EDWARDS

EDWARDS (JONATHAN), a celebrated American metaphysician and divine, was born October 5, 1703, at Windsor, in the province of Connecticut. His family had originally emigrated from England in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. His father, Mr Timothy Edwards, was a clergyman of great piety and respectability, and by his mother he was grandson of Mr Solomon Stoddard, a noted and zealous divine of Northampton. Jonathan was accordingly reared in the bosom of Puritanism, and all his ideas were early imbued with the cast of thought, which was native to the stock from which he sprung. There was something, indeed, not a little singular in the prevailing character of religion in America in those days. A conversion seems to have been a regular era in a man's life, which could be fixed down to a date, as much as his coming of age or being married. A very curious document remains of Jonathan's conversion, the whole steps and progress of which he has detailed for the behoof of his children; and it is a document which, even amidst all its frequent weakness and extravagance, impresses us with a high sense of the genius and of the worth

Edwards. of this remarkable man. We cannot avoid giving our readers a little insight into it, especially as it contains some passages of deep feeling and sensibility, which form a striking contrast to the controversial hardness of his writings. It is full of bursts of tenderness; and even while the subjects of his earliest meditations were the same dark doctrines, in their most tremendous form, which he afterwards defended so ably by the help of his mature reason,—amidst all the gloom which naturally surrounds them, they seem to have left upon his mind no sentiments that were not gentle and charitable. At the same time, this document affords us a distinct proof that such doctrines take their origin, in a great measure, in peculiar circumstances of society, or of the individual mind; and since they were quite as fully impressed upon Edwards before he was capable of any profound reasoning upon them as afterwards, the presumption is, that his early prepossessions came strongly in aid of his later conclusions.

It was in the midst of these youthful musings that he acquired a full and firm persuasion of tenets which we will own scarcely seem to us, to be either so "lovely," or of so "good report," as the more natural sentiments of his unconverted state, which he gave in exchange for them. "I had a variety (says he) of concerns and exercises about my soul from my childhood; but had two more remarkable seasons of awakening, before I met with that change by which I was brought to those new dispositions, and that new sense of things that I have since had. The first time was when I was a boy, some years before I went to college, at a time of remarkable awakening in my father's congregation. I was then very much affected for many months, and concerned about the things of religion," &c. This state of mind, however, rather passed off; but, in his last year at college, he was visited by a severe sickness, which made him form many wise and holy resolutions, which he was afterwards for the most part enabled to keep. So far well, but now follows the grand proof of his conversion: "From my childhood up," he says, "my mind had been wont to be full of objections against the doctrine of God's sovereignty, in choosing whom he would to eternal life, and rejecting whom he pleased, leaving them eternally to perish, and be everlastingly tormented in hell. It used to appear like a horrible doctrine to me. But I remember the time very well, when I seemed to be convinced and fully satisfied as to this sovereignty of God, and his justice in thus eternally disposing of men according to his sovereign pleasure. But never could give an account how, or by what means, I was thus convinced, not in the least imagining in the time of it, nor a long time after, that there was any extraordinary influence of God's Spirit in it, but only that now I saw further, and my reason apprehended the justice and reasonableness of it. However, my mind rested in it, and it put an end to all those cavils and objections that had till then abode with me all the preceding part of my life. And there has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, with respect to the doctrine of God's sovereignty, from that day to this, so that I scarce ever have found so much as the

rising of an objection against God's sovereignty in the most absolute sense, in showing mercy to whom he will show mercy, and hardening and eternally damning whom he will. God's absolute sovereignty and justice, with respect to salvation and damnation, is what my mind seems to rest assured of, as much as of any thing that I see with my eyes," &c. This doctrine continued through all Mr Edwards's life, in peculiar favour with him; and he employs the whole resources of his dialectics to support it, with a full conviction that he was thereby glorifying God, and performing an important service to mankind.

In this document of Mr Edwards's early opinions, we have said that, amidst all their horrors, there are many intimations of the natural fineness and sensibility of his spirit. The following passages are remarkably beautiful, and have about them a tone almost of pastoral or rather scriptural poetry: "Not long after I first began to experience these things, I gave an account to my father of some things that had passed in my mind. I was pretty much affected by the discourse we had together; and when the discourse was ended, I walked abroad alone, in a solitary place in my father's pasture, for contemplation. And as I was walking there, and looked up on the sky and clouds, there came into my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express. . . . God's excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every thing; in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water, and all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for a long time, and so, in the day-time, spent much time in viewing the clouds and sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things; in the mean time, singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and Redeemer. . . . I used to be a person uncommonly terrified with thunder; and it used to strike me with terror, when I saw a thunderstorm rising; but now, on the contrary, it rejoiced me. I felt God at the first appearance of a thunderstorm, and used to take an opportunity at such times to fix myself to view the clouds, and see the lightnings play, and hear the majestic and awful voice of God's thunder," &c. These confessions have let us already into the inside of Edwards's mind, and there is no need to return upon them, while we pursue the account of his studies, life, and writings. There is a poetry and grandeur in some of his passages of this sort, which show a moral sublimity of genius in the midst of enthusiastic reveries, often, in inferior minds, more productive of dark and disorderly sentiments than of sound and elevated piety. When he comes, however, to reason on his theological or philosophical tenets, he is no longer either an enthusiast or a poet; for he then proceeds with all the pertinacity and ingenuity of a hard-headed special-pleading lawyer.

