Englanders would be called to send troops south in a new colonial war with

Englanders would be called to send troops south in a new colonial war with

''A City Set on a Hill'' ∞Ωπ

tianity depended on that principle. New Englanders could not forget the cruel expulsion from France of their Huguenot brethren under Louis XIV in 1685. Catholic France was on New England's borders, and in late 1739 New Englanders would be called to send troops south in a new colonial war with Spain. No one could forget the Catholic political threat to true religion.

Such political assumptions—that religions are tied to nations and empires—are crucial for understanding Edwards' view of history and his place in it. Edwards' outlook on this point is very di√erent from that of Augustine, with whom he is often compared. Augustine projected an ongoing conflict or tension between the City of God, founded on love of God, and the cities of the world, founded on love of temporal things, a conflict that would not be resolved before Christ's return. Edwards had a more progressive view of history marked by increasing revivals and culminating in the millennium.≥≠

Moreover, as heir to more than a thousand years of ''Christendom'' and to two centuries of Reformed politics, Edwards took for granted that God was working through national religious wars and revolutions that would facilitate the preaching of the Gospel. Hence progress toward the kingdom would involve the political history of empires. Edwards accordingly emphasized Old Testament models that integrated the spiritual and the political and Old Testament prophecies that depicted history as the history of empires. He did, of course, recognize inevitable tensions between the true church and any nation. As in ancient Israel, a nation might be perilously turning from God even as God was using it for his purposes. Yet he firmly believed that God worked through favored nations.

Although Edwards was thoroughly dedicated to this model, he also emphasized, as he did in all of his thought, the preeminence of the spiritual over the temporal. History was essentially the history of redemption. So the driving force in history was not what princes did, as important as they might be, but rather what ''Jesus Christ, the prince and savior of the world'' had done and continued to do through his Holy Spirit.≥∞ Christ did use princes for his redemptive purposes, yet the princes themselves were not the keys to history. At the center of history was Christ's work through the Holy Spirit in saving souls.

The revival of 1734–35 may have solidified Edwards' thinking concerning the characteristic form of the Holy Spirit's work in redemptive history. Ever since his early notebooks on the Apocalypse,≥≤ Edwards had viewed the spread of the Gospel as the center of redemptive history. Now he was seeing more clearly the role of periodic awakenings as pivotal in that historical

∞Ω∫ ''A City Set on a Hill''

process. Biblical history was punctuated by revivals of God's people. So was Christian history, as in the time of Constantine or the Reformation.

Edwards wanted to make sure that his people noticed the role of awakening in the prophetic scenario. Each of the three dispensations beginning with Christ's first coming would involve a ''glorious spiritual resurrection of souls,'' that was ''a lively image and type'' of the fourth dispensation, when Christ would come in judgment and raise the dead.≥≥ In the first era, from Christ's ministry until the destruction of Jerusalem, the Gospel was marvelously brought to masses of gentiles. In Constantine's time, the era of widespread persecutions was ended, the blood of the martyrs was avenged (fulfilling the prophecy of the sixth seal in Revelation 6), and the greater part of ''the known world'' was brought into the church. By identifying Constantine's rule with the opening of the sixth seal, Edwards also advanced the prophetic timetable beyond that of many interpreters, leaving fewer prophecies to be fulfilled before the final triumph. Now, he said, in the approaching last times one could expect another marvelous ingathering preceding the defeat of Antichrist and the establishment of Christ's millennial kingdom on earth. Recent awakenings, such as that at Northampton, were harbingers of that coming day.

Whereas the kingdom of Antichrist, or the rise of the papacy to corrupt Christendom, was Satan's ''masterpiece'' of the present era, other of the devil's strategies were also to be undone in the last days.≥∂ On a topic close to home, for instance, Edwards told his people that he had heard that ''the occasion of the first peopling America was this: that the devil being alarmed and surprised by the wonderful success of the gospel that was the first three hundred years after Christ, and [by] the downfall of the heathen empire in Constantine's time, and seeing the gospel spread so fast, and fearing that his heathenish kingdom would be wholly overthrown through the world, led away a people from the other continent into America, that they might be quite out of reach of the gospel.''≥∑ The discovery of America, then, was a providential preparation for ''the future glorious times of the church'' when Satan's work would be undone and ''all the inhabitants of this new discovered world shall be brought over into the kingdom of Christ, as well as all the other ends of the earth.''≥∏

Edwards was sure that the defeat of the Antichrist, the pivotal event in this triumph, would be 1,260 years after the rise of the papacy, but he told his parishioners that we could not be sure what date marked that rise, only that it was after a.d. 479, or else its defeat would have happened already.≥π He also

''A City Set on a Hill'' ∞ΩΩ

believed that the kingdom of Antichrist would be destroyed before the year 2000, by which time the earth would be 6,000 years old and an era of millennial rest would be due.≥∫ He had concluded, however, that one could not date these events by exact years. The rise of the papacy had been a gradual process and so would be the Antichrist's demise.≥Ω

Edwards tallied up for his congregation a balance sheet of the progress of Christ's kingdom as it stood in 1739. On the negative side, first, ''The Reformed church is much diminished.'' The Reformation, he explained, had commenced some 220 years earlier, beginning the era of assault on Antichrist. Catholics had struck back with persecutions and warfare. More serious now, however, than even the Catholic threat was the erosion of the faith within Protestant countries. So the second negative of the age was ''the prevailing of licentiousness in principles and opinions.'' Enthusiasts, such as the Quakers and others, undermined the faith. Meanwhile, Socinians, Arminians, Arians, and Deists were all flourishing. The new unbelief was truly alarming, even unprecedented, because it arose from those reared with the very benefits of Protestant teaching. ''And particularly,'' he proclaimed, ''history gives no account of any age wherein there was so great an apostasy of those that had been brought up under the light of the gospel to infidelity, never such a casting o√ the Christian religion and all revealed religion, never any age wherein was so much sco≈ng at and ridiculing the gospel of Christ by those that have been brought up under gospel light, nor anything like it as there is at this day.''∂≠

The last negative, according to Edwards, should be taken as a warning. Even among Reformed people, he cautioned, there was ''much less of the prevalency of the power of godliness'' than at the beginning of the Reformation. Vital piety was being called enthusiasm, whimsy, and fanaticism. ''Those that are truly religious are commonly looked upon as crackbrained.''∂∞

Balancing the positive against the negative, Edwards listed three hopeful developments since the Reformation. First, ''The Pope is much diminished in power and influence.'' Even many of ''the popish princes themselves seem now to regard him very little more than they think will serve their own designs.'' Second, ''there is far less persecution now than there was in the first times of the Reformation.'' Yet, always especially sensitive to ridicule, Edwards had to add that the new form of persecution is humor ''to despise and laugh at all religion and hearken to a spirit of indi√erence about it.'' Third, he could point to ''a great increase in learning.'' God had allowed a great era of pagan learning before Christ's coming so that humans might see ''the insu≈- ciency of their own wisdom.'' Now, since the Reformation, was a time of even

≤≠≠ ''A City Set on a Hill''

greater learning. Once again, God's purpose was to show the futility of human learning on its own. ''Learned men, and dreadfully divided in their opinions, run into all manner of corrupt opinions and pernicious and foolish errors.'' Yet the time was coming when people would learn the futility of their own speculations, when they would see ''that glorious outpouring of God's Spirit.'' In that time, Edwards a≈rmed, ''we hope that God will improve this great increase in learning as an handmaid to religion, a means of a glorious advancement of the kingdom of his Son, when human learning shall be subservient to understanding the Scriptures and a clear explaining and glorious defending the doctrines of Christianity.''∂≤

Edwards' fondest hope, the desire that drove his long days of study and prayer, was that he might have a hand in God's work advancing toward this marvelous vindication of the Gospel. His passion for scholarship and his passion for awakening were of one piece. Eventually the two would triumph together. In the meantime, in an age of conflict, he must do all that he could to promote both. What he longed for most was ''the church's year of jubilee.'' Describing this time to his congregation, he promised, as he was confident Scripture taught, that ''there shall be a glorious pouring out of the Spirit with this clear and powerful preaching of the gospel, to make it successful for reviving those holy doctrines of religion that are now chiefly ridiculed in the world, and turning multitudes from heresy, and from popery, and from other false religion, and also for turning many from their vice and profaneness, and for bring vast multitudes savingly home to Christ.''∂≥

C H A P T E R ∞≤ kl God ''Will Revive the Flame Again,

Even in the Darkest Times''

s Edwards scanned the international horizon, the skies looked dark in many respects, yet he believed he was seeing some glimmers of a coming dawn. He was convinced he had solid biblical reasons to be optimistic, even if there were sure to be trials for the church as the last day approached. Although the once-Reformed nations had become greatly corrupted, the Reformation's assault on the Antichrist marked an irreversible advance of the prophetic clock. Reformed theologians had greatly purified Christian doctrine. Such true Christian teaching would surely prevail, if only hearts were changed.

The real glimmers of the dawn were the scattered lights of awakenings. In 1739 Edwards could point his people to a few distant lights on the horizon that paralleled the flash they had seen close at hand. The glimmer he featured in the Work of Redemption sermons was the work of August Hermann Francke (1663–1727), the pietist leader at the University of Halle in Saxony. Francke's work, he told his congregation, had grown out of a simple emphasis on charity that flowered into remarkable orphanages and schools for children of the poor. These had inspired wonderful revivals of religion in Germany and elsewhere. Edwards had also heard hopeful accounts of Gospel preaching in Muscovy and mission successes in Malabar in the East Indies, though he knew little of these.∞

Edwards viewed himself as part of an international Reformed evangelical movement that saw awakenings as God's greatest works in the current age. Isaac Watts and John Guyse, in their preface to the London edition of A Faithful Narrative, had hailed the Northampton events as a sign of ''how easy it will be for our blessed Lord to make a full accomplishment of all his predictions concerning his kingdom, and to spread his dominion from sea to

≤≠≤ God ''Will Revive the Flame Again''

sea, through all the nations of the earth.'' The Connecticut Valley revival, they believed, demonstrated how easy it was for the Lord ''to awaken whole countries.''≤

Just as the light from Northampton seemed to be receding and Edwards was finishing his sermon series, wonderful encouragement began to come from across the Atlantic. Moreover, the new light was coming not so much from Watts' dissenters as from, of all places, the Church of England. Up to this time Edwards held a largely dim view of England's established church, particularly its missionaries to the colonies. As recently as 1738 Edwards had written to Benjamin Colman about ''the injurious, oppressive designs of the Church of England against us,'' which helped ''to thicken and darken the cloud that hangs over the land.''≥

Now he was hearing something remarkably di√erent. George Whitefield, a young Anglican priest, had been preaching to crowds of many thousands outdoors in England during the spring and summer of 1739, and Whitefield was thoroughly Reformed. Field preaching itself was revolutionary in an Anglican setting. Whitefield was defying the tightly organized and decorous Anglican parish system and appealing to the laity over the heads of their priests. That his doctrines were Reformed was an equally extraordinary reversal of a long trend in Anglicanism away from the teachings of the sixteenthcentury Reformers.

And Whitefield was coming to New England! He had already been in the new colony of Georgia in 1738, organizing in Savannah a mission and an orphanage inspired by the Francke model. The vigorous young itinerant, unlike Edwards, seemed not at all inhibited by two-month ocean voyages and had returned to America in fall 1739, landing in Philadelphia. Whitefield was a master at publicity and his fame had preceded him. His Philadelphia reception was a fitting sequel to his triumph in London. Several of the enthusiastic crowds to which he preached numbered about 8,000, or close to two-thirds of the city's population. After preaching a month in the Philadelphia area and New Jersey, he worked his way south to Savannah. He promised a tour to the north and New England the next year.

In Northampton, Edwards eagerly followed the news of the evangelist's triumphs. Whitefield's feats were well reported in the Boston newspapers, which he received periodically, and through the networks of correspondents who made Reformed pietism a vital international movement. Benjamin Colman was corresponding with Whitefield and forwarding intelligence to his Hampshire County allies. Even Benjamin Franklin, despite profound theo-

God ''Will Revive the Flame Again'' ≤≠≥

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

George Whitefield (1714–70) and admirers. The scene is probably in England.

logical di√erences with the evangelist, saw the enterprising Whitefield as a kindred spirit and published some of his writings.∂

Learning of Whitefield's plans to come to New England, Edwards excitedly wrote to him in February 1740. He wanted the itinerant to include Northampton in his plans. If one traveled from New York to Boston, Edwards pointed out, Northampton was only slightly farther than the shortest

≤≠∂ God ''Will Revive the Flame Again''

route and took one through one of the most populous parts of the country. Edwards warned the young evangelist not to expect too much: ''Indeed I am fearful whether you will not be disappointed in New England, and will have less success here than in other places: we who have dwelt in a land that has been distinguished with light, and have long enjoyed the gospel, and have been glutted with it, and have despised it, are I fear more hardened than most of those places where you have preached hitherto.'' Nonetheless Edwards had seen enough success to remain optimistic. ''I hope, if God preserves my life, to see something of that salvation of God in New England which he has now begun, in a benighted, wicked, and miserable world and age and in the most guilty of all nations.''

Mention of ''the most guilty of all nations,'' referring to Britain of which New England was a part, led Edwards to an assessment of Whitefield's ministry that grew directly out of his recent assessment of the state of the world in the History of Redemption sermons. First he rejoiced to Whitefield that God had used such an unlikely vessel as the Church of England. ''It has been with refreshment of soul that I have heard of one raised up in the Church of England to revive the mysterious, spiritual, despised, and exploded doctrines of the gospel, and full of a spirit of zeal for the promotion of real vital piety.'' Edwards saw Whitefield's success as fulfillment of the prophecy. God ''will not su√er the smoking flax to be quenched, even when the floods seem to be overwhelming it; but will revive the flame again, even in the darkest times.'' If apostate England might begin to be revived, who could say that they were not seeing the dramatic early signs of the coming of the kingdom? ''I hope,'' Edwards continued, ''this is the dawning of a day of God's mighty power and glorious grace to the world of mankind.'' He prayed that God would raise up a host of preachers like Whitefield who would be blessed against all opposition ''until the kingdom of Satan shall shake, and his proud empire fall throughout the earth and the kingdom of Christ, that glorious kingdom of light, holiness, peace and love, shall be established from one end of the earth unto the other!''∑ Whitefield and by implication Edwards himself stood near the epicenter of current history.

Whitefield had, of course, heard of Edwards and Northampton. Not only had he read the celebrated Faithful Narrative, he had also profited from the revival handbook of ''the great Stoddard,'' A Guide to Christ, and from his Safety of Appearing in Christ's Righteousness. In July Whitefield wrote to Colman of his intention to visit New England that fall and asked the Boston patriarch to pass copies to various clergy, including Edwards, to be read from

God ''Will Revive the Flame Again'' ≤≠∑

their pulpits. Using the same image that Edwards used in his letter, he affirmed that ''surely our Lord intends to put the whole world in a flame.''∏

Whitefield would come to Northampton, but a better tactician than Edwards, he first mounted a major campaign in the sophisticated capital city of Boston, turning to the New England hinterlands on his way back to New York.

Edwards need not have worried that the New Englanders would harden their hearts toward Whitefield, at least not the masses of the laity. Just the opposite. The populace of New England, attuned as they were to religious themes, embraced him, often with abandon. Whitefield was, as Harry Stout has observed, the first American ''star.'' He was only twenty-five, and his tour demonstrated for the first time that in America, where established institutions were weak, popular opinion could counter any authority. Whitefield was also revolutionary in being the first to apply modern commercial technique to religious ends.π The advance publicity, aided by the clergy of Benjamin Colman's circle, was tremendous. Everyone had heard of the phenomenal crowds. Boston would be no exception. Staying in the Boston vicinity four weeks, Whitefield repeatedly drew huge audiences, often numbering from five to eight thousand. Soon after his arrival in mid-September, one Boston church was so crowded that the gallery began to give way. The crowd, having heard of such disasters, panicked. Some jumped from the windows onto the main floor, where others were rushing to escape. Five people were killed and more were gravely injured. Whitefield, arriving in the midst of the catastrophe, was undeterred. Even though the weather was wet, ''God was pleased to give me presence of mind.'' He moved the meeting to the common, where a stunned crowd of several thousand heard him ''improve'' the Lord's awful judgment. After that he preached mainly out-of-doors.∫

No one was a greater supporter of Whitefield in Boston than Governor Jonathan Belcher. The governor, a member of Thomas Prince's pro-revivalist Third Church (Old South), dined with the evangelist on several occasions, escorted him in his coach, attended many of his services, and tearfully met with him in private for prayers. Whitefield, who could be critical, judged Belcher's a√ections as clearly sincere. On Whitefield's final Sabbath in Boston, the governor dined with him, prayed privately with him, and then escorted him in his coach to the common for a late afternoon gathering of nearly 20,000, probably the largest audience ever gathered in the colonies. Two days later, at Marlborough, thirty miles from Boston, Whitefield was surprised to find the governor again in the crowd. ''Though it rained, and he

≤≠∏ God ''Will Revive the Flame Again''

was much advanced in years'' (the governor was fifty-eight), Belcher accompanied him fifteen miles farther to Worcester.Ω

When Whitefield met Edwards in Northampton on Friday (October 17) of that week, the two evangelists must have made a striking pair. Whitefield was ''a young, slim, slender, youth,'' energetic and driven by his mission. The tall Edwards, twelve years his senior, was equally driven, but as so often, he was ''at present, weak in body'' and a little too thin.∞≠ Each was personally somewhat reticent, but Whitefield was cheerful and an indefatigable activist entrepreneur who could always seize the moment with little preparation or thought. Edwards was just the opposite. Though quick and resourceful in argument, he was always serious and meticulously careful to make distinctions and not to move beyond the implications of his premises.

