Chapter 6 of 1155

delight committing of my soul to him, of which our divines used to speak, and

∞≠∂ ''A Low, Sunk Estate and Condition''

with this week, thrust me quite below all comforts in religion. They appear no more than vanity and stubble, especially when I meet with them so unprepared for them. I shall not be ﬁt to encounter them, except I have a far stronger, and more permanent faith, hope and love.''

What thrust him ''quite below all comforts in religion,'' it is di≈cult to guess. On September 30 he noted in his diary that ''the hurries of commencement, and diversion of the vacancy, has been the occasion of my sinking so exceedingly, as in the last three weeks. The ''diversion of the vacancy,'' probably referred to the two-week vacation after each quarter. Or it could have referred to the vacancy of the rectorship and the di≈culty of policing his sometimes riotous charges. Still, as he carefully stated his problem, these were only the occasion of his being pushed below the comforts of his spiritual resources.∫ In his ''Personal Narrative,'' written ﬁfteen years later, he remarked, ''After I went to New Haven, I sunk in religion; my mind being diverted from my eager and violent pursuits after holiness, by some a√airs that greatly perplexed and distracted my mind.''

His diary does not o√er much to ﬁll in the details. In the months immediately after the spiritual collapse, we get only a few glimpses of his struggles. Once again he was facing the dread of gnawing doubts that his conversion might be a delusion. In November he had some revival of hope: ''Friday, Nov. 6. Felt sensibly, somewhat of that trust and a≈ance in Christ, and with delight committing of my soul to him, of which our divines used to speak, and about which, I have been somewhat in doubt.'' Still he soon found himself back in a spiritual wasteland. Within two weeks he was attempting to deal with his inability to concentrate in prayer: ''Sabbath, Nov. 15. Determined, when I am indisposed to prayer, always to premeditate what to pray for; and that it is better, that the prayer should be of almost any shortness, than that my mind should be almost continually o√ from what I say.''

As the crisis went on he turned less often to his diary. In February 1725 he made a rare entry that intimated that his spiritual deadness might have an intellectual component: ''The very thing I now want,'' he wrote, ''to give me a clear and more immediate view of the perfections and glory of God, is a clear knowledge of the manner of God's exerting himself, with respect to spirits and mind, as I have, of his operations concerning matters and bodies.'' Whether this issue could amount to the ''a√airs that greatly perplexed and distracted my mind'' is not clear.

Giving up Calvinism entirely was not beyond his thoughts. ''If ever I am inclined to turn to the opinion of any other sect,'' he wrote on May 21, 1725,

''A Low, Sunk Estate and Condition'' ∞≠∑

''resolved . . . privately to desire all the help that can possibly be a√orded me from some of the most judicious men in the country, together with the prayers of wise and holy men, however strongly persuaded I may seem to be that I am right.''Ω

Finally, on May 28 he wrote in resignation: ''It seems to me, that whether I am now converted or not, I am so settled in the state I am in, that I shall go on in it all my life. But, however settled I may be, yet I will continue to pray to God, not to su√er me to be deceived about it, nor to sleep in an unsafe condition; and ever and anon, will call all into question and try myself, using for helps, some of our old divines, that God may have opportunities to answer my prayers, and the spirit of God to show me my error, if I am in one.''

The settled state was not one of despair. Rather it was one of guarded hope and ﬁrm resolve. We also know from his notebooks that he was still capable of reﬂecting on spiritual sensibilities much beyond the ordinary. Yet he seems to have lost the raptures, the ability to become lost in the direct experience of the divine.

Meanwhile, the light of his earthly love for Sarah Pierpont shone ever more luminously. By the spring 1725 their relationship had blossomed into a suit for her hand. Sarah was still only ﬁfteen but by May or June they were engaged to be married.∞≠ The wedding would be in two years. Sarah would be considerably younger than the average New England bride, but such an early engagement was within the bounds of propriety.∞∞ The approval of James Pierpont Jr., sometimes his colleague as tutor at Yale, may have helped speed the courtship and provided ready access for Jonathan to socialize at the widow Pierpont's home.∞≤

We have a rare glimpse from this summer of Jonathan in the company of other young people, in a happy mood sharing their ordinary joys. Writing in his ''Miscellanies,'' he observed that it is good to set aside times for festivity. ''Thus our elections are times of pleasure and rejoicing; and what an inﬂuence has it on the mind of the youth all over the Colony, to think this time is by general agreement made a time of mirth. How uneasy are they if they are alone and not in company, and han't opportunity to be merry as well as others; how extraordinarily unnatural and unpleasant does serious business and solitude seem at such a time, which would seem pleasant at another time; and how does it promote mirth, to think that the whole country are then merry. This abundantly convinces me of the rational foundation of sabbaths, and holy days of fasts and thanksgivings.''∞≥

Although he seems to have lost his immediate sense of divine things, he

∞≠∏ ''A Low, Sunk Estate and Condition''

still could see the higher spiritual meaning of the most sublime of human experiences. During the spring of his courtship, in 1725, he wrote a series of meditations on love and heaven in his ''Miscellanies.'' Their theme is much like the entry of the previous spring on ''The Excellencies of Christ,'' though without the poetic ﬂourishes. Whatever ''ravishing'' beauties one encountered in this life, he observed, whether in right proportions of light, sound, or motions of a body, would be perfected in heaven when there would be perfect harmony of minds.

Jonathan and Sarah both loved to sing, and Jonathan wrote that music pointed especially well toward the coming perfections of a universe of harmonious relationships. Music, he believed, was the highest way of communicating among persons. ''The best, most beautiful, and most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other, is by music. When I would form in my mind an idea of a society in the highest degree happy, I think of them as expressing their love, their joy, and the inward concord and harmony and spiritual beauty of their souls by sweetly singing to each other.'' The young lovers also enjoyed the complex harmonies of the music of the day. Yet their delights in earthly harmonies were only dim anticipations of the heavenly communication of spiritually fulﬁlled persons. ''Then perhaps we shall be able fully and easily to apprehend the beauty, where respect is to be had to thousands of di√erent ratios at once to make up the harmony. Such kind of beauties, when fully perceived, are far the sweetest.''∞∂

In the last of these entries ''On the Love of Christ,'' Jonathan explored the usual typological meaning of human love as pointing to Christ's love of his bride, the church. In doing so he expressed his enthusiasm for human sexuality within, of course, its properly spiritual bounds. ''We see how great love the human nature is capable of, not only to God but fellow creatures. How greatly are we inclined to the other sex! Nor doth an exalted and fervent love to God hinder this, but only reﬁnes and puriﬁes it. God has created the human nature to love fellow creatures, which he wisely has principally turned to the other sex; and the more exalted the nature is, the greater love of that kind that is laudable is it susceptive of; and the purer and better natured, the more is it inclined to it.''∞∑

Much as he tried to turn his love for Sarah into the purely spiritual assent of minds, the problem of his sexuality must have been a source of deep tension for Jonathan as long as he was unmarried. Whether it had anything to do with his continuing in a low spiritual state, we can only speculate. Viewing the

''A Low, Sunk Estate and Condition'' ∞≠π

human condition as a warfare between ﬂesh and spirit, he had a ﬁrm conviction that sexual impurity was incompatible with the spiritual sensibilities he sought. Indeed, he often preached that to be driven by short-term pleasures of physical lust was the epitome of self-love. The devil used such inclinations, not evil in themselves, to blind people to spiritual love to others and to God. As Jonathan had put it to the people of Bolton in a typical exhortation, those who indulged ''the lusts of the ﬂesh'' could ﬁnd no spiritual light. ''They love sinful pleasures, carnal and sensual delights, which do becloud their souls and muddy their understanding, so that no light can enter in it.''∞∏

Although Jonathan was guarded in his diary, he occasionally alluded to the problem. In November 1725 he observed, ''When one suppresses thoughts that tend to divert the run of the mind's operations from religion, whether they are melancholy, or anxious, or passionate, or any others; there is this good e√ect of it, that it keeps the mind in its freedom. Those thoughts are stopped in the beginning, that would have set the mind a-going in that stream.''∞π

In dealing with any of these three recurrent psychic distractions, ''melancholy, anxious, and passionate,'' his most typical cure was to keep driving himself to work his way out of it. So in a particularly revealing diary entry, for June 6, 1725, presumably at the height of his courtship, he observed of himself: ''I am sometimes in a frame so listless, that there is no other way of proﬁtably improving time, but conversation, visiting, or recreation, or some bodily exercise.'' Sensible as this advice might appear, he resolved not to give in to it so easily. ''However,'' he concluded, ''it may be best in the ﬁrst place, before resorting to either of these, to try the whole circle of my mental employments.''

His continuing strict diet was another way of suppressing the physical to enhance the mental and to get more work done. At the beginning of September 1724, his ﬁrst year as tutor, he set down reasons to eat only lightly, which he believed would lengthen his life, help him think more clearly, study more, sleep less, and give him fewer troubles with ''the headache.''∞∫

Constantly driving himself in so many ways was taking a toll on his health. His June 6, 1725, resolve to try overcome his listlessness by working ''the whole circle of my mental employments'' before resorting to conversation, visiting, or recreation, or some bodily exercise was his last entry before a severe physical collapse.

Once again the strains of commencement week seem to have been the last

∞≠∫ ''A Low, Sunk Estate and Condition''

straw. After commencement in September 1725 Jonathan set out to visit his parents in East Windsor. He got as far as North Haven and collapsed, too ill to be moved. He stayed in the home of his fellow East Windsorite, Isaac Stiles, who had just ﬁlled the vacancy as North Haven's pastor. Jonathan's illness was serious enough that his mother Esther came to care for him. In his ''Personal Narrative'' he recalled this time as a hiatus in the spiritual lethargy of his years as tutor. ''And in this sickness, God was pleased to visit me again with the sweet inﬂuences of his spirit. My mind was greatly engaged there on divine, pleasant contemplations, and longings of soul. I observed that those who watched with me, would often be looking out for the morning, and seemed to wish for it. Which brought to my mind those words of the Psalmist, which my soul with sweetness made its own language, 'My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning' [Psalms 130:6].''

He must have again been near death since his nurses were sitting up with him through the nights. His mother stayed longer than she had expected and presumably Sarah was sometimes there also. He recalled: ''about that time, I used greatly to long for the conversion of some that I was concerned with. It seemed to me, I could gladly honor them, and with delight be a servant to them, and lie at their feet, if they were but truly holy.''

Sarah may have been among those for whom he was concerned. Sarah has long been romanticized as a saint since her childhood, as though she were always in sweet communion with the divine. Yet, if we learn anything from Jonathan's diary, Calvinist saints never sailed long on smooth waters with steady spiritual winds. Rather, faith was a constant struggle as God tested them and allowed Satan to toss them on stormy seas. Often it seemed to them that God had deserted them. Often they saw themselves as the greatest of sinners. Just as Jonathan was anything but secure or steady in his faith, so too was Sarah. Though Jonathan later judged she had been truly converted at an early age, he also noted that she, when ''in lower degrees of grace,'' had ''many ups and downs.'' She had, he explained, ''a vapory habit of body'' (a tendency toward depression—which he had also) and was ''often subject to melancholy'' and sometimes ''almost overborne with it, it having been so even from early youth.'' At age sixteen, whatever her considerable virtues, she was much di√erent from the idealized thirteen-year-old Jonathan had pictured as a purely spiritual being singing God's praises in the ﬁeld. Like Jonathan—and as was expected in the tradition—she may have had deep doubts as to whether she had found saving grace. In the long run Jonathan admired her as the truest

''A Low, Sunk Estate and Condition'' ∞≠Ω

of saints, yet from the little candid information that survives and from what we know of human nature, we can be sure that her path was not always smooth.∞Ω

By November 16, 1725, Jonathan was well enough to resume his diary and was studying again. He resolved in his ﬁrst entry: ''to observe this rule: To let half a day's, or at most, a day's study in other things, be succeeded, by half a day's, or a day's study in divinity.'' At the same time, he resolved to be more sociable, observing that he erred in the social duties of writing letters to friends and visiting friends and relations.≤≠ At the insistence of the evercautious Timothy, rather than immediately resuming his tutoring duties, he returned to East Windsor to complete his recovery.≤∞ Once again he took up some work on his ''Miscellanies'' and other notebooks, mostly on usual topics, amassing evidences to conﬁrm the truth of Christianity.

In one notable entry, he again placed his longing for Sarah in its larger spiritual context: ''Happiness. How soon do earthly lovers come to an end of their discoveries of each other's beauty; how soon do they see all that is to be seen! Are they united as near as 'tis possible, and have communion as intimate as possible? How soon do they come to the most endearing expressions of love that 'tis possible to give, so that no new ways can be invented given or received.'' Once again, he contrasted the easily reached limits of human love with the inﬁnitely progressing heavenly love between Christ and the saints: ''And how happy is that love, in which there is an eternal progress in all these things; wherein new beauties are continually discovered, and more and more loveliness, and in which we shall forever increase in beauty ourselves; where we shall be made capable of ﬁnding out and giving, and shall receive, more and more endearing expressions of love forever: our union will become more close, and communion more intimate.''≤≤

By the winter term of 1726 he was back in New Haven to be reunited with Sarah and to resume his duties. At Yale there was still no resident rector, and he and his uncle of nearly his own age, Daniel Edwards (his grandfather's son by his second marriage) were the two tutors who tried to hold the disorderly college together.

Once again the Yale atmosphere and a multitude of concerns brought him back into the valley of spiritual emptiness. In his ''Personal Narrative'' he recalled: ''I was again greatly diverted in my mind, with some temporal concerns, that exceedingly took up my thoughts, greatly to the wounding of my soul: and went on through various exercises, that it would be tedious to relate, that gave me much more experience of my own heart, than ever I had before.''

What these ''temporal concerns'' were, we do not know. He did have a

∞∞≠ ''A Low, Sunk Estate and Condition''

long dispute with the Yale trustees as to whether he should be paid his salary for the time he was ill. That would hardly seem su≈cient, however, to give him the unprecedented self-knowledge that he described.≤≥

A more substantial distraction and anxiety during this whole period was the question of his own career and ambition. Jonathan was intensely ambitious. He viewed himself as having a high calling from God, nothing less than to present the deﬁnitive defense of the Christian religion in relation to all knowledge and all possible objections. But what would be the platform from which he would speak? Being a college tutor was a short-term occupation. And, as the di≈culties in a ﬁnding a leader for Yale showed, even being the rector of a college could be seen as a step down from an attractive parish.

By spring 1726 a great opportunity was on the horizon. Probably during the vacation between the winter and spring terms he traveled to Northampton to preach in his grandfather's church.≤∂ Doubtless this added to his anxieties. Solomon Stoddard was now in his eighties, and in the fall of 1725 the town had voted to hire an assistant. Possibly Stoddard had already had his grandson in mind but was prevented by Jonathan's illness from pursuing the matter. In the meantime, the town chose a young Harvard graduate from a distinguished family, Israel Chauncy, to ﬁll the position temporarily. Jonathan's notebooks show that he was reﬂecting on his grandfather's writings. In August the town of Northampton formally invited Jonathan to come to serve as assistant. Jonathan apparently ﬁnished out his commencement duties and arrived by early October. On November 21, 1726, the town meeting voted, ''by a very great majority'' on the basis of ''what experience we have had of him by his preaching and conversation and also from his character from other places'' to settle permanently as a pastor to assist Stoddard. He was ordained February 15, 1727.≤∑

Five months later Jonathan traveled to New Haven, where he and Sarah were married on Friday, July 28, 1727. We have only one hint about the occasion. Years later, in Stockbridge, Jonathan wrote part of a sermon to the Indians on a scrap of paper he apparently had saved for years. It was a bill to ''Rev. Sir,'' from Boston, January 26, 1727, that included charges for silver buckles, white gloves, and a lute string.≤∏ We can guess that these items were for the wedding and that he would have seen music, the ''most perfect way that we have of expressing a sweet concord of mind to each other,'' as especially appropriate to celebrating their union.

Marriage brought fulﬁllment to a courtship that we know little about except that it coincided with the time he was spiritually troubled. Whether

''A Low, Sunk Estate and Condition'' ∞∞∞

that was simply coincidence is not clear. When Jonathan referred to the spiritual crisis of these years he usually related it to events connected to Yale, never to the stresses of courtship, unless they were the ''temporal concerns'' by which he was so distracted.

Jonathan and Sarah celebrated sexuality in the context of viewing it as ultimately a spiritual experience, pointing to the much higher bliss of Christ's relation to his church. A ''Miscellanies'' entry on the incarnation written around the time of his marriage is perhaps a commentary on the challenge for ordinary mortals to keep the spiritual thoughts supreme. When Christ was conceived in Mary's womb, Edwards observed, her ''mind was ﬁlled with a divine and holy pleasure instead of sensual pleasure.''≤π

By fall 1727 Jonathan had dramatically recovered his spiritual bearings, speciﬁcally his ability to ﬁnd the spiritual intensity he had lost for three years. In a rare diary entry he wrote: '' 'Tis just about three years, that I have been for the most part in a low, sunk estate and condition, miserably senseless to what I used to be, about spiritual things. 'Twas three years ago, the week before commencement; just about the same time this year, I began to be somewhat as I used to be.''

Exactly how this recovery was related to his marriage, we can not be sure.≤∫

We do know that Jonathan's renewed spiritual intensity shaped the way he experienced marriage. About a year after their marriage he started a new notebook, ''Shadows of Divine Things'' (later ''Images of Divine Things''), dedicated to the reinvigorated spirituality. In it he collected his reﬂections on the spiritual meanings of nature, doubtless in part to share these with Sarah, who like himself had long been attuned to listening for this ''language of God.''≤Ω God's manner of speaking in creation was ''to make inferior things shadows of the superior and most excellent, outward things shadows of spiritual.''≥≠ In several very early entries he reiterated that ''marriage signiﬁes the spiritual union and communion of Christ and the church.'' This explicit biblical typology provided a basis for extending to all of life the principle of ﬁnding spiritual analogies. ''If God designed this [marriage] for a type of what is spiritual, why not many other things in the constitution and ordinary state of human society, and the world of mankind.''≥∞

On August 25, 1728, Sarah bore their ﬁrst child, another Sarah. Childbirth, a biblical image, was especially typical of the a∆ictive way God dealt with fallen humanity, even in bringing them the best things personally, spiritually, or through history. ''Women travail and su√er great pains in bringing children, which is to represent the great persecutions and su√erings of the

∞∞≤ ''A Low, Sunk Estate and Condition''

church in bringing forth Christ and in increasing the number of his children; and a type of those spiritual pains that are in the soul when bringing forth Christ.''≥≤ Jonathan himself had just gone through years of the agonies of a sort of spiritual childbirth.

While noting the relationship between his marriage and his renewed spiritual intensity, we need also to keep in mind the larger theological lens through which Jonathan himself viewed his recovery. In his ''Personal Narrative,'' he wrote: ''Since I came to this town [Northampton], I have often had sweet complacency in God in views of his glorious perfections, and the excellency of Jesus Christ. God has appeared to me, a glorious and lively being chieﬂy on the account of his holiness. The holiness of God has always appeared to me the most lovely of all his attributes. The doctrines of God's absolute sovereignty, and free grace, in showing mercy to whom he would show mercy; and man's absolute dependence on the operations of God's Holy Spirit, have very often appeared to me as sweet and glorious doctrines.''

Edwards' representation here of the sequel to the years of his ''low, sunk estate,'' may be a clue to one of its multiple components—a recurrence of his inability to rest in the doctrine of God's sovereignty in saving whom God would. Only when he could bring himself to accept the premise of God's perfect holiness could he accept the teaching that human rebellion against such perfection could be so inﬁnitely evil as to warrant eternal punishment. Only when he could sustain a view of God's holiness that was inﬁnitely beyond human standards could he delight in God's arbitrary but perfectly good sovereignty.

