And I will begin with the reading of Galatians 5, verses 16 to 26. Galatians 5, verses 16 to 26. This I say then, walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh. These are contrary to one to the other, so that you cannot do the things as you would. But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like. of which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another. Let's pray. Almighty God, at the outset of a new day, we offer Thee praise and honor, our heart's adoration. for life itself and for the rest of the past night, for strength and health to come here this day, for minds to think. But above all, we thank Thee for the mercies You have shown us in our Lord Jesus Christ, for the gift of eternal life, and for the joy of being able to commune with Thee in prayer. And our prayer this day is that You might be with us To bless our reflections and our thoughts and studies and words, that we might learn not only of Jonathan Edwards and revival in the past, but that what we look at might have meaning and significance and challenge for our day. May the life of this man and his days and his times be a spur to holier living on our part in this day, to a deep longing for Thou to do what You have done in times past, revive Thy church, renew Thy people, and save sinners. We ask all these mercies for Jesus' sake. Amen. I've divided the material on Edwards really into three sections, and we'll see how we go in terms of actually doing the lectures. It might work out that we might do it just for an hour or so. This is long, and I think we'll probably need one, two, three. Let's see. I think we might need one extra one now. Well, hang on, let's see. Should be one each there. One more, so we will. Well, I begin with the Religious Affections, which is the key book of Edwards that deals with the whole issue of revival. And then we will go back to looking at something of Edwards' life and his background. And what we want to do, actually, what I want you to think about is this particular book and its significance for us. It's the cream, really, of Edwards' reflections on revival. The classic quality of Jonathan Edwards' treatise concerning religious affections, which first saw the light of day in 1746, was soon recognized. For instance, only 35 years after its publication, the young Andrew Fuller, an English Calvinistic Baptist who would become one of the most influential theologians of his day, noted the impact of this work by Edwards in his diary. I think I've never yet entered in the true idea of the work of the ministry. I think I am by the ministry as I was by my life as a Christian before I read Edwards on the affections. Oh, that the Holy Spirit would open my eyes and let me into the things that I have never yet seen. A few years later, Fuller's closest friend, John Rowland Jr., told a fellow Baptist pastor, Joseph Kinghorn, that if he could keep but three books out of his whole library, Edwards' religious affections would be one of the three. Similar testimonies over the past 200 years could be cited that could easily confirm, for example, Ian Murray's affirmation that Religious Affections is one of the most important books possessed by the Christian Church on the nature of true religion. Now some scholars have argued that a central reason for this impact of Edwidge's Religious Affections is due to its striking originality. and its sharp departure from the Puritan theology and ambience of Edwards' spiritual roots. Thank you. But as Brad Walton, a Canadian scholar, has recently argued with great cogency, far from representing a discontinuity with Puritan traditions, Edwards' religious affections is in fact a reassertion, elicited by the events of the Great Awakening, of traditional Puritan experimental spirituality. by the word experimental, I assume you know it means experiential. Cast largely in the same form, using essentially the same language and conceptualization as 17th century Puritan analyses of true piety, spiritual sensation, and heart religion. Through extensive examination of especially those Puritans who formed what has been termed the spiritual brotherhood, And there was an actual line of men who, beginning with Richard Greenham, just outside in Dry Drayton, just outside Cambridge, you can trace the men that they mentored. And there's almost a line of succession running from Greenham all the way through right to John Howe. Greenham's ministry in the 1570s, 1580s, and 90s in Dry Drayton. Running from Richard Greenham, the fountainhead of affective Puritanism, through Richard Sibbes to Thomas Goodwin and John Howe. Walton shows that the writings of these Puritan authors, along with those of a few others like John Owen, contain all the various elements that make up Edwidge's religious affections. And again, this is emphasizing what we looked at yesterday, that the evangelical awakening is, in many respects, a Puritanism Revive, just to broaden it from simply than George Whitefield. where he talked about him as a Puritan revived, the Great Awakening as Puritanism revived. The uniqueness of Edwards' books lies in the way that it attempts to articulate so thorough, coherent, and systematic a treatment of heart religion. But if Edwards' discussion of heart religion is substantially the same as Puritan forebears, why read him, and his religious affections in particular? Well, now I'm going to go into looking at something of the importance of Edwards, but I want to back up and use this as a place also to talk a little bit about his biography. And so I'll begin this section and I'm going to broaden it in terms of looking at the biography of Edwards. Well, first of all, Edwards and his generation knew revival at the core of which is heart religion in a way that the Puritans never did. And we're talking here about the extensiveness and the depth and the breadth of the Great Awakening. Edwards is, in fact, as Martin Lloyd-Jones once described him, preeminently the theologian of revival, and by extension, therefore, the theologian of the heart, as Harold Simonson has argued. The earliest letter we possess from his hand, written to his elder sister, Mary, when he was but 12 years of age, tells of a revival in his hometown of East Windsor, Connecticut, under the preaching of his father, Timothy Edwards. He describes it as a very remarkable stirring and pouring out of the Spirit of God, in which it was common on Mondays, after the word had been preached the day before, for above 30 persons to speak with Father about the condition of their souls. Much more significantly, the revival that made a profound impact on the Connecticut Valley during the winter of 1734-1735, actually six months more than winter, running from December through to June 1st, 1735, December 1734, that is, began in Edwards's church in Northampton, Massachusetts, and was subsequently described and analyzed in Edwards's A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton and the Neighboring Towns and Villages of, it should be just simply, Hampshire in New England. When the book was printed over in England by Isaac Watts, Isaac Watts thought the place was called New Hampshire. And in the copy that we actually possess of Edwards' own copy, he's actually scratched out the new, because the county is in Northampton, rather the county in Massachusetts is Hampshire. Over a