A New Divinity: Transatlantic Reformed Evangelical Debates during the Long Eighteenth Century [1 ed.] 9783666552854, 9783525552858

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Mark Jones/Michael A.G. Haykin (eds.)

A New Divinity Transatlantic Reformed Evangelical Debates during the Long Eighteenth Century

Reformed Historical Theology Edited by Herman J. Selderhuis in Co-operation with Emidio Campi, Irene Dingel, Elsie Anne McKee, Richard Muller, Risto Saarinen, and Carl Trueman

Volume 49

Mark Jones / Michael A.G. Haykin (eds.)

A New Divinity Transatlantic Reformed Evangelical Debates during the Long Eighteenth Century

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

To Chester Chummie: With Appreciation For Edwin Ewart, a lover of Truth and teacher of theology

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek: The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data available online: http://dnb.de. © 2018, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher. Typesetting: 3w+p, Rimpar Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISSN 2197-1137 ISBN 978-3-666-55285-4

Contents

Editors’ Introduction

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Mark Jones / D. Patrick Ramsey 1. The Antinomian-Neonomian Controversy in Nonconforming England (c. 1690) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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William VanDoodewaard 2. The Marrow Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37

Ian Hugh Clary 3. “A catholic spirit”: George Whitefield’s Dispute with the Erskines in Scotland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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HyunKwan Kim 4. The Doctrine of Free Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Daniel W. Cooley / Douglas A. Sweeney 5. The Edwardseans and the Atonement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Paul Helm 6. The “Modern Question”: Hyper-Calvinism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Mark A. Herzer 7. Eschatology: Spes Meliorum Temporum

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Nathan A. Finn 8. The Particular Baptist Battle Over Sandemanianism . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Michael A. G. Haykin 9. Andrew Fuller and the Fading of the Trinitarian Imagination . . . . . . 193

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Scott Sealy 10. Church Authority and Subscription in the Synod of Philadelphia (1721–1741) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205 Paul Kjoss Helseth 11. The Legacy of John Witherspoon and the Founding of Princeton Theological Seminary: Samuel Stanhope Smith, Ashbel Green, and the Contested Meaning of Enlightened Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233 Robert Smart 12. Is Revival from God? The Great Awakening Debate Between Two Moderates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 Index of Names

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303

Editors’ Introduction

This is a book on theological debates during the “Long” Eighteenth Century. By “Long” we have in view a period that goes beyond 1700–1799. But quite how far that period extends has not been agreed upon. English literature scholars might go as far back as John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667) and take the “century” forward as far as the deaths of Keats, Shelley, and Byron (1820s). Political historians might choose to begin the “century” with the Restoration (1660), but certainly by the Glorious Revolution (1688) all the way to the Reform Act (1832), though perhaps stopping at the Battle of Waterloo (1815). Whatever the case, clearly there is no established clearly defined period that makes up the Long Eighteenth Century. For historical theologians, the problem may be even more acute. Our own “period” in this volume is arbitrary in many respects. This depends in part on when we choose to date the end of Puritanism. The Act of Uniformity (1662) may be the beginning of nonconformity. At this point, Puritanism effectively ended, though many have argued that the transition from Puritanism to Protestant Dissent came after 1689 with the Act of Toleration. With the Act of Toleration all parties who had hitherto been in conflict began to lay down their weapons and peacefully coexist. But there were still many theological debates that would emerge or gain momentum based upon past (somewhat) unresolved debates among broadly Reformed theologians. This volume does not really move into the nineteenth century. So it is very much an eighteenth century book. But we do begin earlier than 1700, which means our “century” is longer than 100 years. What were some of these theological debates that we have chosen to highlight in this volume? After the Act of Toleration, Protestants in England and New England did manage to co-exist without some of the incredible persecutions that marked the seventeenth century. But the history of the church teaches us that theological controversies never go away. This book is evidence of that during the Long Eighteenth Century. We have decided to begin this century with the NeonomianAntinomian debates that took place towards the latter part of the seventeenth

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Editors’ Introduction

century. Even here, this particular debate has a rich history, going back to the 1620s–30 s both in England and New England. Martin Luther coined the word “antinomian” in 1539, which had a much different meaning when it was used in the debate highlighted in the first chapter of this volume. As Jones and Ramsey show, the term “neonomian” was coined by Isaac Chauncy in his debates during the 1690s against Daniel Williams. Historically speaking, “neonomianism” is simply the pejorative term for the perceived Arminianism of the moderate Presbyterians. The chapter by Jones and Ramsey describes not only the rise of Antinomianism, as a way to understand the broader context of the Antinomian-Neonomian debates in the 1690s, but also the theological nature of the debates (e. g., conditionality, justification, etc.) between the Congregationalists (e. g., Isaac Chauncy & Richard Davis) and moderate Presbyterians (e. g., Daniel Williams, William Bates, & John Howe). The Antinomian-Neonomian debates in the 1690s provide a natural gateway into the Marrow controversy in Scotland. Many of the theological issues that arose during the Marrow controversy (1718–1726) were already discussed before in the seventeenth century among leading Reformed theologians. In fact, as William VanDoodewaard notes, it was particularly due to the somewhat forgotten work, The Marrow of Modern Divinity by Edward Fisher, which first appeared in print during the summer of 1645. Fisher’s Marrow has an intriguing seventeenthcentury context, which deserves more scholarly attention. This work was eventually republished in 1718 in Scotland, two years after the famous Auchterarder controversy, which led to the Church of Scotland in 1717 rejecting certain theological propositions that highlighted what VanDoodewaard and other scholars believe to be certain legalistic and hyper-Calvinistic tendencies in the Church of Scotland at that time. Eventually, in 1720, Fisher’s Marrow came under a sort of ban by an Act of the General Assembly. A new edition of The Marrow appeared in 1726, which included extensive explanatory notes by Thomas Boston, who was one of the “Marrow Men.” VanDoodewaard highlights the various theological debates that took place during the Marrow controversy, such as preparationism versus preparatory grace, the relationship of saving faith and repentance, and the gospel offer. Among other things, VanDoodewaard’s chapter shows the inter-relationship of theology over the centuries. The Marrow controversy was, in part, a question over who was being more faithful to the doctrines of the Westminster Confession of Faith. Ian Hugh Clary looks at a debate on the nature of revival between George Whitefield and the Erskine brothers. Controversy often followed the itinerant ministry of the transatlantic revivalist George Whitefield. Whether it involved his dispute with Wesleyan Methodists over predestination, or his challenges to what he termed “unconverted ministers,” Whitefield, especially in his youth, courted

Editors’ Introduction

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controversy and even welcomed it. However, after his first preaching trip to Scotland Whitefield found himself on the receiving end of serious criticism by ministers of the Associate Presbytery, many of whom, like the brothers Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, he once counted as friends. As their dispute over ecclesiology grew more heated, Whitefield himself cooled in his taste for debate – it was at this time that he began to negotiate a truce with John Wesley, and softened in his critiques of Anglican clergy. Clary’s chapter outlines the nature of Whitefield’s relationship to the Associate Presbytery, his own developing ecclesiological convictions, and the resulting controversy that ensued upon his refusal to limit his preaching to their churches only, in neglect of Church of Scotland pulpits. Moving over to New England, HyunKwan Kim offers us insight into whether Jonathan Edwards’s view on the will is a departure from classical Reformed thinking. His essay identifies the apparent chasm between the Westminster Confession and Edwards’s view on the subject of free choice. To the surprise of some, Edwards has a philosophical position that is consistent with materialistic determinism. As HyunKwan Kim notes, in this respect, Edwards diverges from the classic Reformed orthodox position. Aristotelian faculty psychology and medieval modal logic enabled Reformed authors to preserve room for contingency in human actions (so the Westminster Confession). For Edwards, however, Lockean faculty psychology enables him to try to develop his own theological compatibilism against Arminian libertarianism. So we have evidence of the Reformed theological tradition diversifying even more so with the contributions of Jonathan Edwards. In some respects, Edwards remains in focus in the following chapter by Daniel Cooley and Douglas Sweeney. In this chapter the authors consider the “Edwardseans” and their preference for the so-called “moral government” theory of the atonement over against the substitutionary theory that was most dominant in Reformed circles. The moral government theory of the atonement was part of what became derisively known as the “New Divinity” theology. This theology was birthed in the revivals of the 1730s and 1740s in New England. In this chapter Cooley and Sweeney highlight some of the distinctive marks of the “New Divinity” school of thought, particularly in the areas natural ability and moral inability, immediate repentance, and the imputation of Adam’s sin in order to provide the context for analyzing the relationship between Jonathan Edwards and his followers. Some have argued that Edwards was not responsible for the later “deviations” from Reformed orthodoxy, but this chapter shows that the story is not quite so simple. In the end, by comparing Jonathan Ewards with his son’s theology of the atonement, the authors show that the heirs of Edwards were building off a platform that Edwards had developed. In other words, there is a degree of strong continuity – while admitting some dissimilarity – between Edwards and the Edwardseans. According to the authors, the latter group, fol-

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Editors’ Introduction

lowing from Edwards, adapted Calvinistic atonement theology into a “Edwardsean moral government theory” that proved to be controversial but necessary in light of the challenges from those who held to a “universalist” understanding of the atonement. Paul Helm looks at the thorny historical-theological phenomenon known as Hyper-Calvinism, which Helm notes was variegated. He looks at two of the major players in the debate, John Gill and Andrew Fuller. These two figures allow Helm to look at the Hyper-Calvinism dispute in terms of the manner of the communication and reception of the gospel. He highlights the differences in how the message of the gospel was communicated in order to show how this affected the hearers and their understanding of what the message is. In other words, the “how” and the “what” of offering the gospel are interconnected. This was, as Helm shows, a debate with real consequences for the life of the church in England during the eighteenth century. Mark Herzer’s essay on eschatology shows the acute differences in John Gill’s and Jonathan Edwards’s conception of the millennium. Though anachronistic millennial labels may not perfectly represent their positions, Gill can easily be categorized as a premillennialist while Edwards would represent the new and emerging postmillennial position that began to dominate the eighteenth century. Herzer also charts their remarkable similarities and deep attachment and dependence on seventeenth-century thought. Both embraced the historicist method of interpreting the Apocalypse which was rife in the previous century. Like almost all Reformed theologians of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, they worked through the Apocalypse with at least one thing certain, namely, that the Pope was the Antichrist. Surprisingly, their disparate millennial expectations still led both of them to expect a very hopeful future in world history (spes meliorum temporum). For all their homogeneity, each theologian differed greatly as they speculated on the details of the fulfillment of the Apocalypse. Though Gill’s millenarianism had its genesis in many of the Puritans of the previous generation (Joseph Mede, Thomas Goodwin, William Twisse, John Cotton, Increase Mather, William Bridge, Jeremiah Burroughs, etc.), his unique and eccentric eschatological speculations had little historical roots. Edwards unwaveringly sought to read contemporary events recorded in newspapers in terms of his eschatological timetable. Both expected a millennium but they differed as to what that would look like. What can be seen from these two representatives of the eighteenth century is that Reformed reflections on eschatology was not moribund but was instead vibrant, diverse, and yet tethered to the seventeenth century. Even though Gill was more in line with the latter part of seventeenthcentury millenarians and Edwards more engaged with eighteenth-century scholarship (cf. Moses Lowman), they both strongly adhered to Reformed orthodoxy.

Editors’ Introduction

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Nathan Finn considers the Sandemanian controversy, which was a debate that took place among Baptist theologians and pastors. The Sandemanian movement offered a restorationist critique of mainstream evangelicalism. The most controversial Sandemanian view was its advocacy of “bare faith” in the facts of the gospel, which constituted a denial that repentance is an element of saving faith. When some Calvinistic Baptists in Scotland and Wales became attracted to Sandemanian views, the Baptist theologian Andrew Fuller wrote an influential treatise against Sandemanianism in general and the doctrine of bare faith in particular. As Finn shows, when the Sandemanian influence began to wane among the British Baptists, many observers agreed that Fuller’s polemic had played the decisive role in the controversy. Michael Haykin examines one of the most significant challenges faced by Reformed orthodoxy in the Eighteenth Century, namely, the undermining of confidence in the Triunity of God. Beginning in the 1690s and drawing ammunition from the fledgling Enlightenment’s supreme confidence in human reason, critics of the classical Christian understanding of God ignited a debate that dominated much of the century. It resulted in the loss of one entire Reformed community, that of the English Presbyterians, to heterodoxy and notable conflict within the ranks of the Congregationalists and Particular Baptists. Haykin looks at one slice of the dispute within the Particular Baptist ranks, that involving the defection of Edward Sharman, a founder of the Baptist Missionary Society, and his spirited attack on the Trinitarianism of Andrew Fuller, the leading Particular Baptist theologian in the latter decades of the Long Eighteenth Century. Though Fuller did not reply specifically to Sharman, the details of his Trinitarian thought are well enough documented to delineate the shape of what he would have said to his former colleague. This chapter thus helps to demonstrate that the Eighteenth Century must be given due weight in histories of the doctrine of the Trinity. Scott Sealy’s essay on ecclesiological debates shows that when Presbyterians in the American colonies began organizing their church courts in the early Eighteenth Century, they did so in the midst of an international debate on the authority of these institutions, particularly in the question of confessional subscription. Sealy’s chapter examines the events related to subscription that preceded the schism between “Old Side” and “New Side” in 1741 within the context of the greater discussion, especially in the General Synod of Ulster. His chapter also shows that the ecclessiology and views of polity of the Irish Non-Subscribers was adopted by the New Side contributing to the division as well as the limits of authority incorporated into the church’s constitution in the reunion of 1758. Paul K. Helseth’s essay explores the tension within what Mark Noll refers to as the “Princeton circle” that led to the founding of Princeton Seminary in 1812. It is generally assumed that Princeton Seminary was founded because more conservative members of the College Board of Trustees were troubled by the quality

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Editors’ Introduction

and general direction of the education the College was providing at the end of the Long Eighteenth Century. But why were they troubled? Were they troubled because the College’s President, Samuel Stanhope Smith, was carrying out Witherspoon’s vision of enlightened education in a faithful fashion, as Smith maintained and as the consensus of critical opinion would have us believe? Or, were they troubled because Smith had abandoned Witherspoon’s vision due to his accommodation of the more anthropocentric assumptions of Scottish Common Sense Realism, as Ashbel Green and his more conservative associates believed? Helseth argues that the founding of the Seminary was not an attempt to advance the more moderate interests of the Scottish intellectual tradition, but to recover an approach to enlightened education that was thought to have been compromised by Smith’s more wide-ranging appropriation of Enlightenment thought. In short, Helseth rightly challenges the consensus of critical opinion by arguing that the tension that was the immediate impetus for the founding of the Seminary is best explained by pointing to the religious and educational entailments of the philosophical psychologies of Samuel Stanhope Smith and Ashbel Green. It suggests that Smith was conceiving of the educational mission of the College in a more robustly Scottish sense because he had accommodated a philosophical psychology that made it impossible for him to embrace precisely what Green and his more conservative colleagues were eager to recover, namely an understanding of enlightened education that was grounded generally in Witherspoon’s more Augustinian theology, and specifically in the religious and educational entailments of his more Augustinian understanding of the unitary operation of the soul. In the final essay, Robert Smart gives detailed attention to a rather well-known debate in the eighteenth century between two leading Congregational ministers, Jonathan Edwards and Charles Chauncy. The debate focussed on the nature of the work of the Holy Spirit in relation to what has been called the Great Awakening. Edwards believed that the Great Awakening was, in the main, a work of the Spirit, but Chauncy had more reservations. Chauncy conceded that the Spirit might work in revival, but he held to certain theological views that kept him from accepting that the Great Awakening was a legitimate work of the Holy Spirit. He could not accept, like Edwards did, that revival was a mixed work, which included both biblical and unbiblical elements. Nonetheless, as Smart shows, Edwards did in fact acknowledge the validity of Chauncy’s criticisms regarding certain aspects of the Great Awakening. Calvinistic Baptists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists all had their internal theological disagreements. Sometimes, of course, these disagreements crossed ecclesiological boundaries, as in the Antinomian-Neonomian debate. These debates were also transatlantic. Whether in books or people travelling across the Atlantic, there were new theological ideas emerging constantly

Editors’ Introduction

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throughout the eighteenth century. Many of these ideas, especially if they were new, were not received well. This volume attempts to give scholars a look at the nature and content of theological debate in the eighteenth century and what appears also to be an ever-widening Calvinistic tradition. In his introductory chapter to our previously edited work, Drawn into Controversie: Reformed Theological Diversity and Debates Within Seventeenth-Century British Puritanism, Richard Muller claimed that “the eras of the Reformation and of Reformed orthodoxy were times of intense polemic and debate, initially over issues of confessional identity and confessional boundaries. There were also a large number of debates, varying in intensity, which took place over theological and philosophical issues not immediately related to confessional definition.”1 Instead of a single theological tradition (e. g., Presbyterianism), we have chosen rather deliberately to provide a wider picture of confessional and non-confessional debates in a few theological traditions, in the hope of offering readers a glance at the theological terrain of the eighteenth century in broadly Calvinist circles both in Britain and New England. Like all the previous centuries in the history of the church, debates among Christian pastors and theologians was a fact of Eighteenth century ecclesiological life. “New Divinities” emerged, competing with “Old Divinities” and sometimes there were battles over which side was in fact “New” and what side was “Old.” These battles sometimes get resolved; sometimes they did not. But if scholars, churchmen, theologians, and laypeople wish to understand present-day theological debates, they should look through the annals of church history and consider whether there is, indeed, anything new under the sun. To the degree that this volume can give us an accurate look at the past, with the goal of helping those in the present, we, the editors, consider ourselves to have provided a valuable service, along with these fine essays by the authors, in the service of theology and church history.

1 Ed. Michael A.G. Haykin & Mark Jones, Drawn into Controversie: Reformed Theological Diversity and Debates Within Seventeenth-Century British Puritanism (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 17.

Mark Jones / D. Patrick Ramsey

1.

The Antinomian-Neonomian Controversy in Nonconforming England (c. 1690)

1.1

Introduction

Most theological controversies become nasty, otherwise they would not be controversies. The polemical abilities of those involved, coupled with all sorts of rhetorical tricks, partly explain why the parties rarely end up agreeing. One particularly nasty controversy that lasted nearly a decade occurred among the English Dissenters in London at the end of the seventeenth century. Focusing primarily on soteriological issues, this controversy disrupted the newly formed union between English Presbyterians and Congregationalists. The Presbyterians accused the Congregationalists of Antinomianism, while the Congregationalists fired back with the charge of Neonomianism. Consequently, this chapter in history has been variously referred to as the Antinomian or the Neonomian controversy. In the interests of neutrality, this debate will be referred to in this essay as the Antinomian-Neonomian debate. This late seventeenth-century debate involves various theological terms and concepts that have a fascinating Reformation and Post-Reformation background. The coining of the word “antinomian” dates back to the Reformation period, whereas the word “neonomian” was actually coined in the 1690s by Isaac Chauncy. A brief history of antinomianism will help set the context for the debate under consideration in this essay.

1.2

Martin Luther’s Contribution

Not long after Martin Luther (1483–1546) gained notoriety for his teaching on the doctrine of justification by faith alone, one of his zealous disciples, Johann Agricola (c. 1494–1566), began to quarrel during the late 1520s with another one of Luther’s disciples, Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), over questions relating to

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the law and the gospel.1 In short, at first the principal issue between Melanchthon and Agricola was over whether the preaching of the law was required for repentance and salvation. Agricola believed that the preaching of the gospel (and not the law) produced repentance, and that Melanchthon held to an essentially Roman Catholic view. Luther would himself become embroiled in the controversy with Agricola, which resulted in Luther’s work, Against the Antinomians (1539).2 Thus he coined the term “antinomian” in response to the excessively anti-legal rhetoric coming from those who allegedly belonged in his camp. Of course, the “softly singing Antinomians” (to use Luther’s words) were a little bemused by his response to them. After all, Luther could be guilty of antinomian-like rhetoric himself. In fact, the hero of the English antinomian theologians in the seventeenth century was not Calvin, though he was cited by them, but Luther. The seventeenth-century Scottish theologian, Samuel Rutherford, noted “how vainly Antinomians of our time boast that Luther is for them.”3 David Como makes a telling statement in connection with this: “Luther confessed that some of his early writings had indeed stressed the notion that believers were free from the Law, but claimed that such excessive rhetoric had been necessary to deliver men from the bondage of papal works righteousness. “Now, however, when the times are very dissimilar from those under the pope,” such rhetoric was no longer necessary, and if misunderstood, could lead men to an amoral, fleshly security that threatened […] moral and social order.”4 Luther’s negative statements on the law must be understood in relation to his sixteenthcentury opponents. Plus, his writings must be historically located.5 Context, in the case of studies on Luther, is half the interpretation! Interestingly, it seems Luther would not have been surprised by his heroic status among later antinomian theologians. Even in his treatise Against the Antinomians Luther makes the comment that if he had died at Smalcald, he would have “forever been called the patron saints of such spirits [i. e., the antinomians], since they appeal to my books.”6 But Luther was no “Antinomian”, 1 See Timothy Wengert, Law and Gospel: Philip Melanchthon’s Debate with John Agricola of Eisleben over poenitentia (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997). 2 On Luther’s debate with Agricola, see M.U. Edwards, Luther and the False Brethren (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 156–79. 3 A survey of the spirituall antichrist (London, 1647) 1:69. 4 Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in PreCivil-War England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 113. 5 Interestingly, in his work on the moral law against the antinomians, the Puritan theologian Anthony Burgess draws attention to the differing emphases in Luther’s earlier works versus his later works. See Vindiciæ Legis: or, A Vindication of the Moral Law (1646), 19–20. 6 Luther’s Works, American Edition (55 vols.; ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut T. Lehmann; Philadelphia: Muehlenberg and Fortress, and St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–86), 47:108.

The Antinomian-Neonomian Controversy in Nonconforming England (c. 1690)

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that is, not in the sense that he was against God’s law – specifically, the Ten Commandments. Luther expounded the Ten Commandments in various places, sang the Ten Commandments, and prayed them as well. In fact, he writes: “I know of no manner in which we do not use them, unless it be that we unfortunately do not practice and paint them with our deeds and our life as we should. I myself, as old and as learned as I am, recite the commandments daily word for word like a child.”7 As David Steinmetz acutely observes, Luther “does not reject good works except as the basis for justification. On the contrary, Luther wishes to stress as much as possible the importance of good works in the life of faith.”8 Likewise, Mark Edwards captures well Luther’s objection to the antinomian preachers of his day who were “fine Easter preachers but disgraceful Pentecost preachers, for they taught only redemption through Christ and not the sanctification through the Holy Spirit.”9 This particular criticism would resurface again roughly a century later in Puritan England. Antinomian debates among Lutheran theologians did not end with Luther’s death in 1546. The latter half of the sixteenth century reveals a number of tensions among Lutheran theologians over questions relating to the law and the gospel.10 Melanchthon had in fact changed his view on repentance and agreed that the gospel was alone able to produce evangelical repentance. Perhaps even more controversially, Melanchthon held to a “Reformed” view of the gospel, which included the whole doctrine of Christ, which included repentance. The Gnesio-Lutherans disagreed with Melanchthon’s view (i. e., the “Philippist” position) and defined the gospel narrowly as pure promise, and excluded repentance from the gospel message. Because he supposedly confused “law “ and “gospel” categories, and argued that the gospel produced repentance, Melanchthon was accused of antinomianism. These debates evince that among Lutheran theologians there were competing views on the law and the gospel, particularly in relation to the doctrine of repentance. In the midst of these debates, including the Majoristic controversy, the charges of antinomianism and “popery “ were not infrequently used in order to get the upper hand.

7 8 9 10

LW, 47:109. Luther in Context (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2nd edition, 2002), 119. Luther and the False Brethren, 170. On this, see Martin Foord, “A new embassy”: John Calvin’s ‘gospel’ in Michael Parsons (ed.), Aspects of Reforming. Theology and Practice in Sixteenth Century Europe (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2013), chapter 10. Incidentally, in this chapter, I think that Foord has provided the most reliable essay on Calvin’s view of the law-gospel distinction.

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Mark Jones / D. Patrick Ramsey

Antinomianism in Puritan England

The antinomian movement in England during the seventeenth century was in part a rebellion against Puritan piety and practice. It was also a theological movement that lacked the sophistication found in the writings of the more accomplished Reformed theologians. This lack of sophistication was a great cause of consternation among some Reformed divines who frequently had to defend themselves against the charge of antinomianism from their Roman Catholic opponents. A further complication was the rising Arminian movement within Protestantism. The antinomians may have lacked the precision required to stay clear of various errors, and at the same time maintain historic Reformed truths about sola gratia, but they were experts with their rhetoric – for they were the true defenders of free grace!11 Studies on antinomianism in England during the seventeenth century have not always been kind to Puritan Reformed theologians. Como’s impressively detailed study on antinomianism during this period suffers from some basic misunderstandings of Reformed theology and indeed the Bible itself, which is a fairly common trait among social historians who make theological assessments. For example, he suggests that Puritanism “was a movement that attempted to preserve and reconcile the antinomian and the moralizing elements of the Pauline epistles.”12 John Coffey and Paul C.H. Lim make a valid claim about Puritan theology in relation to Luther’s law-gospel schema, but they incorrectly accuse the Puritans of legalism: “And like the Reformed, they typically qualified Luther’s antithesis between law and gospel, emphasizing the role of God’s law within the Christian life and the local community, and trying […] to recreate godly Genevas in England and America. This legalism provoked an ‘antinomian backlash’ from within, but even when radical Puritans rejected orthodox Reformed ideas about the moral law or predestination or infant baptism, they still defined themselves in relation to the Reformed tradition.”13 Incidentally, noteworthy is the claim that the antinomians often viewed themselves as part of the Reformed theological tradition, not in opposition to it. Scholars today who accuse the Puritans of legalism are simply echoing a pattern well established in the seventeenth century by antinomian theologians, who hurled the “legalist” epithet – as well as “crypto-papist” and the like – towards those who were thoroughly Reformed in their theology. This was often a reaction against Reformed theologians who had used the word “antinomian” to 11 Note Saltmarsh’s book, titled Free Grace (London, 1645); and Robert Towne’s work, The Assertion of Grace (London, 1645). 12 Blown by the Spirit, 130. 13 John Coffey and Paul Chang-Ha Lim, The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 3.

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describe the theology of men like John Eaton (1574/5–1630/31), Tobias Crisp (1600–1643), John Saltmarsh (d. 1647), John Traske (c.1585–1636), and Robert Towne (1592/3?-1664). The aforementioned theologians all had different emphases and did not agree entirely with each other. Therefore, to refer to the “antinomians” is not to refer to a monolithic group of theologians, but certainly a group of theologians who were in error – sometimes serious – according to many orthodox divines.14 Of course, the antinomian divines rejected the label that was imposed upon them. John Saltmarsh, for example, makes use of what would be typically powerful rhetoric in the whole debate: “Can the Free-grace of Jesus Christ tempt any one to sin of itself ? Can a good tree bring forth evil fruit? And shall we call every one Antinomian that speaks Free-grace, or a little more freely than we do?”15 In other words, Saltmarsh and his friends essentially claimed that if to speak of “free-grace” makes them “antinomian,” then they were guilty as charged. If the antinomian theologians evinced clever rhetoric in justifying themselves, the Reformed orthodox divines had a few tricks up their own sleeves too. Anthony Burgess (d. 1664), a prominent Puritan theologian, strongly asserted that the law cannot justify, which means that “we are all Antinomians in this sense.”16 But that was the only sense in which the orthodox could be “antinomian,” namely when it came to the matter of lawkeeping for justification. Like Burgess, those who criticised the antinomians were not fringe theologians who had been seduced by Arminian or Roman Catholic theology. No, they included the Westminster divines. A close reading of the Westminster documents reveal how anti-antinomian they are. Roman Catholicism, Arminianism, and Socinianism were major theological threats in England during the 1640s. But so too was antinomianism. Perhaps this was the case because of what antinomian theology might possibly lead to, rather than what in fact was the case. Even so, stalwart Reformed theologians such as Thomas Goodwin (1600–1680), Thomas Gataker (1574–1654), Samuel Rutherford (c.1600–1661), Thomas Shepard (1605– 1649), and John Flavel (bap. 1630, d. 1691), some of whom had international reputations, wrote copiously on the errors of antinomians. Their polemical works 14 There are typically problems when an “ism” is attached to a word, even in the case of “Puritanism”. The Puritans were not a monolithic movement in terms of their theology. There were a number of Puritans who were not Reformed, for example. Equally, one has to affirm “shared characteristics” (see Como, Blown by the Spirit, 33–38) in order to speak of “antinomianism.” There are dangers involved in this approach, but “lumping” as opposed to “splitting” does have its advantages. Scholars, to this point, have used “antinomian” and “antinomianism” to describe the theology of a group of certain individuals in England and New England during the seventeenth century, and so I will continue in that trend, even though I acknowledge there can be problems with such an approach. 15 Free Grace, “An Occasional Word”. 16 Vindiciae Legis, 151.

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on the subject reveal that the debate was a little more complicated than whether the moral law is still binding for Christians in the New Covenant. The various debates can be sketched by the following questions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

Are there any conditions for salvation? Is the moral law still binding for Christians? What is the precise nature of and relationship between the law and the gospel? Are good works necessary for salvation? Does God love all Christians the same, irrespective of their obedience or lack thereof ? Who is the subject of spiritual activity, the believer or Christ? May our assurance of justification be discerned by our sanctification? Does God see sin in believers? When is a person justified? At birth or upon believing?17

These are some examples of the issues that were debated during the seventeenthcentury in England. The question over the abiding nature of the moral law was indeed central to the debate, but the aforementioned questions are all in some way related to that question. Yet debates of this nature were taking place not only in England. New England had to contend with many of the same issues.

1.4

Antinomianism in New England

While antinomian debates were raging in England during the 1630s–1650s, the same quarrels were very much alive in New England where another antinomian controversy was taking place: involving (among others) a theologian (John Cotton), a politician (Henry Vane), and a laywoman (Anne Hutchinson). Michael P. Winship has shown that John Cotton (1585–1652) affirmed: “the dispute revolved around how to best magnify the free grace of God.”18 To call the dispute that happened in Massachusetts Bay colony from 1636–1638 the “free grace controversy,” because it “seems both descriptively accurate and prejudicial to none of the actors,”19 is perhaps useful for this reason: antinomian debates have invariably been driven by the question of what it means to preach and teach the “free grace” of God. Anne Hutchinson (bap. 1591, d. 1643) eventually came to the conclusion that only a few ministers were gospel preachers. The others, such as Thomas Shepard 17 This is my own list. Readers of Dutch may consult the sketch provided by G.A. van den Brink in his book, Herman Witsius en het antinomianisme: met tekst en vertaling van de Animadversiones Irenicae (Apledoorn: Instituut voor Reformatieonderzoek, 2008), 51, n. 12. 18 Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 1. 19 Making Heretics, 1.

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and Thomas Hooker (1586?-1647), were basically legalists. One minister whom Hutchinson approved of was the well-known Congregationalist, John Cotton. Hutchinson’s approval of Cotton only complicated matters for him. But as Theodore Bozeman has noted, without Cotton’s role the “famed Antinomian Controversy of 1636–1638 is difficult to imagine.”20 In fact, the controversy involved theologians from across the Atlantic as well. Cotton ended up writing a response to the Scottish commissioner at the Westminster Assembly, Robert Baillie (1602–1662), who had accused him, among other things, of being antinomian.21 Cotton staunchly denied the charge, but Hutchinson’s approval of his ministry was enough evidence for those who were already suspicious of Cotton’s theology. In his response to Baillie, the questions he answers, particularly on the relation of faith to union with Christ and justification, reveal the complexity of the debate. Cotton’s view on faith in relation to justification and union with Christ is highly technical. In short, he claimed that union with Christ takes place before the act of faith. Regeneration and union are roughly synonymous in his schema. As a result, because union precedes faith, so too does justification. However, this is essentially an antinomian view, not the typical Reformed view that faith precedes justification.22 Cotton was, however, fully aware when he departed from orthodox Reformed views, such as his rejection of faith as an instrumental cause in justification. These types of questions were related to other theological issues that were being discussed at the time. With a clear eye on antinomian theology, in 1637 the Synod of Elders, where Cotton was present, declared that certain theological views were “unsafe”. The “unsafe” propositions included the following epithets from antinomian theologians: 1. To say we are justified by faith is an unsafe speech; we must say we are justified by Christ. 2. To evidence justification by sanctification or graces savours of Rome. 3. If I be holy, I am never the better accepted by God; if I be unholy, I am never the worse […] 4. If Christ will let me sin, let him look to it; upon his honour be it. 5. Here is a great stir about graces and looking to hearts; but give me Christ; I seek not for graces, but for Christ […] I seek not for sanctification, but for Christ; tell me not of meditation and duties, but tell me of Christ […].

20 Theodore Dwight Bozeman, The Precisianist Strain: Disciplinary Religion & Antinomian Backlash in Puritanism to 1638 (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia, by the University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 241. 21 The way of Congregational churches cleared (1648). 22 Cotton supposedly retracted his “antinomian” position after debate with the New England elders. See David D. Hall, The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638: A Documentary History (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 411.

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6. I may know I am Christ’s, not because I do crucify the lusts of the flesh, but because I do not crucify them, but believe in Christ that crucified my lusts for me. 7. If Christ be my sanctification, what need I looks to anything in myself, to evidence my justification?23

The above statements get to the heart of the issues involved in the antinomian debates during the 1630s in New England, and indeed in England. They reveal that a century onwards from Agricola’s debates with Melanchthon and Luther the term had taken on a new meaning.

1.5

Nonconforming England

Even after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the antinomian debates did not go away in England, though there were particular decades in the seventeenth century when the rhetoric was fiercer than usual. In the 1690s the controversy erupted once again. This time, the highly respected Dutch theologian, Herman Witsius (1636–1708), played a role in this English nonconformist debate between Presbyterians and Congregationalists.24 One of the factors that set off the debate was the reprinting of Tobias Crisp’s controversial sermons, Christ Alone Exalted. In the early 1640s these sermons caused a firestorm of controversy, and they would do so again decades later by bringing Richard Baxter into the debate. Baxter’s involvement was a little unfortunate for those who claimed to be orthodox in their view of justification by faith alone, and also against “Crispianism,” because Baxter’s doctrine of justification was not orthodox. In fact, the term “neonomian” was coined by Isaac Chauncy (1632–1712) during these debates. After Baxter died (1691) his friend Daniel Williams (c.1643–1716) became the leading spokesman against antinomian theology. Scholars have generally not been kind to Williams, but their negative assessments of his theology pale in comparison to the rhetoric that emanated from Isaac Chauncy’s pen. Chauncy repeatedly referred to Williams as a “neonomian “ because of Williams’s insistence on speaking of the duties of the gospel as well as conditions for salvation. The specific point about “conditions” for salvation shows how complex the debates in the seventeenth century were. As noted above, Baxter’s involvement in the debate was not entirely helpful, particularly since he had been not only the most vociferous enemy of the anti23 Joseph B. Felt, The Ecclesiastical History of New England. Volume 1 (Boston, 1855), “Detrimental Speeches”, 318. 24 See Herman Witsius, Conciliatory or Irenical Animadversions on the Controversies Agitated in Britain, under the unhappy names of Antinomians and Neonomians. Translated by Thomas Bell (Glasgow: W. Lang, 1807).

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nomians during his illustrious theological career, but also because his peculiar theological beliefs – he was sui generis – meant he was also an enemy of a perfectly orthodox theologian called John Owen (1616–1683). Like Baxter and Williams, Owen was anti-antinomian; but unlike Baxter, he was not a neonomian. Owen affirmed conditions for salvation, which was what got Williams into trouble with Chauncy. But Owen was able to affirm conditions for salvation in a manner that was more precise and theologically sophisticated than Williams.25 Thus the antinomian debates in the latter part of the seventeenth century reveal that just as there is a spectrum of antinomian theology (Saltmarsh vs. Crisp), there is also a spectrum of neonomian theology (Baxter vs. Williams), as well as orthodox theologians who had slight differences of expressing certain points of Reformed theology (Goodwin vs. Owen). It is far too simplistic and historically naïve to suggest that someone is only antinomian if they reject the place of the moral law in the life of a believer. And it is likewise wrongheaded to suggest that “neonomians “ are those who speak only of imperatives without the indicatives. Instead, the seventeenth century reveals that both antinomians and neonomians were typically reactionary theologians. Their reactions to the perceived excesses of certain groups were not always helpful or clearly articulated. For every John Owen or Thomas Manton, there was a Richard Baxter or a Tobias Crisp. The application for us today is really no different. In our zeal against errors and heresies we are perhaps the ones most vulnerable to infelicitous statements and hyperbolic rhetoric that often only creates more heat than light.

1.6

Daniel Williams and the Antinomian-Neonomian Debate

Due to the influence of the new edition of Tobias’ Crisp’s sermons, and the preaching of men like Richard Davis, the Presbyterians became concerned about antinomianism among the Congregationalists. Even some Congregationalists shared their concern.26John Flavel, whose own teachings were accused of having “a tang of Antinomianism,” felt compelled to take up his pen because he believed Antinomianism was again on the rise, “to the hazard of God’s truth, and the church’s peace.”27 Flavel’s writings against Antinomianism, however, did not 25 On Owen’s anti-antinomianism and his scholastic distinctions used in the debate, see Gert van den Brink, “Impetration and Application and John Owen’s Theology” in ed. Kelly M. Kapic and Mark Jones, The Ashgate Research Companion to John Owen’s Theology (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). 26 Michael Watts, Dissenters, 292–293. 27 John Flavel, The Works of John Flavel (1820; repr., Carlisle: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 3:551, 420.

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create controversy. That honor belonged to the Presbyterian Daniel Williams who wrote a book refuting the errors of Tobias Crisp, entitled Gospel-Truth: Stated and Vindicated. Several Congregational ministers were troubled by this book, believing that Williams went beyond refuting Crisp, adding his own doctrines “which have been reckoned contrary to the Received and Approved Doctrine of the Reformed Churches.”28 The fact that the majority of Presbyterians in the Union, including several notable ministers, lent their names to “such palpable Deviations from the Truth,”29 led the Congregationalists to believe that the Presbyterians as a whole were infected with Arminianism30 or Neonomianism, the label Isaac Chauncy coined to described the views of Daniel Williams.31 The stage for the antinomian-neonomian controversy among the United Ministers was thus set. Although the issues surrounding Antinomianism and Neonomianism were the most obvious causes for this debate, personalities and party spirit were also major contributory factors. Richard Davis and Daniel Williams were some of the divisive figures. Davis, a strict Congregationalist, irritated the Presbyterians with his ministry methods and his preaching, being accused of Antinomianism. He became such a controversial figure that on January 4, 1692, the managers of the Common Fund ceased supporting his ministry.32 Eventually, on December 26, 1692, the United Ministers, after a number of Congregationalists had already left the Union, publicly declared their opposition to Davis’ practice and teaching, noting “That he never was, nor is by us esteemed, of the number of the United Brethren.”33 Williams created a similar reaction from the Congregationalists with his aggressive stance against anything that smelled of antinomianism, along with his own teaching on the covenants, justification and the atonement. His book, Gospel-Truth Stated and Vindicated, produced a virulent response. In a vendettalike fashion, Isaac Chauncy published a caustic and protracted critique with his three-part Neonomianism Unmask’d in 1692–1693.34 Robert Traill added his 28 29 30 31

[Taylor], History, 9. Ibid, 9. Traill, Works, 1:252–3, 280; Isaac Chauncy, “The Epistle Dedicatory,” in Neonomianism Unmask’d (London: J. Harris, 1692–3). See also Edmund Calamy, An Abridgment of Mr. Baxter’s History of his Life and Times, 2nd ed. (London: John Lawrence, 1713), 515; David Bogue and James Bennett, History of Dissenters (London: 1808), 1:404; J. Hay Colligan, Eighteenth Century Nonconformity (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1915), 15–16. 32 Gordon, Freedom after Ejection, 185–186. 33 The Sense of the United Nonconforming Ministers, In and about London, Concerning some of the Erroneous Doctrines, and Irregular Practices, of Mr. Richard Davis (London: Thomas Cockerill, 1693), 6. 34 The full title: Neonomianism Unmask’d: or, the Ancient Gospel Pleaded Against the Other

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response when he published anonymously A Vindication of the Protestant Doctrine Concerning Justification, and of its Preachers and Professors from the unjust charge of Antinomianism in 1692. Although Traill’s work was shorter and less sharp than Chauncy’s, it still packed a punch. Edmund Calamy described it as “an angry letter,”35 commentating that with its appearance “the hopes of a free brotherly Correspondence vanish’d away.”36 In addition to these written responses to Williams’ book, Congregationalists started to leave the Union. Even though Williams was by no means alone in his views, the Congregationalists would not consider reunion unless the Presbyterians threw him overboard.37 A party-spirit also helped to enflame the controversy. The Presbyterians circled the wagons around Daniel Williams. Sixteen of them, including William Bates and John Howe, endorsed the first edition of Gospel-Truth Stated and Vindicated, while the second edition contained forty-nine signatures. A group of ministers that regularly met at Dr. Upton’s home prevailed upon William Lorimer to pen a lengthy vindication of Williams and those who had attached their name to his book entitled, An Apology for the Ministers Who Subsribed only unto the Stating of The Truths and Errours in Mr. Williams’ Book.38 Several other books and pamphlets were published in defense of Williams.39 After Williams was ousted from Pinner’s Hall, the remaining Presbyterian lecturers walked out with Williams and started a rival lectureship at Salters’ Hall even though they were “Intreated and Courted, with great Importunity to stay at Pinners-Hall.”40 There they were joined by Samuel Annesley and Richard Mayo.41It is noteworthy that Annesley was willing to partner with Williams at Salters’ Hall because he had not signed Gospel-Truth Stated and Vindicated, and was considered to be a high Calvinist.

35 36

37 38 39 40 41

Called A New Law or Gospel. Subtitle: A Theological Debate, occasioned by a Book lately Wrote by Mr. Dan. Williams, Entituled, Gospel-Truth Stated and Vindicated: Unwarily Commended and Subscribed by some Divines. Of Chauncy’s book, Williams writes that in all his years he had never met “a Tract parallel to his [Chauncy], for abusive Language, violent Rage, and uncharitable Censures,” “To the Reader,” in Defense. Calamy, Historical Account, 1:324. Calamy, An Abridgment of Mr. Baxter’s History of his Life and Times, 516. Of all the heated writing produced by this controversy, and there was a lot of it, J.I. Packer has observed that Traill’s pamphlet was the best and the coolest (A Quest for Godliness, 158). The Presbyterians, however, considered it to be one of the fiercest because they understood Traill to be accusing them of rationalism, Arminianism, Pelagianism, Popery, and of corrupting the gospel. The Congregational account of the history of the controversy makes it clear that Williams had to be sacrificed for reunion. See [Taylor’s] A History of the Union. Calamy, Historical Account, 1:325. The ministers were Calamy, Sylvester, Lorimer, Shower, N. Taylor, Kentish, Oldfield, Upton. See Peter Toon, Puritans and Calvinism (Seoul: Westminster Publishing House, n.d.), 92. [Taylor], History of the Union, 26. Calamy, Historical Account, 1:351.

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The Congregationalists also supported one another. After Chauncy and some other Congregationalists expressed their displeasure with Williams to the United Ministers, an attempt at reconciliation was made. A doctrinal statement focusing on the controversial issues was put together and subscribed to by both Chauncy and Williams. Unity, however, was not forthcoming because a further statement was accepted declaring that the United Ministers had not sanctioned Williams’ book as a whole and that they were approving Chauncy’s writings on this controversy. Some Congregationalists saw this as a rebuke to Chauncy, leading them to believe that it was the “firm purpose of the Governing Party of the United Ministers, to Uphold and Justifie Mr. Williams in his Errors.”42 The Congregationalists thus rallied around Chauncy even as they believed the Presbyterians were rallying around Williams. It is tempting to believe that if the divisive personalities had not been present then the party-spirit would not have been encouraged and the two sides would have remained united. Isaac Chauncy certainly thought so as he believed that the controversy would have died with Richard Baxter if it had not been for Williams taking up the mantle.43 An ironic suggestion considering the role Chauncy himself played in the controversy. It is also biased as he could have made the same argument concerning the practice and preaching of Richard Davis or Robert Traill’s published letter. People further removed from the heat of debate, however, have made similar observations. Later Congregational ministers and historians Bogue and Bennett believe that this debate was over nothing of substance but arose out of “misapprehension, bigotry or an irritable temper.”44 They even lay a large part of the blame at the feet of the Congregationalists and at Isaac Chauncy in particular.45 So are Bogue and Bennett correct? Was this sad episode in the life of the English non-conformists more due to demeanor than doctrine? The history of the United Ministers would seem to support this observation. Daniel Williams was a well-known minister, and promiment member of the Happy Union, being a co-author of the constitutional document, The Heads of Agreement. His call to become the pastor of the Congregational church at Paved Alley, Lime Street, London in 1688 was resisted by some in part because they thought he was unsound in doctrine.46 His views on the controverted subjects therefore were not a mystery before the formation of the Happy Union. Nonetheless, the union between the two groups was warmly and widely embraced by most Presbyterian and

42 43 44 45 46

[Taylor], History, 22. Chauncy, Neonomianism Unmask’d, 10. Bogue and Bennett, 1:391. Bogue and Bennett, 1:404, 418. Thomas, Daniel Williams, 5–6; ODNB, s.v. “Williams, Daniel.”

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Congregational ministers in London.47 Furthermore, Williams, Chauncy, and all the other ministers of the Union were openly committed to Reformed orthodoxy as it was necessary for all member churches to own the doctrinal sections of one of the following confessions: 39 Articles, Westminster Confession of Faith, Westminster Shorter Catechism, Westminster Larger Catechism or Savoy Declaration.48 They all again committed themselves to the teachings of these confessions in 1692 when they subscribed to An Agreement in Doctrine, a compilation of confessional passages pertaining to the disputed doctrines, namely, sin, covenant, atonement, effectual calling, justification, faith and repentance, good works, perseverance of the saints, and the moral law. Thus despite their differences, ecclesiastical and doctrinal, the Presbyterians and Congregationalists willingly and knowingly joined hands on the basis of a shared, albeit broad, Reformed orthodoxy. Yet, it didn’t take long for charges of heterodoxy and heresy to fly, especially in the direction of Daniel Williams. It would seem then that Bogue and Bennett are at least partially correct to suggest that much more was going on in this debate than a holy zeal for the truth. The very fact that the debate lasted long after the final bond between the two sides was broken also seems to support their point. At the very least, this sad episode in the life of the London Dissenters demonstrates how difficult it is for Protestants to remain united by means of a shared confession(s) when they have differing views on soteriological matters, especially the doctrine of justification. Although all the major players believed they were within the bounds of the confessions that they had subscribed together, they did not or could not see that those across the aisle were within those same bounds when their differences were highlighted in a heated and very public debate. And when each party refused to throw their controversial friends and mentors to the wolves, their suspicions of the other side’s heterodoxy were all but confirmed. The intriguing question, however, still remains—if cooler heads had prevailed would the Happy Union have remained happy and united? Or, however unwittingly, was this in fact a debate between antinomians and arminians/neonomians or between antinomians and the Reformed or between the Reformed and arminians? Space constraints prevent us from addressing all of these questions in detail. Instead we will focus our attention on the views of Daniel Williams, the man at the center of the debate from beginning to end. Our narrower question then is this: was Williams, as a representative of late English seventeenth Presbyterianism, Arminian? Scholars are divided. Some have suggested that he be47 Williams, Answer, 2. See also Bolan, et al., The English Presbyterians, 102; Dale, History of English Congregationalism, 479. 48 Heads of Agreement Assented to by the United Ministers In and about London: Formerly called PRESBYTERIAN AND CONGREGATIONAL (London: R.R. for Tho. Cockerill, 1691), 14–15.

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came Arminian,49 or that he leaned towards Arminianism50 or that he loosened “the rigours of Calvinism.”51 Others, however, believe that he was thoroughly orthodox.52 In his recent study on the moderate Presbyterianism of John Howe, David Field rejects the ideas that Williams and his fellow Presbyterians were Arminians, betrayers of Calvinism, and legalists, arguing that they were “committed to the fundamentals of a Calvinist theology.” As we now take a fresh look at Williams’ views we will limit ourselves to his teachings on the conditionality of the covenant of grace as it pertains to justification. Williams’ greatest concern with Crispianism and Antinomianism was their denial of the conditions of the covenant of grace.53 Consequently, he stressed in his formulations the conditions and man’s role in salvation. And it was his views on these issues that provided the necessary fodder for Chauncy to peg him with the epithet “Neonomian.”54

1.6.1 Justification When Williams wrote Gospel-Truth Stated and Vindicated he purposely avoided any contentious aspects or formulations of his teaching, or those of his fellow Presbyterians, because he wanted to focus on refuting the errors of antinomianism and avoid needless controversy in the process.55 As a result, his book presents, for the most part, a generic expression of Reformed orthodoxy. Why then did Chauncy make such a fuss about it? He believed that Williams was being dishonest by not being forthright and open about his true views and by hiding behind “allowable Terms that none dare oppose [him].”56 At one point, Chauncy even cited Richard Baxter and suggested that the words of his “Oracle” provided a more candid presentation of his views.57 Williams responded by interpreting

49 Griffiths, Religion and Learning, 104, 100. See also John Buchanan, The Doctrine of Justification (1867; repr., Carlisle: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1997), 176–178; John Macleod, Scottish Theology, (repr., Greenville: Reformed Academic Press, 1995), 139–140. 50 Dewey D. Wallace, Jr., “Socinianism, Justification by Faith, and The Sources of John Locke’s The Reasonableness of Christianity,” Journal of the History of Ideas 45 (1984): 53. 51 Bolam, et al., The English Presbyterians, 125. 52 Wilson, History and Antiquities, 2:208; Williams, Memoirs, 318. 53 See Williams, “To the Reader” in Gospel-Truth; End to Discord, 52. See also, Michael Watts, Dissenters, 294–295; Richard Greaves, “John Bunyan and Covenant Thought in the Seventeenth Century,” Church History 36 (1967): 158. 54 Chauncy, Neonomianism Unmask’d, 3:96–97. 55 Williams, “Postscript,” 283; End to Discord, 103. 56 Chauncy, Neonomianism Unmask’d, 1:16. 57 Chauncy, Neonomianism Unmask’d, 1:16.