In public, Whitefield was a born actor. He preached without notes, had a splendid voice that Benjamin Franklin calculated could readily be heard by 25,000, and was a master of painting vivid pictures that would draw an audience emotionally into the theme of the text. He often portrayed the feelings of biblical characters or lost sinners, but his own personality was never far from center stage. ''My Master. My Lord,'' he would cry out.∞∞

Seldom did he preach a sermon in which he did not weep and reduce multitudes to tears. Edwards, despite his e√orts to emulate his grandfather, had still not learned to preach with notes only, let alone extempore without them. He could depict some powerful images, but he seldom sustained them. The power of his preaching came from his relentless systematic delineation of all the implications of his theme. Although his personal intensity could hold audiences spellbound, his voice was weak. He almost never referred to himself or his own experiences.

Despite their di√erences, the two men admired each other and had much in common. They were both deeply passionate, and they were passionate about the same concern: true Gospel preaching that God would use to save souls and to bring in his kingdom. Both were ardently spiritual and almost Spartan in their zeal for the higher cause and their aspirations to throw o√ every worldly concern. Each had been both humbled and gratified by the marvels of God they had seen through their preaching.

In a weekend of constant activity, Whitefield triumphed in Northampton as he did everywhere else. After preaching at Hadley Friday morning, October 17, he crossed the ferry to Northampton and preached at Edwards' church in the afternoon and to a gathering in the Edwardses' home in the evening. Saturday morning he rode the five miles to Hatfield to preach there and to

God ''Will Revive the Flame Again'' ≤≠π

pay respects to the aged patriarch, William Williams. Returning to Northampton, he preached again in the afternoon and twice on Sunday. When he reminded the Northampton people of their former awakening, ''it caused many to weep sorely.'' During the Sabbath morning service, he reported, ''good Mr. Edwards wept during the whole time of exercises. The people were equally a√ected; and, in the afternoon, the power increased yet more.''∞≤

Edwards' uncontrollable tears came from seeing what he had prayed for so desperately for the past five years: that the intensity of the revival of 1734–35 would be renewed. In the weeks and months that followed he was not disappointed as the flame that Whitefield had reignited spread once again throughout the town, often more intensely than before. By December he could report to Whitefield the ''joyful tidings'' that it had spread to many of the young people and children, including some of his own, whom he believed ''savingly brought home to Christ.'' A father's joy could not be greater. In a retrospective account, written in 1743, he described the fervor in the town as having gone beyond the first awakening and continuing for many for two years.∞≥

Whitefield in the meantime was much impressed by the Edwardses. He had stayed in their home and on the Saturday morning not only joined them in their usual family devotions but, at Jonathan's request, spoke to his little children. Sally (Sarah Jr.) was twelve, Jerusha was ten, Esther was eight, and Mary was six. Four-year-old Lucy probably was included as well (the others were two-year-old Timmy and Susannah, born that summer). The young evangelist's visit with the girls, Edwards rejoiced, bore much fruit. Edwards showed his love for his daughters by putting concern for their salvation above all else.

Whitefield was particularly impressed that the Edwards children ''were not dressed in silks and satins, but plain, as become the children of those who, in all things, ought to be examples of Christian simplicity.''∞∂ In Boston, Whitefield had complained that the population was ''very wealthy'' and much ''conformed to the world'' and to ''the pride of life.'' Women often wore jewels, face patches, and gay apparel at meetings. ''The little infants who were brought to baptism, were wrapped up in such fine things, and so much pains taken to dress them, that one would think they were brought thither to be initiated into, rather than to renounce, the pomps and vanities of this wicked world.''∞∑ Whitefield likely made the same remark to the Edwardses, who would have appreciated such sanctified irony.

Whitefield was also charmed by Sarah. Doubtless keeping her own

≤≠∫ God ''Will Revive the Flame Again''

modest interest in Boston fashions to herself, she could talk of spiritual things as well as show o√ the cottage industries that she managed. ''A sweeter couple I have not yet seen,'' Whitefield wrote of Sarah and Jonathan. ''Mrs. Edwards,'' he added, ''is adorned with a meek and quiet spirit; she talked solidly of the things of God, and seemed to be such a helpmeet for her husband, that she caused me to renew those prayers, which for some months, I have put up to God, that He would be pleased to send me a daughter of Abraham to be my wife.''∞∏

This was no o√hand remark, but the desperate plea of a twenty-five-yearold in the throes of agonizing passions and dilemmas. Whitefield was part of the ''methodist'' movement, in fact its most prominent spokesman (though in England it was being taken over by his friends the Wesleys, with whom there would soon be a break over Whitefield's Calvinism). Behaviorally, methodism demanded sacrifice of all worldly pleasures in order to serve Christ. Whitefield had at first attempted to follow the example of the Apostle Paul, conducting his itinerancy as a celibate, free from encumbrance. Soon after his rise to fame, even while he seemed circumspect in his dealing with his female admirers and converts, he concluded that the correct Pauline admonishment for him was that ''it is better to marry than to burn.''

Although methodists' emphasis on the a√ections paralleled some ideals of romantic love emerging in the eighteenth century, methodists deplored earthly loves if they distracted from single-minded service to Christ. Whitefield's problem, however, was that in England in 1739 he had fallen in love with a well-to-do convert, Elizabeth Delemotte. Explicitly attempting to suppress any romantic or passionate aspects of his longings, in May 1740 he had at last proposed, emphasizing in his letter that nothing could hold the marriage together but the mutual love of Christ, and that Elizabeth should expect hardship and su√ering. Elsewhere he had remarked that a wife should not cause him to preach one less sermon. Elizabeth turned him down.

On the weekend he visited the Edwardses, Whitefield had only recently heard this demoralizing news. He had not given up on Elizabeth, but by the time he returned to England the following spring he found he would have to look elsewhere. Almost desperate to settle the matter, he seems to have married the first eligible saint willing to put up with his conditions. That turned out to be Elizabeth James, a rather plain widow ten years his senior, who mostly remained at home while he traveled and to whom he seems to have had a minimal emotional attachment.∞π He had married but the itinerant had hardly begun to duplicate the much-admired settled relationship of

God ''Will Revive the Flame Again'' ≤≠Ω

the Edwardses, who apparently had managed to both subordinate and enhance their relationship by constant prayerful reminders that it was a type of Christ's love for his church.

It was customary for hosts to accompany honored guests to set them on their way on the first stage of a journey, but Edwards did much more. Although it was cold and snow threatened, he left with Whitefield on the Sabbath evening and rode with him by horseback two more days, guiding him to East Windsor, where they visited with Edwards' aged parents. Once again, Whitefield was impressed as much by Esther Stoddard Edwards as by Timothy; he remarked, ''I fancied that I was sitting in the house of Zacharias and Elizabeth.''∞∫

In the meantime Jonathan got to hear Whitefield preach out-of-doors to audiences of several thousand. Monday of their journey had been blustery, so that most of the ferries across the Connecticut stopped running, which kept the crowds down. Tuesday was a better day. Wherever they went messengers rode ahead heralding the exciting news that Whitefield was about to preach at a nearby town. As the news spread, virtually everyone who could get away rushed to hear the great itinerant. As the time approached the country roads would, as one farmer described it later that week, reverberate ''like a low rumbling thunder'' and be engulfed by clouds of dust as throngs pressed toward the place, as though fleeing for their lives. ''Every horse seemed to go with all his might to carry his rider to hear the news from heaven for the saving of their souls. It made me tremble to see the sight how the world was in a struggle.''∞Ω

Whitefield's visit changed Edwards' life, as it changed New England and the American colonies generally. As Edwards watched Whitefield preach to a crowd of several thousand at Su≈eld on Tuesday morning, October 21, he was witnessing the dawn of a new age—the age of the people. Awakenings were familiar in the Connecticut Valley, and Edwards played a key role in one that touched as many people there as did Whitefield. Yet there were some notable di√erences. Whitefield's tour was a truly international phenomenon. It was also the first intercolonial cultural event, the beginning of a common American cultural identity. Moreover, like most everything else that succeeded in America, it was founded not so much on what was imposed from above as by the popular response generated from below.≤≠

All previous revivals in western New England had been generated and controlled by local pastors. The awakenings were, in fact, as in Edwards' case, notable means of gaining control over parishioners. They were first of all

≤∞≠ God ''Will Revive the Flame Again''

about salvation, but also about authority—ultimately God's authority but also the authority of his spokesmen. Edwards' experience, all he had learned from his father and his grandfather, fit this traditional model of authority from the top down.

Whitefield, by contrast, was a new modern type, the young rebel against authority. An Anglican, he had made his name by defying Anglican parish authority. Opposing the pretensions of the hierarchy and dismissing the weight of social tradition, he had gone to the people for his authority. He was, as Edwards was not, an eighteenth-century revolutionary.

Whitefield raised the crucial issue dramatically at Su≈eld. Earlier on that Tuesday morning, on their way from Springfield, the crowd traveling with him was joined by a minister who insisted that it was ''not absolutely necessary for a Gospel minister, that he should be converted.'' The minister (it could have been Robert Breck, now a well-settled pastor in Springfield, or one of his allies) apparently appealed to the authority of Solomon Stoddard, a point perhaps designed to put Edwards in an awkward position. Whitefield replied that he much admired Stoddard but felt he had done great damage in ''endeavouring to prove that unconverted men may be admitted to the ministry.'' Whitefield also observed that he fully agreed with a recent sermon, preached that spring in Pennsylvania by Gilbert Tennent, on ''the Danger of an Unconverted Ministry.'' Tennent, a fiery young Presbyterian, had been Whitefield's principal local associate and guide in his recent visit to Pennsylvania and New Jersey. His sermon had been directed against some of the more staid (''Old Side'') of his fellow Presbyterian clergy who took a dim view of Whitefield's revival methods. Tennent's implicit accusation that his opponents were unconverted created a furor in the Presbyterian churches. The controversy, which soon led to a Presbyterian schism, and the sermon were being much discussed by the New Englanders. In Boston Whitefield himself had preached on the theme of unconverted ministers.

Fresh from the horseback debate on the topic, Whitefield saw that there were many ministers in the throng that gathered at Su≈eld, so he decided to preach again on the dangers of the unconverted ministry. ''I insisted much in my discourse,'' he wrote in his daily journal, ''upon the doctrine of the new birth, and also the necessity of a minister being converted, before he could preach Christ aright. The Word came with great power, and a strong impression was made upon the people in all parts of the assembly. Many ministers were present. I did not spare them.''≤∞

Whitefield's revolutionary message has been well characterized as an

God ''Will Revive the Flame Again'' ≤∞∞

''inverted jeremiad.''≤≤ Up to this point in New England it had been the clergy who, lamenting decline in the mode of the prophet Jeremiah, railed against their unconverted parishioners. Whitefield was suggesting that the tables might be turned. A spiritual people should challenge the authority of insu≈- ciently spiritual clergy. The o≈ce by itself carried no authority. Although these revolutionary implications would become apparent within the year, the controversy that swirled out of Whitefield's sermon had most immediately to do with his having called some of the local clergy ''unconverted.'' Most of the ministers, he said, thanked him for his frankness, but one took great o√ense, and Whitefield was sure there were more like him in New England.

The discussions continued as Whitefield and his entourage made their way to Windsor (''where,'' Whitefield recorded, ''a converted man is minister'') and East Windsor.≤≥ Sometime during the day Edwards o√ered some friendly criticism. He told Whitefield and others present that while he agreed heartily with Whitefield's preaching that clergy must be converted, he thought the young man was ill-advised to be jumping to conclusions as to whether particular clergy were converted or not. Edwards knew from his own agonizing years of uncertainty as well as from his di≈culties in gauging the genuineness of his parishioners' professions that many cases were too di≈cult to judge.≤∂

Edwards made clear that, despite Whitefield's occasional indiscretions, he was wholeheartedly on the young itinerant's side. He saw Whitefield's visit and the revival not only as an answer to prayer but also as potentially the glimmerings of a new age, perhaps even the millennial dawn. Edwards was convinced, as he wrote for publication the next year, that ''we have reason from Scripture prophecy to suppose, that at the commencement of that last and greatest outpouring of the Spirit of God . . . the manner of the work will be very extraordinary, and such as never has yet been seen; so that there shall be occasion then to say, as in Isa. 66:8, 'Who hath heard such a thing.' ''≤∑

At the same time Edwards was concerned to ''try the spirits'' (I John 4:1), testing new phenomena against Scripture. He had no objection to new practices or extraordinary spiritual manifestations not directly found in Scripture, just so long as they did not contradict Scripture.≤∏ So, while he rejoiced in much good that seemed to come from Whitefield's new methods and the overwhelming emotional and sometimes spiritual e√ects they produced, he was not so taken by the young evangelist as to be without criticism.

Never one to put politeness above principle, Edwards had already taken the young man aside and spoken to him privately about the danger of relying

≤∞≤ God ''Will Revive the Flame Again''

on ''impulses.'' Whitefield and many of his fellow awakeners were following what they took to be direct leadings from God's Spirit. They would, after intense prayer about a decision, become convinced that God was directly telling them what they should do. Edwards believed such ''impressions'' were often products of the imagination rather than ''impulses from above.'' He strongly favored prayerful spiritual intensity accompanied by wonderful images of God's grace, and so forth. But for Edwards these ecstatic experiences had to be disciplined by the rational mind, informed by Scripture. The point was crucial. If everyone who had intense spiritual experiences could claim special messages from God, there would be no way of checking all sorts of errors and delusions.

Almost as soon as the itinerant left the region, Edwards delivered a series of sermons warning his congregation against being deceived by the enthusiasm that Whitefield so facilely generated. Preaching on the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:3–8), Edwards concentrated several sermons on the seed that fell on the ''stony places'' and sprang up quickly, only to die in the heat of the sun from lack of deep roots. Reminding the congregation that many of them had lapsed from their fervor of five or six years earlier, Edwards was determined not to have the same thing happen again. Clearly he was uneasy with some of Whitefield's style and cautioned against being distracted by mere ''eloquence,'' ''aptness of expression,'' and ''beautiful gestures.'' Edwards was delighted that Whitefield had been used of God to spark a new awakening among his congregation, but he was determined to cultivate it carefully by his own methods.≤π

When Edwards had frankly chided Whitefield for following spiritual ''impulses,'' the itinerant seemed not at all convinced and rather coolly let the subject drop. Whitefield may have sensed that Edwards had other reservations as well. The two evangelists remained firm allies, but were too di√erent in style to work together closely. Edwards, in a rare personal remark, later noted that ''I thought Mr. Whitefield liked me not so well, for my opposing these things: and though he treated me with great kindness, yet he never made so much of an intimate of me, as of some others.''≤∫

One of the striking paradoxes of American history is that among the three most famous men in the colonies before the Revolutionary era, Whitefield and Franklin became closer personal friends than did Whitefield and Edwards. Edwards was always one of Whitefield's chief defenders, and when the itinerant and his wife visited Northampton in 1745, Edwards was pleased that Whitefield had matured in his opinions and become more prudent in his

God ''Will Revive the Flame Again'' ≤∞≥

conduct, so that ''he endeared himself much to me.''≤Ω Yet it was with Franklin that Whitefield developed an intimate friendship; he stayed in Franklin's home whenever he visited Philadelphia and corresponded frequently with the Pennsylvania entrepreneur. Though Franklin remained far from evangelical in his religious views, the two men had much in common. Each was a born innovator who knew how to exploit the possibilities of the emerging commercial age. Rebellious against old hierarchical authorities, each was a founder of societies and charities that would mobilize public interests. In 1756 Franklin, always thinking big and looking for something to crown his career, even proposed to Whitefield that the two friends might found a colony in Ohio that would be a better example of Christianity for the Indians than was seen among the traders.≥≠

Edwards, for all his openness to the new age and his ardent support for Whitefield's work, was in some respects a person of another era. Much ink has been spilled on whether Edwards was essentially a medieval or a modern. The answer is that he was both. Like Whitefield and Franklin he was looking for a revolution, but he was thoroughly committed to the age of Constantine in a way that they were not. Caught between two eras and determinedly and sometimes brilliantly trying to reconcile the two, he spent the rest of his life in an agonizing struggle to fully a≈rm the new without giving up anything of the old. He would be trying to pour new wine into old wine skins.

C H A P T E R ∞≥ kl The Hands of God and the Hand of Christ

s the snows deepened in the hard winter of 1740–41, the joys within the Edwards household seemed only to increase. In mid-December Edwards wrote to Whitefield with ''joyful tidings'' of the spiritual blessings since his visit, especially among young people of the town, including his own children. ''I hope salvation has come to this house since you was in it, with respect to one, if not more, of my children.'' Probably he was referring to ten-year-old Jerusha, who like the lost sister for whom she was named, was becoming a spiritual gem. By March, he could write to Colman that ''this winter has been a time of the most remarkable and visible blessing of heaven upon my family that ever was'' and that he believed that ''my four eldest children (the youngest of them between six and seven years of age) have been savingly wrought upon, the eldest some years ago.''∞

Twelve-year-old Sarah, the eldest, tended to be sickly. In the summer she went to visit her uncle and aunt William and Abigail Edwards Metcalf in Lebanon, Connecticut. When Jonathan wrote to her he characteristically reminded her first that because she had ''a very weak and infirm body,'' she may ''not . . . be long-lived,'' and in the meantime she would probably have to live without many comforts other than ''the presence of Christ and communion with him.'' (As it turned out, she lived to be seventy-six.) Then he asked that her aunt give her a little work, even if she could not do much. His only news was that religion was flourishing even more in the town and the region than when she left.≤

By this time Jonathan was thoroughly preoccupied by an awakening greater than any before and one in which Northampton had only a supporting role. This awakening di√ered from the Connecticut Valley awakening of six years earlier in three striking ways. First, it seemed to radiate out from Boston

Hands of God and Hand of Christ ≤∞∑

to include the entire region. The earlier awakening (and its smaller New England predecessors) had arisen in the hinterlands and never penetrated the cultural capital. Second, Whitefield's itinerancy connected the New England events directly to both an intercolonial awakening and an international movement. Third, Whitefield's spectacular successes suggested that awakenings were more likely to be generated by itinerants or visiting preachers than under the strict guidance of local clergy. This weakening of the role of local pastoral authority would soon have more revolutionary implications.