hundred years later, this powerful book was still being consulted as a handbook on the nature of revival. Five years after this regional revival occurred, Five years after this regional revival there occurred what is known as the Great Awakening, a revival that swept the entirety of the American colonies from 1740 to 1742. Although the English itinerant evangelist George Whitfield, who we looked at in detail yesterday, was the main human instrument in this revival, Edwards also played a very prominent role in it. He too traveled and preached extensively beyond the borders of his own parish. And even more significantly, in print, Edwards was this revival's most theologically astute champion, as well as its most perceptive critic. This dual role with regard to the revival called for some of Edwards' finest books, and foremost among them is The Religious Affections. But let me go back and give a little bit of the biography of Edwards, just to bring him up to this period of time in the 1730s. Edwards was born in 1703 and therefore this year is the celebration of the 300th anniversary of Edwards. He is born in East Windsor, Connecticut, which is right on the Connecticut River that cuts in half the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts. running almost directly down the middle of both those states. It was the river that the earliest settlers into New England, as they had settled along the coastline of New England, the Atlantic seaboard, they began to settle inwards. They used the river as a highway, as it were, since there were no roads accessible, at least in their minds, and they used the river then to go back deeper into those two, what would become the states of Connecticut and then Massachusetts. And not surprisingly, the first places they settled were places along the river. As they went back along the river and they found what they regarded as good places of settlement, where there would be easy access for boats coming in, and therefore beaches, but also with significant bluffs of short way inland because you don't want flooding. Those would be the places they would initially settle. East Windsor is just like that. Easy access, and then it rises sharply. and beyond the higher ground they would build their houses and so on. Edwards' heritage in terms of his parents was a rich one. His father, Timothy Edwards, came from a line of Puritans, although there were some skeletons, as it were, in the closet. uh... edwards is uh... grandfather his father's father married a woman who turned out to be almost insane uh... and uh... threatened him with death on one occasion uh... committed adultery on numerous occasions and eventually Timothy Edwards, his grandfather was granted a divorce from her and remarried and had a number of children. And there was definite, in that woman's family, there was definite madness because her father had killed a daughter. There was another sister who killed somebody as well. It was just quite a mess in that one particular family. But Timothy Edwards turned out very well. and was quite a remarkable man, pastored in East Windsor Congregationalist Church for 63 years. His mother was Esther, and her maiden name was Esther Stoddard. And again, on her side she went back to Puritan, a number of key Puritans Of whom the most significant figure is Solomon Stoddard, who died in 1729. Solomon Stoddard was the pastor of the church to which Edwards was called in 1727, the Congregationalist Church in Northampton. And he would be his grandfather's assistant for two years. Stoddard, and we'll touch on this a very little bit, would be a major theological force that Edwards would find himself opposed to in one key area, namely the issue of membership, church membership, and the Lord's Table. They had among their children, obviously Jonathan, we'll just call him Edwards at this point, and then 10 other children, all of whom were daughters. And there were four older daughters and then Jonathan and six younger daughters. Both of his parents were very tall. Jonathan was tall himself in a day in which I would have been average height. In that day, Edwards was, he was over six feet. And apparently all of his sisters were as tall as that too. People talked about Timothy Edwards as 60 feet of daughters. which indicates that the sisters were also very tall women. What Timothy Edwards did, unlike a number of other New England pastors, he educated his daughters as assiduously as he educated Jonathan. Thus he taught them Latin and Greek. The older sisters actually helped tutor Jonathan as he was growing up. And in fact, Timothy Edwards ran a school in the town and the older sisters helped teach in the school when Timothy was occupied with other things or if he was away on certain occasions. It gave to the Edwards sisters a strength of character which one finds in their diaries and letters. For instance, during the Great Awakening It is his sister Mary who believes the Great Awakening is not from God and she's got real problems with it and she writes, we have on hand, we have existing a long letter she wrote to Jonathan in which she was laid out scriptural proof why the Awakening was not from God and why Jonathan should not be involved in it at all. And so there's a strength of character here which comes from his father's training of the daughters. And Edwards would do the same with his daughters. He would give them a significant depth in terms of scripture in a way that was unusual for that day. At the age of 12 or so, in 1715-1716, he goes to Yale. He graduates by 1720 with his BA. education uh... uh... but we would describe today as uh... university education in that day is probably more equivalent to the upper levels of high school and so if you're looking at the the age and i think he's twelve years old gets it working as b a uh... he is a genius but that there is no doubt but uh... this was typical in the period He is not converted until 1721. And let me put a little circa there to indicate that we do not know the date. Edwards never specified the date. He is like, in this regard, the Puritans as a whole. They are not interested in specifying the time of conversion. What is critical is conversion has taken place and there's been a radical shift in one's affections and one's pathway and so on. It is after the Great Awakening that individuals become very concerned about dating their conversion and probably a key figure in this regard is John Wesley who can actually date the time. It was at 845 on the evening of May the 24th, 1738. He actually records it in his diary. But Edwards here is very much a Puritan. No dating of his conversion. The reason why we know it's roughly 1721 is a number of factors. He starts ministry in 1722. Something he would never have entered upon given his background, his training, if he had not had the experience of conversion. It was after his time at Yale, so it's roughly 1721. Ian Murray in his biography of Edwards, that's the date he argues for. Between 1722 and 1723, he has two pastorates. They are brief. One of them, the first one, is in New York City, NYC there, which is hardly what it is today. The British had captured it from the Dutch, as you probably know. It was originally a Dutch settlement, at least lower Manhattan. Wall Street was actually named after the wall that the earliest Dutch settlers there