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Baxter in an orthodox manner, although he did acknowledge that he would have stated things differently and that he did not always agree with Baxter.58 Chauncy was not completely without warrant for reading between the lines of Williams’ book. He was obviously cognizant of Williams’ theological context and there are a few expressions, particularly in the preface, which reflect that context. Williams, along with many other Presbyterians formulated the application of salvation, including justification, in accord with a governmental or rectoral structure.59 Their formulations allowed them to emphasize the necessity of meeting the conditions of the covenant of grace over against antinomianism, which proclaimed that there are no conditions and the elect have nothing to do in order to be saved.60 Despite the fact that Williams sought to avoid these formulations in Gospel-Truth Stated and Vindicated, they were what Chauncy had in mind when he charged Williams with Neonomianism. Essentially, Chauncy believed that Williams taught that Christ’s death satisfied the old law, namely the Covenant of Works, and procured a new law. By keeping the new law, the sinner becomes inherently righteous, which in turn becomes the ground for his justification. The sinner therefore is not justified by Christ’s righteousness but by his own righteousness. Christ’s righteousness, or rather the effects of his righteousness, must be received in order to avoid being judged by the old law and be eligible to be saved by the new law. But the righteousness of Christ does not play a direct role in justification. The sinner’s own righteousness, according to the new law, comes to the fore in justification and salvation as a sinner is pardoned on the grounds of his faith and repentance, and he possesses heaven on the basis of his persevering holiness.61 In short, when the sinner believes, the effects of Christ’s righteousness—not Christ’s righteousness itself— are imputed to him to free him from the Covenant of Works (legal righteousness), he becomes truly righteous on the basis of the new law (gospel righteousness), and so is justified. Such a scheme, argued Chauncy, is intrinsically meritorious.62 Moreover, it is both antinomian and neonomian or legalistic. There is first the “Abrogation of the Old Law,” which is the epitome of antinomianism; and secondly, there is the “Erection of a new Law of Works for our justification, which is Neonomianism.”63 58 Williams, Defence, 46–47. 59 Williams writes: “They seem jealous of the Honour of Free-Grace (yet owning Christ’s Merits) we are for Free-Grace in opposition to all Merits besides Christ’s, but not exclusively of all governing Methods in applying the effects of Free-Grace. They grant Faith in Christ is required, that we may be saved; we more expressly say, it’s by a rectoral Authority…” End of Discord, 95. 60 “To the Reader,” in Gospel-Truth. 61 Chauncy, Neonomianism Unmask’d, 1:30, 32. 62 Ibid., 1:32. 63 Ibid., 1:21. See also Chauncy, A Rejoynder, 3–6.

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As we consider Williams’ teaching on justification in response to Chauncy’s accusation of Neonomianism, it is important to keep in mind that Williams espoused a typical Protestant position.64 The issue, again, was that he encased justification in a rectoral structure. And this move profoundly shaped or reshaped two aspects of justification: the role of faith and the act or sentence of justification.

1.6.2 Faith in Justification Due to his concern with antinomianism Williams was zealous to maintain the notion that faith is an objective requirement and a divine command that must be obeyed in order to receive the promised gift of justification. Faith is a requirement, a condition, or a moral instrument of justification and not merely sequential to justification. It is in this sense that Williams refers to faith as a “Gospel-Righteousness” and as a “Subordinate Righteousness.”65 God has made a promise to all sinners that he will justify on account of Christ’s righteousness the one who exercises true faith. The blessing of justification is not given indiscriminately but to the one who conforms “to the Rule of Promise.”66 Here we see the rectoral method of applying salvation express itself. When a sinner believes and so performs the condition according to the gospel, he is judicially reckoned and adjudged to be a believer or to have fulfilled the condition. Thus, he is “justified by the righteousness of faith.”67 Williams writes: Faith in him be accounted a Gospel-Righteousness, as it is the performed Condition upon which we are by the Gospel-Promise adjudged to have the Righteousness of Christ imputed to us as our pleadable Security against the Curse of the Law; by which Righteousness of Christ alone our Right to Pardon and eternal Life (wherein we are personally invested by the Gospel) is merited as well as the Blessings themselves.68

Although Chauncy, as we have seen, interprets Williams as saying that sinners are justified, that is forgiven and given eternal life, on the grounds of their own righteousness, that is precisely not what Williams is advocating. And he constantly defends himself from such an accusation. In his book The Defence, he states that the only “Meritorious or Material Cause of Justification” is the 64 The Second Paper, written by Williams, says: “God justifies, pardons, accepts and entitles Sinners to Eternal life only for the sake of the Righteousness of Christ without them, imputed to them, and received by Faith alone,” in Answer, 54. See also Williams, “Postscript,” 313. 65 Williams, Gospel-Truth, 87; Defence, 6, 18; Man Made Righteous, 137; “Postscript,” 270–282; End to Discord, 49, 83, 93, 113–114, 123. 66 Williams, Gospel-Truth, 87. 67 Williams, “Postscript,” 279. 68 Williams, End to Discord, 49–50.

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righteousness of Christ.69 He denies that faith, repentance, obedience, qualification of a sinner, or any work a sinner does is a part or the whole of “that Righteousness for which, or by which we are justified.”70 Furthermore, he denies that Christ only served to excuse sinners from perfect obedience, that Christ merited only that sinners might merit by their faith and that “Faith and Repentance are the meritorious Cause of our Pardon and Glory by the New Law, and so, that Gospel-Conditions are of the same use to our Justification, as Works were under the Law; that is, to be the Righteousness for which we are justified and saved.”71 Indeed, he condemns it as legalistic to preach that faith, holiness or good works “stand in the same place now, as perfect Obedience did under the Law, viz. to render the Reward to be of Debt, or be the meritorious Righteousness for which we are justified.”72 The only use that “Gospel-Conditions” have with respect to Christ and his saving benefits is that they comply with the “stated Rule of the Distribution of Pardon and Glory, which are merited by Christ and given only for his sake.”73 God does not save indiscriminately but only those who answer or conform to the “Revealed Gospel-Rule, that a man must be a penitent Believer, whom God will justifie for Christ’s righteousness.”74 In his book Man Made Righteous, Williams denies that faith is the righteousness imputed for justification in the sense that it gives one a right to forgiveness and acceptance. Faith as righteousness is not a “Righteousness by Acceptilation,” by which he means that faith is not accepted in the place of perfect righteousness. Moreover, it does not add to or even serve the same purpose in justification as Christ’s righteousness.75Rather, faith in justification is simply the means by which God determines who will receive salvation. Williams writes: The use of Faith in order to Justification is, that it renders the Sinners the ordained Objects of God’s Justifying Act and Gift, according to his own Gospel Rule, Justification brings the Righteousness by which we are pardoned; but God promiseth to Justifie him that hath Faith, and saith he will not Justifie that hath not Faith: Doth not Faith distinguish him that hath Faith from another that hath not Faith? And doth not God declare he will deal very differently with him that hath Faith, and him that hath no Faith; he’ll justifie the one, and still condemns the other: And its’ the same as to any other Condition of any other promised Benefit: The Condition is not that for which the Benefit is given, but it renders the Man the Person to whom God hath promised to give that Benefit in Christ’s right.76 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

Williams, Defence, 17. Williams, “To the Reader,” in Defence. See also Williams, Defence, 17; “Postscript,” 312. Williams, Defence, 4. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 4. See also 14. Williams, “To the Reader,” in Defence. Williams, Man Made Righteous, 137. Ibid., 133. See also 146–147.

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Williams sets his view of faith as righteousness apart from Socinian, Arminian, and Popish views in his book End to Discord. The Socinian believes that faith in Christ is accepted as a perfect righteousness in the place of a perfect, sinless obedience. Williams considers such a view erroneous, affirming that faith is not accepted for righteousness and that faith in the gospel does not have the same role as perfect obedience did in the Covenant of Works.77 According to Williams, the Arminian Limborg taught that faith is imputed for righteousness in that God graciously reckons imperfect obedience which flows from faith as if it were perfect. Obedient faith is like a fraction of a payment owed to a creditor, who upon receiving it graciously forgives the rest of the debt, considering him to have paid the whole amount. Williams rejects this understanding as error. While acknowledging that faith is accounted a gospel-righteousness in the sense explained above, it plays no part whatsoever in the ground or accomplishment of salvation. Moreover, a sinner is justified the moment he believes and it is not suspended until he produces works of faith.78 Contrary to the Popish view, Williams does not believe that Christ merited in order to give us the chance to also merit. Rather, Christ merited salvation itself, which “he gives and applies on Gospel-terms.”79

1.6.3 The Act of Justification Williams’ understanding of the act of justification corresponds to his understanding of the role of faith in justification. Consequently, it is somewhat complex.80 Since justification is a forensic act, it refers to God as judge declaring a judicial sentence. Williams is adamant that there is only one sentence given in justification and there is only one actual existing “Bar” or tribunal.81 Nevertheless, he does acknowledge that the sentence is twofold, which corresponds to a twofold “Bar,” and a twofold law or rule of judgment. One aspect of justification is a sentence given according to the Law of Mediation and occurs at the “Creator’s Bar.” This refers “to what satisfied the offended Creator for [the] Sinner’s Fault, and merited Salvation for [the] forfeiting Rebel.”82The other aspect of justification is a sentence given according to the Law of Grace and occurs at the “Redeemer’s Bar,” which refers to satisfying or performing the condition of the Gospel promise. The former is “Justification by the righteousness of Christ,” 77 78 79 80 81 82

Williams, End to Discord, 48. Ibid., 49. See also 83–84. Ibid., 52. See Williams, “Postscript,” 276–281; End to Discord, 116–132. Williams, End to Discord, 125. Ibid., 130.

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while the latter is “Justification by the righteousness of Faith.” These two justifications must be distinguished and the difference between them is “so great,” yet they are “so connected, mutually connoted, and inseperable in their subject, that they are expressed as if but one only Act.”83 Williams does have his biblical and theological reasons for holding to a twofold justification. He finds “nothing plainer” in Scripture that on the one hand sinners are said to be justified by Christ (Rom 5:19, 2 Cor 5:21, Eph 1:6–7, Rev 1:5, Rom 5:11), and on the other hand that they are justified by faith (Rom 5:1, 3:30) and that “Faith is imputed for Righteousness, Rom. 4.9,11,22,24.”84 Theologically, a twofold justification flows from his understanding of the covenants and the governmental application of redemption. In the Covenant of Redemption, God promised Christ that he would only justify by his righteousness believers. And in the Covenant of Grace, God in Christ promises sinners to justify them by Christ’s righteousness if they believe. In other words, faith is “made a condition of our Personal interest in Christ’s righteousness, for justification as unto life.”85It then follows, according to Williams, believing sinners are justified by “the righteousness of Faith” in that they are “reckoned and adjudged to be believers.”86 Since the righteousness of faith is not that righteousness whereby a sinner is justified “unto salvation before God,” that is, the righteousness that God accepts “for satisfaction to his Justice, or to merit that right to impunity and life” then there must be another justification whereby the believing sinner is justified by Christ’s righteousness.87 Thus, the justifying sentence is twofold and includes the following two truths: 1. That the Believer is absolv’d from Guilt, accepted into God’s Favour, and entituled to eternal Life in and for Christ’s Righteousness, and neither Faith, nor any Grace or Act of ours make the least recompense to God, or is the least Price or Merit of Pardon or Life, or any motive inclining divine Justice to promise or accept us into his favour, or to treat us as righteous Persons…2. That God accepts and accounteth Faith a performed Condition of this Gospel-Covenant, and upon it aquits the Sinner from the Charge of damning Infidelity, and adjudgeth the Believer, qua such, in opposition to Infidels, to be in Christ’s Right, and by his Gospel-Promise, entitled to a present personal Interest in the foresaid Absolution, Acceptance, and Gift of eternal Life; yet as procured by Christ’s Righteousness alone, and applied for his sake.88

83 84 85 86 87 88

Williams, “Postscript,” 281, 279. Williams, End to Discord, 120. Williams, “Postscript,” 279. Ibid. Ibid., 279–280. Williams, End to Discord, 97–98. See also 124.

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1.7

Conclusion

Having examined the most controversial aspects of Williams’ teaching on justification, we return to consider if he had fallen into Arminianism or what Chauncy called “Neonomianism.” While it isn’t Arminian to refer to faith as a condition or requirement of justification, it is at least unusual to speak of faith as righteousness and to include it in the act or sentence of justification, a point which Williams appears to recognize.89 Indeed, some of his exegesis and formulations “sound” more Arminian than Reformed. Yet, Williams is very conscientious in his theology to avoid Arminianism, Socinianism and Romanism. Thus, if his view is to be labeled “Neonomian,” it is necessary to distinguish between orthodox and heterodox versions of Neonomianism. The above assessment is, for the most part, confirmed by Herman Witsius’ analysis of the Antinomian-Neonomian controversy. After acknowledging that faith is a cause of justification, Witsius queries about the kind of cause: is it a condition of justification as perfect obedience was in the Covenant of Works? Or is it an instrument whereby sinners apprehend Christ and his righteousness? Witsius implies in his ensuing discussion that there were some, undoubtedly among the Presbyterians, who, while clearly avoiding the heresies of Socinus on the atonement and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, considered faith to be a condition akin to obedience in the covenant of works thereby introducing a new law. In so doing, the Dutchman believes that “the most pleasant, the most gracious, and the most glorious nature of the gospel of Christ is not a little corrupted.”90 However, he wants to make it clearly known that not all those who “come under the name of Neonomians” fall into this error and “do not recede far from the truth in this cause.”91 One example that he gives is Daniel Williams and provides a lengthy quote from Defence, which he says he read with “great pleasure” and whose statements are orthodox and worthy of praise.92 Witsius, therefore, acknowledges that Williams did not teach that the Gospel is a new law, at least in an unorthodox sense. Williams’ twofold justification, however, is not found in the Reformed Confessions. In fact, it would seem that the chapter on justification in both the WCF and Savoy Declaration contradict Williams’ view that faith is imputed for righteousness. Interestingly, Richard Baxter, who Williams is evidently following, scrupled over the wording of these confessions.93Yet, at the end of 1692, Williams 89 90 91 92 93

Williams, End to Discord, 83. Witsius, Conciliatory Animadversions, 112. Ibid., 114. Ibid,, 115. Witsius cites Williams, Defence, 13. See Boersma, A Hot Pepper Corn, 287. WCF 11:1: “…nor by imputing faith itself, the act of believing, or any other evangelical obedience to them, as their righteousness…”

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subscribed to a document that included WCF 11.1. That he was able to do this probably indicates he believed that the WCF did not exclude his view, understanding it to refer to the material cause of justification in opposition to the Arminian and Socinian views of faith in justification.94 Moreover, he was likely encouraged to take this interpretation by Richard Baxter who claimed that “some worthy persons of that Assembly [Savoy], upon conference, assure me, That how ill soever it be worded, they themselves did mean it as I and other Protestants do, and did disclaim the obvious ill sence.”95 Regardless, it is safe to conclude that Williams’ doctrine of justification, particularly his doctrine of twofold justification, is not Arminian or Neonomian as defined by Isaac Chauncy. It is antiantinomian.

94 See Williams, End to Discord, 83–84. 95 Baxter, An End of Doctrinal Controversies, (London: John Salusbury, 1691), 266. Cited by Boersma, A Hot Pepper Corn, 287fn202.

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2.

The Marrow Controversy

2.1

Introduction

The Marrow of Modern Divinity first appeared in print during the summer of 1645 in London, England. Its author, “E. F.”, was most likely Edward Fisher, laytheologian and barber surgeon in London.1 The Marrow received high praise: Joseph Caryl, a leading Independent preacher appointed by the Parliament as imprimatur for theological literature, enthused over the work’s clarity, moderation, and helpfulness in “endeavouring to reconcile and heal those unhappy differences which have lately broken out afresh amongst us.”2 Edward Fisher lived in the context of controversy among English Puritans over polarities of legalism and antinomianism. He had personally wrestled to gain a scriptural clarity: “[I have] by mine own experience, and by the confession, and observation of others, found out our aptness to tread in one of these erroneous paths [legalism or antinomianism].”3 Much like Caryl, he reflected that this had occurred in the wider context of “hot contentions” in the churches “about some 18 or 20 years ago,” and that the controversy had reignited “now within these three or four years last past.”4 Through The Marrow, Fisher attempted to mediate in a resurgent controversy: “I, by the grace of God, endeavoured in this ensuing Dialogue to walk […] as a middle man” between “the Strict Professor according to the Law, and the loose Professor according to the Gospel.”5 Fisher’s work was directed to the reading 1 E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (London: Printed by R.W. for G. Calvert, at the BlackSpread Eagle near Pauls, 1645), A3, 14; Stephen Wright, “Fisher, Edward” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–7). Substantial material in this essay is drawn from my more extensive work The Marrow Controversy and Seceder Tradition (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 1–110. 2 E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 1. 3 E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 12–13. 4 E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 13. The period Fisher refers to spans from the late 1620’s to the early 1640’s. 5 E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 13.

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public. Four characters engage in dialogue across the pages: Nomista, a legalist; Antinomista, an antinomian; and Neophytus, a young Christian, receives counsel from a minister, Evangelista, towards a biblical understanding of law and gospel. The discussion, wisely directed by Evangelista, explains the nature and role of the law or covenant of works, preparatory grace, the nature of saving faith and repentance, the covenant of grace in Christ, the gospel offer, and the role of the law of Christ in the believer’s life. Fisher’s dialogue “reflected Reformed theology of the earlier [Reformation and post-Reformation] period, endorsing commonly received opinions rather than doctrines newly propounded.”6 A lay-theologian, Fisher drew on a wide range of Reformation and Reformed works ranging from the writings of Luther and Calvin to those of contemporaries including John Preston and Thomas Goodwin.7 The Marrow’s federal theology described the covenant of grace as being absolute, arguing against those who held to a neonomian conditionality of the covenant of grace tied to repentance or obedience. The book saw this conditionality as a confusion of justification and sanctification, or of the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. The Marrow stressed that the covenant of grace, “terminates itself only on Christ and his righteousness; God will have none to have a hand in the justification and salvation of a sinner, but Christ only… Jesus Christ will either be a whole Saviour, or no Saviour.”8 Fulfilling the complete obligation and penalty of the covenant of works in the place of the elect by his substitutionary atonement, Christ made the covenant of grace complete.9 This covenant of grace is published, proclaimed, and offered to all in the gospel “deed of gift and grant.”10 In applying the biblical warrant to “go and preach the gospel to every creature under heaven,” Fisher expounded that this meant, “go and tell every man without exception, that here is good news for him, Christ is dead for him, and if he will take him and accept of his righteousness, he shall have it.”11

6 David Lachman, The Marrow Controversy (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1988), 12. 7 In his later editions the author appended, following his preface to the reader, “a catalogue of those writer’s names, out of whom I have collected much of the matter contained in this ensuing dialogue”. E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (London: Printed by R. Leybourn, for Giles Calvert, 1646). 8 E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 87. 9 E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 36 10 E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 101. 11 The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 101. Lachman notes that some, such as Richard Baxter would claim that this statement, cited from John Preston’s The Breastplate of Faith and Love (London: W.I. for Nicolas Bourne, 1632), 8, was indicative of an Amyraldian covenant theology. Lachman argues that neither Preston, nor , who coined the language of “deed of gift and grant”, provide evidence of holding to Amyraldian doctrine, but rather used this language only in relation to the gospel offer. Lachman, 22–36. Jonathan Moore in his English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology (Grand

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Saving faith, itself a sovereign gift of grace, was the sole instrument by which the believer freely receives the gift of complete salvation in Christ, enters into, and is preserved in this covenant of grace. Fisher was careful in warning against those “in this city” who are “antinomians,” citing the apostle Paul’s warning, “there is a form of godliness without the power of godliness.”12 Sanctification is the necessary result of justification. Faith brings with it other graces, the necessary fruits of faith, as “the Spirit of Christ writes the lively law of love in his [the believer’s] heart, so that he is ready to do every good work, the love of Christ constraining him […] he seeks to do the will of God […] [in] true sincere obedience.”13 In his second edition, Fisher mentioned “Master Dod” in discussing his own former legalism, along with “Master Thomas Hooker,” as the one who counseled him toward conversion, making Fisher aware of personal hypocrisy and bringing to him an understanding of the free riches of Christ’s grace.14 Fisher was aware of both legalists and antinomians in the English Puritan community.15 He referenced Henry Burton, who wrote in fiery opposition to antinomianism, and John Eaton author of The Honey-Combe of Free Justification.16 While in the mainstream of Reformed orthodoxy in most respects of his writing, Eaton diverged in emphasizing that Christ’s imputed righteousness meant free justification and the abolishment of “all the filthy nakedness of our sins out of God’s sight,” coming to “the conclusion that justification utterly banished the sins of believers from God’s sight.”17 Burton saw Eaton as heading dangerously near antinomianism, a perspective only reinforced by Eaton’s bold attacks against what he saw as legalism and pharisaism among fellow Puritans. Fisher was critical of Eaton’s conclusion that God was not displeased with sin in believers, but sympathetic to other concerns expressed in Eaton’s The Honey-Combe of Free Justification. He

12 13 14

15 16 17

Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), argues compellingly that while Preston was not Amyraldian, he did hold to a form of hypothetical universalism. Moore, 117–121, 217–229. E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 90. E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 141. John Dod, A Plaine and Familiar Exposition of the Ten Commandments (London: Printed by Felix Kyngston for Thomas Man, 1607), 1–375; Thomas Hooker, The Soules Preparation for Christ; or, A Treatise of Contrition (London: Printed for Robert Davvlman, 1632), 1–258. E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 14. E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 14. See “John Eaton, the Eatonists, and the ‘Imputative’ Strain of English Antinomianism” in David R. Como, Blown By The Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil War England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 176–218. John Eaton, The honey-combe of free justification by Christ alone collected out of the meere authorities of Scripture and common and unanimous consent of the faithfull interpreters and dispensers of Gods mysteries upon the same, especially as they expresse the excellency of free justification / preached and delivered by Iohn Eaton [..]., (London: Printed by R.B. at the charge of Robert Lancaster, 1642), B2v; Como, 183.

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also saw some merit in Burton’s concerns, and sought to carefully “walk as a middle man in this ensuing dialogue.”18 Fisher’s final edition of The Marrow provided not only rebuttal of antinomianism and legalism, but also the preparationism he saw as cohering with the latter. He sought to counsel those who believed that man had to “truly repent for his many and great sins” before they had any warrant to come to Christ in faith— a view arising in part from confusion created by the teaching and pulpit emphases of men like Hooker and Shepard.19 Responding to the idea that “Christ requires a thirsting […] humbling […] sorrowing and grieving […] before a man comes to him,” Fisher wrote that whatever a man is, or whatever he has or has not done, he has warrant to come to Christ in faith.20 In fact, he said, those who required sorrowing repentance of sinners as prerequisite to coming to Christ in faith “would have [the sinner] do what is impossible.”21 True repentance, Fisher argued, was the fruit of faith in, and love for God. Fisher’s changes to the The Marrow stirred controversy. Despite the fact that Fisher explicitly taught the law’s essential role in bringing conviction of sin and genuine repentance, critics now argued that The Marrow undermined the role of the law in conversion. One English Puritan known as “J.A.”—believed to be John Angel of Grantham—held to a preparationist approach similar to Hooker and Shepard’s.22 J.A. recorded his unhappiness that The Marrow claimed “true and evangelical repentance is a fruit of faith, and cannot be before faith in Christ.”23 “I will show you the contrary,” he wrote, “[…] that it is not a fruit of justifying faith, 18 19 20 21 22

E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645), 164, 13. E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (London: Printed for R.W. by Giles Calvert, 1650), 133. E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1650), 133. E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1650), 134–135. Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley argue for a substantial rehabilitation of Thomas Hooker and his son-in–law Thomas Shepard from charges of legalistic preparationism in Prepared by Grace, for Grace: The Puritans on God’s Ordinary Way of Leading Sinners to Christ (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2013). Hooker’s substantial commitment to Reformed orthodoxy is noted, as is his divergence from the mainstream “in speaking of preparation as ‘saving sorrow’ that precedes faith.” However, Beeke and Smalley give less attention to Hooker and Shepard’s practice in preaching the law for conviction, and its effects. Both contemporary Puritans and later critics urged that points of Hooker and Shepard’s theology of preparation, along with their pulpit emphasis on a depth of conviction of sin along the way to faith blurred the distinction between the warrant of faith and the way to faith. The argument that Hooker, in his theology of preparation, may have intended that “‘saving sorrow’ precedes conscious faith” inserts a qualifier not present in Hooker’s writing. Beeke and Smalley, 81, 252–253. 23 J.A., A manifest and brief discovery of some of the errours contained in a dialogue called the Marrow of Modern Divinity (London: Printed by T.W. for Joshua Kirton, 1646.), 8–13. The critic J.A. may have been John Angel of Grantham “a man mighty in word and doctrine among the Puritans, but one harassed by much soul-distress.” Other critics of The Marrow in the late 1640’s and early 1650’s included John Trapp, Richard Baxter, and Thomas Blake. David Martin McIntyre, “First strictures on ‘The Marrow of Modern Divinity’” in Evangelical Quarterly 10:1 (Jan 1938), 66–67.

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but a work of the Spirit, to prepare the heart to the believing of the promise… God doth always work repentance in them whom he hath a purpose to save forever, before he bestows on them that faith which doth justify or assure them of the pardon of their sins in the blood of Jesus Christ […] I do not say that repentance is the condition required in our parts to our justification, as being our own work, but yet I affirm that it is the way which God doth always take […] For Christ calls none but such [poor penitents] unto him, neither ought any minister to apply the promises of mercy to any other but such as are weary, heavy laden, mourn, and earnestly desire mercy and pardon of sin.”24 Despite criticism, The Marrow’s popularity steadily continued. Numerous editions came to print in the late 1640’s and 1650’s. In 1649, Fisher published The Marrow of Modern Divinity. The Second Part. Touching the most plain, pithy, and spiritual exposition of the Ten Commandments […] in a dialogue.25 Joseph Caryl, commending this addition to The Marrow wrote, “The Marrow of the second bone is like that of the first, sweet and good. The Commandments of God are Marrow to the Saints as well as the promises, and they shall never taste the Marrow of the promise who distaste the Commandments.”26 In 1650, a London obituary noted the death of “Mr. Fisher, bookseller and barber in the Old Bailey.”27

2.2

The Marrow Controversy (1718–1726)

Fifty years later, in the early 18th century, the dominant stream of theology in the Church of Scotland, particularly in relation to the gospel offer, bore legalistic and hyper-Calvinistic tendencies.28 William Blaikie states, “it was not […] so much

24 J.A., A manifest and brief discovery of some of the errours…in…the Marrow of Modern Divinity, 8–13. 25 E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity. The second part. Touching the most plain, pithy, and spiritual exposition of the Ten Commandments… in a dialogue… whereunto is added the difference betwixt the Law and the Gospel. By E.F. Author of the first part (London: Printed for John Wright at the King’s Head in the Old Bayley, 1649). 26 E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity. The second part, A1. Caryl’s commendation is dated 6 Septemb. 1648, and the other commendations are dated later in the same month indicating the work must have been near completion prior to 1649. 27 See David Martin McIntyre’s “First strictures on ‘The Marrow of Modern Divinity’” in Evangelical Quarterly 10:1 (Jan 1938), 61–70. 28 J. M. MacLeod, David Lachman, A. T. B. McGowan, William J. U. Philip, and Philip Ryken see hyper-Calvinism as a distortion of federal theology, which particularly impacts the preaching of the gospel so that “a therapeutic type of preaching doles out the Gospel to those only who are alive to their ruined plight [..]. with this restricted presentation of Christ as Saviour, the sinner has no end of questionings as to whether or not he is so truly convinced of his sin as to

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that the old Calvinistic creed was formally attacked, as that the doctrines of grace were discredited, and in some degree neutralised by the introduction of a spirit of legality.”29 J. M. MacLeod asserts that “the hyper-Calvinistic brethren held that there is no world-wide call of Christ sent out to all sinners […] they maintained that Christ is held forth or offered as Saviour to those only whom God effectually calls […] the eye of the hearer was directed to the hidden man of the heart to the obscuring of the call to look out and away from self to Saviour.”30 At the same time, in the lengthy case of John Simson (Professor of Divinity at Glasgow, 1708– 1739), the majority of the Church of Scotland leadership evidenced a tendency toward leniency in dealing with inroads of Enlightenment philosophy into Reformed theology in its divinity schools.31 The event immediately prior to the Marrow controversy and the issue which ignited it was the action of the Presbytery of Auchterarder, and the denomination’s response. In 1716 the Presbytery of Auchterarder set out a series of propositions which ministerial candidates were required to assent to prior to the granting of license or ordination. One of these propositions was intended to guard against the preaching of the necessity of preparation for grace.32 The candidate was to agree that, “I believe it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we must forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ, and instating us in Covenant to God.”33 The Presbytery rejected candidate William Craig for his refusal to assent to this proposition; he appealed to the General Assembly, which ruled in his favor. The Assembly of 1717 rejected the legitimacy of subscriptions to any formula “but such as is or shall be agreed to and approven by the Assemblies of this Church.”34 They continued, declaring their “abhorrence of the foresaid

29 30 31 32

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have a warrant to stretch out his hand to take off the Gospel table the Bread of Life as his own.” J. M. MacLeod, Scottish Theology (Edinburgh: Knox Press, 1974), 142. William Garden Blaikie, The Preachers of Scotland-from the Sixth to the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1888), 189. MacLeod, 143. J. H. S. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), 287– 291. “Preparation for grace” or “preparationism” needs to be understood as distinct from “preparatory grace.” The former tended to view effort in pursuing conviction of sin and contrition as qualifying individuals for the hearing of, and reception of Christ as Savior in the gospel offer. It could do so explicitly, or implicitly through emphases and practice in preaching. The latter understood that the Holy Spirit in the work of regeneration, graciously applies the law and gospel of God to the elect sinner’s heart, creating conviction of sin (to a greater or lesser degree) concurrent with faith in Christ. Such proponents of “preparatory grace” proclaimed Christ as immediately and fully sufficient for all, and viewed faith as theologically prior to repentance. Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland […] 1717, 839–840. Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland […] 1717, 840.

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proposition, as unsound and most detestable,” arguing it would lead to spiritual sloth and unholiness. They requested a commission to further investigate and report back to the following Assembly.35 While the commission’s 1718 report found that the Presbytery was sound and orthodox in its meaning, it found “they had expressed it in words very unwarrantable and exceptionable”—the Presbytery was admonished not to use them again.36 That same year, The Marrow of Modern Divinity was republished in Scotland, with a recommendatory preface by James Hog of Carnock, a Church of Scotland minister Fife.37 Hog read The Marrow on Thomas Boston’s recommendation. Boston came across the work during a pastoral visit and read it with profit “by the latter end of the year 1700” in his Simprin parish.38 Having struggled with his personal understanding of the gospel, due to the influences of legalism and hyper-Calvinism, Boston had also wrestled with these issues in regard to gospel proclamation.39 The Marrow’s republication intensified controversy. Pamphlet warfare ensued, primarily between James Hog and Principal James Hadow of St. Andrews College in Fife. Hadow’s opposition and Hog’s defense led to the former preaching a sermon against The Marrow at the opening of the Synod of Fife on April 7, 1719.40 A formal complaint was brought against The Marrow to the General Assembly that same year; the assembly gave the standing Commission for Purity of Doctrine the task of examining the matter.41 The Commission for Purity of Doctrine’s report was not favorable for The Marrow’s cause. The 1720 General Assembly, seeing the developing controversy as a substantial issue, delayed official decision making until late in the Assembly meetings, allowing members time to read excerpted statements from and doctrinal complaints against the work.42 Following charges made by Hadow and 35 Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland […] 1717, 840. 36 Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Held and begun in the year 1718…in Register of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland annes 1718, 19, 20, & 1721 (MSS 233, Special Libraries and Archives, King’s College, Aberdeen), 154. 37 E[dward] F[isher], The Marrow of Modern Divinity, with a recommendatory preface by James Hog. The Ninth Edition Corrected. Edinburgh: John Mosman and William Brown, 1718. 38 Thomas Boston, Memoirs of Mr. Thomas Boston […] in The Complete Works of the late Reverend Thomas Boston, ed. Samuel M’Millan, Vol. VII. (London: William Tegg and Co., 1854), 154–156. 39 See Boston, Memoirs, 94–95. 40 Boston, Memoirs, 317. See also: James Hadow, The Record of God and Duty of Faith Therein Required (Edinburgh: John Mosman and Company for John Paton, 1719). 41 Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Held and begun in the year 1719 […] in Register of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland annes 1718, 19, 20, & 1721. (MSS 233, Special Libraries and Archives, King’s College, Aberdeen), 177–342. 42 Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Held

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committees, the resulting Act of Assembly stated that the theological expressions in The Marrow were “exceptionable” and “exceedingly harsh and offensive.”43 The Assembly’s Act did “strictly prohibit and discharge” all ministers either by preaching, writing, or printing to recommend the said book, or, in discourse, to say anything in favour of it; but, on the contrary they are hereby enjoined and required to warn and exhort their people, in whose hands the said book is, or may come, not to read or use the same.44

This Act of the 1720 Assembly drew national attention to this previously obscure book, serving to stimulate the promoters of The Marrow to rectify the wrong done to the “truth of the gospel, the doctrine of free grace.”45 Acting without success at the Presbytery level, they drafted a complaint, their Representation and Petition, to the 1721 Assembly.46 In it, they argued that condemnation of The Marrow was condemnation of gospel truth. After answering the charges of the Assembly against the work, the petitioners requesting reconsideration and repeal of the previous decisions.47 The 1721 Assembly referred the complaint to a commission.48 The result was that the Assembly of 1722 confirmed the prior decisions, including in its Act a more extensive summary and refutation of doctrine found in The Marrow. This was undoubtedly in response to not only the Representation and Petition, but also to the continuing, determined defense of The Marrow and its doctrine in discussions, sermons, tracts, and pamphlets.49 The Assembly also acted to rebuke and admonish Marrow supporters, but stopped short of requiring assent to the Assembly’s decision.50 While the Act of 1722 was the Assembly’s final statement

43 44 45 46 47 48

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and begun in the year 1720 […] in Register of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland annes 1718, 19, 20, & 1721. (MSS 233, Special Libraries and Archives, King’s College, Aberdeen), 404–405, 407, 422, 427. Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland…1720, 432. Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland […] 1720, 432–433. Boston, Memoirs, 319. The Representation and Petition of us under subscribing Ministers of the Gospel. (Edinburgh: 1721). The Representation and Petition, 42. Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Held and begun in the year 1721 […] in Register of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland annes 1718, 19, 20, & 1721. (MSS 233, Special Libraries and Archives, King’s College, Aberdeen), 587–588. Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. Held and begun in the year 1722 […] in Register of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland annes 1722, 23, 24, & 1725. (MSS 233, Special Libraries and Archives, King’s College, Aberdeen), 149–180. Lachman, 418.

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on the Marrow controversy, pamphleteering continued for several years. The last, most substantial written result of the controversy was a new edition of The Marrow in 1726, and included extensive explanatory notes by Thomas Boston.51

2.3

Theological Contours of the Controversy

What were the theological contours of this controversy, which roiled the Church of Scotland for the better part of a decade and stood as a key factor in precipitating the formation of the Scottish Secession Churches the decade following?52 While numerous aspects of the theology held by the controversy’s participants are worthy of consideration, some, like the extent of the atonement, were essentially the same, despite the claims to the contrary by Marrow opponents.53 There were, however, at least three areas of divergence: preparationism versus preparatory grace, the relationship of faith and repentance, and the preaching of law and gospel.

2.3.1 Preparationism versus Preparatory Grace54 James Hadow, the leading opponent of The Marrow and the Marrow supporters, taught, as David Lachman notes, “that pardon is conditional on repentance, [making] repentance the condition of justification.”55 While Hadow viewed repentance unto salvation as a fruit of God’s gracious work, his approach to understanding and describing the place of conviction of sin and repentance in the morphology of conversion appeared similar to Hooker’s. At the same time, Hadow’s language of conditions bore some similarity to that of Baxterian and subsequent neonomian thought.56 Hadow declared, The truth therefore which I undertake to prove against the Marrow, is, That the Evangelical Grace and Duty of Repentance goeth before Pardon of Sin, in God’s Method 51 E[dward] F[isher], The Marrow of Modern Divinity […] with notes in The Complete Works of the late Reverend Thomas Boston, ed. Samuel M’Millan. Vol. VII. (London: William Tegg and Co., 1854), 143–489. 52 William VanDoodewaard, The Marrow Controversy and Seceder Tradition: Atonement, Saving Faith, and the Gospel Offer in Scotland (1718–1733) (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 113–274. 53 VanDoodewaard, 104–105. 54 I am indebted to Isaac Gajendran, Confex Makhalira, and Felipe Boechat Asseruy Silva for their research assistance on preparatory grace and preparationism in the context of the Marrow controversy. 55 Lachman, 454. 56 Lachman, 38.

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of bestowing them; that Remission of Sin is a Consequent Blessing annexed unto Repentance by Divine Promise; and that therefore Ministers in preaching the Gospel, may, and ought to call Sinners to repent, and forsake their Sins, in Order unto their obtaining the Pardon of them, as well as to believe in Christ for their Justification.57

He further argued that The awful Authority of God, as He is Sovereign Lord Creator, the binding Force of His perpetual Moral Law, and the Threatnings (sic) and Promises thereunto annexed, are appointed to be Restraints against Sin, and Ties and Encouragements unto Holiness: And when all these are taken into the Gospel Dispensation, with a Commandment unto Men to repent of their Sins, in Order unto the obtaining the Pardon of them, and a Denunciation of Wrath against the Impenitent; they become a Fence set by God, about the Offer of his Mercy and Grace, on the Gospel, whereby it is armed and guarded against Contempt and Reproach.58

Like Hooker, albeit with a greater use of language of conditionality, Hadow viewed conviction of sin and repentance as a necessary precondition to the faith required to meet, or take hold of, the promise of the covenant of grace.59 Thomas Blackwell, another Marrow opponent, similarly pushed the boundaries of Reformed orthodoxy in positing a preparationism in his descriptive—and prescriptive—theology of conversion. Blackwell stated that Christ “graciously directs man to acknowledge his inability to lift up his voice for a day of Almighty power, and so to continue waiting in the use of appointed means, till it please the Holy Ghost to infuse spiritual life.”60 Blackwell would go on to state that “conviction, contrition, humiliation for sin, [are] necessary towards the making way for the soul’s cordial esteeming and embracing of Christ” and that these may correctly be described as conditions, prerequisites, or qualifications in relation to the covenant of grace in Christ.61 In practice, this meant that “warning sermons” were preached with the aim of causing the congregation to feel the condemning weight of the law, the burden of conviction of sin, without freely proclaiming Christ’s immediate sufficiency for the entirety of the gathered congregation. A close, though more subtle corollary, was the practice of preaching which by its emphases implied need for depth of conviction of sin prior to coming to Christ. Many of The Marrow’s supporters expressed their concerns with these formulations and practices in print. Robert Riccaltoun concluded his Sober Inquiry by criticizing Hadow’s preparationism, stating that it was 57 Hadow, The Antinomianism of the Marrow of Modern Divinity Detected (Edinburgh: Printed by John Mosman and Company, 1721), 51. 58 Hadow, The Antinomianism of the Marrow of Modern Divinity Detected, 99. 59 Lachman, 454. 60 Thomas Blackwell, Schema sacrum, or, a sacred scheme of natural and revealed religion… (Paisley: Printed for J. Davidson and Co. at Ferguslie, 1786), viii. 61 Blackwell, 89; Lachman, 179.

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the Principal’s way [to] reject so many Reformation principles, and withal, to maintain such uncouth and unscriptural ones in their place, such as, the necessity of preaching repentance, without mentioning either faith, or Christ, with a promise of pardon annexed to it, repentance the condition of believing…and set [them] in [a] tolerable light.62

Thomas Boston wrote extensively to distinguish between preparationism and preparatory grace. In his A View of the Covenant of Grace from the Sacred Records, Boston examined “the way of instating sinners, personally and savingly, in the covenant of grace.”63 Boston believed that an effect of faithful preaching was that non-Christians could develop what he termed “a legal faith” which could lead to “a legal repentance, whereby the sinner is broken and bruised with fear and terror of the wrath of God; grieves and sorrows for sin, as a ruining destructive evil; and therefore really desires to be free from it,” and even “despairs of salvation by himself; and seriously looks out for relief another way.”64 In this way, Boston said, the “law is our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.” In fact, “none will come to Christ” without this “in greater or lesser measure.”65 The divine use of the law in this way was God’s gracious work and the beginning of regeneration, but only where it was mixed with faith in Christ. “Legal faith” and “legal repentance” only became genuine faith and repentance when combined with faith in Christ. Boston explained where he and the other Marrow supporters stood distinct from a preparationist conditionality. Neither “the legal faith, [n]or legal repentance, is the condition of our welcome to Christ and the covenant of grace: our access to Christ and the covenant is proclaimed free, without any conditions or qualifications required in us, to warrant us sinners of mankind to believe on Jesus Christ.”66 While “legal faith” could make way for saving faith or “gospel faith,” it was not saving faith; similarly a “legal repentance” was not “evangelical repentance.”67 In distinct contrast to the preaching of men like Hadow, Boston was adamant that the gospel offer was not to be restricted to “thirsting” or “heavy laden sinners”: the words ‘labour and heavy laden,’ do not restrict the invitation to such as are sensible of their sins, and longing to be rid of them, though indeed none but such will readily 62 Riccaltoun, 326–327. 63 Thomas Boston, A View of the Covenant of Grace from the Sacred Records in The Complete Works of the late Reverend Thomas Boston, ed. Samuel M’Millan. Vol. VIII. (London: William Tegg and Co., 1854), 577. 64 Boston, 578. 65 Boston, 578. 66 Boston, 584. 67 Boston, 584.

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accept; but they denote the restlessness of the sinful soul of man; a qualification (if it is so called) to be found in all that are out of Christ, whether they have, or have not, any notable law work on their consciences. I say notable, to distinguish it from that which is common to all men, even to heathens (Rom. 11:15)…the conscience is still heavy laden with guilt, whether it has any lively feeling thereof or not; and the heart is still under a load of unsatisfied desires; so neither the one nor the other can find rest indeed. This is the natural case of all men. And to souls thus laboring, and laden, Jesus Christ here calls, that they may “come to him, and he will give them rest”…rest for their consciences, under the covert of his blood; and a rest to their hearts, in the enjoyment of God through him.68

Boston’s ministry included shepherding those who believed they needed to meet preparatory qualifications before coming to Christ. When asked: When I view my own condition, I very much fear I have not as yet reached that thirst after Christ, and that willingness to take him, which these texts speak of; and that I cannot be accounted one truly laboring and heavy laden: how then can I believe that Christ offers himself to me in particular?69

Boston answered, “[…] whatever qualifications you have, or have not; yet if you are a sinner of Adam’s race, (and I hope you doubt not that), Christ is offered to you, together with his righteousness, and all his salvation.”70 Looking at his contemporary Scotland, Boston believed that “they are but few who are personally and savingly instated in the covenant of grace, in comparison of those who are strangers to it,” but “we are allowed to offer it to strangers; to invite and call them who are without the covenant, to come into it, and so to compel them to come in.”71 His and his opponents’ convictions on preparation for grace reflected a key aspect of divergence between the two sides of the Marrow controversy.

2.3.2 The relationship of saving faith and repentance Both Marrow supporters and opponents held to the necessity of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in the heart to create and enable saving faith. The writings of Marrow supporters stand unanimous in their stress on the necessity of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in order to have saving faith in Christ. Among opponents of The Marrow, the only apparent case of some ambiguity is found in writings of Thomas Blackwell, an Aberdeen divinity professor. At times Blackwell seems to manifest rationalist or Arminian tendencies with a strong 68 69 70 71

Boston, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, 381. Boston, A View of the Covenant of Grace…, 589. Boston, 590. Boston, 577.

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emphasis on human rationality, persuasion, and choice, yet he also notes the necessity of the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. While University of Glasgow divinity professor John Simson was found guilty in 1717 of “adopting hypotheses tending to attribute too much to natural reason and the power of corrupt nature,”72 no published concerns regarding Blackwell’s Methodus Evangelica are extant. A considerable area of difference between Marrow supporters and opponents on saving faith was found in the debate over whether faith was a condition to the covenant of grace. The statements of Church of Scotland Assemblies at the time of the Marrow controversy reveal a marked tendency toward equalising obedience and repentance with faith as conditional to salvation. This tendency was reaffirmed in the writings of Hadow and Blackwell: Boston viewed it as “Baxterian” or “neonomian.”73 Hadow argued that the gospel, or the proclamation of the covenant of grace, provides a conditional promise, where saving faith is the condition. He posited that repentance was also a necessary pre-condition to this condition of faith. In his definition of repentance, Hadow aligned himself with the earlier English Puritan tendencies of Hooker and Shepard, viewing a “prefaith” conviction of and sorrow over sin as a preparatory qualification to coming to Christ. The common experience of the way to Christ was blurred with the warrant for coming to Christ. Thomas Blackwell emphasized faith as an act of obedience to the gospel command. He viewed repentance and faith as prerequisites to a salvation offered on these conditions in the gospel. Where the Acts of Assembly, Hadow, and Blackwell reveal preparationist and neonomian tendencies, at least one Marrow opponent, John Willison, was a marked departure from this trend, particularly in his stress on saving faith as a gift of grace and the first spring and motion of all the other graces.74 In contrast to their opponents, Marrow supporters stressed that saving faith was a gift of God’s grace to the elect, created and nurtured in them by the Holy Spirit. Speaking from the conviction that prevailing language of the covenant conditionality of faith was in essence making the covenant of grace a new law, with faith a new and meritorious act of obedience, the representative documents of Marrow supporters stressed justification by faith alone: “A justified person has in Christ, at once, all things necessary to salvation, though of himself he has

72 David Lachman, “John Simson” in Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993), 775. 73 Hadow, The Record of God, 18–19; Thomas Blackwell, Methodus Evangelica or a Modest Essay upon the True Scriptural-Rational Way of Preaching the Gospel (London: Printed for N. Cliff and D. Jackson, 1712), 80–83, 90; Boston, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, 148. 74 VanDoodewaard, 49–58.

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nothing.”75 This response stood in harmony with their emphasis on the active and passive obedience of Christ in his complete redemption of the elect. Concern that the Church of Scotland was promoting a new covenant nomism is also evidenced in the Marrow supporters’ view of the relationship of faith to other elements of the order of salvation. Where the Assembly stressed “the necessity of a Holy Life, in order to the obtaining of everlasting happiness,”76 Marrow supporters explicitly denied that the necessity of either repentance or personal holiness to salvation was to be understood in terms of causality. They stated, “we cannot look on personal holiness, or good works, as properly federal and conditional means of obtaining the possession of heaven, though we own they are necessary to make us meet for it.”77 The relationship of saving faith and assurance was also debated. The Church of Scotland majority, in its opposition to Marrow theology, and especially the statement “that saving faith commanded in the Gospel is a man’s persuasion that Christ is his, and died for him,”78 stressed a definitional and practical separation between faith and assurance, to the point of hesitating to acknowledge any fiducial element in faith. In doing so, they saw themselves as adhering to the definitions of saving faith and assurance given by the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, which, they stated, “show that assurance is not of the essence of faith.”79 James Hadow was convinced that assurance could only logically be seen as belonging to the essence of faith if one held to a universal atonement. While most Marrow opponents held faith and assurance at some distance from each other, some, like John Willison, placed a strong emphasis on the command to seek assurance, arguing that some measure of assurance should accompany and flow from justification, adoption, and sanctification. In contrast to Marrow opponents, Marrow supporters argued that saving faith necessarily included an assurance, “the fiducial act, or appropriating persuasion” in its essence.80 Some degree of this type of assurance, “that Christ is his,” had to be present in saving faith. Full assurance, which was non-essential to saving faith and which the Marrow supporters saw the Westminster Confession describing as “an infallible assurance of faith,” was both the increase of that fiducial assurance rooted in gospel promises, which must be present in at least some degree in 75 The Answers […] to the Said Queries, 38. 76 Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland […] 1720, 492–493. 77 The Answers […] to the Said Queries, 41. 78 Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland […] 1720, 44. 79 Register of the Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland […] 1720, 427. 80 Representation and Petition […], 30–31.

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saving faith, and the reflex, or subjective assurance, rooted in the inward evidences and testimony of the Spirit in the life of the believer.81 This latter type or part of assurance, could range from being non-existent to abundantly present in the believer. A. T. B. McGowan, Joel Beeke, and others have argued that Marrow supporters stand in the line of previous theologians in positing two types or aspects of assurance, objective and subjective, or direct and reflex.82 This basic categorization is certainly correct, yet Marrow supporters appear to manifest a greater complexity in their view of assurance than that summarized by dual distinctions. They believed that the objective or direct assurance which is of the essence of faith, while it must exist in at least seed form in saving faith, in its mature, healthy, and growing state is also a part of that full assurance, “not being of the essence of faith”.83

2.3.3 The Gospel Offer Perhaps the culminating evidence of the divergences exhibited in the controversy is in the area of preaching the offer of the gospel. The Marrow’s opponents manifest a tendency towards a conditional gospel offer and a deep suspicion of the language used by Marrow supporters in their gospel offers. In particular, the statements of the 5th Act of Assembly appear to indicate that the free offer of certain salvation should at most be made to those deemed to bear evidence of preparation, or some evidence of the regenerating work of the Spirit, whether this be conviction of sin, repentance, or the pursuit of holy obedience. James Hadow, perhaps the leading figure among Marrow opponents, repeatedly evidences a tendency to view gospel promises as being conditional, and particularly as conditioned upon election—which in his view became potentially evident only in those in a state of preparation, and manifesting conviction of sin. He argued that while gospel promises might appear in Scripture as “sometimes proposed indefinitely,” yet they were “to be understood as made to God’s elect.”84 Hadow stressed the “conditional promise,” giving the example “he that believeth shall be saved” as a promise made to believers only.85 Similar tendencies are evident in Thomas Blackwell’s work, which, while making direct application of the Scriptures in diligently seeking to bring personal conviction of sin, only 81 Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch. 18.3, “Of Assurance of Grace and Salvation”. 82 See A.T.B. McGowan’s “Thomas Boston’s Doctrine of Assurance” in The Federal Theology of Thomas Boston, 185–205, and Joel Beeke, The Quest for Full Assurance (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1999), 147, 209–212, 231–237. 83 Westminster Larger Catechism, Q & A 81. 84 Hadow, The Record of God, 23. 85 Hadow, The Record of God, 10–11.

