fulltext3

J O N AT H A N E D WA R D S

The “Miscellanies”

(Ent ry Nos . 833 –1152 )

E D I T E D B YA M Y P L A N T I N G A PA U W

HENRY P. MOBLEY, JR . , PROFESSOR OF DOCTRINAL THEOLOGY

LOUISVILLE PRESBYTERIAN SEMINARY

New Haven and London

Y A L E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S , 2 0 0 2

Funds for editing The Works of Jonathan Edwardshave been provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts, LillyEndowment, Inc., and The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc.

Published with assistance from The Exxon EducationFoundation.

Copyright © 2002 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copyingpermitted in Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. CopyrightLaw and except by reviewers for the public press), withoutwritten permission from the publishers.

Set in New Baskerville type by The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc., Grand Rapids, Michigan. Printed inthe United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press,Binghamton, New York.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Edwards, Jonathan, 1703–1758.[Works. 1957]The works of Jonathan Edwards / Perry Miller, general

editor.p. cm.

General editor, v. 3–6, John E. Smith; v. 7 edited byNorman Pettit; v. 8 edited by Paul Ramsey . . . [etc.]

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.Contents: v. 1. Freedom of the will — v. 2. Religious

affections—v. 3. Original sin . . . [etc.]ISBN 0-300-02282-4 (v. 6) — ISBN 0-300-06059-9

(v. 13) ISBN 0-300-09174-5 (v. 20)1. Congregational churches—United States—

Doctrines. 2. Reformed Church—United States—Doctrines. 3. Theology—Early works to 1800.4. Philosophy. 5. Ethics. I. Miller, Perry,1905–1963. II. Title.BX7117 .E3 1957230�.58—dc20

57-002336

A catalogue record for this book is available from theBritish Library.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanenceand durability of the Committee on Production Guidelinesfor Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

e d i to r i a l c o m m i t t e e f o r

t h e wo r k s o f j o n at h a n e dwa r d s

Harry S. Stout, General Editor, Yale University

John E. Smith, General Editor Emeritus, Yale University

Jon Butler, Yale University

Ava Chamberlain, Wright State University

John Demos, Yale University

Shalom Goldman, Emory University

David D. Hall, Harvard University

Wilson H. Kimnach, University of Bridgeport

Janice Knight, University of Chicago

Sang Hyun Lee, Princeton Theological Seminary

Michael McGiffert, College of William and Mary

Mark A. Noll, Wheaton College

Barbara B. Oberg, Princeton University

Amy Plantinga Pauw, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary

Thomas A. Schafer, McCormick Theological Seminary

Stephen J. Stein, Indiana University

John F. Wilson, Princeton University

p r e v i o u s ly p u b l i s h e d

Paul Ramsey, ed., Freedom of the WillJohn E. Smith, ed., Religious AffectionsClyde A. Holbrook, ed., Original SinC. C. Goen, ed., The Great AwakeningStephen J. Stein, ed., Apocalyptic WritingsWallace E. Anderson, ed., Scientific and Philosophical WritingsNorman Pettit, ed., The Life of David BrainerdPaul Ramsey, ed., Ethical WritingsJohn F. Wilson, ed., A History of the Work of RedemptionWilson H. Kimnach, ed., Sermons and Discourses, 1720–1723Wallace E. Anderson and Mason I. Lowance, eds., Typological WritingsDavid D. Hall, ed., Ecclesiastical WritingsThomas A. Schafer, ed., The “Miscellanies,” a–500Kenneth P. Minkema, ed., Sermons and Discourses, 1723–1729Stephen J. Stein, ed., Notes on ScriptureGeorge S. Claghorn, ed., Letters and Personal WritingsMark Valeri, ed., Sermons and Discourses, 1730–1733Ava Chamberlain, ed., The “Miscellanies,” 501–832M. X. Lesser, ed., Sermons and Discourses, 1734–1738

c o n t e n t s

Editorial Committee vList of Illustrations viiiNote to the Reader ixEditor’s Introduction 1

The “Miscellanies,” Entry Nos. 833–1152 41

General Index 527

Index of Biblical Passages 553

vii

viii

i l l u s t r at i o n s

Frontispiece Plate from Francis Quarles’ Emblemes (1635), illustrat-ing Ps. 137:4.

Page223 The first page of “Miscellanies” No. 953, in Book 4,

quoting Theophilus Gale’s Court of the Gentiles.429 The first page of “Miscellanies” No. 1062, in Book 5,

“Economy of the Trinity and Covenant of Redemp-tion.”

n o t e to t h e r e a d e r

Preparation of the Text

The text of Jonathan Edwards is reproduced in this Edition as he wroteit in manuscript, or, if he published it himself, as it was printed in the firstedition. In order to present this text to modern readers as practically read-able, several technical adjustments have been made. Those which can beaddressed categorically are as follows:

1. All spelling is regularized and conformed to that of Webster’s ThirdNew International Dictionary, a step that does not involve much more thanremoving the “u” from “colour” or “k” from “publick” since Edwards wasa good speller, used relatively modern spelling, and generally avoided “y”contractions. His orthographic contractions and abbreviations, such asampersands, “call’d,” and “thems.” are spelled out, though pronouncedcontractions, such as “han’t” and “ben’t,” are retained.

2. There is no regular punctuation in most of Edwards’ manuscriptsand where it does exist, as in the earliest sermons, it tends to be highly er-ratic. Editors take into account Edwards’ example in punctuation and re-lated matters, but all punctuation is necessarily that of the editor, includ-ing paragraph divisions (especially in some notebooks such as the“Miscellanies”) and the emphasizing devices of italics and capitalization.In reference to capitalization, it should be noted that pronouns referringto the deity are lower case except in passages where Edwards confusinglymixes “he’s” referring to God and man: here capitalization of pronounsreferring to the deity sorts out the references for the reader.

3. Numbered heads designate important structures of argument in Ed-wards’ sermons, notebooks, and treatises. Numbering, including spelled-out numbers, has been regularized and corrected where necessary. Par-ticularly in the manuscript sermon texts, numbering has been clarifiedby the use of systematic schemes of heads and subheads in accordancewith eighteenth-century homiletical form, a practice similar to modernanalytical outline form. Thus the series of subordinated head numberforms, 1, (1), 1, a, (a), in the textual exegesis, and the series, I, First, 1, (1),

ix

1, a, (a), in Doctrine and Application divisions, make it possible to deter-mine sermon head relationships at a glance.

4. Textual intervention to regularize Edwards’ citation of Scripture in-cludes the correction of erroneous citation, the regularizing of citationform (including the standardization of book abbreviations), and the com-pletion of quotations which Edwards’ textual markings indicate shouldbe completed (as in preaching).

5. Omissions and lacunae in the manuscript text are filled by insertionsin square brackets ([ ]); repeated phrases sometimes represented by Ed-wards with a long dash are inserted in curly brackets ({ }). In all cases ofuncertain readings, annotation gives notice of the problem. Markings inthe text designate whole word units even when only a few letters are at is-sue.

6. Minor slips of the pen or obvious typographical errors are correctedwithout annotation. Likewise, Edwards’ corrections, deletions, and in-ternal shifts of material are observed but not noted unless of substantiveinterest.

7. Quotations made by the editor from the Bible (KJV) and other sec-ondary sources are printed verbatim ac literatim. Edwards’ quotations fromsuch sources are often rather free but are not corrected and are not an-notated as such unless significant omissions or distortions are involved.

In this group of notebook entries, Edwards began in earnest to cite andquote from various sources. Some of these excerpts are verbatim, in whichcase the wording and punctuation have been checked against the origi-nals. Bracketed ellipses indicate significant omissions not marked by Ed-wards. Other excerpts he paraphrased. In either case, Edwards was notmerely a passive copier; he re-organized materials, interjected his owncomments, and added references to his own and others’ works.

Within these entries, a wide array of authors and works, classical, earlychurch, and otherwise, are mentioned and quoted. Edwards replicatedvirtually all of these quotations (and, consequently, their inaccuracies)from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century works upon which he relied.An effort has been made to fill out these references to identify, where pos-sible, lesser known figures; to provide the more familiar titles of someworks; to explain vague references or allusions, and to supply the sourcereferences given by the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century compilerswhen Edwards himself did not do so.

Another characteristic of these entries is that they include, relative toprevious ones, more instances of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Translationsare provided in the footnotes, excepting where Edwards’ own text gives

x Note to the Reader

the meaning of the word or passage. In the case of repeated phrases, onlythe first occurrence is translated.

Acknowledgments

Like countless other students of the “Miscellanies,” I am deeply in-debted to Thomas A. Schafer. He first kindled my interest in these note-books while I was in graduate school at Yale, and he has remained a wiseand generous mentor ever since. His foundational work on these manu-scripts has undergirded my efforts at every stage of preparation for thisvolume. General Editor Harry S. Stout has also supported and nurturedmy interest in Edwards since graduate school days with his inimitable en-thusiasm; I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to a series he hasdone so much to promote.

The Edition staff has made the sometimes arduous and painstakingwork of historical editing a rewarding experience. Douglas A. Sweeneyand Peter J. Thuesen were encouraging and helpful in correcting draftsof edited entries. Ava Chamberlain, building on the experience of edit-ing her own “Miscellanies” volume, has been a welcome source of supportand expertise. My deep thanks also go to Executive Editor Kenneth P.Minkema, whose knowledge of Edwards is matched only by his generousspirit. He spent countless hours correcting my drafts, researching foot-notes, charting Edwards’ use of secondary sources, and promptly and ge-nially answering hundreds of questions. George G. Levesque, Dean ofBerkeley College, and Michael J. Anderson of the Classics Department atYale University generously assisted in identifying and translating Latinand Greek passages. Susan Laity of Yale University Press copy-edited themanuscript.

George Marsden kindly read the introduction. Two anonymous read-ers provided perceptive critiques and valuable suggestions for improvingthe volume. My colleagues at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, JohannaBos, Joe Coalter, Susan Garrett, Kathryn Johnson, and John Mulder, havein different ways all lent their expertise to this project. I am grateful fortheir counsel and encouragement, and especially for their friendship.

Excerpts from the “Miscellanies” copy by Sereno Dwight are publishedcourtesy of Andover-Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, Mass.The manuscript of No. 1152 is published by permission of the Library ofCongress, Washington, D.C.

Funding for this volume and for the Edition as a whole has been pro-vided by the Pew Charitable Trusts, Lilly Endowment, Inc., and the HenryLuce Foundation, Inc.

Note to the Reader xi

editor’s introduction

This is the third volume of entries from Jonathan Edwards’ notebooks,the “Miscellanies,” in the Works of Jonathan Edwards series. The first vol-ume, edited by Thomas A. Schafer, covered entries a–500, and spannedthe early years of Edwards’ ministry, 1722–31.1 The second volume,edited by Ava Chamberlain, included entries 501–832, which Edwardswrote during the 1730s.2 The “Miscellanies” entries in this volume werewritten during the best-known period of Edwards’ life, the eventful andtumultuous years 1740–1751. This was the period in which Edwards wit-nessed, documented and pondered the surprising revivals of the “GreatAwakening,” as well as their precipitous decline. Although he remainedrooted in Northampton, Edwards became an international figure duringthese years, through both his published works and his energetic transat-lantic correspondence. His joint efforts with ministers in Scotland tomaintain an evangelical network among the scattered members of the re-vival community through a “concert of prayer” helped counter his dis-couragement at the aftermath of the New England revivals. Back at home,these years were a time of increasing tension between Edwards and hisNorthampton congregation; ongoing conflicts over pastoral salary andchurch discipline presaged his dismissal in 1750.

The “Miscellanies” notebooks were an important site for Edwards’ the-ological experimentation, a place where he continually restated and re-fined his major ideas and arguments. Some of the entries of this periodreflect his creative engagement with the urgent theological issues of themoment; such entries include several on heaven’s glories and hell’s tor-ments, the importance of spiritual humility, and the nature of saving faithand its relation to holy practice. Other entries form part of Edwards’ on-going research in preparation for larger apologetic works; here we find

1

1. See Works of Jonathan Edwards, 13, The “Miscellanies,” a–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (NewHaven, Yale Univ. Press, 1994). After initial citation, all volumes in the Yale Edition will be re-ferred to as Works with the volume number.

2. See Works of Jonathan Edwards, 18, The “Miscellanies,” 501–832, ed. Ava Chamberlain (NewHaven, Yale Univ. Press, 2000).

long excerpts copied from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century apolo-gists, interspersed with Edwards’ own arguments against the theologicalheterodoxies of his day.

It is also interesting to note what does not appear in these notebooks.Although these years were plagued by bitter controversies with theNorthampton congregation, we see few allusions to Edwards’ growingpastoral difficulties in the “Miscellanies.” These entries seemed to haveserved him more as an intellectual refuge than as a site for venting his pri-vate frustrations. Nor are his growing millennial interests reflected here.The exegetical and theological reflections of his Humble Attempt to extendthe international Concert for Prayer are rehearsed in his sermons fromthis decade, rather than in his “Miscellanies” notebooks.3 I shall examinein greater detail some of the recurrent theological themes in these en-tries, following a brief narrative of this period in Edwards’ life.

Overview of the Period

By late 1739, at the beginning of the long decade under consideration,Edwards had been the senior pastor at Northampton for ten years andhad recently settled into a new, larger meeting house. Between March andAugust of that year he preached an ambitious series of thirty sermons tohis Northampton congregation, published posthumously as A History ofthe Work of Redemption.4 Organized around a single text, Is. 51:8, these ser-mons traced the broad sweep of God’s redemptive work from its begin-ning in the human fall into sin to its consummation in the glorificationof the saints in heaven. In his Personal Narrative, written at about the sametime, Edwards declared, “My heart has been much on the advancementof Christ’s kingdom in the world.”5 As his “Miscellanies” from this periodshow, the earthly contours of the “progress of the work of redemption”and its dramatic eschatological finale would continue to be his preoccu-pying theological and pastoral interest throughout the 1740s.6

Though Edwards’ pastoral relations were calm at the beginning of this

2 Editor’s Introduction

3. For the text of Humble Attempt, see Works of Jonathan Edwards, 5, Apocalyptic Writings, ed.Stephen J. Stein (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1977), 307–436. In Feb. 1746, JE preached a ser-mon series on Zech. 8:20–23, on which this treatise is based (Edwards Collection, General MSS151, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Unless otherwise noted, allMSS referred to in this volume are in the Beinecke Library.)

4. See Works of Jonathan Edwards, 9, A History of the Work of Redemption, ed. John F. Wilson (NewHaven, Yale Univ. Press, 1989).

5. Works of Jonathan Edwards, 16, Letters and Personal Writings, ed. George S. Claghorn (NewHaven, Yale Univ. Press, 1998), 800.

6. See, e.g., Nos. 833, 834, 835, 907, 932, 935, 946, 949, 952, 991.

period, there were already foreshadowings of future conflicts with hisNorthampton congregation. In 1739 Edwards saw to it that three moredeacons were appointed at Northampton: Stephen Wright, EbenezerPomeroy, Jr., and Noah Cook. The latter two would eventually lead the op-position to Edwards’ ministry that culminated in his dismissal. Owing tothe increasing needs of his young household, Edwards in 1740 asked thetown for a salary increase. In No. 850, written that same year, he notes thescriptural imperative for “God’s visible people” to provide generously “forthem that dwell before the Lord, to eat sufficiently, and for durable cloth-ing.” This time Edwards’ request was promptly granted, though extendedwrangling over the amount of the pastor’s salary would soon begin.

Although in retrospect Edwards would see “a great abiding alteration”7

in the religious affections of the people of Northampton following the1734–35 revival, the intervening years were also marked by seasons of de-cline. The early fall of 1740 was one of these periods. As Edwards lamentsin a letter to Eleazar Wheelock of October 9, 1740, it was “a sorrowfullydull and dead time with us.”8

That would all change in a week, with George Whitefield’s visit toNorthampton on October 17. Edwards sent the invitation to Whitefieldin a letter full of apocalyptic anticipation for the defeat of Satan’s king-dom and the establishment of Christ’s “glorious kingdom of light, holi-ness, peace and love.”9 Whitefield’s visit did not disappoint. The “GrandItinerant” had arrived in Boston in September, and during an eleven-dayperiod he preached in almost twenty indoor and outdoor settings, at-tracting the largest crowds ever assembled in an American colonial city.During Whitefield’s four-day stay in Northampton, Edwards reports that“the congregation was extraordinarily melted by every sermon” the re-vivalist preached; Edwards was, on Whitefield’s account, himself movedto tears.1 In the entries following directly on Whitefield’s visit, however,Edwards emphasizes the role of perseverance and practical works in jus-tification, perhaps to cast doubt on the lasting spiritual efficacy of White-field’s preaching.2

By December 1740, the revival sparked by Whitefield’s visit had spread

Editor’s Introduction 3

7. Letter to Thomas Prince, Dec. 12, 1743, in Works, 16, 115.8. Letter to Eleazar Wheelock, Oct. 9, 1740, in ibid., 16, 85.9. Letter to George Whitefield, Feb. 12, 1740, in ibid., 16, 81.1. Letter to Thomas Prince, Dec. 12, 1743, in ibid., 16, 116; George Whitefield’s Journals (Lon-

don, 1741; rep. Carlisle, Penn., Banner of Truth, 1960), 476.2. See Nos. 856–861. In Nos. 859 and 860 JE refers to a sermon series he preached in Nov.

1740 on Matt. 13:3–8, the parable of the sower. Ava Chamberlain finds in these sermons apointed critique of Whitefield; see “The Grand Sower of the Seed: Jonathan Edwards’s Critiqueof George Whitefield,” The New England Quarterly LXX (Sept. 1997), 368–85.

to many of the young people and children of the town, a developmentthat was especially heartening to Edwards. His vital interest in the regen-eration of young people—and even very young children—had alreadybeen evidenced in his careful observations of the religious experiencesof four-year-old Phoebe Bartlett in the earlier revival,3 as well as in hisparental solicitude for his own children. In No. 849, written earlier thatyear, Edwards defends the proposition “The younger persons are, thefairer they stand for regeneration, if means equally proper and thoroughbe used in order thereto, of those from whom God expects it.” In this newseason of revival, Edwards conscientiously supplied the appropriatemeans for both the children and young people to increase in their reli-gious affections. The flourishing of religion in Northampton continuedthroughout the summer of 1741. Despite his acknowledgment of some“imprudences and irregularities,” Edwards’ joy and excitement over theearly course of the New England revivals was palpable. In an effusive let-ter to his former parishioner Moses Lyman, Edwards declares, “If thisben’t the work of God, I have all my religion to learn over again, and knownot what use to make of the Bible.”4

In the same letter he defends the itinerancy of his fellow ministers Ben-jamin Pomeroy and Eleazar Wheelock. Earlier that summer Edwards hadcalled upon these two revivalists to help resolve a three-year-old conflictover the right to access to the sacraments in his father’s church, with pleas-ing results. At this point in the revivals Edwards judged that “most of theclamor” made against itinerants “must needs be from some other princi-ple than a regard to the interest of religion.”5 In early 1742 he invited Rev.Samuel Buell for an extended visit to Northampton’s pulpit to aid the re-vival there. And in 1741 and 1742 Edwards did quite a bit of traveling him-self throughout the Connecticut River Valley, preaching what were oftenjudged to be very “awakening” sermons.

At the height of the revival, Edwards went to Enfield, where hepreached the sermon on July 8, 1741, that would become his most famousrhetorical and theological legacy, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Hismemorable images of sinners at the mouth of hell treading precariouslyon thin, rotting canvas and dangling like spiders over the flames appar-ently had the desired effect.6 Edwards’ “Miscellanies” from about this


3. A Faithful Narrative, in Works of Jonathan Edwards, 4, The Great Awakening, ed. C. C. Goen(New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1972), 199–205.

4. Letter to Moses Lyman, Aug. 31, 1741, in Works, 16, 97.5. Ibid.6. The theme of Sinners was not a homiletical aberration. JE’s “Table” to the “Miscellanies”

time reveal a concentrated fascination with the realities of hell’s torments,hellfire in particular.7 In these entries he honed his rhetorical skills forthe “preaching of the terrors,” although, as he notes in No. 931, even themost vivid human images represent the true “extremity of hell’s tor-ments” in a “poor, flat, cold manner.”

In his commencement sermon given at Yale College in September1741—published later that year as The Distinguishing Marks of the Work ofthe Spirit of God8—Edwards defended the preaching of terrors “with agreat deal of pathos and earnestness.”9 “Some talk of it as an unreason-able thing to think to fright persons to heaven,” he declares, “but I thinkit is a reasonable thing to endeavor to fright persons away from hell, thatstand upon the brink of it.”1 Ever the shrewd observer of religious expe-rience, Edwards understood that a prideful claim to righteousness was afar greater obstacle to human salvation than ordinary sins of the flesh. Ina corollary to No. 862, one of several entries on the need for spiritual “hu-miliation,” Edwards notes that “self-righteousness remains in the heart af-ter conversion as much as worldly-mindedness.” A central goal of thepreaching of the terrors was to quench spiritual pride, by nurturing in sin-ners “a spirit to condemn themselves and justify God” (No. 879).

In spite of his acknowledgment of the devil’s subtle and deceitful ways,Edwards expresses confidence in Distinguishing Marks that the revivalswere a work of God that operated “against the interest of Satan’s king-dom.”2 He saw “no manner of need of bringing in the help of the devilinto the account” of the revival phenomena, even in the case of those whoexperienced “a kind of ecstasy, wherein they have been carried beyondthemselves, and have had their minds transported into a train of strongand pleasing imaginations, and kind of visions, as though they werewrapped up even to heaven, and there saw glorious sights.”3 Indeed, suchintense religious experiences were closely akin to those of his wife, Sarah,which Edwards would describe the following year.4


lists eight other sermons on hell that he composed the same year, alongside dozens of “Miscel-lanies” entries. See Works, 13, 135.

7. See Nos. 886, 900, 901, 906, 916, 921, 924, 927, 929, 931.8. Works, 4, 213–88.9. Ibid., 4, 246. Gilbert Tennent published an extended defense of the “preaching of the ter-

rors”; see A Solemn Warning To The Secure World, From The God of terrible Majesty. Or, The Presumptu-ous Sinner detected, his Pleas Consider’d, and his Doom Display’d (Boston, 1735).

1. Works, 4, 248.2. Ibid., 4, 250–51.3. Ibid., 4, 237.4. Ibid., 4, 331–41.

These were heady days for Edwards. Samuel Hopkins, Edwards’ studentand eventual biographer, who moved in with the family in December1741, notes that “the fame Mr. Edwards had for Knowledge, Piety, and agreat Acquaintance with experimental Religion, naturally led both Min-isters and People, from almost all parts of New England, to look to himfor Direction and Assistance, in this extraordinary time.”5 In No. 903, anentry regarding the reality of the final resurrection and day of judgment,Edwards could not resist a contemporary analogy to the revivals: “So if anyin New England, ten years ago, had foretold such a change in the religiousstate in New England, as now is—it is so extraordinary, so much besidethe settled course of things within the memory of all living, and in manythings diverse from all that ever was heard of—then it would have beenperhaps as difficult to believe it, as to believe the great events foretold toaccompany the end of the world.” As Edwards notes in No. 907, God was“making way for an immensely greater, and more glorious reformation”of the church, after it had nearly succumbed to “deism, heresies and cold,dead formality.”

Edwards’ assessment of the revivals in Some Thoughts Concerning the Pre-sent Revival of Religion in New England,6 published in 1742, only a year af-ter Distinguishing Marks, was considerably more somber. The devil wasnow brought much more directly into his account of things, and also fig-ured largely in several entries from this period.7 Writing at the time of theembarrassing excesses of James Davenport’s second preaching tour, Ed-wards acknowledged that the devil’s main work, in times of revival, waswith the friends of religion. In the spring of 1742, Davenport was declaredby a court in Hartford to be “disturbed in the rational faculties of hismind”; the next spring, after his enthusiasm spurred his followers to burntheir wigs, finery, and unwholesome books in a manic public ritual, Ed-wards led a council of ministers to New London to discipline Davenportand restore order. As he notes in No. 928, an entry on “Presbyterian dis-cipline,” both nature and revelation “teach us to be united with those thatwe dwell with in the same country, . . . [making] us, in many respects, onebody with them.”

That entry also affirms the “special affection” that should exist amongChristians of the same region. Instead, this was a time of “sad divisions


5. Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Character of the Late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards (Boston,1765), 51.

6. Works, 4, 289–530.7. See Nos. 931, 936–941, 980.

among ministers.”8 The excesses of Davenport and lay exhorters hadearned the scorn of the revivals’ detractors, most notably CharlesChauncy, whose first written denunciation of the revivals was publishedlater that year.9 In the escalating conflict between Old Lights and NewLights, Edwards compared believers to “poor helpless sheep,” driven backand forth by the devil to the extremes of cold formalism and rabid en-thusiasm.1 His “Miscellanies” entries from these years denounce the er-ror of both extremes. In No. 999, he chastens the cold formalists by in-sisting that even “erroneous practice” may be “the occasion of those trueand holy exercises which are from the Spirit of God.” But in No. 1058, Ed-wards denounces enthusiasm, in which persons are “mightily moved andactuated by something that is pretended to be the Spirit of God, but yet isvain and empty as the wind, exceeding unsteady, and soon comes to noth-ing.” In Religious Affections, which he was writing during this period, Ed-wards was to articulate a middle way regarding the nature of true religion,a course previously laid out in his “Miscellanies.”

In March 1742 Edwards called a day of fasting and prayer in Northamp-ton “for the Continuance and Increase of the Gracious Presence of Godin That Place,” to culminate in a solemn ceremony of covenant renewal.This explicit attempt to reform his congregation had been on Edwards’mind for some time. In No. 873, a long entry probably written the previ-ous year, “concerning the profession persons ought to make explicitlywhen they come into the visible church,” Edwards emphasizes the needfor all Christians “to profess sincere, real faith or an hearty embracing[of] Christ, and reliance upon him as the Savior.” When he linked this de-mand for public profession with sacramental privileges a few years later,Edwards was dismissed from Northampton.

In the ceremony in 1742 Edwards asked everyone in the congregationover fourteen years old to stand up and “own” the covenant, as detailedin a sixteen-paragraph epitome of Christian holy practice that he haddrawn up. Following initial expressions of repentance and intercessionsfor divine blessings, the text of the covenant turned strongly toward eco-nomic matters. Subscribers vowed to “have a strict regard to rules of hon-esty, justice and uprightness,” and not to “overreach or defraud our neigh-


8. Quoted in Ola E. Winslow, Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: A Biography (New York, Macmil-lan, 1941), 199.

9. Enthusiasm Described and Cautioned Against; A Sermon Preached at the Old Brick Meeting Housein Boston, the Lord’s Day after Commencement 1742 (Boston, 1742).