built to protect the settlement. It had been taken by the British a number of years before this, and his first pastorate was in a small Presbyterian church in New York City. Edwards talks about going along the Hudson River and meditating on Christ. And it would have been in the Hudson, right there at the lower end of Manhattan, that he would have walked, probably outside of the settlement, walking up along the shore there. The other place where he was very briefly for a couple of months, for about four months, is in Bolton, Connecticut. He is not settled and he believes initially that maybe an academic career would suit him better and so we find him in 1724-1726 back at Yale studying for his MA which he does receive in 1726. What he had thought was a possible course for his life, namely an academic sphere, he soon realizes is also not God's calling on his life. And this is a period of time in which there is great He is very unsettled in these couple of years as to what the Lord is leading him to do. It's not until 1726 that he is actually called to Northampton and he finds God's pathway for his life. And he is called there to accept and help his grandfather as his grandfather's assistant pastor. His grandfather had been a pastor of the church at that point for 57 years. His grandfather started pastoring in that congregation in 1669, as a very young man. And his grandfather had... Is that actually his father? Grandfather. His grandfather had introduced some significant changes into the church from the church that he had started pastoring in 1559. And these are key issues, and I'll sketch it out very quickly because it does affect the whole issue of Edwards' understanding of revival. His grandfather had come there in 1669. He was the second pastor. The first pastor had died within a year or so. His name was Eliezer Mather. And Solomon's daughter married this man's widow. And thus he was related to the Mathers. And the Mathers were one of the key Puritan families in Boston. Increase Mather was therefore a relative, and Cotton Mather, these two key figures. and uh... they went back to a puritan leader named richard mader and cotton mader was named after john cotton because john cotton is linked into the family by by uh... by marriage as well the maders would become the fiercest opponents of uh... solomon stoddard over the issue now that i'm going to detail uh... stoddard became uh... the pastor in sixteen sixty nine About a year or two after his pastorate, he had an experience at the Lord's table where he was assured of his salvation. Most scholars believe it was an experience of assurance he had rather than conversion. But this will be a prominent aspect, a prominent event in his own thinking as we will see. By the time that Stoddard became the pastor of this church. There had been adopted in a number of churches in New England what's called the halfway covenant. And the halfway covenant provided a way that men and women who had not experienced salvation could have their children baptized. The Congregationalist churches in New England had been founded on the principle that only those who were members of the church could have their children baptized. Both parents had to be members of the church to have their children baptized. To be a member of the church, you had to be able to give a clear testimony of conversion. In the 1660s, some of the churches adopted what was known as the halfway covenant. And this came from the pressure of some parents who argued. They were the children of members, but they themselves had not experienced conversion. And they asked their pastors, would it not be possible for us to have some of the benefits of membership? Namely, could we not have our children baptized even though we cannot profess conversion? And thus there was this significant pressure from a number of families and there is a movement away from the original foundations of congregationalism. This does not happen in England, it only happens in New England. And thus congregationalists like John Owen, or Philip Doddridge, later congregationalist, or Isaac Watts, did not go through any of this argumentation. It only happens in New England, in Massachusetts, and Connecticut. A number of pastors give way to these requests and thus the halfway covenant was established in which a couple could have their children baptized if they professed to believe intellectually in the truth of the Christian faith and if they pledged themselves to live a moral life. The one key thing that they did not have was the experience of conversion. And Stoddard instituted this in the Northampton Church, but he went further. By the late 1670s, definitely by 1690, we don't have any statement from Stoddard until 1690. We have statements by the Mathers about Stoddard before 1690, and also a great Puritan writer who is very hardly known today, named Edward Taylor. Edward Taylor was the pastor at Westfield, Massachusetts and very few of his writings were published in his life. He wrote more than any poet in the 16th and 17th century in the English language, but none of it was published in his lifetime. He gave explicit instructions that none of it be printed by his family. Fortunately, his family preserved it and it was in the 1930s that it was rediscovered and it began to be published. And he is an extraordinary, extraordinary Puritan poet. And if you like poetry, as I do, it's just fabulous. It's just awesome what the writing of this particular man, not at all known in his own day, He lived not far from Northampton, was a stern critic of Stalin and Stoddard. He did write a book against Stoddard on this issue of what I'm going to now detail, where Stoddard goes beyond the halfway covenant. By 1690 definitely, probably before, Stoddard had come to the conviction the goal of the halfway covenant was to encourage men and women to participate in some of the privileges of membership, but really to go the whole way. It was to be an incentive to be converted. Stoddard felt it wasn't working, and it wasn't. Men and women were quite content. They had their children baptized. It's evident, I think, in this that there is almost a superstitious view of baptism. Baptism became almost a kind of way of safeguarding their children physically and spiritually. And once they got that done, as it were, they didn't need anything else. And so Stoddard felt that the solution was to open the table to all of these halfway members. That would be one privilege, in addition to the privilege of voting for the pastor, electing pastor and elders and deacons that they had not had. And so he opened the privilege of allowing these halfway members to come to the table. And thus, he argued that the Lord's Supper was meant to be a converting ordinance. Not surprisingly, the Mathers in Boston and Edward Taylor in Westfield were stern opponents of this and felt that this was not simply was even worse than the halfway covenant. It was undermining the Constitution of their churches. And from a historical vantage point, I think one could say they were right. And so when Edwards comes to Northampton, he has this to face. He's a young man and he is in disagreement with it fairly soon. But he doesn't feel he can challenge it until 1748. His early ministry, his real ministry begins in 1729 when Edwards becomes the pastor of the Northampton