to uphold the validity of spiritual knowledge against both philosophical skeptics and critics of awakened religion. At the same time, it emboldened his efforts to enliven the unawakened and counter enthusiast errors, as he meticulously applied 4  Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete, 48, x, and chapters 3−10 unfold these methods. For more on Edwards’ redemptive-historical interpretation, see Kenneth P.  Minkema, “The Other Unfinished ‘Great Work’: Jonathan Edwards, Messianic Prophecy, and ‘The Harmony of the Old and New Testament,’” in Jonathan Edwards’s Writings: Text, Context, Interpretation, ed. Stephen J.  Stein (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), 52–65; Barshinger, Edwards and the Psalms; Nichols, Edwards’s Bible; and Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete, 53–75, 137–59.

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it to distinguish the true essence of spiritual knowledge from mere doctrinal, propositional, speculative, and even mystical knowledge. Planted in the early stages of his educational formation and ministry in the early 1720s, his religious experientialism especially governed his thinking and techniques as an influential preacher and theologian during the religious awakenings of the mid-1730s and 1740s. This chapter examines Edwards’ efforts to promote evangelical enlightenment grounded in the interactive nexus between the Spirit, the Word, and spiritual sense experience. Perpetuating a central maxim of his Reformed heritage, Edwards held that one could only achieve certainty in belief and true spiritual knowledge of God through the Spirit regenerating, indwelling, and guiding the soul to understand Scripture’s divine realities experientially. However, he adapted his Reformed exegetical heritage to new intellectual and religious currents by appropriating the enlightened experimental discourses of empirical philosophy and awakened Protestant vitalism. Most especially, he blended Puritan experimental divinity with Lockean sensationalist psychology to posit a dynamic notion of the spiritual sense by which one attained sensory spiritual ideas of the Bible’s teachings. After a brief look at his intellectual and religious context, the chapter explores the formation of his sensationalist spiritual epistemology, his understanding of the immediacy of the Spirit’s workings, the mediatory role of the Word, the harmonizing of experience with Scripture, and finally how he believed the spiritual sense produced spiritual knowledge of Scripture (something many scholars have misunderstood). His quest to read the Bible spiritually underpinned the chief vision of his theology and ministry: to unite creatures in relational harmony with the Trinity through the inculcation of spiritual knowledge and affections. For Edwards, this union arose from the dynamic interplay between the indwelling Holy Spirit, Holy Scripture, and experience.

“Remarkable Stirring”: Edwards and His Times Jonathan Edwards’ understanding of spiritual knowledge and his experiential approach to exegesis had its origins in the religious and educational formation of his youth. His theological training was saturated with European and New England Reformed treatments on Scripture and pneumatology. He read William Ames’ Marrow of Theology as one of his primary theology manuals during his school days at Yale and was well acquainted with the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Savoy

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Declaration from his youth.5 He was familiar with John Owen’s work Understanding the Mind of God, and he cited other works of Owen throughout his corpus.6 In his treatise on Religious Affections, Edwards cited Calvin’s Institutes on the indwelling of the Spirit to distinguish true spiritual knowledge from enthusiasm,7 and he drew extensively from the New England divine Thomas Shepard (1605–1649) to adjudicate sincere faith and affections rooted in the Spirit’s indwelling operations.8 However, Edwards’ context conditioned his reception of his Reformed tradition. One formative context was the religious environment of the Connecticut River Valley. Reared in the theology and practices of prominent ministry dynasties in the region, Jonathan took after his father Timothy Edwards (1668–1758) in embracing a fervent experimental piety, a disciplined education, and an amateur admiration for natural philosophy.9 The renewal-­ oriented ministries of his father, his influential grandfather Solomon Stoddard (1643–1729), and his uncle William Williams (1665–1741)10 made a lasting impression on him. Jonathan Edwards’ earliest known piece of writing was a letter written to his sister in May 1716, describing the “remarkable stirring and pouring out of the Spirit” in their father’s congregation.11 Later he presented the awakenings of his day in Northampton in continuity with “five harvests” under Stoddard’s ministry, whom he served

5  For Edwards’ connection to another Reformed creed, the Heidelberg Catechism, see Kenneth P. Minkema, “‘Our Confused Way of Church Government’: Jonathan Edwards, the New England Way, and the Heidelberg Catechism,” in Profil und Wirkung des Heidelberger Katechismus, ed. Christoph Strohm and Jan Stievermann (Göttingen: Gütersloher Verlaghaus, 2015), 330−42. 6  Catalogues of Books, WJE, 26:105. For more on Edwards’ use of Owen, see Stephen J. Wilson, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Edwards, Religious Affections, WJE, 2:68–69. Edwards also cited Owen’s Pneumatica and An Exposition of The Epistle to the Hebrews in “Blank Bible,” WJE, 24:361, 410. Edwards would have encountered similar theologies of Scripture in other European Reformed writers, such as Johannes Wolleb (1589−1629), Richard Sibbes (1577−1635), Petrus van Mastricht (1630−1706), and Francis Turretin (1623−1687). 7  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:278. 8  See Wilson, “Editor’s Introduction,” WJE, 2:53−57. 9  For more on the Edwards’ family background, see Kenneth P. Minkema, “The Edwardses: A Ministerial Family in Eighteenth-Century New England” (PhD diss., University of Connecticut, 1988); Ava Chamberlain, “Family Life,” in Oxford Handbook of Edwards, 3−16; and George Marsden, “Historical and Ecclesiastical Contexts,” in Oxford Handbook of Edwards, 33−50. 10  See Philip F. Gura, “Sowing for the Harvest: William Williams and the Great Awakening,” Journal of Presbyterian History 56:4 (Winter 1978), 326−41. 11  WJE, 16:29.

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as assistant minister from 1726 to 1729 and succeeded upon his death.12 Like the Mathers, Stoddard belonged to a generation of ministers between the Glorious Revolution and the Great Awakening who reevaluated their ministerial strategies for shifting social circumstances. The development of a market economy combined with an Enlightenment humanist principle that self-interest furnished the foundation of individual happiness, virtue, and social order gave rise to increased demand for “worldly” goods and heightened social disparities and competition between New Englanders. Moreover, with the revocation of the original charter and the Toleration Act of 1689, the New England Puritan clergy yielded less influence over magistrates to enforce religious and moral uniformity. In response, many turned to new tactics of voluntary religion to combat moral decay and promote religious vitality. While some looked to voluntary moral societies, others like Williams and Stoddard relied more on conversionist methods and experimental piety as the chief means of reform. They prayed for the outpouring of the Spirit, urged Christocentric heart religion, and affirmed the necessity of ministers acquiring, in Stoddard’s words, an “experimental knowledge” of true religion to better promote the “Work of Conversion.”13 Edwards’ familial connections and his embrace of a renewal-oriented Calvinism also tied him to a wider movement of transatlantic awakened Protestantism that would culminate in the evangelical revivals of the 1740s. His well-received public lecture in Boston in July 1731, titled “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence,” marked his own initiation into an influential network of New England evangelical leaders who collaborated to promote Calvinist orthodoxy and heartfelt piety. Shaped greatly by the recently deceased Mather and Stoddard, the network included Boston ministers Thomas Prince, William Cooper, Benjamin Colman, and Joseph Sewall and had close ties to like-minded Protestants across the Atlantic—a connection that deepened and expanded during the evangelical

 WJE, 4:146.  Solomon Stoddard, A Guide to Christ. Or, the Way of Directing Souls that Are Under the Work of Conversion (Boston: J.  Allen, 1714), 9. Other important works by Stoddard and Williams that represent his approach to religious reform include The Nature of Saving Conversion, and the Way Wherein it is Wrought (Boston: James Franklin, 1719); The Defects of Preachers Reproved, in a Sermon Preached at Northampton, May 19th, 1723 (New London, CT: T.  Green, 1724); William Williams, The Great Salvation Revealed and Offered in the Gospel (Boston, 1717); and The Great Concern of Christians (Boston, 1723). See Crawford, Seasons of Grace, 37–97. 12 13

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awakenings.14 When Edwards penned his Faithful Narrative reporting on the unprecedented revival in his congregation and the surrounding area in the mid-1730s, this network was essential in facilitating its wide dissemination. The prominent English Dissenters Isaac Watts and John Guyse first published it in London in 1737, and editions and translations multiplied and reached eager audiences throughout British North America, England, Scotland, Wales, the Netherlands, Germany, and beyond. The work also inspired several individuals who would become major leaders of the awakenings, such as George Whitefield, John Wesley, William McCulloch, and James Robe. As the revival fires spread, Edwards saw the phenomenon in Northampton as part of a much larger interconnected work of the Spirit to renew experimental religion by the Word.15 Edwards’ early Enlightenment intellectual context was also key to his formation as a minister and thinker. Like his educated New England contemporaries, Edwards kept abreast of the latest transatlantic intellectual fashions through periodicals like The Spectator and The Present State of the Republic of Letters. Also, thanks to Jeremiah Dummer’s generous donation to the Yale College library, Edwards had access to works by leading Enlightenment-age thinkers such as Isaac Newton, John Locke, Pierre Bayle, Richard Steele, Henry More, John Tillotson, Samuel Clarke, and the third Earl of Shaftesbury from his senior year through his master’s program (1720–1723) and tutor years (1724–1726) at Yale.16 His studies in these years would set him on a life-long intellectual engagement with various Enlightenment philosophies, from new rationalist and empiricist theories to debates over the Trinity and the nature of moral virtue. He

14  George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 141−43. 15  David W. Kling, “Edwards in the Context of International Revivals and Missions,” in Oxford Handbook of Edwards, 51−68. 16  Marsden, Edwards, 62; Peter J.  Thuesen, “Edwards’ Intellectual Background,” in Princeton Companion to Edwards, 19−21. As scholars have noted, Dummer’s gift was one of the more dramatic symbols of provincial New England’s participation in the transatlantic “republic of letters,” which embodied an emphasis on rational Christianity combined with a latitudinarian spirit and polite style. See Norman Fiering, “The Transatlantic Republic of Letters: A Note on the Circulation of Learned Periodicals to Early Eighteenth-Century America,” William and Mary Quarterly 33 (1976): 642−60.

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utilized what he deemed compatible with orthodox faith and conducive to piety, and he opposed what he judged unsound.17 Considering these contexts and backgrounds, scholars have offered conflicting images of Edwards. Some see him as a stalwart defender of Puritanism against the Enlightenment, others enlist him as a child of the Enlightenment, and then others portray him as embattled and torn between the two.18 However, such simplified portraits understate the eclectic nature of Edwards’ thought. He drew from diverse theological and philosophical traditions for his own purposes—most especially Reformed Protestant Orthodoxy, Scholasticism, idealism (or immaterialism), occasionalism, and British empiricism.19 His evangelical objectives drove his engagement with the early Enlightenment, creating a variegated relationship of overlap, borrowing, correlation, and inspiration on the one hand, but also resistance and revision on the other. His reading of Scripture reflects this eclecticism, displaying a multifaceted and fluid confluence between the experimental frameworks of Puritan practical divinity and the 17  The literature on Edwards and the Enlightenment is extensive; see, among other studies, John E. Smith, “Puritanism and Enlightenment: Edwards and Franklin,” in Knowledge and Belief in America, Shea and Huff, eds., 195−226; Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s Moral Thought and Its British Context (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1981); Fiering, “The Rationalist Foundations of Jonathan Edwards’s Metaphysics,” in Edwards and the American Experience, Stout and Hatch, eds.; Gerald R.  McDermott, Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods: Christian Theology, Enlightenment Religion, and Non-­ Christian Faiths (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Allen C. Guelzo, “Edwards, Jonathan,” in Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, ed. Alan Charles Kors (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), I.390−92; Avihu Zakai, “The Age of Enlightenment,” in Cambridge Companion to Edwards, ed. Stein, 80−99; Marsden, Edwards, chs. 4, 27, 28; Rivett, Science of the Soul, ch. 6; Russell B. Goodman, American Philosophy Before Pragmatism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 8−47; Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete, 25−26, 271−77. 18  The biographies by Ian Murray and Perry Miller are representative of the first two images, respectively. Thuesen, though laying stress on the eclectic nature of Edwards’ thought, also introduces this language of “tension” and “torn” between premodern and modern thought worlds. See Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (1949; reprint, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005); Ian H. Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987); and Thuesen, “Intellectual Background,” 16−17, 20−21. 19  See, among others, William Sparkes Morris, The Young Jonathan Edwards: A Reconstruction (Brooklyn, NY: Carlson Publishing, 1991); and Thuesen, “Intellectual Background,” 23. Michael McClymond and Gerald McDermott demonstrate how Edwards’ theology is too eclectic to boil down to a single dominant motif, despite the attempts of many to do so. Michael J.  McClymond, Gerald R.  McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1–10.

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early Enlightenment. It was from this synthesis that Edwards developed a dynamic program of evangelical enlightenment concentrated on the capacities of sense experience to generate spiritual knowledge and religious renewal.

“Flesh and Blood Reveals It Not”: Experience and Spiritual Knowledge Edwards exploited a widespread eighteenth-century confidence in experience and the philosophical and cultural discourses surrounding it for evangelical ends.20 He saw an analogy between experimental religion and experimental philosophy. As he wrote in his treatise on Religious Affections (1746), “This is properly Christian experience, wherein the saints have opportunity to see, by actual experience and trial, whether they have a heart to do the will of God, and to forsake other things for Christ, or no. As that is called experimental philosophy, which brings opinions and notions to the test of fact; so is that properly called experimental religion, which brings religious affections and intentions, to the like test.”21 In his late treatise on Original Sin (1758), he appealed to the “rules of methods of reasoning, that are universally made use of, and never denied, or doubted to be good and sure, in experimental philosophy” to prove the utter depravity of human nature. One simply had to “reason from experience and facts” and deduce from “evidences” and “trials” to prove that the “natural disposition of the hearts of mankind” was indisputably wicked.22 Experiential claims saturated his writings and sermons. He appealed to general lived experience, observation, experimental trial, the empirical evidence of the Spirit’s work, experiential certainty, and experiential knowledge of the heart. These multifaceted dimensions of his experientialism also pervaded his reading of Scripture. The development of Edwards’ experientialism was both an intellectual and personal matter. The early 1720s were especially critical years in Edwards’ formation as a thinker and minister, when the various strands of his thought world—namely, Reformed theology, renewal-oriented awakened Protestantism, and the early Enlightenment—intertwined to shape

 See Ryan P. Hoselton, “Experientialism,” Edwards Encyclopedia, 212−15.  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:452. See Harrison, “Experimental Religion and Experimental Science,” 432. 22  Original Sin, WJE, 3:167−68. 20 21

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his understanding of experiential knowledge and piety.23 The young and precocious Edwards took great interest in natural philosophy and especially the writings of Isaac Newton, and he began penning his own scientific observations and philosophical musings around the age of sixteen. He kept personal notebooks on “Natural Philosophy” and “On the Mind,” and he devised scientific essays on topics such as “Of Insects,” “Spider Letter,” “Of Atoms,” “Of Being,” “Of Light Lays,” and “Of the Rainbow”. According to Wallace Anderson, “Edwards’ theory of the nature of the physical world belongs decidedly to the modern rather than the medieval age. Throughout his scientific writings, his masters were Descartes, Gassendi, Boyle, and Newton,” and while “he undoubtedly studied scholastic science to some extent during his undergraduate years, his writings show little or no traces of it.”24 Like other awakened Protestants such as Cotton Mather and John Wesley, Edwards’ pious commitments propelled rather than stagnated his engagement with new trends in natural philosophy. At the same time, he shared their concern that deistical pretensions and mechanical and materialist misuses of natural philosophy undermined devotion to the divine

23  For more on how Edwards’ sermons from his New York pastorate in 1722−1723 prefigured central aspects of his thought and ministry in later years, see Wilson H.  Kimnach, “Jonathan Edwards’ Early Sermons: New York, 1722−1723,” Journal of Presbyterian History (1962−1985) 55.3 (Fall 1977): 155−66; Karin Spiecker Stetina, “The Biblical-Experimental Foundations of Jonathan Edwards’ Theology of Religious Experience, 1720−1723” (PhD diss., Marquette University, 2003). McClymond and McDermott see an “experiential-­ empirical turn” in Edwards’ thinking in the mid- to late 1730s when he took to recording detailed observations of the empirical manifestations of religious experiences associated with the outbreak of revivals. I suggest there was not necessarily a “turn” in his thinking but rather a culmination and outworking of ideas that preoccupied him in the early 1720s. McClymond, McDermott, Theology of Edwards, 78−80. 24  For more on Edwards’ philosophical and scientific thought, see Wallace E. Anderson, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Scientific and Philosophical Writings, WJE, 6:1−136; quote from p.  47; Avihu Zakai, Jonathan Edwards’s Philosophy of Nature: The Re-enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (London: T & T Clark, 2010); Zakai, “The Natural Sciences and Philosophy of Nature,” in Oxford Handbook of Edwards, 324−36. Jonathan Edwards’ father Timothy shared some of his observational findings on pumpkin vegetation with Judge Paul Dudley, a member of the Royal Society, who then cited Timothy’s observations in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1724. This prompted Jonathan to submit his “Spider Letter” to Dudley for publication, but with no success.

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sustainer and telos of creation.25 Wishing to uphold God’s universal and immediate agency in the world, Edwards creatively wed Newtonianism with philosophical idealism and the doctrine of continuous creation. He reasoned that the essence of atoms, as the basic particles of being, did not consist of irreducible self-existing substance but rather the power of solidity or resistance. Since the solidity or resistance of particles exists only in relationship to other particles, being itself is contingent on a force that keeps particles in continual motion, otherwise they would cease to exist. Humans experience reality as if it operated according to natural relational laws of cause and effect, but it is in fact the force of God’s continuous action that gives both existence and cause to all things. Thus, contrary not only to mechanistic and mechanical philosophies but also Scholastic substance metaphysics and Cartesian substance dualism, Edwards concluded that the universe is ideal or immaterial and exists in the mind of God, who is spirit.26 While Edwards’ theocentric metaphysics constituted one response to certain Enlightenment philosophies, his greater (though closely related) philosophical preoccupation was epistemology: How does one come to know this sovereign divine Being and the world he created? In step with Protestant orthodoxy, he affirmed that God revealed the truth in two books: the book of nature and the book of Scripture. But how did one move from disinterested propositions and logical reasoning concerning divine matters to attaining authentic spiritual knowledge and experiential certainty? This concern coincided early on with Edwards’ own personal quest for religious certainty. In a diary entry from December 18, 1722, Edwards expressed his struggle to attain certainty of salvation in conformity with the standard steps of preparatory work and regeneration “of

25  Robert Brown notes, with the exception of Matthew Tindal, that Edwards’ exposure to Spinoza and deist literature came primarily through secondary sources. Brown, Edwards and the Bible, 35, n. 27. McDermott argues that Edwards encountered deist ideas and challenges from a young age, and he estimates that Edwards devoted twenty-five percent of his Miscellanies directly or indirectly to addressing these challenges. McDermott, Edwards Confronts the Gods, 39. 26  See Hindmarsh, Spirit of Early Evangelicalism, 127−35; Oliver D.  Crisp and Kyle C.  Strobel, Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to His Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2018), 67−89.

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which divines speak,” longing for an assurance that was based on a palpable inward sense of divine grace.27 Scholars have identified the influence of Lockean empiricism on Edwards’ thinking as his decisive breakthrough. Perry Miller famously described Edwards’ thought as “Puritanism recast in the idiom of empirical philosophy,” attributing Edwards’ absorption of Locke and Newton as the springboard not only for Edwards’ but also America’s transition into enlightened modernism.28 Aside from his secular teleological historiogra­ phy (among other problems), Miller rightly identified sensationalist psy27  Edwards, “Diary,” WJE, 16:759. Later in Religious Affections, Edwards borrows from Shepard to argue that the Spirit’s operation on the soul—though it often appears like “confused chaos”—varies greatly from person to person and therefore religious experience should not be “strained” into “exact conformity to the scheme” of salvation and sanctification prescribed by certain ministers. Edwards, Religious Affections, WJE, 2:161−62. See also “Miscellanies,” no. 899, WJE, 20:156. For more on the differences between Puritan and evangelical views on experiential assurance, see Brekus, Osborn’s World, 95−104. 28  Miller, Edwards, 62. See Perry Miller, “Jonathan Edwards on the Sense of the Heart,” Harvard Theological Review 41, no. 2 (1948): 121–45, and Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1964), 167–83. Cf. George Marsden, “Perry Miller’s Rehabilitation of the Puritans: A Critique,” Church History 39, no. 1 (March 1970): 91–105; Edwards: A Life, 60–64; Fiering, “Edwards’s Metaphysics,” and Fiering, Edwards’s Moral Thought. For studies that address the influence, similarities, and differences between Locke and Edwards, see, among others, Claude Smith, “Jonathan Edwards and ‘The Way of Ideas,’” Harvard Theological Review 59, no. 2 (1966): 153–73; Paul Helm, “John Locke and Jonathan Edwards: A Reconsideration,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 7, no. 1 (1969): 51–61; Helm, “Jonathan Edwards, John Locke, and The Religious Affections,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 6.1 (2016), 3−15; David Laurence, “Jonathan Edwards, John Locke, and the Canon of Experience,” Early American Literature 15, no. 2 (Fall, 1980): 107–23; James Hoopes, “Jonathan Edwards’s Religious Psychology,” Journal of American History 69, no. 4 (1983): 849–65; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, especially p.  48; and Caroline Schröder, Glaubenswahrnehmung und Selbsterkenntnis: Jonathan Edwards’ theologia experimentalis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 122−41. Robert Brown has reassessed the relationship between Edwards and Locke in light of Edwards’ exegetical work in “Edwards, Locke, and the Bible” and Jonathan Edwards and the Bible. McClymond offers a helpful summary and assessment of responses to Miller without marginalizing the importance of Locke’s influence on Edwards. Michael J. McClymond, “Spiritual Perception in Jonathan Edwards,” The Journal of Religion 77, no. 2 (April 1997): 195–216. Pushing back against the argument that the Enlightenment gave rise to evangelicalism, Hindmarsh rightly shows that Edwards’ devotional Bible reading commitments underlay his resistance to naturalist Enlightenment philosophies. Cf. Hindmarsh, “Lectio Evangelica,” 48−54.

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chology as a key aspect of Edwards’ thought. However, his assessment was one-sided. As demonstrated in Chap. 2, Edwards’ Protestant tradition long maintained that experience furnished knowledge and that religious certainty was an experiential matter. Its influence on Edwards should not be minimized. Nonetheless, Edwards’ reading of Enlightenment experimental philosophies and especially Locke did more than confirm beliefs he already held. In an environment in which Enlightenment philosophies undermined the validity of spiritual knowledge, Edwards integrated experimental philosophy in his religious experientialism in service of his own program of evangelical enlightenment. He consequently embraced a more dynamic approach to experience than his Reformed forebears, maximizing the potential of vital experiential religion to inculcate a philosophically grounded spiritual knowledge of God by the Word. Edwards articulates a creative synthesis between experimental philosophy and experimental religion in his “Miscellanies” notebook entry, no. aa, written sometime between the end of 1722 and mid-1723: There may undoubtedly be such a thing as is called the testimony of faith, and a sort of certainty of faith that is different from reason, that is, is different from discourse by a chain of arguments, a certainty that is given by the Holy Spirit; and yet such a belief may be altogether agreeable to reason, agreeable to the exactest rules of philosophy. Such ideas of religion may be in the mind, as a man may feel divinity in them, and so may know they are from God, know that religion is of divine original, that is, is divine truth. Yea, this faith may be to the degree of certainty, for he may certainly intuitively see God and feel him in those ideas; that is, he may certainly see that notion he has of God in them. The notion of God, or idea I have of him, is that complex idea of such power, holiness, purity, majesty, love, excellency, beauty, loveliness, and ten thousand other things. Now when a man is certain he sees those things, he is certain he sees that which he calls divine. He is certain he feels those things to which he annexes the term God; that is, he is certain that what he sees and feels, he sees and feels; and he knows that what he then sees and feels is the same thing he used to call God. There is such an idea of religion in his mind, wherein he knows he sees and feels that power, that holiness, that purity, that majesty, that love, that excellency, that beauty and loveliness, that amounts to his idea of God.29

 WJE, 13:177.

29

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Like other Reformed theologians, Edwards affirmed that the Spirit’s indwelling of the soul gave rise to a kind of faith and knowledge of God that could be inwardly sensed and felt. However, he reformulated this notion with Lockean sensationalist psychology. According to Locke, sense experience furnished the blank mind with simple ideas, which the internal operations of the mind then combined to form complex ideas and thereby generate knowledge.30 As this passage demonstrates, Edwards’ case for the possibility of creating knowledge of God and certainty in belief from spiritual feelings and sensations paralleled Locke’s reasoning. Edwards wrote in his early philosophical notebook entitled “The Mind” (1723) that “there never can be any idea, thought or act of the mind unless the mind first received some ideas from sensation.”31 Moreover, one’s degree of sensible experience correlated with one’s degree of certainty, “Our senses, when sound and in ordinary circumstances, are not properly fallible in anything; that is, we mean our experience by our senses. If we mean anything else, neither fallibility nor certainty in any way belongs to the senses. Nor are our senses certain in anything at all, any other way than by constant experience by our senses.”32 However, going beyond Locke, Edwards extended this maxim to the spiritual and maintained that continual religious experience led to growth in spiritual certainty and understanding. His Reformed theology and theocentric metaphysical idealism convinced him that reality was not limited to natural substance and causation, so why would experience and knowledge be limited to the natural? Edwards’ early thinking on sense experience and spiritual knowledge strikingly coalesced in the fall of 1723 in a sermon on 1 Cor 2:14 entitled A Spiritual Understanding of Divine Things Denied to the Unregenerate. The sermon treated themes and concepts that Edwards would expand upon for the rest of his ministry, as evident in works like The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741) and Religious Affections (1746), his private “Miscellanies” notebooks, Trinitarian writings like “Discourse on the Trinity” (1730s–1740s) and his “Treatise on Grace” (ca. 1739–1743), numerous sermons like A Divine and Supernatural Light (1734), and his exegetical notebooks “Notes on Scripture,” “Blank Bible,” and Apocalyptic Writings. The sermon was Edwards’ earliest 30  See Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 104−21, 163−66 (Book II, chapters 1−2, 12). 31  WJE, 6:390. 32  WJE, 6:369.

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comprehensive attempt to utilize experiential categories to elucidate the opposition between natural and spiritual persons. He asserted that only the regenerate enjoyed spiritual knowledge, which he defined as “the experimental knowledge of the saving operations of the Holy Spirit” on “the mind and the heart.” To elaborate on this definition, he replicated Locke’s notion that ideas originated in either external or internal sensation (Locke termed the latter “reflection” to distinguish it from external sensation). Edwards wrote, “There is a direct knowledge, and there is a reflex knowledge. The direct knowledge is the knowledge the Christian hath of divine things, without himself, of the truth and excellency of the things of the gospel. The reflex knowledge is that which he obtains by reflecting and looking inward upon his own heart, and seeing the operations and actings of that, and the workings of the Spirit of God therein.” Internal spiritual sensation was the key mark that distinguished natural from spiritual knowledge. While natural persons could understand religious matters with great depth and precision on a notional level, they had no “real apprehension”—by which Edwards meant a conscious sensible perception—of divine things unless they “felt them within themselves.”33 One must not assess their spiritual state by notional beliefs of outward things alone, Edwards reasoned. A true Christian feels and senses their ideas of divine things inwardly. The distinction between speculative and experiential understanding had deep roots in Edwards’ Reformed tradition. John Owen, for example, contrasted speculative “knowledge” (“gnosis”) with “acknowledgement” (“epignosis”). Owen deemed the former “of very little use” compared to the latter, which through the “saving illumination of the Holy Spirit” gave “the mind an experience of the power and efficacy of the truth known” and conformed “the soul unto the will of God revealed” in Scripture.34 Edwards made this distinction a central motif of his thought, but he combined it with Lockean empiricist terminology and an amplified interest in the emotive dimensions of spiritual sensory capacities. Similar to Locke’s analysis in Book III of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding entitled “Of Words,” Edwards argued that having an “ideal apprehension” of “actual ideas” required a direct sensation of the idea. He differentiated ideal appre WJE, 14:80.  Owen, Understanding the Mind of God, 4:155–56. See William J. Wainwright, “Jonathan Edwards and His Puritan Predecessors,” in The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity, Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 224−40. 33 34

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hension from a mere indirect “mental reading” of signs. For Edwards, the mind’s thoughts most often used signs rather than actual ideas based on sensory experience when conceiving external substances and abstract concepts, even for religious matters. To “excite” real apprehension of an idea required the mind’s “direct ideal view” of it, either through contemplation with the “faculty of understanding” or an inner encounter via the “faculty of the will, or what is figuratively called the heart.”35 Building on this premise, Edwards proceeded to distinguish between speculative and sensible knowledge, or the “sense of the heart.” The former encompassed intellectual understanding of the head while the latter consisted in a “kind of inward tasting or feeling” of the “heart, or the will and affections.” The latter involved an immediate sensory experience of the moral and aesthetic qualities of something, and the degree and proportion of the sensation corresponded with the intensity and “liveliness” of one’s ideal apprehension of it. Every person by nature had the ability through “external senses” such as sight, taste, hearing, and touch to move from speculative knowledge of natural things to a direct sensible knowledge of their qualities.36 Everyone through their natural senses could perceive “the justness of a speech, the goodness of style, the beauty of a poem,” harmony and disharmony in music, sweetness and bitterness in food, beauty and ugliness, and so on.37 However, natural “human faculties or principles” were unable to attain sensible knowledge of “divine things with respect to spiritual good and evil,” particularly “the spiritual excellency, beauty, or sweetness, of divine things.”38 As he preached in his widely read sermon on Matt 16:17, A Divine and Supernatural Light, “mortal men” could not see and know the divinity of Christ in a spiritual manner, for “flesh and blood reveals it not.”39 To engender ideal  WJE, 18:458, 452, 458, 461, 458.  WJE, 18:462, 459. 37  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:282. 38  WJE, 18:462−64. In his communion controversy, Edwards drew from Locke’s approach to ideas and language and its implications for church life. Edwards argued for the necessity of true rebirth to make a profession of faith and partake in the sacraments. If one was not truly reborn, Edwards argued, he or she lacked real ideas of what was signified in a proper profession of faith and thus could only speak the words as mere signs with no true understanding. He explains, “Mr. Locke says, Human Understanding, … ‘He that uses words of any language without distinct ideas in his mind, to which he applies them, does so far as he uses them in discourse, only make a noise without any sense or significations.’” Misrepresentations Handled, and Truth Vindicated, WJE, 12:389n4. 39  Divine and Supernatural Light, WJE, 17:409. 35 36

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apprehensions of spiritual matters was “wholly and entirely a work of the Spirit of God, not merely as assisting and co-working with natural principles, but as infusing something above nature”—namely, the “spiritual sense.”40 Edwards likened the “new inward perception or sensation” of the spiritual sense infused in the mind by the Spirit to “what some metaphysicians call a new simple idea.” However, the properties of objects perceived by the spiritual sense were distinctively of a spiritual nature. The spiritual sense was not a new faculty nor was it compounded from previous innate powers, exertions, or materials of the mind. It was a new sense or “principle of nature” that enabled the existing faculties (the understanding and the will) to perform “entirely a new kind of exercises” for the inculcation of spiritual knowledge. Just as different natural senses gave rise to diverse sensations and ideas—such as the difference between “the sweet taste of honey” and “the ideas men get of honey by only looking on it, and feeling of it”—so were the ideas and sensations that spiritual persons had of divine things qualitatively different from what natural persons experienced.41 The new principle was “vital” because it brought to life new sensations and perceptions of spiritual matters that were entirely unfamiliar to the person before conversion. It enabled a regenerate believer to conceive spiritual things as actual ideas, because his “heart is sensible of pleasure and delight in the presence of the idea.”42 The natural person “beholds spiritual things faintly,” just as a person gazing upon trees in the dark of night has “little notion of the beauty of the face of the earth” and thus his “ideas ben’t strong and lively.” In contrast, the new sensations following spiritual rebirth filled the mind’s spiritual blank slate by making its notions of divine things lively and sensible. The Spirit’s gracious illumination was not a matter of revealing new notional truths about God but rather enlightening the mind’s existing notions to make them “appear clear and real.” Parallel to how Locke and other empiricists reasoned that the accumulation of knowledge came from sensory data being impressed or imprinted on the mind, Edwards held that th e Spirit acted on the inner spiritual sense to imprint the excellency, beauty, concinnity, and goodness of divine things on the mind. Before conversion, one’s “ideas” of God were “dim.” But when the “powers of the soul are more awakened,” these ideas were “impressed with the greater  WJE, 18:463, 465.  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:205−206. 42  Divine and Supernatural Light, WJE, 17:413. 40 41