1. Works, 4, 495.

bor in any matter,” to “pay our honest debts,” make restitution where ap-propriate, and not to let money and reputation become “our governingaim.”2 It was appropriate, in Edwards’ view, to angle the covenant towardthe pressing needs of the church at the moment. As he notes regardingpublic profession in No. 873, “The precise example of former times is nota rule. . . . At some times, ’tis a great deal more necessary that some par-ticular duties should be promised, and some particular doctrines explic-itly professed, in order to our charity’s embracing and resting in a person,as one of our society, than at another.” Increased economic stratificationin Northampton, combined with less show of concern for the indigent,made his parishioners’ business practices of particular concern to Ed-wards.3

This concern fed into his continuing disputes with the congregationover his salary. The aristocratic tastes of his family, once a source of pridefor the town, now struck his parishioners as pretentious and extravagantand were a reason for the growing alienation between them. In 1743 Ed-wards suffered the indignity of being required to provide an itemized listof his family’s expenditures for public scrutiny. In Religious Affections, writ-ten during this ongoing dispute, Edwards lashes out at the “proud hyp-ocrite” who is “very often much in . . . finding fault with others’ appareland way of living; and is affected ten times as much with his neighbor’sring or ribband, as with all the filthiness of his own heart.”4 Not until 1747

did Northampton grant Edwards’ request for a fixed salary.During the height of his salary disputes came the “Bad Book” case of

1744, whose outcome, according to Samuel Hopkins, “seemed in a greatMeasure to put an end to Mr. Edwards’ Usefulness at Northampton.”5 Agroup of young men, many from among “the considerable families intown,” had come upon an illustrated midwife’s manual and used it totaunt young women in the community.6 Edwards’ tactless and authori-tarian attempt to punish them met with widespread resistance and even


2. The complete text is printed in ibid., 4, 549–54.3. Indicators of increased economic stratification include the decision to arrange seating at

the new meeting house by “estate” and the parceling of common lands in 1740. See Gerald R.McDermott, One Holy and Happy Society: The Public Theology of Jonathan Edwards (University Park,Penn., Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1992), for an account of JE’s continuing calls for economicjustice in Northampton.

4. Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2, Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven, Yale Univ.Press, 1959), 335.

5. Hopkins, Life, 55.6. See Thomas H. Johnson, “Jonathan Edwards and ‘Young Folks’ Bible,’” New England Quar-

terly 5 (1932), 37–54; and Patricia J. Tracy, Jonathan Edwards, Pastor: Religion and Society in Eigh-teenth-Century Northampton (New York, Hill and Wang, 1980), 160–62.

contempt on the part of the accused. One searches in vain for any hint ofhumor or self-criticism in No. 948, Edwards’ roughly contemporaneousentry on “church discipline.” After comparing the elders of the cities ofIsrael to “the elders of Christian churches” and “the selectmen of ourtowns here in New England,” Edwards notes matter-of-factly, “The priestswere superior to them in judgment.” Edwards’ confidence in his own su-perior judgment on the contentious issues of salary and church disciplinefurther alienated his Northampton opponents.7

In 1744 Edwards declared the revivals dead. His remaining years atNorthampton were pastorally barren; no new candidates presented them-selves for full membership until 1748. Several entries from these yearsecho his futile exhortations to his Northampton parishioners regardingthe urgency of accepting and uniting with Christ. In No. 1129, a long en-try probably written in late 1749, Edwards discusses the fittingness of anearthly state of probation “to try whether man will here accept of Christand close with his redemption.” He affirms that God has established thespan of earthly life as the limit for closing with Christ, for it would be un-fitting for the door of God’s mercy to “stand open to rebels and enemiesand obstinate despisers of Christ and grace forever and ever.” This wouldonly encourage what the frustrated pastor already saw as a serious prob-lem in Northampton: “men’s delay of repentance and turning from sinto God through Christ, and living boldly in the neglect of Christ and ofthe means of an interest in him.” At the same time, as Edwards acknowl-edges more freely in No. 1138 than he seemed capable of in public, onlyGod truly knows the heart: “the gracious sincerity of our neighbors is athing which, as to its certain knowledge, is altogether unsearchable by

men.”As his situation in Northampton worsened, Edwards found some com-

fort in shifting his gaze toward Europe. In a November 1745 letter hewrites, “For although there are many dark clouds, and God’s Spirit isgreatly withdrawn from some places where it has lately been remarkablypoured out, and Satan seems at present greatly to rage and prevail; yetGod is still carrying on his work, if not in one place, yet in another.”8 Inthis letter Edwards enthusiastically commends the Concert of Prayermovement, begun by Scottish ministers, to enlist all Christians in activeintercession to God for the continued blessings of the Spirit. In No. 1053


7. The same pastoral dynamics are evident in the communion controversy that ended JE’sNorthampton pastorate five years later. See Works of Jonathan Edwards, 12, Ecclesiastical Writings,ed. David D. Hall (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1994).

8. Letter to a Correspondent in Scotland, Nov. 1745, in Works, 16, 183.

Edwards argues the need for this “preparatory work”: “If the wisdom ofGod did not see it meet that there should be preparation for that spiritualgood that he bestows on his church and people, there would be no use atall of means of grace, and prayer to God for the blessings we need wouldbe of no benefit.” In 1747 he published An Humble Attempt, urging Chris-tians to unite in “extraordinary prayer.” His vision of the church as “onefamily, one holy and happy society” stood in dramatic contrast to the grow-ing enmity in his own church at Northampton.9

Edwards also found solace in his study during these years. His treatiseReligious Affections drew together dozens of “Miscellanies” entries on prac-tice, faith, spiritual humiliation, and religious experience.1 In a January1747 letter to his friend Joseph Bellamy, Edwards reported that he hadbeen reading Daniel Whitby, one of his principal opponents in Freedom ofthe Will;2 No. 1075b, consequently, is a rehearsal of Edwards’ main argu-ment against the self-determining power of the will. In roughly contem-poraneous entries he continues exploring the themes of divine glory andhuman happiness that would find later articulation in his treatise End ofCreation.3

During the late 1740s Edwards occupied himself with compiling a lifeof David Brainerd, missionary to the Indians. Brainerd died in Edwards’parsonage in October 1747, nursed by Edwards’ daughter Jerusha, whoherself died the following spring. In the summer of 1748 Edwards beganto edit Brainerd’s diary. In contrast to the spiritual hypocrisy he foundrampant in Northampton, Edwards saw in Brainerd’s life “a remarkableinstance of true and eminent Christian piety in heart and practice.”4

Moreover, in Brainerd he found a true theological disciple, one who wasso profoundly influenced by Edwards that, according to Norman Pettit,“he became—in conscious imitation—a spokesman for Edwards’ views.”5

In Brainerd’s diary the embattled Edwards found support for his views onconversion, discipline, and sainthood that were even then bringing hisNorthampton pastorate to an end.

For at the time he was preparing The Life of David Brainerd for the press,Edwards was drawn back into local church politics. In 1748 Mary Hulbert,


9. See Works, 5, 307–436; the quote appears on p. 446.1. The entries relating to this work will be discussed below under the heading, “The Nature

of True Religion,” pp. 24–29.2. Letter to Bellamy, Jan. 15, 1747, in Works, 16, 217.3. See Nos. 1066, 1077, 1080–1084, 1094, 1099, 1140, 1142, and 1151.4. Works of Jonathan Edwards, 7, The Life of David Brainerd, ed. Norman Pettit (New Haven, Yale

Univ. Press, 1985), 96.5. Ibid., 7, 16.

a young woman from Northampton, presented herself for full member-ship. Edwards had to tell her that he could no longer admit applicants inthe traditional way, and with that began the two-year controversy that ledto the publication of the Humble Inquiry—a defense of his new views onchurch membership—and culminated in his dismissal in June 1750. Ed-wards did not have an immediate prospect for another position, nor didthe church have a replacement. The awkward result was that Edwardspreached on a supply basis at Northampton, raising suspicions among hisopponents that he was trying to start a second church. Although a smallgroup of church members hoped to do just that, Edwards was not inter-ested. He had had enough of Northampton. His search for a new posteventually led him—not coincidentally for the person who had just pub-lished what was to become the most famous memoir in the history ofAmerican missions—to the Indian mission and English hamlet of Stock-bridge, in western Massachusetts.6 Through early 1751, Edwards shuttledbetween Northampton and Stockbridge; he moved there in mid-1751 totake up his full-time duties, determined to fulfill them with a Brainerd-like intensity.

Borrowings from the Ancient Heathens

In the 1740s Edwards began to copy long excerpts from secondarysources into his “Miscellanies” notebooks, sometimes without any evalu-ative comment. Perry Miller inferred from this that Edwards’ “own inspi-ration was tiring.”7 But it is also possible to see in these entries signs of intellectual vitality. They reveal Edwards in an acquisitive mode, industri-ously gathering food for theological consumption. Several entries that ap-pear at first glance to be excerpts from other works turn out, on closer ex-amination, to be Edwards’ original reflections on the author’s subject orreorganizations of the author’s materials; more often he interjects hisown comments into the selected excerpts. In these long entries, Edwardsindulged his catholic tastes in reading and doggedly acquired knowledgefor future projects.

The sources for his extended excerpts confirm what Ola Winslow called“his lifelong hospitality to panoramic surveys of large subjects.”8 In the


6. See Joseph A. Conforti’s account of the immense influence of The Life of David Brainerd innineteenth-century Protestantism in Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition, and American Culture(Chapel Hill, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1995), 62–86.

7. Images or Shadows of Divine Things, ed. Perry Miller (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1948), 41.8. Winslow, Jonathan Edwards, 121.

entries from this period, he is especially drawn to Hugo Grotius’ extendeddefense, Truth of the Christian Religion, and Theophilus Gale’s massive two-volume work, The Court of the Gentiles.9 These writers, along with severalothers Edwards consulted, assembled large and varied collections of theviews of “the ancient heathens,” often with help from classical Christiansources such as Eusebius or Clement of Alexandria. The apologetic bentof these sources, both classical and contemporary, was to defend theChristian faith by showing the striking similarities between Christian or-thodoxy and the utterances of the ancients on doctrinal subjects rangingfrom infused grace to original sin to the Trinity.

The compilers of “heathen” views that Edwards drew on covered arather wide range of contemporary theological opinion. During his firsttour of New England, Whitefield complained about the decline of Cal-vinism in New England, noting that at Harvard “[John] Tillotson and[Samuel] Clarke are read instead of Shepard, Stoddard, and suchlikeevangelical writers.”1 Edwards’ “Miscellanies” regarding the ancientswould surely have provoked the same complaint. In these entries Ed-wards cites liberal Anglicans like Tillotson and Clarke, along with IsaacBarrow and the Dutch Arminian Grotius, at least as much as “evangelicalwriters” like Gale or Humphrey Prideaux.

Perry Miller took Edwards’ tendency to quote “authors who were op-posed to his doctrines” as additional evidence of his intellectual exhaus-tion. “It may be,” Miller suggested, “that he insisted to himself, despite theevidence, that in these paragraphs they really meant what he meant.”2 Butit would be a mistake to underestimate either Edwards’ theological acu-ity or his theological affinity with his non-Calvinist sources. Far from be-ing simply forerunners of the deists, men like Tillotson or Barrow were,like Edwards himself, mediating figures, breaking with some aspects oftheir theological inheritance while holding on to traditional under-standings about human sinfulness and the need for divine revelation andgrace.3

By contrast to the radical optimism of the deists regarding the reachesof unaided reason and the strength of innate moral principles, the insis-


9. See “Note to the Reader,” above, for more background on these and other sources.1. Quoted in Iain H. Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Carlisle, Pa., Banner of Truth

Trust, 1987), 212.2. Images or Shadows of Divine Things, 41.3. See W. M. Spellman, The Latitudinarians and the Church of England, 1660–1700 (Athens,

Ga., Univ. of Georgia Press, 1993). The unifying effects of broad rationalist currents in 18th-cen-tury religion also deserve notice. See Knud Haakonssen, ed., Enlightenment and Religion: Ratio-nal Dissent in Eighteenth-century Britain (Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996).

tence of Grotius, Tillotson, Clarke, and Locke on the Christian doctrinesof human weakness and depravity, and their eagerness to plumb thethought of ancient “heathens” to offer reasonable arguments on their be-half, made them welcome theological allies for Edwards. Though he dis-agreed with many of these thinkers on doctrines like the Trinity and di-vine predestination, Edwards shared their desire to defend both thereasonableness of Christianity and the need for divine revelation, and waswilling, as always, to borrow good arguments where he could find them.

Following his sources, Edwards pursued his appeals to the ancients indefense of traditional doctrines in opposing directions. Often the expla-nation for the similarity between Christian orthodoxy and the opinionsof the ancients was that the wisdom of the ancients ultimately derivedfrom the Jews. Edwards articulates this approach in his heading for No.959: “Heathens had what they had of truth in divine things by Tradi-

tion from the first fathers of nations, or from the Jews.” In No. 953 he in-troduced an extended excerpt from Gale with the declaration that “theheathen philosophers had their notions of the unity of God, of theTrinity, of the immortality of the soul, the last judgment, the general con-flagration, etc.” from the Jews, as “those that were divinely instructed andinspired of God.” According to No. 986, cases of disagreement betweenancient traditions and Christian doctrines arose when the ancients, “in-stead of adhering to what had been revealed, came to lean to their ownunderstandings, and to set up what they thought to be right in the roomof what God himself had directed,” with the result that “they lost and be-wildered themselves in endless errors.” In his own corollary to anotherlong excerpt in No. 962, Edwards makes the sweeping claim that “humanlearning and all useful and noble knowledge, and not only knowledge inthings divine and spiritual, was originally from the church of God in allages of the world, . . . so that [no] barbarous nation has received so muchas civility, but from the church of Christ.”4 The apologetic argument inthese entries was that the truths of the ancients were derivative of thechurch’s revealed wisdom, not an independent, competing source ofknowledge.5

However, Edwards, like his sources, also pushed the apologetic in the


4. Similar claims are found in Nos. 973, 977, and 1012.5. Gerald R. McDermott has aptly called this long prisca theologia tradition “the trickle-down

theory of revelation.” See his “The Deist Connection: Jonathan Edwards and Islam,” in JonathanEdwards’s Writings: Text, Context, Interpretation, ed. Stephen J. Stein (Bloomington, Ind., IndianaUniv. Press, 1996), 44; and Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods: Christian Theology, EnlightenmentReligion, and Non-Christian Faiths (New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1999).

opposite direction, sometimes treating ancient opinion as an indepen-dent confirmation of the veracity of scriptural accounts and theologicaldoctrines.6 Here general revelation confirmed special revelation. Henotes in Religious Affections how “arguments fetched from ancient tradi-tions, histories, and monuments,” while no substitute for a spiritual con-viction of the gospel’s truth, “may be greatly serviceable to awaken unbe-lievers, and bring them to serious consideration, and to confirm the faithof true saints,” and may even be “subservient to the begetting of a savingfaith in men.”7 In No. 900, an entry on the reality of the future confla-gration, Edwards started by noting that the biblical account of the floodwas confirmed both by geological evidence and “by many scraps of storyand tradition in the heathen world.” Scripture’s “rational and particularaccount” of creation is also “agreeable to reason, and the most ancient tra-ditions abroad amongst the nations.” From this evidence, Edwards arguesthat the Bible “is also most likely to give us a right account of the end ofthe world.” Indeed, he finds its account of the final conflagration to be so“exceeding agreeable to reason” that “philosophy would give us great rea-son to think so, if the Scriptures had said nothing about it.” He finds fur-ther confirmation in the “traditions among the heathen concerning theconflagration,” which he compiles in No. 956 from Gale, Grotius, andother sources. In Nos. 1015, 1020 and 1025 Edwards draws on Grotius toshow how the veracity of Old Testament history and the reasonablenessof Christ’s suffering were “confirmed by the traditions of the heathen.”8

In Nos. 1028 and 1073 he notes ancient traditions “agreeable to the Chris-tian doctrine of original sin” and those “confirming” the need for infusedgrace. In these entries his apologetic strategy was to bolster the case forthe reasonableness of Christian Scripture and doctrines by demonstrat-ing their agreement with the best of natural human wisdom.

In yet another apologetic tack, Edwards sometimes assembled argu-ments to show how flawed and inadequate the ancients’ knowledge of thethings of God was. In No. 977 the venerable figures of Plato and Aristo-tle, who in other entries are praised for their remarkable theological acu-men, confess that “their natural understanding was of itself as unqualified


6. Isaac Barrow, for example, in a sermon quoted by JE in the entries of this period, notedhow “the wisest and most considerate men, in several times, only by reflecting upon their ownminds, and observing in them what was most lovely and excellent, most pure and straight, havefallen upon, and conspired in, notions concerning God, very suitable to those which we believetaught us by revelation.” See Barrow, Theological Works (8 vols. Oxford, 1830), 4, 438.

7. Works, 2, 305, 307.8. See also Nos. 981 and 983 for additional heathen “confirmations” of scriptural accounts.

to find out and apprehend [divine things], as the eyes of bats to beholdthe light of the sun.” This ignorance led to mistakes. For example, in No.979 Edwards notes that even Plato and Cicero, “the very best” of the an-cients, were “entirely ignorant of the manner in which ‘God ought to beworshipped,’” and wrongly advised others to comply “‘with the outwardreligion of their country.’”9 These entries emphasized the lack of agree-ment between the views of the ancients and Christian doctrine to showthat knowledge of “moral and divine things” depended on divine revela-tion.

What linked these persistent but not always consistent apologetic strate-gies was Edwards’ heavy investment in refuting deist claims. Beginning atthe end of the seventeenth century, figures like John Toland, ThomasChubb, and Matthew Tindal declared that natural reason was sufficientby itself to guide humanity to earthly morality and heavenly salvation.They appealed to a variety of non-Christian sources, including the an-cients, to argue that special divine revelation was unnecessary. Theyridiculed appeals to the intrinsic mystery of religion and launched an as-sault on Christian doctrines they deemed unreasonable. Edwards’twofold response was to argue for the reasonableness of the controvertedChristian doctrines while at the same time affirming the presence of the-ological mystery and the consequent need for divine revelation.

In more than twenty entries from this period, Edwards appeals to an-cient views on a variety of theological doctrines that had come in for spe-cial deist attack. With the aid of the ancients, Edwards defended the in-carnation, Jesus’ spirit of prophecy, the reasonableness of Christ’ssuffering, and the resurrection. He finds in their writings remarkable an-ticipations of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. He assembles theirsupport for traditional views of original sin, the human need for a me-diator, and divine judgment and eternal punishment. In No. 960, for ex-ample, Edwards declares that Plato’s grasp of the doctrine of original sinfar exceeded that of “many” in Edwards’ own time. Whereas his con-temporaries found it “unreasonable,” despite “such plain revelations aswe have of it,” Plato “‘discourseth very largely and divinely, touching theirregularities of the passions and affections.’” By this time, Edwards hadabandoned his plans to write a unified “Rational Account” of the faith,1

but these entries show his continued interest in defending the reason-


9. By contrast, in No. 963 JE’s sources affirm the wisdom of Pythagoras and Seneca concern-ing proper worship of God, noting that “it appears very likely that Pythagoras had these notionsfrom the Jews.”

1. See Ava Chamberlain’s introduction to “Miscellanies,” Nos. 501–832, in Works, 18.

ableness of particular doctrines called into question by the “fashionabledivinity” of his day.2

At the same time, Edwards was intent on repudiating deist assertions ofthe sufficiency of natural reason. In Nos. 837 and 839, for example, hedefends the need for special revelation in his own words, insisting that themore doctrines are “above our comprehension and difficult to our belief,the more do those things that are really true concerning them containseeming inconsistencies and impossibilities.”3 In No. 1100 he notes thateven mathematicians are rationally convinced of many truths “concern-ing which they have no clear ideas.” In his selection and framing of quo-tations from the ancients, Edwards augments these more philosophicaland exegetical arguments against the deists with appeals to classical wis-dom.4

For example, Edwards draws on Gale in No. 964 to defend the place ofmystery in religion: “The wiser heathen were sensible that the things of[the] gods are so high above us, that no other is to be expected than thatwhat appertains to them should appear exceeding mysterious and won-derful to us, and that ’tis therefore unreasonable to disbelieve what we aretaught concerning them on that account.” The unspoken implication isthat the deists, not the Christians, are to be judged “unreasonable” by an-cient standards. In No. 979 Edwards quotes Samuel Clarke to demon-strate the ancient writers’ awareness of the “obscurity and uncertainty” oftheir reason, so that “it was no proper or fit means for the reforming ofthe world of mankind and leading them to happiness.” Instead, “‘the nat-ural notions’ which the wise heathens had ‘of God, gave them reasonableground to expect and hope for’” divine revelation to remedy reason’s de-ficiencies.5 Edwards summons a new work by Samuel Shuckford in No.986 to assault the historical credibility of the deist claim that “‘the worldever did in fact by wisdom know God; that any nation upon earth, or anyset of men ever did, from the principles of reason only without any assis-


2. This phrase is from No. 832, written as a “Preface to the Rational Account.” Thomas Schafernotes that “Rational Account” was originally one of the names by which JE referred to the “Mis-cellanies.” Nos. 1127 and 1129 perhaps represent a reversion to this earlier apologetic strategyof broad demonstrations of the rationality of God’s plan of redemption.

3. No. 1084 uses the example of Adam to demonstrate that failure to understand God’s wordshould not be ascribed to “any fallacy in the promise, but properly to the narrowness of his un-derstanding, whereby the effects of God’s wisdom and power are infinitely above it.”

4. JE’s dependence on secondary sources for this wisdom is acknowledged in his 1757 letterto the Princeton trustees, where he notes his deficiencies in “the Greek classics.” See Works, 16,725–26.

5. Though, in No. 965, JE lambasts the ancient heathens for being “all deeply immersed inthat miserable, cursed abyss of spiritual pride.”

tance from revelation, find out the true nature and the true worship ofthe Deity.’” Anyone who would claim this, Shuckford avers, “‘must findout some history of the world entirely different from all the accountswhich the present sacred and profane writers do give us; or his opinionmust appear to be a mere guess and conjecture of what is barely possible,but what all history assures us never was really done in the world.’” In theseexcerpts, Edwards turns the deists’ appeals to natural reason againstthem, since it was precisely the reason of the ancients that led them toagree with Christian orthodoxy on the presence of mystery and the needfor revelation.

The reliability and uniqueness of Christian Scriptures were also com-ing under deist attack.6 Drawing heavily on Isaac Newton’s Chronology, Ed-wards presents a wide-ranging argument in No. 984 for why “‘mankindcannot be much older than is represented in Scripture.’” In No. 1060 Ed-wards intersperses his own comments with lengthy excerpts from a de-fense of canonical authority by Jeremiah Jones (1693–1724), a Welshminister and biblical critic. Jones was concerned to demonstrate the great“‘pains and care of those early Christians’” to distinguish “‘the genuinewritings of the apostles’” from all spurious claims to divine revelation,concluding that “‘’tis next to impossible, either that so great number ofmen should agree in a cheat, or be imposed upon by a cheat.’” With lit-tle or no direct access to early Christian sources, Edwards was undoubt-edly unfamiliar with most of the authors and documents whose abbrevia-tions he dutifully copied into his notebooks. But he affirmed theimportance of Jones’ arguments regarding the widespread canonicalagreement among early church authorities for defending “the great valueand importance of those genuine Gospels, and the high repute they hadin the Christian church.”7

Hell Torments

When it came to defending “the extremity of hell torments” for thoseeternally condemned by God, Edwards had fewer contemporary allies.Although this and other doctrines of Calvinism “appeared to him as scrip-


6. For JE’s plans for a larger apologetic response to this attack, see Kenneth P. Minkema, “TheOther Unfinished Great Work: Jonathan Edwards, Messianic Prophecy, and ‘The Harmony ofthe Old and New Testament,’” in Jonathan Edwards’s Writings, 52–65.

7. McDermott, Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods, persuasively argues that JE’s confrontationwith the deists, already prominent during the 1740s and becoming even more pronounced inthe last decade of his life, fueled his interest in the ancient heathen and influenced his shiftingreflections on sin, reason, and the nature of true religion.

tural, reasonable, and important as any,” according to Samuel Hopkins,8

there were a growing number in Edwards’ time who found such doctrinesan offense to both reason and morals.9 Among them were figures Ed-wards appealed to for other apologetic reasons. Chevalier Ramsay, whomEdwards quotes in a late notebook entry (No. 1253) to defend the Trin-ity against “the deists, Unitarians, and Socinians,” ridiculed the Calvinistbelief in God’s eternal punishment of sinners: “The grosser pagans con-tented themselves with divinising lust, incest, and adultery; but the pre-destination doctors have divinised cruelty, wrath, fury, vengeance, and allthe blackest vices.”1 In the view of its critics, the doctrine of hell tormentswas a perverse reflection of the worst in human nature. John Tillotsonnoted that “all religion inclines men to imitate the God whom they wor-ship,” raising the concern that the doctrine of God’s deliberate and un-pitying torment of the damned could encourage human hatred and cru-elty.2

Isaac Barrow, whom Edwards quotes repeatedly in his “Miscellanies”from this period, articulated a growing Anglican consensus on the depthof natural human benevolence and compassion that was an important el-ement in arguments against traditional eschatology.3 According to Bar-row, as Christ’s heart was “pierced with deepest commiseration of ourwretched case,” so too “our bowels are touched with a sensible pain at theview of any calamitous object,” and “the sight of a tragedy wringeth com-passion and tears from us.”4 This natural human compassion constitutesour “nearest resemblance” to the God who “is an assured friend to allmen” and “concerneth himself for all men’s welfare.”5 Nothing in the“mysteries of predestination and providence,” declared Barrow, can fi-nally subvert faith’s conviction that “God is impartially merciful, benign,


8. Hopkins, Life, 52.9. See D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell: Seventeenth-Century Discussions of Eternal Torments

(Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1964). For earlier sermonic treatments of hell and its eternaltorments, see the “Preface to the Period” in Works of Jonathan Edwards, 14, Sermons and Discourses,1723–1729, ed. Kenneth P. Minkema (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1997), 24–32.

1. Cited in Norman Kemp-Smith, ed., David Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Ox-ford, Clarendon, 1935), 10.

2. “The Excellency of the Christian Religion,” in Works of Dr. John Tillotson, ed. Thomas Birch(10 vols. London, 1820), 1, 455. See also Tillotson, Of the Eternity of Hell-Torments. A SermonPreach’d before the Queen at White-Hall, March the 7th, 1689–90 (London, 1708).

3. See Norman S. Fiering, “Irresistible Compassion: An Aspect of Eighteenth-Century Sym-pathy and Humanitarianism,” in Frank Shuffelton, ed., The American Enlightenment, vol. XI, Li-brary of the History of Ideas, ed. John W. Yolton (Rochester, Univ. of Rochester Press, 1993), 73–96.

4. Isaac Barrow, Theological Works, 2, 393, 78.5. Ibid., 2, 98–99.

just, etc.”6 If human persons are deeply and instinctively compassionate,how can God be anything less?

Edwards’ entries on hell and its torments from this period show anawareness of these mounting objections. In No. 866, “concerning the ex-treme and everlasting torments of ungodly men in hell,” he gives voice tocontemporary doubts about the wisdom and mercy of a God who would“make men that he knew would be so wicked, and would deserve and mustsuffer such things.” “Why,” Edwards asks rhetorically, “would the great au-thor and orderer of all things suffer things to come to this?” Entertainingthis sort of question, he allows, “disposes us to pity the damned wretch,”and to raise objections against “the author of his being and orderer of hismisery.” Edwards’ severe response is that “the very principal reason ofsuch thoughts arising in the mind is a want of a sense of the horrible evilof sin.” The moral defect was not in the doctrine, but in the objector.7 Be-cause, according to No. 870, God does not show “any manner of regard”to the welfare of the damned, or “any mercy or pity towards them,” hu-man pity based on an inadequate sense of the awfulness of sin impugnsGod’s moral wisdom.