Church. And he realizes that there's much that is amiss in the congregation. The most evident thing is the youth of the congregation. We would call them teenagers today. They don't use that word in the 18th century. Some scholars have argued, I'm not particularly convinced that this is right. Some scholars have argued that the concept of a teenager is an invention of the 20th century. And especially in view of the fact that women could be married at 15 or 16. in uh... new england that that's probably the affecting the the marriage will age was fourteen uh... although uh... some families married much later the edwards' daughters didn't marry until their mid to late twenties which is quite remarkable that they when many of the women were married fourteen or so uh... so when you're married fourteen children at sixteen the concept of being a teenager is hardly hardly apropos but be that as it may Edward soon discovered that there were problems in the congregation. The teens were running amok. Family government had broken down in the town. Many of the teens spent their nights out of doors, drinking, what we would describe today as partying, he calls it frolicking, engaged in sexual immorality. But as Edward started to observe the congregation in those couple of early years when his father's assistant, his grandfather's assistant, He realizes the problem is much deeper. The problem is not so much the surface issue of the teens, but the deeper problem is the parents. Number one, family government is broken down. He's not surprised family government is broken down because you have these men and women who are content with their status in the church. They have the privilege of having the table. They have their children baptized, but they're not converted. And their interests and goals and focuses are this world. And acquisition of land or holding on to land. And some of his sternest, some of his most difficult problems actually come from relatives, a group of people known as the Williamses, who are his cousins and all go back to Solomon's daughter. And many of the Williams clan basically saw this whole area of Massachusetts as a great opportunity to amass huge amounts of land at the expense, especially, of the native Indians who were there. And this will bring Edwards into sharp conflict with these people. And as he looks then at the heads of the households, what he sees are men and women who have no concern for the kingdom of God, and not surprisingly, Their children reflect this. They're there faithfully in church week after week after week. Outwardly appear moral and orthodox, but their heart's passion has got nothing to do with those things of Christ and his kingdom. And it is in the 1730s that Edwards, in 1734, will begin to preach on two areas. One is the importance of family government. And one of the things that I haven't, it's only in the last three or four years that this really struck me. How frequently in the 18th century many of those involved in revival emphasize this element of the Christian life. The importance of husbands and wives and especially fathers being the heads of their own household and taking seriously the duties of parents and husbands and fathers in raising their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And this becomes a critical thing. Wherever you see revival in the 18th century, it doesn't matter whether it's Scotland, Wales, England or New England, this theme comes up again and again and again. And it's interesting, sometimes you can read literature from this period and not notice it. And because I was looking, I've spent a lot of time looking for other things and asking different questions. I never saw this. Even though I knew Edwards had emphasized it, but it was just Edwards, I thought, in that situation. And then I started to see it about three or four years ago. I began to realize this is in significant places. This is a key element that these men, like Edwards, believe is a factor in helping the church move towards revival. this whole area of family government. The other thing he preaches on is justification by faith alone. And there is a series of sermons. You can actually read them in the two-volume Banner Edition. I'm pretty certain they'd be in the Yale Edition. The Yale Edition is this critical edition that's been underway since Perry Miller started it in the mid-1950s. It's supposed to come to a close this year. They've really got to hurry it. I'm not sure if they're going to make it. Up to 22, 23 out of a projected 27 volumes. So they've got a few weeks if they haven't all come out. They may have all come out this year, but I don't think so. But they're close to finishing this massive project. Even then it leaves most of Edwards' sermons still unpublished. Edwards has about 1,200 sermons. They will publish at most 300. There's about 900 that are unpublished. And it would take, they have about 30 sermons per volume. It would take another 30 to 40 volumes to complete it. And there's just no way in our day that they're going to put that money into that. I'm told they're putting it on CD. So I've not seen proof of that in a written form, but I've heard that. Edwards, and you can read them, the sermons on justification. in the two-volume banner and I'm pretty certain in the Yale edition. I do not think, I think there are more than two sermons. If you look at it, it looks to me like there's about five or six sermons there in terms of the length and detail. What Edwards emphasized in those sermons was it does not matter who you are in terms of your status in Northampton society. It does not matter who your grandparents might have been or your parents in terms of their standing in the church. It doesn't matter your moral, quote-unquote, background or character. If you have not experienced justification by faith alone, you are under the wrath of God. And you have no hiding place in the great day when God will call you to account for what you have done in this life. Edwards links closely the revival that takes place in 1734 to 35 with this preaching. He actually uses the little word, then. It was then, he says, the Spirit of God began to set in amongst us. And that little word, then, is critical. To me it opens up a whole world of thinking of Edwards. For Edwards, at the heart of revival, biblical revival is the preaching of the Word of God. And it is a key instrument in bringing about revival. It is a key instrument in sustaining revival. It is a key element of genuine revival. I find this very important because in our day you have reports of revival. In Toronto, where I'm currently teaching, you have that thing called the Toronto Blessing, 10 years old or so now, in which preaching, there are many other problems, but preaching is not a prominent aspect of it. Preaching prays, if you ever go or if you know of any of the services that these people hold, preaching is like a preliminary, it's a warm-up, and then they have quote-unquote reministry time. And what is shocking is they believe that Edwards would have given his imprimatur to this. One of the first things Edwards would have noticed in terms of the problems with this movement is the fact that preaching is on the back burner. Preaching is not first and foremost. And all of the key figures that one looks at in the 18th century and 19th centuries, in which the