Whitefield's tour had been more a catalyst than a full revival. At least it did not have much immediate impact on New England's church membership roles.≥ Nonetheless, Whitefield, who was suspicious of the spirituality of the majority of the New England clergy, made sure there was a follow-up. In December 1740 Gilbert Tennent arrived in Boston to continue Whitefield's work. Tennent had been a close supporter of Whitefield during his triumph in the Middle Colonies. The same age as Edwards, Tennent was a ScotchIrish Presbyterian and the son the Reverend William Tennent Sr., a welleducated Scotsman. In 1735 Tennent Sr. established in Neshaminy, Pennsylvania, northeast of Philadelphia, a ''log college'' for training Presbyterian pastors, including his sons. The school was the earliest root of what became the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). New England clergy had close contact with their Presbyterian counterparts in the Middle Colonies. Jonathan Dickinson, the principal leader of the pro-awakening wing of the Presbyterians (and first president of the College of New Jersey at its founding in 1746) had been born in Hatfield, Massachusetts, and was an early Yale graduate. When Edwards visited New Jersey in 1735, Dickinson must have been one of his contacts. As recently as 1738 Dickinson had preached in Stephen Williams' church and brought intelligence to Williams and so to the whole clan of ongoing minor awakenings in New Jersey.∂

Gilbert Tennent's itinerancy in Boston was both controversial and remarkably successful. Thomas Prince Sr., one of Boston's most ardent proponents of revival, at first found Tennent a little disappointing after Whitefield. The Presbyterian had the extemporaneous style and often terrifying content, but not the dramatic presentation. Nonetheless, he who was known for having condemned the ''unconverted ministry'' among the Presbyterians was transparently spiritual himself, and Prince thought he challenged waverers to search their hearts.∑ Rector Timothy Cutler was utterly appalled. Employing stylish eighteenth-century wit, Boston's leading Anglican characterized Tennent as ''a monster'' who told his hearers ''that they were damned! damned!

≤∞∏ Hands of God and Hand of Christ

damned! This charmed them; and, in the most dreadful winter I ever saw, people wallowed in snow, night and day, for the benefit of his beastly brayings.'' Charles Chauncy, one of the few Congregationalist Boston preachers to oppose the awakening, depicted Tennent as ''an awkward imitator of Mr. Whitefield, and too often turned o√ his hearers with meer stu√, which he uttered with a spirit more bitter and uncharitable than you easily imagine.''∏

Yet not long after Tennent left in early March there was no denying that an awakening was sweeping Boston in a way that might not have been thought possible a year earlier. By the end of April thousands of people were crowding to Tuesday and Friday ''lecture'' sermons, so that the three largest churches had to be opened to accommodate the throngs. William Cooper of Brattle Street Church said more parishioners sought counseling about the state of their souls in one week than in the previous twenty-four years. Another pastor said he counseled a thousand inquiring souls. Many hundreds, from all classes in society, joined the roles of the full communicants in Boston's churches. Many hundreds of others, though under deep religious conviction, stopped short of full communion, having been warned by Tennent of the damnation that they would face if they partook of the Lord's Supper while still not truly converted.π

As revival fires were sweeping from Boston throughout New England during the spring, Edwards was enjoying a relatively modest though gratifying awakening among the young people in Northampton, but he was also ready for outside help. Much of the recent awakening was spread by young New England pastors who, following the example of Whitefield and Tennent, were itinerating across the region, preaching extemporaneously.

In June Edwards wrote to one of the most e√ective New England preachers, Eleazar Wheelock (Yale 1733). Jonathan's immediate concern was for his father's parish, which because of a protracted dispute concerning pastoral authority was one of the few places experiencing no revival at all.∫ Jonathan's plan, which succeeded, was to have Wheelock visit there and preach however long it took to generate a revival, whereupon he believed the deadlock might be broken.Ω

Jonathan added in his letter to Wheelock that there ''has been a reviving of religion amongst us of late,'' but he wished Wheelock and fellow preacher and classmate, Benjamin Pomeroy (related to a prominent Northampton family) to ''come up hither and help us'' since ''your labors have been much more remarkably blessed than mine.''∞≠ By the time he wrote this, the Northampton young people's revival was taking some remarkable turns of its own.

Hands of God and Hand of Christ ≤∞π

''In the month of May 1741,'' Edwards later recorded, ''a sermon was preached to a company at a private house. Near the conclusion of the exercise one or two persons that were professors were so greatly a√ected with a sense of the greatness and glory of divine things, and the infinite importance of the things of eternity, that they were not able to conceal it; the a√ection of their minds overcoming their strength, and having a very visible e√ect on their bodies.'' The group adjourned to another room ''for religious conference'' where the a√ected young people told of their experiences. ''The a√ection . . . was quickly propagated through the room: many of the young people and children that were professors appeared to be overcome with a sense of the greatness and glory of divine things, and with admiration, love, joy and praise, and compassion to others that looked upon themselves as in a state of nature; and many others at the same time were overcome with distress about their sinful and miserable state and condition; so that the whole room was full of nothing but outcries, faintings and such like.''

The meeting had been for one district of the town, but the word spread. Edwards continued: ''Others soon heard of it, in several parts of the town, and came to them; and what they saw and heard there was greatly a√ecting to them; so that many of them were overpowered in like manner: and it continued thus for some hours; the time being spent in prayer, singing, counseling and conferring.''

Several similar meetings followed. Then after one Sabbath service Edwards met with all the children under sixteen at a neighboring house, to speak to them more directly about the sermon. ''The children were there very generally and greatly a√ected with the warnings and counsels that were given them, and many exceedingly overcome; and the room was filled with cries: and when they were dismissed, they, almost all of them, went home crying aloud through the streets, to all parts of the town.'' Some of these displays at this and subsequent occasions were clearly childish and disappeared in a couple of days. But in other cases, as he reported over two years later, ''their a√ections became durable.''

About midsummer Edwards called the young people from sixteen to twenty-six to his house for a meeting that was blessed with extraordinary a√ections so intense that many were overcome. ''Many seemed to be very greatly and most agreeably a√ected with those views which excited humility, self-condemnation, self-abhorrence, love and joy: many fainted under these a√ections.'' Ecstatic experiences soon spread from such meetings to the Sabbath services themselves. Outcries sometimes filled the assembly. Several

≤∞∫ Hands of God and Hand of Christ

times many of the congregation stayed after the services to meet with those who were overcome, praying and singing as the wondrous contagion spread. ''The months of August and September [1741] were the most remarkable of any this year, for appearances of conviction and conversion of sinners, and great revivings, quickenings, and comforts of professors, and for extraordinary external e√ects of these things.'' Smaller gatherings at homes were most intense. ''It was a very frequent thing to see an house full of outcries, faintings, convulsions and such like, both with distress, and also with admiration and joy.'' Northampton did not normally hold late night or all-night meetings as did some other towns where the awakening was most intense, yet ''it was pretty often, so that there were some that were so a√ected, and their bodies so overcome, that they could not go home, but were obliged to stay all night at the house where they were.''∞∞

These overwhelming ecstatic manifestations that seized the normally staid citizenry of New England provide the context for the most famous episode in Edwards' career. In many towns physical e√ects of terrors and ecstasies equaled or surpassed those in Northampton. For instance, the Reverend Jonathan Parsons, one of the pastors who turned itinerant during the awakening, reported that on election day, May 14, 1741, when the young people of his parish normally would have been reveling, they instead attended his preaching. ''Under this sermon, many had their countenances changed; their thoughts seemed to trouble them, so that the joints of their loins were loosed, and their knees smote one against another. Great numbers cried out aloud in the anguish of their souls. Several stout men fell as though a cannon had been discharged; and a ball had made its way through their hearts. Some young women were thrown into hysteric fits.''∞≤ As local itinerants, such as Parsons, Wheelock, Pomeroy, and at least a dozen others, criss-crossed the colonies during the summer, similar sensational phenomena spread from parish to parish. Revival sermons now were typically punctuated by outcries of anguish or of joy, or by convulsions, rages, seizures, and faintings. Sometimes preachers could not continue until the ecstatic were carried o√. For a time during this great awakening, unprecedented in its scope and intensity, it seemed as though all New England were seized with spiritual hysteria. Often it was wonderful, often terrifying. Whatever it was, for proponents of revival, there was no denying that many persons' lives were being changed in ways that—the rapturous seizures aside—seemed to meet sober tests for spiritual transformation. In many towns, even those with rigorous rules for communicant status, full memberships were rising at phenomenal rates.∞≥ For Ed-

Hands of God and Hand of Christ ≤∞Ω

wards, who was looking for a spiritual awakening of monumental proportions but who also knew that Satan would try to counter it with excesses and selfdelusions, there was nothing to do but to seize the hour.

Whitefield changed Edwards' conceptions of how that was best to be done. We do not know exactly how much Edwards himself itinerated during the extraordinary summer of 1741. At the end of the summer he referred to his ''prodigious fullness of business and great infirmity of body.''∞∂ In the meantime he seems to have been using every bit of strength both to tend the renewed revival fires at home and to inflame some abroad as much as his strength allowed.

We find him at Enfield, near the Massachusetts-Connecticut border, on Wednesday, July 8, in a setting that suggests what was going on throughout the New England. The neighboring town of Su≈eld (where Edwards had heard Whitefield preach) was undergoing a tremendous revival; an amazing ninety-five persons had been added to the communicant roles the previous Sunday. A team of clergymen had gathered to fan the revival fires, minister to the many inquirers, and help spread the spiritual flame from town to town. Stephen Williams was there from nearby Longmeadow and recorded some of the details. Playing the leading role in the e√orts was Joseph Meacham, pastor at Coventry, Connecticut.

Meacham's presence is another reminder of who were Edwards' closest associates. As usual it was a Williams family a√air. Meacham, a strictly orthodox Calvinist, now in his mid-fifties, was married to Stephen Williams's older sister, Esther. Esther was another of the ''redeemed captives'' and as a teenager had spent time among the Indians in Canada. The dream of extending the revival internationally, including the Indians, was still high in the family priorities. In what they thought might be a divine sign of hope on that front, the previous summer their lost sister, Eunice, thirty-six years after her captivity, remarkably had returned with her Indian husband to visit Stephen. Jonathan Edwards had traveled to Longmeadow to visit his muchlamented Catholic cousin and had preached a sermon on the occasion. Stephen had high hopes that his sister might return this summer of 1741. He and the rest of the family prayed most of all that she might be touched by the revival ''in a saving manner.''∞∑

Joseph Meacham was from Enfield and so was especially distressed that the village was not sharing in the wondrous revival joys seen in Su≈eld. To remedy this disparity the campaigners instituted a series of weekday services where they would travel back and forth between pious Su≈eld and

≤≤≠ Hands of God and Hand of Christ

impious Enfield, hoping to spread the infection of revival. On Tuesday morning Meacham preached in Enfield and later the same day Wheelock preached outside at Su≈eld, followed by another sermon at the meetinghouse from Meacham. This last, Williams recorded, produced ''considerable crying among the people . . . yea and a screaching in the streets.'' The next morning Meacham and Wheelock preached again at Su≈eld, ''and the congregation [was] considerably a√ected—and many cried out.''∞∏

The team then traveled to Enfield where ''Dear Mr. Edwards'' preached. According to Wheelock's later recollection, when the ministers entered the meetinghouse the assembly was ''thoughtless and vain'' and ''hardly conducted themselves with common decency.''∞π That quickly changed. When Edwards started to preach, they fell under the gaunt pastor's almost hypnotic spell. Although Edwards had none of the dramatic gestures of a Whitefield or a Tennent and was said to preach as though he were staring at the bell-rope in the back of the meetinghouse, he could be remarkably compelling. An admirer described his delivery as ''easy, natural and very solemn. He had not a strong, loud voice; but appeared with such gravity and solemnity, and spake with such distinctness, clearness and precision; his words were so full of ideas, set in such a plain and striking light, that few speakers have been so able to demand the attention of an audience as he.'' Through sheer intensity he generated emotion. ''His words often discovered a great degree of inward fervor, without much noise or external emotion, and fell with great weight on the minds of his hearers. He made but little motion of his head or hands in the desk, but spake so as to discover the motion of his own heart, which tended in the most natural and e√ectual manner to move and a√ect others.''∞∫

The combination of controlled but transparent emotion, heartfelt sincerity both in admonition and compassion, inexorable logic, and biblical themes could draw people into sensing the reality of ideas long familiar.

Yet this sermon on Deuteronomy 32:35, ''Their foot shall slip in due time,'' went beyond anything Edwards had ever preached. The impact on the recently lighthearted congregation was as though they suddenly realized they were horribly doomed. ''Before the sermon was done,'' as Stephen Williams recorded, ''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 Christ.''

Edwards, who had been building the intensity of the sermon, had to stop and ask for silence so that he could be heard. The tumult only increased as the ''shrieks and cries were piercing and amazing.'' As Edwards waited, the wails

Hands of God and Hand of Christ ≤≤∞

continued, so there was no way that he might be heard. He never finished the sermon. Wheelock o√ered a closing prayer, and the clergy went down among the people to minister among them individually. ''Several souls were hopefully wrought upon that night,'' Stephen Williams recorded, ''and oh the cheerfulness and pleasantness of their countenances.'' Finally the congregation was enough under control to sing an a√ecting hymn, hear a prayer, and be dispersed.

In its subject, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was not unusual either for Edwards or for New England preaching. Preaching on hell was a routine part of covering the full range of Gospel topics, and other sermons were more lurid in depicting hell's agonies.∞Ω In Sinners Edwards took hell and its agonies for granted as realities proven by Scripture and confirmed by reason. To be sure, some eighteenth-century people did doubt traditional views of hell, even in New England. Yet Edwards spoke to his audience as though such a denial were not an intellectual option. That he could do so is itself revealing. It suggests how immense the gulf of assumptions is that separates most modern readers from the world of the original auditors. Few today, including many who a≈rm traditional Christian doctrines, have the sympathies to take seriously some of these deepest sensibilities of ordinary eighteenth-century colonials.

Sinners is an ''awakening sermon.'' Building on the widely held premise of New Englanders that hell was as genuine a reality as China, Edwards hoped to awaken people to what that awful reality must mean to them here and now. Language, as he saw it, was not used just to create ideas of reality, as Locke might describe it, but preeminently to arouse a√ections that would excite vital knowledge among the hearers. As he argued in A Divine and Supernatural Light, even devils had theoretical knowledge of many spiritual realities. His hearers needed to grasp truths with their a√ections, with their whole hearts, so that they would be moved by God's Spirit to act on what they now saw vividly to be true. The seemingly inescapable biblical teaching of eternal punishment, as horrible as Edwards himself found it, could be a wonderful gift if people could be brought to stare into the fire. Only then could they begin to feel its meaning for them. Ironically, that terrifying vision could be the means God used to bring the joys of salvation.

The subject of the sermon is that at this very moment God is holding sinners in his hands, delaying the awful destruction that their rebellion deserves. Despite this unfathomable mercy, God is a just judge who must condemn sinners because they are in rebellion against God and hence hate what

≤≤≤ Hands of God and Hand of Christ

is truly good. Yet—and this is the point that is often missed—being in the hands of God means for the moment you are being kept from burning in hell as you deserve. God in his amazing long-su√ering is still giving you a chance; his hand is keeping you from falling. What is most remarkable about this long-su√ering is that God is at the same time extremely angry with you. He is ''dreadfully provoked,'' just as he would be if he were presently allowing you to burn in hell. You are like the rebel who has broken a sacred pact in rebellion against a wonderfully just and good prince and so deserves only vengeance. Yet God is restraining his anger. Edwards, who wants to focus on this theme with an audience familiar with theology, does not stop to explain the trinitarian complexities of God's anger and love. For now one sees only the righteous rage of the just God against injustice.

Another essential point sometimes missed in the logic of Sinners is that, strictly speaking, it is the weight of sinners' own sins that is dragging them toward the abyss. Although Edwards does not distract with a theological exposition, his premise is that God does not create evil, but only permits it. Ultimately, God permits hate and injustice to be their own reward. Rancor and malevolence fuel the flames of hell. Sinners relish their rebellion, and their love of evil pulls them inexorably toward its just and awful consequences. The weight of their sins is so great that at any moment it would drag them down to the fury of unending hatred if God released his restraining hands.≤≠

What is extraordinary in this sermon is not such doctrines but the sustained imagery Edwards employs to pierce the hearts of the hearers. For this awakening sermon he does not pause to qualify and explain. Rather he focuses everything on the central theme of what it means for guilty sinners to be held in the hands of God. Occasionally in earlier sermons he sustained powerful images.≤∞ Yet Sinners is so remarkable because Edwards employed so many images and addressed them so immediately to his hearers that they were left with no escape. Early in the sermon, still expounding the ''doctrine,'' he depicts how ''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.''≤≤ Even if his audience had not yet contemplated the reality of hell, they had to be sobered by these images of the tenuousness of life. This was something Edwards knew from grim experience. As a teenager, as he had put it in his ''Personal Narrative,'' God had ''shook me over the pit of hell.'' Since then he had experienced

Hands of God and Hand of Christ ≤≤≥

many illnesses. He walked with the arrows of death flying around him—as did everyone in the congregation.