Several entries later, in No. 879, Edwards is still struggling with the hu-man tendency to regard hell punishments as unjust, but this time his re-sponse is softer, emphasizing the human ignorance and divine mysterysurrounding the doctrine. Edwards acknowledges that even “the mostconvinced person upon earth” might succumb to the temptation to doubt“the justice of damnation” if the increase in “his sense of the dreadfulnessof hell” were not accompanied by “a proportionable increase of a senseof the evil of sin.” Moreover, “an actual conviction that that very punish-ment which men are exposed to by sin is just and righteous” is unattain-able, since “we are all infinitely far from having an idea” of actual hell pun-ishment. True conversion, he declares, requires of persons only “a spiritto condemn themselves and justify God,” since “an actual approbation,and acquiescence” regarding hell’s dreadfulness is impossible in our pre-sent state.

In other entries Edwards points to the need for divine revelation to il-


6. Ibid., 3, 574. Barrow did not deny the “unexpressible vexations” of hell, but assured thatthey are “by performing our duty surely avoided” (ibid., 6, 66).

7. Tellingly, JE concludes No. 866with an autobiographical vignette: “For I don’t observe that,when I read the history of Antiochus Epiphanes and his sorrowful end, and so of other such cruelpersecutors, the horribleness of whose practices I have a sense of, any such thought arises. I don’tfind myself then disposed to make any such objections against the Author of their being: we seein such instances that their wickedness is very horrid, and that it is willful, and that is enoughwith us, with respect to the justice of the event, and its fitness upon all accounts.”

lumine our feeble grasp of the extremity of hell torments. No. 1111 con-sists of a favorable citation from, of all people, John Taylor, whom Edwardshad come to regard as a chief culprit for undermining the doctrine oforiginal sin. Whereas “‘the reason of things,’” Edwards quotes Taylor assaying, makes it evident that virtue is necessary for gaining eternal life,“‘what man in all the world can conclude, he has exercised such a due de-gree of virtue, that the governor of the universe is obliged in equity to givehim eternal glory . . . ?’” Taylor insists that the philosophers were inca-pable of providing the “‘certain and clear discovery of that state,’” con-cluding that “‘God only can open the future world, and show, what honorand glory he has prepared for the reward of sincere virtue, and what pun-ishment he will inflict upon incurable vice.’” In No. 886 Edwards himselfnotes that just as the people of God “had an immensely greater view giventhem of the misery of the wicked after Christ came,” so they can hope inthe end times for an idea of the torments of hell “vastly beyond all thatthey had an idea of before.” Given the limits of human understanding,the most appropriate response to the doctrine of hell punishments is asteadfast trust in the justice and righteousness of God (No. 879).

Edwards sometimes modulated from an insistence on hell’s mystery toa stress on its reasonableness, just as he had in his borrowings from theancients to defend the doctrine of revelation. He found support for theteaching of eternal punishment in the discoveries of natural science andthe notion of God’s established moral order, both cornerstones of the“reasonable Christianity” of his day. As he insists in No. 930, traditionaleschatology makes eminent scientific sense: “The vastness of the universe,and all it evidences of God’s power and wisdom in every part, as discov-ered by both telescope and microscope, and all the late discoveries ofmodern philosophy and astronomy, are a great argument of the exceed-ing great future happiness of the godly, and misery of the wicked.” In thepreceding entry, Edwards finds in contemporary astronomy “a great dealthat argues” for the eventual corruption of the visible universe, and its fi-nal end in “a conflagration, or great and immense lake or deluge of fire.”In No. 931 he cites the demonstrations of Isaac Newton regarding the raysof the sun to confirm the terribleness of “‘the everlasting fire preparedfor the devil and his angels,’” as described in Matt. 25:41.8 Even hislengthy scientific argument in No. 880 against “atheist” claims that theworld’s existence and harmonious order “came to pass fortuitously, by


8. In Nos. 1038 and 1041, the comet of 1680 is presented as evidence that the world will cometo an end.

mere chance,” plays indirectly into his arguments for hell torments.9

Showing that the world’s original creation is the work of a “contriving, dis-posing cause” (No. 880) helps Edwards establish the reasonableness of afinal judgment, in which God “takes the visible universe in hand the sec-ond time to dissolve all” (No. 926).

Nor did Edwards shy away from investigating the physiology of hell tor-ments, arguing in No. 924, for example, that the “infinitely vehement ac-tion and agitation” of the final conflagration “will cause a dreadful soundin the ear, probably many million [times] more terrible than the loudestthunder.” That Edwards found it natural to fashion his defense from thescientific knowledge at hand reflects his explicitly—at times excruciat-ingly—physical conception of hell torments.1

God’s moral government over the world was another bulwark for thereasonableness of hell punishments. In a work which Edwards was read-ing during this period, Samuel Clarke argued at length about the neces-sity for a future state of rewards and punishments to rectify earthly injus-tices and vindicate the honor of God.2 On these grounds Clarke foundthe doctrine of eternal happiness for the doers of good and eternal pun-ishment for the doers of evil to be credible and reasonable. Edwards hada theological ally in Clarke so long as he could ignore Clarke’s Arminiansensibilities about who would enjoy that happiness. “Nothing is moremanifest,” Edwards declares in No. 864, “than that there is no such thingas a regular, equal dispensing [of] rewards and punishments to men, ac-cording to their moral state, in this world.” Since moral injustice aboundson earth, there must be “a future state of rewards and punishments” if


9. JE’s exposition of God’s absolute sovereignty in relation to the world in this entry recapit-ulates arguments he first articulated in the early 1720s. See Works of Jonathan Edwards, 6, Scien-tific and Philosophical Writings, ed. Wallace E. Anderson (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1980), 68–75.

1. Several times in these entries JE defends the physical reality of hell by noting that “ninety-nine parts in an hundred of the visible world are the most fierce liquid fire.” Yet Andrew Del-banco, among many others, asserts that for JE, hell was “not a place of burning sulfur but a stateof mind: an eternal torment in the absence of God.” See Alan Heimert and Delbanco, eds., ThePuritans in America: A Narrative Anthology (Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1985), 410. The en-tries from this period show this to be a wishful misreading of JE. By contrast, H. Richard Niebuhr,in a letter full of praise of JE, acknowledged his difficulties with this aspect of JE’s theology: “Ex-cept for the problem of demythologizing his hell I can take him almost straight.” Quoted inRichard R. Niebuhr’s “Foreword” to H. Richard Niebuhr: Theology, History, and Culture: Major Un-published Writings, ed. William Stacy Johnson (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1996), x.

2. Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of NaturalReligion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation (London, 1706). JE cites this workin Nos. 963, 977, 978, 979, 983, and 1018, though not directly in connection with the doctrineof hell torments.

God’s moral government over the world is to be maintained. Similarly, Ed-wards argues in No. 1007 that, given the supposition of the Creator’smoral government, a public final judgment “is a most reasonable doc-trine, and much commends itself to our belief from the reason of thething.”

It also seemed reasonable in a society in which punishment was a pub-lic and communal matter.3 Corporal and capital punishment were famil-iar sights to citizens of the colonies and widely accepted as a necessary de-terrent to sins against the body politic.4 Edwards defended the commontheological correlate that the threat of eternal hell torments served as adeterrent to sin against God and was not above justifying the preachingsof the terrors on the grounds of pastoral expediency. In a 1743 letter toa Scottish minister, Edwards cautions against attempting “to banish allfears of damnation from the minds of men” because “When love is low inthe true saints, they need the fear of hell to deter them from sin, and en-gage them to exactness in their walk, and stir them up to seek heaven.”5

Edwards’ own vivid preaching on hell torments during this period was un-abashedly aimed at provoking this fear in his listeners.

But arguments from expediency alone do not explain the pervasivepresence of the doctrine of hell in the “Miscellanies.” It was a carefully ex-amined and integral part of Edwards’ theological vision, to which he re-turned repeatedly throughout his life. While he endorsed the usual ar-guments about the logic and justice of hell punishments, there was also aprofoundly aesthetic dimension to his reflections on hell: Edwards wasconvinced that it was properly a beautiful doctrine when seen by regen-erated eyes.6 For example, he argues in No. 866 that the design of hellpunishment is to augment the saints’ perception of the beauty of heaven,


3. Philip C. Almond argues for the parallelism between earthly and heavenly punishment inEngland during this period: “the sufferings of the damned were magnifications of the sufferingsof criminals. The penal system of the damned was a projection of the early modern penal sys-tem. The divine Judge was an omnipotent replica of earthly judges. . . . Descriptions of the suf-ferings of the damned functioned as linguistic correlates to the visual spectacle of the punish-ments of criminals.” Heaven and Hell in Enlightenment England (Cambridge, Cambridge Univ.Press, 1994), 84.

4. See Douglas Greenburg, Crime and Law Enforcement in the Colony of New York, 1691–1776(Ithaca, N. Y., Cornell Univ. Press, 1976); Lawrence Friedman, Crime and Punishment in AmericanHistory (New York, Basic Books, 1993).

5. Letter to James Robe, May 12, 1743, in Works, 16, 109. JE’s posthumous reputation as a hell-fire preacher, reinforced with every reprinting of his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of anAngry God, has obscured other prominent themes in his preaching.

6. According to his Personal Narrative, written during this period, JE’s own resistance to thedoctrine of eternal punishment was transformed at his conversion into a “delightful conviction”of divine sovereignty. See Works, 16, 791–92.

“to raise their idea of God’s power and majesty, to impress it with exceed-ing strength and liveliness upon their minds, and so to raise their sense ofthe riches and excellency of his love to them.” By contrast, there would be“a visible defect, an inharmoniousness” in heaven, if hell punishmentwere not “agreeable” to the saints’ “sight and sense of God’s glory.”

Several of the entries on hell exhibit a kind of theological chiaroscuro,in which the darkness of God’s wrath and power is deliberately contrastedwith the light of divine mercy and gentleness. Sometimes this techniquehad the unfortunate result of bifurcating the Godhead, by assigningfierce wrath to the Father and gentle mercy to the Son.7 But more typi-cally the light and dark were complements within a single theological por-trait, as in No. 957, in which Edwards remarks on the increase in the “holy,sweet, ravishing beauty and delight” of Christ after the final judgment, ex-claiming, “How immensely will it heighten in the eyes of the saints thevalue of that love and gentleness, with which they now shall see Christclothed, that they have just before seen such great manifestations of hisinfinite majesty and the terribleness of his wrath, and how will it heightentheir admiration and joy in his embraces!” Since “creatures obtain theiridea of good and its value very much by comparison,” Edwards remarksin No. 1127, the contrast between heaven’s delights and hell’s tormentscasts the light of God’s love and mercy into sharper relief. He goes on fur-ther in that entry to state that the saints’ “sense of the worth of happinessis obtained very much by a sight of the contrary, and the contrary whichthey have been liable to but have escaped or been preserved from.”

Although Edwards occasionally presented the wrath and mercy of Godas parallel manifestations of divine glory,8 his predominant view of God’srelations with creatures exhibits a definite asymmetry. At the headwaterof his theology is the identification of divine glory with the communica-tion of God’s overflowing love to creatures. The divine glory that is theend of both creation and redemption coincides with “making the crea-ture happy in God, as a partaker of God’s happiness” (No. 1150). Re-hearsing the main argument of his treatise End of Creation,9 Edwards as-


7. In No. 931, for example, JE uses the Old Testament image of the pillar of cloud protectingthe children of Israel from the vehemence of the sun to represent the mercy of Christ in “de-fending his church from the wrath of God.”

8. For example, in No. 926, JE argues that the “eternal flame, that the bodies of the wickedare to be tormented in” and “the eternal light” both manifest God’s glory: “The latter will be toshow especially the glory of his grace, and the former will be to show the glory of his anger. Theone is the light of his love, and the other is in the same sense the flame of his wrath.”

9. See Works of Jonathan Edwards, 8, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, Yale Univ.Press, 1989), 403–536.

serts in No. 1140 that God “delights in the communications of his ownhappiness because ’tis a thing valuable and desirable in itself that somecommunications of his happiness should be made and enjoyed.” That thisis not the case with communications of God’s wrath is clear in No. 1081,where Edwards notes that judgment is God’s “strange work, which plainlyshows that God loves to show mercy for mercy’s sake, but that he executesjudgment for the sake of something else.” In the same way, Edwards’ vividdefense of hell and its torments was ultimately in service of his vision ofthe sweetness and delight of heaven, where Christ and the saints find theirperfect happiness in savoring “the glorious success” of the work of re-demption (No. 1137).

The Nature of True Religion

Though Edwards’ theological preoccupation with the nature of truereligion was lifelong, dozens of entries from this period wrestle with par-ticular questions the revivals raised for him about the marks of savingfaith. Some of these reflections were eventually incorporated into his trea-tise Religious Affections, published in 1746. This link is explicit in No. 860,where Edwards makes a note to himself to “Remember to show how everyChristian grace tends to practice, as loving God, trusting in God, repent-ing of sin, etc., and how that practice is the proper trial of it,” a reminderthat became the outline of his argument in the Twelfth Sign of that trea-tise. No. 999, on how even “erroneous practice” may be the occasion forholy exercises, and No. 1000, on the importance of judging others bytheir spiritual fruit, were imported almost verbatim into Religious Affec-tions.1 Edwards’ continual return throughout the entries of this period tothe connection between justification and works of obedience, or practice,indicates the urgency of this issue for him in his roles as pastor and re-vivalist.2

Interpretive debates about Edwards’ view of human salvation, espe-cially the role he ascribed to love and works, have often turned on a con-ventional distinction between the Protestant emphasis on God’s sover-


1. See Works, 2, 188, 407. Some of JE’s other direct cullings were illustrative rather than sub-stantive, for example, the footnotes on spiritual humility excerpted from his readings ofTheophilus Gale in No. 956 and Jeremiah Jones in No. 1060; see ibid., 2, 316, 335.

2. On JE and justification in the earlier revival period, see the “Editor’s Introduction” to Works,18, and the “Preface to the Period” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 19, Sermons and Discourses,1734–1738, ed. M. X. Lesser (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 2001), as well as a more synthetictreatment of the topic in Works of Jonathan Edwards, 21, Writings on the Trinity, Grace and Faith, ed.Sang Hyun Lee (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, forthcoming).

eign grace and the Catholic stress on the abiding reality of salvation in hu-man persons.3 This debate is of interest in placing Edwards’ thoughtwithin the larger history of Christian doctrine.4 But it is more illuminat-ing to frame his entries on justification and works during the 1740s interms of the two opponents who loomed large on his immediate theo-logical horizon: Arminians threatening God’s free grace in salvation bytheir emphasis on human works and enthusiasts indulging in “exceed-ingly savory” talk of their spiritual experience to the neglect of Christianpractice. In response to these opposing challenges, Edwards charted amiddle way that attempted to uphold both the integral role of humanworks and the freeness of God’s grace in salvation.

To those swept up in George Whitefield’s message of the immediate ex-perience of spiritual rebirth, Edwards countered with the requirementfor a lifelong course of spiritual obedience. “The whole work of sanctifi-cation,” he declares in No. 847 (written during or shortly after the fall of1740), should be considered part of God’s regeneration of the sinner.“And therefore the new birth is not finished till the soul is fully restored,and till the corruption and death that came by Adam and the first birth iswholly removed.” In an entry written more than a year later Edwards isstill chastising those “professors,” particularly in his own congregation,who “abound very much in talking of their own experiences,” with “butlittle fruit in good works” (No. 951). The same critique is evident in No.1000, where he notes that “the saints may think they talk feelingly; theymay relish their talk, may imagine they perceive a divine savor in it, . . .and yet all may prove nothing.” In No. 1058, the only entry from this pe-riod actually given the title “Enthusiasm,” Edwards decries the “greatweakness” of those whose flamboyant spiritual displays come to nothing.

Edwards’ concern to counter religious enthusiasm extended beyonddenunciations, as in No. 1000, of those whose spiritual blossoms pro-duced no fruit. It also fueled numerous constructive arguments about“how works justify” that stressed ongoing holy practice as integral to faith’sacceptance of Christ. No. 996, an entry entitled “How We Are Justified


3. Anri Morimoto describes the difference between the “Protestant concern” and the“Catholic concern” in salvation in these terms, and gives an account of previous efforts to em-phasize the Protestant features of JE’s soteriology. See Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision ofSalvation (University Park, Penn., Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1995).

4. Though even here, there is growing awareness that the distinction between Protestant andCatholic views of salvation has been overdrawn in interpretations of the earliest Protestant re-formers. See, for example, Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson, eds., Union with Christ: The NewFinnish Interpretation of Luther (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1998). Morimoto makes a similar ar-gument in the case of JE (see preceding note).

by Works,” summarizes Edwards’ theological challenge to the enthusi-asts: “Our act of closing with and accepting of Christ is not in all respectscompleted by our accepting him with our hearts till we have done it prac-tically too, and so have accepted him with the whole man: soul, spirit andbody.” In his polemic against the enthusiasts’ overemphasis on the initialconversion of the heart, Edwards skated close to the edge of denying theonce-and-for-all sufficiency of the gift of faith. “Even after conversion,” heasserts, “the sentence of justification in a sense remains still to be passed,and the man remains still in a state of probation for heaven,” until his faithproduces fruits of obedience (No. 847).5 Faith is so intimately connectedwith obedience, Edwards declares in No. 1130b, that accepting Christ’s“sufferings as an atonement for our sin implies a heart fully repenting ofand renouncing sin,” and “thoroughly secures holiness of heart and lifein the redeemed of Jesus Christ.” Fruits of obedience are intrinsic to saving faith, not merely external evidence for its existence: “Scripture isplain concerning faith,” Edwards asserts in No. 868, “that the operativeor practical nature of it is the life and soul of it.”6

In combating his other main theological opponent, the Arminians,7

Edwards did not abandon his argument that “practice belongs to the na-ture of acceptance” (No. 859), but he took a decidedly different tack onit. The Arminians, unlike the enthusiasts, were eager to affirm sincereobedience as the condition of justification. Edwards’ theological opposi-tion was to their assumption that this obedience was somehow worthy ofGod’s respect and favor. In his eyes this would diminish God’s free gracein the work of redemption: it is Christ’s righteousness that merits salva-tion, not human righteousness. In response to the Arminians, Edwardsrepeatedly affirmed faith as the fitting condition for justification.8 He alsoclarified his claim that “Christian practice and the acts of an holy life arealso in some sort the condition of salvation.” This is the case, he asserts inNo. 1070, “not as recommending to salvation by their moral value, but


5. See the contemporaneous sermon, The Subjects of a First Work of Grace May Need a New Con-version, in Works of Jonathan Edwards, Sermons and Discourses, 1739–1742, eds. Nathan O. Hatchand Harry S. Stout (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, forthcoming). McDermott, Jonathan EdwardsConfronts the Gods, 136, worries that JE’s dispositional soteriology undermines “the Reformationcontention that salvation is the justification of the ungodly.” JE counters this tendency, however,in his anti-Arminian arguments.

6. For entries in a different notebook dating from the Great Awakening and afterwards thatlink obedience, sanctification, and repentance with true faith, see “Faith” nos. 92, 103, 104, 121,128, and 148 (Works, 21).

7. Though JE explicitly mentions deism only once in these entries (No. 907), he saw deism asthe logical culmination of Arminian proclivities.

8. See, e.g., Nos. 877, 1042, 1092, 1096.

only as the exertions and expressions of the soul’s acceptance of and ad-herence and unition to the Savior.”

Using an image that he would also employ in Religious Affections,9 Ed-wards in No. 856 likens the role of “practicing holiness” in acceptingChrist to a beggar’s “eating food given him.” Far from being meritoriousin itself, this “work” was simply an integral part of receiving another’s gra-cious act. Edwards’ view of the role of human works in salvation allowedhim to cite appreciatively in No. 1052 the insistence of John Guyse (whohad cosponsored the English publication of A Faithful Narrative) that Paul“‘excludes all our works from having any share in our title to this bless-ing.’” His most sustained argument against Arminian views of salvationcomes in the lengthy disquisition of No. 1070, where he considers whichunderstanding of holy acts is consistent with the free grace of God in sal-vation. Edwards concludes that, like “the acts and exercises of love, hu-mility, repentance and other graces,” the act of faith is “the condition ofour salvation, not as recommending us to the benefit by any excellency init, but only as the soul’s acceptance of and active unition to the Savior, andso putting the soul into a natural fitness or capacity for the benefit.” Inthis entry Edwards was satisfied that he had found a way to affirm the roleof faith and works of love in human salvation without denigrating God’sfree grace.

His theological arguments with both Arminians and enthusiasts foundcommon ground in his repeated warnings against spiritual pride. Theproud need a thorough humiliation, he states in No. 1009, “to bring ’emoff from the opinion of their dignity and sufficiency.” Whether their suf-ficiency is rooted in a “false and imaginary happiness” or in a “counter-feit righteousness,” “the creature must be dethroned that God may be ex-alted” (No. 1128). In Religious Affections the enthusiasts are the target asEdwards cautions the one who, being “proud of his experiences, arro-gates something to himself, as though his experiences were some dignityof his.”1 In No. 1070 the Arminians are in view as he warns against as-cribing “dignity and worthiness” to human “actions and labors.” A few en-tries later, in No. 1080, Edwards marvels at how “Arminians, Pelagians,etc. account it an ignoble selfishness in God to make himself his highestend,” choosing instead to “make a regard to their own happiness as thehighest end,” as if that were the “foundation of all virtue and everythingthat is morally good or excellent in them.” Whatever the ground of spiri-


9. See Works, 2, 446, 455.1. Ibid., 2, 318.

tual pride, the threat to salvation is the same: “Men’s opinion of their suf-ficiency and dignity will effectually prevent their coming to Christ” (No.1009). In refusing the spiritual humiliation that would lay bare their con-tinuing need for God’s free grace, the proud make themselves enemiesof Christ, Edwards declares in No. 875, because they cannot accept thehumiliation of the cross: “they despise a crucified Savior, one that sufferedsuch disgrace, and humbled himself so low.”

In an intriguing series of entries written in the early 1740s, Edwardsprobes the earthly dangers of spiritual pride by extended reflections onits devastating consequences in the heavenly realm. Angels, he asserts, aresuperior creatures to human beings, and so experience an even greatertemptation to spiritual pride, a temptation which some have been able toresist, and to which some have dramatically succumbed. In plumbing thereligious psyches of both Lucifer and the elect angels, Edwards finds amagnified version of the struggle against spiritual pride unfolding onearth.

Edwards uncovers many instructive parallels between human saintsand the elect angels. Both know the vicissitudes of the life of faith. “’Tis athing supposed without proof that the glorious inhabitants of heavennever felt any such thing as trouble or uneasiness of any kind,” he declaresin No. 938. Like their earthly counterparts, the elect angels “have knownwhat it is to be in great danger and to be distressed with fear” for their sal-vation. The dynamics of assurance are similar: the angels’ spiritual prideis crushed “by what they saw of their own weakness and mutability and in-sufficiency for themselves,” and their sense of the heart enlivened by “thedistinguishing grace of Christ to them in preserving them when othersfell” (No. 941). The angels too strive for moral progress, as Edwards pointsout in No. 940, since perfection in holiness “is not such in those that arefinite but it admits of infinite degrees.” This angelic increase in holinessfollows the same recipe Edwards urged on earthly enthusiasts: being“emptied of themselves and brought low in humility” and “persevering inobedience.”

Heavenly piety, like earthly faith, revolves around the figure of Christ.“Christ’s humiliation,” Edwards declares in No. 941, in “many ways laid afoundation for the humiliation of all elect creatures,” including the an-gels. “By seeing one infinitely above them descending so low and abasinghimself so much, they are abundantly made sensible how no abasementis too great for them.” But God’s call to imitate the condescension of thedivine Christ was not the ultimate test of their humility and obedience.The angels’ most severe temptation to spiritual pride came with the di-


vine command that they submit to the authority of the Christ clothed inhuman flesh. In the complex trinitarian economy that Edwards articu-lates in No. 1062, God gives the incarnate Christ jurisdiction over the an-gels in carrying out the work of human redemption. The point of moraldivide for the angels was whether “they would submit to serve, obey andadore their appointed head and king in his abject meanness, and whenset at naught and abased to hell for beloved, though sinful, vile men” (No.939). The example of the angels shows us, Edwards declares in a corollaryto No. 936, “the necessity of a work of humiliation in man, or the ne-cessity of man’s being emptied of himself, in order to a partaking of thebenefits of the new creation and the redemption of Jesus Christ.”

Casting an ominous shadow over the ultimately successful spiritualstruggles of the elect angels is the figure of Lucifer. Edwards inherited atheological tradition that heightened the dramatic intensity of Lucifer’sprideful fall by stressing his exalted status as “the very highest of all God’screatures, . . . the chief of all the angels” (No. 936). But Edwards boldlywent beyond this tradition to posit Lucifer as “a type of Christ, in whomall the glory and excellency of all elect creatures is more properly summed[up] as the head and fountain of all, as the brightness of all that reflectsthe light of the sun is summed up in the sun.”2 Lucifer fell not because hereached too high but because he disdainfully rejected his anointed roleas “the grand minister” of God’s providence to “feeble, mean and despi-cable” human beings (No. 980). He became instead the head of the proudangels who rejected the authority of the lowly “Christ, God-man.” His pre-cipitous fall from grace anticipates the destiny of all the proud on earthwho “despise a crucified Savior”: a share in his “most amazing eternal tor-ments.”

The Trinity

During his last years at Northampton, Edwards took up again the ques-tion of the Trinity, a subject to which he had devoted concentrated at-tention in the 1720s and early 1730s.3 Whereas his earlier “Miscellanies”entries on the Trinity explore the doctrine’s connections to his philo-sophical idealism and notions of consent and excellency, Edwards’ ap-proach in the 1740s reflects new apologetic strategies. Since the begin-


2. No. 980. See also Nos. 929, 931, 936, 941, and 952.3. JE wrote the first portion of his Discourse on the Trinity in 1730, returning to it over the years

with various additions. See the numerous entries under “Trinity” in the “Table” to the “Miscel-lanies,” in Works, 13, 149.

ning of the century, the classical doctrine of the Trinity had come underwide attack as a prime example of metaphysical abstruseness and irra-tionality by both deists and more moderate critics of Christian tradition,including Samuel Clarke, Edwards’ favorite source for arguments fromthe ancients.4 Starting in this period, and continuing to the end of his life,Edwards brought a new theological urgency to defending the doctrine’sreasonableness.