new revival, this is always prominent, something they always emphasize. And the reason for that is that our experience is worth nothing if it is not in harmony with the Word. An experience has to be tied back to the Word of God. If it is not intimately tied back to the Word, it's open season, you can have anything. What standard do you have? Not surprisingly, you see the antics, if I might use it that way, of the Toronto Blessing. For Edwards, the word and spirit go closely together. And again, Edwards here is drawing upon a rich heritage of Puritan thought and Reformation thought. The Reformers had to face this. If you read Calvin, having to face this with some of the fanaticism of various Anabaptist groups in 16th century Europe. Or the Puritans, the key group they had to face were the Quakers. There were others like the Muggletonians, and the Ranters, and the Levelers, and the Diggers. But the Quakers were the ones who particularly emphasized the Spirit at the expense of the Word, or exalted the Spirit over the Word. And men like Owen and Baxter argued, no, the Spirit always acts in harmony with the Word. It is Word and Spirit by which we determine the reality of experience. And Edward is building on that and we'll see something of that in the next couple of hours. And so then there is this revival that takes place in 1734-1735. Now let me come back to my notes and then because we'll have more to say about the 1740-42 revival in a few minutes. Page 5, there the second paragraph. Edwards' reflections on heart religion and the religious affections are of immense value because Edwards possessed a wonderful facility for meticulous and minute observation. This facility can be seen in the intriguing and detailed investigation which he conducted during the early 1720s into the way the spiders made their webs. There is a fascinating letter called the Spider Letter which Edwards wrote after observing patiently the way that a certain spider in Massachusetts, rather in Connecticut, made its web. Edwards watched it and all of its detail. He actually drew some diagrams and so on. That letter is still of use to entomologists who are focused on spiders, at least in the observation of external phenomena. And the patience and minuteness that you see in this letter would be later exercised in pastoral ministry. Later in his life, this gift now exercised in the realm of pastoral ministry and theology yielded a profound understanding of the human heart and its workings. Serino E. Dwight, Edwards' grandson and one of his earliest biographers, stated that Edwards' knowledge of the human heart and its operations has scarcely been equaled by that of any uninspired preacher. this might be a little exaggerated um... he is after all a uh... relative of edwards but nonetheless there is i think that the heart of it is true there is a death a profundity in edwards that is remarkable and uh... not not without reason as edwards been described as the american augustine recently and uh... of book uh... review article that i was reading uh... edwards stands i think as a massive figure, not only in this whole issue of revival, but in many, many other areas of theology. Dwight goes on to mention three probable sources for this insightful understanding of the human heart. Edwards' perceptive reading of the Scriptures. Edwards committed himself in 1722, not long after his conversion, to read the Scriptures thoroughly, assiduously, that he grow daily in their knowledge. If Edwards is anything, he is a Bible-centered individual. One of the great illustrations of this is a Bible that Edwards bought in the 1720s when he was a young man. And he broke the back of it. He broke the spine, purposely. And then he inserted, between every page, a blank sheet. It's what we call an interleaved Bible. I've searched for one now and then. I've never found one. for sale. I've seen them, but I've never found one for sale. I have a Greek New Testament that is interleaved, but never an English Bible. That's what he's done. Then what he did was he drew a line on every page, down the middle of the page, a vertical line, and then began to write on both sides of it, observations on the text. It's known as the blank Bible. because of the blank pages that he had inserted, but not because there was nothing written on it. There are close to 10,000 minute, his handwriting is difficult to read, very microscopic in places, observations on the text of the Bible. That's just one of the Bibles he used. He also had a thing in which he called the miscellanies. in which, when he had thoughts on scripture, he wrote them down and numbered them. They're not chronological, they're not related in terms of Bible books, they're just simply thoughts in sequence, in chronological in time. And again, that runs to, I think, about 1,500 of these comments. In other words, here is a man who spent significant time studying the Word of God. And it is from that well that he draws the resources to think about how does the Spirit of God work in the heart. He had a thorough acquaintance with his own heart. This is very Puritan, but again is essential for anybody engaging in pastoral ministry. You need to know yourself. I think of in this connection the question that was instrumental in leading ultimately to the conversion of John Wesley when he had met on the ship going over to went as a missionary in 1736 to convert the Indians of which he would later say, oh who would convert me? I went to America to convert the Indians but who will convert me? He met on that ship a Moravian named August Spangenberg and they had conversation when they reached Georgia and Spangenberg asked him Do you know yourself? It was Wesley, a minister of the gospel in the Church of England, but he was not converted. And Wesley realized he did not know himself. How important it is to know one's own heart. And then Edwards' grasp of philosophy. It should not be surprising that this combination of personal experience and empirical insight, insight that is rooted thoroughly in Scripture, produced one of the most significant books, The Religious Affections, on heart religion in the history of the Church. To quote Lloyd-Jones again, if you want to know anything about the psychology of religion, conversion, revivals, read Jonathan Edwards. There is a story, which as far as I know is a true story, it was told to me by somebody who got it directly from John Gerstner. The individual who told it to me knew Gerstner fairly well, John Gerstner being one of the men who avidly studied Edwards through the fifties, the sixties, and the seventies, up until his death in the, I guess he died in the nineties, I think. But he was an avid student of Edwards. In fact, he was among the team that Perry Miller assembled to do the collected work in the Yale edition of Edwards, although John Gerstner never actually did any of the editions. Apparently, on one occasion, Perry Miller, who was the chief editor and the key figure who started this Yale edition, but who was an atheist, met uh... uh... john gerstner apparently on one occasion went to perry miller's home after miller spent a day reading some of edwards' sermons and uh... he entered into the house and was greeted with the uh... the uh... the question would you like a scotch and uh... gerstner said no no i particularly not and i don't and