Jonathan emerged from his three years of spiritual depression not only with a renewed sense of the ''images and shadows of divine things'' but also with the zeal of a convert to defend strict Calvinist orthodoxy. So far as we can judge from his notebooks, he had in the meantime never worked in any other framework. Yet often during those three agonizing years there had been a disconcerting disjunction between head and heart.

After he moved to Northampton, Jonathan very rarely made diary entries, so there is no longer a candid record of his spiritual struggles. In his ''Personal Narrative'' he indicated that for at least the next decade he sustained his ability to be enraptured by God's holiness and perfections. Nevertheless, we know that he also su√ered from depressions throughout his life. In trying to imagine what someone who could be so enraptured by the holiness of God was really like during his years of ministry, it is important to recall what he was like during the time for which we have a more complete

''A Low, Sunk Estate and Condition'' ∞∞≥

record. In Northampton he recovered to ''somewhat as I used to be'' at the height of his early spiritual experience. Yet as he ''used to be,'' as in his fondly remembered days in New York, was a time of constant struggle. Even as he kept the disciplines of the faith, he was frequently a∆icted by times of spiritual deadness and very human imperfections. Probably he never again sank as low, or at least not nearly for so long, as he did in his years in New Haven. Yet, whatever the spiritual forces working in him, it would be a mistake to think of him as someone for whom saintliness came easily.

C H A P T E R π kl On Solomon Stoddard's Stage

o move to Northampton was to move into the seat of family power. Solomon Stoddard, the patriarch, now eighty-three, though somewhat feeble and nearly blind was still sharp of mind, strong of opinion, and a formidable presence. The people of Northampton, Edwards later recalled, regarded Stoddard ''almost as a sort of deity.''∞ Not only in Northampton but throughout the region, Stoddard was a force. Like a feudal baron whose power depended on personal allegiances, he had used kinship ties to connect with other powerful clergy, merchants, and magistrates—with the other ''river gods,'' as they sometimes were collectively known.≤ Having his hand-picked grandson as his successor was one more link that would help secure the future after he relinquished command.

Many other links in this network of leadership were already ﬁrmly in place. For Jonathan, the magistrate-patron of crucial importance was his uncle, Colonel John Stoddard. Second son of the patriarch, Colonel Stoddard was the man of a√airs, a military commander, political leader, and wealthy real estate merchant. Aged forty-four in 1726, he still resided with his parents in the family home, which sat on a prominence that overlooked the town. After his father's death, John married in 1731 and continued to live in this home, which signaled his inheritance and his baronial authority as the richest man in the town and its most inﬂuential magistrate.≥ The ﬁrst year Jonathan lived in Northampton, he presumably lived with his grandparents and his uncle. John, a Harvard graduate of some learning and a man of piety, took his young nephew under his wing and remained his most important ally and patron.

John Stoddard's narrow escape at Deerﬁeld in 1704 had been a deﬁning moment. Throughout his life his greatest challenge would be to cope with

On Solomon Stoddard's Stage ∞∞∑

western Massachusetts' agonizing relations with the Indians. He ﬁrst gained prominence as a military leader in the Indian wars. During Queen Anne's War he rose to be a commander in the ﬁeld. At the end of the war in 1713, he and his now-famous brother-in-law, the Reverend John Williams of Deerﬁeld, were the colony's envoys to Canada who negotiated the return of many of the captives. Throughout the rest of his career, when he was not ﬁghting in wars, he trying to keep the peace. Eventually he became the colony's leading ﬁgure both in fortifying western Massachusetts' frontier and in attempting to reestablish Indian missions.

John Stoddard was, in e√ect, the village squire and was sometimes referred to as such. He was Northampton's most frequently elected representative to the Massachusetts General Court, although he was also at the center of the town's political contentions. He sometimes served as a member of the Governor's Council. His loyalty to the royal governors was rewarded with various local judicial posts and control of the patronage in Hampshire County. As one historian put it, ''everyone—county residents and provincial governors alike—knew that whatever was distributed in Hampshire County came only with the approval of Colonel Stoddard.''∂ He was a pillar of the church, and he frequently presided over town meetings, as he had over the one that called his nephew to assist his father.

In 1726 Colonel Stoddard was dealing with the aftermath of another round of ugly warfare with the Indians, which had kept the frontier towns in turmoil during the previous three years. The colonists called the conﬂict Father Râle's War after a French Jesuit missionary who they believed had incited the Abenaki Indians of Maine to attack France's New England enemies. In western Massachusetts the conﬂict was led by a renegade leader of the displaced Abenakis known as Grey Lock. The elusive Grey Lock and his men made hit-and-run guerrilla raids in and around the Connecticut Valley settlements. Stoddard had overseen the building of a new garrison fort up the river and an improved watch for Northampton. Possibly when Jonathan ﬁrst moved there, the Stoddard house itself was protected with a palisade.∑

The other pivotal link in the chain of family relationships was Solomon Stoddard's son-in-law William Williams, pastor of the neighboring town of Hatﬁeld. Although Solomon Stoddard had a son and ﬁve sons-in-law among the valley clergy, Williams was by far the most important. William Williams' inﬂuence was based on his being the most talented clerical ﬁgure in the most prominent clan among the Connecticut Valley gentry. The Williamses had intermarried with just about every leading family in the area and hence were

∞∞∏ On Solomon Stoddard's Stage

connected with nearly all the leading merchants and political leaders as well as many of the clergy. At age ﬁfty-one in 1726, William Williams was heir apparent to Stoddard's ecclesiastical domain. ''Uncle Williams'' of Hatﬁeld was the obvious choice to preach the ordination sermon for his young nephew.

There is every reason to believe that William Williams approved the choice of his intensely pious and learned nephew to be Stoddard's successor. There may indeed already have been a minor rivalry between Jonathan and some of his Williams cousins. A few years earlier the Edwards family had been speculating as to whether Uncle Williams' son Solomon might be settled in Northampton. At one point when they thought that was fact, Jonathan had made a note in his diary to ''always rejoice in everyone's prosperity.''∏

Years later, after the generation of William Williams and John Stoddard was gone, a rivalry emerged among the cousins with all the ugliness of a family feud. In the meantime, the older generation seems to have gotten along. Jonathan's next oldest sister, Mary, to whom he was close, had lived with her aunt and uncle in Hatﬁeld in the early 1720s, before moving to Northampton to take care of her grandparents. Mary was living in the Stoddard home when Jonathan arrived. Uncle Williams seems to have been happy to form an alliance with his nephew, who was closer to him and his generation in many of his principles than were some of Williams' own children.

Though William Williams and Solomon Stoddard did not agree on everything, the two leaders stood ﬁrmly together on three points as crucial for the survival and prosperity of their people under God's covenant.π First, they were eager to strengthen the hand of the clergy. Second, they were determined to preserve Reformed orthodoxy. Third, they were zealous for evangelism. To foster the ﬁrst two of these, they had managed in 1714 to take one step in a Presbyterian direction by founding the Hampshire Association of clergy to have oversight of ecclesiastical a√airs in the region. Across the border in Connecticut the clergy had gained more regional authority and also adopted a version of the Westminster Confession of Faith, but in independent-minded Massachusetts an association of clergy, with largely advisory functions, was the best they could do. Still, it consolidated clerical inﬂuence, and they hoped it might provide some check against heterodox doctrine intruding in their midst.

Zeal for evangelism was the cutting edge of their campaign. Like other pietists springing up throughout the Protestant world in this era, they recognized that amid the vicissitudes of religious-political conﬂicts, one could not count on state support for churches. During the seemingly endless religious

On Solomon Stoddard's Stage ∞∞π

conﬂicts, one characteristic response among seventeenth-century renewal movements in many traditions—including Catholic and Jewish—had been to emphasize vital heartfelt piety.∫ For New Englanders of Puritan heritage that was nothing new, but with the weakening of state support, they preached it with increasing urgency. Practically speaking, evangelism was essential to gaining the beneﬁts of the social covenant. A predominance of converted people was the only hope for cultivating the collective virtue necessary to ease God's controversy with the region and to bring blessings.

With these concerns in the forefront, Stoddard and Williams cultivated revivals throughout the valley. Spurred by a regional awakening in 1712, they insisted that revival should be the church's top concern. In the ensuing years they found eager support among Boston's leading clergy for such evangelical renewal. In 1714 Increase Mather wrote a preface to Stoddard's new manual on evangelism, A Guide to Christ, thus signaling the end of their long controversy over church membership.Ω Similarly, the Mathers had by this time put aside an earlier conﬂict with Benjamin Colman, pastor of Boston's upstart Brattle Street Church, realizing that Colman was as committed to Calvinism and international awakening as they were. During these years, William Williams joined Stoddard as his right-hand man on his trips to Boston and was clearly heir apparent as western spokesman for the cause. Almost every year he or Stoddard preached in Boston and published treatises on evangelism.∞≠

Stoddard took the lead in extending this evangelistic impulse toward missions to the Indians. In a treatise published in 1723, he framed the question in classic covenantal form, Question Whether God is not Angry with the Country for Doing so Little Towards the Conversion of the Indians? Stoddard's tract appeared near the onset of Father Râle's War and included the point that a mission would be a strategic counter to the Jesuits. Jesuit missionary success was a reproof to the New Englanders whose missions e√orts had been paltry since the disaster of King Philip's War. The Jesuit missions also created a military threat. Yet Stoddard's realism on that score was accompanied by a sharp critique of typical English attitudes toward the Indians. Such attitudes, he proposed, might be the chief reason why God had been punishing the country for ''these three score years.'' True the Indians might be of ''a very brutish and sottish spirit.'' Nonetheless, ''they are of mankind, and so objects of compassion.'' The colonists should remember that the British were no better. ''Our fore-fathers . . . were given up unto as brutish a service of the Devil, as any nation under the sun'' until missionaries had ''pitied them and brought the Gospel among them.'' A few colonists had attempted Indian

∞∞∫ On Solomon Stoddard's Stage

missions, but the colony as a whole had done practically nothing. ''Many men,'' Stoddard railed, ''have been more careful to make a booty of them, than to give to them the practice of religion.''

One learned writer, Stoddard observed, had conjectured that the English on the frontier might ''Indianize and become that Gog and Magog spoken of in Revelation 20.'' As an alternative, he urged, if the Indians ''embrace religion, it might provoke us to emulation.'' The English ''make a high profession, but yet religion runs low and iniquity doth abound. There is a great deal of pride, drunkenness, injustice, prophaneness, and koraism [rebelliousness against authority] in the land. And we need to say as David, 'Wilt thou not revive us again.' ''∞∞

William Williams shared Stoddard's concern for the Indians and like his mentor viewed the urgency of their conversion in covenantal and millennial terms. Writing in 1728 to their mutual friend Judge Samuel Sewall, thanking him for sending his treatise on the Apocalypse, Williams rejoiced in some recently reported signs of Indians' responsiveness to the Gospel as hope that God's anger with New England might be relaxed.∞≤ When Edwards settled in western Massachusetts in 1726, the need to convert the Indians was certainly an early topic of conversation. One can imagine the three learned clergy of Northampton and Hatﬁeld, each to be the region's leading cleric of his generation, sitting by the ﬁreplace debating how God might use New England in his millennial plans and agreeing on the urgency of both revival and e√ective Indian missions.

Stoddard's powerful presence consolidated Jonathan's views in other ways, especially regarding the urgency of evangelism. Jonathan had been reading at least some of his grandfather's works since his youth and had heard his powerful preaching on occasion. In Stoddard he could ﬁnd themes that resonated with or helped to shape what became his most characteristic views. In Treatise on Conversion (1719), for instance, Stoddard emphasized the theme of ''spiritual light,'' or of having eyes opened to see the glory and excellency of God as the essence of conversion. ''When men know the excellency of God, they must chose him. The glory of God is such, that it captivates the heart; where it is seen, it has a magnetic power; it irresistibly conquers the will; there is a necessity of loving God, when he is seen.''∞≥ While these were common images that Jonathan could have acquired anywhere, they also indicate that he and his grandfather, despite some di√erences, were kindred spirits.

Even when years later Edwards turned against his grandfather's views on church membership, he candidly described Stoddard as ''a very great man, of

On Solomon Stoddard's Stage ∞∞Ω

strong powers of mind, of great grace, and great authority, of a masterly countenance, speech, and behavior.''∞∂ One sign that in his ﬁrst years in Northampton, Edwards held his grandfather in the highest regard is an enthusiastic ''Miscellanies'' entry from 1727. ''The best philosophy that I have met with,'' he wrote, ''of original sin and all sinful inclinations, habits and principles, is undoubtedly that of Mr. Stoddard's, of this town of Northampton.''∞∑

Stoddard's publications were also full of advice to clergy, which he doubtless repeated to his young protégé. He urged ministers not to preach with notes, or if they must, to not let them hinder gestures.∞∏ For the meticulously thorough Edwards, most comfortable writing in the privacy of his study, this was hard advice. He was not the animated natural conversationalist his grandfather was. Although he practically memorized his sermons, not until late in his career could he manage to abandon writing them out in precise detail and having the security of the text in front of him.

''Ten to one they will know it'' if they are converted, Stoddard would say with his typical businesslike dogmatism, cutting through a century of New England debates. Jonathan, who had just spent years in his own quest for assurance, may have seen the odds a little di√erently. Stoddard admitted exceptions but thought it just encouraged indecisiveness to let the exceptions become the rule. It ''is not good preaching'' he insisted,'' to teach ''that frequently men are ignorant of the time of their conversion.''∞π

Another sign of bad preaching was ''when men don't preach much about the danger of damnation.''∞∫ Here was a point on which grandfather and grandson saw eye to eye. Timothy Edwards had taught the same thing, and Jonathan was long familiar with his grandfather's published sermon on The E≈cacy of the Fear of Hell, to Restrain Men from Sin. Stoddard had preached this sermon in 1712 on ''the occasion of a more than ordinary outpouring of the Spirit of God.'' The forceful Northampton preacher had brought this wonderful e√ect by piling up lurid images, mostly from Scripture. He compared hell to ''where they burnt their children to Moleck'' at Tophet. ''There they burnt them as sacriﬁces to the Devil, and made a noise with trumpets, that they might drown the noise of the cries of the poor children, they could not bear their roarings. Hell is worse than all these.'' Being in hell would be like su√ering in the ﬁre and brimstone that fell on Sodom: ''men, women, children, all like torches; their bodies blazed; How they scream out in that extremity!''

The di√erence was that such agony was short-lived, whereas in hell one su√ered ''everlasting burnings.'' Stoddard liked to put things in numbers:

∞≤≠ On Solomon Stoddard's Stage

''Add thousands to thousands, and multiply millions by millions; ﬁll quires of paper with numbers. . . . When men have su√ered never so long there is still an eternity remaining. . . . This makes every part of their misery inﬁnite, their pain will be inﬁnite, the terror inﬁnite.''∞Ω

Stoddard and his peers saw preaching hellﬁre as a matter of compassion. Given the reality of hell, it would be inhumane not to alert people to the horrible danger they were in. One could hardly doubt hell's reality in a world where the Bible was the highest authority. As Stoddard pointed out, no one insisted on the point more than Jesus.≤≠ Even the modern philosophers acknowledged that there must be some system of justice in the next life to rectify injustices in this one, although the latitudinarian's God might be lenient in its administration. For Calvinists, who premised every argument on their reading of Scripture, there seemed no choice but to heed the Bible's direct word. The duty of preachers was clear. They must warn people that they trod on the brink of eternal misery. To fail to do so was to lack human feeling. As Stoddard observed regarding the urgency of mission to the Indians, ''It is a doleful thing to think, that from generation to generation, they go down to Hell.''≤∞

Jonathan had had his own problems with the strict Calvinist version of this doctrine—both as a general question of justice and a personal question as to whether it was what his sins deserved—but he agreed entirely as to the usefulness of the teaching in God's wise economy. Ever since the ﬁrst glimmerings of his own awakening, he was acutely aware that the human problem was to see one's condition in its true perspective. Human self-centeredness was so overwhelming and this world was so alluring, that each person was by nature incredibly short-sighted, self-absorbed, and blinded by pride. People had to awaken to their true interests. Over and over again he stressed this point in his early preaching. So even in his ﬁrst sermons from his teenage years, when he may have had his own doubts, he was scrupulous to give the conventional warnings of hellﬁre their due place. The dreadful teaching was a gift of God to awaken people who were blindly sleepwalking to their doom.≤≤

Stoddard must have been pleased to hear Edwards' early sermon in Northampton on The Warnings of Future Punishment Don't Seem Real to the Wicked. The problem, said Edwards, was that many people who a≈rm belief in hell, believe it is an inherited belief, but it does not seem real to them. Developing one of the most characteristic principles in all his preaching, he distinguished between believing something theoretically and having a true sense of it as a personal reality. So he ﬁrst presented a series of arguments why

On Solomon Stoddard's Stage ∞≤∞

there must be a hell (for instance, that otherwise ''oftentimes it would really be for men's interest to do wickedly,'' which would be absurd). Yet such theoretical belief would be useless unless people ''have a lively or sensible idea'' of its eternal horrors. They needed a verbal picture of hell painted for them so that they could, in e√ect, hear the ''shrieks and cries of the damned.'' Edwards' own sermonic picture, piling up all the Scriptural images, closely resembled the pattern of Stoddard's earlier sermon and would have done Dante proud. In this world (to take just one from the onslaught of images), God restrains the devil and his crew, but not in the next. ''The devil thirsts for the blood of souls, and 'tis only because God restrains him that he don't lay hold of the soul before death; but as soon as ever the man is dead, God restrains him no more, but then these hell hounds ﬂy upon their prey, these roaring lions dare then lay hold as it were with open mouths.''≤≥

In late 1727 Stoddard (who still took his turn at preaching) and Edwards received a providential jolt that greatly aided their cause of making the impending judgment seem real. On a Sunday evening, October 29, 1727, a sizable earthquake shook New England, bringing down chimneys and walls and rocking even the strongest houses. The populace was terriﬁed. This was a society where Michael Wigglesworth's doleful The Day of Doom (1662) was still a best-seller, ministers endlessly preached impending judgment, and earthquakes were a predicted sign of the end. The next morning colonists crowded into churches for a day of humiliation and fasting. Nine days of aftershocks kept many in a state of dread. Numerous churches experienced awakenings, some adding scores of confessing members. In Northampton, Edwards later recorded, Solomon Stoddard was pleased to see this, the last of his revivals, during which he judged they gained some twenty new converts, even if he was disappointed that they did not have a general awakening as in earlier days nor as many conversions as some towns to the east, nearer the center of the quake.≤∂

Many New Englanders regarded the quake as a warning of worse judgments to come. The Massachusetts governor called for a day of repentance and fasting for Thursday, December 21, and in Northampton, Edwards delivered the fast-day sermon. Preaching from the book of Jonah and employing the standard covenantal formula of God's punishments or rewards for communal behavior, he emphasized that the only way to avert impending judgments was by true reformation. As an expert on natural phenomena, he acknowledged in passing that ''earthquakes and signs in the heavens may often have natural causes,'' but he immediately added, ''yet they nevertheless

∞≤≤ On Solomon Stoddard's Stage

be ordered to fall out so as to be forerunners of great changes and threatenings of judgements.'' God left nothing to chance in his arrangements of natural causes. So this earthquake should be seen as a direct message, especially to the young people of Northampton. The Sabbath ended at sundown, and Sunday evenings were a time for young people to frolic. ''It was their manner very frequently to get together in conventions of both sexes, for mirth and jollity, which they called frolics; and they would often spend the greater part of the night in them, without regard to any order in the families they belonged to.''≤∑

It was no accident then that in the midst of such carryings-on the earthquake ''lately terriﬁed you in the night.'' '' 'Tis the very probable opinion of some,'' Edwards reported as though speaking for an older authority, ''that the earthquake was sent as a token of God's anger against not only the wickedness of the land in general, but more especially the sin that is committed on a sabbath-day night.''≤∏

While grandson and grandfather agreed on most subjects, the most di≈- cult transition for Jonathan was from being under his father's sway regarding the much-debated question of conversion and communion to working in his grandfather's domain. Though the controversy between Stoddard and the Mathers had died down, the sensitive issue of who should be allowed to partake of the Lord's Supper had not been settled. Jonathan had studied Stoddard's controversial opinion that the presumption should be that baptized adults should partake, even without evidence of being converted. He had convinced himself (and his grandfather) he could live with the practice. Northampton was worth an open communion.