One group of entries attempts to show that, far from being an adulter-ation of classical and biblical monotheism, the doctrine of the Trinitygives final articulation to ancient theological insights. In pressing hisclaims for adumbrations of the Trinity among the ancients, Edwards re-lies on more conservative theological sources, such as Theophilus Galeand Jacques Basnage.5 In their repeated variations on the thesis that “Theheathen philosophers speak of the Son of God as Wisdom or Idea or Lo-gos, and of the Holy Spirit as Love” (No. 955), Edwards finds independentconfirmation of the reasonableness of trinitarian doctrine. Apparently,he felt that the case for trinitarian traditions among the ancients could bemade even more strongly: in a note to himself at the end of No. 955, hewrites, “Gale’s Court of the Gentiles almost wholly omits Plato’s divine phi-losophy, where these traditions are chiefly contained.” Edwards alsofound anticipations of the Trinity in the Old Testament. As he notes inNo. 1105, “The very frequent joining of the word Elohim, a word in theplural number, with the word Jehovah, a word in the singular number . . .seems to be a significant indication of the union of several divine personsin one Essence.”6 The Christian doctrine of the Trinity confirms and clar-ifies the insights of the philosophers and patriarchs into the presence of“some plurality” in the Godhead (No. 1114).

Another trinitarian topic of interest to Edwards in the late 1740s wasthe economy of the Trinity, the division of labor among the persons of theGodhead in the work of creation and redemption. This issue also had anapologetic edge, since the radical submission of the Son to the Father inthe work of redemption was a significant entry point for contemporary


4. Thomas Schafer notes that Samuel Clarke’s second series of Boyle Lectures are cited moreoften in the “Table” to the “Miscellanies” than any other book (Works, 13, 120). For accounts of18th-century assaults on trinitarian doctrine, see William S. Babcock, “A Changing of the Chris-tian God: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century,” in Interpretation XLV (April1991), 133–46; Roland N. Stromberg, Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth-Century England (NewYork, Oxford Univ. Press, 1954); and Conrad Wright, The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America(Boston, Beacon Press, 1966).

5. See Nos. 953, 955, 970, 992.6. See also Nos. 1102, 1114.

challenges to the doctrine. Arians like Clarke found in the Son’s depen-dence on and obedience to the Father evidence for his inferior ontolog-ical status, and concluded that the Father alone is fully God. In March andApril 1746, Edwards preached a sermon series on the distinctive roles ofthe Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the work of redemption.7 He elabo-rates these themes in No. 1062, a carefully written entry that forms a smalltreatise on the trinitarian economy of redemption. In it he argues that al-though the work of redemption required the temporary subordinationof the Son to the Father, it did not threaten the eternal equality of themembers of the Godhead. “’Tis very manifest,” he asserts, “that the per-sons of the Trinity are not inferior one to another in glory and excellencyof nature.” The Son, as a divine person equal to the Father, undertakesthe humiliation of the incarnation voluntarily—it cannot be forced uponhim. The Son’s role is decided upon in the covenant of redemption, an“agreement which the persons of the Trinity came into from eternity as itwere by mutual consultation and covenant” (No. 993).8

Thomas Ridgley, to whom Edwards may also be responding in No.1062, proposed a compromise between Arianism and orthodoxy. Hepredicated Christ’s status as Son on his mediatorial role in human salva-tion, rather than on his eternal subsistence with God. This provided anexplanation of the Son’s subordination that avoided the Arian solution:only the incarnate Christ was subordinate to the Father.9 Against viewslike Ridgley’s, Edwards argues that the representations of the “wondrouslove and grace of God” in giving the Son for human salvation would be“absurd, if he were not God’s Son till after he was appointed to be our Me-diator” (No. 1062). The unique subordination of the Son in the work ofredemption is in harmony with the general pattern of trinitarian relationand action within the Godhead, in which the Father has an eternal pri-ority to the Son.

In No. 958, Edwards addresses what appears to be a conflict betweenthe reasonableness of the trinitarian economy and biblical claims aboutChrist’s role in creation. When Scripture says that all things were made byChrist, one might conclude that “the natural signification of such ex-


7. See the reference to these sermons under “Economy of the Persons of the Trinity” in the“Table” to the “Miscellanies,” Works, 13, 131.

8. See also Nos. 1064 and 1091, which explore the relations between the intratrinitarian cov-enant of redemption and the covenant of grace that binds believers to Christ.

9. Thomas Ridgley, Body of Divinity: Wherein the Doctrines of the Christian Religion are Explainedand Defended. Being the Substance of Several Lectures on the Assembly’s Larger Catechism (2 vols. Lon-don, 1731).

pressions” is “that he made himself, or made that of himself which wasmade.” To avoid such an unreasonable conclusion, Edwards acknowl-edges an exception in the trinitarian economy: “there is but one thingthat is created that is more immediately the work of God the Father, andthat is the human nature of Christ, and that both in its old and new cre-ation.” In sum, “All things are from him as God-man, but he him[self] asGod-man is from the Father.” Yet Edwards hastens to add that the Scrip-ture is not wrong to speak of all things being made by Christ: “as all thepersons of the Trinity do concur in all acts,” even the creation of Christ’shuman nature is, strictly speaking, “not without the Son.”

When Edwards resumes the theme of the divine glory that is God’s endin creation, he puts a new emphasis on the Trinity.1 “The glory of God,”he asserts in No. 1094, “implies these two things: manifestation and com-munication, the latter called grace, the former, truth.” Edwards identifiesthe manifestation of God’s truth with “Christ’s being in the creature, inthe name, idea or knowledge of God being in them.” Likewise, the com-munication of God’s grace is connected with “the Holy Spirit’s being inthem, in the love of God’s being in them” (No. 1084). The double flow-ing forth of God outward toward the creature is thus a repetition of theinternal flowing forth of the Son and Holy Spirit within the Godhead(Nos. 1082, 1151). Appealing to the Trinity helped Edwards explain howGod could be at once self-sufficient and self-communicative in the workof creation.2 To critics who found God’s “pleasure in his glory’s beingmanifested and respected” to compromise God’s absolute indepen-dence, Edwards could claim that it “indeed is only a kind of second pro-ceeding of the same persons” of the eternal Godhead (Nos. 1140, 1082).To those, on the other hand, who found God’s concern for his own gloryto exemplify “ignoble selfishness,” Edwards could argue that “the one lastend” of the trinitarian processions was “making the creature happy inGod” (Nos. 1080, 1151).

Edwards’ strident treatise An Humble Inquiry was published at about thesame time as these trinitarian entries on God’s end in creation, at thenadir of his relations with his church in Northampton.3 To explain hisproposed new requirements for congregational participation in the


1. With the exception of No. 448 and a reference to his Discourse on the Trinity in a corollaryto No. 679, the roughly two dozen earlier “Miscellanies” on God’s end in creation are not ex-plicitly trinitarian.

2. See the analysis of End of Creation in these terms in Michael J. McClymond, Encounters withGod: An Approach to the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1998).

3. The treatise is published in Works, 12, 165–325.

Lord’s Supper, Edwards appealed to the Trinity. What could it mean, heasked, for those without “the least spark of true love to God in their hearts,to say publicly and solemnly, that ‘They avouch God the Father, Son, andHoly Ghost to be their God’”?4 The manifestation of truth through theSon is inseparable from the communication of love and grace throughthe Holy Spirit. One cannot sincerely hold “a true notion” of the triuneGod without having a concomitant love for God. While Edwards had oncefound in the manifestations and communications of God to his congre-gation a deep confirmation of the progress of God’s glorious work of re-demption, he now appealed to the Trinity to accentuate the painful di-vide between his vision of union and happiness in God and his ownpastoral experiences of bitterness, distrust, and, ultimately, disunion.

Note on the Texts

Entries 833–1152 are in Books 3–7 of the “Miscellanies,” housed (withthe exception of Book 6) at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Li-brary of Yale University. No. 833 begins on p. 74 of Book 3, which is 134

pages in length. Edwards did not number the pages, but a later owner ofthe manuscript did. The book has a cover made of coarse brown reamwrapper, inscribed “III” by Edwards on the front and back. The pages areformed from an infolded quire of folio-sized paper (pp. 1–126) and twoseparate double leaves added at the end (pp. 127–34). The handwritingis generally neat, even, and close, though it tends to spread out as the vol-ume progresses. Inks vary between medium and dark brown, exceptingthe concluding portion of No. 880 (starting on p. 129 of Bk. 3), which iswritten in a gray ink.

Book 4 begins with No. 884 and concludes with the first portion of No.958. Missing its cover, the manuscript is an infolded, unpaginated folioquire (pp. [1–98]) with two single leaves (pp. [99–102]) at the end; inaddition, there is a stitched-in fragment between pp. 6 and 7, occurringin No. 891. This entry (pp. [5–14]), along with No. 922 (pp. [25–32]),is omitted from this volume because the two are the initial parts of a longertreatise, completed in No. 1067, on “Prophecies of the Messiah.”

No. 958 resumes in Book 5, which ends with No. 1066. The cover ofBook 5 is made from a coarse brown ream wrapper on which Edwardswrote “V” on the front and back. There are also some notations and math-ematical calculations by Jonathan Edwards, Jr., on the front of the cover,


4. Ibid., 12, 211.

and his revisions occur sporadically throughout the volume, most promi-nently in such entries as Nos. 1060 and 1062. The paper in Book 5 is intwo infolded folio quires, unpaginated, the first comprising pp. [1–122],the second pp. [123–42]. At the bottom of p. [128], the end of No. 1060,is a pinned-in scrap containing notes for that entry. The ink Edwards usedto write the entries in Book 5 is generally a bright brown, and the hand-writing is relatively good throughout, though there is noticeable deterio-ration at the end of the book, starting at No. 1062. This entry contains ahigh degree of deletions and interlineations, suggesting that Edwards wascomposing directly into the notebook and not—as apparently was hispractice—working from notes or a draft.

The lengthy entries 1067, “Prophecies of the Messiah,” and 1068, “Ful-fillment of the Prophecies of the Messiah,” which together make up Book6 (located at Andover Newton Theological School), are not included inthis edition owing to space limitations and the highly specialized subjectmatter of the two treatises. Yet another entry, No. 1069, “Types of the Mes-siah,” is not included here because it appears in volume 11 of the Edition,Typological Writings.5 No. 1069 begins Book 7, which concludes with No.1155. Its cover is constructed from a smooth brown ream wrapper that isnot inscribed by Edwards, but notations in later hands read, “Types of theO[ld] T[estament]” and “A Manuscript of the late Rev. Jonathan Ed-wards, President of Nassau Hall College, Princeton, New Jersey.” Thereare also several notations in pencil: one is “X,” indicating an inventorynumber assigned to the manuscript; another is “#1069 to 1155”; and stillanother is a comment beginning “Arguably . . . ,” the rest having beenrubbed away to the point where it is indecipherable. The paper is one infolded folio quire of 142 pages. Edwards paginated pp. 1–73 of No.1069, but the remainder of the volume is not consecutively paginated.This manuscript has been the target of autograph hunters. The leaf con-taining Nos. 1139–44 was cut out, but it has been restored to the book;likewise, a portion of the leaf containing Nos. 1149 through the begin-ning of No. 1152 was snipped out, and the fragment is now at the Libraryof Congress. No. 1152 ends on p. [128] of Book 7. As with previous vol-umes, Edwards started out by writing as neatly and compactly as he could,but around No. 1112 his handwriting becomes more spread out and theletter formation becomes noticeably larger. Nos. 1070–1075b are writ-ten in a gray ink, and Nos. 1076–1155 are in a dark brown ink.


5. See Works of Jonathan Edwards, 11, Typological Writings, ed. Wallace E. Anderson and MasonI. Lowance (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1993), 183–86.

None of the “Miscellanies” entries is dated by Edwards, but the volumeeditors have been able nonetheless to provide dating for selected entriesor groups of entries using the methodology established by Thomas A.Schafer, who transcribed nearly the whole of the “Miscellanies” andedited entries a–500. Schafer’s methodology includes handwriting, ink,and watermark analyses, as well as comparisons among Edwards’ dated,datable, and undated manuscripts. This volume, as well as the others inthe “Miscellanies” series, is heavily indebted to Schafer’s decades of for-mative textual work.

Employing Schafer’s techniques, Ava Chamberlain, the editor of “Mis-cellanies” 501–832, has dated No. 832 to the winter of 1739–40, pro-viding a starting point for the earliest entries in this volume. But, as Cham-berlain points out, the entries after No. 500 become more difficult to datebecause Edwards’ paper use becomes much more uniform. Book 3 ismade of ten sheets (forming pp. 1–20 and 107–26) with a London Armswatermark and GR/Crown countermark and of forty-three sheets(pp. 21–106) with a “OO” watermark and “V” countermark. But begin-ning with the two separate double leaves at the end of this book, all theway through the end of Book 7, the paper has an English Arms watermarkand GR/Crownwr countermark. Also, Edwards’ orthography and inks donot evidence the dramatic changes seen in the earliest “Miscellanies” en-tries. One resource for comparison is Edwards’ sermon manuscripts,which he began dating in 1733. His occasional references to dated ser-mons in the “Miscellanies” help date the entries. However, whereas Nos.501–832 contain a relatively high number of sermon references, thesame cannot be said of Nos. 833–1152. After No. 863, in fact, Edwardsmakes only one more reference in the “Miscellanies” to manuscript ser-mons, namely, in No. 1156. We therefore have to rely largely on citationsof secondary works to date certain entries, as well as on handwriting andink comparisons and other circumstantial evidence.

On these bases, we can assign the initial one hundred and twenty or soentries in this volume to the “Great Awakening,” which peaked inNorthampton from late 1740 to early 1742. The entry topics—includingjustification, regeneration, the work of redemption, signs of godliness,and other conversion-related issues—reflect a time of revival. In this pe-riod, sermon references help us determine the terminus a quo for selectentries. No. 841 refers to the sermon on Luke 15:22, dated January 1740,and No. 847 has textual parallels to the sermon on Luke 22:32, preachedin August 1740. In November 1740, right after George Whitefield leftNorthampton, Edwards preached a sermon series on the parable of the


sower; Nos. 859–60 both contain references to that series and were writ-ten at or shortly after that point. The final sermon reference in this vol-ume which helps us move the chronology forward comes in No. 862,where Edwards cites the sermon on Mark 14:3 from May 1741. In thesame entry he later added a reference to the sermon on Gen. 43:3, of Feb-ruary 1742, so we know the original portion of the entry can be no laterthan that date. (No. 863 does refer to the sermon on Is. 33:14, but that isdated December 1740.) Entries in the late 800s and early 900s continuerevival-oriented themes such as heaven and the saints’ dwelling there, andhell and its eternal torments; the day of judgment and the final confla-gration; and Christ’s ascension, and angelology. No. 874 contains a ref-erence to “Notes on Scripture” nos. 421–22, which editor Stephen J. Steinhas dated to before October 1741. Edwards cites Jonathan Dickinson’sTrue Scripture Doctrine, published in 1741, in No. 884. In No. 903, con-cerning the day of judgment, Edwards provides something of a referencepoint when he states that “if any in New England, ten years ago, had fore-told such a change in the religious state in New England, as now is—it isso extraordinary, so much beside the settled course of things within thememory of all living, and in many things diverse from all that ever washeard of—then it would have been perhaps as difficult to believe it, as tobelieve the great events foretold to accompany the end of the world.” Ifwe date this entry to 1741 or 1742 and work back a decade, that wouldplace us just before the onset of the 1734–35 revival. No. 991 is relatedto “Images” no. 166, which has a contemporaneous reference to that veryentry. Wallace E. Anderson has dated “Images” in the late 160s from theend of 1743.

We come to a significant milestone at No. 953, the first entry in whichEdwards cites Theophilus Gale’s Court of the Gentiles. Edwards primarilyused this work—and to a lesser extent others such as Hugo Grotius’ Truthof the Christian Religion, Richard Kidder’s Demonstration of the Messias, andHumphrey Prideaux’s Connection of the Old and New Testament—to gatherinformation on what he called “Traditions of the Heathen,” a topic towhich he would devote many pages of the “Miscellanies” during the re-mainder of his life. References to other secondary works in Nos. 1021 and1073 locate these entries after 1742, which is the date that a scrap pinnedinto No. 1060 bears. A reference to the third edition of Thomas Boston’sHuman Nature in Its Fourfold State, issued in 1743, provides a further land-mark. Nos. 1067 and 1068, on the prophecies of the Messiah, contain noreferences to No. 1069; but “Types of the Messiah,” which was begun in1744, has numerous contemporaneous references to the previous two en-


tries. We can deduce, therefore, that Nos. 1067 and 1068 were probablywritten during 1743 and 1744.

Termini a quo become scarce in the 1100s. No. 1181 is a quote drawnfrom John Taylor’s Key to the Apostolic Writings, which Edwards receivedfrom John Erskine in the summer of 1748 and acknowledged in his let-ter to Erskine of August 31 of that year. And No. 1118 contains a refer-ence to the third installment of John Glas’ Notes on Scripture Text, anotherbook that Edwards received from Erskine, in this case during the winterof 1749, as stated in his letter of July 5, 1750.

Edwards’ rate of entry-making in this period is difficult to calculate pre-cisely because of a lack of exact chronological parallels, but it is possibleto provide approximate figures. The ink of entries up to No. 922 is a brightbrown and matches sermons from 1741. No. 923 is written in a dull brownink that matches late entries in a sermon notebook that Wilson H. Kim-nach has dated from 1740–41.6 Entries in the 950s evidence a change inEdwards’ handwriting; the letter formation becomes more angular andjagged, similar to his post-awakening orthography, especially in sermonsand occasional notes. It seems likely, therefore, that we can date miscel-lanies in the 950s as having been written during or shortly after 1742, theend of the awakening period at Northampton.

From this chronological landmark, we can calculate that Edwardswrote about 119 entries during the two-year revival period itself, totaling166 pages. If we break this down into yearly production, we see that incontrast to the awakening years of 1734–35, when Edwards neglected the“Miscellanies” because of demands on his time, he actually devoted moreattention than normal to his notebooks during the subsequent awaken-ing in 1740–42—perhaps a reflection of Northampton’s smaller role thistime around and Edwards’ emergence as an observer and critic of revivalphenomena. Whatever the explanation may be, during 1740 and 1741

he wrote nearly sixty entries per year, averaging just over eighty pages an-nually. Afterward, and through the end of the Northampton pastorateabout eight years later, he wrote 199 entries, an average of about twentyentries per year. This comparison with the awakening period in terms ofentries may seem deceptive, because Edwards wrote unprecedentedlylengthy entries in the mid- to late 1740s. Nevertheless, entries 953–1152

comprise 534 pages, for an average of slightly more than fifty pages an-nually.


6. MS Sermon Notebook “19,” p. 7. This is one of three extant notebooks in which JE sketchedout ideas for sermons.

Table 1. Selected Dates for the Compositionof “Miscellanies” Nos. 833–1152

Entry Date

841 no earlier than Jan. 1740

847 no earlier than Aug. 1740

859–60 no earlier than Nov. 1740

862 no earlier May 1741

874 before Oct. 41

884 no earlier than 1741

903 probably late 1741 or 742

991 no earlier than mid-1743

1021 after 1742

1060 after 1742

1067–68 c. 1743–44

1069 begun c. 1744

1101 no earlier than summer 1748

1118 winter 1749 or later

In order to identify the time at which the entries in this volume end, weneed to rely on content analysis and on orthographic and ink compar-isons with other dated or datable manuscripts. Based on subject matter,it seems likely that up through at least No. 1138 (on the sincerity of neigh-bors being unsearchable by men) Edwards was still in Northampton, or,in any event, issues relating to the recent communion controversy wereweighing heavily on his mind. We can speculate that miscellanies in thelate 1130s coincide roughly with the date of his dismissal, June 1750. Ed-wards did not move permanently to Stockbridge until a full year later,spending January–March 1751 at the mission and shuttling betweenNorthampton and Stockbridge. Starting at No. 1140 we see the begin-ning of a series of entries on the end of creation, the first of the two dis-sertations he eventually completed at Stockbridge. It is possible that theseentries date from July 1750–May 1751, the interim between Edwards’Northampton and Stockbridge pastorates. The last three paragraphs ofNo. 1148 are a later addition, written in an ink similar to that in other writ-ings from late 1751,7 so we know that the main part of the entry was madeearlier—though only slightly, since the handwriting is identical. Taking


7. See, for example, entries on pp. 59 ff. in JE’s “Account Book,” dated Sept. 1751 ff., and his“Vindication from the Church’s Accusation,” written after May 1751.

into account ink and handwriting comparisons, along with Edwards’ av-erage production rate during this period, it seems reasonable to say thatmiscellanies in the 1150s are nearly contemporary with his final depar-ture from Northampton in the spring of 1751. If we look beyond the en-tries in this volume, No. 1181 cites the Monthly Review for April 1751. Wecan state with some certainty that this entry was not written before late1751 because it would have taken at least that long for Edwards to acquirethe magazine from overseas. No. 1152, therefore, the entry with whichthis volume ends, may be located at the tail end of the interim period, orpossibly at the beginning of his Stockbridge tenure.


T H E “ M I S C E L L A N I E S , ”E N T R Y N O S . 8 3 3 – 1 1 5 2

833. Occasion of the Fall of the Angels. Christ had his delegateddominion over the world committed to him as soon as the creation of theworld was finished. For though Christ did [not] actually begin the workand business of a mediator till man had fallen, yet seeing the world, evenin its very creation, was designed to be for the use of Christ in the great af-fair of redemption, and his purposes in that work were the end of the cre-ation, and of all God’s providences in it from the beginning; therefore,the government of the world was committed into his hands from the verybeginning, for even the very creation was committed into his hands forthat reason, as the Apostle intimates, Eph. 3:9–10. Much more have wereason to think that the disposal of it was committed into his hands whenit was made, because it was created for his disposal and use. It was there-fore most fit that it should be committed to him, not only in the actual ac-complishment of that great work of his, the work of redemption, but alsoin those antecedent dispensations that were preparatory to it. During thatshort space of time that was taken up in the preparation before the workof redemption actually began, it was most meet that Christ should havethe disposal of those things that were to prepare the way for his own work;otherwise the work would not wholly be in his hands. For the accom-plishing of the work itself, so as best to suit his own purpose and pleasure,depends in a great measure on the preparation that was made for it; andso there is the same reason that the preparation should be in his hands asthe work itself.

There is the same reason that those things that are without the limits ofthe work itself, as to time, should be in the hands of Christ, because of therelation they have to that work, as that those things that are without thelimits of the work itself, as to place and nature and order of being, shouldbe in his hands, as the angels in heaven. Indeed, all the works of God thatwere before the fall of men were parts of the work of preparation for thework of redemption. The creation itself was so, and for this reason the cre-ation of the world was committed into his hands. And there is no reasonto suppose that part of this work of preparation was committed intoChrist’s hands, because it was a preparation for his work, and not other

43

parts of the preparation for the same work. All things are for Christ forhis use; and therefore God left it with him to prepare all things for his ownuse that in everything he might have the preeminence, and that in himmight all fullness dwell, a perfect sufficiency every way for the design thathe had to accomplish. And therefore, by the will and disposition of the Fa-ther, all things were made by him and all things consist by him; and he wasmade head over all things to the church, and for the purposes of the workof redemption that he was to accomplish for the church. Col. 1:16–19,“For by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth,visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principal-ities or powers; all things were created by him and for him; and he is be-fore all things, and by him all things consist. And he is the head of the bodyof the church: who is the beginning, the first born from the dead; that inall things he might have the preeminence. For it pleased the Father thatin him should all fullness dwell.” Eph. 1:22, “And hath put all things un-der his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church.” ’Tismanifest by these things that not only the creation of the world, but theupholding and government of the world, were committed into the handsof Christ, and doubtless it was so from the beginning. As Christ’s dele-gated dominion over the world will not be at an end till his use of it is fin-ished, and he has completed that work in which its great use consists, andhas fully obtained his end of it, which will be at the end of the world whenhe will deliver up that kingdom to the Father; so doubtless that delegated do-minion over the world began when his use of it began, which was at thebeginning of the world, or as soon as the world was finished, and that thenthe kingdom was committed to him of the Father.

Why the Work of Creation was Committed into the Hands of

Christ. Creation. Providence. Redemption. As the glory of the churchhas various beginnings or periods, steps and degrees of inchoation—oneis at the first founding of the church after the fall; another at that otherfounding of it in the call of Abraham; another founding is at the cove-nanting after coming out of Egypt; another on Christ’s resurrection; an-other at the fall of Antichrist; another at the end of the world—so it is withthe glory of Christ, as head over all things to the church.

1. He was in a sense invested with this honor from eternity in the eter-nal covenant of redemption; then was the government of the future worldcommitted to him. But,

2. He actually began to exercise this power that was committed to himin the creation of the world, for he created the world as the Father’s del-

44 The “Miscellanies”

egate, and therein began to act as the head over all things in his delegatedpower.

3. He was solemnly and visibly invested with this authority, that he asGod’s delegate might dispose and govern the world in the sight of the an-gels, the created inhabitants of heaven, as soon as the world was finished.And God beheld all his works that Christ had made, and saw that he hadtherein perfectly finished the work that he had given him to do, and thatall was good and that he had done all things well. Then, when he restedand rejoiced and was satisfied in the creation that Christ had made, onthe latter part of the sixth day, or beginning of the seventh or sabbath day,did he solemnly commit to him the dominion over this world, that hemight govern it as his delegate.1

4. After man fell, he actually took on him[self] the work of the Media-tor, and began to govern the world as mediator, and as actually fulfillingthe work of such an office.

5. His most solemn investiture of all into his delegated kingdom wasthat which he received as God-man on his ascension into heaven. As thecreation of this visible world was in the sight of the angels—for then “themorning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” [Job38:7]—so this solemn investing [of] Christ with the dominion over theworld, on the finishing of the creation, was doubtless visible to them. Itmust needs be so, for this committing [of] the government of the worldto Christ in part consisted in committing the angels, God’s servants andthe ministers of his providence, to him to be his servants and as ministersof providence subject to him in his delegated kingdom.

And seeing this great transaction was done in their view, as the creationof the world was that they might see the glory of God in it, and might singtogether and shout for joy on that occasion, and seeing that they were sonearly concerned in this affair, being therein put in subjection to Christas God’s vicegerent; no other can reasonably be supposed, if we considerthe analogy of God’s dispensations, but that God on this occasion madeknown to the angels something of his design and end in this dispensation.And ’tis very probable, that as this was done immediately after the creationof man—the principal work of that part of the creation, which the angelssaw and which they most admired—that now was something revealed ofthat peculiar love to that race of beings that he had in it, and how it wasfor their sakes; and that God intended to make them, though created af-

Entry 833 45

1. JE’s account of the last day of creation closely echoes Gen. 1:31–2:2, but he attributes thework of creation to Christ instead of to God.

ter the angels, and of a much inferior nature to them, the principal endof the creation; and that the use of the creation was to be2 Christ’s ac-complishment of a great work for them; and that this was the work thatthey were subjected to Christ for, and were chiefly to be employed in; andthat they3 were to be exalted higher in glory than themselves, and wereto be, under Christ, ministering spirits to them, as the most beloved rankof creatures; and perhaps that the Son of God, that was now invested withthe dominion over the world, should have this dominion in that natureas the head of that race; and as such they were to be his subjects and ser-vants and ministering spirits; and that this was the occasion of their fall.They thought they were unequally dealt with, and hence pride arose; andthey could not deign for such purposes to be subject to the Son of God,and to have this inferior nature so exalted above them.