uh... gerstner and perry miller said well you won't mind if i have a couple before dinner he said I've just been reading Edwards and the man so unnerves me that I have to have a scotch usually afterwards to settle down and the person who told me that got that from Gerstner and it's remarkable that here's a man who is an atheist spent his life studying Edwards as a scholarly it was for him scholarship but the impact of Edwards' sermons Still 200 years later. And a lot of that is Edward is searching, very searching. One further reason for the vital importance of Edwards' thoughts about heart religion is the fact that Edwards was blessed with a heart supremely devoted to the pursuit of the glory of God. According to Joseph Haroutunian, Haroutunian was an Edwards fan, although he was a neo-orthodox church historian of the 40s and 50s. But he was one of those who began to recognize that Edwards had much to say to the contemporary scene. It is remarkable that many of the evangelicals in the 30s and 40s and early 50s had forgotten Edwards. And the reason they had forgotten him is they had lost his reformed convictions and they had embraced a kind of Phineas. And in the providence of God it was an atheist like Perry Miller and some neo-orthodox men like Joseph Haroutonian and Richard Niebuhr who emphasized the importance of the contemporary church to Reed Edwards. According to Joseph Haroutonian, even a superficial perusal of the essays and sermons of God, Edwards, reveals a mind passionately devoted to God, permeated with the beauty and excellence of God. Haroutonian cites as an example in this regard a passage from the sermon, Ruth's Resolution, which Edwards preached during the revival in Northampton in 1734-35, and which was published three years later. Reflecting on Ruth's determination to cleave to her mother-in-law, Naomi, and to embrace her God, the God of Israel, as her own, Edwards stated that this God is a glorious God. There is none like Him who is infinite in glory and excellency. He is the most high God, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders. His name is excellent in all the earth, and His glory is above the earth and the heavens. Among the gods there is none like unto Him. There is none in heaven to be compared to Him, nor are there any among the sons of the mighty that can be likened unto Him. God is the fountain of all good, an inexhaustible fountain. He is an all-sufficient God, a God that is able to protect and defend and do all things. He is the King of glory, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, a strong rock and a high tower. He is a God who has all things in His hands and does whatsoever He pleases. He killeth and maketh alive. He bringeth down to the grave and bringeth up. He maketh poor and maketh rich. The pillars of the earth are the Lord's. God is an infinitely holy God. There is none holy as the Lord, and He is infinitely good and merciful. Many that others worship and serve as gods are cruel beings, spirits that seek the ruin of souls. But this is a God, the delight of mercy. His grace is infinite and endures forever. He is love itself, an infinite fountain, an ocean of it. As Haroutonian notes, this passage is characteristically Edwardian, especially its focus on God's unique excellency and the fact that the God whom the believer seeks to glorify and serve is the creator of the universe and the fountain of all beauty and excellence. Written from this God-centered perspective, Edwards' book on the religious affections, though concerned with the human heart, does not remain enmeshed in issues of theological anthropology, but enables the reader to view these issues from that supreme vantage point of ultimate significance, namely God and His glory. As such, this work, along with others by Edwards, has been recognized by later evangelical authors as providing a benchmark for reflection on the nature of true spirituality. Now the First Great Awakening a little bit, and we've already noted, but also a few other items that need to be noted before we look at this particular book of Edwards. The immediate historical background to the religious affections was the Great Awakening of 1740-1742, which made a profound impact on the entirety of the English colonies in North America. Estimates of those converted to England alone, where the population was around 250,000 at the time, range from 25,000 to 50,000. Yesterday I cited the figures Murray gives of 30,000 to 40,000. Some scholars give as low as 25,000, some as high as 50,000. It's very difficult to ascertain numbers here because church records, by and large, many of the church records in the Spirit no longer exist. These figures, it should be noted, do not include conversions of those who were already church members, which means the impact is even greater. In the middle of the revival, William Cooper, one of Edwards' friends and the Congregationalist minister of Brattle Street Church, Boston, gave his perspective on what God was doing in his day. The dispensation of grace we are now under is certainly such as neither we nor our fathers. This is now, look at the date, if he was born in 1694, he's thinking now of his Puritan fathers. Have seen. And in some circumstances, so wonderful, I believe there has not been the light since the extraordinary pouring out of the Spirit immediately after our Lord's ascension. The apostolical time seemed to have returned upon us. Such a display has there been of the power and grace of the divine spirit in the assemblies of his people. And such testimonies has he given to the word of the gospel. A number of preachers have appeared among us to whom God has given such a large measure of his spirit that we are ready sometimes to apply to them the character given of Barnabas, that he was a good man and full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. They preach the gospel of the grace of God from place to place with uncommon zeal and assiduity. The doctrines they insist on are the doctrines of the Reformation, under the influence whereof the power of Godliness so flourished in the last century. Notice again the link back, the close link back. We are preaching nothing but what the Reformers preached. We are preaching nothing but what the success of the Reformers, the Puritans preached, and God owned that preaching. The points on which their preaching mainly turns are those important ones of man's guilt, corruption and impotence, supernatural regeneration by the Spirit of God, and free justification by faith in the righteousness of Christ and the marks of the new birth. The manner of their preaching is not with the enticing words of man's wisdom, how be it they speak wisdom among them that are perfect. An ardent love to Christ and souls warms their breasts and animates their labors. God has made these his ministers active spirits, a flame of fire in his service, and his word in their mouths has been as a fire and as a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces. Here Cooper places the revival in England within the broad sweep of church history. He is oddly convinced that no other revival in either his lifetime or that of his Puritan forebears is comparable to what God was doing in the early 1740s. In some respects only at the time of Pentecost could one find something genuinely comparable. Those are remarkable