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speaks in explanatory and descriptive terms on preaching Christ as Savior. Though in a later Scottish context, these issues in the Marrow controversy were significantly similar to those expressed in previous English Puritan contexts. There were distinct echoes of the controversy between Baxter and his critics, and also of the engagement between theologians like Thomas Goodwin, Giles Firmin, and Edward Fisher with the kind of preparatory approach expressed in the preaching of Hooker and Shepard.86 Opposition to The Marrow was not, however, monolithic in its identity. John Willison was notable, but not alone in standing testimony to the fact that theological controversies are typically marked by continuum, mixtures of thought, and, at times, confusion.87 Nonetheless, there is good ground to believe that Marrow supporters were accurate in their numerous complaints that the preaching of their opponents—and for some, their own previous preaching— obscured Christ as Savior, whether through explicit or implied preparatory qualifications (even where these were claimed to come by grace), or neonomian tendencies.88 In contrast to their opponents in the controversy, Marrow supporters emphasized the absolute and unconditional nature of the promises of the gospel and the conviction that the gospel offer was full, free, and universal—directed to every hearer of the preaching of the Word. Boston proclaimed: “it is indorsed and directed to you, and every one of you […] O the riches and freedom of grace! […] This offer is made unto you all without exception. Christ is willing to be yours.”89 In fact, Marrow supporters argued, the sure nature of the gospel promises was crucial as they provided the warrant or ground for faith, so that “there can be no receiving of salvation where there is not a revelation of Christ in the gospel affording a warrant to receive him, Rom. x. 14, and then, by the effectual operation of the Spirit, persuading and enabling the sinner to embrace him upon this warrant and offer.”90

86 Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley helpfully note that “perhaps the greatest danger posed by some Puritan views of preparation is the lack of balance in presentation even in the context of a sound system of doctrine.” Beeke and Smalley, 252. 87 John Willison stands as an anomaly regarding the general tendency among Marrow opponents to a conditional or indirect gospel offer. His sermons and writings give repeated warm, personal, and direct offers of a full and free gospel in Christ. In this regard he was much closer to the Marrow supporters than he realized during the Marrow controversy; the reality and awareness of his theological kinship becoming practically evident in later years. Lachman, 198–199; VanDoodewaard, 57–58. 88 Boston, Memoirs, 154–156, 291–292. 89 See for example Thomas Boston, The Everlasting Espousals in The Complete Works of the Late Reverend Thomas Boston, ed. Samuel M’Millan (London: William Tegg and Co., 1854), 7:498– 499, 516–517; Boston, The Marrow of Modern Divinity, 263–264. 90 The Answers […] to the Said Queries, 78.

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In their defense of the gospel offer, Marrow supporters repeatedly made use of the book’s distinct terminology, particularly the phrase, “the deed of gift and grant.”91 They viewed this phrase as a concise expression of the warrant for the free, unconditional gospel offer in the person and work of Christ as expressed in Scripture, and thus in harmony with the establishment and purpose of the covenant of grace. Compelled by this understanding, Boston, along with the other Marrow supporters, could do no less than expound the words of The Marrow, “Go and tell every man, without exception, that here is good news for him, Christ is dead for him; and if he will take him, and accept of his righteousness, he shall have it; restraint is not; but go and tell every man under heaven […] a Saviour is provided for him.”92 Under the conviction that these essential gospel truths were endangered by the preparationism and neo-nomianism clouding the Church of Scotland, Hog republished The Marrow of Modern Divinity. The Marrow supporters responded to the storm of criticism over its republication in their pamphlets and addresses to the Church of Scotland Assembly, and Boston republished it a second time with extensive annotations, all in order to protect “the purity of gospel doctrine”.93 The passion, theology, and use of language in gospel proclamation by Marrow supporters collided with the theology, emphases, and concerns of fellow ministers in the Church of Scotland. Despite ecclesiastical setbacks, the Marrow supporters aided in the preservation and promotion of a vibrant evangelical stream of Scottish theology.94

91 E[dward] F[isher], The Marrow of Modern Divinity […] with notes in The Complete Works of the late Reverend Thomas Boston, ed. Samuel M’Millan. Vol. VII. (London: William Tegg and Co., 1854), 262–263. For further examples see Thomas Boston’s annotations in The Marrow of Modern Divinity […], 262–267; the defense of the Marrow supporters in the Representation and Petition, 13–14, and The Answers […] to the Said Queries, 72; and Robert Riccaltoun’s Sober Enquiry, 161–162. 92 Boston, The Marrow of Modern Divinity […], 264. 93 Representation and Petition, 2–3. 94 VanDoodewaard, 113–274.

Ian Hugh Clary

3.

“A catholic spirit”: George Whitefield’s Dispute with the Erskines in Scotland1

3.1

Introduction

“Oft in the church arise destructive schisms From anti-evangelic aphorisms.”2

In 1742 Adam Gib (1714–1788), a Presbyterian minister in Edinburgh, published a booklet entitled, A Warning Against Countenancing the Ministrations of Mr. George Whitefield, wherein he decried the young George Whitefield (1714–1770) who, the year before, had arrived for his first of fourteen preaching trips to Scotland.3 In the tract, Gib criticized the revivalist along a number of lines, including the latter’s ordination in the Church of England and what the author perceived as his watering-down of the gospel. Gib spoke in strong terms, at one point saying, “[A]s Mr. [Whitefield] is reviving that old Scheme, but with new, and more fatal, while fairer Refinements, whatever Event an over-ruling God shall order it unto, we maintain, that its Nature is fertile of all Errors, Blasphemies, and Mischiefs in Society, sacred and civil; while it breaks down all the Fences which provide for the visible Church against hellish Powers, and their Legions of human Lusts.”4 These are striking words when one considers that Whitefield came to Scotland at the behest of the Associate Presbytery, of which Gib was a minister. Initially, there had been significant accord between Whitefield and the Associate Presbyterians, particularly two of its key leaders, Ebenezer (1680–1754) and Ralph (1686–1752) Erskine. This was due in the main to the strained relations 1 I am thankful to Drs. Jack Whytock, of Prince Edward Island, Canada, and Stephen Myers, of Statesville, NC, for their constructive comments on a draft of this chapter. Any errors remain my own. 2 Ralph Erskine, “A Legal Spirit the Root of Damnable Errors,” Gospel Sonnets; Or, Spiritual Songs (Edinburgh, 1782), 63. 3 Adam Gib, A Warning Against Countenancing the Ministrations of Mr. George Whitefield (Edinburgh: David Duncan, 1742). For Gib see John McKerrow, History of the Secession Church, rev. ed. (Glasgow: A. Fullarton and Co., 1841), 845–849. 4 Gib, Warning, 45.

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each party shared with their respective Established Churches. In England, Whitefield the evangelical and Calvinist was a pariah amongst Anglicans due to his criticisms of certain ministers’ moral and doctrinal laxity. As a revivalist with unconventional preaching methods he was embroiled in controversy in America with both the Anglicans and the “Old Lights” who accused him of enthusiasm. In Scotland, the Erskine brothers joined with other ministers and seceded from the Church of Scotland over theological differences, perceived moral slackness, and the issue of patronage. Whitefield and the Erskines shared more than just a negative church experience, positively they embraced an evangelical Calvinism, an interest in open-air preaching, and a desire for revival. If there were such strong similarities between Whitefield and the Erskines over matters of experience and theology, why did they have a parting of ways early in their relationship? Due to the combustible nature of theological disputes an answer to such a question has been hard to adequately formulate. Differences in church polity go some way towards one, but so do personalities and politics. Though the Erskines were committed Presbyterians, and Whitefield a lifelong Anglican, there was considerable rapprochement between them over a lengthy correspondence. But once Whitefield came to Scotland he would not side wholeheartedly with the Associate Presbytery in a controversy between them and the Church of Scotland, and so he found himself on the receiving end of significant theological and personal criticism, as the example of Gib illustrates. Earlier historiography—often denominational apologetics—have argued that the disagreement centered on polity, making it a bar to the potential catholicity that was developing between members of two ecclesiastical communions that had normally been at odds. As this essay shows, in accord with recent research on the period, the problem was also one of personality, with polity an important but secondary cause. One of the results of this controversy, however, was a softening of the strident Whitefield who, after tasting something of his own medicine, became more moderate in his criticisms of opponents of the revival. This essay begins by looking at background issues pertaining to the Erskines and the souring of their relationship with the Church of Scotland by focusing on the way two important controversies shaped their outlook: the Marrow Controversy and the Secession Crisis. This will provide a context for the later discussion of Whitefield and the Erskines. With the final fissure between the Erskines and the Established Church in Scotland outlined, the nature of Whitefield as an Anglican and Calvinist will be summarised to highlight areas of difference and similarity with the Erskines. To show that there was no initial discord over polity, we will next look at the early friendship between Whitefield and the Erskines, which was forged due to similar methods of response to their respective Established Churches and their mutual desire for revival. We will then examine the cause of discord between Whitefield and the Associate Presbytery upon his

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arrival in Scotland and conclude by discussing the effect it had in softening Whitefield and hardening his opponents.

3.2

The Scottish Background

In a 1991 essay on Scottish evangelicalism, historian David W. Bebbington notes how earlier scholarship divided the movement into two parties.5 The first was the party of the Moderates who were understood to be liberal, scholarly, and in favour of patronage. The second was the Popular Party whose members were conservative and who opposed learning and patronage. As Bebbington rightly argues, this approach is simplistic and does not bear the weight of historical evidence. For instance, some theologically conservative ministers favoured patronage, and there were others who did not appear to fit in either party. Most tellingly, two leaders with diverging views—William Robertson (1721–1793) and John Erskine (1721–1803)—shared the same pulpit in Edinburgh.6 Instead of seeing two distinct parties, Bebbington advises that Scottish evangelicalism should be viewed more broadly along the lines of three tendencies. The first is what he calls “traditional Protestantism” and includes those who sought to preserve the ethos of the seventeenth century, particularly in terms of doctrinal orthodoxy, adherence to the Westminster Confession of Faith, and a rejection of the “new modes of thinking associated with the Enlightenment.” This tendency was exemplified in the Erskine brothers and the broader Seceding tradition, though it is important to note that there were ministers who remained in the Church of Scotland after the Secession Crisis who retained this “traditional Protestantism.” The second tendency involved the Moderates like Robertson, those who were influenced by Enlightenment thought, particularly as it was expressed by thinkers like David Hume (1711–1776), Adam Smith (1723–1790) or Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746).7 They tended to emphasise scholarship, were in favour of patronage, and stressed moral teaching over “the drama of salvation.” 5 D. W. Bebbington, “Evangelicalism in Modern Scotland,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 9.1 (1991), 4. See also David W. Bebbington, “Scottish Cultural Influences on Evangelicalism,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 14.1 (Spring 1996): 23–36. 6 For Robertson and Erskine, see Jonathan M. Yeager, Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 7 For Robertson and the Enlightenment see Hugh Trevor-Roper, History and the Enlightenment (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2010). In his inimitable way, Trevor-Roper explained the effect that Robertson had on Scottish religion: “[I]n Hume’s time, even the Scottish Kirk was in retreat. What real harm could it do when the Great Secession had relieved it of its fanatics and it was governed, year after year, by his own urbane friend and fellowhistorian, that lukewarm clergyman, William Robertson?” Trevor-Roper, History and the Enlightenment, 12.

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The Moderates were typically identified with “the elite.”8 The third and final tendency was that of the Evangelicals who, like the traditionalists, adhered to the older doctrines of the faith, but like the Moderates were willing to use the categories of the Enlightenment to express this theology—John Locke’s (1632–1704) epistemology of sense experience in particular. The key Scottish evangelical was the aforementioned John Erskine, who famously corresponded with Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) in America, who likewise shared similar tendencies. This kind of evangelical theology was “simple, rational and practical.”9 In spite of some criticisms over Bebbington’s approach to the relationship between evangelicalism and the Enlightenment, his taxonomy helpfully sets the stage for navigating the complexities of the Erskines’ relationship to the Church of Scotland, and to George Whitefield.10 It answers how Whitefield could be courted both by the Secession and Evangelical ministers in the Church of Scotland, and why he would want to work with both while not compromising himself. It also helps us understand the Erskines’ concerns, and lament the break between the Seceders and the Evangelicals. Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine were true sons of the Kirk. Their father, Henry Erskine (1624–1696), a Presbyterian minister at Cornhill-in-Tweed, Northumberland, had been ejected under the Act of Uniformity (1662). That same year episcopacy had been imposed on the church in Scotland. After preaching in a clandestine location, he was charged for holding a conventicle and, under threat of imprisonment on Bass Rock, was exiled to Carlisle in Cumbria after he pled for mercy. He then removed to Whitsome in the Scottish Borders, and then Chirnside in Berwickshire. An eleven-year old Thomas Boston (1676–1732) heard Erskine preach, later recording that it made a lasting impression on him.11 Erskine also played an important role in the lives of his children, particularly the two brothers considered in this chapter who would go on to be ministers of some repute. Ebenezer Erskine was the minister at Portmoak from 1703 until he took the charge in Stirling in 1731 where he remained until his death in 1754. His 8 Bebbington, “Evangelicalism,” 5. 9 Bebbington, “Evangelicalism,” 6. 10 Though Andrew McGowan provides a critique of Bebbington’s argument that eighteenthcentury evangelicalism was birthed by the Enlightenment as it pertains to Scotland, he does not seem to actually engage in any depth with Bebbington’s use of Hutcheson, or others of the Scottish Enlightenment. Nor does he provide any interaction with categories of Enlightenment thought. See A. T. B. McGowan, “Evangelicalism in Scotland from Knox to Cunningham,” in Michael A. G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart, ed., The Advent of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (Nashville, TN: B & H Academic, 2008), 63–83. A better, though more general critique of Bebbington on this score, that takes Enlightenment categories more seriously, is Michael A. G. Haykin, “Evangelicalism and the Enlightenment: A Reassessment,” in Haykin and Stewart, ed., Advent of Evangelicalism, 37–62. 11 Cited in David George Mullan, Narrative of the Religious Self in Early-Modern Scotland, St Andrews Studies in Reformation History (Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2010), 169–170.

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younger brother Ralph was the minister at Dunfermline from 1711 until his death in 1752. Like their father, their lengthy ministries saw them regularly involved in controversy. Two important events that form the backdrop to the Erskines’ commitments to a dissenting brand of Presbyterianism that would shape their relationship to Whitefield are the Marrow Controversy and the Secession Crisis. As the Marrow Controversy is dealt with in another chapter of this book, only a brief summary of it will be offered here to provide context to the Erskines’ ecclesiological concerns.12

3.3

The Marrow Controversy13

The Marrow Controversy proper draws its name from the debate over the book The Marrow of Modern Divinity (1645) published by “E. F.,” whom scholars generally take to be Edward Fisher (1611/1612–c. 1656), a puritan from Oxford who wrote it while the Westminster Assembly sat.14 The book is a collection of quotations by various Reformers and puritans supporting the free offer of the gospel, justification by faith alone, and related doctrines.15 Though its initial publication was not without controversy, it found itself at the center of a debate over neonomianism and antinomianism in the early-eighteenth-century Church of Scotland. The formal dispute began when James Webster (1659–1720) of 12 See chapter 2. 13 I am indebted to Stephen G. Myers, Scottish Federalism and Covenantalism in Transition: The Theology of Ebenezer Erskine (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2015), 28–115 for this summary. For other treatments of the Marrow Controversy, see Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Whole Christ: Legalism, Antinomianism, and Gospel Assurance (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2016); William VanDoodewaard, The Marrow Controversy and the Seceder Tradition, Reformed Historical-Theological Series (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011); Joseph H. Hall, “The Marrow Controversy: A Defense of Grace and the Free Offer of the Gospel,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 10 (1999): 239–257; William J. U. Phillip, “The Marrow and the Dry Bones: Ossified Orthodoxy and the Battle for the Gospel in EighteenthCentury Scottish Calvinism,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 15 (Spring 1997): 27– 37; David C. Lachman, The Marrow Controversy, 1718–1723: An Historical and Theological Analysis, Rutherford Studies in Historical Theology (Edinburgh: Rutherford House, 1988). 14 Stephen Wright, “Fisher, Edward (1611/12, d. in or after 1656),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8853 (accessed January 12, 2016). See also D. M. McIntyre, “First Strictures on the Marrow of Modern Divinity,” Evangelical Quarterly 10 (1938), 61. 15 E. F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity (London, 1645). Interestingly, the book was printed by Giles Calvert (1615–1663), a publisher of radical literature including material by puritans, Levellers, Quakers, and Fifth Monarchy men; the Marrow was his first best-seller. See Mario Caricchio, “News from the New Jerusalem: Giles Calvert and the Radical Experience,” in David Finnegan and Ariel Hessayon, ed., Varieties of Seventeenth- and Early-Eighteenth Century English Radicalism in Context (Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2011), 74.

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Edinburgh brought a charge of heresy to the Kirk’s General Assembly of 1715 against John Simson (1667–1740), Professor of Divinity at Glasgow University, accusing him of Arminianism and legalism.16 Two years later the Assembly found that Simson did in fact teach doctrines at odds with Reformed orthodoxy, and though he was barred from teaching on particulars touching those matters, he was able to keep his faculty position. In a later controversy over Arianism (1729), Simson was finally removed. Throughout the earlier Simson affair the Presbytery of Auchterarder sought to mitigate his errors by requiring their ministerial candidates subscribe to the Westminster Standards and to appended articles that the Presbytery drafted, including a statement saying, “I believe that it is not sound and orthodox to teach that we must forsake sin in order to our coming to Christ, and instating us in covenant with God.”17 This statement was labelled by its opponents as the Auchterarder Creed. The overriding concern expressed in the statement is that “turning from sin” could be construed as a kind of worksrighteousness that militates against justification by faith. At the Assembly that disciplined Simson (1717), the Presbytery of Auchterarder was also disciplined for its refusal to license William Craig, who would not affirm the Creed. The Assembly expressed its “abhorrence” of the Creed, calling it “unsound and most detestable.”18 Craig took a complaint to the Assembly that in turn found in his favour, reproving the Auchterarder Presbytery and ordering it to restore Craig’s license. The following year James Hog (d. 1736) of Carnock republished Fisher’s Marrow with a new preface charging the Church of Scotland with error.19 Hog had read the book at the suggestion of the aforementioned Thomas Boston of Ettrick, who had read it some years before. This led to a dispute between Hog and James Hadow (1667–1747), Principal and Professor of Divinity of St. Mary’s College at the University of St. Andrews, who accused Hog of antinomianism and universal atonement. At the Synod of Fife (1719), Hadow preached against the Marrow doctrine in an influential sermon entitled The Record of God and Duty of

16 James Webster, Case of Mr. John Simson Consisting of the original papers of the process carried on against him by J. Webster Containing Mr. Webster’s Libel and Mr. Simson’s Answers (Glasgow, 1715). A thorough study of Simson’s life and thought is Anne Skoczylas, Mr. Simson’s Knotty Case: Divinity, Politics, and Due Process in Early Eighteenth-Century Scotland, McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Ideas 31 (Kingston and Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2001). 17 Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1638–1842 (Edinburgh: The Edinburgh Printing and Publishing Co., 1843), 519. 18 Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 519. 19 E.F., The Marrow of Modern Divinity, 9th ed. (Edinburgh: John Mosman and Co., 1718). The standard work on Hog remains Charles L. Moffatt, Jr., “James Hog of Carnock (1658–1734): Leader in the Evangelical Party in Early Eighteenth Century Scotland” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1960).

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Faith Therein Required.20 Though Hadow recognized that the Marrow Brethren did not advocate openly for libertinism, he feared that was their trajectory.21 Hog responded by accusing Hadow of denying the free offer of the gospel. The General Assembly of 1719 commissioned a committee to look into questions “inconsistent with our Confession of Faith,” and a year later the committee condemned the Marrow as antinomian, which garnered final support from the Assembly.22 In 1721 Hog, along with Boston, the Erskine brothers, and eight others—the so-called “Representers,” or “Marrow Men”—presented the General Assembly with their Representation and Petition defending the Marrow along biblical and historical lines.23 This was to no effect as the next year’s Assembly rejected their petition and upheld the earlier Assembly’s condemnation of Fisher’s book. The twelve ministers responded with a treatise written by Erskine.24 A pamphlet war ensued wherein Hadow published The Antinomianism of the Marrow of Modern Divinity Detected (1721) accusing the Marrow Men of antinomianism.25 In spite of the accusations, they were not full-blown antinomians, but there is an argument to be made that some of their work could be interpreted that way; their basic view was that the believer was not under any legal obligation to act morally, but rather did so by virtue of their transformed natures. For their part, the Erskines took an active role in the controversy, publishing sermons against legalism in the 1720s, and joining with the Representers in receiving the Assembly’s rebuke. They also refused to comply with the Synod of Fife’s request that the Marrow Men re-sign the Westminster Confession, not for any theological disagreement with it, but that such an action would suggest agreement with the Assembly’s actions of 1720. The protracted dispute, which was essentially between two parties who adhered to the Westminster Standards, resulted in personal loss for the Erskines—so much so that when Ebenezer Erskine had been extended a call to minister at Kirkcaldy, he was rejected by the 1725 General Assembly because of his involvement with the Marrow Controversy. He was forced to remain at his charge in Portmoak through three other calls, until he finally removed to the 20 James Hadow, The Record of God and Duty of Faith Therein Required (Edinburgh: John Mosman and Co., 1719). See also James Hadow, Observations on “The Marrow of Modern Divinity” (Edinburgh, 1719). 21 Thomas Ahnert, The Moral Culture of the Scottish Enlightenment, 1690–1805 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 29. 22 Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 534–536. 23 The Representation and Petition of Several Ministers of the Gospel, to the General Assembly, Met at Edinburgh May 1721 (Edinburgh, 1721). 24 Queries, Agreed unto by the Commission of the General Assembly; and Put to These Ministers, Who Gave a Representation and Petition…Together with Answers Given by These Ministers to the Said Queries (n.p., 1722). 25 James Hadow, The Antinomianism of the Marrow of Modern Divinity Detected (Edinburgh, 1721). An indispensable evaluation of the differences between Hadow and Ebenezer Erskine is found in Myers, Scottish Federalism, 32–114.

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church in Stirling in 1731. In 1733, Ralph Erskine joined the opposition at Simson’s second trial for heresy that saw the professor condemned as an Arian. All of this led to a deep suspicion of the Church of Scotland on the part of the Erskines and the other Representers. This was especially the case in light of the easy treatment that Simson had when compared with the harsh treatment of their own experience.

3.3.1 The Secession Crisis Though the Marrow Controversy was theologically generated, it was the political issue of patronage that finally drew the Erskines out of the Church of Scotland. This crisis over secession from the Established Church formed the direct backdrop to the Erskines later dispute with Whitefield, so the nature of this crisis will here be outlined. The roots of the Erskines’ secession were political, stretching back to the early eighteenth century. After the Union of 1707 many Scots were in open rebellion against the new parliament for what they believed to be an undue tax burden. Archibald Campbell (1682–1761), earl of Ilay, was sent to determine the cause of the unrest, and through various means, came into a position of significant power. He distributed his influence through patronage that, as Roger L. Emerson has argued, deeply shaped the Scottish Enlightenment.26 This was also true of the Kirk in the eighteenth century.27 Though patronage had ecclesiastical precedent in the Middle Ages, and was practiced in the Church of England, it had ceased to be practiced in Scotland after the Glorious Revolution. It was thus brought back with great controversy. Through Ilay, patronage was mediated by the General Assembly, which, while it was a means of keeping the English at bay, relativized the power of local congregations. This shift of power, located to a growing degree in the hands of Ilay, was done primarily through the Patronage Act (1712), though abuse led to a clarification by Act of Parliament in 1719. The Act stated that a patron—which could include the crown, a landowner, landed gentry, or even a university—could fill a church vacated of its minister with one of his (or its) own choosing within a period of six months. Churches and ministers often waited for the six months to expire, or presbyteries would turn down potential ministers to 26 See Roger L. Emerson, Academic Patronage in the Scottish Enlightenment: Glasgow, Edinburgh and St. Andrews Universities (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008); Roger L. Emerson, An Enlightened Duke: The Life of Archibald Campbell (1682–1761), Earl of Ilay, 3rd Duke of Argyll (Kilkerran, UK: Humming Earth, 2013). 27 For a full treatment of patronage as it related to the church see, Laurence A. B. Whitley, A Great Grievance: Ecclesiastical Lay Patronage in Scotland Until 1750 (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013).

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bide time so that churches could choose their own. This was viewed by the patrons as a power grab and they reacted against it strongly. As a means of remedying the situation, Riding Committees were set up by the Kirk in 1729 that would install ministers in churches where a presbytery may have refused his candidacy. Eventually an Overture was taken in 1731 whereby a church that had been vacated for more than six months would receive a minister, jure devoluto, by the joint decision of the presbytery and the heritors.28 Some saw this Overture as adequate, giving balance against the claims of the patrons over a particular congregation. Others, however, saw it as deeply problematic. That a non-presbyterian could be involved in the selection of a minister, while the congregation itself had no involvement was not right—especially if the patron was episcopalian. This also went against the Reformation roots of the Kirk and its Covenanting tradition. The First Book of Discipline (1560) stated that the congregation was to select its own minister, whereas the Second Book of Discipline (1578) augmented this to make the decision rest with the elders, though with congregational assent. Samuel Rutherford (c. 1600–1661) of Anwoth reflected the First Book of Discipline when he said that the minister should be selected by the people.29 It was also a violation of the Barrier Act (1697) that required a General Assembly to obtain the consent of the presbyteries before passing any Acts binding the constitution of the church.30 The Erskines were of those opposed to the Patronage Act when it was first published in 1712 and continued to do so through to 1731 when the General Assembly set the Overture in place for “planting vacant churches.” In a sermon titled The Sovereignty of Zion’s King Ebenezer Erskine declared, “the manner of electing ministers and other officers in the church, is not left to a patron, a presbytery, or to men that are heritors in this world; no, but it is a privilege that belongs unto the subjects of Christ’s kingdom.”31Along with two thousand people, the brothers contributed to a petition against the Act, which the Assembly refused to accept.32 This led to further protest. Ebenezer Erskine, who at this point 28 Cf. J.H.S. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), 277–288. 29 For this insight I am indebted to Valerie Honeyman, “‘That Ye May Judge for Yourselves’: The Contribution of Scottish Presbyterianism Towards the Emergence of Political Awareness Amongst Ordinary People in Scotland Between 1746 and 1792” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Stirling, 2012), 55. Also useful is Jack C. Whytock, Continental Calvinian Influences on the Scottish Reformation: The First Book of Discipline (1560) (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2009). 30 Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 260–261. 31 Ebenezer Erskine, “The Sovereignty of Zion’s King,” in The Whole Works of the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine: Consisting of Sermons and Discourses on Important and Interesting Subjects, in Two Volumes (London: William Baynes and Sons, 1826), 2:211. 32 A Publick Testimony: Being the Representation and Petition of a Considerable Number of

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was the minister in Stirling, preached before the Synod of Perth and Stirling in October 1732, a sermon on Psalm 118:22 that was later published as The Stone Rejected by the Builders, Exalted as the Head-Stone of the Corner. The sermon was both a political and theological critique where the preacher rejected patronage and criticized the Kirk’s doctrinal deviance. In it, Erskine declared, “I am firmly persuaded that, if a timely remedy is not provided, this act will very soon terminate in the ovethrow [sic] of the church of Scotland, and of a faithful ministry therein.”33 This caused great unrest and the synod voted to censure him, a move that he appealed to the 1733 Assembly to have revoked, which did not happen. With three others—William Wilson (1690–1741), Alexander Moncrieff (1695– 1761), and James Fisher (1697–1775)—Erskine lodged a further protest, which the Assembly also rejected, forcing the four to retract and if they failed they would face censure. The four refused and were removed as ministers from their churches, which were then left vacant.34 With the support of their congregations, the four “dissenting brethren” and a handful of others met in a public house at Gairney Bridge, a village near Kinross where, on December 6, 1733, they formed the Associate Presbytery of the Church of Scotland, with Ebenezer Erskine as its first moderator. The Presbytery did not see itself as having fully separated from the Kirk, rather they “seceded” from those who had direct oversight of them. In 1734 the General Assembly extended an olive branch to the Seceders by repealing the Acts of 1730 and 1732 and invited the Dissenting Brethren to return to their churches. They refused, citing a document that they had written outlining their complaints with the Established Church entitled, Testimony to the Doctrine, Worship, Government and Discipline of the Church of Scotland (1734).35 As the title indicates, though patronage was the generating issue, their problems with the Kirk were much broader and more theological. In their refusal to return to their charges, the Seceders demonstrated their opinion that the Kirk did not actually address those broader concerns outlined in the treatise. By 1734, after a period of continued fellowship with ministers of the Associate Presbytery, Ralph Erskine in Dunfermline joined with them, giving them full support in preaching tours across Scotland, oftentimes Christian People … Anent Grievance (Edinburgh: Thomas Lumisden and John Robertson, 1732). 33 Erskine, “The Stone Rejected by the Builders, Exalted as the Head-Stone of the Corner,” in Works 1:472. Also cited in Jack C. Whytock, “An Educated Clergy”: Scottish Theological Education and Training in the Kirk and Secession, 1560–1850, Studies in Christian History and Thought (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2008), 170. 34 Ilay had opposed the Marrow Men in the 1720s and supported Simson. He cast the deciding vote at the 173 Assembly that removed Ebenezer Erskine. Cf. Emerson, Academic Patronage, 235. 35 A Testimony to the Doctrine, Worship, Government, and Discipline of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1734).

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taking to open-air preaching that would result in new works being planted for the Presbytery. The ministers of the Associate Presbytery continued their work with little disruption for a number of years. However, with the publication of John Currie’s Essay on Separation (1738), the issue was again brought to the fore.36 The General Assembly of 1740 met and the Seceders were removed from their standing in the Church of Scotland. When Ebenezer Erskine showed up to his church on May 18, 1740, he was barred from entry, and so resorted to holding services in a field until a church building could be erected. Stephen G. Myers describes the ministry as having progressed “from a dispossessed congregation in 1740 to a stabilised and prominent institution in the burgh, in addition to being the largest congregation within a growing Secession.”37 The new denomination did not reach the size of the Established Church, but it was a significant minority. In 1737 there were fifteen congregations, it grew to thirty-six in 1740, forty-five in 1746, ninety-nine in 1766 and it continued to grow.38

3.4

Whitefield: Reformed and Anglican

It was the Secession Crisis more than the Marrow Controversy that set the background for the Erskines’ problems with Whitefield, driven as they were by ill-feeling towards the Church of Scotland for years of painful political wrangling that saw them eventually leave for a new denomination. With this context set, we can now turn to look at Whitefield and outline aspects of his life and thought that are relevant to his controversy with the Erskines. First we examine Whitefield as a member of the English Church, and then his Calvinism.

3.4.1 Whitefield the Anglican It is a quirk of history that biographers of Whitefield the Anglican have typically been written by Nonconformist authors. For instance, John Gillies (1712–1796), Whitefield’s earliest biographer, was a Scottish Presbyterian; Luke Tyerman (1820–1889), author of an important Victorian-era work, was a Wesleyan Methodist; Arnold Dallimore (1911–1996), whose two volumes were published in 36 John Currie, An essay on separation: or, a vindication of the Church of Scotland. In which the chief things in the testimonies of these Reverend brethren who lately made a secession from her are considered, and shown to be no ground of separation or secession (Edinburgh, 1738). 37 Myers, Scottish Federalism, 127. 38 W. R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 329.

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the late-twentieth century, was a Baptist; Harry S. Stout, of Yale University is a Presbyterian; and Thomas S. Kidd, author of the most recent biography, is a Baptist.39 In an article on Whitefield as an Anglican, Lee Gatiss observes that Whitefield “has been strangely undervalued” by churchmen, which has made his identity as one “somewhat obscured.”40 That Dissenters tend to have a deeper interest in Whitefield is a testimony to the abiding influence he had on them from the beginning. Nevertheless, the revivalist was clearly committed to the Church of England, however much he may have aggravated her leaders throughout his ministry. As J. I. Packer explains, Whitefield “insisted that the religion he modelled and taught was a straightforward application of Anglican doctrine as defined in the Articles, the Homilies and the Prayer Book.”41 Whitefield’s self-conscious Anglicanism is exemplified early in his life. For instance, he expressed admiration for Anglican formularies during his preparations for ordination at Gloucester Cathedral in 1736 while he was only twentyone. In his journal he wrote that he “made some observations upon the thirtynine Articles, and proved them by Scripture.”42 Throughout his written corpus Whitefield positively used The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion and the Book of Common Prayer, and such texts were on the curriculum of Bethesda, his beloved Georgian orphanage for which he so diligently laboured. There, “[a]ll orphans and students shall be obliged to learn and repeat, and, if capable, to translate into Latin all the thirty-nine articles [sic], or those specified in the act of toleration [sic].”43 Of the Church of England herself Whitefield once said, “My dear brethren, I am a friend to her Articles, I am a friend to her Homilies, I am a friend to her liturgy. And, if they did not thrust me out of their churches, I would read them every day.”44 39 John Gillies, Memoirs of the Life of the Reverend George Whitefield, M. A. (London: Edward and Charles Dilly, 1772); Luke Tyerman, The Life of the Rev. George Whitefield, 2 vols. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1876); Arnold A. Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth-Century Revival, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1979); Harry S. Stout, The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991); Thomas S. Kidd, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014). 40 Lee Gatiss, “George Whitefield—The Anglican Evangelist,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 18.2 (2014), 71. 41 J. I. Packer, “The Spirit with the Word: The Reformational Revivalism of George Whitefield,” in W. P. Stephens, ed., The Bible, the Reformation and the Church: Essays in Honour of James Atkinson, Library of New Testament Studies (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), 178. 42 Tyerman, Life, 1:43. 43 George Whitefield, A Select Collection of Letters of the Late George Whitefield (London: Edward and Charles Dilly, 1772), 3:499. 44 George Whitefield, “The Folly and Danger of Being Not Righteous Enough,” in The Chris-

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The preceding thus contradicts Alan Jacobs’ assessment of Whitefield and the Anglican formularies in his recent biography of the prayer book. Jacobs frames the infamous debate between Whitefield and the Wesleys as a representation of “different strains of Anglicanism, and quite different approaches to the Book of Common Prayer.”45 Predestination, which was the generating cause of Whitefield’s conflict with the Wesleys, and the subject of Article 17 of the English Articles, will be dealt with in the next section of this chapter. For our purposes here, it should be noted that Jacobs’ contention that the differences between Whitefield and the Wesleys were also liturgical does not take into account the above-cited quotations and examples demonstrating Whitefield’s love for and use of Anglican liturgy. Indeed, in contrast to the revivalist’s stated use of the prayer book as training for literacy amongst the orphans at Bethesda, Jacobs makes the surprising claim that Whitefield, “focused so absolutely on bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ to lost souls, and especially to the illiterate poor, the Book of Common Prayer seemed less than relevant.” According to Jacobs, it was John Wesley—whom, it goes without saying, was just as concerned as Whitefield for bringing lost souls to Christ—who admired the prayer book more. Jacobs quotes Wesley as saying, “I believe there is no liturgy in the world, either in ancient or modern language, which breathes more solid, scriptural, rational piety, than the Common Prayer of the Church of England.”46 Yet, in light of the Whitefield quotations above, and the statements by Gatiss and Packer, this affirmation of Wesley’s could just as easily have come from the pen of Whitefield. Both were concerned for evangelism and liturgy; historians may debate who had the greater concern for either, but it remains that Whitefield self-identified as an Anglican and made good use of her confessional and liturgical documents. Of course, noting Whitefield’s love for the prayer book does not mean that he felt constrained to use it at all times, nor that he was uncritical of the Church of England. The most read sermon of his in the colonies, originally published in London, was The Indwelling of the Spirit, the Common Privilege of All Believers (1739). In it he chastised the clergy with strong words: “[Y]ou are the Schismaticks, you are the Bane of the Church of England, who are always crying out, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord; and yet starve the People out of our Communion, by feeding them only with the dry Husks of dead Morality, and not bringing out to them the fatted Calf, I mean, the Doctrines of the Operations of tian’s Companion: or, Sermons on Several Subjects (London, 1739), 282. Cf., Gatiss, “George Whitefield,” 72. 45 Alan Jacobs, The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), 108. 46 John Wesley, “Preface,” Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America (1784; rpr., Nashville, TN: Quarterly Review/United Methodist Publishing House, 1984), cited in Jacobs, Book of Common Prayer, 110.

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the blessed Spirit of God … We subscribe to our Articles, and make them serve for a Key to get into Church-Preferment, and then preach contrary to those very Articles to which we have subscribed.”47 Such preaching drew the ire of the clergy, particularly Alexander Garden (c. 1685–1756), a Scottish Episcopalian and the bishop of London’s commissary in Charleston, South Carolina. He called Whitefield “the most virulent, flaming, foul-mouthed persecutor of the Church of God that ever appeared in any age or country.”48 In a public statement, Garden also prevented Whitefield from preaching in South Carolina, though Whitefield told the commissary that he would “regard that as much as I would a Pope’s bull.”49 David Ramsay, a medical doctor and historian of South Carolina, summarized Whitefield’s mindset when willing to break with Anglican practice: “Though Whitefield possessed an high esteem for these prayers, and always used them when he officiated in Episcopal churches; yet being often called upon to preach to large crowds, many of whom neither possessed nor knew how to use the book of common prayer in public worship, he departed from the rules of his church and performed divine service in the extempore mode usually practiced among non-Episcopalians.”50 This, and his denial of apostolic succession, became specific points of criticism by the clergy against Whitefield that went beyond just matters of personality.51 Due to this cold welcome by Episcopalians, Whitefield’s friendships in America were predominantly with Dissenters like Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764) or Theodorus Freylinghuysen (1691–1747), rather than members of the Anglican Church. Of course, he could at times direct his criticisms of “unconverted ministers” to Presbyterians and Baptists as well,52 but due to his ecumenically-minded Anglicanism, Whitefield has been called by historian William Howland Kenney the “Dissenter Priest of the Great Awakening.”53 47 George Whitefield, The Indwelling of the Spirit, the Common Privilege of All Believers (London, 1739), 11. 48 Cited in W. R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 289, n. 79. For a summary of Anglican leaders who broke with Whitefield in America, see Robert Prichard, A History of the Episcopal Church, 3rd rev. ed. (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2014), 43–45. 49 Cited in Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 69. See also Alexander Garden, Mr. Commissary Garden’s Six Letters to the Rev. Mr. Whitefield, With Mr. Whitefield’s Answer to the First Letter (Boston: T. Fleet, 1740). 50 David Ramsay, Ramsay’s History of South Carolina: From Its First Settlement in 1670 to the Year 1808 (Newberry, SC: W. J. Duffie, 1858), 8. 51 Robert W. Pritchard, A History of the Episcopal Church rev. ed. (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1999), 44. 52 See the treatment in Dallimore, George Whitefield, 1:547–562. 53 William Howland Kenney, “George Whitefield, Dissenter Priest of the Great Awakening, 1739–1741,” The William and Mary Quarterly 26.1 (January 1969): 75–93.

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In many respects, the invitation extended by Scottish Presbyterians to Whitefield to itinerate in their country would have been more likely had it come from Americans. The memory of 1638 and the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant, along with the violence enacted against the Covenanters remained a constant in Scottish Presbyterian memory, even after the Union of 1707. For them to align with an Anglican would seem to neglect that memory. There were other differences as well, not the least the question of religious toleration. For the Erskines this matter was all too personal, as their father had suffered the same fate as two thousand other puritan ministers in the Great Ejection of 1662.54 Yet, due to his strong criticisms of Church of England ministers, and his willingness to break with Anglican conventions, Whitefield was seen as a potential ally, one whose commitments to his church might also be slowly eroding. And unlike the Wesley brothers, Whitefield was also a Calvinist, which further endeared him to the Scottish cause.

3.4.2 Whitefield and the “Calvinistical Scheme” One other reason why Whitefield has not been as well-remembered by Anglicans today may have to do with his support of Calvinist theology; though historically a Reformed church, Calvinist theology is not as well received amongst Anglicans today.55 Whitefield, however, stands within in the Reformed strain of Anglican history. It was this, more than liturgical differences, that brought about the disruption between him and the Wesleys, and forged the early relationship between him and the Erskines.56 Though he had told John Wesley in 1740 that he had 54 A. S. Wayne Pearce, “Erskine, Henry (1624–1696),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) http:// www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8853 (accessed January 12, 2016). 55 Anthony Milton describes the Church of England’s Reformed heritage as a “fundamental fact,” but also makes careful qualifications about its relationship with the Continental Reformed churches, and how Reformed doctrine came to be generally received in England, such as in the Thirty-Nine Articles. See Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 395–396. See also Andrew Petegree, “The Reception of Calvinism in Britain,” in Wilhelm Neuser and Brian Armstrong, ed., Calvinus Sincerioris Religionis Vindex (Kirkville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1997), 267–289. Paul Zahl explains that for many Anglicans today, to be called a Calvinist is an insult, akin to being called a Fundamentalist. See Paul F. M. Zahl, The Protestant Face of Anglicanism (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), 32. 56 Writings on the fraught relationship between Whitefield and the Wesleys are legion. A selection of helpful works are Ian J. Maddock, Men of One Book: A Comparison of Two Methodist Preachers, John Wesley and George Whitefield (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011); Timothy L. Smith, Whitefield & Wesley on the New Birth (Grand Rapids, MI:

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“never read any thing that Calvin wrote; my doctrines I had from Christ and his apostles,” Whitefield upheld Calvinism, or what he commonly called the “doctrines of grace.”57 In a letter written in 1742—after his dispute with the Erskines —he declared, “I embrace the calvinistical scheme, not because Calvin, but Jesus Christ, I think, has taught it to me. I go on preaching the cross and power of the Redeemer, and desire to say as little as possible about others.”58 In this section we will examine the nature of Whitefield’s Calvinism, and what role the Erskines played in its development. Historians differ as to when Whitefield actually began to endorse Calvinist theology personally and publicly. Edwin Sidney (d. 1872), an Anglican minister, naturalist and historian, argued that Whitefield only came to Reformed theology after meeting with Calvinist ministers in America after 1739.59 Tyerman agreed and argued that in his earliest days Whitefield was an avowed Arminian and changed only to ingratiate himself with Selina Hastings (1707–1791), Countess of Huntingdon, herself a strong Calvinist.60 More recently, Dallimore has suggested that Whitefield’s Calvinism was never too strongly expressed, especially early on, and was more of a “tendency” in his thought that developed throughout his ministry.61 For instance, not long before his conversion Whitefield had read the Scottish puritan Henry Scougal’s (1650–1678) book The Life of God in the Soul of Man (1677), a Reformed work arguing for the nature of genuine Christianity.62 Hints of Calvinism can also be detected in Whitefield’s early preaching, as in a sermon preached in 1737 when he was but twenty-two years old. Based on Ro-

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Francis Asbury Press, 1986); Irwin W. Reist, “John Wesley and George Whitefield: A Study in the Integrity of Two Theologies of Grace,” Evangelical Quarterly 47.1 (1975): 26–40. George Whitefield, “Letter CCXIV,” in Letters of George Whitefield, for the Period of 1734– 1742 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), 205. For “doctrines of grace” see Arnold A. Dallimore, George Whitefield: God’s Anointed Servant in the Great Revival of the Eighteenth Century (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), 69–71. The term “Calvinism” is here, as it was in the eighteenth century, used as a synonym for “Reformed,” notwithstanding Richard Muller’s useful critique of popular notions of “Calvinism.” Cf. Richard A. Muller, “How Many Points?” Calvin Theological Journal 28 (1993): 425–433. Whitefield, “Letter CCCCLVIII,” in Letters, 442. Edwin Sidney, The Life of Sir Richard Hill, bart (London, 1839), 171. Richard Hill (1732–1808) was the brother of the evangelical minister Rowland Hill (1744–1833), whom Sidney also wrote about. Edwin Sidney, The Life of Rowland Hill, A.M. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1834). Tyerman, Life, 1:335. Dallimore, George Whitefield, 2:24. Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man (London: C. Smith and W. Jacob, 1677). For an exposition of Scougal’s work see, J. I. Packer, “Introduction,” in Henry Scougal, The Life of God in the Soul of Man (Fearn-Rosshire, UK: Christian Heritage, 2005), 5–16. For Scougal, see Clare Jackson, “Scougal, Henry (1650–1678),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed., ed. Lawrence Goldman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8853 (accessed March 23, 2016).

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mans 8:30, it argued that salvation is the work of God, that justification and sanctification are necessarily linked, and that the believer is preserved in faith by God until final glorification.63 Another suggestion for the origin of Whitefield’s Calvinism is that he learned it from the Erskines in their lengthy correspondence before his arrival in Scotland, particularly with Ralph Erskine. In February 1741, on board the Minerva back to England from America, and not long before his first trip to Scotland, Whitefield wrote a letter to Erskine explaining the kinds of books he had recently profited from, a number of which would have been more than well-known to the Scot: “Your Sonnets and Sermons have been blessed to me and many…I want all your own and brother’s works. Since I have been on board, I have been much helped by reading the Marrow of Modern Divinity. Boston on the Covenant; and this morning have been solacing myself with your paraphrase upon Solomon’s Song.”64 Indeed, not long before they first met, Ralph penned a lengthy letter to Whitefield that is, in the words of W. R. Ward, “was virtually a theological treatise in itself.”65 While there is no doubt that the Erskines, and Ralph in particular, encouraged Whitefield in his theological development, they did not introduce a radical change to his thinking. Following modern scholarship, and broadly corresponding with the view of Dallimore noted above, it is generally understood that Calvinism was a latent tendency from early in Whitefield’s thought and that it grew and developed over time. Jared C. Hood addressed the issue of the Grand Itinerant’s theological development arguing that Whitefield’s thought grew from a simplistic Calvinism derived from the Thirty-Nine Articles to a more robust “covenant theology of the seventeenth century [sic] Reformed Scholastics.”66 Richard Turnbull makes a similar case, saying, that Whitefield had been “generally sympathetic” to Calvinism before 1740, but “in a moderate fashion,” and that his views “hardened” after time spent with Calvinist ministers in America.67 In an important article on the subject published in 2015, historian David Ceri Jones emphasises the role that

63 Dallimore, George Whitefield, 22:5–26. The sermon that Dallimore referenced was recently reprinted as George Whitefield, Farewell Parochial Sermon at Stonehouse (Shropshire, UK: Quinta Press, 2003). 64 Erskine, Life and Diary, 318. 65 Ward, Protestant Evangelical Awakening, 314. 66 Jared C. Hood, “‘I Never Read Calvin’: George Whitefield, a Calvinist Untimely Born,” Churchman 125.1 (2011): 7–20. 67 Richard Turnbull, Reviving the Heart: The Story of the 18th Century Revival (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2012), 72. Of Whitefield’s embryonic Calvinism, Turnbull, citing Article 17, says, “This is perhaps not entirely surprising, as he did after all have the Church of England’s Articles of Religion (1571) on his side.”

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Whitefield played as a “reviver and populariser of Calvinism” and argues that Whitefield “adopted Calvinism very early.”68 Whatever the case, Whitefield expressed Calvinist sympathies during the late 1730s, the time of his correspondence with the Erskines. In a letter written to a “Rev. Mr. S” while in Philadelphia, dated November 10, 1739, he stated of the doctrines of grace: “I am more and more convinced that they are the truths of God; they agree with the written word and the experience of all the saints in all ages … Election, free grace, free justification without any regard to works foreseen, are such paradoxes to carnal minds, that they cannot away with them.”69 Writing in another letter to a “Rev. Mr. H.” on the same day he declared, “Oh the excellency of the doctrine of election, and of the saints’ final perseverance, to those who are truly sealed by the Spirit of promise!” Doctrines such as depravity, election, and perseverance were commonplace in his preaching. In a sermon on the conversion of the apostle Paul, based on Acts 9:22 he said, “[T]he frequent conversion of notorious sinners to God, to me is one great proof, amongst a thousand others, of that precious but too much exploded and sadly misrepresented, doctrine of God’s electing love. For whence is it that such are taken, whilst thousands, not near so vile, die senseless and stupid? All the answer that can be given is, they are chosen vessels.”70 Speaking about the freedom of the will, he said, “[O]ur deists tells us that man now has a free will to do good, to love God, and to repent when he will; but indeed, there is no free will in any of you, but to sin; what’s more, your free will leads you so far, that you would, if possible, pull God from his throne.”71 Whitefield’s theology continued to develop over time so that he moved from the basic belief in the doctrines of grace, to a fuller understanding of covenant theology. Tyerman mistakenly credits Whitefield’s covenant theology to the influence of Jonathan Edwards in America; it was actually the Cambridge puritan John Edwards (1637–1716) who proved influential. Whitefield first travelled to America in 1740, but a year before that he recorded in his journal that he was “greatly strengthened by perusing some paragraphs out of a book called The Preacher, written by Dr. Edwards, of Cambridge.”72 In fact, Whitefield saw 68 David Ceri Jones, “George Whitefield and the Revival of Calvinism in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” International Congregational Journal (June 2015), 102. 69 Whitefield, “Letter CXIII,” in Letters, 108. 70 George Whitefield, “Saul’s Conversion,” in Seventy-Five on Various Subjects (London: W. Baynes, 1812), 2:175. 71 George Whitefield, “A Penitent Heart, the Best New Year’s Gift,” in Sermons on Important Subjects (London: Henry Fisher, Son, and P. Jackson, 1828), 369. 72 George Whitefield, Journals (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 335, citing John Edwards, The Preacher: A Discourse Shewing, what are the Particular Offices and Employments of those of that Character in the Church (London, 1705–1709). An important study of Edwards’s Reformed orthodoxy is Jeongmo Yoo, John Edwards (1637–1716) on Human Free Choice and

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himself standing within the stream of English puritan thought that would include theologians like Edwards. In a preface that he wrote to a reprinting of John Bunyan’s (1628–1688) Works he said, “[F]or these past thirty years I have remarked, that the more, true and vital religion hath revived either at home or abroad, the more the good old puritanical writings, or the authors of a like stamp who lived and died in the communion of the church of England, have been called for.”73 Gatiss helpfully observes that Whitefield’s developed Reformed theology extended to finer points of doctrine. For instance, in a sermon on 1 Corinthians 1:30 he spoke of “an eternal contract between the Father and the Son,” reflecting the pactum salutis, or the so-called “covenant of redemption,” an important part of the Reformed doctrine of God. Gatiss comments that this was “no small detail for Whitefield” and that if Wesley and other Arminian evangelicals had taken this covenant seriously, there would not have been as much disputing over election.74 Whether he grew in his understanding from a simple to a more robust Reformed theology or not, Whitefield maintained this basic theological outlook throughout his career. In a funeral sermon preached not long after Whitefield’s death in 1770, Richard Elliot, a chaplain to the Countess of Huntingdon, summarised the basics of Whitefield’s overall theology as holding to original sin, the new birth, justification by faith alone, the perseverance of the saints, and unconditional election.75 It was this theological perspective that endeared him to the Erskines, in spite of his Anglicanism. In a letter dated August 21, 1739, Ralph Erskine explained the effect of having read some of Whitefield’s published journals and sermons: “I rejoice to see you ascribe all to the free grace of God in Christ.”76

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Divine Necessity: The Debate on the Relation Between Divine Necessity and Human Freedom in Late Seventeenth-Century and Early Eighteenth-Century England, Reformed Historical Theology (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013). George Whitefield, “The Recommendatory Preface,” in John Bunyan, The Works of that Eminent Servant of Christ, Mr. John Bunyan, 2 vols. (London: W. Johnston, 1767), 1:3. Also cited in Packer, “The Spirit with the Word,” 175. Lee Gatiss, “Introduction,” in Lee Gatiss, ed., The Sermons of George Whitefield (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 1:33. On the importance of the pactum salutis for Reformed theology see, J. V. Fesko, The Covenant of Redemption: Origins, Development, and Reception, Reformed Historical Theology 35 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), though it is curious that he does not note Whitefield’s use of it. Richard Elliot, Grace and Truth, or a Summary of Gospel Doctrine (London: Printed for the author, 1770). Cf. Fred Witzig, “The Great Anti-Awakening: Anti-Revivalism in Philadelphia and Charles Town, South Carolina, 1739–1745,” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Indiana University, 2008), 5–6. Erskine, Life and Diary, 301.