Corol. Lord’s Day. Christ’s Ascension. We have reason to think thatthis solemn investing [of] Christ with the dominion over the world wassoon after the creation was finished, soon after the creation of man, thelast work of that creation. For doubtless, soon after man was created, theangels, as the ministers of God’s providence, were sent forth to ministerto him: for God himself did soon converse with man and began his won-derful government of mankind, but we can’t think that this was withoutthe ministration of angels. But the ministration of angels has ever beenunder Christ. And besides, as soon as man was created, God began thecourse of his providence towards man in those great things that werepreparatory to the work of redemption; but, as has been shown before,4

the works that were preparatory to the work of redemption were the workswhich Christ wrought in the exercise of his delegated power. But ’tis notlikely that Christ began the wonderful series of his providence, in his dis-posal and government and use of the world, in the great and remarkabledispensations of it, till the government of the world had been solemnlycommitted to him. And therefore we may suppose that the seventh day,which was the day when God rested from all his works and rejoiced inthem, was the great day of this solemn investiture; that God saw the workthat his Son had done in the creation complete, and rejoiced and was re-freshed in the work of his Son; and, at the same time that he rejoiced inhis work, he manifested his approbation of it, and his delight in the work-man, by committing to him the creation he had made, and, so it were, re-


2. MS: “was the [illeg. deletion] which was to be.”3. I.e. men.4. Probably a reference to “Miscellanies” no. 742 (Works, 18, 373–76).

warding his work. The day of rejoicing is the proper day of bestowing gifts:God, on this day of his rejoicing, bestowed on his Son the gift of the king-dom.

And this was the day of the rejoicing of all the inhabitants of heaven;this day especially was the day “when the morning stars sang together andall the sons of God shouted for joy” [Job 38:7], having now seen the fin-ishing of the work of creation. And they now rejoiced, those of them thatstood on the great occasion of the investiture of the Son of God with thegovernment of the world, and the great and wonderful decrees God haddeclared concerning him. And so the first sabbath that ever was [was] asolemn day, an occasion of the great honor God put on Christ, as the headof all things to the church; as the Christian sabbath is thus appointed es-pecially in commemoration of the great honor he received at his resur-rection, which was the beginning of his exaltation as head over all the uni-verse, on his finishing and resting from the work of the new creation. Andif what Mr. Bedford supposes be true, it was the same day of the week onwhich Christ arose.5 And if so, it was probably also the very same day withthat of Christ’s most solemn investiture of all with the dominion over theworld which Christ received as God-man, when he sat down at God’s righthand in heaven after his ascension, which was the greatest, most solemnand joyful day that ever was seen in heaven. Then Christ, on that holy sab-batism or rest, came to his rest, which was his everlasting throne in heaven;as the Psalmist, on occasion of the ascending of the ark into Mount Zion,calls the place where it was seated—the throne or mercy seat, on whichDavid placed it—its rest. Ps. 132:8, “Arise, O Lord, into thy rest; thou andthe ark of thy strength.” So Solomon calls the mercy seat in the temple inMount Moriah, where the ark had ascended. II Chron. 6:41, “Now there-fore arise, O Lord God, into thy resting-place, thou, and the ark of thystrength.” Ps. 132:14, “This is my rest forever: here will I dwell; for I havedesired it.” But Christ’s throne in heaven, and not a throne in an earthlysanctuary, is spoken of as the true place of Christ’s rest. Is. 66:1, “Thus

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5. Arthur Bedford, The Scripture Chronology, Demonstrated by Astronomical Calculations, and alsoby the Year of Jubilee, and the Sabbatical Year among the Jews; or, an Account of Time from the Creation ofthe World, to the Destruction of Jerusalem; as it may be proved from the Writings of the Old and New Testa-ments . . . (London, 1730). In the preface to the reader (p. v), Bedford outlines his goals for hismassive study. Among other things, he states, “I hope, that I have prov’d, that the most solemnActs of Devotion, and other religious Transactions mention’d in the Old Testament, especiallyfrom the Creation to the Time of Moses, were performed on that Day, which we call Sunday, andthat the Sabbath was alter’d from the first to the last Day of the Week, only among the Childrenof Israel at their Departure out of Eqypt, in Commemoration of so great a Deliverance; and thatit was restor’d again to the first Day of the Week by Our SAVIOUR’S Resurrection.”

saith the Lord, the heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool:where is the house that ye build unto me, and where is the place of myrest?” Probably this day of Christ’s being instated as God-man in God’sthrone in heaven was the first day of the week. For though it is said to beforty days after his resurrection in the beginning of the Acts—and so, if itbe St. Luke’s design to give us the precise number of days when he as-cended from Mount Olivet, that must be two days distant from the firstday of the week—yet that space of time might be taken up in Christ’sbody’s ascending to the highest heaven. It might take up so much time,and yet its motion be immensely swifter than the motion of the rays oflight. And so the day of Christ’s sitting on the throne of God in heaven,and so the solemn day of his investiture with the glory of his kingdom,might be on the first day of the week. This was an occasion of great re-joicing to the whole church in heaven and earth; though the church onearth did not partake with the glorious assembly in heaven in the joy of iton that very day, for that was too soon after her parting with Christ, whichleft her sorrowful. But this was reserved till the sabbath following, whichwas the same day of the week when the Holy Ghost was poured out byChrist, he having received the promise of the Father; and the church onearth received the happy effects of Christ’s enthronization with thechurch in heaven. Or else the whole time from the fortieth day till the dayof Pentecost might be taken up in Christ’s ascension, and so the day of hisenthronization might be the day of Pentecost itself, which was the first dayof the week.

At Christ’s first enthronization after the creation, Christ was set over theangels, as he was at the second after the new creation. Progress of the

work of redemption begun in creation. Christ’s delegated king-

dom, when he was first invested with it.

834. Day of Judgment. Progress of Redemption. The last trumpetshall sound soon after Christ’s appearance, or at least while he yet appearsat a great distance; for the living will not be changed till the trumpetsounds, and therefore not able to bear the sight of that ineffable glory thatChrist will appear in, unless at a very great distance. The first thing thatwill be, will be the appearance of Christ’s coming, which the world ofmankind shall behold and view before any change shall pass upon thebody. This glory shall be seen by the living saints, gradually increasing.They shall see more and more of the glory in which Christ appears as heapproaches, as long as their natures can bear it without a change, or aslong as the increase of the glory only tends to increase their pleasure and


delight in the view of the glorious sight; till the glory, by near approach,begins to be too strong for frail nature. And then the trumpet shall sound,and they shall be changed in the twinkling of an eye, and the dead shallbe raised [I Cor. 15:51–52].

835. Progress of Redemption. Christ’s Coming to Judgment. SeeNo. 803. The state of the world of mankind will especially call for Christ’sappearance to judgment, at the time when he will appear. For not onlyshall the world of mankind be probably many hundred times more nu-merous than they are, and the greater part of them wicked, and sinnersagainst great light, etc., but then shall the wicked world be far more com-bined in wickedness than ever before. Before the rise of the four great em-pires, almost all the world was wicked, but there was very little of a com-munication between one part of the world and another. Afterwards,under the Roman Empire especially, there was a great communication be-tween many of the nations of the world, by their being united under theRoman government, and by the flourishing of arts and sciences that werethen brought to such a height. And then God saw it a proper time forChrist’s first coming. Of later times, the communication between distantparts of the habitable globe has grown exceedingly, through the flour-ishing of arts and sciences, and the art of navigation in particular; but yetthere is not such a communication as to make way for a combination ofthe wicked world. But this communication is daily growing, and withoutdoubt the long continuance of the glorious times6—wherein there shallbe such a union of the whole earth, and wherein all useful arts and thearts of communication shall be carried to the highest perfection—willhave wonderfully established a universal communication between allparts of the world of mankind; so that, when the world apostatizes, the waywill be open for an universal combination of the wicked world againstChrist and his church.

As before the first destruction of the world by water, the earth was filledwith violence and there were but few godly, and there seemed to be im-minent danger of the church’s being lost, so will it be before the seconddestruction of the world by fire.

’Tis fit that, after God has granted to the world such great means andglorious advantages for spiritual good, as he will do in the expected glo-rious times of the church, in that great light which shall then be enjoyed,those great works of God’s providence which shall then be seen, the many

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6. MS: “of the church.”

great and excellent examples, etc., and after he has also given for so longa time together such glorious success of these means: I say it is fit that af-ter all this there should be, before the world comes to an end, somethingto show the insufficiency even of such means and advantages in them-selves, that they can effect nothing without the sovereign influence ofGod’s Spirit; and something to show the desperate corruption of man’snature, which, if left to itself, breaks over all these restraints, makes blindin the midst of such glorious light, and conquers the world when fur-nished with all these advantages.

’Tis fit that there should be a remarkable manifestation of the evil ofthe world, just before it comes to an end; and that it should remarkablyappear how worthy it is of destruction and the curse that God has de-nounced against it, just before its final destruction comes upon it and thedenounced curse is most fully executed.

’Tis fit that there should be something remarkable to make the churchof Christ willing that the world should come to an end, and to long forChrist’s last appearing, just before he actually appears. But if the happyglorious times of the church on earth were continued till the very time ofChrist’s appearing, it would not be so.

836. Millennium. When the duration of the glorious times of thechurch on earth after the fall of Antichrist is spoken of in the 20th chap-ter of Revelation as being a thousand years, the words are to be literallyunderstood that it will be about that space of time, though perhaps it willnot be so precisely; and if [it] be so precisely, it will probably be difficultprecisely to fix the beginning, and so the end of it. Because, if the thou-sand years in ch. 20 of Revelation is not to be understood literally but fig-uratively, then ’tis probable that a vastly longer space of time is intendedthan a literal thousand years. For the manner of Scripture prophecy is torepresent the true time by other times that are vastly less; thus a prophet-ical day is a year, a prophetical week seven years, a prophetical monththirty years, a prophetical year 360 years. And if this thousand years herebe used as a figurative and prophetical thousand years, it probably is torepresent a vastly long space of time, as a thousand years seems to men tobe a great while. Thus a day, an hour and a moment seem to men to bevery short spaces of time; hence they are used to represent any short spaceof time as the shortness of man’s life, etc. But the following reasons in-duce me to think that the space here meant is not any space of time vastlylonger than a thousand years:

1. ’Tis not likely that the face of the earth would hold the inhabitants


for a vastly longer time than a thousand years, multiplying so fast as theywill under such great universal and uninterrupted prosperity, health andlong life, which the generations of men shall enjoy throughout that spaceof time, without being diminished with wars, pestilences and other des-olating calamities which now waste mankind. If we should suppose thatat the beginning of the glorious times there should be just the same num-ber of inhabitants on the face of the earth as now, and that their numbershould be doubled but once in a hundred years, which is the least thatcan be supposed under such prosperity; then at the end of one thousandyears, there will be about a thousand times so many inhabitants on theearth as now there is. And at the end of two thousand years there mustbe a million times so many, and at the end of three thousand years a thou-sand million times so many, and at the end of four thousand years a mil-lion million times so many inhabitants, as are now on the face of theearth.

2. That the world should continue standing such a vastly long time thata thousand years should be but a figure, or type, of the time, hardly con-sists with what the Scripture says of the near approach of the day of judg-ment.

3. That the world should for so vast a space of time be continued in sucha glorious state of peace, rest, love, holiness and joy and such universalprosperity, wherein holiness shall be so general and such multitudes shallbe saved, hardly consists with what the Scripture says of this evil world, thereign of sin and Satan and affliction in the world, and of the few that shallbe saved; for doubtless these things are spoken of the world in its moreordinary state, which they may truly be, if it shall be thus for six thousandyears, and otherwise but one thousand years. If so, this single thousandyears may well be looked upon as an exempt season. But if we suppose theglorious times to be so vastly long, as that a thousand years is but a prophet-ical figure of them, it will be far otherwise; the state that the world is in forthe most part will be quite diverse from these representations, and thetime that it is in a state agreeable to them is more properly the exemptseason. The general proposition should have been the reverse: what issaid of the evil of the world, the few that are saved, etc. should come in asthe exception.

4. This world is represented in Scripture as an accursed world; woe isdenounced against the world, and the very ground is cursed. But its be-ing for most of its time in a state of such rest and glory is scarcely consis-tent with this. The world will at last be burnt, as having been for the mostpart a stage of wickedness and the kingdom of the devil.

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5. The reasons that are given [in] No. 520, why few are saved, if good,do conclude against the millennium’s being so long a space of time.

6. As the number of persons that are saved is a distinguished number,an elect company that are chosen out of the world; so that part of the du-ration of the world that is as it were saved out of the time of the world’scontinuance to be consecrated to God and spent for him, is not the great-est part of the time, but a certain elect portion of time, saved out from therest as the sabbath, is saved out of the week to be holy to God.

7. If the world should be continued for so vast a space of time, in sucha state, the world will be in danger of forgetting its own natural corrup-tion and misery. That space wherein it appeared in its own proper colors,being comparatively so small and at so great a distance, the world will bein great danger of being very insensible of it. And indeed, if it should bebut one thousand years, ’tis very likely that towards the latter part of it theywill begin to grow insensible of it, and so pride will begin to come in, andthis will be one great occasion of that apostasy of Gog and Magog [Rev.20:8].

8. If this glorious state of the church should be continued for so vast aspace of time, it will look too much as though the church had arrived toher rest and to her proper state of glory. But this is not the appointed stateof her reward and happiness, and therefore won’t be very long continued.The proper state of the church’s rest is after the day of judgment; this thatis before, is only given to the church as a foretaste, a forerunner and im-age of this her true rest and glory. ’Tis observable, that prelibations andimages of things that are before the appointed proper season for the truething of which they are forerunners and representations, are wont to bebut short. The children of Israel in the wilderness sometimes had rest, butit was continued but a little while, because they were not come to their truerest; when the children of Israel had taken the land on the other side Jor-dan, they were not suffered to continue there long, because that was nottheir appointed rest. Deut. 12:9, “For ye are not as yet come to the rest, andto the inheritance which the Lord your God giveth you.” The end of a typeand foretaste is to lead to the antitype and proper inheritance, but if thistype of heavenly rest should be so very long continued it would be in dan-ger of leading from the antitype to rest in the type. See No. 1224.

837. Christian Religion. Natural Religion. Revealed Religion.The whole of Christian divinity depends on divine revelation; for thoughthere are many truths concerning God and our duty to him that are evi-dent by the light of nature, yet no one truth is taught by the light of na-


ture in that manner in which it is necessary for us to know it. For the knowl-edge of no truth in divinity is of any significance to us any otherwise thanit, some way or other, belongs to the gospel scheme, or has relation toChrist the Mediator. It signifies nothing for us to know anything of anyone of God’s perfections, unless we know them as manifested in Christ;and so it signifies nothing to us to know any part of our duty, unless it will[bear] some relation to Christ. It profits us not to have any knowledge ofthe law of God, unless it be either to fit us for the glad tidings of the gospel,or to be a means of our sanctification in Christ Jesus, and to influence usto serve God through Christ by an evangelical obedience. And thereforewe stand in the greatest necessity of a divine revelation. And it was mostfit and proper that, when God did give us a revelation—Christ—that itshould not only contain those peculiar truths which purely and in everyrespect depend on revelation, as the doctrines of Christ’s mediation andjustification through him, but that this revelation should contain every-thing that belongs to divinity, either to be known or practiced. For it all depends on revelation, in the way in which it is necessary for us to know it.

838. Angels. Why Called Thrones, Dominions, Principalities

and Powers. As the angels are made to be the ministers of God’s provi-dence of the government of the world, and as they are beings of a limitedunderstanding, and not equally capable of understanding and managingthe affairs of the whole universe, or of the whole extent and compass ofdivine providence, or of any part indifferently, as they may be of affairs ofsome particular kind or system or series of events, or of some particularpart of the universe—for it must needs be so with all that are of limitedunderstanding, that they must be more capable of the care and manage-ment of things in a certain particular sphere, than of anything indiffer-ently, without any fixed limits—so ’tis very reasonable to suppose, fromhence, that the different angels are appointed to different kinds of work,and that their ministry more especially respects some certain limited partsof the universality of things, which God has in some respect committed totheir care; so that over these things they have a ministerial dominion,some of larger and others of lesser extent, some in a more exalted, othersa less honorable station. So they are a kind of princes under God, oversuch and such parts of the creation, or within such a certain sphere.Though their dominion be only ministerial (as the dominion of ministersof the gospel or angels of the churches is), yet it is very honorable and ex-alted; ’tis a very honorable work they are employed in, an image of the

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work of the Son of God as God-man, who has the vicegerency of the wholeuniverse, and so they as well as the princes of Israel are called gods, elohim.Deut. 32:43, “Worship him, all ye gods,” which is rendered by the Apos-tle, “Let all the angels of God worship him” [Heb. 1:6]. And they are allcalled the sons of the Most High, as they are, Job. 38:7, “When the morn-ing stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” They mayalso, on this account, be fitly compared to stars, as they are here, and alsoin the song of Deborah: “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera”[Judg. 5:20]; not only for their brightness in wisdom and holiness, andfor their being the native inhabitants of heaven, and obeying the com-mands of God as the stars do, but because they have their particular do-minion set ’em in the lower world, as the stars have—Job. 38:33, “Canstthou set their dominion in the earth?”—and also because they have theircertain sphere and course to which they are limited in heaven. Theseseem in part to be signified by the kings of the earth, that shall bring theirhonor and glory into the church; they are made chiefly for a ministerialdominion over and management of the world of mankind on the earth,as ministering spirits unto Christ, and on the account of their honorableplace and trust in heaven, they may be called ministers of the new earth,there spoken of in that chapter.7 God hath concealed the particularspheres of the angels’ dominion and ministry, that we might not betempted to idolatry; they therefore that worship angels, under a notionof such and such angels having a superintendency over such particularpersons or affairs, intrude into those things that they have not seen.

’Tis not reasonable to suppose that the angels are called thrones, do-minions, principalities and powers [Col. 1:16] merely for the honor theyhave in their great abilities and excellent qualifications, for the words doproperly denote rule and authority. Earthly rulers are called principali-ties and powers. Tit. 3:1, “Put them in mind to be subject to principalitiesand powers, and to obey magistrates.”

839. Mysteries in Religion. From that text, John 3:12, “If I have toldyou earthly things, and ye believe not: how shall ye believe if I tell you ofheavenly things?,” several things are manifest concerning mysteries in re-ligion:

1. That there are mysteries in religion, or there are things contained inthose doctrines that Christ came into the world to teach, that are not onlyso above human comprehension that men can’t easily apprehend all that


7. Rev. 21:24.

is to be understood concerning them, but that are difficult to the under-standing in that sense, that they are difficult to be received by the judg-ment or belief. “How shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” Dif-ficult upon the same account that the doctrine of the new birth wasdifficult to Nicodemus, because it was so strange and seemingly impossi-ble [John 3:3–11].

2. We may from the words infer, that the more persons or beings are inthemselves and in their own nature above us, the more are doctrines ortruths concerning them mysterious to us, above our comprehension anddifficult to our belief, the more do those things that are really true con-cerning them contain seeming inconsistencies and impossibilities. ForChrist, in the preceding verses, had been speaking of something that istrue concerning men, being of the same nature, and inhabitants of thesame world with ourselves, which therefore Christ calls an earthly thing.And this seemed very mysterious and impossible, and to contain greatseeming inconsistencies; he8 says, “How can a man be born when he isold?” [John 3:4]. It seemed to be a contradiction, and after Christ hadsomewhat explained himself, yet still the doctrine seems strange and im-possible: v. 9, “How can these things be?” Nicodemus still looked upon [itas] incredible, and, on that account, did not believe it at that time, as isimplied in these words of Christ: “If I have told you earthly things and yebelieve not.” But Christ here plainly signifies that he had other truths toteach, that were not about man, an earthly inhabitant, but about a personvastly above man, even about himself, who is from heaven and in heaven,as in the next verse [John 3:13], that therefore, it would be most reason-able to suppose, should be much more difficult to man’s understandingand judgment, seeming to contain greater impossibilities and inconsis-tencies; then proceeds immediately to declare to him a heavenly thing, ashe calls it, viz. that Christ, a heavenly and divine person, should die (vv.14–15). Such a mysterious doctrine, strange and seemingly inconsistentand impossible, that a divine person should die, [is] more strange thanthat man should be born again. Hence, when divines argue from the mys-teriousness of many things in the nature of things here below that we dailyconverse [with], that therefore it would be very unreasonable to supposebut that there should be things in God that should be much more myste-rious, and therefore that ’tis unreasonable to object against the truth ofthe doctrines of the Trinity, incarnation, etc., they argue justly, becausethey argue as Christ argued.

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8. I.e. Nicodemus.

840a. Condition of God’s Promises is often spoken of in Scripture asif it yet, in some sense, remained to be fulfilled after it is fulfilled. So in Ps.34:9–10, “O fear the Lord ye his saints: for there is no want to them thatfear him. The young lions do lack and suffer hunger, but they that seekthe Lord shall not want any good thing.” Here the saints are exhorted tofear the Lord, that they may be entitled to this privilege of being providedfor of God; whereas, if they are saints, they are those that fear God already,and so already entitled to the promise. So Christ says to his disciples in the18th chapter of Matthew, v. 3, that, except they should be converted andbecome as little children, they should not enter into the kingdom of God,although all but one were converted already. So the Psalmist, long afterhe was converted, after acknowledging that he was shapen in iniquity andconceived in sin, prays to God, Ps. 51:10, that God would create in hima clean heart and renew in him a right spirit, the same kind of terms asare used to signify the first conversion of a sinner, both in the Old Testa-ment and New. We often read of conversion in the Old Testament undersuch terms of giving a new heart and a right spirit, etc., and in the NewTestament, conversion is called a being created again, being new crea-tures, and renewed in the spirit of the mind, etc.; yet this was long afterthe Psalmist was first converted. So the Apostle tells Timothy, I Tim. 4:16,that in being faithful in his ministry, he should save himself as well as thosethat heard him. And the apostle Paul, long after his conversion, yea, afteran assurance of it, says that he kept under his body, lest he should be acastaway [I Cor. 9:27], and says in another place that necessity was laidupon [him], yea, woe to him, if he should not preach the gospel [I Cor.9:16]. So Cornelius, that was already a good man—of whom the HolyGhost gives this testimony, that he was a devout man, and one that fearedGod with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayedto God always; and to whom God by his angel manifested his acceptanceof him, declaring to him in an extraordinary manner by his angel, thathis prayers and alms were come up for a memorial before God [Acts 10:1–4]—so that Cornelius did already in some respect believe in Christ, evenin the manner that the Old Testament saints were wont to do; and yet af-ter this, God directs him to send men to Joppa, and call for Simon whosesurname was Peter, who should tell him words whereby he and all hishouse should be saved (Acts 11:13–14). So Christ gives his disciples di-rections how to become the children of God, and yet, in the same words,speaks of God as already their Father (Matt. 5:45). So he gives the disci-ples directions how they shall be his disciples in John 15:8. See No. 847.


840b. Lord’s Day. Christ himself has set us the example of foundingboth doctrines and duties of religion on Scripture consequences. Doc-trines: instance the doctrine of the resurrection; he argues it from whatGod says to Moses (Mark 12:26). And duties: instance the duty of a child’smaintaining the parents, Matt. 15:4 at the beginning, where he makes useof the Scripture with reason, and draws the consequence from both to-gether.

841. Obedience of Christ. The obedience of Christ excels all others,because,

1. It was perfect with a sinless perfection, and so exceeds all fallen men’sobedience.

2. It was perfect with a legal perfection. It was a finished righteousness,Christ continuing perfectly obedient to the end of the time of his proba-tion, and so it exceeded Adam’s righteousness, that he had before the fall.

3. It was a person infinitely worthy, and infinitely valued and loved ofGod that obeyed.

4. The works or acts [that] was required of him by the law that he wasunder, and that he performed, were superlatively excellent, for it was awork of the highest love to God and love to creatures, and he in this workexercised a love to both immensely excelling all others, which gave an ex-ceeding value to the work in the eyes of the Father.

5. It was a perfectly free gift to God, and not a debt; that is, it was notwhat he owed in his original circumstances.

6. Never was there so great and difficult a work required of any other,as Christ performed in obedience to God.

7. Never was so much good done by any work of righteousness, both ofglory to God and good to fellow creatures. In these five last things, Christ’sobedience immensely exceeds the angels. See sermon on Luke 15:22.9

842. Christian Religion. No. 1109, Nos. 1198 and 1199. With re-spect to that objection against the truth of the Christian religion, that theapostles seem often to speak of the coming of christ to judgment, as ifthey thought it near at hand, see “Scripture,” note on Matt. 16:28.1 First,

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9. Dated Jan. 1740 with the doctrine, “A truly penitent sinner has the best righteousness thatever any creature appeared in.” The reference was made at the same time that the rest of this en-try was written.

1. No. 197 in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 15, Notes on Scripture, ed. Stephen J. Stein (NewHaven, Yale Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 115–19.

I will begin with the apostle Paul, or what he says that may be thought tohave such a look, and

1. What he says in the first epistle to the Thessalonians, which is reck-oned to be the first of his epistles in the order of time, and particularly inthe fourth chapter, vv. 15, 16 and 17, “For this we say unto you by the wordof the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of theLord, shall not prevent2 them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shalldescend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, andwith the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then wewhich are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them to meetthe Lord in the air; so shall we be ever with the Lord.” Now, from this place,some may be ready to say that here the Apostle plainly speaks as thoughhe expected this coming of Christ while the bigger part of the Christiansthat were then living should be alive: he speaks of those that should thenbe alive in the first person plural, and of those that are asleep in the thirdperson plural. Whereas, if he expected the day of judgment would be longafter they were all dead, then it would have been more natural for him tospeak of those that should then be asleep, and should come with Christ,in the first person plural, because he supposes that he and all those towhom he was speaking would be some of them; and to have spoken ofthose that should be alive in the third person, because he supposed theywould be those [that] none of them that then lived should be amongst.Thus it would have been more natural for him to have said “They whichare alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent uswho shall then be asleep”; and, in v. 17, “Then they which are alive and re-main shall be caught up together with us.” To this I say:

(1) That, considering the scope of the Apostle in these verses, all thatcan be inferred from such a manner of speaking is that it might, for aughtwas then revealed, be while they lived; for the scope of the Apostle was tocomfort the Thessalonians concerning their friends that were alreadydead, with that consideration that they should surely meet them again, ifnot before, yet at the day of the Lord’s coming. These are those that wereasleep that the Apostle is especially speaking of. These, it was certain, werethose of which those that the Apostle is speaking to were not some, andtherefore it was most proper and natural for the Apostle to speak of themin the third person; more proper than of those that should be alive, see-ing it was uncertain but that they should be of them. And the Apostle’sdrift leads him to make such a supposition in his discourse, because he


2. I.e. precede.

would speak of the time when, at farthest, they should certainly againmeet with their deceased friends; and if they did not meet ’em before,then they would be alive at that time. And it is but just to suppose that itwas only the uncertainty of the time that was the ground of the Apostle’susing such a manner of expression, because he, in this very context,speaks of the time as altogether uncertain; as it follows immediately after,in the beginning of the next chapter: “But of the times and seasons,brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know per-fectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For whenthey shall say, Peace and safety: then sudden destruction cometh uponthem, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape” [IThess. 5:1–3]. The Apostle, by the expressions he uses, probably had inhis mind those words of Christ in Acts 1:7, “It is not for you to know thetimes and seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.” See No.1109.