statements and yet the remarkable events of those years bear them out to some degree. The preaching through which God brought about this revival, though, did not contain anything new. Essentially, it was the same doctrine of salvation that was trumpeted forth at the time of the Reformation and in the Puritan era. One that highlighted humanity's total depravity, the Spirit's glorious sovereignty in regenerating sinners, and their justification by faith alone in Christ. And the preaching style fit the doctrine. It was plain and ardent. And that also is very important. There were, however, other forces at work in the revival, destructive forces that were making havoc of it. The preaching and example of James Davenport typified these forces. He was a minister from Southwold, Long Island, and came from a distinguished Puritan lineage. Davenport became acquainted with Whitefield in 1740 in New York, and soon sought to imitate the success of the English evangelist. Itinerating throughout New England, he was led, however, into increasingly fanatical attitudes and patterns of behavior. When he came into a town, he would seek to interrogate the minister as to his spiritual state. Those who refused to answer his questions or his answers did not satisfy him, he declared to be unconverted and unfit to be spiritual leaders. By the way, Edwards has disagreements with men on the issues of the revival. He never names them publicly and he cautions in times of controversy, do not get engaged in ad hominem attacks. And he had the evidence of Davenport's follies. Also George Whitefield at times in his early career would state from the public pulpit that so-and-so in his mind was unconverted. And Edwards felt that this was directing attention sometimes in a negative way towards a man and not maybe ideas. Davenport was convinced also he had the ability to distinguish whom was among the elect of God. A gift that he relied upon when he called into question the spiritual state of these various New England ministers. He would then proceed to encourage the members of their congregations to forsake them and conduct their own meetings. Invariably, he would publicly upbraid those members of the clergy he deemed to be unconverted. For example, at New Haven, Connecticut in 1741, he branded the pastor Joseph Noyes an unconverted hypocrite and the devil incarnate. He would do this, obviously he'd ask for a public hearing in the church, he wouldn't get it. So what he would do is simply go down to the common. All of the New England churches, you can still see this in many of the New England churches, they're normally built around, New England town, sorry, they would be built around a common. Typical of an English model, where there would be a village green, that certain public activities would be held there. And so Davenport, if he didn't get an opportunity to speak in the church, would simply go down to the green, set up a portable pulpit, and begin to speak to whomever would come and listen. And you'd hear these horrific things being said about the ministers of the towns. The following summer, 1742, Davenport was in the Boston area region. We spent two months accusing the majority of the Boston ministers as leading their people blindfolded to hell and urging their congregations to pull them down, turn them out, and put others in their places. Not surprisingly, wherever Davenport went, he left divided congregations in his wake. That joke that's annoying, is this the one that had the community, uh, they all, what, 20 families and they, uh, No, I think that's a later noise. I think that's later in the 1700s, almost like a shaker community. I think that's later. Again, what we see here is that in times of awakening, these things will happen. I think the Reformation is a time of revival. And yet you have the appearance there of certain, especially Anabaptist groups, who are just frankly off the wall theologically. Like the Zwickau prophets who believed that if God had wanted them to have Bibles for guidance, he would have sent Bibles down to Pentecost, but he sent the Spirit. They didn't need Bibles. Or in the time of the Puritans with the Quakers, the Quakers were a major disruptive force. During the 1650s, when God is incredibly blessing Presbyterian, Congregationalist and Baptist churches in England, and they are mushrooming in terms of numbers and churches being planted, you have the appearance of the Quakers. And Quaker men and women coming into congregations, standing up in the middle of sermons. denouncing the minister or demanding that they had, that they be given the opportunity to speak. Some of them even doing such radical things which were deeply disturbing to the congregations as stripping off their clothes and saying it was a prophetic sign that God was going to strip off the righteousness of their congregations. And these things, rather than looking at these things and say, well that means the whole revivals in question. We need to recognize when God does a deep work, Satan is always going to be there seeking to confound the work, confuse the work. You see this in the New Testament. Edwards could point to, look at the Corinthian church. There was undoubtedly an outpouring, a rich outpouring of the Spirit in Corinth. Remarkable. But then you read through 1 Corinthians and you see some of the major problems in that church. And we shouldn't be surprised that when God does a great work, Satan seeks to oppose it. And therefore, the great importance of knowing, as Edwards did, what are the contours and shape of biblical Christianity. Davenport's evident fanaticism and 18th century jargon enthusiasm provided anti-revival forces known as the Old Lights with a highly visible target for their attacks. To them, he came to epitomize the anarchy and destruction of church harmony the revival inevitably brought in its wake. The captain of these forces was Charles Tauncy, the junior pastor of Boston's prestigious First Church. Short in stature, assertive in temperament, Tauncy came to be known as Old Brick, which is also the name of the church he pastored. George Marsden suggested this may have been due to the fact that he resembled a brick, both in appearance and in his solid temperament. Actually, if you've seen a picture of him later in life, he looks kind of like a brick, you know, he's got a square shape. Chauncey was first written of the Revival in 1741, when he actually gave thanks for what the Spirit of God was doing. He had no doubt, he wrote, that there were a number in this land upon whom God has graciously shed the influence of this Blessed Spirit, something for which he and his readers ought to be thankful. Yet he went on to note some concerns. There have arisen unchristian heats and animosities along with rash and sordid uncharitable judging. Evil speaking, reviling and slandering have become all too common. Here Chauncey clearly has in view the uncharitable way that men like Davenport often treated those whom they judged to be unconverted. By the following year the prominent Boston pastor had become much more critical. In July of that year, Davenport had appeared in Boston and specifically sought out Chauncey to pronounce judgment on the latter's spirituality. The encounter which took place in the doorway of Chauncey's study decisively turned the latter against the