And what would the deadly uncertainties of daily life mean for someone who was unconverted and truly realized it was a horrible hell underneath? How would sinners respond if they realized that only the hands of the righteous God kept them from falling into the eternal fires? In image after image Edwards leads his audience to feel the weight of their sins dragging them to destruction and to sense the awful power of the God's judgments, which built to almost unbearable pressure of impending doom. ''Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure toward hell.'' ''All your righteousness'' can have no more e√ect ''than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock.'' ''There are the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder,'' yet there is still a moment to seek shelter before he will allow the ''whirlwind'' to destroy you ''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.'' ''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.''

Then comes the infamous passage:

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 . . . 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.

Oh sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in.

≤≤∂ Hands of God and Hand of Christ

By now the Enfield audience was probably in hysterics, and Edwards may not have gotten much beyond this point. He may not have been able to press on to biblical arguments to remind them of what hell would be like for some who sat there that very evening. He probably did not get to sound the note of hope that was ultimately the point of the sermon: ''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; . . . 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!''

When Isaac Watts received the printed version of the sermon he wrote on his copy: ''A most terrible sermon, which should have had a word of Gospel at the end [of] it, though I think 'tis all true.''≤≥ Edwards had o√ered this one brief Gospel word, but indeed if one had taken this sermon as characteristic of his preaching, it would have been dreadfully out of balance. Edwards could take for granted, however, that a New England audience knew well that Gospel remedy. The problem was to get them to seek it.

Edwards had preached the sermon at least once before, in June to his Northampton congregation, when the new revival was building. Then he had ended on a more pastoral note. He preached without interruption and ended with an exhortation that if they have been brought to fear for their souls, ''this is very needful that you may be made sensible of your need of Christ. If you were brought to this, then you would be sensible of the absolute necessity of a mediator.'' Other outline notes indicate that he preached the sermon a number of times after its renowned success in Enfield. Apparently it was one of his standards as he visited various towns in this new era of itinerancy. He also appended to the sermon, in di√erent ink, an outline of six practical steps in seeking salvation. These may have become part of the sermon or perhaps were intended for when he met with smaller groups afterwards, as he had with young people in Northampton. They urged seekers to persevere ''as resolute soldiers'' in spiritual disciplines, such as prayer and fasting, but also reminded them that ''God will never bestow mercy on you because you deserve it, but only because you need it.'' The whole point of a sermon like this one was to reduce sinners to a sense of their utter helplessness. Paradoxically, only when they reached that point would their strenuous spiritual e√orts be consistent with throwing themselves entirely on God's grace.≤∂

Hands of God and Hand of Christ ≤≤∑

We get another glimpse of how the pastoral Edwards balanced the stern Edwards of Sinners from a remarkable letter Edwards wrote that summer to eighteen-year-old Deborah Hatheway. Hatheway was from Su≈eld, Enfield's pious neighbor, and had been converted during the revivals of the spring. Su≈eld's pastor died in April, and Edwards had visited there to fill the pulpit. Edwards helped spark the awakening and perhaps Deborah's conversion. In answer to her request, he responded in early June with what became a famous letter. Published and distributed by the hundreds of thousands in the mid-nineteenth century, Advice to Young Converts became, next to Sinners, Edwards' most printed work.≤∑

The tone was gentle and pastoral, reflecting Edwards' own evercontinuing e√orts to nourish his own faith. Addressing her as ''dear child,'' he began by suggesting that the way of the kingdom is hard work. Even as ''we advise persons under convictions to be earnest and violent for the kingdom of heaven'' (this reflects a biblical phrase), so those converted ''ought not be the less, watchful, laborious, and earnest.'' Among the nineteen points of advice, he counseled Deborah to remember that after conversion one has ''a thousand times'' more reason ''to lament and humble yourself for sins'' but at the same time ''don't be at all discouraged or disheartened 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.''

One item of advice to the young woman was surely a commentary on his ongoing battle with the most subtle of his own sins. ''Remember'' he wrote, ''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.'' Pride, he continued, was the sin ''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.''

The pastoral Edwards encouraged the young convert to become a minister to others her own age, setting up private religious meetings for young women. He went on to urge her, ''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.'' Edwards well knew the dangers and di≈culties of being cast in the role

≤≤∏ Hands of God and Hand of Christ

of the converted person whose duty it was always to exhort the unconverted. Those who enjoyed God's free gift of grace must constantly remind themselves that their privilege came not because they were inherently any better than the worst of the unregenerate.

Converts should not dwell on old experiences, but seek new ones. ''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.'' Again Edwards spoke from his own knowledge.

Ultimately—and here is the counterbalance to the hands of an angry God—one had to become as a child taking the wounded hand of the gentle Christ: ''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.''

C H A P T E R ∞∂ kl ''He That Is Not with Us Is Against Us''

ugust 31, 1741, marked a turning point in Edwards' life. Until that time, his star was steadily on the rise: he had gained an international reputation as a preacher of awakening, and he had been gradually taking his place in the galaxy of New England's establishment. In the west he was a bright junior member of the Stoddard-Williams aristocracy. Elsewhere he was connected not only to Yale and the Connecticut elite, but also to Benjamin Colman and the circle of Boston's most influential leaders. Through his uncle John Stoddard he had firm connections with Massachusetts' political leaders, including Governor Belcher. The governor, who so admired Whitefield, was a member of Old South Church, pastored by Thomas Prince, an ardent proponent of revival, and a friend and ally of Edwards'. For all these men the spectacular awakening o√ered hope for their vision of a Reformed evangelical civilization. As the great revival continued to advance in amazing ways, so did Edwards' prominence. Yet for the rest of his career the beacon that he had hoped would point toward a unified advance of true Protestantism was clouded by storms. Edwards was now a leader in his own right, but he was also a lightning rod for controversies, jealousies, and bitter resentments.

On Monday, August 31, Edwards took time out amid ''prodigious fullness of business and great infirmity of body'' to respond to a former parishioner, Deacon Moses Lyman, concerning ''the great stir'' over the alleged excesses of the awakening that was by now ripping apart the New England establishment. At the end he appended a portentous postscript: ''The Reverend Williams of Hatfield died this morning.'' William Williams, in his seventyseventh year, had been failing for some time. Recently he had sent word to a gathering of the Hampshire Association, where he had been the commanding

≤≤∫ ''He That Is Not with Us''

figure since Solomon Stoddard's death, that he did not expect to see them at another meeting. Still, Williams' demise had been more sudden than expected, and his allies among the county clergy were devastated. Amid the acrimony that still plagued their numbers in the wake of the Breck controversy (earlier in the summer the Williams clan had boycotted an ordination that Breck was to attend) and the increasing agitation over the awakening, William Williams was a revered and often beloved pillar of strength who kept the tenuous evangelical establishment from collapsing.∞

The reason Edwards was writing to Moses Lyman suggests why the loss of the authority of the older generation, which Williams' passing symbolized, had ominous implications. Deacon Lyman, who had moved from Northampton in 1739, was troubled about the extravagant outcries and bodily e√ects so common in the new awakening and about the widespread itinerancy of pastors whose work was precipitating many of these reactions. Here was a veteran of the astonishing Northampton revival of 1734–35 who viewed the manifestations of the current awakening as extreme by comparison. New England had long been divided by controversies, yet as in the earlier disputes between Solomon Stoddard and the Mathers or the recent Breck case, these were almost always intraestablishment a√airs among men who ultimately stood together. The recent rumblings over the awakenings and Whitefield's visit at first seemed another such instance. In spring 1741 the evident spiritual benefits for the church establishment promised to be su≈cient to outweigh the grumbling of those whose sense of decorum was o√ended. But by the end of the summer, the controversy was moving into a new phase. Even former friends of awakening were wondering if evangelical enthusiasm had gotten out of control.

To add to the sense of crisis, Massachusetts was in the midst of an unprecedented popular political uprising. The issues had some striking parallels to the awakening, although few at the time seem to have directly connected the two. In September 1740, the same month that Whitefield arrived, a private Land Bank without government authorization began issuing notes. These notes of credit, secured in land, were intended to serve as paper money. The value of the bills would also float on the market, so they might have an inflationary impact. Their proponents promised that these bills would give ordinary people access to the ever-increasing number of goods available in the trade with England.

Governor Belcher tried to suppress the Land Bank scheme, but it had such strong popular support that the legislature would not cooperate. Belcher

''He That Is Not with Us'' ≤≤Ω

moved ahead anyway, heavy-handedly exercising executive powers to suppress the bills. He removed o≈ceholders and even militia men who were known to subscribe to the bank. The popular outcry was so great that Belcher's rivals in England used the disorder against him. At home Belcher feared insurrection. In May 1741 he wrote to his younger friend Thomas Hutchinson (who would become an authority on insurrection as the colonial governor during the American Revolution), ''The common people here [have] grown so brassy and hardy, as to be now combining in a body to raise a rebellion.''≤

Belcher himself was brought down without the armed uprising he had feared. Although Whitehall agreed that the Land Bank must be suppressed, Belcher's alienation of the people weakened his standing in England. By the end of June he learned that he had been replaced by a rival, William Shirley. On August 14 the defeated Belcher turned over the governorship. Shirley was, ominously, an Anglican. The moment for a happy alliance between an evangelical governor and the dissenting clergy had passed.

The Land Bank and the awakening were both tumultuous popular movements presaging a new era. Each promised a new definition of the individual. The Land Bank o√ered common people increased freedom of choice as participants in the international culture of commercial capitalism. The awakening, though preached as God's grace, emphasized individual commitment and connected the people to a new international evangelical culture. The two movements did not seem connected, but they tended to flourish most among the same populations, especially among nonelites in the countryside.

Opponents of each deplored the instability of the new democratic cultures they signaled. The power of popular uprisings was di≈cult to restrain. Moreover, that which was not controlled by centralized agencies and traditional local elites was subject to counterfeit. Paper money was liable to both counterfeiting and inflation that would cheapen monetary values. So, too, itinerant evangelism was subject to counterfeiting and inflated experiences that cheapened spiritual truths.≥

One reason contemporaries did not often link the two movements was that they seemed opposite in their immediate messages. The Land Bank appealed to materialistic aspirations while the awakening deplored displays of worldly goods. Governor Belcher, for instance, had hoped that the ''heavenly Whitefield'' and his allies would help suppress the greed and ''wanton use of liberty'' he associated with the Land Bank.∂ Conversion demanded asceticism and strict discipline in using material things. Freedom would include freedom

≤≥≠ ''He That Is Not with Us''

from material dependency. Nevertheless the relation between the Land Bank and the awakening was ambiguous. The awakening did appeal to some of the same people and even to some of the same clergy as had the Land Bank, but the overlap of the two movements was not su≈cient to suggest clear patterns of cause and e√ect.∑

During late 1740 and the first half of 1741, when both the Land Bank agitation and the Great Awakening were at their heights, Edwards and his immediate circle of elite pro-awakening clergy were no friends of the instability that was widely attributed to the Land Bank. For that matter, neither did they see themselves as challenging the old religious order. Edwards and his closest associates were committed to maintaining the religious order in local parishes, first of all their own. Yet by the end of the summer, the question of whether that order could survive amid such enthusiasm was increasingly pressing. The loss of the calming and respected voice of William Williams could not have come at a worse time. In May Stephen Williams had written in his diary, ''I am a√ected to think that such a poor—weak—ignorant creature as I am—should be left the eldest minister of the county at such a time of this.''∏

Most immediately, the loss of Williams would threaten Edwards' tenuous relationship to his powerful Williams cousins, led by William's magistrate son Israel, who was already snubbing Edwards. William Williams apparently had held his brilliant nephew in high esteem. They had always been allies both in doctrinal concerns and in the awakenings.π That Edwards (rather than Stephen Williams, for instance) was chosen to preach the funeral sermon for William Williams likely reflected the express wishes of the uncle and signaled his choice for leadership.

If some of the more secular cousins thought Edwards was a harsh extremist, his funeral sermon was designed to undercut that image. Williams, he said, was ''eminently an evangelical preacher,'' and the sermon had a gentle evangelical tone, perhaps reflecting Williams' own.∫ Rather than speaking, as he often did on such occasions, about the lessons of eternity that death should teach, Edward spoke as a tender pastor to an audience he knew to be deeply bereaved. Using the text Matthew 14:12 (''And his disciple came, and took up the body [of John the Baptist] and buried it, and went and told Jesus''), Edwards urged the congregation, the family, and the fellow ministers with the simple refrain, ''go and tell Jesus.'' As he put it to the family, ''go and tell Jesus; tell a compassionate Saviour what has befallen you.''Ω Whatever some of the cousins thought of Edwards, they were pleased with the sermon as a

''He That Is Not with Us'' ≤≥∞

tribute to their father and acceded to having it published ''at the united request of those reverend and honoured gentlemen, the sons of the deceased.''

While any potential for conflict within the Williams clan was for the moment under control, the awakening was not, and Edwards was about to step into a cockpit of controversy. The week after the funeral he was slated to deliver the Yale commencement address. As he was well aware, New Haven was becoming a center for some of the hottest agitation over the revival, and some of the students were nearing a state of rebellion. Probably he was working on his Yale address about the same time that he wrote to Deacon Lyman. The letter is a précis of Edwards' view. He conceded that there were ''some imprudences and irregularities, as there always was, and always will be in this imperfect state.'' Yet the awakening as a whole had ''clear and incontestable evidences of a true divine work.'' Edwards allowed no room for doubt. ''If this ben't the work of God, I have all my religion to learn over again, and know not what use to make of the Bible.'' He would publicly proclaim the same at Yale on September 10, 1741.

The agitations at Yale had begun with Whitefield's visit the previous fall. The grand itinerant found the college spiritually torpid. He preached urgently on ''the dreadful ill consequences of an unconverted ministry,'' and his visit precipitated a revival.∞≠ Whitefield was followed in March by Gilbert Tennent. The Presbyterian evangelist was more rough-hewn and even more ready with his condemnations of unconverted ministry. Preaching in the New Haven area seventeen times within one week, Tennent brought what Whitefield had started to a fever pitch. As in Boston the same spring, Tennent's visit led to more apparent conversions than Whitefield's in the fall. Samuel Hopkins (nephew to Edwards' brother-in-law of the same name), who was a student at the time, later recalled that the people of New Haven were almost universally aroused and estimated that ''thousands . . . were awakened.''∞∞

Yale's new rector, the conservative Thomas Clap, at first welcomed the awakening and allowed the itinerant to preach three times in the college hall. The growing disorder soon changed his mind.∞≤ Traditionally student conversions had been means to bring students into line with the ideals of the standing order. Now they were subverting that order. The awakened students, following the lead of the itinerants, were attacking their elders. They condemned many of the clergy and declared Yale and its faculty spiritually dead. When Whitefield's published journal appeared in the spring, it made clear that this subversion went all the way back to him. ''Many,'' he had written of the New England clergy ''nay most that preach, I fear do not experimentally

≤≥≤ ''He That Is Not with Us''

know Christ.'' As for the colleges, Harvard and Yale, ''their light is become darkness, darkness that can be felt, and is complained of by the most godly ministers.''∞≥ Friends of the colleges were deeply o√ended and Whitefield's eventual e√ort at conciliation could only partly paper over the damage.∞∂

Meanwhile, a sensational young itinerant, James Davenport, carried the subversive side of the awakening to an extreme. In July, the same month that New England pastors, such as Wheelock, Pomeroy, and Edwards, were evangelizing across the countryside, Davenport arrived in Connecticut as a missionary determined to reclaim his apostate native land. Far from being a lowly upstart, he had the most elite credentials. Grandson of the founder and first pastor of the New Haven colony and son of a respected Connecticut pastor and late Yale trustee, James had been one of Yale's youngest graduates, at age sixteen in 1732. There he had been friends with Pomeroy and Wheelock. He was also connected to the Williams family, as his older sister was married to Stephen Williams.

Shortly after taking a parish in Long Island, the young man was caught up in the Whitefield fervor. During 1740 he had met and traveled with Whitefield in New York and New Jersey. He had also met Gilbert Tennent, and he shared the Presbyterian evangelist's opinion of the unconverted clergy and dim view of New England. In 1741, believing himself directly called by God to neglect his parish for bigger things, he set out as an itinerant to New England.