And [that] there was no such notion prevailing among the disciples orapostles, that Christ should come while most of them lived, is manifestfrom this: that when the disciples mistook the design of Christ’s words,when he said concerning John, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what isthat to thee?” (John 21:22)—and from thence for a while entertained anotion that that disciple was not to die till Christ came—it seems to bespoken of, v. 23, as though they, even while under this mistake, lookedupon it as though it was the distinguishing privilege of that disciple, whichnone of the rest were to expect. And ’tis evident that John himself con-cluded no such thing as that Christ should come in his lifetime, becausehe speaks of that notion of the other disciples about him as ill-founded.

(2) That the Apostle did not intend to be understood as though it werecertain that the coming of Christ was at hand, in any such sense that hewould come while they were living, is evident by what he himself says—speaking of those very words, and expressly denying that he intended anysuch thing, or that he supposed [it] to be certain that the coming of Christwas at hand in any such sense—in the beginning of the second chapter ofthe second epistle to the Thessalonians, where he very earnestly warnsthem not to understand him in any such sense. Vv. 1–3, “Now we beseechyou, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gath-ering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be trou-bled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter, as from us, as that theday of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means, for thatday shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that manof sin be revealed, the son of perdition,” etc. Now, ’tis evident that the

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Apostle does not thus write to them the second time, endeavoring to re-tract anything that he had written before, because he had waited long,and found by trial that he was like to be disappointed; but it must be be-cause he really did not intend so at first. For ’tis evident that this epistlewas written soon after the other, while the same fellow laborers were withhim. Both the epistles are begun in the same manner: “Paul and Silvanus,and Timotheus unto the Church of the Thessalonians, in God our Fatherand the Lord Jesus Christ: grace unto you, and peace from God our [Fa-ther] and the Lord Jesus Christ” [II Thess. 1:1–2]. And both have beensupposed to be written while the Apostle abode in the same city of Athens,as appears by the postscripts.3 And if we well observe the contents of thisand the foregoing epistle, the principal occasion of the Apostle’s writingthe second epistle so soon after the other, seems to have been on infor-mation that the Apostle had received, that his former epistle had beenmisunderstood in this particular; and being much concerned about it,and fearing the ill consequences of such a misunderstanding, he writes inhaste about it, to guard them from the mischief of such a mistake, and toestablish ’em in it, that ’tis uncertain when the Lord will come, as [he]had told ’em before in his other epistle, in the beginning of the fifth chap-ter. And he argues the great uncertainty there was, whether it would be inthat age or not, from what the Holy Ghost had revealed about the com-ing of Antichrist. That this Apostle did not expect Christ’s coming in thatgeneration may be argued from his speaking as though he expected thatthose that were then alive would rise from the dead at Christ’s secondcoming, as in I Cor. 6:14, II Cor. 4:14.

And from what the Apostle says in this second chapter of the secondepistle to the Thessalonians, there appears a necessity that those passagesin any of his other epistles that look as though he concluded that Christwould come in that age, should be understood in some other sense; andthat the Apostle did not really mean so as his words, on a cursory view,would lead us to suppose. For here, the Apostle is very express, and fulland earnest in it, that he would by no means be so understood in a pas-sage in one of his epistles that had been so misunderstood and that looksmost of all that way. And he don’t say so now, in this epistle to the Thes-salonians, because he had altered his mind since he wrote his other epis-tles to other churches, for those epistles that he wrote to the Thessaloni-ans were the first epistles that he wrote (see the evidence of this in Roberts’


3. In the KJV, a postscript appears after the text of each epistle, asserting that they were “writ-ten from Athens.”

Key of the Bible).4 And ’tis a further evidence that those passages in otherepistles must be understood in some other sense, that there are passagesin that very epistle, particularly in the first chapter, that we should beready to think had such a look, were it not that the Apostle himself im-mediately in the second chapter denies any such meaning.

So we must understand such passages, where ’tis spoken of as a duty ofChristians to look and wait for the coming of the Lord Jesus, as Tit. 2:13,I Cor. 1:7 and Phil. 3:20, which implies no more than [that] they in thosedays should expect, in God’s time, to see that day, and that they knew notwhen it would come; and that they should earnestly desire it, and be pa-tient while it is delayed, and still look for it, and depend upon it, thoughit be delayed.

So there is a necessity of understanding the following passages, whichwere all written after this in the second to the Thessalonians: Rom. 13:11–12, “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out ofsleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night isfar spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness,and let us put on the armor of light.” We can’t understand this, as thoughthe Apostle concluded the day of judgment would come while they lived,because he had before explained himself otherwise; but only that the dayof Christ’s kingdom, which is the day of the salvation of the church ofChrist, was at hand—that which the Holy Ghost had before intended bythe kingdom of heaven—which indeed, in some things that the HolyGhost meant by it, was near at hand; and, therefore, the Holy Ghost directed the Apostle to use such words. And so Phil. 4:5, “Let your mod-eration be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.” And Heb. 10:25, “Ex-horting one another, and so much the more, as ye see the day approach-ing.” Christ’s coming was indeed at hand in many respects, and in suchrespects as might well have all that influence upon those that the Apostlewrote to, that he intended. There was that which was called Christ’s com-ing, that should be in that generation; and the coming of Christ at theoverthrow of the heathen empire, might well be said to be at hand; andChrist’s last coming to judgment might well, considering all things, be

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4. Francis Roberts, Clavis Bibliorum. The Key of the Bible, Unlocking the Richest Treasury of the HolyScriptures (London, 1648). In an overview of Paul’s epistles, Roberts states (pp. 177–78): “Firstof all seems to be written the I. To Thessal. from Athenes by Tychicus, for Paul by reason of the tu-multuous Jews going from Thessalonica to Berea, and thence to Athenes, Act. 17. Thence he con-firmes the Thessalonians in the faith by his first Epistle, written about seventeen years after hisconversion, ninth yeare of Claudius, and nineteenth year after Christ’s passion, when the Coun-cell at Jerusalem was held. Hieron[ymous].” Eusebius Hieronymous, or St. Jerome, was a fourth-century bibical scholar.

said to be at hand, as the apostle Peter observes, though there should bethousands of years between [II Pet. 3:8]. This Apostle speaks of “ages tocome” (Eph. 2:7); though it was not to be till many generations werepassed, yet it was at hand, in a sense that is agreeable to the common lan-guage of the Holy Spirit. So Christ’s first coming was spoken of as verynigh at hand of old: Hag. 2:6–7, “For thus saith the Lord of hosts, Yet once,it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea,and the dry land. And I will shake all nations; and the desire of all nationsshall come, and I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts”;though it was then above five hundred years to it. And when it was aboutfour hundred years, it is said, Mal. 3:1, “The Lord whom ye seek, shall sud-denly come into his temple: even the messenger of the covenant, whomye delight in.” And when it was above seven hundred years to the gospelday, it is said to be but a very little while: Is. 29:17–18, “Is it not yet a verylittle while, and Lebanon shall become a fruitful field, and the fruitfulfield shall be esteemed as a forest? And in that day shall the deaf hear thewords of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity, andout of darkness.” So God represents as though he would very quickly per-form all the things prophesied of by Jeremiah, though some of ’em werenot to be fulfilled in many ages (Jer. 1:10–12). So the time is said to be athand for the accomplishment of all the prophecies of the book of Reve-lation, and Christ’s last coming at the conclusion of them (Rev. 1:3, and22:10 and [22]:7, 12, 20). Though the book evidently contains a series ofevents of many ages, so that when the apostle Peter says with respect toChrist’s last coming, its being said to be at hand, that a thousand years inGod’s sight is but as one day [II Pet. 3:8], ’tis no new conceit of his own,to save their own reputation; but God’s language, that he had used of old,justifies him in so saying. And the expressions that the apostles used aboutthe approach of Christ’s coming did not tend to the disappointment ofGod’s people, for Christ’s coming to reward them at death was at hand,when they should have such a comfortable and full prospect of their com-plete reward at Christ’s last coming; so that it shall be as it were antici-pated, and [they] will as it were have a possession of it, and then it will ap-pear very nigh at hand to them. Though the time appears long to us inour dim-sighted state, yet it will appear as nothing to them; the secondcoming of Christ was so nigh at hand, that the church of God might welltake all that comfort from what was really to be understood by those ex-pressions, that they would be ready to take from them, as the first comingof Christ was very often spoken of for the comfort of the saints of the OldTestament, under great afflictions, though they never were like to see it


in their lifetime; so in the case of Zerubbabel and Joshua and Daniel andAhaz.

As to that text of the Apostle in I Cor. 10:11, “And they were given forour admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come,” see how thetime from the first coming of Christ to the conflagration is well called “theends of the world.” (See first sermon on Is. 51:8, beginning the third pe-riod, the fifth page of that sermon.)5 The connection of these words withthe context and the drift of the Apostle, in mentioning the ends of theworld being come upon ’em, don’t at all require their being understoodin any other sense. For his drift is only this: that those things that had hap-pened to the children of Israel in the wilderness, happened to ’em for en-samples, and were written for our sakes, though they happened so longago, or though we live so long after them with respect to them in the endsof the world or latter part of the world’s duration, in those [days] that thenand long after that time used to be called the latter days.

[2.] And as to what is said, that may seem to look as though he soon ex-pected the last coming of Christ—as particularly what he says, I Pet. 4:7,“The end of all things is at hand,” which is an expression that seems tohave as much of such a look, as any in all the apostles’ writings—yet howdid this same Apostle explain this propinquity or nearness: II Pet. 3:7–8,“But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are keptreserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodlymen. But beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is withthe Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”

And ’tis to be considered that the apostle Peter was under no tempta-tion to change his voice in this matter, from any experience of the eventsfailing; he had [not] lived long enough as yet to prove [but] that Christ’swords, whence any may suppose they might expect Christ’s second com-ing before that generation passed, and before some that were then pre-sent should taste of death, [might be fulfilled in that sense.]6

[3.] And ’tis a further argument that when the apostles used such kindof language, as that the Lord is at hand, etc., they did not use it [in] anysuch sense, as that it should be in that age or the next; for the apostle John,who was used to their language, and knew how they used it, being one ofthem, used it still when he was very old, and all the other apostles weredead; and even after he had prophesied of many great events, whichplainly were to have their accomplishment in many successive ages, in the

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5. Sermon 1 in the Redemption discourse, in Works, 9, 118–26.6. Bracketed words in this paragraph supplied by JE, Jr.

Revelation. He uses [it] in the beginning of the book, when he is aboutto give an account of his prophetical visions. Rev. 3:11, “Behold, I comequickly.” And he uses it over and over at the end of the book, after he hadgiven an account of those future events, in the last chapter, v. 7, “Behold,I come quickly”; v. 12, “Behold, I come quickly”; v. 20, “He that testifieththese things, saith, Surely, I come quickly.” The 17th chapter of that bookalone is sufficient to convince anyone that John could not suppose thathis prophecies could be fulfilled but in several successive ages. See noteon I John 2:18, “Scripture” [no.] 484.7

And ’tis an argument that such a nearness of Christ’s last coming wasnot a doctrine that the apostles so much insisted upon, as such an inter-pretation of those texts supposes, that the church prevailed still, whenthey see that there was not such an accomplishment, see that Christ didnot come. Such a disappointment would have been a dreadful blow toChristianity, if this had been the universal expectation of Christians, thathad been raised by the abundant promises of Christ and his apostles. Theyprobably upon it would [have] exceedingly lost ground and shrunk away;but it was very much the contrary.

See notes on Matt. 16:28, [“Scripture,”] nos. 197 and 414, and 484. Seenote on Deut. 11:24 and 12:5.8

843. The Old Testament Dispensation did not wholly vanish at onceimmediately on Christ’s resurrection, though that laid the foundation forits abolition; but it vanished gradually, and the new dispensation gradu-ally succeeded. The old dispensation was not wholly abolished till the de-struction of Jerusalem, and therefore the Apostle, speaking in the epistleto the Hebrews of the abolishing the old dispensation but a few years be-fore the destruction of Jerusalem, uses such a manner of expression as hedoes, Heb. 8:13, “Now that which is old, is ready to vanish away.”


7. Works, 15, 581–82. The reference is a later insert, dating from the late 1740s.8. For “Scripture” nos. 197 and 414, on Matt. 16:28, see Works, 15, 115–19, 421–22, and for

no. 484, on I John 2:18, see ibid., 581–82. In the “Blank Bible” note on Deut. 11:24, JE writesthat the text is an “instance of the gradual fulfillment of the promises that God makes to thechurch. So the promises to God’s people . . . will not have their fullest accomplishment till thelast calling of the Jews.” Deut. 12:5 provides yet another illustration of the point that God defersthe accomplishment of promises and prophecies. JE observes in the “Blank Bible” that, despitethe promise given in the verse, God refused to take up a “settled abode” right away; rather, Goddwelt in a tent or “stayed in the borders of the land” to see if Israel would be worthy. Only withDavid did God “come in the midst of the land.” In like manner, “the primitive Christians seemedto expect Christ’s last coming to accompany the destruction of Jerusalem.”

844. Justification. Persevering obedience is so necessary to salvationthat it behooves believers to keep God’s commandments, lest they shouldgo to hell; as the Apostle says, “Lest I should be a castaway” [I Cor. 9:27].There is an absolute necessity of it, in order to their salvation, and notmerely in order to a good evidence of their salvation; as the Apostle says,“necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is me, if I preach not the gospel” [ICor. 9:16].

845. Justification. Blood of Christ. Obedience of Christ. (Seethe fourth volume of Dr. Williams’ Sermons, pp. 23 ff. and pp. 40 ff.)9 Thedeath of Christ and the blood of [Christ] are very often spoken of in Scrip-ture as saving, as a righteousness, or as meritorious, and as sweet and ac-ceptable to God’s holiness, perhaps not less frequently than as a propiti-ation. So in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, it is spoken of as a propitiation forsin in the former part, but in v. 12 ’tis spoken of as positively meritorious:“Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall dividethe spoil with the strong, because he hath poured out his soul unto death.”So John 10:17–18, “Therefore doth my Father love me, because I laydown my life that I might take it up again. No man taketh it from me, butI lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power totake it again. This commandment received I of my Father.” If the Fatherloves Christ because he laid down his life, he doubtless also loves thosethat are his, on the same account. Acts 20:28—there God is said to havepurchased the church with his own blood, but this certainly signifiessomething more than being set at liberty from hell; it signifies also theirbeing brought into a relation to God as his, into a covenant relation,whereby he is their God and they are his people, as appears by the scopeof the place: “Take heed, feed the church of God, which he has purchasedwith his own blood.” So in the fifth chapter of Romans, v. 9, we are said to

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9. This reference, a later addition, is to Daniel Williams, Discourses on Several Important Subjects(5 vols. London, 1738 [vols. 1–2], 1750 [vols. 3–5]), 4. The sermon to which JE refers is “ManMade Righteous by Christ’s Obedience,” originally published in 1694. In pp. 23–25, Williamsproposes and examines the inquiry: “Were Christ’s sufferings a part of the Obedience of Christ,whereby we are made righteous?” He replies that “whatever was endured by Christ was enjoinedby him in a way of Authority, upon supposition he would be a Redeemer,” that “Christ’s suffer-ings were endured by him in a way of Obedience,” that “the efficacy of Christ’s Sufferings muchdepended on their being acts of Obedience,” and that “Christ’s Sufferings are a part of his mer-iting Righteousness.” Pp. 40 ff. contains a discussion of a third inquiry, “Did Christ by his Deathand Sufferings merit any thing, and that for us?” Williams goes on to affirm that “Christ by hisDeath and Sufferings merited, yea even saving blessings for us.”

be “justified by his blood.” In the second chapter of Ephesians, v. 13, weare said to be “made nigh by the blood of Christ.” And Eph. 5:2, Christ isthere said to “have given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to Godfor a sweet smelling savor,” something positively pleasing, amiable and de-lightful to God, and therefore a price to purchase positive good from God.Hence the typical sacrifices are so very often said to be a sweet savor toGod; the places are too many to be mentioned. Christ’s dying is spokenof as what he did as a servant doing God’s will, with delight and cheerful-ness obeying his command, Heb. 10:5–7, Ps. 40:6–8. Christ’s body bro-ken and his blood shed don’t only deliver us from eternal misery, but pro-cures for us eternal life, as is very manifest by John 6:51–55. So the bloodof Christ is drink that don’t only assuage our disease and torment, but re-freshes and makes glad the heart of man like wine. So Christ says, “Myblood is drink indeed” [John 6:55], and in another place, “I will nothenceforth drink of the fruit of the vine, until I drink it new with you inmy Father’s kingdom” [Matt. 26:29]. Believers ben’t only delivered fromhell, but they enter into heaven by his blood; for Christ himself, as theirhead, entered into heaven by his own blood, Heb. 6:20, and so we enterinto the holiest also by the blood of Christ, Heb. 10:19–20. And hence weread of Christ’s entering into the holiest with his own blood to appear be-fore God for us, and not a word of his entering in there with his right-eousness or obedience, any otherwise than as it appeared in his blood thathe shed. Though the redemption of Christ does consist in his positiverighteousness as much as his propitiation, he entered into the holiest ofall with his whole ransom, or price of redemption; but half of this con-sisted in his obedience. But upon this supposition, the reason is plain: theblood of Christ did as much show his righteousness as his propitiation,and appeared as mainly in his blood as his propitiation did. So of old, inall the sacrifices, those great types of Christ, what they had that was to beoffered to God was their blood; and other parts of their bodies, whereinlife consisted, they had nothing to offer to God but what was offered inthe fire. The fat of the innards, which signified the love and obedience ofthe heart (that was by the Holy Spirit signified by oil and fat), was offeredin the fire, and the incense itself was offered in the fire. All which showsthat the main of what Christ offered to God as a price for the redemptionof man, both to assuage his wrath and positively to procure his favor, wasoffered up in his sufferings, and especially his last passion.

Christ is said in Heb. 10:14 “by one offering to have perfected foreverthem that are sanctified,” i.e. perfected them as to what appertains totheir well-being, their holiness and happiness. The blood of Christ is the


blood of the new testament, by which we have the inheritance made overto us by the testator; we come by the inheritance by his blood, and there-fore the testament of old was confirmed and sealed with blood, and thebook of the testament sprinkled with blood; see Heb. 9:15–20. Christ en-dured the cross “for the joy that was set before him,” and thereby obtainedthat joy, and is set down on the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb.12:2). So doubtless his members obtain a participation of the same joy,and come to sit down with him in heaven, by his enduring the cross. Theblood of Christ is said to “speak better things than the blood of Abel”(Heb. 12:24), i.e. it calls for the favor of God and his blessing and eternallife, as that cried to God for his wrath and curse and his vengeance in death[Gen. 4:10–12]. In I Pet. 1:2, Christians are said to be elect through the“sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,” i.e. they are ordained to obtainthat salvation which they are elected to, through the sprinkling of thatblood; see I Pet. 3:18. So the saints are said to be redeemed to God by theblood of Christ (Rev. 5:9), and the robes of glorified saints are said to bemade white in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 7:14); the whiteness of theirrobes signifies not only cleanness from pollution, but beauty, joy, gloryand triumph, as is manifest by many other places in this book. Heb.13:20–21, we are said to be made perfect in every good work through theblood of the everlasting covenant; see also Heb. 10:29.

846. The Satisfaction of Christ by suffering the punishment of sinis properly to be distinguished, as being in its own nature different, fromthe merit of christ. For merit is only some excellency or worth. Butwhen we consider Christ’s sufferings merely as a satisfaction for the guiltof another, the excellency of Christ’s act in suffering don’t at all come intoconsideration, but only these two things, viz. their equality or equivalenceto the punishment that the sinner deserved, and secondly, the union be-tween them, or the propriety of his being accepted in suffering, as the rep-resentative of the sinner. Christ’s bearing our punishment for us is notproperly meriting that we should not bear it, anymore than if it had beenpossible for us ourselves to have borne it all—that would have been mer-iting that we should not be punished anymore. Christ’s sufferings don’tsatisfy by any excellency in them, but by a fulfillment. To satisfy by fulfill-ment and to satisfy by worthiness, or excellency, are different things. If thelaw be fulfilled, there is no need of any excellency or merit to satisfy it, be-cause ’tis satisfied by taking place and having its course. Indeed, how farthe dignity or worthiness of Christ’s person comes into consideration indetermining the propriety of his being accepted as a representative of sin-

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ners, so that his suffering, when equivalent, can be accepted as theirs, maybe matter of question and debate; but ’tis a matter entirely foreign to thepresent purpose.

847. Regeneration or Conversion a work that is in some respect of-ten renewed, and in some respect continued through the whole life.1 Thefollowing things may be observed in the Scriptures concerning the re-generation or the work of conversion. (See [Poole,] Synopsis, on Job42:5.)2

1. That this work is sometimes spoken of as done when men are first sav-ingly called, as soon as they become believers, or faithful in Christ Jesus,or begin to be saints. We find many in Scripture spoken of as being alreadycalled saints, already faithful in Christ Jesus, and with respect to such thework of regeneration is spoken of as past. John 1:12–13, “But to as manyas received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, evento them that believe on his name; which were born, not of blood, nor ofthe will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” Tit. 3:4–5, “Afterthat the kindness and love of God our Savior towards men appeared, notby works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercyhe saved us, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the HolyGhost.” Jas. 1:18, “Of his own will begat he us.” I Pet. 1:3, “Blessed be theGod and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abun-dant mercy, hath begotten us again to a living hope, by the resurrectionof Christ from the dead”; and vv. 22–23, “Seeing ye have purified yoursouls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love of thebrethren: see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently, beingborn again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word ofGod which liveth and abideth forever”; with I Pet. 2:2, “As newborn babesdesire the sincere milk of the word.” I John 3:14, “We know that we have


1. Much of the material from this entry was used in the sermon on Luke 22:32 (Aug. 1740),the doctrine of which reads: “Those that have true grace in their hearts may yet stand in greatneed of being converted.” See The Subjects of a First Work of Grace May Need a New Conversion inWorks, Sermons and Discourses, 1739–1742.

2. This reference, to Matthew Poole’s Synopsis Criticorum (4 Pts. in 5 vols. London, 1669–76),3, col. 494, is a later addition. Commenting on the second part of Job 42:5, Poole writes: “Nunc,cum me docuisti, mens mea novit opera tua: q.d. Nunc ego sapio. Longe exactius novi Dei po-tentiam quam antehac: ut certiora sunt (& firmius inhærent) quæ vidimus, quam quæ audivimus. . . Perfectius jam te cognosco ex hac revelatione; ut illi qui hominis vocem primum audierunt,deinde eum conspiciunt. Vide quantum sit interius Dei spiritu hominem doceri. Verbi minis-terium ad omnes in Ecclesia diffunditur; sed ii demum Deum vere noscunt quibus sese interiusspiritus revelat.”

passed from death to life, because we love the brethren”; so John 5:24.See also I Cor. 6:11. So the Apostle says, “I have begotten you through thegospel” [I Cor. 4:15], and I have begotten you through the word of truth[Jas. 1:18], but it is needless to enumerate any more of those many textsthat hold this forth.

2. That this work is often spoken of as yet remaining to be sought andprayed for by the saints, after they are become saints. So Christ exhortsthe disciples to enter in at the strait gate (Matt. 7:13), speaking to thosethat in the same sermon he calls the salt of the earth and light of the world(Matt. 5:13–14). So David, in the 51st Psalm, prays that God would cre-ate in him a clean heart and renew in him a right spirit [v. 10]. So Ephraim,when he repented, prayed thus: Jer. 31:18, “Turn thou me, and I shall beturned”; so Lam. 5:21. And the Apostle, writing to “the saints and faithfulin Christ Jesus” that were at Ephesus, he exhorts them to “put off con-cerning their former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt ac-cording to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of their minds,and put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness, andtrue holiness” (Eph. 4:22–24). So the Apostle exhorts those that were atRome, “beloved of God, called to be saints” (Rom. 1:7), and those thatwere the subjects of God’s redeeming mercies, to be transformed by therenewing of their mind; Rom. 12:1–2, “I beseech ye therefore by the mer-cies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable untoGod, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to thisworld, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” So the Apos-tle ceased not to pray for the saints and faithful at Ephesus, “That the Godof our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, might give unto them thespirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ, the eyes oftheir understanding being enlightened: that they might know what wasthe hope of Christ’s calling; and what the riches of the glory of his inher-itance in the saints; and what was the exceeding greatness of his powerstowards them who believed, according to the working of his mighty power,which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead” (Eph.1:17–20). In this the Apostle has respect to the glorious power and workof God in regeneration, as appears by the sequel, in the continuation ofhis discourse in the beginning of the next chapter, “And you hath hequickened who were dead in trespasses and sins” [Eph. 2:1]. By which italso appears that those that he so importunately asked this for were, as hesupposed, already regenerated and quickened, according to the “powerof God [which he wrought in Christ] when he raised him from the dead.”So the Apostle earnestly beseeches the saints at Corinth to be reconciled

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unto God, II Cor. 5:20. See Eph. 5:14, “Awake thou that sleepest, arisefrom the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.” So Christ tells the disci-ples, in the 18th chapter of Matthew, “Except ye be converted, and be-come as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” [v.3], which certainly has respect to regeneration, for ’tis by being bornagain that men become little children, or newborn babes. In the 30thchapter of Deuteronomy, at the beginning, God promises the children ofIsrael that if, after their apostasies and his judgments for them, theyshould “return unto the Lord their God and obey his voice according toall that he commanded them that day” [v. 2], that then “the Lord theirGod would circumcise their hearts, and the heart of their seed, to love theLord their God with all their heart, and all their soul, that they might live”[v. 6]. So that God would regenerate the souls of his people is mentionedas one main promise of the covenant of grace made with them. Jer. 31:31–33, “Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new cove-nant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah. Not accordingto the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took themby the hand, to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenantthey broke, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord. But thisshall be the covenant, that I will make with the house of Israel, after thosedays, saith the Lord: I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it intheir hearts, and will be their God, and they shall be my people.” This be-ing here spoken of as a principal benefit promised to them, or promised inthe covenant that God makes with them, of which faith is the condition, itmust be in some respect consequent on the first act of faith; for the firstact of faith, the first fulfillment of the condition of the covenant, is neverpromised to them, ’tis no benefit promised in the covenant made withthem. All that is promised to believers in the covenant of grace is what theyobtain a right to by faith, and what they look to God by faith for, and thatthey may plead for in prayer to God. To the like purpose, Jer. 32:40, “AndI will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn awayfrom them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, thatthey shall not depart from me.” Jer. 3:22, “Return ye backsliding children,and I will heal your backslidings.” See Prov. 1:23, Prov. 2:1–9, and John4:10.