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strength, and have a light cast on them.”43 For instance, without the spiritual sense an individual could only process the word, “God,” in “the course of his reading” as a mental symbol without having “an actual idea of God.”44 However, as Edwards discussed in “Miscellanies,” no. aa quoted earlier, once the Spirit excited new spiritual perceptions and sensations of God’s properties in the soul—such as his holiness, beauty, majesty, and love—the mind could form an actual complex idea of God. The soul now directly “sees and feels” what the mind had formerly comprehended on a mere notional level, and this inward affective knowledge “strongly certifies the mind that it is divine.” Edwards equated this inner sense of experiential certainty with “the testimony of the Spirit,” a designation that bespoke the close interconnection between his Reformed tradition and empiricist thought.45 While many in the Reformed tradition like Stoddard stressed that the Spirit’s prior illumination of the understanding moved the volition to faith, Edwards chiefly ascribed true saving knowledge to the Spirit enlivening affections and sensations that gave rise to real and vital apprehensions of spiritual matters.46 Edwards’ extension of Lockean empirical categories  “Miscellanies,” no. 408, WJE, 13:470; WJE, 17:415.  WJE, 18:453. 45  WJE, 13:178. See also “Miscellanies,” no. 375, WJE, 13:447−48; and “Miscellanies,” no. 686, WJE, 18:249, both entitled “Spirit’s Witness,” where Edwards expands on the connection between Christian assurance and inward feeling of the Spirit’s operations. A similar line of reasoning is found in Jonathan Dickinson’s 1740 sermon: “As no Idea of sensible Objects can possibly be communicated to those that have not the proper Senses to perceive them; so neither can any just Conceptions of this Fellowship of the Spirit, this Joy of the Holy Ghost, be communicated to any but to those that have had the happy Experience of it in themselves.” Jonathan Dickinson, The Witness of the Spirit (Boston: Kneeland & Green, 1740), 20. 46  See Schaefer, “Editor’s Introduction,” WJE, 13:51. Fiering contends that the debates between New Light and Old Light theologians during the eighteenth-century awakenings in large part paralleled and carried over from seventeenth-century debates between Augustinian voluntarists and intellectualists, situating Edwards in the former in continuity with men like Ames, Owen, and Mastricht. He notes the irony that while Stoddard gained a reputation as a proto-revivalist, his reasoning belonged in the intellectualist camp. While Fiering is right in highlighting this continuity to qualify accounts that attribute incommensurate influence to Locke on Edwards’ psychological theory, I find he underrates the influence of Lockean empirical philosophy. Norman S. Fiering, “Will and Intellect in the New England Mind,” The William and Mary Quarterly 29.4 (Oct., 1972): 551−58. Jonathan Yeager explores how two evangelical Calvinists, namely Edwards and John Erskine, a minister in Scotland, utilized Lockean philosophy and biblical exegesis in different ways to advance voluntarist (Edwards) and intellectualist (Erskine) philosophies of the will. Yeager, “Faith, Free Will, and Biblical Reasoning in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards and John Erskine,” in Evangelicals and the Bible, ed. Larsen, 55−73. 43 44

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to internal religious experience served both intellectual and conversionist purposes. For Edwards these aims were inseparable. By conceptualizing spiritual knowledge more explicitly in experimental terms, Edwards had both an apologetic bulwark against increasing skepticism and a rationale for emotive revivalist rhetoric. It defended the viability of interior affective religion and the knowledge and existence of a spiritual reality beyond this natural world against materialist critics, to whom “nothing seems real” but “what they see with their eyes, and is the object of their bodily senses.”47 Furthermore, it furnished the rhetorical fabric of experiential evangelical piety. As Sarah Rivett observes, Edwards “used Lockean faculty psychology to inculcate a sensory experience among his listeners in order to produce a new performative religious affect that would be sustainable across disparate populations, denominations, and centuries.”48 Edwards thus defended an “exceeding affectionate way of preaching” against the critics of the evangelical awakenings because it had a “greater tendency to beget true ideas or apprehensions in the minds of the hearers.”49 His central motif in this “rhetoric of sensation,” as Perry Miller famously dubbed it,50 was the opposition between what natural and spiritual persons can know by experience. However, an essential point that Miller overlooked is that Edwards’ rhetoric of sensation ultimately had its genesis in an exegesis of sensation. For Edwards, the production of spiritual knowledge did not simply arise from a lively sensory interaction with just any words, but with the Word. The Spirit instilled sensible ideas and affections of divine things via Scripture. By rooting this rhetorical motif in a creative nexus between a Lockean epistemic framework and Reformed pneumatology, Edwards attempted to establish authentic, verifiable, and vital religious awakening. Emboldened by Lockean empirical thought, he labored to stimulate the spiritual sensory capacities of the reborn heart and mind indwelled by the Spirit while simultaneously using the observable manifestations of experimental religion to counteract Enlightenment rationalist and empiricist restraints. He concurrently transformed Protestant experimental religion and  WJE, 14:84−85.  Rivett, Science of the Soul, 282. 49  Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, WJE, 4:386−87. 50  Miller, Errand into the Wilderness, 167−83. For a recent essay reviving Miller’s thesis, see Harry S. Stout, “What Made the Great Awakening Great?” in Turning Points in the History of American Evangelicalism, Heath W.  Carter and Laura Rominger Porter, eds. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 1−18. 47 48

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Enlightenment empirical philosophy by borrowing from one tradition to overcome the limitations of the other. In blending religion and enlightenment, he wished on the one hand to bolster the former’s philosophical and empirical foundation while dissociating it from arbitrary traditions and deluded enthusiasms, and on the other hand to guard the latter from godless materialism. In contrast to the latitudinarian project to reconcile religion and enlightenment by tempering the Spirit-centered experientialism of Puritan practical divinity in pursuit of a moderate rationalism and cool moralism, Edwards’ enlightened experientialism augmented his vitalistic Reformed pneumatology and spirituality. For Edwards, God was no distant being but active in creation, enlivening souls and enlightening minds by the Spirit and the living Word.

“Vital Communication of God”: The Indwelling Spirit In Edwards’ mind, the task of establishing the immediate presence of God in human affairs against anti-supernatural philosophies and the widespread decay of piety was closely tied to substantiating the immediacy of spiritual ideas through experience. His pneumatology was paramount in this endeavor. Laboring to set his understanding of religious experience against two extremes—enthusiasm and rationalism—Edwards argued that spiritual knowledge and communicative fellowship with God came chiefly via the interaction among the Spirit, Word, and internal spiritual sensations. As he preached in A Divine and Supernatural Light, true spiritual light and knowledge consisted in the Spirit giving the saint “a true sense of the divine excellency of the things revealed in the Word of God, and a conviction of the truth and reality of them.”51 In continuity not only with the Reformed tradition but also many early Enlightenment thinkers, Edwards resisted the unbridled experiential claims of the enthusiasts—a concern which preceded his criticism of the radical excesses during the religious awakenings of the 1740s. He sympathized with Locke’s denunciation of enthusiasts for substituting reason and revelation with the “ungrounded Fancies of a Man’s own Brain.”52  WJE, 17:413.  Locke, Essay, IV.XIX, 698. See Helm, “Edwards, Locke, and Religious Affections,” 5−7.

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Scripture alone supplied the truths that natural reason on its own could not discover, and yet it never conflicted with reason. Edwards also turned this argument against the deists, devoting a late “Miscellanies” notebook entry asserting the necessity of divine revelation against Matthew Tindal’s claim that “the light of nature” was sufficient to discover religious and moral truths.53 Similar to Locke’s interpretation of 1 Cor 2:11–12 (discussed in Chaps. 1 and 2), Edwards wrote, “In these two verses is ­contained an invincible argument for the insufficiency of human reason without a divine revelation in things of that nature which the gospel reveals. … ’tis impossible any should know them naturally but God, him or the Spirit of God.”54 Edwards agreed with the enthusiasts that natural reason alone could not lead a person to a true spiritual knowledge of God. At the same time, the divine revelation that was needed was already given in Scripture and thus enthusiast yearnings for further revelatory knowledge were ungrounded. Edwards’ chief interest in combating enthusiasm was not to restrain experiential religion but rather to channel it toward authentic communion with and affection for God by rooting it in the inextricable bond between the divine action of the Spirit and the normativity of the Word. He therefore dismissed any notion that the Spirit revealed to the mind any “new truths, or propositions not contained in the Word of God” because it did not lead to “any vital communication of God.”55 Edwards applied the same test as the magisterial reformers in opposing enthusiasm. “The Spirit,” he asserted in a 1729 sermon, “that saith the same that the Word says, and promotes the same thing that the Word of God promotes, is the Spirit of God.”56

 “Miscellanies,” no. 1337, WJE, 23:342−45.  Edwards had consulted Locke’s Paraphrase and Notes on First Corinthians, and he explicitly cited him in the entry on 1 Cor 1:28. “Blank Bible,” WJE, 24:1037−38. See also “Light in a Dark World, A Dark Heart,” WJE, 19:719−20; The Importance and Advantage of a Thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth, WJE, 22:83−89; his sermon on 1 Cor 2:11−13, “Ministers to Preach not their own Wisdom but the Word of God [1740],” in Kenneth P. Minkema and Richard A. Bailey, “Reason, Revelation, and Preaching: An Unpublished Ordination Sermon by Jonathan Edwards,” SBJT 3.2 (Summer 1999), 16−33; “Miscellanies,” no. 350, WJE, 13:421; and “Miscellanies,” no. 837, WJE, 20:52−53. 55  Divine and Supernatural Light, WJE, 17:412; Religious Affections, WJE, 2:225. 56  The Threefold Work of the Holy Ghost [1729], WJE, 14:378. This argument saturates his writings in defense of the revivals, like, for example, in The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God [1741], WJE, 4:253−54. 53 54

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Edwards also resisted rationalistic attempts to belittle the role of experience and affections in religion. The Boston minister Charles Chauncey (1705–1787) denounced the religious awakenings in New England stirred by Edwards, George Whitefield, Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764), and others on the basis that they prioritized experience and emotion over rational and sober religion. For Chauncey, “Reasonable Beings are not to be guided by Passion or Affection,” and true conversion to Christianity entailed the “Reduction of their Passions” in subjection to “a sanctified Understanding.”57 Likewise, Alexander Garden (1685–1756), an Anglican minister in South Carolina, pointedly charged Whitefield and other revivalists with substituting “the ordinary Ways and Means of attaining the Knowledge of our Religious Duty, viz. Natural Reason and the written Word of God” for “certain Impulses, Motions, or Impressions of the Holy Spirit on our Minds.” He accused the revivalists of equating regeneration and the testimony of the Spirit falsely with experiential impulses: “they have God himself speaking inwardly to their Souls; immediately teaching, and infallibly leading them into all Truth;—and this they are as sure of, as of seeing the Light, or feeling the Heat of the Sun, at Noonday.”58 While Edwards sympathized with much of the criticisms against enthusiasm—especially when they boasted of new revelations and guidance from impressions59—he nonetheless affirmed the necessity of the Spirit’s immediate inward work on the affections and inner sensations to produce a saving, experiential knowledge of God in Scripture. Unlike Locke, Edwards believed that divine revelation was more than a supply of information that reason could not discover on its own; it was the means by which the Spirit united the soul in vital communion with God. While Locke conceded the possibility that God could enlighten the mind 57  Charles Chauncey, Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England (Boston: Rogers & Fowle, 1743), 324. See also Chauncey, A Letter to … Mr. George Wishart…, Concerning the State of Religion in New England (Edinburgh, 1742) 5−15, 17−24, excerpted in Richard L. Bushman, ed., The Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival of Religion, 1740−1745 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 116−21. 58  Alexander Garden, Regeneration, and the Testimony of the Spirit. Being the Substance of Two Sermons … (Charlestown, SC: 1740), 1−2. 59  Edwards personally warned Whitefield against relying on “impulses.” See Ava Chamberlain, “The Grand Sower of the Seed: Jonathan Edwards’s Critique of George Whitefield,” New England Quarterly 70, no. 3 (Sept. 1997): 368−85.

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to apprehend an idea in a sensible manner, Edwards insisted on it.60 For Edwards, the Spirit’s supernatural illumination and sensible impression of ideas on the heart and mind was the only way to apprehend spiritual truths in Scripture, and he followed the implications of this maxim for piety and knowledge of the spiritual world well beyond the boundaries of many early Enlightenment philosophical circles and anti-revivalists alike. As disparate enlightened ideologies and pieties increasingly distanced God from human affairs, Edwards harnessed sensationalist psychology to rejuvenate and bolster his Reformed tradition’s affirmation of God’s immediate presence and the possibility for communicative fellowship via the Spirit and the Word. He believed the ultimate reason why anyone would “deny any immediate communication between God and the creature” owed to the will’s corruption: ’Tis 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 … 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.61

For Edwards, philosophical schemes that curtailed divine agency in creation were rooted in sinners’ rebellion against God’s active authority and involvement in their lives. He sensed that the increasing challenges to the doctrine of the Trinity were a clear expression of this tendency. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the supplanting of Aristotelian substance metaphysics in favor of rationalist and empiricist philosophies along with Newtonian physics of natural relational laws led many to re-evaluate the philosophical rationale for the Trinity. While some abandoned the doctrine, Edwards reformulated his metaphysics of the Trinity in more relational and dispositional terms that corresponded with aspects of his

 See Locke, Essay, IV.XIX, 705.  “Treatise on Grace,” WJE, 21:177.

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religious sensationalist psychology.62 He continued to affirm the Trinity as a fundamental Christian doctrine not simply because he deemed it biblical but also because it was foundational both to the structure of existence and the creature’s knowledge of God. His effort to ground the intelligibility of the Trinity in more relational ontological categories was tied to his deeper yearning for a vital union between the human soul and the divine life, and it framed his understanding of how the interaction among the Spirit, Scripture, and experience gave rise to spiritual knowledge of divine things. As scholars have demonstrated, Edwards’ trinitarianism combined elements of both Augustinian psychological analogies and Lockean faculty 62  The implications of Edwards’ dispositionalism for his Trinitarian theology has sparked much debate, mainly among philosophical theologians. While this is not the place to address these discussions in depth, a few points are worth mentioning. I accept the argument of Sang Hyun Lee, Amy Planting Pauw, and others that Edwards saw reality, God, and human psychology as dynamic and relational, but I disagree with certain conclusions these authors have drawn. For instance, I am not convinced by Lee’s thesis that Edwards believed God’s being—as essentially dispositional—could expand. Also contra Lee, I agree with Oliver Crisp, Paul Helm, and others that Edwards did not fully abandon substance metaphysics for a strictly dispositional ontology. From a descriptive historical standpoint, it seems he posited aspects of both (incongruous) ontologies for varying purposes and did not concern himself with reconciling them. See, among others, Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000 [1988]), and “Editors Introduction,” WJE, 21:1−108; Anri Morimoto, Jonathan Edwards and The Catholic Vision of Salvation (University Park, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Amy Plantinga Pauw, The Supreme Harmony of All: The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002); Stephen R.  Holmes, “Does Jonathan Edwards Use a Dispositional Ontology? A Response to Sang Hyun Lee,” in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian, edited by Paul Helm and Oliver D.  Crisp (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), 99−114; Oliver Crisp, “Jonathan Edwards’s Ontology: A Critique of Sang Hyun Lee’s Dispositional Account of Edwardsian Metaphysics,” Religious Studies 46 (March 2010): 1−20; Jonathan Edwards on God and Creation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Michael McClymond, “Hearing the Symphony: A Critique of Some Critics of Sang Hyun Lee’s and Amy Plantinga Pauw’s Accounts of Jonathan Edwards’s View of God,” in Jonathan Edwards as Contemporary: Essays in Honor of Sang Hyun Lee, ed. Don Schweitzer (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 67−92; and Paul Helm, “The Human Self and the Divine Trinity,” ibid., 93−106. For more on the Trinitarian debates of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and their relationship to Edwards, see Lee, “Editor’s Introduction,” WJE, 21:3−10; and Pauw, Supreme Harmony of All, 21−26. For more on Edwards’ trinitarianism, see, among others, William J. Danaher Jr., The Trinitarian Ethics of Jonathan Edwards (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004); Steven M. Studebaker, Robert W. Caldwell III, The Trinitarian Theology of Jonathan Edwards: Text, Context and Application (New York: Routledge, 2012); Kyle C.  Strobel, “The Nature of God and the Trinity,” in Oxford Handbook of Edwards, 118−34.

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psychology.63 In his “Discourse on the Trinity,” Edwards elaborated on how the “soul of man” furnished one of the most “remarkable images of the Trinity among the creatures.” Just as in the human soul there was “the mind, and the understanding or idea, and the spirit of the mind … i.e. the disposition, the will or affection,” so in the Trinity there was the Father as the self or mind, the Son as the idea, and the Spirit as the disposition. Utilizing a Lockean definition of an idea as an image or representation, Edwards argued that the Father’s “perfect reflex or contemplative idea” of himself arising from an infinite and unfaltering perception of his own excellency generated the existence of the Son, who subsisted as the perfect idea and “most immediate representation of the Godhead.” From God’s perception of the Son as the “image,” “repetition,” or “idea” of his own glory and beauty proceeded a “pure act” and “sweet energy” of mutual delight, love, and joy—which Edwards identified as the Spirit. If the Son was the idea of God, the Spirit “is to be understood of the disposition, temper or affection of the divine mind,” the sum of which was “infinite love.” Wishing to maintain the unity of the Godhead, Edwards invoked a dynamic and relational notion of divine perichoresis, or mutual indwelling. Each member of the Trinity was “after an ineffable and inconceivable manner one in another” in a “wonderful union” of knowledge and affection. This union enabled the Father and Son to share in the “divine love” via the Spirit indwelling them, and the Father and Spirit to share in “the divine idea” through the Son indwelling them.64 Holding to the intimate unity of the immanent and economic Trinity, Edwards extended this notion of divine indwelling to the vital communicative union between creatures and God: So that that holy, divine principle, which we have observed does radically and essentially consist in divine love, is no other than a communication and participation of that same infinite divine love, which is God, and in which the Godhead is eternally breathed forth and subsists in the third person in 63  See Lee, “Editor’s Introduction,” WJE, 21:11; Helm, “The Human Self and the Divine Trinity,” 93−106. In confining this section to the psychological dimensions, I acknowledge that Edwards’ trinitarianism draws from other thought traditions too, like Scholasticism. 64  “Discourse on the Trinity,” WJE, 21:138, 131, 117, 116, 117, 121, 122, and 133. For more on Edwards’ understanding of the nature and unity of the Trinity, see “Miscellanies,” nos. 308−10, WJE, 13:392−93. See Robert W. Caldwell III, Communion in the Spirit: The Holy Spirit as the Bond of Union in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007); Caldwell, “Pneumatology,” in Oxford Handbook of Edwards, 151−64.

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the blessed Trinity. So that true saving grace is no other than that very love of God; that is, in one of the persons of the Trinity, uniting himself to the soul of a creature as a vital principle, dwelling there and exerting himself by the faculties of the soul of man, in his own proper nature, after the manner of a principle of nature.

Edwards shared his Reformed tradition’s belief that the Spirit united believers to Christ and made them partakers of his salvation and resurrection, but he laid greater stress on the affective and epistemic dimensions of this union. The real “mystery of the vital union that is between Christ and the soul of a believer” rested in the Spirit wedding himself as the vital principle of divine love “to the faculties of their souls.” The Spirit’s life in the soul illuminated the understanding and renewed the will in a way that “changes the nature of the soul” to become more like God. “This light is such as effectually influences the inclination,” he preached in Divine and Supernatural Light, by which the Spirit “assimilates the nature to the divine nature, and changes the soul into an image of the same glory that is beheld.” By harmonizing the human disposition with “the divine disposition,” the Spirit instilled in the mind actual spiritual ideas and sensible participatory knowledge of the “love, joy and beauty” as well as the “excellency and happiness” of the Godhead.65 Just as the Spirit is the union of love and affection between the Father and the Son, so is the Spirit the bond of communication and fellowship uniting creatures with God and with each other. As he elaborated in his “Treatise on Grace,” to “have communion with Christ” through the Spirit’s indwelling meant to partake of “Christ’s holiness and grace, his nature, inclinations, tendencies, love and desires, comforts and delights.” He believed that this conception of the Trinity ascribed greater agency, honor, and equality to the Spirit than “used to be supposed.” According to Edwards, most divines subordinated the Spirit to the Father and Son by restricting his role merely to applying Christ’s redemption to the believer. Rather, the Spirit “is the thing purchased” by Christ’s redemption, and “the Holy Ghost immediately communicates to us the thing purchased by communicating himself.” He elaborated: “Christ purchased for us true spiritual excellency, grace and holiness, the sum of which is love to God, 65  “Treatise on Grace,” WJE, 21:194−95; “Discourse on the Trinity,” WJE, 21:122; Divine and Supernatural Light, WJE, 17:424; “Discourse on the Trinity,” WJE, 21:124, 129. See Roland A. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005), 152−56.

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which is but only the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the heart. Christ purchased for us spiritual joy and comfort, which is in a participation of God’s joy and happiness; which joy and happiness is the Holy Ghost.”66 The saint indwelled by the Spirit experienced “strong and lively exercises of love to God” in the heart, giving rise to “immediate and intuitive evidence of the soul’s relation to God.” Edwards identified this inward sense of union with God as “the Spirit of God bearing witness with our spirits.” For Edwards, religious affections were not the result of misguided frenzy but rather the direct product and evidence of the Spirit’s presence in the soul. Spiritual knowledge of God was therefore experiential, but it was not “heat without light.”67 The Spirit actively facilitated meaningful communication and communion between creatures and God by the spiritual enlightenment of the soul, but he worked by means of the Word.

“We See Him in His Word”: Scripture as Means While the Spirit was the chief agent exciting spiritual ideas in believers to participate in the divine life, the Word was the primary means.68 The two were inseparable. As Edwards preached in a sermon on Hos 5:15, the “Spirit of God in all his work upon the souls of men works by his Word.”69 Edwards asserted the necessity of Scripture and other means of grace 66  “Treatise on Grace,” WJE, 21:158, 191, 156; “Discourse on the Trinity,” WJE, 21:136−38. 67  “Miscellanies,” no. 686 “Spirit’s Witness,” WJE, 18:249; Religious Affections, WJE, 2:266. 68  See Ray S.  Yeo, Renewing Spiritual Perception with Jonathan Edwards: Contemporary Philosophy and the Theological Psychology of Transforming Grace (London: Routledge, 2016), 74−77. Robert Jenson argues that Edwards’ late “Miscellanies,” no. 1338 departs from his earlier understanding of Scripture as a means of communion with God, seeing it now as a direct form of communication between God and creatures. I’m not convinced Edwards intended this. His reasoning seems to be an extension of “Miscellanies,” no 1337 arguing for, as the title states, “the necessity of revelation” against deists like Matthew Tindal and others (he also includes Hobbes, Spinoza, and Lord Bolingbroke) who promote the sufficiency and autonomy of nature, whereas his other earlier writings on this topic (many of which are examined in the current subsection of this study) concern the role of Scripture in producing grace and spiritual knowledge. The entries have different aims, but the argument in this late “Miscellanies” entry doesn’t supplant or contradict what he said before. Edwards, “Miscellanies,” no. 1338, WJE, 23:345−55. Robert W.  Jenson, America’s Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 187−96. 69  God Makes Men Sensible of Their Misery Before He Reveals His Mercy and Love, WJE, 17:155.

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against both radical enthusiasts and rationalists who elevated the individual’s unmediated capacities for knowledge (mystical or rational, respectively) over received revelation. He thus urged his congregation, “We must be much in reading the Scriptures, if we would get spiritual and saving knowledge. They are the means by which, as we have said, God communicates this knowledge.”70 Edwards’ Puritan tradition had long emphasized the importance of the means of grace—particularly Scripture, preaching, the sacraments, and the gathered church—which sinners made use of in preparation for conversion (a process most saw as lifelong).71 However, Edwards’ understanding of the Word as a means of spiritual knowledge and grace was more dynamic and laid greater emphasis on the Spirit’s immediate work on the soul—a shift that reflected new evangelical conversion morphologies that stressed the dramatic and instantaneous nature of rebirth. His conceptualization of this process deviated from the Scholastic framework of primary and secondary causes and instead blended Reformed pneumatology with sensationalist psychology and occasionalist philosophy. To better comprehend how the Word functioned as a necessary means of spiritual knowledge, Edwards likened the creature’s knowledge of God to the way one obtained knowledge of other minds. His reasoning here closely resembled Locke’s sensationalist approach to language. Each person had a “great variety of Thoughts,” Locke wrote, but “they are all within his own Breast, invisible, and hidden from others.” Now if a person could not sense or perceive the thoughts of others, he asked, how then could humans enjoy the “Comfort, and Advantage of Society?” They must communicate through sensible signs in the form of “articulate Sounds” and visible markings—otherwise known as words. For Locke, words were “voluntary Signs” and “sensible Marks” that signify the ideas of the speaker or writer. Words served to assist one’s own memory, communicate ideas by laying “them before the view of others,” and words could “excite in Men certain Ideas” if they meaningfully connected with the recipient’s senses and perceptions. Every word prompts a variety of ideas in persons in accordance with how their own distinct sensible experiences relates to the thing being signified. Some may hear the word “Gold” and think of a bright yellow color associated with objects that bear this

 Spiritual Understanding of Divine Things Denied to the Unregenerate, WJE, 14:94.  Hall, Puritans, 116.

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color, while others might think of the metal and its qualities like weight, malleability, and monetary value.72 In a similar vein, Edwards pondered how the creature can enjoy the “Advantage of Society” with God by learning God’s invisible thoughts. For the answer, he applied this sensationalist understanding of language and knowledge to the spiritual domain. In “Miscellanies,” no. 777, he reasoned that knowledge of other minds was either “immediate and intuitive, or mediate, or [by] some manifestations or signs.” To have an “immediate view of a mind” necessitated “some union of personality,” enabling “immediate perception, sense, or feeling” of the other mind’s “thoughts, volitions, exercises, and motions” and its “sense or feelings.” Such union of personality enabling immediate knowledge of God’s mind existed exclusively within the Trinity. While “Jesus Christ is admitted to know God immediately,” he wrote, the “knowledge of all other creatures in heaven and earth is by means, or by manifestations or signs held forth.”73 Only in heaven with glorified bodies will the redeemed enjoy “immediate intellectual views of minds, one of another and of the supreme mind, more immediate, clear and sensible than our views of bodily things with bodily eyes.” In our world, however, “we behold spiritual beauties only mediately by the intervention of our senses.”74 Edwards’ interest in the immediacy of ideas and the mediation of language was essential to his understanding of how God communicated spiritual knowledge to the creature through the Spirit and the Word. God’s mind enjoyed the immediate presence of his own ideas with perfect clarity and constancy. But created beings did not enjoy the same union of personality with God’s mind the way Jesus did, and thus they had to rely on their sense experiences and ultimately on God’s prerogative to communicate his ideas to them through “voluntary significations,” or words. Edwards determined four means by which humans could “see or know God”: (1) “images or resemblances,” such as a created symbol of God’s glory like the sun, and above all the image of God in the incarnate Christ; (2) “words and declarations, or voluntary significations”; (3) “effects,” like God’s works in creation; (4) and “a priori” reasoning, such as logical arguments “from the necessity of his existence.” Scripture belonged in the second category as a “voluntary signification of what is invisible” in God. As one  Locke, Essay, III.II, 404−408.  “Miscellanies,” no. 777, WJE, 18:427−29. 74  “Miscellanies,” no. 182, WJE, 13:329. 72 73

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who held to the cessation of divine revelation in post-Apostolic history, Edwards believed that whereas the prophets and inspired authors of Scripture received such communication through “impulses made on the mind” or “externally by voices,” now believers “see him in his Word.” Through “the written Word,” regenerate saints born centuries after the closing of the biblical canon could experience spiritual views, or ideas, of God with the Spirit’s illumination. In Scripture, God laid bare his mind for creatures to behold. However, due to finite and fallen human nature, the creature’s spiritual ideas remained transitory and imperfect and thus required regular sensory stimuli generated by the Spirit working through designated means to activate them. “All that there wants in order to such an intellectual view” of other minds, Edwards mused, “is that a clear and sensible apprehension of what is in [another] mind should be raised in our own minds constantly, according to such and such laws.”75 Only in heaven would the saints enjoy such constancy. In the meantime, they must rely on the Spirit’s interventions. In an early sermon from his New York pastorate entitled “Christ, the Light of the World” (1723), which he seems to have repreached in Bolton and Northampton, he affirmed that Christ “communicates his light to the souls of men” through Scripture. He cast the mediatorial role of Scripture to impart light and spiritual knowledge in neo-platonic language: “Jesus Christ himself is the essential Word of God, of whom the word written and preached is but an emanation: Christ is the sun, and the word written and preached are the rays.” Citing passages like Ps 19:7–9 and Heb 4:12, he ascribed causal agency to Scripture: “it pierces as light into the dark recesses of the heart, and reveals the secret and hidden thoughts of men.” Moreover, citing Rom 10:14, he explained that the “word preached” was especially “efficacious to the enlightening [of] the soul.” The act of preaching brought the Word to life with a unique force and effectiveness. At the same time, however, he wished to assign full causality to the Spirit. With this shift of emphasis, he heavily downplayed the power of the Word in and of itself. “Although the word be quick and powerful,” he preached, “yet it is nothing; it is but a dead letter without the application of the Holy Spirit.” The Word may “be sharper than a two-edged sword,” but “it cannot divide a rocky heart except [it be] managed by an Almighty hand.” Dead and blind sinners could not receive Christ’s light without the Spirit. When Christ “enlightens the mind,” he “sends forth the Holy Spirit to 75  “Miscellanies,” no. 777, WJE, 18:427−29; “Miscellanies,” no. 182, WJE, 13:329. See also “Miscellanies,” no. 782, WJE, 18:457−58.

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dwell in the soul, to be as a continual internal light to manifest and make known spiritual things to the believer.”76 Thus, while the mediation of the Word was necessary to know God’s mind, only the immediate indwelling presence of the Spirit in the soul could cause this knowledge by exciting spiritual perceptions and sensations of the things taught in the Word. As he preached around the same time in “A Spiritual Understanding Denied to the Unregenerate,” the “immediate efficient cause” of true spiritual understanding “is the Holy Spirit.” All “spiritual saving light” must be “given by the immediate teaching of God’s Spirit,” for “none other can know the things of God but his Spirit” and “none other but the Spirit of God can remove those obstacles that are in the way.”77 Edwards drew from occasionalist philosophy to further penetrate the relationship between the immediate work of the Spirit and the mediate role of the Word. Represented most prominently by the French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), whom Edwards also may have read in the early 1720s, occasionalists posited that God was the efficient cause of all that happens, and consequently no proper relationship of cause and effect exists in the universe. Edwards utilized occasionalism to assert God’s continuing involvement in creation against ideologies that postulated the autonomy of nature and a mechanistic universe.78 Edwards’ use of occasionalist philosophy was most evident in his 1754 treatise on Original Sin, where he submitted that “God’s upholding created substance, or causing its existence in each successive moment, is altogether equivalent to an immediate production out of nothing, at each moment.”79 But his occasionalism was not just a late development. From early on it informed how he understood God’s operations in his creation and how creatures could experience God with an intimate and saving spiritual knowledge. It also aided him in comprehending the role of Scripture and the Spirit in the production of grace and vital piety, as “Miscellanies,” nos. 539 and 629 make clear. For Edwards, means of grace like the sacraments and Scripture were not means in the sense that they exercised efficient or even instrumental causation—hence they “have no influence to produce grace, either as  Christ, The Light of the World, WJE, 10:542−43.  Spiritual Understanding, WJE, 14:88−89. 78  See Fiering, “Rationalist Foundations of Edwards’s Metaphysics,” 78−81. 79  Original Sin, WJE, 3:402, emphasis original. See also “Miscellanies,” no. 346, WJE, 13:418. Edwards’ occasionalism qualifies Bebbington’s assessment that Edwards reinterpreted “the sovereignty of God as an expression of the law of cause and effect.” Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 64. 76 77

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causes or instruments.” Nonetheless, “they are concerned in the affair of the production of grace, and are necessary in order to it,” since “by them the Spirit of God has an opportunity to cause acts of grace in the soul.” In this respect, means of grace like the Scriptures did not function in the same way as natural means: Indeed, in natural things, means of effects, in metaphysical strictness, are not proper causes of the effects, but only occasions. God produces all effects; but yet he ties natural events to the operation of such means, or causes them to be consequent on such means according to fixed, determinate and unchangeable rules, which are called the laws of nature. … But means of grace are not means of the exercises of grace in such a manner. For the actings of the Spirit of God in the heart are more arbitrary80 and are not tied to such and such means by such laws or rules. … the Holy Spirit is given and infused into the hearts of men only under this general law, viz. that it shall remain there and put forth acts there after the manner of an abiding, natural, vital principle of action, a seed remaining in us.