revival. Chauncey bluntly told Davenport he was suffering from a heated imagination. And the Boston minister quickly fired off a sermon published as, Enthusiasm described and cautioned against. In this work, Chauncey accused Davenport and his ilk of being enthusiasts, who show their true colors by their blatant disregard of the dictates of reason. As a safeguard against their fanaticism, he first encouraged his hearers and readers to use the scriptures, the great rule of religion, the grand test in matters of salvation, to test what was going on in England. He also drew attention to the fact that the Spirit of God deals with man as reasonable creatures. Reason, though not to be set up in place of God's revelation in the Bible, was essential to the Christian life. Failure to use it, as Davenport and his followers appeared to be doing, was a sure way to fall into all manner of delusion. In particular, Chauncey stressed that the arousal of one's passions and affections needs to be carefully monitored. The passions when properly acted upon by the Spirit, tend mightily awaken the reasonable powers. But if one's passions are set ablaze and one's reason and understanding are not enlightened, it is all to no avail. Reason and judgment, the more noble part of the human being, must be preeminent in all religious experience. Otherwise, it is but a sham and enthusiasm. Real religion, he concluded, is, quote, a sober, calm, reasonable thing, end of quote. Taunsi's main attack on the revival was his seasonal thoughts on the state of religion in New England. It continued to press home what Taunsi saw as the main work of the spirit, the enlightenment of the mind. Enlightened mind and not raised affections, he stated, ought always to be the guide of those who call themselves men. And this in the affairs of religion as well as other things. And it will be so when God really works in their hearts by a spirit. Undergirding Chauncey's views was his conviction, this is important to understand where Chauncey's coming from, that the affections were essentially base animal passions that needed to be held in check by reason. What he has done there, he has taken as biblical an idea of what we call the enlightenment, the age of reason. that there are two parts of man is reason and is affections or emotions or passions and the reason is that which makes us men the emotions or passions or affections are almost animal-like and we need to hold them in check by our reason and we'll see our Edwards responses and I think I don't think that's a biblical model as Edwards will show As the religious situation in New England began to polarize between those who chalked Chauncey's position and those who defended the revival excesses and all, a Presbyterian named John Moorhead, who was sympathetic to the revival, prayed, God direct us what to do, particularly with pious zealots, Davenport, and cold, diabolical opposers, Chauncey. Incidentally, Nobody knew it at the time, but Chauncey was on a theological journey away from Trinitarian Christianity. By the end of his life, he was a major defender of Unitarianism, and one of the key figures that would lead to the downfall of many churches in England into Unitarianism. But no one knew this at the time, and that did not appear until after Edwards' death. The answer to Morehead's prayer came by way of a series of books from the pen of Edwards on the nature of true spirituality. In them, Edwards found himself in the unenviable position of giving an answer to both sides of the debate about the nature of the work of the Holy Spirit and what is a genuine revival. But from this theological crucible, there was brought forth one of the richest books on Christian spirituality in the history of the church, a treatise concerning religious affections. Well, we're going to stop here and then when we come back, we'll pick up at this point and then also do the next lecture. Any questions before we break? We'll break for 15 minutes till 10 o'clock. I'm trying to go back to what you were mentioning about the biography of Edward. There were roughly 20 years where he was at Northampton while what we call the heresies of Stoddard was going on? Yes. and he didn't do anything about it. No. Do we have any other record of his soul angst or anything like that? Yes, and I've not looked at that part of his writings, but there is evidence that he had long been plagued inwardly by this and had disagreed with it. And he basically waited for the most. He waited for what he thought was a propitious time. He knew the strength of his daughter, Even in the 1734-35 revival, where he'd been there about five to six years, six years at that point, he talks about how when the revival came, there needed to be a spiritual giant there. And he was not that man. Which is quite remarkable. His grandfather had enormous stature and standing in the community. And a key part of that were the Williamses, his cousins. who basically perpetuated the memory of the grandfather and perpetuated the authority of his teaching in this regard. And so yeah, it's not until the mid-1740s that Edwards feels he has the standing to tackle his grandfather. And we'll see how that fares. Ed Northampton? No, because Edwards is voted out. Yeah, although later I understand they did adopt Edwards' view, but by the mid-1800s they're walking down the pathway of Unitarianism. Basically, the churches that cited the Edwards were preserved from Unitarianism in the next generation, two generations. Those who opposed Edwards eventually ended up, many of them, going Unitarian. On this issue of the who can receive the Lord's Table. Unitarianism as it was presented in New England in that period of time was a very attractive philosophy in terms of emphasizing the goodness of man, the ability of humanity for their own self-determination, which tied in very nicely with the fledgling America of the late 1790s and the early 1800s where the idea was we can achieve anything we set our minds to and Unitarianism fit that nicely because of the emphasis on the goodness of man. It was not simply the emphasis on the doctrine of the Trinity but it was a whole package that was emphasized there. yes he is very good yep he is dealing with started the start arty and problem in those sermons on justification by faith but they the front the front uh... to confronted head-on is not until the seventeen forties uh... freedom freedom heisen is uh... is is a forerunner. There's no doubt about that. He's often been obscured and there's a great book that Dr. Beecke has brought out on his sermons and sketches his early career. He's in Manhattan. He comes out of a Dutch pietist background. He comes over here around 17, 17, mid 17 teens I think it is. And initially to Manhattan then into into some of the Dutch colonies, Dutch settlements in New Jersey. and he definitely is a forerunner and Edwards knows of his preaching he calls him a Framinghauser and he knows of his preaching and talks of him experiencing revival in those communities so he definitely is a forerunner yeah I think he does need to be mentioned in the great awakening as a man who comes before it like for instance in England a man like Griffith Jones who was solid, experiencing blessing on his ministry, and was almost like a John the Baptist figure in that sense, and like the same of Friedlinghausen.