Working his way along the Connecticut coast, eighty miles from Stonington to New Haven, Davenport openly condemned almost all the ministers in the region, including some renowned for saintliness, as unconverted. Their preaching was ''to their souls,'' he reportedly told the crowds, ''as rat bait is to their bodies.'' He arrived in New Haven for commencement week, and his sensational methods transformed the usual student revels into revels of another sort. Davenport carried every tendency of the awakening to an extreme, and his critics believed him mad. As he marched to his services he sang all the way, ''head thrown back, and his eyes staring up to heaven.'' His meetings during commencement week in New Haven generally lasted until ten or eleven at night and, by establishment standards, lacked all decorum. At one of these late night commencement-week gatherings, as one critic described it, all order had disappeared, ''some praying, some exhorting and terrifying, some singing, some screaming, some crying, some laughing and some scolding, made the most amazing confusion that ever was heard.''∞∑

The most serious of his o√enses, so far as the Yale trustees were con-

''He That Is Not with Us'' ≤≥≥

cerned, was that he encouraged gross insubordination. Davenport made a point of declaring that the Reverend Joseph Noyes, the pastor of New Haven's First Church, was a ''wolf in sheep's clothing.'' Yale boys were required to attend First Church, on the green a stone's throw from the college. Davenport urged Noyes' congregation to forsake their pharisaical pastor and attend pure separate meetings.∞∏ The alarmed trustees, fearing a rebellion, demanded to meet with Davenport. The missionary put o√ several messengers with ''dilatory answers,'' kept them waiting for two hours, and then declared he ''reckoned it his duty to stay where he was.''∞π

Powerless to control an outside source of trouble, Rector Clap cracked down on the students. He issued a ban on attending services of itinerants. He was especially alarmed at the insubordination encouraged by the spirit of the radical preachers. Students imitated the evangelists, setting themselves up as infallible judges of the spiritual condition of each other, the clergy, and even of college o≈cials. One of the most conspicuous o√enders was also one of the brightest students—David Brainerd, well known for both his intense spirituality and his judgmentalism. In their meeting during commencement week the trustees, at Clap's insistence, ''voted that if any student of this college shall directly or indirectly say, that the rector, either of the trustees or tutors are hypocrites, carnal or unconverted men, he shall for the first o√ence make public confession in the hall, and for the second o√ence be expelled.''∞∫

Edwards arrived in New Haven in the midst of this commotion. His commencement address was the day after the tumultuous board meeting, and he may have witnessed the disorder of Davenport's services. Another visitor to the commencement, who attended two meetings of itinerants, wrote in his diary: ''Much confusion this day at New Haven, and at night; the most strange management and a pretence of religion that ever I saw.''∞Ω Perhaps Rector Clap and his allies had hoped that Edwards, as a renowned friend of both true awakening and orthodox order, would warn the students that they must temper their enthusiasm with respect for constituted authority. If so, they were disappointed to hear him provide a ringing endorsement of the awakening—an endorsement all the stronger because he conceded the very facts on which they based their complaints, that there were many strange and unusual phenomena and even excesses.

Edwards did o√er some cautions to the friends of the revival. He warned them against spiritual pride and admonished them, as he had Whitefield himself, about the dangers of being led by ''impulses and strong impressions'' that were supposedly from God. He argued that even though the awakening

≤≥∂ ''He That Is Not with Us''

might signal ''the approaching glorious times of the church,'' he did not believe that would be a time of extraordinary gifts of the spirit, such as direct inspirations or miraculous gifts. I Corinthians 12 and 13, he believed, made clear that the ordinary gifts of the spirit—faith, hope, and charity—were ''a more excellent way'' (I Corinthians 12:31) than the extraordinary gifts discussed in the same chapters. Further, he warned the students against populist evangelists who were teaching them to despise human learning.

Perhaps most important for those who were alarmed at the awakening's excesses was that Edwards warned strongly against the censorious spirit that was becoming epidemic in the awakening. Following the lead of the itinerants, converts like David Brainerd were judging professing Christians to be hypocrites who know nothing of true religion. Edwards argued with some passion that such judgments were unscriptural and unwarranted. Scripture left the separation of the wheat from the cha√ until the last judgment. All the visible church could do in the meantime was to judge who were visibly saints ''to be received as such in the eye of a public charity.'' Edwards had much experience in this domain from the revival of 1734–35. ''I once did not imagine that the heart of man had been so unsearchable as I find it is,'' he confessed. ''I am less charitable, and less uncharitable than I once was.'' From hard experience of seeing a revival come and go, he now realized that the wicked may appear more godly than he had thought (hence he was less charitable in judging persons converted). And the godly might appear carnal and ungodly (hence he was less uncharitable in judging others unconverted). While he still searched for rules to tell the di√erence, humility was the best stance.≤≠

All this would have been fine for cautious Yale conservatives had it not been placed at the end of a discourse in which Edwards developed a forceful case in defense of the awakening. A prodigy in disputation from his days in that very hall, Edwards knew how to undercut an opponent's strongest argument. One by one he went through the phenomena that were commonly used to discredit the awakening and showed that none was su≈cient to judge whether the awakening ''be the work of the Spirit of God or no.'' Some of the phenomena, while indeed strange and unusual, had biblical precedent. So e√ects like ''tears, trembling, groans, loud outcries, agonies of body, or the failing of bodily strength'' did not prove anything one way or the other. Nor were ''great impressions on their imaginations,'' such as ravishing visions, proofs or disproofs of a true work of God. Nor was it a valid objection that preachers used ''means'' to excite religious a√ections, appealing to the emotions as well as to Scripture and reason. Nor was it wrong to frighten sinners

''He That Is Not with Us'' ≤≥∑

with the terrors of hell if there really is a hell. The presence of ''great imprudences'' and ''sinful irregularities,'' or of ''many errors in judgment and some delusions of Satan intermixed with the work,'' or that many ''fall away into gross errors or scandalous practices''—these were no arguments that a work was not the work of God. One had only to look at the New Testament age to see that such works of Satan accompanied even the greatest outpouring of the Spirit.≤∞

Having thus in a tour de force disposed of the supposed negative signs, Edwards turned briefly to the perennial New England question of what were su≈cient evidences of a work of the Spirit. These were signs such as love to Jesus, renouncing of worldly lusts and ambitions, a love of Scripture, a spirit of truth, and true Christian love. These were ''certain, distinguishing marks'' of true awakening. Proceeding, then, from these sure ''rules of the Word of God,'' one had only to examine ''the facts'' of the recent events to see if they fit. Such a candid examination, he concluded, established that ''that extraordinary influence that has lately appeared on the minds of the people abroad in this land, causing in them an uncommon concern and engagedness of mind about the things of religion, is undoubtedly, in the general, from the Spirit of God.''≤≤

This confident brief for the awakening might not have caused the stir it did had not Edwards also attacked those in the New England establishment who were cool toward the awakening. Their caution, Edwards warned Rector Clap and the circumspect Yale trustees, could be a damnable vice if they were opposing a work of God. When all was said, it was apparent that Edwards was closer to the incautious students of the Brainerd circle than to the Yale authorities. Despite his warnings about the students' censoriousness and excesses, he stood with them in insisting that the most essential feature of the awakening was that it was of the Spirit of God.

We do not have the exact sermon Edwards preached at Yale but rather a version ''with great enlargements'' published soon after in Boston. Benjamin Franklin also published an edition in Philadelphia the next year, and Isaac Watts oversaw a London edition. John Wesley published an abridgment which, like the original, went through several editions.≤≥

No one who picked up the Boston edition could miss its confrontational challenge to those who were cool or only lukewarm to the awakening. Brattle Street's William Cooper furnished an e√usive preface that highlighted the point. The present ''evangelical dispensation,'' he began, inaugurated by Christ's first coming, was ''the brightest day that ever shone.'' In the

≤≥∏ ''He That Is Not with Us''

Reformation era ''Gospel light broke in upon the church.'' But since then ''what a dead and barren time has it now been, for a great while, with all the churches of the Reformation!'' All the dead and barren churches, he made clear, included (despite brief isolated exceptions) New England's. Until now! ''And now, behold! The Lord whom we have sought has suddenly come into his temple [Malachi 3:1]. The dispensation of grace we are now under is certainly such as neither we nor our fathers have seen; and in such circumstances so wonderful, that I believe there has not been the like since the extraordinary pouring out of the spirit immediately after our Lord's ascension.''

If this was the greatest moment in history since Pentecost, where did that leave critics of the awakening? Cooper was clear. Such sco√ers, ''I am ready to think, would have been disbelievers, and opposers of the miracles and mission of our Saviour, had they lived in his days. The malignity which some of them have discovered, to me approaches near to the unpardonable sin.''≤∂ These were strong words. Cooper knew, after all, that some of his ministerial colleagues were among those who were questioning the awakening. New England's clerical establishment had often been divided, and (as in the Breck case) their rhetoric sometimes got out of hand. Nonetheless, they usually granted that their fellow clergy were within the pale. Now Cooper and others, if their statements were to be taken seriously, were suggesting that opponents of the awakening might be hopeless reprobates.

Edwards himself suggested that opposing the awakening might be the ''unpardonable sin'' or the ''sin against the Holy Spirit.'' In Matthew 12: 22–32 Jesus declared, in reference to those who claimed Jesus healing work was of the devil, that there was a ''blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,'' which ''shall not be forgiven unto men.'' Edwards pointed out that there was to be ''another coming of Christ, a spiritual coming, to set up his kingdom in the world,'' and that when the Holy Spirit would be poured out in these latter days it should be expected that there would be opposition paralleling that of the ''Jewish church'' to Christ's first coming. The great outpouring of the Spirit in the latter days would once again divide the church.≤∑

In the History of the Work of Redemption Edwards had worked out what he was sure was the key to history. God worked through periodic awakenings. That seemed demonstrated through biblical history. Further it seemed sure that this evangelical dispensation, begun at Pentecost, would reach its fulfillment with a worldwide outpouring of the Spirit. People today could not be sure exactly where they stood in this scenario. But they could be sure that if there were awakenings that met Gospel standards, they were part of the Holy

''He That Is Not with Us'' ≤≥π

Spirit's work in history. It followed that to oppose that work was to oppose the Holy Spirit.

Relying on what seemed a thoroughly sound argument, Edwards in the publication of his Yale address was daring in his condemnations, not only of those who opposed the awakening, but even of those who did not openly support it. When an awakening was so widespread as the present one, manifest ''in the most public places of the land, and almost all parts of it,'' and many ministers did not so much as give a prayer of thanks for it, something was deeply wrong. ''A long continued silence in such a case is undoubtedly provoking to God; especially in ministers: it is a secret kind of opposition, that really tends to hinder the work: such silent ministers stand in the way of the work of God; as Christ said of old, 'He that is not with us is against us.' ''

After citing various biblical condemnations of those who opposed God's work, Edwards argued that ''pretended prudence'' of those who say they are waiting to see if the awakening bears consistently good fruit was ''like the fool's waiting at the riverside to have the water all run by.'' When there was already clear evidence of so many true conversions in this mix of the work of the Holy Spirit and the counterattacks of Satan, those who questioned the whole work should ''take heed that they ben't guilty of the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost.''≤∏

So in the same sermon—now a short treatise—in which Edwards admonished itinerants and students not to pronounce judgments on the inner states of the souls of others, especially clergy, he proclaimed an alternative that was almost as divisive. Rather than judging the souls of individuals, he was taking his stand on the more acceptable ground of judging the cause. He was sure that the awakening was truly great, extraordinary, and unprecedented. He related it to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the latter days. If all the right signs were there, then all true believers had an obligation to acknowledge that the awakening was, at least in part, the work of the Holy Spirit. Although Edwards stopped just short of saying that opponents of the awakening, or even those who remained silent about it, were ipso facto in league with the devil, he was unmistakably suggesting that they might be.≤π

Opponents of the awakening could not miss what was going on. Edwards, Cooper, and their allies were throwing down the gauntlet. They might have said only, as Cooper summarized it concisely, that they believed that some of the opposition ''approaches near to the unpardonable sin,'' but the implication was clear. Unless the clergy who now stood on the sidelines questioning and sco≈ng added their support to the awakening, the New

≤≥∫ ''He That Is Not with Us''

England establishment would be hopelessly divided. God might curse the land and the great opportunity would be missed. One party, as Edwards believed he had demonstrated, was on the side of the Holy Spirit. What then of the other party?≤∫

Until now most of the clergy who had opposed the awakening had done so cautiously, at least in public. In the gossipy town of Boston it was easy to learn of private conversations in which clerical skeptics expressed their derision, but they had mostly confined any public attacks to the safe distance of the anonymity of newspaper letters where the sensational events were being sharply debated. Edwards' challenge, seconded by Boston's evangelical clergy, forced the opposition into the open. For the next several years much of Edwards' energy would be devoted to what amounted to a verbal duel with the Boston pastor Charles Chauncy, the most outspoken champion of the Old Lights whose honor he had impugned. After more than a century of maintaining an essential unity through many controversies, New England's clerical establishment would be permanently divided between ''New Light'' awakeners and ''Old Light'' critics.

C H A P T E R ∞∑ kl

''Heavenly Elysium''

n the meantime the light of the awakening had been brightening in Northampton during August and September 1741, and Edwards was dealing every day with new confirmations that the work was truly of the Holy Spirit. He was also much in demand as the revival fires continued to blaze all over New England. During November and December he made an extensive preaching tour, and in late January he was to leave for another two-week stint that would involve at least eight stops in Massachusetts and Connecticut.∞

On January 21, 1742, shortly before leaving on this tour, Edwards recounted the state of the awakening to his younger friend, the Reverend Joseph Bellamy. Bellamy had graduated from Yale in 1735 and had come to Northampton in 1736 to study theology with Edwards, probably the first student to do so. Bellamy then became pastor at the new settlement of Bethlehem in western Connecticut. He was a large, impressive, somewhat roughmannered young man, known for his wit and intellect and as a powerful preacher. He became one of Edwards' most valued friends and allies.≤ Edwards' closest friendships were with such younger protégés, including a number who succeeded Bellamy as students and guests in the Edwards household.

''Religion in this and the neighboring town has now of late been on the decaying hand,'' Edwards reported to Bellamy, yet ''there has been the year past the most wonderful work amongst children here, by far, that ever was.'' Moreover, on the larger scene ''the work of God is greater at this day in the land, than it has been at any time.'' Edwards was sure that ''Neither earth or hell can hinder his work that is going on in the country. Christ gloriously triumphs at this day.'' He continued, noting that because he was being called away to preach in Leicester, a town about halfway to Boston, where a ''great

≤∂≠ ''Heavenly Elysium''

work has lately broke out,'' he would not be able to join Bellamy in a meeting at Guilford, on the Connecticut coast. Moreover, he mentioned that he had ''at this time some extraordinary a√airs to attend at home.''≥

The ''extraordinary a√airs'' at home referred to the beginnings of what was among the most revealing episodes in the whole Edwards saga. On Wednesday morning, January 20, 1742, Sarah Edwards was enraptured by spiritual ecstasy that continued for more than two weeks. Repeatedly she was physically overwhelmed by her spiritual raptures, sometimes leaping involuntarily to praise God and more often so overcome by joys and transports that she collapsed physically. Except for the first two days of these wonders, Jonathan was out of town on his scheduled preaching tour. At one point one of the neighbor ladies remarked that she was afraid Sarah ''should die before Mr. Edwards' return, and he should think the people had killed his wife.'' Sarah, who seemed to keep her wits about her even when repeatedly overcome by ecstasies, saw it only as a spiritual lesson. She assured those gathered round ''that I chose to die in the way that was most agreeable to God's will, and that I should be willing to die in darkness and horror, if it was most for the glory of God.''∂

On his return, Jonathan was elated to learn of his beloved's transfixing encounters with the divine. They far surpassed his own raptures, yet they fit the same patterns. Always the eighteenth-century philosopher and collector of evidence, he wrote down her account of the entire episode as she dictated it. Her memory was good. She could recall the day and even the hour of most of her experiences and could detail the notions that brought on her ine√able feelings. During the entire time, the house had been filled with guests in addition to her seven children and some servants, for whom she was the principal hostess and caretaker. Yet she kept up with her domestic duties. She often retired by herself to meditate (as she had delighted to do since her childhood), and much of her ecstasy took place in solitude or at night. Yet many other incidents took place when guests were present and were triggered by their remarks. In the best of Calvinist fashion she attended to her ''worldly business'' with ''great alacrity,'' reporting that ''it being done thus, 'tis found to be as good as prayer.''∑

Jonathan was so impressed by Sarah's spiritual example that he incorporated a disguised version of her account into a long treatise he was writing (Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion [1742]) as a sequel to The Distinguishing Marks. Sarah's experience, he argued, perfectly fit the highest spiritual standards to which the most mature Christian should aspire.

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[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Sarah Pierpont Edwards at age forty-one

Here was conclusive evidence that conspicuous physical e√ects, which were common in the awakening, could not be taken in themselves as evidence of deplorable ''enthusiasm'' or of spiritual immaturity. After pages of recounting her experiences and the evidences of her state of true grace, he concluded, rhapsodically: ''Now if such things are enthusiasm, and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be evermore possessed of that happy distemper! If this be distraction, I pray God that the world of mankind may be all seized with this benign, meek, beneficient, beatifical, glorious distraction!''

In this concluding fervor Jonathan finally allowed himself a moment to express his own a√ections in what was a sustained but otherwise entirely disguised love portrait of Sarah. The preceding many pages were a mature

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sequel to the ''Sarah Pierpont'' paean he had written concerning her spiritual beauties when she was thirteen. Yet, except in Northampton, few readers would know that. He had carefully excised all references to the particular context or even to the gender of the person he was describing. He reported only that he had been acquainted with this case ''where the a√ections of admiration, love and joy, so far as another could judge, have been raised to a higher pitch than in any other instances I have observed or been informed of.''∏ Although he incorporated many phrases from Sarah's own account and added other details, he referred to her seemingly impassively as ''the person.'' Yet, when we realize the subject, there is no mistaking that he was describing someone he deeply loved and admired.

God was the preeminent subject for both Jonathan and Sarah, but these accounts remain our best sources for clues about their relationships and priorities. We learn, for instance, that Jonathan still a≈rmed his estimate of her youthful spirituality. ''The person'' he wrote, is not ''in the giddy age of youth'' but ''was converted above twenty-seven years ago.'' This detail would throw o√ most readers because it sets the time of Sarah's conversion at age four or five.π It also explains, incidentally, why during the earlier revival Jonathan had been willing to credit the genuineness of Phoebe Bartlett's spiritual awakening at age four.