He went young to Yule College, and so early as his thirteenth year had read Locke On the Human Understanding, with great delight and profit. He had a great taste for natural philosophy, but the moral and divine sciences were his chief

object; and after a long residence at college, during which time he prepared himself assiduously for the ministry, he was in due form licensed to preach. In August 1722, he was invited to preach to the English Presbyterians at New York, where he continued with approbation above eight months; but as this society was too small to maintain a preacher, he returned, in the year 1723, to his father's house at Connecticut, where, for some time, he applied to his studies with much industry and perseverance; and this severe application became habitual to him, although he was of a delicate constitution. In the spring of 1724, having taken his master's degree, he was appointed tutor of Yale College, being then in his twenty-first year, an office which, notwithstanding his youth, he filled for two years with great success and reputation. In September 1726, he received an invitation from the people of Northampton in Connecticut, to become assistant to his mother's father, Mr Stoddard, to whom he was ordained colleague in his twenty-fourth year, and continued pastor of this congregation till the year 1750. During this time he married, had many children, and wrote several pious and useful treatises, chiefly suggested by the events of the times; such as his "Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, in the Conversion of many Hundred Souls in Northampton" (for these, as his biographer* tells us, were remarkable times for the out-pouring of God's Spirit); but particularly a sensible and useful treatise on Religious Affections, in which he endeavoured to restrain the extravagance and fanaticism into which, under these strong impressions, the religion of his flock was but too apt to run. He was a most faithful and conscientious minister, but at last fell under the odium of his people, from no other cause but his anxiety for their spiritual interests. They appear, indeed, to have been a very stiff-necked generation, full of absurd whimsical vagaries on the subject of religion, but at the same time with very little of its spirit in their lives and conversations. They had all a voice in the election and continuance of their clergyman, and they were very ready to seize any opportunity to show their power. Mr Edwards discovered that some licentious books had got among the youth of his congregation; a fact as to which he wished some investigation to take place; and this was the first point upon which his people flew off from him. There was afterwards another point about the administration of the Holy Communion. His grandfather Mr Stoddard, it seems, had a notion, that the administration of the sacrament was a moment which the Divine Spirit was much disposed to seize for the conversion of sinners; and that, therefore, the most notorious sinners were to be without scruple admitted to that holy ordinance, in the hope that this conversion would fall upon them. The result of this precious notion was, that the utmost licentiousness,

mingled as it was with wild religious fancies floating in every brain, began to prevail among the people. When Mr Edwards, on his grandfather's death, got the entire charge, he endeavoured to make a change in this particular. But the outcry against him was loud and overbearing. Even his brethren of the clergy tamely gave way to it; and this excellent, able, and pious clergyman was thus driven away by the misguided flock, for whom he had laboured assiduously for twenty-four years; and at an advanced period of life, with a wife and a large family, was thrown upon the world, and the care of Providence.

His next position was at Stockbridge, in the western part of Massachusetts Bay, where he was put at the head of a mission for converting the Indians. He was not enabled to do much as a missionary, but here he had a great deal of leisure, which he employed in writing his principal works. It was now he completed his chief treatise, on the subject of free-will; concerning the rapid execution of which we have the following information in the Reverend Sir Henry Moncreiff Wellwood's very interesting Life of Dr Erskine.—"It was not till the month of July 1752, that he appears to have resumed his studies on the subject of free-will; for on the 7th of that month he writes Dr Erskine, that 'he hoped soon to be at leisure to resume his design;' and gives him another sketch of the plan of his book, in which, though there be nothing new, there is more detail than in the which he had formerly sent him. Whatever opinion (continues this able writer) may be held with regard to Mr Edwards's argument, it must appear astonishing to those who are capable of appreciating the difficulty of his subject, that, in nine months from the date of this letter (on the 14th of April 1753), he could write Dr Erskine, that he had almost finished the first draught of what he originally intended; though he was under the necessity of delaying the publication till he knew the result of proposals which he had circulated for printing his book by subscription. His book was published in 1754, and though he had made some progress in preparing his materials before he left Northampton, was certainly written, and nearly completed, within the time ascertained by the two letters referred to, and must be admitted to convey a very striking idea, both of his mental resources, and of his literary ardour."