Edwards affirmed that God as the ultimate efficient cause operated in accordance with a Newtonian cosmology of relational laws with respect to the natural world. But the Spirit’s movements were not so confined when it came to spiritual matters, for “not only the principle of grace, but every exercise of it, is the immediate effect of the sovereign acting of the Spirit of God.” This applied as well to the production of spiritual knowledge. Edwards told his congregation, “He imparts this knowledge immediately, not making use of any intermediate natural causes, as he does in other knowledge.” While “a person can’t have spiritual light without the Word,” the “Word of God is no proper cause” or even second cause of it.81 Unlike 80  By “arbitrary” Edwards did not mean random but rather according to God’s sovereign will as the divine arbiter. See Edwards’ distinction between “natural operations” and “arbitrary operations” in “Miscellanies,” no. 1263, WJE, 23:201−12. 81  “Miscellanies,” nos. 539 and 629, WJE, 18:84, 157; Divine and Supernatural Light, WJE, 17:409, 416. This point may also shed interesting insight on Edwards’ communion controversy, in which he opposed Stoddard’s position that the Lord’s Supper was a “converting ordinance.” For Edwards, the Lord’s Supper had no causal ability to produce grace in the heart or transform one’s character. Edwards, Misrepresentations Corrected, and Truth Vindicated, WJE, 12:407−10. Most Puritan theologians such as John Owen also understood the Spirit to be the efficient cause of saving grace and spiritual knowledge but still retained the Scholastic category of instrumental causation. See John Owen, The Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God as Revealed in His Word, with Assurance Therein, in The Works of John Owen, vol. 4, ed. William Goold (Johnstone & Hunter, 1850–53; reprinted, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2004).

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the predictable and fixed processes of cause and effect in nature, the creature’s use of the means of grace like the Lord’s Supper or Scripture did not in itself bring about any spiritual effect but rather created opportunities or occasions for it. His objective in utilizing an occasionalist framework to make this point was to underscore the Spirit’s divine authority, the immediacy of the union between creatures and God, and the creature’s reliance on the Spirit’s sovereign initiative to produce new life and spiritual knowledge. Edwards thus reformulated a perennial Puritan tension between the individual’s depraved helplessness and the need to strive actively after grace in occasionalist terms. On the one hand, he wished to assert the sovereign freedom and totality of the Spirit’s causal agency to bring about grace in the heart. Humans could not cause or compel the Spirit to apply salvation, for the “attending and using means of grace is no more than a waiting upon God for his grace.” On the other hand, he wished to capitalize on the available means of grace to create opportunities for the Spirit to act, since “without means there could be no opportunity for grace to act, there could be no matter for grace to act upon.” Means of grace could give rise to such opportunities in three ways: they could furnish the mind with true religious notions, improve one’s natural reason and judgment, and impress upon the heart the moral goodness of those notions.82 The Word was the primary means used by the Spirit to impart grace and knowledge immediately to the believer. As he preached in A Divine and Supernatural Light, “the notions that are the subject matter of this light, are conveyed to the mind by the Word of God; but that due sense of the heart, wherein this light formally consists, is immediately by the Spirit of God.” For example, “that notion that there is a Christ, and that Christ is holy and gracious, is conveyed to the mind by the Word of God: but the sense of the excellency of Christ by reason of that holiness and grace, is nevertheless immediately the work of the Holy Spirit.”83 Just as the Old Testament prophet Elijah by “laying fuel upon the altar” had given “opportunity for the fire to burn, when God should send it down from heaven,” so the reading and preaching of Scripture supplied the mind and heart with the “matter” upon which the Spirit acted to infuse grace if he chose to do so—such as notions “of God, Christ, the future world, the saints, the attributes of God, the works of God, those things that Christ  “Miscellanies,” no. 539, WJE, 18:88.  Divine and Supernatural Light, WJE, 17:417.

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has done and suffered, etc.” Edwards listed certain conditions that provided “greater opportunity for grace to act if infused.” For one, the notions must be true, “for those that are false ben’t proper fuel for the fire.”84 Challenging enthusiasts and idle parishioners alike, he often advocated for growth in notional knowledge of Scripture as essential for ­experiential spiritual knowledge. In a sermon entitled “Profitable Hearers of the Word,” Edwards urged his congregation to pursue “that knowledge of the principles of religion that is within your power,” since a “notional knowledge of divine things, must go before a spiritual.”85 Hoping to enhance the opportunities for the Spirit to awaken and enlighten, he studiously labored to determine the right meaning of the text, availing himself of various Bible commentaries and theological, historical, grammatical, geographical, encyclopedic, and philosophical aids to ensure that the religious notions he believed and taught were accurate. If the first condition for the Spirit’s gracious action concerned the correctness of one’s doctrinal notions derived from Scripture, the others dealt with the way they were communicated and held in the mind. Merely espousing right religious notions was insufficient. As he wrote in Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival [1743] against those who criticized the emotional fervency of the awakenings, “an increase in speculative knowledge in divinity is not what is so much needed by our people, as something else. … Our people don’t so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched; and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching that has the greatest tendency to do this.”86 Years earlier, Stoddard had criticized mere book learning and called for an experimentally based kind of affectionate preaching to awaken sinners more effectively.87 Edwards agreed but he conceptualized these principles within the framework of his sensationalist psychology and occasionalism, leading him to lay greater weight on appeals to the inner sensations in preparation for the Spirit’s work. For Edwards, the greater the profusion, liveliness, strength, and frequency of religious notions in the mind, the more auspicious were the opportunities for the Spirit to act.88 He wrote in Religious Affections: And the impressing divine things on the hearts and affections of men, is evidently one great and main end for which God has ordained, that his Word  “Miscellanies,” no. 539, WJE, 18:85−86. The biblical story of Elijah is from 1 Kings 18.  Profitable Hearers of the Word of God, WJE, 14:265. 86  Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival [1743], WJE, 387−88. 87  See especially Stoddard, Defects of Preachers Reproved [1723]. 88  “Miscellanies,” no. 539, WJE, 18:85−86. 84 85

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delivered in the holy Scriptures, should be opened, applied, and set home upon men, in preaching. And therefore it don’t answer the aim which God had in this institution, merely for men to have good commentaries and expositions on the Scripture, and other good books of divinity; because, although these may tend, as well as preaching, to give men a good doctrinal or speculative understanding of the things of the Word of God, yet they have not an equal tendency to impress them on men’s hearts and affections.

While the sole cause of grace and spiritual light lay in the Spirit’s sovereign prerogative, the minister was still responsible for communicating Scripture in a manner that roused the senses and emotions to prepare the heart for it. This point applied to the unregenerate and regenerate alike: God hath appointed a particular and lively application of his Word, to men, in the preaching of it, as a fit means to affect sinners, with the importance of the things of religion, and their own misery, and necessity of a remedy, and the glory and sufficiency of a remedy provided; and to stir up the pure minds of the saints, and quicken their affections, by often bringing the great things of religion to their remembrance, and setting them before them in their proper colors, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in them already. (II Peter 1:12–13)89

Most persons sitting in New England’s pews had the right information about the Bible. What they needed, Edwards believed, were newly enlightened eyes and hearts to see and feel God in it. Edwards affirmed in typical Reformed fashion that the “Word alone, however managed, explained, confirmed and applied, is nothing but a dead letter without the Spirit.”90 Nonetheless, the way in which the Word was communicated, read, heard, and meditated upon still mattered. Here Edwards devised a new kind of sensationalist, scriptural preparationism in which the human agent could actively prepare the soul for the Spirit’s gracious operations by attending to the Word as a means of grace. He preached in 1729 that “the diligent use of means,” especially how one went about “reading and hearing the word of God,” more propitiously “prepares the heart for God’s grace and makes it better entertained.”91 When the individual filled the mind with a greater supply of religious  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:115−16.  Threefold Work of the Holy Ghost, WJE, 14:433. 91  Edwards, sermon on Exodus 20:24 (Spring-Fall 1729), Box 1, F. 28, Beinecke, pp. 10−11, transcribed in The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, Volume 44, Sermons, Series II, 1729 (Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University, 2008). Hereafter WJEO. 89 90

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notions from Scripture, the Spirit had “more objects to act upon”—hence the “benefit of frequent and abundant instructions; here is the benefit of study and meditation, and comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” Also, actively nurturing biblical content in the mind with liveliness and intensity had a greater tendency to impress and excite stronger ideas of religious things, giving the Spirit greater opportunity to act on them—hence “the advantage of clear, convincing instructions, of setting forth divine things in a clear light; here is the advantage of divine eloquence, in instructing, warning, counseling, etc.: they serve as they give more strong and lively impressions of the truth.” Finally, when a person entertained religious truths in the mind with greater frequency by heeding the regular preaching of the Word, personal Scripture reading, and habitual meditation, the chances for the Spirit to enliven those notions into spiritual knowledge were all the more auspicious. The “oftener these notions or ideas are revived,” Edwards wrote, the “more likely are persons to receive grace,” as the “Spirit of God … hath more opportunity more constantly.” Since “we know not when the Spirit’s time is,” he reasoned, it was optimal to regularly sustain and cultivate biblical thoughts in preparation.92 The use of means like Scripture not only provided more opportunities to receive grace but also prepared the soul to experience it in greater fullness and richness when (or if) the Spirit did act. In a sermon entitled “The Importance and Advantage of a Thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth,” Edwards told his congregants, “The more you have of a rational knowledge of the things of the gospel, the more opportunity will there be, when the Spirit shall be breathed into your heart, to see the excellency of these things, and to taste the sweetness of them.” By swaying one’s reason— which Edwards confined to the “speculative faculty”—to assent to “the truth of spiritual things,” means of grace like Scripture could prepare the soul for deeper experiences of grace and strengthen one’s assurance, since “love and other graces flow out the more freely and fully towards those objects that are thus believed to be real.” Also, learning Scripture could give the “natural principle of heart” a sense of the “natural good or evil” of its notions and thereby emotionally move “the heart with fear, and desire, etc.” to “be the better prepared for grace.” For example, if the mind “was before prepared by so deep a sense of the dreadfulness of God’s anger,” then the love and grace of God “appears all the more glorious” upon conversion.93 As vibrantly exhibited in his famous sermon Sinners in  “Miscellanies,” no. 539, WJE, 18:86−87.  Importance and Advantage, WJE, 22:100; “Miscellanies,” no. 539, WJE, 18:87−88.

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the Hands of an Angry God, Edwards was no amateur when it came to applying Scripture to terrorize hearts with the fear of God, only to then comfort and stagger them with vivid displays and passionate offers of God’s grace.94 In light of this reasoning, it is easy to understand why Edwards stressed the need for ministers to have a saving and experimental knowledge of the things they preached from the Word. On this point, Edwards would have aligned closely with other awakened Protestants like Francke and Mather, whose Manuductio ad Ministerium he owned.95 But he conceptualized it in his own unique terms that appropriated both sensationalist epistemology and occasionalism. While he attributed all causal agency for spiritual regeneration and illumination to the Spirit, he allowed no room for passivity on the part of the human agent. Preachers and laity alike must actively attend to the Word to know the mind of God. Ministers who cultivated this knowledge themselves will convey biblical truth with greater vivacity, power, and depth, thereby providing their parishioners with more favorable occasions to be awakened by the Spirit. He exhorted lay believers to engage in private reading of Scripture frequently and introspectively for the same reason. Thus, Scripture’s function as a means of spiritual knowledge hinged significantly on the individual’s sensory experience to create auspicious occasions for the Spirit’s regeneration and enlightenment.96

“So Inward, and So Affecting”: Harmonizing the Soul to Scripture According to Edwards, without spiritually awakened wills and affections, persons could never understand Scripture spiritually and thus never achieve true enlightenment. For the main doctrinal point of his 1723 sermon on 2 Cor 2:14 he asserted, “There is a spiritual understanding of divine things, which all natural and unregenerate men are destitute of.” Natural persons could “obtain a large notional knowledge and understanding of  Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God [1741], WJE, 20:400−418.  See WJE, 26:21, 130. He also owned a work by Francke that expressed these sentiments, entitled “Letter Concerning the Most Useful Way of Preaching.” Originally a letter, it was translated into English and published with a work on experimental preaching by John Jennings, Two Discourses […] (London, 1736; Boston: J. Draper, 1740). WJE, 26:171. 96  Rivett makes too little of this active and participatory dimension of Edwards’ preaching when she states that he “urged his congregants to resist interpretive form and to remain completely passive through the sensory encounter.” Rivett, Science of the Soul, 302. 94 95

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the doctrines of divinity,” and this knowledge could even positively impact their lives. They could also “have a great notional knowledge of the meaning and interpretation of Scripture, and may be able to solve the knots and intricacies thereof and to reconcile the seeming repugnancies” in Scripture. And yet, they “cannot know the things of God’s Spirit because they are spiritually discerned.”97 As he reasoned in the spring of 1724  in “Miscellanies,” no. 123, natural persons could not attain “complex spiritual ideas” of spiritual matters such as “holiness, humility, charity” comprised of “simple spiritual ideas” because “they never obtained them by internal sense and experience”—once again displaying his creative adaptation of Lockean epistemology.98 Spiritual ideas arose in the mind through an experiential harmony between the reborn soul and the Word. Edwards’ understanding of spiritual experiential knowledge was integrally tied to what scholars have termed his “necessitarian dispositionalism,” and this combination had important implications for how he approached the relationship between piety and exegesis.99 Edwards viewed human psychology as inherently emotive and dispositional, driven by the will and affections. As he contended throughout his corpus and most thoroughly in his major treatises Freedom of the Will and Original Sin, one’s temperament or disposition ineluctably determined the will’s inclinations. The first humans in their prelapsarian state were endued with two principles: a natural (inferior) and a spiritual (superior). The natural principles consisted of everything “that belonged to his humanity” like reason, natural appetites, love of self, etc., and they flowed from “the inner human nature.” The spiritual principles consisted of “his love to God, and his relish of divine beauties and enjoyments,” and they flowed “from the Spirit of God dwelling in man,” not from anything inherent in human nature. “But when man fell, then the Spirit of God left him,” and consequently “only the flesh was left.” Without “spiritual principles to govern and direct them,” the natural principles became wholly subjected to a sinful will.100 Without the Spirit, a person’s “natural disposition” was habitually inclined

 WJE, 14:72−74.  WJE, 13:287. See also “Miscellanies,” no. 239, WJE, 13:354. For more on Edwards’ understanding of the moral state and ability of human nature on its own, see his sermon based on Romans 3:11−12 entitled All That Natural Men Do Is Wrong, WJE, 19:515−36. 99  McClymond, McDermott, Theology of Edwards, 5. 100  “Galatians 5:17” in “Blank Bible,” WJE, 24:1086−87. See also Threefold Work of the Holy Ghost, WJE, 14:378; Original Sin, WJE, 3:380−88. 97 98

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against spiritual good.101 The reason why persons sinned and rejected God was not due to a natural inability but rather a moral one—they disbelieved not because of natural impediments (whether intellectual, physical, spatial, or temporal) but because they were bound by their own volition to a heart that did not desire and love God. The corruption of the will had enormous implications for epistemology. The most intelligent and “able men in the world” could now “do nothing towards causing the knowledge” of spiritual things because they lacked the Spirit and thus the moral power to reform the heart. To acquire spiritual knowledge, “the disposition … must necessarily be changed first.”102 Edwards saw an inseparable and reciprocal relationship between the disposition and spiritual sense experience in the production of knowledge. Simple spiritual ideas arose exclusively from “internal feeling and sense of the mind,” but the mind’s disposition had to be properly attuned and inclined to spiritual matters first in order for it to sense and feel them. In stressing the alignment between the mind’s knowledge of God and its moral and aesthetic disposition, Edwards echoed not only Puritan divines but also Cambridge Platonists such as Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and John Smith (1618–1652)—whose writings he studied at Yale.103 Aspects of Cambridge Platonist thought resonated with Edwards in part because it resisted early mechanistic and materialist intellectual trends. He thus cited Smith’s Select Discourses in Religious Affections and expressed hearty agreement with his identification of “true religion” with a “godlike frame of spirit.”104 Edwards, however, retained a more robust Reformed emphasis on human depravity and the need for the Spirit’s intervention to renew one’s inner frame. He articulated the relationship between the transformed disposition and knowledge with the help of Lockean sensationalist psychology. Natural persons could not attain spiritual ideas because divine things “seem all so tasteless and insipid” to their natural dispositions. They regard them as a mere “parcel of words to which they in their own minds have no correspondent ideas; ’tis like a strange language or a dead letter, that is, sounds and letters without any signification. … This is the reason the Scripture is  WJE, 14:83.  WJE, 13:287. 103  WJE, 13:287. For more on how Edwards’ understanding of the relationship between the disposition of the mind and internal sensation compared with Locke and the Cambridge Platonists, see McDermott, Edwards Confronts the Gods, 68−69. 104  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:217. 101 102

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no more sweet to them.”105 However, once the Spirit implanted the new spiritual sense in the heart, it “sweetened and mollified” the “internal tempers and disposition” and consequently made one’s knowledge of divine matters “so substantial, so inward, and so affecting.”106 He wrote: The godly man’s idea of God consists very much of these spiritual ideas, that are complicated of those simple ones which the natural man is destitute [of]. But as soon as ever he [the natural man] comes to have the disposition of his mind changed, and to feel some of those operations of mind by means of which he gets those simple ideas, [then it is] that he sees the beauty of them; so he gets the sight of the excellency of holiness and of God. Though after this, when his mind is again indisposed, he will not be able to repeat those ideas; and [only] at some times, according as God makes the internal disposition of his mind more or less agreeable thereto, will he have ideas more or less clear.

The transformed disposition and spiritual senses operated in an inseparable and reciprocal relationship to generate, enhance, and sustain spiritual ideas, “For we cannot have the idea without the adapted disposition of mind, and the more suitable the disposition the more clear and intense the idea; but the more we practice, the more is the disposition increased.” The immediacy and by consequence one’s certainty of a spiritual idea was dependent on this interaction. Just as constant natural sense experience engendered knowledge and certainty of natural things, so “spiritual knowledge is increased” by regular “practice of virtue and holiness.”107 When the disposition inclines to God, one’s spiritual experiences and ideas of divine things become more intense and lively. At the same time, the greater the quality and constancy of spiritual experience, the more the disposition harmonized and bent toward God. In “Miscellanies,” no. 126, written shortly after no. 123 in mid-1724, he expanded on the implications of the relationship between the disposition and sensible spiritual knowledge for reading Scripture.108 Wrestling with how a person regularly maintained the immediate presence of spiritual ideas in the mind, Edwards resolved that there must be a continuous  WJE, 13:287.  Spiritual Understanding, WJE, 14:81. 107  WJE, 13:287. See also Edwards, “Miscellanies,” no. 141 (156), WJE, 13:297−98. 108  For more on the dating of these and other early “Miscellanies,” see Schaefer, “Editor’s Introduction,” WJE, 13:75−89, especially 82−83. 105 106

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and harmonious alignment between Scripture and the individual’s disposition and senses: At one time, the mind has those ideas of things spiritual, and therefore perceives what agrees and harmonizes with [Scripture]; and if anything be mentioned that is congruous and harmonious to it, the mind feels it immediately and echoes to it: it sees wherein the agreement is, and how it naturally falls in with it. And at such a time the soul, as soon as it looks into God’s Word and sees a thing spiritual of which it has an idea, there mentioned, and reads the dependent passages, it sees that there is an exact correspondency, and that things consent in the same manner. But at another, when he has not the ideas themselves in his mind, ’tis no wonder that he can see no agreement. Supposing he is reading of Christian charity; if he has no idea in his mind of it, ’tis no wonder if he don’t feel the correspondency, consent and naturalness of the expressions used about it. When the mind is affected with a thing much, it is led into such schemes of thought about [it] as, if they were written down, would seem very impertinent to one that was not affected—’tis so in all matters; the Scripture falls in with the natural stream of one’s thoughts, when one is affected with the things of which it speaks, but is very wide of their series of thoughts who are not affected.

Attaining spiritual ideas of Scripture required more than a mental organizing of letters and words into coherent propositions. It depended on an experiential correspondence between Scripture and the mind’s sensations. As Miller explained, “The regenerate state thus becomes one with that living, pulsating state in which a word is vividly, fully identified with its sensation.”109 In Edwards’ thinking, however, this identification between the regenerate sensations and the divinely inspired words of Scripture was impossible without the Spirit’s active agency. To awaken spiritual ideas in the mind, the Spirit must incline the disposition and stir the affections “as sweetly corresponds and harmonizes with the expressions of God’s Word.” The Spirit incited “correspondent affections of mind” and “raises such a series and succession of thoughts” that united the reader’s mind with the “mind of the text.” This harmony enabled the inner senses to feel and perceive the moral and aesthetic spiritual qualities of divine things communicated in Scripture. Just as “one instrument of music answers of itself to another in harmony and concord,” so the Spirit’s inspired words of

 Miller, “Sense of the Heart,” 127.

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Scripture resonate with the spiritually tuned perceptions, sensations, and desires of the reborn soul.110 For Edwards, the emphasis placed on interior experiential religion in producing spiritual knowledge and establishing assurance was not divorced from outward practice. As Ava Chamberlain has shown, Edwards became increasingly aware of the dangers of unbridled experiential claims when the excesses of enthusiasts and the hypocrisy of once-awakened backsliders threatened the integrity of the revivals of the early 1740s. He especially grew concerned with the problem of self-deception. He worried that individuals rested disproportionate weight and assurance on rapturous experiences and emotional outbursts that were not truly of a spiritual nature. In response, as evident in his treatise on Religious Affections, he laid greater stress on the importance of Christian practice and perseverance. However, she overstates her case in claiming that Edwards now “rejected immediate religious experience as a solution to the epistemological problem concerning the nature and means of assurance.”111 Edwards’ greater caution did not lead him to minimize experiential authority. As he professed throughout his corpus, inner affectional experience and outward practice together constituted true experimental religion. This concern was already evident soon after the 1734–1735 Northampton revivals in a list he entitled “Directions for Judging of Persons’ Experiences.” Authentic religious “discoveries and illuminations and experiences,” he reflected, “are not superficial pangs, flashes, imagination, freaks,” but rather “solid, substantial, deep, inwrought into the frame and temper of their minds, and discovered to have respect to practice.”112 This statement anticipated Edwards’ design in Religious Affections, where he distinguished true spiritual affections from false by tying experimental religion all the more firmly to the inseparability of the Spirit and the Word. While experiential knowledge of the Word was a deeply inward matter for Edwards, it also had implications for outward Christian practice. The witness of the Spirit was “the highest kind of evidence of the saint’s adoption,” Edwards wrote. However, to discern the Spirit’s inner presence and activity, a person had to look to the effects produced in their heart and life over time. As he elaborated in his twelfth and chief sign of  WJE, 13:289−91.  Ava Chamberlain, “Self-Deception as a Theological Problem in Jonathan Edwards’s ‘Treatise Concerning Religious Affections,” Church History 63:4 (Dec. 1994), 555. 112  “Directions for Judging of Persons’ Experiences,” WJE, 21:523. 110 111

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genuine religious affections, outward good works supplied “the main evidence of our true Christianity to others.” But when it came to securing “evidence of our real Christianity to our own consciences,” one must test “not only the motion of our bodies, but the exertion and exercise of the soul.” Edwards analogized the process of discerning and procuring this internal attestation of one’s spiritual state to the methods of “experimental philosophy.” Experiments or trials of the soul worked out in Christian practice yielded verifiable evidence of the Spirit’s gracious work: Whenever a person finds within him, an heart to treat God as God, at the time that he has the trial, and finds his disposition effectual in the experiment, that is the most proper, and most distinguishing experience. And to have at such a time that sense of divine things, that apprehension of the truth, importance and excellency of the things of religion, which then sways and prevails, and governs his heart and hands; this is the most excellent spiritual light, and these are the most distinguishing discoveries.

Such a trial constituted the most “proper experiment of the truth and power of our godliness.” Inner sensations without practice produced no reliable evidence of true conversion, but neither did fruits that were not attended with inner spiritual affections, a godly disposition, and lively and sensible perceptions of God’s excellency. The convert must test both. However, although Edwards ascribed an important role to the religious community in assessing true religious practice, he ultimately regarded such experimental trials as an individual matter: “I had rather have the testimony of my conscience … than the judgment, and fullest approbation, of all the wise, sound and experienced divines … on the most exact and critical examination of my experiences, as to the manner of my conversion.” Inner religion that was regularly “effectual in practice” yielded the “highest evidences” of grace in one’s life and bore witness of it to the conscience.113 Inner sensations and outward practices alike must harmonize with Scripture. Edwards’ understanding of experimental religious trials corresponded to how he described the activity of one’s consciousness when absorbing Scripture. In his notebook on “The Mind,” he defined consciousness as 113  Edwards cited Stoddard’s Sincerity and Hypocrisy to argue that his stress on the role of the inner senses in establishing assurance did not contradict the voices of divines who laid greater stress on the “visible exercises of grace.” Religious Affections, WJE, 2:454, 424, 452−53, 443, 453−54.

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“the mind’s perceiving what is in itself—its ideas, actions, passions” through a “sort of feeling within itself. The mind feels when it thinks.”114 According to Udo Thiel, this conception of consciousness as inner-­ directed and concerned with how a person relates to their own mental states gained prominence in the eighteenth century, and it contrasted with seventeenth-century Puritan understandings of conscientia as a moral judgment.115 The casuistical writings of Puritan authors such as Perkins and Ames embodied this earlier understanding of conscientia, in which they set divine testimony from Scripture in dialectic with the individual’s existential situation to draw a conclusion or moral judgment regarding their spiritual state. Ames expressed this in the form of a syllogism. The major proposition derived from divine testimony: “Whosoever beleeves in Christ, shall not dye but live.” The minor proposition stated the soul’s position: “I beleeve in Christ.” Last came the conclusion or judgment: “Therefore, I shall not dye but live.”116 Edwards introduced his sensationalist understanding of consciousness in this line of reasoning, rooting assurance of salvation in the interaction between inner spiritual sensation and the Word. In a friendly letter from 1750 engaging theological disagreements with the Scottish minister Thomas Gillespie (1708–1774), Edwards elaborated on how a person can know whether they are “in a good estate” spiritually. Echoing the Ramist logic of Perkins and Ames, he wrote: “True believers, in the hope they entertain of salvation, make use of the following syllogism: whosoever believes, shall be saved; I believe, therefore [I shall be saved].” Like Ames, he based assent to the major proposition on belief in “the Word of God.” However, assent to the minor proposition—i.e., “a man’s believing that he is in a good estate”—rested on “immediate sensation or consciousness, and not on divine testimony.” In other words, Scripture could tell a person what to believe to be saved, but it did not say whether the individual reading or hearing it was saved. For this, each person must depend “on inward sensation” to judge “those individual inward acts of understanding, and exercises of the heart.” Edwards illustrated his point from Gen 24. Abraham’s servant knew from a revelation (divine  “The Mind,” WJE, 6:345.  Udo Thiel, The Early Modern Subject: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 6−11. Thiel discusses Edwards’ thoughts on consciousness from Original Sin on pp. 262−65. 116  See William Ames, Conscience With the Power and Cases Thereof … Translated Out of Latine Into English (London, 1639), 3. 114 115

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testimony) that the woman who would draw water from the well for him would become Isaac’s wife. However, his knowledge “that Rebekah was the damsel” was obtained “not from divine testimony, but from the testimony of his own senses.” The servant grasped the revelation on a speculative level (major proposition). Then his own sense of sight informed him it was Rebekah who drew the water (minor proposition). Now he could confidently conclude that Rebekah was to become Isaac’s wife (conclusion). Likewise, believers had to rely on Scripture for what to know about God, but the knowledge of whether they in fact personally loved and believed what Scripture said about God derived from “the testimony of my own heart, or inward consciousness.” The conclusion or judgment of a person’s spiritual state—the assurance and knowledge that “therefore I shall be saved”—depended on the harmony between one’s belief in the divine testimonies of Scripture and the strength of their internal sensations.117 While Edwards’ reasoning largely followed his Puritan tradition, his sensationalist framework and occupation with the individual’s inner experiential faculties—consciousness, sensations, affections, disposition, inclinations etc.—gave shape to a distinctive program of evangelical enlightenment by the Word.

“When the Mind Is Enlightened Spiritually”: Knowing Scripture Having established Edwards’ philosophy of spiritual knowledge as a dynamic interaction between the Spirit, Word, and experience, it is necessary to explore his understanding of the spiritual sense’s role in reading and knowing Scripture. This point marks an important difference between Mather and Edwards. Drawing on the experimental methods and language of early Royal Society natural philosophers such as Robert Boyle, Mather affirmed that observations from spiritual experience furnished data-like knowledge that illuminated the Bible’s hidden spiritual meanings. In contrast, Edwards’ adaptation of Lockean empiricism maintained that spiritual experience did not reveal Scripture’s meaning but rather generated new sensible ideas and perceptions of the mind’s already existing notions of Scripture. It did not unveil spiritual meanings but rather spiritual qualities. Many scholarly treatments have inaccurately portrayed the relationship between his notion of the spiritual sense and his biblical  “Letter 4. Edwards to Gillespie,” WJE, 2:502−504.