It was here that Jonathan recorded that Sarah, ''in lower degrees of grace,'' had always been prone to ''many ups and downs'' and ''a vapory habit of body, and often subject to melancholy, and at times almost overborne by it.'' Her ascent to a higher level of grace and the bodily e√ects of it had begun during the Northampton awakening in 1735. But it reached ''a much higher degree, and greater frequency'' in 1739, when there was no awakening. This point was important to Jonathan's argument because he could underscore that these agitations ''arose from no distemper catched from Mr. Whitefield or Mr. Tennent.''∫ Since the onset of these more wonderful and more frequent experiences in 1739, Sarah's depressions had been ''overcome and crushed by the power of faith and trust in God, and resignation to him; the person has remained in a constant uninterrupted rest, and humble joy in God, and assurance of his favor, without one hour's melancholy or darkness.'' This was all the more remarkable because ''vapors have had great e√ects on the body, such as they used to have before, but the soul has been always out of their reach.''Ω

At the core of Sarah's new spiritual strength was her attitude of near-total submission to God. Jonathan made a point of mentioning that even ''in times

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of the brightest light and highest flights of love and joy,'' she had no belief ''of being now perfectly free from sin (agreeable to the notion of the Wesleys and their followers, and some other high pretenders to spirituality in these days).'' Thinking along this line, Jonathan added an oblique defense of Sarah's belief in dressing well, noting that the person had ''a particular dislike of placing religion much in dress, and spending much zeal about those things that in themselves are matters of indi√erence'' and often seemed outward displays of humility. She also did not believe that the pious needed to a√ect ''a demure and melancholy countenance.''∞≠ (He admired that she was more outwardly cheerful than he in social settings.) Yet while she avoided methodist doctrines and forms, her piety was just as intense, seeking to be so absorbed in the wonders of God's sovereign love that she could submit to God every care of the world. The greater the submission, the greater the transport of being filled with spiritual joys.

Sarah's original version of the narrative focused intensely on this theme of submission. For years she had been working hard to be ''weaned'' from the world. A perpetual mother, ''to be weaned'' was one of Sarah's favorite terms. It meant to submit entirely to God's will so that she could give up her cares for ''all things here below.'' Yet two things remained that she could not su√er with tranquility. First was ''the ill treatment of the town.'' Being the minister's wife, she was subject to carping criticisms of the town, which she could not bear. She felt that she valued too highly ''My own good name and fair reputation among men, and especially the esteem and just treatment of the people of this town.'' The second, and even more vexing failing, was her inability to stand any ''ill will of my husband.'' Or to put it positively, she valued too highly ''the esteem, and live and kind treatment of my husband.''

A small incident with Jonathan had triggered the crisis. Jonathan had said that ''he thought I had failed in some measure in a point of prudence, in some conversation I had with Mr. Williams of Hadley.'' Chester Williams, pastor at nearby Hadley, was a distant cousin. Though Chester was a friend of the revival and even did some preaching while Edwards was absent, Jonathan may have been especially sensitive to anything that his colleague might have taken as a slight. In any case, Sarah was mortified by his criticism and took her hurt and resentment as evidence of her lack of su≈cient sanctification.

The next day, Wednesday, January 20, still harboring her concerns about her inability to find ''su≈cient rest in God,'' she gathered with the family and guests around ten in the morning for prayers. The Reverend Peter Reynolds, pastor at Enfield, o√ered a prayer during which Sarah found herself wishing

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he would address God as ''father.'' She greatly desired to be able ''without the least misgiving of heart, call God my Father.'' Retiring to be alone to contemplate this, she was overcome with ecstasy. ''God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ, seemed as distinct persons, both manifesting their inconceivable loveliness, and mildness, and gentleness, and their great immutable love to me.'' The peace that followed ''was altogether inexpressible.'' At the same time ''I felt compassion and love for all mankind, and a deep abasement of soul, under a sense of my own unworthiness.'' In the fashion of New England piety, she saw her sense of her own worthlessness as a sign that God was acting in her life.

For the next days, even as Sarah continued ''every act of duty,'' her sensibilities were dominated by these sublime ecstasies. The following Monday evening—after five and a half days—she faced a new challenge to her abilities to submit all her cares to God. She heard that Samuel Buell was coming to town to preach. The twenty-five-year-old Buell had just graduated from Yale. He had originally intended to study with Edwards, but he had proved such an e√ective preacher of revival that he had turned to being a licensed itinerant. When Sarah heard of his coming she wished him great success in Northampton, yet she was also chagrined to realize that in her heart of hearts she would be jealous if the young man sparked a new revival greater than what her husband had been recently able to foster. In the 1734–35 revival Jonathan's success had outshone all counterparts. Sarah's loyalty to Jonathan was deep. She also felt insecure toward the town. She knew Jonathan had critics who would be glad to undercut his authority as supreme revivalist.

When Buell began his preaching Wednesday afternoon, Sarah not only overcame her jealously, but she became one of the chief instruments of his spectacular success. After the service, seeing that several people were spiritually moved, Sarah was so overcome by a vision of heaven that she lost her bodily strength. She and others stayed in the meetinghouse for three hours, until well after dark, as she felt led ''to converse with those who were near me, in a very earnest manner.'' Likely she was exhorting men as well as women in this group—in such cases of witnessing to an extraordinary experience, Jonathan allowed exceptions to the rule that women should not teach men.∞∞

When she returned home Buell and six other guests were there, conversing on divine things. Once again she was overcome, alternately losing bodily strength and feeling impelled to leap from her chair, and praising God in words of hymns.

The next morning in a similar setting she was even more overcome, first

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falling down in a swoon and later ''unconsciously'' leaping from her chair when especially moved by the words of some of the ''melting hymns'' of Isaac Watts, which Buell was reading. Buell was a great proponent of the new hymnody, using hymns not only in private meetings, as Edwards had, but also introducing them for the first time into the regular Northampton church services.∞≤ Even in ordinary times, Sarah was often singing. On this Thursday morning Sarah felt herself ''entirely swallowed up in God'' and was totally overcome with ''a ravishing sense of the unspeakable joys of the upper world.'' From twelve to four in the afternoon she lay in bed, conversing on these things to the pious women who attended her. That night was ''the sweetest night I ever had in my life,'' as she spent the whole night in a ''heavenly elysium'' as though ''to float or swim, in these bright, sweet beams of the love of Christ.'' Each minute seemed part of eternity, ''worth more than all the outward comfort and pleasure, which I had enjoyed in my whole life.''

With these even higher raptures came ever more total submission. On Friday she met a test even greater than overcoming any mixed feelings at the success of Buell. Chester Williams, clearly not Sarah's favorite person, was scheduled to preach in the afternoon. She woke up in the morning wondering ''whether I was willing that he, who was a neighboring minister, should be extraordinarily blessed, and made a greater instrument of good in the town, than Mr Edwards.'' Submitting herself even to that, her ecstasies both in public and in private continued throughout the day and into the next week.

Having submitted her jealousies to God, Sarah considered whether there were any limits to what she might endure for God's glory. She had already cultivated a willingness to die and said that ''I often used to feel impatient at the thought of living.'' Jonathan's account added that she had shown this resignation ''when actually under extreme and violent pains, and in times of threatenings of immediate death.'' Women of Sarah's time, we must not forget, were constantly in danger of death not only from disease but also from childbirth. They also lived with the shadow of the possibility of the sudden deaths of their children in epidemics. Learning to submit, to face death, and to deal with depression were constant demands. Sarah remarked that she was thankful to God, ever since her 1739 experiences, for making her willing to die any death, even as ''on the rack or at the stake.''

Such attitudes had long been cultivated in Christian spiritual disciplines, as the believers considered whether they could face a martyr's death. Foxe's Book of Martyrs was standard reading in New England. Sarah would have been familiar, for instance, with the story of the martyrdom of the fourth-

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century saint Theodora, well known in English literature via a fictionalized account by Robert Boyle, The Martyrdom of Theodora and Didymus (1687). Even in polite England, cultivating such resignation was seen as an admirable ideal, as suggested by the fact that in Handel's Theodora, first performed later the same decade, the heroine in contemplating a ''fate worse than death'' (forced prostitution) cries out ''Lead me, ye guards, lead me on to the rack, or to the flames.''∞≥

Sarah believed she had now attained the grace to face fates even greater than a torturous death. Without specifying details, she now believed that she could endure not only postponing the joys of heaven but enduring ''a thousand years in horror, if it be God's will.'' Even if she su√ered ''the torment to my body being so great, awful and overwhelming, that none could bear to live in the country where the spectacle was seen and the torment and horror of my mind being vastly greater than the torment of my body,'' she could bear it if it were for the glory of God. God's grace so ''seemed to overcome me and swallow me up.''

Closer to home, she could now imagine accepting with tranquility not only mild criticisms from Jonathan, but she could endure it if somehow he were transformed into a monster. Part of what she said was so graphic that Sereno Dwight, Edwards' great-grandson who first published her account, edited it out. In one brief passage that has survived in Jonathan's hand, she reported: ''At the same time I thought of my being cast o√ by my nearest and dearest friends and as I had thought before of Mr. Edwards's kicking me out of the house and finally casting me o√, now I put it to myself how I could bear from him the worst treatment of me at home and thought that if he should turn to be most cruel to me and should horsewhip me every day I would so rest [in] God that it would not touch [my heart] or diminish my happiness. I could still go on in the performance of all acts of duty to my husband and my happiness remain whole and undiminished.''∞∂

In our era, when traditions of martyrdom and submission have been all but lost and traditions of psychologizing are rampant, it is di≈cult to view such experiences in their own context. The temptation today is to speculate on what the passage about horsewhipping reveals about Sarah's psyche or about the Edwardses' relationship. Before doing that, however, we should be reminded that trained psychologists and psychoanalysts often hear many hours of testimony from patients without being able to diagnosis the roots of their problems. So one should not jump to a conclusion based on a fragment. Nevertheless, if one holds to a realistic view of human nature (as Calvinists

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themselves do), one should acknowledge that there are dark sides to every human and to every human relationship, even if we lack the evidence for identifying the specifics. The one thing that is clear from this passage is that the Edwardses valued submission far more than it is usually valued today.

The more totally Sarah thought of her submission the freer she felt of earthly cares and the more totally sublime was her experience of God's acceptance. During at least the next week Sarah's visions, overwhelming ecstasies, and testimonies to others were constantly renewed. Buell continued to preach and counsel people every day. Under his leadership the new revival spread to monumental proportions.

As Edwards rode back into town two weeks later, he heard from one person after another of the wonders that took place under Buell's ministry. Arriving at his house, he warmly welcomed Buell and heard reports from Sarah and others. Soon he sat down in silence in a corner, tears in his eyes. When asked, he explained that he had been humbled. ''I am not worthy that my labors should be attended with such a blessing!''∞∑

Edwards rejoiced in what he believed God had done through the younger man, especially in what he learned from Sarah, but he also soon became concerned about the e√ects on the less mature. Many, especially among those already converted, were following Sarah's example into higher states of religious intensity, staying long after meetings and being overcome with religious visions and delights. Some were in sorts of trances for up to twentyfour hours. Some were led to such heights that, in Edwards' later judgment, ''Satan took the advantage.''∞∏

The next we learn of Sarah—from an era when surviving evidences regarding women's lives are often fragmentary—is from a truly cryptic source. It is a prescription written for her by the local physician, Samuel Mather, sometime before the end of December 1742. She is supposed to take some remedies, Jovial Bezorardick and decoction of mugwort, every morning and evening until the supply is gone and apply another to the forehead regularly with a damp cloth. Another, Mynsichtu's Emplastrum Matricale, Mather thought so e√ective for ''hysterical cases'' that it would be worth sending to Boston for. It was to be applied to the navel and worn there for ''some weeks or months'' and was ''an admirable remedy'' for ''all diseases retaining to an hysterical original.''∞π

We know of Dr. Mather's prescription only because the always economizing Jonathan used the paper for a sermon preached in December 1742. Another sheet of paper used for the same sermon contains a prayer bid, one of

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the written requests for prayer that parishioners would give the pastor. This one is from a daughter of the Lyman family, who thanked God for her preservation in a terrible house fire of December 8 in which two of her sisters died. In Sarah Edwards' earlier narrative she recounted that one of the tests she had long put to herself was whether she could endure—what was apparently one of her worst fears—''if our house and all our property in it should be burnt up, and we should that night be turned out naked.'' Now she had seen that happen to neighbors, prominent citizens, who also had a family of girls, probably friends of her own.∞∫

Whether the fire and the prescription are connected by anything more than being on paper bound into the same sermon is a matter of speculation. The undated prescription could have been written much earlier. Also, we can not be sure of the nature of Sarah's malady. ''Hysterical'' in the eighteenth century usually referred to nervous disorders that were thought to originate in the womb. Dr. Mather's mention of ''diseases retaining to an hysterical original'' suggests that diagnosis.∞Ω

One possibility would be that Sarah, known to be susceptible to ups and downs, was su√ering from some mental and physical distress (the concoction on a damp cloth for the head may imply headaches), perhaps exacerbated by being badly shaken by the horror of the Lyman fire. There are, of course, lots of other possibilities. Her di≈culties (whenever they occurred) also could have been related to childbearing. In 1742 Sarah had, for the first time since 1728, not had a child on a regular two-year cycle. Some have speculated that her remarkable spiritual experiences early in 1742 were related to a miscarriage. In December 1742, she was pregnant again, probably about four months along (their eighth child, Eunice, was born May 8, 1743).

We are on firmer ground if we view Sarah's euphoric experiences of early 1742 as an accentuation of some characteristic patterns in New England piety. Puritans viewed the submission of wives in marriage as a type of the spiritual submission to Christ to which all should aspire. The church was the bride of Christ. Calvinist theology constantly emphasized that only when the saints completely gave up on their own willfulness would God seal the covenant. Some of the most e√ective sermons, including some of Jonathan's, urged men as well as women to think of themselves as ''virgins'' preparing for Christ, ''the bridegroom.''≤≠ One might be ravished by the love of Christ and be filled with the Spirit. Accepting this intimate eternal covenant, believers were gladly to submit to the authority of God's laws of love and promise lives of service to God, to the family of God, and to neighbors.

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Although Puritans did not think that women should be any more submissive to God than men, women seem more often to have attained the requisite submission. For generations women had outnumbered men as full members of churches, sometimes by large numbers. Recent historians of gender have also seen women's spiritual submission as a way of establishing their spiritual authority. Anne Hutchinson was a striking case, claiming to be more thoroughly submitted to God's grace than the allegedly works-righteous clergy and using that claim to challenge their earthly authority. Far more common were women who became spiritual models by submitting both to God and to properly delegated male authorities. Anne Bradstreet's poetry shows spiritual power through such submission. Mary Rowlandson presented her narrative of captivity during King Philip's War as a type of the redemptive su√ering of Israel.≤∞ Sarah Edwards' raptures likewise had the side e√ect of establishing her as a spiritual authority—though it may be misleading to put it that way since that was the opposite of her expressed intention. In any case, during Buell's visit she both kept scrupulously to her place (for instance, witnessing for three hours to lingering congregants only after the formal service ended) and rivaled him as a promoter of the revival.≤≤

Given the persistence of intense female piety in New England, it is arguable that the Great Awakening of 1740–42 was especially remarkable because comparable numbers of males also were caught up in such raptures. Jonathan was a natural leader in the new style of awakenings because he had long had such spiritual sensibilities. By the early 1740s on both sides of the Atlantic and throughout the colonies, many men were experiencing spiritual ecstasies as well. Still, Jonathan's models of exemplary piety were almost all women. Young Sarah Pierpont and his sister Jerusha were models in his youth, Sarah remained a model, and his daughter Jerusha, now aged twelve, had become another. In his Faithful Narrative of the 1734–35 revival, Phoebe Bartlett and a young woman, Abigail Hutchinson, were his principal models. Only in the subsequent years when he came to know the dying David Brainerd did he find a male model of the submissive piety he so loved.

Whatever the intense vicissitudes of Sarah's disposition, by surviving accounts she was greatly admired. The outside observer who has written most about her, Samuel Hopkins, was present in the Edwards household during her weeks of euphoria as well as at some later times. Hopkins had been a senior at Yale College (and a classmate of Buell) during the 1740–41 year of awakenings. Naturally reserved and intellectual, Hopkins had agonized about whether he was converted. Despite his assent to Reformed doctrines and his

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thorough sympathy for the awakeners, he had not experienced the overwhelming a√ections that now seemed requisite. During Hopkins' senior year the zealous sophomore David Brainerd visited his college room one day to inquire as to the state of his soul. The taciturn Hopkins was determined that no one should discover his lack of zeal, yet he inwardly believed that Brainerd was right in saying that he should at least sometimes experience overwhelming a√ections toward Christ. At the same time, Hopkins thought that Gilbert Tennent was the greatest preacher he had ever heard and planned to go study with him in New Jersey. Then in September he heard Edwards' commencement sermon. Although he did not speak to his new hero, he knew it was with him that he must study.≤≥

After spending most of the fall secluded at home and in a morose search for true piety, the twenty-two-year-old Hopkins arrived in Northampton in December. Edwards was away preaching when he arrived. After a few days Sarah came to his room and, as he recalled, said ''As I was now become one of the family for a season, she felt herself interested in my welfare; and [as] she observed that I appeared gloomy and dejected, she hoped I would not think she intruded by desiring to know, and asking me what was the occasion of it.'' Hopkins opened up to Sarah as he had not been able to do with others. He told her that he feared he was in a ''Christless, graceless state.'' Sarah assured him that she had been praying much for him and believed he would ''receive light and comfort'' and ''that God intended yet to do great things by me, etc.''≤∂

Within a couple of months Hopkins found the spiritual comfort that Sarah had predicted, and he eventually became Edwards' best-known successor and the leading American theologian of his generation. Sarah Edwards' counsel and example in his early spiritual formation had a lasting impact. Hopkins' mid-nineteenth-century biographer, Edwards A. Park, in recounting part of Sarah's ecstatic narrative, remarks that her reflections ''would now be termed Hopkinsian.''≤∑ Sarah's willingness to spend a thousand years of hell on earth if that were for the greater glory of God had a ''Hopkinsian'' ring to nineteenth-century ears. Hopkins restated Jonathan Edwards' emphasis on ''love to Being in general'' as simply ''disinterested benevolence.'' Hopkins himself became a leading proponent of antislavery during the Revolutionary era and ''disinterested benevolence'' became a powerful motto for American reformers. Harriet Beecher Stowe memorialized Hopkins in The Minister's Wooing as the personally and theologically

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sti√ minister who eventually redeems himself by putting ''disinterested benevolence'' ahead of his romantic interest.