Stoddard was concerned ﬁrst of all with fostering conversion through any God-given means possible. Opening the Lord's Supper was a tangible way to bring people into the presence of Christ's sacriﬁce and a sensibility of the depths of their wickedness for which Christ had died. During the years he spent under Stoddard's tutelage, Jonathan was reading or rereading his grandfather's works and wrestling with whether it was possible to devise a science of identifying visible saints.≤π Unable to settle the issue, he was willing to make the most of Stoddard's practice. In an early communion sermon in Northampton he preached on Jesus' parable in which the master ordered his servants to go to the highways and hedges to compel the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind to come to his feast. Applying this to the unconverted, he told them how their poverty, misery, and blindness was far beyond that of the beggars in the parable. ''You know not how sweet and satisfying the meat and drink of this feast is, and what abundance and variety there is. If you did,

On Solomon Stoddard's Stage ∞≤≥

you would need no compelling to come; the sense of it would be wings to your feet. You know not what friendship, what communion, what love and joy there is at God's table. Taste and see that the Lord is gracious: put o√ your ﬁlthy garments; wash yourself from your ﬁlthiness; accept of the white raiment Christ o√ers you; go to Christ and enter with him into his chambers; sit down with him in his feasting and banqueting house.''≤∫ This was pure Stoddardeanism. The Supper would be a converting ordinance.

Allowing himself to be under his grandfather's sway on such a life-ordeath issue was a momentous decision for Jonathan. Years later, when it led to the greatest calamity of his career, he confessed that he had never been at ease with Stoddard's approach. In these early days Jonathan's internal anxieties must have been great because, among other things, Timothy Edwards was not so far away—especially not from his son's psyche. Jonathan, despite his creativity, remained remarkably close to his father's opinions on most issues. We do not know how they handled their di√erences on this much-debated matter, except for one clue. In 1732, after Stoddard was out of the picture, Timothy Edwards had the honor of delivering the election-day sermon in Connecticut. The sermon was one of his few publications. In the midst of a standard covenantal jeremiad about the deplorable state of society, he made a point of saying that people should ''scorn and abhor'' the practice of allowing ungodly persons who ''make a profession of godliness, and are accepted by the people of God to sit with them at the Lord's Table.''≤Ω The once-controlling father was keeping the pressure on.

Family, immediate and extended, was immensely important in shaping Jonathan's life. The worst times of his youth had been when he was in New Haven separated from his immediate family, even if the best had been when he was adopted into the Smith family in New York. After he moved to Northampton, he was once again surrounded by close family, grandfather, grandmother, and sister.

His marriage to Sarah in July 1727 was a step signaling the young assistant's transition to adult and authoritative status. Under the leadership of Squire John Stoddard, the town saw that the young couple were well settled as beﬁt their status. As part of his initial settlement, Edwards was granted ten acres of land for a pasture and another forty acres farther from town that could be used for income. His annual salary was set with an inﬂation clause, probably reﬂecting advice from his father, who constantly fought with his town over his declining real income. The Northampton town meeting speciﬁcally agreed that ''he should have an honorable and suitable maintenance according

∞≤∂ On Solomon Stoddard's Stage

to the dignity of his o≈ce.'' In addition he was given su≈cient funds to purchase a home, so that shortly before his marriage he could acquire a ''Mansion house, barn and home lot'' of three acres, on King Street near the church.≥≠

''The Falling of a Mighty Spreading Tree''

On February 11, 1729, the earth shook again as the center of family power, indeed the center of gravity in western Massachusetts, shifted with the passing of Solomon Stoddard. In December 1728 Stoddard's old friend Samuel Sewall wrote him a last letter congratulating him on continuing to preach even when in much pain. Sewall, after reporting the death of a mutual friend, Dr. John Clark, could not resist wryly adding, ''I have buried very many noble physicians.'' Sewall urged the eighty-ﬁve-year-old Stoddard, especially in the light of the ''blessing granted you in the serviceableness of your children and grandchildren'' to be ready to pronounce his Nunc dimittis [Let now thy servant depart in peace] when the time came.≥∞ Stoddard did not give up easily. Edwards recalled that ''he retained his powers surprisingly to the last.'' His obituary in the Boston paper noted that to the end he preached without notes and he had written several more sermons that he did not get to deliver.≥≤

William Williams, the ecclesiastical heir apparent, preached the principal funeral sermon. At age sixty-four, he was the most inﬂuential member of the Hampshire Association as well as the patriarch of the region's leading clan. The ''death of a prophet,'' he proclaimed, was ''like the falling of a mighty spreading tree in a forest, which . . . makes all the trees about it to shake, leaves a wide breach where it stood which may be long ere it be ﬁlled again.'' In Boston, Benjamin Colman, Brattle Street Church's eminent pastor, eulogized Stoddard. Alluding to Increase Mather's old accusation that Stoddard wanted to be the ﬁrst Puritan ''pope,'' Colman turned the criticism into a compliment. He was ''a Peter here among the Disciples . . . very much our Primate.''≥≥ A Northampton eulogist recalled the remarkable awakenings under Stoddard when ''the Spirit of God so moved upon the heart of the people, that it became almost the general cry of the place, What must I do to be saved.''≥∂

To step into the hollow where for so long had stood a mighty tree was no easy task. For sixty years, as long as almost anyone could remember, Stoddard had shaped the town by the force of his personality. For sixty years he had had a near monopoly on the most authoritative public speaking. Even in the last

On Solomon Stoddard's Stage ∞≤∑

two and a half years when he shared the pulpit with his grandson, the frail retiring young man, however attractive, was clearly the apprentice and protégé. In powerful sermons year after year Stoddard had berated the people of Northampton for their sins and fostered their periodic reformations. He had created their identity. ''He being our pastor,'' wrote the anonymous eulogist, ''gave a name and reputation to our town.''≥∑

Edwards may have been determined to do the same, but handling the people of Northampton was no easy matter. Though they were sometimes subject to the heights of revival enthusiasm, they were also ﬁckle. As in any dictatorship, however successful, there were strong emotions and some deep resentments. Edwards later wrote: ''The people of Northampton are not the most happy in their natural temper. They have, ever since I can remember, been famed for a high-spirited people, and close, and of a di≈cult, turbulent temper.'' Once, during Stoddard's day, a church controversy became so heated that ''it came to hand-blows: a number of one party met the head of the opposite party, and assaulted him and beat him unmercifully.''

Moreover, for a decade or so before Edwards arrived, Northampton had been torn with a persistent political division, ''a sort of settled division of the people into two parties, something like the Court and Country Party in England (if I may compare small things with great).'' Edwards explained: ''There have been some of the chief men in the town, of chief authority and wealth, that have been great proprietors of their lands, who have had one party with them. And the other party, which commonly has been the greatest, have been of those who have been jealous of them, apt to envy 'em, and afraid of their having too much power and inﬂuence in town and church. This has been a foundation of innumerable contentions among the people from time to time.''≥∏

Some of these conﬂicts centered around Colonel John Stoddard, who rose to political prominence in the mid-1710s and was known for his ''Tory'' political views. Stoddard had used his political power to build a fortune in land. Although he was the most powerful politician and the one most often elected to represent the town, as well as the most inﬂuential laymen in the church, he was opposed by a more whiggish ''country party.'' The tensions were exacerbated by a gradual transition from the more communal and deferential standards of the Puritan era to the more individualistic tendencies of the eighteenth century and by perennial questions of availability of land for the younger generations. The line of division that Edwards referred to may also have reﬂected some acrimonious contentions in Massachusetts govern-

∞≤∏ On Solomon Stoddard's Stage

ment between the royal governors' ''Tory'' supporters, such as Stoddard, and the recalcitrant and more popular lower house, debates that dimly presaged issues of the American Revolution a half-century later.≥π Though Edwards considered the ''country party'' in Northampton the more numerous, they were not often able to ﬁnd a representative who carried the prestige to displace the aristocratic Stoddard.

To add to the challenge of the transition, the moral behavior, especially of the young people, had become increasingly lax as Solomon Stoddard became too old to oversee it e√ectively. At church meeting, young people were given to misbehaving, knowing that the enfeebled Stoddard could no longer see them. The late Sunday night frolics had not abated either. Edwards recalled, ''just after my grandfather's death, it seemed to be a time of extraordinary dullness in religion: licentiousness for some years greatly prevailed among the youth of the town; they were many of them very much addicted to nightwalking, and frequenting the tavern, and lewd practices.''≥∫

On his own now as the spiritual overseer of a town that was, by old Puritan standards, out of control, Edwards made the most of the memory of the great Stoddard in a classic jeremiad sermon of lament and warning. ''God has taken away our Joshua,'' he declared, ''he that was our captain to lead us into the heavenly Canaan, and with him he has taken away many of the elders that were contemporary with him.'' That was the warning. ''It looks darkly upon us that those of that generation are taken away so fast, and that there is a no more hopeful prospect from the rising generation.'' On the day Stoddard had died, so had Ebenezer Strong, the last of the elders of the church (Stoddard, in consolidating power, had let the o≈ce die out). A few months later the venerable John Williams, who had su√ered so much as pastor of Deerﬁeld, was taken. In June, Edward Taylor, the conservative ally of Timothy Edwards, passed on, his great poetry safely stored away for only posterity to see.

With that generation disappearing, Edwards found little basis for hope that another generation of saints would be raised up from among the irreverent and pleasure-loving youth of Northampton. As he put it in a sermon: ''Licentious and immoral practices seem to get great head amongst young people. And how little appearance is there of a spirit of seriousness and religion to be seen among them? How little concern about their salvation and escaping eternal misery?'' Once a generation departs from the old ways, he admonished, there was little hope to reverse the trend. ''They who live loosely while young, and give the reins to their lust, it is to be feared they will not hold

On Solomon Stoddard's Stage ∞≤π

the reins very taut with respect to their children. When a people have got into a way of declining, they will be likely to wax worse and worse, to revolt more and more.''≥Ω

The people of Northampton, he cautioned in another sermon memorializing Stoddard's work, should consider how much more liable to punishment they were by ''living unconverted under an eminent means of grace.'' Using an image from Jeremiah 6 of a bellows burnt out in attempting to reﬁne ''reprobate silver,'' Edwards chided the Northamptonites for having become ''sermon proof'' after years of powerful preaching. Northamptonites who might be proud of their heritage should realize that more is required of them having lived under such a means of grace. ''Woe to them that go to hell out of Northampton and that lived under Mr. Stoddard's ministry! We are ready to wonder at the wickedness we hear there is in some parts of the world, in the West Indies and in other places; but they han't one half of the sins to answer as obstinate sinners will have that go from this place.''∂≠

In the spring, shortly after Stoddard's death, Edwards' health once again collapsed. In late April and early May he and his two Sarahs took a trip to New Haven and East Windsor, perhaps for a needed rest.∂∞ After a few weeks back in the pulpit, he was struck down more severely and could not preach for about a month in the early summer. One of Sarah's brothers, Benjamin Pierpont, supplied the pulpit, though he was soon called to ﬁll the vacancy left by John Williams' death at Deerﬁeld.

Likely Edwards was su√ering from anxiety and the strain of too much work. He was now responsible for the spiritual and moral oversight of perhaps thirteen hundred people.∂≤ A congregation of that size, even under the best of circumstances, could be overwhelming for one man. To make matters worse, he had to wrestle with the disparities between his high spiritual ideals and the coarse realities of an ordinary town, which seemed particularly out of control after Stoddard's death. He could not escape the conclusion that most of his neighbors and parishioners were blindly stumbling their way to perdition. As usual, he was also working himself too hard. In addition to responsibilities of marriage, becoming a father, assuming the full duties as pastor, and often preaching three times a week (Sunday morning, Sunday afternoon, and a weekly Thursday lecture), he was also working on a number of ambitious writing projects.

What we know is that his condition involved loss of voice and ''weakness'' and that the condition seems to have been recurrent. Near the end of his life he reported, in very similar terms, being subject to ''a low tide of spirits; often

∞≤∫ On Solomon Stoddard's Stage

occasioning a kind of childish weakness and contemptibleness of speech, presence, and demeanor.''∂≥ In this case he was back at work by the summer, but as late as September 1729 his father reported to Jonathan's sister Anne that her brother was still recovering.∂∂

Though fear of early death from disease was something that most separates that era from some later times, the Edwards family had been remarkably spared. In his twenty-sixth year, Jonathan had lost only two grandfathers among those closest to him. Timothy and Esther Edwards had reared eleven children without a loss. So the pain may have all the greater for Jonathan in December 1729 when an epidemic of diphtheria or ''the throat distemper'' took perhaps his dearest youngest sister.

Jerusha Edwards was the same age as Sarah Pierpont and had all the qualities Jonathan idealized in her New Haven counterpart. As much as anyone, she was his model of female piety. She was renowned for her devotion, her solitary contemplations, sweetness of temper, ﬁne understanding and beautiful countenance.

Jonathan must have deeply loved his younger sister because they were so much alike in intellect, temperament, and piety. According to her eulogy in a Boston newspaper, Jerusha ''conversed much with books, upon various subjects, but most of all upon divinity, for which she had the greatest relish.'' Like him, she ''often expressed her abhorrence of that conversation which is full of froth and levity.'' ''Discourses rational and weighty were her delight.''∂∑ When Jonathan last saw her at East Windsor in 1729 she had two clergymen suitors. When she died a number of her family wrote tributes to her model of submission.∂∏ Timothy Edwards recalled that when ''my dear daughter'' was dying she referred to the story of the foolish virgins who were not prepared for the bridegroom and urged her family gathered around her, ''all of you, don't let your lamps go out.'' When Jonathan and Sarah's second daughter was born the next spring, they named her Jerusha. Seldom would a namesake be so much like the original.

In the meantime, Edwards was back in Northampton in fall 1729, throwing his energies into turning things around. In sermon after sermon he hammered away at themes of hypocrisy, the certainty of judgment, the excellencies of the triune God, the means God has provided for awakening, and the beneﬁts of salvation.∂π Whereas Stoddard's preaching was sometimes blunt in getting directly to the point, Edwards' was intricate, extremely clear, logical, and relentless. He followed the Puritan style of a brief exposition that translated the text into a theme or proposition, then, following Ramist method,

On Solomon Stoddard's Stage ∞≤Ω

divided the proposition into various points of doctrine and recapitulated all these implications in an application. His sermons have been compared to ''the extraordinary ceiling and dome paintings of the Renaissance'' where it seems as though ''the whole visionary distance as far as the eye can see in any direction has been opened.''∂∫ Or they might be compared to Bach's fugues, exploring every variation of a theme. The great di√erence from those analogies is that Edwards' sermons reveal little attempt at overall artistic design or symmetry. They are the products of a logician who ﬁlls in all the implications of each thought. Those who listened would be left little room to escape his web of arguments.

With his grandfather gone, Edwards was troubled that so many communicant members seemed unconverted. He was not giving up the Stoddardean practice, but in his notebooks he was contemplating tightening it up. He was especially concerned about the young people who took communicant membership for granted without worrying about whether they were converted. Those who present themselves for membership, he wrote in his ''Miscellanies'' notebook, must ''often be put in mind of the danger of hypocrisy . . . and before every sacrament, examination should in a more solemn manner be renewed.''∂Ω

In one sermon, probably for a bimonthly communion service, he focused on the theme of hypocrites, building on the image of how Judas betrayed Christ with a kiss. The Church of Rome presented one horrifying model of such betrayal, but Judases could be found closer to home. Partaking of the sacrament itself could be the fatal kiss. ''You pretend to be Christ's friend, or else why do you come here? And there are many of you that make a further profession than the generality of men under the gospel do. You are like Judas and the other disciples in that respect, that you appear as disciples: you go along with the rest of the disciples; you profess to forsake all and to follow him; you come to Christ as it were with a kiss; you come to meeting and to the sacrament as though you were friends. Inquire whether you ben't like Judas also in this other respect, that you betray your Lord.''∑≠

If some of his parishioners were like Judas, England and New England could be compared to ancient Israel and Judah when they turned from the Lord. In a fast-day sermon preached in December 1729 on the occasion of the meeting of the Hampshire County court in Northampton, Edwards once again brought his usual thoroughness to the jeremiad form. Ministers on such public occasions conventionally preached on ''the state of the land,'' enumerating the vices for which God was punishing them. Edwards' account depicts

∞≥≠ On Solomon Stoddard's Stage

what he saw himself up against. First of all, ''our nation'' as a whole, meaning Britain, ''is at this day exceedingly corrupted and degenerated.'' Not only had ''debauchery and wickedness, profaneness and unbounded licentiousness in sensuality'' come in ''like a ﬂood'' in recent years, all sorts of sects and inﬁdels, including Deists and Freethinkers, had arisen. Such inﬁdelity, Edwards believed, might well presage God's judgments in tribulations and terrible earthquakes that would usher in the last times.

In the meantime there was plenty of vice in Hampshire County to warrant the wrath of a just God. The guilt was all the greater in light of all the Gospel preaching it had been given. People readily laughed and made fun of sacred things. They were given to pride and vanity, ''ﬂaunting . . . their buildings, apparel and way of living, many going far beyond their condition.'' Covetousness and injustice were rife; people would do anything for gain. Those who bought and sold often deceived their neighbors (one of Edwards' most frequent accusations). Drunkenness was commonplace as ''multitudes . . . haunt and throng public houses from day to day.'' Contentiousness appeared among people in suing each other (the court would soon be in session), and it was particularly lamentable ''that there is so much contention amongst the leaders.'' (In late 1729 Massachusetts was between royal governors and its country and court parties were in an uproar).

Edwards' most lengthy exposition in his catalogue of vices had to do, predictably, with the indulgences of the young. The fault lay ﬁrst of all with parents. Family government and education, the keystone of the old Puritan social system, had fallen badly in decline. Parents, he observed, were reacting against what they felt were too strict upbringings. The most notorious result was ''amazing'' impurities tolerated among the young in recent years. Not only was lasciviousness encouraged by nightwalking and similar frivolities, but New England parents allowed practices that are ''looked upon as shameful and disgraceful at Canada, New York, [and] England.'' Everyone knew that he referred to the New England practice of ''bundling'' in which parents allowed young people to spend the night in bed together partly clothed. ''I believe there is not a country in the Christian world,'' Edwards warned, ''however debauched and vicious, where parents indulge their children in such liberties in company-keeping as they do in this country—that is, amongst those that pretend to keep the credit of their children. Such things as are commonly winked at by parents here, trusting in their children that they won't give way to temptation, would in almost any other country ruin a person's reputation and be looked upon as su≈cient evidences of a prostitute.''