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interpretation, charging Edwards with practicing an arbitrary spiritual hermeneutic that sharply deviated from his Protestant tradition. A root of this misreading can be traced to a common misunderstanding of the kind of knowledge Edwards believed the spiritual sense produced. Leon Chai writes, for example, “we know that the kind of spiritual knowledge Edwards has in mind is essentially propositional in nature. It consists, we are told, of a new way of understanding Christian doctrine.”118 Edwards in fact labored throughout his corpus to argue the opposite. The knowledge produced by the spiritual sense was inseparable from right doctrinal propositions, but it was inherently experiential. Scholars have applied this misunderstanding of the spiritual sense to Edwards’ exegesis, claiming that he viewed the spiritual sense as a special tool to interpret the propositional and doctrinal meaning of Scripture— especially its spiritual mysteries that lay hidden to unbelievers. According to Stein, Edwards thought the inward spiritual sense of the soul afforded entry to the inward spiritual sense of the text. It enabled interpreters to decipher mystical meanings beyond the literal sense, i.e., beyond the text’s “grammar, history, and prophecy.” Finding the literal sense too “restricted” and “confined,” Edwards opted for “the sweeping breadth and possibility of the spiritual interpretation” with “free reign.” Consequently, writes Stein, “Edwards’s interpretation of any given text could and often did randomly result in a statement about Christ, the church, or heaven. … Accordingly, the Bible did not function for him as a theological norm or source in any usual Protestant fashion because the literal sense of the text did not restrict him.”119 Nichols similarly faults Edwards’ notion of the spiritual sense for encouraging unbridled subjectivity in his interpretation of Scripture (especially with typology and prophecy), and for practicing a hermeneutic that is so “self-contained” and random that it is not replicable or instructive for interpreters today.120 W.  R. Ward also  Leon Chai, Jonathan Edwards and the Limitations of Enlightenment Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 33. 119  Stein, “Quest for the Spiritual Sense,” 109−10, 113. 120  Nichols, Edwards’s Bible, 23, 43. Nichols asserts in a later essay that “Edwards’ approach is not an unprincipled exercise of imagination,” but nonetheless the rules for interpreting Scripture’s spiritual sense, according to Edwards, were “made available only to those indwelt by the Holy Spirit, capable of polyvalence and subject to its own principles of interpretation.” Edwards thought the new spiritual sense in the believer legitimated “a particular freedom in exploring Scripture’s spiritual sense,” and in this respect, argues Nichols, Edwards was an innovator within his Reformed tradition. Nichols, “Jonathan Edwards’ Principles of Interpreting Scripture,” in Edwards and Scripture, 45−46, 50. 118

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concludes that Edwards’ exegesis “had become so completely severed from the literal sense so dear to the Reformers as to be completely arbitrary.”121 No doubt, Edwards’ biblical interpretation often veered far from the plain or literal sense. When Zech 1:8 described myrtle trees in a valley, he saw the low and “melancholy condition” of Israel. In other passages, lilies and pomegranates that adorned the temple represented the beauty of the saints and spiritual fruit in their life. Oxen threshing corn and wheat before being sacrificed signified the labors of Christ before his death to procure spiritual bread for his people.122 And so on. Nonetheless, his spiritual interpretations were not arbitrary, and a better grasp of how his exegesis worked together with his sensationalist religious psychology will help avoid this misguided judgment. Historians must look beyond a surface-­ level comparative reading of his interpretations and understand them in light of his engagement with broader transformations of ideas and piety at the time—in particular, the intellectual challenges to traditional claims regarding spiritual knowledge, the enthusiast extremes that threatened the credibility of the awakenings, and the early evangelical pursuit to assert the Spirit’s gracious operations and the new birth as the key loci of genuine spiritual knowledge and experience. Contrary to what scholars have claimed, Edwards did not believe the spiritual sense of the heart revealed these spiritual meanings to him or any other regenerate reader. Those arguing otherwise have drawn a misleading parallel between Edwards’ understanding of natural and spiritual knowledge, and his literal and spiritual interpretation.123 They hold that Edwards used natural means like reason, grammar, and history to understand the literal sense, and mystical means like inner illumination and the spiritual sense of the heart to understand Scripture’s spiritual sense (leading to arbitrary and subjective interpretations). However, when Edwards spoke about the role of the spiritual sense in reading Scripture, the key contrast was not whether it gave the interpreter a new propositional understanding of the spiritual sense of the text as opposed to the literal, but whether it produced an experiential and spiritual knowledge as opposed to notional knowledge. He certainly distinguished between a literal and spiritual sense  Ward, Early Evangelicalism, 146.  “Notes on Scripture,” WJE, 15:223, 229−30, 150−51. 123  The entry “Spiritual Sense of Scripture” in the Edwards Encyclopedia follows Stein and repeats the same mistake; see Edwards Encyclopedia, 545−47. 121 122

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in Scripture. In fact, he believed most passages had several spiritual ­meanings, since God as the author speaks with “a manifold instruction in his speech.”124 But he did not equate the correct interpretation of the text’s spiritual meaning(s) with having a spiritual knowledge of it. A spiritual knowledge of Scripture was not about identifying the true mystical meaning(s) of the pomegranates in the temple. Rather, it concerned the spiritual nature of the reader’s inner sensations, perceptions, cognition, and affections and their experiential harmony with the meaning of the passage. Thus, Edwards’ idiosyncratic readings cannot be attributed to a reliance on the spiritual sense as a revelatory mechanism. Edwards most forcefully belabored these points in Religious Affections, as he strove to distinguish true spiritual affections and knowledge from false. On the one hand, he wished to disillusion any self-deceiving churchgoers that their extensive understanding of the Bible’s spiritual meanings was the same thing as the spiritual knowledge of regenerate Christians. Citing 1 Cor 13:2, Edwards pronounced that “a man might understand all such mysteries, and have no saving grace.”125 Thousands of New England churchgoers learned the intricacies of Old Testament types and their New Testament fulfillments. They could explain the many ways that complex Old Testament books like Leviticus, Canticles, Esther, and Ezekiel brimmed with Christological meanings. They could decipher mysteries about the Trinity throughout the Law and the Prophets. But Edwards insisted that having a saving and experiential knowledge of these things was another matter. It was in fact “possible that a man might know how to interpret all the types, parables, enigmas, and allegories in the Bible” and yet “not have one beam of spiritual light in his mind; because he mayn’t have the least degree of that spiritual sense of the holy beauty of divine things which has been spoken of, and may see nothing of this kind of glory in anything contained in any of these mysteries, or any other part of the Scripture.”126 Hence, “He that explains what is meant by the stony ground, and the seed’s springing up suddenly, and quickly withering away,” he reasoned, “only explains what propositions or doctrines are taught in it.” Likewise, “he that explains what is typified by Jacob’s ladder, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it, or what was typified by Joshua’s leading Israel through Jordan, only shows what  “Miscellanies,” no. 851, WJE, 20:80.  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:278−79. 126  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:278. 124 125

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propositions are hid in these passages.” Regenerate readers did not come to understand the hidden typological meanings of the stony ground, Jacob’s ladder, and crossing the Jordan by virtue of the spiritual sense, since “many men can explain these types, who have no spiritual knowledge.”127 His rhetoric encapsulates a key early evangelical tenet: having the right interpretations and doctrine was not enough. Individuals needed the spiritual rebirth from the Spirit to attain a vital experiential knowledge of God by the Word. On the other hand, he endeavored to counteract the enthusiasts who often confused a spiritual knowledge of Scripture with immediate impressions, bodily sensations, and visions from the Spirit. Edwards labored to distinguish right spiritual practices from enthusiast extremes since early in his ministry. But the commotion surrounding the revivals of the 1730s and 1740s elicited more extensive reflections from him on these matters, as seen in The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741), Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival (1742), and Religious Affections (1746).128 The revival fervor in the Connecticut River Valley in the mid-­1730s and the awakening preaching of George Whitefield and others unlatched momentous changes in piety for many ordinary believers on both sides of the Atlantic. As revivalists insisted on the necessity of having an immediate, inward, and transformative experience of God’s grace through the indwelling Spirit, awakened men and women toiled to detect the sensory effects of the Spirit in their souls and prove their salvation. The intense longing and introspection for discernible signs of spiritual life that characterized the new evangelical piety came with controversial innovations. Many associated the Spirit’s activity with receiving bodily sensations and healings, impulses of Scripture in their minds, and visions of their names in the “Book of Life” providing them assurance of salvation.129 Edwards was well aware of these innovations and explicitly cautioned against some of them. His concern was whether these things constituted true spiritual knowledge, and his response contained elements of both Puritan practical divinity and sensationalist psychology. In one sense, these enthusiast innovations were not entirely novel, and Edwards addressed 127  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:278. Edwards referred to Mark 4:5 and Matt 13:5, Gen 28:10–17, and Josh 3. This point challenges Nichol’s argument that Edwards saw typological interpretation as restricted for those indwelt by the Spirit. Nichols, “Edwards’s Principles of Interpreting Scripture,” in Edwards and Scripture, 46−50. 128  WJE, vol. 4. 129  Winiarski, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light, 207−84.

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them in a similar fashion as his Puritan forebears. New England divines such as Thomas Shephard and Solomon Stoddard countered enthusiasm long ago, and Edwards drew heavily from their works to argue that there was no immediate witness or inspiration of the Spirit detached from the mediation of the Word.130 However, claims to illuminated knowledge based on ecstatic religious experiences reached unprecedented levels in the context of the evangelical awakenings of the mid-1700s.131 And from the perspective of critics like Charles Chauncey and Alexander Garden, it became increasingly difficult to differentiate the enthusiasts’ religious experientialism from that of the followers of Whitefield and Edwards. Looking to address these widespread confusions in a versatile religious environment, Edwards applied sensationalist philosophy to explain, “for the sake of the common people,” the difference between knowledge and affections arising from “imaginary ideas” and ideas proceeding from the spiritual sense infused by the Spirit. By imaginary ideas he did not mean fake ones. He did not dispute the reality of the new affections, ideas, and visions that many were having in the fervor of revival. He instead questioned the spiritual nature of them. Their sensations and visions may have appeared spiritual, but they were in fact “nothing but nature extraordinarily acted.” They arose from exciting “new circumstances” and consisted of a “new cooperation of natural affections” and “a new composition of ideas,” but they amounted to a different kind of sensation than those derived from the new vital principle of the Spirit. An imaginary idea or impression, Edwards explained, was an image conjured up in the mind of something that was not physically present and thus not immediately experienced by the natural external senses. Such were the ideas many were having and calling spiritual. Some said they had a spiritual vision of Christ on the cross with blood flowing from his wounds, or they heard him  On this issue Edwards drew particularly from Thomas Shepard’s Sound Believer: A Treatise of Evangelicall Conversion (London, 1645), and Parable of the Ten Virgins (published posthumously in London, 1660) of which, as John Smith notes, Edwards quoted over two dozen pages. He also cited Solomon Stoddard’s Guide to Christ (Boston, 1714) and Treatise Concerning Conversion (Boston, 1719), and the English Puritan John Flavel, A Discourse of the Occasions, Causes, Nature, Rise, Growth, and Remedies of Mental Errors (London, 1691), and Sacramental Meditations (London, 1679), among other Puritan authors. Edwards, Religious Affections, WJE, vol. 2. 131  As Isabel Rivers shows, inward religion was a contested matter in the revivals, and evangelical leaders encouraged it while also addressing its potential dangers in varying ways. Isabel Rivers, “Inward Religion and its Dangers in the Evangelical Revival,” in Heart Religion, ed. Coffey, 138−55. 130

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speaking words of Scripture to comfort them. Others claimed to see his face smiling at them or had visions of him sitting on the throne in heaven. Many sensed the Spirit impressing passages of Scripture on the mind to give spontaneous insight and discernment in a given situation. But such things were not in essence spiritual, Edwards argued. Natural persons had the capacity to imagine these very things as well. If many who saw and heard Christ firsthand with their external senses long ago had no true spiritual sense of his glory and divinity, why would seeing visions and hearing voices today be different?132 Spiritual knowledge by definition must be something that persons in a natural state with only natural capacities cannot experience. Edwards’ thinking on the nature of spiritual ideas and true worship moved in a similar direction as Calvin (as discussed in Chap. 2), as he attributed enthusiast trances, mystical visions, and audible revelations to natural flaws of the imagination, psychological frame, and ultimately the will. Edwards’ rationalist contemporaries like the deists and even Chauncey made similar arguments in their agenda to demystify piety and stress inherent human reason and moral judgment in determining right belief and practice. However, like other early evangelicals, Edwards still wished to uphold the philosophical validity of experiential knowledge of the sacred, but to make this case he confined it more narrowly to the immediate and gracious work of the Holy Spirit on the inner sensations of the reborn. He quoted Calvin to demonstrate the continuity of his thinking on this point: “it is not the office of the Spirit that is promised us, to make new and before unheard of revelations” that lead persons “away from the received doctrine of the gospel; but to seal and confirm to us that very doctrine which is by the gospel.” According to Calvin, those “pretending to be immediately led by the Spirit” were not in fact experiencing anything spiritual but were rather “laboring under a mistake” and were “driven by a sort of raving madness.” Edwards readily acknowledged the influences of Satan, but they were not technically of a spiritual nature in the way Edwards defined it. Satan’s workings were in fact anti-spiritual, since demonic influences only deluded persons to think false religion was true and that these impressions, visions, and voices arising from merely natural exercises amounted to an authentic experience of God.133

 Religious Affections, WJE, 2:208−213.  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:278, 210. See Calvin, Institutes, 1:93−94.

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While Edwards echoed the thinking of Calvin and many Puritans like Shepard and John Flavel in distinguishing the natural from the spiritual, he also used sensationalist psychology. This framework gave him the tools to desacralize spurious religion to better distinguish authentic spiritual knowledge. For Edwards, knowledge arising from spiritual sensations was of an entirely different nature than knowledge based on “impressions on the imagination, and imaginary ideas.” Natural persons have “no manner of idea” of the spiritual things of Scripture regardless of what mystical things they think they saw, felt, or heard. Their ideas were produced by an “extraordinarily raising and exciting [of] natural principles” and the “varying and compounding such sort of ideas” that the person “has by nature.” Edwards found this point very “agreeable to 1 Corinthians 2:14,” and it enabled him to repudiate any claims to new revelatory illuminations of Scripture: As the suggesting words of Scripture to the mind, is only the exciting in the mind ideas of certain sounds or letters; so it is only one way of exciting ideas in the imagination; for sounds and letters are external things, that are the objects of the external senses of seeing and hearing. Ideas of certain marks upon paper, such as any of the twenty-four letters, in whatever order, or any sounds of the voice, are as much external ideas, as of any other shapes or sounds whatsoever: and therefore, by what has been already said concerning these external ideas, it is evident they are nothing spiritual; and if at any time the Spirit of God suggests these letters or sounds to the mind, this is a common, and not any special or gracious influence of that Spirit.134

The imaginary ideas about mystical visions and sounds were not spiritual because they arose from natural sensations. Edwards argued that even many actions and influences of the Spirit on persons were “common” and did not constitute true spiritual experiences. One of his favorite examples to illustrate this point was the prophet Balaam from the Old Testament book of Numbers. The Spirit gave revelations and visions to Balaam, a pagan prophet who opposed God’s people Israel, and even “impressed on his mind” a “clear and lively outward representation of Jesus Christ, as the star rising out of Jacob.” But these visions were not equivalent to spiritual knowledge because the Spirit merely excited and moved Balaam’s “natural principles” to produce these ideas in his mind. They did not arise out of the “new spiritual principle,” and thus 134

 Religious Affections, WJE, 2:210, 208, 219.

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Balaam had “no manner of spiritual discovery of Christ; that daystar never spiritually rose in his heart, he being a natural man.”135 He referred to Balaam again in his exegesis of Heb 6:4–6 in his “Notes on Scripture” to explain why it appeared that some Christians could fall away from the faith. Like Balaam, persons in their natural, unregenerate state could experience the things mentioned in the text via the “common” and even “miraculous” influences of the Spirit, such as being “once enlightened,” experiencing “common illuminations and affections,” and having “tasted of the good word of God,” and yet not truly know God in a spiritual and saving manner. Such persons will not persevere in the faith because they never experienced the “gracious exercises” of the Spirit.136 Edwards’ sharp distinction between natural and spiritual knowledge ultimately served his broader aim to promote religious enlightenment through authentic experiential knowledge of God. Grasping this point is essential for understanding Edwards’ approach to the relationship between the spiritual sense and reading Scripture. Whether a person conflated spiritual knowledge with a notional understanding of Scripture’s mystical sense or with ecstatic visions and revelatory impulses, Edwards made clear that it was something else. It was “evident,” Edwards wrote, “that spiritual knowledge does not consist in any new doctrinal explanation of any part of the Scripture; for still, this is but doctrinal knowledge, or the knowledge of propositions; the doctrinal explaining of any part of Scripture, is only giving us to understand, what are the propositions contained or taught in that part of Scripture.” Neither did a “spiritual understanding of the Scripture” open “to the mind the mystical meaning of the Scripture, in its parables, types and allegories; for this is only a doctrinal explication of the Scripture.” Ascertaining the literal, doctrinal, spiritual, allegorical, and typological meanings of Scripture on its own fell short of a spiritual understanding. These statements clarify a passage that some have cited 135  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:206, 213. Edwards referred to Numbers 24:17, joining a long tradition of interpreters who believed the “daystar” signified Christ. 136  “Notes on Scripture,” WJE, 15:70−71. This entry distinguishing the influences of the Spirit into “common” and “gracious” was written in 1729 and thus anticipates his more extensive thinking on the matter during the 1740s, as seen in his “Treatise on Grace” and Religious Affections. Winiarski wrongly asserts that Edwards introduced this dichotomy in “Treatise on Grace,” and he consequently overstates his argument that Edwards’ doctrine of the Spirit shifted during the revival period of the early 1740s by making the Spirit’s immediate gracious activity more central to his “emerging revival theology.” See Winiarski, Darkness Falls, 217−18. For the dating of Edwards’ entries in “Notes on Scripture,” see Stein’s “Editor’s Introduction,” WJE, 15:42−46.

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when claiming that Edwards utilized the spiritual sense to unveil Scripture’s spiritual meaning: Spiritually to understand the Scripture, is rightly to understand what is in the Scripture, and what was in it before it was understood: ’tis to understand rightly, what used to be contained in the meaning of it; and not the making a new meaning. When the mind is enlightened spiritually and rightly to understand the Scripture, it is enabled to see that in the Scripture, which before was not seen, by reason of blindness.

It seems Edwards contradicts himself here, and that he believed the spiritual sense did in fact reveal the Bible’s propositional meaning. However, the sentence prior challenges this reading: “Thus to understand texts of Scripture, is not to have a spiritual understanding of them.”137 His point here was simply that a spiritual understanding of Scripture must be based on a right comprehension of its propositions rather than some novel or revelatory insight. The blindness that unbelievers had was not an inability to ascertain the Bible’s meaning but to perceive its spiritual wonders: Spiritually to understand the Scripture, is to have the eyes of the mind opened, to behold the wonderful spiritual excellency of the glorious things contained in the true meaning of it, and that always were contained in it, ever since it was written. … Which things are, and always were in the Bible, and would have been seen before, if it had not been for blindness, without having any new sense added by the words being sent by God to a particular person, and spoken anew to him, with a new meaning.

John Owen described blindness in similar terms, stating that those “under the power of their natural darkness and blindness” can still “assent unto the truth of Scripture” by natural means, but to “discern the glory of spiritual things” in Scripture with “faith divine and supernatural” they needed the Spirit’s gracious illumination.138 For Edwards, the eyes of the reborn must be opened to have new kinds of spiritual views and apprehensions of the  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:278, 280. Emphasis added. Brown, for instance, argues that in Religious Affections, Edwards had moved beyond his earlier position that the spiritual sense concerned merely an aesthetic and experiential dimension and now ascribed to it greater powers to reveal scriptural content to the enlightened reader. Brown, Edwards and the Bible, 52. My reading challenges this interpretation. 138  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:280–81. Owen, Reason of Faith, 57–58. 137

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notions they read and hear from Scripture. The spiritual sense enabled them to perceive and discern the spiritual and moral beauties contained in its narratives, doctrines, and laws. The unregenerate were “so far from understanding the Word of God,” not because they lacked the capacity to determine its meaning, but because they lacked a “sensible apprehension” of “the very main things of Scripture,” namely “the glory of God, the excellency and fullness of Jesus Christ, the nature of holiness, [and] the reason and foundation of duty.” These “main things of Scripture” were spiritual qualities that only regenerate believers could discern by experience.139 Although these spiritual sensations were internal, they were not disconnected from practice. Edwards’ emphasis on the importance of Christian obedience when addressing the dangers of enthusiasm and hypocrisy also pervaded his biblical experientialism. Criticizing the enthusiasts for seeking guidance from spiritual impulses, Edwards countered that the “gracious leading of the Spirit” consisted in “instructing a person in his duty” through the Word and in “powerfully inducing him to comply with that instruction.” The Spirit did not give new revelations or impressions but rather a new “inward sensation” that inclined the soul to follow the precepts already in the Word. By the spiritual sense and the Word, the “sons of God are led by the Spirit of God, in their behavior in the world.”140 The spiritual sense renewed the will to embrace and obey Scripture’s commands and produce good works. In one sense, Edwards’ sharp demarcation of natural and spiritual knowledge and its implications for reading Scripture followed a parallel trajectory of desacralization as some early Enlightenment thinkers like Locke and the deists. But whereas the latter applied empiricist philosophy to desacralize religious knowledge and authority, rationalize religious belief, and moralize piety, Edwards used it to elucidate the precise nature of spiritual knowledge to promote religious enlightenment more effectively. He devised a narrower conception of the spiritual, confined to the Spirit’s gracious operations as a vital principle in the soul, rousing the spiri­ tual sense and enlightening the mind to the divine beauties and glories in the world and the Word. “Truly gracious affections,” he wrote, “arise from special and peculiar influences of the Spirit, working that sensible effect or sensation in the souls of the saints.”141 Superstitions and rituals, esotericism and magic, enthusiast fervor, imaginary ideas, visions,  Profitable Hearers, WJE, 14:249.  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:281, 283. Emphasis original. 141  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:208, 210. 139 140

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impressions, and revelations that appeared mystical ultimately amounted to natural exercises and arose from natural causes (with the exception of the Spirit’s common supernatural work like with Balaam). While he certainly had an expansive typological view of creation in which all things brimmed with spiritual meaning, Edwards’ cosmos was not like Mather’s vitalistic notion of a plastic spirit amenable to preternatural forces. Whereas Mather’s world remained enchanted with prodigies, witchcraft, and spirits, the enlightened clergy of Edwards’ generation found these views, as Marsden notes, “a bit of an embarrassment.”142 In Edwards’ less enchanted view, the things of the natural world are like words on a page—on their own they are natural objects and symbols. However, the Spirit’s enlightenment of the spiritual senses enables persons to perceive and experience the greater divine realities they signify. Grasping Edwards’ careful attempt to distinguish the natural and spiritual reveals how many early evangelicals, in adapting Christianity in an early Enlightenment context, advanced both desacralization and re-­ sacralization of their world. They reasserted a spiritual vitalism but simultaneously narrowed it to a conversion-based, experiential, affective, and interior dimension tied to the workings of the Spirit. But this narrowing did not mean a reducing or blunting of piety. Edwards for one found this conception of spiritual knowledge greatly conducive for his faith and life as a Christian in a time when many either dismissed spiritual experience and knowledge altogether or confused it with the delusions of enthusiasm. It augmented religious certainty by assuring the awakened that their experiences were authentic and their salvation sure. While not using the scholarly language of Lockean philosophy like Edwards, Sarah Osborn typifies how many lay evangelical believers employed similar experimental reasoning to express confidence in the truth of Christianity based on experience. She knew the “evidences of a work of grace” in her life were not “the effects of nature, gifts, imagination, or a common work of the Spirit” but rather true signs of God’s salvation, because only the regeneration of the Spirit could “enamor the soul with his beauty” and “make it even break with longings after a conformity to him.”143 Bolstered by the authority of empiricism, Edwards and other early evangelicals found renewed confidence in the possibility of knowing and communing with God spiritually by the Spirit and the Word.  Marsden, Edwards, 69.  Osborn, True Christianity (1755), in Collected Writings, 115.

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Absorbed with the immediacy and authority of experiential knowledge, Edwards harmonized Enlightenment empirical philosophy and Protestant experimental piety in an ambitious program of evangelical enlightenment and awakening. His creative integration of Puritan practical divinity and Lockean empiricism gave rise to his dynamic notion of the spiritual sense that furnished both a philosophical basis for certainty and a wellspring for authentic and vital religion. It bolstered his agendas to prove the Spirit and uphold the validity of spiritual knowledge against what he perceived as naturalizing tendencies. It also fueled his pious ambition to capitalize on the experiential capacities of the new spiritual sense for enhancing his own and his audience’s knowledge and affections of divine things, as he sought to unite souls in deeper harmony with the divine life. Confident that growth in experiential knowledge of and harmony with God arose from the operations of the Spirit on the mind as it encountered divine things in Scripture, Edwards read and preached the Word with all the affection he could muster.

CHAPTER 6

“It Wonderfully Enlightens”: Edwards’ Exegesis of Sensation

Edwards’ sermons and published writings display the colossal extent of his practical efforts to know and expound the Word to further spiritual enlightenment for himself and others. He also devoted several unpublished notebooks to this end. He began the notebook entitled “Notes on Scripture” in early 1724 during his brief pastorate in Bolton, Connecticut, and he maintained it until shortly before his death. He filled it with 507 entries, following no organizational system other than the devotional, ministerial, and intellectual interests that engaged him in a given season of life. In 1730 he began exegetical entries in another notebook, “Miscellaneous Observations on the Holy Scriptures,” which he received as a gift from his brother-in-law Benjamin Pierpont. He referred to it as the “Blank Bible” because it was a Bible interleaved with blank pages, and he penned over 5500 exegetical notes in it. Other unpublished exegetical notebooks or leaflets include his “Notes on the Apocalypse,” “Images of Divine Things,” “Types of the Messiah,” “Hebrew Idioms,” “Defense of the Authenticity of the Pentateuch as a Work of Moses and the Historicity of the Old Testament Narratives,” “Notes on Books of Moses,” “Scripture Prophecies of the Old Testament,” “Notes on the Coming of Christ,” and “The Harmony of the Genius, Spirit, Doctrines and Rules of the Old

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. P. Hoselton, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment, Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44935-2_6

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Testament and the New.”1 Overall, his sermons and writings reflect how his biblical practices dynamically and reciprocally interacted with his theology, eclectic metaphysical musings, historical studies, devotional meditations, ministry responsibilities, polemical controversies, everyday life experiences, social commitments, and entanglements in current events. Ultimately for Edwards, these exegetical labors served a greater end of furthering spiritual knowledge and piety. In this respect he followed his Reformed Protestant and Puritan traditions, but his reaction to the intellectual and religious transformations of his time molded the practical manifestations of his biblical experimentalism in different ways. As argued in the previous chapter, his innovative synthesis between Puritan experimental divinity, Lockean empiricism, and awakened Protestant vitalism undergirded his attempts to bolster spiritual knowledge of God by the Spirit and the Word in an intellectual and religious context that increasingly elevated nature over spirit and reason over revelation. From this synthesis Edwards advanced a constructive program of evangelical enlightenment based in a biblical sensationalism that would prove and promote the vital spiritual workings of the Spirit. This chapter now explores five interrelated aspects that characterized his practical quest for evangelical enlightenment by the Word: experiencing, professing, interpreting, preaching, and practicing Scripture. In particular, it examines how his exegesis of sensation galvanized his efforts to deepen his own personal piety, establish experiential certainty in Scripture’s divine origin and authority, interpret Scripture with the guidance of spiritual sensations, preach Scripture to spark spiritual knowledge in others, and promote true revival by illustrating and commending the correspondence between authentic Spirit-enlivened piety and Scripture.

“Sweet and Powerful Words”: Experiencing Scripture Edwards’ religious experimental framework greatly shaped, and was shaped by, his private reading practices and personal piety.2 As he related in his “Personal Narrative,” he regularly examined the sensations of his  Stein, “Editor’s Introduction,” WJE, 4:1−91, 15:1−4, 24:1−4; Sweeney, “Exegesis,” in Edwards Encyclopedia, 209. Also, as Brown notes, “There are close to one hundred entries in the ‘Miscellanies’ that address issues of biblical interpretation.” Brown, “The Bible,” in Princeton Companion to Edwards, 92. 2  See Charles E.  Hambrick-Stowe, “Language of the Heart: The Bible in Jonathan Edwards’ Personal Life and Spiritual Practice,” in Edwards and Scripture, 68−85. 1

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mind and heart while reading Scripture to test and encourage the Spirit’s operations on his soul. Recounting his conversion, he wrote, “The first that I remember that ever I found anything of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things, that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, 1 Timothy 1:17, ‘Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever, Amen.’” Upon reading this verse, he recalled, “there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the divine being; a new sense, quite different from anything I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did.” He found himself “singing over these words of Scripture” and praying “in a manner quite different from what I used to do; with a new sort of affection.” At the time he did not know this experience was of a “saving nature,” but in hindsight he ascribed to this episode positive signs evincing true conversion. After this point, he “began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him.” He devoted himself more to “reading and meditating on Christ,” and he was especially “much in reading” the “whole book of Canticles” at the time. “Those words,” he effused, referring to Cant 2:1, “used to be abundantly with me: ‘I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valleys.’ The words seemed to me, sweetly to represent, the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ.”3 Now filled with the Spirit and guided by a new vital principle in his soul, reading Scripture took on a whole new dimension for Edwards. The words became living and real for him. He could taste their sweetness, see their beauty, hear their harmony, smell their aroma, and feel their power. They were no longer ink marks on a sheet of paper but vehicles to a spiritual world he had read and heard about but never personally traveled until now. His description of the experience closely follows the logic of his spiritualized sensationalist psychology. He had read the same passage of Scripture many times before—but only as mere words and signs. However, receiving the new sense from the Spirit stirred new affections, perceptions, and sensations of the spiritual realities contained in the verse, which in turn generated in him real spiritual ideas of God’s glory, experiential certainty of Scripture’s veracity, and an inward sensible testimony that his heart did in fact know and love God. Around this time, Edwards was being exposed 3

 “Personal Narrative,” WJE, 16:792−93.

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to new philosophies that questioned the validity of spiritual knowledge. But he could not deny the realness of his sensations and perceptions when his heart encountered the Word. Reminiscing about a season soon after his conversion in early 1723 when he served as interim pastor in New York, he wrote: I had then, and at other times, the greatest delight in the holy Scriptures, of any book whatsoever. Oftentimes in reading it, every word seemed to touch my heart. I felt an harmony between something in my heart, and those sweet and powerful words. I seemed often to see so much light, exhibited by every sentence, and such a refreshing ravishing food communicated, that I could not get along in reading. Used oftentimes to dwell long on one sentence, to see the wonders contained in it; and yet almost every sentence seemed to be full of wonders.4

He found intellectual grounds for the credibility of his spiritual experiences in empirical philosophy. As Robert Brown explains, Lockean empiricism gave him “philosophical expression to the self-evidential nature of the experiential religious knowledge characteristic of Puritan and Reformed religious psychology.”5 It reassured him that the inner pious movements and illuminated perceptions that he experienced when reading Scripture were not delusions or pretense but rather constituted valid knowledge. His experimental framework also aided him in differentiating his own spiritual experiences and knowledge from the enthusiasts and backsliders. The new affections ensuing from his transformed disposition and “sense of divine things” did not extinguish and prove his own self-deception or hypocrisy but “gradually increased, and became more and more lively.”6 Just as regular experience led to greater certainty and knowledge in ­matters pertaining to the natural world, so the constancy of his experiences while reading Scripture with spiritual senses fortified his assurance and knowledge of the spiritual world. And as long as he sensed that his affections arose from the Spirit and were harmonious with the Word, he knew they were real and that his heart was not deluded by enthusiast hysteria. He devoted himself to a regular diet of meditation and study of Scripture, and his corpus of writings, sermons, and private notebooks bespeak its pervasive effect on his thought and ministry. To maintain and  “Personal Narrative,” WJE, 16:797.  Brown, Edwards and the Bible, 40. 6  “Personal Narrative,” WJE, 16:793. 4 5

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enrich a spiritual frame of mind and conform his thoughts and affections to the Word, he determined early on in his “Resolutions” to “study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.”7 He strove to read Scripture with a frequency and intensity that gave the Spirit opportunities to ignite his knowledge and affections for God. In his last “Diary” entry, dated May 23, 1724 (written between “Miscellanies,” nos. 123 and 126), he recorded the effects that his reading of Scripture had on his mental and spiritual temperament as personal and empirical substantiation of the Spirit’s active cooperation with the Word and reborn heart to produce spiritual knowledge and holiness. “At those times when I have read the Scripture most,” he observed, “I have evermore been most lively, and in the best frames.” The reverse experience confirmed the same conclusion. Edwards attributed his feeling “insipid” and “dull” about spiritual matters to his negligence in reading Scripture and to not adapting his disposition to the movements of the Spirit. He believed his reading methods also influenced his disposition toward spiritual things. In another “Diary” entry, he reflected on how he might read more profitably when he felt “listless and dull, and not easily affected by reading religious books.” In such times, he resolved to endeavor, “with all my might, to keep the image and picture of the thing in my mind, and be careful that I do not lose it, in the chain of the discourse.”8 By evoking images in his mind, he endeavored to sustain actual sensory ideas of what he read more effectively. What mattered to Edwards was not simply what the text meant but also what he perceived and felt in the moment of reading it. His own reading experiences were in themselves experimental trials by which he could judge his spiritual state. He wished to assimilate his thoughts, language, affections, and desires to Scripture. To this end he prayerfully sought to empty himself of sin and be filled with the “holy operations” of the Holy Spirit “communicating divine light and life to my soul.” He recalled a time in 1737 when he rode his horse into the woods for physical and spiritual refreshment. As he prayed and meditated, he became overwhelmed by the excellency and grace of Christ and wanted nothing more than to “be annihilated; to lie in the dust, and to be full of Christ alone.” Emptying himself of worldly, selfish, and mundane desires enabled him to be filled with the Word. Dying 7 8

 “Resolutions,” WJE, 16:755.  “Diary,” WJE, 16:785−86, 759−60, 767, 772.

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to sin allowed him to receive life from the Word. He remembered during this season sometimes having “an affecting sense of the excellency of the word of God, as a word of life; as the light of life; a sweet, excellent, life-­ giving word.” His sense was “accompanied with a thirsting after that word, that it might dwell richly in my heart.”9 He wanted the Word to live in him so he could partake of its vivifying light and other spiritual qualities. Words of Scripture evoked in Edwards vivid mental views of spiritual things and affections for them because he had experienced them firsthand. “Sometimes only mentioning a single word,” he wrote, “causes my heart to burn within me: or only seeing the name of Christ, or the name of some attribute of God.” Over the years, words from the Bible became inextricably associated in his mind with particular experiences. A passage like Matt 18 “has often been sweet to me,” he wrote, because “I love to think of coming to Christ, to receive salvation of him, poor in spirit” and “cut off entirely from my own root.” He recollected how a passage of Scripture roused and reassured him when he was very ill for about three months in 1725: God was pleased to visit me again with the sweet influences of his spirit. … I observed that those who watched me, would often be looking out for the morning, and seemed to wish for it. Which brought to my mind those words of the Psalmist, which my soul with sweetness made its own language, “My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning” [Ps 130:6]. And when the light of the morning came, and the beams of the sun came in at the windows, it refreshed my soul from one morning to another. It seemed to be some image of the sweet light of God’s glory.10

As with this instance, his reading of Scripture habitually intertwined with every area of his life and infused his everyday experiences with spiritual significance. The Bible became his very own language by giving voice to the desires and experiences of his soul. When the Spirit stirred his sensations to produce lively ideas of the text, it left a sensible imprint on his mind and memory. He registered such moments as observable manifestations of the power and realness of the Word in his life, and they heavily shaped how he conceived his own spiritual narrative, his exegesis, and his 9

 “Personal Narrative,” WJE, 16:801.  “Personal Narrative,” WJE, 16:800, 798−99.

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duties as a minister of the Word. Basic to his program of evangelical enlightenment was his effort to behold divine glories in the Word, and then show others what he saw.

