1 A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, and the Neighbouring Towns and Villages of New-Hampshire in New-England (Edinburgh and London, 1737)Google Scholar. Translated into German and Dutch by 1740, this work was frequently reprinted for over a century. See Johnson, T. H., The Printed Writings of Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: a Bibliography (Princeton [N. J.], 1940), Nos. 4–33Google Scholar. Except where otherwise noted, Dwight's, S. E. ten-volume edition of Edwards' Works (New York, 1830), is used in this study.Google Scholar

2 “Faithful Narrative,” Works, IV, 21; Preface to “Discourses,” Works, V, 347–348.Google Scholar

3 This is the judgment of Miller, Perry in his Jonathan Edwards (New York, 1949), pp. 109–113Google Scholar. Miller attributes the theological susceptibility of New England to Arminian views in large part to the mutual contract features of the covenant theology (“The Marrow of Puritan Divinity,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXXII [Transactions, 1935], 247–300).Google Scholar

4 These, and several others of liberal persuasion, were included in the Dummer collection sent to Yale (Dexter, F. B., Documentary History of Yale University … 1701–1745 [New Haven, 1916], pp. 240–241)Google Scholar. They were also quite familiar to Edwards. About 1740, John Taylor of Norwich published, at London, his Scripture-Doctrine of Original Sin Proposed to Free and Candid Examination. This work, immediately popular in New England, contains, explicitly or in germ, all the “Arminian” (really, Pelagian-Socinian) ideas against which Edwards was to contend throughout his career. For Edwards' reading and literary interests, see Caskey's, J. S. transcription (with notes) of “Jonathan Edwards' ‘Catalogue,’” (unpublished B.D. thesis; Chicago Theological Seminary, 1931)Google Scholar and Johnson, T. H., “Jonathan Edwards' Background of Reading,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXVIII (Transactions, 1931), 193–222.Google Scholar

5 God makes his covenant of grace, says Bulkeley, Peter, with each believer: “But [it] is not properly a Covenant, where there is not a mutual obligation and binding of the parties one to another by condition …” (The Gospel Covenant [enl. and corr. ed.; London, 1651], p. 314)Google Scholar. And, as argues, John Cotton (A Treatise of the Covenant of Grace… [London, 1659], pp. 62ff.)Google Scholar, of what use are conditional promises, if we cannot take a promise in one hand and a qualification in the other and thus approach God?

6 Dwight, S. E., “Life of Edwards,” Works, I, 300–304Google Scholar; Miller, Perry, “Solomon Stoddard, 1643–1729,” Harvard Theological Review, XXIV (1941), 285ff.Google Scholar

7 Boston, 1738. The discourse on “Justification by Faith Alone” is printed in the Works, V, 351–452.Google Scholar

8 New Englands Lamentations … The Decay of the Power of Godliness; The Danger of Arminian Principles; The Declining State of Our Church-Order… (Boston, 1734).Google Scholar

9 Haroutunian, Joseph, Piety versus Moralism (New York, 1932), p. 10Google Scholar; Winslow, Ola Elizabeth, Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758 (New York, 1940), pp. 173–174.Google Scholar

10 There is no doubting Edwards' own loyalties. He was deeply rooted in the Calvinistic Puritanism of both Old and New England. Nurtured on the writings of men like William Ames, John Preston, Richard Sibbes, and Thomas Shepard, he also made regular use of such works as Turretine's, FrancisInstitutio Theologiae Elencticae (Geneva, 1679–1685)Google Scholar, which be prized for its help in theological polemics, and Mastrieht's, Peter vanTheoretico Practica Theologia (ed. nova, Rhentun, 1699)Google Scholar, which he ranked next to the Bible (in a letter of 1747; see Williams, Stanley [ed.], “Six Letters of Jonathan Edwards to Joseph Bellamy,” New England Quarterly, I [1928], 230)Google Scholar. To what extent Edwards knew at first hand the continental Lutheran, Arminian, and even Calvinistic theologians, is uncertain. Toward Calvin himself, Edwards' attitude was one of deference but independence (Preface to the “Freedom of Will,” Works, II, 12–13).Google Scholar

11 Works, V, 353.

12 Ibid., p. 354.

13 Ibid., pp. 354–355. Edwards is here asserting the Calvinistic view (as against John Piscator, e. g.) that not only the sufferings and death of Christ but his active obedience or fulfillment of the law are imputed to the believer.

14 Ibid., pp. 394ff. Cf. Calvin's, definition of justification as “an acceptance, by which God receives us into his favour, and esteems us as righteous persons; and we say that it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ” (Institutes, III, xi, 2)Google Scholar. The translation used in this study is that of Allen, John (Philadelphia, 1939)Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., pp. 370–374.