Hopkins, for his part, was the literary executor and first biographer of Edwards. His biographical memoir, published in 1765, included a glowing tribute to Sarah. Admiring her for, among many other virtues, having ''the law of kindness on her tongue,'' Hopkins' portrait follows that same rule. He described her as ''a more than ordinary beautiful person; of a pleasant, agreeable countenance.'' The genuineness of her piety was manifested in her concerns for charity toward the poor and her extraordinary kindness to guests and strangers. Moreover, she ''paid proper deference to Mr. Edwards,'' catered to the peculiarities of his Spartan diet, and was a tender nurse to him in his illnesses. She too frequently ''labored under bodily disorders and pains'' but cheerfully and without complaint.

Hopkins also admired her ''excellent way of governing her children,'' bringing them to obey cheerfully ''without loud, angry words, or heavy blows.'' Though she was firm, she was mild and always explained her reasons for discipline. As a result, the children were remarkably well-behaved and seldom (Hopkins says ''never'') quarreled. When there was any special di≈- culty she would consult with Jonathan, who would treat it with solemn importance. Jonathan was called in particularly to quell any sign of willfulness among their young children. He showed ''the greatest calmness'' as well as the greatest firmness in his discipline and ''as a consequence of this, they reverenced, esteemed and loved him.''≤∏

Hopkins doubtless had romanticized the Edwards home, which had fostered spiritual warmth at a crucial time and to which he often returned, first as a student and then as a friend. The role of the seven children must have been particularly striking. The older girls had all become very pious. When Hopkins first arrived the frail eldest, Sarah, was thirteen. The next three, Jerusha, Esther, and Mary, ages eleven, nine, and seven, were, as Edwards Park put it, ''beautiful and sprightly.'' At one of his subsequent visits in July 1743, Hopkins recorded in his diary ''Made Miss Jerusha a present of a Bible.''≤π The spiritual Jerusha was now thirteen and perhaps not too young to be admired.

Sarah Sr. remained the prototype of Hopkins' veneration.≤∫ He particularly admired her household management, which he portrayed as e≈cient and frugal. Often she would repeat to the children the words of Jesus in telling the disciples to gather up the fragments from the loaves and fishes, ''that nothing be lost.'' Sarah, says Hopkins, ''was better able than most of her

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sex to take the whole care'' of the household in her hands.≤Ω Partly that was out of necessity, since Jonathan assiduously tried to keep himself free from worldly cares and, according to Hopkins, paid little attention to the houseand farmwork going on around him.≥≠ Sarah was thus left as the sole manager of a substantial enterprise overseeing children, servants, animals, and what amounted to an active boarding house.

Particularly in the early 1740s we have glimpses of her traveling back and forth to Boston, presumably on family business. In one instance, she and a young man who accompanied her made an overnight stay at the Reverend Ebenezer Parkman's home at Westborough. Later, in 1744, Parkman recorded, ''At my house found Mrs. Edwards of Northampton and her Daughter Jerusha, accompanied by Reverend Mr. Hopkinton [Samuel Hopkins] of She≈eld.'' Hopkins' journal for the previous day reads, ''Set out today from Northampton to Boston, in company of Madam Edwards and her daughter, who rides behind me'' (i.e., on the same horse). Whether this arrangement reflected more than disinterested benevolence we cannot tell.≥∞

C H A P T E R ∞∏ kl

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espite the abundance of Edwards' writing in his notebooks, sermons, publications, and more than two hundred surviving letters, he reveals remarkably little that is personal, excepting as spiritual and intellectual concerns are deeply personal. Most of the detail we know of his daily life and work comes from Samuel Hopkins' admiring biographical memoir. Judging from Hopkins' portrait, Edwards was deeply spiritual, intensely hardworking, intellectual, introspective, and somewhat withdrawn. He regulated his days by the strictest disciplines.∞

What would it have been like to meet Edwards? Hopkins acknowledged that those who did not know Edwards well found him ''sti√ and unsociable,'' but, the biographer quickly adds, ''this was owing to want of better acquaintance.'' Edwards, Hopkins explains, followed his resolve not to speak evil of others and so did not participate in the usual banter of lively light conversation. He followed the biblical advice to be ''slow to speak'' and hence spoke only when he had something to say. Edwards also believed it unprofitable to get into verbal disputes with strangers and felt he was at ''the best advantage with his pen in his hand.'' Further, ''his animal spirits were low, and he had not strength of lungs to spare, that would be necessary in order to make him what would be called, an a√able, facetious gentleman, in all companies.''

Yet his friends, Hopkins insisted, knew how ''groundless'' the accusation was that he was ''sti√ and unsociable.'' They, like his family, knew his warm and a√ectionate side. Friends ''always found him easy of access, kind and condescending; and though not talkative, yet a√able and free.'' His trusted allies liked to talk with him about serious spiritual and intellectual issues. Such intimates felt free to challenge his opinions and to enter into argument with him. On the subjects of his concern, said Hopkins, ''his tongue was as

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the pen of a ready writer,'' and his intimates found these heartfelt discourses ''most entertaining and instructive.'' Toward Sarah, Hopkins reports, ''Much of the tender and kind was expressed in his conversation with her and conduct toward her.''≤

Hopkins' portrait of Edwards as personally warm, despite almost painful reserve and austere public formality, gains credibility if we consider Edwards' successes in the awakenings. No pastor ever held a large congregation more under his spell than he had in 1734–35. At that time and during the sequel in 1741–42 the town's folk lined up at his study to seek his counsel. During those times at the least, and apparently for much of the fifteen years he had been in Northampton, many people—young and old, poor and rich—found him attractive and inspiring. Although in some respects he may have fit the image of the withdrawn intellectual, few scholars have put more emphasis on the primacy of the a√ections. In his preaching and in earnest personal encounters, that a√ective side of his personality seems to have shown through.

A key to understanding this spectrum of reaction to Edwards is to recognize that he was single-mindedly dedicated to a cause. Like many such persons, he sought total loyalty. Hopkins notes that he selected his intimate friends carefully and on that basis, and it is only with them that he would truly open up. Not surprisingly, many of his intimate friends were younger, though he could form close ties with anyone who was loyal to the cause. He was close to members of his extended family who, especially during the eras of Solomon Stoddard and William Williams, shared his concerns. With his children he followed the New England practice of breaking any signs of willfulness, and he cultivated intense spirituality at early ages. He treated the people of Northampton almost the same way, maintaining strict discipline, asking heartfelt loyalty, and he was not content when they showed anything else. He saw the loyalty he sought as only secondarily loyalty to himself. It was first of all a heartfelt loyalty to the triune God. That meant renouncing all purely worldly a√ections and allegiances.

What sort of person Edwards appeared to be depended largely on how fully one shared his vision. Unsympathetic strangers interpreted his reserve as aloofness and his dogmatism as arrogance. As New England divided over the awakening, those who di√ered with him increasingly saw him as an unbending party partisan. Even aside from the Great Awakening, he had a reputation for insisting that clergy ''be very critical in examining candidates for the ministry, with respect to their principles, as well as their religious dispositions and morals.'' For this, says Hopkins, ''he met with considerable di≈culty and

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opposition.''≥ While opponents found such scrupulousness cold and lacking in charity, those in Edwards' own party saw it as admirable integrity. The arguments that Edwards used in his attempts to demolish opponents' positions might be seen as arrogant sophistry or as brilliant clarity. The passion in his sermonic rhetoric might be seen as ruthless manipulation or as warm, loving spirituality. His reserve in conversation about personalities might be seen as cold disregard of others or as self-renouncing discipline. His singleminded dedication to his work could be seen as self-centered lack of sociability or as selfless dedication to serve God and neighbor with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind.

We must also take into account that Edwards stayed as much as possible in his strict pastoral role because he understood himself to have a high calling in a universe governed by ordered authorities. He saw himself called to lead his congregation as surely as Moses was called to lead Israel. He was to be a father to the town folk, authoritarian yet loving. Like Moses (whom the Bible characterized as meek and slow of speech),∂ he had compassion for his often wayward people. He also knew that, like Moses, he had his weaknesses. Yet he had no doubt that he was ordained to lead his people in God's prescribed way and that they must follow him as God's spokesperson and servant.

Slavery

We can consider Edwards' attitudes toward slavery in the context of his hierarchical assumptions. Nothing separates the early eighteenth-century world from the twenty-first century more than this issue. Many elite New Englanders owned African slaves, and Edwards and his close relatives seem usually to have had one or two slaves per household. Although the records are incomplete, we know that in 1731 Edwards traveled to Newport, Rhode Island, where he purchased a young slave named Venus. By 1736 another African—named Leah—seems to have replaced Venus (or perhaps the Edwardses gave Venus a biblical name more appropriate for a ministerial family). In 1740 Jonathan and Sarah cosigned to guarantee financial support for ''Jethro Negro and his wife Ruth,'' who were manumitted in the will of Sarah's stepmother. Nonetheless, the Edwardses themselves seem usually to have owned at least one slave.∑

Although there were scattered protests among European Americans against African slavery before and during Edwards' time, the first widespread revolution in attitudes did not take place until the decades immediately after

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his death. In the era of the American Revolution, many elite Americans, including such Edwards followers as Samuel Hopkins and Jonathan Edwards Jr., were outspoken opponents of slavery. Before that most British-Americans simply absorbed African slavery into their hierarchical views of society, where it was assumed that the higher orders of society would have servants to perform domestic and farm labor. White servants, most indentured for a period of years, were treated much like slaves. They were thoroughly dependent on the patriarchal authority of their masters. They needed permission to marry, buy or sell property, or leave the premises. They could be bought or sold, seized to pay debts, or willed to heirs. The vast di√erences, of course, were that African slavery was always involuntary and usually perpetual. Slaveowners were well aware of these anomalies and that Africans were unhappy in their servile condition.∏ Yet before the Revolutionary era British colonials typically rationalized enslavement of Africans as an extension of long-accepted practices of servitude and dependency.π

All we know of Edwards' views comes from a fragmentary and recently discovered source. Sometime in summer or fall of 1741, just when the Great Awakening was reaching its peak, Edwards took time to jot down a cryptic list of arguments in response to a controversy over slavery. The dispute that occasioned these observations was highly unusual, with few if any known counterparts in New England near this time. Some parishioners of the church in Northfield (near Deerfield) had denounced their pastor, Benjamin Doolittle, for owning African slaves. The accusation was only one part of larger controversy between Doolittle and part of his congregation, led by a number of the older men in the town. The ''disa√ected brethren'' accused Doolittle, who had been their pastor since 1716, of making exorbitant salary demands—an issue Edwards and many other pastors also were encountering. Some of the discontent arose from suspicions that Doolittle had Arminian leanings and that he was cool toward awakenings. At the moment, however, the controversy over slaveowning had come before the Hampshire Association, and Edwards was chosen to draft a response.∫

Edwards viewed the accusation regarding slaveholding as insincere and saw his primary job as defending the authority of a fellow minister. That he would do so is especially striking because he probably shared the suspicions that Doolittle had unorthodox and Old Light leanings. Edwards' jottings for his arguments are incomplete and often hard to interpret. Nonetheless he is clear that he believed that the dissidents were raising the slavery question ''only to make disturbances and raise uneasiness among people against their minister to the great wounding of religion.''

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Edwards and his slaveowning colleagues and ''river gods'' friends and relatives must have been especially eager in 1741 that the status quo regarding slaveholding not be disturbed. That summer New York City had once again experienced what many believed to be a major slave conspiracy to burn down the town. The frenzy of the New Yorkers to suppress the alleged terrorists was well reported in the Boston papers, and fears of slave uprisings had spread to New England.Ω One feature of the Northfield accusations that Edwards seemed most disturbed about was that Doolittle's accusers had ''boasted'' that they had ''ba∆ed'' their pastor with their arguments concerning the immorality of slavery. Though Edwards did not mention the implication, if the word got around that, as was claimed, the minister ''could say nothing that was worth a saying'' in defense of slaveholding, such talk could inflame the slaves.

Despite his interest in defending ministerial authority and in protecting his fellow slaveholders, Edwards' arguments revealed his deep ambivalence toward the institution of African slavery. His main argument was that using one's ''neighbor's work without wages'' was not itself sinful, since the Bible expressly allowed slavery and it would not contradict itself. Whereas God had temporarily ''winked at'' some ancient practices that were later revealed to be objectionable [he was probably thinking of polygamy], slavery was not condemned in the New Testament, and there was ''no other sin generally prevalent that is not expressly mentioned and strictly forbidden.''

At the same time that he defended slavery as not wrong in itself, Edwards made a point of condemning the African slave trade. Do ''other nations'' Edwards asked, ''have any power or business to disfranchise all the nations of Africa?'' Slavery had, of course, long been justified as a more humane alternative to killing captured troops in warfare, but that principle did not apply when Europeans claimed a universal right to enslave any African they could get their hands on. The only plausible justification for that would be that Christian nations somehow had the right to take what they wished from nonChristian nations, as Israel had, for instance, been told they could take property from the Egyptians. It would be absurd, Edwards suggested, to interpret such precedents as a universal rule. Rather, the principle had to be that ''all mankind were their neighbors'' so that the moral law applies to treatment of all nations. Hence the European nations had no right to steal from the Africans.∞≠

Even though Edwards regarded African and Native American civilizations as vastly inferior to Christendom, especially since these heathen peoples had su√ered so long under Satan's rule, he thought they were equal to

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Christian nations both in their rights and in their potentialities. In his sermons on The History of the Work of Redemption in 1739 he had assured the Northamptonites that although these peoples now lived almost like the beasts in some respects, it would not always be that way. In the millennial era, only a few hundred years hence, he assured his congregation, ''It may be hoped that then many of the Negroes and Indians will be divines, and that excellent books will be published in Africa, in Ethiopia, in Turkey—and not only very learned men, but others that are more ordinary men, shall then be very knowing in religion.''∞∞

Edwards explicitly denied that there was any inherent inferiority among di√erent peoples in God's eye. ''We are made of the same human race,'' he had written in a note on Job 31:15 in the early 1730s, perhaps soon after he had first become a slaveowner. ''In these two things,'' he wrote, ''are contained the most forceable reasons against the master's abuse of his servant, viz. That both have one Maker, and that their Maker made 'em alike with the same nature.''∞≤

For the same reason, Edwards regarded Africans and Indians as spiritual equals. During his ministry, the Northampton church had already admitted nine Africans into full communicant membership. Six of these, including the Edwardses' slave Leah, were products of the awakening of 1734–35 and became communicants in 1736. Around this same time, the church admitted two Indian members, Mary and Phoebe Stockbridge.

True to his hierarchical instincts, Edwards pulled back from any politically disruptive implications of this evangelical Christian egalitarianism. Resourceful in disputation as he was, in his notes regarding the Doolittle case he used the immorality of the African slave trade as a way of showing that the arguments of the critics of the ministerial slaveowner proved too much. The whole economy of New England, he implied, depended on products produced by African slavery (a key part in New England's trade was with the slave economies of the Caribbean). If it were wrong to partake in this system immediately, then it would also be wrong to partake in it remotely, as for instance, in purchasing goods produced by slave labor. If the objectors wished to claim that it was all right to benefit from slave labor indirectly, ''they would do well to fix the number of steps'' that one had to be removed from the slavery from which one benefited. By this reductio Edwards was in e√ect saying that in a world filled with sin it was impossible to keep oneself from benefiting from others' evil. Hence, until the millennial conversions got to the heart of the problem, one should simply make the best of imperfect social arrangements.∞≥

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Patriarchal Authority

Edwards' views on slavery, like his authoritarian views of his ministerial role, are those of someone who was by instinct a social conservative. He viewed the universe and this world as hierarchical and assumed that social relationships should be governed by respect for divinely instituted authority. He found in Scripture ample justification for that long-standing viewpoint since the Scripture writers also took hierarchy for granted. Edwards was moreover an elite male colonial British citizen in an era when there were strong status distinctions and expectations of deference. He was in many respects a thoroughly eighteenth-century man—an eighteenth-century traditionalist. In American political and social terms, he was pre-Revolutionary.

Paradoxically, nothing was more revolutionary in his own era than the popular spirit of the awakening that he did so much to promote.∞∂ Further, Edwards' Calvinistic theological heritage included revolutionary potential, as the Puritan revolution of the previous century had demonstrated. As his views on the future equality of the races suggested, conversionist theology had potentially leveling implications. In Edwards' millennial view of history he projected a great worldwide revolution based on the combination of awakenings and Reformed theology. Yet, while he was correct in anticipating a momentous worldwide expansion of evangelical Protestantism, he did not envision its predominantly populist character. Rather, he believed a great international Reformed revolution would help establish properly constituted authority, especially that of the learned clergy who correctly interpreted Scripture.

