Jonathan Edwards's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God": A Casebook 9780300155006

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
The Story of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
A Theological Primer
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
Companion Texts by Edwards
Contemporary Documents
Interpretations
Chronology of Edwards’s Life
Glossary
Resources for Teaching
Suggested Reading
Original Sources for Texts
Illustration Credits

Citation preview

Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

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Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God A Casebook

c including the authoritative edition of the famous sermon

c Edited by Wilson H. Kimnach, Caleb J. D. Maskell, and Kenneth P. Minkema jonathan edwards center at yale

New Haven and London

Published with assistance from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund. Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip Hamilton McMillan of the Class of 1894, Yale College. Copyright ∫ 2010 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Nancy Ovedovitz and set in Adobe Caslon type by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Edwards, Jonathan, 1703–1758. Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the hands of an angry God : a casebook / edited by Wilson H. Kimnach, Caleb J.D. Maskell, and Kenneth P. Minkema. p. cm. ‘‘Including the authoritative edition of the famous sermon’’. Includes bibliographical references. isbn 978-0-300-14038-5 (alk. paper) 1. Edwards, Jonathan, 1703–1758. I. Kimnach, Wilson H. II. Maskell, Caleb J. D. III. Minkema, Kenneth P. IV. Title. bx7260.e3e37 2010 285.8092—dc22 2009035917 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10

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Contents c

Introduction

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The Story of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Wilson H. Kimnach 1 A Theological Primer, Caleb J. D. Maskell Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

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Companion Texts by Edwards 51 Of Being (1721) 52 The Mind (1723) 54 The ‘‘Spider Letter’’ (1723) 56 The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners (1735) 62 An Account of the Late Wonderful Work of God (1735) 66 Personal Narrative (1740) 75 Letter to Deborah Hatheway, a Young Convert (1741) 86 Letters to His Children 91 To Mary Edwards (1749) 92 To Timothy Edwards (1753) 94 Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival in New England (1743) Letter to Lady Mary Pepperrell (1751) 102 Original Sin (1758) 105

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Contemporary Documents 111 Gilbert Tennent, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry (1740) 112 Letter from a Visitor to Su≈eld, Connecticut (1741) 118 Stephen Williams’s Eyewitness Account of the Preaching of Sinners (1741) 122 Eleazar Wheelock’s Pastoral Letter About the Preaching of Sinners (1741) 125 William Rand, The Late Religious Commotions in New England Considered (1743) 127 Interpretations 131 Benjamin Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut (1818) 132 Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening (1842) 135 Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister’s Wooing (1859) 138 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Reflects on Edwards (1880) 142 Alexander B. Grosart, The Tear-Stained Pages of Sinners (1897) 146 Mark Twain Reads Edwards on the Will (1902) 147 Theodore Roosevelt on His Wife’s Ancestor Jonathan Edwards (1916) 149 Vernon L. Parrington on the Tragedy of Edwards (1927) 151 Robert Lowell, ‘‘Mr. Edwards and the Spider’’ (1946) 155 Edwin H. Cady, ‘‘The Artistry of Jonathan Edwards’’ (1949) 157 Perry Miller Creates an Edwards for the Twentieth Century (1949) 161 Billy Graham Re-Preaches Sinners (1949) 165 H. Richard Niebuhr, ‘‘The Anachronism of Jonathan Edwards’’ (1958) 169 Two Views of the Toronto Blessing and Edwards’s Place in the Twenty-first Century 172 Guy Chevreau, Catch the Fire (1994) 173 Hank Hanegraa√, Counterfeit Revival (1997) 176 Marilynne Robinson, ‘‘Credo’’ (2008) 180

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Chronology of Edwards’s Life Glossary

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Resources for Teaching Suggested Reading

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Original Sources for Texts Illustration Credits

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Introduction c

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have o√ended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet ’tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.

‘‘A most terrible sermon, which should have had a word of gospel at the end, though I think ’tis all true.’’ This is what the English theologian and

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hymn writer Isaac Watts (composer of ‘‘Joy to the World’’ and ‘‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’’) wrote on his copy of Jonathan Edwards’s sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Watts, who was Edwards’s correspondent and a promoter of his works, used the word terrible in the eighteenth-century sense of ‘‘terrifying,’’ but there were many commentators then—and even more today—who would apply the more modern usage of terrible (repulsive, objectionable) to describe what has been called the quintessential ‘‘hellfire and brimstone’’ sermon. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God has su√ered the fate of a classic. It has become archetypal, a placeholder, a literary artifact lodged in our imagination of the American past. Like most classics, it is rarely read but often referred to, usually with a roll of the eyes and a barely stifled groan. And as is also the case for most classics, Sinners’s main readership consists of students and teachers, who often need help contextualizing and comprehending its urgent, horrific rhetoric and otherworldly theological pronouncements. To many of these long-su√ering readers, Sinners can at first blush feel like little more than a static-filled broadcast from a distant country—and the farther away the better. If this is your experience as a reader, take heart. You are in good company. Readers of Jonathan Edwards from his own day to ours, including many great thinkers across the spectrum of American literature, history, theology, and culture, have struggled to appreciate both the style and the content of Edwards’s work. In his own day, his ideas were vigorously debated, and the religious movements in which he took part, particularly the Great Awakening (of which Sinners is a landmark text), were extremely controversial. Edwards’s contemporaries, such as the Reverend Charles Chauncy of Boston, became famous through their vitriolic rejections of his ideas and practices and those of his colleagues. Subsequent generations were no more inclined to agree wholeheartedly with Edwards. His ideas were strongly criticized for decades after his death: notable antagonists included the likes of Clarence Darrow, H. L. Mencken, and Mark Twain, who wrote that reading Edwards’s theology was like going on a ‘‘tear with a drunken lunatic . . . a resplendent intellect gone mad’’ (see the Twain selection in this volume). For many surveyors of the

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Dick Lepine, ‘‘A politically correct Jonathan Edwards’’

American cultural scene, particularly in the turbulent decades of savage violence and technological progress between the American Civil War and the Great Depression, Jonathan Edwards’s life and thought epitomized the worst of repressive, authoritarian, fear-mongering American religion. The Freethinker Marilla Ricker put this point in no uncertain terms when she wrote that Edwards ‘‘believed in the worst God, preached the worst sermons, and had the worst religion of any human being who ever lived on this continent.’’ Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) was born in Connecticut and educated at Yale College, serving later as a pastor in Northampton, Massachusetts, a missionary to the Indians at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and the president of the fledgling College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). He left behind a huge body of writings, published and unpublished, and is widely regarded as one of the most significant religious figures of his time.

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Ron Hill, ‘‘You know . . . you’re not THAT angry . . . ’’

And yet many people know him only as the author of ‘‘that sermon,’’ delivered in Enfield, Connecticut, on July 8, 1741, in the midst of the religious revivals known as the Great Awakening. Edwards’s harrowing words on that day caused those listening to moan, cry out, reel, and faint in fear, but they also gave signs of evangelical awakening and conversion— and that was Edwards’s goal in preaching it. One of the reasons it was so famous in its day is that it worked. But why, more than 250 years later, do we still read Sinners—and why should we? Why is Sinners represented in all major American literary anthologies and widely regarded as an American classic? Why is it constantly reprinted by religious presses? In the second half of this volume, we o√er a variety of interpretations of Sinners by sympathizers and critics. But the question remains open to us and to you, the reader. What are we to make of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in a twenty-first-century context? Let us begin our exploration with three possible answers. First, we should note that simply because an author has eminent and

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vociferous critics, it does not mean that he or she is not worth reading, simply that he or she provokes strong reactions from readers. Thus the assessments of Chauncy, Twain, Darrow, Ricker, and others are not the last word on Edwards but rather strong, principled disagreements from another place on the spectrum of American self-consciousness. It is notable that following World War II, when the hunt for ideas that defined ‘‘American identity’’ had become a matter of public debate, interest in Jonathan Edwards underwent a renaissance that has continued to this day. So in spite of the fact that Edwards’s ideas were recalled as an embarrassment by so many in the eras of the Chicago World’s Fair (1893), the Scopes Monkey Trial (1925), Free Thought, and Progressivism, they began to make a comeback in the somewhat sobered, post-Holocaust, postHiroshima age, when Americans began to reflect in a less optimistic way about, among other things, the presence of evil in a world of progress. Next, look at the numbers. Sinners has been continuously in print since its first edition in 1741. There are literally millions of copies in individual editions and in popular anthologies of spiritual writing, many of which were printed by evangelical tract societies like the American Bible Society. There were more than fifty di√erent English printings of Sinners in the twentieth century alone. Sinners has been translated into at least twelve languages and become an archetypal revival sermon, shaping the thinking and practice of countless preachers. Among them is the most famous preacher of the twentieth century, Billy Graham, who was so impressed by the sermon and its e√ect on its hearers at Enfield that he himself repreached the sermon at a huge revivalist meeting in Los Angeles in 1949 (see the Graham selection in this volume). At the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University, the sta√ regularly receives questions about the sermon, and Web pages about Sinners are always the most visited on its site. (The searches on Sinners on the Center’s Web site, http://edwards .yale.edu, more than double each year in the early autumn, when the leaves are beginning to turn on the trees and hapless teenagers nationwide are being assigned the text in their American literature survey courses.) The sermon’s readership alone bears out the argument that its subject matter, its imagery, and its rhetorical force have struck a chord which,

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pleasant or grating, welcome or not, has yet to stop resonating in some aspect of the American psyche. It thus warrants attention as an indicator of the understanding of the self before God for so many Americans, as well as for Christian believers around the world. Finally, and probably most important, to understand why Sinners is a significant work of American literary history, we have to look for what Herman Melville’s Captain Ahab calls ‘‘the little lower layer,’’ uncovering from Edwards’s dense, fiery rhetoric the concepts that inform it. There is no question that the rhetoric of the sermon is powerful. Indeed, it is probably the main reason the sermon has continued to draw attention over the centuries. Sinners is a deeply disturbing text, full of formal rhetorical fireworks and memorably horrible images, most notably Edwards’s description of a spider dangling on a thread over the flames of hell. But to understand the significance of Sinners as a high point of a particular moment in American literary, cultural, and religious history, it is not enough simply to acknowledge the power of Edwards’s language. Hauntingly e√ective as it is at unsettling the listener, the rhetoric is not an end in itself. Rather, it evokes a worldview, a vision of reality that Edwards held and of which he seeks to remind his hearers. Wilson Kimnach’s essay, which begins this volume, names Edwards’s rhetorical objective realization, that is to say, the rhetorical strategy that will go the farthest to awaken within the hearer an awareness of the truth of the spiritual realities about which Sinners speaks. Edwards crafted Sinners not so much to convince as to remind, to awaken in his listeners a living sense of the spiritual realities present in the world they inhabit. For Edwards, earthly life was a stage upon which a pitched battle for individual souls was being constantly waged between God and the devil. The eternal destiny and common life of the community hung in the balance; the only safe passage for the sinner through this dangerous battlefield was found by fleeing to Christ. This vision of life was by no means peculiar to Edwards; in fact, it was (and arguably remains) a foundational aspect of the evangelical worldview. But Edwards’s dramatic explication of this worldview in Sinners, and the e√ect it has had on many of its hearers over the years, makes the

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sermon a lens through which to examine some of the key ideas and practices that are close to the center of the religious self-consciousness shared by Edwards and those who sought to appropriate his legacy. It is interaction with and understanding of this worldview that o√ers the most profitable reading of the sermon as a work of significance in the history of American literature and American thought more generally. This volume is meant to help readers of all sorts appreciate the cultural and theological backgrounds of the sermon, its place within Edwards’s larger thought, and his purpose in preaching it, as well as its place (and its author’s place) within American, and even global, Christian religious culture. We begin with two essays that locate the sermon within its historical and theological context. Readers who are coming to this material for the first time are urged to start with these essays before reading the sermon, which follows. We then supply a sampling of other writings by Edwards that will help readers identify key themes, movements, and even rhetorical devices used in Sinners. Following this are reactions to Edwards and his most famous sermon from a variety of thinkers—novelists, theologians, historians, even poets—over two centuries. At the back we have provided a brief chronology of Edwards’s life, a glossary of key persons and concepts (many also identified in footnotes), suggested discussion questions for high school and college teachers, and a brief bibliography of key works on Edwards. This casebook can be used on its own or in conjunction with resources to be found online at the Jonathan Edwards Center’s Web site, http:// edwards.yale.edu/SinnersReader, which o√ers companion materials specifically designed for this book. Here students and teachers will find further primary and secondary texts, educational materials, and visual and aural aids.

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wilson h. kimnach

The Story of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God c Went over to Enfield, where we met dear Mr. Edwards of Northampton, who preached a most awakening sermon from those words, Deut. 32:35, and before the sermon was done there was a great moaning and crying out through the whole house—‘‘What shall I do to be saved?’’ ‘‘Oh, I am going to hell!’’ ‘‘Oh what shall I do for a Christ?’’ and so forth—so that the minister was obliged to desist. [The] shrieks and cries were piercing and amazing. After some time of waiting, the congregation were still, so that a prayer was made by Mr. Wheelock, and after that we descended from the pulpit and discoursed with the people, some in one place and some in another. And amazing and astonishing: the power [of ] God was seen and several souls were hopefully wrought upon that night, and oh the cheerfulness and pleasantness of their countenances that received comfort. Oh that God would strengthen and confirm [their new faith]! We sang a hymn and prayed, and dispersed the assembly.

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The birth of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, often called the ‘‘Enfield sermon,’’ is here vividly, if impressionistically, described in the diary of the Reverend Stephen Williams, a ministerial colleague of Jonathan Edwards’s from the nearby town of Longmeadow, Massachusetts. The scene is hardly what one might expect of a New England meetinghouse at the conclusion of the Puritan epoch. Moreover, one might wonder why ‘‘dear’’ Jonathan Edwards was raising hell in someone else’s pulpit, or why he had a band of ministers with him. This problematic context of Sinners must be kept in mind if we are to appreciate what some critics have identified as the greatest example of homiletical artistry in our literature and others have characterized as a depraved attack on human dignity or a laughable example of outmoded religious superstition. The scene at Enfield, a small village along the Connecticut River near the border separating the Connecticut and Massachusetts colonies, was replicated in many towns in the English colonies during the summer of 1741. That summer marked the climax of a colonial phenomenon that has been labeled the Great Awakening, and the excitement in the congregation was expected and typical of religious meetings during that period. The Great Awakening was initiated by one man, George Whitefield, an evangelical Anglican priest who came over from England in 1738 and by 1740 had toured the American colonies from end to end, preaching to any congregation that would have him—and when he was rejected by the churches, he would preach in town squares or neighboring fields. At the time he was a unique phenomenon, although in the perspective of American history he was clearly the first of what has become an American institution, the ‘‘revivalist.’’ Revivalists historically di√er from regular ministers in that they are specialists in religious excitement and they are peripatetic: they move from place to place stirring up interest in salvation through Jesus Christ, and it is at least implied that the many details and extended program of the salvation process will then be overseen by regular ministers in their respective congregations. Although Whitefield’s mass marketing of salvation was unprecedented, the phenomenon of ‘‘revival’’ was not new, especially in New England. The first European settlers in the region, the Puritans, had left comfort-

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George Whitefield

able homes in England during the seventeenth century and come to what they characterized as a ‘‘howling wilderness’’ in order to e√ect a reformation in the Anglican church by their practical example. These radical reformers sacrificed estates and risked their own lives and those of their families traversing the stormy Atlantic in small wooden ships to settle where they at first had no houses to live in and were at the mercy of native inhabitants whom they viewed as satanic savages. The essential fact is that the Puritans were undoubtedly serious about realizing their vision of the Christian church. The insincere and the indi√erent were left waving at the dock in England. Thus Puritan church congregations were ‘‘pure’’ and the people were highly motivated by what they trusted was the authentic spirit of God in their pilgrim community. As time passed, however, and generations followed in New England, the religious establishment inevitably became routine, since children take what their parents have achieved as the norm, the ordinary. The New England churches could no longer expect the heroic commitment of the original Puritans in order to maintain their

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membership. Consequently, leaders of the churches introduced various devices—for example, the Half-Way Covenant, which expanded the right to the sacrament of baptism—to make church membership less demanding and thus sustain the membership numerically; but at the same time they realized that merely maintaining institutional continuity was not likely to preserve the extraordinary religion of the first Puritans. Preachers inevitably began putting greater stress upon the importance of individual commitment, and by the later seventeenth century most ministers had become conscious of a certain ebb and flow of religious fervor in churches that were no longer pilgrim voyagers. The periodic elevation of religious intensity, whether as a result of months of e√ort in the pulpit or a sudden material threat to the community, such as drought, disease, or Indian attack, generally resulted in a wave of persons joining the church, frequently youth who had previously not seen their spiritual state as worthy of especial note. These episodes were generally referred to as ‘‘awakenings,’’ and they occurred in individual churches or localities. Ministers such as Timothy Edwards, Jonathan Edwards’s father, had good reputations largely because they were known to have had more awakenings in their congregations than most other ministers of the colony. An eminent and long-serving minister, Solomon Stoddard, Edwards’s maternal grandfather, kept account of these events— which he called ‘‘harvests,’’ using a rural metaphor—in various years of his ministry, comparing them quantitatively. It was in the western part of New England, in the Connecticut River valley, that the stress upon such awakenings was greatest, probably because it was there that civilization’s institutions seemed most likely to be undermined by frontier conditions. From the first major settlement on the Connecticut River at Hartford in 1636, the leading valley ministers, such as Thomas Hooker in the first generation and subsequently Solomon Stoddard, were noted for their evangelizing of persons who were on the margin of church society. They awakened congregants to their plight if they had not been ‘‘converted,’’ or changed from ‘‘natural’’ persons into ‘‘visible [apparent] saints,’’ or true church members. By the time Jonathan Edwards joined his grandfather in Northampton as assistant minister in 1727, Stoddard had refined

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The Stoddard Manse, Northampton, Massachusetts

the process of awakening through five distinct episodes, in 1679, 1683, 1696, 1712, and 1718, and he had even published two books, A Guide to Christ (1714) and A Treatise Concerning Conversion (1719), to instruct ministers and converts on the subtleties of evaluating the experience of awakening and conversion. Soon Edwards was on his own, when Stoddard died in 1729 and left his twenty-five-year-old grandson in control of the most prominent church of the Connecticut Valley. An ambitious young man, Edwards inevitably felt the need to establish himself as a church leader, and consideration of the examples of his father and grandfather would have led him to the conclusion that the surest evidence of success would be a period of awakening. Thus Edwards not only preached sermons that would instruct and comfort established church members, he placed increasing stress upon the idea of God’s power and the vulnerability of humans, particularly in spiritual matters. The title of his first published sermon, God Glorified in

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the Work of Redemption, by the Greatness of Man’s Dependence upon Him in the Whole of It (1731), captures the theme well, especially when we remember the broad cultural context of the eighteenth century, with its increasing stress on ‘‘natural ability’’ and its adequacy, through the power of reason, to satisfy the basic needs of humankind, whether in church or state. Those not yet members of the Northampton church, or those who may have felt careless or indi√erent in it, were strongly reminded that ordinary, or ‘‘natural,’’ people had to be converted into a new kind of person in order to be optimistic about their ultimate destiny. Moreover, lest they minimize the importance of the new life with Christ, Edwards reminded them of the alternative destination of natural beings in sermons detailing the torments of hell, the place Puritans had always agreed would be the destination of those who remained spiritually detached and alone. For several years Edwards preached cycles of sermons detailing all the dimensions of the Christian life required of his people, while he invoked the power of God in pastoral prayers to awaken them. Finally, in the fall and winter of 1734–35, the young people of the church began to show concern for their spiritual lives, and many older persons also seemed to be moved. The congregation became increasingly excited about their religious experiences, and soon Edwards was admitting new members in numbers that had not been seen before. What is more, the religious excitement seemed to spread to neighboring towns up and down the Connecticut Valley, to no fewer than thirty-two localities according to Edwards’s observation. He soon published a report in London describing the awakening, entitled A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, and the Neighboring Towns and Villages of Hampshire in New England,∞ although by the time the book was brought out in Boston, in 1738, he ruefully observed that the heavenly gales had already blown over. Had the revival really been authentic? Edwards certainly hoped so, although he would not again be so unreservedly impressed with an awakening movement. The immediate result of A Faithful Narrative was that Edwards inherited Stoddard’s mantle as an authority on awakenings, for his report not only describes events but attempts to establish criteria for evaluating

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them. While Stoddard insisted that no account of spiritual awakening is beyond question, Edwards’s Narrative clearly provides encouragement for the authentication of conversion. Unobtrusively occupying the center of Edwards’s report is his own image, that of the pastor calmly leading and advising his flock, since the spiritual upheaval only served to strengthen the place of the pastor among the people as Christ’s representative. In the perspective of his life, the Narrative memorializes the apogee of Edwards’s pastoral career, for in only two or three years a di√erent kind of revival began to challenge the role of Edwards and other regular ministers within the colonies. And thus we return to the time of Sinners and to the episode of awakening described in the passage at the head of this essay. It was just after George Whitefield’s preaching campaign through the New England colonies and consequently a time of great religious agitation, even within the outlying Connecticut Valley churches where Edwards and his cousin Stephen Williams were employed. Because of his reputation as an interpreter of awakening, recently established through A Faithful Narrative, Edwards was an obvious candidate to assume a leadership role in the new Great Awakening. However, although Edwards clearly worked e√ectively in his own church in the traditional way and visited other local parishes such as Su≈eld where the new spirit had been notably manifested, he was less visible on the national scene than several itinerating revival specialists in the new mold such as Gilbert Tennent, James Davenport, Eleazar Wheelock, and Benjamin Pomeroy, not to mention Whitefield himself. Therefore, when the minister of Enfield, Peter Reynolds, appointed a lecture specifically to prepare his congregation to participate in the awakening that was flourishing in such neighboring towns as Su≈eld, Edwards accepted the challenge. As always when asked to preach abroad, Edwards selected a sermon that he had preached recently at home. Whether to save time in composition or to have the advantage of preaching something he had already tested, Edwards customarily recycled old sermons, even for the most important occasions. In this case he selected the sermon on Deuteronomy 32:35 that he had composed and preached at Northampton a couple of

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An engraved stone commemorating the preaching of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God on the location where the meetinghouse once stood in Enfield, Connecticut

weeks previously, a sermon that he doubtless felt was powerfully awakening, although his own congregation had not apparently responded to it in any extraordinary way. Like all eighteenth-century sermons, it had no title and was identified only by its initial biblical text when preached at Enfield, as is evident from Williams’s memorandum; titles were given only for publication in print, and they tended to be more descriptive of the occasion than evocative of the subject. The form of the sermon used by Edwards might be described as ‘‘classical’’ in an analogy with eighteenth-century music written by Mozart, particularly in that both homiletics and music followed upon seventeenth century baroque forms and responded to them largely by simplifying structure. Concern with literary form and style in the sermon has a long history in English literature, where the sermon itself occupies a distin-

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guished place. A number of the greatest literary artists, such as John Donne and Edward Taylor, were also remarkable preachers and employed their artistry in their sermons as much as in their poetry; moreover, a number of English writers, including Lancelot Andrewes and John Tillotson, have become literary figures exclusively through their sermons. Besides revealing individual artistry, the formal characteristics of the English sermon also constituted important indicators of sectarian allegiance from the time of Henry VIII’s break with Rome onward. Thus conventional Anglican preachers could be distinguished from Puritans more readily on the basis of homiletical form and style than essential theological principles. The early Puritans not only embraced the theology of the French theologian John Calvin but based the form of their sermons on the methodology of the French logician Peter Ramus, who emphasized the clarification of thought through dichotomous structures in which ideas are defined by juxtaposition to their opposites. This Ramistic structuring of argument often led in the seventeenth century to extreme formal complication in the exposition of the sermons—and to the formal streamlining that came in reaction in the eighteenth, even while preachers retained the basic Ramistic form. Edwards and contemporary New England preachers recognized three primary units of exposition: the Text, which opens the sermon with a quotation from the Bible and usually includes a brief interpretation or commentary; the Doctrine, which begins with a formal statement of the sermon’s thesis (doctrine), based on the biblical text opening the sermon, and which includes numbered paragraphs of discussion known collectively as ‘‘reasons’’; and the Application, the concluding division which presents the practical implications of the sermon in numbered paragraphs known collectively as ‘‘uses.’’ As a whole, the sermon’s argument evolves through its three divisions emphasizing, respectively, a critical understanding of the Scripture text, the derivation of ethical principles from the interpreted Scripture, and appropriate practical thought and action. Proportionately, the Text is very brief, usually only a page or so in length, while the Doctrine and Application are roughly equal in length, the Doctrine being longer in theoretical sermons or ‘‘lectures’’ and the Application

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being longer in pastoral sermons. Awakening sermons are emphatically pastoral. Having some sense of this form is as important to an understanding of the sermon as recognizing the structure of three quatrains and a couplet is to appreciating a Shakespearean sonnet. The numbers preceding paragraphs are actually less important in a printed sermon than in the sermon heard orally, for the numbers were given out to help note takers keep the structure of the sermon’s argument clear in their notes. Looking at the printed text of Sinners, the reader might first observe that the Scripture text is minimal: a seven-word clause taken from a paragraph defining God’s role as an avenger of sin. This theological minimalism sets the pattern for the entire sermon, for Sinners is an awakening sermon directed to an informed congregation familiar with the theological arguments proving the entire dependence of human beings on God for salvation and their utter defenselessness, as sinners, before his anger. As Edwards stated in an earlier sermon, the problem for his typical listeners was not that they doubted the truth of their traditional theology but that often ‘‘it don’t seem real to them.’’ At a time of unprecedented awakening fervor in the colonies, one Edwards believed might be a significant millennial overture, he selected a sermon that e≈ciently targets the resistance of unconverted persons: the matter of realization. This task would seem to have more to do with psychology than with theology, and in important ways it does; for the preaching of the Great Awakening was not about new theological concepts so much as it was about a new way of experiencing the old ones. Whitefield and his followers exhorted their listeners with a new and seemingly reckless urgency, and they were as contemptuous of the niceties of ecclesiastical decorum as early Puritan radicals had been. That skeptical observer of preachers Benjamin Franklin recollected in his Autobiography that Whitefield characterized natural persons in his sermons as ‘‘half Beasts and half Devils,’’ although ‘‘they admir’d and respected him, notwithstanding his common Abuse of them.’’≤ If anything, Whitefield’s disciples became more extreme in the sensationalism of their exhortations, as if they were attempting to exorcise people from beastly and devilish possession. Of course, theological orthodoxy maintained that only God could bring about the transfor-

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mation known as the ‘‘new birth,’’ but preachers had always understood that God used means such as instruction and exhortation to prepare the way. Now, as the Great Awakening evolved, the emphasis was more than ever on the necessity of severing people from their habitual attitudes and rationalizations so that not only might they see themselves as God did and really feel as humbled as they had always professed to be, but that they might acquire new identities as creatures of faith and actually experience life anew. Edwards creatively defined the phenomenon of the New Birth as the acquisition of a ‘‘new sense of the heart’’—drawing on the idiom of Lockean sensational psychology—or what we might call a new capacity to experience ideas long since accepted as abstract doctrines. Such an exalted sensibility was actually predicated on Edwards’s personal religious experience, fostered by his inspired study of Scripture as well as by his speculations on nature and the mind, and gradually realized through lengthy notebook meditations that integrated the analytical eye of the scientist, the argumentative discipline of the philosopher, and the expressive genius of the poet. At the time of preaching Sinners, however, Edwards seems to have accepted the view prevailing during the Great Awakening that most people needed a violent psychological uprooting from their old mentality in order to be open to divine influence.≥ In Sinners, the preacher focuses exclusively on the moment of death as a confrontation with eternal judgment. Such a strategy had been urged by Solomon Stoddard in his manual for young ministers, A Guide to Christ, wherein he wrote, ‘‘Sometimes a man goes on in a way of seeking a great while, yet seems to be at a stand. . . . Mind him that he may quickly die.’’∂ Perhaps recollecting Stoddard’s advice, Edwards turned in this sermon from representation of the su√erings of the damned in the afterlife, a standard strategy of ‘‘hellfire’’ sermons, to the representation of sinners in this life as they appear in a divine context. The realization of life in a divine context implies the abridgement of time, for the eternity of divine being is not a long time but another dimension of being that subsumes all time. Suspended in the process of time, people can subscribe to the reality of death and judgment, but for all

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except the condemned on the eve of execution it is ‘‘not now.’’ Of course ‘‘not now’’ can be replicated indefinitely, and thus healthy humans in all ages have enjoyed a defense mechanism that practically equates ‘‘not now’’ with ‘‘never’’ insofar as their personal demise is concerned. They know that death is a part of their life, but they have no sense, or realization, of it. Thus Edwards attempted again—as in many of his sermons—to make a hypothetical or spiritual experience real through the power of specification, although in this case he knew that he also had to undermine a fundamental psychological defense as well. The incantatory rhythms of speech and the reiterative images of imminent threat that reinforce one another in Sinners are essential factors in Edwards’s rhetorical assault on that defense. What Edwards actually preached at Enfield may or may not have corresponded closely with the famous ‘‘Enfield sermon’’ that is printed in this volume. The Northampton sermon manuscript from which he preached is very similar to the printed sermon up to the group of four considerations that conclude the Application; however, from that point to the end of the sermon—consisting of two-thirds of the Application, or three-sevenths of the entire sermon—the argument is considerably altered. In the original version, the sermon concludes with extended passages of pastoral advice to seekers which are generally more mild and encouraging than the variations on the theme of God’s wrath in the printed version that leave room for only a few hopeful exhortations in conclusion. The printed version of the sermon is thus more narrowly focused in theme and rhetoric, resulting in a greater impact as the concentrated mass of specification incrementally reinforces the relatively small nexus of leading ideas. Such a rhetorical enhancement of the printed awakening sermon may have resulted from Edwards’s awareness that the medium of print is ‘‘cooler’’ than the medium of live discourse and thus in need of greater verbal assertion to sustain a comparable emotional impact. When the subject of impact is introduced, one of the greater imponderables of Edwards’s career is introduced, for as a result of the alleged impact of his preaching on July 8, 1741, a Northampton sermon became the ‘‘Enfield sermon’’ and one of three sermons Edwards composed on

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Deuteronomy 32:35 became Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Indeed, without the Enfield re-preaching, the most famous—or infamous— sermon in American literature would probably not have been published at all. But the sermon’s actual role in the Enfield awakening is made explicitly contingent by Stephen Williams’s comment that ‘‘the minister was obliged to desist’’ as a result of outcries and the general turbulence of the congregation. Moreover, Edwards apparently did not resume preaching, but he and his attendant ministers descended from the platform on which the pulpit stood, met the congregation in the boxed pews below, and spent the remainder of the service counseling people, ‘‘some in one place and some in another.’’ How much of Sinners was actually preached, and its relative significance as a factor in the Enfield awakening, is obscure and likely to remain that way. The wild behavior of the Enfield congregation mimicked that of many other congregations during the Great Awakening as religious fervor swept from community to community, especially when outside preachers visited to undertake what has subsequently become institutionalized as a revival. Indeed, the Great Awakening di√ered radically from earlier awakenings, such as the one Edwards reported in his Faithful Narrative, not only in that it was national rather than regional in scope but in its explosive intensity. Much to the chagrin of many in the established clergy, the excitement provoked by itinerant revivalists seemed to undermine the resident ministers’ authority, while laypeople often appeared to enter into questionable rivalries related to the emotional and even physical violence of their spiritual experiences. It was one of those events that are said to democratize religion, one wherein authority is di√used and old social and institutional structures are undermined—in this case, even to the extent of the permanent division of churches and communities. At the height of the Great Awakening, in the summer of 1741, Jonathan Edwards was an ardent proponent of the work of Whitefield and the itinerant evangelists; however, he was hardly the spokesman that he had been for the 1734–35 awakenings. He was primarily a parish minister who occasionally preached abroad at the invitation of other ministers, but he was not a new-style itinerant. Although he had been long known as a

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Interior of a colonial New England church: the ‘‘Old Ship’’ Church, Hingham, Massachusetts

‘‘deep preacher’’ who impressed the congregations who heard him, he lacked most of the oratorical resources that great preachers commonly rely on: he did not have a resonant voice, used few if any gestures while speaking, and did not much employ the emphasis of eye contact. He did enunciate clearly, however, and seems to have impressed listeners with his authenticity—not to mention the power of his language. He had not yet undertaken preaching tours such as the ones he would pursue in the fall and the following year. Thus, when his visit to Enfield was attended by a clear manifestation of the awakening spirit, Edwards was apparently encouraged to memorialize the event in print. He was not the town’s o≈cial pastor, of course, and those in attendance might have seen his sermon as only the beginning of spiritual exercises which continued under the guidance of Edwards and his fellow ministers for hours afterward; consequently, Edwards issued his publication under a thematic title, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and only the subtitle identifies it with the place of Enfield and the occasion of the Great Awakening. Nevertheless, this pamphlet would be Edwards’s sole publication documenting his role as a

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revivalist during the Great Awakening, as opposed to two volumes—the Faithful Narrative and a companion piece, Discourses on Various Important Subjects—documenting his central role in the 1734–35 awakenings.∑ Edwards would shortly begin publication of his interpretations of the phenomena of the Great Awakening, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741) and Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (1743), but these works are in the tradition of Stoddard’s Guide to Christ: substantial critiques of an informed observer rather than documents of personal leadership. In fact, after publication of the Enfield sermon, Edwards’s support of vital religion became substantially literary; he published a biographical study of Protestant sainthood in An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd (1749) and began a series of magisterial treatises defining and defending the essentials of his conception of the Christian life.∏ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God thus documents a historic event and Jonathan Edwards’s role in it, even if, like all great works of literature, it also exerts an a√ective impact upon readers who have little or no imaginative involvement with the circumstances of its origin. Like Thomas Paine’s The Crisis, Sinners must first be viewed historically if it is to be understood; but once a historical appreciation of Sinners is achieved, the reader of today is still only partially in possession of the work. Yet so long as we furtively marginalize the disturbing fact of death when planning or assessing our lives, or are susceptible to the proposition that an invisible power limits all human agency, or trust that there is a universal moral order that will ultimately prevail, the passion of this sermon will provoke intense response. Not many Christians today see the world with the eyes of Edwards (and perhaps few except poets and seers ever did); on the other hand, even thoroughgoing secularists can be arrested, much as they are by the disturbing truths embodied in ancient myths, by this powerfully realized vision of the human predicament. NOTES 1. On the title page of the first edition (London, 1737), the Massachusetts county of Hampshire was mistakenly rendered ‘‘New-Hampshire.’’

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2. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 175. 3. Subsequently, Edwards would o√er a general defense of such New Light preaching in Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival in New England (Boston, 1743). See the excerpts in this volume. 4. Solomon Stoddard, A Guide to Christ; or, The Way of Directing Souls That Are Under the Work of Conversion (Boston, 1714), 48. 5. Discourses on Various Important Subjects, Nearly Concerning the Great A√air of the Soul’s Eternal Salvation (Boston, 1738). This volume is the only collection of sermons Edwards published himself, and its preface contains a specific justification of his earlier awakening preaching. 6. Most directly related to the Great Awakening is A Treatise Concerning Religious A√ections (Boston, 1746), Edwards’s most comprehensive and penetrating exploration of the new experiential religion.

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caleb j. d. maskell

A Theological Primer c

Jonathan Edwards believed that the world is most fully understood when it is understood theologically. In keeping with that understanding, he preached to his Northampton congregation twice a week or more for nearly a quarter of a century on various dimensions of his theological vision, one that he believed formed a holistic picture of God’s world and the role of humans in it. As such, when we read Sinners today, we are reading a document that for its original hearers was located within a highly developed theological context. Terms like God, sinners, and hell, as well as aspects of the divine such as ‘‘God’s arbitrary will,’’ ‘‘God’s wrath,’’ ‘‘God’s mercy,’’ and so on, were familiar ideas for Edwards’s contemporary

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audiences. Even where some of his audience may have sharply disagreed with him, there was a shared theological vocabulary that enabled Edwards to set forth his positions. In our day, that shared vocabulary is all but gone. Theological ideas that were second nature to the colonial New England mind, which was typically steeped in didactic sermonizing over a lifetime of church attendance, no longer bind opposing groups together in a common conversation. While some groups have retained the use of Edwardsean theological concepts, they are not in the majority. Indeed, the average evangelical congregation in America today would be confused, and perhaps even o√ended, if Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God were preached from its pulpit. In our day it is necessary to gain a basic understanding of Edwards’s theology in order to understand what Edwards is trying to do in the sermon. One has to read no further than the title before Edwards makes reference to ‘‘sinners’’ and ‘‘God,’’ terms that derive their primary meaning from theological concepts. For Edwards, the implications of ideas like ‘‘God’’ and ‘‘sinners’’ cut to the heart’s core of what it meant to know oneself and one’s place in the world. Any account of Edwards’s theology must begin with God. For Edwards, God is the conceptual foundation, the historical origin, and the ultimate end of everything in the universe. All other aspects of Edwards’s theology are constructed in light of what he thought about God. Edwards draws his ideas about God from historic Christian orthodoxy, understood through the lenses of the Reformation, Calvinist Puritanism, early Enlightenment philosophy, and the earliest days of the transatlantic evangelical movement. This confluence of intellectual and social currents caused him to identify the Bible as the primary source of revelation about God while also giving substantial credibility to the influence of human reasoning about God and human experience of God as important parts of forming a whole vision of God. As long as the Bible was the first source and final arbiter of debates about what God was like, human reason and human experience were also considered to be valuable sources from which

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to draw knowledge of God. On this journey to the knowledge of God, no discipline was excluded because Edwards believed that all truth was God’s truth. Science and theology were not at odds for Edwards; in fact, he saw science (particularly physics) as a vehicle for understanding some aspects of the designs of God in the creation of the world. For him, natural philosophy (science) and moral philosophy (ethics) constituted parts of an integrated vision of God’s world rightly understood, under the overarching canopy of biblically grounded theology. Most of the nearly hundred thousand manuscript pages Jonathan Edwards wrote consist of his exploration of questions about the nature of God. In spite of the vast range of these writings, there are some key ideas about God that run throughout, forming a central core of his thought. God Is Excellency The main philosophical idea of Edwards’ theology is that God is characterized by excellency.∞ Excellency was a word used by philosophers and theologians, particularly in Edwards’s time, to capture a wide range of meanings about the beauty, goodness, pleasantness, harmony, and proportionality of a thing. Edwards used it to describe the nature of God. For Edwards, as for the majority of Christian thinkers, God is the origin and highest representation of every good and every perfection that could be seen or known in the universe. Unbounded by the constraints of space and time, God is, by nature, infinitely wise, infinitely powerful, infinitely just, infinitely good, and infinitely loving. As such, any imaginable amount of knowledge, power, justice, goodness, or love is by nature less than the amount that is contained in God. God, says Edwards, is the source of these characteristics—not merely their arbiter but their definition. God is knowledge, power, justice, goodness, and love, but also more than the sum of any one of these attributes. God is their archetype. No aspect of any of those qualities that can be known is unknown to God. In this way for Edwards, God literally is excellency. All goods that a human being might hope for, strive toward, desire for his or her life, are

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already present in infinite measure in God’s nature. God is not merely good or even excellent, but excellency personified, the embodiment of all of these goods. It is important to note that these characteristics are not an exhaustive list. Indeed, such a list by definition cannot be exhaustive because God is by nature infinite. It is actually a part of God’s infinite nature that his* multifaceted greatnesses cannot be entirely described in a bounded set. Excellency refers to much more than a particular set of characteristics. Rather, it is something like a condition of ultimate goodness that is constantly represented and expressed in everything that God is and does.