On Solomon Stoddard's Stage ∞≥∞

Bundling, which was supposed to be a way of getting acquainted without sexual intercourse, did not always work as advertised. Pregnancies before marriage were rising dramatically in New England. Even in well-churched Northampton, where premarital pregnancies were rarer than in some parts the region, the ﬁgure had recently risen to one in ten ﬁrst children born within eight months of marriage.∑∞ Premarital sex was commonplace. Even when it resulted in pregnancy, so long as the couple married, there was no longer much stigma involved. Alluding to that new attitude, Jonathan perceived another alarming decline. ''And there is not that discountenance of such things as there formerly used to be. It is not now such a discredit; 'tis not accounted such a blot and disgrace to a person. Formerly, things were accounted such a wound as a person never could get over as long as he lived. That ben't much minded: now they are so bold and impudent, that they are not ashamed to hold up their heads.''∑≤

One might suppose that, given Edwards' perfectionist standards demanding not only avoidance of vice but also evidences of Christ-like virtue, his prospects among the factious and self-indulgent Northamptonites would be dim. Yet the heritage of Stoddard's preaching, the orthodox profession of so many of the inhabitants, their uneasiness with their vices, and their anxieties over their eternal destinies gave him much to work with.

Most Northamptonites participated in a lay culture that put some distance between themselves and clerical ideals, while still a≈rming many of those ideals in principle or in parts of their lives. Typically, families and kinship networks shaped their primary loyalties, and these were interwoven in varying degrees with church loyalties. For unmarried young people the youth culture provided the major bu√er against clerical ideals.∑≥

Tavern culture o√ered an especially important alternative to the culture of piety. Taverns played prominent social and political roles in eighteenthcentury New England towns. Northampton already had three. Farmers would gather there for social life, relaxation, and to conduct business. Often taverns were centers for popular political activity. We can speculate that the ''country party'' Edwards described was also the tavern party, opposed by the Stoddard family and their aristocratic allies who were active in suppressing vice and who cultivated the political patronage of the governors and the crown.∑∂

Even if family culture, youth culture, and tavern culture provided substantial alternatives to church culture, most Northamptonites did not draw clear or consistent lines between the secular and the sacred. Like most church-

∞≥≤ On Solomon Stoddard's Stage

going people they had a pious side, an impious side, and a side in daily routines of work that was not especially either. They were constantly negotiating the often contradictory standards of the subcultures of which they were a part.

Amid these contradictions Edwards still had a base of goodwill. He might be constantly scolding the congregation and railing against their vices, but that was what he was expected to do. That was what Stoddard had done and most townspeople revered him for it. Stoddard may have been a di≈cult act to follow, but in some ways the passing of such a powerful overlord could foster goodwill toward his successor. True, with their Joshua gone, there may have been an increase in open deﬁance for a time, but the more controlled and gentle Edwards was also a breath of fresh air. His abilities, his piety, and his transparently passionate sincerity could win him respect.

At twenty-six, Edwards was now a man of authority. He was an aristocrat in a hierarchical society that took aristocracy for granted. He was much aware of the authority of his o≈ce and the deference it should command. He was God's spokesman in Northampton. He was, in one of his favorite metaphors, ''the trumpet of God.''∑∑ His learning, especially his expertise in Scripture but also his superior knowledge of natural philosophy and history, enhanced his authority. Even more important, he realized, was the authority of his piety. As he had written years earlier when he was imagining his calling, the power of following Christ was limitless. ''If it was plain to all the world of Christians that I was under the infallible guidance of Christ, and [that] I was sent forth to teach the world the will of Christ, then I should have power in all the world: I should have power to teach them what they ought to do, and they would be obliged to hear me.''∑∏

By the fall of 1729 Jonathan was already winning the approval of his Northampton parishioners. Timothy Edwards proudly reported to his daughter Anne that Benjamin Pierpont had told him ''that the people of Northampton seem to have a great love and respect for him, and that they take great content in his ministry. They continue their usual kindness to him, and have built him a good large barn and almost ﬁnished it, since he hath been laid aside by his weakness from his work.''∑π The people of Northampton, despite their divisions, could also show the communal spirit that one might hope for in a religiously oriented interdependent farming community.∑∫ Respecting their young pastor and wishing the best for him and his young family in time of need, they could put on their best face in a barn-raising.

C H A P T E R ∫ kl

And on a Wider Stage

dwards usually rose at four or ﬁve in the morning in order to spend thirteen hours in his study. In his only diary entry during his early years in Northampton he wrote, in January 1728, ''I think Christ has recommended rising early in the morning, by his rising from the grave very early.'' The discipline was part of a constant, heroic e√ort to make his life a type of Christ. He began the day with private prayers followed by family prayers, by candlelight in winter. Each meal was accompanied by household devotions, and at the end of each day Sarah joined him in his study for prayers. Jonathan kept secret the rest of his daily devotional routine, following Jesus' command to pray in secret. Throughout the day, his goal was to remain constantly with a sense of living in the presence of God, as di≈cult as that might be. Often he added secret days of fasting and additional prayers.∞

His work was also a service to God in the many hours each day he devoted to study. As Daniel Walker Howe has observed, if one is looking for the prototype of the work ethic in colonial America, it would be better to look to Edwards than Benjamin Franklin.≤ As Edwards saw it, the discipline of work was part of his worship of God, an o√ering of his time to God. Moreover, huge amounts work were directed toward knowing the ways of God. In addition to carefully crafting lengthy sermons each week, he was deeply engaged in biblical study, a daily activity that produced several major notebooks ﬁlled with his tiny writing. One of these, his ''Notes on Scripture,'' was essentially a commentary. Another was a ''Blank Bible'' of more than nine hundred pages interleaved with pages of Scripture. His brother-in-law Benjamin Pierpont, who stayed in the Northampton parsonage during parts of 1730, had given it to him, and Edwards used it to develop a ready compendium for his reﬂections on biblical texts.≥ He also continued his ''Notes on the

∞≥∂ And on a Wider Stage

Apocalypse,'' which combined interpretations of biblical prophecies with close reading of current events for clues to how the prophecies were being fulﬁlled.

Edwards was also driven by ambition to serve the coming of God's kingdom in some great way not just in Northampton but throughout the world. He was planning a massive masterwork that would both establish his reputation and strike a blow for Protestant-biblical truth versus its recent detractors. In 1729 or 1730 he drew up a new outline of his ambitious treatise: ''A Rational Account of the Main Doctrines of the Christian Religion Attempted.'' What he sketched out was closer to a systematic theology than most of his plans. It would start with the being, nature, and excellency of the triune God, considering these in relation to the end of creation and the work of redemption. Yet the great work, which he was constantly expanding in his ''Miscellanies,'' would be much more than another systematic theology. It would expound his distinctive philosophical theology of God's dynamic relationship to all created being. It would challenge claims of eighteenth-century philosophers that ''natural notions'' of God, justice, good, evil, and so on were adequate without biblical revelation. It would be comprehensive. In a note for a ''preface,'' he wrote: ''To shew how all arts and sciences, the more they are perfected, the more they issue in divinity, and coincide with it, and appear to be parts of it. And to shew how absurd for Christians to write treatises of ethics distinctly from divinity as revealed in the Gospel.''∂

Such a monumental project, which included not only all of theology but also attention to the arts and sciences and to basic issues in philosophy and ethics, required that Edwards keep up with all the latest authors. This was not easy in an inland town of a province far from the world's intellectual centers, and he kept long lists of books to be searched for and read. Always interested in prophecy and current events, as well as information about publications, he eagerly awaited those who made trips to Boston and could bring back recent periodicals and newspapers. Beginning in 1731, Edwards organized and kept in his home a library for the clergy of the Hampshire Association. The association also served as a sort of debating society where, at each of the twicea-year meetings, the clergy honed their disputational skills by debating a difﬁcult topic in theology, biblical interpretation, church order, and discipline.∑

Thirteen hours a day was hardly enough for work on all these fronts and pastoring a large congregation. To ease the latter burden, Edwards decided early on that he should serve God ﬁrst with his best gifts. Accordingly, except in cases of sicknesses and emergencies, he declined to make pastoral calls on

And on a Wider Stage ∞≥∑

his parishioners as was usually expected of New England clergy. He was not good at small talk, often not of a sociable frame of mind, and such routine calls sapped his meager energies and were too time-consuming. If parishioners had special needs, he welcomed counseling them on spiritual things in his study. He also encouraged neighbors or young people to meet for private religious exercises and would preach to such groups. Normally, however, he believed he could best exercise his extraordinary intellectual gifts as well as best serve his parishioners by staying in his study during the day.∏ Early in 1734, in his ﬁrst diary entry in six years, he observed: ''I judge that it is best, when I am in a good frame for divine contemplation, or engaged in reading the Scriptures, or any study of divine subjects, that ordinarily, I will not be interrupted by going to dinner, but will forego my dinner, rather than be broke o√.''π

In order to work every possible minute, it was essential that he not be unduly distracted. He turned over the management of the house and oversight of the husbandry to Sarah, who must have been working at least as many hours per day as Jonathan. Through the 1730s she was pregnant with great regularity every two years, so that by the end of the decade they had seven children, six girls and a boy. We have little record of how Sarah managed through these years, although she had help from servants, or at least from an African woman slave.∫ White servants or hired laborers may have aided in the farming since the Edwardses had both a large garden plot and the use of some ﬁelds outside the village. We are told that Jonathan, unlike his father, paid little attention to daily chores. Samuel Hopkins, his admiring protégé, from whom we learn most of the details of his routine of some years later, remarked, ''He was less acquainted with most of his temporal a√airs than many of his neighbors; and seldom knew when and by whom his forage for winter was gathered in, or how many milk kine he had; whence his table was furnished, etc.''Ω

To preserve his always precarious health, Edwards engaged in recreation necessary to continue his work. In winter he usually chopped wood moderately for a half an hour or more. When the weather permitted, in the afternoons after dinner he would ride two or three miles to a secluded place where he would walk for a while. He had great love of natural beauty and enjoyed the blue mountains that graced the horizon of the river valley, and he loved the views he could gain by climbing the surrounding hills.∞≠ His walks were in part for contemplation, prayer, and spiritual communion, but so that no time would be wasted, he also carried with him pen and ink to write down his

∞≥∏ And on a Wider Stage

thoughts along the way. For longer horseback rides, he used a memory device. For each insight he wished to remember, he would pin a small piece of paper on a particular part of his clothes, which he would associate with the thought. When he returned home he would unpin these and write down each idea. At the ends of trips of several days, his clothes might be covered with quite a few of these slips of paper.∞∞ Fashionable appearance apparently was not a high priority.

''Roses Grow upon Briers''

Riding through the countryside, Edwards was always alert to ''Shadows of Divine Things,'' as he called a recently developed notebook. What he perceived was not sentimentally sweet. Rather, he saw all created reality as bittersweet contrasts, dazzling beauty set against appalling horrors, ephemeral glories pointing to divine perfections. His ﬁrst entry, characteristically, was on death, that ''being eaten with worms (Is. 66:24) is an image of the misery of hell.''∞≤ He loved ﬂowers, but the lesson of ﬂowers was one of great beauty that soon died. His enthusiasm for the ﬂowers of spring, for instance, is indicated inside the back cover of his account book, where he began noting the dates in the spring when their cherry, peach, plum, and apple trees would ﬁrst bloom. Yet in his contemplations he was not carried away by the romance of physical beauty. There was a more profound lesson: ''That of so vast and innumerable a multitude of blossoms that appear on a tree, so few come to ripe fruit; . . . seem to be lively types: how few are saved out of the mass of mankind, and particularly how few are sincere, of professing Christians, that never wither away but endure to the end, and how, of the many that are called, few are chosen.''∞≥

This bittersweet view of reality, made up of the sharpest contrasts, permeated his view of history as well as individual experience. '' 'Tis God's manner to make men sensible of their misery and unworthiness before he appears in his mercy and love to them.'' So Edwards explained to his congregation in the fall of 1730 in a long, carefully designed sermon-exposition, preached over four services. Throughout history, God repeatedly allowed his people to fall into despair as a means to a most wonderful redemption. They fell into slavery in Egypt and misery in the wilderness, their judges and kings failed to bring righteousness or preserve peace, they were taken into the Babylonian captivity, and so forth—all to show them their need for utter dependence on God. ''Even the man Christ Jesus was ﬁrst made sensible of the wrath of

And on a Wider Stage ∞≥π

God before his exaltation to that transcendent height of enjoyment of the Father's love.''∞∂

At the core of Edwards' outlook is a rigorously unsentimental view of love. This attitude is especially di≈cult to appreciate for those whose sensibilities have been shaped by the sentimentality of the succeeding eras. Edwards starts with the premise that the trinitarian God is essentially loving and creates the universe in order to share that love with others. Yet God permits real and terrible evil in that universe; it is in a state of war because of Satan's rebellion against God. Those on the side of evil in this warfare hate true love and what is ultimately good. So, whatever one's sentiments about such persons, one must view them as those whose commitment to evil is destroying themselves and others. Evil is real and pernicious, and justice demands that God should punish those who promote it.

This outlook may seem alien given the sentimental views of human relationships in our era, but it is helpful to our understanding of them to be reminded that Edwards' universe was similar to that of many of our own moral tales, from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings to countless lesser entertainments.∞∑ Edwards' essential outlook was of a piece with perennial human narratives that have explained reality as a struggle between light and darkness, in which the light will eventually triumph and vindicate justice. The astonishing feature of the Christian account, as Edwards emphasized, was that the triune God was not only the great opponent of evil but had also in the incarnate Christ su√ered God's own wrath in order to o√er redemption.

For the Christian who was to be united with Christ, life remained a struggle of the deepest contrasts. Edwards resolved the highs and lows of his own spiritual experiences into the lessons of this tough-minded theological heritage that did not ﬂinch at the discomforts of a lifetime of struggles, even for the regenerate. As he expressed it in one of the most revealing early entries in his ''Shadows of Divine Things'' notebook: ''Roses grow upon briers, which is to signify that all temporal sweets are mixed with bitter. But what seems more especially to be meant by it, is that true happiness, the crown of glory, is to be come at in no other way than by bearing Christ's cross by a life of mortiﬁcation, self-denial and labor, and bearing all things for Christ.''∞∏

The Arminian Threat

All of life, then, was spiritual warfare. Although Edwards was ﬁghting battles on many fronts, he believed his greatest contribution could be in intellectual

∞≥∫ And on a Wider Stage

combat. Among the enemies—such as Roman Catholicism, latitudinarianism, Deism—none was more important than Calvinism's subtly subversive o√spring, Arminianism. For Edwards and his ministerial friends, ''Arminianism'' usually referred both to the speciﬁc anti-Calvinist teachings attributed to Arminius and to broader trends to a≈rm the ability of humans to contribute to their own salvation. Calvinists believed that such doctrines led to ''works righteousness'' and to a loss of a sense of absolute dependence on God. Paradoxical as it might seem, they were convinced that only when one recognized that all one's e√orts were worthless could one exert the e√ort appropriate to the demands of God's holiness. Few Christians have emphasized the law more than did these champions of grace. The law showed the unregenerate their true state and was the delight of the converted, driving them toward a holiness they would never perfectly obtain in this life. If Calvinist orthodoxy collapsed in New England, they were convinced, so would vital piety and so would strict morality. Mere moralism would never do because it depended on ﬂawed human e√orts rather than on God. In short, the future of their civilization and the light it might provide for the world depended on maintaining the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Promoting good works depended on undermining belief in their e≈cacy.

One had only to look to the English homeland, riddled with fashionable heresy and lax morals. This was nothing new. From the beginning of New World settlements, New Englanders had deﬁned themselves against Anglicanism, Arminianism, and moral laxity. Since the Restoration of 1660, at least, English elite culture was, as the heirs to Puritanism viewed it, driven by fashion and degeneracy. Fashion controlled not only styles and manners; it also shaped belief. Arminianism was a beguiling ﬁrst step. For well over a generation the most popular English preaching had been an attractive Christian moralism, which New Englanders saw as o√ering easy salvation and false security. Fashionable philosophy a≈rmed a natural moral sense as an innate basis for cultivating virtue.∞π To orthodox New Englanders, the permissiveness of their homeland and the decline of vital religion were evidences of the folly of urging people to overcome their moral weaknesses by voluntarily exercising resources native to human nature.

Modern intellectual fashion was almost everywhere rising up to challenge inherited authority, presenting an even larger issue. Inspired by the scientiﬁc revolution, advanced thinkers increasingly acted as though the newest idea were the most likely to be true. In 1704 Jonathan Swift, an Irish Anglican cleric, in the Battle of the Books could still celebrate the ancient champions in

And on a Wider Stage ∞≥Ω

his mock epic battle of library volumes, but the very idea that the recent upstarts might take the ﬁeld against such long-proven authorities signaled a new era. Though the Anglican Church was still bound by law to the authority of the orthodox Thirty-Nine Articles, enforcement of the standards was inconsistent and leading Anglican clergy pushed the boundaries, especially in antitrinitarian teachings.∞∫ Even in the formerly Puritan nonconformist denominations, Arminianism and Arianism were growing at remarkable rates at the same time these English dissenters were losing ground relative to the population.∞Ω

In the face of the onslaught of modern fashion, New England orthodoxy could look hopelessly quaint. That Deism and antitrinitarianism should be beyond the New England pale was understandable, but to be still ﬁghting against ''Arminianism'' in this age of high moral ideals could be seen as pitifully provincial. True, Calvinism remained an international movement to be reckoned with, and in some other provincial strongholds, such as parts of Presbyterian Scotland and Scots-Irish Ulster, it could hold to a strict confessionalist line. Yet in more cosmopolitan centers, such as the enlightened cities of Scotland or among London dissenters, inroads of modern thought had forced tolerance.

In New England the contest between modern fashion and Puritan authority was often literally a battle of the books. Harvard and Yale had both been committed to the principle of theological inoculation, exposing their students to modern authors, but in safe doses and in a controlled environment. When the infection spread, as it had most notoriously in the Anglican apostasy at Yale, one of the ﬁrst responses was to blame the books. After that defection Jeremiah Dummer, who had secured the original Yale gift for the library, had to assure that in addition to Anglican authors, no ''eminent dissenter'' had been omitted from the collection.≤≠ When in 1732, Anglican cleric George Berkeley, the philosopher, then residing in Rhode Island, secured another large gift, including more books for the college, some of the orthodox Calvinists suspected it was Anglican plot. The idea was not entirely fanciful. Yale defector Samuel Johnson encouraged Berkeley to think the school might become Anglican.≤∞

In Boston the once controversial Benjamin Colman, pastor of Brattle Street Church since 1699, was among the chief guardians of Yale's orthodoxy. Like many who argued for tolerance on matters indi√erent, Colman was alarmed when such tolerance was extended toward what he considered the heart of the matter. Such developments all too readily could be misconstrued

∞∂≠ And on a Wider Stage

to conﬁrm predictions of critics who claimed that moderation was the ﬁrst step down a slippery slope to heterodoxy. During the Anglican crisis, he had been among those criticizing Dummer for overloading the collection of books with Anglican and Arminian authors.≤≤ When he got wind of the Berkeley donation he wrote to Rector Elisha Williams inquiring whether the gift came with strings attached. Williams assured him that it had not been ''clogged in the manner you hint.''≤≥ Not entirely satisﬁed, Colman wrote to another Yale trustee, Eliphalet Adams, about the same concerns, urging that Adams ''freely write'' about his investigations into the rumored ''prevalence of Arminianism in the college.''≤∂

Colman's alarm is especially revealing about the signiﬁcance of Arminianism for the Massachusetts establishment in the early 1730s. Colman, an innovative upstart in his youth, was by now Boston's leading clergyman. Cotton Mather had died in 1728. Early in the century the Mathers had bitterly opposed Colman and Brattle Street, but they had long since been reconciled, and by the 1720s Colman and Cotton Mather presented a united front on almost everything, including questions of Calvinist orthodoxy.