In 1757, on the death of Mr Aaron Burr, Mr Edwards was chosen President of New Jersey College. He had been here, however, a very short time, when he was carried off on March 22, 1758, in the fifty-fifth year of his age, by the small-pox. This disease was, at that time, raging in the neighbourhood. Mr Edwards, who had never had it, proposed to be inoculated, which his physicians approved of. He had the disease favourably, but a secondary fever set in, and by reason of a number of pustules in his throat, the obstruction was such that he could not

Edwards swallow the necessary medicines, and the fatal result was what we have stated. The character of Mr Edwards is that of a very primitive, self-mortified, simple, and amiable man, and affords a strong proof of the power of genuine Christian piety upon the heart in spite of the most dark and awful tenets. He was solely occupied with his professional duties and his theological studies, insomuch, as is mentioned with inimitable simplicity by the author of his life, "that he was less acquainted with most of his temporal affairs than many of his neighbours, 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," &c. Mrs Edwards, however, a most valuable and sensible woman, fully supplied his defects in these particulars. We must quote another passage from this piece of biography, which is equal in simplicity, though by no means in any thing else, to some of the exquisite biographies of Isaac Walton. After being informed that he did not permit dancing (he has a sermon against that amusement), we are told that "he allowed not his children to be from home after nine o'clock at night, when they went abroad to see their friends and companions; neither were they allowed to sit up much after that time, in his own house, when any came to make them a visit. If any gentleman desired acquaintance with his daughters, after handsomely introducing himself, by properly consulting the parents, he was allowed all proper opportunity for it, and a room and fire, if needed; but must not intrude on the proper hours of rest and sleep, nor the religion and order of the family."

Mr Edwards comes nearer Bishop Butler as a philosophical divine than any other theologian with whom we are acquainted. His style, like Butler's, is very much that of a man thinking aloud. In both these authors the train of thinking in their own minds is more clearly exhibited to us than, perhaps, by any other writer; while they show us, with great truth and distinctness, what their notions are, and how they came by them, with very little concern about the form of expression in which they are brought out. Butler, however, had a larger mind than Edwards, and was by no means so much of a special pleader. He may be, therefore, less acute, but he is more comprehensive, and gives fairer play to every opposing argument. We do not mean here to enter into any of Edwards's speculations. Both on the subject of Original Sin, and on the Freedom of the Will, he seems to us to unite a great deal too closely the views which originated, as we have seen, in no small degree, amidst his early reveries, with the infallible discoveries of divine revelation. Our notion is, that in all discussions on such subjects which have hitherto appeared, the speculativists have forgotten how little a part either of the history or the nature of man we are, in fact, acquainted with; and how ready we ever are, in laying the foundations of our theories, to place a tortoise beneath the elephant. The whole difficulty, for instance, on

the freedom of the will, turns upon a puzzle in the idea of cause and effect. Perhaps this idea is far from being precise in our minds (Mr Edwards uses it very loosely in his speculations), and yet we do not scruple, in our reasonings upon it, to draw the most positive inferences from the assumptions which we lay down. We suspect, for our parts, that the true and accurate notion of causation always involves the idea of volition, and, in that supposition, to ask for the cause of volition itself is absurd. It may be very true, that we cannot will to do any thing without previous thought or motive; neither can we think without previous existence. But is our existence the cause of our thinking? Just as much as our thinking is the cause of our willing. We are far, however, from wishing to add our own crude conceptions to those which have been piled up upon this subject from the beginning of time to the present hour, without, we believe, doing the slightest service to the cause of moral and religious truth, or doing any thing, in short, except affording an exercise for ingenuity, and too often a handle for the most uncharitable rancour and presumptuous absurdity. Mr Edwards, with all his great powers, has, accordingly, we apprehend, done but little good to the world,—we mean as a philosopher,—for he did much good in his own day, while he was living the life of a zealous and faithful Christian minister. But it is "thus we play the fools with the time; and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us." Exalted above all the folly of human wisdom, the spirit of this truly good and pious man is now, it may be, disposed to regard with some such sentiment many of his own former most severe and laborious speculations, which were carried on in the serious belief, that if "the knots of Calvinism were trimmed off, or its doctrines, in the whole length and breadth of them, were not rigidly maintained, a man could nowhere set his foot down with consistency and safety, short of Deism, or even Atheism itself, or rather universal Scepticism!"

Edwards's works consist of several volumes of sermons, printed at various times, and often reprinted in this country as well as in America. Besides these he wrote, 1. A Treatise concerning Religious Affections, 1746, 8vo. 2. An Account of the Life of the Reverend David Brainerd, 1749, 8vo. 3. An Inquiry into the Qualifications for full Communion in the Visible Church, 1749; intended as a vindication of his principles in the matter which occasioned his dismissal from Northampton. 4. A careful and strict Inquiry into the Modern Notion of that Freedom of Will, which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agency, 1754. 5. The great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin defended; containing a Reply to the Objections of Dr John Taylor, 1758. 6. A History of Redemption. 7. Miscellaneous Observations on Important Theological Subjects. London, 1798. 8. Remarks on Important Theological Controversies. Ibid. 1796. Some of these were posthumous, as were a few other tracts of less importance written by him. (v. v.)