Israelites, when they left Egypt, all partook of the Passover, with no profession required,
Notes to Pages 351–54 ∑π≥
Edward Taylor, argued that the Old Testament ceremonial restrictions were types of restrictions for admission to the Lord's Supper. E. Brooks Holifield, The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Puritan Sacramental Theology in Old and New England, 1570–1720 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 217–19.
23. Northampton's expectation that most adults would become communicant members made the half-way covenant less important than elsewhere, since it applied only to the baptized who did not become commuicants. Paul R. Lucas, Valley of Discord: Church and Society along the Connecticut River, 1636–1725 (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1976), 136. Stoddard did not persuade Northampton to accept all his views and only in 1714 gained consent for all the baptized in the town to be under church discipline, regardless of whether they owned the covenant. Ibid. 157–58.
24. In Faithful Narrative, Works, 4: 157, Edwards says ''We have about six hundred and twenty communicants, which include almost all our adult persons.'' Kenneth Minkema in ''Old Age and Religion in the Writings and Life of Jonathan Edwards,'' Church History 70 (December 2001): 674–704, indicates (p. 699) a decline in the total of church members (including baptized) from 823 in 1735 to 747 in 1750. Meanwhile, the estimated population rose from 1,100 in 1735 to 1,355 in 1750. The records, however, are not complete. The church membership figures, for instance, are minimum numbers. Minkema also shows that not only did Edwards alienate some of the young in the ''young folk's Bible'' scandal, but that a core of an alienated older generation, reared under Stoddard, were instrumental in his removal.
25. Edwards, An Humble Inquiry, Works, 12: 266–83. In reply to the objection that the Israelites, when they left Egypt, all partook of the Passover, with no profession required, Edwards pointed out that the objection would prove too much because all the present parties thought that some profession should be prerequisite, p. 274. Also, Edwards said that the Old Testament precedents were hardly relevant when the New Testament was clear, p. 279. Christopher Grasso, A Speaking Aristocracy: Transforming Public Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Connecticut (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 131–36, has some helpful discussion of this point. 26. ''Author's Preface,'' in An Humble Inquiry, Works, 12: 167–70. 27. Ibid., 174–262. 28. Ibid., 257–62, quotation p. 257. Concerning himself as agent, he uses the analogy of an ambassador to a prince who asks a lady for a tangible sign that she accepts the prince's suit, p. 258. Edwards translates I Corinthians, 11:29, as ''eateth and drinketh judgement to himself'' (p. 260) rather than ''damnation to himself'' as the King James Version puts it and as he himself sometimes put it in sermons, see below. Perhaps he did not want to rest his argument on a disputed translation.
29. Ibid., 257. 30. Sermon on Matthew 9:15 (date uncertain), quoted in William J. Danaher Jr., ''By Sensible Signs Represent: Jonathan Edwards' Sermons on the Lord's Supper,'' Pro Ecclesia 7, no. 3 (summer 1998): 269. Edwards to John Erskine, November 17, 1750, Works, 16: 366. 31. Sermon on I Corinthians 10:16 (August 1745; August and October 1755), as quoted in Danaher, ''By Sensible Signs,'' 283. I am much indebted to Danaher's analysis of the communion sermons, although, as these quotations suggest, I do not think that Edwards elevated communion over covenant, as Danaher argues, p. 287, but saw them as two ways of talking about the same thing.