It Is Part of God’s Nature to Need Relationship Another important part of God’s excellency has to do with relationality.≤ In entry no. 117 of his private notebooks called the ‘‘Miscellanies,’’ Edwards reflects on the idea of divine love, one of God’s primary attributes. Edwards writes that love must have an object, and thus, ‘‘there must have been an object from all eternity which God infinitely loves.’’≥ In the eternity of God’s existence, Edwards argues, God must have always had something ‘‘infinitely and perfectly consenting and agreeable to Him,’’ toward which to direct his infinite love. This need presents a theological problem: given the Christian doctrine that God created the universe ex nihilo (‘‘from nothing’’), it must be that in that infinite vastness of eternity before the universe began there was a time when nothing existed but God. But in that epoch, what was there for God to love? If, as Edwards says, God’s infinite love requires an object in order for it to be fully realized, was God’s love somehow deficient, imperfect, or under-realized in a world before creation? Furthermore, even after the creation of the universe, Edwards is clear about the necessity for God * Second-person references to the Deity are given in the masculine form (‘‘he,’’ ‘‘him’’), in keeping with Edwards’s usage.

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to have something ‘‘infinitely and perfectly consenting and agreeable to Him’’ to love. Given that nothing that is created can also be infinite, could any created thing be infinitely and perfectly consenting? Clearly not. Edwards’s solution to this head-scratching problem is disarmingly simple, but it has enormous implications. He says that God’s infinite love finds its true object not in anything created but rather eternally within God himself. As a Trinitarian Christian, Edwards believes (as do most Christians) that God exists as three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, who share one essence, one being that binds them together in perfect mutuality and harmony. Edwards says that it is in the relationships between the persons of the Trinity that God’s infinite love is most perfectly expressed. Thus God’s need is not a need for any other created thing but rather for himself alone as expressed in the persons of the Trinity. Each person of Trinity exists in continual, active acknowledgment of the divine perfection of the others, embodying a harmonious relationality that is for Edwards the picture of excellency. Not only does God have infinitely beautiful essential characteristics, but these characteristics find their ideal object within God’s own self. The beautiful, perfectly proportioned relationship between the members of the Trinity causes them to take pleasure in one another and to acknowledge one another’s perfections. This pleasure-filled acknowledgment is what Edwards calls ‘‘consent’’ in the quotation from ‘‘Miscellanies,’’ no. 117, and ‘‘consent to Being’’ elsewhere in his writing. The members of the Trinity do not have to work hard to love one another, to consent to one another’s excellency. Rather, that consent comes naturally because their infinite love for one another is perfectly and proportionally reciprocated by the infinitely excellent qualities of the divine nature. We could raise an objection to Edwards’s idea of infinite mutual love between the members of the Trinity by accusing God of narcissism, selfishness, or improper self-obsession. Is God’s self-regard not a form of pride that could be considered disproportionate and sinful? Edwards would respond to such a question by agreeing that in a human being such self-

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regard would be disproportionate and sinful, but in the case of God, this is not so because nothing about God’s self-regard is disproportionate. In the mutual love between the members of the Trinity, there is simply an acknowledgment of the reality of infinitely good divine characteristics. For Edwards, it is good and right for God to ‘‘manifest a supreme and ultimate regard to Himself ’’ because God contains within himself the highest goods that can exist, with nothing lacking and nothing incomplete.∂ The excellency of God’s goodness is best celebrated in all of its reality through the relationships of mutual consent within the Trinity. Why God Created the World As we have seen, Edwards believes that it is a part of God’s perfection that he needs nothing but himself to bring him infinite satisfaction. Furthermore, God’s infinite power and wisdom is such that God cannot be resisted. Edwards’s God is a radical sovereign, with no needs and no deficits. Why then did God create the world? Edwards’s answer is based, first, on his doctrine of God’s sovereignty. Edwards believes that God created the universe and holds it together by his sovereign, arbitrary will. Everything in the universe, from humans to spiders, from black holes to grains of sand, was created by God and continues to exist because God sustains it by continuing to take an interest in it. All laws of nature, all laws of the universe, all the ‘‘realities’’ of the natural world are made real by God’s continual decision to sustain them.∑ Yes, it is that arbitrary. For Edwards, existence itself has its foundation in the mind of God. If God decided that he was no longer interested in something and decided to put it out of his mind, that thing would simply cease to exist. Its being would be cancelled because it would be cut o√ from the ultimate source of being, God. God is under no compulsion to sustain creation; he does so because he desires to. As the creator, God is entirely free to choose the fate of the creation; the only force that can limit God must be internal to him. These ideas are a bit unsettling. Can God really be so arbitrary and the world so utterly contingent? Is God so capricious, nihilistic, in denial of

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the concrete and material reality of life on earth? Edwards himself struggled with the idea of God’s sovereignty and arbitrary will, writing that as a young man, it appeared ‘‘like a horrible doctrine’’ to him and that he was ‘‘full of objections’’ to it.∏ However, as he wrestled with it, Edwards actually came to take delight in the doctrine. The answer to how this can be lies in Edwards’s understanding of the ultimate reason that God created the world: to express his glory. An important part of that glory is love: love between the persons of the Trinity that flows out in love to creation and created beings. God’s ultimate purpose in creating the world and sustaining it, for Edwards, is as an emanation and objective expression of his internal glory, fullness, and love. God’s desire for creation is that it should make ‘‘God’s internal glory extant, in a true and just exhibition.’’π By ‘‘God’s internal glory,’’ Edwards simply means the divine excellency that the persons of the Trinity recognize and ‘‘consent to’’ in one another. In God, all that is excellent combines to create something of ‘‘great valuableness, dignity, or worthiness of regard.’’ In the creation of the universe and, most important for our purposes, of the human race, God sets out to create something that will express these eternal excellencies in time and space. Edwards speaks of this act as ‘‘an emanation of [God’s] own infinite fullness,’’ a manifestation in time and space of the joyous pleasure that God takes in his own glory.∫ Recall the biblical creation account. In the first two chapters of Genesis, God pronounces his pleasure at the ‘‘very-goodness’’ of the creation. According to Edwards’s model, when God says that, he is consenting to the images of the divine nature that are found in the creation in an analogous way to the way that the members of the Trinity consent to the divine nature that they see in one another. The infinite good that is God’s is also the good found, in noninfinite measure, in God’s creation. There are three important aspects of this to consider here. First, given that God’s intention is a manifestation of his own worthiness, the creation itself is going to be full of ‘‘images of divine things.’’ Edwards is interested in this and sees things typologically—that is, the natural world contains reflections of aspects of God’s being and attributes. Second, all creation is intended by God to exist not as a mere static

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picture of his glory but in dynamic relationship to God its Creator. This is particularly significant regarding God’s creation of human beings, who are chosen by him out of all of the creation to have a special kind of relationship with him. Finally, insofar as God has desired to manifest his glory through the creation of the world, it will happen, no matter how lacking in excellency some aspects of the creation may appear. Recall the sovereignty of Edwards’s God. Nothing can happen in God’s universe that God does not permit, and God’s purposes cannot be thwarted. God does not initiate a plan and hope for the best; rather, he guides his works through to their completion just as he desires it to be. God’s Relationship to Human Beings For Edwards, God’s relationship to human beings is first and foremost a historical issue. Edwards understands the history of the relationship between God and human beings as being mediated by a series of interrelated covenants, binding agreements made voluntarily by God about the way he promises to relate to people. This is a complex theological subject that was a particular favorite of the Reformed Puritan tradition of which Edwards was a part, but for our purposes it can be understood broadly in the following way. Covenant of Works When Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden, God established his relationship to them with a covenant, the covenant of works. As described in Genesis 2–3, it is a simple agreement made with Adam (2:16–17) in which Adam was told that he could do anything he wanted except eat fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If he disobeyed God and ate the fruit, he would die. Adam and Eve did eat the fruit and were thus cursed by God with death because they broke the terms of the covenant. This breaking of the covenant of works, known widely as the Fall, caused not only Adam and Eve but all humans who came after them to be condemned to struggle, labor, and pain, to exist in disharmony with God, and to stand under the wrath of God’s judgment for disobedience.Ω

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This disobedience was known to Edwards as the first sin in human history. Specifically, Edwards believed that because of Adam’s disobedience all humankind, represented by Adam as the biblical father of humanity, was aΔicted with original sin, an inner disposition of rebellion and disobedience toward God that cut to the heart of the human character. Gone was the blissful state of Eden. As Adam and Eve chose to become God’s rivals, trying to ‘‘be as gods’’ (Gen. 3:5),* they and all their progeny would exist in a constant state of rivalrous insurrection against God and God’s commandments. One could be forgiven for wondering how this situation among human beings is part of the manifestation of God’s glory. Edwards would answer this query in three ways. First, God gave human beings free will, through which they could choose whether they would obey God. Second, Edwards would note that God is glorified through acts of justice; God’s judgment against Adam and Eve was righteous and thus a manifestation of his glory, in spite of its painful e√ects on human beings. Finally, Edwards would say that it is to God’s glory to demonstrate the ways in which he can bring enormous good out of an enormously problematic situation. Covenant of Grace The way God chose to bring good to human beings in spite of their condition of post-Edenic judgment was through the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace is God’s promise to bless and redeem all people who trust and obey him, in spite of the curse of judgment brought upon them by the sin of their original parents. Edwards follows standard Reformed theology when he says that this promise is referred to in the middle of God’s curse on Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:15. God promises that the woman will have o√spring who will ‘‘crush the head’’ of the serpent who has led them into sin. Even in the midst of punishing their disobedience, God is working out a means of grace, a plan for their redemption. This covenant promise of God’s grace to those who will trust and obey him with faith is the foundation of historical covenants with specific * All quotations from the Bible are taken from the King James Version, the version Edwards used.

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individuals found throughout the Old Testament. These covenants are the foundational definitions of the relationship between God and his chosen people Israel, and they all point toward the climax of the covenant of grace, the renewal of all humanity in the ‘‘New Covenant’’ inaugurated through the coming of Jesus Christ, the ‘‘second Adam.’’ Covenant of Redemption Governing the historical events of the covenant of works and the covenant of grace is what we might call the Big Story, the covenant of redemption. Recall Edwards’s commitments to God’s arbitrary and creative will, God’s desire to express his glory, and God’s ultimate consent to his own being through the love among the persons of the Trinity. All three of these things come together in the covenant of redemption, an eternal covenant between the God the Father and God the Son in which the Father sends the Son into the world as a human being to live a glorious life of perfect obedience to God and, in doing so, to redeem God’s chosen people. This for Edwards is the basic meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the central event of human history. Before the world came into existence in space and time, the covenant of redemption, established through the work of Christ, stood at the center of history as God’s plan to bring glory to himself through the work of the redemption of the world. We see here again that the history of the world, in all its complexity and apparent contingency, is for Edwards entirely governed by the will of God for the sake of the expression of God’s glorious nature, the excellency of the Trinity. Edwards believed that the whole history of the world could be described as ‘‘the history of the work of redemption,’’ a stage on which God acted out his glorious work of redeeming sinners from their sin and calling them back to himself. Sinners For Edwards, all human beings are sinners. Recall the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. That was the first incident of sin in human history. Furthermore, Adam and Eve are the parents of all humanity and stand for all human beings under the covenant of works. Their

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sin meant that all human beings became sinners and the curse they incurred meant that all their posterity were likewise cursed. Most important, their sin meant that human beings were no longer in harmony with God. The excellency of the relationship was destroyed when Adam and Eve tried to become like God. In aspiring to equality with God instead of to their appointed place of a subordinate loving relationship with God, they distorted God’s design for the creation and were judged for it. To say it a little more precisely then, for Edwards a sinner is a person whose life su√ers from a lack of harmonious, proportional excellency in relation to God, based upon that person’s inordinate desire to take for him- or herself what God has deemed that he or she should not have. This battle of wills, between the will of God and the individual wills of human beings, is rooted in human pride and is the essence of the sinful nature typified by Adam and Eve’s disobedience. For Edwards, this creates not just a doctrine or a theological problem but a condition of aΔiction, a plight through which all must su√er. The punishment for sin is death, both in the present and in the future. God told Adam and Eve that if the disobeyed him, they would die, and sure enough, when they disobeyed him, death was introduced to the world. As for Adam and Eve, so also for all humanity. When Edwards surveyed the landscape of human life, he saw the ‘‘wages of sin’’ everywhere. Death, disease, war, famine, and natural disasters were the order of the day. They were the natural e√ect of sin in the world, felt every day of a human life. The ultimate punishment for sin is, according to Edwards’s reading of the Bible, eternal damnation in hell, an inferno of unending torment. For Edwards, God is infinitely just and thus it is fitting that he should punish sin with an infinite punishment.∞≠ Remember the proportionality in God’s excellency. In the same way that it was just for God to punish Adam and Eve for their sin, so also it is just for God to infinitely punish sin that rises up to challenge his will and disorder his universe. Not only is it just to punish sinners by consigning them to hell but it brings glory to God when he does so. Hell for Edwards is an eternal monument to the infinite justice of God, and as such it is the ultimate vehicle for the expression of God’s glory in the damnation of sinners.

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The Elect Clearly this is gruesome stu√, and hell is a place that all people would seek to avoid. But what can they do? For Edwards, the covenant of grace and the covenant of redemption provide a way out for humanity. But there is a catch. When we considered Edwards’s theology of the covenant of grace and the covenant of redemption, we saw that because God is the only one who can initiate a covenant, those with whom God chooses to covenant are the only ones who can enter a covenant. In other words, God has to choose the people who can participate in the merciful arrangement of his covenant. Throughout the Old Testament, the people of Israel were God’s chosen people, the ones with whom God made covenants that promised blessing and redemption from sin if they followed him. Their status as Israelites included them in these covenants, and set them apart as God’s chosen, specifically called, says Edwards, by God’s arbitrary will to reveal his glory through his work of redemption. When Jesus Christ came to the earth, he made a way for people of all nations, not just the people of Israel, to be blessed by coming into the covenant of grace. But even when the covenant was opened beyond Israel, there were still chosen people, people Edwards referred to as the ‘‘elect.’’ The elect are sinners whom God has predestined for salvation from their sin and given the gift of eternal communion with God. They are the people who hear the message of Christ, understand and embrace it because of a sovereign work of God’s grace upon their hearts, and thus bring glory to God as the ones that he redeemed from enslavement to the curse of their sin. They are the happy participants in the divine drama of the covenant of grace. Edwards believed that there was no certain way to know whether one was among the elect. Ultimately, election to salvation was God’s business, and no one can definitively know the mind of God. That said, one can know what some of the signs of the redeeming work of God on one’s heart might be. Edwards writes about this question at length, particularly in A Treatise Concerning Religious A√ections. In brief, his answer is that in order to know whether one is among the elect, one

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must examine the a√ections of the heart, because the heart is the primary arena of God’s work. For Edwards, the loves of the heart determine the choices of the will and the reason of the mind. The elect will find themselves thinking and acting in ‘‘spiritual’’ ways, ways that cut against the grain of typical human impulses. If you are among the elect, you will find yourself acting with humility instead of pride, exercising mercy not judgment, cherishing the interests of others rather than your own self-interest. This is conversion, the fruit of the redeeming operations of the work of the Holy Spirit on the individual soul. Edwards describes it as the shining of the ‘‘divine and supernatural light’’ into the soul, causing a person to transform from a ‘‘natural’’ state to a ‘‘spiritual’’ state.∞∞ In Sinners, Edwards calls this an experience of ‘‘pass[ing] under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God.’’ This work is entirely God’s sovereign initiative. A natural person can know about God in great detail, but only a spiritual person, one whose soul has been illuminated, can really know God. This encounter is the fundamental element of conversion, the transformation that signifies election, and the fount from which all true religious a√ections will flow. Notwithstanding, Edwards believed that one should never live overconfidently assured of one’s election. That could lead to pride and complacency. Rather, one should seek to persevere in behaving in the most Christian way possible because, as Edwards reminds his readers at the end of Religious A√ections, Jesus taught that one could recognize an individual’s faith by the evidence of that person’s way of life.∞≤ The Ferocity of ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’’ Having taken this whirlwind tour through the basic contours and questions of Edwards’s theology, we can now return to the question that drives this investigation: Why does Edwards preach this ferocious sermon? There are several theological reasons. First, Edwards wants to awaken the people at Enfield to the dangerous contingency of their condition. He wants his listeners to consider that the

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only thing that keeps sinners out of hell is the ‘‘mere pleasure of God,’’ the ‘‘sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation.’’ Their life in an unredeemed state is radically uncertain. Death is always just around the corner, and no amount of their good works will enable them in any way to ‘‘earn’’ God’s favor because the thoroughgoing condition of their lives is fundamentally sinful. Paradoxically, as fearsome as this situation is, Edwards points out that it is the mercy of God that causes him to restrain his anger, albeit only for a time. In addition, Edwards uses astonishing, haunting images to ensure that people understand that God is extremely angry with them in their natural state of sin. God cannot live at peace with sin; his perfection, his justice, and his glory all repudiate it. When God sees people in their sin, he ‘‘burns’’ against them. They are an o√ense to him because they participate in the distortion of his creation that militates against his glory. Edwards takes particular pains to note that the sentence of damnation to hell has already been handed down against sinners; they are not in a neutral state that will last until they are judged at the end of their lives. Rather they are, at the present, objects of God’s wrath. A third theological point that Edwards reinforces over and over in Sinners concerns the foolishness of complacency about being in a natural, unconverted state under the covenant of works. People in his congregation who know about the wrath of God, who know that God has made provision for the elect through Jesus Christ, and yet who prefer to ‘‘trust in their own schemes’’ are virtually willing their own damnation. Through the sermon, he aims to move them from mere cerebral knowledge to an emotional feeling that God is justified in being ‘‘dreadfully provoked’’ against them and that there is no hope for them in anything but God’s mercy. Finally, Edwards wants his congregation to wake up to their terrible situation and ‘‘fly from the wrath to come.’’ He wants them to see their dreadful dilemma under the covenant of works and flee to Christ in humility and repentance to reap the benefit of safety and freedom under the covenant of grace. This is the particular force of the final paragraphs of the sermon. One might raise the objection that it is all very well to insist that

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everyone in the congregation who has not experienced conversion should turn to Christ, but what about the doctrine of election? What about people who are predestined to damnation? Edwards would unflinchingly respond that there are probably people in the congregation who are predestined for damnation, predestined to be vessels of wrath and bring glory to God through their eternal punishment. Such people will sense the hardening of their hearts at the call to repentance and thus do nothing; unfortunately, no amount of preaching can turn such people to Christ. God has not willed it. At the same time, there are those among the congregation who are predestined for election but yet unconverted, those who are yet complacent in their striving after salvation and ignore the ‘‘loud calls of God’s will and providence.’’ Edwards does not pretend to know who among his listeners is elect yet unconverted, and so he calls on all the people who hear his message to leave their complacency and pursue God in the ways available to them (prayer, self-reflection, Scripture reading, and so on). For these, who can and ultimately will hear the message of the New Covenant in Christ and are able to respond through the gracious operation God’s ‘‘Divine and Supernatural Light’’ on their souls, he wants his message to bring ‘‘a day of great favor.’’ Edwards is convinced that ‘‘God seems now to be hastily gathering in His elect in all parts of the land,’’ and he preaches accordingly, with the goal of awakening as many souls as possible to come to Christ while they still have time left on earth. NOTES 1. See ‘‘The Mind’’ in this volume. 2. For some the idea that God would ‘‘need’’ anything is controversial. Indeed this is something that Edwards himself thought about. In this context, however, it is a fitting description of Edwards’s God. 3. The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 13: The ‘‘Miscellanies,’’ a–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 283, online at edwards.yale.edu/ miscellanies. 4. The End for Which God Created the World, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 8: Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 436. Also available at http://edwards.yale.edu. 5. This is a theological position that is technically known as ‘‘occasionalism.’’ For

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examples in Edwards, see ‘‘Of Being’’ and Original Sin in this volume. Such thinking was first advanced by Islamic theologians (most notably Al-Ghazali in the eleventh century), debated by Christians and Muslims throughout the Middle Ages, and then brought to prominence in the Enlightenment by such figures as the French theologian Nicolas de Malebranche (1638–1715), the German philosopher G. W. Leibniz (1646–1716), and the English philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753). 6. See Edwards’s ‘‘Personal Narrative’’ in this volume. 7. End for Which God Created the World, 527. 8. Ibid., 513, 435. 9. See Edwards’s Original Sin in this volume. 10. See Edwards’s Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners in this volume. 11. See A Divine and Supernatural Light, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 17: Sermons and Discourses, 1730–1733, ed. Mark Valeri (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 405–26. Also available at http://edwards.yale.edu. 12. See the discussion of the ‘‘twelfth sign’’ of gracious a√ection in Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2: Religious A√ections, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 383–461, and Matthew 7:16.

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deuteronomy 32:35. Their foot shall slide in due time. In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked unbelieving Israelites, that were God’s visible people, and lived under means of grace; and that, notwithstanding all God’s wonderful works that he had wrought towards that people, yet remained, as is expressed, v. 28, ‘‘void of counsel,’’ having no understanding in them; and that, under all the cultivations of heaven, brought forth bitter and poisonous fruit; as in the two verses next preceding the text. The expression that I have chosen for my text, ‘‘Their foot shall slide in

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The first page of the manuscript of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

due time,’’ seems to imply the following things, relating to the punishment and destruction that these wicked Israelites were exposed to. 1. That they were always exposed to destruction, as one that stands or walks in slippery places is always exposed to fall. This is implied in the manner of their destruction’s coming upon them, being represented by their foot’s sliding. The same is expressed, Ps. 73:18, ‘‘Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction.’’ 2. It implies that they were always exposed to sudden unexpected destruction. As he that walks in slippery places is every moment liable to fall; he can’t foresee one moment whether he shall stand or fall the next; and when he does fall, he falls at once, without warning. Which is also ex-

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pressed in that, Ps. 73:18–19, ‘‘Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation as in a moment!’’ 3. Another thing implied is that they are liable to fall of themselves, without being thrown down by the hand of another. As he that stands or walks on slippery ground, needs nothing but his own weight to throw him down. 4. That the reason why they are not fallen already, and don’t fall now, is only that God’s appointed time is not come. For it is said, that when that due time, or appointed time comes, ‘‘their foot shall slide.’’ Then they shall be left to fall as they are inclined by their own weight. God won’t hold them up in these slippery places any longer, but will let them go; and then, at that very instant, they shall fall into destruction; as he that stands in such slippery declining ground on the edge of a pit that he can’t stand alone, when he is let go he immediately falls and is lost. The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this: [doctrine.] There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God. By ‘‘the mere pleasure of God,’’ I mean his sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of di≈culty, any more than if nothing else but God’s mere will had in the least degree, or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment. The truth of this observation may appear by the following considerations. I. There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men’s hands can’t be strong when God rises up: the strongest have no power to resist him, nor can any deliver out of his hands. He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great deal of di≈culty to subdue a rebel, that has found means to fortify himself, and has made

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himself strong by the numbers of his followers. But it is not so with God. There is no fortress that is any defense from the power of God. Though hand join in hand, and vast multitudes of God’s enemies combine and associate themselves, they are easily broken in pieces: they are as great heaps of light cha√ before the whirlwind; or large quantities of dry stubble before devouring flames. We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; so ’tis easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that anything hangs by; thus easy is it for God when he pleases to cast his enemies down to hell. What are we, that we should think to stand before him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down? II. They deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God’s using his power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, ‘‘Cut it down; why cumbreth it the ground’’ (Luke 13:7). The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and ’tis nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God’s mere will, that holds it back. III. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell. They don’t only justly deserve to be cast down thither; but the sentence of the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are bound over already to hell. John 3:18, ‘‘He that believeth not is condemned already.’’ So that every unconverted man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is. John 8:23, ‘‘Ye are from beneath.’’ And thither he is bound; ’tis the place that justice, and God’s Word, and the sentence of his unchangeable law assigns to him. IV. They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God that is expressed in the torments of hell: and the reason why they don’t go down to hell at each moment, is not because God, in whose power they are, is not then very angry with them; as angry as he is with many of those miserable creatures that he is now tormenting in hell, and do there feel and bear the fierceness of his wrath. Yea, God is a great deal more angry

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with great numbers that are now on earth, yea, doubtless with many that are now in this congregation, that it may be are at ease and quiet, than he is with many of those that are now in the flames of hell. So that it is not because God is unmindful of their wickedness, and don’t resent it, that he don’t let loose his hand and cut them o√. God is not altogether such an one as themselves, though they may imagine him to be so. The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation don’t slumber, the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them, the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whet, and held over them, and the pit hath opened her mouth under them. V. The devil stands ready to fall upon them and seize them as his own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his dominion. The Scripture represents them as his ‘‘goods’’ (Luke 11:21). The devils watch them; they are ever by them, at their right hand; they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions that see their prey, and expect to have it, but are for the present kept back; if God should withdraw his hand, by which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their poor souls. The old serpent is gaping for them; hell opens its mouth wide to receive them; and if God should permit it, they would be hastily swallowed up and lost. VI. There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles reigning, that would presently kindle and flame out into hell fire, if it were not for God’s restraints. There is laid in the very nature of carnal men a foundation for the torments of hell: there are those corrupt principles, in reigning power in them, and in full possession of them, that are seeds of hell fire. These principles are active and powerful, and exceeding violent in their nature, and if it were not for the restraining hand of God upon them, they would soon break out, they would flame out after the same manner as the same corruptions, the same enmity does in the hearts of damned souls, and would beget the same torments in ’em as they do in them. The souls of the wicked are in Scripture compared to the troubled sea (Is. 57:20). For the present God restrains their wickedness by his mighty power, as he does the raging waves of the troubled sea, saying, ‘‘Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further’’ [ Job 38:11]; but if God should

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withdraw that restraining power, it would soon carry all afore it. Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul; it is destructive in its nature; and if God should leave it without restraint, there would need nothing else to make the soul perfectly miserable. The corruption of the heart of man is a thing that is immoderate and boundless in its fury; and while wicked men live here, it is like fire pent up by God’s restraints, whenas if it were let loose it would set on fire the course of nature; and as the heart is now a sink of sin, so, if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the soul into a fiery oven, or a furnace of fire and brimstone. VII. It is no security to wicked men for one moment, that there are no visible means of death at hand. ’Tis no security to a natural man, that he is now in health, and that he don’t see which way he should now immediately go out of the world by any accident, and that there is no visible danger in any respect in his circumstances. The manifold and continual experience of the world in all ages, shows that this is no evidence that a man is not on the very brink of eternity, and that the next step won’t be into another world. The unseen, unthought of ways and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they won’t bear their weight, and these places are not seen. The arrows of death fly unseen at noonday; the sharpest sight can’t discern them. God has so many di√erent unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the world and sending ’em to hell, that there is nothing to make it appear that God had need to be at the expense of a miracle, or go out of the ordinary course of his providence, to destroy any wicked man, at any moment. All the means that there are of sinners going out of the world, are so in God’s hands, and so universally absolutely subject to his power and determination, that it don’t depend at all less on the mere will of God, whether sinners shall at any moment go to hell, than if means were never made use of, or at all concerned in the case. VIII. Natural men’s prudence and care to preserve their own lives, or the care of others to preserve them, don’t secure ’em a moment. This divine providence and universal experience does also bear testimony to. There is

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this clear evidence that men’s own wisdom is no security to them from death: that if it were otherwise we should see some di√erence between the wise and politic men of the world, and others, with regard to their liableness to early and unexpected death; but how is it in fact? Eccles. 2:16, ‘‘How dieth the wise man? as the fool.’’ IX. All wicked men’s pains and contrivance they use to escape hell, while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain wicked men, don’t secure ’em from hell one moment. Almost every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do; everyone lays out matters in his own mind how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his schemes won’t fail. They hear indeed that there are but few saved, and that the bigger part of men that have died heretofore are gone to hell; but each one imagines that he lays out matters better for his own escape than others have done: he don’t intend to come to that place of torment; he says within himself, that he intends to take care that shall be e√ectual, and to order matters so for himself as not to fail. But the foolish children of men do miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in their confidence in their own strength and wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow. The bigger part of those that heretofore have lived under the same means of grace, and are now dead, are undoubtedly gone to hell: and it was not because they were not as wise as those that are now alive; it was not because they did not lay out matters as well for themselves to secure their own escape. If it were so, that we could come to speak with them, and could inquire of them, one by one, whether they expected when alive, and when they used to hear about hell, ever to be the subjects of that misery, we doubtless should hear one and another reply, ‘‘No, I never intended to come here; I had laid out matters otherwise in my mind; I thought I should contrive well for myself; I thought my scheme good; I intended to take e√ectual care; but it came upon me unexpected; I did not look for it at that time, and in that manner; it came as a thief; death outwitted me; God’s wrath was too quick for me; O my

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cursed foolishness! I was flattering myself, and pleasing myself with vain dreams of what I would do hereafter, and when I was saying, ‘Peace and safety,’ then sudden destruction came upon me’’ [I Thess. 5:3]. X. God has laid himself under no obligation by any promise to keep any natural man out of hell one moment. God certainly has made no promises either of eternal life, or of any deliverance or preservation from eternal death, but what are contained in the covenant of grace, the promises that are given in Christ, in whom all the promises are yea and amen. But surely they have no interest in the promises of the covenant of grace that are not the children of the covenant, and that don’t believe in any of the promises of the covenant, and have no interest in the Mediator of the covenant. So that whatever some have imagined and pretended about promises made to natural men’s earnest seeking and knocking, ’tis plain and manifest that whatever pains a natural man takes in religion, whatever prayers he makes, till he believes in Christ, God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction. So that thus it is, that natural men are held in the hand of God over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually su√ering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold ’em up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out; and they have no interest in any mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of, all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted unobliged forbearance of an incensed God. application. The Use may be of Awakening to unconverted persons in this congregation. This that you have heard is the case of everyone of you that are out of

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Christ. That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of: there is nothing between you and hell but the air; ’tis only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up. You probably are not sensible of this; you find you are kept out of hell, but don’t see the hand of God in it, but look at other things, as the good state of your bodily constitution, your care of your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation. But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw his hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than the thin air to hold up a person that is suspended in it. Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not that so is the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment; for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you; the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption, not willingly; the sun don’t willingly shine upon you to give you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth don’t willingly yield her increase to satisfy your lusts; nor is it willingly a stage for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air don’t willingly serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals, while you spend your life in the service of God’s enemies. God’s creatures are good, and were made for men to serve God with, and don’t willingly subserve to any other purpose, and groan when they are abused to purposes so directly contrary to their nature and end. And the world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of him who hath subjected it in hope. There are the black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of God it would immediately burst forth upon you. The sov-

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ereign pleasure of God for the present stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the cha√ of the summer threshing floor. The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given, and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose. ’Tis true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God’s vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the meantime is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are continually rising and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God that holds the waters back that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward; if God should only withdraw his hand from the floodgate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it. The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and Justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood. Thus are all you that never passed under a great change of heart, by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before altogether unexperienced light and life (however you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious a√ections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, and may be strict in it), you are thus in the hands of an angry God; ’tis nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction. However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what you hear,

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by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of them, when they expected nothing of it, and while they were saying, ‘‘Peace and safety’’: now they see, that those things that they depended on for peace and safety, were nothing but thin air and empty shadows. The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have o√ended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet ’tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment; ’tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was su√ered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep: and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up; there is no other reason to be given why you han’t gone to hell since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship: yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason why you don’t this very moment drop down into hell. O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: ’tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell; you hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep o√ the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment. And consider here more particularly several things concerning that wrath that you are in such danger of.

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First. Whose wrath it is: it is the wrath of the infinite God. If it were only the wrath of man, though it were of the most potent prince, it would be comparatively little to be regarded. The wrath of kings is very much dreaded, especially of absolute monarchs, that have the possessions and lives of their subjects wholly in their power, to be disposed of at their mere will. Prov. 20:2, ‘‘The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: whoso provoketh him to anger, sinneth against his own soul.’’ The subject that very much enrages an arbitrary prince, is liable to su√er the most extreme torments, that human art can invent or human power can inflict. But the greatest earthly potentates, in their greatest majesty and strength, and when clothed in their greatest terrors, are but feeble despicable worms of the dust, in comparison of the great and almighty Creator and King of heaven and earth: it is but little that they can do, when most enraged, and when they have exerted the utmost of their fury. All the kings of the earth before God are as grasshoppers, they are nothing and less than nothing: both their love and their hatred is to be despised. The wrath of the great King of kings is as much more terrible than their’s, as his majesty is greater. Luke 12:4–5, ‘‘And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, fear him.’’ Second. ’Tis the fierceness of his wrath that you are exposed to. We often read of the fury of God; as in Is. 59:18, ‘‘According to their deeds, accordingly he will repay fury to his adversaries.’’ So Is. 66:15, ‘‘For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebukes with flames of fire.’’ And so in many other places. So we read of God’s fierceness. Rev. 19:15, there we read of ‘‘the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of almighty God.’’ The words are exceeding terrible: if it had only been said, ‘‘the wrath of God,’’ the words would have implied that which is infinitely dreadful; but ’tis not only said so, but ‘‘the fierceness and wrath of God’’: the fury of God! the fierceness of Jehovah! Oh how dreadful must that be! Who can utter or conceive what such expressions carry in them! But it is not only said so, but ‘‘the fierceness and wrath of almighty God. ’’ As though there would be a very

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great manifestation of his almighty power, in what the fierceness of his wrath should inflict, as though omnipotence should be as it were enraged, and exerted, as men are wont to exert their strength in the fierceness of their wrath. Oh! then what will be consequence! What will become of the poor worm that shall su√er it! Whose hands can be strong? and whose heart endure? To what a dreadful, inexpressible, inconceivable depth of misery must the poor creature be sunk, who shall be the subject of this! Consider this, you that are here present, that yet remain in an unregenerate state. That God will execute the fierceness of his anger, implies that he will inflict wrath without any pity: when God beholds the ine√able extremity of your case, and sees your torment to be so vastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor soul is crushed and sinks down, as it were into an infinite gloom, he will have no compassion upon you, he will not forbear the executions of his wrath, or in the least lighten his hand; there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God then at all stay his rough wind; he will have no regard to your welfare, nor be at all careful lest you should su√er too much, in any other sense than only that you shall not su√er beyond what strict justice requires: nothing shall be withheld, because it’s so hard for you to bear. Ezek. 8:18, ‘‘Therefore will I also deal in fury: mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet I will not hear them.’’ Now God stands ready to pity you; this is a day of mercy; you may cry now with some encouragement of obtaining mercy: but when once the day of mercy is past, your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God as to any regard to your welfare; God will have no other use to put you to but only to su√er misery; you shall be continued in being to no other end; for you will be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction; and there will be no other use of this vessel but only to be filled full of wrath: God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to him, that ’tis said he will only laugh and mock (Prov. 1:25–32). How awful are those words, Is. 63:3, which are the words of the great God, ‘‘I will tread them in mine anger, and will trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all

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my raiment.’’ ’Tis perhaps impossible to conceive of words that carry in them greater manifestations of these three things, viz. contempt, and hatred, and fierceness of indignation. If you cry to God to pity you, he will be so far from pitying you in your doleful case, or showing you the least regard or favor, that instead of that he’ll only tread you under foot: and though he will know that you can’t bear the weight of omnipotence treading upon you, yet he won’t regard that, but he will crush you under his feet without mercy; he’ll crush out your blood, and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his garments, so as to stain all his raiment. He will not only hate you, but he will have you in the utmost contempt; no place shall be thought fit for you, but under his feet, to be trodden down as the mire of the streets. Third. The misery you are exposed to is that which God will inflict to that end, that he might show what that wrath of Jehovah is. God hath had it on his heart to show to angels and men, both how excellent his love is, and also how terrible his wrath is. Sometimes earthly kings have a mind to show how terrible their wrath is, by the extreme punishments they would execute on those that provoke ’em. Nebuchadnezzar, that mighty and haughty monarch of the Chaldean empire, was willing to show his wrath, when enraged with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; and accordingly gave order that the burning fiery furnace should be het seven times hotter than it was before; doubtless it was raised to the utmost degree of fierceness that human art could raise it: but the great God is also willing to show his wrath, and magnify his awful majesty and mighty power in the extreme su√erings of his enemies. Rom. 9:22, ‘‘What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsu√ering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?’’ And seeing this is his design, and what he has determined, to show how terrible the unmixed, unrestrained wrath, the fury and fierceness of Jehovah is, he will do it to e√ect. There will be something accomplished and brought to pass, that will be dreadful with a witness. When the great and angry God hath risen up and executed his awful vengeance on the poor sinner; and the wretch is actually su√ering the infinite weight and power of his indignation, then will

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God call upon the whole universe to behold that awful majesty, and mighty power that is to be seen in it. Is. 33:12–14, ‘‘And the people shall be as the burning of lime: as thorns cut up shall they be burnt in the fire. Hear, ye that are far o√, what I have done; and ye that are near, acknowledge my might. The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites. Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?’’ Thus it will be with you that are in an unconverted state, if you continue in it; the infinite might, and majesty and terribleness of the omnipotent God shall be magnified upon you, in the ine√able strength of your torments: you shall be tormented in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb; and when you shall be in this state of su√ering, the glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look on the awful spectacle, that they may see what the wrath and fierceness of the Almighty is, and when they have seen it, they will fall down and adore that great power and majesty. Is. 66:23–24, ‘‘And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me, saith the Lord. And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.’’ Fourth. ’Tis everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to su√er this fierceness and wrath of almighty God one moment; but you must su√er it to all eternity: there will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long forever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all; you will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be infinite. Oh who can express what the state of a soul in such

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circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it, gives but a very feeble faint representation of it; ’tis inexpressible and inconceivable: for ‘‘who knows the power of God’s anger?’’ [Ps. 90:11]. How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in danger of this great wrath, and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation, that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious they may otherwise be. Oh that you would consider it, whether you be young or old. There is reason to think, that there are many in this congregation now hearing this discourse, that will actually be the subjects of this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they are, or in what seats they sit, or what thoughts they now have: it may be they are now at ease, and hear all these things without much disturbance, and are now flattering themselves that they are not the persons, promising themselves that they shall escape. If we knew that there was one person, and but one, in the whole congregation that was to be the subject of this misery, what an awful thing would it be to think of ! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would it be to see such a person! How might all the rest of the congregation lift up a lamentable and bitter cry over him! But alas! instead of one, how many is it likely will remember this discourse in hell? And it would be a wonder if some that are now present, should not be in hell in a very short time, before this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some person that now sits here in some seat of this meeting house in health, and quiet and secure, should be there before tomorrow morning. Those of you that finally continue in a natural condition, that shall keep out of hell longest, will be there in a little time! your damnation don’t slumber; it will come swiftly, and in all probability very suddenly upon many of you. You have reason to wonder, that you are not already in hell. ’Tis doubtless the case of some that heretofore you have seen and known, that never deserved hell more than you, and that heretofore appeared as likely to have been now alive as you: their case is past all hope; they are crying in extreme misery and perfect despair; but here you are in the land of the living, and in the house of God, and have an opportunity to obtain salvation. What would not those poor damned, hopeless souls give for one day’s such opportunity as you now enjoy!