16 Ibid., pp. 355–359.

17 Ibid., pp. 415.

18 Ibid., pp. 376–377, 409ff.

19 Ibid., pp. 438–446. Cf. Calvin, , “The True Method of … Reforming the Church,” in Tracts Relating to the Reformation, trans. Beveridge, H. (Edinburgh, 1844–1851), III, 247–248.Google Scholar

20 Boston, 1731.

21 “God Glorified,” Works, VII, 161.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., pp. 160–161. Italics in all quotations are the original authors'.

23 The “Miscellanies,” consisting of eight volumes and an index volume, will be found in the Yale Collection, Folders XIII-XXI. Entries on this topic are especially numerous in the first half of the series (which extends from “a” to “z,” from “aa” to “zz,” and from 1 to 1360). There are fewer entries in the latter half; however, No. 1354 is a long article on the subject. Edwards also kept a separate notebook on faith (Folder XXVI), which is printed in the Works, VII, 536ff.Google Scholar

24 Works, V, 315–319Google Scholar. The Religious Affections was published at Boston in 1746.

25 Misrepresentations Corrected, and Truth Vindicated, in a Reply to the Rev. Mr. Solomon Williams' Book, Intitled, The True State of the Question … (Boston, 1752).Google Scholar

26 “Reply to Williams,” Works, IV, 600–601.Google Scholar

27 Edwards' Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of … Freedom of Will …, though almost a decade in preparation, was published at Boston in 1754. The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended … (Boston, 1758)Google Scholar was in the press at the time of Edwards' death. The Nature of True Virtue and The End for Which God Created the World were published posthumously as Two Dissertations (Boston, 1765)Google Scholar. His “Treatise on Grace” was edited, a century later, by Grosart, A. B. in Selections from the Unpublished Writings of Jonathan Edwards of America (Edinburgh, 1865).Google Scholar

28 The Apostles St. Paul and St. James Reconciled with Respect to Faith and Works (Boston, 1743).Google Scholar

29 The most important pamphlets in the controversy were the attack on Balch by Wigglesworth, Samuel and Chipman, John, Remarks on Some Points of Doctrine, Apprehended by Many as Unsound; Propagated in Preaching… by the Rev. W. Balch (Boston, 1746)Google Scholar and Balch's, Vindication of Some Points of Doctrine … Being an Answer to the Remarks … (Boston, 1746)Google Scholar. For a summary of the points at issue, see Haroutunian, , Piety versus Moralism, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

30 Croswell, Andrew, What is Christ to Me, If He Is Not Mine? Or, A Seasonable Defence of the Old Protestant Doctrine of Justifying Faith … (Boston, 1745)Google Scholar. Williams, answered with A Vindication of the Gospel Doctrine of Justifying Faith …(Boston, 1746)Google Scholar. Besides replying, Heaven Shut against Arminians and Antinomians … (Boston, 1747)Google Scholar, Croswell also wrote a discourse on Free Forgiveness of Spiritual Debts … Wherein the Author … Speaks His Mind Freely of Several Doctrines, Which Virtually Teach Sinners to Pay Their Own Spiritual Debts … (Boston, 1746).Google Scholar

31 “Justification by Faith Alone,” Works, V, 356.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., pp. 356–357.

33 The accomplishment of this union is related by Ames (Medulla Theoligica [ed. tertia; Amstelodami, 1628], I, xxvi)Google Scholar to effectual calling; and this, according to Turretine (op. cit., XV, iv, 13), consists in regenerating grace “per habituum supernaturalium infusionem a Spiritn Sancto,” out of which habitus issue the “actus fidei et poenitentiae.”

34 “Justification by Faith Alone,” Works, V, 361Google Scholar. The special influence of Mastricht on Edwards is almost certainly to be seen here. The “realis unio,” the “substantialis conjunctio” (i. e., union of substances, but not coalescence into one substance) of the soul with Christ lies at the heart of Mastricht's theology (op. cit., VI, v) and ethics (Idea Theologiae Moralis [bound with op. cit.], I, ix; II, v, xii).