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Whitefield and the Erskines: Friends then foes

With this survey of the Erskines’ theological and ecclesiological concerns, and the correspondence with some of Whitefield’s own views, we can now turn to the nature of their relationship. In what follows we will trace how their friendship initially flowered, and how it became a source of consternation for all involved. Particular attention will be paid to common ground in labouring for revival, the way each understood their respective theological concerns, and how polity and personality contributed to the souring of their friendship. All of this works towards a greater understanding of the nature of the larger debate between Whitefield and the Associate Presbytery in light of older and recent scholarship on the question. We will then observe the results of this dispute in the life of Whitefield before concluding.

3.5.1 George and Ralph: An Epistolary Friendship The genial nature of Whitefield’s early correspondence with the Erskines is evident in the way that he described it in his journal entries from the spring of 1739. The first formal contact between Whitefield and the Scottish ministers occurred in March 1739 with a letter that he, along with John Wesley and William Seward (1702–1740), wrote to Ralph Erskine. Though Whitefield had seen success in his preaching tour in the colonies, and had been publicized in England, the Scottish brothers at this point had not heard of him. This may seem surprising, but it should be kept in mind that he was only twenty-four years of age at this point and had only commenced his preaching ministry a year or so before.77 It was on April 17 that Ralph received his first personal letter from Whitefield, dated March 10, 1738. Erskine notes Whitefield’s “utility in bringing home many souls to Christ,” and his desire to hear news of the gospel in Scotland. Erskine records that he did not immediately answer Whitefield until he had done more research about him.78 On May 18, 1739, Whitefield recorded in his Journals that he received his first letter from Ralph and was excited to find that they shared an 77 There is a letter to Ralph Erskine written by an American revivalist named John Muirhead who speaks of Whitefield, but it is undated and so it is hard to determine whether it was received before the initial correspondence from Whitefield in 1739. Donald Fraser, ed., The Life and Diary of the Reverend Ralph Erskine, A. M. of Dunfermline (Edinburgh: William Oliphant & Son, 1834), 282–286. 78 Erskine recorded in his diary dated April 17, 1739, “I received a letter this month from Mr. Whitefield, dated Bristol, March 10, 1738–9…I did not suddenly answer this line, till I heard more about him, which I did both in public prints, and by letters from London—having written for an account of him.” See Fraser, Life and Diary, 287. It is hard to determine whether this letter is the same as the one written by Whitefield, Wesley, and Seward noted above.

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interest in open-air preaching. He wrote: “Received several excellent letters, amongst which was one from Mr. Ralph Erskine, a field-preacher of the Scots Church, a noble soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, that all who were truly zealous knew one another! It may greatly strengthen each other’s hands.”79 Eight days later, on May 26, he recorded receiving another likewise encouraging letter from Scotland, this one from Ebenezer, and again he points to the practice of open-air preaching: “Received an excellent letter from the Rev. Ebenezer Erskine … acquainting me of his preaching last week to fourteen thousand people. Blessed be God, there are other field preachers in the world besides myself.”80 Whitefield would have taken comfort that he was not the only one to preach in the open, new to it though he was, and his recording of the Erskines’ practice in a journal intended for publication would have also been a means of defending his own practice against detractors. The Erskines must have continued to occupy his mind, because on June 9 he included “Erskine’s Sermons,” that, along with Bishop Hall’s Christ Mystical and Boehme’s Sermons, he “would earnestly recommend to everyone.”81 On July 22, alluding to the controversy that the Erskines were engaged in with the Church of Scotland, he wrote, “Received a letter from Mr. Ralph Erskine, of Scotland. Some may be offended at my corresponding with him, but I dare not but confess my Lord’s disciples.”82 The following day he penned a letter to Ralph describing his own criticisms of the Church of England, his affection for the ministers of the Associate Presbytery, and how he is opposed for owning his friendship with the Erskines.83 In subsequent letters Whitefield continued to draw a link between his experience with the Church of England, and the Erskines’ with Scotland’s Established Church. In Philadelphia, on November 10, 1739, after he had first met Gilbert Tennent, Whitefield stated of him that the American was a “great friend” of the Erskines. Like Tennent and himself, Whitefield described Erskine as one who was persecuted by his country’s church: “Mr. Erskine and his brethren are hated by the judicatories of Edinburgh … as the Methodist preachers are by their brethren in England. Though we are but few, and stand alone, as it were like Elijah, yet I doubt not, but the Lord will appear for us, as He did for that prophet, and make us more than conquerors.”84 This connection between Whitefield and the Erskines and their respective Established Churches would be important in the Scots’ view of him as an Episcopalian. Ralph Erskine wrote a lengthy letter to Whitefield on August 21, 1739, where he speaks of reading Whitefield’s published 79 80 81 82 83 84

George Whitefield, George Whitefield’s Journals (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 266. Whitefield, Journals, 275. Whitefield, Journals, 287. Whitefield, Journals, 312. George Whitefield to Ralph Erskine, July 23, 1739, in Fraser, Life and Diary, 299–300. Whitefield, Journals, 344–345.

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journals and sermons.85 Erskine was encouraged to hear that Whitefield suffered opposition for befriending the Secession ministers and sent the Englishmen publications relating to the “public affairs of the Associate Presbytery.” While Erskine rejoiced over Whitefield’s Calvinism, he also noted the differences between the two and offered some constructive criticism, as from an older man to a younger. Such differences, according to Erskine, were due to Whitefield’s “education in the Church of England,” but it was his hope that he could provide Whitefield greater clarity towards greater unity. In fact, Erskine recognized a “beauty” in providence that Whitefield was part of the Church of England as it was hoped that he could continue the reformation that had begun but stalled in the sixteenth century; particularly in relation to the “useless rites and customs relating to worship, which have no Scriptural foundation.” Erskine encouraged Whitefield to be on guard against things that could prove to be a hindrance to his ministry in Scotland. Though not wanting to offend him, Erskine was concerned to bring his friend to firmer theological convictions. For instance, he chastised aspects of Whitefield’s journal, particularly to a recorded kindness that Whitefield extended to a Quaker, because the Quakers “deny justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ.” Erskine also warned Whitefield to be careful about statements against separation from an ecclesiastical body like the Church of England which could, in turn, be used against the Secession. The situation in Scotland was for him entirely different from that in England, and Whitefield should be careful to note that. The Associate Presbytery did not see themselves as having separated from the Church of Scotland, but only her judicatories—”we never did quit our charges or congregations, to which we were ordained by the imposition of the hands of our several respective presbyteries.” Erskine also critiqued some of the ways that Whitefield expressed himself theologically, particularly as it pertained to areas touching Marrow doctrine like justification by faith or sanctification. Yet, in all of these criticisms, Erskine was at pains to bring Whitefield along gently, and often spoke in such a way as to not bring unnecessary offense. It is important to note that Erskine, like Whitefield, drew a link between their experiences with their established churches: “When I consider how you and your brethren are stirred up of God to such a remarkable way of witnessing for him in England against the corruptions and defections of that church, and when we of the Associate Presbytery have been called forth in a judicial way to witness against the corruptions and defections of the Church of Scotland, and both at a juncture, when Popish powers are combining together against us, and desolating judgments are justly threatened from heaven—there is perhaps more in the womb of providence relating to our several situations, and 85 The following quotations come from Ralph Erskine to George Whitefield, August 21, 1739, in Fraser, Life and Diary, 300–310.

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successes therein, than we are aware of.”86 Though the differences in polity are evident in this letter, Erskine was willing to overlook them because of their common cause in the gospel. In this early correspondence, both Whitefield and the Erskines, particularly Ralph, demonstrate deferential care and mutual respect. In a letter dated July 23, 1739, Whitefield told Ralph that should ever the latter take offense at anything, “reprove me sharply, and I shall thank you with my whole heart.”87 He expressed happiness that Erskine approved of his sermons, and described himself as “but a novice in the school of Christ.” The letter concluded with Whitefield showing solidarity in the cause of Christ with the Erskines and the Associate Presbytery, offering the latter “my tenderest affections” and explaining that “I am opposed for owning you; but to deny our Lord’s disciples, in my opinion, is denying Christ himself.”88 In a reply, Ralph laid out the common ground between himself and Whitefield, particularly as they related to their respective churches. Erskine pointed to Whitefield’s adherence to the Thirty-Nine Articles, expressing a like mind in his own approach to the “Articles of the Church of Scotland,” that he would “preach them up,” as Whitefield did of the English Articles, so long as they “are agreeable to Scripture.” Just as Whitefield would not separate from the Church of England, the Erskines “never declared a secession from the Church of Scotland, but only a secession from the judicatories in their course of defection from the primitive and covenanted constitution, to which we stood bound by our ordination engagements.”89 In his treatment of Whitefield’s relationship to the Erskines, Tyerman is careful to defend his subject, which can at times colour his portrayal of Whitefield’s actions. However, he does offer a lengthy paragraph summarizing the commonalities between the two parties that is worth quoting at length in order to see the how there could be a rapprochement between ardent Presbyterians and an Anglican cleric: The Erskines were dissatisfied with the state of the Church of Scotland; and so were Whitefield and the Wesleys with the Church of England. The Erskines were expelled from the Church of Scotland, and yet claimed to be members of it. Whitefield and the Wesleys, though not expelled from the Church of England, were practically silenced, for almost all the pulpits of the Church were closed against them. The Erskines were now tent-preachers, and preachers in the open-air; so were Whitefield and his friends. The Erskines, though still maintaining that they were members of the Church of Scotland, 86 Fraser, Life and Diary, 309. 87 George Whitefield to Ralph Erskine, July 23, 1739, cited in Dugald Butler, John Wesley and George Whitefield in Scotland, or, The Influence of the Oxford Methodists on Scottish Religion (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1899), 12. 88 Ibid., 13. 89 Ralph Erskine to George Whitefield, n.d., in Butler, Wesley and Whitefield in Scotland, 13.

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were openly employed in organising a seceding church. Whitefield and the Wesleys still called themselves members of the Church of England; and yet they were actively, though unintentionally, creating dissenting sects. Scotland greatly needed protesters like the Erskines; and England greatly needed open-air preachers like Whitefield and the Methodists.90

Of these commonalities, Tyerman concludes, “A finer field of usefulness than Scotland, or one more adapted to Whitefield’s peculiar genius, doctrines, and mode of action, it would have been difficult to find.”91 He is right, Whitefield and the Erskines shared a similar mode of action in open-air preaching, both were openly critical of their respective churches, and they showed open affection for each other, in spite of their differences.

3.5.2 “A Presbyter at large”: An uneasy correspondence In spite of the similarities, it is evident, even in their early correspondence, that there was potential for things to take a negative turn. Not all was sunshine in Whitefield’s thinking on the ecclesial situation in Scotland, and even at this early stage in their friendship, he shared some of his concerns with them about the state of the Scottish church. In one letter to Ralph he expressed fears that the Seceders bordered on “Cameronianism.” This was a term that was applied to the radical wing of the Scottish Covenanters, and named after Richard Cameron (d. 1680), an influential field preacher who co-wrote the Sanquhar Declaration and instigated an armed rebellion against Charles II (1630–1685). The Cameronians were critical of fellow Covenanters who had accepted a royal indulgence. Cameron himself died in a skirmish with royal troops in Ayrshire on July 22, 1680. With this memory lingering in his mind, Whitefield questioned how far the members of the Associate Presbytery were willing to push for reformation in the Kirk. He admitted “ignorance of the constitution of the Scottish Church,” and requested books to help him understand. His fear was that they would willingly take up the sword in defense of their rights, which he detected in one of Erskine’s printed sermons that he had read. This was a worry for Whitefield: “I pray God your next may inform me that I am mistaken; for when zeal carries us to such a length, I think it ceases to be zeal according to knowledge.”92 He made a similar point to the ministers of the Associate Presbytery, in a letter dated November 8, 1739, expressing his fear of a “false zeal,” which he saw was the “blemish of the 90 Tyerman, Life, 1:503. 91 Tyerman, Life, 1:503. 92 George Whitefield to Ralph Erskine, n.d., in Butler, Wesley and Whitefield in Scotland, 16.

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Cameronians in the year [1684].”93 Writing from Savannah, Georgia, on January 16, 1740, he further expressed his differences with the Seceders over polity: “I think I have one objection against your proceedings—your insisting on Presbyterian Government, exclusive of all other ways of worshipping God. Will not this necessarily lead you (whenever you get the upper hand) to oppose and persecute all that differ from you in their church government or outward way of worshipping God? … For my own part, though I profess myself a minister of the Church of England, I am of catholic spirit; and if I see any man loves the Lord Jesus in sincerity, I am not very solicitous to what outward communion he belongs.”94 Though such differences were expressed, the Whitefield-Erskine epistolary exchange continued with relative friendliness. Whitefield regularly expressed what a blessing the Erskines’ and other Scottish ministers’ writings were to him and how often he prayed for the Secession.

3.5.3 “An open breach”: Whitefield and the Erskines part ways The friendship excelled to such a point that on April 10, 1741, Ralph Erskine invited Whitefield to come to Scotland upon his return to Britain from America. There was a hitch, however. Though there was “no face on earth I would desire more earnestly to see” said Ralph Erskine of Whitefield, the invitation came with one caveat: “Yet I would desire it only in a way that, I think, would tend most to the advancing of our Lord’s kingdom and the reformation work among our hands. Such is the situation of affairs among us, that unless you come with a design to meet and abide with us of ‘the Associate Presbytery,’ and if you make your public appearances in the places especially of their concern, I would dread the consequence of your coming, lest it should seem equally to countenance our persecutors. Your fame would occasion a flocking to you, to whatever side you turn; and, if it should be in their pulpits, as no doubt some of them would urge, we know how it would be improved against us. I know not with whom you could safely join yourself, if not with us.”95 Erskine invited Whitefield to a preaching tour of Scotland, but only in support of the Seceders. He well-recognized the boost it would give to the Church of Scotland were Whitefield to preach for the evangelicals who remained. Whitefield responded negatively to this particular request in letters to both Erskine brothers. Interestingly, it was not Ralph to whom he first replied. On May 93 Fraser, Life and Diary, 312. 94 George Whitefield to Ralph Erskine, January 16, 1740, in Butler, Wesley and Whitefield in Scotland, 17. 95 Ralph Erskine to George Whitefield, April 10, 1741, in Tyerman, Life, 1:504. See also Butler, Wesley and Whitefield in Scotland, 20.

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16, 1741, he wrote to Ebenezer acknowledging that he had received Ralph’s invitation and the request to preach only for the Associate Presbytery. This was a request that he “cannot altogether agree to.” In his defense, Whitefield explained that he came only as “an occasional preacher” to preach “the simple gospel” to any who were willing to hear and of “whatever denomination.” He declared that his business was “to evangelise,—to be a Presbyter at large.” Though he refused to be singular in his allegiance to the Seceders, his wish was that the members of the Associate Presbytery would not be offended “if, in all things, I cannot immediately fall in with them.”96 This must have resulted in immediate recrimination for, in a letter to Ralph dated June 4, 1741, he indicated that the Associate Presbytery “are a little too hard upon me.” He asked for a kind of clemency as he was still working out matters of church polity. Nevertheless, as he had said to Ebenezer earlier, “I come simply to preach the gospel” and ideally should be received “as an occasional itinerant preacher by all.”97 To this Ebenezer replied in June 1741 explaining why the Associate Presbytery had requested that Whitefield come to Scotland. They wanted him to build the “fallen tabernacle of David in Britain, and particularly in Scotland.” He promised that “no party views” were behind their request for exclusivity and recognized that it would be “wholly unreasonable to propose or urge that you should incorporate as a member of our Presbytery.” Their one desire was that he not strengthen the hands of the “corrupt clergy and judicatories” who were on a “course of defection.” If he agreed to at least that, then Erskine did not want to see Whitefield limited in the scope of his preaching.98 On July 30, 1741, Whitefield arrived by boat in Leith, an area to the north of Edinburgh along the Water of Leith, to be welcomed to Scotland not only by Ralph Erskine, but also by Alexander Webster (1708–1784), an evangelical minister of the Kirk. Both were hoping he would preach for them first.99 As Whitefield had initially been invited by the Associate Presbytery to come to Scotland, he felt bound to preach for Erskine in Dunfermline, which he did on the first Sunday he was there. In a letter to the English Methodist John Cennick (1714–1755), Whitefield described the attentiveness of his Scottish hearers: “After I had done my prayer, and had named my text, the rustling made by opening the Bibles all at once quite surprised me,—a scene I was never to witness before.”100 On the day following the sermon Ralph wrote to his brother indicating that he and Whitefield had conversed about their differences both as to polity and to preaching. Of his ordination in the Church of England, Erskine reported that 96 97 98 99 100

George Whitefield to Ebenezer Erskine, May 16, 1741, in Tyerman, Life, 1:505. George Whitefield to Ralph Erskine, June 4, 1741, in Tyerman, Life, 1:505–506. Ebenezer Erskine to George Whitefield, June, 1741, in Tyerman, Life, 1:506. Cf. John Gillies, Memoirs of Whitefield, 72–73. George Whitefield to John Cennick, August 1, 1741, in Tyerman, Life, 1:508.

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Whitefield said that he “knew no other way,” though “he would not have it that way again for a thousand worlds”—the latter a statement Tyerman cast aspersions upon. As to whom he would preach, Ralph described Whitefield as saying that he would “refuse no call to preach Christ, whoever gives it; were it a Jesuit priest or a Mohamedan.” Of his actual preaching, however, Ralph commented, “The Lord is evidently with him.”101 On August 5, while in Dunfermline, Whitefield met with representatives from the Associate Presbytery, including the Erskine brothers. The Dunfermline meeting became the turning point in Whitefield’s relations with his Scottish friends. It is important to observe that, as Myers rightly says, there are difficulties in determining the veracity of the accounts of this meeting, as our sources are mainly anecdotal. No minutes have come down to us, and so it is hard to confirm accounts. What follows is a summary from Whitefield’s side, as reported in Tyerman’s biography, in a letter to his friend Thomas Noble in New York. Whitefield told Noble that the “grave venerable men” were “so confined that they will not so much as hear me preach, unless I will join with them.”102 According to him, they attempted to set him right about church government and the Solemn League and Covenant, which Whitefield thought was of no use, because it was not his purpose to come to Scotland for an ecclesiological debate. He recorded that Ralph Erskine had sought to mediate between himself and the Scottish ministers, pointing to the English Whitefield’s ignorance of Scottish Presbyterianism to try and placate their harsh feelings. This did not abate the more heated in attendance, some of whom were not willing to indulge these excuses. Whitefield asked, “What would they have me to do?” in light of their concerns. The answer, according to Whitefield, was “that I was not desired to subscribe immediately to the Solemn League and Covenant, but to preach only for them till I had further light.” He asked, “[W]hy only for them?” Ralph Erskine replied: “[T]hey were the Lord’s people.” Whitefield then asked whether there were any of the Lord’s people remaining in the Church of Scotland? If the answer was that there were none, Whitefield would still go to preach for them, so as to win them to Christ. As a result of this meeting, Whitefield told Noble that he was “more and more determined to go out into the highways and hedges; and that, if the Pope himself would lend me his pulpit, I would gladly proclaim the righteousness of Jesus Christ therein.”103 The meeting broke and the two parties together attended another church service where one of the ministers preached strongly “against prelacy, the Common Prayer Book, the surplice, the rose in the hat, and such-like externals.” Whitefield surmised that when it came time for the minister to preach 101 Ralph Erskine to Ebenezer Erskine, July 31, 1741, in Tyerman, Life, 1:507. 102 George Whitefield to Thomas Noble, August 8, 1741, in Tyerman, Life, 1:509. 103 Whitefield to Noble, in Tyerman, Life, 1:509–510.

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the free offer of the gospel that he had run out of breath: “What a pity that the last was not first, and the first last!”104 The consequence of this meeting was, as Whitefield described it, “an open breach.” Whitefield never preached in a Secession church, and kept solely to pulpits in the Kirk.105 The Associate Presbytery began to speak openly against him, as the quotation from Adam Gib at the beginning of this chapter illustrates. Though he was opposed vehemently in Scotland, Whitefield saw great preaching success throughout the country, as crowds gathered in large numbers to hear him. In 1742 this success materialised famously at the Cambuslang Revival where thousands came to celebrate a communion season.106 With the combined preaching of Whitefield and local Scottish ministers, many were converted, with the outworking of that conversion often dramatic. This brought further criticism from the Associate Presbytery as they saw in Whitefield and the revival a swell of fanaticism. On August 4, 1742, the Presbytery called for a day of fasting and mourning in response.

3.5.4 Differing interpretations There are, as Myers outlines, a number of ways that Whitefeld’s controversy with the Associate Presbytery could be interpreted.107 The traditional view, typically offered by Secession historians, is that the breach was over church polity only, and this because Whitefield would not accept Presbyterianism or the Solemn League and Covenant. Such historians are also willing to admit the problem of the vitriolic reactions of the Erskines and the Associate Presbytery and offer apologies for them. Much is right in this interpretation, but it leaves other aspects of the issue out. While it is no doubt true that there was a significant ecclesiological difference between Whitefield and the Erskines, the mutual accord in their correspondence highlighted above would seem to indicate that this was not the primary motivation for the split. The Erskines, and by extension the Associate Presbytery, knew from very early on that Whitefield was an Episcopalian, and that he himself had expressed both an ignorance of Presbyterianism and con104 Whitefield to Noble, in Tyerman, Life, 1:510. 105 Whitefield did maintain respect for the Erskines. Dallimore cites a letter to David Erskine, Ebenezer’s son, that spoke well of the brothers, as well as a letter from Whitefield to Ralph where he offered to preach in the latter’s church if ever the occasion arose. Dallimore, George Whitefield, 2:90. Also, during his fifth visit to Scotland Whitefield met with Ralph Erskine to whom he said, “O when shall God’s people learn war no more?” Cf. Dallimore, George Whitefield, 2:287. 106 The popular account of this is Arthur Fawcett, The Cambuslang Revival: The Scottish Evangelical Revival of the Eighteenth Century (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1971). 107 Myers, Scottish Federalism, 171–181.

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cerns that some of the reactions to the Church of Scotland might lead to Cameronian extremes. As noted, Ebenezer Erskine made it clear in a letter written in June 1741 that the Scots did not expect Whitefield to “embark in every branch of our reformation.” Given this, Myers rightly concludes that “[I]t is quite clear that while Erskine did not find Whitefield’s episcopacy to be ideal, he was nonetheless willing to work with Whitefield in spite of it.”108 The differences in ecclesiology were outweighed by the good that Whitefield would do for the gospel in Scotland. The meeting in Dunfermline on August 5, 1741, and the subsequent breakdown in relations between Whitefield and the Secession was not about episcopacy, but was rather to do with Whitefield’s willingness to work with Evangelical ministers in the Church of Scotland. Whitefield said that he would preach for anyone, even the Pope, and would thus not confine himself to one particular communion, no matter how righteous their claims were to secession. For the Erskines, Whitefield was in effect promoting the cause of the Kirk, and by necessity endorsing their side in the dispute with the Secession. As Myers says, “The sole deciding factor in Erskine’s opposition to Whitefield was Erskine’s opposition to the Established Church.”109 It was only after the fact that the members of the Associate Presbytery made public what they perceived as all of Whitefield’s errors that culminated in their opposition to the Cambuslang Revival. For example, in a sermon preached in December 1743, Ebenezer Erskine said that the revival had a “spirit of malignancy and enmity against the truth” and that “it inspires the convicts and subjects of it with an inveterate prejudice against those who bear up the testimony of Jesus.”110 According to Erskine, the proof that the revival was ill-founded was in the fact that it produced enmity against the Secession and affinity for the Kirk.111

3.5.5 Scotland and the moderation of Whitefield It would take us too far afield to delve into the continuing nature of the dispute between the Associate Presbytery and the Church of Scotland, the use of the Cambuslang Revival as propaganda against the latter, the future fracturing of the Secession with the Burgher/Antiburgher dispute, or the ways that the ecclesial divisions shaped the ministries of the Erskines. Myers does an admirable job on 108 Myers, Scottish Federalism, 172. 109 Myers, Scottish Federalism, 173. 110 Ebenezer Erskine, “Christ Considered as the Nail Fastened in a Sure Place,” in The Whole Works of Ebenezer Erskine, 3 vols. (Edinburgh: D. Schaw and Co., 1798), 83. Cf. Myers, Scottish Federalism, 174. 111 The language of enmity and affinity comes from Myers, Scottish Federalism, 174.

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these and related matters in his published doctoral work on Ebenezer Erskine. As Keith Edward Beebe and David Ceri Jones observe, the attacks upon Whitefield by the Associate Presbytery backfired and inadvertently strengthened the Evangelical cause in the Kirk: “[R]ejecting Whitefield actually hurt more than helped the Secession cause, as the Scottish populace, many of whom were evangelicals who otherwise might have been lured in their direction, found a compelling reason to listen to his sermons from established pulpits. As a result, evangelical clergy who had consistently sympathized with the Secessionists’ concerns but chose to remain with the Kirk saw renewed vigour in their congregations, both spiritually and numerically.”112 The Presbyterian stridency also had an effect on Whitefield. He who had once denounced Church of England clergy in very strong terms was now on the receiving end. Pointing to a letter written by Whitefield from Aberdeen on October 10, 1741, Beebe and Jones plausibly surmise that the controversy with the Seceders prompted Whitefield to reconcile with John Wesley, with whom he had fallen out over predestination.113 This came after a particularly difficult dispute in Aberdeen with John Bissett (1692–1756) who publically berated Whitefield.114 In the brief letter, Whitefield takes a conciliar approach with Wesley: Reverend and Dear Brother,—May God remove all obstacles that now prevent our union! Though I hold to particular election, yet I offer Jesus freely to every individual soul. You may carry sanctification to what degrees you will, only I cannot agree with you that the in-being of sin is to be destroyed in this life. In about three weeks, I hope to be at Bristol. May all disputings cease, and each of us talk of nothing but Jesus and Him crucified! This is my resolution. I am, without dissimulation, ever yours, G. Whitefield.”115

We also see a change in Whitefield’s perspective beyond his controversy with the Wesleys in his later approach to “unconverted clergy.” By the end of 1741, after a short jaunt out of Scotland, Whitefield had married Elizabeth James. Not long afterward he returned to Scotland where he preached until the end of 1742 while the Cambuslang Revival was at its height. Throughout 1743 he spent time in Wales with the Calvinistic Methodists there, and in 1744 sadly experienced the death of his son John. Marriage and the death of a child, amongst other significant events, would have contributed to a maturing of his outlook on life and ministry. As Jerome Mahaffey explains, “The sum of these events—Whitefield’s recognition 112 Keith Edward Beebe and David Ceri Jones, “Whitefield and the ‘Celtic’ Revivals,” in Geordan Hammond and David Ceri Jones, ed., George Whitefield: Life, Context, and Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 143. 113 Beebe and Jones, “Whitefield and the ‘Celtic’ Revivals,” 143. 114 Cf. Tyerman, Life, 1:522–523. 115 George Whitefield to John Wesley, October 10, 1741, in Luke Tyerman, The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M. A., 3rd ed (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1876), 1:349.

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of where the dissenting road led, his marriage to Elizabeth James, his son’s death, mob and Anglican opposition, the need to support the current political establishment, and the attempt on his life—all contributed tangibly to Whitefield’s move away from the radical end of the religious spectrum towards the mainstream of British Society.” He no longer attacked unconverted ministers or denominations, but “only criticized particular threatening doctrines of specific ministers and decried intellectual forays from the Enlightenment that he sensed were permeating and polluting the church.”116 Though Mahaffey does not mention his negative experiences with the Erskines and the Seceders, Whitefield’s controversy with them would have had just as much of a moderating effect. In Scotland Whitefield met with success not only with commoners, as he had in England and America, but also with the upper classes; he preached with acclaim before nobles and ministers in the Kirk. As Beebe and Jones describe, his “influence on established clergy was profound,” as many received encouragement to take up their ministries with renewed vigour.117 At the same time, the Seceders, his former allies with whom he had previously joined in attacking ministers of Established churches, were now attacking him. All such circumstances would have had an effect on his maturation as a Christian and revival leader, and would change the way he would conduct himself with other ministers. The weapons used to criticise all and sundry in the Church of England, at home and abroad, were thus turned on him and he felt something of the unjustness of such blanket attacks. This would have given him perspective, and eventuated in a more catholic Whitefield, even while the Erskines and Seceders became more sectarian.118

116 Jerome Dean Mahaffey, Preaching Politics: The Religious Rhetoric of George Whitefield and the Founding of a New Nation (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 124. 117 Beebe and Jones, “Whitefield and the ‘Celtic’ Revivals,” 144. 118 One cannot help but wonder if there was regret on the part of the Erskines and other Seceders, especially after divisions amongst the Secession in the Antiburgher dispute. The Erskines found themselves opposed to Antiburghers like Gib, Whitefield’s vitriolic critic, and they in turn received some of the same. A rapprochement is seen in the correspondence between John Brown (1722–1787) of Haddington, a Burgher and student of Ebenezer Erskine, and the Countess of Huntingdon, who forged an educational relationship between the Seceders and the Methodists. I am thankful to Jack Whytock for spurring these thoughts in personal correspondence; see also Whytock, “An Educated Clery,” 210. For Gib’s Antiburgher work, see Adam Gib, The Present Truth: A Display of the Secession Testimony, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1774).

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Conclusion

In this essay we have seen a kind of passing of two theological ships. The young Whitefield, who was brash as a critic of “unconverted ministers,” broadened his thinking in light of harsh criticism directed his way. The Erskines and their Secession colleagues, once part of a national church, adopted a critical stance and moved more and more into a sectarian outlook. We asked the question, how could such staunch Scottish Presbyterians work with an Anglican in the cause of the gospel in light of the fraught history between the two communions? The answer, in short, is that theological controversy brought two potential combatants together in a relationship of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” At the same time, they did genuinely share a theological outlook in Calvinism, and an interest in seeing the gospel spread. There is no doubt that they also shared a real epistolary friendship. The break between Whitefield and the Erskines can thus be understood as a difference of emphases: Whitefield was less ecclesiologically inclined, and so was willing to bring his revival message to all and sundry, whereas the Erskines, with a stronger ecclesiology, would not countenance compromise, even with likeminded ministers in their old denomination. As neither were willing to compromise their respective positions, the result was an open breach, as Whitefield described it. Why there could not have been an amicable parting was largely due to personality, as much as it was to polity. Had the Erskines and the Secession been willing to work with Whitefield, and allow him the freedom to join also with the Kirk, would there not have been a greater chance at both parties meeting their anticipated goals? Would that the Secession have been built up, and the Kirk made healthier? Could it have brought about a rejoining of the Associate Presbytery with the Church of Scotland with due repentance and forgiveness on both sides? For Whitefield, he may have continued his openness to the teachings of the Presbyterians that, while it may not have seen him shift denominational allegiances, may have made him more ecclesiologically aware. If there was to be a positive outcome, it was that Whitefield tempered his critiques so that he could maintain a wide preaching ministry, still drawing attention to the problematic doctrines arising in the church, while at the same time not alienating those who may not line up perfectly with all of his views. In 1842 American historian Joseph Tracy (1793–1874) pointed to something of the change in perception that some in America had of Whitefield’s ministry. Tracy described Whitefield as having to “recover” from his previous controversies while embarking on his second visit to America in 1744. Opinions had changed to some degree so that in 1745 in Franklin’s Philadelphia Gazette the magistrates of Savannah would publish a defense of Whitefield’s character pertaining to charges of financial mismanagement of Bethesda Orphanage.

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Though Tracy’s language is too florid and exaggerated, it does make the point that there had been a discernible change in Whitefield: “For the remainder of his life, the faults of his character were like the spots on the sun; detected, without much difficulty, by the cool and careful observer who takes pains to look for them; but, to all practical purposes, lost in one general and genial effulgence.”119 From what we have seen in this essay, a significant part of this change was due to his controversy with two Scottish brothers who practiced open-air preaching and longed for revival.

119 Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (Boston: Charles Tappan, 1845), 372.

HyunKwan Kim

4.

The Doctrine of Free Choice

4.1

Introduction

Jonathan Edwards’s magisterial treatise, A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agency, Vertue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame (1754)1 has often been considered as the culmination of New England Calvinist theology against its Arminian counterpart in their debate over the nature of human free choice.2 Alexander V. G. Allen, in his biography of Jonathan Edwards (1889), writes, “His work [Freedom of Will] was received by his fellow-religionists with exultant testimonies to its power and value. There was among the Calvinists a general conviction that he had annihilated Arminianism.”3 However, the question of whether Edwards’s view might be seen as truly representing the traditional Calvinist position or not has been a constant issue in the older scholarship as well as in the contemporary debates, because of his staunch defense of the doctrine of philosophical necessity.4 In fact, with a general refusal of the traditional Aristotelian “faculty psychology”5 in the eighteenth 1 Jonathan Edwards, A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agency, Vertue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame (Boston: S. Kneeland, 1754), Hereinafter cited as Freedom of Will. 2 As for the praise of Edwards’s Freedom of Will, see Alexander V. G. Allen, Jonathan Edwards (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1889), 283–286. 3 Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 284. 4 As for the dissenting voices, in the older and contemporary scholarship, see Richard A. Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the Absence of Free Choice: A Parting of Ways in the Reformed Tradition,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 1, no. 1 (2011), 3–5; note also, Allen C. Guelzo, “From Calvinist Metaphysics to Republican Theory: Jonathan Edwards and James Dana on Freedom of the Will,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 56 (1995), 399–418. 5 As for the Aristotelian faculty psychology, Muller explains, “Faculty psychology, with its characteristic distinction of spiritual life into the faculties of intellect and will, or, more precisely, of the soul into four faculties-intellect, will, sensitive power, and vegetative power-

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century, the finely developed scholastic language and medieval modal logic that were employed by the Reformed orthodox thinkers had been shifted into a more deterministic way. Richard A. Muller points out that the stereotypical categorization of the Reformed doctrine of free choice simply as “philosophical determinism” or “Stoic fatalism” have been in part triggered by viewing the Reformation and Post-Reformation periods primarily through the lens of “rather recent developments in the tradition, namely, the eighteenth-century rise of Calvinistic philosophical determinism,”6 and that “Edwards was one of the thinkers who made the transition between a traditional Reformed theology and a form of philosophical determinism.”7 Indeed, among the older scholarship, Allen observed, “There is no difference between his [Edwards’s] doctrine and that of the ancient Stoics, or of the famous philosopher Hobbes, who shocked the religious world of his day by his unspiritual method of dealing with religious things.”8 Recently, James A. Harris also writes, “Edwards’s naturalism pushes him to the conclusion that Hobbes had reached a hundred years earlier.”9 Nevertheless, Edwards’s praise of the Reformed orthodox thinkers, and his evaluation of Hobbes mystifies his readers in figuring out the possible origins of Edwards’s philosophical determinism. Edwards especially favored the representative theologians of Reformed scholasticism in the seventeenth century, such as Francis Turretin and Petrus van Mastricht. Comparing these two figures, Edwards writes: They are both excellent. Turretin is on polemical divinity; on the Five Points, and all other controversial points; and is much larger in these than Mastricht; and is better for one that desires only to be thoroughly versed in controversies. But take Mastricht for divinity in general, doctrine, practice, and controversy; or as an universal system of divinity and it is much better than Turretin or any other book in the world, excepting the Bible, in my opinion.10

Here, Edwards applauded the polemical clarity of Turretin and the universal system of Mastricht, but in his doctrine of free choice, Edwards did not adopt their scholastic use of medieval modal logic and Aristotelian causality. Thus,

6 7 8 9 10

had its roots in Aristotle and became, in the thirteenth century development of a Christian Aristotelianism, the dominant view of spiritual or rational existence.” Richard A. Muller, God, creation, and providence in the thought of Jacob Arminius: sources and directions of scholastic Protestantism in the era of early orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1991), 143. Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the Absence of Free Choice,” 21–22. Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the Absence of Free Choice,” 11. Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 288. James A. Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 110. Jonathan Edwards, Letters and Personal Writings, ed. George S. Claghorn, vol. 16 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), 217.

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“Edwards’ resolution of the problem of free will,” Muller states, “stands in marked contrast to the resolution found among Reformed orthodox writers like Gijsbert Voetius, Francis Turretin, and indeed, Edwards’ own favorite theologian, Petrus van Mastricht.”11 In contrast, Edwards explicitly denied any sort of connections between Thomas Hobbes and himself. But, interestingly Edwards insinuates that Hobbes might have been partly right in the doctrine of free choice. He says: As to Mr. Hobbes’s maintaining the same Doctrine concerning Necessity; – I confess, it happens I never read Mr. Hobbes, Let his Opinion be what it will, we need not reject all Truth which is demonstrated by clear Evidence, meerly because it was once held by some bad Man… And if Mr. Hobbes has made a bad Use of this Truth, that is to be lamented: but the Truth is not to be tho’t worthy of Rejection on that Account.12

Here, Edwards considered Hobbes even as “some bad Man” but he does not entirely reject Hobbes’s idea, given that it contains a sort of truth on the “Doctrine concerning Necessity.” At this point, it might be worthwhile to examine in what sense Edwards’s doctrine of free choice is deviated from his precedent Reformed doctrine of free choice, and in what sense Edward’s arguments echoes Hobbes’s philosophical determinism. In order to investigate Reformed doctrine of free choice, this essay will look upon the Westminster Confession’s treatment of human free choice, not simply because it has a great authority as the standard of Reformed faith, but also mainly because it “could not have been written apart from the intellectual background of Protestant orthodoxy and scholasticism, with its strong components of logic, dialectic and Aristotelian causality.”13 Thus, the Westminster Confession directly reflects the distinctive characteristics of Reformed scholasticism that Edwards highly praised. With regard to the similarity between Edwards and Hobbes, this essay will focus on Edward’s use of Locke to show that his reliance on Locke in fact becomes a vehicle to reach Hobbesian thought. While Edwards starts with Locke’s definition of freedom based on Lockean psychology employed “Of Power” in An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), his free will discussion goes far beyond Locke’s perspective into a more deterministic way so as to echo Hobbesian materialist determinism; this in turn would disavow his precedent Reformed thought on human freedom. 11 Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the Absence of Free Choice,” 20. 12 Edwards, Freedom of Will, IV. 6. 13 Richard A. Muller, “‘The Only Way of Man’s Salvation’: Scripture in the Westminster Confession,” in Calvin Studies VIII: Presented at the Colloquium on Calvin Studies, Held January 26–27, 1996, at Davidson College and the Davidson College Presbyterian Church, ed. John Leith (Davidson, NC: Davidson College, 1996). 18–19.

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Reformed Doctrine of Free Choice in the Westminster Confession

The Westminster Confession formulates the doctrine of free choice in chapter 9, Of Free Will. It starts with the declaration that “God has endued the will of man with that natural liberty, that is neither forced, nor, by any absolute necessity of nature, determined good, or evil.”14 Here, it is significant to remember the Confession’s expression that God gave “that natural liberty” not simply to man, but specifically to “the will of man.” That is, the Confession states that the natural liberty pertains to the faculty of the will. Based on Christian Aristotelianism and scholastic faculty psychology,15 Reformed thinkers commonly believed that the faculty of free choice comes from the conjoined operation of both the intellect and the will. More specifically, they mostly ascribed the decision of choice to the faculty of the intellect, and the freedom or liberty to the faculty of the will. As we shall see later, however, following Locke’s definition, Edwards maintained that the freedom does not belong to the will of man, but belongs to man himself. Although the will of man possessed the natural liberty of doing good or evil, the Confession teaches that it was only possible in the state of innocency before the fall. That is, the Confession basically adopts the Augustinian fourfold state of the human nature in its teaching of human free will: 1. able to sin, able not to sin (posse peccare, posse non peccare) in the state of innocency; 2. not able not to sin (non posse non peccare) in the state of nature; 3. able not to sin (posse non peccare) in the state of grace; and 4. not able to sin (non posse peccare) in the state of glory. In the rest of chapter 9, therefore, the Confession continues to explain that the ability of the will of man is variant according to each of the four states:

14 Chapter 9. I, “Of Free Will,” in The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms: As Adopted by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (Lawrenceville, Ga.: Christian Education & Publications Committee of the Presbyterian Church in America, 2007), 12. Hereinafter cited as WCF. 15 Concerning Christian Aristotelianism on faculty psychology, Muller writes, “Faculty psychology, with its characteristic distinction of spiritual life into the faculties of intellect and will, or, more precisely, of the soul into four faculties-intellect, will, sensitive power, and vegetative power-had its roots in Aristotle and became, in the thirteenth century development of a Christian Aristotelianism, the dominant view of spiritual or rational existence.” Richard A. Muller, God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius: Sources and Directions of Scholastic Protestantism in the Era of Early Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1991), 143. For the Protestants’ adoption of the Aristotelian faculty psychology in the time of the Reformation and Post-Reformation, see Richard A. Muller, The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Formation of a Theological Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 159–173 and idem; God, Creation, and Providence, 143–149, 167–169, 191–207.

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II. Man, in his state of innocency, had freedom, and power to will and to do that which was good and well pleasing to God; but yet, mutably, so that he might fall from it.16 III. Man, by his fall into a state of sin, has wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation: so as, a natural man, being altogether averse from that good, and dead in sin, is not able, by his own strength, to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.17 IV. When God converts a sinner, and translates him into the state of grace, He frees him from his natural bondage under sin; and, by His grace alone, enables him freely to will and to do that which is spiritually good; yet so, as that by reason of his remaining corruption, he does not perfectly, or only, will that which is good, but does also will that which is evil.18 V. The will of man is made perfectly and immutably free to do good alone in the state of glory only.19

Here, the Confession teaches moral necessity of human beings after the fall. The mutability of the will is now determined to do evil alone in a state of sin. Although man could do what is spiritually good by God’s grace in a state of grace, corruption still remains in human beings. Only in the state of glory, the will of man is determined to do good alone. This does not mean that human beings lost the freedom of the will after the fall because of moral necessity. If the foundation of freedom of the will lies in the ability to do good or evil, one cannot say that human beings have freedom of the will even in the state of glory, because they will do only good in that state. That is, the Confession implies that the moral necessity that arises from the moral state of human nature does not destroy the essential nature of freedom. In other words, human beings enjoy their highest freedom whether they seek good or evil according to their nature. Therefore, what has been lost after the fall is not the freedom as the faculty of the will, but the mutability to do good or evil. The Confession does acknowledges the creaturely freedom even under God’s eternal decree and foreknowledge. In chapter 3, Of God’s Eternal Decree and chapter 5, Of Providence, the Confession writes in this way: I. God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.20

16 17 18 19 20

WCF, 9.2. WCF, 9.3. WCF, 9.4. WCF, 9.5. WCF, 3.1.

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II. Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the First Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly; yet, by the same providence, he ordereth them to fall out, according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently.21

In these articles, the Confession stresses both God’s eternal decree as the first cause and the contingency of the will of the creatures as the second cause. Due to the limitation of the genre of the confessional document,22 the Confession did not fully explain how the contingency of the second cause can be preserved under the immutable and infallible existence of the first cause. Reformed scholasticism, however, could harmonize God’s infallible knowledge and the contingency of the creatures, using the scholastic distinction of necessity of consequence (necessitas consequentiae) and necessity of consequent (necessitas consequentis). The necessity of consequence refers to “a necessity brought about or conditioned by a previous contingent act or event so that the necessity itself arises out of contingent circumstance.”23 Thus, the necessity of consequence is not a causal necessity but a logical necessity. On the contrary, the necessity of consequent is “the necessity of something that cannot be other than what it is.”24 Thus, it is a causal and absolute necessity. Reformed orthodox thinkers believed that God’s infallible knowledge of a thing per se does not impose a causal necessity on the occurrence of the thing. Notably, Francis Turretin puts it in this way: The infallibility and certainty of the event does not take away the nature of the contingency of things because things can happen necessarily as to the event and yet contingently as to the mode of production. If there is granted a prescience of future contingent things, all things would take place necessarily by necessity of consequence, by the necessity of infallibility; not by necessity of the consequent and absolute.25

That is, although a thing has an extrinsic necessity like divine foreknowledge, the existence of the thing is still contingent in that it takes place by contingent causes according to its nature. As it will be shown later, however, Edwards believed that

21 WCF, 5.2. 22 As for the Confession’s intentional reticence, Muller says, “The Confession intentionally offers no more detail than its authors thought necessary for a basic definition of Reformed doctrine—and many topics found in the theological systems of the day are entirely omitted from consideration.” Muller, “‘The Only Way of Man’s Salvation”: Scripture in the Westminster Confession,” 19. 23 Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1985), 200. 24 Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 200. 25 Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison Jr. (New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 1992). III. xii. 23. Hereinafter cited as Institutes.

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divine foreknowledge presupposes the absolute causal necessity, and thus it denies any sort of contingencies. What kind of contingency, then, do the will of human beings possess according to Reformed scholasticism? The modal term contingency refers to a certain state when a thing or event is either “able to be otherwise” or “possible not to be.” Reformed orthodoxy thinkers assumed that in order for the will to be considered as contingent, it has to possess both the freedom of contradiction (libertas contradictionis) and the freedom of contrariety (libertas contrarietatis). The freedom of contradiction refers to the possibility of the will “to elicit or not elicit some action, e. g., to love some thing or not,” while the freedom of contrariety lies in the possibility of the will “to wish an object or its opposite.”26 However, how can the will actualize its all contingent possibilities at the moment of choice under the existence of God’s eternal decree and foreknowledge? If the Confession really allows this kind of contingency for the will at the moment of choice, it would mean that the Confession teaches libertarian free choice.27 But, the Confession clearly emphasizes God’s absolute sovereignty over whatsoever comes to pass, as shown in chapter 3, Of God’s Eternal Decree and in chapter 5, Of Providence. The Confession did not clarify in what sense the will of human beings have a liberty or contingency in spite of the existence of God’s foreknowledge. Once again, however, the doctrine of free choice defended by Reformed scholasticism provides helpful guidance in decoding the precise intention of the Confession on the issue. Especially Turretin’s use of medieval scholastic distinction does clarify the exact place of the contingency of the will. In order to situate the faculty of the will in the right place, Turretin first divides the concept of actuality (actus) into twofold: the primary actuality (actus primus), and the secondary actuality (actus secundus). Turretin then claims that the will is “determinable to various objects and holds itself differently towards them” in the state of the primary actuality; thus “it can either elicit or suspend the act” (freedom of contradiction) or “be carried to both of opposite things” (freedom of contrariety), but the will is determined to one way in the secondary actuality.28 The primary actuality refers to “the bare existence of a thing distinct from its 26 W. L. Gildea, W. H. Fairbrother, and H. Sturt, “Symposium—The Freedom of the Will,” in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 3, no. 1 (1895), 47. 27 In his recent volume, Deviant Calvinism (2014), Oliver D. Crisp falsely insisted that “libertarian Calvinism makes good sense of what the Westminster Confession says about the relationship between the divine ordination of all things whatsoever and human free will.” Oliver D. Crisp, Deviant Calvinism: Broadening Reformed Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2014), 93. However, Crisp seems to misread the precise intention of the Westminster Confession. By the name of libertarian Calvinism, Crisp simply amalgamated two conflicting views of human free will. 28 Turretin, Institutes, X. iii. 4.

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operation,” and the secondary actuality means “the existence of a thing in its operation.”29 That is, according to Turretin, the will is indifferent and undetermined if it remains in the mere existence of itself before it starts to operate, that is, in actu primo; but when all the requisites for acting are posited, the indifference of the will disappears in actu secundo. What, then, does motivate the will to move from the primary actuality to the secondary actuality? According to Turretin, the intellect intrinsically determines the will towards a certain way in this process. At the same time, the providence of God also extrinsically moves the will according to its own nature. Thus, Turretin says, “The will can never be without determination as well extrinsic from the providence of God, as intrinsic from the judgment of the intellect.”30 That is, the will keeps being indifferent away from any requisites for further action, and thus it possesses a potency to produce multiple effects from alternatives in the primary actuality, but it is determined to actualize only one possibility when it is conjoined by intrinsic and extrinsic requisites in the secondary actuality. Using this framework, Turretin could secure room for the contingency where the freedom of contradiction and of contrariety are preserved, and show that the future acts that come to existence arise from the contingent mode in the primary actuality, although they are said to be necessary insofar as God knows it. At this point, Turretin’s doctrine of human free choice offers a crucial suggestion in understanding the Westminster Confession’s treatment of human free choice. While the Confession presupposes God’s absolute sovereignty in his ordinance of “whatsoever comes to pass,” it also accentuates “the liberty or contingency of second cause” in the will of human agency.31 However, the Confession’s emphasis of the contingency of second cause is not to be interpreted as if it allowed the ability of human beings to do otherwise at the moment of choice. If human beings could exert this type of libertarian free choice, their act of choice could be no longer called a secondary cause, but should be considered as a primary cause. As clearly shown in Turretin’s doctrine of free choice, Reformed theologians during this period situated the contingency of human free choice not at the moment of choice, but prior to the act of choice in the primary actuality.

29 Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 24. 30 Turretin, Institutes, X. iii. 7. 31 WCF, 3.1.

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Locke and Edwards on the Freedom of Will

Locke deals with the nature and extent of human freedom mostly in “Of Power,” Chapter XXI of Book II in the Essay. In the course of revising the Chapter for later editions, however, Locke’s original contention of several important matters has been heavily changed. As the result, a psychological determinism described in the first edition of the Essay has been diluted as the second and subsequent editions progressed. Edwards, consequently, takes an ambivalent approach to Locke’s ideas according to which edition they belong to; he principally agrees with the first edition of Locke’s Essay, but explicitly rejects Locke’s revised and enlarged ideas that start from the second edition onwards.32 Thus, continuities and discontinuities between the thought of Locke and that of Edwards are provoked from this inconsistency.

4.3.1 Continuities between Locke and Edwards In stipulating the nature of human freedom, Locke attempts to provide how the traditional definition of freedom should be recast in relation to the will. Following Hobbes, Locke also thinks that the traditional question of whether the will is free or not is basically poorly posed since he assumes that the idea of freedom does not belong to the will but belongs to the agent. Locke holds that the will is “nothing but one Power or Ability” and freedom is “another Power or Ability,” both of which are only attributable to agents.33 Locke exemplifies it in this way: Question, viz. Whether Man’s Will be free, or no. …the Question it self is altogether improper: And it is as insignificant to ask, whether Man’s Will be free, as to ask, whether his Sleep be Swift, or his Virtue square; Liberty being as little applicable to the Will, as swiftness of Motion is to Sleep, or squareness to Virtue. Everyone would laugh at the absurdity of such a Question as either of these, because it is obvious that the modifications of Motion belong not to sleep, nor the difference of Figure to Virtue; and when anyone well considers it, I think he will as plainly perceive, that Liberty, which is but a power, belongs only to Agents, and cannot be an attribute or modification of the Will, which is also but a Power.34 32 Indeed, Edwards owned at least two different editions of Locke’s Essay. In the list of his “Account Book,” a ledger in which Edwards noted books that were lent to others, there is a record that Edwards owned the first edition of the Essay (1690) as well as the third edition of The Works of John Locke (1727). Edward, Works, 26:326. When writing the Freedom of Will, however, Edwards used a seventh edition of the Essay (1713). See, Ramsey, “Editor’s Introduction,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 55. 33 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London, 1690), II, 21, n. 16. 34 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, 21, n. 14.