The account that is to be given of these things is this:(1) That the whole of the saving work of God’s Spirit on the soul in the

beginning, and progress of it from the very first dawnings of divine lightand the first beginnings of divine life until death, is in some respect to belooked upon as all one work of regeneration: in all of it the soul is re-


newed. Regeneration is that work of God’s Spirit, whereby the soul isbrought back from that state of sin into which we fell by the first apostasyof mankind, and [the Spirit] restoring it to its former state of holiness,restoring the image of God to it that was lost by the fall; but this is donegradually through the whole work of the sanctification of the Spirit. Thedestruction and death that the nature of man fell under by Adam, andwhich it is subject to by the first birth, and that new birth, in which the soulis restored by Christ, are so related one to another, that one is to be mea-sured by the other: one consists in the removal of the other, and in restor-ing the soul from the other. And therefore the new birth is not finishedtill the soul is fully restored, and till the corruption and death that cameby Adam and the first birth is wholly removed. Christ, speaking of the newbirth, says “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is bornof the Spirit is spirit” [John 3:6]. Flesh, i.e. corruption, is by the first birth,but the Spirit or grace and holiness is by the second birth; and as all cor-ruption is by the first birth, so the mortifying of that corruption, and allthe restoration of holiness or the Spirit, is by the new birth. The new birthin Scripture is represented as a new creation, but the whole work of sanc-tification, in the whole progress, is a work of creation. In every step anddegree of that restoration, something is brought out of nothing, and thereis the very same almighty, creating power needed and exerted, as there isin the first beginning of this work on the soul. And the new creature is notfully made, till all that creature is remade that was destroyed by the fall,which was the undoing of the old creation. Regeneration is in Scripturerepresented as the raising the soul from the dead, but the whole sanctify-ing work of God’s Spirit is a raising the soul from the dead; in every stepof this work, the same exceeding greatness of power is exerted that [was]wrought in Christ Jesus, when he was raised from the dead. After the be-ginning of God’s saving, still a body of death remains. There is but a littlelife, and every step of the whole work is out of death; ’tis as it were a rais-ing the soul from its grave. All that death which came upon the soul whenit died in the fall, is removed in that spiritual resurrection that it has inChrist, and therefore that resurrection is not finished till the soul is thor-oughly sanctified. Regeneration is a dying unto sin and living unto right-eousness, but the Christian is so doing as long as he lives; and the wholework, in every degree of it, is by the dead hearing the voice of the Son andliving. The apostle Paul still earnestly sought that he might attain to theresurrection of the dead, not as though he had already attained [Phil.3:11–12]. Regeneration is putting off the old man and putting on the newman, but the Christian is doing this as long as he lives. After the begin-

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ning of a saving work of God on his soul, he has both the old and new man,the flesh and Spirit; there is the old man still in a sense entire, i.e. with allhis members. Regeneration is a crucifying the flesh with the affectionsand lusts, and this is a-doing as long as the Christian lives, and during thewhole conflict that he has with sin. Regeneration is a circumcising theheart, which is done in every step of the mortification of sin. There is asit were an unregenerate part still in man, after the first regeneration, thatstill needs to be regenerated; ’tis as it were but a very little of man that isregenerated, in what is done at first of this work.

Regeneration is an opening the eyes of the blind, and a causing light toshine out of darkness, and so is every part of the work of sanctification.Christians, after they are converted, may still justly complain that they areblind, exceeding blind; they may complain still of gross darkness, dark-ness that may be felt. And the light God gives ’em from time to time is likethe shining of the light out of darkness, when God said, “Let there belight” [Gen. 1:3], and ’tis an opening the eyes of the blind. The work, inthe whole progress of it, is a proper conversion, or a turning from sin toGod; and there is scarce anything in God’s first work on the soul that ispeculiar to that, that can’t be attributed to what is done in progressivesanctification, excepting that that is the beginning, first in order of time,and immediately after a total corruption. And there is scarce any petitionthat is proper to be put up to God by an unregenerate man for regener-ating grace, but what a true convert may join in and put up for himself.Christ seems to speak of regeneration as a continued thing, Matt. 19:28,“Ye that have followed me, in the regeneration.” ’Tis all spoken of as thesame work of God, Phil. 1:6, “He that hath begun a good work in you willcarry it on to the day of Christ.”

(2) Those particular changes which godly men pass under, after thefirst saving work of God’s Spirit upon their hearts, are sometimes repre-sented as their conversion, as particularly:

1. The first clear discovery of God and Christ to the soul, when it fol-lows the more obscure dawnings of grace and feebler actings of faith inholy desires after Christ and holiness, seem to be sometimes representedas their conversion. Which is represented in what Christ wrought for theblind man, who cried earnestly to Christ that he might receive his sight,and yet acted faith in that request: Christ said to him, “Go thy way, thy faithhath made thee whole,” as Mark 10:51–52. The same is represented inmany other miracles that Christ wrought. Many Christians, though theyderive spiritual influence from Christ at first to enable them to come tohim by faith, yet when they are first enabled to come, they come to him


for that end, viz. that Christ would renew their hearts; that as David, afterhe began to repent and his heart began to be renewed after his great fall,yet cried to God to create in him a clean heart, and renew in him a rightspirit [Ps. 51:10]. Grace stirs up persons to look to God, the true fountainof grace, for converting grace, and to come to Christ for it with a sense oftheir unworthiness of it. So the children of Israel, Deut. 30, at the begin-ning: “And it shall come to pass when all these things are come upon thee,the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shaltcall to mind among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driventhee, and shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice ac-cording to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children withall thine heart, and with all thy soul” [vv. 1–2]; v. 6, “The Lord thy Godwill circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thyGod with all thy heart, and with all thy soul.”

2. A remarkable work of God’s grace on the heart—causing a great al-teration in the soul as to the degree of grace, very much delivering of itfrom former darkness, and setting it much at liberty from corruptionsthat before, through the weakness of grace, used much to entangle andensnare the soul, giving the soul a new and much clearer understandingof divine things, and remarkably putting it under new advantages for theexercises and fruits of the divine life—is also called conversion in Scrip-ture. Though there may have been no remarkable falling into gross sinbefore, which was the case in the conversions of Cornelius and Nathaniel,and probably was the case in the conversion of John’s two disciples thatfollowed Jesus (John 1:35), and of several other of Christ’s disciples, whoseemed to have been good men before. For they seemed to be found al-ready in a disposition to follow Christ, when Christ first appeared to themin his human nature, and this seems to have been the case with Zaccheus,and with the woman of Canaan [Matt. 15:22].

3. When the godly are recovered after they have much fallen into sin,either by falling into a particular heinous transgression or by graduallysinking into a very ill frame, is what is called conversion in Scripture. SoPeter’s recovery is called his conversion: Christ says to him, “When thouart converted, strengthen thy brethren” [Luke 22:32]. And a work ofGod’s Spirit in recovering a fallen saint is oftentimes very much like thefirst work of God in the conversion of [a] sinner; as also the work of Godin raising a feeble saint to higher degrees of spiritual light and life is some-times so.

On these accounts, it seems to be that conversion is spoken of in Scrip-ture as what yet remains to be sought and prayed for by the saints, after

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they have already been savingly wrought upon. And indeed, there is noth-ing in the beginning of this work, or in that which is more strictly calledregeneration, that is essential to it, but what the saint may be the subjectof afterward again and again; there is no light or sense or conviction ofheart essential in the first work, but what may be repeated, and in the samemanner and order—the same conviction of sin, the same sense of self-in-sufficiency, the same despair in self, the same conviction of God’s justice.For all that is essential in the conviction of God’s justice at first, is that itis just in itself, without any consideration of any free promise of God: ’tisa thorough conviction of desert of hell. There may be the same kind ofcoming to Christ and trusting in him. Yea, the consequences of an after-work of God’s Spirit, as to a person’s relative state, may be in some respectsthe same; conversion may still be, by divine constitution, necessary to sal-vation in some respect, even after he is really a saint. Christ’s words seemto intimate that if Peter should not be converted after his fall, in answerto his prayer for him, Satan would have had him; and Christ tells the dis-ciples that unless they should be converted and become as little children,they should in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven [Matt. 18:3].And the conversion of the children of Israel, promised in the 30th chap-ter of Deuteronomy, as what should be consequent on their returning toGod with all their heart, and with all their soul, is spoken of as being in or-der to their salvation: v. 6, “And the Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart,and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart,and with all thy soul, that thou mayst live.” So what is promised in the 31stchapter of Jeremiah, of writing God’s law on their hearts (which has beenspoken of already) is in order to their becoming God’s people: “I [will putmy law in their inward parts,] and will write it on their hearts, and will betheir God, and they shall be my people” (v. 33). When Zaccheus camedown, Christ told him that salvation was come to his house [Luke 19:9].So Cornelius was directed to send for Peter, who should tell him words bywhich he and all his house should be saved (Acts 11:14). So the apostlePaul pressed forward that he might attain to the resurrection of the dead[Phil. 3:11–14].

And even justification itself does in a sense attend and depend uponthese after-works of the Spirit of God upon the soul. The condition of jus-tification in a sense remains still to be performed, even after the first con-version, and the sentence of justification in a sense remains still to bepassed, and the man remains still in a state of probation for heaven, whichcould not be, if his justification did not still depend on what remained tobe done. See Nos. 840 and 857.


848. That the Saints shall be in some respects Higher in Glory than

the Angels, seems evident by that Scripture, Rev. 3:12, “I will write uponhim my new name,” speaking of “him that overcomes.” Christ’s new nameis that honor and glory that he received at his exaltation, for that gloryand advancement was now to Christ as God-man and Mediator. Christ’swriting this his new name upon them, implies that he will in some respectgive them also this honor and glory, and make them partakers with himin it; as a woman, when married to an husband, takes his name upon her.But this name of Christ, that he received at his exaltation, is far above thename of any angel. Phil. 2:9, “Wherefore God also hath highly exaltedhim, and given him a name which is above every name.” Heb. 1:3–4,“When he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand ofthe Majesty on high, being made so much better than the angels, as hehath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.” Eph.1:20–21, “He raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right handin the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might,and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, butalso in that which is to come.” And in the two following verses, ’tis said thathe was thus exalted for the church, and that the church is his body or full-ness [vv. 22–23], which intimates that she partakes with him in this exal-tation above every name, etc. And in the first chapter of Hebrews, onething brought to show how much better he was made than the angels, andhow much more excellent [a] name he had obtained than they, is that theangels are “all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them, whichshall be heirs of salvation” [v. 14], which don’t obscurely intimate thatthese co-heirs with Christ of his glory shall be partakers with him in thisexaltation above the angels.

849. Conversion, or rather Regeneration, of Infants and Other

Children. From infants being visibly in covenant, or visibly some of God’speople, and those that, by God’s appointment, are to be looked upon andreceived by his church as some that belong to them, we may argue that in-fants stand fair for being really God’s people, and of his church, in God’sordinary way of dealing with mankind. If they were capable of it only bysome extraordinary and unusual divine proceeding, this would not havebeen sufficient ground for all the infants of God’s people to be receivedand looked upon by God’s people as some of them, or, which is the samething, some that are regenerated. Nor can we suppose God would haveappointed them, not only ordinarily but universally, to be the subjects ofa visible sign and seal of regeneration, if, in his ordinary way of proceed-

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ing, it was not to be expected that they should be the subjects of the thingsignified. From hence we may argue that infants stand fair for being ac-cepted of God, and justified as some of Christ’s while they live, and notonly when they are dying. For they are appointed to be received as someof God’s people while they live; they are then visibly some of God’s peo-ple, or those that we should hope are so already, and not only those thatwe may hope will be so hereafter, when they come to die. If only those chil-dren that die in infancy are justified, then it can scarcely be properly said,that infants in general stand fair for justification, in God’s ordinary wayof proceeding.

Let it be further considered whether or no this proposition may not beproved, on the following grounds:

Prop. The younger persons are, the fairer they stand for regeneration,if means equally proper and thorough be used in order thereto, of thosefrom whom God expects it.

Infants are not capable of using means in order to their salvation; there-fore, God don’t look to them for the use of means, but to parents and tothe church to which they belong. Parents should use means, by heartilyand earnestly devoting them to God, and praying and striving for them,agonizing in their names and for their sakes, striving to enter in at thestrait gate with them in their arms; and so the church and its pastorsshould use means for them. And as they gradually emerge out of theirstate of infancy, so God gradually looks off from the parents and thechurch to them, and while they are between a state of infancy and adultage, God has his eye partly on them and partly on parents, etc. Parentsshould then agonize for them, not only in dedicating them to God andpraying for them, but also instructing, counseling and warning them, andso endeavor to bring ’em into the strait gate, and carry ’em along in thenarrow way that leads to life. Now if proper means are thus equally usedfor them at different ages, the younger they are, the fairer do they standfor being brought into a state of salvation thus. If equally proper and thor-ough means be used for them in infancy, in devoting them to God, andwrestling with God for them, they then stand fairer for being brought intoa state of salvation, than ever afterwards. And if, when they are in child-hood, between infancy and adult age, their parents are still equally thor-ough in using means for them and with them, in the use of such means asare proper for that age, and they themselves are withal thorough in usingmeans for themselves in proportion to their capacity, and according towhat is to be expected of such an age, if they han’t been brought into astate of salvation before, they stand fairer for it then, than ever afterwards.


And if, when they first come to adult age and come to be fully capable ofacting for themselves, they are equally thorough in the use of propermeans for themselves, they stand fairer for being brought into a state ofsalvation, than afterwards.

This proposition may be established by the following reasons:1. We have good ground, from what was observed before in the begin-

ning of this number, to suppose that all the hindrances that are in the wayof salvation that appertain to, or arise from, a state of infancy, are whollyremoved and done away by a sovereign God, in what he has been pleasedto constitute and reveal concerning little children, summarily containedin that sentence of Christ, “Suffer little children to come unto me, andforbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of heaven” [Matt. 19:14], andin appointing that his church should look upon and receive little childrenas some of his regenerate people. Whatsoever there is in a state of infancythat tends to hinder infants’ salvation, or being blessed by the Savior, maybe looked upon as something that forbids it; but Christ, in saying “forbidthem not,” has disallowed, repelled and removed everything that forbidsthis. And so, we must look upon it that he has removed that hindrance,among the rest, that appertains to the infant state: that salvation is not sen-sible at that age to the person that is the subject of it. If that be an hin-drance, then that is a great disadvantage that infants are under, arisingfrom their infancy; but we must look upon Christ, out of his compassionto infants, has removed that and all their other disadvantages. Those thatobjected against bringing little children to the Savior, to be blessed byhim, might have made that objection: they might have said, these chil-dren won’t be so sensible of the blessing that Christ bestows upon them,for they will never remember the accursed state they were in before, whenthey come to grow up. But we must suppose Christ would not have allowedany such objection, and therefore we may look upon it that Christ haswholly removed it.

If Christ has been pleased to appoint parents to stand in the room of in-fants, then doubtless he accepts them as standing in their room, that whatis in them shall be accepted as sufficiently countervailing the defects andhindrances that attend their infant state. Otherwise Christ’s constitutiondon’t make parents fully sufficient to stand in their room: they are notfully appointed and accepted as in their room, unless proper means, usedby them for their infants, are as likely to be blessed for them, as if used bythemselves.

We must look on what Christ has said and done concerning infants asthe breaking down the partition wall between him and infants [Eph.

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2:14]. But the wall is not wholly broken down, if infants still, when allproper means are used, yet by reason of their infancy, don’t stand so fairfor salvation, as they would do if they were not infants. If Christ under-takes to break down the partition wall, he will do it thoroughly: he won’tleave the work but partly done, still leaving a wall of separation and hin-drance behind. So when he undertook to break down the wall betweenJews and Gentiles, he wholly removed it; when he undertook to breakdown the wall between God and sinful man, he made an end of sin; whenhe rent the veil of the temple, he rent it from the top to the bottom.

2. Thus we are to look on infants as set on a level with other persons,with respect to hindrances of their being in a state of salvation, all the pe-culiar hindrances, if equally proper means are used, being wholly re-moved. But the peculiar hindrances being gone, what remains to be con-sidered, in order to judge in what proportion they stand fair for salvation,are the positive advantages for a state of salvation of the infant age, com-pared with those of other ages, if equally proper and thorough means [areused] for their salvation. And these are certainly greater, the younger per-sons are: there are no peculiar hindrances of their side, but the peculiaradvantages are all of their side. If Christ removes disadvantages, he don’tat the same time diminish advantages.

Their advantages are greater because they have less guilt, less hardnessof heart. Infants han’t provoked God and hardened their hearts by sin-ning against light and rejecting offered mercy, despising counsels andwarnings, and resisting the Holy Ghost—which are things that, above allothers, lay blocks in the way of persons’ salvation.

And then the earliest time is the best, because it is the most fit andproper for persons to begin to [be] good, and to be consecrated to God.’Tis a thing greatly insisted on, that the first fruits should be given to God.And then, if persons are dedicated to God in the beginning, their wholelife is given to God: God has especially allotted the beginning of life forpersons to be dedicated to him, because they ben’t fit to live at all in theworld, till they are devoted to God, and have a divine life begun in them.The sooner persons are renewed, the more sin will be avoided, and theless Satan will be served.

3. The earliest time being, on so many accounts, the fittest time for per-sons to [be] devoted to God, ’tis reasonable to suppose that God wouldso constitute and order things as especially to allot this time for it, andwould so order it that it should be a time of the greatest advantage for sucha purpose. If it be the fittest time, then we must suppose that God espe-


cially requires that it be endeavored in that time; but doubtless there is anharmony between God’s commands and his providence. We find in Scrip-ture that persons are especially called upon of God, and required to seekGod, at such times as when he is near, to seek him in a time accepted anda day of salvation.

Persons are most in the way of duty when they endeavor that the soulshall become the Lord’s in the earliest season, because, as was said before,sin against God is most prevented in this way, and by this means the wholelife is given to God. But doubtless God would so order it in his providencethat men should have most encouragement of success in that way, in thatwherein they are most in the way of duty. If it were not so likely that en-deavors would be successful in the earliest time, this would be a tempta-tion to persons to neglect and put off till a more convenient season. Butdoubtless God has so ordered it that what Felix made his excuse for pre-sent neglects should always be a groundless and unreasonable supposi-tion, viz. that hereafter there would be a more convenient season [Acts24:25]. The longer we delay, the more difficult the work will grow. We maytell children, as soon as they are capable of understanding us, that now istheir best time; otherwise, they may truly reply to us that hereafter theyshall have a more convenient season. And we may also tell parents, whenwe exhort them to seek their salvation, that now is their best time.

And as to the objection of children’s salvation’s not being sensible tothemselves, if the objection were valid, it would be much more so againstthe salvation of infants that die in infancy. For if they are saved, they areimmediately carried into perfect glory, and remember no degree of astate of sin and misery. But yet ’tis generally supposed to be a commonthing, that the infants of the godly that die in infancy are saved. How re-generation in some respects may be very sensible, though persons areconverted in infancy, may be learned from No. 847.

850. Deacon’s Office. It was a thing established in the visible churchof God from the very beginning, that a part of the substance of God’s vis-ible people should be brought as an offering to the Lord. So it was in thefamily of Adam: this is a duty that he trained up his two sons, Cain andAbel, in. What Cain and Abel did was not only in compliance with the in-stitution of sacrifice, but with what they had been trained up in as theirduty: to offer to God a part of their substance. Cain brought of the fruitof the ground, an offering to the Lord, doing his duty therein, as to thematter of it, though he did not do it with a right spirit [Gen. 4:3–5]. See

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Ps. 76:11, which is much to the purpose. See also II Chron. 32:23 and Ps.68:29; compare Ps. 76:11 with Ps. 89:7; see Ps. 72:10, Ps. 45:12, Is. 60:16

and 61:6, Is. 60:6–9, Ps. 22:29.And it has not only been a thing established from the beginning of the

world, that God’s visible people should offer a part of their substance toGod, but this has always been a part of the public service of God in hischurch. When Cain and Abel are said to have brought their offerings tothe Lord, thereby is doubtless meant that they brought their offerings ei-ther to Adam’s altar, or to the place where Adam’s family were wont tomeet with God and worship God. And this duty don’t cease with the abol-ishing of the Mosaic dispensation. There is nothing that argues that nowa less proportion of what we have should be offered to God than formerly,but the Scripture rather seems to intimate that, in gospel times, God’s peo-ple should consecrate more of their substance to God. Is. 23:18, “And hermerchandise and her hire shall be holiness to the Lord: it shall not be trea-sured nor laid up, for her merchandise shall be for them that dwell be-fore the Lord, to eat sufficiently, and for durable clothing.” When the chil-dren of Israel were to appear before God at their feasts, they were never“to come empty-handed.” See Mather on the Types, p. 416.3 See sermonon Gen. 4:3–5.4

851. Scriptures. Interpretation. That the Scripture often includesvarious distinct things in its sense. It is becoming of him who is infinite inunderstanding and has everything in full and perfect view at once, andwhen he speaks, sees all things that have any manner of agreement withhis words, and knows how to adapt his words to many things, and so tospeak infinitely more comprehensively than others, and to speak so as nat-urally to point forth many things: I say, it becomes such a One, when hespeaks, to speak so as [to] include a manifold instruction in his speech.


3. The last three sentences of this entry are a later addition. Samuel Mather, The Figures orTypes of the Old Testament; By Which Christ And The Heavenly Things Of The Gospel Were Preached AndShadowed To The People Of God Of Old (London, 1683). JE, who used the 2nd edition of 1705, refersto the sermon entitled “The Gospel of Jewish Festivals”; on p. 416 Mather states that one aspectof the Jewish festivals was that “They were not to come empty-handed. Exod. 23. Deut. 16. 16,17. True Religion is bountiful: Duties of Worship are to be accompanied with duties of mercy and bounty: so upon the Christian Sabbath, there should be Collections for the poor, I Cor. 16. 2.”

4. The sermon, dated Nov. 1743, has the doctrine: “It has been a thing established in thechurch of Christ from the very beginning, that his people should publicly offer up a part of theirworldly subsistence to God as a part of the stated public service of his visible church.”

That expression in the Old Testament, “Out of Egypt have I called my son”[Hos. 11:1], has respect to two distinct things, as is manifest beyond allcontradiction, and many other phrases in the Old Testament applied inthe New. See note on Dan. 5:23 ff.5

852. Perpetuity of the Church. The corruption of Terah and otherof Abraham’s ancestors with the idolatry that prevailed in Chaldea [Josh.24:2], though they were the true church, and the corruption of thechurch Israel in Egypt, where they served other gods, is very parallel withthe corruption of God’s people in the first times of Antichrist, beforethere was a separation from that idolatrous church. Both Chaldea andEgypt are types of the Romish Church.

853. The Work of Redemption the End of the Work of Creation

and All Works of Providence. If we would know what is the end of theworld, let us look to the end or finishing of the world, and see who appearsthen. That great sight that will be to be seen then, that will be the last andgreatest sight to be seen in this visible world, that will be the sight in whichall things will end, will be Christ the Redeemer in his glory, that he has ob-tained by the work of redemption, that he has gone with all his redeemedwith, in the perfect and complete fruits of his redemption. In one word,the greatest and last sight, which will be the issue of all events, at the wind-ing up of things and dissolution of heaven and earth, will be the completeaccomplishment of the effect and end sought, by what Christ doth in thework of redemption.

854. Conviction. “The hunted beast flies to his den, and the pursuedmalefactor to the horns of the altar, the chased mankiller to his city ofrefuge, so the humbled sinner unto Jesus Christ. [ . . . ] The full stomachof the proud Pharisee loathes the honeycomb of Christ’s righteousness;whilst to the hungry appetite of the humbled sinner, the bitterest passionsof a Savior are exceedingly sweet; the deeper the sense of misery, thesweeter is the sense of mercy. How acceptable is the fountain of living wa-ters to the chased, panting hart, and the blood of Christ to the thirsty soul

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5. The “Blank Bible” note on Dan. 5:25–28 treats the episode of Belshazzar’s feast, when thehandwriting of God appeared on the wall. The words of the message, JE points out, had multi-ple meanings, which illustrates “1. That the words of God, especially the words of prophecy, maywell be supposed sometimes to have several senses; yea, further, 2. that when the same words al-low of two senses . . . we may well suppose that the Holy Ghost has respect to both oftentimes.”Both meanings or senses, JE concludes, “are instructive and agreeable to the analogy of faith.”

6. Thomas Case (1598–1682), The Morning Exercise Methodized; or Certain chief Heads and Pointsof the Christian religion Opened and Improved in divers Sermons, by Several Ministers of London, In theMonthly Course of the Morning Exercise at Giles in the Fields, May 1659 (London, 1660), 368. JE usedthe 2nd edition of 1676. The quote is taken from Sermon XXI by “Mr. Crofton,” entitled “Re-pentance not to be Repented, Plainly Asserted, and Practically Explained,” pp. 359–409.

and conscience scorched with a sense of God’s wrath!” Morning ExerciseMethodized, p. 368.6

855. Justification. Faith Condition of Salvation. As to that ques-tion, whether closing with Christ in his kingly office be of the essence ofjustifying faith, I would say:

l. That accepting Christ in his kingly office is doubtless the proper con-dition of having an interest in Christ’s kingly office, and so the conditionof that salvation that he bestows in the execution of that office, as muchas accepting the forgiveness of sins, is the proper condition of the for-giveness of sin. Christ in his kingly office bestows salvation, and thereforeaccepting him in his kingly office, by a disposition to sell all and suffer allin duty to Christ, and giving proper respect and honor to him, is theproper condition of salvation. This is manifest by Heb. 5:9, “And beingmade perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation to all them thatobey him”; and by Rom. 10:10, “For with the heart man believeth untorighteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”The Apostle speaks of such a confessing of Christ, or outward and opentestifying our respect to him, and adhering to our duty to him, as exposedto suffering, reproach and persecution. And that such a disposition andpractice is of the essence of saving faith, is manifest, John 12:42–43, “Nev-ertheless, among the chief rulers also, many believed on him; but becauseof the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out ofthe synagogue. For they loved the praise of men, more than the praise ofGod”; compared with John 5:44, “How can ye believe, which receive honorone of another, and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?”

2. Accepting Christ as a priest and king can’t be separated. They notonly can’t be separated, or be asunder, in their subject; but they can’t beconsidered as separate things in their nature. For they are implied one inanother: accepting Christ as a king is implied in accepting him as a priest,for as a priest he procures a title to the benefits of his kingly office; andtherefore, to accept him as a priest implies an accepting him in his kinglyoffice. For we can’t accept the purchase of his priesthood [but] by ac-cepting the benefits purchased. If faith is supposed to contain no more


immediately than only an accepting of Christ as a mediator for our justi-fication, yet that justification implies a giving a title to the benefits of hiskingly office, viz. salvation from sin, and conformity to his nature and will,and actual salvation by actual deliverance from our enemies, and the be-stowment of glory.