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And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day wherein Christ has flung the door of mercy wide open, and stands in the door calling and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners; a day wherein many are flocking to him, and pressing into the kingdom of God; many are daily coming from the east, west, north and south; many that were very lately in the same miserable condition that you are in, are in now an happy state, with their hearts filled with love to him that has loved them and washed them from their sins in his own blood, and rejoicing in hope of the glory of God. How awful is it to be left behind at such a day! To see so many others feasting, while you are pining and perishing! To see so many rejoicing and singing for joy of heart, while you have cause to mourn for sorrow of heart, and howl for vexation of spirit! How can you rest one moment in such a condition? Are not your souls as precious as the souls of the people at Su≈eld,* where they are flocking from day to day to Christ? Are there not many here that have lived long in the world, that are not to this day born again, and so are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and have done nothing ever since they have lived, but treasure up wrath against the day of wrath? Oh sirs, your case in an especial manner is extremely dangerous; your guilt and hardness of heart is extremely great. Don’t you see how generally persons of your years are passed over and left, in the present remarkable and wonderful dispensation of God’s mercy? You had need to consider yourselves, and wake thoroughly out of sleep; you cannot bear the fierceness and wrath of the infinite God. And you that are young men, and young women, will you neglect this precious season that you now enjoy, when so many others of your age are renouncing all youthful vanities, and flocking to Christ? You especially have now an extraordinary opportunity; but if you neglect it, it will soon be with you as it is with those persons that spent away all the precious days of youth in sin, and are now come to such a dreadful pass in blindness and hardness. And you children that are unconverted, don’t you know that you are going down to hell, to bear the dreadful wrath of that God that is now * The next neighboring town.—JE’s note.

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angry with you every day, and every night? Will you be content to be the children of the devil, when so many other children in the land are converted, and are become the holy and happy children of the King of kings? And let everyone that is yet out of Christ, and hanging over the pit of hell, whether they be old men and women, or middle aged, or young people, or little children, now hearken to the loud calls of God’s Word and providence. This acceptable year of the Lord, that is a day of such great favor to some, will doubtless be a day of as remarkable vengeance to others. Men’s hearts harden, and their guilt increases apace at such a day as this, if they neglect their souls: and never was there so great danger of such persons being given up to hardness of heart, and blindness of mind. God seems now to be hastily gathering in his elect in all parts of the land; and probably the bigger part of adult persons that ever shall be saved, will be brought in now in a little time, and that it will be as it was on that great outpouring of the Spirit upon the Jews in the apostles’ days, the election will obtain, and the rest will be blinded. If this should be the case with you, you will eternally curse this day, and will curse the day that ever you was born, to see such a season of the pouring out of God’s Spirit; and will wish that you had died and gone to hell before you had seen it. Now undoubtedly it is, as it was in the days of John the Baptist, the ax is in an extraordinary manner laid at the root of the trees, that every tree that brings not forth good fruit, may be hewn down, and cast into the fire. Therefore let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over great part of this congregation: let everyone fly out of Sodom. ‘‘Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed’’ [Gen. 19:17].

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The selections by Edwards in this section are a mixture of private notebook ruminations, intimate letters, and more public statements from sermons, letters, published reports, and treatises. They range from one of Edwards’s earliest compositions, ‘‘Of Being’’ (1721), to his final work, The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended (1758), and are meant to provide a wider view of Edwards’s thought and beliefs—to demonstrate in his own words that Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God does not sum up the tone and substance of his worldview. At the same time, these selections help frame Sinners, illustrating the culture that lay behind the

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words of the Enfield sermon. The thought and language of philosophy, empirical science, psychology, and theology are employed by Edwards to communicate his theme of God’s grandeur and power, and the concomitant theme of humankind’s need to perceive this and humbly accept the transforming awareness. For Sinners was part (and a fairly small part, actually) of an elaborate and interconnected network of ideas and observations. Original and complete versions of these texts are available both in the volumes of the Yale edition (see the Original Sources for the Texts in this volume) and online at http://edwards.yale.edu/SinnersReader. OF BEING (1721) A youthful composition, begun when Edwards was only nineteen, ‘‘Of Being’’ is a philosophical text that attempts to tackle ultimate questions, beginning with the possibility that there could be ‘‘nothing.’’ Rather than a formal essay, ‘‘Of Being’’ was a series of attempts to critique the idea of nothingness. For Edwards, nothingness is impossible, since it is a contradiction. If, therefore, there has to be ‘‘something,’’ what is it? His answer: a being that exists necessarily, eternally, and everywhere. Edwards even goes so far as to say that this being is so present that it is space itself. God is the room between objects and other beings, and God is resistance; divine power keeps atoms together. Edwards’s approach is therefore Idealism: everything exists ultimately only in the Divine Mind and emanates from it. As Edwards says, if God’s consciousness were to cease, the universe would cease. Consequently, matter, or ‘‘material things,’’ is not true substance; rather, Spirit, or eternal Mind, is ‘‘properly substance.’’ The life of the spirit is our ultimate concern, because it is what is ‘‘real’’ and lasting.

That there should absolutely be nothing at all is utterly impossible. The mind can never, let it stretch its conceptions ever so much, bring itself to conceive of a state of perfect nothing. It puts the mind into mere convulsion and confusion to endeavor to think of such a state, and it contradicts the very nature of the soul to think that it should be; and it is the greatest contradiction, and the aggregate of all contradictions, to say that there should not be. ’Tis true we can’t so distinctly show the contradiction by

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words, because we cannot talk about it without speaking horrid nonsense and contradicting ourselves at every word, and because ‘‘nothing’’ is that whereby we distinctly show other particular contradictions. But here we are run up to our first principle, and have no other to explain the nothingness or not being of nothing by. Indeed, we can mean nothing else by ‘‘nothing’’ but a state of absolute contradiction. And if any man thinks that he can think well enough how there should be nothing, I’ll engage that what he means by ‘‘nothing’’ is as much something as anything that ever [he] thought of in his life; and I believe that if he knew what nothing was it would be intuitively evident to him that it could not be. So that we see it is necessary some being should eternally be. And ’tis a more palpable contradiction still to say that there must be being somewhere, and not otherwhere; for the words ‘‘absolute nothing’’ and ‘‘where’’ contradict each other. And besides, it gives as great a shock to the mind to think of pure nothing in any one place, as it does to think of it in all; and it is selfevident that there can be nothing in one place as well as in another, and so if there can be in one, there can be in all. So that we see this necessary, eternal being must be infinite and omnipresent. [. . .] Space is this necessary, eternal, infinite and omnipresent being. We find that we can with ease conceive how all other beings should not be. We can remove them out of our minds, and place some other in the room of them; but space is the very thing that we can never remove and conceive of its not being. If a man would imagine space anywhere to be divided, so as there should be nothing between the divided parts, there remains space between notwithstanding, and so the man contradicts himself. And it is self-evident, I believe, to every man, that space is necessary, eternal, infinite and omnipresent. But I had as good speak plain: I have already said as much as that space is God. And it is indeed clear to me, that all the space there is not proper to body, all the space there is without the bounds of the creation, all the space there was before the creation, is God himself. And nobody would in the least stick at it, if it were not because of the gross conceptions that we have of space. [. . .]

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Corollary 1. It follows from hence, that those beings which have knowledge and consciousness are the only proper and real and substantial beings, inasmuch as the being of other things is only by these. From hence we may see the gross mistake of those who think material things the most substantial beings, and spirits more like a shadow; whereas spirits only are properly substance. [. . .]

THE MIND (1723) From the cosmic considerations in ‘‘Of Being’’ we move into the realm of aesthetics, or the beautiful, in an excerpt from the first entry of Edwards’s notebook ‘‘The Mind,’’ a topic he wanted to explore in a treatise. It may be surprising to find the same person who preached Sinners discussing the nature of beauty in such eloquent and familiar terms, but for Edwards the realm of aesthetics was essential to understanding God and the divine relation to created beings. The word relation, in fact, is of great importance to Edwards, for he defined being, or ‘‘self,’’ by its relationships to other beings, especially ultimate being. Edwards refers to God here and elsewhere as ‘‘Being in general,’’ which for him takes in the Creator and the whole created order. As with everyday objects, such as flowers, or in creative pastimes such as music, where we notice or construct in our minds relationships or harmonies, so in the spiritual world—for Edwards, the world that was true substance, or ‘‘really real’’—there are beautiful similarities that partake of a higher beauty. When souls are in harmony with God, when they are holy in motive and action, they are ‘‘excellent,’’ or beautiful. But the world is also full of deformities. When souls are in disharmony with God, when they sin and act only from self-love, they are ugly—they ‘‘dissent’’ from being in general, and so have less being. Here, then, is part of the vision that lies behind Sinners, the life to which many of those to whom Edwards preached that day were blind, and into which he sought to draw them.

[. . .] All beauty consists in similarness, or identity of relation. In identity of relation consists all likeness, and all identity between two [beings] consists in identity of relation. Thus, when the distance between two is exactly equal,

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their distance is their relation one to another; the distance is the same, the bodies are two, wherefore this is their correspondency and beauty. So bodies exactly of the same figure: the bodies are two, the relation between the parts of the extremities is the same, and this is their agreement with them. But if there are two bodies of di√erent shapes, having no similarness of relation between the parts of the extremities, this, considered by itself, is a deformity, because being disagrees with being; which must undoubtedly be disagreeable to perceiving being, because what disagrees with being must necessarily be disagreeable to being in general, to everything that partakes of entity, and of course to perceiving being. And what agrees with being must be agreeable to being in general, and therefore to perceiving being. But agreeableness of perceiving being is pleasure, and disagreeableness is pain. Disagreement or contrariety to being is evidently an approach to nothing, or a degree of nothing, which is nothing else but disagreement or contrariety of being, and the greatest and only evil; and entity is the greatest and only good. And by how much more perfect entity is, that is, without mixture of nothing, by so much the more excellency. Two beings can agree one with another in nothing else but relation; because otherwise the notion of their twoness (duality) is destroyed and they become one. And so in every case, what is called correspondency, symmetry, regularity and the like, may be resolved into equalities; though the equalities in a beauty in any degree complicated are so numerous that it would be a most tedious piece of work to enumerate them. There are millions of these equalities. Of these consist the beautiful shape of flowers, the beauty of the body of man and of the bodies of other animals. That sort of beauty which is called ‘‘natural,’’ as of vines, plants, trees, etc., consists of a very complicated harmony; and all the natural motions and tendencies and figures of bodies in the universe are done according to proportion, and therein is their beauty. Particular disproportions sometimes greatly add to the general beauty, and must necessarily be, in order to a more universal proportion—so much equality, so much beauty—though it may be noted that the quantity of equality is not to be measured only by the number, but the intenseness, according to the quantity of being. As bodies are shadows of being, so their proportions are shadows of proportion.

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The pleasures of the senses, where harmony is not the object of judgment, are the result of equality. Thus in music, not only in the proportion which the several notes of a tune bear one among another, but in merely two notes, there is harmony; whereas it is impossible there should be proportion between only two terms. But the proportion is in the particular vibrations of the air which strike on the ear. And so in the pleasantness of light, colors, tastes, smells and touch: all arise from proportion of motion. The organs are so contrived that, upon the touch of such and such particles, there shall be a regular and harmonious motion of the animal spirits. Spiritual harmonies are of vastly larger extent; i.e. the proportions are vastly oftener redoubled, and respect more beings, and require a vastly larger view to comprehend them, as some simple notes do more a√ect one who has not a comprehensive understanding of music. The reason why equality thus pleases the mind, and inequality is unpleasing, is because disproportion, or inconsistency, is contrary to being. For being, if we examine narrowly, is nothing else but proportion. When one being is inconsistent with another being, then being is contradicted. But contradiction to being is intolerable to perceiving being, and the consent to being most pleasing. Excellency consists in the similarness of one being to another—not merely equality and proportion, but any kind of similarness. Thus similarness of direction: supposing many globes moving in right lines, it is more beautiful that they should move all the same way and according to the same direction, than if they moved disorderly, one one way and another another. This is an universal definition of excellency: The consent of being to being, or being’s consent to entity. The more the consent is, and the more extensive, the greater is the excellency. [. . .]

THE ‘‘SPIDER LET TER’’ (1723) This composition on ‘‘flying’’ spiders was written to Judge Paul Dudley of Massachusetts, a fellow of the Royal Society in London. Dudley had published some botanical observations by Timothy Edwards in the society’s prestigious journal

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Philosophical Transactions, and Timothy urged his son to submit something; for his philosophical work Jonathan drew on earlier empirical observations he had made on insects. The ‘‘Spider Letter’’ provides an opportunity to hear a very di√erent ‘‘voice’’ from the Edwards of Sinners, that of Edwards the scientist. Here the spider conjures not images of precarious existence or the yawning pit but the ‘‘wisdom of the Creator,’’ who, by endowing the flying spider with the ‘‘wondrous liquor’’ in its tail, allows it to have ‘‘pleasure’’ and to ‘‘recreate itself.’’ All the same, in the ‘‘corollaries,’’ or implications, of his observations, Edwards takes note of how the spider’s singular ability contributes to its destruction.

Windsor, October 31, 1723 Sir, In the postscript of your letter to my father you manifest a willingness to receive anything else that he has observed in nature worthy of remark; that which is the subject of the following lines by him was thought to be such [. . . .] They are some things that I have happily seen of the wondrous and curious works of the spider. Although everything pertaining to this insect is admirable, yet there are some phenomena relating to them more particularly wonderful. Everybody that is used to the country knows of their marching in the air from one tree to another, sometimes at the distance of five or six rods, though they are wholly destitute of wings: nor can one go out in a dewy morning at the latter end of August and beginning of September but he shall see multitudes of webs reaching from one tree and shrub to another; which webs are commonly thought to be made in the night because they appear only in the morning by reason of the dew that hangs on them, whereas they never work in the night, they love to lie still when the air is dark and moist; but these webs may be seen well enough in the daytime by an observing eye, by their reflection of the sunbeams; especially late in the afternoon may those webs that are between the eye, and that part of the horizon that is under the sun, be seen very plainly, being advantageously posited to reflect the rays, and the spiders themselves may be very often seen traveling in the air from one stage to another amongst the trees in a very unaccountable manner. But, sir, I have often seen that which is yet

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more astonishing. In a very calm serene day in the forementioned time of year, standing at some distance between the end of an house or some other opaque body, so as just to hide the disk of the sun and keep o√ his dazzling rays, and looking along close by the side of it, I have seen vast multitudes of little shining webs and glistening strings, brightly reflecting the sunbeams, and some of them of a great length, and at such a height that one would think that they were tacked to the vault of the heavens, and would be burnt like tow in the sun, making a very pleasing as well as surprising appearance. [. . .] But that which is most astonishing is that very often there appears at the end of these webs, spiders sailing in the air with them, doubtless with abundance of pleasure, though not with so much as I have beheld them and showed them to others. And since I have seen these things I have been very conversant with spiders. Resolving if possible to find out the mysteries of these their amazing works, and pursuing my observations, I discovered one wonder after another till I have been so happy as very frequently to see their whole manner of working; which is thus: When a spider would go from one tree or branch to another, or would recreate himself by sailing or floating in the air, he first lets himself down a little way from the twig he stands on by a web, as [in] Fig. 1; and then taking hold of it by his forefeet as in Fig. 2, and then separates or loosens the part of the web cd from the part bc by which he hangs; which part of the web cd, being thus loosened, will by the motion of the air be carried out towards e, which will by the su√erance of the spider be drawn [out] of his tail with infinite ease by the moving air, to what length the spider pleases, as [in] Fig. 3: And if the further end of the web de, as it is running out and moving to and fro, happens to catch by a shrub or the branch of a tree, the spider immediately feels it and fixes the hither end of it, d, to the web bc, and goes over as by a bridge by the web de. [. . .] Now, sir, it is certain that these webs, when they first come from the spider, are so rare a substance that they are lighter than the air, because they will immediately ascend in a calm air, and never descend except driven by a wind: and ’tis as certain that what swims and ascends in the air is lighter than the air, as that what ascends and swims in water is lighter

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than that: So that if we should suppose any such time wherein the air is perfectly calm, this web is so easily drawn out of the spider’s tail, that barely the levity of it is su≈cient to carry it out to any length. But at least its levity, or ascending inclination, together with so much motion as the air is never without, will well su≈ce for this. Wherefore, if it be so that the end of the web de (Fig. 3) catches by no tree nor other body till it be drawn out so long that its levity shall be so great as to be more than equal to the gravity of the spider, or so that the web and the spider taken together shall be lighter than such a quantity of air as takes up equal space, then according to the universally acknowledged laws of nature the web and the spider together will ascend and not descend in the air. As when a man [is] at the bottom of the water, if he has hold of a piece of timber so great that the wood’s tendency upwards is greater than the man’s tendency downwards, he together with the wood will ascend to the surface of the water. Therefore, when the spider perceives that the web de is long enough to bear him

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up by its ascending force (which force the spider feels by its drawing of him towards e), he lets go his hold of the web bc (Fig. 4) and, holding by the web de, ascends and floats in the air with it. [. . .] And this very way, sir, I have multitudes of times seen spiders mount away into the air with a vast train of this silver web before them from a stick in mine hand; for if the spider be disturbed upon the stick by shaking of [it] he will presently in this manner leave it. Their way of working may very distinctly be seen if they are held up in the sun, in a calm day, against a dark door or anything that is black. [. . .] Corollary 1. Hence the wisdom of the Creator in providing of the spider with that wonderful liquor with which their bottle tail is filled, that may so easily be drawn out so exceeding fine, and being in this way exposed to the air will so immediately convert to a dry substance that shall be so very rare as to be lighter than the air, and will so excellently serve to all their purposes. Corol. 2. Hence the exuberant goodness of the Creator, who hath not only provided for all the necessities, but also for the pleasure and recreation of all sorts of creatures, even the insects. But yet, sir, I am assured that the chief end of this faculty that is given them is not their recreation but their destruction, because their destruction is unavoidably the constant e√ect of it; and we find nothing that is the continual e√ect of nature but what is the end of the means by which it is brought to pass: but it is impossible but that the greatest part of the spiders upon the land should every year be swept into the ocean. For these spiders never fly except the weather be fair and the atmosphere dry, but the atmosphere is never clear and dry, neither in this nor any other continent, only when the wind blows from the midland parts, and consequently towards the sea; as here in New England, the fair weather is only when the wind is westerly, the land being on that side and the ocean on the easterly. I scarcely ever have seen any of these spiders flying but when they have been hastening directly towards the sea. [. . .] The same also holds true of other sorts of flying insects, for at those times that I have viewed the spiders with their webs in the air there has

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also appeared vast multitudes of flies at a great height, and all flying the same way with the spiders and webs, direct to the ocean. And even such as butterflies, millers, and moths, which keep in the grass at this time of year, I have seen vastly higher than the tops of the highest trees, all going the same way. These I have seen towards evening, right overhead, and without a screen to defend my eye from the sunbeams, which I used to think were seeking a warmer climate. The reason of their flying at that time of year I take to be because the ground and trees and grass, the places of their residence in summer, begin to be chill and uncomfortable. Therefore when the sun shines pretty warm they leave them, and mount up into the air and expand their wings to the sun, and flying for nothing but their own ease and comfort, they su√er themselves to go that way that they can go with the greatest ease, and so where the wind pleases: and it being warmth they fly for, they never fly against the wind nor sidewise to it, they find it cold and laborious; they therefore seem to use their wings but just so much as to bear them up, and su√er themselves to go with the wind. So that it must necessarily be that almost all aerial insects, and spiders which live upon them and are made up of them, are at the end of the year swept away into the sea and buried in the ocean, and leave nothing behind them but their eggs for a new stock the next year. Corol. 1. Hence is reason to admire at the wisdom of the Creator, and to be convinced that it is exercised about such little things in this wonderful contrivance of annually carrying o√ and burying the corruption and nauseousness of the air, of which flying insects are little collections, in the bottom of the ocean where it will do no harm; and especially the strange way of bringing this about in spiders, which are collections of these collections, their food being flying insects, flies being the poison of the air, and spiders are the poison of flies collected together. [. . .] Corol. 2. The wisdom of the Creator is also admirable in so nicely and mathematically adjusting their plastic nature, that notwithstanding their destruction by this means and the multitudes that are eaten by birds, that they do not decrease and so by little and little come to nothing; and in so adjusting their destruction to their multiplication they do neither increase, but taking one year with another, there is always an equal number of them.

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These, sir, are the observations I have had opportunity to make on the wonders that are to be seen in the most despicable of animals. [. . .] Pardon me if I thought it might at least give you occasion to make better observations on these wondrous animals, that should be worthy of communicating to the learned world, from whose glistening webs so much of the wisdom of the Creator shines. Pardon, sir, your most obedient humble servant, Jonathan Edwards THE JUSTICE OF GOD IN THE DAMNATION OF SINNERS (1735) Delivered in May 1735, near the end of the dramatic revival that occurred in Northampton over the previous winter and spring, this sermon portrays a God seemingly very di√erent from the beneficent Creator portrayed in ‘‘Of Being’’ or ‘‘The Mind’’: an o√ended Omnipotence who is also the Lawmaker and Judge. Here, then, Edwards presents the case of what humanity deserves when it does not live in harmony with God, when it ignores the world of spirit, when it transgresses divine law. He argues that if God is infinitely good and lovely, he is o√ended by anything that is evil or ugly, that is, sinful. And only one sin is enough, in God’s pure eyes, to render a person a criminal before the eternal bar. Yet God gives us free will to understand the good, which makes us accountable. This sermon, and the position it presents, is similar to that of Sinners and several other sermons Edwards preached in that vein. The excerpt here is taken from the Doctrine of the sermon.

romans 3:19. That every mouth may be stopped. [. . .] doctrine. ’Tis just with God eternally to cast o√, and destroy sinners. For this is the punishment which the law condemns to; which the things that the law says, may well stop every mouth from all manner of objection against.

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The truth of this doctrine may appear, by the joint consideration of two things, viz. man’s sinfulness, and God’s sovereignty. I. It appears from the consideration of man’s sinfulness. And that whether we consider the infinitely evil nature of all sin, or how much sin men are guilty of. First. If we consider the infinite evil, and heinousness of sin in general. ’Tis not unjust in God to inflict what punishment is deserved; because the very notion of deserving any punishment is, that it may be justly inflicted: a deserved punishment and a just punishment are the same thing. To say that one deserves such a punishment, and yet to say that he don’t justly deserve it, is a contradiction; and if he justly deserves it, then it may be justly inflicted. Every crime or fault deserves a greater or lesser punishment, in proportion as the crime itself is greater or less. If any fault deserves punishment, then so much the greater the fault, so much the greater is the punishment deserved. [. . .] [. . .] Our obligation to love, honor, and obey any being, is in proportion to his loveliness, honorableness, and authority. For that is the very meaning of the words, when we say anyone is very lovely; it is the same as to say, that he is one very much to be loved: or if we say such an one is more honorable than another; the meaning of the words is, that he is one that we are more obliged to honor. If we say anyone has great authority over us, ’tis the same as to say that he has great right to our subjection and obedience. But God is a being infinitely lovely, because he hath infinite excellency and beauty. To have infinite excellency and beauty, is the same thing as to have infinite loveliness. He is a being of infinite greatness, majesty and glory; and therefore is infinitely honorable. He is infinitely exalted above the greatest potentates of the earth, and highest angels in heaven; and therefore is infinitely more honorable than they. His authority over us is infinite; and the ground of his right to our obedience, is infinitely strong; for he is infinitely worthy to be obeyed in himself, and we have an absolute universal and infinite dependence upon him.

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So that sin against God being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous; and so deserving of infinite punishment. Nothing is more agreeable to the common sense of mankind, than that sins committed against anyone, must be proportionably heinous, to the dignity of the being o√ended and abused [. . . .] [. . .] Second. That it is just with God eternally to cast o√ wicked men, may more abundantly appear, if we consider how much sin they are guilty of. From what has been already said, it appears, that if men were guilty of sin, but in one particular, that is su≈cient ground of their eternal rejection and condemnation [. . . .] But sinful men are not only thus, but they are full of sin; full of principles of sin, and full of acts of sin: their guilt is like great mountains, heaped one upon another, till the pile is grown up to heaven. They are totally corrupt, in every part, in all their faculties; and all the principles of their nature, their understandings, and wills; and in all their dispositions and a√ections, their heads, their hearts, are totally depraved; all the members of their bodies are only instruments of sin; and all their senses, seeing, hearing, tasting, etc. are only inlets and outlets of sin, channels of corruption. There is nothing but sin, no good at all. [. . .] [. . .] II. If with man’s sinfulness, we consider God’s sovereignty, it may serve further to clear God’s justice in the eternal rejection and condemnation of sinners, from men’s cavils and objections. I shall not now pretend to determine precisely, what things are, and what things are not, proper acts and exercises of God’s holy sovereignty; but only that God’s sovereignty extends to the following things. First. That such is God’s sovereign power and right, that he is originally under no obligation to keep men from sinning; but may in his providence permit, and leave them to sin. He was not obliged to keep either angels or men from falling. ’Tis unreasonable to suppose that God should be obliged, if he makes a reasonable creature capable of knowing his will, and receiving a law from him, and being subject to his moral government, at

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the same time to make it impossible for him to sin, or break his law. For if God be obliged to this it destroys all use of any commands, laws, promises, or threatenings, and the very notion of any moral government of God over those reasonable creatures. For to what purpose would it be, for God to give such and such laws, and declare his holy will to a creature; and annex promises, and threatenings, to move him to his duty, and make him careful to perform it, if the creature at the same time has this to think of, that God is obliged to make it impossible for him to break his laws? [. . .] [. . .] Second. It was fit that it should be at the ordering of the divine wisdom and good pleasure, whether every particular man should stand for himself, or whether the first father of mankind, should be appointed as the moral and federal head, and representative, of the rest. If God has not liberty in this matter to determine either of these two, as he pleases, it must be because determining that the first father of men should represent the rest, and not that everyone should stand for himself, is injurious to mankind. For if it be not injurious to mankind, how is it unjust? [. . .] Third. When men are fallen, and become sinful, God by his sovereignty has a right to determine about their redemption as he pleases. He has a right to determine whether he will redeem any or no. He might, if he had pleased, have left all to perish, or might have redeemed all. Or he may redeem some, and leave others; and if he doth so, he may take who he pleases, and leave who he pleases. To suppose that all have forfeited his favor, and deserved to perish, and to suppose that he may not leave any one individual of them to perish, implies a contradiction; because it supposes that such an one has a claim to God’s favor, and is not justly liable to perish; which is contrary to the supposition. ’Tis meet that God should order all these things, according to his own pleasure. By reason of his greatness and glory, by which he is infinitely above all, he is worthy to be sovereign, and that his pleasure should in all things take place: he is worthy that he should make himself his end, and that he should make nothing but his own wisdom his rule in pursuing that

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end, without asking leave or counsel of any, and without giving account of any of his matters. ’Tis fit that he that is absolutely perfect, and infinitely wise, and the fountain of all wisdom, should determine everything by his own will, even things of the greatest importance, such as the eternal salvation or damnation of sinners. ’Tis meet that he should be thus sovereign, because he is the first being, the eternal being, whence all other beings are. He is the creator of all things; and all are absolutely and universally dependent on him; and therefore ’tis meet that he should act as the sovereign possessor of heaven and earth.

AN ACCOUNT OF THE LATE WONDERF UL WORK OF GOD (1735) This rarely published letter is Edwards’s original description of the Northampton awakening of 1734–35 and a key document of the Great Awakening. The letter precipitated the waves of religious fervor that swept England and the British North American colonies during the next twenty-five years, and had repercussions far beyond. Benjamin Colman, the influential Boston minister who was the recipient of the letter, immediately requested of Edwards a more detailed version, which eventually resulted in A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Work of God (1737). That tract, soon translated into several languages, became a manual for revivalism and brought Edwards transatlantic fame. The awakening began, Edwards recounted, among the young people, spreading to other age groups, and then to di√erent towns up and down the Connecticut River valley. In discussing ‘‘the nature of persons’ experiences,’’ he noted reformation of behavior, harmony, charity, humility, and a new unity among formerly feuding ministers and congregations—a unity that the coming waves of revival would do much to undermine. Edwards noted that Northampton ‘‘never was so full of love, nor full of joy, nor so full of distress.’’ He insisted that true religious experience brings peace, not confusion. Only later did he see that a spirit of religion unleashed could bring chaos. Encouraging and a≈rming dramatic and varying religious experiences among the populous with new, emotional language—like that used in Sinners—would rend the established church order. The ominous postscript to the account, reporting his uncle Joseph Hawley’s suicide because of spiritual despair, was a particularly tragic manifestation of the ‘‘distress.’’

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Title page of the London printing of A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Work of God (1737)

Northampton, May 30, 1735 Dear Sir, In answer to your desire, I here send you a particular account of the present extraordinary circumstances of this town, and the neighboring towns with respect to religion. I have observed that the town for this several years have gradually been reforming; there has appeared less and less of a party spirit,* and a contentious disposition, which before had prevailed for many years between two parties in the town. The young people also have been reforming more and more; they by degrees left o√ their frolicking, and have been observably more decent in their attendance on the public worship. The winter before last there appeared a strange flexibleness in the young people of the town, and an unusual disposition to hearken to counsel, on this occasion. It had been their manner of a long * Strong exercises of inclination involving both understanding and will.

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time, and for ought I know, always, to make sabbath-day nights and lecture days to be especially times of diversion and company-keeping. I then preached a sermon on the sabbath before the lecture, to show them the unsuitableness and inconvenience of the practice, and to persuade them to reform it; and urged it on heads of families that it should be a thing agreed among them to govern their families, and keep them in at those times. And there happened to be at my house the evening after, men that belonged to the several parts of the town, to whom I moved that they should desire the heads of families, in my name, to meet together in their several neighborhoods, that they might know each others’ minds, and agree every one to restrain his family; which was done, and my motion complied with throughout the town. But the parents found little or no occasion for the exercise of government in the case; for the young people declared themselves convinced by what they had heard, and willing of themselves to comply with the counsel given them; and I suppose it was almost universally complied with thenceforward. After this there began to be a remarkable religious concern among some farm houses at a place called Pascommuck, and five or six that I hoped were savingly wrought upon there. And in April [1734] there was a very sudden and awful death of a young man in town, in the very bloom of his youth, who was violently seized with a pleurisy and taken immediately out of his head, and died in two days; which much a√ected many young people in the town. This was followed with another death of a young married woman, who was in great distress in the beginning of her illness, but was hopefully converted before her death; so that she died full of comfort, and in a most earnest and moving manner, warning and counseling others, which I believe much contributed to the solemnizing of the spirits of the young people in the town; and there began evidently to appear more of a religious concern upon people’s minds. In the fall of the year I moved to the young people that they should set up religious meetings, on evenings after lectures, which they complied with; this was followed with the death of an elderly person in the town, which was attended with very unusual circumstances, which much a√ected many

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people. About that time began the great noise that there was in this part of the country about Arminianism, which seemed strangely to be overruled for the promoting of religion. People seemed to be put by it upon inquiring, with concern and engagedness of mind, what was the way of salvation, and what were the terms of our acceptance with God; and what was said publicly on that occasion, however found fault with by many elsewhere, and ridiculed by some, was most evidently attended with a very remarkable blessing of heaven, to the souls of people in this town, to the giving of them an universal satisfaction with respect to the thing in question, and engaging their minds the more earnestly to seek salvation in the way that had been made evident to them. And then a concern about the great things of religion began, about the latter end of December and the beginning of January [1735], to prevail abundantly in the town, till in a very little time it became universal throughout the town, among old and young, and from the highest to the lowest. All seemed to be seized with a deep concern about their eternal salvation; all the talk in all companies, and upon occasions was upon the things of religion, and no other talk was anywhere relished; and scarcely a single person in the whole town was left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world. Those that were wont to be the vainest and loosest persons in town, seemed in general to be seized with strong convictions. Those that were most disposed to contemn vital and experimental religion, and those that had the greatest conceit of their own reason, the highest families in the town, and the oldest persons in the town, and many little children were a√ected remarkably; no one family that I know of, and scarcely a person, has been exempt. And the Spirit of God went on in his saving influences, to the appearance of all human reason and charity, in a truly wonderful and astonishing manner. The news of it filled the neighboring towns with talk, and there were many in them that sco√ed and made a ridicule of the religion that appeared in Northampton. But it was observable that it was very frequent and common that those of other towns that came into the town, and observed how it was here, were greatly a√ected, and went home with wounded spirits, and were never more able

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to shake o√ the impression that it made upon them, till at length there began to appear a general concern in several of the towns in the county. [. . .] As to the nature of persons’ experiences, and the influences of that spirit that there is amongst us, persons when seized with concern are brought to forsake their vices, and ill practices; the looser sort are brought to forsake and to dread their former extravagances. Persons are soon brought to have done with their old quarrels; contention and intermeddling with other men’s matters seems to be dead amongst us. I believe [that] there never was so much done at confessing of faults to each other, and making up di√erences, as there has lately been. [. . .] People are brought o√ from inordinate engagedness after the world, and have been ready to run into the other extreme of too much neglecting their worldly business and to mind nothing but religion. Those that are under convictions are put upon it earnestly to inquire what they shall do to be saved, and diligently to use appointed means of grace, and apply themselves to all known duty. And those that obtain hope themselves, and the charity of others concerning their good estate, generally seem to be brought to a great sense of their own exceeding misery in a natural condition, and their utter helplessness, and insu≈ciency for themselves, and their exceeding wickedness and guiltiness in the sight of God; it seldom fails but that each one seems to think himself worse than anybody else, and they are brought to see that they deserve no mercy of God, that all their prayers and pains are exceeding worthless and polluted, and that God, notwithstanding all that they have done, or can do, may justly execute his eternal wrath upon them, and they seem to be brought to a lively sense of the excellency of Jesus Christ and his su≈ciency and willingness to save sinners, and to be much weaned in their a√ections from the world, and to have their hearts filled with love to God and Christ, and a disposition to lie in the dust before him. They seem to have given them a lively conviction of the truth of the gospel, and the divine authority of the holy Scriptures; though they can’t have the exercise of this at all times alike, nor indeed of any other grace. They seem to be brought to abhor themselves for the sins of their past life, and to long to be holy, and to live

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holily, and to God’s glory; but at the same time complain that they can do nothing, [for] they are poor impotent creatures, utterly insu≈cient to glorify their Creator and Redeemer. They commonly seem to be much more sensible of their own wickedness after their conversion than before, so that they are often humbled by it; it seems to them that they are really become more wicked, when at the same time they are evidently full of a gracious spirit. Their remaining sin seems to be their very great burthen, and many of them seem to long after heaven, that there they may be rid of sin. They generally seem to be united in dear love and a√ection one to another, and to have a love to all mankind. I never saw the Christian spirit in love to enemies so exemplified in all my life as I have seen it within this half year. They commonly express a great concern for others’ salvation; some say that they think they are far more concerned for others’ conversion, after they themselves have been converted, than ever they were for their own; several have thought (though perhaps they might be deceived in it) that they could freely die for the salvation of any soul, of the meanest of mankind, of any Indian in the woods. This town never was so full of love, nor so full of joy, nor so full of distress as it has lately been. Some persons have had those longing desires after Jesus Christ, that have been to that degree as to take away their strength, and very much to weaken them, and make them faint. Many have been even overcome with a sense of the dying love of Christ, so that the frame of the body has been ready to fail under it; there was once three pious young persons in this town talking together of the dying love of Christ, till they all fainted away; though ’tis probable the fainting of the two latter was much promoted by the fainting of the first. Many express a sense of the glory of the divine perfections, and of the excellency and fullness of Jesus Christ, and of their own littleness and unworthiness, in a manner truly wonderful and almost unparalleled; and so likewise of the excellency and wonderfulness of the way of salvation by Jesus Christ. Their esteem of the holy Scriptures is exceedingly increased. 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,

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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: and so are God’s sabbaths, and ordinances, and opportunities of public worship. The sabbath is longed for before it comes; some by only hearing the bell ring on some occasion in the week time, have been greatly moved, because it has put them in mind of its ringing to call the people together to worship God. But no part of public worship has commonly [had] such an e√ect on them as singing God’s praises. They have a greater respect to ministers than they used to have; there is scarcely a minister preaches here but gets their esteem and a√ection. [. . .] There is an alteration made in the town in a few months that strangers can scarcely conceive of; our church I believe was the largest in New England before, but persons lately have thronged in, so that there are very few adult persons left out. There have been a great multitude hopefully converted; too many, I find, for me to declare abroad with credit to my judgment. The town seems to be full of the presence of God; our young people when they get together instead of frolicking as they used to do are altogether on pious subjects; ’tis so at weddings and on all occasions. The children in this and the neighboring towns have been greatly a√ected and influenced by the Spirit of God, and many of them hopefully changed; the youngest in this town is between nine and ten years of age. Some of them seem to be full of love to Christ and have expressed great longings after him and willingness to die, and leave father and mother and all things in the world to go to him, together with a great sense of their unworthiness and admiration at the free grace of God towards them. And there have been many old people, many above fifty and several near seventy, that seem to be wonderfully changed and hopefully newborn. The good people that have been formerly converted in the town have many of them been wonderfully enlivened and increased. This work seems to be upon every account an extraordinary dispensation of providence. ’Tis extraordinary upon the account of universality of it, its a√ecting all sorts, high and low, rich and poor, wise and unwise, old and young, vicious and moral; ’tis very extraordinary as to the numbers

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that are hopefully savingly wrought upon, and particularly the number of aged persons and children and loose livers; and also on the account of the quickness of the work of the Spirit in them, for many seem to have been suddenly taken from a loose way of living, and to be so changed as to become truly holy, spiritual, heavenly persons; ’tis extraordinary as to the degrees of gracious communications, and the abundant measures in which the Spirit of God has been poured out on many persons; ’tis extraordinary as to the extent of it, God’s Spirit being so remarkably poured out on so many towns at once, and its making such swift progress from place to place. The extraordinariness of the thing has been, I believe, one principal cause that people abroad have suspected it. There have been, as I have heard, many odd and strange stories that have been carried about the country of this a√air, which it is a wonder some wise men should be so ready to believe. Some indeed under great terrors of conscience have had impressions on their imaginations; and also under the power of spiritual discoveries, they have had livelily impressed ideas of Christ shedding his blood for sinners, his blood running from his veins, and of Christ in his glory in heaven and such like things, but they are always taught and have been several times taught in public not to lay the weight of their hopes on such things and many have nothing of any such imaginations. There have been several persons that have had their natures overborne under strong convictions, have trembled, and han’t been able to stand, they have had such a sense of divine wrath; but there are no new doctrines embraced, but people have been abundantly established in those that we account orthodox; there is no new way of worship a√ected. There is no oddity of behavior prevails; people are no more superstitious about their clothes, or anything else than they used to be. Indeed, there is a great deal of talk when they are together of one another’s experiences, and indeed no other is to be expected in a town where the concern of the soul is so universally the concern, and that to so great a degree. And doubtless some persons under the strength of impressions that are made on their minds and under the power of strong a√ections, are guilty of imprudences; their zeal may need to be regulated by more prudence, and they may need a guide to their assistance; as of old when the

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Church of Corinth had the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit,* they needed to be told by the Apostle that the spirit of the prophets were subject to the prophets, and that their gifts were to be exercised with prudence, because God was not the author of confusion but of peace [I Cor. 14:32–33]. There is no unlovely oddity in people’s temper prevailing with this work, but on the contrary the face of things is much changed as to the appearance of a meek, humble, amiable behavior. Indeed, the devil has not been idle, but his hand has evidently appeared in several instances endeavoring to mimic the work of the Spirit of God and to cast a slur upon it, and no wonder. And there has hereby appeared the need of the watchful eye of skillful guides, and of wisdom from above to direct them. [. . .] Thus, Sir, I have given you a particular account of this a√air which Satan has so much misrepresented in the country. This is a true account of the matter as far as I have opportunity to know, and I suppose I am under greater advantages to know than any person living. Having been thus long in the account, I forbear to make reflections, or to guess what God is about to do; I leave this to you, and shall only say, as I desire always to say from my heart, ‘‘To God be all the glory, whose work alone it is.’’ And let him have an interest in your prayers, who so much needs divine help at this day, and is your a√ectionate brother, And humble servant, Jonathan Edwards. Northampton, June 3, 1735 Since I wrote the foregoing letter, there has happened a thing of a very awful nature in the town. My Uncle [ Joseph] Hawley, the last sabbathday morning [ June 1], laid violent hands on himself, and put an end to his life, by cutting his own throat. He had been for a considerable time greatly concerned about the condition of his soul; till, by the ordering of a sov* The ‘‘gifts’’ that Edwards refers to include healing, miracles, the ability to speak in tongues, and prophecy; see I Corinthians 12:7–10.

