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A God of this magnitude, one who created and governed such an immense universe, could, of course, easily plan for miracles and arrange for any number of coincidences that would have special providential meanings. Nothing in the new conception of an automated mechanical universe necessitated a diminishing of God's immediate involvement. God saw every sequence of cause and effect from the vantage point of eternity. He saw beginning and
secondary causes, seen in natural laws, to bring about anything he wanted. Almost all thinkers of the new scientific age made this ancient distinction. They could affirm both that God
governed everything and that he did so through a vast system of secondary causes, or natural laws.
Yet for many who had
Newton attributed it to the will and action of God the creator and sustainer of matter. What was matter after all but a place in the universe that God had infused with certain powers, such as the power of resistance to other matter trying to pass through it and the power of attraction to other matter even at a distance?35 In Opticks Newton asked, "does it not appear from
phenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite space, as it were
his sensory [sense organs], sees the things themselves intimately, and thoroughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly by their immediate presence to himself"36
Newton had
God must continue to preserve these powers or the universe would cease to be. "The universe is created out of nothing every moment," said Edwards, "and if it were not for our imaginations, which hinder us, we might see that wonderful work performed continually."47
"nothing has any existence anywhere else but in consciousness." To prove this startling point he suggested that we think of "another universe only of bodies, created at a great distance from this." Only God would know its wondrous motions and spectacular beauties because this universe contained no other intelligence. So where else, he asked, do these beauties and relationships of motions exist other than in the divine consciousness? Suppose the divine consciousness were also removed for a moment.
Rather he was developing his thought in rigorous Calvinist fashion, from the top down, starting with an absolutely sovereign triune Creator who was in control of all things.
Excellency, as Edwards defined it, was "the consent of being to being.... The more the consent is, and the more extensive, the greater is the excellency."58
"Spiritual harmonies are of vastly larger extent; i.e., the proportions are vastly oftener redoubled, and respect more beings, and require a vastly larger view to comprehend them, as some simple notes do more affect one who has not a comprehensive understanding of music."s9
Resolved, if ever I live to years, that 1 will be impartial to hear
the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and receive them if rational, how long so ever I have been used to another way of thinking."64
Reason needed to correct mere experience. That was what the Copernican revolution had taught.
He was addressing one of the subjects, Arminianism.
We can imagine that at some moment in the summer of 1723 both Newton and Edwards may have been sitting in their respective gardens, working to crack the prophetic code.
"Reformed religion": "a sinner is not justified in the sight of God except through the righteousness of Christ obtained by faith." Arminian opponents of this Reformed formula argued that God justified sinners, at least in part, on the basis of their sincere repentance and reformation.
'Tis a most evil and pernicious practice in meditations on afflictions, to sit ruminating on the aggravations of the affliction, and reckoning up the evil, dark circumstances thereof,
"Religion allows us to take the full comfort of our meat and drink, all reasonable pleasures are to be enjoyed in conversation or recreation; allows of the gratification of all our natural appetites." The secret for keeping these pleasures reasonable was to enjoy them in the perspective of the far greater pleasures of spiritual things.
Reason showed the vast superiority of things eternal, so it would be folly to enjoy pleasures of the flesh for their own sake.
"Thus," in his most repeated illustration, "it is not he that has heard a long description of the sweetness of honey that can be said to have the greatest understanding of it, but he that has tasted."
Edwards was captivated by the idea that God's purpose in creating the universe is to bring harmonious communications among minds, or spiritual beings, and every detail of physical creation points to that loving reality, epitomized in Christ.
Within two weeks he was attempting to deal with his inability to concentrate in prayer: "Sabbath, Nov. i5. 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 off from what I say."
"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 suffer 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."
On August 25, 1728, Sarah bore their first child, another Sarah. Childbirth, a biblical image, was especially typical of the afflictive way God dealt with fallen humanity, even in bringing them the best things personally, spiritually, or through history. "Women travail and suffer great pains in bringing children, which is to represent the great persecutions and sufferings of the
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."32 Jonathan himself had just gone through years of the
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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."13
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 churchgoing
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.
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."56
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."
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."
His ambition had long been to do great things for God as an internationally recognized writer.
Whether he sent an earthquake or a shortage of available land, God was still acting to remind humans of their spiritual needs.
Edwards pressed toward spreading heavenly concerns among them.
Early eighteenth-century stirrings throughout the Protestant world were marked by renewals of lay prayer meetings.
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 effect, 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
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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
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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.
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.
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,...
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Just when the people of the region were in an "unusual ruffle" 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
elsewhere." Yet preaching this doctrine, he later emphasized, proved the spark that set off the nearly unprecedented spiritual fires.
"Once, as I rid out into the woods for my health, anno 1737," he recounted, "and having lit from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer; I had a view, that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God.... The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception." The ecstasy lasted "about an hour; which kept me, the bigger part of the time, in a flood of tears, and weeping aloud." During this time he felt "an ardency of soul," which he could describe
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Because New Englanders prided themselves on regulating their worship on the Bible alone, one might think that they would have taken more to heart the biblical condemnation of those who "love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues" (Matthew
"don't content yourself with that that you think you are willing to have Christ for your saviour unless you are willing of free choice and not forced with the threatenings of hell" or the desire of "going to heaven.""
In the next life the saints, with spiritual bodies only, would be able fully to express their eternally burning love to God and to each other.16
what is this? gnostocism
"There in heaven this fountain of love, this eternal three in one, is set open without any obstacle to hinder access to it. There this glorious God is manifested and shines forth in full glory, in beams of love; there the fountain overflows in streams and rivers of love and delight, enough for all to drink at, and to swim in, yea, so as to overflow the world as it were with a deluge of love."17
Because Edwards was so thoroughly Reformed, there was no sentimentality in Edwards' love. To be loving as God loved simply meant that one had to love what God loved and to hate what God hat...
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about-the mystery of history. Particularly, why would a perfect God be involved in the seemin...
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Too much study, he believed, had taken a striking toll physically. Edwards, he wrote, "continues his application [to study] and in such a degree, that he is very much emaciated, and impaired in his health, and it is doubtful to me whether he will attain the age of forty."20
was in the midst of his third and by far the largest sermon series, thirty sermons onA History ofthe Work ofRedemption, showing how Christ's redemptive love was the key to all history.
This remarkable elevation of the fourth-century emperor reveals that Edwards assumed that the advance of Christ's kingdom intimately involved politics.
Edwards' outlook on this point is very different from that of Augustine, with whom he is often compared. Augustine projected an ongoing conflict or tension between the City of God, founded on love of God, and the cities of the world, founded on love of temporal things, a conflict that would not be resolved before Christ's return.