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This shows Locke’s belief that the freedom cannot be a property of the will. In order for something to be said to have freedom properly, Locke believes that it should be a distinct agent in possession of rational power by which it can make a choice. The will, for him, is not an agent but simply “a Power to begin or forbear, to continue or end several, Thoughts of our Minds, and Motions of our Bodies,”35 just like freedom is another kind of power, “the power a Man has to do or forbear doing any particular Action” as one prefers.36 Talking of the freedom of the will, then, sounds nonsensical since it attributes one power to another kind of power. Locke, thus, says, “For who is it that sees not, that Powers belong only to Agents, and are Attributes only of Substances, and not of Powers themselves?”37 The proper question, then, becomes not whether the will is free or not, but whether or not an agent wills freely. Locke’s notion of freedom did provide Edwards with a greatly helpful inspiration in developing his Freedom of Will, given that Edwards’s treatise mainly argues against the Arminian concept of freedom, where true liberty is believed to consist in the self-determining power of the will.38 Edwards criticizes the Arminian position as being obviously absurd, in light of what Locke has described concerning the will. Thus, Edwards begins his argumentation with employing Locke’s understanding of the will: I observe, that the Will (without any metaphysical Refining) is, That by which the Mind chuses any Thing. The Faculty of the Will, is that Faculty or Power, or Principle of Mind, by which it is capable of chusing: an Act of Will is the same as an Act of Chusing or Choice. … For in every Act of Will whatsoever, the Mind chuses one Thing rather than another. …Mr. Locke says, “The Will signifies Nothing but a Power or Ability to prefer or chuse.”39 Edwards accentuates that the subject of choosing is not the Will, but the Mind. Following Hobbes and Locke, Edwards also maintains that it is the agent, and not the will that could properly possess the power of freedom: “And therefore to talk of Liberty, or the contrary, as belonging to the very Will it self, is not to speak good Sense. …For the Will it self is not an Agent that has a Will.”40 Edwards’s agreement with Locke upon the identification of the will in relation to the mind is based on their common refusal of traditional Aristotelian “faculty 35 36 37 38

Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, 21, n. 5. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, 21, n. 15. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, 21, n. 16. See especially, Edwards, “Wherein it is considered, Whether there is or can be any such Sort of FREEDOM OF WILL, as that wherein Arminians place the Essence of the Liberty of all moral Agents; and whether any such Thing ever was or can be Conceived of” in Freedom of Will, II (31–134). 39 Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 1. 40 Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 5.

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psychology.”41 Locke has doubted on the scholastic distinction of the mind into separate faculties of intellect and will: “This way of speaking of Faculties, has misled many into a confused Notion of so many direct Agents in us, which had their several Provinces and Authorities and did command, obey, and perform several Actions, as so many distinct Beings.”42 Locke, instead, proposes the unitary account of the mind where both the understanding and the will are simply understood as one of the powers or abilities that human beings have. Adopting Lockean psychology, Edwards praises the clarity of Locke’s unitary account of the mind: “I need say the less on this Head, Mr. Locke having set the same Thing forth, with so great Clearness, in his Essay on the human Understanding.”43 According to Muller, “He [Edwards] has, following Locke, evacuated the traditional distinction between intellect and will as separate faculties and the consequent distinction resident in the tradition between the acts of will and intellect in their conjoint act of choosing freely.”44 In this scheme of psychology, the will is described as “more of a process than a faculty.”45 The only kind of freedom, then, is not the freedom of the will, but the freedom of willing or the freedom of action. What, then, determines the motion of willing to take place in this structure? In the first edition of the Essay, Locke wrote that “the Will, or Preference, is determined by something without it self,” and that “the greater Good is that alone which determines the Will.”46 For Locke, “good” is something that “has an aptness to produce pleasure in us,” and human beings always seek for the pleasure for their happiness.47 Thus, Locke concluded that human beings are determined to follow what they consider to be the greater good. At this point, Locke’s understanding of the determination of the will seems to resemble the traditional intellectualistic thinking where the will always follow what the practical intellect judges to be good.48 Those two positions, however, are 41 42 43 44 45

Refer to footnote 15 in this chapter. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, 21, n. 6. Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 5. Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the Absence of Free Choice,” 13. McClymond and McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 341. 46 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, 21, n. 29. 47 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II, 21, n. 29. 48 For this reason, Alexander S. Rosenthal sees “Locke’s natural law theory” as “an intellectualist doctrine and thus in a homogeneous development from the natural law teachings of Thomas Aquinas and Richard Hooker.” Alexander S. Rosenthal, Crown under Law: Richard Hooker, John Locke, and the Ascent of Modern Constitutionalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 221–2. However, the question of whether Locke was an intellectualist or a voluntarist remains contentious. See Rosenthal, “The Question of Intellectualism and Voluntarism in Locke’s Natural Law Theory” in Crown under Law: Richard Hooker, John Locke, and the Ascent of Modern Constitutionalism, 289–306.

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fundamentally different since Locke’s unitary account of the mind in no way secures the room for the freedom of the will where the freedom of contradiction and of contrariety are preserved, prior to the act of willing. The traditional intellectualist thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas or Francis Turretin have distinguished the will in its primary actuality (actus primus) from its secondary actuality (actus secundus) to preserve the contingency of the will based on Aristotelian faculty psychology.49 In this sense, Locke’s perspective far more resembles a one-stage volition theory proposed by Hobbes.50 Just as Hobbes had proposed “the last appetite” as the determination of the will, so Locke considered “the greater good” as the determination of the will. This line of thinking is more evidently presented in Edwards’s notion of motive. Edwards writes, “It is that Motive, which, as it stands in the View of the Mind, is the strongest, that determines the Will.”51 By the term “motive,” Edwards defines it as “the whole of that which moves, excites or invites the Mind to Volition, whether that be one Thing singly, or many Things conjunctly.”52 According to Edwards, every motive, whatever it is, only occurs when the mind “consider’d or view’d” it “as good.”53 Motive, then, is a something that derives the act of willing to move to a certain direction based on what the mind perceives to be an apparent good. Thus, Edwards says, “The Will is always determined by the strongest Motive.”54 In accordance with Hobbes and Locke, Edwards’s perspective also represent a one-stage volition theory, where the will has no independent powers or abilities of its own, but is simply understood as being placed in the last portion within the 49 The primary actuality means “the bare existence of a thing distinct from its operation,” and the secondary actuality refers to “the existence of a thing in its operation.” Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1985), 24. Aquinas uses this distinction in the form of de dicto and de re to preserve the contingency of things, Thomas Aquinas, De Veritate I, Q. 2, A. 12, ad. 4. For Turretin’s use of this distinction, see Francis Turretin, Institutio Theologiae Elencticae 3 vols. (Edinburgh, 1847), X, iii, 4. 50 According to Guelzo, “Hobbes thought of volition as a one-stage process, in which willing was merely a name attached to the last segment in the process of appetite, and which could not be interrupted by a process of further deliberation within the will, or the act of willing, itself. Consequently, the outcomes of all choices are necessary ones because they cannot be other than what the last appetite is, and the will could be spoken of as “free” not because it possesses power but simply because it possesses ability or opportunity.” Allen C. Guelzo, “Calvinist Metaphysics to Republican Theory: Jonathan Edwards and James Dana on Freedom of the Will,” Journal of the History of Ideas 56, no. 3 (1995): 405. See, also Thomas Hobbes, “Supplement from Liberty and Necessity,” Hobbes: Selections, ed. F. J. E. Woodbridge (New York, 1930), 205–6. 51 Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 2. 52 Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 2. 53 Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 2. 54 Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 2.

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process of the mind’s inclination towards its apprehension of good. Edwards even identifies “the will at present” with “the greatest apparent Good at present” since he believed that the mind cannot but to choose what is most agreeable to itself.55 In this sense, Edwards writes, “The Will always is as the greatest apparent Good, or as what appears most agreeable”56 At this point, Edwards seems to follow Locke’s original ideas in the first edition of the Essay. Locke, however, obfuscates his original deterministic thinking by adding “the power of suspension” as the requisite for human freedom in the second and subsequent editions. For this reason, in developing the philosophical determinism, Edwards filters Locke’s revised thoughts and criticizes the key concepts of Locke’s modifications. In the course of strengthening his perspective, Edwards’s argument, whether consciously or not, remarkably becomes similar to that of Hobbes.

4.3.2 Discontinuities between Locke and Edwards After publishing the first edition of the Essay, Locke faced an objection that his scheme of human freedom and necessity oversimplified the role of human willing in making a voluntary action. Notably William Molyneux, in his letter to Locke in 1692, wrote that “you seem to make all sins to proceed from our understandings, or to be against conscience, and not at all from the depravity of our wills. Now it seems harsh to you, that a man will be damned, because he understands no better than he does.”57 Locke seemed to take account of Molyneux’s criticism seriously since he considerably revised the Chapter “Of Power” and introduced a new account of human freedom and necessity in the second and later editions.58 In the first edition, Locke explicitly wrote that the will is determined by “something without it self”, and that “the greater good” alone determines the will. In the second edition, however, Locke answers differently: To the Question, what is it determines the Will? The true and proper Answer is, The mind; For that which determines the general power of directing, to this or that particular 55 Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 2. 56 Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 2. 57 John Locke, The Works of John Locke in Nine Volumes, (London: Rivington, 1824). 297–8. Molyneux to Locke, 22 December, 1692. 58 According to Patrick Kelly, “It was Molyneux who persuaded Locke against cutting out a considerable amount of material from his book, and two important new sections owed their place directly to him, namely the greatly extended chapter on power and the entirely new chapter on ‘Identity and diversity’” Patrick Kelly, “Locke and Molyneux: the anatomy of a friendship,” Hermathena, No. 126 (1979): 41.

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direction, is nothing but the Agent it self Exercising the power it has, that particular way.59

Here, Locke puts an emphasis on “the Agent it self,” not simply on “the greater good” in making a choice. This revision offers somewhat a crucial importance. Locke, now, seems to think that the act of willing does not mechanically occur by the conception of the greater good, but is made by the agent who has the powers of both will and understanding.60 What, then, does determine the will in the mind of the Agent? Before elaborating this question, Locke makes a clear distinction between the will and desire. “The will or Volition,” Locke writes, “is conversant about nothing, but our own Actions; terminates there; and reaches no farther.”61 Thus, the will directly aims at a certain action that the agent performs for attaining good. Locke, however, describes desire “as the uneasiness a Man in himself upon the absence of any thing, whose present enjoyment carries the Idea of Delight with it.”62 Because of its state of uneasiness, a desire aims at a certain good for happiness, but itself cannot make a sufficient condition as to elicit a certain action. That is, although a desire may stimulate the will to act toward a certain good, not all desire determines the will to occur in a certain way. Rather, if human beings are placed under pressure, their will and desire could run counter.63 For this reason, Locke says, “It is evident, that desiring and willing are two distinct Acts of the mind: and so the Will, which is but the power of Volition much more distinct from Desire.”64 Based on these preliminary clarification, Locke introduces a new account of the determination of the will: To return to the Enquiry, what is it that determines the Will in regard to our Actions? And that upon second thoughts I am apt to imagine is not, as is generally supposed, the greater good in view: But some (and for the most part pressing) uneasiness a Man is at present under. This is that which successively determines the Will, and sets us upon those Actions, we perform.65

59 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, The Second Edition, with large Additions. (London, 1694), II, 21, n. 29. 60 For the implication of “the Agent it self,” see, Peter A. Schouls, Reasoned Freedom: John Locke and Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 128; Harris, Of Liberty and Necessity, 28. 61 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed., II, 21, n. 30. Locke uses volition and will interchangeably. 62 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed., II, 20, n. 6. 63 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed., II, 21, n. 30. 64 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed., II, 21, n. 30. 65 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed., II, 21, n. 31.

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I am forced to conclude that good, the greater good, though apprehended and acknowledged to be so, does not determine the will, until our desire, raised proportionably to it, makes us uneasy in the want of it.66 For Locke, now, what determines the will is no longer the greater good, but the uneasiness of desire for some absent good. By saying this, Locke places the uneasiness of desire “into the psychological causal chain as an immediate link” between the greater good and the will to act for attaining the good.67 Accordingly “the greatest present uneasiness” principally becomes the determinant of the will “in its choice of the next action.”68 As we have seen, Locke revised that it is “the Agent it self,” not merely “the greater good” that determines the act of willing into a particular way. However, if the agent is merely under the necessity of the greatest present uneasiness, there seems to be no freedom in the agent, but to follow the greatest uneasiness at present. In order to allow more freedom in the agent, Locke supposes that the power of the mind must be greater than the greatest present uneasiness; that is, the mind has a power to suspend the execution of its desire. The greatest uneasiness, then, does not always determine the will. It is natural, as I have said, that the greatest, and most pressing should determine the will to next action; and so it does for the most part, but not always. For the mind having in most cases, as is evident in Experience, a power to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desire; and so all one after another is at liberty to consider the objects of them; examine them on all sides, and weigh them with others…. This seems to me the source of all liberty; in this seems to consist that, which is (as I think improperly) call’d Free will.69

In the first edition, the only kind of freedom that Locke allowed was the freedom of action, freedom from external coercion. He, now, declares that it “is evident in Experience” that the source of freedom lies in the power to suspend the operations of the will. Accordingly, Locke departs from a one-stage volition theory, and develops two-stage analysis of volition that allows the will “a freedom to pause and consider what other faculties had proposed.”70 Thus, the Remonstrant theologian Philipp van Limborch, in his letter to Locke, wrote that he principally agrees with 66 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed., II, 21, n. 35. 67 Richard Glauser, “Locke and the Problem of Weakness of the Will” in Mind, Values, and Metaphysics: Philosophical Essays in Honor of Kevin Mulligan, 2 vols., ed. Anne Reboul (Cham, ZG: Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2014), 1:486. 68 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed., II, 21, n. 40. 69 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed., II, 21, n. 47. 70 Guelzo, Edwards on the Will, 41. Thus, Henry Philip Tappan wrote, “Locke, in distinguishing the will from the desire, seems about to launch into a different psychology.” Henry Philip Tappan, A Review of Edwards’s “Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will” (New York, 1839), 86.

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Locke’s revised account of human freedom: “I judge these, and other things that you add there, to be most true, and I thoroughly agree with them.”71 It seems obvious that Edwards was not satisfied with Locke’s second thoughts, and thus could not reconcile with Locke, in every place where Locke puts a modification. To begin with, Edwards does not accept Locke’s statement, “The Will is perfectly distinguished from Desire” in its own sense.72 Although Edwards acknowledges that will and desire are different in their precise significations, he says that “I can’t think they are so entirely distinct, that they can ever be properly said to run counter.”73 Edwards does not want to make a distinction between those two terms since he believes that will and desire are never repugnant to each other in regard to a same thing: “A Man never, in any Instance, wills any Thing contrary to his Desires, or desires any Thing contrary to this Will.”74 In this scheme, will and desire are simply different names for designating the same act of willing. Consequently, Edwards disapproves Locke’s claim that “the greatest present uneasiness” motivates action. Edwards affirms that when one perceives something to be good, his apprehension of good already includes the removal of what makes the present uneasiness in the mind.75 For Edwards, there is no sense of struggle between will and desire, and the finally actualized will itself already contains all possible processes in the mind, and explains the whole operations of motivation. In this mental process, the freedom of action solely represent what human beings enjoy under the name of freedom. Accordingly, Edwards criticizes Locke’s revised claim that the source of all freedom lies in the power to suspend the operation of the will. Edwards says, “That Liberty consists in a Power of the Mind to forbear or suspend the Act of Volition…. I say, if any one imagines that this helps the Matter, it is a great Mistake.”76 He asks, “If this Act of determining a Suspension be the only Act in which the Will is free, then wherein consists the 71 72 73 74 75

Beer, ed., The Correspondence of John Locke, 7:370. Limborch to Locke, 8 July, 1701. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2nd ed., II, 21, n. 30. Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 1. Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 1. “The Word Good, in this Sense, includes in its Signification, the Removal or Avoiding of Evil, or of that which is disagreable & uneasy. ‘Tis agreable and pleasing, to avoid what is disagreable and displeasing, and to have Uneasiness removed. So that here is included what Mr. Locke supposes determines the Will.” Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 2. Also in his treatise on “The Mind,” Edwards puts it in this way, “That it is not uneasiness in our present circumstances that always determines the will, as Mr. Locke supposes, is evident by this: that there may be an act of the will in choosing and determining to forbear to act or move when some action is proposed to a man, as well as in choosing to act. Thus, if a man be put upon rising from his seat and going to a certain place, his voluntary refusal is an act of the will which does not arise from any uneasiness in his present circumstances.” Edwards, Works, 6:385. 76 Edwards, Freedom of Will, II, 7.

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Will’s freedom with Respect to this Act of Suspension?”77 For Edwards, an act of suspension itself is an act of willing, which is determined by the prior perception of the greatest good. Therefore, at the moment the act of suspension is being actualized, it already is in the state of the freedom, that is, freedom of action. By these objections, Edwards clearly distances himself from Locke, and carries his free will discussion into a more deterministic direction. Behind this rigid philosophical determinism, there is his strong conviction that every event must have its sufficient cause. Edwards thinks that the Arminian notion of freedom of will, by placing the freedom in the indifference of the will, allows the acts of the will to occur contingently. For Edwards, however, it is totally nonsensical to talk of anything that comes to existence from a contingent state, since he believes that nothing can occur without a cause, and that every event or thing is bound to “the full and fix’d Connection” of the cause and effect.78 Edwards’s notion of causality is so strongly fettered that it does not leave any room for contingencies that threaten its certainty. Although Edwards distinguishes natural necessity from moral necessity, there is no fundamental difference between the two in terms of causal determinism, since he assumed that all causes, whether they are natural or moral, never fail to bring out their anticipated effects.79 And here it must be remembered, that it has been already shewn, that Nothing can ever come to pass without a Cause, or Reason, why it exists in this Manner rather than another; and the Evidence of this has been particularly applied to the Acts of the Will. Now if this be so, it will demonstrably follow, that the Acts of the Will are never contingent, or without Necessity, in the Sense spoken of; inasmuch as those Things which have a Cause, or Reason of their Existence, must be connected with their Cause.80 In this way, Edwards clearly drives out the volitional contingency in human actions. At this point, Edwards’s argument undeniably mirrors Hobbes’s mechanistic understanding of human action. Indeed, Hobbes’s treatise Of Libertie and Necessitie (1654), written against John Bramhall, had already proposed several key concepts that were also later adopted in Edwards’s Freedom of Will.81 For Hobbes 77 Edwards, Freedom of Will, II, 7. 78 Edwards, Freedom of Will, I, 3. 79 For this reason, Hugh J. McCann points out that Edwards “treats the will as though it were imprisoned in the natural order.” Hugh J. McCann, “Edwards on Free Will,” in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 39. 80 Edwards, Freedom of Will, II, 8. 81 As for the Hobbes-Bramhall debate, see Vere Chappell, “Introduction to Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity” in Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity, ed. Vere Chappell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), ix–xxiii; J. Mark Beach, “The Hobbes-Bramhall Debate on the Nature of Freedom and Necessity” in Biblical Interpretation

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also, human beings are free, but do not have the freedom of the will. Human freedom is simply a matter of not being coerced by obstacles when acting in accordance with “the last appetite,” which Edwards calls as “the strongest motive.”82 “Liberty” Hobbes defines, “is the absence of all the impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical quality of the agent.” Therefore, even though the will is determined, human beings are free in terms of the freedom of action. Hobbes, like Edwards, held that every event or thing has a cause, and every cause is sufficient enough to yield its expected effect necessarily: “Hence it is manifest, that whatsoever is produced, is produced necessarily; for whatsoever is produced hath had a sufficient cause to produce it, or else it had not been; and therefore also voluntary actions are necessitated.”83 In this way, Hobbes identifies moral efficacy with natural efficacy. For him, “How contingent soever it seem, or how voluntary soever it be,” human volition is “produced necessarily” like all the other natural things in the world order.84 As Edwards does, Hobbes’s understanding of necessity is based on his belief on the certainty of the Divine decree and foreknowledge. Hobbes maintains that any contingency in human freedom would “destroyeth both the decrees and the prescience of God Almighty” because “whatsoever God hath purposed to bring to pass by man, as instrument, or foreseeth shall come to pass.”85 By this logic, Hobbes does not makes any distinction between the concept of necessity of consequences (necessitas consequentiae) and necessity of consequent (necessitas consequentis),86 which Edwards also confused, thus interchangeably used.87

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and Doctrinal Formulation in the Reformed Tradition: Essays in Honor of James De Jong, ed. Arie C. Leder and Richard A. Muller (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014), 231– 261. Thomas Hobbes, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, ed. William Molesworth, 11 vols. (London, 1849), 4:273. Hereinafter cited as Works of Hobbes. Hobbes, Works of Hobbes, 4:275. Hobbes, Works of Hobbes, 4:277. Hobbes, Works of Hobbes, 4:278. The necessitas consequentiae is “a necessity brought about or conditioned by a previous contingent act or event so that the necessity itself arises out of contingent circumstance,” and the necessitas consequentis is “the necessity of something that cannot be other than what it is, when it is to say, a simple or absolute necessity.” Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, 200. Edwards wrote, “I would inquire, whether there is, or can be any such Thing, as a Volition which is contingent in such a Sense, as not only to come to pass without any Necessity of Constraint or Co-action, but also without a Necessity of Consequence, or an infallible Connection with any Thing foregoing.” Edwards, Freedom of Will, II. 8. To this, Muller points out that “Edwards, it should be noted, appears to confuse necessitas consequentiae with necessitas consequentis: he uses the former term but clearly means the latter—specifically, he insists that effects occur by necessity, given the “infallible Connection” between cause and effect.” Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the Absence of Free Choice,” 14.

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However, if all human acts are necessarily caused, how can the laws and its corresponding reward and punishment be effective? Indeed, Bramhall insisted, if Hobbes’s causation is right, “the laws, which prohibit any action, will be unjust,” “all consultations are vain” and thus “praise, dispraise, reward and punishment, are in vain.”88 In replying to this, Hobbes explains that it is the will or desire, and not the necessity that makes the action unjust by breaking the law; and, the laws are dictated against the sinful will, not against the prior causes. He, therefore, says “What necessary cause soever precede an action, yet if the action be forbidden, he that doth it willingly may justly be punished.”89 For Hobbes, that is, even though all human actions are necessitated, only willed acts are subject to punishment by the laws. In this way, Hobbes imputes all moral responsibility solely to human beings, not to God. Not surprisingly there is almost the same logic in Edwards’s argument. Edwards also claims, “When a Thing is from a Man, in that sense, that it is from his Will or Choice, he is to Blame for it, because his Will is IN IT: so far as the Will is in it, Blame is in it, and no further.”90 That is, despite the fact that human beings’ will cannot be different that it is, they are still responsible for doing what is blamed, because that is how they willed. Here again, the execution of willing is only responsible for the committed sin, regardless of its unavoidable causal necessity. In doing so, Edwards clears God of being the author of sin.91 Hitherto considered, it does follow that Edwards’s understanding of human freedom and necessity distinctly resonates that of Hobbes, even though he frequently has recourse to citations from Locke when he develops his perspective. In the Freedom of Will, Edwards apparently follows Lockean terminology and his psychology, frequently mentioning his name. However, his argument shows stronger affinity with Hobbes’s metaphysics, where every effect is necessarily determined by unbreakable connection of cause and effect. Accordingly, he rules out any contingent state in human volition, identifying it with physical necessity in its nature.

4.3

Conclusion

This essay tried to identify the chasm between the Westminster Confession’s treatment of human free choice and Edwards’s understanding of the same subject depicted in his Freedom of Will, while tracing the possible origins of 88 89 90 91

Hobbes, Works of Hobbes, 4:252. Hobbes, Works of Hobbes, 4:253. Edwards, Freedom of Will, IV, 8. See especially, Edwards, Freedom of Will, IV, 6.

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Edwards’s philosophical determinism. Although Edwards has often been revered as one of the greatest defenders of the Calvinistic doctrines, his treatise on the freedom of will has yielded a polarized reception because of his philosophical position that bears materialistic determinism. Indeed, Edwards’s terminologies and logic that were deployed in the Freedom of Will shows his divergence from the Reformed tradition. The older Reformed orthodoxy thinkers of seventeenth century harmonized their doctrines of God’s sovereignty and human free choice based on the Aristotelian faculty psychology and medieval modal logic. By doing so, they could preserve the room for contingency in human actions. This is distinctively reflected in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Edwards, however, appears to establish his inherited Calvinistic doctrines on the ground of the intellectual influence of his time. After Locke muddled his psychic determinism by adding the power of suspension as the requisite for human freedom, Edwards’s arguments leaned towards Hobbes’s, while remaining in Locke’s authority for supporting his position.

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5.

The Edwardseans and the Atonement

5.1

Introduction

Adaptation was a hallmark of Jonathan Edwards and his followers. This willingness to adapt often placed them at the center of controversy. The followers of Edwards sought to promote a version of Reformed theology that they thought would best advance the cause of religion and revival in New England. Such efforts earned them the derisive name, the “New Divinity,” a name replaced in the nineteenth century by the title of their theological system, the New England Theology.1 At the center of this system lay their theory of the atonement, a doctrine as controversial as any other “improvement” in the New Divinity scheme. However, they believed that their theory of the atonement represented an improvement over previous versions of penal substitution in past centuries. To them, moral government was more consonant with Scripture and more consistent with the essentials of Reformed theology. Without advocating any particular theological viewpoint, this essay will explain how late eighteenth-century Edwardseans argued for a Reformed, Edwardsean moral government theory of the atonement. In other words, we will describe the rhetoric and logic behind the Edwardseans’ insistence that God is more glorified under their moral government theory than under a penal substitutionary theory. To set the stage, this essay will first outline the origins and shape of the New Divinity theology as the backdrop for their controversial work on the atonement.

1 Edwards Amasa Park was responsible for popularizing “the New England Theology” as a term to describe the Edwardsean theology in circulation in the nineteenth century. The New Divinity was a precursor to the New England Theology. See Edwards Amasa Park, “The New England Theology,” Bibliotheca Sacra 9 (1852): 169–216.

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New Divinity Theology

The New Divinity was birthed in the revivals of New England in the 1730s and 1740s.2 These revivals, known as the Great Awakening, were the culmination of decades’ worth of pastoral labors in Puritan New England that shaped those who became the leaders of the revivals in New England. Edwards, as an adolescent student at Yale, observed and participated in the smaller but formative Connecticut revivals in the early 1720s. A little more than ten years later he would lead his own congregation in Northampton through what became the “model revival.” This revival followed many of the same patterns of the Connecticut River Valley revivals in 1720–1722.3 While the writings of the New Divinity rarely appear in twenty-first-century theological journals, in their own time and place they created quite a stir and gathered a significant share of proponents. For example, Samuel Hopkins managed to obtain twelve hundred subscribers to his System of Doctrine, first published in 1793. Calling it a “demonstration of force,” Charles HambrickStowe correctly observes that this is a surprising number. Subscribers came from several states and even across the Atlantic. A substantial number of them were laity. These men, and even some women, helped offset some of the publication costs by pre-ordering copies of Hopkins’s two-volume theological system.4 Edwin Gaustad declared that the New England Theology—and by extension the New Divinity theology—was the “monument of the Awakening.” The theology of the Old Calvinists predated the Awakening, and the liberals would have emerged without an awakening.5 The pastoral ministries of the New Divinity helped to bring a number of theological concerns to the forefront. More than the 2 For overviews of New Divinity doctrine see William Breitenbach, “Piety and Moralism: Edwards and the New Divinity,” in Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, ed. Nathan O. Hatch and Harry S. Stout (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 177–195; E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 135–49; David William Kling, A Field of Divine Wonders: The New Divinity and Village Revivals in Northwestern Connecticut, 1792–1822 (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993), 75–109; Douglas A. Sweeney, Nathaniel Taylor, New Haven Theology, and the Legacy of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 30–34; Allen C. Guelzo, Edwards on the Will: A Century of American Theological Debate (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 93–139. 3 Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 18, 23. 4 Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, “The New England Theology in New England Congregationalism,” in After Jonathan Edwards: The Courses of the New England Theology, ed. Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas A. Sweeney (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 169–70. 5 Edwin Scott, Gaustad, The Great Awakening in New England (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1968), 134. For a helpful discussion of the theological responses to the Great Awakening (i. e. Old Lights, Old Calvinists, New Divinity, and New Lights), see Holifield, Theology in America, 79–156.

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Old Calvinists and the Old Lights, the New Divinity prioritized revival and spiritual awakening as they shaped their theological agenda.6 This agenda focused on how to explain the sovereignty of God in the framework of their practice of exhorting sinners to repent immediately. Radical New Lights were complaining that the old Puritan way of talking about conversion permitted the unconverted to remain passive. Solomon Stoddard had advocated an approach of waiting for grace. Radical New Lights argued that this posture allowed people to build up excuses for not converting. The New Divinity response coalesced into what would become part of the core of New Divinity theology. This core has been described in terms of an ellipse. The two foci of this New Divinity ellipse were formed by the distinction between natural ability and moral inability and the doctrine of immediate repentance. Many of the other key doctrines in the New Divinity constellation were construed with reference to these two central concepts.7

5.3

Natural Ability and Moral Inability

The distinction between natural and moral ability was the first hallmark of the New Divinity, though the distinction was not new to Edwards and his followes but had a previous pedigree in the writings of the Protestant scholastics. Jonathan Edwards explained this distinction in Freedom of the Will. On the one hand, human beings are under no natural necessity or compulsion to sin. No natural or physical constraint prevents them from obeying the law of God, nor are they physically compelled to commit sin. On the other hand, every human being is under a moral constraint or necessity. Because of innate human depravity, humans lack the necessary motivation and desire to obey God. Men and women possess both natural ability and moral inability. Edwards’s essay on the will formed a major response to the naturalistic determinism of the seventeenthcentury scientific revolution and the materialistic philosophy of Thomas Hobbes.8 The New Divinity believed that spiritual complacency was a critical barrier to the spiritual growth of their New England parishioners, and they made use of this Edwardsean distinction to exhort their listeners to repent and believe immediately. The only thing standing between the sinner and Christ was an unwillingness to submit to Christ. Like the Old Calvinists, the New Divinity placed a 6 For information on Old Calvinist theology see Guelzo, Edwards on the Will, 140–75. 7 Sweeney, Nathaniel Taylor, New Haven Theology, and the Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, 31–32. 8 Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will, ed. Paul Ramsey, vol. 1, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), 156–57. David Kling provides a useful discussion concerning the debate over human nature and divine grace from Jonathan Edwards to Nathaniel William Taylor. Kling, A Field of Divine Wonders, 88–95.

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high premium upon the notion of divine sovereignty in relation to human ability, but unlike the Old Calvinists, the New Divinity also affirmed natural ability, at least as defined by Jonathan Edwards.

5.4

Immediate Repentance

The second hallmark of the New Divinity theology was immediate repentance. To these Edwardseans, an evangelistic sermon was not finished until the preacher issued a call to the unregenerate to repent immediately. The Old Calvinists preached that sinners under the influence of supernatural grace ought to make use of the means of grace in order that grace might overcome the sinful passions gradually. The New Divinity believed this approach would lead to discouragement and laziness.9 New Divinity ministers, in keeping with the Edwardsean distinction between natural ability and moral inability, preached to their congregations that nothing prevents their immediate repentance except their own desire. No natural inability prevented them from responding to God right now. The New Divinity had become impatient with notions of gradual conversions by the use of the means of grace. They wanted to diminish the perfunctory or preparatory stages of conversion and call sinners to repent today.10 The remedy for the sinner’s unwillingness was found in regeneration. In regeneration God gives a sinner a new spiritual heart, while in conversion the individual responds to God’s gift in faith, love, and repentance. While regeneration necessarily comes with conversion, the two are not coterminous. For the New Divinity, regeneration involved a “radical change of heart,” an idea that separated them from the Old Calvinists, who were reticent to stress radical, emotive changes, which might lead to uncontrolled outbursts.11 The New Divinity understood regeneration as a reorientation of the heart, not simply an elevation of one’s nature but a transformation of the inner affections and desires. This understanding was not unique; however, it was an important difference between the New Divinity and the Unitarians in Boston. Samuel Hopkins described this spiritual transformation in terms of “disinterested benevolence.” The converted sinner possessed a new disposition characterized by a love for God that was not dependent upon a sense of gratitude to God. This love was completely dependent upon the sinner rightly beholding the character of God.12 9 Kling, A Field of Divine Wonders, 98–99. 10 Sweeney, Nathaniel Taylor, New Haven Theology, and the Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, 33; Kling, A Field of Divine Wonders, 100–1, 103. 11 Kling, A Field of Divine Wonders, 95–97, 99–103. 12 Breitenbach, “Piety and Moralism: Edwards and the New Divinity,” 191.

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Breitenbach has shown that most of the key New Divinity principles were published in the writings of Edwards by the time he died in 1758.13 We can find the origins of disinterested benevolence in Religious Affections, where Edwards argued that true love for God is rooted in our love for God’s character not merely in our gratitude for God’s salvation. Freedom of the Will was the most important point of reference for all that the New Divinity would say and write concerning the nature of human freedom, the key point of reference for the two foci: natural ability/moral inability and immediate repentance.

5.5

Imputation of Adam’s Sin

Using Edwards’s own constructions, the New Divinity argued for the “reasonableness of Christianity.”14 In doing so, they took Edwards’s own modifications even further, creating space for the development of a moral government theory of the atonement. Like most of the medieval and early modern Protestant theologians, Edwards’s understanding of original sin was influenced by Augustine, who argued that all of humanity participated ontologically in the fall. All of humanity was collectively present in Adam when he first sinned. Accordingly, it is proper that all of humanity receive guilt and native depravity as a result of that sin. It is important to note, though, that federal covenantal theology also influenced Edwards on this subject. In other places, he wrote that our guilt is imputed to us on the basis of Adam’s vicarious representation of fallen humanity—a theory that later Princeton theologians promoted. Often adherents of the vicarious representation theory have portrayed the early modern Reformed theologians as uniformly supporting a federal theory without Augustine’s metaphysics; however, like Edwards, many of these theologians held to what could be termed an Augustino-Federal theory. Like Augustine, Edwards argued that God imputes sin to us on the basis that all humanity fully consented with Adam’s sin and ontologically participated with Adam when he sinned. Since we have consented to Adam’s sin through ontological participation, God imputed Adam’s guilt to all humanity.15 13 Breitenbach, “Piety and Moralism: Edwards and the New Divinity,” 191. The New Divinity did not reproduce the theology of Edwards verbatim; however, there are clear points of contact as Breitenbach shows. 14 Kling, A Field of Divine Wonders, 84. 15 George Park Fisher, “The Augustinian and the Federal Theories of Original Sin Compared,” in Discussions in History and Theology (New York: Scribner, 1880), 255–405. There is considerable debate and perhaps misunderstanding regarding Edwards’ view of imputation. Rather than a mediate/immediate view of imputation, some have regarded Edwards’s view as mainly mediate such as George Nye Boardman, A History of New England Theology (New York: A.D.F. Randolph, 1899), 67; Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Sin and Salvation

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Between the death of Jonathan Edwards in 1758 and the death of Samuel Hopkins in 1803, a key shift occurred in regard to the doctrine of original sin. Some of the New Divinity theologians began to argue that all guilt is derived from personal sin only. These New Divinity theologians shifted away from the view that God immediately imputes Adam’s sin to his progeny based on their ontological participation in Adam’s sin. They disagreed with Augustine when he taught that all humanity participated in the fall. To be sure Samuel Hopkins and Joseph Bellamy were not prepared to abandon immediate imputation of Adam’s sin. Even so, like their New Divinity brethren, Hopkins and Bellamy did not share Edwards’s commitment to Augustine’s metaphysic and so set the stage for the New England moral government theory. The adoption of this theory hinged in large ways upon their belief that all guilt comes from personal sin. Guilt is not transferrable in any sense. Since the penal substitution theory depended upon the transfer of a moral debt from the elect to Christ, they pursued a different path.16

5.6

Assessments of the New Divinity

Part of what has made this essay and others like it necessary is that the regnant historiography has often divorced Edwards from those who claimed to carry on his legacy. Charles Hodge called the genetic connection between Edwards and the Edwardseans a “hallucination.”17 Mark Noll wrote in America’s God, “For what happened after he passed from the scene, ideologically as well as theologically, in Christ, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 100. Others have portrayed Edwards as advocating immediate imputation such as Samuel Miller, Life of Jonathan Edwards (Boston: Hilliard, Gray & Co., 1837), 236. For additional information on Edwards and imputation see Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 351–53; Jonathan Edwards, Original Sin, ed. Clyde A Holbrook, vol. 3, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 389–412. Oliver D. Crisp, “On the Theological Pedigree of Jonathan Edwards’s Doctrine of Imputation,” Scottish Journal of Theology 56 (2003): 308–27. 16 Kling, A Field of Divine Wonders, 86; William Breitenbach, “The Consistent Calvinism of the New Divinity Movement,” The William and Mary Quarterly 41 (1984): 251–56. For information on Bellamy’s and Hopkins’s views of original sin see respectively Mark R. Valeri, Law and Providence in Joseph Bellamy’s New England: The Origins of the New Divinity in Revolutionary America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 76–109; Peter Jauhiainen, “An Enlightenment Calvinist: Samuel Hopkins and the Pursuit of Benevolence” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1997), 289–99;321–24; Peter Jauhiainen, “Samuel Hopkins and Hopkinsianism,” in After Jonathan Edwards: The Courses of the New England Theology, ed. Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas A. Sweeney (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 116. 17 Charles Hodge, “Professor Park and the Princeton Review,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review 23 (1851): 694.

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Edwards was not responsible.”18 This common way of reading the history that flows from Jonathan Edwards to the New Divinity suggests that the New Divinity’s claim to an Edwardsean legacy has little basis in reality.19 Part of the problem with the historiography is that scholars often combine historical and theological methodologies to produce evaluations of Edwards and those who would claim his legacy.20 Richard Muller has observed this phenomenon in Calvin studies. He suggests that a scholar may write as an historian or as a theologian, but doing both at the same time “only results in the muddying of historical waters, and the loss of genuine engagement with the thought of past centuries.”21 Muller is a notable example of the sort of scholarship that is calling for a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the relationship between John Calvin and the Reformed tradition. He sees more variety and diversity among the Protestant reformers and the Reformed tradition than scholars have often acknowledged. The Calvinists were not merely theologians who adopted the theology of John Calvin, but were a complicated web of thinkers who drank deeply from the writings of Calvin and from other reformers as well. Even asking the question whether Calvin was a “Calvinist” is not as easy as many have supposed.22 As much as Muller has pleaded with his colleagues concerning Calvin studies, might those in Edwards studies also exercise the sort of methodological care that our subjects require and deserve?

5.7

Rise of the New England Theory of the Atonement

Jonathan Edwards Jr. was credited with the rise of the New England moral government theory of the atonement in the 1780s. He preached against the growing number of universal salvation preachers threatening to inflict serious damage to Calvinism in New England. These Universalists outside Boston could speak the language of common rural folk. They could compete with the New 18 Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 49. 19 For a lineup of the historiography of each of these forms see Breitenbach, “Piety and Moralism: Edwards and the New Divinity,” 177, n.1. For a longer view of the debate over Edwards and the Edwardseans see Douglas A. Sweeney, “Edwards and His Mantle: The Historiography of the New England Theology,” The New England Quarterly 71 (1998): 97–119. 20 For example, Ola Winslow’s Pulitzer prize winning biography of Edwards portrayed Edwards’s Calvinism as “a tragic pity” and a “mistake.” Ola Elizabeth Winslow, Jonathan Edwards, 1703–1758: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1940), 326. George Marsden, a Calvinist himself, considered Edwards’s Calvinism as one of his strengths. George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 246–47. 21 Richard A. Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition: On the Work of Christ and the Order of Salvation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012), 9. 22 Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition, 13–69.

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Divinity in their own territory. Preachers of universal salvation taught that God is benevolent and sovereign and can pardon whomever he chooses without an atonement or with an atonement depending on the preferred scheme. Like his father, Jonathan Edwards Jr. was no stranger to controversy. Just as Edwards the Younger settled in as pastor at the White Haven Church in New Haven, a group of White Haven church members left to form a new congregation in town called Fair Haven since they failed to block his installation.23 The troubles in New Haven began long before Edwards’s arrival in 1768, reaching back at least as far as the Great Awakening. In 1741, radical New Light preacher James Davenport was permitted to preach to the members of First Church in New Haven. Davenport was unconvinced that Joseph Noyes, the congregation’s pastor, was truly converted. He expressed his concerns to the congregation from the very desk that Noyes preached from every Sunday, an accusation that only confirmed the suspicions of members sympathetic to New Light revivalism. After this flap, thirty-eight members requested that a separate society be formed.24 This new congregation held greater New Light sympathies than those who remained under Rev. Noyes’s leadership.25 White Haven was formed on May 7, 1742, but the society was not formally recognized for taxing purposes until 1759. For nine years, the members of White Haven were relegated to supply preachers until Samuel Bird, a pro-revival minister, was called as pastor in 1751. When Bird stepped down as pastor in 1768, he inadvertently opened a door for another controversy related to membership policy. Previously, in 1760, after a lengthy debate, the church voted to affirm the Half-Way Covenant as their policy regarding church membership. Just eight years later and shortly before Edwards accepted a call as pastor of the church, White Haven reopened the question regarding church membership. They decided to reverse their previous decision and require evidence of “owning the covenant.” Under Edwards this was a strict rule. Robert Ferm, Edwards Jr.’s biographer, states that no evidence directly links Edwards to this request, but he thinks he likely made it. Shortly after Edwards’s installation, a group of White Haven members left to form Fair Haven.26 23 A group of sixty-seven men in New Haven signed a petition expressing their disapproval of Jonathan Edwards Jr. being settled as the pastor of White Haven Church. The document lists no grievances, though it is likely that their concerns centered on Edwards’s strict membership requirements. See “Signers Against Jonathan Edwards, Jr.,” December 16, 1768, Folder 215, Box 20, Connecticut Miscellaneous Collection, Sterling Memorial Library. 24 Joseph Bellamy was one of four ministers who gave formal support to the formation of this congregation. Robert L. Ferm, Jonathan Edwards the Younger, 1745–1801: A Colonial Pastor (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 70. 25 Joseph Bellamy was one of four ministers who gave formal support to the formation of this congregation. Robert L. Ferm, Jonathan Edwards the Younger, 1745–1801: A Colonial Pastor (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 70. 26 Ferm, Jonathan Edwards the Younger, 68–75. Further complicating the situation in New

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Universal Salvation

In the early 1770s, John Murray cast his Universalist gauntlet onto the New Haven town green.27 He preached a Rellyan Universalist scheme to the residents of New Haven.28 This occasioned no small annoyance for Jonathan Edwards Jr.29 The Rellyan scheme that Murray preached was a modification of Calvinist theology. According to Murray, a follower of Welsh revivalist James Relly, Christ’s death was a universal payment for sin. The decree of election was a universal decree. All are united with Christ on the basis of a vicarious atonement, thus all human beings are saved from eternal punishment and granted admission to heaven after death, though some undergo purification prior to their entrance into heaven.30 The Universalists mirrored the Unitarians in their repudiation of many Calvinist doctrines: their new readings of Scripture; their use of rational theology, arguing that traditional orthodoxy was unreasonable, unscriptural, and unhelpful; their use of evidential theology; and their keen focus on moral concerns. The two groups varied in social class and in their views of education. The Universalists came from the middle and lower classes while the Unitarians were largely found among the Boston elite. Some of these Unitarian theologians also adhered to a universal view of salvation. They prized biblical learning and an educated clergy while Universalists viewed higher education with suspicion and prized private reading of Scripture by ordinary laymen.

27 28

29

30

Haven, a college church was formed for the Yale students in 1757. Yale felt that the controversy was affecting college life and sought this as a remedy. Murray would later marry Judith Sargent Stevens (later Judith Stevens Murray), the writer and women’s rights activist. For information on Rellyan Universalism see James Relly, Union: Or, a Treatise of the Consanguinity and Affinity Between Christ and His Church (Boston: White and Adams, 1779); Ernest Cassara, “John Murray and the Origins of Universalism in New England: A Commentary on Peter Hughes’s ‘Religion without a Founder,’” Journal of Unitarian Universalist History 26 (1999): 72–92; Kenneth R. Morris, “The Puritan Roots of American Universalism,” Scottish Journal of Theology 44 (January 1991): 457–87; Ann Lee Bressler, The Universalist Movement in America, 1770–1880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Ferm, Jonathan Edwards the Younger. See Jonathan Edwards Jr., “Brief Observations on the Doctrine of Universal Salvation, as Lately Promulgated at New Haven,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, D.D. with A Memoir of His Life and Character, ed. Tryon Edwards, vol. 1 (Boston: Doctrinal Tract and Book Society, 1850), 279–94. Universalism did not grow significantly in America until the arrival of John Murray; however, universalism can be found as early as the seventeenth-century in Rhode Island in Samuel Gorton. Other Universalists in America prior to Murray include John Rogers in Connecticut, the German Baptists called the “Dunkers” in Pennsylvania (after 1708), and George de Benneville in Germantown, PA. Holifield, Theology in America, 220. Holifield, Theology in America, 221–22. See Peter Hughes, “The Origins of New England Universalism: A Religion Without a Founder,” Journal of Unitarian Universalist History 24 (1997): 31–63; Cassara, “John Murray and the Origins of Universalism in New England.”

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Jonathan Edwards Jr.’s Theory of the Atonement

The controversy over Murray’s universal salvation continued to simmer in the 1770s, and Joseph Priestley added fuel to the fire of universalism when he published An History of the Corruption of Christianity in 1782. This wide-ranging work covered many areas of theology including the atonement. His basic operating premise was that most of church history was a process of introducing corruptions into authentic Christian doctrine. In no uncertain terms, he rejected the satisfaction view of the atonement as well as the Trinity and two natures of Christ. These doctrines represented corruptions of true New Testament Christianity.31 In contrast to Anselm, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and a host of other orthodox theologians, he believed that Faustus Socinus had articulated a proper doctrine of Christ, emphasizing his true humanity.32 Priestley agreed with Socinus when he argued that Luther’s penal view of the atonement was absurd. Christ’s death could not atone for the sins of other men. Rather, the sinner obtains atonement only by repentance and reformation. God forgives all who repent and obey him.33 Three years after Priestley published his History of Christianity, Jonathan Edwards Jr. delivered a sermon series on the atonement defending a moral government theory as an evangelical fortification against the rise of a more liberal moral example theory of the atonement. Edwards categorically denied that the only benefit of Christ’s death was a moral example for Christians to follow. In his view, the moral example view of Christ’s death amounted to a violation of God’s justice. This violation was the main thing that Edwards sought to refute in three sermons delivered in New Haven in 1785. He also sought to defend an atonement that did not lead to universal salvation advocated by the followers of James Relly. The Edwardsean theory of the atonement was born over the course of these sermons where he advocated a version of the moral government theory of the atonement. Edwards received most of the credit for being the first to give full voice to what Edwards Amasa Park and many others called the Edwardsean theory of the atonement.34 Edwards Jr. organized his sermon series around a set of three questions. Are we forgiven through the atonement of Jesus Christ only? What is the ground of this mode of forgiveness? Are we forgiven by grace? 31 Joseph Priestley, An History of the Corruption of Christianity, vol. 1 (London: Piercy & Jones, 1782), 259–80. 32 Faustus Socinus (1539–1604) was the Italian theologian who founded an anti-Trinitarian movement in Europe. 33 Priestley, An History of the Corruption of Christianity, 1:272–73. 34 Rudisill accurately and briefly summarized the Edwardsean theory of the atonement. Dorus Paul Rudisill, The Doctrine of the Atonement in Jonathan Edwards and His Successors (New York: Poseidon, 1971), 83–112.

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Edwards argued that Christ’s death was absolutely necessary. God would not have sacrificed his Son, nor would the Son have agreed to die, unless it were the only way to accomplish redemption. Edwards believed that the “bare event” of Christ’s death provides compelling evidence that it was necessary. If the event accomplished nothing objectively, as Priestley and others were arguing, why would God have done such a ghastly thing? Edwards cited the scene found in Matt 26:39 where Jesus asks his Father if this “cup” might pass from him. Evidently, it could not.35 Answering his second question, Edwards employed philosophical rather than scriptural arguments. If God is just, then he must have established a moral government when he created moral creatures. If he created a moral government, he must have created a moral law. If he created a moral law, he must have established punishments for violating the moral law, or else the law would be “mere advice.”36 In other words, if God is just, then he cannot simply forgive by divine fiat without any accounting of the acts of rebellion committed against the divine moral government. If he did so, his so-called law would be no law at all. If God were to enact the moral law but fail to enforce it via punishment, it would imply that God had either some error in judgment, a “depraved design” when he made the law, or a lack of power to enforce the law. So if God fails to enforce the law, he allows the divine moral government and its legislator to fall into contempt. It would be “inconsistent” for God to allow rebellion to go unpunished without an atonement. This would only invite and encourage further rebellion. Edwards designed his argumentation here to refute the notion that God in his mercy would forgive on the basis of the sinner’s own efforts toward reformation and repentance, not on the basis of anything Jesus did. If God forgave on that basis, there would be no accounting for the violation of the law and the divine moral government would not be vindicated. The law becomes “mere advice.”37 So far, most reformed theologians would be in full-throated agreement with Edwards; however, he enters more controversial waters when he begins to describe the role of substitution in his theory. Christ’s death was substituted for the punishment required by law. In penal substitution, Christ himself is normally viewed as the substitute victim. In Edwards’s view, the sufferings are the substitute rather than Christ. Edwards said, “The atonement is the substitute for the 35 Edwards lists a number of Scripture passages in support of the necessity of Christ’s death, including Eph 1:11; Rom 3:24; Acts 20:28; Heb 9:12; 1 Pet 1:18, 2:24; Isa 53:4–6, 10–12; 1 Cor 5:7; Eph 5:2; Heb 9:26; Luke 24:25, 26, 46; John 3:14, 15; Heb 9:22; 1 Cor 3:11; Acts 4:12; Matt 20:39; John 11:42; Gal 2:21, 3:21. 36 Jonathan Edwards Jr., “The Necessity of Atonement,” in The Atonement: Discourses and Treatises, ed. Edwards Amasa Park (Cambridge, MA: Congregational Board of Publication, 1859), 6. 37 Edwards, “The Necessity of Atonement,” 6–7.