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ereign providence he was su√ered to fall into deep melancholy, a distemper that the family are very prone to; he was much overpowered by it; the devil took the advantage and drove him into despairing thoughts. He was kept very much awake a-nights, so that he had but very little sleep for two months, till he seemed not to have his faculties in his own power. He was in a great measure past a capacity of receiving advice, or being reasoned with. The coroner’s inquest judged him delirious. Satan seems to be in a great rage, at this extraordinary breaking forth of the work of God. I hope it is because he knows that he has but a short time. Doubtless he had a great reach, in this violent attack of his against the whole a√air. We have appointed a day of fasting in the town this week, by reason of this and other appearances of Satan’s rage amongst us against poor souls. I yesterday saw a woman that belongs to Durham [Connecticut], who says there is a considerable revival of religion there. I am yours, etc., Jonathan Edwards. PERSONAL NARRATIVE (1740) Written at the request of the Reverend Aaron Burr, the man who would eventually become Edwards’s son-in-law and whom Edwards would succeed as president of the College of New Jersey, this spiritual autobiography is the lengthiest meditation we have by Edwards on his own life, and so it is of incomparable value in seeing how he perceived himself and the highs and lows of his religious experiences over some twenty or more years. A number of important features and themes stand out that echo through his writings: the importance of awakenings, questions about his conversion experience, doubts about central doctrines, ecstatic episodes—such as the time in his father’s pasture when he had a vision of the ‘‘majestic meekness’’ of God—and favorite themes of contemplation. Looking back, he realized how misguided his religious e√orts as a youth had been. Above all, he sought to attain a perpetual state of humility and contrition for his sins, and to realize his utter dependence on God—the truth he sought to impart to those who heard Sinners. Thus, he endeavored to apply the lesson of Sinners as much to himself as to others.

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W. F. Pratt, Jr., Sketch of the Northampton church built in 1737

I had a variety of concerns and exercises about my soul from my childhood; but had two more remarkable seasons of awakening, before I met with that change, by which I was brought to those new dispositions, and that new sense of things, that I have since had. The first time was when I was a boy, some years before I went to college, at a time of remarkable awakening in my father’s congregation. I was then very much a√ected for many months, and concerned about the things of religion, and my soul’s salvation; and was abundant in duties. I used to pray five times a day in secret, and to spend much time in religious talk with other boys; and used to meet with them to pray together. I experienced I know not what kind of delight in religion. My mind was much engaged in it, and had much selfrighteous pleasure; and it was my delight to abound in religious duties. I, with some of my schoolmates joined together, and built a booth in a

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swamp, in a very secret and retired place, for a place of prayer. And besides, I had particular secret places of my own in the woods, where I used to retire by myself; and used to be from time to time much a√ected. My a√ections* seemed to be lively and easily moved, and I seemed to be in my element, when engaged in religious duties. And I am ready to think, many are deceived with such a√ections, and such a kind of delight, as I then had in religion, and mistake it for grace. But in process of time, my convictions and a√ections wore o√; and I entirely lost all those a√ections and delights, and left o√ secret prayer, at least as to any constant performance of it; and returned like a dog to his vomit, and went on in ways of sin. Indeed, I was at some times very uneasy, especially towards the latter part of the time of my being at college. Till it pleased God, in my last year at college, at a time when I was in the midst of many uneasy thoughts about the state of my soul, to seize me with a pleurisy; in which he brought me nigh to the grave, and shook me over the pit of hell. But yet, it was not long after my recovery, before I fell again into my old ways of sin. But God would not su√er me to go on with any quietness; but I had great and violent inward struggles: till after many conflicts with wicked inclinations, and repeated resolutions, and bonds that I laid myself under by a kind of vows to God, I was brought wholly to break o√ all former wicked ways, and all ways of known outward sin; and to apply myself to seek my salvation, and practice the duties of religion: but without that kind of a√ection and delight, that I had formerly experienced. My concern now wrought more by inward struggles and conflicts, and self-reflections. I made seeking my salvation the main business of my life. But yet it seems to me, I sought after a miserable manner: which has made me sometimes since to question, whether ever it issued in that which was saving; being ready to doubt, whether such miserable seeking was ever succeeded. But yet I was brought to seek salvation, in a manner that I never was before. I felt a spirit to part with all things in the world, for an * Strong exercises of inclination involving both understanding and will.

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interest in Christ. My concern continued and prevailed, with many exercising things and inward struggles; but yet it never seemed to be proper to express my concern that I had, by the name of terror. From my childhood up, my mind had been wont to be full of objections against the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, in choosing whom he would to eternal life, and rejecting whom he pleased; leaving them eternally to perish, and be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well, when I seemed to be convinced, and fully satisfied, as to this sovereignty of God, and his justice in thus eternally disposing of men, according to his sovereign pleasure. But never could give an account, how, or by what means, I was thus convinced; not in the least imagining, in the time of it, nor a long time after, that there was any extraordinary influence of God’s Spirit in it: but only that now I saw further, and my reason apprehended the justice and reasonableness of it. However, my mind rested in it; and it put an end to all those cavils and objections, that I had till then abode with me, all the preceding part of my life. And there has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, with respect to the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, from that day to this; so that I scarce ever have found so much as the rising of an objection against God’s sovereignty, in the most absolute sense, in showing mercy on whom he will show mercy, and hardening and eternally damning whom he will. God’s absolute sovereignty, and justice, with respect to salvation and damnation, is what my mind seems to rest assured of, as much as of anything that I see with my eyes; at least it is so at times. But I have oftentimes since that first conviction, had quite another kind of sense of God’s sovereignty, than I had then. I have often since, not only had a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine of God’s sovereignty has very often appeared, an exceeding pleasant, bright and sweet doctrine to me: and absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not with this. 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, I Tim. 1:17. ‘‘Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever

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and ever, Amen.’’ As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were di√used through it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite di√erent from anything I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was; and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be wrapped up to God in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him. I kept saying, and as it were singing over these words of Scripture to myself; and went to prayer, to pray to God that I might enjoy him; and prayed in a manner quite di√erent from what I used to do; with a new sort of a√ection. But it never came into my thought, that there was anything spiritual, or of a saving nature in this. From about that time, I 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. I had an inward, sweet sense of these things, that at times came into my heart; and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. [. . .] Not long after I first began to experience these things, I gave an account to my father, of some things that had passed in my mind. I was pretty much a√ected by the discourse we had together. And when the discourse was ended, I walked abroad alone, in a solitary place in my father’s pasture, for contemplation. And as I was walking there, and looked up on the sky and clouds; there came into my mind, a sweet sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express. I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction: majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness. After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of everything was altered: there seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost everything. God’s excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon and stars; in the clouds, and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon, for a long time; and so in the

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daytime, spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things: in the meantime, singing forth with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. And scarce anything, among all the works of nature, was so sweet to me as thunder and lightning. Formerly, nothing had been so terrible to me. I used to be a person uncommonly terrified with thunder: and it used to strike me with terror, when I saw a thunderstorm rising. But now, on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God at the first appearance of a thunderstorm. And used to take the opportunity at such times, to fix myself to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God’s thunder: which oftentimes was exceeding entertaining, leading me to sweet contemplations of my great and glorious God. And while I viewed, used to spend my time, as it always seemed natural to me, to sing or chant forth my meditations; to speak my thoughts in soliloquies, and speak with a singing voice. [. . .] The delights which I now felt in things of religion, were of an exceeding di√erent kind, from those forementioned, that I had when I was a boy. They were totally of another kind; and what I then had no more notion or idea of, than one born blind has of pleasant and beautiful colors. They were of a more inward, pure, soul-animating and refreshing nature. Those former delights, never reached the heart; and did not arise from any sight of the divine excellency of the things of God; or any taste of the soulsatisfying, and life-giving good, there is in them. My sense of divine things seemed gradually to increase, till I went to preach at New York;* which was about a year and a half after they began. While I was there, I felt them, very sensibly, in a much higher degree, than I had done before. My longings after God and holiness, were much increased. Pure and humble, holy and heavenly Christianity, appeared exceeding amiable to me. I felt in me a burning desire to be in everything a complete Christian; and conformed to the blessed image of Christ: and * Edwards preached for a small Presbyterian congregation in New York City during 1722 and 1723.

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that I might live in all things, according to the pure, sweet and blessed rules of the gospel. I had an eager thirsting after progress in these things. My longings after it, put me upon pursuing and pressing after them. It was my continual strife day and night, and constant inquiry, how I should be more holy, and live more holily, and more becoming a child of God, and disciple of Christ. I sought an increase of grace and holiness, and that I might live an holy life, with vastly more earnestness, than ever I sought grace, before I had it. I used to be continually examining myself, and studying and contriving for likely ways and means, how I should live holily, with far greater diligence and earnestness, than ever I pursued anything in my life: but with too great a dependence on my own strength; which afterwards proved a great damage to me. My experience had not then taught me, as it has done since, my extreme feebleness and impotence, every manner of way; and the innumerable and bottomless depths of secret corruption and deceit, that there was in my heart. However, I went on with my eager pursuit after more holiness; and sweet conformity to Christ. [. . .] On January 12, 1723, I made a solemn dedication of myself to God, and wrote it down; giving up myself, and all that I had to God; to be for the future in no respect my own; to act as one that had no right to himself, in any respect. And solemnly vowed to take God for my whole portion and felicity; looking on nothing else as any part of my happiness, nor acting as if it were: and his law for the constant rule of my obedience: engaging to fight with all my might, against the world, the flesh and the devil, to the end of my life. But have reason to be infinitely humbled, when I consider, how much I have failed of answering my obligation. [. . .] I had great longings for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom in the world. My secret prayer used to be in great part taken up in praying for it. If I heard the least hint of any thing that happened in any part of the world, that appeared to me, in some respect or other, to have a favorable aspect on the interest of Christ’s kingdom, my soul eagerly catched at it; and it would much animate and refresh me. I used to be earnest to read

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public newsletters, mainly for that end; to see if I could not find some news favorable to the interest of religion in the world. I very frequently used to retire into a solitary place, on the banks of Hudson’s River, at some distance from the city, for contemplation on divine things, and secret converse with God; and had many sweet hours there. Sometimes Mr. Smith* and I walked there together, to converse of the things of God; and our conversation used much to turn on the advancement of Christ’s kingdom in the world, and the glorious things that God would accomplish for his church in the latter days. 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. [. . .] Since I came to this town,† I have often had sweet complacency in God in views of his glorious perfections, and the excellency of Jesus Christ. God has appeared to me, a glorious and lovely Being, chiefly on the account of his holiness. The holiness of God has always appeared to me the most lovely of all his attributes. The doctrines of God’s absolute sovereignty, and free grace, in showing mercy to whom he would show mercy; and man’s absolute dependence on the operations of God’s Holy Spirit, have very often appeared to me as sweet and glorious doctrines. These doctrines have been much my delight. God’s sovereignty has ever appeared to me, as [a] great part of his glory. It has often been sweet to me to go to God, and adore him as a sovereign God, and ask sovereign mercy of him.

* John Smith, with whom Edwards boarded in New York. † Edwards arrived in Northampton in 1726 as an assistant minister to his grandfather Solomon Stoddard. He was dismissed in 1750 following a bitter controversy with his congregation over the terms of admission to church membership.

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I have loved the doctrines of the gospel: they have been to my soul like green pastures. The gospel has seemed to me to be the richest treasure; the treasure that I have most desired, and longed that it might dwell richly in me. The way of salvation by Christ, has appeared in a general way, glorious and excellent, and most pleasant and beautiful. It has often seemed to me, that it would in a great measure spoil heaven, to receive it in any other way. That text has often been a√ecting and delightful to me, Is. 32:2, ‘‘A man shall be an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.’’ It has often appeared sweet to me, to be united to Christ; to have him for my head, and to be a member of his body: and also to have Christ for my teacher and prophet. I very often think with sweetness and longings and pantings of soul, of being a little child, taking hold of Christ, to be led by him through the wilderness of this world. [. . .] Sometimes only mentioning a single word, causes my heart to burn within me: or only seeing the name of Christ, or the name of some attribute of God. And God has appeared glorious to me, on account of the Trinity. It has made me have exalting thoughts of God, that he subsists in three persons; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The sweetest joys of delights I have experienced, have not been those that have arisen from a hope of my own good estate; but in a direct view of the glorious things of the gospel. When I enjoy this sweetness, it seems to carry me above the thoughts of my own safe estate. It seems at such times a loss that I cannot bear, to take o√ my eye from the glorious, pleasant object I behold without me, to turn my eye in upon myself, and my own good estate. My heart has been much on the advancement of Christ’s kingdom in the world. The histories of the past advancement of Christ’s kingdom, have been sweet to me. When I have read histories of past ages, the pleasantest thing in all my reading has been, to read of the kingdom of Christ being promoted. And when I have expected in my reading, to come to any such thing, I have lotted upon it all the way as I read. And my mind has been much entertained and delighted, with the Scripture

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promises and prophecies, of the future glorious advancement of Christ’s kingdom on earth. I have sometimes had a sense of the excellent fullness of Christ, and his meetness and suitableness as a Savior; whereby he has appeared to me, far above all, the chief of ten thousands. And his blood and atonement has appeared sweet, and his righteousness sweet; which is always accompanied with an ardency of spirit, and inward strugglings and breathings and groanings, that cannot be uttered, to be emptied of myself, and swallowed up in Christ. [. . .] I have many times had a sense of the glory of the third person in the Trinity, in his o≈ce of sanctifier; in his holy operations communicating divine light and life to the soul. God in the communications of his Holy Spirit, has appeared as an infinite fountain of divine glory and sweetness; being full and su≈cient to fill and satisfy the soul: pouring forth itself in sweet communications, like the sun in its glory, sweetly and pleasantly di√using light and life. I have sometimes had an a√ecting 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: accompanied with a thirsting after that Word, that it might dwell richly in my heart. I have often since I lived in this town, had very a√ecting views of my own sinfulness and vileness; very frequently so as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together: so that I have often been forced to shut myself up. I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness, and the badness of my heart, since my conversion, than ever I had before. It has often appeared to me, that if God should mark iniquity against me, I should appear the very worst of all mankind; of all that have been since the beginning of the world to this time: and that I should have by far the lowest place in hell. When others that have come to talk with me about their soul concerns, have expressed the sense they have had of their own wickedness, by saying that it seemed to them, that they were as bad as the devil himself; I thought their expressions seemed exceeding faint and feeble, to represent my wickedness. I thought I should

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wonder, that they should content themselves with such expressions as these, if I had any reason to imagine, that their sin bore any proportion to mine. It seemed to me, I should wonder at myself, if I should express my wickedness in such feeble terms as they did. My wickedness, as I am in myself, has long appeared to me perfectly ine√able, and infinitely swallowing up all thought and imagination; like an infinite deluge, or infinite mountains over my head. I know not how to express better, what my sins appear to me to be, than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite. I go about very often, for this many years, with these expressions in my mind, and in my mouth, ‘‘Infinite upon Infinite. Infinite upon Infinite!’’ When I look into my heart, and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell. And it appears to me, that were it not for free grace, exalted and raised up to the infinite height of all the fullness and glory of the great Jehovah, and the arm of his power and grace stretched forth, in all the majesty of his power, and in all the glory of his sovereignty; I should appear sunk down in my sins infinitely below hell itself, far beyond sight of everything, but the piercing eye of God’s grace, that can pierce even down to such a depth, and to the bottom of such an abyss. And yet, I ben’t in the least inclined to think, that I have a greater conviction of sin than ordinary. It seems to me, my conviction of sin is exceeding small, and faint. It appears to me enough to amaze me, that I have no more sense of my sin. I know certainly, that I have very little sense of my sinfulness. That my sins appear to me so great, don’t seem to me to be, because I have so much more conviction of sin than other Christians, but because I am so much worse, and have so much more wickedness to be convinced of. When I have had these turns of weeping and crying for my sins, I thought I knew in the time of it, that my repentance was nothing to my sin. I have greatly longed of late, for a broken heart, and to lie low before God. And when I ask for humility of God, I can’t bear the thoughts of being no more humble, than other Christians. It seems to me, that though their degrees of humility may be suitable for them; yet it would be a vile self-exaltation in me, not to be the lowest in humility of all mankind.

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Others speak of their longing to be humbled to the dust. Though that may be a proper expression for them, I always think for myself, that I ought to be humbled down below hell. ’Tis an expression that it has long been natural for me to use in prayer to God. I ought to lie infinitely low before God. It is a√ecting to me to think, how ignorant I was, when I was a young Christian, of the bottomless, infinite depths of wickedness, pride, hypocrisy and deceit left in my heart. I have vastly a greater sense, of my universal, exceeding dependence on God’s grace and strength, and mere good pleasure, of late, than I used formerly to have; and have experienced more of an abhorrence of my own righteousness. The thought of any comfort or joy, arising in me, on any consideration, or reflection on my own amiableness, or any of my performances or experiences, or any goodness of heart or life, is nauseous and detestable to me. And yet I am greatly aΔicted with a proud and selfrighteous spirit; much more sensibly, than I used to be formerly. I see that serpent rising and putting forth its head, continually, everywhere, all around me. [. . .] LET TER TO DEBORAH HATHEWAY, A YOUNG CONVERT (1741) The town of Su≈eld, Massachusetts, had experienced revivals in 1734, and, as we see in the letter in this volume by the visitor to Su≈eld in July 1741, Edwards was acting as a temporary substitute pastor because of the regular minister’s death. Deborah Hatheway, an eighteen-year-old convert, was probably one of the individuals to whom Edwards preached in the days before he delivered Sinners, during which he praised the people of Su≈eld for their zealousness. This letter, written only a month before the preaching of Sinners, gives us a clue to what Edwards might have said to the people of Enfield after that sermon. His tone here is pastoral and practical, emphasizing how to apply religious teachings to oneself. Self-examination, prayer, and fellowship with other believers are among the measures he advises. The remedy for spiritual fear is love—a theme to which he would return again and again. Another theme he reiterates, reflecting eighteenth-

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century assumptions, is the maintenance of social order. As a young woman, Hatheway can exhort other women and children—her ‘‘equals’’—in public, but men only in private.

Northampton, June 3, 1741 Dear Child, As you desired me to send you in writing some directions, how to conduct yourself in your Christian course, I would now answer your request. The sweet remembrance of the great things I have lately seen at Su≈eld, and the dear a√ections for those persons I have there conversed with, that give good evidences of a saving work of God upon their hearts, inclines me to do anything that lies in my power, to contribute to the spiritual joy and prosperity of God’s people there. And what I write to you, I would also say to other young women there, that are your friends and companions and the children of God; and therefore desire you would communicate it to them as you have opportunity. 1. I would advise you to keep up as great a strife and earnestness in religion in all parts of it, as you would do if you knew yourself to be in a state of nature and was seeking conversion. We advise persons under convictions to be earnest and violent for the kingdom of heaven, but when they have attained to conversion they ought not to be the less watchful, laborious and earnest in the whole work of religion, but the more; for they are under infinitely greater obligations. For want of this, many persons in a few months after their conversion have begun to lose the sweet and lively sense of spiritual things, and to grow cold and flat and dark, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows, whereas if they had done as the Apostle did, Philippians 3:12–14, their path would have been as the shining light, that shines more and more unto the perfect day. 2. Don’t leave o√ seeking, striving and praying for the very same things that we exhort unconverted persons to strive for, and a degree of which you have had in conversion. Thus pray that your eyes may be opened, that you may receive your sight, that you may know your self, and be brought to God’s foot, and that you may see the glory of God and Christ and may be raised from the dead, and have the love of Christ shed abroad in your

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heart; for those that have most of these things, had need still to pray for them; for there is so much blindness and hardness and pride and death remaining, that they still need to have that work of God wrought upon them, further to enlighten and enliven them; that shall be a bringing out of darkness into God’s marvelous light, and a kind of new conversion and resurrection from the dead. There are very few requests that are proper for a natural person, but that in some sense are proper for the godly. 3. When you hear sermons hear ’em for yourself: though what is spoken in them may be more especially directed to the unconverted, or to those that in other respects are in di√erent circumstances from yourself. Yet let the chief intent of your mind be to consider with yourself, in what respects is this that I hear spoken, applicable to me, and what improvement ought I to make of this for my own soul’s good? 4. Though God has forgiven and forgotten your past sins, yet don’t forget ’em yourself: often remember what a wretched bond slave you was in the land of Egypt. Often bring to mind your particular acts of sin before conversion, as the blessed apostle Paul is often mentioning his old blaspheming, persecuting and injuriousness, to the renewed humbling of his heart and acknowledging that he was the least of the apostles, and not worthy to be called an apostle, and the least of all saints, and the chief of sinners. And be often in confessing your old sins to God, and let that text be often in your mind, Ezek. 16:63, ‘‘That thou mayest remember and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God.’’ 5. Remember that you have more cause, on some accounts a thousand times, to lament and humble yourself for sins that have been since conversion than before, because of the infinitely greater obligations that are upon you to live to God. And look upon the faithfulness of Christ in unchangeably continuing his loving favor, and the unspeakable and saving fruits of his everlasting love, notwithstanding all your great unworthiness since your conversion, to be as great or wonderful, as his grace in converting you. 6. Be always greatly abased for your remaining sin, and never think that you lie low enough for it, but yet don’t be at all discouraged or disheart-

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ened by it; for though we are exceeding sinful, yet we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, the preciousness of whose blood, and the merit of whose righteousness and the greatness of whose love and faithfulness does infinitely overtop the highest mountains of our sins. 7. When you engage in the duty of prayer, or come to the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or attend any other duty of divine worship, come to Christ as Mary Magdalene did, Luke 7:37–38. Come and cast yourself down at his feet and kiss ’em, and pour forth upon him the sweet perfumed ointment of divine love, out of a pure and broken heart, as she poured her precious ointment out of her pure, alabaster, broken box. 8. Remember that pride is the worst viper that is in the heart, the greatest disturber of the soul’s peace and sweet communion with Christ; it was the first sin that ever was, and lies lowest in the foundation of Satan’s whole building, and is the most di≈cultly rooted out, and is the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts, and often creeps in, insensibly, into the midst of religion and sometimes under the disguise of humility. 9. That you may pass a good judgment of the frames you are in, always look upon those the best discourses and the best comforts that have most of these two e√ects, viz. those that make you least, lowest, and most like a little child; and secondly, those that do most engage and fix your heart in a full and firm disposition to deny yourself for God, and to spend and be spent for him. 10. If at any time you fall into doubts about the state of your soul under darkness and dull frames of mind, ’tis proper to look over past experiences, but yet don’t consume too much of your time and strength in poring and puzzling thoughts about old experiences, that in dull frames appear dim and are very much out of sight, at least as to that which is the cream and life and sweetness of them: but rather apply yourself with all your might, to do an earnest pursuit after renewed experiences, new light, and new, lively acts of faith and love. One new discovery of the glory of Christ’s face, and the fountain of his sweet grace and love will do more towards scattering clouds of darkness and doubting in one minute, than examining old experiences by the best mark that can be given, a whole year.

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11. When the exercise of grace is at a low ebb, and corruption prevails, and by that means fear prevails, don’t desire to have fear cast out any other way, than by the reviving and prevailing of love, for ’tis not agreeable to the method of God’s wise dispensations that it should be cast out any other way; for when love is asleep, the saints need fear to restrain them from sin and therefore it is so ordered that at such times fear comes upon them, and that more or less as love sinks. But when love is in lively exercise, persons don’t need fear, and the prevailing of love in the heart, naturally tends to cast out fear, as darkness in a room vanishes away as you let more and more of the perfect beams of the sun into it, I John 4:18. 12. You ought to be much in exhorting and counseling and warning others, especially at such a day as this, Heb. 10:25. And I would advise you especially, to be much in exhorting children and young women your equals; and when you exhort others that are men, I would advise that you take opportunities for it, chiefly when you are alone with them, or when only young persons are present. See I Tim. 2:9, 11–12. 13. When you counsel and warn others, do it earnestly, a√ectionately and thoroughly. And when you are speaking to your equals, let your warnings be intermixed with expressions of your sense of your own unworthiness, and of the sovereign grace that makes you di√er; and if you can with a good conscience, say how that you in yourself are more unworthy than they. 14. If you would set up religious meetings of young women by yourselves, to be attended once in a while, besides the other meetings that you attend, I should think it would be very proper and profitable. 15. Under special di≈culties, or when in great need of or great longings after any particular mercies for your self or others, set apart a day of secret fasting and prayer alone; and let the day be spent not only in petitions for the mercies you desired, but in searching your heart, and looking over your past life, and confessing your sins before God not as is wont to be done in public prayer, but by a very particular rehearsal before God, of the sins of your past life from your childhood hitherto, before and after conversion, with particular circumstances and aggravations, also very particularly and fully as possible, spreading all the abominations of your heart before him.

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16. Don’t let the adversaries of religion have it to say, that these converts don’t carry themselves any better than others. See Matt. 5:47, ‘‘What do ye more than others’’; how holily should the children of God, and the redeemed and the beloved of the Son of God behave themselves? Therefore walk as a child of the light and of the day and adorn the doctrine of God your Savior; and particularly be much in those things, that may especially be called Christian virtues, and make you like the Lamb of God; be meek and lowly of heart and full of a pure, heavenly and humble love to all; and abound in deeds of love to others, and self-denial for others, and let there be in you a disposition to account others better than yourself. 17. Don’t talk of things of religion and matters of experience with an air of lightness and laughter, which is too much the manner in many places. 18. In all your course, walk with God and follow Christ as a little, poor, helpless child, taking hold of Christ’s hand, keeping your eye on the mark of the wounds on his hands and side, whence came the blood that cleanses you from sin and hiding your nakedness under the skirt of the white shining robe of his righteousness. 19. Pray much for the church of God and especially that he would carry on his glorious work that he has now begun; and be much in prayer for the ministers of Christ, and particularly I would beg a special interest in your prayers, and the prayers of your Christian companions, both when you are alone and when you are together, for your a√ectionate friend, that rejoices over you, and desires to be your servant, In Jesus Christ, Jonathan Edwards.

LET TERS TO HIS CHILDREN Edwards and his family lived with the ever-present fear of death because of epidemics, wars, and other circumstances that often shortened life. The letters written to two of his children reprinted here reveal both characteristic sentiments of the day—seek a heavenly state because the earthly state is so uncertain—and something of Edwards’s relationship with his children. He and his wife, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, reared eleven children, all of whom survived childhood, which

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was unusual. Both these letters are written to children who are away from home, an absence that raises for their father the prospect that he might never see them again.

TO MARY EDWARDS (1749)

In this letter to his fifteen-year-old daughter, who is in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Edwards expresses concern that the two of them are so far apart and out of touch—she might die and be buried before he hears of her death. The somber tone of the letter also reflects his worries concerning the bitter controversy he and his congregation are engaged in over his ‘‘opinion about the sacrament’’—that is, his e√orts to change the terms of admission into the church—a struggle that would lead to his dismissal in less than a year. Thus, he commits Mary to the care of God, who is ‘‘everywhere.’’ His first priority as a parent is her ‘‘soul’s good.’’ Earthly parents may not always be present, but the Heavenly Parent is always watching. Mary is ‘‘every moment in his hands’’—a quite di√erent use of the imagery found in Sinners.

Northampton, July 26, 1749 Dear Child, You may well think that it is natural for a parent to be concerned for a child at so great a distance, so far out of view, and so far out of the reach of communication; where, if you should be taken with any dangerous sickness that should issue in death, you might probably be in your grave before we could hear of your danger. But yet my greatest concern is for your soul’s good. Though you are at so great a distance from us, yet God is everywhere. You are much out of the reach of our care, but you are every moment in his hands. We have not the comfort of seeing you, but he sees you. His eye is always upon you. And if you may but be sensibly nigh to him, and have his gracious presence, ’tis no matter though you are far distant from us. I had rather you should remain hundreds of miles distant from us and have God nigh to you by his Spirit, than to have you always with us, and live at a distance from God. And if the next news we should hear of you should be of your death (though that would be very melancholy), yet if withal we should hear of that which should give great grounds to hope that you had died in

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the Lord, how much more comfortable would this be (though we should have no opportunity to see you, or take our leave of you in your sickness), than if we should be with you in all your sickness, and have much opportunity to tend you, and converse and pray with you, and take an a√ectionate leave of you, and after all have reason to apprehend that you died without God’s grace and favor! ’Tis comfortable to have the presence of earthly friends, especially in sickness and on a deathbed; but the great thing is to have God our friend, and to be united to Christ, who can never die anymore, and whom even death can’t separate us from. My desire and daily prayer is that you may, if it may consist with the holy will of God, meet with God where you be, and have much of his divine influences on your heart wherever you may be, and that in God’s due time you may be returned to us again in all respects under the smiles of heaven, and especially in prosperous circumstances in your soul; and that you may find all us alive. But that is uncertain; for you know what a dying time it has been with us in this town, about this time of year, in years past. [. . .] I hope you will maintain a strict and constant watch over yourself and against all temptations: that you don’t forget and forsake God; and particularly that you don’t grow slack in secret religion. Retire often from this vain world, and all its bubbles, empty shadows, and vain amusements, and converse with God alone; and seek that divine grace and comfort, the least drop of which is more worth than all the riches, gaiety, pleasures and entertainments of the whole world. [. . .] We are all through divine goodness in a tolerable state of health. The ferment in town runs very high concerning my opinion about the sacrament: but I am no better able to foretell the issue than when I last saw you. But the whole family has indeed much to put us in mind and make us sensible of our dependence on God’s care and kindness, and of the vanity of all human dependences. And we are very loudly called to seek his face, trust in him, and walk closely with him. Commending you to the care and special favor of an heavenly Father, I am Your very a√ectionate father, Jonathan Edwards. Your mother and all the family give their love to you.

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TO TIMOTHY EDWARDS (1753)

Edwards’s son Timothy left home at age fourteen to attend the College of New Jersey. While on the way, he contracted a ‘‘distemper’’ (illness). As with his earlier letter to daughter Mary, Edwards uses sickness, or the possibility of sickness, as an opportunity to counsel his child about the di≈culty and constant labor of obtaining eternal salvation.

Stockbridge, April 1, 1753 My Dear Child, Before you will receive this letter, the matter will doubtless be determined, as to your having the smallpox. You will either be sick with that distemper, or will be past danger of having it, from any infection taken in your voyage. But whether you are sick or well, like to die or like to live, I hope you are earnestly seeking your salvation. I am sure there is a great deal of reason it should be so, considering the warnings you have had in word and in providence. That which you met with, in your passage from New York to Newark, which was the occasion of your fever, was indeed a remarkable warning, a dispensation full of instruction, and a very loud call of God to you, to make haste and not to delay in the great business of religion. If you now have that distemper, which you have been threatened with, you are separated from your earthly friends; none of them must come to see you; and if you should die of it, you have already taken a final and everlasting leave of them while you are yet alive, not to have the comfort of their presence and immediate care, and never to see them again in the land of the living. And if you have escaped that distemper, it is by a remarkable providence that you are preserved. And your having been so exposed to it, must certainly be a loud call of God, not to trust in earthly friends, or anything here below. Young persons are very apt to trust in parents and friends, when they are sick, or when they think of being on a deathbed. But this providence remarkably teaches you the need of a better Friend, and a better parent, than earthly parents are; one who is everywhere present, and allsu≈cient; that can’t be kept o√ by infectious distempers; who is able to

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save from death or to make happy in death; to save from eternal misery and to bestow eternal life. It is indeed comfortable, when one is in great pain, languishing under sore sickness, to have the presence and kind care of near and dear earthly friends; but this is a very small thing, in comparison of what it is, to have the presence of an heavenly Father and a compassionate and almighty Redeemer. In God’s favor is life, and his lovingkindness is better than life. Whether you are in sickness or health, you infinitely need this. But you must know, however great need you stand in of it, you don’t deserve it. Neither is God the more obliged to bestow it upon you, for your standing in necessity of it, your earnest desiring of it, your crying to him constantly for it, from fear of misery, and taking much pains. Till you have savingly believed in Christ, all your desires, and pains, and prayers lay God under no obligation; and if they were ten thousand times as great as they are, you must still know, that you would be in the hands of a sovereign God, who hath mercy on whom he will have mercy. Indeed, God often hears the poor, miserable cries of sinful, vile creatures, who have no manner of true regard to him in their hearts; for he is a God of infinite mercy, and he delights to show mercy for his Son’s sake; who is worthy, though you are unworthy; who came to save the sinful and the miserable, yea, some of the chief of sinners. Therefore, there is your only hope; and in him must be your refuge, who invites you to come to him, and says, ‘‘He that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out’’ [ John 6:37]. Whatever your circumstances are, it is your duty not to despair, but to hope in infinite mercy through a Redeemer. For God makes it your duty to pray to him for mercy; which would not be your duty, if it was allowable for you to despair. We are expressly commanded to call upon God in the day of trouble; and when we are aΔicted, then to pray. But, if I hear that you have escaped—either that you have not been sick, or are restored—though I shall rejoice, and have great cause of thankfulness, yet I shall be concerned for you. If your escape should be followed with carelessness and security, and forgetting the remarkable warning you

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have had, and God’s great mercy in your deliverance, it would in some respects be more awful than sore sickness. It would be very provoking to God, and would probably issue in an increasing hardness of heart; and, it may be, divine vengeance may soon overtake you. I have known various instances of persons being remarkably warned, in providence, by being brought into very dangerous circumstances and escaping, and afterwards death has soon followed in another way. I earnestly desire, that God would make you wise to salvation and that he would be merciful and gracious to you in every respect, according as he knows your circumstances require. And this is the daily prayer of Your a√ectionate and tender father, Jonathan Edwards. P.S. Your mother and all the family send their love to you, as being tenderly concerned for you. SOME THOUGHTS CONCERNING THE REVIVAL IN NEW ENGLAND (1743) During the Great Awakening, Edwards disagreed with ‘‘enthusiasts,’’ or extremists, who claimed direct revelations from God or who condemned all the established churches and their ministers. Yet he was not about to disown the movement he had done so much to foster. Edwards would expand and refine his views, beginning with Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741) and continuing through Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival (1743) and A Treatise Concerning Religious A√ections (1746). These lengthy essays established Edwards as the most astute observer of revival phenomena of his time, formulating a middle way between pro-revival and anti-revival extremists. By late 1742, with the revival fires waning noticeably, or waxing into fanaticism, Edwards was fixed on the issue of whether the movement had a divine origin and, relatedly, of doing all possible to encourage God’s Spirit to continue to move among the people of New England. In the lengthy treatise Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, he a≈rmed that although there had been some abuses and mistakes, the ‘‘work’’ was indeed from God’s Spirit, that ministers and congregations alike were obliged to do all they could to ‘‘promote’’ it, and that there were specific measures that could be taken to correct errors. In part 3 of this five-part

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enjoinder, Edwards addressed critics of the revivals who had ‘‘injuriously blamed’’ the zealous. Among these zealous were ministers who utilized certain preaching tactics, including appealing to their listeners’ passions and ‘‘speaking terror.’’ For Edwards, the issue was whether an individual’s whole person—what he termed ‘‘the a√ections’’—was changed, rather than merely having emotions temporarily raised. Here, in what amounts to a manifesto on awakening preaching, Edwards defends this brand of rhetoric, thereby providing a rationale for a sermon like Sinners. He compares ministers to physicians; ministers are healers of souls who must use all manner of means to ‘‘search out’’ spiritual wounds and cure them for the good of the patient. ‘‘Our people,’’ Edwards memorably writes, ‘‘don’t so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched.’’