In 1726 Mather had boasted that ''every one knows'' that the churches of New England ''perfectly adhere to the confession of faith, published by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster.'' He reassured his readers, ''I cannot learn that among all the pastors of two hundred churches, there is one Arminian: much less an Arian, or a Gentilist.''≤∑ Mather exaggerated, although he was technically correct. No congregationalist pastor would publicly deny Westminster or take an open stance for Arminianism, but everyone also knew that for decades some Harvard students toyed with Arminian notions and that a few of the more liberal clergy were rumored to be tainted with Arminian and rationalist tendencies. Increasingly the guardians of the New England establishment were using ''Calvinistic'' or ''Calvinistical'' as shorthand for ''non-Arminian.''≤∏

In this setting (though a year before the Berkeley gift) Jonathan Edwards made his Boston debut, delivering the public lecture on Thursday, July 8, 1731, the week of the Harvard commencement, when Boston was ﬁlled with clergy. Those who designed the occasion were well aware of the symbolic signiﬁcance of inviting not only Stoddard's young successor but also a thoroughly orthodox Yale man to address an audience overwhelmingly of Harvard graduates.≤π

Edwards did not disappoint. In ''God Gloriﬁed in Man's Dependence,'' he once again took on directly the Arminian threat. Nothing he said was new. Indeed, on such a ceremonial occasion nothing new was expected any more

And on a Wider Stage ∞∂∞

than it would be in a later Fourth of July speech. Yet Edwards said it well. With his usual thoroughness he fashioned his sermonic architecture. At the foundations of his ediﬁce he systematically closed every seam that might allow people to gain a glimmer of a supposition that their salvation was partly their own doing. So he forced them to look toward the dome around which he crafted windows that framed the light of God's ways.

Humans had a greater dependence on God, he pointed out, because of their fall into sin. ''We are more apparently dependent on God for happiness, being ﬁrst miserable, and afterwards happy.'' ''Schemes of divinity'' that in any way questioned ''an absolute and universal dependence on God, derogate his glory, and thwart the design of our redemption.'' They ''own an entire dependence on God for some things, but not for others.'' Thus they rob the Gospel of ''that which God accounts its lustre and glory.'' Faith itself includes ''a sensibleness and an acknowledgement of absolute dependence on God.'' Far from being a human work, it ''abases men, and exalts God.'' So the redeemed have no room for pride. ''Is any man eminent in holiness,'' he concluded to his eminent audience, ''let him take nothing of the glory of it to himself, but ascribe it to him whose 'workmanship we are, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.' ''≤∫

Pleased to be so well reminded of their unworthiness, the powerful Boston clergy saw that the sermon was quickly published. In the ''Advertisement,'' or foreword to the publication, Thomas Prince and William Cooper reiterated the point that ''vital piety will proportionably languish'' if people lose their sense of total dependence on God. Such had been the doctrines that ﬂourished ''in the days of our forefathers,'' and they hoped they ''will never grow unfashionable among us.'' They were delighted that God was raising up ''among the children of his people'' those who ''have still a high value for such principles.'' And particularly they hoped that ''the college in the neighboring colony (as well as our own) may be a fruitful mother of many such sons as the author.''≤Ω

The International Cause

The Boston sermon marked a turning point in Edwards' career. Aside from providing his ﬁrst publication (his sponsors claimed, conventionally, ''it was with no small di≈culty that the author's youth and modesty were prevailed on''), it placed the twenty-seven-year-old within the international network promoting evangelical renewal. His sponsors had an interest in maintaining

∞∂≤ And on a Wider Stage

Calvinist orthodoxy, but defense of the Reformed faith was inextricably linked for them, as it was for him, to a larger concern. Their great practical hope lay in the growing transatlantic movement to promote heartfelt piety. Inspired by a progressive historical vision, they aspired to be used by God to help usher in his kingdom through a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the salvation of countless souls. Although they were looking back with loyalty to their Puritan heritage, they were also looking forward as part of an emerging spiritual movement that we now know as ''evangelicalism.''≥≠

Thomas Prince, the elder of Edwards' immediate sponsors, was one of Boston's leaders in building an international network of Calvinist evangelicals. A 1707 Harvard graduate, he spent most of his time from 1709 to 1717 in England. There he temporarily ﬁlled various pulpits and established evangelical contacts. Upon his return he was soon settled at the prestigious Old South Church as a colleague of his classmate Joseph Sewall, son of Judge Samuel Sewall. That put him near the center of what might be called the Boston evangelical network that included the Sewalls, the Mathers, and Solomon Stoddard when he visited his hometown. Prince hoped to move even closer to the inner circle when he asked for the hand of Judge Sewall's daughter, Judith. Judith turned him down and Prince married another. Soon after, Judith married Prince's friend William Cooper.≥∞

William Cooper and Thomas Prince had similar tastes in religion as well as in women and remained friends and close allies in the evangelical cause. Cooper (Harvard 1712), a gifted preacher, had accepted a call in 1715 to be Benjamin Colman's colleague at Brattle Street Church. During the next decade and a half, Colman, Cooper, Prince, the Sewalls, and Cotton Mather (until his death) were at the center of a campaign for a revival of vital Calvinist piety. In 1730 Colman became the colonial correspondent for the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge, which supported Indian missions. In 1731 William Cooper established a correspondence with John Maclaurin of Glasgow, a Scottish Calvinist champion of religion of the heart.≥≤ When Jonathan Edwards visited Boston in 1731, he was incorporated into this internationally oriented circle into which he so naturally ﬁt, both by birth and by disposition.

A shared emphasis on the a√ections helped unite these sometimes disparate allies. In contrast to some other Boston clergy who were more rationalistic (Charles Chauncy is the best known), Colman and his party shaped their Calvinism more by the strands of modern thought growing out of Henry More and the Cambridge Platonists, stressing the beauty of God's creation

And on a Wider Stage ∞∂≥

and redemption and the role of beauty in rousing the a√ections. Edwards already belonged to this school of thought. He was also a reader and admirer of Colman's works, though he probably did not agree with the eminent Bostonian in every detail.≥≥

Among the most noticeable changes marking the sometimes subtle transformation from Puritanism to Calvinistic evangelicalism that this group was fostering was the reform of singing in worship. New England congregational singing had become chaotic and dissonant. Seventeenth-century Puritans had strictly followed the anti-Anglican principle that nothing should be part of public worship except what was commanded in Scripture. Like others of the Reformed, they would sing only literally translated biblical psalms. Although many Puritans owned musical instruments, they would not think of using them in the meetinghouse. As though to underscore the point that music was incidental to words, they published the metric psalms without musical notes. Congregations sang to any one of a number of familiar psalm tunes. A precentor, or leading singer, would ''set the tune'' by singing at least the ﬁrst line, and the congregation would then join in. Over the years the collective memory of the tunes evolved or devolved. Further, members of the congregation sang variations on the original notes as it pleased them. Whereas today this might be regarded as a wonderful folk tradition, by the early eighteenth century the near chaos seemed appalling to those attuned to the reﬁned musical standards of the day.

Judge Samuel Sewall was the precentor at Old South Church from 1694 to 1718. In 1713 he reported in his diary that he started the psalm tune ''Windsor'' in a key much too high and ended up unintentionally moving into the tune ''High Dutch.'' Twice in 1718, not long before giving up the job, he reported that he was unable to keep the ''gallery'' from forcing their way ''irresistibly'' into ''St. David's'' despite his setting the tune of ''York.''≥∂ One early proponent of reform wrote in 1721 that ''the tunes are now miserably tortured and twisted and quavered . . . it sounds in the ear of a good judge like ﬁve hundred di√erent tunes roared out at the same time with perpetual interferings with one another.'' The irreverent James Franklin satirized in the New England Courant that he was ''credibly informed that a certain gentlewoman miscarried at the ungrateful and yelling noise of a deacon'' whom he suggested might be employed as a ''procurer of abortions.''≥∑

In the meantime, English dissenters had been reforming sacred singing for nearly a generation. The leading ﬁgure was Isaac Watts, a Calvinist clergyman. Watts argued that it was not necessary to use exact biblical words,

∞∂∂ And on a Wider Stage

only that hymns and spiritual songs be based on Scriptural themes. On this principle he wrote hymns for private devotional use, publishing them as Hymns and Spiritual Songs in 1707. These included, ''When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,'' ''Alas and Did My Savior Bleed,'' and ''Jesus Shall Reign Where'er the Sun.'' In 1719 he added what became very popular paraphrases of the psalms. By the time Edwards was a young man Watts' hymns were being used in New England for family devotions and neighborhood social meetings, and he certainly was familiar with Watts.≥∏ We might imagine, in light of his musical sensibilities, that the singing in his private meditations, or with Sarah, included such hymns.

At the same time that hymns were being introduced to New England, so was ''regular'' singing, or singing in parts. Music was not taught at seventeenth-century Harvard, and so musical literacy had been low. In 1713 the ﬁrst of a number of schools for music and dancing opened in Boston, primarily for women to learn genteel skills. Probably from around this time whatever ﬁnishing education Jonathan's sisters received in Boston included education in music, though not dancing.≥π

With enthusiasm for the symmetries of eighteenth-century harmonies sweeping sophisticated Boston, the town's clergy took the lead in calling for an end to the pandemonium of psalm singing at meeting. By 1722 Cotton Mather introduced the new singing into Sunday worship.≥∫ Soon the reform turned into the ''singing controversy.'' Throughout the 1720s New Englanders hotly debated the subject, and in many outlying areas the debate continued decades later. The Boston clergy used the power of the press, publishing numerous defenses of the superiority of ''regular'' singing and providing instruction on singing by note and in three-part harmony. Colman, the Mathers, Prince, Cooper, and Joseph Sewall all endorsed the new way. Opposition came principally from the laity who found the familiar individual expression of ''the old way'' more meaningful. They also had Puritan precedent on their side. Singing by rule seemed a step toward Anglican formalism leading to Popery.≥Ω

Those who promoted singing reform saw the aestheticism of the age as a way to promote vital piety. ''The singing of the sacred Psalms in the ﬂock,'' said Cotton Mather, ''may be made more beautiful, and especially have the beauties of holiness more upon it.''∂≠ Orderly harmonies were supremely rational, but like much else in true religion, rational harmonies pointed to God's beauty and were ultimately designed to move the a√ections.

And on a Wider Stage ∞∂∑

Although most laypeople, especially in rural communities, had their own ideas of beauty and resisted the innovations, clergy whose leadership was strong enough introduced the reform even in many such outlying towns. Not surprisingly, one of the ﬁrst to do so was Solomon Stoddard. By the time Jonathan settled in Northampton in 1726 at least some of the parishioners had learned singing in parts. Some churches hired ''singing masters'' to help acquaint their congregation with the new aesthetic forms.∂∞ Musical literacy was spreading so rapidly, at least in urban areas, that by 1729 one could hear public concerts in Boston.∂≤ By the time Jonathan visited there in 1731 he was already an enthusiast for the beauties of regular singing.

Isaac Watts was a central ﬁgure in the international network of Reformed clergy who shared concerns for heart-felt revival. Watts was, like Edwards, a sometimes sickly polymath who published widely in a number of ﬁelds. Watts was more a popularizer, however, producing texts summarizing the learning of the day on subjects from spelling to astronomy. His textbook on logic, for instance, became a standard at New England colleges for generations. Watts became a regular correspondent with Cotton Mather and other New England clergy. Those who had more recently spent time in England, such as Thomas Prince, knew him personally. As his fame rose, Watts became one of the chief patrons of the colonies. He and Benjamin Colman (who each had at one time been in love with the English poet Elizabeth Singer) corresponded regularly and served as each other's literary agents in their respective cities.∂≥

The Royal Governor and the Kingdom

Among Watts' circle of evangelical friends and correspondents was the new royal governor of Massachusetts, Jonathan Belcher. The son of a Boston merchant, Belcher had graduated from Harvard in 1699, frequently traveled to England, where he made important contacts, and become a leading ﬁgure in colonial politics. Usually a defender of royal prerogative but also deeply loyal to the cause of Reformed Christianity, he switched in 1728 to the more popular side in opposition to the new royal governor, William Burnet, an Anglican of ostentatious manners. In early 1729 Belcher traveled to England to oppose a permanent salary for the governor, which would have made the governor less dependent on the colonial assembly.

By this time Massachusetts was in bitter political turmoil. Power struggles, personal rivalries, unsettled imperial issues, and economic uncertainties

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

Governor Jonathan Belcher (1682–1757) had a vision for the advance of Christian civilization.

And on a Wider Stage ∞∂π

combined to create deep divisions between the popular ''country'' party and the more elite ''court'' faction. The arrival of Governor Burnet in 1728 brought the crisis to a head. The imperious governor and the country party, which controlled the lower house, were equally intransigent. Overheated political rhetoric on both sides raised a sense of alarm. Burnet threatened to have the colony's charter revoked, a possibility that sparked spasms of anxiety among both the religious establishment and the popular country party. The country party was also jealous to guard the Assembly's power to issue ''bills of credit,'' essential for keeping money available for investments in land for the less wealthy. Then suddenly, in September 1729, Burnet died. No one knew what might happen next, and the colony was thrown into a terrible state of uncertainty. By the spring, as Stephen Williams described it in his diary, the ''country'' was ''in an uproar.'' ''What the event of our struggles will be,'' Williams worried, ''God only knows.''∂∂

Jonathan Belcher's appointment as governor appeared to most of Massachusetts' establishment as a wonderful providence. His presence in England and some earlier contacts with the royal family put him in the right spot at the right time. In exchange for the appointment, he dropped his opposition to the permanent salary, a deal not di≈cult for him to accept now that he would be the beneﬁciary. Although Belcher's ability to play both sides in the political fray had and would cost him some friends, in the summer of 1730 he returned to Boston amid great celebrations. Some of his clerical associates were especially delighted. Benjamin Colman had been one of his earliest sponsors, and Thomas Prince was another friend. Isaac Watts sent an extravagant adulatory poem.∂∑

Belcher was an heir to the Puritans in the age of Walpole and hard-nosed politics. He had one foot ﬁrmly planted in each world.∂∏ In religious principles he stood solidly among the Calvinistic evangelicals. While he would defend the rights of Anglicans in the colony, attended Church of England services in England, and even would celebrate Christmas in Christ's Church, Boston, he would not let his daughter marry an Anglican and worried when his son attended Anglican services in England.∂π Though duly circumspect in his public religious pronouncements, in his private correspondence he freely expressed his pious religious sentiments and concern for ''vital piety.''∂∫ To Isaac Watts he acknowledged that ''the station God has set me in is surrounded with snares and di≈culties'' and requested that Watts ''Bow then your knees with mine to the fountain of grace and wisdom, that I may so conduct my administration as most of all to advance the glory of God with

∞∂∫ And on a Wider Stage

the weal and happiness of his people.''∂Ω Belcher took to heart a favorite Puritan image, often applied to him, as a Nehemiah, raised up by God for the restoration of his people.∑≠

The people were not so sure that Belcher was the next Nehemiah, especially when they soon found out that he had attained the governorship at the price of defending royal prerogatives. Once again Massachusetts politics fell into a turmoil as the Assembly became bitterly divided. The court party, cultivated by his patronage, supported Belcher, while the country party blocked his initiatives and called for his removal.

Colonel John Stoddard was one of Belcher's closest allies. They had known each other since Harvard days and shared the same combination of Calvinistic principles and shrewd, mostly conservative, political instincts. Belcher valued Stoddard and the votes the ''Squire of Hampshire County'' could bring from the west and rewarded him appropriately with various appointments to the local judiciary. Stoddard in any case would have supported Belcher's largely unsuccessful e√orts to promote legislation for the suppression of ''vice and wickedness,'' such as ''gaming and excessive drinking,'' which they saw as undermining the morals of the commonwealth.∑∞

Belcher also valued the westerner's knowledge of Indian a√airs. In 1734 the governor and the colonel traveled together to interview the tribes on the western frontier and not long afterward cooperated in a plan for an Indian mission.∑≤

The contentions in Massachusetts politics had their counterpart in the long-standing factious and often petty political rivalries in Northampton. Belcher's appointment must have strengthened the Stoddard-Edwards commitment to the court party. He was one of their own, a friend both of the landed elite and of true religion.

Edwards was a champion of prerogative and deference. His o≈ce, his ''river-gods'' clan, his theology, and his disposition all pointed in that direction. Time and again in his sermons of this period he warned against the sin of envy. No one in Northampton could miss the political overtones of ''envy'' as Edwards used it. It was a trait of those who agitated against their betters. Did they, he asked, really have the welfare of the country in mind, or their own advancement? In a communion sermon on this theme, he deplored the party spirit of Northampton, contrasted it with the spirit of Christian love symbolized by the sacrament, and urged agitators that they had better worry about their salvation.∑≥ In another political sermon he deplored the terribly ''unsettled'' state of public a√airs and declared that ''the very excellency of a

And on a Wider Stage ∞∂Ω

public state is its stability.'' ''Old and experienced rulers,'' he said, in a not-soveiled reference to persons like Squire John Stoddard, were much to be preferred to new and inexperienced ones. '' 'Tis no part of public prudence,'' he declared, ''to be often changing the persons in whose hands is the administration of government.'' Viewing the issue in ﬁrmly paternalistic terms, he argued that such political ﬁckleness was as ruinous as it would be to be changing heads of families every few years.∑∂

When Colonel Stoddard's nephew preached to the Boston establishment in the still unstable days of 1731, Governor Belcher must have warmly welcomed the young man. The two moved in the same elite circles. Edwards, in turn, would have been pleased by the international connections that this o≈cial visit to Boston a√orded. Building connections with internationally connected clergy, like Prince, Cooper, and Colman, exactly suited his ambitions to bring God's truth to all the world. That the governor of the colony was sympathetic to the same causes was also important to the aspirations of these clerical leaders. Though committed ﬁrst to the revival of vital piety, they took for granted that God worked also through political means. England under the Hanoverian kings since 1714 and after the defeat of the Stuart Pretender in 1715 was ﬁrmly committed to the Protestant cause. Yet the Protestant cause in England itself clearly needed renewal. The New England colonies represented one of the best hopes for building a spiritual-political base that might provide at least a model, perhaps even a staging center, for the coming revival. Despite cultural and political tides that might have seemed to be running against such ambitions, they were conﬁdent of the outcome, since this was God's work. They could well join in the sentiments of Isaac Watts' paraphrase of Psalm 72:

Jesus shall reign where-'er the sun, Does his successive journeys run. His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, Till moons shall wax and wane no more.∑∑

C H A P T E R Ω kl The Mighty Works of God and of Satan

n mid-1731, around the time he was preparing for his sermon in Boston, Edwards began to notice some winds of change in Northampton, winds that would eventually blow into an amazing awakening. That spiritual nor'easter would alter the course of his career. His ambition had long been to do great things for God as an internationally recognized writer. Preaching a public lecture sermon that would be published in the provincial capital was a small step in that direction. Yet Edwards was already deeply involved as pastor of one of the largest churches in western Massachusetts. His work and the remarkable developments there would take precedence over everything else.

It all began with the young people. Their disrespect for authority, which had grown during Solomon Stoddard's last years, reached a peak just after his death. Yet as Edwards gained standing in his own right, his railings against their loose behavior, combined with his evident compassion for their souls, began to have some e√ect. ''In two or three years after Mr. Stoddard's death,'' as he recounted it, ''there began to be a sensible amendment of these evils; the young people shewed more of a disposition to hearken to counsel, and by degrees left o√ their frolicking, and grew observably more decent in their attendance on the public worship, and there were more that manifested a religious concern than there used to be.''∞

The social conditions for young people in western New England had become trying. Families were large, ﬁve to nine children on average.≤ During the seventeenth century the town of Northampton had distributed open land to sons as they came of age. That practice, plus scattering tracts and maintaining meadows for common cultivation, had provided a strong economic base for the communalism integral to the Puritan cultural ideal. But after 1705,

Mighty Works of God and of Satan ∞∑∞

there was no more land available in the township except some distributed in 1730 to encourage a new settlement at Southampton, about eight miles away. With the ever-present threat of renewed Indian hostilities, homesteading had to be a communal activity, and even then it was precarious. In Northampton, farmers were consolidating land holdings, and the gap between the well-todo landowners and the less prosperous was growing, contributing to longstanding political antagonisms. With no new land available, young people were living with their parents. While that did not necessarily cause economic deprivation—farms might prosper from having extra family laborers—it did change social patterns. Young people were postponing marriage about three years longer than had their parents, so that the average age of marriage was about twenty-eight or twenty-nine for men and twenty-ﬁve for women.