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punishment threatened in the law and was designed to answer the same ends of supporting the authority of the law, the dignity of the divine moral government, and the consistency of the divine conduct in legislation and execution.”38 Edwards laid stress on the atonement as an equivalent substitute for the punishment threatened in the divine law. He held that this atonement meets the same ends of moral government as the original punishment did. It is “equivalent to the punishment of the sinner, according to the literal threatening of the law.” In a way similar to Samuel Hopkins and Joseph Bellamy, Edwards argued that the atonement prepared the way for the “dispensation of pardon.”39 The aim of the punishment prescribed in the law and the atonement of Christ is to uphold the honor and dignity of the divine moral government, to maintain the divine moral law. In this series, Edwards also argued that Christ never paid a literal debt nor “purchased” salvation, as the Westminster Confession states.40 If Christ’s death paid humanity’s debt owed to God, then salvation is humanity’s due. The debt is paid; God can require no further payment. If nothing further is required, then what is the place of faith and repentance? Edwards believed that if one considers Christ’s death as the all-sufficient payment for sin, then, in a sense, salvation is man’s just due, at least in the case of the elect. But Edwards rejected such thinking. Instead, he held that all of the expressions in Scripture that refer to the payment of a debt, deliverance of a prisoner, or the paying of a ransom are to be taken metaphorically. The atonement consists only in the vindication of divine law. It is difficult to overstate the importance of this aspect of Edwards’s view of the atonement. Here he is diverging from Puritan and Reformed ways of answering the question of purpose. What is the atonement for? Under penal substitution, one might expect an answer that relates to the justification of the sinner. Edwards takes a different tack. The atonement is about restoring God’s divine rule; man’s redemption is a felicitous by-product of that restoration. The atonement is designed to vindicate the righteousness and justice of divine law. Vindication means that “God is determined to support the authority of his law, and he will not suffer it to fall into contempt.”41 It means that God has shown and will show that he acts in accordance with divine law. This vindication is not merely a vindication 38 Edwards, “The Necessity of Atonement,” 8. 39 Edwards, “The Necessity of Atonement,” 7. 40 Philip Schaff and David S. Schaff, ed., “The Westminster Confession of Faith,” in The Creeds of Christendom: The Evangelical Protestant Creeds, with Translations, 6th ed., vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1990), 621 (8.5). 41 Jonathan Edwards Jr., “Grace Consistent with Atonement,” in The Atonement: Discourses and Treatises, ed. Edwards Amasa Park (Cambridge, MA: Congregational Board of Publication, 1859), 19.

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of a set of statutes but of the very character of God. If God’s law falls into disrepute, it is because God has failed to uphold it. Now that God’s law and character are vindicated, God can forgive the sinner and yet remain consistent with his own just character. Yet if God has made full atonement, how is it that man is saved by grace? Edwards answers by explaining his understanding of three different forms of justice: commutative, distributive, and general. Edwards did not coin these terms, but they form a critical pivot point for his understanding of the atonement. Commutative justice relates to the protection of personal property and commerce. This form of justice theoretically provided legal protection for American merchant ships from the pirates and privateers in Edwards’s lifetime. Injustice under commutative justice is theft or failure to repay a debt. The atonement takes on this form of justice when Christ’s death is conceived as a payment of a debt. Edwards rejects this view. He regards all biblical language referring to the atonement as a payment of a debt as metaphorical language. If Christ’s death were a strict payment of a debt, as Universalists were arguing, then once it is paid, nothing else is required. Once a debt is paid, the creditor cannot ask for additional payment. If Christ made a full atonement and completely paid the debt we owed, then how can God ask for faith and repentance as well? Rellyan Universalists were arguing that the debt has in fact been paid for all. Logically, all will ultimately be saved on the basis of Christ’s universal atonement. To address this problem, Edwards moved the atonement out of the realm of commutative justice. The second form of justice that Edwards discusses is distributive justice. This justice is the rewarding of good moral acts and the punishment of evil acts. This form of justice emphasizes the distribution of rewards and punishments to each individual according to her merit. In this case injustice would occur when God failed to punish someone as her actions deserve. Too much punishment and too little punishment are both unjust. This form of justice undergirds the penal substitutionary model of the atonement. Christ received the punishment that each one of the elect would have received according to her ill desert. This form of justice, with its quid pro quo arrangement, can account for the punishment of criminals (i. e. violators of the law). Justice must be rendered according to the merit of the individual, not a collective body. In the case of penal substitution, then, the sinner is found guilty and worthy of punishment; however, Christ is permitted to suffer the penalty due to each of the elect in order that she might be forensically justified (i. e. legally declared righteousness) without suffering eternal punishment. Again, this is not a collective arrangement. Christ died for each one of the elect, not for all humanity or the elect as a group. General justice, the third definition of justice, is featured in Edwards’s theory of the atonement. This sort of justice relates to all moral goodness. To seek general justice is to conduct oneself according to “general benevolence” or “to

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seek the glory of God and the good of the universe.” This form of justice incorporates all virtues such as truth, faithfulness, meekness, forgiveness, patience, prudence, temperance, and fortitude. So strictly speaking, and by Edwards’s own admission, it is not proper justice. God sought to fulfill general justice in the atonement rather than distributive or commutative justice. The atonement provided a general and cosmic vindication of God’s divine moral rule over the universe. Grace and justice are mutually exclusive. Where there is justice there can be no grace, except in the case of general justice. Edwards illustrated this point by asking whether it would be just for God to cast the Apostle Paul from heaven into hell at this very moment. This would be a just act according to Paul’s moral desert, according to distributive justice. However, casting Paul into hell would undermine general justice. So according to distributive justice, Paul received grace, and according to general justice, he received justice.42 Assuming all of what Jonathan Edwards Jr. has said concerning the atonement, how has he departed from the penal substitutionary theory of the atonement? He agreed that Christ’s sufferings were equivalent to the punishment due to man, though Christ’s death was not strictly a punishment. That is, Christ’s death was substituted for the punishment that was due to man. So his theory relates to punishment and substitution, yet no one has clearly stated these facts. Oliver Crisp calls this theory penal non-substitution, but there is clearly substitution.43 If Crisp is right that his theory features no substitution, then how should we account for statements from Edwards that suggest substitution? For example, Edwards said, “The truth is, the glory of God and the greatest good of the moral system did require that Christ should become a substitute for sinners, and that his offered substitution should be accepted by God.”44 The problem is that Edwards proposes a different sort of substitution, all the while believing that it was a substitutionary theory. What we might say instead is that the New England theory is a non-distributive form of penal substitution. We ought to say that it is a different sort of substitution, and the benefits of the atonement are distributed on a different basis. Instead of Christ being the substitute victim for man, Christ’s sufferings are substituted for man’s punishment. Instead of the atonement being distributed to each one of God’s elect individually, it is construed as a collective satisfaction for all who believe. To be clear, Edwards taught that only those who are unconditionally elected by God will ultimately believe. 42 For Edwards Jr.’s discussion of justice see Edwards, “Grace Consistent with Atonement,” 20– 28, esp. 20–21. 43 Oliver D. Crisp, “Penal Non-Substitution,” Journal of Theological Studies 59 (2008): 143. 44 Jonathan Edwards Jr., “Inferences and Reflections,” in The Atonement: Discourses and Treatises, ed. Edwards Amasa Park (Cambridge, MA: Congregational Board of Publication, 1859), 41. See also on p. 19, “Christ, as his substitute, hath made full atonement.”

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This key point distinguished him and the New England Theology from the Arminian form of moral government, which argued that God elects to salvation those whom he foreknows will believe.

5.10 Jonathan Edwards To conclude our discussion, we ought to reflect upon the relationship between Edwards the elder and this nascent moral government theory of the atonement. Edwards was quite comfortable with the language of moral government and returned to the subject often in his private notebooks; however, there are some important points of distinction between Edwards and his son on the subject, especially in regard to the relationship between justice and the atonement. Jonathan Edwards Sr. never talked about justice in the way that his son did by way of identifying three basic forms: commutative, distributive, and general; however, a careful reading of Edwards will reveal that his theology dealt with similar concepts in different terms. Edwards was particularly ready to utilize commutative justice in explaining his ideas of Christ’s “purchase” of redemption.45 Edwards Jr. and the other Edwardseans completely opposed the notion that Christ paid an actual debt, arguing that such language in Scripture should be regarded as metaphorically pointing to a higher truth concerning Christ’s death. Commutative justice involved the payment of debts and the conduct of commercial business and had no relation to the character of the debtor or the creditor. In contrast with his father, Edwards Jr. believed that the atonement had nothing to do with commutative justice. Edwards Sr. was less explicit in his use of distributive justice regarding the atonement, though the concept was indeed present. He believed that the sins of believers are “charged” to Christ’s account. Edwards conceived of sin in Anselmic fashion as an offense against God. Edwards Jr. and his cohorts spoke of sin as a violation of law rather than an offense against God. This might seem like a trivial difference; however, the stakes were considerable. Like the Universalists, Edwards Sr. conceived of God as the offended party. Unlike Edwards Sr., the Universalists asked why could God not forgive the offense without satisfaction? Men are praised for doing so. Why would this be any less praiseworthy in God? As an answer to this objection, the moral government theorists argued that God is not 45 Jonathan Edwards, “The Wisdom of God in the Way of Salvation,” in Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Sereno Edwards Dwight and Edward Hickman, vol. 2 (London: Ball, Arnold & Co., 1840), 147; Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption, ed. John F. Wilson, vol. 9, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 117–18, 294– 318.

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only the offended party; he is the moral governor over the universe and has a responsibility to see that the divine moral government is maintained. Sin is not only an injury to God, it is also an injury to the universe. God cannot allow this to go unaddressed. Thus, the atonement is concerned with general justice.46 Perhaps one of the most remarkable examples of these differences is found in The Wisdom of God in the Way of Salvation. Edwards preached this six-sermon series in March 1733. In it he stated: Yea, it is so ordered now that the glory of these attributes requires the salvation of those that believe. The justice of God that required man’s damnation, and seemed inconsistent with his salvation, now as much requires the salvation of those that believe in Christ, as ever before it required their damnation. Salvation is an absolute debt to the believer from God, so that he may in justice demand it, on account of what his surety has done. For Christ satisfied justice fully for his sin; so that it is but a thing that may be challenged, that God should now release the believer from the punishment; it is but a piece of justice that the creditor should release the debtor, when he has fully paid the debt. And again, the believer may demand eternal life because it has been merited by Christ, by a merit of condignity. So is it contrived, that the justice that seemed to require man’s destruction, now requires his salvation.47

Edwards Jr., of course, did not say what his father said above. He rejected his father’s use of commutative justice in relation to the atonement. The atonement is not a literal debt paid. In fact, his father argued the very point that his son longed to refute. Edwards Sr. seems to suggest that the believer can demand his salvation on the basis that his debt has been paid. In the younger Edwards’s mind, this played right into the hands of the Universalists, who argued that since Jesus paid the debt man owed to God, then faith and repentance were not necessary. God cannot justly require them since the debt is fully satisfied. Edwards Sr. would have never agreed with the Universalists had he lived into old age. His limited view of the scope of the atonement prevented his theology from undergirding universal salvation. New England Universalists, however, took advantage of the growing popularity of a general atonement in order to preach that men and women may demand their salvation from God on the basis of Christ’s universal satisfaction. Despite their dissimilarities, Jonathan Edwards Jr.’s notion of general justice is similar to his father’s ideas about the character of God. According to Edwards Jr., general justice is the requirement that God must seek to make manifest his glory and the good of the universe. Edwards Sr. believed that all of God’s attributes are displayed in Christ’s death. Edwards Jr. believed that all of God’s attributes are

46 Edwards, “The Wisdom of God in the Way of Salvation,” 143–44. 47 Edwards, “The Wisdom of God in the Way of Salvation,” 149.

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displayed in general justice. As general justice is fulfilled, God’s moral government is honored and the character of the lawgiver is shown to all the world.48 In summary, Edwards Sr. believed that the atonement was the fulfillment of all three forms of justice that the Edwardseans discussed: commutative, distributive, and general. In large measure, this represents a significant difference between Edwards and his followers. However, we can also see how there is a resemblance between them. They all agreed that the atonement was designed to restore the honor of God. Edwards spoke of this in Anselmic terms; the Edwardseans used moral government terms. They all agreed that the atonement was an expression of God’s character. It has been the expression of God’s glory, making manifest his attributes. Edwards Sr. brought Anselmic themes and Grotian themes together. “By sin,” he explained, “man has slighted and despised God: but this is made an occasion of his appearing the more greatly honourable. Sin casts contempt upon the authority and law of God: but this, by the contrivance of our redemption, is made the occasion of the greatest honor done to that same authority, and to that very law.”49 The remarkable point about this quotation is that it featured a moral government theory, yet also affirmed that sin is an offense against God. God is the offended party just as the law has been violated and the moral government has fallen into contempt. So the elder Edwards shows that there is a platform in his writings from which his theological heirs developed a moral government theory of the atonement. Edwards’s theological heirs were pastors and theologians who labored collaboratively and creatively to develop a theology that they believed improved upon the theology of Jonathan Edwards. Not all will agree that they achieved this goal, but there is little doubt that they considered themselves to be working out of the Reformed tradition and the theology of Edwards. Their doctrine of the atonement was not the same as that of Jonathan Edwards, but neither was it an example of “strange and logic spinning” theology.50 The Edwardseans faced fresh challenges from Universalists that compelled them to fortify their theology against these attacks upon the doctrine of the atonement. These challenges led them to adapt a penal substitutionary theory into an Edwardsean moral government theory, which was adapted to service the needs of their Calvinist doctrine. The result was controversial and novel in the way it adapted a moral government theory to Calvinist theology.

48 Edwards, “The Wisdom of God in the Way of Salvation,” 144–45. 49 Edwards, “The Wisdom of God in the Way of Salvation,” 148. 50 Gordon S Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 603–4.

Paul Helm

6.

The “Modern Question”: Hyper-Calvinism

6.1

Introduction

The “Modern Question” came to be the name given in the eighteenth century to the issue of whether or not Christ should be offered unconditionally by the preacher to all hearers. Allied with this was the issue of whether it is the duty of all who hear the good news of Jesus Christ to repent and believe. Those who denied that Christ should be offered indiscriminately and that those who hear have a duty to believe, came to be better known as Hyper-Calvinists, for these negative positions were all held by Calvinists, and grew out of the doctrinal framework of Calvinism.

6.2

The Doctrinal Background

The debate, or at least its conceptual tools, were forged in an earlier phase of Calvinistic theology, as Martin Foord has shown, in debates between various parties at the Synod of Dordt and in Puritanism. He illustrates this from various readings of Ezekiel.1 In particular he notes the position of John Owen respecting Ezekiel 18:23 and 32. However, the significance of this should not be overestimated. It is one thing to offer an interpretation of one biblical verse, using the dialectic between the secret and revealed will of God to do so. It is another thing to hold that sentiments attributed to God ought to govern the responsibilities of the preacher. In fact in his exposition of Psalm 130 Owen unabashedly urged impenitent sinners to come to Christ.2

1 Martin Foord, “John Owen’s Gospel Offer: Well-Meant or Not?” In The Ashgate Companion to John Owen’s Theology, ed. Kelly Kapic and Mark Jones (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012). 2 John Owen, Works, ed W.H. Goold (1850–3, repr. Edinburgh The Banner of Truth Trust, 1965), 6:528–29.

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Nevertheless, the seeds of Hyper-Calvinism were sown in discussions of the sort that Foord draws attention to, and some of them germinated as part of a wider debate about the nature and scope of gospel preaching. The sort of thing that Owen wrote became an issue about the propriety of indiscriminate offers of grace and of the emphasizing of the duties of all who hear the gospel to believe in Christ, an issue over which ministers divided and distinct parties were formed, in the early years of the 18th century. This became an issue of public controversy, chiefly if not exclusively, among English Dissenters, namely Congregationalist (or Independent) and Baptist.3 It is difficult to estimate how geographically widespread the debate was but much of it was centered in the English Midlands. While the controversy surfaces from time to time in circles influenced by Calvinism, it can be said that that phase of it which we are to examine, which involved Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) as its central figure, has an interest and an importance that gives it a special significance. We shall examine Fuller’s strategy for resisting and dismissing Hyper-Calvinism after giving an account of the ethos of such views. If by the main title of Fuller’s book against Hyper-Calvinism, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation,4 we are inclined to anticipate a defense of the “free offer,” we need to remember that the sub-title is Or The Duty of Sinners to Believe in Christ. The offer of the Gospel is defended because in Fuller’s view that is the way that all who hear the Gospel should come to see that the have a duty to believe it. For Fuller the free offer of the Gospel is an inference from faith’s being a duty, underlined by instances of the indiscriminate gospel-invitations that are present in Scripture. Those who receive such invitations have a duty to comply with them.

6.3

The Arrival of Hyper-Calvinism

Following the revolutionary settlement of 1688, English Dissent became increasingly fragmented. English Presbyterianism pretty well disintegrated, and though Congregationalists and Baptists had each their own Confession of Faith, these were not prominent in the life of chapels. Ministers developed the habit of writing their own confessions, and this was both cause and effect of a growing individualism that divided chapels into parties and tendencies, from neo-nomianism to high Calvinism and antinomianism. Some of these positions, like 3 Anglican clergy certainly discussed the issue. For example, see John Newton, who published a collection of his letters anonymously in Cardiphonia, or The Utterance of the Heart (Edinburgh, 1821), II.55–6. Robert Hawker (1753–1827), a popular Anglican preacher, was considered by some to be Hyper-Calvinistic. 4 Andrew Fuller, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation or The Duty of Sinners to Believe in Jesus Christ (2nd ed., 1801) in The Works of Andrew Fuller (Philadelphia, 1820).

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Hyper-Calvinism, had originated in the previous century but flourished in this rather cantankerous atmosphere. Hyper-Calvinism was itself capable of different expressions. It dwelt on and emphasized some of the tenets of high Calvinism, in particular the bondage of the human will to sin, the church’s eternal election and justification, the place of the moral law in the believer’s life, and the distinction between the secret and the revealed will of God. An additional factor was the importance attached by all parties to “experimental preaching,” the practice of preaching so as the hearers would be called upon to test the genuineness of their own faith by reflecting on their own experience. If mishandled such preaching could lead to undue introspection. There is also the fact that the issues raised in the controversy impinge on the dialectic between law and gospel. Is there a command to believe, as there is a command to repent? Is such a command, if there is one, every bit the same as, say, “Thou shall not kill”? Does an invitation that is divine turn that invitation into a law? Is the command to believe in Christ a “new law”? And like the temper that animated the antinomians, Hyper-Calvinists also tended to stress the unimportance of human effort when measured against God’s eternal decrees.5 As we shall see, Hyper-Calvinism itself came to be a variegated phenomenon, as pastors exerted their independence. Its overall influence—by the time a selfconscious division was made between the Hyper-Calvinists and the “Fullerites”—seems to have been localized in Independent and Baptist churches around Kettering, Northamptonshire, where Fuller was pastor of the Baptist Church (1782–1815). For example, John Brine (1703–1765), a vigorous proponent of Hyper-Calvinist doctrines, who was born fifty years before Fuller, became a Baptist pastor at Coventry and was a life-long friend of the more famous John Gill (1697–1771), who is also often thought of as a Hyper-Calvinist and who was also born in Kettering. Brine was Fuller’s most-quoted exponent of Hyper-Calvinism in The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. It is generally thought that in England the origin of the practice of denying the legitimacy of the free offer and the obligation of all who hear to believe lay in the theological views of Joseph Hussey, a well-read Congregationalist minister in Cambridge, who published God’s Operations of Grbrineace but No Offers of His Grace (1707), and of Richard Davis, (1658–1714), who had been an acquaintance of the elderly John Owen. Davis seems to have veered to Hyper-Calvinism only late in his life. His followers established Congregationalist churches in the English

5 Mark Jones, Antinomianism (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2013),15, 29.

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Midlands, most of which became Hyper-Calvinist.6 Lewis Wayman (d. 1764) pastor of the church at Kimbolton, 16 miles from Kettering, came to have particular significance. This trend among the Congregationalists struck a chord with particular (or Calvinist) Baptist believers through John Skepp, who had been a member of Hussey’s congregation, and who later became a Baptist and a minister of the Currier’s Hall Church, in London. He wrote Divine Energy, or, the Efficacious Operations of the Spirit of God upon the Soul of Man, published posthumously in 1722. John Gill and his life-long friend John Brine were influenced by Hyper-Calvinism, though as we shall see Gill’s views were rather distinctive and un-typical of the standard type. He was a minister in London and a voluminous writer. Though Gill freely engaged in controversies, the issue of the free offer was not among them, though he had decided views on the question. Brine became a minister in Coventry and later in London.7 He wrote A Refutation of Arminian Principles detailed in a pamphlet, intitled, the Modern Question, Concerning Repentance and Faith in 1743. The issue had already been discussed in a pamphlet A Modern Question Modestly Answered, written by Matthias Maurice who was a Congregationalist minister of Rothwell, another Northamptonshire market town, not far from Kettering.8 Matthias Morris succeeded Richard Davis, as the Congregationalist minister at Rothwell and upheld the “duty” position in “The Modern Question.”9 Lewis Wayman, whose views on faith Fuller also regarded as representative of the Hyper-Calvinist, were published in 1739, edited by Thomas Bradbury (1677– 1759). The Hyper-Calvinism against which Andrew Fuller fought ought not to be thought of as a concerted religious or theological movement, which it had never been, but as the position held by local, influential, and sometimes rather independently-minded pastors. The Savoy Declaration of 1658 and the Baptist Confession of 1689 were silent on the question. Fuller encountered Hyper-Calvinism as the de facto view in the congregation to which he grew up in. As already noted, Hyper-Calvinism flourished within a framework of Calvinistic ideas. This expression is deliberately loose, for two reasons. The variations of doctrine and emphasis among Calvinists meant that it must be incorrect to say, as Peter Toon did in his The Emergence of Hyper-Calvinism in English Nonconformity, 1689–1765, that hyper-Calvinism was a logical deduction from 6 Peter Toon, The Emergence of Hyper-Calvinism in English Nonconformity, 1689–1765 (1967 ed.; repr. Eugene OR: Wipf and Stock, 2011), 95–6. 7 Toon, Hyper-Calvinism, 100–2. 8 Robert W. Oliver, History of the English Calvinistic Baptists, 1771–1892 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2006), 96–7. 9 Toon, Hyper-Calvinism, 131–2.

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the doctrines of high Calvinism, any more than high Calvinism, the more developed Calvinism of the late seventeenth century, was itself a deduction from the theology of Calvin. Toon did not attempt to demonstrate these alleged deductions. In fact Hyper-Calvinism had a real but much looser connection with Calvinism than Toon supposed. Richard Muller has recently shown in emphatic fashion that in the phases of the development of Reformed Orthodoxy there was a good deal of variation within the broad parameters of Reformed soteriology.10 There is a similar variety of views respecting the presentation of the gospel and the obligations that this presentation generates. The matrix of ideas that gave rise to hyper-Calvinism was the product of Calvinistic minds that became preoccupied with two distinct aspects of this theological outlook. One was a fixation on God’s eternal decrees at the expense of human responsibilities and opportunities in real-time. The other was a set of restrictions on what fallen human-beings can be held responsible for, on what Christ’s atonement was intended to achieve, and on the language that ministers as a consequence ought to use in the pulpit. Involved in these restrictions was a blurring of the distinction intrinsic to orthodox Calvinism between the secret and the revealed will of God. The most theologically proficient person in this group was John Gill. He is frequently regarded as a Hyper-Calvinist, but his views are sufficiently distinctive as to require a distinct treatment.

6.4

John Gill

The central question that Gill posed was: are invitations or commands to come to Christ a part of God’s revealed will? Gill maintains in his commentaries, as well as in his theological and doctrinal works, that indiscriminate invitations to the gospel which men and women ought to accept are inadmissable. Rather, the gospel invitations are only for “sensible sinners,” sinners who are made aware of their “perishing condition,” and who, being in that condition, may be directed to have faith in Christ.11 Fuller’s interest in Gill is in his exegesis, and he teases him for sometimes leaving behind his “system” as he called it, while pursuing that exegesis.12 That “system” was based fairly straightforwardly on the unregenerate sinners’ spiritual inability, and on the different character of the commands of the Lord to Israel under the Mosaic covenant for them to repent and believe, which require only natural ability, from those under the new covenant, which require 10 Richard A. Muller, Calvin and the Reformed Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2012), especially chapters 6 and 7. 11 John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, (1836), 737 12 Fuller, Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 59.

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spiritual ability, an ability which cannot be presumed, but is the result of the special work of the Holy Spirit. Unlike Lewis Wayman and others, Gill, and his friend John Brine,13 accept the distinction between the secret will and the revealed will of God, that is, between God’s decrees, which are mostly unrevealed, and so secret, and his precepts, which have been revealed.14 Further, Gill’s view of the nature and place of faith in justification is distinct from that of Wayman and others even though he, like them, held to eternal justification, believing God’s justification of sinners to be an immanent and so eternal act of his essence.15 He seems to have derived this approach from Thomas Goodwin, Johannes Maccovius, and William Twisse. This was of limited influence on Gill in the Hyper-Calvinist direction, however, as, in his understanding, eternal justification did not diminish the need for the elect to be justified by faith in time. For there is for Gill and for Brine a distinct preaching of justification by faith, and a change in the status of those converted that occurs in time, from condemnation to vindication. It is sometimes said that the Hyper-Calvinist and the Arminian agree together on the claim that obligation implies ability. The Arminian thus holds that a person has an obligation to believe in Christ only because he has ability to exercise faith, and the Hyper-Calvinist holds that a person ought not to be commanded to believe in Christ because he does not have ability to do so. If Gill was a Hyper-Calvinist then one might expect him to follow this line. Does he? In a number of places Gill clearly says that obligation does not imply ability. In his The Cause of God and Truth, discussing the biblical teaching about reprobation, he considers the following argument. Holding people responsible for what they cannot do may be said to be contrary to the justice of God; because by it God is made to require faith and obedience of persons from whom he has either taken away strength to perform, or to who he has

13 See also Fuller’s treatment of Brine’s argument in the latter’s Motives to Love and Unity (1753), 50–1 (Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 79). 14 For Gill’s view, see Body of Divinity, 72. Toon misses the important point that both Gill and Brine accept the distinction between the secret and the revealed will of God. On this, see William Young, “Remarks on Peter Toon”s Hyper-Calvinism” (Evangelical Library Bulletin, 42 [Spring 1969], 12–13). 15 Gill, Body of Divinity, 205–206, for the various senses in which it was asserted that the elect are eternally justified see Mark Jones and Gert van den Brink, “Thomas Goodwin and Johannes Maccovius on Eternal Justification” in Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology, (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012). For whether Gill accurately represents Goodwin and Maccovius note the remarks about Gill, ibid., 141, 147. For Gill, the elect are eternally justified not in their own persons but in their Head, Jesus Christ.

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absolutely decreed not to give it; which make it impossible for them to believe and obey: and no man is bound to do that which is impossible.16

Gill replies: I reply, that the rule, which is so frequent in the mouths and writings of our opponent, [viz. Daniel Whitby] Nemo obligatur ad impossibile, no man is bound to that which is impossible, in many cases will not hold good.17

He cites the case of a debtor who may not be able to pay his debts and yet may still have the obligation to do so. And the fact that a person may become habituated to evil does not entail that he does not have an obligation to live uprightly. Second: “It is man’s duty to believe the word of the Lord, and obey his will, though he has not a power, yea, even though God has decreed to withhold that grace, without which he cannot believe and obey.”18 This looks like a fairly standard Augustinian position. But then he goes on to say: However, there are many things which may be believed and done by the reprobates, and therefore they may be justly required to believe and obey; it is true, they are not able to believe in Christ to the saving of their souls, or to perform spiritual and evangelical obedience, but then it will be difficult to prove that God requires these things of them.19

It is evident that in this passage taken as a whole Gill makes a distinction between obedience to the law and the performing of spiritual and evangelical obedience. This seems a curious difference, because Gill appears to restrict spiritual obedience to the gospel only. One might ask what is this obedience to the law which is required of us all, but a purely-motivated and perfect obedience, of which we are incapable? Such preaching is the call on men and women perfectly to keep the law, not merely to keep it in an outward, self-righteous or hypocritical manner. Is not the “preaching of the law” intended to drive a person into this particular corner? So it would seem that unless Gill is going to restrict obedience to the law in an implausible and unsatisfactory fashion, then the inability fully to keep the law does nevertheless entail an ability to keep it fully; and, by parity of reasoning, the inability to exercise true faith in Christ ought not to remove the obligation to exercise penitence and faith. To confuse things further, in one place Gill grants that “God requires all men, and it is their indispensable duty, to love him with all their heart, soul, and strength, to fear him always, and keep his commandments.”20 16 The Cause of God and Truth (London: Thomas Tegg, 1838), 292. This looks like a paraphrase or perhaps a direct quotation from Curcellaeus or from Limborch, each of whom Gill cites. 17 The Cause of God and Truth, 292. 18 The Cause of God and Truth, 292. 19 The Cause of God and Truth, 292. 20 The Cause of God and Truth, 278.

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So there appears to be some inconsistency in Gill’s attitude to the principle that ought implies can. In some cases not covered by straightforward instances of physical impossibility he seems to imply that ought does imply can, in other cases not. This apparent inconsistency is unfortunate; nevertheless, its presence makes it harder plausibly to claim that Gill was a “Hyper-Calvinist” for the usual reasons. What of Gill on the central mark of Hyper-Calvinism, the free offer of the good tidings? According to Gill, God “hath set forth Christ in his purposes to be a propitiation through faith in his blood for the remission of sin; and he has sent him to shed his blood to obtain it, and has exalted him as a Saviour to give it, and to him give all the prophets witness, that whosoever believes in him shall receive it.”21 He has a fairly robust attitude to evangelism. The ministry of the gospel is “for the enlargement of the interest of Christ in the word; and it is by means of the gospel being preached to all nations in all the world, that the kingdom of Christ has been spread everywhere.” The ministry “is for the conversion of sinners; without which churches would not be increased nor supported, and must in course fail, and come to nothing.”22 Nevertheless the restrictions regarding ability undergird the objection to the free offer, though this does not stop Gill saying that “ministers, in exhorting men to believe in Christ, do not, and cannot, consider them as elect or non-elect, but as sinners standing in need of Christ, and salvation by him; and that as sensible, or as insensible of their state and condition; not as insensible of it; for I do not find that any such are exhorted to believe in Christ for salvation.”23 So the gospel is not to be offered to any indiscriminately and not restrcted to the elect; it is to be offered to sinners, the preaching discriminating between the sensible and insensible. The sensible are such because they have been granted the ability to repent and to exercise faith. Connected with this is the way that Gill and Brine understood the scope of the death of Christ. It was standard, even amongst those who upheld a form of definite atonement, to hold that Christ’s death was of infinite value, but that its scope was limited by God’s decree to the salvation of the elect. Gill and Brine (and no doubt others) rejected this distinction. The sufficiency and the efficacy of Christ’s atonement had the same scope. So Gill says, about the terms of preaching: The distinctions of Christ dying sufficiently for all, but intentionally only for the elect, and for all if they will believe and repent, but moreover for the elect, to procure faith and repentance, for them, he [viz. Daniel Whitby, to rebut whose views The Cause of God 21 Body of Divinity, 733. 22 Body of Divinity, 931. 23 Cause of God and Truth, 304.

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and Truth was written] rejects; and which, for my own part, I can no more admit of than himself.24

6.5

The Hyper-Calvinist Mind-Set

For Hyper-Calvinists the elect were not only chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, but were also eternally justified in him. Though as we have suggested this does not contribute directly to a denial of the free offer, it was an element in the Hyper-Calvinist mind-set contributing to a style of preaching less direct than even Gill’s. As a consequence, faith is not so much a transaction the exercise of which brings about in the believer the change from death to life, as it is a recognition in time of an eternal truth about the believer that he or she is eternally justified. If they are eternally justified, then they are justified, presumably, even while still in unbelief. If so, what place does faith play? The answer is: It is the God-given way in which a person gains the knowledge that he is eternally justified. It is not the instrument of justification, as Gill held, and the Reformers, such as John Calvin held,25 so much as the way in which the believer has disclosed to him that he is already justified, because eternally justified, and so already delivered from the bond-slavery of sin to spiritual freedom. The object of faith is not simply “Christ, and him crucified” announced indiscriminately to sinners, but something additional that will provide to the one who has it the evidence that he is already justified. What could that be? Since the New Testament does not list the names of those who are elected and eternally justified, it must be some datum that goes beyond divine special revelation in Scripture. In this way, eternal justification came, though not in the case of Gill, to be linked to a denial of the distinction between the secret and the revealed will of God. For it involved God directly revealing to an individual person that he or she is elect. The effect of dwelling on the doctrine of eternal election, on God’s eternal justification, on the human inability to come to Christ, and restricting the offers that the preacher might make to those who are “sensible sinners,” was to create an atmosphere in which a person was encouraged to make his chief concern the discerning of what was eternally true of him. Due to this neglect of the revealed will of God, and the supplanting of it by a concern with having the divine secret 24 The Cause of God and Truth, 180–1. The reference is to Daniel Whitby, whose Arminian views Gill was rejecting. I am grateful to Richard Muller for these references. See also John Brine, The True Sense of Atonement for Sin by Christ’s Death (1742). Brine held that the virtue of the death of Christ was of infinite worth, and becomes sufficient an atonement for the elect by the will of God (6–7). 25 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.11.7.

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will disclosed to them, Hyper-Calvinist congregations tended to be fatalistic. What someone could do to receive the good news was restricted to what human beings have a natural ability to do, to attend church, sing hymns, read the word of God, and attentively listen to preaching. The preacher intimated that the dominant response of the unbeliever when using the means of grace was to wait, that is, to wait for the Lord to act, and to expect that if and when he does act this will be by disclosing in some direct way that he or she is a child of God, because eternally justified. So the unregenerate in such congregations were encouraged to adopt a good deal of passivity, if not outright fatalism. Such a person is told that he has no obligation to come to Christ, because he has no ability to do so. The promotion of this outlook also reinforced and is reinforced by the earlier point about preaching. The preacher is not to call men and women to Christ, but to expound the character of believer and unbeliever faithfully, with the prayer that the Lord will use such a ministry to bring people to a realization of their eternal justification. So nothing must be said by the preacher that implies anything more than natural ability in the unregenerate. Fuller will argue that such a fatalistic attitude is inconsistent. Such people do not deny that in the question of appropriating salvation God has laid down a structure of means and ends, namely, to undertake certain activities that they can do, such as attending church and reading scripture, and to undertake such activities is not to be fatalistic.

6.6

Andrew Fuller’s response

We have already noted the clustering of Hyper-Calvinist congregations in the English Midlands. This became of special significance because it was in Kettering, the home town Gill and Brine, that Andrew Fuller, the most outspoken and thorough opponent of Hyper-Calvinism, became a minister, whose influence became local and through his writings, national and even international. Through his writings a number of able ministers changed their views, and became unshackled by the change. They included several who were instrumental in the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society, the first of modern missionary societies. And after his death, Fuller’s views continued to be the leading target of those of a Hyper-Calvinist outlook. The issues raised by the Hyper-Calvinism dispute, at their most abstract, have to do with the manner of the communication and reception of the good news of grace and salvation which comes through Jesus Christ. The way that the message is to be communicated affects and is affected by the understanding of what that message is. The how and the what are interconnected.

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Fuller concentrates on the offer and what it presupposes. Yet, he did not mount a direct attack on John Gill’s system but on the lesser figures of Brine and Wayman. He came to believe that “indiscriminate invitations” to Christ are central to Christian preaching, and to the act of faith. Fuller is a preachertheologian, and The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation is a work on the theology of preaching. So the book does not offer itself as a thorough refutation of all aspects of Hyper-Calvinism, of its framework, as I have called it. Fuller says next to nothing, for example, on eternal justification. Nor is it a historical treatment examining Hyper-Calvinism’s roots and chief exponents, though he refers to Calvin, and to standard Puritan writers such as John Owen and Stephen Charnock. There is only one oblique reference to John Bunyan, who had ministered and suffered in Bedford, only a few miles from Kettering, in a previous generation.26 While there is nothing on earlier Hyper-Calvinist figures such as Richard Davis, he does refer to Joseph Hussey, who along with Davis, was an early figure in Hyper-Calvinism. He tangles with Wayman and Brine most of all, but only to illustrate features of Hyper-Calvinism, not to offer a point-by-point commentary on their views. He has rather guarded things to say about Gill and also about Abraham Booth (1734– 1806), a London Baptist minister, each of whose views he partly approves.27 Fuller thought that Booth was sound on the nature of faith but denied or skirted the question of whether faith was a duty.28 Fuller may have sensed that to attack Hyper-Calvinism as a theological mind-set was a difficult if not an impossible thing to do, because, as we have seen, an adherence to one precise system was not what unified its adherents. Rather, it is the scripturalness of indiscriminate invitations—not against Gill at this point—and of the obligatoriness of repentance and faith, and hence of human responsibility and inability—only partly against Gill—which are the two (or three) issues that Fuller gives attention to in The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation. Let us briefly look at these in turn. First, the nature of faith. According to Fuller, what is the character of that faith that it is our duty to exercise? Some of the treatment of faith in the book has to do with the Sandemanian view of it as purely an assent to the truth, which Fuller also thought got in the way of preaching the gospel, but as this is not an issue in his controversy with Hyper-Calvinism we shall not consider these views here.29 It

26 Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 115. 27 Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 32ff. 28 Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 34. Fuller is a fair-minded controversialist, though he did like to have the last word. Some of the views of Booth, Gill and Brine are critiqued, but some are also approvingly referred to. 29 See below, Chapter 8.

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suffices to note that, for Fuller, faith is not only assent to the truth but also trust, fiducia, in the object of faith. As we have seen, it was characteristic of several Hyper-Calvinists to think of faith primarily in epistemological terms. An act of faith is a way of God graciously disclosing to the believer grounds that assure him of his position as an elect and eternally-justified child of God. The tendency of justifying faith in their hands is not to assert that trusting Christ brings about a change of status in real time, a change foreshadowed and ensured by God’s eternal decree, but to modify it in the epistemological way already mentioned. This has the consequence of changing the character of gospel-preaching by excluding indiscriminate invitations to Christ on which faith may rely. And Fuller discerned that this characteristic was present, for example, in Wayman’s defense of the presentation of the gospel: The author of The Further Inquiry, Mr Lewis Wayman, of Kimbolton, who wrote about sixty years ago upon the subject, questions, “Whether there be any act of special faith, which hath not the nature of appropriation in it” (p.13) and by appropriation he appears to mean, a persuasion of our interest in spiritual blessings. This is the ground upon which he rests the main body of his argument.30

What Fuller means is this: Wayman teaches that the act of faith is not simple reliance upon Christ, but rather the recognition that God has chosen the person who believes. Faith includes the intimation that the one believing is among the eternally elected and eternally justified. The person is thus “persuaded of his interest” in spiritual blessings. That is why, according to Fuller, Wayman characterizes people who trust Christ but who are fearful that Christ has not received them, as “unbelievers.”31 Fuller makes three points. Faith is an act of taking to oneself Christ’s pardon and righteousness. And the offers and invitations of the gospel, which are among the terms in which the gospel is presented in Scripture, are general and indiscriminate. No individuals are explicitly in them, but only kinds of people, “sinners” and “weary and heavy-laden,” for example. So that to suppose that what faith involves are such propositions as “Christ has died for me,” is to presuppose that God may disclose to a person what goes beyond what he has revealed about that person in Scripture, and thus to fail to respect the distinction between what God has revealed and what he keeps secret. The belief that Christ has died for me cannot be what is revealed, but such a belief is either the response to the invitation and an inference drawn from that response, or an immediate intimation. But such an intimation would in effect be a codicil to the canonical Scriptures. As Fuller says:

30 Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 19. 31 Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 19.

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He has abundantly promised, that all who believe in him, trust him, and obey him, shall be saved; and a persuasion that, if we sustain these characters, we shall be saved, is, doubtless, an exercise of faith: but whether we do, or not, is an object; not of faith, but of consciousness. …If any one imagine that God has revealed to him his interest in his love; and this, in a special, immediate and extraordinary manner, and not by exciting in him the holy exercises of grace, and thereby begetting a consciousness of his being a subject of grace, let him beware, lest he deceive his soul.32

The vital point here is that the invitations of the gospel are general in character, addressed to sinners, not to those in a congregation that are in a certain spiritual condition, to those who Gill and Hyper-Calvinists in general referred to as “sensible sinners” to those who sensed they were sinners.33 According to Fuller, such invitations have the force of divine commands. And faith is not a disclosure that the believer is one of the elect, but such a belief can only be an inference from faith in Christ. The invitations of Christ lose their impact in the Hyper-Calvinists’ view of preaching. So John Brine, for example, reduces the force of invitations and exhortations to mere statements. Brine asserts: The words contain a declaration, that believing in Christ for salvation is necessary to the enjoyment of eternal life, and that faith in him is an act acceptable and pleasing to God; but afford no proof, that it is required of man in a state of unregeneracy… [and] falls very short of asserting it to be their present duty.34

For Fuller, a gospel invitation that a hearer is entitled to disregard or turn down on the grounds that, being unregenerate, he lacks the ability to respond to it, cuts the nerve of gospel preaching. In stressing the obligation to turn to Christ, Fuller has to avoid the taint of neo-nomianism. The gospel is not a law, even though he holds that faith in Christ is a duty. Second, it is here that Fuller’s treatment of moral and spiritual inability is significant. Moral inability, the inability of unbelieving sinnners to exercise repentance and faith, for example, does not remove or diminish their moral obligation to the least degree.35 Fuller was recommended to read Jonathan Edwards by Robert Hall. In doing so, he became strongly convinced that obligation reaches beyond natural ability to matters regarding which people have a “moral inability” a distinction which he finds in Edwards, and also in “some other performances.”36 32 33 34 35 36

Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 20–1. Body of Divinity, 304, 734. Motives of Love and Unity. 42, (quoted by Fuller, Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 40). Fuller, Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 58, quoting Hussey. Fuller, Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 11. Gill was partly committed to it, as we have seen (Fuller, Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 59) It was a standard distinction in Reformed theology. See, for example, Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (1688–90) 10.2.8.

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The distinction is treated in extenso in Jonathan Edwards’ work on the The Freedom of the Will in Part I, Section 4 of the book, entitled “Of the Distinction of Natural and Moral Necessity and Inability”, and in Part IV, Section 4, entitled “It is Agreeable to Common Sense and the Natural Notions of Mankind, to Suppose Moral Necessity to be Consistent with Praise and Blame, Reward and Punishment.” On this distinction, Edwards writes as follows: We are said to be naturally unable to do a thing, when we cannot do it if we will… Moral inability consists not in any of these, but either in the want of inclination, or the strength of a contrary inclination; or the want of apparent motives in view to induce and excite the act of the will, or the strength of apparent motives to the contrary. Or both these may be resolved into one; and it may be said in one word, that moral inability consists in the opposition or want of inclination.37

Suppose I have a normal human body, including two fully-functioning legs; then I have the natural ability to walk. But if I have uncontrollable spasms in my legs, or possess only one leg, then I have a natural inability to walk normally. I cannot walk normally even if I want to. If I have normal legs but I am lazy, or I have in other ways resolved not to walk, then I have a moral inability to walk. So moral ability must presuppose a certain amount of natural ability. Edwards gives the following examples of moral inability or “moral necessity” as he prefers to call it. “A woman of great honor and chastity may have a moral inability to prostitute herself to her slave. A child of great love and duty to his parents, may be unable to be willing to kill his father.”38 So moral inability does not in Edwards’s view remove responsibility, praise or blame, but rather the reverse. The virtuous woman and the loving child are praiseworthy, vicious inabilities are blameworthy. Edwards argues, “‘Tis the soul only, that is properly and directly the object of precepts and commands. The motions or state of the body are matters of command, only as they are subject to the soul, and connected with its acts.”39 So in assessing responsibility, natural ability and inability are subordinate to moral ability and inability, but each may have a bearing on responsibility. Third, taking his cue from Edwards, and grounding this view of responsibility in Scriptural texts such as John 6:44, Romans 8:7 and 2 Peter 2:14, Fuller argued that the preacher’s invitation to come to Christ implies an obligation to do so on the part of the hearers, despite their moral inability to comply. As we have noted Gill agreed with this in respect of the law, but not with respect of the Gospel. It

One of these “other performances” may have been a book of the ejected Puritan Joseph Truman, A Discourse of Natural and Moral Impotency (2nd ed.; London: Robert Clabel, 1675). 37 Jonathan Edwards, Freedom of the Will 1.4, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957), 159. 38 Freedom of the Will 1.4, ed. Ramsey, 160. 39 Freedom of the Will 3.4, ed., Ramsey, 320.

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seems that he made a sharp distinction between repentance, which he believed had to do with our obligation to the moral law of our Creator and Lord, and the response of faith to the invitations of the Gospel which as we have noted are to be directed, he believed, only to “sensible sinners.”40 While respecting the difference between the law and the gospel, Fuller came to hold that men and women had an obligation to keep the law, and if they heard it, an obligation to respond to the Gospel. Not only Gill demurred, but also Abraham Booth, who was also a critic of John Gill,41 but who preferred to think of the presentation of the gospel in terms of invitation and entreaty, and not a matter of duty. Perhaps Fuller is rather nervous in his defence of faith as a duty, though it is at the very heart of his position, as is shown by the fact that he discusses this matter first at proposition III of Part II of the book,42 and then in his “Answers to Objections,” and finally in his sensible “Concluding Reflections.”43 Fuller says that though the Gospel is a message of pure grace it “virtually requires” obedience. But if something virtually requires obedience, then it presumably requires obedience. I think Fuller means by virtual obedience that, like the law, the invitations of the gospel call for our compliance, yet they are not as the law is, divine commands, but gospel invitations. This side of things could benefit from more research and reflection.

6.7

Conclusion

The outcome of the Hyper-Calvinism dispute left Andrew Fuller with the upper hand. There was no-one of Fuller’s wit and industry on the other side, and his position, known hereafter as “Fullerism” advocating “duty faith,” carried the day in the mainstream of Particular Baptists. But his opponents were not totally routed. It is not fair to regard them as fatalistic and inactive. In the following century there was a remarkable resurgence of Hyper-Calvinism through the agency of the Bapitst William Gadsby (1773–1844), centred on Manchester and the mill towns of its hinterland, such as Rochdale and Bury, where a fair number of churches were planted. Gadsby was a paradox, a popular evangelist with Hyper-Calvinistic views, and with a strong social conscience. These churches and others came eventually to form the Gospel Standard Strict Baptist 40 Such a distinction can be found in mainstream Reformed Theology, for example, in Ursinus. See Mark Jones, “The Puritans on Law and Gospel” in his and Beeke, A Puritan Theology, 322– 3. 41 Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 32, 34, 106. 42 Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 52. 43 Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 103–4, 105–6.

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denomination.44 Their Confession of Faith enshrines the opposition to “duty faith” and to “offers of grace” and to the law as a rule of life.45 The denomination continues to the present day, though with fewer chapels and adherents than in its hey-day.

44 Oliver, History of the English Calvinistic Baptists, Chapters 9 and following. 45 Gospel Standard Strict Baptist Church, Articles of Faith and Rules XVI, XXIV, XXVI, XXIX.

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7.

Eschatology: Spes Meliorum Temporum

7.1

Introduction

Millennialism has fallen on hard times within Reformed theology. Contemporary Reformed theologians tend to believe that the vast majority from their camp have historically embraced amillennialism. Yet, many staunch Calvinists have maintained peculiar, if not controversial, positions on eschatology to the consternation of some of their contemporary Reformed divines. In this essay, I compare two eighteenth-century Reformed theologians in terms of their eschatological convictions. Both John Gill (1697–1771) and Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) wrote extensively as Calvinists on eschatology yet differed on some important points. They both believed in a future millennium but disagreed on the timing of Christ’s return. These anachronistic labels of premillennialism and postmillennialism will help us to understand their respective positions in general terms even though they are not completely accurate. Though they diverged concerning some details regarding the future, they both surprisingly held to an optimistic future. They embraced a hope of better times (spes meliorum temporum). In some matters, they did not differ much; but in other matters, they differed greatly. I will highlight those differences while at the same time reveal their remarkable similarities. John Gill followed in the seventeenth-century understanding of eschatology while espousing some peculiar (if not eccentric) views on eschatology. Edwards, on the other hand, offered a more progressive and contemporary doctrine of the Apocalypse. Both have their genesis in the seventeenth century but they were not slavishly dependent upon such ideas. Some of the eschatological trajectories seen in the seventeenth century like spes meliorum temporum can also be found in the eighteenth century. As in the seventeenth century, no single eschatological view prevailed in the eighteenth century among Reformed theologians. Gill and Edwards represent some of the leading Reformed thinkers in the eighteenth century and comparing their views grants a glimpse into the diversity of thought in Reformed eschatology.

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Seventeenth-Century Chiliasm

The term “millenarianism” needs to be carefully defined. Crawford Gribben has demonstrated how the term has been utilized to describe both premillennialism and postmillennialism in the seventeenth century.1 Even the Westminster Confession of Faith’s teaching on eschatology has been used to defend premillennial, postmillennial, and amillennial.2 What can be said with great certainty is that writings on eschatology grew in the seventeenth century and various forms of millenarianism were surprisingly and extensively received. Since there are many significant works on seventeenth-century millennialism and this study concerns the eighteenth century, I will only briefly present the general contours of seventeenth-century thought.3 This will help set the background to the eschatology of Gill and Edwards. Before the 1640s, most Reformed divines held to an Augustinian eschatology.4 The millennium represented the past and the present. In the second Helvetic Confession (1566), an expectation of a literal millennium was connected with the Jewish dreams of a “golden world in the earth”.5 Therefore, the idea of a future millennium was not favorably received. All the major Protestant confessions condemned millennialism before the seventeenth century.6 But a growing interest in the study of the Hebrew language and the rabbinic literature helped to foster the burgeoning interest in millennialism, especially an optimistic eschatology in the seventeenth century.7 Rabbinic literature taught that the world would last only six thousand years. Hugh Latimer and others 1 Crawford Gribben, The Puritan Millennium: Literature and Theology, 1550–1682 (Revised Edition), Studies in Christian History and Thought (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), 8–10; it has also been noted by William M. Lamont, Godly Rule: Politics and Religion, 1603–60 (London: Macmillan, 1969), 7. 2 Gribben, The Puritan Millennium, 8–9, 237; Crawford Gribben, “The Eschatology of the Puritan Confessions,” Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology 20:1 (2002): 51–52. Cf. C. N. Willborn, “Eschatology and the Westminster Standards,” The Confessional Presbyterian 4 (2008): 171–182. 3 Some attention will be given to the sixteenth century as well since a few important authors influenced the seventeenth century. 4 Gribben, The Puritan Millennium, 35; Robert G. Clouse, “The Apocalyptic Interpretation of Thomas Brightman and Joseph Mede,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 11:4 (Fall 1968): 184. 5 Gribben, The Puritan Millennium, 31. 6 See Jeffrey Jue, “Puritan millenarianism in Old and New England,” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, ed. John Coffey and Paul Lim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 259ff.; Howard Hotson, “The Historiographical Origins of Calvinist Millenarianism” in Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe: The Later Reformation, ed. Bruce Gordon (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), 159. 7 Peter Toon, “The Latter-Day Glory,” in Puritans, the Millennium and the Future of Israel: Puritan Eschatology 1600 to 1660, ed. Peter Toon (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 1970), 23–26.