Edwards' social views, inherited from the conservative Timothy Edwards, reflected seventeenth-century American Puritan ideals of a biblical commonwealth led by authoritarian patriarchs. Edwards was looking forward to a worldwide triumph of Reformed-evangelical culture that would amount to those Puritan ideals writ large. He was a progressive in that he helped adapt the awakenings to that purpose. Yet built within New England civilization were other progressive potentialities—for an increasingly individualistic acquisitive modern culture and for more popular authority—with which he was essentially uncomfortable.

As Edwards faced various challenges in Northampton during the 1740s, his responses were built around an old style of authoritarian paternalism that was under increasing strain.∞∑ His policies were those of which his father would have approved and which might have worked in a New England village of half a century earlier. Nowhere, in fact, had the strain of holding

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onto the old assumptions become more apparent than in East Windsor itself. There Timothy Edwards had suspended communion for three years from 1738 to 1741 as a result of a bitter dispute over his e√orts to discipline a couple who had married without consent of the young woman's father—an issue of paternal and ministerial authority if ever there was one.∞∏ Jonathan was solidly on his father's side on such matters. In Northampton he continued to present his congregation with a grand picture of the future, but in the di≈cult decade of the 1740s he too would find it increasingly di≈cult to shape the town according to his social and spiritual expectations.

The Awakening Sealed

In March 1742 Northampton was at another peak of revival fervor. When Edwards had returned from his preaching tour in February he encountered not only Sarah's wonderful ecstasies but also a town that under the preaching of Samuel Buell was nearly out of control. Working together with Buell for the next several weeks, Edwards tried at once to fuel the revival and quell its excesses. ''A great deal of caution and pains'' he wrote, ''were found necessary to keep the people, many of them, from running wild.'' Parishioners were attempting to outdo each other in enthusiasm, spreading the false impression that the more violent the emotions and the more vehement the expressions of zeal the greater the true piety.∞π Edwards labored vigorously to make the point, as he would throughout the awakenings, that great excitements were not essential to true spirituality—even if they were often compatible with it.

At the same time, while the revival fires were hot, Edwards initiated a plan to try to consolidate the gains. From hard experience he had learned that revival passions were fleeting. He did not want a repetition of what had happened in the late 1730s. Then, as he later acknowledged, he had been taken in by some superficial enthusiasms and found himself in the embarrassing position of presiding over a spiritually torpid town just as it became internationally renowned as a model of spiritual transformation.

This time Edwards attempted to transform the volatile euphoria of revival into a more stable spirituality that could be controlled in the fixed channels of the covenant. Early in March he drafted an elaborate church covenant, which he presented to some of the leading men of the congregation. He then brought it to the various religious societies that met in the several districts of the town. Winning their approval, he declared a day of fasting, prayer, and of owning the covenant for Tuesday, March 16, 1742. On

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that day the whole congregation assembled in the meetinghouse, and in a solemn ceremony, all the people over fourteen years of age rose and assented to the document.

Covenant renewal ceremonies were patterned on the Old Testament, and covenants had been a staple of New England since its founding. One of the uses of the law, according to Reformed theology, was as a guide to Christian living in response to grace. So Puritans could both preach salvation by wholly unmerited grace and at the same time guide the church with a legal system of the moral law (but not the ceremonial law) that replicated practices of ancient Israel. In joyous gratitude for their undeserved salvation, true believers would gladly contract to adopt the full moral law as their guide for life, even if they knew they could never keep it perfectly.

Edwards' lengthy covenant is a remarkable constitution for a model town. After acknowledging God's grace and asking forgiveness for earlier backslidings, the people agreed to an elaborate set of promises as to how they should live. By far the largest section dealt with how Christian neighbors should live together. This part could have been called ''A Model of Christian Charity,'' and it is reminiscent of the famous declaration by John Winthrop, Massachusetts' first governor, of how the bonds of charity should unite the Christian commonwealth. Because Edwards' document was a formal contract, he did not speak so much of the principle of charity that summarizes the law (as he had in Charity and Its Fruit), but rather spelled out the specific rules for applying that principle. In the process he also catalogued the past failings of the often-contentious Northamptonites and had them promise to renounce all those vices.

Those who had defrauded their neighbor in any way promised not only to change their ways but that ''we will not rest till we have made that restitution, or given that satisfaction, which the rules of moral equity require.'' Further, everyone promised to renounce backbiting, a spirit of revenge, enmity, ill will, and secret grudges. Particularly in public a√airs, they agreed to give up their notorious party spirit and ''to avoid all unchristian inveighings, reproachings, bitter reflectings, judging and ridiculing others, either in public meetings, or in private conversation.''

In a briefer section, but one that would soon have great significance, the young people promised ''that we will strictly avoid all freedoms and familiarities in company, so tending either to stir up or gratify a lust of lasciviousness'' and any other behavior they would be afraid to engage in if they knew that in a few hours they would have to give account to a holy God.

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Finally, everyone promised to ''devote our whole lives to be laboriously spent in the business of religion'' and to ''run with perseverance the race that is set before us.'' Recognizing these vows might in the future be contrary to their corrupt inclinations, they would ''be often strictly examining ourselves by these promises, especially before the sacrament of the Lord's Supper'' and praying for grace to ''keep us from wickedly dissembling in these our solemn vows.''∞∫

The most evident aspect of Edwards' outlook revealed in the Northampton Covenant is that he was attempting to institutionalize the spirit of the revival. In this he was following not only the Old Testament covenant model, but also asking the congregation to seal their commitment to specifically New Testament rules for Christian living. Yet the larger practical problem was how to keep the revival light from fading once more. Like the disciple Peter on the mount of transfiguration, Edwards was proposing to build a permanent structure that would conserve so spectacular a spiritual outpouring.

He was also indirectly addressing another matter about which he was increasingly uneasy. Many of the revivalists in the international and intercolonial circles in which he moved were strongly opposed to the Stoddardean practice of open communion. Edwards disagreed with those who claimed that they could reliably tell the converted from the unconverted, but he felt the force of their point that the church should examine candidates for full communicant membership to be sure they showed the visible signs of commitment in their profession and practice. Whitefield admired Solomon Stoddard's evangelistic writings, but he was astonished to learn that his practice of open communion would even allow that ministers might be unconverted. This subject was likely discussed on the day (October 21, 1740) Whitefield and Edwards had visited Jonathan's parents, since that is the date of Whitefield's journal comment on Stoddard.∞Ω Timothy Edwards, who doubtless retained an emotional hold over Jonathan, had in his 1732 published election-day sermon openly criticized Stoddardean leniency regarding church membership and, by implication, his son's continued complicity in it.≤≠

The unease that Jonathan was feeling about this topic could be mitigated if virtually everyone in the church of age to be a communicant (apparently fourteen) showed some evidence of conversion. Edwards seemed to believe the town was approaching that level of nearly universal conversions during the 1734–35 awakening, but the subsequent behavior of some had convinced him otherwise. Once again in winter 1742 the awakening, or at least interest in

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religious things, was close to universal. Even if he was not sure that everyone was ready to give evidence of conversion, he had persuaded ''the people in general that were above fourteen years of age'' to solemnly swear to the covenant. Furthermore, he underscored that it would be especially before each celebration of the Lord's Supper that they would ''strictly examine ourselves by these promises.''≤∞

The Dawning of a Glorious Day?

Whatever Edwards' disillusion about the long-term impact of the 1734–35 awakening, in the winter and spring of 1742 he was still immensely optimistic about the prospects of this much greater awakening. He was giving all his time and energy to it. Not only was he traveling frequently, but when he was at home lines of parishioners waited for his counsel. Further, he was devoting most of his intellectual energies to writing a much longer defense of the revival, to appear the next spring as a 378-page treatise entitled Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England: And the Way in Which It Ought to Be Acknowledged and Promoted.≤≤

Some Thoughts reveals Edwards at the height of his exhilaration over the awakening. True, as he was writing about it in 1742, the revival was becoming increasingly divisive, yet he insisted that such a potential revolution deserved every Christian's wholehearted support. Alluding in his preface to the current conflict between England and Spain, the ''War of Jenkins' Ear'' to which New England had to send some expeditionary forces, he announced that ''We in New England are at this day engaged in a more important war.''≤≥ As in any war there was much confusion, and Some Thoughts was designed to be a comprehensive handbook to sort out truth from error. Its essential argument was the same as that of Distinguishing Marks. Edwards' first goal was to demonstrate irrefutably that the awakening was essentially a great work of God. At the same time he condemned its excesses, carefully distinguishing among evidences of true spirituality practices that went beyond biblical norms and ecstatic experiences that were neither necessary to spirituality nor necessarily incompatible with it. Although he described the contest as a war, he saw himself as a moderate. He especially deplored censoriousness on each side. He admonished not only those who condemned the whole awakening because of its excesses, but also those awakeners who were too quick to condemn many church members and clergy as unconverted.

In spite of his e√orts to carve out this judicious middle ground on which

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he hoped all right-thinking Christians might stand, his treatise became best known for an unguarded remark that revealed his immense hopes for the New England awakening. Trying to establish the larger point that to oppose the awakening is to oppose a great work of God, he wrote: '' 'Tis not unlikely that this work of God's Spirit, that is so extraordinary and wonderful, is the dawning, or at least a prelude, of that glorious work of God, so often foretold in Scripture, which in the progress and issue of it, shall renew the world of mankind.''

Further, since these events ushering in the end-times and eventually the millennium, or thousand-year reign of Christ on earth, had been so long expected, he argued, ''we can't reasonably think otherwise, than that the beginning of the great work of God must be near.'' Such predictions would not have been unusual had not Edwards immediately added: ''And there are many things that make it probable that this work will begin in America.''≤∂

He went on with more than eight pages of tortured arguments as to why the patterns of the history of redemption made it probable that the dawn of this work should be first seen in America. It is not surprising that the otherwise sympathetic Isaac Watts would remark, ''I think his reasonings about America want force.''≤∑ According to Edwards, the prophecy of Isaiah 60 (which begins ''Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee'' and ends describing a time when the sun and moon will not set and ''the Lord shall be thine everlasting light'' and ''thy people also shall be all righteous'') seemed to fit America because it referred to events in distant isles and the conversion of the gentiles. Edwards also reasoned that there was some symmetry in God's work of redemption. Since the first great work had been done in the old hemisphere, the new work would be done in the new. The last would be made first. God would not build a paradise ''where there is some good growth already, but in a wilderness.'' Contrary to nature, the spiritual sun would now go from west to east. (Edwards' view of geography, like his view of spiritual history, was thoroughly Eurocentric). All these and other biblical types led Edwards to conclude: ''And if these things are so, it gives us more abundant reasons to hope that what is now seen in America, and especially in New England, may prove the dawn of that glorious day: and the very uncommon and wonderful circumstances and events of this work, seem to me strongly to argue that God intends it as the beginning or forerunner of something vastly great.''≤∏

Many friends of the revival were suggesting that it was the beginning of the glorious last days when the gentiles would be gathered in, leading toward

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the millennium. William Cooper's e√usive preface to The Distinguishing Marks was only one of many such expressions in which such grand expectations were taken for granted. Deborah Prince, the talented daughter of Edwards' pro-revivalist friend, Boston's Thomas Prince Sr., wrote in 1743 (a year before her untimely death), ''It is the opinion of many eminent divines, that it is the dawning of that glorious day, when the whole earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.''≤π

Edwards did not explain his own variation on the current end-time scenarios, which he had preached in the still unpublished History of Redemption sermons and worked out in his private notebooks. The basic outline of his interpretation was like that most commonly held among his peers. He did not expect to see the full-blown millennium at any moment soon, but rather he saw the revivals as the beginning of a momentous era of both triumph and strife that would culminate in the millennial peace.≤∫ The last days would be ushered in by a great series of revivals and the ingathering of the gentiles and extraordinary anticipations of millennial spirituality. Yet these latter days would be days of unprecedented conflict as well.

Because Edwards did not explain the details of his variant of millennial views, he opened himself up to the accusation that he had claimed the millennium was already beginning in America. Two years later, he complained to a Scottish correspondent, that ''it has been slanderously reported and printed concerning me, that I have often said that the millennium was already begun, and that it began at Northampton. A doctor of divinity in New England [Charles Chauncy], has ventured to publish this report to the world from a single person, who is concealed and kept behind the curtain; but the report is very diverse from what I have ever said.'' Edwards went on to explain his actual view, which was that there would ''be many sore conflicts and terrible convulsions, and many changes, revivings and intermissions'' before the church would rest in millennial peace.≤Ω

Edwards, in fact, did not believe that he was viewing the start of the millennium itself, but it is understandable that his remarks in Some Thoughts have been interpreted, both at the time and since, as suggesting that the millennium might be beginning in America. He certainly did say that what was happening in New England might prove to be ''the dawn of that glorious day'' and either ''the beginning or forerunner of something vastly great.'' Edwards was thinking of a long set of events of the ''glorious day'' preliminary to the millennium. Those events would commence with great revivals, go on through great conflicts and even greater revivals, and culminate in an evening

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of rest and peace.≥≠ In 1742 he did believe that the Great Awakening in New England was likely the beginning of an era of worldwide revivals that would radiate from America.≥∞

Edwards' extravagant estimate of what was happening was a reflection of the intersection of his own experience, his theological vision, and the extraordinary events of the year. We must think of him as someone who was often so overwhelmed with the glory of God that he seemed to sense it directly. His immediate experiences confirmed the spiritual realities of which he spoke. Moreover, at the core of his vision of God was the beauty of God's irrepressible love manifested in Christ. While he also expected continuing evil, or the horrors generated by rebellion against such wonderful good, his theology demanded a culmination of history in the triumph of universal love over hatred. In this end-time victory the Gospel would finally triumph in every nation.

Now he found himself in an extraordinary time when many thousands all over New England were sharing in the immediate experiences of the spiritual realities that he knew so well. He was also surrounded by evidences of answered prayers and genuine spiritual experiences far too numerous to discount. He thrilled at the spiritual ecstasies of his wife and at seeing his daughters transformed into spiritual gems. The cantankerous Northamptonites had promised to translate their revived spirituality into an exemplary community. Even if he was enough a Calvinist to recognize that living according to New Testament principles of mutual love and forbearance would be contrary to residual ''corrupt inclinations and carnal desires,'' his parishioners had agreed to give their all toward pursuing the highest ideal. Although Edwards did not expect to see the millennium, he provided his town with a constitution that was a type of what millennial life would be like.

In such a heady atmosphere, Edwards could hardly conceive of how Christians might dismiss the greatest event that anyone in New England had ever witnessed. Yet there it was. Even some of the clergy were belittling what in all probability was the beginning of the spectacular end-times ingathering of the nations.≥≤

Nor was the fault just in the churches. The civil authorities were also to blame. Invoking the traditional language of God's covenant with New England, he challenged the governments: ''whether we han't reason to fear that God is provoked with this land, that no more notice has been taken of this glorious work of the Lord that has been lately carried on, by the civil authority.'' Alluding to the celebrations of the arrival of the Anglican Governor Shirley the previous year, Edwards pointed out that lack of fanfare on such

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occasions would have been interpreted as an insult. So by analogy, ''shall the Head of the angels, the Lord of the universe, come down from heaven in so wonderful a manner into the land, and shall all stand at a distance and be silent and unactive on such an occasion?''≥≥

Edwards continued his challenge to those who were cool toward the awakening by once again raising the sensitive question of New England's colleges, Harvard and Yale. Friends of the colleges were still seething from Whitefield's scathing remark that ''their light is become darkness.'' Whitefield's reply to criticisms, though positive in tone, conceded nothing but rather merely rejoiced that Gilbert Tennent's tour had brought more light among the students.≥∂ Edwards, acknowledging that the colleges were ''out of my proper sphere,'' nonetheless observed that he would ''take the liberty of an Englishman (that speaks his mind freely concerning public a√airs)'' as well as his liberty as a minister to speak on spiritual matters.

Edwards' assessment of the colleges was nearly as scathing as Whitefield's. Particularly, he was appalled at what he regarded as the impiety now permitted at the colleges. Because the colleges were primarily to train clergy, it was ''the greatest nonsense and absurdity imaginable'' that ''instead of being places of the greatest advantages for true piety, one can't send a child thither without great danger of his being infected as to his morals, as it has certainly sometimes been with these societies. 'Tis perfectly intolerable, and anything should be done rather than it should be so.''≥∑

In retrospect we can see that the Great Awakening was indeed part of the emergence of a transatlantic evangelical movement that would have an immense impact on world history, but in New England it was far from what Edwards hoped for. Rather than being the dawn of an era in which awakened New England would be, in John Wintrhop's famous phrase, a ''lighthouse on a hill,'' the model of a Reformed civilization, the awakening signaled the twilight of the old Puritan version of that ideal. As with most revolutions, the transformation of New England had been taking place gradually, sometimes with little notice. The clergy had already lost much of their authority, and now they could no longer pretend to speak with one voice. Public morals were becoming more like those in England, and even though clergy condemned the laxity, they could not prevent it. Nor was there much hope that the Massachusetts government would support true religion as Edwards understood it. Edwards was correct in recognizing that an unprecedented era was emerging, but his hopes that the new spirit would be contained in the old wineskins of the covenanted Puritan commonwealth led by patriarchs would prove sadly unrealistic.

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