“The Word and Work of a Divine Mind”: Professing Scripture For various reasons, Edwards believed the deists and skeptics erred in questioning traditional understandings of the divine authority and historicity of Scripture. As evident in various entries in his private notebooks— especially entry 416 from his “Notes on Scripture” titled “Whether the Pentateuch was written by Moses,” and “Miscellanies,” no. 1060, “Concerning the Canon of the New Testament”—Edwards readily utilized critical methods and evidentiary arguments to defend Scripture’s historical reliability.11 He reasoned, for example, that “Scripture history” must be true because “the geography is consistent.” If Scripture was a “mere fiction,” then the geography of the travel narratives in the book of Acts would be filled with “innumerable blunders and inconsistencies,” but it was verifiably accurate.12 Furthermore, as noted in the previous chapter, he drafted rebuttals against deism affirming the insufficiency of reason on its own and the need for special revelation in Scripture. In his sermon series on the History of Redemption, he composed several arguments for the divine authority and reliability of the Bible based on both external and internal evidence against the “unreasonableness of the deists.” Ultimately, however, his primary grounds for professing Scripture’s authority lay in his firsthand experiential knowledge of its divine inspiration. To discern its divine marks, one must pray with the Psalmist for God to open their eyes to behold its wonders (Ps 119:18).13 Promoting spiritual enlightenment was thus the most powerful defense against skepticism. God’s Word teemed with observable stamps of divine inspiration. Echoing his Reformed tradition, Edwards believed that undeniable evidence lay in its masterful composition. He agreed with the Westminster Confession’s (1646) assertion that the “heavenlinesse of the Matter, the efficacy of the Doctrine, the majesty of the Style, the consent of all the 11  See Brown, “The Bible,” in Princeton Companion to Edwards, 94−95; Edwards and the Bible. 12  “Miscellanies,” no. 202, WJE, 13:338−39. 13  History of Redemption, WJE, 9:281−93.

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Parts, the Scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God)” and “the many other incomparable Excellencies … are Arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God.”14 Edwards, however, concerned himself more with the psychological aspects of this logic, exploring further how the marks of divine inspiration in Scripture interacted with the reader’s mental processes and affective states. In “Miscellanies,” no. 6, he reasoned that the scriptural accounts were so “cunningly contrived” that no “mortal or finite being” could have written them without divine inspiration. Its prose produced a singular effect on the cognition in a way that verified its truthfulness: “There is something in the relation that at the same time very much pleases and engages the reader, and evidences the truth of the fact.” Indeed, readers could discern “a strange and unaccountable kind of enchantment … in Scripture history.” Its pleasantness and simplicity distinguish it from “any other history whatever.” It was composed with such exceptional craft that readers felt “actually present” in its stories, delivering the sense that they were not simply outside “readers but spectators, yea actors in the business.” Indeed, the text “leads along one’s ideas so naturally and easily” that it was “as if [readers] saw” the Bible’s stories as observers present at the scene. Contra the deists, the historical accounts of Scripture were not mere distant relations of times past. They pulsed with life and light, enchantment and wonder, and truth and pertinence in the present-day reader’s mind. Such knowledge was, however, ultimately ineffable. “It is impossible to tell fully what I mean,” Edwards admitted, “to any that have not taken notice of something of it before.”15 Only those with firsthand experience of these things could recognize Scripture’s unusual enchantment and supernatural origin. In “Miscellanies,” no. 333, Edwards compared the knowledge readers acquired of the divine inspiration of Scripture with the learning processes of a newborn. When an infant enters the world and first “sees persons act and hears their voice,” its mind initially lacks sufficient sensory data to form ideas and cannot “distinguish between their bodies and other things.” But after more “acquaintance” with the sounds and behavior of other persons, the newborn’s “comprehension increases” and can better recognize their distinct existences and characteristics. Similarly, a person learns the existence of 14  The Humble Advice of the Assembly of Divines, Now by Authority of Parliament Sitting at Westminster, 4−5. 15  “Miscellanies,” no. 6, WJE, 13:202−203.

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God and his character by hearing his voice and experiencing him in Scripture. God’s existence is evident in Scripture in “the same manner as the existence of a human thinking being is evident by the motions, behavior and speech of a body of human form and contexture, or that that body is animated by a rational mind.” Persons who have not acquainted themselves with the words and form of Scripture or its “harmony, wisdom, etc.” long and deep enough “can’t see any evidence of a divine mind as the original of [Scripture].” In other words, just as direct sensible contact with another functioning and communicative body reveals to the mind the existence of the rational self or soul that enlivens it, so will close and regular contact with the living and breathing Word reveal the existence of the divine being who speaks through it. He elaborated, So there is that wondrous universal harmony and consent and concurrence in the aim and drift, such an universal appearance of a wonderful glorious design, such stamps everywhere of exalted and divine wisdom, majesty and holiness in matter, manner, contexture and aim; that the evidence is the same that the Scriptures are the word and work of a divine mind, to one that is thoroughly acquainted with them, as ’tis that the words and actions of an understanding man are from a rational mind, to one that has of a long time been his familiar acquaintance.16

Through close and thorough acquaintance with God’s “words and actions” in Scripture, readers came to know of God in the same way that persons learned the existence, content, and nature of other minds through firsthand encounter with their words and actions. While any discerning unregenerate reader could observe the bountiful evidence of Scripture’s supernatural origin, only those who had the indwelling Spirit enjoyed a real experiential certainty of it. Again, Edwards followed his Reformed tradition with this logic, yet he delved deeper into its cognitive and psychological dimensions. As the Westminster Confession affirmed, the stamps of Scripture’s divine inspiration were available for all to see, but the only true “assurance of the infallible truth and Divine authority thereof” came “from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witnesse by and with the Word, in our hearts.”17 All other arguments for the divine authority of Scripture were no doubt compelling, but they were limited and probabilistic. True saints, Edwards argued, had a different  “Miscellanies,” no. 6, WJE, 13:410−11.  Assembly of Divines at Westminster, 4−5.

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level of certainty that exceeded reason because they could personally attest to the realness of Scripture’s spiritual teachings and histories firsthand. As he preached in Profitable Hearers of the Word of God, those in a mere natural state “may indeed have a common belief of many things in the Word, as they have of probable histories,” but “the faith of the godly, whereby they believe the Word of God to be true, is from the intrinsic signatures of divinity which they see in it,” such as the glory and holiness of God. The ability to detect these “signatures of divinity” depended on having spiritually new-born ears to hear God’s voice: There are as proper manifestations of divinity in the speech of God as there are manifestations of humanity in the speech of men. God opens the understandings of profitable hearers to see these signatures and manifestations of divinity, so that they hear it as the Word of God. They do as it were hear God speak, and they are assured of the divinity of his speech, for he speaks like a God. His speech is not like the speech of men, but like the speech of God: divinely excellent, holy, wise, awful and gracious. And ’tis this sort of faith only that will hold the mind through all temptations. This is a sure foundation. This makes the truth of the gospel in a manner intuitively certain.18

The Spirit enabled believers to hear the Word as God’s divine speech to them, thus revealing the existence and character of the one speaking in Scripture. It confirmed the truth of Christianity and the Bible not through history or reason but rather an intuitive certainty based on experience. Only those who experienced the Word in this way could grasp what Edwards meant. In “Miscellanies,” no. aa he wrote, “a certain property is seen and felt in religion by faith, that is altogether ineffable, and can’t be called either power, or beauty, or majesty (because neither of these half imply it), but rather divinity, which strongly certifies the mind that it is divine.”19 The new enlightened perceptions and enlivened sensations from the Spirit enabled one to see the glory of divine things in Scripture, feel its wonder, practice its good instructions, and perform their part in its narrative. The Spirit illuminated new ideas of divine things in the mind that corroborated the divine nature of the text. “There is such a thing as an appearing real,” Edwards wrote in “Miscellanies,” no. 206, “that is, a conviction of the reality of the thing, that is incommunicable, that cannot be drawn into formal arguments or be expressed in words, which is yet the  Profitable Hearers, WJE, 14:251−52.  “Miscellanies,” no. aa, WJE, 13:178.

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strongest and most certain conviction.” Our ideas of things that “we behold with waking eyes” appear real “because we have a clear idea of them in all their mutual relations, concurring circumstances, order and dispositions—the consent of the simple ideas among themselves.” Such was the “testimony of the Spirit” when it came to divine things. A religious idea “appears so real” in “the minds of those who are taught by the Spirit” because it carried “so many strong yet ineffable marks of truth.” It was a kind of “intuitive evidence” that “the nature of the soul will not allow it to reject,” amounting to a “sort of seeing rather than reasoning the truth of religion.”20 Such sensory spiritual encounters with the Word enabled readers to experience it firsthand with an ineffable and vivid realism that at once exceeded rational demonstration and instilled the ultimate assurance of its divine origin. Edwards was no anti-intellectual and felt perfectly comfortable defending the faith and the authority of Scripture with the most sophisticated logic and compelling proofs he could produce. But he remained persuaded that his Reformed forebears were right all along. The Word authenticated its own authority. “The gospel of the blessed God don’t go abroad a begging for its evidence,” he declared in Religious Affections, “it has its highest and most proper evidence in itself.”21 He believed the same for Scripture. Its authority rested in its divine origin. How the reader came to recognize and believe Scripture’s divine origin with certainty, however, was ultimately a matter of experience. Such understanding and assurance was rooted in an ineffable sensory knowledge given by the Spirit that transcended rational comprehension. Edwards’ own personal encounter with Scripture augmented this assurance. He found his attempts to grasp and explain these ineffable experiences utterly inadequate, but it did not stop him from trying in hopes that the Spirit might use his words to stir this sense in himself and others.

“What Could He Mean By Those ‘Wondrous Things’?”: Interpreting Scripture As argued in Chap. 5, Edwards did not believe the spiritual sense revealed the propositional meaning of Scripture, nor was comprehending the spiritual meaning of a passage itself the same thing as knowing it spiritually.  “Miscellanies,” no. 201, WJE, 13:338.  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:307.

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Nonetheless, biblical interpretation was essential to his program of evangelical enlightenment and, in practice, his vitalistic and experimental notion of the spiritual sense greatly shaped the content and emphases of his exegesis. In contrast to Cotton Mather—who often announced his experiential glosses in italics and all caps—the precise effects of Edwards’ experientialism on his exegesis are more challenging to pinpoint. His fullest statement on the matter appears in Religious Affections: But a spiritual taste of soul, mightily helps the soul, in its reasonings on the Word of God, and in judging of the true meaning of its rules; as it removes the prejudices of a depraved appetite, and naturally leads the thoughts in the right channel, casts a light on the Word of God, and causes the true meaning, most naturally to come to mind, through the harmony there is between the disposition and relish of a sanctified soul, and the true meaning of the rules of God’s Word. Yea, this harmony tends to bring the texts themselves to mind, on proper occasions; as the particular state of the stomach and palate, tends to bring such particular meats and drinks to mind, as are agreeable to that state. Thus the children of God are led by the Spirit of God in judging of actions themselves, and in their meditations upon, and judging of, and applying the rules of God’s holy Word: and so God teaches them his statutes, and causes them to understand the way of his precepts; which the Psalmist so often prays for.22

Here again, Edwards drew from experimental philosophy to articulate the role of the inner spiritual senses to understand and interpret Scripture. Citing Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopedia (1728)—a pioneering project devoted largely to summarizing major concepts of natural philosophy—on the term “taste,” Edwards likened a natural “kind of taste of the mind … which philosophers speak of” to a “divine taste” arising from the spiritual sense, “given and maintained by the Spirit of God, in the hearts of the saints.” Similar to the way a person’s natural sensory “tastes” helped them discern and judge the qualities of natural things such as the “nobility and sublimity of speeches and actions,” the spiritual person’s “tastes” guided their judgment of “the true spiritual and holy beauty of actions; and that more easily, readily and accurately, as they have more or less of the Spirit of God dwelling in them.”23 A spiritual taste aided readers in four  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:285.  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:282−83. Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopedia: or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London, 1728), vol. 2 under “Taste.” 22 23

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particular ways to understand Scripture: it removed prejudices that hindered their reasoning, “naturally” guided and concentrated the mind, illuminated Scripture, and conjured up the right meaning in the mind via a sensory harmonization between the soul and the Word. Edwards argued in line with earlier Protestant Orthodox thinkers that the logical and literal interpretation of the text must instruct and test the interpreter’s thoughts and affections. Thus the “taste itself” must be “subject to the rule of God’s Word, and must be tried by that, and a right reasoning upon it.” At the same time, however, Edwards believed that the spiritual sense also carried the “nature of instruction,” which assisted the “soul” to better interpret Scripture. The Spirit’s leading combined with maturity and constancy in religious experience made the saint’s spiritual taste more refined and discerning, helping readers judge the right meaning of the text more accurately.24 Believers could better interpret Scripture because the divine wonders contained in its true meaning coincided with what they knew by experience and intuition. Edwards explained in “Miscellanies,” no. 141 how a saint’s “distinguishing taste and relish” became “more and more perfect as they have more holiness.” Once “the sanctified mind is let into the spiritual world” and as it grows in holiness, its spiritual taste more “easily perceives what ideas are harmonious and what not.” A truly “holy mind” can and will “reject for false everything in divinity that is not harmonious” because it cannot relish it.25 Sanctified tastes also helped readers reject false interpretations of the Bible because the soul found no harmonious resonance in them of real holiness and spiritual glory. Like a keen sense of smell discerns the difference between fresh and spoiled foods, the acute spiritual tastes of a saint guided by the Spirit and well-practiced in experimental religion could better discern false and true interpretations of Scripture. However, to say the spiritual sense enabled and assisted the interpreter to discern Scripture’s true meaning is different than saying it revealed this meaning. Edwards insisted that the true “nature of spiritual understanding” of Scripture consisted “most essentially in a divine supernatural sense and relish of the heart,” and not “imaginary sights,” “enthusiastical impressions and applications of words of Scripture,” and “all 24  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:284−85, 266. Hence Sweeney says, in Edwards’ thinking, that the Spirit gives those with the spiritual sense a “cognitive advantage” in biblical interpretation. Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete, 38. 25  “Miscellanies,” no. 141 (156), WJE, 13:297−98.

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interpretations of the mystical meaning of the Scripture, by supposed immediate revelation.”26 It is also different than saying that the saint’s discovery of the text’s meaning constituted spiritual knowledge. Rather, the spiritual act consisted in the reader’s sensory experience of the divine things contained in the right meaning of the passage. Thus, for Edwards, the main function of the spiritual sense in biblical interpretation was to enliven and nurture pious thoughts, desires, and practices that corresponded with Scripture’s true meaning. And contra to what some scholars have said, Edwards’ doctrine of the spiritual sense inspired him toward greater accuracy in his exegesis (at least in his mind), since he believed the soul could not rightly enjoy spiritual tastes of false interpretations. Edwards’ longing for harmony between his soul and the text shaped his reading practices. He labored continually after a spiritual frame of mind so he could know and experience God in the Word. He asked himself how exactly a spiritual reading of Scripture transpired, musing that it was “remarkable, that the same persons reading the same portion of Scripture, at one time shall be greatly affected with it, and see what is astonishingly glorious in it … the admirable majesty, coherence, and harmony,” and yet “at another time” the same text appeared “insipid, mean, impertinent, and inconsistent.” The explanation lay in sensationalist psychology. The reader’s affective experience of the text depended on the activity of their internal sensations exciting lively spiritual ideas at the time of reflection. Edwards illustrated his point with his experience of reading Eccl 1:14. The passage itself, he noted, seemed “insipid” to “one in a common frame of mind” not attuned or disposed to spiritual things. It reads, “One generation passeth away, and another cometh; but the earth abideth forever.” It was not the most stirring text, he conceded: “The thought of the earth being the same does not seem very naturally and affectingly to fall in after the thought of one generation passing and another coming.” But the Spirit showed him otherwise: But yet, when upon an occasion I was more than ordinarily affected with the passingness of one generation after another, how that all those who made such a noise and bluster now, and were so much concerned about their life, would be clean gone off from the face of the earth in sixty or seventy years’ time … and that another generation would come on that would be very little concerned about them, and so one after another; it was particularly  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:285−86.

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affecting to me, to think that the earth still remained the same through all those changes upon the surface, the same spots of ground, the same mountains and valleys where those things were done remaining just as they were, though the actions were ceased and the actors quite gone—and then this text came into my mind.

The Spirit stirred Edwards’ affections to feel the spiritual import of the passage as he was moved by the transience of human life in light of the greater span of existence. It is noteworthy that he did not ground this experiential reading in an imaginative mystical interpretation. In this instance, his affections harmonized with a rather plain applicative meaning of the passage, demonstrating that true spiritual understanding applied to both literal and mystical interpretations. The instance illustrated for Edwards “in what sense the Word of God is said to be written in the hearts of believers,” as the reader’s “disposition of mind” generated ideas that harmonized with “the expressions of God’s Word.” It explained how certain Scripture passages “are often suddenly brought into the mind.” Contrary to the experiential claims of many zealous converts, the Spirit never suggested passages of Scripture to the believer but rather stirred the “affections of mind” to synchronize with “the mind of the text.” The “motions that are then in the mind” at a particular time may revive “footprints” of the passage that had been impressed “in the memory,” bringing about thoughts and affections that correspond to the content of the text.27 In practice, his objective to read Scripture in a way that impressed and enlivened spiritual things in his heart and mind informed the content and emphases of his interpretations. As noted, much of his exegetical work was the result of studious labor to ascertain the right propositions and doctrines taught in Scripture, whether he was examining details of biblical geography and philology, or plumbing the various typological and Christological dimensions of the passage. But there was another level to his reading of Scripture, what could be called an exegesis of sensation, that was distinctly spiritual and experiential and impacted his exegesis in significant and interrelated ways. For one, his sensationalism led him to devote heightened attention to the emotive dimensions of the text. Like Francke and Mather, he wished to experience the same affections that the Spirit incited in the biblical

 “Miscellanies,” no. 126, WJE, 13:290−91.

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actors and writers,28 as illustrated in his personal exegetical notes on Matt 28:9 in his “Blank Bible.” In the passage, Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” arrived at Jesus’ tomb only to discover that it was empty. “It may be pleasant and profitable to consider the various passions that these women felt in their hearts on this occasion,” Edwards reflected. “Christ was a person exceeding dear to them, and they lately had had their hearts filled and overwhelmed with sorrow upon occasion of the cruel and ignominious death that they with their own eyes had seen Christ put to…. And they never expected to see him alive any more.” However, hearing the news from the angel that Jesus is risen “turned their deepest sorrow to overflowing joy.” Their feelings intensified when Jesus himself met them on the road, and they “express their joy and testify their respect to him in the most dear, humble, and adoring manner.”29 By making affections the center of the drama, Edwards wished to participate in the same surprising joy as these women, thereby personally encountering the glory and wonder of the resurrected Christ via the text. A second important feature of his exegesis of sensation was his dynamic use of typology.30 While typology was a key aspect of seventeenth-century Puritan exegesis, Edwards re-conceptualized it according to sensationalist psychology. Puritan exegetes such as William Perkins, Benjamin Keach, and Samuel Mather outlined specific interpretive rules that prevented readers from devising imaginative fulfillments of biblical types that were extrinsic to the passage.31 Keach warned interpreters against straining ­metaphors in Scripture by letting the “parallels run till they grow lame.”32 Edwards declined this advice.33 He not only eagerly connected biblical types with post-biblical history but also imaginatively devised typological significations from nature, emotions, historical events, scientific inventions like the telescope, and more. Even so, those who charge Edwards with 28  Edwards would have read Mather’s treatment of Francke’s and Spener’s thoughts on exegesis and the importance of identifying with the affections of the biblical writers in the Manuductio ad Ministerium. Mather, Manuductio, 80−82. 29  “Blank Bible,” WJE, 24:877−78. 30  For more on Edwards’ typology, see Wallace E. Anderson, Mason I. Lowance Jr., and David H.  Watters, “Editor’s Introduction,” WJE, 11; Nichols, “Edwards’ Principles of Interpreting Scripture”; and Nichols, “Typology,” in Edwards Encyclopedia, 575−77. 31  See Benjamin Keach, Tropologia: A Key to Opening Scripture Metaphors and Types (London, 1681); and Samuel Mather, Figures or Types of the Old Testament. 32  Keach, Tropologia, 39. 33  Nichols, “Edwards’ Principles of Interpreting Scripture,” 45.

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arbitrariness, unbridled subjectivity, and interpretive freedom have misunderstood his project. Scholars have shown how Edwards’ redemptive-historical theology functioned as a critical guide for his typological interpretations.34 Even Edwards’ seemingly unrestrained allegorical interpretation was governed by this framework, as he absorbed allegories into typology and identified them with events and realities of redemptive history.35 However, another less acknowledged yet essential influence on his typological interpretations lay in his sensationalist psychology. In his notebook on “Types of the Messiah,” he explained how scriptural types functioned as word-images that communicated knowledge to the reader via the senses: What principles of human nature render types a fit method of instruction: it tends to enlighten and illustrate, and to convey instruction with impression, conviction and pleasure, and to help the memory. These things are confirmed by man’s natural delight in the imitative arts, in painting, poetry, fables, metaphorical language [and] dramatic performances.36

For Edwards, types not only represented historical events but they also served an epistemological function as images that excited sensory ideas of spiritual realities in the mind. As discussed in the Chap. 5, God used words (especially Scripture) and images (like creation, or Christ in human form) as means to communicate his mind to creatures. But unlike images in creation (where Edwards also found many imaginative types of spiritual things),37 biblical types were unique in that they were both words and images. As words they communicated propositions, and as images they connected the propositions with sensory perceptions in the mind. As such, biblical types were particularly effective in evoking spiritual ideas. In “Miscellanies,” no. dd, Edwards pondered why Scripture sometimes “expresses things so unintelligibly” with “similitudes”—such as “Ye are the temple of the Holy Ghost” in 1 Cor 6:19. Why not “call these things directly by the intelligible names that lie hid under these expressions?” he  See especially Barshinger, Edwards and the Psalms.  McClymond, McDermott, Theology of Edwards, 119. 36  Images of Divine Things, WJE, 11:191. 37  See Janice Knight, “Learning the Language of God: Jonathan Edwards and the Typology of Nature,” The William and Mary Quarterly 48:4 (Oct., 1991): 531−51; “Typology,” in Princeton Companion to Edwards, 190−209; Anderson, Lowance Jr., and Watters, “Editor’s Introduction,” WJE, 11:3−34, 157−86. 34 35

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wondered. The answer was because readers “are not able to behold directly” such divine things, and thus they must be “represented before us in lively pictures.”38 God communicated via the media of biblical types and images to bridge the experiential and epistemological chasm between human finitude and divine glories, thus enabling Christians to maintain lively ideas of God’s mind and works. Images did not just convey information but also engaged the spiritual senses to behold divine things with sensory perception. The reader’s task thus remained incomplete merely identifying the meaning of the type without experiencing the spiritual and redemptive glories it represented. Edwards’ sensationalist thinking provided him ample justification for his elaborate and copious typological expositions. In his early philosophical notebook on “The Mind,” no. 43, he reasoned that God designed an “agreement of things” in creation that ordered the relationship between particular and universal ideas in the mind, so that “the thinking of one thing, of itself, yea, against our wills, excites the thought of other things that are like it.” Since God imbued creation with harmonious relations, “the tying of ideas together into genera and species” was “not always arbitrary.”39 Edwards thus believed that types and images in Scripture, functioning as word-images and “divine significations,”40 instinctively evoked and interacted with related ideas stored in the memory via sensation. Reading passages that contained imagery of “oil” thus excited the mind’s ideas of the Spirit, or reading the word “moon” brought to mind various realities concerning the church.41 Such readings were fully legitimate because God designed the mind to reflexively associate sensations with ideas. At one level, the minds of natural persons worked this way too. By nature everyone could relate types and symbols in Scripture with other notions of religion stored in the mind and arrive at accurate interpretations. But spiritual readers had the advantage of having experienced the spiritual reality signified in the type or image, which enhanced their ability to draw more accurate connections and interpretations. Practically, this way of thinking could facilitate exegetical conclusions that mirrored the experiences, interests, and biases of the interpreter more than the plain  “Miscellanies,” no. dd, WJE, 13:181.  “The Mind,” no. 43, WJE, 6:361−62. 40  “Notes on Scripture,” WJE, 15:580. 41  For some examples of Edwards tying oil to the Spirit, see “Blank Bible,” WJE, 24:254−55; “Notes on Scripture,” WJE, 15:61, 209, 244, 391, 572−74; and the moon to the church, WJE, 24:131−34, 225−28, 290−92. 38 39

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meaning of the text. It is no coincidence, therefore, that Edwards’ typological interpretations reflected key features of his experiential evangelical piety, which gave prominence to Christocentric devotion, themes of redemption, the supernatural workings of the Spirit, the excellence of God, the heart and affections of saints, trials of faith, the misery and darkness of sin, and the glories of future heaven. Wishing to expand his mind’s capacity to experience harmonious relations of spiritual ideas, Edwards capitalized on the full sensory potential of types and images in Scripture. Types invited a vital engagement with the passage. Often when Edwards contemplated a type or symbol in Scripture, he described it as a “lively type,” “lively image,” or “lively representation.” In various passages of the Bible he saw “lively stones,” “lively color,” and even “a lively parallel betwixt Hercules and Joshua 1.” Entry no. 285 in his “Notes on Scripture” illustrates his typological vitalism. Edwards perceived the “ark of shittim wood” (Exod 25) in the temple to be a “lively type of Jesus Christ.” The ark was “the symbol of God’s most immediate presence” among his old covenant people the Israelites, and it ultimately typified Christ as God’s immediate presence among his new covenant people the church. Edwards contemplated how the ark’s attributes represented qualities of Christ as a way to evoke a vivid sense of God’s presence in his own mind and heart. “Though the ark was in some respect mean,” he reflected, “yet it was exceeding precious; though it was made of wood, yet it was overlaid with gold.” In the same way, the outward appearance of “the man Christ Jesus” was ordinary, and yet Christ “was exceeding excellent,” for he was “endowed with excellent graces and virtues.” Similar to how the ark was a “cabinet” of greater treasures like “the law of God and the pot of manna,” the human nature of Christ “was only a repository and vehicle” containing something more glorious, namely the divine nature through the indwelling Holy Spirit. Connections between the ark and Christ gave way to parallels between Christ and believers. Thus, just “as the human nature of Christ is as it were the container of the deity,” so is our human nature “the vehicle” or container by which the divine nature was “conveyed to us” through the Spirit’s indwelling. These reflections called to mind how the Scriptures speak of the church as the “body of Christ,” and thus “the church is his [Christ’s] cabinet, and believers are his jewels.”42 His notes on Ps 68:8–9 furnish another example, where he pondered how the rain that fell on the camp of Israel after they received the law was  “Notes on Scripture,” WJE, 15:64, 225, 407, 242−46.

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a “lively type of the effusion of the Holy Spirit.” The fact that God sent the rain in an “exceeding dry and parched wilderness” during an especially “hot time of the year” made it all the more refreshing. The vivid contrast served to make the spiritual signification of the rain all the “more lively” in the reader’s mind. Just as the rain’s “cooling and sweetening the air” refreshed the weary Israelites, so the “sweet influences of the Spirit of God on the soul” refreshed the spiritually parched today.43 Edwards believed that God designed such vivid and lively images throughout both the Bible and creation to communicate spiritual realities more powerfully. Even the command in Lev 18:6 forbidding marriage between relatives represented a “more lively image of the union between Christ and his church,” since nonrelatives who married were more “separated before that union” than relatives—underscoring Christ’s grace and power to unite himself with estranged sinners.44 Typological interpretation also enabled spiritual persons to identify with Scripture’s redemptive story line as a reflection and reality of their own personal redemption. Edwards imaginatively mined redemptive themes and types throughout Scripture and related them to the inward redemptive journey of the soul. Pharaoh’s daughter washing herself in the river (Exod 2:5) signified “the washing of regeneration.” The gradual ascent of the rainbow in Gen 9:12–17 (the sign of God’s covenant to Noah) pointed to the gradual sanctification of “the saints,” who “from their first conversion, are traveling in the way towards heaven” like a rainbow. And “the exact fitting, squaring, and smoothing” of the “lively stones” of Solomon’s temple (1 Kgs 6:7) “represents the perfection of the saints in glory,” who form the new spiritual temple of God.45 Perhaps the greatest example of Edwards uniting experiential religion, Scripture, and ultimate spiritual realities was his sermon series on The History of Redemption, in which he thread various epochs together punctuated by the “pouring out of the Spirit” from the “days of Enos” to the ministry of the apostles, and from revivals of religion throughout church history (including his present day in New England) to Christ’s second return.46  “Notes on Scripture,” WJE, 15:137−38.  “Blank Bible,” WJE, 24:255. 45  “Notes on Scripture,” WJE, 15:96, 331, 64. 46  See History of Redemption, WJE, vol. 9. For more on Edwards’ understanding of history, see Avihu Zakai, Jonathan Edwards’s Philosophy of History: The Reenchantment of the World in the Age of the Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006). 43 44

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A third feature of Edwards’ exegesis of sensation concerns the content or objects of his spiritual readings. What was it that he wanted spiritual persons to see, feel, and know in Scripture that natural persons could not? Or, as he asked in Divine and Supernatural Light in reference to Ps 119:18, “What could the Psalmist mean, when he begged God to ‘open his eyes.’ Was he ever blind? Might he not have resort to the law and see every word and sentence in it when he pleased? And what could he mean by those ‘wondrous things’?” Edwards answered, “Doubtless by ‘wondrous things’ in God’s law, he had respect to those distinguishing and wonderful excellencies, and marvelous manifestations of the divine perfections, and glory, that there was in the commands and doctrines of the Word.”47 Similar to how David read the law, spiritual persons in the present day could perceive and sense spiritual qualities of divine things in the full canon of Scripture. This included “the amiable and bright manifestations of the divine perfections, and of the excellency and sufficiency of Christ, and the excellency and suitableness of the way of salvation by Christ, and the spiritual glory of the precepts and promises of the Scripture, etc.”48 When spiritual persons, following David, prayed for the Spirit to open their eyes to know Scripture, it meant they wanted more than an indifferent, notional understanding of stories and instructions—they wished to experience all the spiritual wonders in these things and grow in affection for them. Edwards speculated about how biblical authors and characters themselves experienced the spiritual realities related in Scripture, and such reflections informed his interpretations. In his exposition of Gen 32:24–30 in the “Blank Bible”—an entry he used for a 1735 sermon titled “Blessed Struggle”—Edwards made Jacob’s sensory perceptions of and affections for “the man” he wrestled central to understanding the narrative.49 When the “person came to him in the form of a man, he [Jacob] was doubtless immediately sensible by his appearance that it was some very extraordinary person.” At first Jacob seemed to think the man was an angel. Jacob’s perception of “the extraordinary excellency, wisdom, and 47  The passage reads: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.” Divine and Supernatural Light, WJE, 18:418. 48  Religious Affections, WJE, 2:281. 49  Mark Noll offers a more expansive analysis of Edwards’ interpretation of the passage, but he left the question open as to why Edwards focuses on distinctive elements that differentiate him from other contemporaneous interpreters. I suggest Edwards’ experientialism is key. Noll, “Jacob Wrestling with ‘a Man,’” in Edwards and Scripture, 106−25, especially 111.

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holiness that appeared in him made him value and desire his blessing.” Jacob felt an affection for the man, and thus he wrestled with him because he wished to receive his blessing and prolong their time together. The man “appeared so excellent and amiable a person, and conversed with him in so sweet, condescending, and friendly a manner that Jacob was exceedingly delighted in his company, and could not bear to part with him.” When Jacob finally “perceived that it was God” after the man told him he “had power with God, and had prevailed,” Jacob felt “astonished” that “he had such a familiar conversation with God.”50 Edwards’ experiential reading added new details to the story that explain what Jacob was thinking and experiencing, why he wrestled the man, and how he came to know the identity of the figure. Edwards’ exposition was rooted in his own religious experiences and philosophical assumptions of what such an encounter with God would entail, bolstering his confidence to speculate on what Jacob would have sensed and perceived in this situation. Three successive entries in his “Notes on Scripture” further illustrate how Edwards creatively probed the biblical actors’ spiritual experiences to explicate the text. In no. 265, Edwards worked from the allusion in 2 Pet 1:16–18 to explore the disciples’ experience of the glorified Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration (Matt 17:1–8; Mark 9:2–9; Luke 9:28–36). He focused his commentary on the things the Spirit enabled believers to understand experientially—things that the “apostate” in Peter’s letter denied: in particular, the return of Christ. Wishing to combat the false teachers, Peter urges trust in the apostles’ teachings because they were “eyewitnesses of his majesty” when Christ appeared to them in glory on the Mount of Transfiguration. Edwards wondered what exactly the apostles saw on that mountain that would give them such confidence in the reality of Christ’s second coming. They not only heard Christ “say that he would come in his kingdom in power and great glory, but they were in a sort eyewitnesses of it, in that they were eyewitness of something in Christ that was a remarkable and wonderful earnest and prelibation of it, viz. the glory of his transfiguration.” The apostles knew that Christ would return because they experienced a foretaste of the second coming firsthand. What ultimately assured them, however, was not what they witnessed with physical eyes and ears but with their spiritual senses. He wrote,

 “Blank Bible,” WJE, 24:179−82; Blessed Struggle, WJE, 19:418−36.