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accepted this timeline.8 That meant there were less than four hundred fifty years left.9 They were also convinced that the last millenium (in which they found themselves living) would be shortened for the sake of the elect.10 Furthermore, after the Marian exiles returned, many writers began to envision a time of extensive latter-day conversion of Jews and others began to envision a future (and not a past) millennium. Though not a millenarian, William Perkins’s own view helps us to understand what was believed in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Gribben summarizes William Perkins’s eschatological view in these terms: “The future… was not entirely bleak… There were better times ahead. There was yet the calling of the Jews to be expected.”11 Bozeman takes an entirely different position on Perkins and argues that he was not an exemplar of a new and optimistic form of Puritan eschatology.12 Yet his expectation of a future ingathering of Jews would become a “staple component of subsequent puritan eschatology.”13 He believed that the end would come only after the conversion of the Jews, which was the last prophecy to be fulfilled and could happen very soon.14 Perkins also believed that the church was a suffering church. He said that “the Church of God hath alwayes beene subject to the crosse, and none must marvell if it be.” He echoed the understanding of most: the church was always a suffering church and “cannot bee free from the Crosse.” He (in this imaginary dialog) says that we ought not to fear the coming year or believe that the ones after will be any worse: “that afflictions, hurly-burlies, subversions of kingdomes, are no more to feared this next yeare than any other years.”15 This suggests that Perkins and the mainstream puritans did not per se expect glorious things in the near future 8 Bryan W. Ball, A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism to 1660, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1975), 16– 22. 9 Most people believed that the world was a little over 5,500 years old. 10 Richard Bauckham, Tudor Apocalypse: Sixteenth Century Apocalypticism, Millennarianism and the English Reformation, The Courtenay Library of Reformation Classics (Oxford: Sutton Courtney Press, 1978), 167; Ball, A Great Expectation, 17. 11 Gribben, The Puritan Millennium, 37; cf. Crawford Gribben, Evangelical Millennialism in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500–2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 33–35. 12 Theodore Dwight Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 211–212. Bryan Ball tended to believe that Perkins was somewhat optimistic, see A Great Expectation, 23. Bozeman also believes Perkins was an amillennialist while Gribben argues that Perkins does not fit these categories very well, The Puritan Millennium, 36. 13 Gribben, The Puritan Millennium, 37. One of the signs of Christ’s coming, Perkins argues, is that many Jews would be converted (cf. Rom. 11). See William Perkins, The Workes of that Famous and Worthy Minister of Christ, in the University of Cambridge, Mr. William Perkins, vol. 3 (London: John Haviland, 1631), 470. 14 Ball, A Great Expectation, 23. 15 Perkins, The Workes, 3:475–475. The treatise is entitled, A Fruitfull Dialogue Betweene the Christian and the Worldling, concerning the End of the World.

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(apart from the ingathering of Jews). Yet, his apparent amillennial view has been deemed by some as a “development of the hope.”16 Whether this element bloomed into optimism cannot be proved with certainty.17 Yet, some scent of future optimism began to waft through England in the early part of seventeenth century. This view did not only exist in England. W. J. van Asselt has convincingly argued that such a view also grew in the Netherlands. Along with Johannes Cocceius (1603–1669), several significant Cocceian theologians embraced the idea that “a triumphal time would dawn for the Church” before the second coming of Christ.18 This special time of hope was common to many in England. Many of the Puritans believed they were participants in the eschatological unfolding revealed in Scripture. Eschatology “was not something puritans studied so much as something in which they believed themselves to be involved,” because it was never a theoretical issue for them.19 Because of their hermeneutical approach to the book of Revelation, they located themselves in a particular place of what they perceived to be a historical time map found in the Apocalypse. For some, the seven churches of Asia Minor in Revelation 2–3 depicted the seven periods of church history. Other writers took the seven seals, trumpets, and vials to be progressive stages of the history of the Christian church, such as John Napier and Johann Alsted.20 In fact, Gribben is certainly on the mark when he writes, “Recent research in Puritan eschatology has concluded that millennialism, in particular, was a central component of mainstream Puritan thinking. Nevertheless, while it drove a great deal of Puritan visions for reform, even leading the movement’s adherents into violent disagreement, it hardly characterized the confessional tradition they shared.”21 Though millennialism did not make it into the confessions, seventeenth-century divines gave much attention to 16 Cf. Iain H. Murray, The Puritan Hope: Revival and the Interpretation of Prophecy (Carlisle: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1984), ch. 3; see p. 42 on Perkins. I use the word “amillennial” loosely (taking Gribben’s caveat seriously). Bozeman also seems to place Perkins on the side of amillennialism, cf. To Live Ancient Lives, 212. 17 Since only the conversion of Jews awaited fulfillment, the end was imminent. Christ’s return would destroy the Antichrist at the end and thus the glorious end would come about. This, as the argument goes, is the reason the conversion of the Jews was considered a sign of better times. 18 Willem J. van Asselt, “Chiliasm and Reformed Eschatology in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Christian Hope in Context, ed. A. van Egmond and D. van Keulen, Studies in Reformed Theology (Zoetermeer: Meinema, c. 2001), 23–24. 19 Gribben, The Puritan Millennium, 13–14. 20 For Napier, see Robert G. Clouse, “John Napier and Apocalyptic Thought,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 5.1 (April, 1974): 101–114. On Alsted, see Howard Hotson, Paradise Postponed: Johann Heinrich Alsted and the Birth of Calvinist Millenarianism (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000). 21 Crawford Gribben, “Evangelical Eschatology and ‘The Puritan Hope’,” in The Advent of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2008), 380.

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it. Several key writers influenced many minds, especially the nonconformists. Though more names could be presented, I will highlight only a few to convey the general contours of seventeenth-century eschatology. While the great mathematician John Napier of Merchiston (1550–1617) wrote at the end of the sixteenth century, we include him in this study because his interpretation of the Apocalypse indicated that key eschatological events would find their fulfillment in the seventeenth century.22 Napier, who was influenced by John Knox’s colleague Christopher Goodman, believed the book of Revelation “to be above all a book of times containing dates and events hidden under the figures of prophetic language,”23 and he used his mathematical skill and the historicist method to understand the Apocalypse.24 He carefully calculated the times for each symbol in the Apocalypse and offered a very precise timetable. This meant that each symbol in the Apocalypse stood for various events in history (in particular, ecclesiastical history). For example, he placed the reference to Satan’s binding in Revelation 20 to have occurred around 300 A.D.25 Rome would fall in 1639. Napier also calculated the return of Christ and His judgment to be around 1688 or 1700.26 The saints’ rest would begin around 1688 but 1786 seems to be the end.27 He did not believe that there would be a large future conversion of Jews but he was convinced that God would convert 144,000 Jews (“litterally spoken of Israell”) beginning around 1541. There would be “no more of them” than the 144,000—God would preserve them up to that time so as to save them.28 Though he believed in a literal millennium, he did not expect it for the future since it had already transpired in 300–1300. At around 1300, Gog (Pope) and Magog (Turks) were released (“Papistical and Mahometicke armies of Gog and 22 The wrings of John Napier and Thomas Brightman (see below) helped the seventeenth century thinkers and their writings were utilized more in the seventeenth century than the sixteenth. 23 Katharine R. Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530–1645, Oxford Historical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 138–139. 24 Clouse, “John Napier and Apocalyptic Thought,” 111: Napier “affords an excellent example of the historicist school of explanation of the book of Revelation.” Christopher Hill colorfully summarized Napier: “John Napier is said to have especially valued his invention of logarithms because it speeded up his calculations of the number of the Beast” in Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 25. Jane Dawson makes a similar observation in “The Apocalyptic Thinking of the Marian Exiles” in Prophecy and Eschatology, ed. Michael Wilks (Oxford: The Ecclesiastical History Society, 1994), 90. 25 John Napier, A plaine discovery of the whole Revelation of Saint John (Edinburgh, 1593), 62ff. 26 Napier, A plaine discovery, 16, 21, 180–183. Capp offers the same interpretation of Napier’s chronology in The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-century English Millenarianism (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 26–27. Cf. P. G. Rogers, The Fifth Monarchy Men (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 138–139. 27 Napier, A plaine discovery, 12, 154–155; cf. Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 144; P. G. Rogers, The Fifth Monarchy Men, 138; Ball, A Great Expectation, 80–81. 28 Napier, A plaine discovery, 182–183 (cf. 119–120).

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Magog”).29 His view of the millennium contained very unique elements. He defined the millennium as an absence of war (and not a period of great blessings for the saints).30 Only after the millennium did better things await the saints (e. g., Reformation, etc.). Hotson points out the irony of Napier’s view: “The thousandyear reign of the saints… is not the best period of church history but the worst, and the loosing of Satan paradoxically marks a spiritual change for the better.”31 What is important about Napier is his historicist method as manifested in the seven seals extending to the destruction of Jerusalem in 71 A.D. and the seven trumpets and bowls [synchronous] unto the return of Christ. Bryan Ball observes that Napier offered “a well-reasoned approach to The Revelation.”32 His simple method made Revelation approachable. Using Rome as the Antichrist (as believed by almost all Protestants),33 he calculated each symbol. For him, Rev. 12 and the subsequent chapters merely amplified and repeated what was revealed in the previous chapters of Revelation.34 This enabled him to date the return of Christ (each Trumpet or Vial lasted 245 yrs.). The effect of his interpretation (though he was not a millenarian) was the impending end, since he had argued that the seventh trumpet “had sounded in 1541 and had ceased in 1590.”35 Rome’s fall was to follow in the next century and Christ would return around 1688–1700. That meant the end was very near. Later on, some of the more radical millenarians made much of this, which prompted a great deal of social upheaval.36 The late Elizabethan Puritan Thomas Brightman (1562–1607) also used the historicist method though he differed in some of the details from Napier. Like Napier, he also interpreted the eschatological time table to unfold in the seventeenth century. He believed England was the “Antitype” of Laodicea in Revelation 3, the last of the seven churches. The Church of England perfectly fit the description of the Laodicean church on account of her own lukewarm condition 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

Napier, A plaine discovery, 62. Napier, A plaine discovery, 63–64. See Howard Hotson, “The Historiographical Origins of Calvinist Millenarianism,” 166–168. Ball, A Great Expectation, 80. Cf. Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England. Napier, A plaine discovery, 155ff., cf. 2–3, 69. Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 148–149. Cf. Gribben, The Puritan Millennium, 40. 36 Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men, 26–27. For a thorough study of these radicals, see the magisterial trilogy on the radicals by Richard Greaves in which he carefully documents their role in Britain and how eschatology (and other ideas) greatly influenced them (like the Fifth Monarchists): Deliver Us From Evil: The Radical Underground in Britain, 1660–1663 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986); Enemies Under His Feet: Radicals and Nonconformists in Britain, 1664–1677 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990); Secrets of the Kingdom: British Radicals from the Popish Plot to the Revolution of 1688–1689 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992); cf. Christopher Hill, A Tinker and a Poor Man: John Bunyan and his Church, 1628–1688 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989), 94ff.

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which he described as a mixture of “Romish and Reformed Churches.” Brightman argued that the Church of England hung “betweene Heaven and Hell” because the “contagious vapour of Romish marsh doth molest and annoy us.”37 The historicist method led him to stretch the timeline of the seven seals up to Constantine; the trumpets covered the period up to (or near) the Reformation. The seven vials pertain to the Reformation and the events after it. By his time, three vials had already been poured out. The seals, trumpets, and vials therefore were all historically identifiable.38 The first millennium was from 300–1300 in which Satan was bound. He argued that a second millennium began around the year 1300 and would continue unto 2300.39 Until the “Antichrist of Rome, and the Turks” are destroyed, “the Church shall be still in her warfaring estate.”40 However, the resurrected Gospel would eventually overthrow the empire of the Antichrist and Babylon.41 Before the end, he declared that “our brethren of the Jews shall be converted to the faith.”42 He expected Rome to fall around 1650 and the Antichrist overthrown in 1686.43 Eventually, the gospel would prevail in the future for Brightman. So, both Napier and Brightman expected something hopeful: “Napier and… Brightman believed in a future Golden Age which would see not only the perfection of religion but also the completion of knowledge.”44 Napier’s computation expected this sooner than Brightman’s but both expected something of this golden age and

37 Thomas Brightman, A Revelation of the Apocalypse (Amsterdam, 1611), 102–133. See also Gribben’s brief summary of Brightman in his The Puritan Millennium, 40–42; Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 167–168. Peter Toon offers a very helpful overview of Brightman’s eschatology in “The Latter-Day Glory,” in Puritans, the Millennium and the Future of Israel: Puritan Eschatology 1600 to 1660, ed. Peter Toon (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 1970), 26–32. 38 James A. De Jong, As the Waters Cover the Sea (USA: Audubon Press, 2006), 17–18. 39 Thomas Brightman, A Revelation of the Apocalypse, 656. The text is clearer and more accurate in the later edition The Revelation of St. John (London, 1644), 824. Though he gives these dates, he believes he has avoided the problem of date setting: “But let us observe here how much they are deceived, who are so venterous, as to set down a certaine yeare and day almost of the last judgement” (p. 825). Scholars disagree in their interpretation of Brightman’s millennial position. W. J. van Asselt lists him as one of the Anglican premillennialists while Barry H. Howson refers to him as a postmillennialist. See Willem J. van Asselt, “Chiliasm and Reformed Eschatology in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 17; Barry H. Howson, “The Eschatology of the Calvinistic Baptist John Gill (1697–1771) Examined and Compared,” Eusebeia 5, (2005): 56 n.6, 40 Brightman, The Revelation of St. John, 825. 41 Cf. Howard Hotson, “The Historiographical Origins of Calvinist Millenarianism,” 168–169. 42 Brightman, The Revelation of St. John, 824–825; cf. Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 170–174; James A. De Jong, As the Waters Cover the Sea, 18–20. 43 Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England, 26–27. 44 Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 175.

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they expected “the climax of human history” in the seventeenth century.45 However, neither one of them believed that the millennium was in the future and they both denounced millenarianism.46 Then how did millenarianism arise in the seventeenth century? Howard Hotson offers one of the most convincing studies on how millennialism emerged in the seventeenth century. It is something that has not been carefully studied.47 In identifying Rome as the antichrist (e. g., Luther), the Protestants began to work out the implications to the rest of eschatology. Mired in an Augustinian view of the millennium (as something past), Napier and Brightman sought to explain the Apocalypse as best as they could.48 Their conception of the millennium did not fit the history everyone understood (persecutions flared up and wars were not absent). So, men such as Joseph Mede and Johannes Alsted raised serious objections against that interpretation since their study of historical events exposed the problems associated with viewing the millennium as something that recently passed. Rome’s rule over the (past) millennium left much to be desired. In placing the millennium in the future, these divines attempted to rescue the glorious millennium as something better than what had just transpired. Hotson suggests that exegetical and historiographical demands required a new understanding of the millennium.49 The rise of millennialism, therefore, was not a reaction to social upheavals but a necessity born out of exegesis. W. J. van Asselt has argued similarly using a Dutch pastor (Johan Mauritius Mommers, 1654–1737) as a test case to substantiate this point. He concluded that “not all defenders of chiliastic ideas… were politically or socially oppressed dreamers and fantasizers; some of them belonged to the academic establishment and were serious exegetes.” He suggested that one of the major factors for the rise of millenarianism “was also due to exegetical and historiographical discussions.”50 This will help us to understand why Joseph Mede (1586–1638) departed from the prevailing understanding of the millennium.51 45 Hill, Antichrist in Seventeenth-Century England, 26. 46 Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 175. 47 Many studies have utilized sociological, political, and economic categories to explain the rise of millennialism but very little has been written to explain the movement in theological terms. 48 Brightman, Bryan Ball argues, sought to address these deficiencies in John Foxe’s own understanding of the Apocalypse, see his Tudor Apocalypse, 221–224. 49 See Howard Hotson, “The Historiographical Origins of Calvinist Millenarianism,” 159–181. 50 W. J. van Asselt, “Chiliasm and Reformed Eschatology in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 28–29. 51 On Mede, see Jeffrey K. Jue, Heaven Upon Earth: Joseph Mede (1586–1638) and the Legacy of Millenarianism, International Archives of the History of Ideas (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006); Johannes van Den Berg, “Joseph Mede and the Dutch Millenarian Daniel van Laren,” in Prophecy and Eschatology, ed. Michael Wilks (Oxford: The Ecclesiastical History Society, 1994), 111–122; Gribben, The Puritan Millennium, 42ff.

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Mede’s works would eclipse many writers on the subject of eschatology. In 1627 he published his The key of the Revelation, a translation of his Clavis Apocalyptica. Rather than utilizing a mathematical approach as did Napier, he found a “key” to understanding the Apocalypse which he called “synchronisme.” “By a Synchronisme of prophecies I mean,” argued Mede, “when the things therein designed, run along in the same time; as if thou shouldest call it an agreement in time or age.”52 That is, much of the Apocalypse depicted the same events (Napier said something similar). For example, the seven seals represented the time up to Constantine (“comprehendeth the destinies of the Empire”), much like the way Brightman had argued. All three interpreted the symbols of the Apocalypse using the historicist hermeneutic. The other parts of Revelation dealt with “the destinies of the Church or of christian religion; untill at length both shall be united in the Church raigning; the kingdoms of this world becoming our Lords and his Christ.”53 Regarding the trumpets and vials, he believed they themselves lived in the sixth trumpet stage. The seventh trumpet “is yet to come at the Bettel of Armageddon.”54 The seven vials all occurred “within the seventh Trumpet.”55 He also thought a massive conversion of Jews would precede Christ’s return and the dawn of the millennium. They would be converted suddenly like Paul the Apostle.56 Mede summarized his view of the millennium in only five short pages.57 He recognized that he departed “from the received opinion” and argued that the “seventh Trumpet, with the whole space of the thousand yeeres, and other prophesies thereto appertaining doe signifie that great Day of Judgement.” All this would happen in the future. The millennium, therefore, was not something the church had already entered but something she must look forward to at the seventh trumpet. It seems that the millennium would begin at “the morning judgement of Antichrist.” Christ’s “most holy Spouse” would reign for a thousand years sometime in the future.58 In his The key of the Revelation, it is not clear if Christ would be present with the saints on earth during the millennium. But his 52 53 54 55 56

Joseph Mede, The key of the Revelation (London, 1643), pt. 1, 1. Mede, The key of the Revelation, pt. 1, 38. Mede, The works of the pious and profoundly-learned Joseph Mede (London, 1672), 595. Mede, The works of the pious and profoundly-learned Joseph Mede, 585. See Mede’s works cited in Jeffrey Jue, Heaven Upon Earth, 191–192. Johann Heinrich Alsted also believed in a future conversion of the Jews, see his The beloved city or, The saints reign on earth a thousand yeares (London, 1643), 16. Christopher Hill rightly stated, “The conversion of the Jews in the 16th and 17th centuries was part of a package of ideas about the approaching end of the world and the millennium” (13), see “‘Till the Conversion of the Jews’,” in Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought 1650–1800: Clark Library Lectures 1981–1982, ed. Richard H. Popkin (Leiden: Brill Academic Pub, 1988), 12–36. 57 Mede, The key of the Revelation, pt. 2, 121–125. It must be noted that he did not teach a millennial position earlier in his career, see Jue, Heaven Upon Earth, 91–100. 58 Mede, The key of the Revelation, pt. 2, 122–123.

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Remains clearly indicated that Christ’s reign would be from heaven, Regnum Caelorum.59 Furthermore, he believed the “first resurrection” mentioned in Revelation 20 to be literal and not figurative.60 This interpretation was similar to what we find in the early church chiliasts.61 Several other notable millenarians flourished in the seventeenth century (T. Goodwin, W. Twisse, J. Cotton, I. Mather, W. Bridge, J. Burroughs, etc.) and they held reputable positions in the church. However, the Fifth Monarchists complicated millenarianism, since they drew heavily from men such as Joseph Mede, Johannes Alsted, and Thomas Brightman.62 Many who spoke harshly against the Fifth Monarchists still advanced their own version of millenarianism. In short, many seventeenth-century divines embraced millenarianism without embracing the political radicalism of the Fifth Monarchy men. Not everyone embraced these millennialists. Men such as Richard Baxter wrote against millennialism, as did Robert Baillie (1599–1662), Joseph Hall (1574–1656), and Thomas Hall (1610–1665).63 Thomas Hall called chiliasm an “Epidemical error” and the full title of his little “Antidote” says it all: A confutation of the Millenarian Opinion, Plainly demonstrating that Christ will not

59 Joseph Mede, The works of the pious and profoundly-learned Joseph Mede, 603. Jeffrey Jue clearly indicates this referencing the Remains, see his Heaven Upon Earth, 99. Yet Crawford Gribben seems to imply that Mede taught a personal reign of Christ during the millennium when he wrote “the future reign of the saints with Christ” (The Puritan Millennium, 43). 60 Mede, The works of the pious and profoundly-learned Joseph Mede, 770: “But howsoever when at first I perceived that Millennium to be a State of the Church consequent to the times of the Beast, I was averse from the proper acception of that Resurrection, taking it for a rising of the Church from a dead estate; as being loth to admit too many Paradoxes at once: yet afterward more seriously considering and weighing all things, I found no ground or footing for any sense but the Literal… I cannot be perswaded to forsake the proper and usual importment of Scripture-language, where neither the insinuation of the Text it self, nor manifest tokens of Allegory, nor the necessity and nature of the things spoken of (which will bear no other sense) do warrant it. For to do so, were to lose all footing of Divine testimony, and in stead of Scripture to believe mine own imaginations.” Johann Heinrich Alsted also believed in two resurrections as in Diatribe de mille annis apocalypticis, non illis Chiliastarum et Phantastarum, sed beatorum Danielis et Johannis (Frankfurt am Main, 1630), 38. 61 Jue, Heaven Upon Earth, 116–117. 62 Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men, 28–29, 45–46. P. G. Rogers said this regarding Joseph Mede in his The Fifth Monarchy Men, 10: “Mede was a gentle scholar, and his interpretation of the second coming was entirely pacific, but later visionaries were to quote and use it for their own more militant ends.” 63 Richard Baxter wrote at least two works against millennialism, see A Reply to Mr. Tho. Beverley’s Answer to my Reasons Against his Doctrine of the Thousand Years Middle Kingdom, and of the Conversion of the Jews (London, 1691) and The Glorious Kingdom of Christ, Described and clearly Vindicated (London, 1691). In this last work, Baxter rightly listed Joseph Mede and William Twisse as being Millennialists. Cf. Jue, Heaven Upon Earth, 163–166.

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Reign Visibly and Personally on earth with the Saints for a thousand yeers either before the day of Judgement, in the day of Judgement, or after it.64 Though excesses existed, what emerged from the seventeenth century was the expectation of some sort of a future millennium, a rebirth of Protestant millenarianism.65 Whether one thought it would occur prior or consequent to the second coming of Christ, there was nonetheless an expectation of a future millennium—the Augustinian view was no longer held by all Reformed theologians. As we turn to our main subject, eighteenth-century eschatology, we will learn that excessive millennialism waned without millennial expectations dying. Though scholars had argued that the millenarian craze ended with the Restoration of 1660, men such as Richard Baxter gave themselves to studying the millennium in the 1680s.66 Millenarian interest did not exist only during political or social crises. It also grew in America through men such as John Cotton during times of relative peace.67

7.3

Eighteenth Century Eschatology

In the eighteenth century, men such as Daniel Whitby and Moses Lowman greatly influenced eschatological studies. These men popularized what came to be known as postmillennialism. Robert Clouse argued that premillennialism virtually disappeared in the eighteenth century on account of Whitby’s influence.68 Stephen J. Stein argues that the most radical interpretation of the Apocalypse was discredited on account of the “the tumult of the Civil War.” That in turn “opened the way for other methods of explaining the visions.”69 Stein’s argument seems to explain why some of the more radical interpretations disappeared in the eighteenth century. Though not everyone embraced Whitby and Lowman’s perspective, Jonathan Edwards eagerly incorporated their understanding into his overall eschatological studies. However, in England, John Gill branched out into his own unique, if not at times idiosyncratic, eschatological views. Both Edwards and Gill maintained standard orthodox views when it came to personal and general eschatology. Where they differed centered on their un64 65 66 67

Thomas Hall, A confutation of the millenarian opinion (London, 1657). Cf Jue, “Puritan millenarianism in Old and New England,” 260–263. Jue, Heaven Upon Earth, 173–174. Philip F. Gura, A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620–1660 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), 126ff.; Jue, Heaven Upon Earth, 180–181. 68 Robert Clouse, “The Apocalyptic Interpretation of Thomas Brightman and Joseph Mede,” 182–183. 69 Stein, “Editor’s Introduction,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards (hereafter WJE), 5:7. I will be citing from Perry Miller, John E. Smith, and Harry Stout, 26 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957–2005).

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derstanding of the millennium. Edwards embraced the newer Whitby and Lowman understanding while Gill continued the millenarian perspective of the seventeenth century, though he modified it considerably. The Arminian clergyman Daniel Whitby (1638–1726) published an essay on the millennium in his commentary on the New Testament.70 The full title summarizes the entire point of the discourse: A Treatise of the True Millennium: Shewing that it is not a reign of persons raised from the dead, but the church flourishing gloriously for a thousand years after the conversion of the Jews, and the flowing in of all nations to them thus converted to the Christian faith. His only importance to our study comes from the influence he had on his disciple Moses Lowman.71 The book’s title also provides the salient elements of eighteenthcentury eschatology which Edwards essentially embraced. I will not deal with all the different aspects of eschatology. The focus will be primarily on how Gill and Edwards interpreted the millennium and related topics. As Richard Muller has shown, John Gill’s relationship to the “Reformed orthodox tradition of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was both profound and complex.”72 In Gill’s own eschatology, we will clearly see echoes of some of the older Reformed theology in his peculiar premillennial view. He does not slavishly follow the orthodox opinion and his independence from them stands out quite clearly in some elements of his eschatology. Though he was not shy about expressing his views on this topic, he felt that those who espoused a millennial position like his labored under “great contempt.”73 Curiously, he believed this problem was caused by their mistaking the date of some of these great eschatological events: “Some good men, in the last age, fixed the time of 70 Daniel Whitby, “A Treatise of the True Millennium,” in A Paraphrase and Commentary on the New Testament (London: Awnsham and John Churchill, 1703), 251–278. 71 Cf. Stein, “Editor’s Introduction,” in WJE, 5:7. Gerald McDermott maintains that Edwards read Daniel Whitby in his One Holy and Happy Society: The Public Theology of Jonathan Edwards (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 60: “Whitby, a liberal theologian whose eschatology Edwards read, portrayed the millennium as primarily a spiritual revival of the Jewish church.” If Edwards did read Daniel Whitby on eschatology, I have not been able to find any references to it in his notes on the Apocalypse. Furthermore, Jonathan Edwards clearly read Whitby’s “Discourse on the Five Points.” On Whitby’s Arminianism, see Paul Ramsey, “Editor’s Introduction,” in WJE, 1:81–89. 72 Richard A. Muller, “John Gill and the Reformed Tradition: A Study in the Reception of Protestant Orthodoxy in the Eighteenth Century,” in The Life and Thought of John Gill (1697–1771): A Tercentennial Appreciation, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin, Studies in the History of Christian Thought (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 1997), 67. 73 John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity (Paris, Arkansas: The Baptist Standard Bearer, Inc., 1987), 623; A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, 3 vols. (London: Printed for W. Winterbotham, 1796), 2:404; cf. Crawford Gribben, “John Gill and Puritan Eschatology,” Evangelical Quarterly 73:4 (2001): 312. Since the reprint edition is more accessible to readers and the text between the two is essentially the same (very minor punctuation differences), I will only cite the reprint edition (hereafter cited as BD).

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Christ second coming, of his personal reign, and the millennium; in which being mistaken, it has brought the doctrine into great disgrace, and great neglect.” The difficulty, Gill argued, was not in setting a specific date but in knowing the start and end of the timeline: “mistaken in fixing the end of these dates, arising from the difficulty of knowing the time of their commencement.”74 This, we will see below, was also the pressing question in Edwards’s own thinking as he wrestled with Moses Lowman and others. Nonetheless, John Gill continued the historicist approach to the book of Revelation found in the earlier generation of men such as Napier, Brightman, and Mede.75 John Gill’s facility with the classical languages enabled him to pick up Hebrew very easily. With the purchase of John Skepp’s library (a “keen student” of the Hebrew language), John Gill gave himself to an intensive study of the Targums and the ancient commentaries.76 His abilities in Hebrew were readily acknowledged and he was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1748 for “his knowledge of the Oriental languages, of Jewish Antiquities.”77 This important educational background helps us to understand what might have been the key influence in his exegetical method in interpreting prophecies. In Gill’s commentary on Revelation, he interacts with Brightman over twenty-five times; Napier about seven or so and Mede about five but he cited Jewish sources much more frequently.

7.4

John Gill’s Eschatology78

Before focusing on Gill’s eschatology in detail, I offer an overview of it.79 His eschatology is more complicated than the anachronistic millennial labels. Though Gill might be clearly premillennial, his basic millennial view is unique 74 BD, 623. 75 Of course other names could be listed (e. g., Thomas Goodwin, Arthur Dent, Johann Alsted, etc.) but we have used only those three names (above) as representatives of a Puritan way of interpreting the Apocalypse. 76 Robert W. Oliver, “John Gill (1697–1771): His Life and Ministry,” in The Life and Thought of John Gill (1697–1771), 18. Cf. Curt Daniel, “Hyper-Calvinism and John Gill” (Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1983), 48–51. 77 Raymond C. Ortlund Jr., “John Gill as Interpreter of the Old Testament,” in The Life and Thought of John Gill (1697–1771), 93. 78 Two very significant articles have been published on Gill’s eschatology. They present a thorough summary of the contours of his eschatology and represent the best essays on this topic to date. See Crawford Gribben, “John Gill and Puritan Eschatology,” 311–326 and Barry H. Howson, “The Eschatology of the Calvinistic Baptist John Gill (1697–1771) Examined and Compared,” Eusebeia 5 (2005): 33–66. Gribben offers a helpful historical context while Howson gives a more careful account of Gill’s eschatology. 79 Gill’s eschatology eluded the grasp of one biographer George M. Ella, John Gill and the Cause of God and Truth (Eggleston, Co. Durham: Go Publications, 1995), 25: “Readers will look in

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and seems to be peculiar to himself. This staunch Baptist Calvinist espoused a millennial view that had some connections with his seventeenth-century Puritan forefathers but his idiosyncratic views may leave the reader puzzled. We find one of the clearest summaries of Gill’s position in his own commentaries. Though he fleshes out his views in various places, some are more detailed than others. In his comments on Daniel 2:44ff., Gill explains how the kingdom of Christ will be established after the four monarchies mentioned in Daniel 2. I will quote only this passage extensively because it conveys most of the features of his eschatology. Also, I have italicized a few important phrases to which I will refer in the essay. Indeed the kingdom of Christ began to be set up in the times of Augustus Caesar, under whom Christ was born; and of Tiberius, under whom he was crucified; and was continued and increased in the reigns of others, until it obtained very much in the times of Constantine; and, after it suffered a diminution under the Papacy, was revived at the Reformation; but will not be set up in its glory until Christ has overcome the ten kings, or kingdoms, and put it into their hearts to hate and burn the antichristian whore; and when she and all the antichristian states will be destroyed by the pouring out of the vials: and then in their days shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; this is the kingdom of the Messiah, as is owned by both ancient and modern Jews… which kingdom is no other than his church on earth, where he reigns; has his throne; holds forth his sceptre; gives out his laws, and is obeyed: and, though this is already in the world, yet it is not so visible, stable, and glorious, as it will be at the close of the fourth monarchy, which is meant by its being set up, confirmed, and established; and this will be done by the God of heaven, the Maker and possessor of it, and who dwells in it, and rules there, and over all the earth; and therefore Christ’s church, or kingdom, is often called the kingdom of heaven; and when it is thus established, it will ever remain visible; its glory will be no more eclipsed; and much less subverted and overthrown, by all the powers of earth and hell. Christ was set up as King from everlasting, and the elect of God were appointed and given him as a kingdom as early; and in and over these he reigns by his Spirit and grace in time, when they are effectually called, and brought into subjection to him; these are governed by laws of his making: he is owned by them as their Lord and King, and they yield a ready and cheerful obedience to his commands, and he protects and defends them from their enemies; and such a kingdom Christ has always had from the beginning of the world: but there was a particular time in which it was to be set up in a more visible and glorious manner: it was set up in the days of his flesh on earth, though it came not with observation, or was attended with outward pomp and grandeur, it being spiritual, and not of this world; upon his ascension to heaven it appeared greater; he was made or declared Lord and Christ, and his Gospel was spread vain in this biography for comments on Gill’s very few articles on eschatology which I have left alone as being completely beyond my ken and powers of analysis.” Admittedly, Gill’s eschatology may not be easy to grasp since his views are unique to himself, but it can hardly be said that he wrote very little on this topic because it is strewn throughout his commentaries, prominent in his BD and found also in other published writings.

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everywhere: in the times of Constantine it was still more glorious, being further extended, and enjoying great peace, liberty, and prosperity: in the times of Popish darkness, a stop was put to the progress of it, and it was reduced into a narrow compass; at the Reformation there was a fresh breaking of it out again, and it got ground in the world: in the spiritual reign it will be restored, and much more increased, through the Gospel being preached, and churches set up everywhere; and Christ’s kingdom will then be more extensive; it will be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth; it will be more peaceable and prosperous; there will be none to annoy and do hurt to the subjects of it; it will be no more subject to changes and revolutions, but will be in a firm and stable condition; it will be established upon the top of the mountains, and be more visible and glorious, which is here meant by its being “set up”: especially this will be the case in the Millennium state, when Christ shall reign before his ancients gloriously and they shall reign with him; and this will never be destroyed, but shall issue in the ultimate glory; for now all enemies will be put under the feet of Christ and his church; the beast and false prophet will be no more; and Satan will be bound during this time, and after that cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, with all the wicked angels and men.80

Because this full extract is found in his commentary on the entire Bible (and other ones could be listed), we see that his eschatological views were not peripheral to his overall understanding. In this extract he believes he was simply unfolding the Bible’s teaching. In the section before this extract, he listed several Jewish writers who also taught that Daniel was prophesying about a Messianic reign. Gill, following all Reformed thinkers, saw the Popish influence on the church to have been a spiritual blight. Though not mentioned in this passage, Gill often identifies Rome and Islam as the principal enemies of the church (Antichrist’s servants).81 In addition, the Reformation is always seen as an outworking of one of the prophecies in the book of Revelation. Several key features of his eschatology, highlighted above, will need explanation. All his statements fit into his overall eschatological structure. His position is both tight and consistent and we will see this in commentaries, various writings and sermons, as well as in his Body of Divinity.

7.4.1 Fifth Monarchy In the extract above, Gill mentions the “fourth monarchy.” The text indicates that God would set up a kingdom and “break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms” (the four monarchies). That kingdom began with the coming of Christ but 80 John Gill, An Exposition of the Books of the Prophets of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (London: Printed for Mathews and Leigh, 1810), 2:286–287. This edition is part of a nine-volume commentary on the whole Bible. 81 Thus, he speaks about the “Pope and the Turks” in Gill, The Glory of the Church in the Latter Day, 6th ed. (London: Paris & Son, 1812), 12. Cf. also ibid., 20, 21.

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it is not the kind that “shall stand for ever” (Dan. 2:44). In the present, “Christ now reigns… in a spiritual manner.”82 Gill believes Christ’s present reign will differ from that envisioned in Daniel 2:44. The Fifth Monarchy men believed that the fifth monarchy (Christ’s reign) could be hastened by human effort and was in continuity with the present system. But that was their great error because they believed it was going to occur “in the present earth,” when, in fact, Gill argued, that was not the case.83 Gill was well aware of how his position greatly differed from the fifth monarchy men but that difference also needed to be clearly stated lest he also fall under reproach. Though he believed in a millennial reign in the future and that it would come after the fourth monarchy, he understood how that would come about in vastly different terms. Though the millennial reign would not be ushered in by the might of men, he did envision the “spiritual reign” of Christ to be hastened by Christian magistrates. He says that the gospel ministers will stir up the magistrates once they notice that the time of the demise of the antichrist had arrived. They will “stir up and animate the christian princes and potentates, to take this work in hand.”84 The millennium will not be ushered in by earthly kings but he seems to believe that Christ’s “spiritual reign” will be ushered in by Christian magistrates.

7.4.2 The Reign of Christ in Three Stages For Gill, many greatly confused Christ’s second coming. He said that the mistake had to do with “confounding the spiritual and personal reign of Christ; as if they commenced together.”85 That is, the spiritual reign of Christ differed from the personal reign of Christ. However, that distinction does not go far enough. John Gill actually believed that Christ reigned in three stages. The extract above noted that the “kingdom of Christ began to be set up” during his earthly ministry. His reign came in his person and ministry, through his death and resurrection, etc. He reigns now. He reigns in heaven as well as “in 82 John Gill, Glory of the Church, 7–8. 83 “And, indeed, in the seventeenth century, in this nation, there were a set of men, called fifth monarchy men, and who were levelers, and riotous persons, were for pulling down civil magistracy, and all order of civil government, and setting up what they called a kingdom of Christ; which brought the doctrine of the millennium into great contempt, and under which it has much lain ever since. But putting it upon the footing I have, that this kingdom will not be in the present earth, the kings of it have nothing to fear from it; it will not interfere with theirs; civil government will not be hurt by it; for it will not be till that is no more, and the world itself at an end; and so can give no encouragement and countenance to persons of a riotous and seditious disposition.” (BD, 645) 84 Gill, Glory of the Church, 12; cf. ibid., 22. 85 BD, 623.

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the hearts of his people, by his Spirit and grace.”86 Gill does not seem to have a specific name for this, though all of it represents aspects of his kingly reign. For that reason, it will be called Christ’s “present reign” as distinguished from his spiritual and personal reign. But as he said above in the extract, the present reign “will not be set up in its glory until Christ has overcome the ten kings.” The present reign is what the church experiences currently. In developing his doctrine of the “spiritual reign” he says “that Christ has been exercising his kingly office in all ages of time, both before and since his incarnation; and there are two remarkable periods of time yet to come” in which Christ’s reign will be “more visible and glorious.”87 He denominates Christ’s second reign as his “spiritual reign, or latter day glory.”88 As the above paragraph indicated, the gospel “will be more peaceable and prosperous.” This phase is in the future and will come at the blowing of the seventh trumpet (“the whole has a view to the spiritual reign of Christ”).89 Though Thomas Brightman thought this trumpet was blown in the year 1558, Gill believed he and his contemporaries still remained “under the sixth trumpet.”90 For Gill, they still have to wait for the seventh trumpet to blow. This reign would take place “upon the rising and ascending of the witnesses into heaven” and the fall of the antichrist.91 Gill offers a new interpretation at this point. He argues that the seven vials will be poured out before Christ ushers in his “spiritual reign.”92 Gill did not believe any of these vials had yet been poured out but he also recognized that “some great and learned men” had argued otherwise.93 His dissent from them offers a very important insight as to why he differed from some of his Puritan forefathers. “Had they begun to be poured out at the time of the Reformation, as some have thought, in all likelihood they would have been finished before now; and antichrist would have been destroyed, and better times than we are now in, would have succeeded.”94 The “better times” expected by his forefathers never mate86 Gill, Glory of the Church, 7. 87 BD, 448. In BD, 448–451, Gill gives an entire chapter to the subject “Of the Spiritual Reign of Christ.” 88 BD, 644, 442. 89 John Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, 3 vols. (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1809), 3:774. 90 Gill, An Exposition of the New Testament, 3:774. Gill specifically mentions Brightman’s interpretation: “Brightman fixes the sounding of the [seventh] trumpet to the year 1558, when the kings of Sweden and Denmark set up the Gospel in their kingdoms, and reformed them from Popery; and when Queen Elizabeth came to the throne of England, and rooted out great part of the Romish superstition: but it is certain that this angel has not yet sounded his trumpet.” 91 Gill, Glory of the Church, 10–11. 92 Gill, Glory of the Church, 12–14. 93 Gill, Glory of the Church, 15. He does not offer the name of these men. 94 Gill, Glory of the Church, 16 (mistakenly listed as p. 24).

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rialized and this necessitated that the timetable of the Apocalypse be altered. He did not abandon their hope for “better times,” but given that believers were not experiencing those better times, he had to offer an interpretation that incorporated the “better times” while still utilizing the same method of interpretation of his forefathers. The most important thing about the “spiritual reign” of Christ centers on his description. His positive and hopeful description of the future spiritual reign of Christ would make any postmillennialist proud. In a sermon on eschatology, he told his hearer that he will “hold out unto” them “the bright side of the cloud.”95 The spiritual reign was not the millennium but the descriptions match some of the millennial visions espoused by his forefathers and by his postmillennial contemporary, Jonathan Edwards. His portrayal of the “glorious things spoken of the church of God in the latter day”96 includes the advancement of the gospel “with more light and clearness than now” and preached with much more consistency. Furthermore, the ministers of the gospel will be in agreement and “their ideas and sentiments shall be regular and uniform.”97 If that is the case then there will be one faith, one doctrine of faith, etc. In this glorious time of Christ’s spiritual reign, “there will be no more an Arian, a Socinian, a Pelagian and Arminian, or any other heterodox person.” The gospel will spread rapidly and broadly with greater success. Gill envisioned a time where the same ordinances will continue but “restored to their primitive purity.” This Reformed Baptist was absolutely certain that Christ’s spiritual reign would mean the end of infant baptism! All this will happen before Christ’s second coming and after the destruction of the antichrist (which he believed would happen somewhere between 1866–1941).98 The abundance of the Spirit and the deeply spiritual people of God will pervade the earth. As Gill said: “All the prophecies of temporal blessings in the latter day, as length of life, a numerous offspring of the people of God, plenty of corporal food, an affluence of wealth and riches, will have their accomplishment in the spiritual reign, or latter day glory.”99 This is unique because many take these prophecies of temporal blessings to be for Israel and wait for their fulfillment in the millennium. But Gill believed most of those promises found fulfillment under the spiritual reign of Christ. He also makes a curious observation about how the “large effusion of the Spirit” in the latter times will differ from Pentecost. During the latter, the “Spirit was not poured upon all flesh, nor were those signs in heaven in the full extent of

95 96 97 98 99

Gill, Glory of the Church, 7. Gill, Glory of the Church, 7. Gill, Glory of the Church, 25. BD, 624; Howson, “ Eschatology of the Calvinistic Baptist John Gill,” 40. BD, 644; cf. Gill, Glory of the Church, 26–27.

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them seen” as predicted in Joel.100 That is, all flesh literally did not receive the Spirit and the signs were not witnessed by enough people. But a greater effusion of the Spirit will come upon the world before and during the spiritual reign of Christ. As to be expected, peace will prevail over the nations. Sometime in the future, Gill believed, Christ will be in heaven exerting greater visible influence on the hearts of men and women to usher in his “spiritual reign.”101 At the end of this “spiritual reign,” men and women will once again grow cold. They will fall back into the “Laodicean church-state” and the church will regress into a sleepy state.102 The “personal reign” of Christ differs from the “spiritual reign” as the “two are very distinct things.”103 The “Millennium state” mentioned in the extract above is the “personal reign” of Christ. Before developing this in the next section, one more observation needs to be made. Gill considered “confounding the spiritual and personal reign of Christ” to be a great mistake. In keeping these two things distinct, Gill believed he could do justice to the requirements of the biblical text. He saw a hope of better times in the Old Testament as all Jewish scholars expected, but he believed this millennial state differed from those events. This distinction enabled him to embrace both visions of the end in his eschatology.

7.4.3 The Millennium Gill’s understanding of the Millennium, though premillennial, differs from other premillennialists in some important details. Again, the dangers of using this anachronistic label must be considered. The broad definition of a “millennialist” allowed for varying positions. Joseph Mede was truly a millennialist but his understanding differed greatly from Gill’s. Millennialism represented many views and though Gill was a premillennialist, his own personal view did not (and does not!) appear to fit any known view. Curt Daniel offered an insightful explanation of Gill’s own position. “Gill evidently sought to go beyond the Puritan Post-Millenialism without entirely rejecting it.”104 We have seen that Gill embraced the key tenet of postmillennialism fleshed out in his understanding of the “spiritual reign” of Christ. Yet, he took it a step further. After the spiritual reign, he believed Christ would begin his “personal reign.” The “personal reign” of Christ begins with his return to the earth; he will “personally appear.” Gill is very specific about this and did not want the hearer to 100 101 102 103 104

Gill, Glory of the Church, 24. BD, 448–451. Gill, Glory of the Church, 27–28. Gill, Glory of the Church, 7. Daniel, “Hyper-Calvinism and John Gill,” 169.

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misunderstand what he was saying. He says that Jesus will descend (1 Thess 4:16) “not by his Spirit, or by the communication of grace, or by his gracious presence, as before; but in person he will descend from the third heaven, where he is in our nature, into the air, where he will be visible.”105 Christ will reign personally for a literal thousand years: “The space of a thousand years is not a certain number for an uncertain, or a large and indeterminate space of time… not indefinitely, but definitely, for just this number of years exactly.”106 He will come gloriously “as the judge of the world.” His descent will be with “all the saints” who had “departed from the beginning of the world, in order to be re-united to their bodies.” He lists Adam, Abraham and “all the antediluvian and postdiluvian saints” as the ones coming with Christ.107 This is what he believes will be the “first resurrection” mentioned in Revelation 20:5, 6. During this time, the wicked will not rise from the dead. Christ will dwell in a new heaven and earth.108 Satan will have been bound. After the thousand years, Satan will be loosed again “and the wicked dead will be raised.”109 This large army of “enraged devils, and of men raised with all that malice and wickedness they died in” will seek to free themselves and attack the saints.110 They will be utterly destroyed by God’s wrath. After the judgment, there will be “the ultimate glory; when the saints shall be for ever with the Lord; shall see him as he is; enjoy uninterrupted communion with Father, Son, and Spirit.”111

7.4.4 Israel Like so many before him, Gill believed (as we have already seen above) in a future mass conversion of Jews. They had been “preserved a distinct people for several hundreds of years for this purpose.” Their continuance is “most surprising.”112 The Jews will come to Christ with the destruction of the antichrist.113 Therefore “the Jews must remain a distinct people until the time of their conversion.”114 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

Gill, Glory of the Church, 28. Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, 3:845. Gill, Glory of the Church, 29–30. A footnote in this sermon indicates that the new heaven and earth will be a purified new heaven and earth. The old will not be annihilated or destroyed, he says. See the footnote in Gill, Glory of the Church, 33. Gill, Glory of the Church, 32–33. Gill, Glory of the Church, 32–33. Gill, Glory of the Church, 34. Gill, Glory of the Church, 22; “The Sure Performance of Prophecy,” in Sermons and Tracts, 1:161. BD, 451. In summarizing Gill’s explanation of the “spiritual reign” of Christ, Barry Howson mis-

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Their conversion will be sudden, much like Paul’s own conversion—”the nation of the Jews born at once.”115 Joseph Mede, William Twisse, Thomas Goodwin, and Increase Mather all explained the future ingathering of Israel in these terms.116 Their conversion will occur during or at the beginning of the “spiritual reign” of Christ. Of the various things that must still be fulfilled, he lists the conversion of the Jews as one example.117 Their conversion “will make much for the increase and glory of Christ’s kingdom.”118 Yet Rome is the great stumbling-block “which lies in the way of the Jews.”119 After their conversion, they will “return to their own land, and resettle there” as foretold in the Bible.120 They will return to the land “being assisted… by Protestant princes, who will drive out the Turk” and establish Israel in Palestine. Their return to the land will enable the expansion of the gospel to spread to the Eastern nations “for the enlargement of Christ’s kingdom.”121

7.4.5 Two Resurrections Gill differed from many of the Reformed divines in his understanding of the resurrection. Brightman explained the first resurrection as the “marvellous conversion” inspired by the forerunners of the Reformation (e. g., John Wycliffe) which occurred around the year 1300.122 This was a spiritual resurrection (a conversion to the truth) and not a literal bodily resurrection. But we have seen that Joseph Mede also believed in two resurrections as well. On this point, he differed very little from some of the seventeenth-century millenarians. Robert

115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

understands what Gill says of the Jews. Howson says that the Jews “will be born again en masse and added to the Christian churches and yet still remain a distinct people” (“Eschatology of the Calvinistic Baptist John Gill,” 38). Gill actually says, “the Jews must remain a distinct people until the time of their conversion… These two sticks, Jews and Gentiles, will become one; but it will be in and by the hand of the Lord” (BD, 451–452); “The Sure Performance of Prophecy,” 1:162. John Gill, “The Watchman’s Answer to the Question, What of the Night?” in Sermons and Tracts (London: Printed by T. Smith, 1812), 1:56; The Glory of the Church, 22; cf. ibid., 24). Gill believes that the analogy of Paul’s conversion may be a possibility and not a certainty. See Jue, Heaven Upon Earth, 194. Gill, “Sure Performance of Prophecy,” 1:146. Gill, “Sure Performance of Prophecy,” 1:160. BD, 451. Gill, “Sure Performance of Prophecy,” 1:162. BD, 452. Brightman, Revelation of St. John, 821. John Wycliffe was actually born around 1330 and died in 1384.

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Clouse believed Joseph Mede was quite radical in believing in two resurrections.123 If that is the case, then so was John Gill. Gill was adamant that Revelation 20 could not be interpreted to mean “spiritual resurrection” or the “resurrection from the death of sin to a life of grace.” He was well aware of this interpretation. He consciously disagreed with Daniel Whitby.124 The resurrection for the millennium was “literally and properly, of a corporal one.”125 Even though Daniel 12 and John 5 seem to teach a single resurrection, he noted that prophecies “are often laid together, which are fulfilled separately, and at a distance from each other.”126 He also offers an explanation of John 5. He believes he has properly answered the objections raised against his understanding. Some, such as Thomas Goodwin, apparently taught the doctrine of two resurrections.127 Gill, therefore, was in good company.

7.4.6 Analysis In summary, we can see that Gill followed much of seventeenth-century millenarianism, especially in his use of the historicist method of interpretation. He differed on some of the details regarding which symbol applied to which era or persons, but overall his eschatology had some continuity with the seventeenthcentury divines such as Mede and other millenarians. Gill’s understanding of the Laodicean church can be found in some of the Puritans.128 He understood the seven churches (Rev 2–3) to be “the state of the church in all ages.”129 This was not unusual. But he believed he and his contemporaries were in the “Sardian churchstate” and about to enter into the “Philadelphian church-state” (during the spiritual reign of Christ).130 Though this may differ from some of the Puritans, the method of correlation remains the same. Gill’s distinction between the spiritual and personal reign of Christ is unique. Howson is absolutely correct when he wrote, “Prior to Gill’s day, this interpretation does not appear to have existed in the history of eschatological thought.”131 In fact, I suspect Gill’s position died with him since no reputable 123 Clouse, “ Apocalyptic Interpretation of Thomas Brightman and Joseph Mede,” 190. Alsted also believed in two resurrections. 124 See BD, 656, n.13. 125 BD, 657. 126 BD, 658. 127 Gribben, “John Gill and Puritan Eschatology,” 319–320. 128 Cf. Gribben, Puritan Millennium, 40. Thomas Brightman compared the Laodicean church to England (see above). 129 John Gill, “Watchmans’s Answer to the Question,” 1:65. 130 Gill, Glory of the Church, 10. 131 Howson, “Eschatology of the Calvinistic Baptist John Gill,” 54.

