to desist from preaching on justification versus Arminianism. This seems unlikely in view
∑∂∂ Notes to Pages 182–85
Hampshire Narrative (Boston, 1737), 94, 161, 163. On the role of ridicule in the era, see John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion: The Age of Enlightenment in England, 1660–1750 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960).
27. Jonathan Edwards to Sir William Pepperrell, January 30, 1753, Works, 16: 554. Edwards' account is the only nearly contemporary record of the origins of the dispute, and he does not detail its causes, which have been the subject of much speculation. Jonathan Ashley, pastor of Deerfield, who was married to Israel's sister, Dorothy, also shunned the Edwards home. Edwards dates the beginning of the opposition to the ''great awakening'' eighteen years earlier.
28. Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (New York: William Sloane, 1949), 104–5. Cf. Dwight, Life, 122n, and 434–35. Dwight bases this interpretation on Edwards' mention of opposition to his sermons on justification in 1734 but has no evidence that the Williamses were the source of this opposition.
29. Perhaps Israel Williams and a few other younger lay members of the clan were unhappy with aspects of the awakening itself. The Joseph Hawley incident could also have been a factor. Israel Williams, like Edwards, was a nephew of Hawley and may have laid some of the blame for the suicide at Edwards' door, but we have no direct evidence of that.
30. Elisha Williams to Isaac Watts, May 24, 1736, quoted in Anne Stokely Pratt, Isaac Watts and His Gift Books to Yale College (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938), 30–31.
31. Timothy Cutler to Bishop Edmund Gibson, May 28, 1739, quoted in Douglas C. Stenerson, ''An Anglican Critique of the Early Phase of the Great Awakening in New England: A Letter by Timothy Cutler,'' William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 30 (1973): 486. Cutler is reporting on a Hatfield resident who said Williams ''Wishes Mr. Edwards had not been so full and forward in the matter.''
32. Jonathan Edwards to Benjamin Colman, May 19, 1737, Works, 16: 67. 33. Dwight, Life, 434, hypothesizes that Edwards refused a demand by Israel Williams to desist from preaching on justification versus Arminianism. This seems unlikely in view of William Williams' leadership in the anti-Arminian crusade.
34. In 1741, when Edwards wrote his first treatise on distinguishing the truly awakened, Cooper wrote the preface.
chapter 11. ''A City Set on a Hill''
1. Faithful Narrative, Works, 4: 209. 2. Edwards to Benjamin Colman, May 19, 1737, Works, 16: 67. In order to impede a return to the lewd practices of tavern culture, the town in 1736 revived the o≈ce of tithingmen, eight of whom were elected to oversee their neighborhoods to prevent public disorderliness, such as drunkenness. See Patricia J. Tracy, Jonathan Edwards, Pastor: Religion and Society in Eighteenth-Century Northampton (New York: Hill and Wang, 1980), 124–25. Another example of political control, as well as of dissent, is that in late 1735, a Northampton husbandman was arrested for proclaiming, ''Mr. Edwards was as great an instrument as the Devil had on this side Hell to bring souls to Hell.'' Case of Barnard Bartlett, General Sessions of the Peace, Hampshire County, January 17, 1736, manuscript collection, Connecticut State Library, Hartford, Conn., Works of Edwards transcription.
3. Edwards to Benjamin Colman, March 19, 1737, Works, 16: 65–66. 4. Ibid., 66; Edwards to Benjamin Colman, May 19, 1737, Works, 16: 68.