35 “Justification by Faith Alone,” Works, V, 363.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., p. 364. The word “faith,” writes Edwards in his notes, signifies a “complex act of the mind” which comprehends “the whole act of acceptance, or closing of the soul or heart with Christ” (Works, VII, 545).Google Scholar

37 “Justification by Faith Alone,” Works, V, 364Google Scholar. The same tendency to ground imputed relations in real ones is observable in Edwards' treatment of original sin. He espouses the mediate rather than immediate imputation of Adam's sin and interposes to account for it a theory of identity or “real union” between each man and Adam which almost replaces imputation altogether (“Original Sin,” Works, II, 542–563).Google Scholar

38 The basic elements of Edwards' theory of beauty or “excellency” are set forth in “The Mind,” Works, I, 693–697 (No. 1).Google Scholar

39 Cf. Bulkeley, op. cit., pp. 361–364; Shepard, Thomas, The Sound Believer (reprint; Boston, 1742), pp. 83, 102ffGoogle Scholar. Yet we find Edwards' English Puritan contemporary, John Brine, maintaining that justification is eternal and that faith enters only as a means by which we receive assurance of the fact (Defence of the Doctrine of Eternal Justification [London, 1732], pp. 18–19, 24–25, 64–65).Google Scholar

40 Formula of Concord; II, iii, 41Google Scholar (Book of Concord, ed. H. B. Jacobs [Philadelphia, 1883], I, 577).Google Scholar

41 Institutes, III, xi, 1Google Scholar. Cf. “Antidote to the Council of Trent,” Tracts Relating to the Reformation, III, 116.Google Scholar

42 No. 77. Spelling and punctuation are modernized. This and the following transcriptions from the “Miscellanies” were made from the MS in the Sterling Library, Yale University, and are quoted by permission.

43 Turretine, op. cit., XV, xiii.

44 “For faith, unless hope and charity be added thereto, neither unites man perfectly with Christ, nor makes him a living member of his body” (Sess. VI, chap. vii; translation from Schaff, Philip, Creeds of Christendom [New York, 1877], II, 96)Google Scholar. Turretine (op. cit., XV, xiii, 2) represents as the Roman view, “ut fidem in se consideratam non justificare obtineant, sed totam vim justiflcandi a charitate mutuari, fidem distinxerunt in formatam, et informem. Informis dicitur illis, quae a charitate sejuncta est, formata vero, quae a charitate tanquam forma perficitur … charitatem non esse formam fidei secundum esse naturae; imo posse separari a fide; sed quoad esse meritorium, quatenus meretur vitam aeternam …”

45 A Treatise of Faith (London, 1637), p. 38.Google Scholar

46 Turretine, op. cit., XV, viii, 7; x. Wollebius, Johann, Christiane Theologiae Compendium (Basileae, 1634), I, xxix, 10Google Scholar. Cf. also Calvin's attack on the distinction between informal and formal faith (Institutes, III, ii, 8–10).Google Scholar

47 Sermons (London, 1744), XI, 4994Google Scholar. Tillotson therefore rejects as specious the favorite Calvinistic solution “that ‘faith justifies the person; and works justify the faith,’ and that this is St. James his meaning” (Ibid., p. 5012).

48 Sermons (London, 1744), VII, 42.Google Scholar

49 “Miscellanies,” No. 218.

50 Ibid., No. 411.

51 Ibid., No. 412.

52 Idem.

53 The question, writes Edwards (“Miscellanies,” No. 36), is not whether men are justified by evangelical obedience: “But the question is whether we are justified by evangelical obedience because of the goodness that is in it, or whether it be merely because by evangelical obedience … the believer is united to Christ and made one with him, and so is looked upon as the same by God. This is the question.” But if this is admitted, the dispute is no longer about justification as such, but about man's ability to perform evangelical obedience.

54 “Personal Narrative,” Works, I, 62Google Scholar. Again he says (Ibid., p. 133): “The sweetest joys and delights I have experienced, have not been those that have arisen from a hope of my own good estate; but in a direct view of the glorious things of the gospel.”

55 One of the most important sermons of the earlier revival was A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, Shewn to Be Both a Scriptural, and Rational, Doctrine (Boston, 1734).Google Scholar

56 “Divine and Supernatural Light,” Works, VI, 182–183Google Scholar. Cf. “Religious Affections,” Works, V, 151ff.Google Scholar

57 This conception is brought out especially in the Religious Affections, the “Miscellanies” number printed by Miller, Perry as “Jonathan Edwards on the Sense of the Heart,” Harvard Theological Review, XLI (1948), 123–145CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the Freedom of Will. The will, says Edwards, “is not moved out of a state of perfect indifference, any otherwise than as it is affected one way or other … In every act of the will whatsoever, the soul either likes or dislikes, is either inclined or disinclined to what is in view. These are not essentially different from the affections of love and hatred” (“Religious Affections,” Works, V, 10–11)Google Scholar. Edwards reduces all emotions (and hence volitions) to varieties or expressions of these two basic inclination of preference and aversion (cf. “Freedom of Will,” Works, II, 16).Google Scholar

58 “Miscellaneous Remarks,” Works, VII, 552.Google Scholar

59 Works, V, 129–150.

60 Ibid., p. 134. This, however, is not out of harmony with the Puritan view of justifying faith as expressed, e.g., by Ames: “Neque est (proprie loquendo) specialis fiducia, qua remissionem peccatorum, & ipsam justificationem apprehendimus: Fides enim justificans praecedit justificationem ipsam, ut causa, suum effectum: sed Fides justificationem apprehendens, necessario praesupponit ac sequitur justificationem, ut actus objectum suum, circa quod versatur” (Medulla, I, xxvii, 16). Cf. Turretine (op. cit., XV, viii, 10, 11; x, 3), who denies that confidence and the reflex act which contemplates one's interest in Christ are of the essence of saving faith.