Young people from their mid-teens until their late twenties were likely to be in this in-between situation. They lived in villages with communal structures, but they were not as likely to be participating responsibly in the community as their grandparents had at the same age. Nor did they have many opportunities to strike o√ on their own, as entrepreneur farmers, as later generations would. A capitalist economy was beginning to replace the communal one, but this is a lot clearer in retrospect than it was for the people living at the time when the relation of individuals to the community was far from settled. The practical e√ect was that increasing numbers of young people were living with their parents well into their twenties. As Edwards' sermons against frolicking made clear, unmarried sons and daughters were under the authority of their parents, but—not surprisingly—parental rule was hardly working as he would have liked. For many young people, the o≈cial expectation that they postpone all sexual activity until marriage and the disparity between that standard and their actual practices helped create a sense of guilt.≥

While the pressures of this ill-deﬁned stage of life were major contributors to youthful unrest and eventual openness to religious alternatives, the social tensions that fostered the awakening were probably no more severe than in other eras. The peaceful 1730s had no more tensions than the 1720s or many other decades. Northampton had seen impressive revivals under Stoddard at times when new land was readily available and marriage did not need to be long postponed. In other parts of the European world, many communities had revivals under a variety of conditions, so one cannot generalize concerning external causes. Nonetheless, the revivals in western New England were among the most intense, and the particular social conditions of the

∞∑≤ Mighty Works of God and of Satan

1730s were the occasion for that intensity. Often relatively peaceful times are ﬁlled with anxieties as people have time to reﬂect on a seemingly lost past when meaning was supposedly plainer and more intense in contrast to an uncertain future.

Had some of the speciﬁc social contributors to the awakening been pointed out to Edwards, such as the extension of unmarried dependence for many of the young, he would have acknowledged them without placing any strain on his theological explanation of the awakening. God always worked through means. Whether he sent an earthquake or a shortage of available land, God was still acting to remind humans of their spiritual needs. Through such forces God provided the soil for revival. God, through the Holy Spirit, also provided the means of grace, such as preaching the Word and the ordinances of the church, as means of tending the spiritual vineyard, as one biblical image put it.

Even though by 1731 Edwards could sense that the spiritual orchard he was tending might be regaining its vitality, it took nearly three more years of patient pruning and cultivation before it burst into bloom. During these years not only did the mood of the young people gradually change, but their elders showed signs of abandoning the town's notorious ''party spirit.'' Still, as late as March of 1734, Edwards was warning in a sermon on Isaiah 5:4 that God would trample under foot a vineyard that brought forth wild fruit, despite all his loving cultivation.∂

About this same time Edwards was attempting to deploy the town's communal and paternal traditions in hopes of striking a decisive blow against the custom he found most incompatible with its spiritual heritage. Although the young people had moderated their frolicking and become more attentive at worship services, it ''had been their manner of a long time, and for aught I know, always, to make Sabbath-day nights and lecture days to be especially times of diversion and company-keeping.'' During the winter of 1733–34, sensing perhaps that he might win this battle, he preached once again against ''company-keeping'' and urged parents to bring it to an end. The next evening he gathered at his house ''men that belonged to the several parts of the town.'' He persuaded them to organize in their several neighborhoods ''meetings with heads of households'' called in the name of the pastor. The town, as he saw it, was essentially an extended family or clan. Or, more precisely, he viewed it as like a tribe of Israel, with himself as the spiritual and moral authority. Through the town elders, who would work through heads of households, he could extend his moral authority over the entire community.

Mighty Works of God and of Satan ∞∑≥

The e√ort worked wonderfully. Persuasion had softened hearts that coercion alone would have only hardened. According to Edwards' account, not only did the heads of households readily cooperate, but astonishingly, the parents discovered that ''the young people declared themselves convinced by what they had heard, and willing of themselves to comply.''∑

Then the ﬁrst ﬂame of revival appeared in the tiny hamlet of Pascommuck, about three miles from the main part of Northampton but part of Edwards' congregational domain. The several families of Pascommuck were swept by ''a remarkable religious concern,'' and ''a number of persons seemed to be savingly wrought upon.'' In April 1734 came a dramatic turning point. ''There happened,'' Edwards reported, ''a very sudden and awful death of a young man in the bloom of his youth; who being violently seized with a pleurisy and taken immediately very delirious, died in about two days; which (together with what was preached publicly on that occasion) much a√ected many young people.''∏

Edwards' whole life had prepared him to seize this moment. Having been twice on the verge of death, he had spent much of his own youth reﬂecting on the folly of loving earthly pleasure when on the brink of eternity. He preached to the stricken mourners on Psalm 90:5–6: ''In the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it ﬂourisheth and groweth up. In the evening it is cut down and withereth.'' His poignant sermon, elaborating this image, brought many friends of the dead young man to tears.

Everyone in the congregation, Edwards pointed out, could vividly recall from walking in their own ﬁelds the experience depicted by the psalmist: ''If we walk out in the morning we may behold them green and gay appearing in lively and pleasant colours. Green grass interspersed with beautiful ﬂowers seeming to smile . . . to rejoice and sing and shout for joy. . . . But if we walk out again in the evening we may see the grass and ﬂowers that so pleasantly saluted our eyes in the morning all cut down, suddenly mown down and dead and withered, having lost its beautiful colour and cheerful lively aspect.''

Following the psalmist, Edwards portrayed the powerful spiritual meaning of this experience. Appreciating the beauties of youth, which he clearly loved as much as the ﬂowers, Edwards painted a picture of the handsome young man who has su√ered a horrible death: ''Or it may be he ﬂourishes in the bloom of youth. He is just come to mature age. His faculties have lately blossomed. . . . And he is in his full strength and all the powers of nature are most lively and active and the body is in its greatest beauty and comeliness.''

Reiterating the image, in his characteristic fugal development of every

∞∑∂ Mighty Works of God and of Satan

variation on a theme, he turned to the perceptions of the young man's friends: ''He ﬂourishes in the hopes and expectations of friends. . . . He is happy and cheerful, is encompassed about with smiles of nature and Providence. [He is] like the green grass and ﬂowers of a ﬁeld in the morning that are covered over with drops of dew and has the beams of sun of the morning pleasantly shining upon it and sends forth a fragrant smell as well as salutes the eyes with a gay and beautiful appearance.''

The fragility of such wonderful yet ﬂeeting beauty stood in moving contrast to the horrible distortions of death, which Edwards depicted just as vividly: ''While man is under the agonies of death and the conﬂict with the king of terrors, how are his features distorted: the eyes set and glaring in ghastly manner and the mouth gasping for breath. . . . How those countenances that were most beautiful and delighting to beholders while there was life and health become unpleasant and loathsome to the sight by death. Their beauty consumes away like a moth.''

Having so powerfully addressed the a√ections, Edwards turned to reason to warn the youth of Northampton of squandering their lives in pursuit of vanity. ''How unreasonable is it,'' he argued at length, ''for one who is so much like the grass and ﬂowers of the ﬁeld . . . to spend away the prime of his opportunity in levity and vain mirth in inconsideration and pursuit of carnal and sensual delights and pleasures.''

As he developed this point in this funeral sermon, he led his young listeners to feel the shock of their unreasonableness: ''Consider. If you should die in youth how shocking would the thought of your having spent your youth in such a manner be to them that see it. When others stand by your bedside and see you gasping and breathing your last or come afterward and see you laid out dead by the wall and see you put into the co≈n and behold the awful visage which death has given you, how shocking will it be to them to think this is the person that used to be so vain and frothy in conversation. This is he that was so lewd a companion. This is he that used to spend of his time in his leisure hours so much in frolicking.''

Edwards concluded by reiterating a central principle in his entire outlook, the same principle he had so often reminded himself of during his own youthful struggles. It was wildly unreasonable, he told the young people, to be misled by the beauties and pleasures of this earthly body when they could look forward to vastly greater pleasures in the world to come: ''If you have an interest in Christ your body shall ﬂourish again in a glorious manner. If you should die in the ﬂower of your days when the body is most active and

Mighty Works of God and of Satan ∞∑∑

beautiful it will rise again a thousand times more active and beautiful.'' Their happiness would be far greater than that of simply being fondly remembered for a time. Their glory would last.π

Having won a foothold among the young and believing that some of those so deeply a√ected by his sermon were savingly converted, Edwards pressed toward spreading heavenly concerns among them. Some weeks after the death of the young man, he met with the young people in a ''private meeting'' for them alone. Alluding to the conclusion of his earlier sermon, he preached on a text he knew they could relate to, Canticles (Song of Songs) 6:1, ''Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee.''

For Edwards, as in much of the Christian tradition, this love poetry was read as an image of the love between Christ and his church. Christ's ''glorious and lovely person'' was ''more excellent than all earthly things, better than all other beloveds.'' Trying to spread the excitement of the awakening, he urged the young people to experience how the love of Christ exceeded earthly loves. The delights of love in this world were designed to point to far higher raptures. Just as lovers spoke of their beloved to others, those already converted should be an encouragement to others to conversion. Today the young people were gathered as friends in one place, but unless those who were not converted followed the example of those who were, a great gulf would eventually be ﬁxed among them.∫

At nearly this same time the young people were stricken by the death of another of their number, this time a married young woman. At the outset of her illness she had been much distressed over the state of her soul but by the time of her death she ''seemed to have satisfying evidences of God's saving mercy . . . so that she died very full of comfort, in a most earnest and moving manner warning and counseling others.''Ω In June, perhaps for this occasion, Edwards composed another funeral sermon that contrasted to the doleful lamentation of April, this one extolling the joys and comforts one could take in the death of a saint.∞≠

By fall the awakening had spread and was transforming the youth culture of Northampton. The young people now seemed so compliant to Edwards' leadership and so eagerly seeking spiritual joys that he easily convinced them to begin meeting on Thursday evenings after lectures (previously a favorite time for frolicking) for ''social religion'' in smaller groups, meeting in homes in various parts of the town. Soon the adults adopted a similar plan. By the next spring various groups were voluntarily meeting on Sabbath evenings as

∞∑∏ Mighty Works of God and of Satan

well. In contrast to ordinary times when women were most active in religious a√airs, the young men now led in bringing almost all of their number to meetings for social religion and prayer.∞∞

By persuading the town to organize into smaller, private religious meetings, Edwards resuscitated one of the basic components of the Puritan movement. Such prayer meetings had been held in New England on lecture day evenings since the early English settlements, but they apparently had lost some of their vitality. In Elizabethan England when the original Puritans were frequently oppressed, the neighborhood conventicals were often the heart of the movement. Nothing was more distinctive about Puritanism than its encouragement of lay spirituality. Puritans promoted literacy for all because it was important for private, family, and neighborhood lay devotion. In the social meetings, neighbors prayed, studied together, taught and exhorted each other, and built each other up spiritually. Often women met separately, providing them opportunities outside their own homes for teaching and exercising other spiritual gifts.∞≤

The renewal of the lay conventicals tied the Northampton awakening not only to old Puritanism but also to the British and European pietist revivals of their day. Early eighteenth-century stirrings throughout the Protestant world were marked by renewals of lay prayer meetings. Evangelical clergy emphasized that regular prayer—personal, family, and social—was the key to any general awakening. Prayer manuals, such as Isaac Watts' popular Guide to Prayer (1715), sold briskly on both sides of the Atlantic.∞≥

Edwards promoted the new singing at the now-thriving social prayer meetings. His congregation had been learning regular or three-part singing for some time, and Edwards believed they ''excelled all that ever I knew in the external part of the duty before, generally carrying regularly and well three parts of music, and the women a part by themselves.''∞∂ In public worship, they still sang only the psalms. In private meetings they could sing and learn the hymns of Isaac Watts, which added to the joy of the occasions. Learning to sing, Edwards believed, was a spiritual duty. It was a biblically mandated way to encourage the faith of others and had a laudable e√ect in raising the a√ections, so essential to true spirituality.∞∑

Edwards took care to have published in 1734 one notable sermon of the previous year. Addressing his preface to the people of Northampton, he praised them for the ''happy union between us'' and for so many who unquestionably exhibited the fruits of the doctrines of which he spoke.∞∏ Yet as the revival grew he wanted them to reﬂect again on these crucial teachings, both

Mighty Works of God and of Satan ∞∑π

to strengthen their faith and to stir others to seek light from God. This sermon, A Divine and Supernatural Light, encapsulates better than any other single source the essence of his spiritual insight. In it he provided a sort of constitution for any true awakening.

More concisely than anywhere else, in A Divine and Supernatural Light he related his most profound theological reﬂections on his understanding of true Christian experience. God communicates to humans, he explained, in an immediate way that goes beyond anything that natural reason by itself can attain. What distinguishes saints from the unconverted is that the Holy Spirit dwells within converted persons and so gives them the power to apprehend the things of God. They have, in e√ect, a new spiritual sense. This new sense is not an ability to have visions, or to gain new information that goes beyond Scripture, or to experience intense religious emotions. Rather, it is the power necessary to appreciate the spiritual light that radiates from God, the power to hear the communication of God's love that pervades the universe. It is a power to appreciate beauty or excellency, speciﬁcally the beauty and excellency of Christ.

Such knowledge, Edwards spelled out to the Northamptonites, is qualitative and a√ective, not simply rational or theoretical. It is, in a familiar image, like the ''di√erence between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness.'' Or, more exactly, it is like ''the di√erence between believing a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty.'' The ''spiritually enlightened'' person does not ''merely rationally believe that God is glorious, but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart.''

In his ''improvement,'' or application of the sermon, Edwards emphasized the egalitarian implications. ''Persons of mean capacities and advantages'' can apprehend this spiritual light ''as well as those that are of the greatest parts and learning.'' If the Gospel ''depended only on history, and such reasonings as learned men only are capable of, it would be above the reach of far the greatest part of mankind.'' But people of ''an ordinary degree of knowledge, are capable, without a long and subtle train of reasoning, to see the divine excellency of the things of religion.'' When they do, they gain divine wisdom ''more excellent than all the knowledge of the greatest philosophers or statesmen.'' This ''sweet and joyful'' divine knowledge, goes far beyond the pleasures of human knowledge. It is a seeing of ''things that are immensely the most exquisitely beautiful.'' This overwhelming beauty ''reaches to the bottom of the heart, and changes its nature.'' It is the only

∞∑∫ Mighty Works of God and of Satan

power capable of producing the fruit of ''universal holiness of life,'' which is the primary evidence that conﬁrms true conversion and the ''intuitive and immediate evidence'' that one has encountered the beauty of the divine.∞π

By the time Edwards wrote the preface for the printed version, he could say there was no doubt that many of his Northampton parishioners ''clearly exempliﬁed'' the remarkable spiritual traits depicted in the sermon. In his view, what he was seeing was not just a fad of religious enthusiasm, not excited claims to faith without evidences of holiness, not shallow arousal of the a√ections that would not last, but lives that were being permanently changed. He wrote this as one who insisted on the most rigorous spiritual standards and who cultivated the suspicions of a cautious rational observer. Yet there seemed no mistaking it: the ﬁres of the Holy Spirit were sweeping through the hearts of many of the people, spreading from one to another.

His personal role was astonishing. The town seemed to be made over in his image, which was no small feat in light of his perfectionist standards and spiritual intensity. Somehow his combination of transparent spirituality and unrelenting crystal-clear logic was winning the hearts of the community. People identiﬁed with this demanding young preacher who set before them an exalted spiritual vision. Every day parishioners ﬁlled his home, waiting to see him for counseling. Callow youth and callous farmers were coming under the wonderful spell.

The emerging awakening also create tensions between the generations. One of the few accounts of the revival in Northampton coming from someone other than Edwards himself tells of a man who asked his son to go to the woods to replenish their dwindling supply of ﬁrewood. The son refused, an argument ensued, and ﬁnally the father, invoking his authority, ordered the young man to go. Instead, the son took his ax and went into the barn where he made such a ''hideous mourning and noise'' that it alarmed the neighbors. Finally, unable to calm him, they called Edwards, before whom the young man continued in his turmoil. Edwards, as the story went, asked the father to forgo his request since the son was under an extraordinary inﬂuence of the Spirit and ''was getting through,'' a phrase used for those seeking conversion. Opponents of the awakening who told such stories saw it as scandalously undermining proper authority and deference.∞∫

Toward the end of December the awakening took a dramatic upturn. A young woman, notorious as ''one of the greatest company-keepers in the whole town,'' came to him for counsel. Previously he had not heard that she had become ''in any wise serious,'' but as he listened to her story and carefully

Mighty Works of God and of Satan ∞∑Ω

questioned her she convinced him ''that what she gave an account of was a glorious work of God's inﬁnite power and sovereign grace.'' So unlikely a convert was this previously coarse-mouthed and ﬂirtatious young woman that Edwards feared the news of her supposed conversion would only raise skepticism. Just the opposite. ''The news of it seemed to be almost like a ﬂash of lightening, upon the hearts of young people all over the town, and upon many others.'' Within a few days four or ﬁve more showed up at his study, all showing the most convincing signs of having been savingly converted. God used the young woman's conversion, Edwards supposed, as ''the greatest occasion of awakening to others, of anything that ever came to pass in the town.'' The young woman now was speaking with all her friends, persons ''farthest from seriousness'' of the town, those who had previously hung out with her at the taverns or frolics. As the stream of converts broadened, people would tell him how this dramatic reformation woke them to their own spiritual needs.∞Ω

By March and April of 1735 the spiritual rains had turned the stream to a ﬂood. The awakening, though similar in kind to earlier revivals, went far beyond them in extent. Edwards, who had once resolved ''in narrations never to speak anything but the pure and simple verity'' and now feared that exaggeration could hurt his cause, reported that ''a great and earnest concern about the great things of religion and the eternal world became universal in all parts of the town, and among persons of all degrees and all ages.''≤≠ People would talk almost of nothing else. At least that was Edwards' impression. Certainly no one was talking of anything else while he was around. Given what we know of human nature and of some of Edwards' later disappointments, we may suspect that awakened Northampton was not nearly as perfect as he represented it to be. Edwards was scrupulously honest, but he was also prone to hyperbole in his zeal to inspire others. He could also be misled by high hopes.

Taking all that into account, the spiritual fervor of the town seems to have gone beyond what anyone had previously seen. ''All other talk,'' Edwards reported, but that ''about spiritual and eternal things was soon thrown by; all the conversation in all companies and upon all occasions, was upon these things only, unless so much as was necessary for people, carrying on their ordinary secular business. Other discourse than of the things of religion would scarcely be tolerated in any company.'' What had once seemed a valley of dry bones now ﬂourished with spiritual life almost with disregard of ordinary a√airs. ''They seemed to follow their worldly business more as a part of their duty than from any disposition they had to it; the temptation now

∞∏≠ Mighty Works of God and of Satan

seemed to lie on that hand, to neglect worldly a√airs too much, and to spend too much time in the immediate exercise of religion.''≤∞

One of the extraordinary manifestations of revival fervor was that illness almost disappeared from the town. In usual times Edwards would receive several ''bills'' each Sunday asking for prayers for the sick. During the months when the awakening was at its height, ''we had not so much as one for many Sabbaths together.'' Edwards did not cite this veriﬁable phenomenon as evidence of the validity of the awakening. Rather, he mentioned it only as a providence in which Satan seemed to be restrained for a time.≤≤

Edwards could not be sure how many would prove in the long run to be savingly converted, but he had good hopes that within a three-month period 300 townspeople had been so changed. The church, the largest west of Boston, now included 620 communicant members, almost all the adults in the town. The awakening was especially extraordinary because it a√ected ''all sorts, sober and vicious, high and low, rich and poor, wise and unwise.'' Included were ''several Negroes,'' who ''appear to have been truly born again.'' Some 30 children, fourteen and younger, ''seemed to be savingly wrought on.'' Unlike earlier revivals under Stoddard, as many men were converted as women. Most revivals, he further observed, reached almost only young people. This one included 50 persons over forty years of age and even 2 over seventy.