856. Justification. How Works Justify, or How a Christian Life

and Practice Justifies. The acts of holy Christian practice do as muchbelong to the acceptance of Christ as the outward act of a beggar, inputting forth his hand, and outwardly taking the gift offered him. Actu-ally yielding to Christ’s teachings is the same thing as actually acceptinghim as a prophet and teacher; actually submitting to Christ as our king,and obeying him, is the same as actually accepting him in his kingly of-fice. Venturing upon his word and promise, in what we do or suffer, is thesame as actually trusting him. Actually following Christ and practicallycleaving to him, in hope of salvation from him, is actually accepting himand trusting in him as a savior. Forsaking sin is actual accepting of free-dom or deliverance from sin. Practicing holiness is actual accepting thatbenefit of Christ’s purchase, as much as the beggar’s taking the gift, andvoluntary having it, is the very same as his accepting it; or, as the eatingfood given him is accepting that food. See an addition to this, No. 859.See also No. 996. See Dr. Williams’ fifth volume, p. 119.7

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7. The two concluding references are later additions. Williams, Discourses, 5, “An End to Dis-cord: Wherein is demonstrated, That no Doctrinal Controversy remains between the Presbyter-ian and Congregational Ministers, fit to justify longer Divisions,” originally published in 1699.P. 119 falls in the middle of an answer to an objection, “But sure there is a vast difference, be-tween those who think we are justified by Faith only, and those who think we are justified by Worksas well as by Faith.” On the page in question, Williams is giving his third answer to the objection:“They who say, it’s by Faith alone, acknowledge, that justifying Faith will certainly produce goodWorks; and if good Works and persevering Holiness do not follow, it was a dead Faith; and be-cause dead, it never was a justifying Faith, however men flatter’d themselves: Also, that men’sFaith, tho not their Persons is justified by their Works: Yea, the most Judicious own, that if Sin,should reign in Believers, and they apostatize, they would be condemned . . . ; and therefore per-severing Holiness and good Works so far continue their Justification, as they prevent what wouldbring them into Condemnation; and Faith is the Condition of the continuation of Justifica-tion. . . . On the other hand, they who say, we are justified by Works, do account works to be nomore but the executing the federal consenting Act of Faith; and so it’s Faith exerting it self byvarious occasions: And considering, that the Believer’s not only forgiving his Enemies, but hispersevering in Faith and Holiness, are plain Conditions in many Promises made thereto; . . . theyconceive, that by Perseverance in Faith and true Holiness, they are kept from being chargeablewith final and total Apostacy, and from obnoxiousness to the Evils denounced by the Gospelagainst Apostates as such, and are adjudged to be under the Influence and Safeguard of thePromises made to believers as persevering.”

857. Justification, How by Perseverance in Faith and by an Holy

Life. Christ, in the 6th chapter of Matthew, v. 33, commands those thatalready have some faith to seek the righteousness of God, which the Apos-tle distinguishes from our own righteousness; yea, and as the words imply,he directs us to seek the righteousness of God, by which we may obtainthe kingdom of God: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his right-eousness.” Compare this with v. 30, where those that he then especiallydirects himself to in this counsel are spoken of as having seemingly8 somefaith. See also Matt. 5:1, and vv. 13–16.

858. Conviction. Humiliation. ’Tis an easy thing for those that don’tconsider their own guilt, and are not convinced how great it is, to trust inChrist to remove that guilt; so in like manner, ’tis an easy thing for thosethat don’t count the cost of being Christians, or that are not sensible ofthe difficulties that attend a universal and persevering adherence toChrist, to embrace Christianity. There are many that seem to trust inChrist to deliver from their guilt, that would not and could not, if theywere sensible how great that guilt was; so there are many that seem to em-brace Christianity, that would not and could not embrace it, if they firstthoroughly considered and were sensible of the difficulties that attend it.But yet there are doubtless instances of those that do truly embrace Chris-tianity, and have a principle of heart disposing them to adhere to Christthrough all difficulties, that han’t first had an explicit, thorough consid-eration and sense of those difficulties; and so there are doubtless somethat have a principle of heart disposing [that] do truly trust in Christ astheir Savior from guilt, that han’t first had an explicit consideration andview of all their guilt. And indeed, those that see most of their guilt, don’tsee all—no, nor a millionth part.

859. Justification. Add this to No. 856. Works are as much the properevidence of the act of the soul in receiving Christ, as the act of the soul inreceiving Christ is the proper evidence of the principle of faith. The soul’sact of faith would not be the proper condition of justification, were it notthat it is necessary, as the proper manifestation and expression of the prin-ciple or being of faith: [if it] was manifest and evident without, men wouldbe justified without. Indeed, the act belongs to the being of faith; so in-deed, considering the nature of man, as a being consisting of soul andbody, the practice belongs to the nature of acceptance. The renovation


8. MS: “seeming.”

of the whole man, in spirit, soul and body, is that wherein the new birthconsists. And so the whole man’s accepting of Christ as a savior, in spirit,soul and body, is properly the condition of justification. See sermon onMatt. 13:6, Prop. IV.9 See No. 861.

860. How Works are Proper Signs of Godliness. See sermon onMatt. 13:6, Prop. IV.1 Practice is the properest and fittest evidence ofeverything in the soul that concerns godliness, not only of godliness itself,but of that conviction that is only preparatory to it. ’Tis not always hethat is in the greatest exercise of mind, or has the greatest terror upon hisheart, that has the greatest and best conviction of sin; but he is undoubt-edly the most convinced of sin that is most afraid of it, and from his con-viction, or consideration, or whatever you will call it, is afraid of it. And heis most sensible of the badness of his heart, that watches most against it.Remember to show how every Christian grace tends to practice, as lovingGod, trusting in God, repenting of sin, etc., and how that practice is theproper trial of it.

861. Justification. How Works Justify. See Nos. 856, 859, 876, and1030. Cleaving to God in practice, as having our expectations of happi-ness and well-being from him, as our portion and chief good, and servinghim in dependence on his sufficiency for us and faithfulness to us in thatway, is implied and very much intended in the Old Testament notion oftrusting in God: which is equivalent to the New Testament notion of faith,and is spoken [of] as the condition of God’s help and salvation in the samemanner in the Old Testament, as faith is in the New. That this is intendedin the Old Testament by trusting in God, is evident from the followingplaces: Ps. 2:11–12, “Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling.Kiss the Son lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrathis kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”Ruth 2:12, “The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be giventhee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.”

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9. This reference is integral to the entry. The sermon is the fifth part of JE’s series on the para-ble of the sower, preached in Nov. 1740. This sermon has the doctrine, “Religion that arises onlyfrom superficial impressions is wont to wither away for want of root when it comes to be tried bythe difficulties of religion.” Prop. IV reads “The difficulties that attend religion are the propertrial of sincerity” (L. 5r.). Under this proposition, JE treats two subpoints: “1. Sincerity very muchconsists in that, that a person chooses Christ before anything else,” and “2. That when professorsare tried with the difficulties of religion, then Christ and other things are set before them to-gether for their actual and practical choice.”

1. See preceding note.

Judg. 9:15, “If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come, and putyour trust in my shadow: if not, let fire come out of the bramble and de-vour the cedars of Lebanon.” Ps. 4:4–5, “Stand in awe and sin not; com-mune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Offer the sacrificesof righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord.” Ps. 37:1, “Fret notthyself because of evil doers; neither be thou envious against the workersof iniquity”; v. 3, “Trust in the Lord, and do good, so shalt thou dwell inthe land”; v. 5, “Commit thy way unto the Lord: trust also in him, and heshall bring it to [pass]”; v. 8, “Fret not thyself in anywise to do evil,” to-gether with that whole Psalm. Jer. 39:16–18, “Go and speak to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, saying, . . . thy life shall be a prey unto thee, be-cause thou hast put thy trust in me, saith the Lord”; compare with Jer.38:7, 12. Ps. 78:22, “Because they believed not in God, and trusted not inhis salvation.” Dan. 3:28, “Who hath sent his angel, and delivered his ser-vants who trusted in him.” See No. 876.

862. Humiliation. See No. 858. ’Tis necessary that persons should bebrought to forsake the world, as well as their own righteousness, in orderto a saving close with Christ. As wicked men trust in their own righteous-ness for salvation, so they trust in the world for happiness; and therefore,their being brought off from a worldly happiness is as necessary, in orderto their looking to Christ as the only medium of happiness, as ’tis that theyshould be brought off from their own righteousness, in order to theirlooking to Christ as the only medium of their salvation. Their trust in theirown righteousness makes ’em insensible of their need of a savior, and sodoes their trust in the world. Trusting in the world is [as] often spoken ofand condemned (and under that term of trusting) as trusting in our ownrighteousness. See Ps. 49:6, Job 31:24, I Tim. 6:17, Ps. 52:7, Prov. 11:28,Mark 10:24. It is opposite to trusting God, and inconsistent with it as well,as trusting in our own righteousness. Ps. 52:7, “Lo, this is the man thatmade not God his strength, but trusted in the abundance of his riches.”Ps. 62:8–10, “Trust in him at all times, ye people, pour out your heart be-fore him: God is a refuge for us. Selah. Surely men of low degree are van-ity, and men of high degree are a lie; to be laid in the balance, they are al-together lighter than vanity. Trust not in oppression, and become not vainin robbery; if riches increase, set not your heart upon them.” I Tim. 6:17,“Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded,nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us all thingsrichly to enjoy.” Trusting in the world is spoken of as hindering our en-tering into the kingdom of God as effectually as trusting in our own right-


eousness. Matt. 19:23–24, “How hard is it for them that trust in riches toenter into the kingdom of God. It is easier for a camel to go through theeye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”The Scripture is more express in the necessity of our being brought offfrom the world, and parting with the world, than it is in the necessity ofbeing brought off from our own righteousness, though it be very plain tothe necessity of both. How often is Christ in teaching his disciples the ne-cessity of their selling all in order to their being his disciples; and that theymust renounce father and mother, wife and children, houses and lands,yea, and their own lives; and that they must count the cost, and so take upthe cross and follow him; and that we cannot serve God and mammon—we must forsake the one and cleave to [the] other. And we are told that“if any man love the world, or the things that are in the world, the love ofthe Father is not in him” [I John 2:15], and that if we receive honor oneof another, we cannot believe [John 5:44]. Both belong to the circumci-sion of the heart, and being poor in spirit includes both; a being sensiblethat we are wretched and miserable and poor includes both. We read ofbeing crucified to the world (Gal. 6:14), as well as our being dead to thelaw, and crucified with Christ in that respect (Gal. 2:19–20). Both are in-cluded in our being crucified with Christ, and being dead with him. ForChrist, when he died, he died both to the world and to the law: both be-long to the crucifixion of the old man. Both belong to the great Christianduty of self-denial or self-renunciation, and indeed, they are the two greatconstituent integral parts of that duty. By the one, man’s worldly-mind-edness is mortified, and by the other, his self-righteousness; which are thetwo great pillars of Dagon’s temple, on which the house rests, and whichthe spiritual Samson breaks, by which the temple falls and the Philistinesare slain [Judg. 16:23–30]. Pride and worldliness are the two daughtersof the horse leech, spoken of, Prov. 30:15; both are natural to man, andare so, in a like respect, antecedent to the fall. Both this world’s happinessand man’s own righteousness might, on good grounds, be depended on,while he stood for himself under the first covenant: for a worldly happi-ness, or happiness in an earthly paradise, was promised in the first cove-nant, and man’s own righteousness was the condition of the covenant.“The first man was of the earth, earthy” [I Cor. 15:47]. One is our ownnatural stock and root as well as the other. In conversion a man is cut offfrom his own stock to be engrafted into Christ, and is cut down as themown grass to be revived by Christ, as much with respect to the one as theother; the renouncing both belongs to our forsaking our own people andfather’s house for Christ. Both the world and our own righteousness are

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represented by the idols of the Jews, that provoked Christ to jealousy: theiridols represented the worldly enjoyments because they were silver andgold; and covetousness, the Apostle tells us, is idolatry [Eph. 5:5]. Andthey represented men’s own righteousness, because they were the worksof their own hands. It is said, Jer. 4:3–4, “Break up your fallow ground,and sow not among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and takeaway the foreskins of your hearts.” Here, breaking up the fallow groundand circumcising themselves represents what the soul is the subject of, un-der the convictions of God’s Spirit. This breaking up the fallow ground isin order to destroy the thorns; but by the thorns it is not only meant self-righteousness, but more especially worldly cares and affections, as is man-ifest by Christ’s own interpretation, in the explanation of the parable ofthe sower in the 13th chapter of Matthew and the 8th chapter of Luke.And so the circumcision of the heart is to take away the foreskin of theheart, but this signifies not only self-righteousness but, more naturallyand more especially, the pleasures of the world or carnal appetites.Joseph’s brethren are thoroughly humbled to the earth for their sin, andare brought to deliver up Benjamin, fully both together; see Gen. 44:16,and sermon on Gen. 43:3.2

Both weaning from the world and also from our own righteousness aresignified by that weaning from the milk, and drawing from the breasts,spoken of [in] Is. 28:9 (this is confirmed by Ps. 131): the one is weaningfrom the breasts of the Jewish church, and the other from the breasts ofthe earth, which is our mother. And then the objects of our lusts are prop-erly called the milk of our mother’s breasts, because ’tis the proper nour-ishment of that corrupt nature, which we have by natural generation, theproper satisfaction of the appetite of that flesh, which is born of flesh; andtherefore, weaning from sin is called a weaning from our father’s house.[In] Israel’s coming out of Egypt, and forsaking their old taskmasters,there was a type both of their renouncing their lusts, and also their re-nouncing their own righteousness, or the law which holds sinners inbondage, and is a taskmaster that requires more of them than they cando; see note on Is. 30:2.3 David is humbled and submits to God’s sover-


2. The sermon, dated Feb. 1742 and published in Sereno Dwight, The Works of President Ed-wards (10 vols. New York, 1829–30; hereafter referred to as Dwight ed.), as “Joseph’s Great Temp-tation and Gracious Deliverance” (7, 115–34), treats the proposition that “Joseph was a re-markable type of Christ”; the reference to it in this entry is a later addition.

3. “Blank Bible” note on Is. 30:2, in part: “Israel’s trusting in Egypt, their old taskmasters, is atype of persons’ trusting in their own righteousness for salvation, or, which is the same thing,trusting in the law that, as we are by nature, holds in bondage and is a taskmaster like the Egyp-tians. It sets us a task that we can never do.”

eignty, and resigns up his kingdom, both together, after his fall in the mat-ter of Uriah [II Sam. 12:13], [and] in the rebellion of Absalom [II Sam.19:14], before he received full comfort.

Both are included in repentance, and are the two great constituentparts of repentance, so far as repentance respects the term:4 in repen-tance, the soul is humbled for sin, in a renunciation of all its own worthi-ness and righteousness; and in repentance, the soul is separated andbroke off from sin, and so from all worldly lusts. Both these are done by akind of force in legal repentance, and both are done freely and of choicein evangelical repentance. Both are alike included in poverty of spirit.

Both these things are excellently expressed as necessary to a true faithin Christ, or hope in the Lord, in Ps. 131:1–3 (and also Is. 28:9), “Lord,my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty; neither do I exercise myself ingreat matters, or in things too high for me. Surely I have behaved and qui-eted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother; my soul is even as aweaned child. Let Israel hope in the Lord, from henceforth and forever.”The soul’s being brought to renounce its own excellency is well expressedby its becoming like a little child. As Christ says, “Except ye be convertedand become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven”[Matt. 18:3], and “he that humbles himself as this little child, the same isgreatest in the kingdom of heaven” [Matt. 18:4]. That a being thus hum-bled is here intended is plain, being particularly expressed in the firstverse. And then a being weaned from the world is naturally signified inthe soul’s being as a weaned child: the heart naturally cleaves to thebreasts of mother earth and thirsts after earthly enjoyments, as the littlechild does after its mother’s breasts. Then it follows, “Let Israel hope inthe Lord, from henceforth and forever.” These things are necessary tofaith in Christ, and true hope and comfort in him. Both worldly enjoy-ments and our own righteousness are meant by the husks that the swinedo eat [Luke 15:16]. “Thou art wearied in the greatness of thy way” [Is.57:10]; this has respect to both these. The world and self-righteousnessare the two things that kept the young man in the gospel out of heaven[Matt. 19:20–21]. By these, men are rich and can’t enter in.

Both these things were represented in Mary’s anointing Christ: her pre-cious ointment was out of an alabaster box, which represents the heart’spurity and the mortification of worldly lusts. And it was out of a brokenbox, which represents humiliation of heart; see note on Mark 14:3.5

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4. MS adds “from which.”5. In the “Blank Bible” note on Mark 14:3, JE argues that the woman’s pouring the fragrant

ointment on Jesus is “a type of the church’s or believing soul’s exercise of the grace of the Holy

It is necessary, in order to an interest in Christ, the second Adam, thatwe should be taken out of the old Adam, which is done by these two things,viz. weaning from the world, and weaning from our own righteousness.By the first, we are weaned from Adam’s earthly happiness. By the second,we are weaned from Adam’s way of obtaining his happiness, viz. his ownrighteousness.

1. By mortification, we are weaned from Adam’s earthly happiness; for“the first Adam was of the earth, earthy” [I Cor. 15:47]. And thoughAdam’s highest happiness consisted in the favor of God, yet the tokens ofthat favor, or those gifts of God to him that were the fruits of that favor,consisted mainly in those good things that were earthly, in the blessingsof an earthly paradise. But “the second Adam is the Lord from heaven” [ICor. 15:47], whose happiness is a spiritual, heavenly happiness, consist-ing in communion of the Holy Ghost; and therefore, in order to a beingsome of the seed of the second Adam, we must have our hearts taken offfrom an earthly happiness, and turned to an heavenly happiness. “For asis the earthy, such are they also that are earthy, and as is the heavenly, suchare they also that are heavenly; and as we have borne the image of theearthy, we must also bear the image of the heavenly” [I Cor. 15:48–49].

2. By humiliation we must be weaned from Adam’s way of obtaining hishappiness by his own righteousness, that we mayn’t trust in the right-eousness of man but in the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Je-sus Christ [Phil. 3:9]. The two great things wherein Adam’s fullness con-sisted was his righteousness and his reward: his righteousness was therighteousness of the flesh, or of the mere human nature, which provedweak and unstable, and not to be depended on for fulfilling the law; andhis reward was a fleshly reward. We must be emptied of this fullness of thefirst Adam, as we would be filled with the fullness of the second Adam.The harvest of the earth, when gathered in, was cut off by the sharp sickleof the word that is “sharper than any two-edged sword” [Heb. 4:12], fromtwo things: from the earth, and from its own stock and root. See further,No. 875.

And the manner of being brought off from both these is very parallel.There is a twofold weanedness from the world. One is a having the heartbeat off or forced off from the world by affliction, and especially by spiri-


Spirit towards Christ, which does primarily and summarily consist in love.” The oil’s “being in[an] alabaster box represents the purity of the heart that contains this sweet ointment.” See alsoWorks, 15, 335, and the sermon on Mark 14:3 (May 1741), in Sermons and Discourses, 1739–1742,entitled Mary’s Remarkable Act.

tual distresses and disquietudes of conscience that the world can’t quiet;this may be in men, while natural men. The other is a having the heartdrawn off by being shown something better, whereby the heart is reallyturned from it. So in like manner, there is a twofold bringing a man offfrom his own righteousness: one is a being beat or forced off by convic-tions of conscience, the other is a being drawn off by the sight of some-thing better, whereby the heart is turned from that way of salvation by ourown righteousness. The argument from it being God’s manner first tobring persons into extremity, and to take away all false comfort and falsedependence, is as forcible for one as the other. God led the children of Is-rael in the wilderness for both these ends: to humble ’em and show ’emwhat was in their hearts, and to bring ’em off from their own righteous-ness; and also to bring ’em off from a trust in the world. He suffered themto hunger, and fed them with manna, that they might know that “mandoth not live by bread alone” [Matt. 4:4].

In these things, viz. in renouncing the world to trust in Christ only asthe means and fountain of our happiness, and in renouncing our ownrighteousness to trust alone in his righteousness, lies the grand secret ofbeing thorough Christians:

Corol. 1. Hence trouble of mind, and God’s using forcible methods, isno more absolutely necessary in order to one of these things than theother; i.e. it is no more absolutely necessary that men should first be un-der great trouble of mind to drive ’em and force ’em from a dependenceon their own righteousness, than it is to drive ’em from a dependence onthe world. And so far as drawing alone will in any case be sufficient forone, it will for the other also.

Corol. 2. Hence there is no more absolute necessity of an explicitness inone of these things than the other; there is no more necessity of a partic-ular, distinct work of God’s Spirit with explicit consideration to bring menoff from their own righteousness, than to bring ’em to renounce theworld. There is more color from Scripture to argue for the necessity of aparticular, distinct act of renunciation on particular consideration in thelatter case, than in the former: for it speaks of the necessity of sitting downand counting the cost [Luke 14:28], and so denying ourselves, and tak-ing up the cross.

Corol. 3. Hence we may infer that self-righteousness remains in theheart after conversion, as much as worldly-mindedness.6

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6. This entry continues in No. 875.

863. Conflagration. Misery of the Damned. Men can artificiallyraise heat to such a degree of fierceness, as to melt almost all nature andeven earth itself into glass, and there is nothing that will stand before [it]but what will either be dissipated into fumes, or melted. It seems as [if]the fire of the general conflagration would be of such a degree of heat, asto turn the earth into a liquid substance. The Apostle, in II Pet. 3:12, saysthat “the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shallmelt with fervent heat.” So that ’tis very probable that the fire of the con-flagration will be such as to dissolve the rocks, and melt the mountainsand the ground, and turn all into a kind of liquid fire. When natural bod-ies are melted by heat artificially raised, they continue in a state of fusiontill everything volatile in them is gone off in fumes, and then the remain-der is reduced to a calx. But there will be no room for a total separationof all the fumes or volatile parts of the matter of this lower world: therewill be no atmosphere sufficient to carry them off, and the various kindsof substances of which this globe consists is probably such that, when allcome to be mixed, it will tend to keep all in a state of fusion. Then thereshall be a literal accomplishment of what is spoken of in Judg. 5:5, “Themountains melted before the Lord,” that is spoken of God’s appearanceat Mt. Sinai, which was some little image of the day of judgment, and ofthe conflagration. And ’tis observable in multitudes of passages of Scrip-ture, that almost all those things that are spoken figuratively of those dis-pensations of providence that are an image of the day of judgment, willbe literally fulfilled at the day of judgment. Then there will [be] a literalfulfillment of that in the 97th [Psalm], at the beginning, “The Lordreigneth, let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of the isles be gladthereat. Clouds and darkness are round about him; righteousness andjudgment are the habitation of his throne. A fire goeth before him, andburneth up his enemies round about. His lightnings enlightened theworld; the earth saw and trembled. The hills melted like wax at the pres-ence of the Lord, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth. The heav-ens declare his righteousness, and all the people his glory” [vv. 1–6]; andthat, Mic. 1:3–4, “For behold, the Lord cometh forth out of his place, andwill come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. And themountains shall be molten under him, and the valleys shall be cleft, as waxbefore the fire, and as the waters that are poured down a steep place”; andIs. 64:1–3, “O that thou wouldst rend the heavens, that thou wouldstcome down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence, as whenthe melting fire burneth, the fire causeth the waters to boil: to make thyname known to thine adversaries, that the nations may tremble at thy pres-


ence. When thou didst terrible things which we looked not for, thoucamest down, and the mountains flowed down at thy presence.”

So that the whole world will probably be converted into a great lake andliquid globe of fire, a vast, shoreless ocean of fire, in which the wicked willbe overwhelmed; and so what is so often threatened in the Revelation tothe wicked, that they shall be cast into a lake of fire, will be literally ful-filled. And so that sulfurous, bituminous lake that overflows the land ofSodom and Gomorrah [Gen. 19:24] appears to be a more lively image ofthe future misery of the wicked; and so that great type of the eternal de-struction of the wicked world, Noah’s flood, appears to be a more livelyrepresentation of it. For they are, both of them, literally deluges: the one,a universal deluge of water, and the other a proper flood or universal del-uge of fire. The whole world shall become a flood of liquid fire, and there-fore these two destructions are more aptly compared one with another,as they are by the Apostle, II Pet. 3:5–7. The Scripture speaks not only ofthe mountains melting, but other parts of the earth also as melted byGod’s wrath, and so becoming a flood, like a flood of waters. Amos 9:5,“And the Lord God of hosts is he that toucheth the land, and it shall melt,and all that dwell therein shall mourn, and it shall rise up wholly like aflood, and shall be drowned as by the flood of Egypt.”

There is something to represent this in those natural images of hell: thevolcanoes, or burning mountains, which in the time of their eruptionscommonly throw out great quantities of liquid fire.

It will be a sea of fire that will always be in a tempest. Fire is a violent el-ement: its nature is to keep things in a vehement agitation. The sun seemsto be nothing else but such an ocean of liquid fire; and that the substanceof the sun is in a state of liquefaction, is probably owing to nothing but itsvehement heat. To this vehemence of heat is owing the brightness of thesun; as we see when fire is raised to a most intense degree of heat, it growswhite and emits a very bright white light; and that intenseness of heat thatis in the sun seems to be owing to nothing but the greatness of the fire. Aswe see that a great fire is, in every part of it, hotter than a small fire, be-cause besides the heat that comes out of the fuel in that place, it has theadditional heat of the fire all round it. That vast ocean and deluge of fireis, as telescopes do show, continually in an exceeding perturbation andtempest. In such a tempestuous ocean, in which all shall be agitated bythe wrath of God, and everything shall in every respect appear in the mostvehement, and to us inconceivable, rage and fury and hideous confusionand uproar, shall wicked men roll and tumble, and shall be plunged andagitated and driven to and fro, having no rest, day nor night; with vast

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waves and billows of fire continually rolling over their heads, bigger thanthe highest mountains, and one billow following another, forever andever.

It looks to me very probable that the time will come, when all the plan-ets and comets shall be cast down into the sun, into that vast fire, there tomake that fire the greater, and to add to that ocean of fire; and not alto-gether unlikely that all the fixed stars shall be thrown together in one, allthose many millions of suns be gathered into one great, which, as it willmake the fire so many thousand times greater, so it will, in some propor-tion, [make it] more exceeding fierce and furious. And that thus thereshall be a literal accomplishment of those many expressions of Scripturethat speak of the heavens being dissolved and rolled together as a scrolland passing away, and the stars falling from heaven, as a fig tree castethher untimely figs when shaken of a mighty wind, and so that the whole vis-ible world shall be destroyed with one great and general destruction. Is.34:4, “And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shallbe rolled together as a scroll, and all their host shall fall down as the leaffalleth from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.” Ps. 102:25–26,“Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens arethe work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all ofthem shall wax old like a garment: as a vesture shalt thou change them,and they shall be changed.” Matt. 24:29, “The stars shall fall from heaven,and the powers of heaven shall be shaken”; so Mark 13:25. II Pet. 3:10,“The heavens shall pass away with great noise”; and v. 12, “The heavensbeing on fire shall be dissolved.” Rev. 20:11, “I saw a great white throne,and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heavens fledaway”; and, “But the heavens and the earth which now are, by the sameword are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment, andperdition of ungodly men” [II Pet. 3:7]. Rev. 6:13–14, “And the stars ofheaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth away her untimely figswhen she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heaven departed as a scrollwhen it is rolled together.” Rev. 21:1, “The first heaven and the first earthwere passed away.”

See, concerning the misery of the damned, sermon on Is. 33:14.7


7. The sermon, dated Dec. 1740, has the doctrine, “The time will come when fearfulness willsurprise the sinners in Zion, because they will know that they are going to be cast into a devour-ing fire, which they must suffer forever and ever, and which none can endure”; the reference toit is written in the same ink as the rest of the entry. See Sinners in Zion, in Sermons and Discourses,1739–1742.

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