[. . .] One thing that has been complained of, is ministers addressing themselves rather to the a√ections of their hearers than to their understandings, and striving to raise their passions to the utmost height, rather by a very a√ectionate manner of speaking and a great appearance of earnestness in voice and gesture, than by clear reasoning and informing their judgment: by which means, it is objected, that the a√ections are moved without a proportionable enlightening of the understanding. To which I would say, I am far from thinking that it is not very profitable, for ministers in their preaching, to endeavor clearly and distinctly to explain the doctrines of religion, and unravel the di≈culties that attend them, and to confirm them with strength of reason and argumentation, and also to observe some easy and clear method and order in their discourses, for the help of the understanding and memory; and ’tis very probable that these things have been of late, too much neglected by many ministers; yet, I believe that the objection that is made, of a√ections raised without enlightening the understanding, is in a great measure built on a mistake, and confused notions that some have about the nature and cause of the a√ections, and the manner in which they depend on the understanding. All a√ections are raised either by light in the understanding, or by some error and delusion in the understanding; for all a√ections do certainly arise from some apprehension in the understanding; and that

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apprehension must either be agreeable to truth, or else be some mistake or delusion; if it be an apprehension or notion that is agreeable to truth, then it is light in the understanding. Therefore the thing to be inquired into is, whether the apprehensions or notions of divine and eternal things, that are raised in people’s minds by these a√ectionate preachers, whence their a√ections are excited, be apprehensions that are agreeable to truth, or whether they are mistakes. [. . .] I think an exceeding a√ectionate way of preaching about the great things of religion, has in itself no tendency to beget false apprehensions of them; but on the contrary a much greater tendency to beget true apprehensions of them, than a moderate, dull, indi√erent way of speaking of ’em. An appearance of a√ection and earnestness in the manner of delivery, if it be very great indeed, yet if it be agreeable to the nature of the subject, and ben’t beyond a proportion to its importance and worthiness of a√ection, and there be no appearance of its being feigned or forced, has so much the greater tendency to beget true ideas or apprehensions in the minds of the hearers, of the subject spoken of, and so to enlighten the understanding: and that for this reason, that such a way or manner of speaking of these things does in fact more truly represent them, than a more cold and indi√erent way of speaking of them. If the subject be in its own nature worthy of very great a√ection, then a speaking of it with very great a√ection is most agreeable to the nature of that subject, or is the truest representation of it, and therefore has most of a tendency to beget true ideas of it in the minds of those to whom the representation is made. And I don’t think ministers are to be blamed for raising the a√ections of their hearers too high, if that which they are a√ected with be only that which is worthy of a√ection, and their a√ections are not raised beyond a proportion to their importance, or worthiness of a√ection. I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the a√ections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are a√ected with nothing but truth, and with a√ections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are a√ected with. I know it has long been fashionable to despise a very earnest and pathetical way of preaching; and they, and they only have been valued as preachers, that have shown the greatest extent of learning, and strength

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of reason, and correctness of method and language: but I humbly conceive it has been for want of understanding, or duly considering human nature, that such preaching has been thought to have the greatest tendency to answer the ends of preaching; and the experience of the present and past ages abundantly confirms the same. Though as I said before, clearness of distinction and illustration, and strength of reason, and a good method, in the doctrinal handling of the truths of religion, is many ways needful and profitable, and not to be neglected, yet an increase in speculative knowledge in divinity is not what is so much needed by our people, as something else. Men may abound in this sort of light and have no heat: how much has there been of this sort of knowledge, in the Christian world, in this age? Was there ever an age wherein strength and penetration of reason, extent of learning, exactness of distinction, correctness of style, and clearness of expression, did so abound? And yet was there ever an age wherein there has been so little sense of the evil of sin, so little love to God, heavenly-mindedness, and holiness of life, among the professors of the true religion? 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. [. . .] Another thing that some ministers have been greatly blamed for, and I think unjustly, is speaking terror to them that are already under great terrors, instead of comforting them. Indeed, if ministers in such a case go about to terrify persons with that which is not true, or to a√right ’em by representing their case worse than it is, or in any respect otherwise than it is, they are to be condemned; but if they terrify ’em only by still holding forth more light to them, and giving them to understand more of the truth of their case, they are altogether to be justified. When sinners’ consciences are greatly awakened by the Spirit of God, it is by light imparted to the conscience, enabling them to see their case to be, in some measure, as it is; and if more light be let in, it will terrify ’em still more: but ministers are not therefore to be blamed that they endeavor to hold forth more light to the conscience, and don’t rather alleviate the pain they are under, by

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intercepting and obstructing that light that shines already. To say anything to those who have never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, to represent their case any otherwise than exceeding terrible, is not to preach the Word of God to ’em; for the Word of God reveals nothing but truth; but this is to delude them. Why should we be afraid to let persons that are in an infinitely miserable condition, know the truth, or bring ’em into the light, for fear it should terrify them? ’Tis light that must convert them, if ever they are converted. The more we bring sinners into the light, while they are miserable, and the light is terrible to them, the more likely it is that by and by the light will be joyful to them. The ease, peace and comfort, that natural men enjoy, have their foundation in darkness and blindness; therefore as that darkness vanishes, and light comes in, their peace vanishes and they are terrified: but that is no good argument why we should endeavor to hold their darkness, that we may uphold their comfort. [. . .] To blame a minister for thus declaring the truth to those who are under awakenings, and not immediately administering comfort to them, is like blaming a surgeon because when he has begun to thrust in his lance, whereby he has already put his patient to great pain, and he shrinks and cries out with anguish, he is so cruel that he won’t stay his hand, but goes on to thrust it in further, till he comes to the core of the wound. Such a compassionate physician, who as soon as his patient began to flinch, should withdraw his hand, and go about immediately to apply a plaster, to skin over the wound, and leave the core untouched, would be one that would heal the hurt slightly, crying, ‘‘Peace, peace, when there is no peace’’ [ Jer. 6:14, 8:11]. Indeed, something else besides terror is to be preached to them whose consciences are awakened: the gospel is to be preached to them. They are to be told that there is a Savior provided, that is excellent and glorious, who has shed his precious blood for sinners, and is every way su≈cient to save ’em, that stands ready to receive ’em, if they will heartily embrace him; for this is also the truth, as well as that they now are in an infinitely dreadful condition: this is the Word of God. Sinners at the same time that they are told how miserable their case is, should be earnestly invited to come and accept of a Savior, and yield their hearts unto him, with all the

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winning, encouraging arguments for ’em so to do, that the gospel a√ords: but this is to induce ’em to escape from the misery of the condition that they are now in: but not to make ’em think their present condition less miserable than it is, or at all to abate their uneasiness and distress, while they are in it; that would be the way to quiet them, and fasten them in it, and not to excite ’em to fly from it. Comfort, in one sense, is to be held forth to sinners under awakenings of conscience; i.e. comfort is to be o√ered to ’em in Christ, on condition of their flying from their present miserable state to him: but comfort is not to be administered to ’em in their present state, as anything that they have now any title to, while out of Christ. No comfort is to be administered to ’em, from anything in them, any of their qualifications, prayers or other performances, past, present or future; but ministers should, in such cases, strive to their utmost to take all such comforts from ’em, though it greatly increases their terror. A person that sees himself ready to sink into hell is ready to strive, some way or other, to lay God under some obligation to him; but he is to be beat o√ from everything of that nature, though it greatly increases his terror to see himself wholly destitute on every side, of any refuge, or anything of his own to lay hold of; as a man that sees himself in danger of drowning is in terror, and endeavors to catch hold on every twig within his reach, and he that pulls away those twigs from him increases his terror; yet if they are insu≈cient to save him, and by being in his way, prevent his looking to that which will save him, to pull them away is necessary to save his life. If sinners are in any distress, from any error that they embrace, or mistake they are under, that is to be removed. [. . .] But that terror which arises from conviction, or a sight of truth, is to be increased; for those that are most awakened have great remaining stupidity; they have a sense of but little of that which is; and ’tis from remaining blindness and darkness that they see no more; and that remaining blindness is a disease that we ought to endeavor to remove. I am not afraid to tell sinners that are most sensible of their misery, that their case is indeed as miserable as they think it to be, and a thousand times more so; for this is the truth. Some may be ready to say that though it be the truth, yet the truth is not to be spoken at all times, and seems not to be seasonable then: but it seems to me, such

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truth is never more seasonable than at such a time, when Christ is beginning to open the eyes of conscience. Ministers ought to act as co-workers with him; to take that opportunity, and to the utmost to improve that advantage, and strike while the iron is hot, and when the light has begun to shine, then to remove all obstacles, and use all proper means, that it may come in more fully, and the work be done thoroughly then. And experience abundantly shows, that to take this course is not of an hurtful tendency, but very much the contrary: I have seen, in very many instances, the happy e√ects of it, and oftentimes a very speedy happy issue, and never knew any ill consequence in case of real conviction, and when distress has been only from thence. [. . .]

LET TER TO LADY MARY PEPPERRELL (1751) The military and political leader Sir William Pepperrell, who lived in Kittery, Maine, was a supporter of Edwards as a missionary to the Indians at Stockbridge, his new post after he was dismissed from the Northampton church. Edwards had visited Pepperrell and his wife, Lady Mary Pepperrell, in early 1751 soon after assuming that post. At the time, the couple were mourning the death of their young son. In his letter to Lady Pepperrell, Edwards presents a meditation on the attributes of Christ, an object of love for his own sake and an object of adoration and consolation for believers. For Edwards, union with Christ represents the end and resolution of the spiritual journey that begins with the plight of those described in Sinners.

[Stockbridge, November 28, 1751] Madam, When I the last spring was at your house in Kittery, among other instances of your kind and condescending treatment of me was this, that when I had some discourse with Sir William [Pepperell] concerning the Indian a√air and Stockbridge, and he generously o√ered me any assistance in the business of my mission here that his acquaintance and correspondence in London gave him advantage for, and to propose my writing

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to him on our a√airs, you were pleased on this occasion to invite me to write to you at the same time. If I should neglect to do as you then proposed, I should not [only] neglect doing a Christian duty to you, but fail of doing myself a great honor. But as I know from the small acquaintance I had with you that a letter of compliments would not be agreeable to a lady of your disposition, especially under your present melancholy circumstances; so the writing of such a letter is very far from my intention or inclination. When I saw the evidences of your deep sorrow under the awful frowns of heaven in the (then late) death of your only son, it made an impression on my mind that turned my disposition to quite other things than flattery and ceremony. When you mentioned my writing to you, I soon determined what should be the subject of my letter. It was that which appeared to me to be the most proper subject of contemplation for one in your circumstances, and the subject which above all others appeared to me to be a proper and su≈cient source of consolation to one under your heavy aΔiction: and this was the Lord Jesus Christ—with regard especially to two things, viz. his amiableness and love, or his infinite worthiness, and that we should love him and take him for our only portion, rest, hope and joy; the other, his great and unparalleled love to us. And I have been of the same mind ever since, being determined, if God favored me with opportunity to write to Your Ladyship, these things should be the subject of my letter. I will now, therefore, begin with the former of these. Let us think, dear Madam, a little of the loveliness of our blessed Redeemer and his worthiness, that our whole soul should be swallowed up with love to him and delight in him, and that we should salve our hearts in him, rest in him, have sweet complacence and satisfaction of soul in his excellency and beauty whatever else we are deprived of. The Scripture assures us abundantly of his proper divinity, so that we consider him that came into the world in our nature and died for us, as truly possessed of all the fullness of that infinite glory of the Godhead, his infinite greatness and majesty, his infinite wisdom, his infinitely perfect holiness and purity, righteousness and goodness. He is called ‘‘the brightness of God’s glory and the express

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image of his person.’’ He is the image and exhibition of the infinite beauty of the [Deity], in the viewing of which God the Father had all his infinite happiness from eternity. The eternal and immutable happiness of the Deity himself is represented in Scripture as a kind of social happiness, in the society of the persons of the Trinity. [. . .] But especially are the beams of Christ’s glory infinitely softened and sweetened by that other thing which I proposed to consider, viz. his love, his unparalleled, dying love. And here many things are to be considered: one is that the glory of Christ’s person very much consists in that infinite goodness and grace, which has so marvelous a manifestation in his love to us. The apostle John tells us that God is light (I John 1:5) and that he is love (I John 4:8, 16), and his light is an infinitely sweet light because it is the light of love and especially appears so in the person of our Redeemer, who was infinitely the most wonderful instance of love that ever was seen. [. . .] The love of Christ another way tends to sweeten and endear all his virtues and excellencies, viz. as his love has brought him into such a relation to us as our friend, our elder brother, our Lord, our head and spiritual husband, our Redeemer, and hath brought us into so strict an union with him that our souls are his beloved bride. Yea, we are the members of his body, his flesh and his bone (Eph. 5:30). Now, Madam, let us consider what suitable provision God has made for our consolation under all our aΔictions in giving us a Redeemer of such glory and such love, especially when it is considered what were the ends of that great manifestation of his beauty and love in his death. He su√ered that we might be delivered. His soul was exceeding sorrowful even unto death, to take away the sting of sorrow and that we might have everlasting consolation. He was oppressed and aΔicted that we might be supported. He was overwhelmed in the darkness of death and of hell, that we might have the light of life. He was cast into the furnace of God’s wrath, that we might swim in the rivers of pleasure. His heart was overwhelmed in a flood of sorrow and anguish, that our hearts might be filled and overwhelmed with a flood of eternal joy. And now let it be considered what circumstances our Redeemer now is

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in. He was dead but is alive, and he lives forevermore. Death may deprive of dear friends, but it can’t deprive us of this, our best friend. And we have this friend, this mighty Redeemer, to go to under all aΔiction, who is not one that can’t be touched with the feeling of our aΔictions, he having su√ered far greater sorrows than we ever have done. And if we are vitally united to him, the union can never be broken; it will remain when we die and when heaven and earth are dissolved. [. . .] That this glorious Redeemer would manifest his glory and love to you, and apply the little that has been said of these things to your consolation in all your aΔiction, and abundantly reward your generous favors, as when I was at Kittery, is the fervent [prayer] of, Madam, Your Ladyship’s most obliged and a√ectionate friend, And most humble servant, Jonathan Edwards.

ORIGINAL SIN (1758) This is an extract from Edward’s last treatise, The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended, published shortly after his death in 1758. The doctrine of original sin stated that all humankind fell into a sinful state when, as the book of Genesis relates, Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. By the mid-eighteenth century, this idea had come under a great deal of criticism, not to mention satire. For Edwards, however, the extent of human sinfulness, imputed or inherited, or personally compiled through actual commission, was total and could not be diminished by human actions alone. The sole hope for redemption was through God, and specifically through the o√er of grace contained in Christ’s sacrifice. As he did in Sinners, Edwards portrayed the absolute dependence of humankind on a sovereign God to overcome the e√ects of sin. Edwards added a lengthy footnote that gives examples from nature to prove his point. (The novelist Marilynne Robinson recounts in the selection printed in this volume that reading this footnote as a college sophomore sparked the beginning of her intellectual life.) Even more, in this remarkable passage, which comes near the conclusion of the treatise, Edwards extended the nature of dependence of all things on the Creator. God, Edwards declares, upholds and keeps the universe in being from moment to

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moment—as radical a dependence on divine power, forbearance, and hope as perhaps can be conceived.

[. . .] And with respect to the identity of created substance itself, in the di√erent moments of its duration, I think, we shall greatly mistake, if we imagine it to be like that absolute independent identity of the First Being, whereby ‘‘he is the same yesterday, today, and forever’’ [Heb. 13:8]. Nay, on the contrary, it may be demonstrated, that even this oneness of created substance, existing at di√erent times, is a merely dependent identity; dependent on the pleasure and sovereign constitution of Him who worketh all in all. This will follow from what is generally allowed, and is certainly true, that God not only created all things, and gave them being at first, but continually preserves them, and upholds them in being. This being a matter of considerable importance, it may be worthy here to be considered with a little attention. Let us inquire therefore, in the first place, whether it ben’t evident, that God does continually, by his immediate power, uphold every created substance in being; and then let us see the consequence. That God does, by his immediate power, uphold every created substance in being, will be manifest, if we consider, that their present existence is a dependent existence, and therefore is an e√ect, and must have some cause [. . . .] The existences (so to speak) of an e√ect, or thing dependent, in di√erent parts of space or duration, though ever so near one to another, don’t at all coexist one with the other; and therefore are as truly di√erent e√ects, as if those parts of space and duration were ever so far asunder: and the prior existence can no more be the proper cause of the new existence, in the next moment, or next part of space, than if it had been in an age before, or at a thousand miles distance, without any existence to fill up the intermediate time or space. Therefore the existence of created substances, in each successive moment, must be the e√ect of the immediate agency, will, and power of God. If any shall say, this reasoning is not good, and shall insist upon it, that there is no need of any immediate divine power, to produce the present existence of created substances, but that their present existence is the

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Title page of The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended (1758)

e√ect or consequence of past existence, according to the nature of things; that the established course of nature is su≈cient to continue existence, where existence is once given; I allow it: but then it should be remembered, what nature is, in created things: and what the established course of nature is; that, as has been observed already, it is nothing, separate from the agency of God [. . . .] A father, according to the course of nature, begets a child; an oak, according to the course of nature, produces an acorn, or a bud; so according to the course of nature, the former existence of the trunk of the tree is followed by its new or present existence. In the one case, and the other, the new e√ect is consequent on the former, only by the established laws, and settled course of nature; which is allowed to be nothing but the continued immediate e≈ciency of God, according to a constitution that he has been pleased to establish. Therefore, [. . .] that the child and the acorn, which come into existence according to the course of

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nature, in consequence of the prior existence and state of the parent and the oak, are truly immediately created or made by God; so must the existence of each created person and thing, at each moment of it, be from the immediate continued creation of God. It will certainly follow from these things, that God’s preserving created things in being is perfectly equivalent to a continued creation, or to his creating those things out of nothing at each moment of their existence. If the continued existence of created things be wholly dependent on God’s preservation, then those things would drop into nothing, upon the ceasing of the present moment, without a new exertion of the divine power to cause them to exist in the following moment. If there be any who own, that God preserves things in being, and yet hold that they would continue in being without any further help from him, after they once have existence; I think, it is hard to know what they mean. To what purpose can it be, to talk of God’s preserving things in being, when there is no need of his preserving them? Or to talk of their being dependent on God for continued existence, when they would of themselves continue to exist, without his help; nay, though he should wholly withdraw his sustaining power and influence? It will follow from what has been observed, 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. Because its existence at this moment is not merely in part from God, but wholly from him; and not in any part, or degree, from its antecedent existence. For the supposing, that its antecedent existence concurs with God in e≈ciency, to produce some part of the e√ect, is attended with all the very same absurdities, which have been shown to attend the supposition of its producing it wholly. Therefore the antecedent existence is nothing, as to any proper influence or assistance in the a√air: and consequently God produces the e√ect as much from nothing, as if there had been nothing before. So that this e√ect di√ers not at all from the first creation, but only circumstantially; as in first creation there had been no such act and e√ect of God’s power before; whereas, his giving existence afterwards, follows preceding acts and e√ects of the same kind, in an established order.

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Now, in the next place, let us see how the consequence of these things is to my present purpose. If the existence of created substance, in each successive moment, be wholly the e√ect of God’s immediate power, in that moment, without any dependence on prior existence, as much as the first creation out of nothing, then what exists at this moment, by this power, is a new e√ect; and simply and absolutely considered, not the same with any past existence, though it be like it, and follows it according to a certain established method.* And there is no identity or oneness in the case, but what depends on the arbitrary constitution of the Creator; who by his wise sovereign establishment so unites these successive new e√ects, that he treats them as one, by communicating to them like properties, relations, and circumstances; and so, leads us to regard and treat them as one. When I call this an arbitrary constitution, I mean, that it is a constitution which depends on nothing but the divine will; which divine will depends on nothing but the divine wisdom. In this sense, the whole course of nature, with all that belongs to it, all its laws and methods, and * When I suppose, that an e√ect which is produced, every moment, by a new action or exertion of power, must be a new e√ect in each moment, and not absolutely and numerically the same with that which existed in preceding moments, the thing that I intend, may be illustrated by this example. The lucid color or brightness of the moon, as we look steadfastly upon it, seems to be a permanent thing, as though it were perfectly the same brightness continued. But indeed it is an e√ect produced every moment. It ceases, and is renewed, in each successive point of time; and so becomes altogether a new e√ect at each instant; and no one thing that belongs to it, is numerically the same that existed in the preceding moment. The rays of the sun, impressed on that body, and reflected from it, which cause the e√ect, are none of them the same: the impression, made in each moment on our sensory, is by the stroke of new rays: and the sensation, excited by the stroke, is a new e√ect, an e√ect of a new impulse. Therefore the brightness or lucid whiteness of this body is no more numerically the same thing with that which existed in the preceding moment, than the sound of the wind that blows now, is individually the same with the sound of the wind that blew just before, which, though it be like it, is not the same, any more than the agitated air, that makes the sound, is the same; or than the water, flowing in a river, that now passes by, is individually the same with that which passed a little before. And if it be thus with the brightness or color of the moon, so it must be with its solidity, and everything else belonging to its substance, if all be, each moment, as much the immediate e√ect of a new exertion or application of power. [. . .]—JE’s note.

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constancy and regularity, continuance and proceeding, is an arbitrary constitution. In this sense, the continuance of the very being of the world and all its parts, as well as the manner of continued being, depends entirely on an arbitrary constitution: for it don’t all necessarily follow, that because there was sound, or light, or color, or resistance, or gravity, or thought, or consciousness, or any other dependent thing the last moment, that therefore there shall be the like at the next. All dependent existence whatsoever is in a constant flux, ever passing and returning; renewed every moment, as the colors of bodies are every moment renewed by the light that shines upon them; and all is constantly proceeding from God, as light from the sun. ‘‘In him we live, and move, and have our being.’’ [. . .]

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The documents printed in this section, written by eighteenth-century individuals who participated in or witnessed the religious revivals, are crucial to helping us understand the charged atmosphere and tumultuous times in which Sinners was preached. Taken from sermons printed at the time or from handwritten manuscripts, these accounts either reconstruct the days immediately before and after Sinners was delivered or provide descriptions of the actual event. To help modern readers, the selections below have been lightly edited— abbreviations have been expanded, spelling has been regularized, and punctuation has been provided where necessary. Footnotes identify figures

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who appear just once while key individuals are listed in the Glossary. For images of the original manuscript pages and a verbatim transcription of the pieces excerpted here, go to http://edwards.yale.edu/SinnersReader. GILBERT TENNENT, THE DANGER OF AN UNCONVERTED MINISTRY (1740) The Irish-born Gilbert Tennent (1703–64) was a Presbyterian minister in New Brunswick, New Jersey, who became a pivotal figure in the colonial phase of the transatlantic evangelical awakening. He secured his place early on with a single, incendiary sermon. In The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry, Tennent defined many of the terms for the coming conflict between traditionalists and radicals. Invoking the biblical image of the formal, legalistic ‘‘Pharisee-Teachers,’’ whom Jesus had castigated as transgressors and false teachers (Matthew 15), Tennent portrayed much of the clergy of New England and the middle colonies as failed shepherds to their flocks, enemies of the truly godly messengers who ministered with ‘‘authority’’—that is, a calling or gift from God. Tennent’s criticism of the established clergy paved the way for George Whitefield, who in his preaching would echo the theme that ministers were not themselves properly awakened (unconverted), as would even more erratic figures like James Davenport, who combined vilification of the settled clergy with a wild style of preaching.

mark 6:34. And Jesus, when he came out, saw much People, and was moved with Compassion towards them, because they were as Sheep not having a Shepherd. As a faithful Ministry is a great Ornament, Blessing, and Comfort, to the Church of GOD; even the Feet of such Messengers are beautiful: So on the contrary, an ungodly Ministry is a great Curse and Judgment: These Caterpillars labour to devour every green Thing. There is nothing that may more justly call forth our saddest Sorrows, and make all our Powers and Passions mourn, in the most doleful Accents, the most incessant, insatiable, and deploring Agonies; than the melancholy Case of such, who have no faithful Ministry! This Truth is set before our Minds in a strong Light, in the Words that I have chosen

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Title page of Gilbert Tennent, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry (1740)

now to insist upon; in which we have an Account of our Lord’s Grief, with the Causes of it. [. . .] But what was the Cause of this great and compassionate Commotion in the Heart of Christ? It was because he saw much People a Sheep having no Shepherd. Why, had the People then no Teachers? O yes! they had Heaps of Pharisee-Teachers, that came out, no doubt after they had been at the Feet of Gamaliel * the usual Time, and according to the Acts, Canons, and Traditions of the Jewish Church. But notwithstanding of the great Crowds of these Orthodox, Letter-learned and regular Pharisees, our Lord laments the unhappy Case of that great Number of People, who, in the Days of his Flesh, had no better Guides: Because that those were as good as none (in many Respects) in our Saviour’s Judgment. For all them, the People were as Sheep without a Shepherd. * The teacher of the apostle Paul; see Acts 22:3.

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From the Words of our Text, the following Proposition o√ers itself to our Consideration, viz. That the Case of such is much to be pitied, who have no other, but Pharisee-Shepherds, or unconverted Teachers. [. . .] Natural Men, not having true Love to Christ and the Souls of their Fellow-Creatures, hence their Discourses are cold and sapless, and as it were freeze between their Lips! And not being sent of GOD, they want that divine Authority, with which the faithful Ambassadors of Christ are clothed, who herein resemble their blessed Master, of whom it is said, That He taught as one having Authority, and not as the Scribes, Matt. 7:29. And Pharisee-Teachers, having no Experience of a special Work of the Holy Ghost, upon their own Souls, are therefore neither inclined to, nor fitted for Discoursing, frequently, clearly, and pathetically, upon such important Subjects. The Application of their Discourses, is either short, or indistinct and general. They di√erence not the precious from the vile, and divide not to every Man his Portion, according to the Apostolical Direction to Timothy.* No! they carelessly o√er a common Mess to their People, and leave it to them, to divide it among themselves, as they see fit. This is indeed their general Practice, which is bad enough: But sometimes they do worse, by misapplying the Word, through Ignorance, or Anger. They often strengthen the Hands of the Wicked, by promising him Life. They comfort People, before they convince them; sow before they plow; and are busy in raising a Fabrick, before they lay a Foundation. These foolish Builders do but strengthen Men’s carnal Security, by their soft, selfish, cowardly Discourses. They have not the Courage, or Honesty, to thrust the Nail of Terror into Sleeping Souls; nay, sometimes they strive with all their Might, to fasten Terror into the Hearts of the Righteous, and so to make those sad, whom GOD would not have made sad! And this happens, when pious People begin to suspect their Hyprocisie, for * One of the early Christian missionaries who worked with the apostle Paul.

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which they have good Reason. I may add, That inasmuch as PhariseeTeachers seek after Righteousness as it were by the Works of the Law themselves, they therefore do not distinguish as they ought, between Law and Gospel, in their Discourses to others. They keep Driving, Driving, to Duty, Duty, under this Notion, That it will recommend natural Men to the Favour of GOD, or entitle them to the Promises of Grace and Salvation: And thus those blind Guides fix a deluded World upon the false Foundation of their own Righteousness, and so exclude them from the dear Redeemer. All the Doings of unconverted Men, not proceeding from the Principles of Faith, Love, and a new Nature, nor being directed to the divine Glory as their highest End, but flowing from, and tending to Self, as their Principle End; are doubtless damnably wicked in their Manner of Performance, and do deserve the Wrath and Curse of a Sin-avenging GOD; neither can any other Encouragement be justly given them, but this, That in the Way of Duty, there is a Peradventure or Probability of obtaining Mercy. [. . .] The Ministry of natural Men, is for the most part unprofitable; which is confirmed by a threefold Evidence, viz. of Scripture, Reason, and Experience. Such as the LORD sends not, he himself assures us, shall not profit the People at all. [. . .] I may add, that sad Experience verifies what has been now observed, concerning the Unprofitableness of the Ministry of unconverted Men. Look into the Congregations of unconverted Ministers, and see what a sad Security reigns there; not a Soul convinced that can be heard of, for many Years together; and yet the Ministers are easy; for they say they do their Duty! Ay, a small Matter will satisfy us, in the Want of that, which we have no great Desire after. But when Persons have their Eyes opened, and their Hearts set upon the Work of God; they are not so soon satisfied with their Doings, and with Want of Success for a Time. [. . .] [. . .] My Brethren, we should mourn over those, that are destitute of faithful Ministers, and sympathize with them. Our Bowels should be moved with the most compassionate Tenderness, over those dear fainting Souls,

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that are as Sheep having no Shepherd; and that after the Example of our blessed LORD! Dear Sirs! we should also most earnestly pray for them, that the compassionate Saviour may preserve them, by his mighty Power, thro’ Faith unto Salvation; support their sinking Spirits, under the melancholy Uneasinesses of a dead Ministry; sanctify and sweeten to them the dry Morsels they get under such blind Men, when they have none better to repair to. And more especially, my Brethren, we should pray to the LORD of the Harvest, to send forth faithful Labourers into his Harvest; seeing that the Harvest truly is plenteous, but the Labourers are few. And O Sirs! how humble, believing, and importunate should we be in this Petition! O! let us follow the LORD, Day and Night, with Cries, Tears, Pleadings, and Groanings upon this Account! For GOD knows, there is a great Necessity of it. [. . .] [. . .] If it be so, that the Case of those, who have no other, or no better than Pharisee-Teachers, is to be pitied: Then what a Scroll and Scene of Mourning, and Lamentation, and Wo, is opened! because of the Swarm of Locusts, the Crowds of Pharisees, that have as covetously, as cruelly, crept into the Ministry, in this adulterous Generation! who as nearly resemble the Character given of the old Pharisees, . . . as one Crow’s Egg does another. It is true some of the modern Pharisees have learned to prate a little more orthodoxly about the New Birth, than their Predecessor Nicodemus,* who are, in the mean Time, as great Strangers to the feeling Experience of it, as he. They are blind who see not this to be the Case of the Body of the Clergy, of this Generation. And O! that our Heads were Waters, and our Eyes a Fountain of Tears, that we could Day and Night lament, with the utmost Bitterness, the doleful Case of the poor Church of God, upon this account. From what has been said, we may learn, That such who are contented under a dead Ministry, have not in them the Temper of that Saviour they * John 3 tells the story of the Pharisee Nicodemus, who secretly met with Jesus and was told that in order to get into the kingdom of heaven he must be ‘‘born again.’’

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profess. It’s an awful Sign, that they are as blind as Moles, and as dead as Stones, without any spiritual Taste and Relish. And alas! isn’t this the Case of Multitudes? If they can get one, that has the Name of a Minister, with a Band,* and a Black Coat or Gown to carry on a Sabbath-days among them, although never so coldly, and insuccessfully; if he is free from gross Crimes in Practice, and takes good Care to keep at a due Distance from their Consciences, and is never troubled about his Insuccessfulness; O! think the poor Fools, that is a fine Man indeed; our Minister is a prudent charitable Man, he is not always harping upon Terror, and sounding Damnation in our Ears, like some rash-headed Preachers, who by their uncharitable Methods, are ready to put poor People out of their Wits, or to run them into Despair; O! how terrible a Thing is that Despair! Ay, our Minister, honest Man, gives us good Caution against it. Poor silly Souls! [. . .] [. . .] It is also an unquestionable Truth, that ordinarily GOD blesses most the best Gifts, for the Hearers Edification, as by the best Food he gives the best Nourishment. Otherwise the best Gifts would not be desireable, and GOD Almighty in the ordinary Course of his Providence, by not acting according to the Nature of Things, would be carrying on a Series of unnecessary Miracles; which to suppose, is unreasonable[. . . .] If God’s People have a Right to the Gifts of all God’s Ministers, pray, why mayn’t they use them, as they have Opportunity? And if they should go a few Miles farther than ordinary, to enjoy those, which they profit most by; who do they wrong? [. . .] But the Example of our Dear Redeemer, will give farther Light in this Argument. Tho’ many of the Hearers, not only of the Pharisees, but of John the Baptist, came to hear our Saviour, and that not only upon Weekdays, but upon Sabbath-days, and that in great Numbers, and from very distant Places; yet he reproved them not: And did not our Lord love the Apostle John more than the rest, and took him with him, before others, * That is, the white collar worn by a minister; see the portraits of Edwards at the beginnings of the sections, in which he is wearing ‘‘Geneva’’ bands.

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with Peter and James, to Mount Tabor, and Gethsemany? Matt. 17 and chap. 26. To bind Men to a particular Minister, against their Judgment and Inclinations, when they are more edified elsewhere, is carnal with a Witness; a cruel Oppression of tender Consciences, a Compelling of Men to Sin: For he that doubts, is damn’d if he eat;* and whatsoever is not of Faith, is Sin. [. . .] [. . .] Is not the visible Church composed of Persons of the most contrary Characters? While some are sincere Servants of God, are not many Servants of Satan, under a religious Mask? and have not these a fixed Enmity against the other? How is it then possible, that a Harmony should subsist between such, till their Nature be changed? Can Light dwell with Darkness? [. . .] And O! that vacant Congregations would take due Care in the Choice of their Ministers! Here indeed they should hasten slowly. The Church of Ephesus is commended, for Trying them which said they were Apostles, and were not; and for finding them Liars. Hypocrites are against all Knowing of others, and Judging, in order to hide their own Filthiness; like Thieves they flee a Search, because of their stolen Goods. [. . .] [. . .] LET TER FROM A VISITOR TO SUFFIELD, CONNECTICU T (1741) This letter, probably intended for the Reverend Benjamin Colman of Boston and extraordinary for its detail, was written by an unidentified writer in July 1741, the month that Edwards preached Sinners, and copied by the Boston merchant and evangelical supporter Samuel Savage. The author, who obviously knew Edwards, * That is, partakes of the Lord’s Supper (communion). Within Tennent’s Presbyterianism and Edwards’s Congregationalism, it was believed that those who partook of the Lord’s Supper unworthily (while guilty of an unrepented o√ense) would, as the Bible warns, ‘‘eat and drink damnation unto themselves.’’

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describes an earlier service Edwards gave at the pastorless Su≈eld church, at which he admitted an unusually large number of people—possibly the most ever admitted to a service in a single day in colonial New England. Over the next couple of days, the letter writer also met with an ‘‘awakened’’ deaf-mute and attended a crowded, highly emotional private meeting led by Edwards in a Su≈eld house. This letter gives a unique glimpse of the range of activities and variety of religious experiences occurring in the early days of the Great Awakening, particularly during the three days leading up to the preaching of Sinners.

Yesterday [ July 5] I got to this Town [Su≈eld], where I kept the Sabbath; and had the Joyfull Opportunity of setting down to the sacrament with about 470 Communicants, 93 of which were admitted by Mr. Edwards of Northampton, who preached here Yesterday morning. The sight was truly glorious: 93 Persons, chiefly middle Aged, admitted to the Lord’s Table; One Owned the Covenant and the Infants baptized: Mr. [Ebenezer] Devotion the late Minister died this Spring, since which Mr. [Timothy] Woodbridge has preached here occasionally; but the Famous [Benjamin] Pomeroy has been instrumental in this mighty Work; this Mr. Pomeroy with Mr. [Eleazar] Wheelock, [ Jedidiah] Mills, [ Joseph] Bellamy and Some others ride about preaching in many Places, and scarcely any where without remarkable success:* They do it on Each day of the week and at ten Miles distant (by the people’s going). I find I am to hear Mr. Pomeroy a few hours hence. In this place I yesterday saw a dumb and deaf man, and in the Evening sent for him and One that could Exchange his thoughts for mine. This Person has at this remarkable Time been carried through great distress to Considerable Joy; his Distress was so great that, from his Knees in his Chamber, where he was found praying, he was heard by an Unusual noise at near a mile’s distance, not by One only, but by the whole neighborhood within this Space, so as to draw * Ebenezer Devotion (1684–1741) was a Congregational minister in Su≈eld; Jedidiah Mills (1697–1776) a Congregational minister in Stratford, Connecticut, and a New Light preacher; and Joseph Bellamy (1719–90) a Congregational minister in Bethlehem, Connecticut, as well as a student and defender of Edwards and one of the key formulators of the New Divinity.

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Benjamin Colman

them together, when they found him in the greatest agonies, Sweat ran down in Streams, heaving with his breast, and panting as if Just Expiring; Since which he has received Comfort, and has embraced the Lord Jesus Christ; My Inquiries were about the Competence of his Knowledge, without which either the Work might be doubted of, or a miracle must be wrought, and I found he had a Knowledge of three in One; and One in three;* I believe he had this Communicated to him by signs instead of sounds, but Can’t learn he had any Suitable Knowledge of Christ as the way to the Father: Indeed, Signs cannot Convey the necessity of a Propitiation, but if they could, be sure they would fail of showing a God-man to be necessary to be of account, And yet to be Equal with God. But when I see you, I’ll acquaint you more fully of an A√air which makes a great noise here. * That is, the Trinity.

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July 7th Yesterday I reached Hartford, 17 miles from Su≈eld, the chief of the day being rainy, which gave me Opportunity without Loss of Time in the Afternoon To hear the famous Pomeroy and Wheelock, who both preached at Windsor with only a short Prayer and a Hymn between the Sermons. Mr. Wheelock in my Judgment Exceeds Mr. Whitefield in digested Divinity, Clearness and beauty of style. (Yes, and is very correct too, though he preaches wholly memoritor,* and as much as Mr. Whitefield Extempore,† in strength of Reason, Gesture, and Tone and Accent in the presence of his Mind and the spirit with which he speaks; perhaps he equals him in Fervor, and it may be don’t fall below him in Grace, or comes short of him in success.) This Gentleman and Mr. Pomeroy I think has with Mr. Edwards been improved and owned at Su≈eld where, I wrote you in my last, I saw 93 admitted last sabbath to the Lord’s Table, and since which Mr. Edwards has corrected my Account and says there were 96, most which after Strong Convictions and of short Continuance were filled with Peace and Joy. The morning following, which was Yesterday, being detained by rain, I thought I would step in and hear what Mr. Edwards had Invited the people to the day before. I was late and lost the sermon, but come just after it and soon enough to see the E√ects of it; it was in a private House, where two large Rooms were filled with Children, Youth and aged persons of both Sexes, In Number I Judge about 200. When I came within about a Quarter of a mile of the house, I met one leading his daughter home, perhaps to put her in bed; immediately after this heard a Confused, but very A√ecting Noise, which as I drew near perceived to Come from di√erent Ages and sexes proceeding wholly from distress, but of di√erent degrees: the lowest kind seemed like Sobs of bereaved Friends, higher than these were Groans and Screeches, as of women in the Pains of Childbirth; but above these were Howlings and Yellings, which to Even a Carnal Man might point out Hell, and * That is, by memory, without using notes. † That is, extemporaneously, or without any prepared message. This is high praise indeed for Wheelock, considering how popular Whitefield was at the time.

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Convince him that Conscience let loose, sights of a holy Absolute God, and men’s vileness, must either lead him to Christ, or Cause Damnation when there is no literal Fire. When I came into the Room the sights did not di√er from the sounds, but Evidently held forth the same distress in the several degrees of it—bereavement, litteral Child birth, and the Torments of Hell—nor were the E√ects of this distress less Surprising. Faintings in the lowest, and enervation in the Higher, and the highest were so entirely unbraced that you would have thought their bones all broken, or rather that they had no bones. So much as to this Extraordinary thing as it o√ered to the Senses. To the mind it held forth (to be sure to my mind it did) man’s Vileness by his Fall in Adam, a holy jealous God, and the wonders of his Grace and love in Christ Jesus: Grace and Love indeed, they thought, who were brought from the highest degree of this distress (as they Expressed it), from the lowest pit of Hell, and had their Feet placed on a Rock. It held about 3 hours, in which space Mr. Edwards chose to carry on by Prayer chiefly, and being faint called in the Assistance of 4 or 5 private Christians. In so short a space a great number, perhaps 15– 20 or more, were brought to di√erent degrees of Peace and Joy, Some to Rapture, all extolling the Lord Jesus Christ, all begging and beseeching Each One they could speak to to Come to a Redeemer who had showed them his mercy, and was willing to do it to all who could believe, or desire his Grace. I rode with Mr. Edwards from Su≈eld to Escantic, or East Windsor, to hear Mr. Pomeroy and Mr. Wheelock.

STEPHEN WILLIAMS’S EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE PREACHING OF SINNERS (1741) As a child living in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in 1704, Stephen Williams, Edwards’s cousin, was captured by French and Indian marauders during a raid in which 56 English settlers were killed and 112 carried o√ to Canada, among them Williams. He was then ‘‘redeemed,’’ or repatriated, and went on to become the longtime minister of Longmeadow, Massachusetts. He was also a supporter of the revivals, although a cautious one. He kept a lengthy, invaluable diary, from

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which we present the entries concerning the events of July 7 and 8 in Su≈eld, both those related by the anonymous visitor above and a detailed firsthand account of Edwards’s preaching of Sinners and its e√ect on its hearers. Williams, writing in his characteristic telegraphic style, recorded that the ‘‘crying out’’ of the congregation was so loud that Edwards had to ‘‘desist,’’ which suggests he was not able to finish the sermon. With Eleazar Wheelock (‘‘Brother W’’ or ‘‘Mr. W.’’), Williams and Edwards divided up the hearers and prayed with them. Subsequent entries show Edwards continuing to preach abroad after July 8 to great e√ect.

July 7, 1741. Went to Enfield in forenoon; afternoon went to Su≈eld where I heard of the remarkable outpouring of the Spirit of God: 95 persons added to church. About sun, an hour higher, we had an Exercise on the meeting House Hill. Mr Meacham* began with prayer. Brother Wheelock preached from Hosea 13:13, the congregation remarkably attentive and Grave, and Some after the Exercise Seemed to take on for others, etc. In the Evening Mr. Meacham preached in the meeting House from Habakkuk 3:12, and there was considerable crying among the people, in one part of the House or another, yea, and a Screeching in the streets. One woman came to the House where I lodged that was Greatly distressed, but She Gave a very imperfect account of things, etc. [ July] 8, 1741. This forenoon Mr. Meacham preached from that [text] in 2 Corinthians 5:20, and Mr. Wheelock from Acts 7:2–5, the discourses Solemn and the congregation considerably a√ected, and many cried out. We retired to Mr. R——’s,† and dined, and then went over to Enfield, where we met Dear Mr. Edwards of Northampton, who preached a most awakening Sermon from those words, Deuteronomy 32:35; and before the Sermon was done there was a great moaning, and crying out throughout the whole House, ‘‘What shall I do to be Saved?,’’ ‘‘Oh, I am going to Hell,’’ ‘‘Oh, what shall I do for a Christ,’’ etc., etc., So that the minister was obliged to desist. Shrieks and cries were piercing and Amazing. After Some time of waiting the congregation were still, So that a prayer was * Joseph Meacham (1685–1752), a Congregational minister in South Coventry, Connecticut, and New Light preacher. † Not further identified.