For the moment, the awakening seemed almost to resolve one of the most troubling dimensions of Edwards' Northampton pastorate—the anomaly created by the Stoddardean policy that unconverted person had been allowed to partake of communion. At the bimonthly communion services at the height of the revival eighty to a hundred at a time made ''open explicit profession of faith'' which ''was very a√ecting to the congregation.'' Edwards described these new converts as ''received into our communion.'' Then he added, rather apologetically, that such professions of faith were not actually required for partaking in the communion.≤≥

This seemingly almost universal awakening also temporarily relieved one of the deepest tensions within the Puritan and Protestant heritage. Was the church to be a separated communion, called out from the world and made up of believers only? Or was it to be a state church to which all respectable citizens belonged? Edwards' ideal for the church and ultimately for the town was that everyone should follow a virtually monastic standard for all of life. Although such an ideal had often been realized in newer sectarian movements whose members separated from established churches and even from

Mighty Works of God and of Satan ∞∏∞

former communities, it was a far more unusual standard for an entire town four or ﬁve generations removed from the movement's origins. Now that nearly everyone seemed converted or pressing toward conversion, the town appeared to be on the verge of becoming nearly coextensive with a strictly disciplined church of believers.

An event so remarkable and of such magnitude was soon the talk of New England. Many were skeptical, believing that Edwards had led his people into fanaticism. New England had always included a radical religious fringe, as the established clergy viewed it. They were familiar with various prophets, on both sides of the Atlantic, who stirred up the imagination, encouraged spiritual visions, claimed miracles, fostered strange behaviors, and taught sensational doctrines, such as that the millennium or the Age of the Spirit was at hand. New England's Reformed clergy, reﬂecting something of the spirit of their ''enlightened'' times as well as knowing of recurrent excesses within their tradition, were deeply suspicious of ''enthusiasm,'' by which they meant undisciplined religious fervor.≤∂ Word spread that the extraordinary transformation of Northampton was just such a fanatical outbreak.

Outsider critics were even more severe. On June 5, 1735, Edwards' former teacher, Timothy Cutler, now an Anglican rector in Boston, wrote to a friend in England: ''The Calvinistic scheme is in perfection about 100 miles from this place. Conversions are talked of, ad nauseam usque. Sixty in a place undergo the work at once. Sadness and horror seize them, and hold them for some days; then they feel an inward joy, and it ﬁrst shows itself in laughing at meeting. Others are sad for want of experiencing this work; and this takes up for the present the thoughts and talk of that country; and the canting question trumped about is, 'Are you gone through?' i.e. conversion.''≤∑

Edwards remarked that ''there were many that sco√ed at and ridiculed'' the revival and that its detractors were circulating ''exceeding great misrepresentations and innumerable false reports.'' He had to counter especially the rumor that the Northampton converts were being driven by ''vain imaginations'' or spiritual visions that went beyond Scripture.

This was a delicate issue for Edwards because the very point of his preaching was to touch the a√ections, to bring people beyond a merely theoretical knowledge of spiritual realities. To do so, he wanted them to form ''lively pictures'' of the truth in their mind, so they would have to confront them and react a√ectively toward them. He believed it proper for people to be placed in ''great terrors, through fear of hell'' by impressing on their minds ''lively ideas of a dreadful furnace.'' Or people might be a√ected by Christ's

∞∏≤ Mighty Works of God and of Satan

death by forming ''a lively idea of Christ hanging upon the cross, and of his blood running from his wounds.''≤∏

Such intense spiritual a√ections could easily be confused with more sensational religious impulses. In a few instances Edwards' parishioners had visions that he found ''mysterious'' and did not know how to evaluate. Nonetheless, he took great pains to teach them the distinction between true biblically based experiences and undisciplined imaginations. As he emphasized in A Divine and Supernatural Light, the spiritual light provides qualitative knowledge but no truths beyond Scripture.

Being so careful to make such distinctions, it was not di≈cult for Edwards to refute the charges of sensationalism, although they persisted in some quarters. He could point out, for instance, that Quaker missionaries, upon hearing the sensational reports from Northampton, came there ''hoping to ﬁnd good waters to ﬁsh in.'' Edwards had, however, well-schooled his parishioners not to be lured by the ''inner light'' of a√ections when the real food of Scripture was not also attached to the hook. After several visits, the missionaries left with nothing to show for their e√orts.≤π

Northampton's revival fervor was contagious. Skeptical visitors would come to the town and leave impressed or even greatly concerned for the states of their souls. When the court met in Northampton in March 1735, just as the revival was building toward its height, many visitors were deeply a√ected by seeing the remarkably altered state of the town.≤∫

By this time the revival was spreading throughout the Connecticut River Valley and as far as New Haven and the coast of Connecticut. In many cases, Edwards believed, these awakenings resulted from direct contacts with Northampton. Some nearby towns followed the Northampton pattern almost exactly, having nearly universal awakenings in April and May 1735. Many other towns were nearly as remarkably touched. In Edwards' account he mentioned nearly every church in western Massachusetts (Hampshire County) and twenty in Connecticut. Included was his ''honored father's parish'' of East Windsor. In one instance, two Connecticut pastors, Hezekiah Lord and John Owen, having heard conﬂicting accounts, traveled to Northampton in May 1735 to see for themselves. Deeply a√ected, they carried the news of the revival to their home churches, where they sparked notable awakenings. Though other reports conﬁrmed Edwards' account, in some cases it was not clear that the awakenings had any direct connection with Northampton. In Edwards' fullest narrative, written in November 1736, he noted that on a trip to New York and New Jersey in fall 1735 he had heard of

Mighty Works of God and of Satan ∞∏≥

remarkable works of God's Spirit in New Jersey, especially under the Dutch Reformed preacher ''whose name I remember as Freelinghousa [Theodore Frelinghuysen]'' and a Presbyterian evangelist, Gilbert Tennent.≤Ω

Satan on the Loose

Edwards had been attempting to harness the lightning of the awakening and (like Benjamin Franklin, who was later knocked out cold during one of his electrical demonstrations) discovered it was even more explosive than he had imagined. On June 1, 1735, the town suddenly was struck directly, and the reverberations sent people scattering down from the spiritual peak they had ascended. Or, in Edwards' own terms, it was a power far more dangerous than mere physical energy. ''Satan seemed to be more let loose, and raged in a dreadful manner.''≥≠

On that Sabbath morning, one of Northampton's elite citizens, Joseph Hawley II, slit his throat and died within a half-hour. Everyone in the town knew Hawley. Forty-two years old when he died, he was a successful merchant who brokered trade in cattle for the market in Boston. He also kept a store, which included such staples as rum, gunpowder, pipes (many people smoked and raised their own tobacco), and also luxuries like silk handkerchiefs. Fashion-conscious Sarah Edwards must have frequented the shop for adornments for her clothes or those of her little girls. Hawley was the ﬁrst in the town to sell knives and forks, and the Edwardses and the Stoddards probably were among the ﬁrst to adopt such niceties. Hawley was married to one of Solomon Stoddard's younger daughters, Rebekah, and so he was Jonathan's uncle and Colonel John Stoddard's brother-in-law. Townspeople highly respected Hawley; they had elected him town clerk every year since 1716.≥∞

Stunned by his uncle's suicide, Edwards searched for an explanation of this ''awful providence.''≥≤ Only two days earlier, on Friday, Edwards had completed a lengthy and glowing account of the awakening in response to an inquiry from Benjamin Colman, Boston's leading pastor. On Tuesday following the suicide he broke open the seal to add the doleful postscript. Eager to put the best explanation on this disheartening sequel, he emphasized that Hawley had been mentally unstable. He had fallen into ''deep melancholy, a distemper that the family are very prone to.'' For the past two months (at the height of the awakening) Hawley had become despairing and unable to sleep, beyond reasoning ''till he seemed not to have his faculties in his own power.'' The coroner's inquest ''judged him delirious.''

∞∏∂ Mighty Works of God and of Satan

Edwards, characteristically, was interpreting the calamity at several levels. While he emphasized Hawley's mental condition and even its genetic component (Hawley's mother, he later explained, had been killed by depression), the real danger of psychological weakness was that it opened the door for a Satanic attack. Once Hawley was ''overpowered'' by the melancholic distemper, ''the devil took the advantage and drove him into despairing thoughts.'' In a fuller account, Edwards explained that Hawley, though always an honorable and intelligent gentleman of religious practice and strict morals, had during the height of the awakening become deeply concerned over the state of his soul. Normally such concern would be a hopeful sign of grace, but the devil used his depression to prevent him from holding out any hope for himself and kept him awake nights ''meditating terror.'' Much weakened by loss of sleep, Hawley would no longer listen to reason or take advice. As Edwards summarized his analysis in his ﬁrst letter to Colman: ''Satan seems to be in a great rage, at this extraordinary breaking forth of the work of God. I hope it is because he knows that he has but a short time.''≥≥

The excruciating pain of Satan's counterstroke was that he had struck when the euphoria of the awakening was at its height and had turned what should have been a means to salvation into destruction. During the golden days of the spring the amazing health of the town had included its mental health. ''Persons that before had been involved in melancholy,'' Edwards recounted, ''seemed to be as it were waked up out of it.'' The ﬁrst contrary sign had come on March 25, when Thomas Stebbins, ''a poor weak man . . . being in great spiritual trouble,'' attempted to cut his throat, ''but did not do it e√ectually.'' The episode did not dampen the awakening ﬁres. Stebbins' case could be attributed to his pathetic character. More important, although Stebbins ''continued a considerable time exceeding overwhelmed with melancholy,'' his case did not seem hopeless. Eventually, Edwards reported, Stebbins' anxiety became the occasion for God's healing grace, repentance, and an apparently lasting recovery.≥∂

Just after the Stebbins episode, during April and May as the awakening was becoming nearly universal, Joseph Hawley's terrible anxieties brought him debilitating sleeplessness. Edwards counseled Hawley and eventually concluded that he ''was in great measure past a capacity of receiving advice, or being reasoned with to any purpose.''≥∑ Yet, Edwards, surrounded as he was that spring by astonishing success on every side, did not believe he should curtail his message for the sake of a few of the fainthearted who remained in turmoil. The travail of the new birth might be excruciating, but that was

Mighty Works of God and of Satan ∞∏∑

God's way of working. The pain was life-giving and the faithful midwife must not artiﬁcially relieve it.

Edwards' view that such was his duty is apparent in two sermons preached in May 1735. In retrospect these take on ominous signiﬁcance if we imagine that the nearly desperate Hawley was in the congregation. One of these awakening sermons was largely positive in tone. Preaching on Ephesians 5:25–

27, Edwards presented an attractive account of Christ's perfect love for the church. Christ wished to make his people ''holy and without blemish.'' Even though they would not attain that perfection in this world, Christians' behavior should reﬂect their love for Christ's excellencies. So the ''Hampton converts'' must be above reproach. ''Let none have occasion to say that we are a close niggardly people . . . [or] that we are a contentious people.'' ''Throughout the land there is a great fame of our religion. We are a city set upon a hill. Let us adorn our profession and the force that ere is of us so that other towns may see the purity and beauty of Christianity amongst us.''

Still, Edwards warned, the standard of Christ's holiness had a terrifying side for those who continued to wallow in some beloved sin: ''There is no expressing the hatefulness and how hateful you are rendered by it in the sight of God. The odiousness of this ﬁlth is beyond all account because 'tis inﬁnitely odious. You have seen the ﬁlthiness of toads and serpents and ﬁlthy vermin and creatures that you have loathed and of putreﬁed ﬂesh . . . but there was but a ﬁnite deformity or odiousness in this. . . . 'Tis but a shadow. Your ﬁlthiness is not the ﬁlthiness of toads and serpents or poisonous vermin, but of devils which is a thousand times worse. 'Tis impossible to express or conceive or measure how greatly God detests such deﬁlement.''≥∏

This passage was only a brief dark counterpoint in an engaging portrait of Christ's holy love for his church, but another May sermon was calculated to drive the anxious to their last extremity and hence to God. In the cycle of his sermons covering the full range of Reformed doctrines, Edwards regularly preached on the horrors of hell. Since the chief use of the doctrine was to wake people to seeing their true state, he was sure to include it in his awakening preaching. Knowing that some of his parishioners were intensely distressed about their sins, Edwards hoped to make the most of even the deepest anxieties. Preaching at the height of the awakening in May 1735, on I Thessalonians 2:16, Edwards explained, ''God sometimes expresses his wrath towards wicked men in this world not only outwardly but also in the inward expressions of it on their consciences.'' Sometimes terrible su√erings in this world, he added, ''are but forerunners of their punishment.''

∞∏∏ Mighty Works of God and of Satan

In any case, God's restraint in permitting sin without full punishment would last only so long and then in the next life God's wrath would be unleashed ''to the uttermost.'' ''When few drops or little sprinkling of wrath is so distressing and overbearing to the soul,'' he admonished, ''how must it be when God opens the ﬂood gates and lets the mighty deluge of his wrath come pouring down men's heads and brings in all his waves and billows upon the soul.''

Unrepentant sinners had all the greater reason to fear the wrath to come if they realized what a terrible thing it would be to be lost amid one of the greatest outpourings of the Holy Spirit ever known. Edwards here revealed his own astonishing hopes for the awakening when it was at its apex. ''God appears amongst us,'' he declared, ''in the most extraordinary manner perhaps that ever he did in New England.'' Not only that, but he considered such works of the Holy Spirit in the era of the church as greater than even the greatest temporal acts of God in the Old Testament age. ''The Children of Israel saw many mighty works of God when God brought them out of Egypt,'' he proclaimed, ''but we see here at this day works of God more mighty and of a more glorious nature.'' How would it be for the few who had hardened their hearts and so been left behind when surrounded by events ''more mighty and of a more glorious nature'' than even God's deliverance of his people from Egypt?≥π

Edwards did not design this sermon to let the anxious sleep any easier. Always reminding himself and everyone else that eternal beneﬁts far outweighed temporary comforts, he would have believed himself remiss had he o√ered easy assurance. He seemed to assume that unassailable reason would help drive people to the painful but life-giving recognition of their true state.≥∫ So he preached, as he believed he must, that those who despaired were indeed unworthy.

At the same time, no degree of unworthiness made one a hopeless case. He had apparently told his Uncle Hawley that ''there were some things in his experience, that appeared very hopefully.'' Hawley's despair nonetheless remained, and ''he durst entertain no hope concerning his own good estate.'' So, on one hand, Edwards was telling the spiritual stragglers in Northampton that they had every reason to think the worst. They were like those in Scripture who despised the prophets and killed Christ. At the same time there was wonderful relief. Christ o√ered to accept them anyway. So he ended his sermon with an evangelistic appeal: ''Now is the time for you to bestir yourself as you would escape wrath and would not have it come upon you to the

Mighty Works of God and of Satan ∞∏π

uttermost. Now Christ is calling. . . . He hath sent me to call you. I would now call you in his name. Come to him. Fly to this refuge that you may be safe in him, welcome as anyone whatsoever. Therefore make no objection from your unworthiness nor any other way. But haste and come away.''≥Ω

The shock of Hawley's suicide could hardly have been greater. Up to that moment it had seemed that nearly the whole town would join the exodus to the safe haven of God's grace. Satan had used the melancholic weakness of one man to turn the logic of the awakening against itself. The outpouring that for so many seemed a means to salvation became for Hawley a cause for despair and self-destruction.

How could this ''awful providence'' be explained? Where was the sovereign and good God when such an aberration took place? Edwards called a fast day to clarify for his stunned and bewildered parishioners what God was teaching them in this event. His explanation reﬂected a part of the Reformed vindication of God's ways that is sometimes overlooked or forgotten.

The crucial point was to take seriously the reality of Satan. For Edwards, Satan was just as necessary to explaining human history as that Prince of Darkness was to John Milton's Paradise Lost. In neither case was the great fallen angel just a metaphor or literary trope. Satan was an historical ﬁgure, one of the chief actors and causal agents shaping the human drama. God in his unfathomable redemptive councils had permitted the evil rebellion to go on, and every human life was touched by it.

In his fast-day sermon Edwards reminded his perplexed congregation that they needed to recognize that Satan was a real person, far more powerful than they were and bent on destroying each of them. They must remember that, except for God's restraining grace, they would be just as weak as the greatest sinner. They were like little children lost and helpless in the dangerous wilds, who could easily be led to destruction by a ''subtile man.'' They were apt to think of themselves as better than someone who had committed some horrible crime, yet they did not realize that they were just as vulnerable. Only God's ''restraining grace,'' he explained, kept people from following the most wicked inclinations of their hearts. '' 'Tis surely owing thus to God, and not at all to ourselves, if we han't committed adultery, or sodomy, or buggery, or murder, or blasphemy, as others have done, or that we han't destroyed our own lives.''

Except for God's restraining grace, Satan would reign unhindered in the earth and easily prey on everyone. The ''wisest and greatest of men, they are but as a leaf that is driven of the wind. . . . They are . . . as a poor infant would

∞∏∫ Mighty Works of God and of Satan

be, if it should be cast out on the open ﬁeld in its blood in the day it was born.'' The awful lesson was, as always, that people must not trust in the least in themselves.∂≠

Edwards' understanding of God's redemptive purpose in his terrible permission of evil included the promise that the devil's days were numbered. Satan's brutal, genocidal reign over most of the peoples of the earth would soon be brought to an end. If God destroyed the powers of evil now, so also would he have to punish all humans still under Satan's dominion. The spread of the Gospel in the Protestant Reformation and the recent awakenings were precursors of the end of the age, when the Gospel light would reach through all the earth and most humans would be wonderfully freed from Satan's rule. Yet, even then, at the end of that millennial age, the last thousand years of human history, as Edwards understood it, Satan was to be ''loosed out of his prison for a time'' (Revelation 20:7). So likewise, along with every advance of the Gospel that preﬁgured Christ's ultimate victory, the church must expect Satan to strike back in force. When he remarked that during the summer of his Uncle Hawley's suicide, ''Satan seemed to be more let loose, and raged in a dreadful manner,'' he was alluding to this painful struggle that was at the center of his understanding of history and of each person's life.

Satan's rage in the summer of 1735 took the terrible form of using the power of suggestion against the revival. Much as awakening had swept the region, so now ''multitudes'' were confronted with the horrible temptation to cut their own throats. ''And many,'' he recorded, ''that seemed to be under no melancholy, some pious persons that had no special darkness, or doubts about the goodness of their state, nor were under any special trouble or concern of mind about anything spiritual or temporal, yet had it urged upon 'em, as if somebody had spoke to 'em, 'Cut your own throat, now is good opportunity: now, now! ' ''

Edwards did not report how many of these ''multitudes'' actually attempted suicide or succeeded. His cousin Stephen Williams, who that year also presided over an awakening in Longmeadow, Massachusetts, noted in his diary for Sunday, July 13, the ''most awful providence,'' the suicide of one of his parishioners.