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There was doubtless an inward sight, or lively sense of heart, of Christ’s spiritual glory that accompanied Peter’s sight of the visible glory of Christ. There was an ineffable beauty, majesty, and brightness in his countenance that held forth and naturally represented the excellencies of his mind, his holiness, his heavenly meekness…and that majesty that spake his union with the deity, and by the influence of the Spirit of God accompanying, excited in Peter and the other two that were with him a great sense of those perfections, and their immense excellency, adorableness, and sweetness. And the Spirit of God doubtless accompanied the word of God that Peter and the others then heard, so that that word was spiritually understood and believed, so that Christ’s glory then was manifested to the disciples three ways. By the rays of light, it was exhibited to their eyes; by the voice, it was declared to their ears, and by the Spirit, to their souls. The last was the most convincing and certain evidence to them of Christ’s divinity.

An unregenerate bystander’s eyes and ears could have processed what this occasion meant—that Christ was divine and would return in glory. But the key difference that made Peter’s eyewitness something distinctly spiritual, Edwards reasoned, lay in his Spirit-enlivened relish of the excellency and beauty of Christ’s divinity, which compelled him to believe the words he heard from heaven that Christ was the Son of God. Peter then wished to convey this assurance and understanding in his letter to struggling Christians confronting persecution and false doctrine. Edwards’ interpretation of this passage puts his exegesis of sensation on full display, as he saturated his descriptions of what the apostles experienced with terms like “ineffably sweet,” “excellent,” “gloriousness,” “bright,” “lively,” “exquisite,” and “pleasantness.” He employed such evocative language to enliven a sense of experiential harmony with the text’s transcendent spiritual realities. When God spoke from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him,” the apostles not only heard an audible voice but also sensed “the sweet and exact agreement” between the glory of the Son and that of the Father, and “this glory being given, as a specimen of the glory of his second coming, declared the truth of what he had so lately told ‘em of his second coming.” Even though the apostles had heard Jesus discuss his second coming many times, they now understood and believed it in greater fullness after they encountered a foretaste of the glory in which Christ would return, heard God’s voice from heaven, and above all sensed his divinity in their souls. Edwards then turned to contemplating the present-day import of the passage. Quoting 2 Pet 1:19, “We have also a more sure word of

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prophecy,” he explained that the church enjoyed a “standing written revelation” that was “surer than a voice from heaven,” namely Scripture. By engaging Scripture prophecies of Christ’s second coming with faith, believers “shall in a measure have a joy of the morning of Christ’s coming beforehand,” a “light in our hearts that will be an earnest and forerunner of the glorious light of that day.” He drew a parallel between the early persecuted church that received Peter’s letter and the condition of the church in his day. Both faced a “world of heresies, grand delusions, and dreadful wickedness,” and therefore they needed to maintain their assurance of Christ’s return by encountering his glory in the trustworthy Word: “When a man is in a dark place, and is in danger of stumbling… and has a light held forth to him to guide him in it, it behooves him to take heed to it, and keep his eye upon it, lest he get out of the way and fall into mischief.”51 Via the interaction of the Spirit, the Word, and the spiritual sense, believers today could attain the same spiritual ideas, affections, and certainty as the apostles who witnessed Christ’s glory firsthand. Edwards continued this train of thought on Exod 33:18–23 in the next two entries, “Notes on Scripture,” nos. 266 and 267. In the passage, Moses had returned to Mt. Sinai after interceding with God on behalf of the rebellious Israelites who made and worshipped a golden calf. Moses asked God to show him his glory. God responded that Moses could not see his face or he would die, and so God hid him in the cleft of the rock for his own safety and permitted only a glimpse of his back. Edwards contemplated the external and internal dimensions of Moses’ sensations. He granted, “by the context, it is manifest that it was a visible glory that Moses had a most immediate respect to.” But the glory Moses saw “with his bodily eyes” was “not exclusive of an inward sweet sense of those glorious perfections, of which the external glory that God manifests himself by is a semblance.” In fact, the inward sense of God’s glory was more important, since the “external glory” of God was ultimately “a means of a sense of the spiritual glory, as the music of a song of praise is the means of a sense of the excellency of divine things.” Thus the “transcendent external majesty and beauty” and the “immensely sweet and ravishing brightness” that Moses saw with bodily eyes served to “exceedingly fill the soul with delight that was immensely above all that he had seen yet.” As was his wont, Edwards moved swiftly to the passage’s Christological meaning. The reason God granted Moses his request was because he decreed from  “Notes on Scripture,” WJE, 15:212–18.

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“all eternity to appear to the bodily eyes of his saints in such an external glory in the person of Christ, God-man.” All the “external manifestations” that God had given to “holy men” like Moses were “presages” of the incarnation. However, like Moses, sinful humans could not see the Son of God’s divine glory in its fullness and still live. Even the disciples who beheld Christ’s transfiguration only witnessed a mere “shadow and faint resemblance” of his glory. In heaven, the glorified saints “shall be fixed in an everlasting view of the glory of God,” and “their eye shall be perpetually feasted with a full vision of his face.” But on earth, “when the saints have extraordinary discoveries of the glory of God, they are transient and short, sometimes ’tis only a glance.” Progressing to the present import of the passage, Edwards claimed that Moses’ encounter with God “livelily represented” the “spiritual discoveries that saints have of God here. They see God as it were when he is gone by.” Like Moses, their sights of God were imperfect, faint, and short-lived. Yet however transitory and imperfect, believers should strive to gain such sights by looking into God’s Word. “The discovery of God’s spiritual glory” for believers today “is not by immediate intuition,” as enthusiasts falsely claimed, “but by the Word of God.” When God passed by Moses, God said he “will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious (v. 19).” In like manner, Edwards wrote, “God reveals himself to the saints in this world by proclaiming his name in the joyful sound of the gospel.” The Bible is the primary “medium” for spiritual sights of God’s glory and spiritual sounds of God’s proclamations of love today.52 In his expositions on the disciples’ encounter with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration and on Moses’ encounter with Christ on Mount Sinai, Edwards not only illuminated the events with the analogies of Scripture and faith, but also with what one might call the analogy of experimental piety. He believed there was a continuity between the spiritual experiences of the biblical characters and what he himself saw and felt when reading God’s Word. What figures like David, Jacob, Moses, and the apostles immediately experienced in former times could still be experienced 52  “Notes on Scripture,” WJE, 15:219−22. Edwards preached two sermons on this passage. See Edwards, sermon on Exodus 33:18−19 (August 1731–December 1732), Box 1, F. 29, Beinecke (transcribed in WJEO 46); and Edwards, sermon on Exodus 33:19, (1746, 1754), Box 1, F. 30 (transcribed in WJEO 64). He drew from his entries in “Notes on Scripture” for some of the content of the first sermon.

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firsthand by saints today when the same Spirit stirred their hearts and enlightened their minds by the Word. In fact, believers today had a greater advantage than those of biblical times because they could behold spiritual wonders throughout the completed canon of Scripture. Edwards’ exegesis of sensation thus reflected a dynamic interaction between Scripture and his own experiences. His reading of Scripture shaped his ideas and affections, yet his pious experiences also shaped his interpretation of the text’s explicative and applicative meanings. For him, the Bible was no historically distant artifact but rather a means to eternal spiritual realities which enlightened Christians could experience firsthand. The regenerate reader sensed an affective harmony and realist identification with its stories and teachings, illuminated ideas of its types and images, a sensory confirmation of its truths, and a spiritual inward taste that guided them to its meaning. Unlike deists and others who desacralized and historicized Scripture as a culturally conditioned text, Edwards knew with certainty that David saw spiritual wonders in the Law, that the bathing of Pharaoh’s daughter typified regeneration, and that Jacob, Moses, and the disciples encountered the excellence and glory of Christ, because he experienced these same things himself.

“A Certain Intenseness”: Preaching Scripture Edwards’ ministry of preaching Scripture was his primary instrument for the awakening and enlightenment of others. Through his sermons, he instructed parishioners how to attain spiritual and experimental knowledge of the Word, and he applied affectionate and lively rhetoric to occasion their awakening more effectively. His own personal quest for spiritual knowledge and enlightenment molded his preaching ministry, as he taught others to cultivate a harmony with Scripture that produced vital affections, certainty, and experiential and practical congruity with its true meaning. His early promotion of an experimental knowledge rooted in the Spirit and the Word from the 1720s anticipated his preaching ministry during the awakenings in key respects. He labored as a young preacher to convey to his parishioners what true saints indwelt by the Spirit experienced when reading Scripture. In his 1723 sermon on 1 Cor 2, A Spiritual Understanding of Divine Things Denied to the Unregenerate, he explained: The godly, having this experimental knowledge, it wonderfully enlightens to the understanding of the gospel and the spiritual and true meaning of the

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Scripture, because he finds the same things in his own heart that he reads of. He knows how it is, because he feels it himself. And this makes that [that] he reads, the Scripture and other spiritual books, [appear] with much more delight than otherwise he would do.

Since “the only likely way ever to obtain this knowledge” was “to converse very much with the holy Word of God,” he urged his audiences to read Scripture often and to read books that would aid their understanding.53 He modelled to his parishioners in his sermons how they should use interpretive methods like collation and typology, and he encouraged diligence in personal Bible study. Do not “content yourselves with a cursory reading,” he charged, but rather “observe what you read,” and “take notice of the drift of the discourse, and compare one scripture with another,” and “use means to find out the meaning.”54 Since the inculcation of spiritual knowledge was an internal matter, Edwards particularly empowered experiential and vital heart religion. It served little purpose if a person “heard and read much about God’s attributes concerning the redemption by Christ” as long as “his sense about these things is not deep, intense and affecting.” True saints should experience “a certain intenseness and sensibleness in their apprehension” of divine things in the Word, he explained, a perceptible “seeing and feeling.”55 The delight, love, wonder, light, and comfort a person senses while reading Scripture should be so palpable that it produces certainty both in the Word’s divine origin and the presence of spiritual life in the soul. He thus invited his listeners to observe the movements of their hearts when reading and hearing Scripture to facilitate introspection over their spiritual state. While such introspection engendered assurance and joy in those who sensed the Word’s life and light, it should prompt those who found their hearts numb and lifeless to realize their need for salvation. He told those indwelt by the Spirit that they enjoyed certain advantages when reading Scripture, like experiential certainty, interpretive discernment, spiritual perceptions, and affective harmony with God, and he exhorted them to make the most of it. The regenerate will find that the “Word of God is not a dead letter” when they experience its vivifying light: “When the Word of God is read, especially at some times, there is a light  Spiritual Understanding, WJE, 14:89, 81.  The Importance and Advantage of a Thorough Knowledge of Divine Truth, WJE, 22:101. 55  Spiritual Understanding, WJE, 14:75. 53 54

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[that] shines from the sacred pages of it into the heart. The soul is irradiated by it, that before was read without seeing anything in it but a dull, lifeless, insipid parcel of words.” When the Spirit’s divine light illuminated the Word to the soul, Edwards explained, it was as if one woke up in a new “spiritual world” where they would discover “a great variety of beautiful and glorious objects that were till now altogether hidden.” These new objects included most especially the beauty, glory, wisdom, and grace of God, especially as exhibited in “the work of redemption.” Scripture was the portal to this spiritual realm. It gave enlightened readers foretastes and glimpses into heaven, where they would experience these divine things in greater fullness. Until heaven, faint rays from the spiritual world would break through to give the elect views of the glories to come. Such access was always at the saint’s disposal via Scripture, “Though this spiritual light indeed is but dim here, and often interrupted, a true saint can see this light from the Word of God or the works of God at all times.”56 With an evangelical twist on Plato’s famous allegory of the cave, he preached in the early 1720s about how the person enlightened by the Word was “like one that was born and brought up in a cave, where is nothing but darkness, but now is brought out into the lightsome world, enlightened by the beams of the sun, and greatly admires and wonders at those things which he never saw before.” The caveman “had been often told what a glorious thing [the] sun was, but he had no notion of it till now.” Similarly the reborn saint “had often before heard many discourses” about “the glorious mysteries of the gospel, but it all seemed as a strange thing to him before; but now he is enlightened by Christ, he sees with his own eyes and admires and is astonished, as being really sensible of the truth of these things.”57 Many knew the Bible in the way that the caveman knew about the sun: merely by an indirect notional knowledge. But the enlightened saint’s knowledge was different. He explained: The godly have experience, and therefore know what it is: they know what the several graces of the Spirit are, they know what faith is, they know what divine love is, they know what repentance is and what spiritual joy is. And therefore when they read or hear of these things, they understand the Word. And therefore it is said that the godly have God’s law “written in their hearts” [Rom 2:15], because they have these things in their hearts which the  Christians a Chosen Generation, WJE, 17:323−24.  Christ the Light of the World, WJE, 10:539.

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law recommends; and therefore when they read or hear, they find an agreement as there is between an original [and] an exact copy.58

The harmony that believers felt between the Word and their spiritual sensations produced experiential certainty both of its divine truth and the authenticity of their knowledge. “This evidence, that they, that are spiritually enlightened, have of the truth of divine things” taught in Scripture, he preached in A Divine and Supernatural Light, “is a kind of intuitive and immediate evidence.” Christians “believe the doctrines of God’s word to be divine, because they see divinity in them, i.e. they see a divine, and transcendent, and most evidently distinguishing glory in them; such a glory as, if clearly seen, don’t leave room to doubt of their being of God, and not men.”59 The experimental knowledge of the enlightened lay believer furnished intuitive, firsthand, and compelling evidence that surpassed reason. Edwards’ experiential ideals of piety and Scripture-reading had significant implications for the religious authority and practices of ordinary believers. He echoed other early awakened Protestants like Mather in teaching that “plain” individuals had the same potential for spiritual knowledge as the social and educated elite. There was, however, nothing plain about the spiritual knowledge these ordinary believers could experience: “The great and learned men of the world perhaps may have a hundred times the notional knowledge of divinity, when yet the humble, plain, illiterate Christian really hath an understanding that is above, that he never has reached to and cannot attain.”60 Overturning the logic of some early Enlightenment philosophical trends, Edwards contended that no amount of education and self-cultivation could attain the depth and richness of enlightened spiritual knowledge. An experimental knowledge of divine things—the ability to see and feel spiritual truths rather than merely reason about them—was something “the unlearned are as capable of as the learned, and which all the learning in the world can never overthrow.”61 The uneducated believer who enjoyed a firsthand sense of the realness and fullness of God in the Word had the ultimate defense against any highbrow assault on the faith. This knowledge did not depend on social status, education, age, gender, or race, but on whether one’s “heart and mind are  Profitable Hearers, WJE, 14:251.  Divine and Supernatural Light, WJE, 17:415. 60  Spiritual Understanding, WJE, 14:71−72. 61  “Miscellanies,” no. 201, WJE, 13:338. 58 59

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spiritualized” by the Holy Spirit.62 “If this knowledge were dependent on natural causes or means,” Edwards asked his parishioners, alluding to the disciples’ unique perception of Jesus’ divine nature in Matt 16:17, “how came it to pass that they, a company of poor fishermen, illiterate men, and persons of low education, attained to the knowledge of the truth; while scribes and Pharisees, men of vastly higher advantages, and greater knowledge and sagacity in other matters, remained in ignorance?” It owed not to any natural cause but “only to the gracious distinguishing influence and revelation of the Spirit of God.”63 The Spirit did not privilege the learned or wealthy but rather the humble and ignorant, thereby manifesting the power and wisdom of God above all human pretensions. Confident in the Spirit’s power to awaken any ordinary believer to the profound spiritual wonders in Scripture, Edwards did not just theorize about the nature of this knowledge but also labored to engender it in his audiences through vital, sensorial, and affectionate language in his preaching and writing. As discussed in Chap. 5, Edwards believed that communicating the Word in such a manner afforded more auspicious opportunities for the Spirit to produce spiritual life, knowledge, and affections. His wish to convey the divine glories he saw in the Word to others influenced both the content of his sermons and his homiletical style. Edwards’ disciple and early biographer Samuel Hopkins (1721–1803) described his preaching style thus: [He] spake with such distinctness, clearness and precision; his words were full of ideas, set in such a plain and striking light, that few speakers have been able to command the attention of an audience as he. His words often discovered a great deal of inward fervour, without much noise or external ­emotion, and fell with great weight on the minds of his hearers. He … spake so as to discover the motion of his own heart, which tended in the most natural and effectual manner to move and affect others.64  Spiritual Understanding, WJE, 14:71.  Divine and Supernatural Light, WJE, 17:409−10. 64  Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Character of the Late Learned Mr. Jonathan Edwards … (Northampton MA: Andrew Wright, 1804), 52. For more on Edwards as a preacher, see the editorial introductions to his edited sermons in WJE vols. 10, 14, 17, 19, 22, and 25; the “Editors’ Introduction” in Wilson H.  Kimnach, Kenneth P.  Minkema, and Douglas A.  Sweeney, eds., The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), ix−xlvii; Wilson H. Kimnach, “Edwards as Preacher,” in Cambridge Companion to Edwards, 103−24; Harry S. Stout, “Edwards as Revivalist,” in ibid., 125−43; Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 188−89, 202−207; and Crisp, Edwards Among the Theologians, 143−63. 62 63

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Scholars have observed how the rhetorical power of Edwards’ sermons rested more in the depth, rhythmic flow, and packaging of his ideas than in charismatic oratory. Few, however, have explored a vital source of his rhetorical depth: his experiential Bible reading practices. As in his own devotional study, he wished to make the truths and wonders of the Bible come alive to the senses of his audiences. Alongside his efforts to elucidate Scripture’s lively types and symbols, he employed vibrant imagery, stark juxtapositions like light and darkness, emotional pleas, repetition, personal exhortations, evocative adjectives, and other stylistic devices. Scholars have long recognized Edwards’ masterful use of imagery in his sermons. But some have misleadingly attributed it to his literary and philosophical genius while downplaying the importance of his biblical practices.65 At the same time, scholars wishing to reassert the significance of Edwards’ theology have downplayed his more dramatic and figurative-rich sermons as unrepresentative of his sophisticated theological thought—like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.66 However, these components were inseparable for Edwards. The striking imagery of light in Divine and Supernatural Light and the evocative metaphors in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God—perhaps his two most well-known sermons—were no anomalies but rather the culmination of early philosophical, theological, and biblical preoccupations concerning the experiential production of spiritual knowledge. Hence, proper preaching must convey spiritual ideas in Scripture not only with theological accuracy but also affective and sensorial speech. As illustrated in his sermon East of Eden [1731] on Gen 3:24, Edwards employed stark juxtaposition and imagery to inculcate the emotional weight of sin’s tragedy in his hearers to cast the hope of Christ’s salvation in sharp relief. He opened the sermon stating that Gen 3 “is the most 65  For example, Kolodny writes, “The power of [Edwards’] sermons, however, lies not so much in the abstract theology as in the stylistic devices through which it has been experienced, and the images, as Perry Miller pointed out in ‘The Rhetoric of Sensation,’ effectively translate the mystery of the unknown and abstract to the accessible borders of immediate emotional experience.” Annette Kolodny, “Imagery in the Sermons of Jonathan Edwards,” Early American Literature 7 (Fall, 1972): 181. Cf. Wilson H.  Kimnach, “The Literary Technique of Jonathan Edwards” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1972). 66  For a list of studies that represent these two contrasting perspectives and for a helpful corrective, see Douglas L. Winiarski, “Jonathan Edwards, Enthusiast? Radical Revivalism and the Great Awakening in the Connecticut Valley,” Church History, 74:4 (December 2005), 686−88.

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sorrowful and melancholy chapter that we have in the whole Bible.” To deliver his point, he transported his audience via sensorial evocation back to the lost paradise of Eden before the Fall: he [Adam] enjoyed the uninterrupted light of God’s countenance…. All nature smiled and seemed to rejoice. The heavenly bodies constantly shed down their most benign and sweet influences. The air was most refreshing and enlivening. Man was placed in a garden that God had planted, a place that the skill of the Maker of all things had contrived for delight and plenty…. Everything around him poured in delight and gladness into his soul. The visible world and all the fullness of it was contrived to cheer and delight his senses. And the senses themselves and all the organs of the body were without doubt in a perfect vigor and sprightliness, and the form of the body exquisitely beautiful…. His mind shone with the perfect spiritual image of God…. God had put his own beauty upon it; it shone with the communication of his glory. And man enjoyed uninterrupted spiritual peace and joy that hence arose. His mind was full of spiritual light and peace as the atmosphere in a clear and calm day.

In harmony with God and all creation, Adam and Eve enjoyed a sensorial and affective euphoria in Eden. But they sinned, and “man lost paradise.” The curse brought upon “a deathly darkness,” and the “earth lost its beauty and pleasantness.” All of God’s “smiles were gone and the tokens of his anger were everywhere seen.” The “vigor and luster” of the human body decayed, and Adam and Eve became aware and ashamed of their nakedness. Above all, they lost the “spiritual image of God” and communion through the indwelling Spirit, and consequently were deprived of all “spiritual peace and comfort.” However, this tragedy ultimately unfolded as an extraordinary felix culpa, for the “gospel proclaims those glad tidings to us that are sufficient to dispel all this melancholy darkness.” If the fall never happened, creatures would have never known the self-sacrificial grace and love of Christ. Drawing on graphic biblical imagery, Edwards offered his hearers two options: partake of Christ, the second Adam and the true “tree of life,” and obtain hope of restoration to prelapsarian paradise, or “be slain by the flaming sword of God’s vengeance.”67 Edwards did not merely want his hearers to understand these doctrines but to feel them—to sense the bliss of Eden before the Fall, the tragedy of  East of Eden, WJE, 17:331, 333−35, 342, 348.

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sin, the glorious mercy of salvation, and God’s excellence and wisdom in it all. He incited their senses and affections to reenact the redemptive drama in all its emotional twists and turns. The sermon was thus a participatory event. He regarded it his duty to give hearers the best chances for responding to the gospel, and he believed the best means for achieving this end was experiential preaching that animated the horrors of sin and the glories of Christ to their senses. As he explained against critics of the revivals, his aim in preaching “with very great affection” was not to manipulate emotions or stir enthusiasm. Rather he believed affectionate preaching conveyed “the truest representation” of divine things in the Word and “therefore has most of a tendency to beget true ideas of it in the minds of those to whom the representation is made.” Hearers could never have actual ideas of spiritual things without the correspondent spiritual sensations and affections. He thus resolved, “I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.”68 The bridge between Edwards’ private study of Scripture and his preaching is on display in his sermon on Exod 33:18–19—based on his “Notes on Scripture,” nos. 266 and 267 (examined above)—in which he exhorted his hearers to behold God’s glory in Scripture in the same way as Moses. Just as “Moses in the mount saw God’s Glory in his word, or by his proclaiming his name,” so “the way wherein God is wont to discover himself to his people here while they are in the flesh is by his word, by that proclaiming of his name or that Revelation he makes of himself in the Bible.” He taught that while none could attain a “comprehensive understanding” of God’s glory, they were “capable of an apprehensive understanding of it,” meaning they can know it by perceiving it. In the Word, he told his hearers, the redeemed “can see and understand that God is infinitely Glorious and have a sight and sense of the Glory and beauty of his Nature.” By opening spiritual eyes and proclaiming his name to spiritual ears in Scripture, God continued to reveal his glory today. No doubt, God has also given numerous “Evidences” of his goodness and glory in creation, like “Rain from Heaven and fruitfull seasons filling our Hearts with food and gladness,” leaving the “Heathen” without excuse for not acknowledging God for it. But “the discoveries we have” of God’s glory “in his Word  Some Thoughts, WJE, 4:387.

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are much more full and clear.” Edwards thus enjoined his parishioners to seek it in the Word like Moses did. Perceiving God’s glory will “peculiarly excite your desires and endeavours to see it and see more and more of it.” He reminded those who may fear such sights of God’s glory (like the Israelites), that to the believer this glory was “mild and Gentle such as a poor frail creature may behold without overbearing terror.” The glory of God was “peculiarly endearing and attractive.” Sights of it warmed and delighted the heart, as vibrantly “represented by the painted colours of the Rainbow that are most pleasant to the eye.” Edwards entreated his hearers to gain first a “sensible” understanding of certain things if they wished to see God’s glory. “That you may be aright sensible of the gloriousness of God’s goodness and grace,” he urged, “labour to get a sense of God’s awfull greatness and majesty,” the “infinite distance between him and the creature,” the “freeness” of God’s grace, and of “your own unworthiness” and “sinfulness.” With pastoral intent, Edwards urged his congregation to holy living by enticing them with sublime and satisfying sights of God’s glory. For as Heb 12:14 states, one must pursue “holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.”69 While Edwards’ “rhetoric of sensation” pinnacled during the awakenings of the early 1740s, his endeavor to enliven his audiences’ senses to divine things in the Word continued until the end of his life. By the late 1740s, Edwards’ optimism for the revivals in New England had waned. He never doubted the reality of the Spirit’s work, but he found that many in his congregation remained spiritually tepid. His late-1740s sermon, Yield to God’s Word, Or Be Broken By His Hand, displayed how the sensationalist and occasionalist influences on his preaching remained intact, but he now employed rhetorical devices to incite unease and concern in his hearers rather than captivate them with entertainments and beauty. “What strange madness is it,” he proclaimed, “that you that yet survive and have seen all these things yet remain unawakened.” In a unique moment of candid exasperation, Edwards spoke in the first person confessing his “considerable discouragement” that his awakening sermons seemed to have “so little apparent effect” on his congregation. No matter how lively and forcefully he preached the divine wonders of the Word, making the means and occasion for salvation ever more auspicious, he could produce no effect on hardened hearts. Nonetheless, he would continue to convey 69  Edwards, sermon on Exodus 33:18−19 (August 1731–December 1732), Box 1, F. 29, Beinecke, pp. 2−3, 28−35, (transcribed in WJEO 46).

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“the force of the awful warnings and threatenings which the word of God sets before you” because it was his duty as a minister—but he left “the effect with God.” He reminded his unawakened parishioners that they “have long” sat under the preaching of the Word, but they remained hardened. Indeed, “God by his word uses means to conquer them by persuasion,” but many in the pews have spurned these means. They were like Pharaoh, who received numerous warnings and illustrations of God’s power and wrath. But Pharaoh never yielded, and so God broke him “in pieces.” Let Pharaoh’s fate be a warning, Edwards exhorted his congregation. “We read of God’s word,” he declared, “that it is a fire and hammer. But they whose hearts will not yield shall be thoroughly broken by the fire and hammer.” Rather than rhapsodize about what the saints will experience in heaven, he instead impressed a sense of what the hardened of heart would feel in hell. “Your inward sense and experience—what you will feel, which none can even utter or conceive—will teach you every moment throughout eternity what a being the great God is, when manifesting his greatness and glory in the fierceness of his indignation,” he warned, and they will “know what it is to…burn alive and be tormented, when this great and infinitely holy God himself is the flame.”70 One way or another, everyone will learn by experience that God was glorious—either in heaven in the sight of his excellent goodness and beauty, or in hell under his awful wrath. After moving to the missionary settlement in Stockbridge in 1751 after his dismissal from the Northampton congregation, Edwards retained this critical tone when preaching to the Anglophone settlers. But his rhetoric was more inviting when preaching to awaken the senses of Native Americans, who unlike the English had not taken the means of grace and salvation for granted. As Kenneth Minkema observes, Edwards’ sermon from April, 1752 on Prov 8:34–36, titled “What it is to hear Christ,” shifted the sensory target from the eyes to the ears, i.e., from seeing to hearing Christ, to communicate to a culture centered on orality more effectively.71 Edwards understood the Native Americans shared the same human nature as the English, and thus the production of spiritual knowledge and enlightenment worked no different. “We are better than you in no respect,” he preached in another sermon, “only as God has made us to  Yield to God’s Word, Or Be Broken By His Hand, WJE, 25:220, 215, 212−13, 217.  Kenneth P.  Minkema, “Jonathan Edwards’ Scriptural Practices,” in Edwards and Scripture, 30−31. 70 71

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differ and has been pleased to give us more light. And now we are willing to give it to you.” Edwards believed his chief role on the mission frontier was to preach the Word to the Native Americans. The French and the Dutch kept them “in the dark” for their own profitable gain, he warned, and even the English have long failed in their duty. But now he and the missionaries “invite you to come and enjoy the light of the Word of God, which is ten thousand times better than [the] light of the sun.” In many sermons, Edwards employed a breadth of metaphors from nature that catered to Native American religious cultures rooted deeply in enchanted understandings of the land. He engaged their sight, taste, and hearing, urging them to receive the “light of God’s Word,” which, when it “shines into the heart, is sweeter than honey, and the gospel will be a pleasant sound.”72 From his early pastorates of the 1720s to the mission field in the 1750s, Edwards labored to enlighten souls by experimental preaching of the Word.

“The Bible Seems to Be a New Book to Them”: Practicing Scripture Edwards’ biblical experimentalism fostered his larger philosophical and ministerial project to prove, define, and display the Spirit’s vital redemptive workings in the world. “The Spirit of God has been poured out” on New England, Edwards reported after the local awakenings of the mid-­1730s.73 But the varied reactions to the revivals made him see that identifying the Spirit’s movements was no simple and straightforward undertaking, prompting him to utilize his sensationalist framework to discern and substantiate the true signs of divine activity in the world more rigorously. He found himself engaged in this endeavor with various groups in mind: skeptics like the deists who questioned the immediate involvement of the Spirit in the natural universe, radical enthusiasts who confused the Spirit’s workings with the impulses of their imagination, rationalist and anti-revivalist ministers like Chauncey who saw little connection 72  “To the Mohawks at the Treaty, August 16, 1751,” in Sermons of Jonathan Edwards, 108−10. See Rachel M.  Wheeler, “Edwards as Missionary,” in Cambridge Companion, 196−216; Wheeler, To Live Upon Hope: Mohicans and Missionaries in the Eighteenth-Century Northeast (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008); and Gerald R.  McDermott, “Missions and Native Americans,” in Princeton Companion to Edwards, 258−73. 73  Faithful Narrative, WJE, 4:107.

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between the Spirit and the emotional fervency of the awakened, nominal churchgoers who knew right doctrine but never experienced spiritual new birth, and newly awakened believers in search of understanding and assurance regarding their experiences. Edwards also had an eye to the world, in hopes that the Spirit’s outpourings in New England would spread around the globe in fulfillment of redemptive history. He alerted his congregation that the world was watching their example: “A city that is set upon a hill cannot be hid.”74 All these considerations informed his detailed observational reports and analyses of the Spirit’s doings in New England, especially A Faithful Narrative (1737), The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741), Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival (1742), Religious Affections (1746), and The Life of David Brainerd (1749). Throughout these writings and sermons, he applied his religious sensationalist framework both to prove the Spirit and to illustrate authentic spiritual enlightenment and piety in the biblical practices of awakened Christians. Edwards’ reports of the Spirit’s operations followed his learned culture’s rules for judging the reliability of testimony. As Shapin explains, Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke insisted that eyewitness testimony must be assessed according to its “multiplicity, plausibility, directness, knowledgeability” etc.75 Edwards attentively stressed the geographical and demographical pervasiveness of the Spirit’s renewing work, the sobriety of those affected, the profusion of evidential spiritual fruits in their lives, and the rational and biblical corroborations. Moreover, scholars have examined how Edwards’ “observational techniques” in documenting the awakenings shared “epistemological continuity” with a “long colonial tradition” of Puritan ethnographic surveys, deathbed narrations, and conversion testimonies that empirically manifested God’s supernatural workings in the world. Edwards introduced Lockean philosophy into this tradition in defiance of growing philosophical resistance to spiritual experience (even Lockean), wishing to better identify and thereby bolster empirical evidence of a spiritual nature in accordance with learned standards of the times. However, while Edwards the empiricist trusted the reliability of sense experience, Edwards the Calvinist also knew the heart’s proclivity to hypocrisy and self-deception in judging its experiences.76 This posed no  Faithful Narrative, WJE, 4:210.  Shapin, Social History of Truth, xxix, 193−242. 76  Rivett, Science of the Soul, 299−303. 74 75

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small obstacle to his agenda to prove the presence and workings of the Spirit. Ava Chamberlain rightly argues that by the mid-1740s, Edwards had elevated the importance of Christian practice, perseverance, and sanctification to address the danger of hastily basing assurance on volatile experience.77 But another key and under-examined component in his attempt to overcome the challenge of self-deception lay in his insistence on harmonizing and substantiating religious experience with the Bible. In Edwards’ thinking, the interrelationship of the Spirit, the Word, and experience worked in a dynamic circle of mutual authentication. In traditional Protestant Orthodox fashion, he believed the Spirit illuminated the believer to know the Word, but the normative divine Word must also test the spirits as well as the individual’s experiences and judgments. Setting this axiom in the framework of empirical philosophy, he held that the most reliable data substantiating the Spirit’s true workings in the world rested in the observable and exemplary practices of women and men who had been transformed in conformity to the Word. He already trusted the authority of sense experience to harvest such data. But to know whether these effects were truly of a spiritual nature, they needed to harmonize with unerring Scripture. This step enabled him simultaneously to challenge anti-supernatural Enlightenment presumptions while also guarding against the errors of religious enthusiasm and self-deception. He thus made a science out of searching for the immediate presence and action of God by tracing the observable effects of the Spirit working with the Word in the lives of awakened believers. He wrote in A Faithful Narrative, “in every place God brought saving blessings with him, and his Word attended with his Spirit (as we have all reason to think) returned not void.”78 To demonstrate this work, Edwards presented evidence of men and women enlightened and enlivened by the Spirit and the Word. The effects were undeniable, as new and old converts alike practiced Scripture. They performed the Bible’s redemptive drama, professed its teachings with a new intuitive certainty, lived out its precepts with vitality, and experienced new affections, perceptions, and sensations of its divine wonders. In his letter to Benjamin Colman (1673–1747), in which Edwards first reported the outpouring of the Spirit during the revivals of 1734–1735 in Northampton and the surrounding area, he described—with clear parallels to his own conversion account in his “Personal Narrative”—how many  Chamberlain, “Self-Deception as a Theological Problem,” 541−56.  Faithful Narrative, WJE, 153.