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Two manuscript pages from Stephen Williams’s diary, with entries dated July 6–8, 1741, containing his account of the preaching of Sinners

made by Mr. Wheelock; and after that we descended from the pulpit and discoursed with the people, Some in one place and Some in another; and Amazing and Astonishing! the power [of ] God was Seen, and Several Souls were hopefully wrought upon that night; and oh! the cheerfulness and pleasantness of their countenances that received comfort. Oh, that God would strengthen and confirm, etc. We Sung an hymn and prayed and dispersed the Assembly. . . . Aug. 1, 1741. This morning I hear of Dear Mr. Edwards preaching at Hadley, and that the e√ect was more wonderful as at Enfield. Oh Lord, be pleased to carry on thy work, etc. [. . .]

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Oct. 14, 1741. At Enfield, Mr. Edwards of Northampton preached to a very wondrous Audience. The Lord Grant his word may be profitable, etc. [. . .] ELEAZAR WHEELOCK’S PASTORAL LET TER ABOU T THE PREACHING OF SINNERS (1741) Eleazar Wheelock was the minister of a Congregational church, an evangelist, the founder of an Indian Charity School in Connecticut, and the first president of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. As an itinerating preacher, usually

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with Benjamin Pomeroy, minister of Hebron, Connecticut, he was controversial during the Great Awakening, but, as the letter above from the anonymous visitor to Su≈eld indicates, highly esteemed among supporters of revivals for his abilities. Along with Stephen Williams, Wheelock was among the ministers in the Enfield church when Edwards preached Sinners. His July 11, 1741, letter to his congregation mentions the Enfield sermon—preached to ‘‘a Great assembly’’—as but one episode among many such amazing instances of revival in towns up and down the Connecticut River. The almost breathless pace of his prose, including a hint that the current commotions may be the dawn of the millennium, conveys the urgency and excitement of the movement.

To the Church and People of God in Lebanon North Parish Dearly Beloved I Came to Windsor* yesterday with a Design to Come to you this Day. The Lord Bowed the heavens and Came Down upon the assembly the Last night, the house seemed to be filled with his Great Power, a very Great Number Crying out under a Sense of the wrath of God and the weight of their Guilt, 13 or 14 we Believe Converted. My Dear Brother Pomeroy Came to me this morning from Mr. Marsh’s† Parish where the work was also Great the Last night. We were Just setting out to Come home but a Number of people were met together and the Distress among them soon arose to such an heighth that we think we have a Call of Providence to Continue here over the Sabbath. Several have been Converted already this morning. There is now work Enough for 10 Ministers in this town, and there is a very Glorious Work at Su≈eld and it was very marvelous in a Great assembly at Enfield Last Wednesday—ten or twelve Converted there. Much of his‡ power was Seen at Longmeadow on Thursday, 6 or 7 Converted there and a Great Number wounded. There was Considerable Seen at Springfield Old Town on Thursday Night and much of it again yesterday morning at Longmeadow—people Everywhere throng[ing] together to hear the word, and I do verily believe these are the * Possibly East Windsor, Edwards’s birthplace where his father, Timothy, was pastor. † Jonathan Marsh (1685–1747), a Congregational minister in Windsor, Connecticut. ‡ The Holy Spirit’s.

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beginning of the Glorious things that are Spoken Concerning the City of our God in the Latter day. I am much Concerned for Some that Remain yet Stupid and Blind among my Dear flock. I Desire your Continual Remembrance of me, your poor pastor, in your prayers to God, that I may be Strengthened in the inward and outward man to all that the Lord shall Call me to. I hope to be with you at the beginning of next week. I am, Your souls’ Friend and servant for Christ, Eleazar Wheelock

WILLIAM RAND, THE L ATE RELIGIOUS COMMOTIONS IN NEW ENGL AND CONSIDERED (1743) Those who were opposed to the revivals, the so-called Old Lights (in New England; Old Siders in the middle colonies), as opposed to New Lights, such as Edwards, criticized Whitefield and itinerating preachers; they were against exhortation by women, children, and slaves, and they attacked the epistemological and theological justifications for revival. The Old Lights emphasized the role of reason and order in religious life, rather than appealing to ‘‘enthusiasm,’’ base passions. The people, in their view, had no right to castigate or abandon their ministers, as rabble-rousers such as Gilbert Tennent had advocated in The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry. Here is an excerpt from such an Old Light, William Rand of Sunderland, Massachusetts. He was Edwards’s neighbor and would have had opportunities to hear him speak. This work is a point-by-point critique of Edwards’s 1741 treatise The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, in which Edwards gave a series of both negative and positive signs of true grace, all to a≈rm that despite some abuses and errors, the revivals were indeed a work of God’s Spirit. Rand could hardly denigrate Edwards as an itinerant since he was a settled pastor and one frequently asked to preach in surrounding pulpits; nor could he attack Edwards’s intellect or preaching. Instead, he engaged in a careful examination of Edwards’s points, identifying the questionable preaching and practices that Edwards was supporting among revival proponents. The excerpt below was especially relevant to the type of terror preaching Edwards utilized in Sinners and defended in other New Light preachers. Cleverly, Rand found a weak spot in

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Edwards’s strategy of focusing on young people and even children as a way of instigating revival in his congregation.

[. . .] Another Thing which seems to have a dark Aspect upon the Work is, that it seems to have had its Rise and to have been very much carried on by such Kind of Preaching as does not well agree with the Preaching of Christ and his Apostles. Mr. Edwards asserts, ‘‘That it is no Argument that a Work is not from the Spirit of God, that it seems to be promoted by Ministers insisting very much on the Terrors of God’s holy Law, and that with a great deal of Pathos and Earnestness.’’ In order to settle this Point, I think, we need do no more than look into the Method of Preaching of Christ and his Apostles; and compare this Preaching which hath produced these wonderful E√ects, with the Sermons we have recorded in the New Testament. Now Christ and his Apostles usually in their Preaching addressed themselves to the Reason and Understanding of their Hearers: They laid Matter for Conviction before them in a calm and rational Manner; and thus they treated their Hearers as rational Creatures; not beginning at first to Work upon their Passions and A√ections. They used very much Gentleness and Mildness in their Preaching. Thus when Christ preached, his Hearers wondered at the gracious Words which proceeded out of his Mouth. So the Evangelist John says, The Law was given by Moses, but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ. And thus it is said of such as enjoy the Gospel Dispensation, Ye are not come unto the Mount that burned with Fire, nor unto Blackness and Darkness and Tempest, and the Sound of a Trumpet, and the Voice of Words, which Voice they that heard intreated that the Word should not be spoken to them any more. —— And so terrible was the Sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake: But ye are come to Mount Zion.—— Heb. 12. 18. If this be a Description of the terrible Manner of the giving of the Law; and of the mild and gentle Manner of the Dispensation of the Gospel, as I conclude all Expositors judge; it appears to me that those Preachers who have had the greatest Hand in promoting this Work, come nearer to the

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Example of the giving the Law from Mount Sinai, than to that of the first Promulgation of the Gospel. But it will be said, Did not Christ preach the Terrors of the Law, and the Damnation of Hell? In answer to that, this I say, That Christ expressed himself with a great deal of Severity against the Scribes and Pharisees, denounced many Woes against them, but then it is to be considered that they were professed Enemies to Christ and his Religion, and therefore he did not use that Mildness, when he addressed himself to them, which generally appear’d in his Preaching. . . . And I will appeal to any one who hath had Opportunity to be acquainted with these Things, whether those Preachers that have been thought to be most successful in the present Work, have not mainly (if not wholly), addressed the Passions of their Hearers, and neglected to address their Reason and Understanding. If so, not only the Example of Christ and his Apostles, but also the Reason and Nature of Things is against them. It hath always been the Method of false Teachers, thus to work upon the Passions of Men, while they have artfully avoided addressing their Reason; because their Doctrine and their Designs would not bear the Examination of unbiassed Reason. I would not be thought to charge these Gentlemen with any ill Design; but I think it is abundantly evident, that their Conduct, in this Instance, hath very much resembled that of false Teachers, who have always been very shy of close Reasoning, chusing rather to have their Scheme admitted by the A√ections. Now that this is an Argument against the Work, let any one judge that observes a Remark which Mr. Edwards makes, . . . ‘‘It is chiefly young Persons that have been the Subjects of it’’ (that is, of the Work he is speaking of ), ‘‘who have less Steadiness and Experiences, and are in the Heat of Youth.’’ Can it be wondered at, if such Persons, when they have had their Passions violently attacked by these Preachers, and by their Imitators the Lay Exhorters, I say, can it be wondered at, that they should cry out, and discover such violent Emotions of A√ections, as have been common; and yet remain in the same State that they were in before. I cannot see here how the crying out, etc., is any Argument of the Operation of the Spirit of God upon them. If Persons should cry out thus when

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they heard a Minister preach in a calm and rational Manner (following the Example of Christ), I should think it looked much more likely that such Persons were under the Influence of the Divine Spirit. It is undoubtedly a decent and beautiful Thing for Ministers to preach in such a Manner as to shew that they are in earnest in what they say. They should feel the Weight of the Truths they deliver. And this I take may be done generally in a mild and calm Manner, or at least without the Boisterousness and violent Emotions of Passion, which appear in those Ministers who have been thought the most successful. When Ministers particularly address themselves to Children and young Persons, it looks very improper to discover violent Emotions of Passions. I know no Example in Scripture that can justify this. And it seems most consonant to the Reason and Nature of Things, that young Persons, and especially Children, whose A√ections are tender, and whose Understandings are very weak, should be addressed with much Meekness and Gentleness, and the Minister’s first Care should be to inform the Judgment, and let Light into the Understanding. But, sure I am, this is very di√erent from the Method that hath been taken by those Preachers and Exhorters that I have been speaking of. [. . .] [. . .]

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The excerpts presented here from various writers over the past two centuries reflect the ebb and flow of opinion on Edwards and on his sermon, viewed as famous or infamous depending on who is writing and when. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, we see Edwards held up by followers and the like-minded for his piety, his role in revivalism, and his defense of ‘‘true’’ religion. More ambivalent approaches to Edwards and to the entire Puritan legacy are represented by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Emily Dickinson, inheritors of that legacy who rejected it but could never quite escape it. By the late nineteenth and into the early twentieth century, during the Progressive era and

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Jazz Age, when writers like the historian Vernon L. Parrington, H. L. Mencken, and Clarence Darrow were cultural arbiters, the reputation of Edwards was at its lowest point, except among a dwindling vein of supporters (and Edwards’s biological and intellectual descendants) who struggled on to keep his memory and America’s adherence to Calvinist Christianity alive. The observation of the bicentennial of Edwards’s birth in 1903 sparked some stirrings of interest in him, but it was not until the mid-twentieth century that we see a significant shift. That change is presaged in Robert Lowell’s dark poem (one of several on Edwards), ‘‘Mr. Edwards and the Spider,’’ which employs a key image from Sinners. The year 1949 was so significant in the reappropriation of Edwards that we present selections from three figures for that year: the historian Perry Miller, who perhaps did more to rehabilitate the intellectual importance of Edwards and the Puritans than any other scholar; the literary critic Edwin Cady, who wrote an appreciation of the artistry of Sinners; and a young evangelist named Billy Graham, who re-preached the sermon during his notable Canvas Cathedral revival tour in Los Angeles. The ensuing selections take us through the Cold War and into the rise of the Christian right and the new evangelicalism of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, when readership and use of Edwards, both in the United States and around the world, has reached an unprecedented high.

BENJAMIN TRUMBULL, A COMPLETE HIST ORY OF CONNECTICUT (1818) Benjamin Trumbull (1735–1820), a Congregational minister in Connecticut and a historian, was part of the New Divinity, a movement made up of ministers and scholars who were disciples and admirers of Edwards. In his version of Connecticut history, written during the early-nineteenth-century period of revivals coupled with religious and social reforms that became known as the Second Great Awakening, religion figured prominently. Trumbull included a lengthy description of the Great Awakening, commenting with obvious approval on the godliness of the people and their attentiveness to ministers, no doubt in the hope

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that the memory and model of the eighteenth-century revivals would spur subsequent awakenings. For their part, ministers had encouraged the ‘‘work’’ by supplying ‘‘vacant congregations,’’ or churches without a pastor, swapping pulpits, and traveling to other towns to preach, sometimes in groups. The example Trumbull singled out was Edwards’s visit to preach to the Enfield congregation in July 1741. Describing the preaching of Sinners, he drew on Eleazar Wheelock’s eyewitness account for the following brief narrative that, accurately or not, established the Enfield congregation as ‘‘thoughtless and vain’’—possibly in an attempt to increase the drama of the event.

[. . .] There was in the minds of people, a general fear of sin, and of the wrath of God denounced against it. There seemed to be a general conviction, that all the ways of man were before the eyes of the Lord. It was the opinion of men of discernment and sound judgment, who had the best opportunities of knowing the feelings and general state of the people, at that period, that bags of gold and silver, and other precious things, might, with safety, have been laid in the streets, and that no man would have converted them to his own use. Theft, wantonness, intemperance, profaneness, sabbath-breaking, and other gross sins, appeared to be put away. The intermissions on the Lord’s day, instead of being spent in worldly conversation and vanity, as had been too usual before, were now spent in religious conversation, in reading and singing the praises of God. At lectures there was not only great attention and seriousness, in the house of God, but the conversation out of it was generally on the great concerns of the soul. As the people were eager to hear the word, the feet of those who published salvation were beautiful;* they were greatly animated, filled with zeal, and laboured abundantly. Especially was this the case with those ministers who favoured the work. They not only preached abundantly to their own people, and invited others to preach to them, but they * An allusion to Isaiah 52:7, ‘‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth!’’ This text was traditionally interpreted to refer to ministers.

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Woodcut showing a section of Enfield in the early nineteenth century

rode from town to town, to assist each other, and preach to the people. They also improved all opportunities to preach to vacant congregations. Sometimes they rode to distant towns and societies, where the work was very extraordinary, to encourage and bear testimony to the good work, and by all means in their power to promote it. In some instances a whole assembly, where the people before had been very unconcerned and vain, would be deeply impressed and awakened under a single sermon. There was an extraordinary instance of this at Enfield. While the people in the neighbouring towns were in great distress for their souls, the inhabitants of that town were very secure, loose, and vain. A lecture had been appointed at Enfield, and the neighbouring people, the night before, were so a√ected at the thoughtlessness of the inhabitants, and in such fear that God would, in his righteous judgment, pass them by, as to be prostrate before him a considerable part of it, supplicating mercy for their souls. When the time appointed for the lecture came, a number of the neighbouring ministers attended, and some from a distance. When

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they went into the meeting-house, the appearance of the assembly was thoughtless and vain. The people hardly conducted themselves with common decency. The Rev. Mr. Edwards, of Northampton, preached, and before the sermon was ended, the assembly appeared deeply impressed and bowed down, with an awful conviction of their sin and danger. There was such a breathing of distress, and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence, that he might be heard. This was the beginning of the same great and prevailing concern in that place, with which the colony in general was visited. JOSEPH TRACY, THE GREAT AWAKENING (1842) Joseph Tracy (1793–1874) was a teacher and Congregational minister in Vermont, a newspaper editor in Boston and New York, and a member of a later generation of the New Divinity movement. He served as the secretary of the Massachusetts Colonization Society, which advocated solving the problem of slavery by freeing slaves and relocating them to Africa—a solution that was at once racist and impractical. Tracy’s most famous work was published during the hundredth anniversary of the religious revivals of the mid-eighteenth century, to which Tracy gave the name the Great Awakening. Clearly an apology for past revivals and an appeal for further ones, Tracy’s book praised the major figures of the first Great Awakening—Whitefield and Edwards predominantly—and presented Edwards as a model of spirituality. He also justified Edwards as a preacher, providing a defense of the importance of religious emotions and ‘‘terror preaching’’ as a means of raising those emotions in individuals.

[. . .] [ Jonathan Edwards] was perhaps the most e≈cient preacher in New England, even if judged by the immediate e√ect of his sermons. Many think of him as an intellectual giant, indeed, but as a giant wholly composed of intellect, and suppose that his power consisted entirely in the cold conclusiveness of his unimpassioned logic. A greater mistake is scarce possible. Besides his logic, there was his strong and realizing faith. God, heaven, hell, the sinfulness of sin, the beauty of holiness, the glory of Christ and the claims of his gospel, were as substantial realities to his mind and heart, as the valley of the Connecticut [River] or the mountains

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of Berkshire. He spoke of them accordingly, and made them seem real to his hearers. He was perhaps as remarkable for his power and habit of deep and strong and tender feeling, as for his powers of argumentation. . . . But the most wonderful displays of his imagination were put forth in describing the imminent danger of the wicked, and the awful scenes that await the enemies of God. There is nothing of the kind in the great masters of English poetry, or of any other uninspired poetry, that equals, in imaginative power, many passages in his sermons. Read his sermon [. . .] entitled ‘‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’’; of the preaching and e√ects of which we have an account. It was preached at Enfield, July 8, 1741. [. . .] His plain, unpretending manner, both in language and delivery, and his established reputation for holiness and knowledge of the truth, forbade the suspicion that any trick of oratory would be used to mislead his hearers. He began in the clear, careful, demonstrative style of a teacher, solicitous for the result of his e√ort, and anxious that every step of his argument should be clearly and fully understood. His text was, Deut. 32:35, ‘‘Their foot shall slide in due time.’’ As he advanced in unfolding the meaning of the text, the most careful logic brought him and his hearers to conclusions, which the most tremendous imagery could but inadequately express. His most terrific descriptions of the doom and danger of the impenitent, only enabled them to apprehend more clearly the truths which he had compelled them to believe. They seemed to be, not the product of the imagination, but,— what they really were,—a part of the argument. The e√ect was as might have been expected. [. . .] Edwards was often called to preach beyond the limits of his own parish; and ‘‘whithersoever he turned himself,’’ he seems to have prospered. In the winter of 1742, he spent some weeks, by invitation, at Leicester, [Massachusetts,] of which we only know that his labors were attended with distinguished success. There is no reason to doubt that scenes much like those at Enfield occurred in many places under his preaching. Those who understand the force of his sermon at Enfield will not wonder, that men who were awakened and convinced by it, were unable to conceal their anguish, and ‘‘cried out’’ in bitterness of spirit. Edwards was right in

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doubting whether those who blamed such outcries, would behave much better, if they had equally clear views of their own guilt and danger. We must remember, too, that the sentiments and usages of society, a century ago, did not require that universal repression of feeling, which is now expected in all well-educated people. The Puritans of the first generation were by no means scandalized, when their people felt so strongly that they could not conceal their emotions. [. . .] In the time of Edwards, audible expressions of feeling by the hearer in public worship had begun to be considered indecorous; for hearers were not expected to be overcome by strong emotions; but the demand of public sentiment for silence was much less imperative then than now. [. . .] With these facts in view, the reader of Edwards’ Enfield sermon cannot be surprised at its visible and audible e√ects. Nor can it be thought surprising that some, constitutionally accessible to such influences, fainted, fell down, or were thrown into convulsions on similar occasions. Nor is it stranger than dreaming, [that] while their bodies were thus overcome, the activity of their minds should continue; that the train of thought which had subdued them, should keep possession of them; that their imaginations should give to the objects of their thoughts, the appearance of bodily form; in short, that there should be trances and visions. Nor is it at all incredible that these trances and visions should help them forward in the knowledge of the truth. If the trains of thought that overcame them were advancing in the right direction, that intense nervous excitement might increase their power, and enable them to see truths which, in the calm of ordinary health and unimpassioned meditation, would have been beyond their reach. [. . .] Still it will be said, that men who were thus impelled to cry out, who fainted, fell, and had convulsions, were under an awful delusion; that the gospel addresses men kindly, and bids them hope; that, if they had been taught and had understood and believed its messages of mercy, they would have been filled with joy and peace; that, therefore, the terrific view of their condition, which filled their minds and overcame their hearts, was an erroneous view, such as men under the gospel ought not to entertain; and that their teachers should have striven to fill their minds with the comforts

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which the gospel o√ers. This is all true; and Edwards and his friends knew it, and acted accordingly. These alarmed, convicted sinners were under an awful delusion, and that delusion was what kept them from peace, and from rejoicing in God their Saviour; but their delusion shortly before, while they were sinning thoughtlessly and carelessly, was still more awful. They had left the path of duty and of safety, and in proud self-reliance and wandered forth upon the dark mountains, despising what they esteemed idle tales of danger. At length, the lightnings of the gathering storm show them where they are,—on the brink of a fatal precipice. They start back and gaze around with horror. [. . .] But blame not the flash of light which showed them where they stood. Without it, the next step would have been into perdition. Now, they may perish in their consternation; but it may also be, that they will hear the voice that calls them to safety, and their souls will live. It is very true, that ‘‘preaching hell cannot frighten men into religion’’; but it may frighten them into serious thought, and secure to religious truth that attention, without which it cannot save the soul. After all that can be said of the power of love and of kindness, and the winning accents of mercy, and the like, it remains an awful truth, that men will not give any e≈cient attention to these things, till they have been first brought to see their need of them. Till then, all that they hear about the mercy of God, only gives them courage to neglect him. [. . .]

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, THE MINISTER’S WOOING (1859) Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–96), most famous for her depiction of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), was the Connecticut-born daughter of the prominent minister, religious educator, and revivalist Lyman Beecher. She was reared in the Puritan religious culture and so could provide an insider’s view, even after she became alienated from it. The main character of her novel The Minister’s Wooing (1859) was based on the Reverend Samuel Hopkins, Edwards’s most renowned disciple, and the novel was at once a romanticization and an indictment of New England Puritanism. Stowe admiringly portrays the Puritans and their descen-

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dants grappling with ultimate issues on a daily basis, but believes that their incessant focus on the ethereal came at a price; many su√ered spiritual doubts or cracked under the stern logic of the theology. In this selection, taken from chapter 23, Stowe mentions not only Hopkins but also Edwards—whose sermons were a ‘‘refined poetry of torture’’—and another of his disciples, David Brainerd, a missionary to the Indians who died of tuberculosis at an early age and became a model of self-sacrifice for aspiring missionaries.

The preaching of those times was animated by an unflinching consistency which never shrank from carrying an idea to its remotest logical verge. The su√erings of the lost were not kept from view, but proclaimed with a terrible power. Dr. Hopkins boldly asserts, that ‘‘all the use which God will have for them is to su√er; this is all the end they can answer; therefore all their faculties and their whole capacities, will be employed and used for this end. [. . .] The body can by omnipotence be made capable of su√ering the greatest imaginable pain, without producing dissolution, or abating the least degree of life or sensibility. [. . .] One way in which God will show his power in punishing the wicked will be in strengthening and upholding their bodies and souls in torments which otherwise would be intolerable.’’ The sermons preached by President Edwards* on this subject are so terrific in their refined poetry of torture, that very few persons of quick sensibility could read them through without agony; and it is related, that, when, in those calm and tender tones which never rose to passionate enunciation, he read these discourses, the house was often filled with shrieks and wailings, and that a brother minister once laid hold of his skirts, exclaiming, in an involuntary agony, ‘‘Oh! Mr. Edwards! Mr. Edwards! is God not a God of mercy?’’ Not that these men were indi√erent or insensible to the dread words they spoke; their whole lives and deportment bore thrilling witness to their sincerity. Edwards set apart special days of fasting, in view of the dreadful doom of the lost, in which he was wont to walk the floor, weeping and * Edwards was briefly the president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University).

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Harriet Beecher Stowe

wringing his hands. Hopkins fasted every Saturday. David Brainerd gave up every refinement of civilized life to weep and pray at the feet of hardened savages, if by any means he might save one. All, by lives of eminent purity and earnestness, gave awful weight and sanction to their words. If we add to this statement the fact, that it was always proposed to every inquiring soul, as an evidence of regeneration, that it should truly and heartily accept all the ways of God thus declared right and lovely, and from the heart submit to Him as the only just and good, it will be seen what materials of tremendous internal conflict and agitation were all the while working in every bosom. Almost all the histories of religious experience of those times related paroxysms of opposition to God and fierce rebellion, expressed in language which appalls the soul,—followed, at length, by mysterious elevations of faith and reactions of confiding love, the result of Divine interposition, which carried the soul far above the region of the intellect, into that of direct spiritual intuition.

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President Edwards records that he was once in this state of enmity,— that the facts of the Divine administration seemed horrible to him,—and that this opposition was overcome by no course of reasoning, but by an ‘‘inward and sweet sense, ’’ which came to him once when walking alone in the fields, and, looking up into the blue sky, he saw the blending of the Divine majesty with a calm, sweet, and almost infinite meekness.* The piety which grew up under such a system was, of necessity, energetic,—it was the uprousing of the whole energy of the human soul, pierced and wrenched and probed from her lowest depths to her topmost heights with every awful life-force possible to existence. He whose faith in God came clear through these terrible tests would be sure never to know greater ones. He might certainly challenge earth or heaven, things present or things to come, to swerve him from this grand allegiance. But it is to be conceded, that these systems, so admirable in relation to the energy, earnestness, and acuteness of their authors, when received as absolute truth, and as a basis of actual life, had, on minds of a certain class, the e√ect of a slow poison, producing life-habits of morbid action very di√erent from any which ever followed the simple reading of the Bible. They di√er from the New Testament as the living embrace of a friend does from his lifeless body, mapped out under the knife of the anatomical demonstrator;—every nerve and muscle is there, but to a sensitive spirit there is the very chill of death in the analysis. [. . .] Thus it happened, that, while strong spirits walked, palm-crowned, with victorious hymns, along these sublime paths, feebler and more sensitive ones lay along the track, bleeding away in life-long despair. Fearful to them were the shadows that lay over the cradle and the grave. The mother clasped her babe to her bosom, and looked with shuddering to the awful coming trial of free agency, with its terrible responsibilities and risks; and, as she thought of the infinite chances against her beloved, almost wished it might die in infancy. But when the stroke of death came, and some young, thoughtless head was laid suddenly low, who can say what silent anguish * See Edwards’s account of his spiritual experiences in his ‘‘Personal Narrative’’ in this volume.

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of loving hearts sounded the dread depths of eternity with the awful question, Where? [. . .] OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR., REFLECTS ON EDWARDS (1880) At a time when Americans were celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the United States, the great national poet Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94), wryly commenting about the ‘‘trumpet-blowing’’ that ‘‘the patron saint of America was Saint Anniversary,’’ wrote a centennial piece of his own—on Edwards. Before the Civil War, Holmes had written a satirical poem, ‘‘The Deacon’s Masterpiece; or, The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay,’’ which depicted the Edwardsean theology as being like the deacon’s carriage; it lasted a hundred years to the day before falling apart. In this piece an older Holmes is more serious and more critical. As much as Edwards was to be respected for his insights and his mystical qualities, Holmes lamented his adherence to Calvinism, which imparted a bitter legacy that only modern religion, science, and psychology allowed humankind to rise above. Much like the dinosaurs, Edwards’s theology was a fossil, a relic of a bygone era. Particularly strong were Holmes’s remarks on Edwards’s conception of human nature and its predicament before a God who embodied Justice: the same Justice in Sinners that ‘‘bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow.’’ In Holmes’s brave new world, this sort of God could not exist.

[. . .] The God of Edwards is not a Trinity, but a Quarternity. The fourth Person is an embodied abstraction, to which he gave the name of Justice. As Jupiter was governed by Fate, so Jehovah is governed by Justice. This takes precedence of all other elements in the composite Divinity. Its province is to demand satisfaction, though as its demand is infinite, it can never be satiated. This satisfaction is derived from the infliction of misery on sensitive beings, who, by the fact of coming into existence under conditions provided or permitted by their Creator, have incurred his wrath and received his curse as their patrimony. [. . .] The omnipotence of Justice is needed in this system, for it is dealing, as was said above, with infinite demands, which nothing short of it could

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begin to meet. The proof of this is a very simple mathematical one, and can be made plain to the most limited intelligence. Sin, which is the subject of Justice, gets its measure by comparing it with the excellence of the Being whose law it violates. As the Being is infinite in perfections, every sin against him acquires the character of infinite magnitude. ‘‘Justice’’ demands a punishment commensurate with its infinite dimensions. This is the ground upon which the eternity of future punishment is an imperative condition prescribed by ‘‘Justice’’ to the alleged omnipotence of the Creator. Who and what is the being made subject to this infinite penalty? Man, as Edwards looks at him, is placed, in a very singular condition. He has innumerable duties and the smallest right, or the least claim on his Maker. In this doctrine Edwards di√ers from the finer and freer thinkers with whom I have compared him.* [. . .] Man, since Adam’s fall, is born in a state of moral inability,—a kind of spiritual hemiplegia.† He is competent, as we have seen, to commit an infinite amount of sin, but he cannot of himself perform the least good action. He is hateful to his Maker, ex o≈cio, as a human being. It is no wonder that Edwards uses hard words about such a being. This is a specimen from one of those sermons to which the long-su√ering people of Northampton listened for twenty-four years: ‘‘You have never loved God, who is infinitely glorious and lovely; and why then is God under obligations to love you, who are all over deformed and loathsome as a filthy worm, or rather a hateful viper?’’‡ [. . .] We can hardly help remarking just here that this kind of language will seem to most persons an unwholesome sort of rhetoric for a preacher to indulge in; not favorable to the sweetness of his own thoughts, and not unlikely to produce irritation in some of his own more excitable hearers. But he was led, as it will soon appear, into the use of expressions still more * Earlier in the essay, Holmes had compared Edwards to the mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–62) and the rationalist philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–77). † Paralysis. ‡ From Edwards’s sermon The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners, published in 1738.

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fitted to disturb the feelings of all persons of common sensibility, and especially of the fathers and mothers, who listened to him. Such was Edwards’s estimate of humanity. [. . .] It is impossible that people of ordinary sensibilities should have listened to his torturing discourses without becoming at last sick of hearing of infinite horrors and endless agonies. It came very hard to kind-hearted persons to believe that the least sin exposed a creature God had made to such exorbitant penalties. Edwards’s whole system had too much of the character of the savage people by whom the wilderness had so recently been tenanted. There was revenge—‘‘revenging justice ’’ was what he called it—insatiable, exhausting its ingenuity in contriving the most exquisite torments; there was the hereditary hatred contriving the most exquisite torments; there was the hereditary hatred glaring on the babe in its cradle; there were the su√ering wretch and the pleased and shouting lookers-on. Every natural grace of disposition; all that had once charmed in the sweet ingenuousness of youth, in the laughing gayety of childhood, in the winning helplessness of infancy; every virtue that Plato had dreamed of, every character that Plutarch had drawn,—all were branded with the hot iron which left the blackened inscription upon them, signifying that they were accursed of God,—the damning word nature. [. . .] Edwards’s system seems, in the light of to-day, to the last degree barbaric, mechanical, materialistic, pessimistic. If he had lived a hundred years later and breathed the air of freedom, he could not have written with such old-world barbarism as we find in his volcanic sermons. We can realize in our day the truth of Montesquieu’s* saying, ‘‘If the punishments of the Orientals horrify humanity, the reason is that the despot who ordains them is above all laws. It is not so in republics, wherein the laws are always mild, because he who makes them is himself a subject.’’ We cannot have self-government and humane laws without its reacting on our view of the Divine administration. [. . .] Again, what can be more mechanical than the God of all gods he * Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755), a French political philosopher, social commentator, and major figure of the Enlightenment.

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contrived—or accepted—under the name of Justice,—a piece of iron machinery which would have held back the father’s arms stretching out to embrace his son, and shed the blood of the prodigal, instead of that of the fatted calf ? What can be more utterly materialistic than to attach the idea of sinfulness and responsibility, and liability to eternal su√ering in consequence, to a little organic bundle, with no more knowledge of its relations to the moral world than a marsupial embryo in the maternal pouch of its geographical position? And what pessimism that ever entered the mind of man has gone farther than that which taxed the imagination to the utmost for its horrors, and declared that these were but the faintest image of what was reserved for the bulk of mankind? [. . .] The fact that, while Edwards’s name is used as a war-cry, and inscribed on the labarum* of the old bow-and-arrow controversialists, his works are neglected, his doctrines either passed over in silence or repudiated, shows that his great powers were under some misguiding influence. The truth is that the whole system of beliefs which came in with the story of the ‘‘fall of man,’’ the curse of the father of the race conveyed by natural descent to his posterity, the casting of the responsibility of death and all the disorders of creation upon the unfortunate being who found them a part of the arrangements of the universe when he first made his appearance, is gently fading out of enlightened human intelligence, and we are hardly in a condition to realize what a tyranny it once exerted over many of the strongest minds. We no longer pretend to hold our primeval ancestor, whoever he may have been, responsible for the entrance of death into the world, for the teeth of the carnivora, for the venom of the snake, for the battles of the megatherium, the maladies of the ichthyosaurus, the indispositions of the pterodactyl, the extinction of the strange creatures that left their footprints on the shores of the Connecticut, where we have been finding the tracks of a fossil theology not less monstrous than its predecessors in the material world. Astronomy, Geology, Ethnology, and the * The imperial Roman standard.

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comparative study of Oriental religions have opened the way; and now Anthropology has taken hold of the matter, and, leaving aside all those questions which by searching no man can find out, must deal with the problem which Asiatic tradition and its interpreters have failed to solve. [. . .] There is no su≈cient reason for attacking the motives of a man so saintly in life, so holy in aspirations, so patient, so meek, so laborious, so thoroughly in earnest in the work to which his life was given. But after long smothering in the sulphurous atmosphere of his thought one cannot help asking, Was this or anything like this,—is this or anything like this,— the accepted belief of any considerable part of Protestantism. If so, we must say with Bacon,* ‘‘It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such an opinion as is unworthy of Him.’’ A ‘‘natural man’’ is better than an unnatural theologian. It is a less violence to our nature to deify protoplasm than it is to diabolize the Deity. [. . .]

ALEXANDER B. GROSART, THE TEAR-STAINED PAGES OF SINNERS (1897) During the 1890s, Sunday at Home, a British religious periodical, featured a series titled ‘‘The Handwriting of Famous Divines.’’ Alexander B. Grosart (1827–99), a minister in Kinross, Scotland, contributed a piece on Edwards. Grosart was an avid fan of Edwards, and even planned to issue a new edition of Edwards’s collected works—a project that never came to fruition. Grosart’s example illustrates the popularity Edwards had achieved in Great Britain and particularly Scotland, where his correspondents had included prominent revivalists such as John Erskine and James Robe, and his writings later gained the respect of the philosopher Dugald Stewart. But Grosart also epitomized the late-nineteenthcentury lionization of Edwards for his intellect and sentimentalization of him for his piety and temperament. Grosart’s account was mostly devoted to reprinting accolades of Edwards by various prominent British figures; he also included a letter by one of Edwards’s Scottish supporters after his dismissal from his North* Francis Bacon (1561–1626), an English philosopher and politician who was instrumental during the scientific revolution for his inductive method of reasoning.

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ampton pulpit, to illustrate Edwards’s selflessness in the midst of his aΔictions. Grosart’s brief introduction to the piece encapsulated the view of Edwards among his religious sympathizers. Even the manuscript of Sinners became, in Grosart’s adulation, a hallowed object that revealed, in what he reported were tear-stained pages, Edwards’s tender regard for his flock. (The manuscript of Sinners at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, however, shows no evidence of having been cried on.)

For mass of pure intellect none will be found to dispute that among American-born men of renown (Colonial or under the Republic) Jonathan Edwards stands alone and unapproached. But when to this is added the equal certainty that united therewith was a spiritual life so strong and hallowing as to demonstrate beyond most the reality of the Pauline description of a ‘‘life hid with Christ in God’’ [Col. 3:3], he still more commands our homage. I am aware that it has been a≈rmed that his intellect so dominated him that he had little or no emotion, no touch of tenderness, no Christ-like compassion, so much so that only ‘‘awful goodness’’ describes him. Never was there more egregious mistake. Like the ancient seers, he preached his messages as ever in the shadow of God. But it has been my privilege to hold in my hands the little many-paged MSS. of the most tremendous of sermons ever preached—‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,’’ and I bear witness that every page almost remains blurred with the Preacher’s tears. So with many others of his most solemn, searching sermons. [. . .] MARK T WAIN READS EDWARDS ON THE WILL (1902) In 1902 the legendary American novelist and humorist was given a copy of Edwards’s treatise Freedom of the Will by his former pastor, longtime friend, and theological antagonist Joseph H. Twitchell of Hartford, Connecticut. In this work, Edwards argued that though we do indeed have the ability or liberty to choose what we want, the will, or our power of choosing, is nonetheless predisposed by natural factors as well as by an internal ‘‘inclination.’’ No choice, in other words, is made wholly impartiality or in a state of indi√erence, and in this sense

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the will is also determined. (An earlier wit, the English polymath Dr. Samuel Johnson, was reported by his biographer James Boswell to have commented on Edwards’s view that ‘‘all theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.’’)* Twain’s letter, describing his reactions to Edwards’s arguments, is at once serious and satirical, reflecting his belief in the complete liberty of the human will (a view that was part of the historically Arminian stance he refers to) and his impatience with orthodox and organized religions. For Twain, Edwards’s position meant that some people are incapable, through no fault of their own, of performing God’s commands—an exception that has ramifications for a sermon like Sinners, which called on all to repent of their sins immediately. Ironically, though he here lambasted Edwards for his dim view of humankind, Twain at the end of his life viewed the ‘‘damned human race’’ even more bleakly than Edwards, as can be seen in such late writings as Letters from the Earth and The Stranger.

Riverdale-on-the-Hudson [New York] Feb. ’02. Dear Joe: ‘‘After compliments.’’ From Bridgeport to New York; thence to home; and continuously until near midnight I wallowed and reeked with Jonathan in his insane debauch; rose immediately refreshed and fine at 10 this morning, but with a strange and haunting sense of having been on a three days’ tear with a drunken lunatic. It is years since I have known these sensations. All through the book is the glare of a resplendent intellect gone mad—a marvellous spectacle. No, not all through the book—the drunk does not come on till the last third, where what I take to be Calvinism and its God begins to show up and shine red and hideous in the glow from the fires of hell, their only right and proper adornment. By God I was ashamed to be in such company. Jonathan seems to hold (as against the Arminian position) that the Man (or his Soul or his Will) never creates an impulse itself, but is moved to action by an impulse back of it. That’s sound! Also, that of two or three o√ered it, it infallibly chooses the one which for the moment is most pleasing to itself. Perfectly correct! An immense admission for a man not otherwise sane. * James Boswell, The Life of Dr. Johnson, 2 vols. (London, 1791), 2:227.

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Up to that point he could have written chapters III and IV of my suppressed ‘‘Gospel.’’* But there we seem to separate. He seems to concede the indisputable and unshakable dominion of Motive and Necessity (call them what he may, these are exterior forces and not under the man’s authority, guidance or even suggestion)—then he suddenly flies the logic track and (to all seeming) makes the man and not these exterior forces responsible to God for the man’s thoughts, words and acts. It is frank insanity. I think that when he concedes the autocratic dominion of Motive and Necessity he grants a third position of mine—that a man’s mind is a mere machine—an automatic machine—which is handled entirely from the outside, the man himself furnishing it absolutely nothing: not an ounce of its fuel, and not so much as a bare suggestion to that exterior engineer as to what the machine shall do, nor how it shall do it nor when. After that concession, it was time for him to get alarmed and shirk—for he was pointing straight for the only rational and possible next-station on that piece of road: the irresponsibility of man to God. And so he shirked. Shirked, and arrived at this handsome result: Man is commanded to do so-and-so; It has been ordained from the beginning of time that some men shan’t and others can’t. These are to be blamed: let them be damned. [. . .] Joe, the whole tribe shout love to you and yours! Mark. THEODORE ROOSEVELT ON HIS WIFE’S ANCESTOR JONATHAN EDWARDS (1916) In 1916, as World War I raged in Europe and Americans debated bitterly about whether to join the conflict, a schoolgirl named Marjorie Sterrett launched a fundraising campaign to build a battleship. Her ‘‘Little Patriots’’ campaign had as its motto that America should ‘‘Fear God and Take Her Own Part.’’ That February * It is uncertain whether Twain was joking about the existence of a ‘‘suppressed Gospel’’ or referring to some of his unpublished writings.