61 “Religions Affections,” Works, V, 262.Google Scholar

62 Cf. Luther's, “Babylonian Captivity of the Church,” Works (Philadelphia, 1915), II, 248–249Google Scholar, and his “Treatise on Christian Liberty,” Ibid., pp. 312–348, passim.

63 “For though we are never reconciled to God, without being at the same time presented with inherent righteousness, yet things which cannot be separated ought to be distinguished … let Regeneration be what it may, we deny that Justification is to be placed in it. “We do not act thus … from a love of disputation … The cause which urges us is most necessary. The point involved is peace of conscience, without which we must all be most wretched, nay, almost undone” (“The True Method of … Reforming the Church,” Tracts Relating to the Reformation, III, 244)Google Scholar. Cf. also Calvin's, Instruction in Faith (1537), trans. Fuhrmann, P. F. (Philadelphia, 1949), pp. 40–43Google Scholar, where the elements of imputation and impartation are distinguished but held in close conjunction.

64 Institutes, III, ii, 16ff.Google Scholar

65 This is the theme of Sibbes', Richard famous sermon, “The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax,” Complete Works (Edinburgh, 1862–1864), I, 38–100.Google Scholar

66 Bulkeley, op. cit., pp. 319, 323–324; Cotton, op, cit., p. 43.

67 Works, III, 93–109.Google Scholar

68 Grosart, , Selections, pp. 47–49.Google Scholar

69 Ibid., pp. 30–34.

70 Works, III, 12ff., 81–87.Google Scholar

71 “The Mind,” Works, I, 699–701 (No. 45).Google Scholar

72 The conception of regenerating and sanctifying grace as an infusion of new habits and principles is prominent in Edwards' writings on the subject (e.g., “Miscellaneous Remarks,” Works, VII, 443, 457–460)Google Scholar. “Grace” ordinarily means, for Edwards, not God's justifying graciousness, but his physical act on the will in “preparatory work” and regeneration.

73 Works, V, 348–349 (Preface).Google Scholar

74 Barrow deplores the “great anger or animosity in Dissenters one towards another, seeing they all conspire in avowing the acts, whatever they be, meant by the word Justification, although in other terms, seeing all the dispute is about the precise and adequate notion of the word Justification … ”—Sermons (Edinburgh, 1821), IV, 120.Google Scholar

75 For example, in the difference between God's judicial “acceptatio” (Calvinist) and his sovereign “acceptilatio” (Arminian) of the atoning work of Christ on behalf of the believer. But here, as elsewhere, the decisive conflict was not about justification per se, but about the doctrines of human abffity and irresistible grace. See Hodge, Charles, Systematic Theology (New York, 1872), III, 185–193Google Scholar; Ritschl, Albrecht, A Critical History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification and Reconciliation, trans. Black, J. S. (Edinburgh, 1872), pp. 310–319.Google Scholar

76 Though the English Arminians insisted that obedience was an essential part of faith (cf. Tillotson, , Sermons, VI, 1796; XI, 5007)Google Scholar, their rationalism, with its intellectualistic conception of faith (Ibid., pp. 4873ff.; Clarke, , Sermons, II, 237–259)Google Scholar, tended to create a hiatus between faith as belief and works as that “sincere obedience” which is rewarded with eternal life (Clarke, , Sermons, VII, 104–105Google Scholar; Tillotson, , Sermons, XI, 4709 ff.)Google Scholar. Edwards, too, could place obedience in justifying faith, but because he identified obedience and faith with that loving disposition or “consent” to God of which only the regenerate are capable (cf. “Miscellaneous Remarks,” Works, VII, 459–470).Google Scholar

77 As Edwards puts it in the “Religious Affections” (Works, V, 172–215)Google Scholar, gracious affections bring both “a conviction of certainty” and “evangelical humiliation.”

78 “He may be said to be the giver of money that offers it to us, without being the proper determiner of our acceptance. But it is in the acceptance of offers, and the proper improvement of opportunities, wherein consists virtue. He may be said to be the giver of money or goods, that does not determine the wise choice; but if the wise and good choice itself be said to be the thing given, it supposes that the giver determines the existence of such a wise choice.” — “Miscellaneous Remarks,” Works, VII, 474.Google Scholar