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read, saw, felt, and heard the Word in new ways: “Many of them say the Bible seems to be a new book to them, as though they never read it before. There have been some instances of persons that by only an accidental sight of the Bible, have been as much moved, it seemed to me, as a lover by the sight of his sweetheart. The preaching of the Word is greatly prized by them; they say they never heard preaching before.”79 Edwards’ emphasis on the newness of these sensations underlined their spiritual nature. These persons were not heathens hearing the Bible for the first time. Rather they were British provincials raised in a Christian land who encountered the Word in a vital, spiritual way for the first time. As he listed more phenomena in A Faithful Narrative, he mixed observation with sensationalist analysis to draw a causal relationship between these effects and the Spirit, thus authenticating their authentic spiritual nature against enthusiast deception: Persons commonly at first conversion and afterwards, have had texts of Scripture brought to their minds, that are exceeding suitable to their circumstances, which often come with great power, and as the Word of God or Christ indeed. … And it seems to me necessary to suppose, that there is an immediate influence of the Spirit of God, oftentimes in bringing texts of Scripture to the mind: not that I suppose ’tis done in a way of immediate revelation, without any manner of use of the memory; but yet there seems plainly to be an immediate and extraordinary influence, in leading their thoughts to such and such passages of Scripture, and exciting them in the memory. Indeed in some God seems to bring texts of Scripture to their minds no otherwise than by leading them into such frames and mediations, as harmonize with those Scriptures.

Edwards did not need to wait for Old Light critical responses to the awakenings to know such claims could be construed and dismissed as enthusiasm. He responded more thoroughly to the issue a decade later in Religious Affections. But already here in A Faithful Narrative he relied on sensationalist psychology to differentiate “immediate revelation” from “immediate influence” of the Spirit to validate these experiences.80 The Spirit was not revealing new knowledge but rather enlivening the knowledge of Scripture in their memory via the spiritual sense.  “A Faithful Narrative: Unpublished Letter of May 30, 1735,” WJE, 4:105.  Faithful Narrative, WJE, 4:178. The analysis parallels his thinking in “Miscellanies,” no. 126, discussed above, WJE, 13:290−91. 79 80

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The Spirit’s workings were also made manifest through widespread affection for the Word and greater assurance of its divine power. “While God was so remarkably present among us by his Spirit,” he remarked, “there was no book so delighted in as the Bible.” Moreover, “The converting influences of God’s Spirit” led many to become “convinced of the divinity of the things they are reading of, in some portion of Scripture,” because now they “immediately felt” it. The Spirit gave them a new “sight and taste” of spiritual things, making their sensory attestation to Scripture’s divine inspiration as reliable as a natural person’s testimony to the existence of the sun after gazing on its “strong blaze” with physical eyes. The evidence pointed to a divine work.81 Having mainly reported group phenomena, he then offered “an account of two particular instances” “to give a clearer idea of the nature and manner of the operations of God’s Spirit, in this wonderful effusion of it.” He first related the experiences of Abigail Hutchinson, a recently deceased woman from a “rational understanding family” with no tendencies to enthusiasm. She had long been ill, but it did not affect her sobriety of mind and temper. When her brother recommended she earnestly seek after salvation, she worried that she did not have enough knowledge of religion to do so. She thus “resolved thoroughly to search the Scriptures” and began reading the Bible from start to finish. That was Monday. By Thursday, she underwent “a sudden alteration” when “an extraordinary sense of her own sinfulness” struck terror in her like “a flash of lightning.” She now more eagerly sought salvation and stopped wherever she was in the Old Testament and “turned to the New Testament” in search of consolation. This distressful state continued through the weekend, as she dwelt on Matt 6:7 and realized she had been trusting her own “religious performances” for salvation rather than Christ. The following Monday morning, however, she woke up relieved of her fears, and she “wondered within herself at the easiness and calmness she felt in her mind.” Passages of Scripture came pouring into her thoughts: And then these words came to her mind, “The blood of Christ cleanses [us] from all sin” [1 John 1:7]; which were accompanied with a lively sense of the excellency of Christ, and his sufficiency to satisfy for the sins of the whole world. She then thought of that expression, “’tis a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun” [Eccl 11:7]; which words then seemed to her to be  Faithful Narrative, WJE, 4:184, 179.

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very applicable to Jesus Christ. By these things her mind was led into such contemplations and views of Christ, as filled her exceeding full of joy. She told her brother in the morning that she had seen (i.e. in realizing views by faith) Christ the last night.

Edwards presented her claim to have seen Christ in the framework of his sensationalist thinking. Her sights of Christ in the Word were not with physical eyes, but they were no less real. Nor were they the result of a confused imagination. They constituted actual spiritual ideas and arose from her new “lively sense” of the things she was reading, convincing her of the reality of Christ’s salvation.82 After this point, passages of Scripture or a single word like “wisdom” and “truth” would evoke in her “extraordinary discoveries of the glory of God,” arousing such intense spiritual ecstasies that she would lose bodily strength and need to lie down. The degree of her experiences demonstrated the Spirit’s vital operations filling her with joyful affection and certainty. “She had sometimes the powerful breathings of the Spirit of God on her soul, while reading the Scripture,” Edwards wrote, “and would express a sense that she had of the certain truth and divinity thereof.” As her health worsened, she increasingly reflected on death and contentedly resigned herself to God’s will. The clash between her physical distress and spiritual joy conditioned her encounter with Scripture, as she looked to it for comfort and meaning. Edwards described how after enduring “the greater part of the night in extreme pain,” she woke up “with these words in her heart and mouth: ‘I am willing to suffer for Christ’s sake … I am willing to spend my life, even my very life for Christ’s sake!’ [cf. II Cor. 12:15].” Whereas Paul originally wrote the verse to express his love for the church in Corinth, Hutchinson’s imaginative paraphrase shifted its reference to her present desire to glorify Christ in her physical suffering. In another instance shortly before her death, Edwards recounted, “At a time when her brother was reading in Job, concerning worms feeding on the dead body [Job 21:26, 24:20], she appeared with a pleasant smile; and being inquired of about it, she said it was sweet to her to think of her being in such circumstances.” She adapted the passage’s applicative meaning to her present experience of longing to be with Christ in heaven.

 Faithful Narrative, WJE, 4:191−93.

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Edwards presented her narrative as an “eminent instance of Christian experience” that testified to the power of the Spirit and the Word.83 Edwards’ other instance of piety was a four-year-old girl named Phebe Bartlett. After her older brother urged her to seek salvation, she began spending hours in her closet praying. During a conversation with her mother in which she expressed her fear of hell and anguish over her lost condition, she found rest for her soul and expressed her joy with profound emotion as she recited truths from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. After this point, Bartlett evinced the alteration in her condition with new fruits. She embraced Scripture with a spiritual understanding and applied it as the language of her heart. Edwards wrote, “She at times appears greatly affected, and delighted with texts of Scripture that come to her mind.” For instance, “about the beginning of November, the last year, that text came to her mind, Revelation 3:20, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and sup with him, and he with me.’ She spoke of it to those of the family with a great appearance of joy, a smiling countenance, and elevation of voice.” Having herself opened the door for Christ, she marveled aloud how wonderful it was to “sup with God.”84 After a time of unprecedented awakening, it became “very sensible that the Spirit of God was gradually withdrawing” from New England.85 A few years later, in a sermon series on The History of Redemption, Edwards traced the Spirit’s workings through the centuries and came to see the spiritual revival in Northampton and elsewhere as a critical watershed in redemptive history. He found promising signs that the Spirit and the Word were at work bringing forth new spiritual life among Native Americans, in Muscovy and the Great Tartary region (modern-day Russia and northern-­ central Asia), the East Indies (particularly Malabar where Pietist missionaries commissioned by the king of Denmark translated and printed the Bible), and among the Halle Pietists in Germany.86 Not long after these sermons concluded, the revival fires reignited and spread throughout the British Atlantic world as George Whitefield and other itinerants  Faithful Narrative, WJE, 4:194–97, 199.  Faithful Narrative, WJE, 4:203. 85  Faithful Narrative, WJE, 4:206. 86  History of Redemption, WJE, 9:432−36. For Edwards’ connections to Francke and Halle Pietism, see Ryan P. Hoselton, “Jonathan Edwards, Halle Pietism, and Benevolent Activism in Early Awakened Protestantism,” in Edwards, Germany, and Transatlantic Contexts, ed. Rhys Bezzant (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021), 51−68. 83 84

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proclaimed the new birth of the Spirit with explosive urgency.87 Edwards was ebullient about the spread of religious enlightenment, but also cautious. He wanted to ensure the Spirit’s work was distinguishable from enthusiast confusions and deceptive flights of fancy, and he even personally warned the young Whitefield against attributing spontaneous impulses to the Spirit’s guidance.88 Amid these challenges, and as critics like Chauncey cast doubt on the revivals, Edwards found himself again looking to examples of vital and experimental biblical piety to ascertain a true work of the Spirit. In Some Thoughts, Edwards conceded there had been errors of enthusiasm. Notwithstanding, he reaffirmed that overall the revivals had been the work of God. He urged critics to set aside their prejudgments and rely on the empirical evidence of awakened religion to establish the Spirit’s true workings in so far as it corresponded with Scripture. “It will evidently appear,” he wrote, “that such a work is not to be judged of a priori, but a posteriori: we are to observe the effect wrought; and if, upon examination of that, it be found agreeable to the Word of God, we are bound without more ado to rest in it as God’s work.”89 He then proceeded on these grounds to assess the revivals, once again providing an instance of exemplary piety. This time he kept the name anonymous—perhaps because it was his wife, Sarah Pierpont Edwards. Loosely following Sarah’s own account,90 he styled her extended spell of intense spiritual experiences as a “kind of heavenly Elysium” arising from a prolonged and uninterrupted “clear and lively view or sense” of divine things. The account brimmed with the vitalist language of spiritual sensation: she experienced a “clear discovery then made to the soul,” “increase of a sense of…divine views and divine love,” “extraordinary sense…as of a flame infinitely pure and bright,” “extraordinary view,” “strongly impressed on the mind,” “sense of the ineffable,” “a clear view,” “an affecting sense,” “very great sense,” “an overwhelming sense,” “a sight,” and so on. The senses also kindled  For more on the transatlantic evangelical awakenings, see literature cited in Chap. 2.  Marsden, Edwards, 211−12. 89  Some Thoughts, WJE, 4:293. 90  The original manuscript has recently been recovered and published. See Kenneth P. Minkema, Catherine A. Brekus, and Harry S. Stout, “Agitations, Convulsions, Leaping, and Loud Talking: The ‘Experiences’ of Sarah Pierpont Edwards,” William and Mary Quarterly 78:3 (July 2021): 491−536. It too demonstrates a vital biblical experimentalism, in which Sarah describes a particularly heightened sensory and affective encounter with Romans 8:34ff on pp. 519−20. 87 88

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vigorous affections, such as a “great delight,” “overcoming pleasure,” “vehement longings and faintings,” “melting compassion,” “constant desire,” and more. While these sensations and affections demonstrated the vital nature of awakened piety, they evinced their authenticity by being directed at evangelical realities such as the tragedy of sin, the glory of Christ, and the beauty of redemption, rather than at imagined visions and whims. Above all, Edwards underscored their conformity with Scripture. At one point, thoughts on God’s faithfulness to his covenant invoked in her a “great sense of his strength” as “appearing in these words, ‘I am that I am’ [Exodus 3:14], in so affecting a manner as to overcome the body,” filling her with a “sense of the glorious, unsearchable, unerring wisdom of God … so as to swallow up the soul.” He admitted that not all instances of awakened religion were “so well regulated,” and many showed a “mixture of nature with grace.” But on the whole, they harmonized with “expressions in Scripture” that exhibit “the fruits of the true Spirit,” such as “having the love of God ‘shed abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost given to us’ [Romans 5:5],” and “having ‘the Spirit of God, and of glory rest upon us’ [1 Peter 4:14]; a being called ‘out of darkness into marvelous light’ [1 Peter 2:9],” and so on. The instances of vital evangelical piety that Edwards had observed “answer these expressions” in the Bible, thus furnishing the “clearest evidence” that a uniform and “glorious outpouring of the Holy Spirit” has truly occurred and had connected various “parts of the land” in a shared spiritual awakening.91 Edwards frequently cited reputable Reformed theologians to aid and bolster his analysis of the awakenings. However, when it came to proving the Spirit by illustration, he did not look to the authority of prominent male leaders, distinguished clergy, or the erudition of exegetical scholars but rather to the models of ordinary believers—especially females. He found reliable sensory evidence of the Spirit’s work in the case histories of Hutchinson, Bartlett, and his wife Sarah because their sensations and affections harmonized with the Word. He particularly promoted accounts of women because females more transparently bespoke the direct causality of the Spirit and consequently the authenticity of their experiences. As Rivett writes, “Edwards assigns privileged epistemic authority to children and young Anglo women that is much in keeping with the relegation of

 Some Thoughts, WJE, 4:332, 336−39, 337, 341−43.

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this population to a kind of tabula rasa purity.”92 In contrast to conventional male clergymen trained in theology and exegesis, the examples of young females manifested the immediate influences of the Spirit more clearly because their spiritual knowledge of Scripture was not owing to any advantage of formal education or social position. He highlighted the weakness of the females in these accounts to accentuate the strong motions of the Spirit, emphasizing how their meditations on Scripture caused them to experience bodily faintness and frailty, submissiveness to God, feelings of being overwhelmed and overcome, and an inability to speak. At the same time—perhaps anticipating biases against female susceptibility to emotional manipulation—he emphasized their sobriety of mind and reason. Moreover, women were not susceptible to the skeptic’s charge against religious leaders who only claimed privileged spiritual knowledge to gain power over others. Wittingly or not, Edwards worked with gender norms of the time to substantiate and illustrate the vital operations of the Spirit and the power of the Word. While he certainly still took social, gender, and religious hierarchies for granted and upheld the necessity of male ministerial authority and learnedness, he also elevated the authority of religious sensations and affections of the Spirit—which he found most conspicuously in younger awakened females. Nonetheless, the fact that he erased any mention of gender in the account of his wife shows that he commended these traits as ideals of piety for everyone. His Life of David Brainerd reinforces this point. Published in 1749 amid rising tensions with his congregation and discouragement over unrealized hopes for its fuller awakening, Edwards commended Brainerd’s life as a “bright” example “of that religion that is taught and prescribed in the Word of God.” Like his accounts of females, Brainerd’s youthful religious life more clearly signified the authenticity of the Spirit’s work since his piety could not be credited to customary educational, institutional, and social privileges. Brainerd was expelled from Yale after saying that a tutor had no more grace than a chair, he was denied traditional ordination since he did not have a university education (an association of New Light ministers eventually ordained him), and he suffered both physical and psychological infirmity—namely tuberculosis and depression, or what they called 92  Rivett, Science of the Soul, 305. See also Sandra M. Gustafson, Eloquence is Power: Oratory & Performance in Early America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), 40−74; Ava Chamberlain, “Edwards and Social Issues,” in Cambridge Companion, 334−39.

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melancholy. Promoting his example despite his inadequacies ultimately conveyed that his pious devotion and sacrificial missionary labors owed entirely to the Spirit and nothing to his status and abilities. However, like his published account of Sarah, Edwards edited Brainerd’s diary to reduce hints of enthusiasm.93 He thus not only highlighted the harmony of Brainerd’s experimental piety with Scripture but also its sobriety. Interspersed between diary entries, Edwards related conversations in which Brainerd denounced separatists, reaffirmed the importance of a “learned ministry,” and criticized any pretense of experiential religion that failed to embody “that true vital piety recommended in the Scriptures.” Establishing the soundness and sobriety of his subject enabled Edwards to present Brainerd’s diary entries as reliable evidences and illustrations of the Spirit’s operations. Ultimately, the publication enabled him to illustrate the kind of experiential, vital, and biblicist piety that he had been advocating in his sermons and treatises in the hopes that the Spirit would use it to instill such spiritual life in others.94 In contrast to the emerging historical-contextual approaches to interpreting the Bible that demanded an objective distance between the reader and the text, Brainerd’s daily experiences and affective states intimately intertwined with his reading practices. For instance, in his season of missionary work among the Native Americans when he regularly despaired from melancholy and doubt, he found hope and encouragement for his spiritual pilgrimage in Scripture: Thursday, November 3 [1743]. … read the third chapter of Exodus and on to the twentieth, and saw more of the glory and majesty of God discovered in those chapters than ever I had seen before; frequently in the meantime falling on my knees and crying to God for the faith of Moses and for a manifestation of the divine glory. Especially the third and fourth, and part of the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters, were unspeakably sweet to my soul. … The fifteenth chapter seemed to be the very language which my soul uttered to God in the season of my first spiritual comfort, when I had just got through the Red Sea, by a way that I had no expectation of. Oh, how my soul then “rejoiced in God” [Ps 63:11]! And now those things came fresh 93   See the “Editor’s Introduction” from Norman Pettit, WJE, 7:1−85; and David L. Weddle, “The Melancholy Saint: Jonathan Edwards’s Interpretation of David Brainerd as a Model of Evangelical Spirituality,” The Harvard Theological Review, 81:3 (July, 1988): 297−318. 94  Life of David Brainerd, WJE, 7:89−90, 458−59.

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and lively to my mind; now my soul blessed God afresh, that he had opened that unthought of way to deliver me from the fear of the Egyptians, when I almost despaired of life.

The entry embodies Edwards’ notion about true saints experiencing a correspondence between the Word and the soul. For Brainerd, the passages did not merely refer to a distant historical event but to his own spiritual narrative and the disposition of his heart. When Brainerd encountered the text as the “very language” of his soul, the sentences became “fresh and lively” to his mind. It vividly brought to mind his spiritual conversion as he sensed a correspondence between Israel’s deliverance from the Egyptians to the promised land and his own deliverance from sin to salvation. Like Moses, Brainerd faced his own Red Sea and a daunting mission—the trials were external and internal. By praying and reading Scripture, he participated in the same faith and experience of God’s glory as Moses, which evoked in him an intimate sense of God’s presence, gave him comfort in his trials, and renewed his zeal for the mission. Brainerd’s interpretive fluidity was characteristic of many in the early evangelical movement who looked to connect symbols and stories in the text with their own experiences of redemption and sanctification.95 Brainerd’s biblical experientialism carried over into his preaching among the Native Americans. In a series of entries from late 1745, he recorded the sensible influences of the Spirit on his preaching of Scripture and his audience’s reception. On October 28, he “discoursed from Matthew 22:1-13” with divine aid “in a plain, easy, and familiar manner, beyond all that I could have done by the utmost study.” The effect bore clear evidence of a divine work: The Word of God at this time seemed to fall upon the assembly with a divine power and influence … There was both a sweet melting and bitter mourning in the audience. … So much of the divine presence appeared in the assembly that it seemed “this was no other than the house of God, and the gate of heaven” [Gen 28:17]. And all that had any savor and relish of divine things were even constrained by the sweetness of that season to say, “Lord, it is good for us to be here” [Matt 17:4]. If ever there was amongst my people an appearance of the New Jerusalem, “as a bride adorned for her husband” [Rev 21:2], there was much of it at this time.

 Brainerd, WJE, 7:225–26.

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Through the Spirit’s vital application of the Word, the congregation sensed God’s presence and reacted with intense emotion. The space transformed from a mere meeting place to the “house of God.” Like the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, Brainerd and the awakened Native Americans corporately perceived God’s glory in the Word with such realness and affection that they wished to abide in this state, beholding Christ’s glory with enlightened eyes as one spiritual people.96 While Brainerd questioned the credibility of the missionary work by the Quakers and Moravians, he (and Edwards) trusted the authenticity of the spiritual fruit among the Native Americans under his own ministry because they were empirically traceable to the Spirit and the Word. On November 24, preaching on Luke 19:1–9, he sensed that “the Word seemed to be attended with divine power to the hearts of the hearers,” and “the impressions they were under appeared to be divine” because they were “the genuine effect of God’s Word set home upon their hearts by his Spirit.” On December 15, he “preached to the Indians from Luke 13:24-28.” Once again, the Spirit applied the Word with enlivening power. He stressed that the “impressions made by the Word of God upon the audience” were not fanatical but “appeared solid, rational, and deep.” Brainerd carefully guided and examined the experiences of the Native Americans to ensure their genuineness. On March 9, 1746, he detailed the dramatic conversion of a Native American woman. He had preached that morning from Luke 10:38–42, and the “Word of God was attended with power and energy upon the audience.” In the afternoon, after a moving time of “prayer in the Indian language (as usual),” he elaborated further on the passage. The “powerful divine influence” had returned “in the congregation,” and “the presence of God” followed the crowd that assembled at his home afterwards. As they sang hymns, a woman “burst forth in prayer and praises to God,” crying “sometimes in English and sometimes in Indian.” He began posing questions to probe the nature of her newfound spiritual discoveries and found “no evidence wanting in order to prove this joy to be divine.” Her “surprising ecstasy” clearly sprang from “a true spiritual discovery of the glory, ravishing beauty, and excellency of Christ: and not from any gross imaginary notions,” like the delusions of the Moravians and enthusiasts who claimed to see Christ bleeding on the cross or smiling at them  Brainerd, WJE, 7:335−36.

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from heaven. Having before been resistant and fraught with doubt, she now “viewed divine truths as living realities; and could say, ‘I know these things are so, I feel they are true!’”97 In the Life of David Brainerd, Edwards wanted readers to discover in Brainerd and Native American converts ample instances of true spiritual enlightenment—rooted in the Spirit and the Word, vital and experiential, and yet rational and sober, such that they confounded the enthusiasts’ delusions and the skeptics’ pretensions alike. Only this sort of grounded, Spirit-born religion could sustain a person in the ultimate experimental test: death. Nearing his end, Brainerd expressed his certainty in the reality of the spiritual wonders he experienced in Scripture. Stricken with tuberculosis, he lay on his deathbed at twenty-nine years of age in the Edwards’ home, tended by Jonathan’s daughter Jerusha (who died and was buried next to him four months later). When a woman (possibly Jerusha) entered “the room with a Bible in her hand” on an evening five days before his passing, Brainerd exclaimed, “Oh, that dear book! that lovely book! I shall soon see it opened! The mysteries that are in it, and the mysteries of God’s Providence, will be all unfolded!” Like Hutchinson, Brainerd confidently resigned himself to his death in joyful anticipation of heaven, where he knew he would behold all the spiritual wonders he had read about in the Word directly in their fullness.98 Edwards’ writings, sermons, and notebooks display his insatiable quest for spiritual enlightenment by the Spirit and the Word. He grounded his labors to enlighten minds and enliven hearts in a synthesis of Puritan practical divinity and sensationalist psychology, producing a dynamic exegesis of sensation that assumed various practical manifestations. He wished to experience Scripture’s divine glories personally, and to profess its divine authority with an experiential certainty that eclipsed mere probabilistic evidential reasoning. While refuting the enthusiasts’ revelatory claims, he relied on corresponding spiritual tastes and affections to interpret Scripture’s meaning accurately and thereby produce spiritual ideas. Hoping to facilitate auspicious occasions for the Spirit to ignite lively and sensible spiritual ideas in others, he preached the Word with affective and sensorial speech. Finally, he presented case histories of saints enlightened  Brainerd, WJE, 7:340, 344, 368−72.  Brainerd, WJE, 7:474−76.

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by the Word, commending their biblical and awakened piety as evidence of the Spirit’s workings and as authentic religion for emulation. While Edwards’ sensationalist biblical practices bore both similarities and differences with other transatlantic awakened Protestants, they illustrate a widespread evangelical effort to translate Reformation biblical beliefs and pieties into new intellectual and cultural circumstances of the early Enlightenment era with momentous implications for the persistence of religious vitality.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

Cotton Mather’s head was filled with questions that the Bible did not answer plainly. He turned to experimental philosophy and experimental religion for insight. On the last question in his commentary on Luke’s gospel, he had reached his limits: Where was heaven? Where was Christ’s ascended and glorified body? He first contemplated a hypothesis from the Newtonian natural philosopher William Whiston, since after all it contained less “Heresy in it, than in some of his Assertions.” It seemed improbable that heaven’s location was beyond the stars—for if the mathematicians’ calculations were correct, it would constitute “an unaccountable Violence” to “the Very Nature of Body…and uniform Lawes of Motion” to travel that distance so quickly. A more likely location was just outside the world’s atmosphere, which the baroscope had estimated to be about “Fifty Miles” away. It also makes sense of Jesus’ frequent comings and goings during the forty days after his resurrection, and of Scripture passages that speak of heavenly beings observing earthly affairs and intervening in them in real time (Job 1, 1 Kgs 22, Luke 16, 2 Cor 12:2). Yet Mather was not quite ready to concede Whiston’s hypothesis. After all, a good Newtonian must consider that “Light is a Body, and yett it can pass to an amazing Distance, in a very Little Time.” He counted on experimental religion to provide a more satisfactory answer, but he would have to be patient, and “wait in a way of Beleeving & Repenting & Bringing forth Fruit unto God; for the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 R. P. Hoselton, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment, Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44935-2_7

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best Satisfaction about the Matter, that is, an Experimental one, Sciss cum.”1 A man of his time, Mather rested considerable confidence in the capacities of empiricism to advance knowledge of the world and the Word. But like most evangelicals, he accepted the epistemological boundaries of human finitude “Fifty Miles” below heaven (or however far it is). Ultimately, his longing for enlightenment propelled a pursuit for holiness en route to eternal glorified existence, where he would finally gain certain and firsthand knowledge of the thousands of questions that animated his boundless curiosity. Intrigued by the invitation to become the next president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), Jonathan Edwards naturally worried if the demands would allow him to complete his writing projects. In October 1757, he wrote a letter to the trustees sharing his intention to write “a great work, which I call A History of the Work of Redemption.” He envisioned it as “a body of divinity in an entire new method, being thrown in the form of an history, considering the affair of Christian theology, as the whole of it, in each part, stands in reference to the great work of redemption by Jesus Christ.” Basing this history on Scripture, he found his method “most beautiful and entertaining, wherein every divine doctrine, will appear to greatest advantage in the brightest light, in the most striking manner, showing the admirable contexture and harmony of the whole.” In yet another project, which he would “call The Harmony of the Old and New Testament,” he would offer “an explanation of a very great part of the holy Scripture” in a manner that was “most entertaining and profitable, best tending to lead the mind to a view of the true spirit, life and soul of the Scriptures, as well as to their proper use and improvement.”2 His outlines for these treatises reflect his life-long absorption with interpreting and presenting the Bible to enlighten the mind and stir the heart. Alas, the works never came to fruition. In March 1758, shortly after assuming the presidency, Edwards died of complications from a smallpox inoculation— which Mather controversially promoted in the 1720s. Like Mather’s “Biblia,” these works would have been monuments to the early evangelical program of biblical enlightenment had they been published. Edwards  Mather, “Biblia Americana,” Luke 24:50, 51. The translation for Sciss cum is “you know when,” referring probably to heaven. William Whiston, “Upon the Several Ascensions of Christ,” in Sermons and Essays Upon Several Subjects (London, 1709), 170−71. 2  “To the Trustees of the College of New Jersey,” WJE, 16:728−29. The first project was based partly on the sermon series he preached in 1739, which was published posthumously in Edinburgh in 1774. 1

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nonetheless bequeathed an experimental and awakened theology that propounded divine light, religious affections, and the spiritual sense of the Spirit as the means of true enlightenment, by which the soul attained lively ideas through the illuminated Word of the divine glories he now experienced in full measure. Like many others over the long eighteenth century, Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards appropriated enlightened discourses and philosophical frameworks of experience to bolster their quest for true spiritual enlightenment. In step with their Reformed Puritan forebears, they yearned for the Spirit to illuminate their minds and hearts to know God’s thoughts, sense his glory, and rest assured of his promises as they read the Word. But they could not ignore the growing number of intellectual challenges to the reliability and authority of Scripture in their time, and they utilized new critical modes of historical and evidential thinking to defend it. The challenge that concerned them most, however, was not merely the Bible’s chronological and historical accuracy, but whether it was possible to attain spiritual knowledge of God in it. Their invocation of experimental philosophy not only lent them confidence in the Bible’s divine origin and authority but also propelled their efforts to awaken spiritual knowledge and piety through experiential interpretation and preaching. As the preceding chapters have shown, their experiential exegesis was not simply the product of their idiosyncratic personalities or subjective fancies, but rather took shape amid wider transformations of philosophy and religion. Chapter 2 demonstrated that while the early evangelical pursuit of experiential knowledge of the Bible had deep roots in the Christian exegetical tradition, the intellectual and cultural conditions of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries greatly shaped the epistemological frameworks, interpretive methods, linguistic conventions, and practices of piety behind their spiritual reading of Scripture. The Protestant reformers and especially Calvinists sought to restore true spiritual worship and rid Christendom of superstitions, arbitrary rituals, and idols. The path to reform was not only to assert the prime authority of Scripture but also to abandon the ancient quadriga method of exegesis that legitimized false religion with arbitrary mystical interpretations. True spiritual knowledge and worship must conform to the literal and singular sense intended by the Bible’s divine author, the Holy Spirit. To discover this sense, they honed self-interpreting methods like collation and contextualization. Yet it was not enough to merely ascertain the Bible’s meaning. The Spirit must also indwell the soul to instill certainty of the Bible’s teachings and

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lead the heart to a saving and experiential knowledge of them. By reconceiving the scope and marrow of the sacred as the Holy Spirit’s indwelling operations to instill experiential knowledge of the Word, Calvin and his heirs contributed to the desacralization of the modern world. This step furnished a critical precondition for the Enlightenment era’s preoccupation with the essence of natural and spiritual knowledge and its relationship to human reason and experience. To varying degrees, radical skeptics and moderate-minded thinkers shrank the boundaries of the sacred even further and elevated the natural capacities of reason and experience for knowledge and moral reform. Many retained a reverence for the Bible, but they disputed the notion that supernatural empowerment was necessary to understand and practice it. On the other hand, the binary opposition between nature and spirit was also a critical precondition for the transatlantic movements of religious awakening in the long eighteenth century. Early Pietists and evangelicals felt emboldened by the era’s heightened regard for experience and capitalized on it to emphasize the deficiencies of nature and reason for true enlightenment, promoting instead the necessity of spiritual rebirth, knowledge, and affections. In their preaching of Scripture, they mastered rhetorical and stylistic techniques to appeal to their audiences’ sensory faculties, emotions, and consciences, and they empowered the experiential capacities of reborn believers to read the Word for growth in knowledge and vital piety. Chapters 3 and 4 examined how Cotton Mather, the grandson of New England’s founding Puritan architects Richard Mather and John Cotton, labored to reconcile the new learning with the theological and pious ideals of his Puritan heritage. He worried that deism, mechanistic philosophies, and skeptical attacks on the Bible would squander the era’s progress in learning on fleeting human vanities. At the same time, he mourned the dearth of piety in the Protestant world and its falling short of completing the Reformation. His vision for his Bible commentary, the “Biblia Americana,” counteracted both problems by amassing and applying the best learning and discoveries of human history for the religious end of elucidating God’s Word. In contrast to philosophical mechanism and materialism, Mather believed that experience in fact corroborated the existence of the spiritual world and the possibility to know it through observation and trial. This stance undergirded his promotion of a vital Christianity animated by the Spirit. Blending Puritan practical divinity with the experimental philosophy of Robert Boyle, he pursued a spiritual knowledge that was at once scientific and evangelical by applying the observations of

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experimental piety to confirm and illuminate Scripture. Finding validation and inspiration for his views from continental Pietists like Spener and Francke—who pioneered the most dynamic Protestant reform movement of Mather’s time—he urged his audiences to identify the pious truths in every Bible passage by assimilating their minds and affections with the pious thoughts of the biblical authors at the moment when the Spirit inspired them to write. His promotion of reborn lay believers’ experiential capacities to interpret Scripture and achieve spiritual renewal anticipated momentous transformations of piety, as later generations of evangelicals increasingly asserted the authority of their experiences over traditional religious structures. While Mather believed his experimental hermeneutic guarded and enlivened his tradition, in practice it resulted in some significant innovations. The ways he collected, organized, and presented his experimental interpretations exhibited the discursive conventions, aspirations, and philosophical frameworks of early Enlightenment experimental philosophers— especially those connected with the Royal Society. His techniques of knowledge-accumulation reflected new Enlightenment forms of media, and his attempt to validate his experimental readings by stressing the reliability of his sources as learned and pious gentlemen imitated the elite culture of enlightened virtuosos in the republic of letters. His search for pious illustrations of the Bible led him to sources well beyond his tradition, as he incorporated experimental observations from a vast variety of Protestants, Catholics, early church fathers, mystics, esoteric thinkers, and more. Emboldened by empiricism, he wished to counter the historicizing and naturalizing effects of critical biblical scholarship by observing spiritual meanings underneath the Bible’s external surface: its history, geography, grammar, poetry, and wisdom. To this end, he creatively utilized pious illustrations not only from practical-minded Bible commentaries and devotional literature but also from affective hymns and poems, daily experience, mystical ecstasies, and quasi-prophetic revelatory communications from heaven (thus pushing the canonical borders of Scripture). His reliance on experience to unveil the manifold spiritual senses and meanings intended by the Spirit marked a noteworthy departure from his Reformed tradition’s insistence on the singular literal sense. His interpretations also downplayed dogmatic and liturgical adiaphora and prioritized meanings that reflected the main tenets of awakened Protestant piety—such as Christocentric devotion, the experience of the new birth, inner holiness and affection, practical faith and good works, and longing for Christ’s

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return. While the covenantal hermeneutics of his Puritan heritage continued to direct his reading of Scripture as a historical and realist narrative of redemption, he also followed a wider trend among evangelicals to make the convert’s own experiences a determinative narrative framework for understanding the Bible. Chapters 5 and 6 demonstrated Jonathan Edwards’ integration of empirical philosophy in his biblical experientialism and its implications for his philosophical and revivalistic pursuits. The critical influence for him, however, was Lockean sensationalist psychology. Inspired by Locke’s reasoning that sense experience furnished the mind with ideas, Edwards argued that spiritual ideas and knowledge arose from spiritual sensations. He wed this notion with his Reformed tradition’s insistence that spiritual knowledge came from the Spirit and the Word. The Spirit infused the regenerate believer with a new vital principle, the spiritual sense, which enabled new exercises of the soul to perceive, hear, feel, and taste divine things in Scripture. These sensations produced spiritual ideas and affections that harmonized the mind and soul with the ideas and affections of Scripture’s divine author. Creatively intertwining Calvinist theology with sensationalist psychology and occasionalist philosophy, Edwards held that such experiential knowledge was entirely dependent on the Spirit’s sovereign prerogative at each moment. True spiritual knowledge could not be the work of man but of the Spirit alone. However, persons have the responsibility to attend actively to the means used by the Spirit—especially Scripture—to produce spiritual affections and knowledge. Edwards thus devised a form of scriptural preparationism by urging his audiences to study their Bibles and sit under faithful biblical preaching to make the chances for the Spirit to act upon their souls ever more auspicious. He also believed it was the duty of ministers to present the Word with vividness, depth, affective rhetoric, and sensory language to better prepare minds and hearts with truths and sensations that the Spirit could act upon at any moment to spark spiritual life. His sensationalist paradigm for reading Scripture fortified his agenda for authentic spiritual revival. Capitalizing on the binary between natural and spiritual experience, he beseeched New Englanders experimentally to test whether their religious knowledge and affections were truly of a spiritual nature by examining whether they could sense the spiritual beauty and holiness of divine things in the Word. Having the right doctrine, ecclesiology, and understanding of the Bible was not enough—they also needed to experience the spiritual new birth of the Spirit.