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she received a letter and a contribution from the hero of San Juan Hill and former president Theodore Roosevelt. The New York Tribune, which sponsored the campaign, published the letter along with excerpts from notes sent by children who boasted of ancestors who had sailed on the Mayflower or fought in the American Revolution. Roosevelt, too, invoked an early American figure, Jonathan Edwards, an ancestor of his wife, Edith Kermit Carow, in the interest of inspiring the country to prepare for war. Though, typically for the time, Roosevelt did not agree entirely with Edwards’s theology, he admired his sense of duty and also noted that ‘‘there wasn’t a touch of the mollycoddle,’’ or e√eminacy, ‘‘about him.’’ Here, perhaps, the former Rough Rider and big game hunter reflected his own definition of masculinity more than Edwards’s.

Sagamore Hill [New York] Feb. 5th, 1916. Dear little Miss Marjorie: On behalf of my four grandchildren I join in the e√ort to help you and your school fellows put our country in shape to ‘‘Fear God, and Take Her Own Part.’’ I enclose a dollar. Forty cents—a dime apiece—are for: Gracie Roosevelt Richard Derby II Theodore Roosevelt III Cornelius Van Schaak Roosevelt Cornelius is the youngest: he is only about two months old. He isn’t as long as his name. But he will grow up to it. He is named after his great-greatgrandfather, who when I was very small, over fifty years ago, helped teach me a Dutch baby-song. Little Richard is the eighth Richard Derby, from father to son, born here in America. He loves the bulldog—a nice, friendly, almost toothless bulldog. Little Ted is really Theodore IV; for my father was Theodore Roosevelt. He was the best man I ever knew; strong, fearless, gentle. He ‘‘feared God and took his own part’’! Gracie is four. The other day her mother was giving her one of her first bible lessons. Her mother said, ‘‘Now, Gracie, remember that God made everything.’’

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Grace (much impressed): ‘‘Did He make everything? ’’ Her mother (with emphasis): ‘‘Yes; everything!’’ Grace (after a pause): ‘‘Well, He didn’t make my leggings fit very well; but I’m sure He meant to, so I won’t say anything about it!’’ The other sixty cents are for my other six grandchildren. They are not born yet. If they are girls I think some of them will be named Edith, Alice, Ethel, Eleanor and Belle. If they are boys some of them will be named Kermit, Archie, Quentin and Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was an ancestor of their grandmother’s who lived in colonial times. He was a great preacher and a strong and good man. I don’t agree with all his theology; but his life teaches the two lessons which are more important than all others for the Americans of today; for he always acted in accordance with the strongest sense of duty, and there wasn’t a touch of the mollycoddle about him. Your friend, Theodore Roosevelt VERNON L. PARRINGTON ON THE TRAGEDY OF EDWARDS (1927) Vernon Louis Parrington (1871–1929) was a professor of history at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Washington. His three-volume Main Currents of American Thought (1927), from which the following is taken, became a classic both within and outside scholarly circles for decades because of its depiction of the victory of popular, democratic ideas over the forces of elitism and exclusion in American history. Parrington wrote during the Progressive era and the Jazz Age, times of reform and optimism in which religion, especially that of Edwards and the Puritans, came under attack. In his observations on Edwards, Parrington was typically dismissive, describing him as an ‘‘anachronism.’’ Edwards, Parrington lamented, should have been a ‘‘transcendental emancipator,’’ but he was trapped by theology—his tragedy was his unrealized potential to serve all humanity—and so had no place in the modern, liberal future.

[. . .] Never had the traditional theology been so sorely in need of a champion as at the beginning of the second quarter of the eighteenth

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century; and such a champion God raised up—many devout Calvinists believed—in the person of Jonathan Edwards. Armed at all points—a theologian equipped with the keenest dialectics, a metaphysician endowed with a brilliantly speculative mind, a psychologist competent to deal with the subtlest phenomena of the sick soul—here was a man who might be counted on to justify the ancient dogmas to the troubled churches of New England. The o√spring of four generations of religious enthusiasts, by every right of heredity and training the child of Puritanism, Jonathan Edwards was the last and greatest of the royal line of Puritan mystics. As a young man he felt himself to be living in the very presence of God; he was conscious of the divine life flowing through and around him, making him one with the Godhead; and he was filled with yearning for personal union with the divine love in Christ. His intellectual and spiritual life was molded by a God-consciousness as passionate as that of Spinoza; and it is this fact of a lifelong devotion to the God-idea that furnishes the clue to an understanding of his later development. Not content that God had marked him for his own, he must build a philosophical universe about the Godhood, justifying his mysticism by a metaphysical idealism. He must examine critically the foundations of his creed and establish his theology upon philosophy. No obscurity must remain unprobed, no link in the chain of reasoning escape challenge: he must base the five points of Calvinism upon a metaphysics that should relate them to a universal system of thought, giving them a cosmic as well as a Biblical sanction. It was a great ambition, likely to prove too di≈cult even for the remarkable powers of Edwards; and if in pursuit of new arguments for old doctrines, he found himself inclosed in a mesh of subtleties, if his theology and metaphysics were never quite reconciled, blame must be laid upon the di≈culty of the undertaking rather than on the incapacity of the thinker. To one cardinal principle Edwards was faithful—the conception of the majesty and su≈ciency of God; and this polar idea provides the clue to both his philosophical and theological systems. [. . .] But in adhering to the doctrine of predetermined election by the sovereign will of God, Edwards did unconscious violence to the instincts of

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the mystic, that throughout his earlier speculations—and in much of his later, as well—impelled him to glorify the love of God the Father, and the sweetness of spiritual communion with Him. The practical necessities of the preacher, called upon to uphold the dogma of election in face of growing disbelief, seem to have forced him to such a position; but once having entered upon the train of speculation opened by the question of divine polity involved in ‘‘His having mercy on whom He will have mercy, while whom He will, He hardeneth’’ [Romans 9:18], he came somewhat reluctantly to accept the doctrine of God’s sovereignty as the cardinal principle of his theology, the creative source of his thinking. Thereafter he followed a path that led back to an absolutist past, rather than forward to a more liberal future. He had broken wholly with the social tendencies of his age and world.[ . . .] Instead he sought refuge in compromise, endeavoring to reconcile what was incompatible. Herein lay the tragedy of Edwards’s intellectual life; the theologian triumphed over the philosopher, circumscribing his powers to ignoble ends. [. . .] In the primal state of man, Edwards argued, before the sin of Adam had destroyed the harmony between creature and creator, the light which flowed from God as from a sun shone freely upon His universe, filling its remotest parts with the divine plenitude; but with the fall the harmony was destroyed, the sun was hidden, and only stray beams broke through the rifts to shine upon those whom God willed them to shine upon; all else in creation was given over to eternal darkness. And if the natural man, thus cast into sudden darkness ‘‘as light ceases in a room when the candle is withdrawn,’’ is a being whose will is impotent to his salvation, it follows that he will now be impelled as inevitably towards evil as before he was impelled towards good. Every instinct of a nature corrupt and compact of sin, and with no wish to exchange darkness for light— having no eyes for the divine glory—drives him to a blind and consuming hatred of God. He is become as a loathsome ‘‘viper, hissing and spitting at God,’’ the outcast and pariah of the universe. There is no drawing back from the conclusion involved in the argument; the Edwardsean logic moves forward by regular steps. The punishment meted out to sin is to be measured by the excellence of which the sin is a denial. God is of infinite

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excellence, and denial of His excellence is therefore infinitely sinful and merits infinite punishment. As a perfectly just judge God could not decree otherwise; because of the infinite heinousness of his sin, the natural man must receive the doom of eternal damnation. Under the rod of such logic—grotesque, abortive, unseasoned by any saving knowledge of human nature—Edwards preached that remarkable series of imprecatory sermons that sank deep into the memory of New England, and for which it has never forgiven him. Unfortunate as those sermons were in darkening the fame of an acute thinker, disastrous as they were in providing a sanction for other men to terrify the imagination of ill-balanced persons, we cannot regret that Edwards devoted his logic to an assiduous stoking of the fires of hell. The theology of Calvin lay like a heavy weight upon the soul of New England, and there could be no surer way to bring it into disrepute, than to thrust into naked relief the brutal grotesqueries of those dogmas that professed thus to explain the dark mysteries which lie upon the horizons of life. For a long while yet they were to harass the imagination of New England, but the end already could be foreseen. Once the horrors that lay in the background of Calvinism were disclosed to common view, the system was doomed. It might still wear the semblance of life; it might still remain as an evil genius to darken the conscience of men and women; but its authoritative appeal was gone. In this necessary work of freeing the spirit of New England, no other thinker played so large or so unconscious a part as Jonathan Edwards; and it was the notorious minatory sermons—the translation into vivid images of the generalized dogmas—that awakened the popular mind to an understanding of the conclusions involved in the premises. [. . .] As one follows the laborious career of this great thinker, a sense of the tragic failure of his life deepens. . . . The greatest mind of New England had become an anachronism in a world that bred Benjamin Franklin. [. . .] The intellectual powers were his, but the inspiration was lacking; like Cotton Mather before him, he was the unconscious victim of a decadent ideal and a petty environment. Cut o√ from fruitful intercourse with other thinkers, drawn away from the stimulating field of philosophy into the

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arid realm of theology, it was his fate to devote his noble gifts to the thankless task of re-imprisoning the mind of New England within a system from which his nature and his powers summoned him to unshackle it. He was called to be a transcendental emancipator, but he remained a Calvinist. ROBERT LOWELL, ‘‘MR. EDWARDS AND THE SPIDER’’ (1946) The Boston-born Robert Lowell (1917–77) was an acclaimed poet, pacifist, and civil rights activist. A descendant of Jonathan Edwards, Lowell was decidedly conflicted about his lineage and its legacy. Lowell did not complete the biography of his ancestor that he reportedly contemplated, but he did publish several haunting poems featuring Edwards. ‘‘Mr. Edwards and the Spider,’’ from a Pulitzer Prize–winning collection, is a meditation on the nature of death—the inevitable ‘‘sinking of the soul.’’ It employs the image that is used centrally both in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and in Edwards’s ‘‘Spider Letter.’’ Lowell also refers to Josiah (actually Joseph) Hawley, Edwards’s uncle and parishioner, who in 1735, in the midst of a revival at Northampton and in despair over the fate of his soul, committed suicide by slitting his throat (for Edwards’s account, see ‘‘An Account of the Late Wonderful Work of God’’ in this volume).

I saw the spiders marching through the air, Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed day In latter August when the hay Came creaking to the barn. But where The wind is westerly, Where gnarled November makes the spiders fly Into the apparitions of the sky, They purpose nothing but their ease and die Urgently beating east to sunrise and the sea; What are we in the hands of the great God? It was in vain you set up thorn and briar

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In battle array against the fire And treason crackling in your blood; For the wild thorns grow tame And will do nothing to oppose the flame; Your lacerations tell the losing game You play against a sickness past your cure. How will the hands be strong? How will the heart endure? A very little thing, a little worm, Or hourglass-blazoned spider, it is said, Can kill a tiger. Will the dead Hold up his mirror and a≈rm To the four winds the smell And flash of his authority? It’s well If God who holds you to the pit of hell, Much as one holds a spider, will destroy, BaΔe and dissipate your soul. As a small boy On Windsor Marsh, I saw the spider die When thrown into the bowels of fierce fire: There’s no long struggle, no desire To get up on its feet and flyIt stretches out its feet And dies. This is the sinner’s last retreat; Yes, and no strength exerted on the heat Then sinews the abolished will, when sick And full of burning, it will whistle on a brick. But who can plumb the sinking of that soul? Josiah Hawley, picture yourself cast Into a brick-kiln where the blast Fans your quick vitals to a coalIf measured by a glass,

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How long would it seem burning! Let there pass A minute, ten, ten trillion; but the blaze Is infinite, eternal: this is death, To die and know it. This is the Black Widow, death. EDWIN H. CADY, ‘‘ THE ARTISTRY OF JONATHAN EDWARDS’’ (1949) Edwin H. Cady had a long and distinguished teaching career at Duke University as a widely published author on American literature. His New England Quarterly article ‘‘The Artistry of Jonathan Edwards’’ was an appreciation of Sinners that became the scholarly standard for two decades and more. Leaving aside questions or assumptions about the divine inspiration of preaching that were commonly invoked among religious readers, Cady focused on Edwards as an artist. Though the anthologization of Edwards—and of Sinners—had begun in the first decade of the twentieth century, Cady’s treatment signaled for many the transition of Edwards from a predominantly religious figure to a literary one. In the excerpt printed here, Cady considers audience, occasion, and speaker, emphasizing Edwards’s deliberate use of images that conveyed the perilousness of existence in order to alert his hearers to their spiritual predicament.

From what is now increasingly apparent of Jonathan Edwards, it surprises that so quiet, academic, and sweet-natured a man could have preached sermons which broke his contemporaries down into storms of distress. Perhaps the most intriguing of these is ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.’’ It is known even to those who have never read Edwards. It has been the focus of much of the disapproval showered on him as ‘‘the salamander of divines,’’ and it raises fascinating problems even for the objective or sympathetic reader. Biographers agree that Edwards recoiled from the Billy Sunday* type of sweaty-shirt oratory and dramatic shouting of his colleagues in the Great Awakening. He was always the * Billy Sunday (1862–1935), a professional baseball player turned evangelist, was one of the most popular American religious figures of the early twentieth century.

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Puritan academic, the Brahman, reading his sermons quietly from a dignified, motionless stance in the pulpit. Why, then, was ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’’ so successful in its mission of reducing previously blasé Enfield, Connecticut, to shuddering terror? Why has it become the classic of hell-fire-and brimstone preaching which so long shut out our view of the tender-minded and philosophic Edwards? It is perhaps too easy to lay the blame for the latter fact on readers who would not read aright. At any rate, we are left with the fundamental question: what made the sermon so very e√ective? Where lie the springs of its success? The answer, I think, is that it is in the widest sense a work of literary art. It uses all the weapons, conscious and subconscious, verbal, emotional, and sensuous, of the author at his best. This is a statement which a generation or more ago might well have been hooted at. Now, thanks to the distinguished work of many scholars in restoring for us the man and his times, it may be entertained. But it must be demonstrated. In the light of Edwards’ reputation as polemicist one looks first to the intellectual structure of the sermon. Perhaps it is another example of his devastatingly tight, crushing logic. But a glance at the rational structure of the sermon shows it to be comparatively insignificant. In traditional form, Edwards gives his text (much more suggestive than doctrinal), four implications of the text, and ten ‘‘observations’’ upon his reading of it, before he passes on to its ‘‘application’’ to his audience. In the most simple fashion available to the Puritan homiletic tradition, the argument clusters about Edwards’ ‘‘proposition’’: ‘‘There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.’’ From this the argument runs: God can and should let them fall; He has already passed sentence on them; their natures are wicked, their claims on God and their powers of self-preservation worse than nothing; indeed, although God’s rightful anger burns against their wickedness, nothing but His inscrutably capricious hand supports them. Let every sinner strive for grace while yet there is time. [. . .] Although thought, form, and imagery in the sermon are one, the great emotional power of the discourse comes primarily from the rich and

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versatile imagery. For ‘‘image’’ in this connection I mean a literary device by which the writer likens an inward state, that subjective fusion of sense, emotion, and recognition which we call experience, to something outward which can be used to convey approximately the same experience into the subjective inwardness of the reader. There are about twenty-five important ‘‘images’’ in ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.’’ Not all of them are good: that is, artistically e√ective. Some are failures because they were mere clichés, others because they were not realized by the author, still others because they are somehow fumbled. But much the greater portion of them do work successfully, and their success carries Edwards’ excruciatingly vivid vision alive into the minds of his hearers. [. . .] [. . . ] The most telling images fall into three main groups: the fires of hell; the tension-pressure symbols of God’s wrath; and suspensionheaviness symbols of the predicament of the sinner. Contrary to the accepted traditions about ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,’’ pictures of hell-fire appear to be neither its most vivid or its most numerous images. [. . .] Actually, ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’’ is not directly concerned to create Hell imaginatively. Hell is in its picture, but only at the periphery. The focus is on the predicament of the sinner, how dreadfully he dangles just before he plunges to eternal agony, and while he has time to repent and be saved. The most striking and distinctive images in the work fall into two groups: (1) those which display the fearful wrath of God, and (2) those which portray dramatically (they seldom paint) the sinner shakily hanging. [. . .] The freshest imagery, and the most essential to the peculiar success of the sermon, communicates Edwards’ sense of the eerie suspension of the sinner upon almost nothing and intensifies it by adding a nightmarish feeling of his fatal weight. Dominantly these are kinesthetic, almost visceral, in their e√ects, rather than visual. Thus they appeal to the most fundamental human sense, one which is all too seldom commanded by writing. [. . .] Edwards also sees ‘‘that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell.’’ In the third paragraph of the ‘‘Application’’ he points out with unusual kinesthetic e√ect:

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Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a fallen rock. From those points it is only a normal imaginative extrapolation to the magnificent, fearful drama of God and his loathsome, dangling spider. [. . .] Doubtless the very sobriety of Edwards’ voice and manner gave all the force of e√ective understatement to his agonizing dream. No dramatics in the pulpit could have been adequate to his symbols. And doubtless also his working within the conventions of the old manner and the traditional sermon method gave him an access to the religiously innured but not rebellious minds of the Enfield parishioners which might have been closed to an obvious innovator. But all these factors aside, the secret of the e√ectiveness, then and since, of ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’’ resides first in the organic oneness of theme, image, and ‘‘application.’’ More directly, the emotional force of the sermon springs from the imagery itself, especially from the freshly imaginative, native figures which burned into the minds of his audience Edwards’ vision of the horrible predicament of the sinner without grace. Although this is not the occasion to defend Edwards from popular misconceptions, it should be apparent that he was not motivated by sadism, a rebellious libido, or any other psychiatric perversion. He was a mystic profoundly convinced of the reality of his subjective experience of God (and psychiatry has most unfortunately as yet neglected to tell us whence come creative and integrative personality forces). He was also a tenderminded pastor of souls God and society had entrusted to him, and a responsible intellectual leader. As all these, he was faced with the problem of moving an audience left calloused, by generations of ordinary preaching, against the traditional appeals of Edwards’ (and their) faith. It was his duty

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and his opportunity to throw all his imaginative and literary resources into the creation of a metaphysical tour de force which would provide profound conceptual and emotional experience for his audience so armored in ennui. His problem of expression was precisely that of a metaphysical poet: to find a means to drive out into e√ective form his overpowering sense of an inward reality. His problem of communication was even more exacting: to find ‘‘objective correlatives’’ which would carry his own experience into the minds of an audience bored with many repetitions of traditional Biblical and Puritanic conventions but otherwise unliterary. That he solved both problems brilliantly is attested both by contemporary evidence and by the eminence, savory or not, of the work ever since. By all the ordinary tests, ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’’ is a genuine work of literary art and testifies to Jonathan Edwards’ right to the name of artist.

PERRY MILLER CREATES AN EDWARDS FOR THE T WENTIETH CENTURY (1949) Perry Miller (1905–64) was a Harvard University English professor and author (and the founding general editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards) who through a series of highly respected books and essays, including a classic biography of Jonathan Edwards and the two-volume New England Mind, a standard intellectual history, was arguably the person most responsible for rehabilitating the image of the Puritans and of Edwards. After Miller, people within and outside of academia had to take seriously the intellectual life of New England’s founders. A response to cultural critics of the previous generation like Parrington who dismissed Edwards as a throwback, Miller’s 1949 biography cast Edwards as thoroughly up to date, influenced by the latest in philosophy and science from John Locke and Isaac Newton. Edwards, Miller wrote, was ‘‘so much ahead of his time that our own can hardly be said to have caught up with him.’’* For Miller, Edwards understood the existential assumptions of modernity, using images and terms of art that addressed the fundamental issue of communicating reality to senseless humanity. In this selection, we join Miller’s narrative at the beginning of the Great Awakening in 1741. * Miller, Jonathan Edwards (New York, 1949), xxxii.

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Perry Miller’s 1949 biography of Jonathan Edwards has never gone out of print

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, as the Enfield sermon is called, slowly, with implacable slowness, coils a monstrous accusation against mankind, until the bow of God’s wrath is bent and the arrow justifiably aimed at the entrails of the race. The climactic image is, as we might expect, the spider [. . .] Enduring images are given early, anterior to thought, previous to love. Edwards told his people that they, like him, had seen the spider thrown on the kitchen fire: ‘‘There is no long struggle, no fighting against the fire, no strength exerted to oppose the heat, or to fly from it; but it immediately stretches forth itself and yields; and the fire takes possession of it, and at once it becomes full of fire, and is burned into a bright coal.’’ A sensitive boy fixes instinctively upon his emblem, and is transfixed by it; the artist catches his glimpse, and is forever caught by it. [. . .] Was this the recoil of

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a sensibility that could not endure the spectacle of agony, that was given, in the ethos of East Windsor, only one explanation? Was then and there engendered a dread of soul that could be assuaged only by being shared? Or was the final expression, though fed from subterranean sources, more calculated? My point is that whatever it owed to impulse, it was also conscious design. Conditioned by New England, Edwards found the route from Locke’s sensationalism to the burning spider inescapable. Locke confirmed what the spider taught, that the life of the soul is the life of the senses. Edwards scientifically, deliberately, committed Puritanism, which had been a fervent rationalism of the covenant, to a pure passion of the senses, and the terror he imparted was the terror of modern man, the terror of insecurity. He overthrew the kind of religious philosophy that had dominated Western Europe since the fall of Rome, the system wherein there was always—whether in terms of the City of God, or of the Mass and absolution, or of final causes and substantial forms, or, at the last, in terms of the Puritan covenant—an ascertainable basis for human safety. Now there was none [. . .] In the moment of triumph, Edwards threw o√ disguises and exposed the secret long nurtured; the last remnant of scholasticism was discarded, and God was no longer bound by any promise, whether of metaphysics or of law. Edwards brought mankind, as Protestantism must always bring them, without mitigation, protection, or indulgence, face to face with a cosmos fundamentally inhuman [. . .] The modern student must, if he wishes to comprehend, free himself of certain ultra modern prejudices. Even among the devout, torments are generally considered, in Edwards’ word, ‘‘bugbears.’’ Were Edwards only a shouting evangelist who drummed up hysteria with hell-fire and brimstone, he would pertain to social history [. . .], but not to literature and not to philosophy. By supplying a vehicle which ignorance and crudity soon adopted, Edwards wrought incalculable harm, though we must remember that the main current of American revivalism flows from Whitefield and the Methodists rather than from him, and that among revivalists he is a peculiar figure. Edwards was primarily concerned with the problem of

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communication. By the time of Channing, Emerson, and Horace Bushnell,* the terms of this problem were so di√erent from those of the early eighteenth century that they could not understand him; today, the terms forced upon us, albeit more complex, are essentially those that confronted him: a behavioristic psychology and a universe of a-moral forces. Far from being street-corner evangelism, Edwards’ sermons are immense and concentrated e√orts to get across, in the simplest language, the meaning of the religious life, of the life of consciousness, after physics has reduced nature to a series of irreversible equations, after analysis of the mind has reduced intelligence to sensory conditioning. They are, we may say, explorations of the meaning of meaning. Not that they are systematic expositions. The terms of art are concealed, and they attempt to solve the problem not by metaphysics but by action. Edwards strove to work so upon his listeners that in the act of comprehension they could not help knowing the answer. They are direct, frontal attacks upon epistemological doubt. Locke condemned enthusiasm for holding ideas without regard to objective fact, and pled for their control by reason; yet he had to confess that by his philosophy no ideas in the mind could ever be ‘‘exactly the images and resemblances of something inherent in the subject.’’ How, then, can an idea be called true? How can a perception have moral or passionate value if the sequence of causes is implacably fixed without regard to values? In parrying these questions, Locke hit upon a significant analogy: sensations bear no more likeness to things existing without us ‘‘than the names that stand for them are the likeness of our ideas, which yet upon hearing they are apt to excite in us.’’ To his surprise, Locke stumbled upon the discovery that the problem of language is one with the problem of knowledge. Thereupon, further embarrassing questions disclose themselves: how can language be anything but the chance accumulation of conditioned reflexes? How, in a scientific * William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), minister of the Arlington Street Church in Boston and chief spokesman for Unitarianism in America; Ralph Waldo Emerson, (1803– 82), essayist, poet, Unitarian minister, orator, and leader of the New England movement known as Transcendentalism; Horace Bushnell (1802–76), pastor of North Congregational Church of Hartford, Connecticut, and innovative theologian.

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cosmos, can words be used to regenerate or to unite a society? Edwards’ sermons must be read as an e√ort to meet these questions head-on. They are experimental wrestlings with the two gigantic issues of modern philosophy: of the link between the objective and the subjective; and of semantics itself—of how words can be manipulated so that, despite their radical unlikeness to concepts, they will convey trustworthy ideas. [. . .] Even the ‘‘future life’’ will conform to the model of this one: it will be ‘‘sensible.’’ In fact, the sense of the soul will be all the stronger, because the ‘‘impression of eternity’’ will be greater, though any man’s sense of it would be as strong, here and now, could he just once apprehend what the spider knows in the fire. The pattern of perception is the pattern of the universe; the punishment of the wicked must be ‘‘an abiding sensible punishment,’’ not because God is gratuitously cruel, but because only out of experience can false judgment be rectified. That which ‘‘senseless’’ sinners will not learn—there is no more revealing argument in Edwards than his equating of obtuseness to sense impression with sin—must be taught ‘‘by briers and thorns, and by the flames of hell.’’ If we whimper that the judgment is barbarous, we show only that we have no ‘‘idea’’ of the sin; in comfort we read of the brutalities that men inflict upon each other, in torture-chambers and concentration camps, and ‘‘we have a sense of the evil of them,’’ but not enough sense, not an ‘‘ideal sense,’’ to make us understand the congruity of vengeance with evil. We object that it is shocking that God should sink the sinner into an abyss of misery [. . . .] If once we perceived the justness of the proportion, in the Lockean meaning of perception [. . .] , ‘‘all objections against this doctrine would vanish at once.’’ [. . .]

BILLY GRAHAM RE-PREACHES SINNERS (1949) The Reverend Billy Graham (b. 1918) is a world-renowned evangelist whose ‘‘crusades’’ have been attended by millions around the globe and who has been a spiritual adviser for several U.S. presidents. He is presented here at the outset of his career, before he was a household name, during a revival tour he held in 1949

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that had an extended stopover in Los Angeles. Originally, he had planned to spend only three weeks there, but the attendance was so great that he extended his stay to eight, preaching under a circus tent, which led to the tour name, Canvas Cathedral. Toward the end of his time there, he broke from his usual extemporaneous delivery to read Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in its entirety. Graham took seriously, and sought to instill, Edwards’s view of fallen humanity and our need for inward divine presence in the form of grace. We reprint here Graham’s introduction to the sermon. Note that Graham’s oratorical style, in keeping with his Southern Baptist tradition, was repetitive, and, even with electric amplification, louder and more emotional than Edwards’s delivery was. Also, Graham got some of his facts wrong (for example, Edwards received an M.A. but not a Ph.D., Sinners was delivered in the summer of 1741, not in the winter of 1740). But he was trying to create an e√ect or a mood among his listeners that would make them receptive to the larger messages: the immediate need for individual repentance and acceptance of Jesus Christ, and the need to reform American morals during the Cold War. Graham’s appropriation of Edwards signaled the beginning of a late-twentiethcentury religious movement in America: the New Evangelicalism. It is perhaps no coincidence that the renaissance of interest in Edwards and the rise of the Christian right, now a formative force in American society and politics, went hand in hand. Religious practitioners and leaders have returned to Edwards at an unprecedented level and use his writings for purposes of devotion, revivalism, church growth, and cultural criticism.

We pray that this mighty sermon that thou didst use 200 years ago might be used again in this day to stir thy people, to convict sinners. And we pray tonight that we might see such an outbreak in this place that we prayed for and dreamed of and called upon God for. We pray that thou wouldst vindicate thy word tonight. And we pray that this night might be the night of which all America is praying. In Jesus’ name, Amen. I’ve never stood before an audience in greater fear and trembling, and yet absolute dependence upon the Holy Spirit, as I now stand. And tonight, I covet, I request, the prayers of every child of God in this place. It was 200 years ago, it was the year 1740. It was a cold, blistery day

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Billy Graham preaching, c. 1950

in New England, in Northampton, Massachusetts, when an aging man stepped to the platform before a congregation of people. The people were expectant; there had been a semblance of revival throughout New England; people had been praying, souls were being saved, thousands of Christians were being stirred, revival fires were spreading, very much as they are at the present time across America. Jonathan Edwards had his Ph.D. from Yale University; he was later to become the eminent president of Princeton University. Jonathan Edwards was one of the greatest scholars that America ever produced, one of the greatest preachers, a man of tremendous conviction, a man that we look back on today and revere. And we pray that God might raise up again such men on the American scene, that will not compromise, but will preach the word of God seriously, as Jonathan Edwards preached of old. He used to stand in front of the student body at Princeton University and preach to them the blessed

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gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Would to God that Yale and Princeton and these universities still had men that believed the old fashioned Book and believed in old-fashioned, heaven-sent, Holy Ghost revival! [. . .] George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, were used mightily of God in New England, when George Whitefield came over to stir the revival fires in that day. And what has been considered one of the greatest sermons ever preached by a man since the days of Pentecost, was one of the sermons that was used of God to shake New England in those early days. The sermon was entitled ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.’’ Jonathan Edwards stood before the crowd of people, hardly an eyelash moved, hardly a person moved a hand, and before he was through preaching, people gripped the benches in front of them and screamed for mercy, and revival broke out that night. Tonight, in the very strange providence of God, I’m doing something that I’ve never done before in my ministry: I’m bringing to you that message that was preached 200 years ago by Jonathan Edwards, the president of Princeton University. I’m going to do as he did: he stepped to the platform, and with gestures he preached, but he read every word of it. It’s a very brief sermon; it’s not too long. I’m going to read it, and extemporize part of it. But I want you to feel the grip, I want you to feel the language. I’m asking tonight the same blessed Holy Ghost that moved in that day to move again tonight in 1949 and shake us out of our lethargy as Christians and convict sinners, that they might come to repentance. So tonight, we take our text. I want you to see that scene: I want you to see the little lanterns, the little oil lanterns; I want you to see the candles in the windows; I want you to see the snow falling outside; I want you to see the people as they’re sitting in this little auditorium. I want you to see this eminent man as he stands to his feet. And his opening words were these: ‘‘Let us turn to Deuteronomy 32:35, these words: ‘Their foot shall slide in due time.’ ’’ ‘‘Their foot shall slide in due time!’’ And if you’ve ever listened in your life, I want you to listen tonight. I want you to listen to the text. I want you to listen to the message, ‘‘Their foot shall slide in due time.’’ [. . .]

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H. RICHARD NIEBUHR, ‘‘ THE ANACHRONISM OF JONATHAN EDWARDS’’ (1958) Richard Niebuhr (1894–1962) was an ethicist who taught at Yale Divinity School and, along with his brother Reinhold (1892–1971), was one of the great ‘‘Neoorthodox’’ theologians of the twentieth century. Neo-orthodoxy was a movement that taught the absolute sovereignty of God and sought to reincorporate traditional religious teachings into liberal philosophy. In this address, given in Northampton on the two hundredth anniversary of Edwards’s death, Niebuhr conjures and then complicates Parrington’s portrayal of Edwards as an ‘‘anachronism’’ and critiques Miller’s version of the ‘‘modern’’ Edwards.’’ The lessons of the twentieth century—two world wars, the Great Depression, the Holocaust, the Cold War, and the threat of nuclear annihilation—made the faith in the inevitable progress of humankind espoused by previous generations seem too naive, and Edwards serves as a useful teacher, argues Niebuhr, both for his view of human beings and for his vision of God. The wheel has come full circle.

[. . .] Now we find it di≈cult to accept the mythology of Edwards, though we may need to accept again something like it, when we come to the full acceptance of the realization, that as we did not and cannot elect ourselves into existence, so neither can we elect ourselves out of it, if the inscrutable power that cast us into being wills to keep us in being after our own biological death.—But aside from that, we have a mythology of our own. We see before us in social, if not in personal terms, the real possibility of a future hell. Of a state of existence in which surviving souls, condemned to live, crawl about scrofulously among the radiations of insidious poison, among emanations of noxious gases, on a planet unfit for habitation which they must nevertheless inhabit. Or we envisage the possibility that anarchy in which every man’s hand is raised against his neighbor; where there is no truth but only deception and lies. Or the hell we envision is that of Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s 1984, or the culmination of the life of Organization Man. The mythology has changed. The possibility that Edwards saw before man is now our possibility, though in a di√erent setting. Those critics of

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H. Richard Niebuhr

his who saw no other alternative before man than progress toward perfection and heaven on earth have become rather quiet. They are not even greatly stirred by the prospect that we shall export our wars with our machines to other planets and re-enact on a larger scale the kind of history with which we have become too familiar. We tend to agree more with him also on the tenuousness of the hold we have on ordered life. Our feet, we know, are set in slippery places. A single trigger-happy or nervous bomber, flying now with a load of destruction in the vitals of his plane, can inaugurate at any moment the beginning of our end. A missile gone astray by the failure of a tiny and fragile device may shoot us into the inferno. Or a statesman’s unthinking remark may begin the debate that will end not in death for us but in an unforeseeably long process of destruction. Edwards is not so anachronistic on this point as he was; not so anachronistic as his nineteenth century critics now seem. But at the central point he remains alien to us as to them, more alien

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than he was in the eighteenth century with its Benjamin Franklins. And because he is alien at that point, the sorts of agreement we may be able to achieve with him on other ideas seem superficial and unreal. The anachronism of a commemoration of Edwards’s death in 1958 is the anachronism of Jonathan Edwards in 1958. We will concede perhaps that man is as wicked as Edwards said. What we do not know—or do not yet know—is that God is as holy as Edwards knew him to be. We have in our wisdom submitted for the holy God a kind Heavenly Father. A holy God will not su√er his plans for a vast, stupendously intricate, marvelous creation and the men designed to be his sons to be flouted and destroyed by self-willed and proud little delinquents, aged 60 as often as 16, called nations or civilizations as often as persons. Or we have substituted for the holy God, the sovereign source and determiner of being, Being simply considered, the Constitution of the universe, a wildly running chance. Our feet are standing in slippery places, to be sure, but we are not being held this side of destruction by holy power and determined will; it is chance that keeps us from slipping. There is no wrath in heaven directed against us, because there is no holiness, no will for wholeness, for integrity, and for glory. And since there is no holiness there is no hope for us except the hope that we’ll get by a little longer with our compromises and our superiour animal cunning. Edwards used to say that the trouble with men was not that they had no ideas of God, but that they had little ideas of God. We might add that they are ideas about little Gods. The anachronism of our Edwards celebration is not so much that we try to honor him in a time of atheism, when men do not believe in God; but that we seek to know and respect a servant of the Almighty, of the Lord, the Source of Being itself, of Power beyond all powers, in a time when our God is someone we try to keep alive by religious devotions, to use for solving our personal problems, for assuring us that we are beloved. He is without wrath, because we have made this image wrathless; his love is not holy love because we have painted the icon without holiness. [. . .] But now a possibility presents itself to us as we remember Edwards and remember man’s remembrance of him. We have changed our minds about

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the truth of many things he said. No rather, our minds have been changed by what has happened to us in our history. We have seen evil somewhat as he saw it, not because we desired to see it, but because it thrust itself upon us. [. . .]

T WO VIEWS OF THE TORONTO BLESSING AND EDWARDS’S PLACE IN THE T WENTY-FIRST CENTURY In the early 1980s a new church movement, the Vineyard, characterized by a nondenominational, casual, ‘‘renewal’’ approach, arose under the leadership of John Wimber (1934–77). Although Wimber distanced himself from much of the cultural style and priorities of Pentecostalism, he nonetheless a≈rmed the validity of the ‘‘gifts of the Spirit,’’ such as speaking in tongues, divine healing, visions, and prophesying. In early 1994 members of the Toronto Airport Vineyard, a movement church under the leadership of pastors John and Carol Arnott, began to experience unusual phenomena in their meetings. Influenced by, but hardly reducible to, the evangelical-charismatic teaching of Wimber, as well as by visits to major Pentecostal revivals in Argentina and the ‘‘inner healing’’ movement popularized by leaders like John Sandford and Francis MacNutt, the worship services and prayer meetings regularly featured unusual physical manifestations, including visions; ‘‘holy laughter’’; falling, shaking, jerking, and rolling on the floor; spiritual ‘‘drunkenness’’; and the emission of strange noises, which some compared to animal sounds, including the roaring of lions. These scenes were accompanied by innumerable professed healings as well as many conversions. Millions visited the Toronto services: pastors, church leaders, critics, and spiritually hungry people of all kinds came from around the world to participate in the events in the hope that they too would be a√ected. Dubbed the Toronto Blessing, the movement spread to other churches, taking particular e√ect among a wide network of Anglican churches in the United Kingdom as well as providing initial inspiration for a revival in Pensacola, Florida, among the Assemblies of God, a large Protestant denomination of the Pentecostal tradition distinguished by its belief in spiritual gifts. The events at the Toronto Airport Vineyard proved too much for Wimber and other Vineyard leaders, and in 1995 the church was

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expelled from the Vineyard movement because of unresolved concerns about the methods, authenticity, and interpretation of the manifestations at the Toronto church. What nearly all these di√erent individuals and movements had in common, despite their di√erences, was their reliance on Edwards’s writings for revivalism, church growth, and missions.

GUY CHEVREAU, C ATCH THE FIRE (1994)

Guy Chevreau, a Canadian minister, scholar, and onetime pastor at the Toronto Airport Vineyard, has written in defense of the Toronto Blessing, particularly in his Catch the Fire. Part history, part testimony, part pop theology, the book cites Christian authorities such as Augustine and John Calvin, George Whitefield and John Wesley. But the most substantial engagement is with Edwards, particularly his treatises defending the Great Awakening, which for Chevreau and other Blessing participants provided a model and justification for the new ‘‘anointing.’’ In this regard, the Toronto Blessing movement was (and is) representative of a number of hybrid evangelical-charismatic revivalist phenomena throughout the world today that refer to Edwards as one of their chief theological theoreticians.

Mid-February [1994], while sitting on the floor during one of the ministry times at the Airport Vineyard, I surveyed the bodies laid out everywhere, and leaned over to a newly-made friend and said, ‘‘All of this makes apple sauce of a fellow’s theological applecarts.’’ I had come to the meetings with a reasonably broad biblical foundation already laid. The study of personal and corporate spiritual renewal has had the focus of my attention for sixteen years. But [. . .] I needed further help in processing the manifestations I was witnessing and experiencing. I had served the Baptist church since 1979, but personally had never seen much by way of physical demonstrations of the Spirit’s power and presence. I figured it was a significant manifestation if we could get people to lean forward, take out their wallets, and put something in the o√ering plate. As to weeping, wailing, laughing, shaking and flailing and falling about, I had no frame of reference. Needing to process what I was experiencing, I read John White’s very

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Cover of Christianity Today, September 2006

helpful book, When the Spirit Comes with Power,* and then by way of further research, followed some of his footnote references. They led me to The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Though most would be completely unfamiliar with his writings, some would know of him only by reputation, as the fire-and-brimstone preacher of the ‘‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’’ sermon. If that’s all Edwards is known for, it is most unfortunate, because [. . .] Edwards can be considered the foremost theological architect of the Great Awakening, another remarkable move of God, roughly 250 years ago [. . .] The evolution of his voluminous writings gives telling witness to his * John White, When the Spirit Comes with Power: Signs and Wonders Among God’s People (Wheaton, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, 1988), which draws on interviews with revival participants to determine the causes of past revivals.