In Northampton and elsewhere in Hampshire County the suicide craze e√ectively brought the conversions to an end, although some awakenings continued well into the next year in Connecticut. At the former center of the awakening religion remained the primary topic of conversation for several months, but soon people's attentions were diverted by other a√airs.∂∞ By the

Mighty Works of God and of Satan ∞∏Ω

end of the summer Edwards felt his own health was deteriorating, and he left for an extended trip to New York and New Jersey. As he rode south from Northampton he must have thought much about the meaning of the recent events. He had proclaimed that the awakening was perhaps the foremost act of God since the Reformation and the greatest ever in the Americas. Now he saw some setbacks that might give him pause. Nonetheless, he assured himself and others, Satan's raging counterattacks were just what was to be expected.

C H A P T E R ∞≠ kl

The Politics of the Kingdom

ndividual lives do not ﬁt a single neat story line. Many things happen at once. In Edwards' case, that complexity of his life is especially apparent around the time of the spectacular Connecticut Valley awakening and its aftermath. Although the revival overshadows everything else, we need to be careful not to let it obscure our vision of other events of those years. Edwards, now in his early thirties, was emerging as a signiﬁcant ﬁgure in the New England ecclesiastical and social establishment. In that process, he was involved in a number of campaigns and controversies, each of which helped shape patterns of alliances and commitments that would deﬁne much of his career.

Publicity and Patronage

Edwards knew that awakenings spread by example; he had seen the revival that began in Northampton radiate from town to town and well into Connecticut, and he was eager that others should feel its power. He also knew that it had not spread to Boston and vicinity. Although the revival was the talk of town, that was a mixed blessing because much of the talk was ridicule. Many in the seaport viewed it as rustic sensationalism. To complicate matters, the leading Boston clergy were embroiled in an ugly dispute with their western counterparts in Hampshire County over the attempted settlement of a young easterner, Robert Breck, as pastor of one of the churches in Springﬁeld, a major river town south of Northampton.

Edwards' opportunity to correct any false impressions about the revival came in May, when Benjamin Colman requested an account. Colman had heard many rumors, extravagant claims, and accusations about the awaken-

The Politics of the Kingdom ∞π∞

ings and wished to set the record straight. In the eighteenth-century world, inﬂuence depended largely on patronage, and Edwards recognized that Colman's response would be crucial. Since the death of Cotton Mather, Colman had played the key role of uniting Massachusetts to international Calvinistic evangelicalism. Despite their current ecclesiastical arguments with the westerners, Colman and his circle of friends were ﬁrmly allied with William Williams and his clan in this larger cause. They shared the deep hope that New England would be a model of genuine awakening.

Edwards' letter to Colman was restrained, scientiﬁc, and detailed. He provided a brief account of the transformation of Northampton and of the spread of awakening to other towns. He emphasized that he was giving an accurate account of events ''which Satan has so much misrepresented'' and which had led to ''many odd and strange stories . . . which it is a wonder some wise men should be so ready to believe.'' Many people were remarkably enraptured by the Spirit and, admittedly, there were occasional excesses. Yet there was no new doctrine, no new way of worship, no prevailing oddity of behavior, no superstition about their clothes, or other alleged innovations. Some of the experiences ''have been beyond almost all that ever I heard or read of'' but were still within accepted biblical bounds. One Northampton young woman, for instance, and two persons from other towns were so overcome by the Spirit that they believed they might die. Others were almost felled by ''a sense of divine wrath.'' Yet it was all by the book. The only thing new was the near universality of Northampton's awakening.∞

Colman was impressed. Even the sobering postscript did not change the essential picture. The Boston pastor shared the letter with his associates. Then, in a decision momentous for Edwards, he transmitted much of Edwards' account to one of his London correspondents, the Reverend Dr. John Guyse. Guyse passed it on to Isaac Watts. The letter took on a life of its own.≤

Suddenly Edwards had the international audience for which he had so longed. He had some concern that any advertisement of the events might be immodest or perceived as such. In his sermon on the fast day after Hawley's death, the same week he had sent o√ the letter to Colman, he warned the Northamptonites (and reminded himself) that God might be punishing them for being proud and boastful about their awakening.≥ Yet he was also eager that word of the revival might be broadcast.

Isaac Watts and John Guyse were elated by the news. Guyse, a leading dissenting pastor, incorporated Colman's version of Edwards' account into a sermon for his London congregation. By this time, early 1736, London itself

∞π≤ The Politics of the Kingdom

was ripe for revival. Later that year, the young George Whiteﬁeld would have dazzling success preaching there. In the meantime, Guyse's congregation was moved by the story of distant Northampton and suggested publication of the sermon. Guyse wrote to Colman to request permission to quote from the account. Colman relayed the message to Edwards' uncle William Williams, senior pastor of the Hampshire region and patriarch of the StoddardWilliams clan. Colman viewed Edwards as subordinate to his powerful uncle. Williams, long a proponent of revivals who had shared in the regional awakening in nearby Hatﬁeld, passed Colman's message to his nephew. It was now August 1736, a terribly hot month when Edwards was distracted by an ''awful distemper'' a∆icting two of his sisters in Windsor and bringing the death of one of them, Lucy, the next to youngest, on August 21. Ten days later, Sarah gave birth to their ﬁfth daughter, another Lucy. As soon as he could, Edwards went to work on the longer account, which is still our principal source for the awakening.∂

Edwards sent his account to Colman on eight sheets of the tiniest writing. Colman realized that this would be well over a hundred pages in print (here is a clue why Edwards' unpublished works have been nearly indecipherable), and so he prepared an abridgment, about one-fourth the original length, and waited to see if there was any interest in publishing the whole. Still taking for granted the Williams-Edwards equation and needing to save printing costs, Colman appended the Edwards abridgment to two of William Williams' sermons he was seeing through the Boston press, adding a prefatory note that the sermons had been preached during the awakening.

As soon as the work appeared in December 1736, Colman sent copies to Isaac Watts and John Guyse, o√ering them the whole of the Edwards manuscript for possible publication. Watts replied enthusiastically. ''We are of [the] opinion that so strange and surprising work of God that we have not heard anything like it since the Reformation, nor perhaps since the days of the apostles, should be published.''∑

While he was seeing Edwards' A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God through the London press in 1737, Watts was a bit worried that the Northampton pastor might have exaggerated or have been deceived by his own enthusiasm.∏ The account was so amazing that Watts was besieged by questions regarding its authenticity, and in several letters he asked whether some of Edwards' neighboring clergy could send conﬁrmation that could be added to a second edition.

Edwards' astonishing narrative created an immediate stir. It served as an

The Politics of the Kingdom ∞π≥

inspiration for revivals in both Scotland and England. John Wesley, who in May 1738 had his history-changing experience of having his ''heart strangely warmed,'' was much impressed by Edwards' Faithful Narrative, which he read in October of that same year and which provided one of the models for the revivals he hoped to promote.π A few years later, when his own Methodist movement was soaring, he published his own abridgment of Edwards' work, making it standard reading in Wesleyan circles.

In the meantime, Colman secured the conﬁrming testimonies, but not in time for the second London edition. The attestation ﬁnally appeared in a third American edition (Boston, 1738). It stated simply ''that the account Mr. Edwards has given in his narrative of our several towns or parishes is true; and that much more of the like nature might have been added with respect to some of them.'' This attestation was signed ﬁrst by ''William Williams, pastor of Hatﬁeld'' and by ﬁve other local pastors, including Stephen Williams and other close allies of Edwards.

Reviving Indian Missions

This same alliance of revival-minded clergy was active on another crucial front—the e√ort to resuscitate the mission to the native peoples. In the west, the mission e√ort was primarily the work of the Williams-Stoddard clan. In the east, Benjamin Colman and his fellow evangelistically minded clergy organized support from both New England and the home country.

The 1730s marked a rare time of extended peace in Massachusetts, and the leaders in the western part of the colony used this opportunity to address their most conspicuous failure. Massachusetts had always been intended as, among other things, a mission to the Indians, but for two generations, since the disaster of King Philip's War in the 1670s, periodic hostilities and ongoing bitterness had thwarted e√ective new e√orts. In his later years Solomon Stoddard had warned of God's punishment if New England continued to neglect this urgent duty. Stoddard's successors were eager to answer that call.

The Reverend Samuel Hopkins of Springﬁeld, married to Edwards' oldest sister, Esther, took the lead in initiating a mission. Having heard from Benjamin Colman of funds from England designated for evangelizing the Indians, Hopkins traveled to Northampton in March 1734 to meet with John Stoddard. Colonel Stoddard, who had often served as chief negotiator with the Indians, was the English leader most knowledgeable about them as well as the most powerful magistrate in the region. Like his late father, he was an

∞π∂ The Politics of the Kingdom

advocate for Indian missions. Edwards likely joined his brother-in-law and uncle in these initial discussions. Stoddard was enthusiastic in his support, and Hopkins next approached his neighboring clergyman, Stephen Williams of Longmeadow, about the project. Williams also was an expert on Indian a√airs and had acquired a knowledge of Indian languages during his boyhood captivity. He readily agreed to cosponsor the project. The promoters of the mission, with the approval from the Commissioners for Indian A√airs in Boston, met with leaders of the friendly Mahican Indians on the Housatonic River in far western Massachusetts. These Housatonic Indians had already shown some interest in Christianity, and they now agreed to have missionaries settle among them. The English quickly secured two young men to begin their work in fall 1734. John Sergeant, a tutor at Yale, headed the mission and Timothy Woodbridge, a great-grandson of the famed missionary John Eliot, went as a schoolmaster. During the spring of 1735 the Housatonics were intrigued by the awakenings going on around them and responded to Sergeant's preaching with great emotion.

Benjamin Colman kept in close touch with these developments and reported them to the Commissioners, his English correspondents, and Governor Jonathan Belcher. The governor was enthusiastic about the plan. Belcher shared with others in the transatlantic evangelical community a genuine zeal for missions. Further, like any colonial governor, he saw the great political advantages of improved relations with the Indians.

In late August 1735, Belcher, Colman, and the western Massachusetts leadership brought these interests together in a dramatic conclave at Deerﬁeld. The symbolism of the place, where there had not been so large a gathering of Indians since the massacre of 1704, was poignant. The governor, with the respected John Stoddard at his side, presided over a treaty with several Indian tribes, including some of the Catholic Mohawks from the Montreal area and some of those who had participated in Father Râle's War, settled only by the uneasy peace of 1725. At the end of four days of highly successful negotiations, the English and many of the Indians gathered at the Deerﬁeld Meetinghouse to witness the ordination of John Sargeant as minister to the Housatonics. In a covenantal ceremony the Housatonics received him as their pastor.

Sargeant's mission to the Housatonics advanced rapidly. Within a year forty of the Indians, including their leaders, were su≈ciently advanced in the faith to receive baptism. The mission, in many respects an extension of the awakening, quickly came to be regarded as a model and drew admiring Indian

The Politics of the Kingdom ∞π∑

visitors from as far away as the Susquehanna. English donors were enthusiastic. The Massachusetts government ceded a tract of land for establishing an Indian village on the western frontier, eventually incorporated as Stockbridge. The Indians had requested that Colonel John Stoddard represent their interests. He, in turn, oversaw the settlement in the town of several New Englander families who were to provide cultural models for the Indians. Most notably, Ephraim Williams, younger brother of William Williams, assumed the role of the town's squire. John Sargeant, the missionary, soon fell in love with and married Ephraim's intelligent and alluring daughter Abigail —whom we shall encounter again later.∫

We do not know how directly Edwards was involved in the Stockbridge e√ort at this time, only that most of his closest colleagues and many of his family were. Presumably his interest in the matter was great, but his only surviving mention of it is in A Faithful Narrative, where he noted that the treaty in August 1735 was one of the much-heralded matters that ﬁrst diverted Northampton people from their former exclusive attention to the awakening. Edwards left for his travels south just before or just after the momentous events in Deerﬁeld.Ω

The ''Great Noise'' over Arminianism

The extraordinary Connecticut Valley awakening of 1734–35 took place in the midst of an intense theological controversy. The close connections between these two events raises a number of puzzling questions. The most evident is: what relation did the controversy have to the revival? Then, as now, the conventional wisdom was that theological disputes were great dampers to ﬁres of spirituality. Yet Edwards made a point of saying that the ''great noise'' over Arminianism and the resulting reemphasis on strict Calvinist doctrines helped spark the awakening. At the same time he recognized that the Arminian controversy, which reached an unedifying peak in fall 1735, ''doubtless above all things that have happened, has tended to put a stop to the glorious work here, and to prejudice this country against it, and hinder the propagation of it.''∞≠

The history of the controversy provides a picture of the dynamics of the ecclesiastical leadership of the Connecticut Valley at this time when assumptions of theological uniformity were still intact. Particularly, it reveals the strong hand of the Williams-Stoddard clan in attempting to control western Massachusetts. Further, it shows how Edwards' role in the region was deﬁned

∞π∏ The Politics of the Kingdom

by his intimate relationship to that hierarchical clan in the era of William Williams' ascendancy. That in turn raises intriguing questions concerning his later falling out with Williams' heirs.

In late 1733 and early 1734 Robert Breck, son of a late respected eastern Massachusetts pastor, o√ered himself as a candidate for a newly organized parish in the thriving town of Windham, Connecticut.∞∞ The pastor of the town's ﬁrst parish was Thomas Clap, a champion for the orthodoxy of the Westminster divines. After long conversations with the young man, Clap determined that Breck's views were Arminian and announced that he would block his ordination. Breck, seeing his case as hopeless, gave up and moved across the Connecticut-Massachusetts border to Springﬁeld, Massachusetts, where he preached as a candidate for a recently vacated pulpit.

When by summer 1734 it became apparent that the Springﬁeld congregation was inclined to call Breck, the Williams clan went into action. Eleazer Williams of Mansﬁeld, Connecticut, near Windham, wrote to his brother Stephen Williams of Longmeadow, near Springﬁeld, that Breck was unsuitable for the ministry. Stephen circulated this letter among other ministers in the Hampshire Association. Their uncle William Williams of Hatﬁeld mobilized the association. As heir to Solomon Stoddard's mantle and power, William Williams viewed the guardianship of the purity of the county clergy as a primary function of the Hampshire Association. On the question of Arminianism he could count on the support of his nephew Edwards.

A few years earlier Edwards had encountered the patriarch Williams' power in controlling the county clergy closer to home. In 1730, a year after the death of the venerated redeemed captive John Williams of Deerﬁeld, Benjamin Pierpont, a younger brother of Sarah, received a call from the Deerﬁeld parish to ﬁll that vacancy. Pierpont had been living with the Edwardses and perhaps reading theology with his brother-in-law. They were, however, quite di√erent types. William Williams caught wind from a number of sources, including Stephen Williams, who felt some proprietary concern for his late father's parish, that Pierpont was not ''a person of prudent, grave, and sober conversation'' but ''vain, apish and jovial, particularly among females.'' What the sober Edwards thought of these accusations, we do not know. In any case Williams stepped in and prevailed on the town to rescind the call. After much intrigue, the Williamses then proposed a successor from their own clan, only to have him rejected by Deerﬁeld, which resisted the family's control. Finally in 1732 they settled on Jonathan Ashley of another powerful regional family.

The Politics of the Kingdom ∞ππ

Ashley was not a Williams relative. Not yet. In 1736 he married one of William Williams' daughters, Dorothy.∞≤

When it came to the threat of Arminianism in 1734, Edwards was enthusiastic in lining up with the Williams-Stoddard powers. Two years earlier he had agreed with the majority of the Hampshire Association to make subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith, or an equivalent, a requirement for ministerial membership.∞≥ This was controversial. Setting subscription standards was hotly contested among Middle Colonies Presbyterians and in Scotland, Ireland, and England. Already within the Hampshire Association at least one minister was rumored to express Arminian views and had openly declared, ''every person is to judge for himself,'' according to his conscience and reason in accord with ''the mind of Christ,'' rather than ''any human determinations.''∞∂

The Hampshire majority had questions about Breck's character as well as his doctrine. At Harvard he had been dismissed for stealing books, and when Thomas Clap asked him about this, he prevaricated on the grounds that, in a sense, he had left voluntarily.∞∑ Breck later confessed to his youthful misdemeanors. The real issue was, as a number of witnesses testiﬁed, that Breck had taught that it was ridiculous to say God would damn the heathen who had never heard of Christ. God, Breck had allegedly said, would hold people responsible only for that which was in their power to do. Breck reportedly had quoted one of the more liberal English authors, Thomas Chubb, in saying a person might be saved out of love of virtue itself, even without any faith or knowledge of Christ.∞∏ As was customary, Breck's opponents were using ''Arminian'' in the broad sense of almost any anti-Calvinistic teaching.

Breck insisted he was not an Arminian and said he was willing to a≈rm the Westminster Confession. He explained that his controversial expressions were speculations, not his settled doctrines. The majority of the Hampshire Association, meeting in fall 1734, was not satisﬁed with a mere subscription to the Confession in this case. Given the testimony of Clap and others, they demanded that Breck must be thoroughly examined so as to satisfy his most suspicious critics. On this ground they forestalled the Springﬁeld e√orts to call Breck.

Just when the people of the region were in an ''unusual ru∆e'' over Arminianism, Edwards preached a two-part public lecture sermon on ''Justiﬁcation by Faith Alone.'' According to his account, ''great fault was found with meddling with the controversy in the pulpit,'' and it ''was ridiculed by many

∞π∫ The Politics of the Kingdom

elsewhere.'' Yet preaching this doctrine, he later emphasized, proved the spark that set o√ the nearly unprecedented spiritual ﬁres. The very spread of Arminian views, he believed, encouraged people to reexamine and to take more seriously the Calvinist views they had always heard. ''Many'' people, he wrote, were awakened ''with fear that God was about to withdraw from the land, and that we should be given up to heterodoxy and corrupt principles.''∞π

He himself may have fanned that fear.

In his ﬁrst letter to Colman in early summer 1735, Edwards underscored the awakening role of preaching against Arminianism. Although Colman and the dominant party of the eastern Massachusetts clergy were in principle as anti-Arminian as the westerners, a serious breach was opening between the two regions over the Hampshire Association's methods in opposing Breck. The rejected candidate had returned east and obtained certiﬁcations of his orthodoxy and character from the powerful friends of his late father. Colman thought Breck should have ﬁrst told them of the nature of the charges in Hampshire, but he nonetheless was willing to vouch for the young man's ﬁne, if not perfect, reputation. ''I beseech you Sir,'' he wrote to Stephen Williams in August 1735, ''to be tender of him.''∞∫

By now the overriding questions had to do with regional power and polity and could not be resolved by goodwill alone. The eastern Massachusetts clerical establishment was unhappy with the ''Presbyterian'' manner in which the Hampshire Association was controlling the western side of the province. The debate went back to one of the grievances against Stoddard, that he was establishing a Presbyterian system, or government by associations of clergy, in the west. Stoddard's successors were demonstrating the power of that system to thwart the desires of local congregations. The Springﬁeld parish had expressed its will in choosing a pastor, but the Hampshire Association was attempting to override it. Further, the western clergy were wielding subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith like the strictest Presbyterians. The Boston clergy who defended Breck were just as orthodox as the Hampshire clergy who opposed him.∞Ω A striking feature of Massachusetts' ecclesiastical a√airs (a feature that eventually proved Edwards' undoing) was that the churches never established uniform polity. The battle of Springﬁeld reached a bizarre climax in October 1735 while Edwards was on his extended trip to New York City and New Jersey. Despite his absence from the worst of the turmoil at Springﬁeld, he became deeply involved when he was asked to draft the principal defenses for the Hampshire Association's actions.

In April 1735 a divided Springﬁeld congregation had issued a call to Breck.

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