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For Edwards, what made an idea spiritual was not the propositional content per se but rather the spiritual nature of the sensations and affections of the mind as it beheld the idea. Thus, simply understanding the Bible’s meaning—even spiritual meanings—did not constitute spiritual knowledge. Contrary to what some scholars have argued, Edwards also did not believe the spiritual sense of the heart revealed the spiritual senses of Scripture. Rather, it animated the mind to feel and perceive the ideas received from Scripture in distinctly spiritual ways. Edwards belabored this point in his polemic against enthusiasts and rationalists in the wake of the revivals of the 1730s and 1740s. To guard against confuting spiritual knowledge with the natural exertions of the imagination, he reasoned, one must discern through experimental trial whether the sensation harmonized with the Word. In one sense, his desacralization of mystical knowledge by confining it to the indwelling operations of the Spirit followed a similar trajectory of desacralization to many Enlightenment empiricists. However, whereas the former pursued this course to demystify religious belief, Edwards’ aim was to better ascertain the true nature and philosophical validity of experiencing God in the Word. The spiritual sensations he experienced when reading and meditating on Scripture assured him of its truth, authority, and divine origin—a certainty that far exceeded any probabilistic arguments based on external evidence. While he did not believe the spiritual sense revealed the Bible’s meaning, his exegesis of sensation still affected the content and emphases of his interpretations. The spiritual tastes of regenerate readers assisted them to discern the soundness of an interpretation by its harmonization with their own experiences of divine things by the Spirit. On this basis, Edwards inventively pursued typological interpretations throughout Scripture that correlated with the sensory ideas in his mind about the beauties and sweetness of Christ, the glory of salvation, the wonders of the Word, the sorrow and darkness of sin, and the joys of Christian practice. He labored in his preaching to convey these spiritual ideas of the Bible to his congregants, hopeful that the Spirit would awaken them. Furthermore, in his defenses of the awakenings, he carefully traced and presented the biblical practices of awakened believers who embodied true spiritual religion as evidential testimony to the power of the Spirit and the living Word. Since neither Mather nor Edwards published their main exegetical writings, the direct influence of their biblical interpretation has been limited. They are not typically regarded as leading representatives of hermeneutical schools, and few have looked to their commentaries to settle interpretive

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debates or emulate their methods. The recent publication of their exegetical writings could change this, however. An influential evangelical minister, John Piper, recently authored two books drawing heavily from Edwards to promote a more robustly spiritual approach to reading and practicing Scripture, and Douglas Sweeney published a popular biography commending Edwards’ exemplary ministry of the Word. Rick Kennedy’s biography of Cotton Mather spoke positively of his “biblical enlightenment,” and the recently published ESV Church History Study Bible contains multiple commentary notes from Mather and Edwards.3 While their interaction with early Enlightenment empirical philosophies did not carry over to later generations, evangelicals from the eighteenth century to today, in various forms and contexts, have continued the effort to reconcile religious enlightenment by the Spirit and the Word with ever-­changing modern conditions.

3  John Piper, A Peculiar Glory: How the Christian Scriptures Reveal Their Complete Truthfulness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016), and Reading the Bible Supernaturally: Seeing and Savoring the Glory of God in Scripture (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017); Sweeney, Edwards and the Ministry of the Word; Kennedy, First American Evangelical, 106; ESV Church History Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2023).

Index1

A Act of Toleration, 62, 64, 85, 180 Alchemy/alchemical, 64, 82, 101, 132, 144, 145n38 Ames, William, 29, 30n25, 35, 35n38, 37, 37n43, 38n45, 43–45, 45n64, 95, 140, 178, 192n46, 218 The Marrow of Theology, 35, 178 Angels/angelic, 82, 101, 102, 106, 108, 125, 146, 147, 152–154, 159, 162, 173, 222, 248, 253 Anglican, 13, 55, 55n92, 85, 148, 165, 196 Apocalyptic/ism, 24, 147, 148, 149n44, 150, 151, 154 Apologetics, 16, 67, 67n118, 69, 128, 133, 140, 176, 193 Aristotle/Aristotelian, 44, 45n64, 52, 60, 73, 164, 197

Arndt, Johann, 72, 92, 101, 115, 168–171, 168n77 Vier Bücher von wahrem Christentumb, 72, 115 Augustine/Augustinian, 34n33, 131, 131n13, 143n36 Awakened Protestant/ism, 1, 2, 5, 6, 13, 15, 16, 20, 33, 61–77, 80, 82, 86, 89, 124, 125, 135, 139–141, 164, 172, 177, 178, 180, 183, 184, 211, 234, 261, 282, 287 B Bacon, Francis, 44, 45n64, 145, 169 Baconian, 95 Bartlett, Phebe, 274, 276 Baumgarten, Jacob Siegmund, 69 Baxter, Richard, 114, 146 Bayle, Pierre, 136, 176n2, 181 Dictionnaire historique et critique, 136

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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INDEX

Bayly, Lewis, 38, 72 The Practise of Piety, 38, 72 Bebbington, David, 12n15, 13, 14, 205n79 Bengel, Johann Albrecht, 164 Besold, Christoph, 131, 132, 132n18 Axiomata Philosophiæ Christianæ, 131 Bible application of, 135, 204, 245, 280 authority of, 2, 7, 9, 11, 13, 17, 34, 35, 41–50, 53, 56–58, 58n99, 63, 68, 69, 71, 80, 81, 83, 95, 119, 123, 139, 140, 155, 163, 164, 176, 234, 239, 241, 243, 281, 285, 289 authorship of, 7, 35, 48, 56, 123, 161, 164 biblical scholarship, 5, 6, 20, 41–50, 67, 123, 163, 164, 173, 175, 176, 287 chronology of, 5, 45, 111 geography of, 5, 45, 81, 111, 123, 137, 163–168, 172, 173, 176n2, 208, 239, 247, 287 grammar of, 22, 43, 74, 143, 163–168, 173, 208, 287 history/historicity of, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 19n2, 22, 31, 32, 42, 45–47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 61, 67, 71, 74, 75, 81, 94, 95, 110–112, 118, 123, 125, 126, 131, 133, 137, 140, 142, 147, 163–168, 173, 176n2, 208, 239, 240, 242, 258, 284, 285, 287, 288 inspiration of, 5, 47, 50, 80, 94, 100, 114, 118, 119, 123, 164, 224, 239–241, 272 interpretation of (see Exegesis) philology of, 42, 45, 61, 71, 81, 94, 95, 111, 123, 163, 164, 247

Polyglot Bible, 45 self-attestation of, 22, 46, 56, 176 self-interpretation of, 36 spiritual sense of, 136, 141, 175–231, 236, 243–245, 271, 287, 289 translation of, 163 vernacularization of, 69 See also Exegesis Bible commentary, 81, 135, 208, 286, 287 Biblia Americana, 3, 4n3, 5, 81, 82, 95, 102, 110–115, 111n92, 111n93, 117, 117n106, 123, 128, 129, 131, 133–136, 140, 142, 143n36, 144, 148, 149n44, 150, 155–159, 156n56, 159n62, 161, 161n64, 163, 168, 168n77, 170, 173, 284, 286 Biblicism, 13, 139 Bochart, Samuel, 45, 137 Böhme, Anton Wilhelm, 74, 91, 93, 115, 131, 131n13, 139, 152, 168n77 Plain Directions for Reading the Holy Scripture, 74 Borel, Pierre, 144 Boston, 83, 85, 115, 130, 146, 180, 196 Boyle, Robert, 7, 12n15, 16, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103n71, 111, 136, 169, 177, 184, 219, 286 Christian Virtuoso, 99 Brainerd, David, 277–281 Bridge, Thomas, 115, 130, 131, 135 Bunyan, John, 114, 141, 167 Solomon’s Temple spiritualiz’d, 167 Buxtorf, Johannes (The Elder), 45, 46 Buxtorf, Johannes (The Younger), 45, 46

 INDEX 

C Calef, Robert, 103 Calvin, John, 21, 25–28, 25n15, 26n16, 33n32, 34, 179, 225, 226, 286 Calvinist/ism, 15, 51, 66, 89, 105, 180, 192n46, 269, 285, 288 Cambridge Platform, 41 Cambridge Platonist/ism, 13, 145, 213, 213n103 Camisard, 150, 151 Cappel, Louis, 45, 46 Carré, Ezéchiel, 151 Cartesian/ism, 5, 13, 51, 56, 94, 100, 185 Catholic/ism, 1, 13, 20, 25, 29, 30, 45, 46, 61, 62, 77, 79, 85, 89, 90, 132, 173, 287 Certainty, 9, 16, 17, 19, 21–26, 30, 34, 46–48, 50–52, 58, 61, 65, 67–69, 72, 76, 106, 109, 110, 155, 173, 178, 183, 185, 187, 188, 192, 214, 230, 231, 234–236, 241–243, 256, 258, 259, 261, 270, 273, 281, 285, 289 Chambers, Ephraim, 176n2, 244 Cyclopedia, 244 Chauncey, Charles, 196, 224, 225, 268, 275 Cheyne, George, 106 Christocentric, 63, 79, 82, 87, 158n60, 159, 163, 172, 180, 251, 287 Church fathers, 19, 34n33, 79, 101, 134n22, 143n36, 169, 173, 287 Church of England, see Anglican Chyträus, David, 137 Cocceius, Johannes, 30, 37, 144 Cole, Nathan, 75 Collins, Anthony, 59, 60 Colman, Benjamin, 180, 270

293

Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus, 137 Consciousness, 217–219, 218n115 Contemplationes Idiotae de amore diuino, 132, 132n19 Copernican/ism, 5, 82, 94, 95 Cotton, John, 33, 39, 83, 286 Cudworth, Ralph, 101, 145, 213 D Deist/ism, 2, 42, 52, 57–61, 60n101, 67, 97, 97n53, 143, 154, 163, 172, 185n25, 195, 201n68, 225, 229, 239, 240, 258, 268 Desacralization, 10, 11, 28, 29n23, 32, 229, 230, 286, 289 See also Secularization Descartes, René, 21, 50, 169, 184 See also Cartesian/ism D’Espagne, Jean, 163 Disenchantment, see Desacralization Dissent/dissenters, 20, 47, 55, 85, 88n22, 181 Doddridge, Philip, 65, 66, 67n119, 70 Family Expositor, 65 Dutton, Anne, 76 E Edict of Nantes, 93, 148 Edwards, Jerusha, 281 Edwards, Jonathan and, 2–9, 11–13, 15–17, 20, 25, 33, 40–42, 45n64, 50, 51, 63, 64, 71, 77, 84, 86, 89, 107, 141, 154, 173, 175–231, 233–282, 284, 285, 288–290 “Blank Bible,” 188, 233, 248, 253 “Christ, the Light of the World,” 204 “Diary,” 237

294 

INDEX

Edwards, Jonathan and (cont.) “Discourse on the Trinity,” 188, 199 disposition/al/ism, 183, 197, 198n62, 199, 200, 212, 213, 213n103, 215, 219, 237, 243, 279 Distinguishing Marks, 188, 223, 269 Divine and Supernatural Light, 188, 190, 194, 200, 207, 253, 261, 263 East of Eden, 263 Faithful Narrative, 181, 269–271 “Images of Divine Things,” 233 harmony, 17, 178, 211–219, 222, 231, 235, 246, 250, 251, 255, 270, 276, 289 History of Redemption, 239, 252, 274 Life of David Brainerd, 269, 277, 281 “The Mind,” 188 “Miscellanies,” 187, 188, 192, 195, 201n68, 203, 205, 212, 214, 237, 239, 240, 242, 245, 249, 271n80 “Notes on Scripture,” 188, 227, 233, 239, 251, 254, 256, 257n52, 265 “Notes on the Apocalypse,” 233 Original Sin, 183, 205, 212, 218n115 “Personal Narrative,” 234, 270 Religious Affections, 179, 183, 186n27, 188, 208, 213, 216, 222, 223, 227n136, 228n137, 243, 244, 269, 271 sense of the heart, 190, 207, 221, 289 Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, 211, 263

Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, 208, 223, 269, 275 spiritual sense (of the Spirit), 8, 17, 175–231, 243–246, 289 Spiritual Understanding of Divine Things, 188, 258 “Treatise on Grace,” 188, 200, 227n136 “Types of the Messiah,” 233, 249 Edwards, Sarah Pierpont, 275 Edwards, Timothy, 179, 184n24 Empiricism/empirical philosophy, 7, 8, 20, 22, 45n64, 61, 64, 69, 72, 72n133, 97, 100, 102, 103, 103n71, 107, 113, 133, 135, 177, 178, 182, 186, 192n46, 194, 219, 230, 231, 234, 236, 270, 284, 287, 288, 290 Enlightenment Christian, 8, 9, 95, 97 evangelical, 7, 9–17, 95, 154, 178, 183, 187, 219, 231, 234, 239, 244 radical/skeptical, 67 Enthusiast/enthusiasm, 9, 19, 27, 43, 52, 55n92, 101, 135, 146, 148, 150, 153, 154, 177, 179, 194–196, 202, 208, 216, 221, 223–225, 229, 230, 236, 257, 265, 268, 270–272, 275, 278, 280, 281, 289 Erasmus, Desiderius, 19, 25, 34n33, 47 Erskine, John, 15, 192n46 Esoteric/ism, 7, 64, 82, 100, 100n62, 101, 134n22, 136, 144–146, 173, 229, 287 Evangelical/ism, 1, 3, 7–17, 19–77, 82, 86–90, 89n27, 94, 95, 104n74, 107, 108, 124, 128, 129, 139–141, 144, 146, 154, 155, 158, 160, 169, 172, 173,

 INDEX 

295

177, 178, 180, 182, 183, 186n27, 186n28, 187, 192n46, 193, 202, 219, 221, 223–225, 224n131, 230, 231, 234, 239, 244, 251, 260, 275n87, 276, 279, 282, 284–288, 290 Exegesis allegory/allegorical, 32 Christological, 46 covenantalist, 79, 141, 158n60 critical, 66, 164 historical-contextual, 163 literal, 21, 32, 142, 176, 221, 227 mystical, 222, 227, 246, 285, 287 plain meaning, 66, 250–251 porismatic, 74, 128 precritical, 42, 140, 141 quadriga, 22, 29, 32, 33, 35, 37, 285 typology/typological, 7, 32, 46, 110, 111, 123, 138, 139, 163, 220, 223, 223n127, 227, 230, 247–252, 259, 289 Experimental philosophy, 7, 7n8, 12n15, 16, 20, 51, 55, 77, 82, 98–110, 112–114, 124, 137, 177, 183, 187, 217, 244, 283, 285, 286

Manuductio ad lectionem Scripturae Sacrae, 74, 115–117, 119, 120, 131 Frei, Hans, 77n149, 140, 141, 141n31 French Prophets, 150, 151, 153, 173

F Faculty psychology, 193, 198–199 Fernel, Jean, 101 Fleming, Robert, 148 Francke, August Hermann, 71, 73–75, 91, 92, 92n38, 115–120, 128, 131, 152, 152n51, 153n53, 164, 168n77, 211, 211n95, 247, 248n28, 274n86, 287 Einfältiger Unterricht, 73 Einleitung zur Lesung der H. Schrift, 73

H Harrison, Peter, 32, 32n30, 51 Harvard, 35, 45, 83, 123 Haug, Johann Friedrich, 136 Berleburger Bibel, 136 Henry, Matthew, 65, 66, 70, 114, 155 Exposition on the Old and New Testament, 65, 155 Hermeneutic, see Exegesis Hermetic/ism, 64, 82, 101, 132, 144, 145n38, 166 Heurnius, Johannes, 105

G Gaffarel, Jacques, 144 Garden, Alexander, 196, 224 Gell, Robert, 163, 165 Amendment of the last English-­ Translation of the Bible, 163 Gerhard, Johann, 29–32, 30n25, 43, 45 De Interpretatione Scripturae Sacrae, 30 Gillespie, Thomas, 218 Glorious Revolution, 85, 180 Goodwin, Thomas, 148 Gospel, 8, 14, 59, 68, 75, 93, 151, 165, 168, 189, 195, 210, 225, 242, 243, 257, 258, 260, 264, 265, 268, 283 Great Awakening, 15, 180 Grelot, Anton, 148 Grotius, Hugo, 46, 47, 47n69, 53, 61, 142 Gründler, Johann Ernst, 91, 153n53

296 

INDEX

Hindmarsh, Bruce, 64, 75, 141n31, 158, 186n28 Hobbes, Thomas, 52, 56, 60, 97, 201n68 Hobbesian, 13, 100 Leviathan, 56 Holy Spirit as divine author, 33, 35, 36, 117, 118, 163, 285, 288 illumination of, 7, 23, 26, 27, 30, 31, 35, 41, 51, 58–60, 106, 114, 133, 143, 153, 189, 191, 192, 197, 204, 211, 221, 226, 228 indwelling of, 23, 26, 96n52, 110, 178, 179, 188, 194–201, 205, 223, 241, 251, 264, 286, 289 inner witness of, 22, 25, 32, 49 regeneration of, 49, 56, 59, 60, 120, 196, 211, 230 testimony of, 24, 26, 27, 33–35, 39, 49, 99, 128, 192, 196, 218, 219, 243, 289 See also Pneumatology Homiletic, see Preaching Hooke, William, 148 Hopkins, Samuel, 262 Huguenot, 93, 148 Hutcheson, George, 114, 155, 156 Hutchinson, Abigail, 272, 273, 276, 281 Hymn/hymnody, 65, 68, 70, 155, 158, 159, 159n62, 161, 162, 173, 280, 287 I Idealism, 45n64, 182, 185, 188 J Jenkin, Robert, 118 Jurieu, Pierre, 148, 149n44

K Kabbalah, 64, 82, 101, 145, 146 Keach, Benjamin, 248 L La Cène, Charles, 163 Lacy, John, 150–152, 153n53, 154 General Delusion, 150, 151, 153n53 Lange, Joachim, 95, 139, 143, 168n77 Latitudinarian/ism, 6, 41–42, 47, 55, 60, 65, 97, 172, 181n16, 194 Le Clerc, Jean, 46, 143, 163 Lightfoot, John, 47 Locke, John, 2, 8, 12n15, 45n64, 52, 57–61, 57n95, 58n99, 72n133, 177, 181, 186–189, 186n28, 190n38, 191, 192n46, 194–196, 195n54, 202, 213n103, 229, 269, 288 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 57, 189 Reasonableness of Christianity, 57 Lockean (philosophy), 192n46, 230, 269 London, 45, 80, 85, 115, 150, 165, 181 Luther, Martin, 19–25, 22n6, 23n8, 31, 131, 131n13, 163 Bondage of the Will, 19n1 Magnificat, 23 M Malebranche, Nicolas, 13, 205 Mather, Cotton and, 2–9, 11–13, 15–17, 20, 25, 33, 40–42, 45, 50, 51, 63, 64, 71, 77, 79–173, 175–177, 176n2, 180, 184, 211, 219, 230, 244, 247, 248n28, 261, 283–287, 289, 290 Angel of Bethesda, 104, 104n75

 INDEX 

Blessed Unions, 88n22, 107n81 Bonifacius, 83, 111 Christianity Demonstrated, 88 Christian Philosopher, 80, 83, 96n52, 99, 100n60, 102, 106, 108 Diary, 80, 81, 83, 83n7, 89, 101, 102, 106, 116, 117, 140n30 India Christiana, 152n51, 153n53 Magnalia Christi Americana, 83, 92n38, 110, 115, 157, 158 Malachi, 91, 93 Man of Reason, 97, 97n53 Manuductio ad Ministerium, 83, 98, 100n60, 113n96, 114, 117, 131n13, 161, 211, 248n28 and “Maxims of Piety,” 88 Memorable Providences, 102 New Offer, 111–113 and Nishmath-Chajim, 104–106, 104n75 Nuncia Bona, 92 and Particular Faiths, 106, 146, 157 Paterna, 129 Psalterium Americanum, 114, 117, 121n117, 131n13, 158 Ratio disciplinae fratrum Nov-­ Anglorum, 83 Reasonable Religion, 96 Signatus, 109n86, 110n89 Things to be Look’d for, 147 Things to be more thought upon, 91 “Triparadisus,” 93, 104n75, 107, 117n106, 149, 149n44 Vital Christianity, 90 Winter Meditations, 105 Wonders of the Invisible World, 83, 102, 103 Mather, Increase, 83, 86, 103n71 Mather, Richard, 33, 83, 286 Mather, Samuel (Cotton’s son), 79n1, 111n93, 123

297

Mather, Samuel (Cotton’s uncle), 114, 139, 248 Figures and Types of the Old Testament, 139 Maundrell, Henry, 172 Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, 172 Means of grace, 201, 202, 205–207, 209, 210, 267 Mechanism/mechanical philosophy, 5, 56, 61, 99, 105, 108, 185, 222, 286 Mede, Joseph, 148 Medieval, 19n2, 22, 33n32, 82, 96n52, 143n36, 173, 184 Miller, Perry, 35n38, 45n64, 89, 100n60, 182n18, 186, 186n28, 193, 193n50, 215, 263n65 Ministry (Christian), 83, 93, 127, 178, 236, 252, 258, 290 Missions, 39, 65, 88, 92, 153n53, 268, 279 Modern/ism/ity, 3, 5, 7n8, 9–14, 9n11, 17, 21, 25, 28, 32, 43n57, 50, 54n91, 61, 63, 64, 94, 100, 108n82, 136, 182n18, 184, 186, 286, 290 Moravian/ism, 15, 63, 68, 280 See also Pietist/ism More, Henry, 101, 181, 213 Muller, Richard A., 32, 42 N Naclantus, Jacobus, 169 Native American/s, 86, 87n19, 88, 267, 268, 274, 278–281 Natural philosophy, 5, 52, 55, 57, 60, 61, 67, 80, 81, 99, 100, 100n60, 111–114, 140, 172, 179, 184, 244 Neoplatonic/Neoplatonism, 45n64, 82, 101, 102, 145, 204 See also Plato/Platonic

298 

INDEX

New England, 15, 33, 35n38, 37, 39–41, 39n50, 43n60, 55, 67, 67n117, 75, 79, 83–86, 88–90, 92n38, 93, 103, 157, 177, 179–181, 181n16, 196, 209, 222, 224, 252, 266, 268, 269, 274, 286 New England Way, 84 Newton, Isaac, 56, 99, 181, 184, 186 Newtonian/ism, 5, 64, 82, 95, 99, 148, 185, 197, 206, 283 Noll, Mark A., 13, 64, 76, 253n49 Northampton, 86, 179, 181, 204, 216, 267, 270, 274 O Occasionalism, 182, 205, 205n79, 208, 211 Osborn, Sarah, 68, 230 Owen, John, 47–50, 48n72, 49n78, 57, 114, 179, 179n6, 189, 192n46, 206n81, 228 The Reason of Faith, 49 Understanding the Mind of God, 49, 179 P Paracelsus/Paracelsian/ism, 64, 101, 144 Perichoresis, 199 Perkins, William, 29, 32–37, 34n33, 39n50, 41, 140, 142, 218, 248 The Arte of Prophecying, 33 Physico-theology, 64, 80 Pietist/ism, 8, 15, 20, 43n57, 63, 65, 69, 72, 72n134, 73, 73n135, 88, 90–92, 92n38, 95, 101, 116, 132n18, 140, 143, 152, 153n53, 173, 274, 286, 287 Plastic spirit, 103–105, 230

Plato/Platonic, 260 See also Cambridge Platonist/ism Pneumatology, 66, 82, 106, 107, 173, 178, 193, 194, 202 See also Holy Spirit Poetry, 150, 155, 158, 160, 161, 161n64, 173, 249, 287 Post-Reformation Protestantism, 183 See also Protestant Orthodoxy, Reformation Preaching, 17, 33, 36, 37, 37n43, 39n50, 55, 65, 75, 87, 193, 202, 204, 207–210, 211n95, 211n96, 223, 234, 258–268, 271, 279, 280, 286, 288, 289 Preparationism, 87, 120, 209, 288 Prince, Thomas, 15, 180 Princeton, 3, 11, 284 Prophecy/prophetic, 7, 46, 57, 60, 82, 110, 118, 123, 147, 151–154, 163, 173, 220, 256 Prosper of Aquitaine, 169 Protestant interest, 85 Protestant Orthodoxy, 20, 63, 182 Puritan/ism, 7, 8, 20, 25n15, 29–41, 43, 44, 45n64, 47, 50, 55, 57, 58, 63, 66, 69, 72, 79, 82, 83, 85, 87, 88, 90, 94, 95, 96n52, 100n60, 101, 103n71, 113, 114, 120, 124, 133, 135, 140, 144, 148, 151, 154, 173, 178, 182, 186, 186n27, 194, 202, 206n81, 207, 213, 218, 219, 223, 224, 226, 231, 234, 236, 248, 269, 281, 286, 288 R Ramist philosophy, 43n60 Reason, rationalism, 96, 243 Reformation, 2, 15, 16, 19–77, 147, 282, 286

 INDEX 

Reformed, 25, 29, 38n45, 40, 52, 54, 66, 89, 90, 100, 101, 124, 140–142, 144, 146, 176, 178, 179, 179n5, 183, 187–189, 192–194, 197, 200, 202, 209, 213, 220n120, 236, 239, 241, 243, 276, 287, 288 Republic of letters, 81, 181n16, 287 Reuchlin, Johann, 145 Revival/ism, 8, 9, 13, 15, 64, 86, 89, 92n38, 93, 95, 151, 154, 180, 181, 184n23, 195n56, 216, 223, 224, 224n131, 227n136, 234, 252, 265, 266, 268, 270, 274, 275, 288, 289 Rhetoric of sensation, 193, 266 Rivett, Sarah, 12, 113, 193, 211n96, 276 Royal Society, 7, 16, 55, 98, 101, 124, 133, 134, 177, 184n24, 219, 287 S Savoy Declaration, 48n72, 178–179 Scholastic/ism, 50–52, 65, 164, 182, 184, 185, 199n63, 202, 206n81 Schreiner, Susan, 21 Science, 7n8, 11, 12, 32, 32n30, 45n64, 58, 64, 80, 83, 94, 95, 101, 104n75, 110, 112, 114, 118, 128–135, 184, 270 See also Experimental philosophy; Natural philosophy Scientific Revolution, 2, 51 Secular/ism, 9n11, 28, 46, 95, 96n52, 104n75, 186 Secularization, 9, 10n12, 12, 13, 28, 29n23, 77, 77n149, 100n60 Sensationalist psychology, 8, 16, 177, 178, 186–188, 197, 198, 202, 208, 213, 223, 226, 235, 246, 248, 249, 271, 281, 288

299

See also Empiricism/empirical philosophy; Lockean (philosophy) Sheehan, Jonathan, 11, 136, 163, 164 Shepard, Thomas, 33, 40, 179, 186n27, 224n130, 226 Simon, Richard, 46 Smith, John, 213, 224n130 Socinian/ism, 42, 49, 51, 52, 197 Sola scriptura, 20, 30, 151 Spener, Philipp Jacob, 71, 73, 74, 120, 131, 131n13, 248n28, 287 Das nötige und nützliche Lesen der Heiligen Schrift, 73 Pia Desideria, 73 Spinoza, Baruch, 2, 52–54, 53n87, 56, 60, 61, 163, 185n25, 201n68 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 52 Stievermann, Jan, 4–5, 101, 153n53, 163 Stockbridge, Massachusetts, 267 Stoddard, Solomon, 86, 179, 180, 180n13, 192, 192n46, 206n81, 208, 217n113, 224 Sweeney, Douglas A., 5, 176, 290 T Tauler, Johannes, 92 Taylor, Charles, 12, 60 Technometry, 35n38, 43, 43n60 Tennent, Gilbert, 196 Theodoret of Cyrus, 143 Tillotson, John, 2, 55, 181 Tindal, Matthew, 59, 185n25, 195, 201n68 Toland, John, 59, 60 Trinity/trinitarian, 32, 59, 79, 91, 107, 178, 181, 188, 197–200, 198n62, 199n64, 203, 222 Tyndale, William, 25

300 

INDEX

U Unitarian/ism, 9, 11, 89 V van Helmont, Johann Baptiste, 101, 104 Vitalism, 79–122, 173, 178, 230, 234, 251 Vitringa, Campegius, 144, 145 Observationes Sacrae, 144 von Zinzendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig, 71 W Walton, Brian, 47 Waple, Edward, 148 Ward, W. R., 12, 15n23, 64, 220 Watts, Isaac, 65, 68, 158–160, 159n62, 181 Wesley, Charles, 65, 70 Wesley, John, 68–71, 141, 181, 184 Explanatory Notes, 70 Westminster Confession, 48n72, 239, 241

Westminster Shorter Catechism, 274 Whiston, William, 56, 148, 164, 283 Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies, 57 New Theory of the Earth, 57 White, John Way to the Tree of Life, 35 Whitefield, George, 15, 69, 71, 75, 89, 141, 181, 196, 196n59, 223, 224, 274, 275 Williams, William, 179, 180, 180n13 Winship, Michael P., 54, 103n71, 108 Y Yale, 35, 178, 181, 213, 277 Z Ziegenbalg, Bartholomäus, 91, 93, 153n53 Zwingli, Huldrych, 21, 23–25 Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God, 23