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growing insights, wisdom and discernment, and as such, Edwards’ works stand as one of the most helpful resources available. When studied, what emerges as the resounding note throughout all of his extensive theological writings is his passion for what he called ‘‘practical and vital Christianity,’’ religious knowledge as experience, held not in the head but in the heart. [. . .] A question that is frequently asked at the pastors’ teaching time is, ‘‘With all of the manifestations that have characterized the meetings at the Airport Vineyard, what assessment would Jonathan Edwards bring to bear?’’ From his voluminous writings, I choose two final citations as my answer: both come from his Thoughts on the Present Revival, the most seasoned and comprehensive of all his writings on the Awakening. The first quote is Edwards’ reply to an accusation brought against preachers who have ‘‘made much of outcries, faintings, and other bodily e√ects; speaking of them as tokens of the presence of God, and arguments of the success of preaching; and seemingly to rejoice in it, yea, even blessing God for it when they see these e√ects.’’ Edwards says: I have learned the meaning of (the manifestations) the same way that persons learn the meaning of language, by use and experience. I confess that when I see a great crying out in a congregation, in the manner that I have seen it, when those things are held forth to them which are worthy of their being greatly a√ected by, I rejoice in it, . . . because I have found from time to time a much greater and more excellent e√ect. To rejoice that the work of God is carried on calmly, without much ado, is in e√ect to rejoice that it is carried on with less power, or that there is not so much of the influence of God’s Spirit. For though the degree of the influence of the Spirit of God on particular persons, is by no means to be judged of by the degree of external appearances, because of the di√erent constitutions, tempers, and circumstances of

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men; yet, if there be a very powerful influence of the Spirit of God on a mixed multitude, it will cause some way or other a great visible commotion.* The second citation comes from the first section of his Thoughts on Revival. Edwards begins his treatise by stating: ‘‘They have greatly erred in the way they have gone about to try this work, whether it be a work of the Spirit of God or no, in judging . . . the means and methods that have been used . . .’’ He again states that it is not means, but the end that is of consequence: We are to observe the e√ect wrought; and if, upon examination of that, it be found to be agreeable to the Word of God, we are bound without more ado to rest in it as God’s work; and shall be like to be rebuked for our arrogance if we refuse [to acknowledge it as such] until God shall explain to us how He has brought this e√ect to pass, or why He has made use of such and such means in doing of it . . . It appears to me that the great God has . . . poured contempt on all that human strength, wisdom, prudence and su≈ciency which men have been wont to trust and glory in . . . so that the Lord alone shall be exalted.’’† HANK HANEGRAAFF, COUN TERFEIT REVIVAL (1997)

The Dutch-born Hank Hanegraa√ (b. 1950) is the president of the Christian Research Institute, a conservative Protestant countercult and apologetic ministry,‡ and host of a radio talk show, The Bible Answer Man. Initially intrigued by the Toronto Blessing and its imitators, Hanegraa√ eventually came to dismiss them all as ‘‘counterfeit,’’ and called for their leaders to return to the Bible to restore * The interpolation in parentheses and emphasis are Chevreau’s. The quotation can be found in Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival (1743), reprinted in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 4: The Great Awakening, ed. C. C. Goen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 399–400. It should be noted that in the original Edwards is referring only to ‘‘outcries.’’ † This passage originally appears, with significant textual di√erences, in Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, 293–95. ‡ The Christian countercult movement is a collection of ministries and individual Christians who independently track the activities and critique the doctrines and practices of groups they identify as cults.

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them and their followers to the way of truth. He also counseled that they return to Edwards as a way of countering the claims of Chevreau and others that Edwards was ‘‘on their side.’’ In fact, a number of sections in Hanegraa√ ’s book begin with a relevant quote from Edwards, wresting him back from Toronto apologists. This criticism, but one among many, shows the tussle over the ‘‘mantle’’ of Edwards in present-day revival circles—a tug-of-war that is certainly not new but goes back to the late eighteenth century, when various groups of Edwards’s disciples sought to establish themselves as the ‘‘ real’’ Edwardseans. Hanegraa√ ’s polemics against this new awakening are also reminiscent of the vitriolic pamphlet war that erupted between the supporters and opponents of the first Great Awakening. All too often, issues of right and wrong are lost in misunderstanding and vindictiveness, accusations and counteraccusations. The name and authority of Edwards was and is a bone of contention for would-be religious leaders, and his thought and legacy will no doubt continue to inspire and instigate future movements.

In teachings, transcripts, tapes, and television appearances, men like John Arnott (Toronto Airport Vineyard), Dr. Guy Chevreau (Catch the Fire), Gerald Coates (Holy Trinity Brompton), Patrick Dixon (Signs of Revival ),* and a host of other Counterfeit Revival proponents are deceiving devotees by revising history. Their primary ploy is to persuade people that sardonic laughter, spasmodic jerks, slaying in the spirit, and other ‘‘enthusiasms’’ were not only pervasive in the First Great Awakening but were also promoted by such historical heavyweights as Jonathan Edwards (popularly cited as one of the greatest theological minds produced in America.) [. . .] Counterfeit Revival ‘‘historian’’ William De Arteaga, for example, uses the Toronto Airport Vineyard as his bully pulpit to simultaneously condemn Calvinism and commend the theology of Jonathan Edwards. [. . .] In the words of DeArteaga, ‘‘The Lord has already chosen the predominant theologian of this revival. It’s not me! It’s Jonathan Edwards ’’ (emphasis added). * Gerald Coates established the Pioneer network, a neocharismatic collection of evangelical churches in the United Kingdom; Patrick Dixon is an English medical and business consultant and writer whose Signs of Revival (1995) praises the new movements.

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Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. The theological focus of Edwards was on eternal verities such as sin, salvation, and sanctification. In sharp contrast, the temporal fixation of men like John Arnott is on such earthly vanities as sardonic laughter, spasmodic jerks, and being slain in the spirit. While Edwards personified a passion for piety, Arnott personifies a priority for parties. Dr. Nick Needham has well said that anyone who believes that Edwards would have approved of this paradigm shift ‘‘must surely have kissed a final farewell to his mind.’’* Other leaders of the Counterfeit Revival have appealed to Jonathan Edwards. Thus, to Edwards we shall now go. [. . .] In Catch the Fire, Counterfeit Revival historian Guy Chevreau goes to great lengths to ‘‘prove’’ that the ‘‘new and extraordinary works of God’’ to which Edwards referred are precisely what he experienced when he first visited the Toronto Airport Vineyard. Chevreau confesses that he was ‘‘too desperate to be critical’’ when he first encountered the ‘‘uncontrollable laughter and inconsolable weeping; violent shaking and falling down; people waving their arms around, in windmill-like motions, or vigorous judo-like chopping with their forearms.’’† Thus, when John Arnott prayed that Chevreau’s wife, Janis, would remain in a drunken stupor for forty-eight hours, he did not attempt to intervene. Instead, Chevreau proudly proclaimed that Arnott’s prayer had been abundantly answered. [. . .] For more than two days Janis fell ‘‘repeatedly,’’ was ‘‘hysterical with laughter,’’ and was ‘‘unable to walk a straight line.’’ So severe was her spiritual drunkenness that Janis was completely unfit to drive. On worldwide television Janis witnessed to the ‘‘new and extraordinary works of God’’ by telling Phil Donahue that for four hours she had rolled * Nick Needham, Was Jonathan Edwards the Founding Father of the Toronto Blessing? (Welling, Kent, U.K.: privately published, 1995), 20. Needham is a British church historian and pastor who in his study of the Toronto Blessing found that it actually exhibited what Edwards calls the ‘‘negative,’’ or inconclusive, marks of revival. † Guy Chevreau, Catch the Fire: The Toronto Blessing, An Experience of Renewal and Revival (Toronto: Harper Collins, 1994), 12–13.

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around under chairs at church. She went on to testify that the very next day she began to ‘‘toss hot, greasy fish’’ at parishioners during a very serious dinner meeting. Dr. Chevreau spends almost a third of his book attempting to convince readers that these were precisely the kinds of new and ‘‘extraordinary enthusiasms’’ that Edwards defined and defended. In doing so, Chevreau corrupts the clear intention of Edwards’ words. When Edwards spoke of the ‘‘new and extraordinary works of God,’’ he was referring to the Spirit’s ‘‘ordinary work of converting sinners, but carried on at certain points in history in an extraordinary way as far as numbers and community-wide consequences were concerned.’’ [. . .] ‘‘One night I was preaching on hell,’’ boasts Counterfeit Revival leader Rodney Howard-Browne,* when suddenly laughter ‘‘just hit the whole place. The more I told people what hell was like, the more they laughed.’’ This was not an isolated incident. [. . .] Edwards provides a completely di√erent perspective. When leaders of the Great Awakening preached on the terrors of hell and impending judgment, people were moved by the Spirit and experienced weakness and weeping. The reality of hell and the brevity of life so engaged their minds that they experienced corresponding e√ects in their bodies. Rather than being deliberately produced by the laying on of hands or loud shouts of ‘‘More, Lord!’’ these responses were the spontaneous results of a vivid encounter with eternal verities. [. . .] Edwards made it crystal-clear that a true valuation of the judgment of God and the terror of hell produces such powerful inner emotions that corresponding e√ects on the body are only natural. [. . .] The e√ects on the body described by men like Edwards were never random or ridiculous but were the result of spiritual awakening. The effects on the body produced through men like Howard-Browne are largely the result of sociopsychological manipulation.

* Howard-Browne, a South African by birth, is the leader of a charismatic church in Tampa, Florida. An early proponent of the ‘‘holy laughter’’ movement, he has led revivals around the world. In 2007–8, he was part of the ‘‘Great Awakening Tour’’ in the United States.

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Leaders of the Counterfeit Revival proudly promote bodily e√ects such as sardonic laughter, spasmodic jerks, and ‘‘surfing in the spirit’’ and perceive preaching as virtually pointless. As Howard-Browne has acknowledged, ‘‘As to what you’re preaching, it’s almost irrelevant.’’ In sharp contrast, leaders of the Great Awakening believed that powerful preaching on sin, salvation, and sanctification was paramount. [. . .] Leaders of the Counterfeit Revival cite the widespread acceptance of their movement as proof that it is a work of the Spirit. Leaders of the Great Awakening did not. While Edwards acknowledged that the outpouring of the Spirit in the days of the apostles caused a great stir, he resisted the notion that the expansion of a movement was an endorsement from God. If size, scope, and spread were validations for a religious movement, one would be compelled to accept the counterfeit Christ of the New Age movement. [. . .]

MARILYNNE ROBINSON, ‘‘CREDO’’ (2008) Born in 1943 in Idaho, Marilynne Robinson teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is a Pulitzer Prize–winning author of fiction and nonfiction. Her work is informed by her interest in religion and theology, and to no small extent by the writings of Jonathan Edwards. In a meditation on her views on faith in general and on her personal faith in particular—Credo means ‘‘I believe’’—she reflects on the role that Edwards had and continues to have on her e√orts to resolve fundamental questions of human being. Surprisingly, paradoxically, the author of Sinners provides the inspiration for ‘‘a meaningful imagination of freedom.’’

[. . .] My habit for a long time has been to consider disputed and in some cases discarded doctrines on the theory that if in the past thoughtful people have found them meaningful, they might in fact be meaningful, though, of course, meaningful is not the same as wholly su≈cient or correct. Take for example the two terms in that venerable controversy, free will versus predestination. There are problems associated with both of them, but in such great matters problems are to be expected, and problems have their own interest and their own implications. In the universe that is

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Marilynne Robinson, c. 2008

the knowledge of God, opposed beliefs can be equally true, and equally false, and, at the same time, complementary, because contradiction and anomaly are the e√ect of our very limited understanding. As a writer it is important to me to remember always, or as often as I can, that we inhabit a reality far larger and more complex than our conception of it can in any way reflect. I am speaking not only of time and causality, but also of the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts. [. . .] How to have a meaningful imagination of freedom is a problem I have pondered for a long time. When I was a sophomore in college, taking a course in American philosophy, I went to the library and read an assigned text, Jonathan Edwards’ Doctrine of Original Sin Defended. There is a long footnote in this daunting treatise that discusses the light of the moon, and how the apparent continuity of the moon’s light is a consequence of its reflecting light that is in fact continuously renewed.* This was Edwards’ analogy for the continuous renewal of the world by the will of God, which * See Original Sin in this volume.

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creates, to our eyes, seeming lawfulness and identity, but which is in fact a continuous free act of God. I learned later that there is in fact no scientifically describable reason for the ongoingness of things, the replication of the world as the world in every moment of time. Edwards’ footnote was my first, best introduction to epistemology and ontology, and my escape— and what a rescue it was—from the contending, tedious determinisms that seemed to be all that was on o√er to me then. I doubt it would be di√erent now, though quantum theory has given us a century to absorb the fact that existence is saturated with virtual or potential reality, a fact which should at least clarify by complicating our sense of our circumstance. But a primitive determinism seems to be as prevalent as ever. For some years my antidote has been Scientific American. The determinism of the moment is the new genetics, but it looks more and more as though inferring human character and behavior from the genome would be like inferring the works of Mozart from the keyboard of a piano. One consequence of Edwards’ ontology was that God must be thought of as free, active, and at no remove from the universe we experience, nor from any least aspect of it. I was aware at the time of attempts to rescue God as a hypothesis by setting him outside a world he had designed to function autonomously, obedient to its own laws. That is to say, God was thought of as marginalized by a determinist reality. I hated this on aesthetic and other grounds and I absolutely could not think my way past it. Then, by grace of that footnote, I realized that I could think of God as present and intentional, and of reality as essentially addressed to human perception—perception being then as now my greatest interest and pleasure in life. It might seem strange to have been liberated by a defense of the doctrine American Protestantism has generally considered unbearably repressive. But that was a memorable day in my interior life. I left the library thinking di√erently than I did when I entered it. I left persuaded that all experience is profound, and worthy of all the attention it can be given. That by its nature it is accessible to being perceived rather than merely seen. [. . .]

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Chronology of Edwards’s Life

1703 1714 1716–20 1720–23 1722–23 1723 1724 1726 1727

1729 1731 1734 1735 1737 1738 1739 1740

October 5, born at East Windsor, Connecticut August, Queen Anne dies; King George I crowned Student at Yale College M.A. student at Yale College Minister to Presbyterian church in New York City October, writes ‘‘Spider Letter’’ November, agrees to settle as pastor of Bolton, Connecticut Begins two-year tutorship at Yale College October, moves to Northampton, Massachusetts, as colleague to his grandfather, the Reverend Solomon Stoddard February 15, ordained as assistant pastor at Northampton church July 28, marries Sarah Pierpont of New Haven August, King George I dies; King George II crowned February, becomes full pastor in Northampton upon death of Stoddard July 8, preaches (and later publishes) a Boston lecture, God Glorified in the Work of Redemption August, publishes A Divine and Supernatural Light December, local Connecticut River valley revivals begin His uncle Joseph Hawley, Sr., commits suicide in despair over the state of his soul A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God published in London Preaches Charity and Its Fruits (published posthumously) Preaches A History of the Work of Redemption (published posthumously) George Whitefield’s first tour of New England October, Whitefield preaches in Northampton

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1741 July 8, preaches Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God September, delivers at Yale commencement and later publishes Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God 1743 Publishes Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England 1744 March, King George’s War begins (part of the War of Austrian Succession), in which Northampton is threatened by attack and militia members are recruited for a campaign against Canada In what became known as the Bad Book A√air, Edwards denounces young men caught reading illustrated midwives’ manuals, alienating several prominent families and contributing to his later dismissal 1746 Publishes A Treatise Concerning Religious A√ections 1747 Publishes An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer 1748 October, King George’s War ends; the missionary David Brainerd dies at Edwards’s home 1749 Publishes An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd and An Humble Inquiry into the Rules of the Word of God 1750 June 22, dismissed as pastor of Northampton over a controversy concerning how severely to restrict full membership in the church July 2, preaches (and later publishes) Farewell Sermon 1751 February, settles in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, as a local pastor and missionary to the Indians 1754 February, the French and Indian War begins (part of the Seven Years’ War) Publishes Freedom of the Will 1755 Completes Concerning the End for Which God Created the World and The Nature of True Virtue (published posthumously) 1758 Publishes Original Sin January, assumes presidency of College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) February 23, to help promote smallpox inoculation, a controversial proceeding both medically and theologically, he is inoculated, but he dies of the disease on March 22

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Glossary

A√ections Strong exercises of human inclination that involve both understanding and will Andrewes, Lancelot (1555–1626) Bishop and scholar of the Church of England who was renowned as a preacher Arminianism Belief named after the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560–1609), who taught that election was conditional on faith, atonement was universal, and grace, once obtained, could be lost; by Edwards’s time, Arminianism came to identify a broad range of anti-Calvinist tenets that favored the ability of human beings to play an active role in their own salvation Brainerd, David (1718–47) Missionary sponsored by the Scottish Society for the Promoting of Christian Knowledge who worked primarily with Delaware Indians in Pennsylvania and New Jersey before succumbing to tuberculosis at an early age Bull, Nehemiah (1700–1740) Congregational pastor in Westfield, Massachusetts, and the co-founder of the Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Indian mission, where Edwards later worked Calvin, John (1509–64) Influential French Protestant theologian and pastor in Geneva and one of the chief figures of the Reformation Carey, William (1761–1834) English Particular Baptist missionary to India, Bible translator, and co-founder of the Baptist Missionary Society Chauncy, Charles (1705–87) Congregational minister of a church in Boston, opponent of the Great Awakening, and critic of Edwards Colman, Benjamin (1673–1747) Pastor of Brattle Street Church in Boston, he was an influential Congregational figure in both England and New England Conversion The term used to describe the change made in the soul by the indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit Covenant of grace Theological term identifying the promise God makes to

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believers in which they are saved through grace, rather than their own works, bestowed by virtue of faith in the sacrifice of Christ Covenant of redemption Theological term identifying the agreement made between the three persons of the Trinity to save a portion of humankind through the mediation of Christ, the Second Person Covenant of works Theological term identifying the agreement between God and the first man, Adam, as described in the book of Genesis, stipulating that humankind would have eternal life if Adam obeyed the command not to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil Davenport, James (1716–67) Congregational minister in Southold, Long Island, who became a controversial itinerant preacher during the Great Awakening Donne, John (1572–1631) Anglican priest and the dean of Saint Paul’s in England, he was a famous preacher and poet Dwight, Timothy (1752–1817) Congregational minister in Greenfield Farms, Connecticut, theologian, poet, and president of Yale College Edwards, Jonathan, Jr. (1745–1801) Jonathan Edwards’s son, he was a Congregational minister in New Haven, Connecticut, Union College president, a theologian, and a founding member of the Connecticut Missionary Society as well as of Connecticut’s first abolitionist society Edwards, Timothy (1669–1758) Jonathan Edwards’s father, he was a Congregational minister in East Windsor, Connecticut Elect Term used in Christian theology to identify those whom God had chosen for salvation Emmons, Nathanael (1745–1840) Congregational minister in Franklin, Massachusetts, and a New Divinity theologian Erskine, John (1721–1803) Pastor of Kirkintilloch and Fife, Scotland, he was active in the Scottish revivals, a leader in the Scottish evangelical party, and an important correspondent with Edwards Excellency Term used often by Edwards to describe a complex of attributes of God, including harmony, proportion, goodness, beauty, and holiness Fuller, Andrew (1754–1815) English Baptist minister and theologian, co-founder of the Baptist Missionary Society Great Awakening The term used to identify the series of revivals that took place in the British American colonies beginning in the mid-1730s in Northampton, Massachusetts, reaching its apex during the early 1740s with the

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tours of George Whitefield, and continuing sporadically through the next two decades Half-Way Covenant The agreement reached during the 1662 Synod in Massachusetts that expanded the right to the sacrament of baptism to the children of people not in full church membership in order to boost declining membership rolls Hawley, Joseph, Sr. (1682–1735) Northampton, Massachusetts, merchant whose suicide during a time of spiritual crisis cast a shadow on Edwards’s first revival e√ort Hooker, Thomas (1586–1647) Puritan leader who left England and was a pastor in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut Hopkins, Samuel (1693–1755) Jonathan Edwards’s brother-in-law and a Congregational minister in West Springfield, Massachusetts Hopkins, Samuel (1721–1803) Jonathan Edwards’s student and his first biographer, a Congregational minister in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Newport, Rhode Island, a prominent New Divinity theologian, and an advocate of abolitionism Locke, John (1632–1704) Prominent English philosopher and political theorist Millennial/Millennium Terms used in Christian theology to refer to the thousand years of peace and prosperity to be enjoyed by the Church either after or before the Second Coming of Christ before the Day of Judgment Natural person Term used in Christian theology to describe a person in a state of nature, or before conversion New Birth Term used during the Great Awakening to describe the act of conversion New Covenant. See Covenant of grace New Divinity Term used during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to identify the school of thought inspired by Jonathan Edwards New Lights Term used to identify supporters of the revivals of the 1740s Noyes, Joseph (1688–1761) Congregational minister in New Haven, Connecticut, and a critic of revivals Old Lights Term used to identify opponents of the Great Awakening, who usually objected to the revivals because of their overly emotional nature and the social disorder that resulted from them Pepperrel, Sir William (1696–1759) Massachusetts politician and judge, and the

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commander of the successful 1745 campaign against Louisburg, Canada, for which he was knighted Pomeroy, Benjamin (1704–84) Congregational minister in Hebron, Connecticut, and a New Light preacher Prince, Thomas (1687–1758) Congregational minister of Old South Church, Boston, and a supporter of Whitefield and revival Puritans Religious group in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who favored purifying or reforming the Church of England Ramus, Peter (1515–72) French Protestant philosopher and logician best known for his dialectical method of arranging knowledge Revival A religious episode, or series of episodes, usually involving a large group of people who are moved by emotional preaching; also known as awakening Reynolds, Peter (1700–1768) Congregational minister in Enfield, Connecticut Second Great Awakening A series of revivals beginning in the 1790s and continuing for several decades in New England and upper New York State, Kentucky, and Tennessee characterized by camp meetings and the rise of new denominations such as the Holiness Movement and the Church of Latter-day Saints; in addition to religious revival, the Second Great Awakening was characterized by an emphasis on social reform, particularly abolition Sinners The term used to describe human beings as depraved and guilty, deserving of God’s judgment Smalley, John (1734–1820) Disciple of Jonathan Edwards and a Congregational minister in New Britain, Connecticut Stoddard, Solomon (1643–1729) Jonathan Edwards’s grandfather and predecessor as the Congregational minister of Northampton, Massachusetts, he was a famous revivalist Taylor, Edward (c. 1642–1729) Congregational minister in Westfield, Massachusetts, and a poet Tennent, Gilbert (1703–64) Irish-born Presbyterian clergyman in New Brunswick, New Jersey, New Castle, Delaware, and Philadelphia, an itinerant during the Great Awakening, and the co-founder of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) Tillotson, John (1630–94) Anglican cleric and later archbishop of Canterbury whose ‘‘plain style’’ made him the most respected and imitated English preacher of his time

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Visible Saint A person who was deemed to be converted by virtue of ‘‘visible’’ goodness, or good behavior and speech West, Stephen (1735–1819) Missionary in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and the vice president of Williams College Wheelock, Eleazar (1711–79) Congregational minister in Lebanon Crank (now Columbia), Connecticut, founder of the Indian Charity School (later Dartmouth College), and a New Light preacher who was present at the delivery of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God White, Thomas (1701–63) Congregational minister in Bolton, Connecticut Whitefield, George (1714–70) Anglican minister and an internationally renowned itinerant evangelist who made several tours of the British colonies Williams, Eleazar (1688–1742) Congregational minister in Mansfield, Connecticut, he was reportedly present at the delivery of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Williams, Stephen (1693–1872) Jonathan Edwards’s cousin, a Congregational minister in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and a former Indian captive who was present at the preaching of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and described the occasion in his diary Woodbridge, Timothy (1713–70) Congregational minister in Hatfield, Massachusetts

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Resources for Teaching

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS BASIC QUESTIONS

≤ What is the purpose of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and how are people meant to respond? ≤ Identify at least three images or metaphors that Edwards draws from the Bible. For each image or metaphor, consider the following: what is the purpose of the image or metaphor; why is it important that the image or metaphor is from the Bible; and does Edwards use the image or metaphor e√ectively? ≤ Have you ever heard terror preaching? If so, how e√ective (and a√ective) was it? ≤ Search the Internet and sample how Edwards and Sinners are perceived and used in popular culture today. What di√erent uses do you see? Are there obvious categories? INTERMEDIATE QUESTIONS

≤ What does Edwards assume his audience is afraid of, and how does he make use of these fears? What new fears does he create? ≤ According to Edwards, is God irrational? Why or why not? ≤ What kind of picture of God does Edwards paint for his listeners when he discusses the ‘‘pleasure of God,’’ and how would you define the ‘‘pleasure of God’’? ≤ Sinners is commonly portrayed as a ‘‘hellfire and brimstone’’ sermon, yet Edwards never describes hell in Sinners. Why not, and what e√ect would describing hell in great detail have had on the listener or reader?

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ADVANCED QUESTIONS

≤ What does Edwards mean by ‘‘unconverted,’’ and what images or analogies does he use in Sinners to evoke the situation of those who are unconverted? ≤ Why does Edwards seek to frighten his listeners by making them see the fragility of their lives, and what literary strategies does he use? What popular notions or mindsets does he attack? ≤ Edwards lived in an age when many nations of Europe were ruled by strong monarchs. How is a monarchical, hierarchical view of the world reflected in Sinners? ≤ Late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century commentators on Edwards and Sinners were scandalized by his harsh depiction of God as cruel and wrathful (see, for example, the Harriet Beecher Stowe selection in this volume). Is this a fair assessment of Edwards’s view of God? ≤ Would the type of ‘‘terror’’ preaching that Edwards used in Sinners work today in most churches? ONLINE RESOURCES

One- and two-day curricula modules are available, via the Jonathan Edwards Center’s Web site, at http://edwards.yale.edu/education/high-school. These modules, which include thematic readings, primary and secondary texts, suggested projects, and further questions for discussion, are adaptable for high school, college, and church settings, as well as for self-study. For further curricular materials, go to http://edwards.yale.edu/SinnersReader. AUDIO VERSIONS OF SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD

Billy Graham, Los Angeles, 1949: edwards/yale.edu/graham Farmingdale, N.Y. : www.thesermon1741.com/ David Sonner, Reformed Bible Church, Appomattox, Va.: www.sermonaudio .com/sermoninfo.asp?sermonID=770213541 Sermon Index: www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=1729

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RESOURCES FOR TEACHING

Mark Dever, Capitol Baptist Church, 2003: resources.christianity.com/details/ hbc/20031005/2AABCDA4-CA5644E9-B221-D7584DC9F0A3.aspx Max MacLean: www.listenersbible.com/products/index.php?main — page=product — custom — info&products — id=147 Dr. Ralph Green: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMiqF3CJGBc

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Suggested Reading

WRITINGS BY JONATHAN EDWARDS

The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Perry Miller, John E. Smith, and Harry S. Stout, gen. eds. 26 volumes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957–2008. The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale Web site. http://edwards.yale.edu. This site includes all of the volumes of The Works of Jonathan Edwards as well as additional materials by and about Edwards. ANTHOLOGIES

Kimnach, Wilson H., Kenneth P. Minkema, and Douglas A. Sweeney, eds. The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999. Smith, John E., Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema, eds. A Jonathan Edwards Reader. 1995. Rev. ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. ON EDWARDS AND THE GREAT AWAKENING

Kidd, Thomas. The Great Awakening. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Lambert, Frank. Inventing the Great Awakening. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Tracy, Patricia J. Jonathan Edwards, Pastor: Religion and Society in EighteenthCentury Northampton. New York: Hill and Wang, 1980; rep. Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2007. Winiarski, Douglas. ‘‘Jonathan Edwards, Enthusiast? Radical Revivalism and the Great Awakening in the Connecticut Valley.’’ Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 74 (December 2005): 683–739.

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SUGGESTED READING

ON SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD

Cady, Edwin H. ‘‘The Artistry of Jonathan Edwards.’’ New England Quarterly 22 (1949): 61–72. Gallagher, Edward J. ‘‘ ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’: Some Unfinished Business.’’ New England Quarterly 73 (2000): 202–21. Le May, J. A. Leo. ‘‘Rhetorical Strategies in ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ and ‘Narrative of the Late Massacres in Lancaster County.’ ’’ In Benjamin Franklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Representation of American Culture, ed. Barbara B. Oberg and Harry S. Stout, 186–203. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Lukasik, Christopher. ‘‘Feeling the Force of Certainty: The Divine Science, Newtonianism, and Jonathan Edwards’s ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.’ ’’ New England Quarterly 73 ( June 2000): 222–45. Medlicott, Alexander. ‘‘In the Wake of Mr. Edwards’s ‘Most Awakening’ Sermon at Enfield.’’ Early American Literature 15 (1980–81): 217–21. Pudalo√, Ross J. ‘‘ ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’: The SocioEconomic and Intellectual Matrices for Edwards’ Sermon.’’ Mosaic 16 (1983): 45–64. Stuart, Robert Lee. ‘‘Jonathan Edwards at Enfield: ‘And Oh the Cheerfulness and Pleasantness . . .’ ’’ American Literature 48 (1976): 46–59. Steele, Thomas J., and Eugene R. Delay. ‘‘Vertigo in History: The Threatening Tactility of ‘Sinners in the Hands.’ ’’ Early American Literature 18 (1983–84): 242–56. BIOGRAPHIES AND REFERENCE WORKS

Gura, Philip. Jonathan Edwards: America’s Evangelical. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005. Lesser, M. X. Reading Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography in Three Parts, 1729–2005. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008. Marsden, George M. Jonathan Edwards: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. ———. A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008. Miller, Perry. Jonathan Edwards. New York: Sloane, 1949. Murray, Iain. Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography. Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1988.

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SUGGESTED READING

Nichols, Stephen J. Jonathan Edwards: A Guided Tour of His Life and Thought. Philipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2001. COLLECTED ESSAYS

Hart, D. G., Sean Michael Lucas, and Stephen J. Nichols, eds. The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards: American Religion and the Evangelical Tradition. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2003. Hatch, Nathan O., and Harry S. Stout, eds. Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Kling, David W., and Douglas A. Sweeney, eds. Jonathan Edwards at Home and Abroad: Historical Memories, Cultural Movements, Global Horizons. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003. Lee, Sang Hyun, ed. The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. Lee, Sang Hyun, and Alan Guelzo, eds. Edwards in Our Time: Jonathan Edwards and the Shaping of American Religion. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000. Piper, John, and Justin Taylor, eds. A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards. Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2004. Stein, Stephen J., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Edwards. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Stout, Harry S., Kenneth P. Minkema, and Caleb J. D. Maskell, eds. Jonathan Edwards at 300: Essays on the Tercentenary of His Birth. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2005.

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Original Sources for Texts

This list provides the sources for documents in this volume, including the original publication and, where appropriate, the location of the manuscript. The Works of Jonathan Edwards series is abbreviated WJE, followed by the volume number. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741) WJE 22:404–18 COMPANION TEXTS BY EDWARDS

‘‘Of Being’’ (1721) MS, courtesy of Franklin Trask Library, Andover Newton Theological School; WJE 6:202–7 ‘‘The Mind’’ (1723) Printed in Sereno Dwight, The Works of President Edwards, 10 vols. (New York, 1829–30), 1:695–96; WJE 6:334–37 The ‘‘Spider Letter’’ (1723) MS, courtesy of the New-York Historical Society, Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Edwards, Jonathan; WJE 6:163–69 The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners (1735) Jonathan Edwards, Discourses on Various Important Subjects (Boston, 1738); WJE 19:336–76 An Account of the Late Wonderful Work of God (1735) MS, courtesy of Franklin Trask Library, Andover Newton Theological School; WJE 4:99–110 ‘‘Personal Narrative’’ (1740) Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Character of the Late Reverend, Learned and Pious Mr. Jonathan Edwards (Boston, 1765); WJE 16:790–804

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ORIGINAL SOURCES FOR TEXTS

Letter to Deborah Hatheway, a Young Convert (1741) Advice to Young Converts (Northampton, Mass., 1807); WJE 16:90–94 Letter to Mary Edwards (1749) MS, courtesy of Franklin Trask Library, Andover Newton Theological School; WJE 16:288–90 Letter to Timothy Edwards (1753) MS, courtesy of Franklin Trask Library, Andover Newton Theological School; WJE 16:578–80 Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival in New England (1743) Jonathan Edwards, Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival in New England (1743); WJE 4:384–408 Letter to Lady Mary Pepperrell (1751) MS, courtesy of Franklin Trask Library, Andover Newton Theological School; WJE 16:414–19 Original Sin (1758) Jonathan Edwards, The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended (1758); WJE 3:399–404 CONTEMPORARY DOCUMENTS

Gilbert Tennent, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry (1740) Published in Philadelphia, 1740; selections from pp. 3–4, 9–10, 11, 12, 15–16, 17– 18, 20–21, 25, 30 Letter from a Visitor to Su≈eld, Connecticut (1741) ‘‘Extract from a letter, Su≈eld,’’ July 6, 1741, Samuel P. Savage Papers II, Samuel P. Savage Collection, Box 1, Folder 1712–50, courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Initial transcription courtesy of Douglas Winiarski of the University of Richmond. Stephen Williams’s Eyewitness Account of the Preaching of Sinners (1741) Stephen Williams, ‘‘Diary,’’ 10 vols., 3:314–15. Courtesy of the First Church of Christ, Longmeadow, Massachusetts. Eleazar Wheelock’s Pastoral Letter About the Preaching of Sinners (1741) MS, July 11, 1741, in Wheelock Papers, no. 743900.1, courtesy of Dartmouth College Library, Hanover, N.H. William Rand, The Late Religious Commotions in New England Considered (1743) Published in Boston, 1743; selection from pp. 22–25

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INTERPRETATIONS

Benjamin Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut (1818) Benjamin Trumbull, A Complete History of Connecticut: Civil and Ecclesiastical, from the Emigration of Its First Planters, from England, in the Year 1630, to the Year 1764; and to the Close of the Indian Wars, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1818), 2:144–45 Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening (1842) Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (Boston, 1842), 214–20 Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister’s Wooing (1859) Harriet Beecher Stowe, The Minister’s Wooing (New York, 1859), 336–39 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Reflects on Edwards (1880) Oliver Wendell Holmes, ‘‘Jonathan Edwards,’’ International Review ( July 1880): 4–7, 22, 24–28 Alexander B. Grosart, The Tear-Stained Pages of Sinners (1897) Alexander B. Grosart, ‘‘Handwriting of Famous Divines,’’ Sunday at Home (May 1897): 458, 460 (London: Religious Tract Society) Mark Twain Reads Edwards on the Will (1902) Mark Twain to Joseph H. Twitchell, February 1902. In Mark Twain’s Letters, ed. Albert B. Paine, 2 vols. (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1917), 2:719–21. Theodore Roosevelt on His Wife’s Ancestor Jonathan Edwards (1916) Theodore Roosevelt to Marjorie Sterrett, February 5, 1916, printed in New York Tribune, February 8, 1916 Vernon L. Parrington on the Tragedy of Edwards (1927) Vernon L. Parrington, Main Currents of American Thought, vol. 1: The Colonial Mind, 1620–1800 (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1927), 155–63 Robert Lowell, ‘‘Mr. Edwards and the Spider’’ (1946) Robert Lowell, Lord Weary’s Castle (New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1946). ∫ 1946, renewed 1974 by Robert Lowell, printed by permission of Houghton MiΔin Harcourt Publishing Company. Edwin H. Cady, ‘‘The Artistry of Jonathan Edwards’’ (1949) Edwin H. Cady, ‘‘The Artistry of Jonathan Edwards,’’ New England Quarterly 22 (1949): 61–62, 63, 68–70, 71–72. Courtesy of The New England Quarterly. All rights reserved.

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ORIGINAL SOURCES FOR TEXTS

Perry Miller Creates an Edwards for the Twentieth Century (1949) Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (New York: Sloan, 1949), 144–51. Courtesy of William Morrow, Harper Collins Publishing Company. Billy Graham Re-Preaches Sinners (1949) Audio file, circa November 1949. Courtesy of the Billy Graham Archives, Wheaton, Ill. Excerpt from introductory comments by Billy Graham. ∫ 1949 Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Used with permission. All rights reserved. H. Richard Niebuhr, ‘‘The Anachronism of Jonathan Edwards’’ (1958) H. Richard Niebuhr, Theology, History, and Culture: Major Unpublished Writings, ed. William Stacy Johnson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 131–33 Guy Chevreau, Catch the Fire (1994) Guy Chevreau, Catch the Fire: The Toronto Blessing, An Experience of Renewal and Revival (Toronto: Harper Collins, 1994), 70–71, 142–44. Courtesy Harper Collins Publishing Company. Hank Hanegraa√, Counterfeit Revival (1997) Hank Hanegraa√, Counterfeit Revival: Looking for God in All the Wrong Places (1997; rev. and enl., Nashville: Word Publishing Group, 2001), 95–98, 101–2, 104. Reprinted by permission. ∫ 2001, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tenn. All rights reserved. Marilynne Robinson, ‘‘Credo’’ (2008) Marilynne Robinson, ‘‘Credo,’’ Harvard Divinity Bulletin 36 (Spring 2008): 23, 27–28. Reprinted by permission.

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Illustration Credits

Page ix T-shirt created for Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University, c. 1985. Photograph by Jonathan Edwards Center sta√. xi From Christianity Today, courtesy of Dick Lepine Cartoons xii From James P. Byrd, Jonathan Edwards for Armchair Theologians (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster–John Knox, 2008), 172, ∫ 2008 www.RonHillArtist.com, courtesy of the artist 1 Joseph Badger, The Reverend Jonathan Edwards, c. 1750, the only portrait painted in Edwards’s lifetime. Courtesy of Yale Art Gallery, bequest of Eugene Phelps Edwards, 1938. 3 From The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield (London, 1771–72), frontispiece 5 Photograph by Jonathan Edwards Center sta√ 8 Photograph by Jonathan Edwards Center sta√ 14 Photograph by Philip Davies, Wenham, Mass. 17 John Ferguson Weir, Reverend Jonathan Edwards, 1910. Courtesy of Yale Art Gallery, gift of Arthur Reed Kimball, B.A., 1877. 33 Title page of the 1741 printing of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God 34 Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University 51 Ca√y Whitney, Jonathan Edwards, 2008. Collection of Donald Kistler. 59 New-York Historical Society, New York 76 Courtesy of the Forbes Library, Northampton, Mass. 111 Keith Wilbur, Bust of Jonathan Edwards, pine and oil, 1982. Collection of the artist. 124–25 Courtesy of the First Church of Christ, Longmeadow, Mass., photograph by Douglas Winiarski and Linda Meditz

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131 Frank Flinn, Jonathan Edwards, woodcut, c. 1981. Courtesy Edwin Mellen Press. 134 From John Barber, Connecticut Historical Collections (Hartford, Conn., 1836) 162 Photograph by Jonathan Edwards Center sta√ 167 Courtesy of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association 170 Courtesy of Yale University Divinity School, Special Collections 174 Courtesy of Christianity Today 181 Photograph by Nancy Crampton

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