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theologian since Gill has espoused anything similar. His “spiritual reign,” however, will look much like Edwards’s millennial reign of Christ.

7.5

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards’s own prodigious output makes a study of his writings quite a daunting task. Secondary literature on his thinking can easily overwhelm all who wish to wade into the ongoing debates over Edwards’s theological positions. Focusing on a narrow topic, like eschatology, does not make the study easier since one must step into an ongoing polarized debate. Yet Edwards’s own position on eschatology is important to our discussion because he represents one of the leading and most brilliant Reformed minds of the eighteenth century. Eighteenth-century theological diversity cannot overlook his creative outlook on eschatology. Gill’s eccentric millennialism met its match in Edwards’s own innovative construction. The sudden intrusion of the Great Awakening sparked the imagination of millennial speculations.132 To historians, this revival has been likened to a giant boulder “unceremoniously dropped in the middle of historical pathways” and was “somewhat of an embarrassment.”133 For Edwards, it presented no occasion for blushing, since he saw it as a precursor for greater things to come.134 Early on, he read “public news-letters” to see if he could get a glimpse into how those events related to the advancement of the kingdom of Christ.135 When the great philosopher-theologian Jonathan Edwards was in the thick of this spiritual awakening, he weighed in with his own usual speculations and breadth of reflections on the Apocalypse. As a young pastor in New York city in the early 1720s, he began to write his earliest reflections on Revelation and “increased his commitment to the study of the Apocalypse” in 1723.136 He never gave up studying the book of Revelation and relished every opportunity to do so. His “Notes on the Apocalypse” is the “only book of the Bible he favored with a separate commentary” and was “the private record of his entertainment and delight.” In addition to his studies, he preached 132 James A. De Jong, As the Waters Cover the Sea, 119ff.; Crawford Gribben, Evangelical Millennialism in the Trans-Atlantic World, 1500–2000 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 57. 133 James West Davidson, The Logic of Millennial Thought: Eighteenth-Century New England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 122. 134 Stein argues that Edwards carefully kept his millennial thoughts to his private notes, WJE, 5:19–24. But he also adds that a significant departure from this practice occurred in 1743, see pp. 26–29. 135 WJE, 16:797. 136 Stein, WJE, 5:10–11.

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sixty-six sermons on the book.137 His writings clearly indicate the importance of this topic in his own thinking. Though C. C. Goen has argued that Edwards’s eschatological view was “a radical innovation,” his thesis has been refuted by subsequent scholars.138 Yet his general point that Edwards held to a postmillennial position needs to be recognized though the term is anachronistic. Edwards did not depart from his Reformed heritage, but he developed it in a manner consistent with his own generation and his forefathers.

7.5.1 Historicist Method Edwards believed that God guided all of history. He says, “The universe is the chariot in which God rides, and makes progress towards the last end of all things on the wheels of his providence.”139 Everything progresses to the end of all things and events unfold according to God’s intended purpose. Each event in history served the ultimate purpose God had decreed: “All revolutions from the beginning of the world to the end, are doubtless but various parts of one scheme, all conspiring for the bringing to pass the great event which is ultimately in view.”140 Therefore, Edwards viewed his own contemporary situation as fitting into God’s ultimate purpose. For Edwards, the book of Revelation gave the general plot line of world history. “He had his newspaper announcing the day’s events in his left hand and Revelation announcing future events in his right and was ultimately hoping to find the correlation between the two.”141 Like so many before him, he interpreted Revelation in historical terms. Each seal, trumpet, vial, etc. corresponded in some measure to the events in world history. Edwards’s eager attention to world events in the papers was his response to what he learned from the Apocalypse. He expected the millennium to come some day and realized certain key events could portend that glorious event. “For Edwards, history and the millennium were inseparable. The first was preparation for the second; the second, the telos of the first. Therefore, neither could be 137 Stein, WJE, 5:1, 15. 138 C. C. Goen, “Jonathan Edwards: A New Departure in Eschatology,” Church History 28 (1959): 25. On Goen’s argument, see John F. Wilson, “History, Redemption, and the Millennium,” in Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, ed. Nathan O. Hatch and Harry S. Stout (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 131–141; Gerald McDermott, One Holy and Happy Society, 37ff; cf. Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 574–577. 139 WJE, 24:315. 140 WJE, 18:93–94. 141 Brandon G. Withrow, “A Future of Hope: Jonathan Edwards and Millennial Expectations,” Trinity Journal 22, no.1 (Spring 2001): 81.

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understood without the other.”142 The Apocalypse and the future millennium therefore served as the lens through which he peered into past and current events. Moses Lowman (1680–1752) had written a book on the Apocalypse entitled A Paraphrase and Notes on the Revelation of St. John (1737). As Edwards had already begun his studies on the Apocalypse, he used Lowman to compare his understanding in mid-1738. Though Edwards agreed with Lowman in many things, he differed over the fifth vial. Both agreed that the Reformation was the last predicted event that had already taken place. Edwards believed that the Reformation represented the second vial while Lowman attached it to the fifth.143 However, Edwards ended up accepting Lowman’s interpretation.144 At times, he sided with Joseph Mede in his acceptance of synchronisms against Lowman.145 Lowman did not utilize synchronisms but offered a successive scheme. That is, the seals, trumpets, and vials represent three successive periods. He says, “These prophecies are again distributed into several periods, plainly distinguished from each other, and manifestly successive to each other.”146 He believed this freed the reader from the “intricacy and difficulty” that “synchronisms” entailed.147 The reader can see this successive method clearly set forth in Lowman’s commentary.148 Edwards strongly disagreed with Lowman for discounting synchronisms.149 Nonetheless, Lowman’s interpretation “exerted a powerful influence upon Edwards’ interpretation of the Revelation.”150 Edwards’s differences with Lowman had most to do with fixing specific events with the descriptions detailed in the Apocalypse. Lowman’s timeline enabled the prophetic timeline to be shorter since the fifth vial had already been poured out (during the Reformation). The Antichrist’s powers (Roman Catholicism) had greatly diminished on account of the fifth vial whereas Edwards originally attributed the second vial to the Reformation. Once he embraced Lowman’s

142 McDermott, One Holy and Happy Society, 47. “His interpretation was based on the belief that God works through the historical process to achieve his will, not in spite of or apart from that process” (Stein, WJE, 5:15). 143 Stein, WJE, 5:55–56. 144 WJE, 5:193–195; cf. Stein, WJE, 5:56–57; Withrow, “Future of Hope: Jonathan Edwards and Millennial Expectations,” 84. 145 Stein, WJE, 5:57. 146 Moses Lowman, A Paraphrase and Notes on the Revelation of St. John, 2nd ed. (London: Printed for John Noon, 1745), x. 147 Lowman, Paraphrase, xii. 148 Lowman, Paraphrase, xxix–xxiv. Stein presents a simpler diagram in his introduction, WJE, 5:58. McDermott explains how by Cocceius’s disciples influenced Lowman, One Holy and Happy Society, 79ff. 149 See WJE, 5:251–252. Edwards charges Lowman of using synchronisms while at the same time discounting them, WJE, 5:252. 150 WJE, 5:59.

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timeline, the church only needed to wait for the sixth and seventh vials (Rev 16:12ff.). Both Lowman and Edwards embraced the historicist method. Edwards was eager for information and news concerning the interests of the kingdom. He sought to connect current events as possibly fulfilling the sixth vial. This collection entitled, “An account of events probably fulfilling the Sixth Vial on the River Euphrates, the news of which was received since October 16, 1747,” is quite telling.151 He continued to collect information until his death. Edwards’s method of interpretation can be found not only in Moses Lowman but also in Philipp Doddridge (1702–1751), whom Edwards used heavily in his Blank Bible.152 Doddridge considered Lowman to be “undoubtedly the best commentator extant, on this part of the New Testament.”153 Like Edwards, Doddridge also embraced Lowman’s interpretation of the fifth vial and believed that the sixth vial will happen “probably, between A.D. 1700, and A.D. 1900.”154 This is not all that different from Edwards’s own method of interpretation. Matthew Poole’s Annotations (the Apocalypse was written by John Collinges)155 also used a similar method of interpretation. Collinges used Joseph Mede and others to say that Rome and the Turks will be greatly crushed in the (near?) future (sixth vial), “but we must not imagine them so ruined” as unable to muster up an army “to fight the devil’s last battle in Armageddon.”156 This again, differs little from Edwards. Whether they used Mede’s synchronism or not, they all tended to interpret the Apocalypse similarly, though they might have differed as to some of the dating. If a uniform Reformed apocalyptic hermeneutic existed, this is as close as it got.

151 WJE, 5:253–284 (also see Stein’s comments, p. 79). Cf. Brandon G. Withrow, “Future of Hope: Jonathan Edwards and Millennial Expectations,” 80. 152 See Stein, WJE, 24:59. Edwards greatly utilized Matthew Poole, Matthew Henry, and Philip Doddridge in his notes. See WJE, 24:64–66 for Stein’s summary of Philip Doddridge and The Family Expositor. Though he cited Poole more, he was more engaged with Doddridge’s content. Regarding Doddridge, see Geoffrey F. Nuttall, ed., Philip Doddridge 1702–51: His Contribution to English Religion (London: Independent Press Ltd., 1951), 11–31. This first chapter gives an overview of his life; the second chapter (pp. 32–45) develops his influence on personal religion. Also, see Donald Macleod’s analysis of Doddridge’s possible Christological heresy (Arianism) in Jesus is Lord: Christology Yesterday and Today (Fearn, Rossshire: Christian Focus Publications, 2000), 95–102. 153 The Works of the Rev. P. Doddridge, D. D., ed. Edward Williams and Edward Parsons (Leeds: Edward Baines, 1805), 10:419. 154 Works of the Rev. P. Doddridge, 10:524–525. 155 For Poole and John Collinges (1623–90), see Stein, WJE, 5:59–61. 156 Matthew Poole, Annotations upon the Holy Bible, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1853), 992–923.

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7.5.2 Latter Day Glory Like all before and after Edwards, the change in the future was not going to be ushered in by political power or human effort.157 As we mentioned, Edwards believed that God guided history and that history was not opaque. From all that he gathered, he believed that change would be positive and glorious. However, by the end of nineteenth century, prophetic expectations were pessimistic and very few expected that anything good awaited the church except to be taken away from the world at the Lord’s coming.158 What eventually transpired in the nineteenth century would have seemed most curious to Edwards and others who witnessed the Great Awakening. Edwards encouraged the people to pray for the effusion of the Spirit that he believed would one day overtake the world.159 He realized that everything will not happen at once but changes “will be accomplished by means.” What he had in mind were the ministry of the Word and others that God appointed: “by the preaching of the gospel, and the use of the ordinary means of grace, and so [the advanceof the gospel] shall be gradually brought to pass.”160 He did not believe that great progress in religion will occur “at one stroke.” Rather, this will happen “by a gradual progress of religion.”161 This great work of gospel progress, though not “amazingly swift,” nonetheless “is not the less great and wonderful.”162 In expecting this glorious work, he also argued that dark times will precede the glorious revival of religion. As dark times preceded the Reformation and exceedingly “degenerate” times prevailed before Christ’s first advent, so those wonderful prophecies of the Bible will meet with difficulties before the “wonderful revival and propagation of religion.” He told the hearers that they were now in those dark times and so should expect the glories to come:163 It is now a very dark time with respect to the interests of religion, and such a time as this prophesied of in this place wherein there is but a little faith and a great prevailing of infidelity on the earth. There is now a remarkable fulfillment of that in the 2 Pet. 3:3, 157 Cf. Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 30ff. Hatch’s summary of Edwards’ position has been aptly summarized by McDermott: “Whereas Calvinists during and after the Revolution linked the advent of the millennium to the new American republic, Edwards insisted that the millennium would come by spiritual means such as the preaching of the gospel” (McDermott, One Holy and Happy Society, 40). 158 For the historical development of this trend, see Timothy P. Weber, Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism, 1875–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 159 See Withrow, “Future of Hope: Jonathan Edwards and Millennial Expectations,” 90–91. 160 WJE, 9:459. 161 WJE, 5:410. 162 WJE, 5:412. 163 WJE, 9:457–460.

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“Knowing this, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts”; and so Jude 17, 18, “But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts.” Whether the times shall be any darker still, or how much darker before the beginning of this glorious work of God, we can’t tell.164

Edwards recognized that a great conflict still awaited the church but was persuaded that Christ would destroy the Antichrist soon, since Revelation 11:3, 7 indicated that the beast would kill the two witnesses.165 Furthermore, he saw the future pouring of the sixth vial as paving the way for the glorious work of the Spirit, because the powers of hell (as personified by Roman Catholicism, Islam, etc.) “would be mightily alarmed, and should stir up themselves to oppose the kingdom of Christ before the seventh and last vial.”166 The powerful work of the Spirit will agitate “all hell” so the church can expect immense conflict as he exerts his power through the preaching of the gospel. It is for this reason Edwards began to catalog all the events he learned through contemporary media. Roman Catholic nations such as France, Spain, and Italy had various tragedies fall upon them and Edwards listed them as possible fulfillments of the sixth vial. The obstacles to her safety were beginning to crumble. He believed the fall of Antichrist was nearer than Lowman had calculated.167 Nonetheless, these conflicts either present or in the near or distant future also indicated advancement of the kingdom or the great work of God’s Spirit.168 E. Brooks Holifield indicates that the “afflictive model of progress” was “common among eighteenth-century writers on eschatology.”169 Gerald McDermott convincingly adds that this paradigm was also “supported… by Edwards’s predecessors in the Reformed eschatological tradition.”170 His model 164 WJE, 9:458. 165 WJE, 5:392ff. He also sought to answer Lowman’s interpretation of the arrival of the Kingdom to be “at a great distance.” The text of Rev. 11 along with Lowman’s own exposition ran contrary to his. 166 WJE, 9:463. Regarding the sixth vial, Rev. 16:12 states that the “great river Euphrates” will be dried up “that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.” Edwards interpreted this to mean the way was made for the destruction of spiritual Babylon since the river separated Babylon from the kings of the east. This would prepare the way for the enemies of the mystical Babylon to destroy her, see WJE, 5:412ff. The river served as an impediment for Babylon’s enemies and now that obstacle will be removed. This meant that spiritual Babylon (Rome, Islam, antichristian forces, etc.) will be attacked (by the pouring of the sixth vial). 167 WJE, 5:398. 168 McDermott summarized Edwards’ position as, “Things would get worse as the millennium drew near, for as the Church prospers, Satan fights harder against it,” One Holy and Happy Society, 56. 169 E. Brooks Holifield, “Edwards as Theologian” in The Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Edwards, ed. Stephen J. Stein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 154. 170 McDermott, One Holy and Happy Society, 55–58. Cf. Theodore Dwight Bozeman, To Live

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therefore was not unique.171 The bright hope of the latter day glory went hand in hand with current and continuing struggles and conflicts.

7.5.3 Israel and Canaan Edwards maintained that ethnic Jews would be restored. Though he often spoke of “spiritual Israel,” he still expected the Lord to convert many Jews in the future and actually to restore them to Canaan. Edwards reasons, in his Blank Bible, from Romans 11:12 that Christ’s redemption will be complete, soul and body, and the restoration will be more than “spiritual Israel” but will include “the external and literal Israel” as well. Edwards adds: As the redemption and salvation of Christ respects chiefly the soul, and yet that the restoration of men by him may be every way complete, the body also shall at last rise and be restored. So Christ’s redemption and the glorious prophecies of the blessed fruits of it to Israel respects mainly the spiritual Israel; yet through God’s abundant grace, and that all things may be restored by Christ in due time, the external and literal Israel shall be restored by him. So likewise, as something equivalent to the restoration of the body, not only shall the spiritual state of the Jews be hereafter restored, but their external state as a172 nation in their own land.173

This statement encapsulates much of what he believed regarding both Israel and the land of Canaan. The Jews would be called to faith in the “latter days.”174 Edwards believed that providence had preserved them as a “distinct” nation “for above sixteen hundred years.” This could only mean that God will eventually call them (cf. Rom 11:26). In fact, he indicates that the lost ten tribes of Israel “wherever they are” will also “be brought in with their brethren, the Jews.”175 The land of Canaan loomed large in Edwards’s prophetic expectation. Since he expected a literal millennium, Canaan became central to the millennial kingdom.176 It was “right in the center” of the world and would make it easier to

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Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 244. Bozeman shows that John Cotton taught “progress through regress in the last times,” 243ff.. John Wilson claims , “The ‘dissenting brethren’ of the Westminster Assembly all shared to some degree in these explorations of a better future grounded in the present. Indeed, it is one of the marks of the Independents in the middle decades of the century that they looked for a purer age of the church within history, and more than a few leaders of the New Englanders stood committed to the same position,” “History, Redemption, and the Millennium,” 137. JE deleted “distinct.” WJE, 24:1028. WJE, 9:178–179. WJE, 9:469–470. Cf. Stein, WJE, 5:18, 133–134.

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access other parts of the world. He believed that the Jews would “return to their own land” because God would convert them. “And as they have hitherto continued a distinct nation, that they might continue a visible monument of his displeasure, for their rejecting and crucifying their Messiah, so after their conversion will they still be a distinct nation, that they may be a visible monument of God’s wonderful grace and power in their calling and conversion.” However, Israel would not retain the “old walls of separation,” but everyone would be free to come and go into Judea: “For they shall look upon all the world to be their brethren, as much as the Christians in Boston and the Christians in other parts of New England look on each other as brethren.”177 Edwards reasoned that the Jews had to return to their own land “because they never have yet possessed one quarter of that land, which was so often promised them.”178 This blessing would come after the destruction of the Antichrist.179 Some of Edwards’s writings indicated that America would be the subject of the millennium in some manner and measure. He believed that Isaiah 60:9 “plainly” pointed “out America, as the first fruits of that glorious day.”180 Though he did not argue that the millennium had begun in Northampton, as Charles Chauncy accused Edwards of teaching, he did teach that revivals were precursors to the “glorious times.”181 Chauncy and others confused Edwards’s hope of gospel progress and glory with his view of the millennium.

7.5.4 Millennium McDermott observes, “For Jonathan Edwards… the millennium was a continual obsession.”182 Yet, he never really preached on the millennium, though he wrote much on it in his private notebook.183 The millennium was never the goal of history but a foretaste of the final kingdom. 177 WJE, 5:134–135. 178 WJE, 5:134. 179 WJE, 24:294; 9:347; 5:196–197. Of course, this coincides with the beginning of the millennium. 180 WJE, 4:353–354. 181 WJE, 4:358; Cf. George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 264–266. Marsden thinks McDermott plays down Edwards’s own teaching on the role of America and the latter glory (see ibid., 557 n.30); Gerald McDermott, One Holy and Happy Society, 40–43, 60–63; Withrow, “Future of Hope: Jonathan Edwards and Millennial Expectations,” 76–77; Robert Davis Smart, Jonathan Edwards’s Apologetic for the Great Awakening (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 133. 182 McDermott, One Holy and Happy Society, 44. Stein argues that “the millennium remained a matter of consuming private interest” for Edwards (WJE, 5:17–18). 183 Stein, WJE, 5:19.

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The history of the world was broken down into six thousand years, just like the days of creation (a day representing one thousand years, following 2 Peter 3:8). “The first 6000 years are 6 days of labor, and the seventh of rest. As the world was six days in making, so I believe that the kingdom of God, that is will be six days in making before ‘tis finished.” He said that the millennium would “begin in the year 6000,” which would be two thousand years after Christ’s birth (who was born, according to common chronology at that time, in the year 4000).184 That is, the millennium would begin in 2000. Though there is debate over Edwards’ interpretation of the imminence of the millennium, it appears his timeline did not change.185 Edwards believed that the millennium will be literally a thousand years or “about that space of time” and if interpreted “figuratively” then the time would be “vastly longer…than a literal thousand years.” But he offered eight reasons why he believed the millennium was about a thousand years long.186 Christ’s reign will not be personal but spiritual during the millennium and it represented the third coming of Christ in Edwards’ understanding of the millennium.187 The fourth coming depicts the finality of all things. For Edwards, to have Christ reign on earth before the culmination of all things would be a second act of humiliation: “It is a greater privilege to the church on earth to have Christ, her head and Redeemer, in heaven at the right hand of God, than for him to be in this lower world: for Christ in heaven is in his glorious throne. For him to come down to this earth to dwell here, would be a second humiliation, a descending from an higher glory to a lower.”188 Edwards declared that the millennium “is the sabbatism of the church” and until that time, she is in a state of warfare “or her militant state.” That rest will only come when all “her enemies are subdued” and “ceases to be any longer in travail.”189 The millennium will be “more like heaven” and “those things that more directly concern the mind and religion, will be more the saints’ ordinary

184 WJE, 5:129, 135, 410. Sean Lucas offers a very brief lucid overview of Edwards’ millennial view in God’s Grand Design: The Theological Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 67–70. 185 Cf. See McDermott, One Holy and Happy Society, 50–54. 186 WJE, 20:49 187 WJE, 9:351: “The third is that which is to be accomplished at the destruction of Antichrist. This also is represented as Christ’s coming in his kingdom in the seventh chapter of Daniel and other places, as I may possibly show hereafter when I come to speak of it.” Cf. McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 574–575. 188 WJE, 18:537. Similarly, “the place of the everlasting residence and reign of Christ and his church, will be heaven and not this lower world purified and refined” (18:376). Cf. Stein, “Editor’s Introduction,” in WJE, 5:22–23. 189 WJE, 5:178–179.

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business than now.”190 It will “be a time of great holiness” and “it shall be a wonderful time, not only for the multitude of godly men, but for eminency of grace.”191 But the millennium is not the eschaton. After the millennium, Satan will mount his final battle against Christ.192 There will be a “very great apostasy” and “the world of mankind being continued so long in a state of such great prosperity, shall now begin to abuse their prosperity to serve their lust and corruption.”193 This will necessitate Christ’s immediate appearing to take vengeance.194 The saints would be reunited to their bodies and ascend to the new heaven and earth.195 Much more could be written, but this gives some of the salient features of Edwards’s view of the millennium. Goen, in his influential essay, said that “Edwards foresaw a golden age for the church on earth, within history, and achieved through the ordinary processes of propagating the gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is commonly designated postmillennialism, and [it was a] novelty in eighteenth-century New England.”196 Goen also believed that Edwards taught an imminent millennium. As we have already seen, he did not hold such a position. Furthermore, the golden age view was not unique to Edwards since his predecessors and contemporaries held to similar views. The argument that the millennium would occur through the ordinary progress of the gospel was held by Joseph Mede, so Edwards’s position was not entirely new. He believed those glorious things “brought to pass for the church while under the means of grace” were but “images and shadows” of the glory to come at the judgment.197 However glorious the millennial period might have been, they were to be nothing compared to the glory to come. However, Holifield has noted that Edwards differed from Increase Mather and his son, Cotton Mather, “by virtue of his insistence that the millennial era would precede the final return of Christ.”198 This is not entirely accurate. Napier and Brightman, in their revised Augustinian method, believed that Christ would come after the millennium. Even Mede did not believe in a personal reign of Christ during the millennium. So his supposed deviation was not entirely unique or drastic. 190 WJE, 13:369. Cf. Ronald Story, Jonathan Edwards and the Gospel of Love (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2012), 112. 191 WJE, 9:481. 192 WJE, 9:487ff. 193 WJE, 9:488. 194 WJE, 9:491ff. 195 WJE, 14:531–532. 196 Goen, “Jonathan Edwards: A New Departure in Eschatology,” 26. 197 WJE, 9:493ff. 198 Holifield, “Edwards as Theologian,” 156.

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Conclusion

Millenarianism occupied mainstream Puritanism much more than it does in modern Reformed theology. Though reputable divines taught millenarianism, it did not gain a strong following in the eighteenth century. John Gill and Jonathan Edwards, however, wrote much on the topic and although they differed in some areas, they agreed in many others. They both had hopes of a better future; the gospel was sure to conquer and the prophetic calendar only supported their optimism. This did not mean that the church will not go through her “afflicted state” but they were certain that the antichrist was about to fall.199 Following the seventeenth century, the two giants utilized an historicist hermeneutic in interpreting the Apocalypse.200 Edwards sought to peer into the future while reading the news, though most of these connections to current events were kept in his private notes. On the other hand, Gill did not use current events to interpret eschatology. Each of them calculated apocalyptic events and wrote while convinced that they were near the end of the prophetic calendar. There is one area of clear consensus from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century (at least up to Edwards), which clearly identified Rome and/or the Pope as the Antichrist. The locusts of Revelation 9 represented Islam.201 Following many other seventeenth-century divines, Gill and Edwards envisioned a large future ingathering of the Jews. Edwards and Gill clearly differed from each other in their understanding of the millennium. Gill’s peculiar theory of the “spiritual reign” of Christ does not differ from Edwards’s own understanding of the millennium. Gill believed this was the great error in understanding the millennium. Everyone had confounded the spiritual and personal reign of Christ. However, Edwards would have disagreed with a “personal” reign of Christ on earth before the final glorification on theological grounds. For Edwards, if Christ descended once more before the final consummation of all things, it would have been another act of humiliation on his part. For this reason, Christ had to return after the millennial period because his return was deemed to be another element of his estate of exaltation. Had he come at the commencement of the millennial reign, it would have been less than perfect. Edwards believed the glories of the millennial period were but “images and shadows” of the glory to come. Christ’s personal return would usher in the judgment and the renewal of all things. Gill’s understanding of the millennial 199 Cf. WJE, 9:487. 200 Gribben argues that the “historicist consensus” remained uninterrupted until the nineteenth century by its emphasis on futurism. Until then, the historicist hermeneutic did not require any particular millennial position. See “Evangelical Eschatology and ‘The Puritan Hope,’” 383. 201 WJE, 5:103–104; Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, 3:752–753.

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reign, however, did not mean that it would be populated by imperfect people but “all the old testament saints, as well as the new, will have a part in the first resurrection, and share in the millennium reign.”202 However near perfect this millennium was to be, Gill still believed that the wicked would be raised from the dead after the millennium to attack the saints and Christ.203 The “posse of devils under Satan” would also side with the wicked. He believed this diabolical rebellion would turn out to be a vain enterprise. But surely, does not this conflict sully the glory of the millennial reign? Hence, Edwards’s criticism of the personal reign of Christ still applies—it would still be another act of humiliation for Christ to have his joyful millennial reign defiled by the great battle of Armageddon. If Gill and Edwards rightly represented the Reformed view of eschatology, then we must conclude that the historicist hermeneutic is part and parcel of standard Reformed orthodoxy or definitely within the pale of Reformed theology. This study has shown how the historicist hermeneutic pervaded both seventeenth and eighteenth century Reformed theology.204 Eschatological studies were all over the proverbial map. Millenarian ideas found a welcome home in many Reformed thinkers in the two centuries we have covered. Though Edwards’s private notes were more creative and audacious, nothing in his public writings seems to contradict them. Gill’s eccentric views were public while Edwards’s were not. Edwards appears to have developed his eschatological view over his lifetime while Gill likely maintained his position consistently throughout his life. Yet, what they wrote clearly indicated their deep appreciation and love for the Bible. They loved studying prophecy and believed they were capable of grasping it. Often, they were dogmatic, but they wrote in an era where their understanding of eschatology was not considered all that novel. Perhaps their hope of better times was related to the Great Awakening they witnessed.205 Though they affirmed the doctrine of the suffering church, they nonetheless hoped great things for the church in this world before Christ returned. This aspect more commonly characterized eighteenth-century eschatology. The anachronistic labels of premillennialism and postmillennialism do not correspond exactly to contemporary usage, because Gill and Edwards used a historicist hermeneutic to arrive at their positions. Yet, they were undeniably Reformed in their theology. 202 BD, 654; Exposition of the New Testament, 3:850–851: “nor will there be any in the new earth but righteous persons.” Gribben observed how this differed from some of the Fifth Monarchists and nineteenth-century dispensationalists who imagined that glorified saints and unbelievers would dwell on the millennial earth, see “John Gill and Puritan Eschatology,” 323–324. 203 BD, 666. 204 Richard Baukham says, “The Protestant historicist tradition of Apocalypse commentary continued vigorously until the nineteenth century” (Tudor Apocalypse, 140). 205 On Gill and the Great Awakening, see Tom J. Nettles, “John Gill and the Evangelical Awakening” in The Life and Thought of John Gill (1697–1771), 154ff.

Nathan A. Finn

8.

The Particular Baptist Battle Over Sandemanianism

8.1

Introduction

Sandemanianism was the term used to describe one of the most influential restorationist movements among transatlantic evangelicals during the Long Eighteenth Century.1 Like all restorationists, the Sandemanians, also called the Glasites, believed it was possible to bypass church tradition and return to the simple faith and practice of the New Testament as they interpreted it. Though they were known for their literalistic appropriation of New Testament practices, their intellectualist view of saving faith was by far the most controversial Sandemanian doctrine. In fact, Sandemanianism became identified almost exclusively with its view of faith, pushing its other principles to the background. For most of its critics, Sandemanianism was, first and foremost, an aberrant variation on the traditional Reformed understanding of faith. Several evangelicals published criticisms of Sandemanianism during the eighteenth century, including the famous Arminian revivalist and Methodism founder John Wesley (1703–1791), the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist itinerant and hymn writer William Williams (1717–1791), the American Separate Baptist pastor and religious liberty advocate Isaac Backus (1724–1806) the Anglican clergyman Thomas Scott (1747–1821) and the English Particular Baptist pastortheologian Andrew Fuller (1754–1815). This chapter focuses upon the latter, whom Martyn Lloyd-Jones once argued “more or less demolished Sandemanianism.”2 While Lloyd-Jones’s statement is a bit hyperbolic—the movement endured for two centuries—this chapter argues that Fuller offered what became at the very least the most influential critique of Sandemanianism.3 1 The definitive historical study of Sandemanianism is John Howard Smith, The Perfect Rule of the Christian Religion: A History of Sandemanianism in the Eighteenth Century (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2008). 2 D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Puritans: Their Origins and Successors (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1987), 173. 3 For the sake of brevity, this essay focuses upon Fuller’s criticism of Sandemanian faith, leaving

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Though some of Fuller’s fellow Particular Baptists were drawn to Sandemanian views during the long Eighteenth Century, the outcome of the Particular Baptist battle over Sandemanianism, as with so many other debates, was ultimately decided largely through the influence of Fuller’s polemical pen.

8.2

Sandemanian Founders and Distinctives

The movement that came to be called “Sandemanianism” began in the mid-1720s as a restorationist effort within the Church of Scotland.4 John Glas (1695–1773), minister of a Presbyterian church in Tealing, Scotland, became the founder of the “Glasites” when he challenged the ecclesiology of the Church of Scotland. He attracted a relatively large following and was eventually excluded from the Scottish Kirk in 1739. Glas’s son-in–law, Robert Sandeman (1718–1771), pastored several Glasite churches in Scotland. From the 1750s onward, Sandeman became the leading popularizer of Glasite thought, resulting in the “Sandemanian” label gradually supplanting the “Glasite” name. Sandeman eventually relocated to colonial Connecticut, where he planted a Sandemanian church and was a noteworthy loyalist to Britain during the heated years leading up to the American Revolution. By 1800, there were several dozen Sandemanian churches in the British Isles and a handful of churches in New England. Glas and Sandeman rejected all creedal statements and sought to follow as closely as possible the patterns and practices of the New Testament. Their literalistic hermeneutic was influenced by the Scottish Common Sense Realism that Glas imbibed during his student days at the University of Edinburgh. However, by far the most provocative Sandemanian belief was their intellectualist understanding of saving faith. Glas became convinced that both Calvinists and Arminians were undermining justification by faith alone because of undue introspection that resulted from frontloading obedience into faith. As John Thomas Hornsby argues, “According to Glas saving faith is something simple not complex. It is neither more nor less than belief of the truth or testimony of God

aside his other criticisms of the movement for another day. The author addresses this topic more comprehensively in his introduction to Andrew Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism, ed. Nathan A. Finn in The Works of Andrew Fuller, vol. 9 (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2016). 4 The material in the following two paragraphs related to Glas and Sandeman and their theological distinctives draws upon Smith, The Perfect Rule of the Christian Religion, 9–92, and Thomas J. South, “The Response of Andrew Fuller to the Sandemanian View of Saving Faith” (Ph.D. dissertation, Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 1993), 46–77. These sources also speak to other controversial Sandemanian practices.

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concerning Jesus Christ passively received by understanding.”5 Glas’s protégé, Sandeman, would further develop this concept of faith, which became identified as the Sandemanian understanding of the doctrine and the center of the entire Sandemanian vision of Christianity. As Michael Haykin notes, the Sandemanians “became known for their cardinal theological tenet that saving faith is ‘bare belief of the bare truth.’”6 The Sandemanian view of faith became controversial during the 1750s. The impetus for the controversy was a work by James Hervey (1714–1758) titled Dialogues between Theron and Aspasio (1755). Hervey had originally been a part of John Wesley’s “Holy Club” at Oxford, but by the 1740s was an Anglican minister serving as rector of the Weston Favell parish in Northamptonshire. In Theron and Aspasio, Hervey argued for a Calvinistic understanding of justification by faith and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. Wesley criticized Hervey’s Reformed views, arguing they resulted in antinomianism. Wesley’s criticism of imputation resulted in a prolonged controversy over Wesley’s own views of justification.7 In 1757, Sandeman responded to Hervey with a treatise titled Letters on Theron and Aspasio. Rather than taking Hervey to task over imputation, Sandeman focused upon the Calvinistic understanding of saving faith, which included both belief in Jesus Christ and repentance from sin. Based upon texts such as Romans 4:5 and 1 John 5:1, Sandeman argued for a decoupling of repentance from faith, lest faith be turned into a work. His favorite word to encapsulate his views was “bare,” a term he uses almost forty times. For Sandeman, “justification comes by bare faith,” which is a “bare persuasion of the truth,” which in turn is nothing more or less than the “bare gospel.”8 To teach differently is to oppose apostolic truth, undermine the finished work of Christ, and potentially overthrow the faith itself: Every doctrine, then, which teaches us to do or endeavor anything toward our acceptance with God stands opposed to the doctrine of the Apostles…. If then we slight the comfort arising from the bare persuasion of this, it must be owing, at bottom, to our slighting this bare truth, to our slighting the bare work of Christ, and our considering it 5 John Thomas Hornsby, “John Glas (1695–1773)” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1936), 102. 6 Michael A. G. Haykin, “Andrew Fuller and the Sandemanian Controversy” in ‘At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word’: Andrew Fuller as an Apologist, ed. Michael A.G. Haykin (Carlisle, Cumbria, U.K./Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Press, 2004), 226. 7 See Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys, A History of Evangelicalism: People, Movements and Ideas in the English-Speaking World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), 171–73, and Iain H. Murray, Wesley and Men Who Followed (Edinburgh, UK/Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2003), 217–31. 8 Robert Sandeman, Letters on Theron and Aspasio Addressed to the Author James Hervey, 4th ed. (New York: John S. Taylor, 1838), 282, 344, 373.

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as too narrow a foundation whereon to rest the whole weight of our acceptance with God.9

So that, if either more of less than the simple truth of the gospel be admitted in the heart of any man as the ground of acceptance with God, if either more or less than the bare persuasion of the truth be admitted as requisite to justification, the whole superstructure of the Christian practice and consolation is effectually undermined and overthrown.10 Though it was intended to be an occasional treatise, Thomas South argues that Letters on Theron and Aspasio functions as the most complete statement of Sandemanian theology since the movement rejected creedal statements.11

8.3

Sandemanianism and the Baptists

Sandeman relocated to Connecticut in 1765. That same year, ex-Presbyterian Robert Carmichael formed a Glasite church in Edinburgh. A second elder, Archibald McLean, joined Carmichael in 1767. Both men combined Sandemanian faith with a Baptist understanding of believer’s baptism by immersion. McLean emerged as the key leader among the so-called Scotch Baptists, a group often derisively called the Sandemanian Baptists. By 1770, at least nine other Scotch Baptist churches had been founded, some of which were new church starts, others of which were Glasite congregations that adopted credobaptism. Though the Scotch Baptists suffered through various controversies and schisms in their first generation, the movement remained vibrant, accounting for around 90 % of the Baptists in Scotland in 1800. Though the Scotch Baptists were the earliest Baptists in Scotland, their churches gradually assimilated into the Particular Baptist movement that eventually became the Baptist Union of Scotland in 1869. The Scotch Baptist churches that retained their original identity gradually died out or become Campbellite congregations during the course of the twentieth century.12 The Scotch Baptists were instrumental in popularizing restorationism in Scotland and beyond. For example, Sandemanian restorationism influenced Robert (1764–1842) and James Haldane (1768–1851), two of the most influential evangelicals in 9 10 11 12

Ibid., 10. Ibid., 357. South, “Response of Andrew Fuller to the Sandemanian View of Saving Faith,” 62. For more on the early Scotch Baptists and their legacy, see Brian R. Talbot, The Search for a Common Identity: The Origins of the Baptist Union of Scotland 1800–1870, Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 9 (Carlisle, Cumbria, U.K./Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Press, 2003), 29–72, and D. B. Murray, “The Scotch Baptist Tradition in Great Britain,” Baptist Quarterly, 33, no.4 (October 1989): 186–98.

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Scotland. Early in their ministry, the Haldane brothers were Independents who adopted a trans-denominational evangelical catholicity. They were also prolific evangelists. They founded the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel at Home in 1797, a society that founded Independent “tabernacles” all over Scotland. In 1798, James became the pastor of the Circus Church in Edinburgh that grew to include 5,000 worshipers and frequently opened its pulpit to evangelicals from a variety of ecclesiastical traditions, including Andrew Fuller. Because of their commitment to evangelism and missions, the Haldanes became allies of Fuller in his fundraising efforts on behalf of the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS). In 1808, the Haldane brothers became baptistic through the influence of McLean and the Scotch Baptists. Many of the Independent churches tied to the Haldanes also became baptistic congregations. Robert Haldane spent three years as a missionary preacher and lecturer in Switzerland and France from 1816–1819, where he was instrumental in bringing about a Protestant revival in Continental Europe.13 Though the Haldanes and their followers were baptistic restorationists influenced by the Scotch Baptists, in their soteriology they were traditional Calvinists who explicitly rejected a Sandemanian view of faith.14 To this day, however, various historians identify the Haldanes with the Sandemanians, the Stone-Campbell movement, and the Particular Baptists, respectively. Other Baptists outside of Scotland imbibed Sandemanian theology, most notably the Welsh Particular Baptist preacher Christmas Evans (1766–1838). Evans became a Sandemanian around 1796 and carried on a correspondence with the Scotch Baptists. Many Welsh Baptists embraced a “McLeanist” view of saving faith during this period, and McLean hoped that Evans and J. R. Jones would lead the North Wales Baptist Association to officially declare themselves a Scotch Baptist association.15 As he became more sectarian, Evans became suspicious of any spiritual activity being reported among non-Sandemanian evangelicals. He also began to feel a dryness in his own personal spirituality: The Sandemanian system affected me so far as to quench the spirit of prayer for the conversion of sinners, and it induced in my mind a greater regard for the smaller things of the kingdom of heaven than for the greater. I lost the strength which clothed my mind with zeal, confidence, and earnestness in the pulpit for the conversion of souls to Christ. 13 For more on the Haldanes’ biography, see George McGuinness, “Robert (1764–1842) and James Haldane (1768–1851),” in The British Particular Baptists, 1638–1910, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin (Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 2000), II, 219–34. For more on the work of Robert Haldane on the Continent, see Kenneth J. Stewart, Restoring the Reformation: British Evangelicalism and the Francophone ‘Réveil’ 1816–1849, Studies in Evangelical History and Thought (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006). 14 Alexander Haldane, The Lives of Robert Haldane of Airthrey, and of His Brother, James Alexander Haldane, 3rd ed. (London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co., 1853), 509. 15 T. Witton Davies, “The McLeanist (Scotch) and Campbellite Baptists of Wales,” Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society 7 (1920–1921): 165.

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My heart retrograded, in a manner, and I could not realize the testimony of a good conscience. Sabbath nights, after having been in the day exposing and vilifying with all bitterness the errors that prevailed, my conscience felt as if displeased, and reproached me that I had lost nearness to, and walking with, God. It would intimate that something exceedingly previous was now wanting in me; I would reply, that I was acting in obedience to the word; but it continued to accuse me of the want of some precious article. I had been robbed, to a great degree, of the spirit of prayer and of the spirit of preaching.16

Andrew Fuller’s writings played a key role in leading Evans out of his Sandemanianism. According to Evans, Fuller “undoubtedly subverted Sandemanianism in its main point,” and Fuller’s Strictures on Sandemanianism “evince him to be the greatest man of his age in powers of mind.”17

8.4

Andrew Fuller and Sandemanianism

Fuller was familiar with Sandemanianism from at least the early 1780s. Though The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation is primarily considered a treatise against High Calvinism, Fuller named Sandemanianism as one of the errors he was seeking to contradict in his preface to the first edition.18 Within a decade or so, Fuller was aware of the Scotch Baptists’ Sandemanian tendencies. In the spring of 1796, Fuller and Archibald McLean corresponded concerning McLean’s book The Commission Given by Jesus Christ to His Apostles Illustrated, which argued for duty-faith, which Fuller appreciated, but which also outlined the practices of the Scotch Baptists, at which Fuller blanched. More importantly, Fuller was concerned about the Scotch Baptist proclivity to separate from other evangelicals over minor points of doctrine. Simply put, Scotch Baptist restorationism was too sectarian for Fuller’s tastes.19 16 David Phillips, ed., Memoir of the Life, Labors, and Extensive Usefulness of the Rev. Christmas Evans (New York: M. W. Dodd, 1843), 59–60. 17 Ibid., 100. See also Geoff Thomas, “Christmas Evans (1766–1838),” in British Particular Baptists, II, 208–11. 18 Andrew Fuller, The Gospel of Christ Worthy of All Acceptation (Northampton: T. Dicey & Co., 1785), iv. 19 Andrew Fuller, Letter to Mr. McLean, March 1796, in The Armies of the Lamb: The Spirituality of Andrew Fuller, Classics of Reformed Spirituality, ed. Michael A. G. Hyakin (Dundas, ON: Joshua Press, 2002), 143–50, and Andrew Fuller, Letter to Mr. McLean, April 20, 1796, in ibid., 151–54. Fuller was still making this latter point nearly a decade later. In a letter to the Scotch Baptist church in Glasgow, Fuller criticized worldliness among believers and noted his willingness to protect orthodoxy and orthopraxy through corrective church discipline. However, he also acknowledged that the English Particular Baptists and the Scotch Baptists tended to draw the lines of fellowship in different places. See Andrew Fuller, Letter to Some Scottish Baptists, February 25, 1804, in ibid., 189–90. Another key letter is from Fuller to McLean and is dated August 1797. In the letter, Fuller makes the same arguments he will expand in his later,

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Fuller met McLean in person during his first trip to Scotland in 1799, where Fuller was raising money for the BMS. Scotland was a key fundraising pool for Fuller, introducing him to a wide variety of potential partners in the missionary enterprise such as the Haldanes, McLean and the Presbyterian pastor John Erskine. Though McLean himself was favorable to supporting the BMS, Fuller found that the Scotch Baptists in general were initially hesitant to embrace the burgeoning missions movement.20 This approach was characteristic of the wider Sandemanian movement. Dyron Daughrity has shown that a key difference between the Glasites and the Haldanes was the latter’s commitment to vigorous missionary work. Like High Calvinists, the mainstream Sandemanians argued that the Great Commission was a command for the apostles that had little direct application to contemporary Christians.21 In their reticence toward missions, at least early on, the Scotch Baptists proved themselves to be quintessentially Sandemanian.22 The differences between Fuller and McLean were apparent during that first visit, despite their mutual interest in missions. In October 1799, Fuller met with McLean, and then noted in his journal, “The Baptists seem to be tinged generally with the sentiments of Glass [sic] and Sandeman.”23 Fuller and McLean continued to correspond about their differences after Fuller’s return to England. As Paul Brewster argues, “Though he respected and liked his Scottish friend, Fuller believed that Sandemanianism was a significant threat to the purity of the gospel and that it led inevitably to lifeless churches.”24 For his part, McLean was also concerned about Fuller’s views. In 1797, McLean had published a second edition of his book on the Great Commission that criticized mainstream Calvinistic views of the relationship between faith, repentance, and justification. Though

20

21 22

23 24

public writings on Sandemanianism. The letter is excerpted in John Ryland Jr., The Work of Faith, the Labour of Love, and the Patience of Hope, Illustrated; in the Life and Death of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, 2nd ed. (Charleston: Samuel Ethridge, 1818), 244–54. For Fuller’s Scotland trips and his interactions with McLean and other Scotch Baptists, see Peter J. Morden, Offering Christ to the World: Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) and the Revival of Eighteenth Century Particular Baptist Life, Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 8 (Carlisle, Cumbria, UK/Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Press, 2003), 148–53. Dyron Daughrity, “Glasite versus Haldanite: Scottish Divergence on the Question of Missions,” Restoration Quarterly 53 (2011): 65–79. Thomas South takes the alternative view from Morden, arguing that the Scotch Baptists were supportive of missions, unlike other Sandemanians. See South, “ Response of Andrew Fuller to the Sandemanian View of Saving Faith,” 81. John Ryland Jr. takes a middle position between Morden and South, claiming that the Scotch Baptists were initially hesitant to support the BMS, but that McLean gradually “stimulated his people to aid our Mission.” See Ryland, Work of Faith, 150–51. Ryland, Work of Faith, 155. Paul Brewster, Andrew Fuller: Model Pastor-Theologian (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2010), 152.

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McLean did not mention Fuller by name, the latter was convinced that he had been targeted in McLean’s comments.25 Fuller published a revised edition of Gospel Worthy in 1801. By this time, Fuller had read Sandeman’s Theron and Aspasio for himself, no doubt because of his interactions with McLean.26 The new edition of Gospel Worthy included a lengthy “Appendix” that was partly directed against McLean’s version of Sandemanianism. It was also a response to McLean’s critique of Fuller in the second edition of The Commission Given.27 In a recent monograph on Fuller’s use of Jonathan Edwards, Chris Chun has demonstrated that the “Appendix” drew heavily upon Edwards’s Religious Affections, especially the argument that faith includes a new “sense of the heart” that gives rise to holy affections.28 McLean responded the following year with his own treatise criticizing Fuller’s Edwardsean critique of McLean’s view of faith.29 Incidentally, McLean’s 1802 book proved to be his last public word in defense of his position. Both before and after his debate with Fuller, McLean steadfastly maintained that his view of saving faith was not the same as that found in Sandemanianism.30 For his part, Fuller was not finished critiquing McLean. In 1803, Fuller published a tract titled “The Great Question Answered,” an evangelistic booklet that became a bestseller. The tract was reprinted in the British Isles, North America, and even France throughout the nineteenth century. In “The Great Question Answered,” Fuller warned against various temptations toward a false sense of assurance. One of these temptations was clearly aimed at Sandemanians: But it may be you will say, I have examined Christianity for myself, and am fully persuaded it is true.—Yet, it has no effect upon you, any more than if you disbelieved it, 25 See Archibald McLean, The Commission Given by Jesus Christ to His Apostles Illustrated (Glasgow: Printed by J. & A. Duncan, 1797), 74–86. Fuller makes this accusation in his Appendix to the second edition of The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, which was published in 1801. See Andrew Fuller, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation in The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, ed. Joseph Belcher (1845; reprint, Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 2:393. This three-volume set of Fuller’s corpus is henceforth cited simply as Works. 26 Fuller, Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation in Works, 2:393–416. 27 Fuller, Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation in Works, 2:393–416. 28 Chris Chun, The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards in the Theology of Andrew Fuller, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2012), 115–20. 29 Archibald M’Lean, A Reply to Mr. Fuller’s APPENDIX to His Book The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (Edinburgh: Thomas and John Turnbull, 1802). 30 South, “Response of Andrew Fuller to the Sandemanian View of Saving Faith,” 79–80. McLean’s biographer argued that McLean had written an unpublished piece two decades before Strictures on Sandemanianism, in which he denied that Scotch Baptists were Sandemanians. He also blamed Fuller for unfairly cementing the association in peoples’ minds. The essay was subsequently published after McLean’s death. See William Jones, ed., Sermons on the Doctrines and Duties of the Christian Life by the Late Mr. Archibald M’Lean with a Memoir of His Life, Ministry, and Writings (London, 1817), xxxiii–li.

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unless it be to restrain you within the limits of exterior decorum. Your faith, therefore, must still be “dead, being alone.” Believing in Christ is not the exercise of a mind at ease, casting up the evidences for and against, and then coldly assenting, as in a question of science, to that side which seems to have the greatest weight of proof. To one whose mind is subdued to the obedience of faith, there is indeed no want of evidence; but it is not so much from external proofs as from its own intrinsic glory, and suitableness to his case as a perishing sinner, that he feels himself impelled to receive it. The gospel is too interesting, and hath too much influence on our past and future conduct, to be an object of unfeeling speculation.31

In his introductory letter to Strictures on Sandemanianism, Fuller claims to have written the tract to set forth his non-Sandemanian views “without controversy,” in the hope that, “with the blessing of God, they might prove of some use to the parties addressed.”32 Without doubt, Fuller’s definitive statement against McLean’s views were set forth in Strictures on Sandemanianism, which was published in 1810. In this work, Fuller expanded upon his earlier arguments in the “Appendix” to Gospel Worthy. As with all of Fuller’s polemical writings, Strictures is comprised primarily of exegetical arguments coupled with pastoral application. Like the earlier “Appendix,” it is also shaped primarily by Edwardsean theology and spirituality, though the thought of John Owen also influenced the work. The remainder of this chapter summarizes Fuller’s mature critique of McLean as it is set forth in Strictures on Sandemanianism, with emphasis on his criticism of the Sandemanian concept of faith.

8.5

Fuller’s Critique

According to Fuller biographer John Webster Morris, for many years Fuller ignored McLean’s response to his 1801 “Appendix” to Gospel Worthy. In part, Fuller was too busy with pastoral responsibilities, missions fundraising and other “superior engagements.” But Fuller was also displeased with McLean’s approach to polemics, believing the latter had misrepresented Fuller and even questioned his motives. Simply put, Fuller did not want to descend into further controversy with McLean. However, Sandemanians viewed Fuller’s lack of engagement as a tacit admission that McLean had bested Fuller in the debate. Fuller thus felt compelled to respond with Strictures on Sandemanianism, a book-length rebuttal to McLean’s views.33 31 Andrew Fuller, The Great Question Answered in The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller (Boston: Lincoln, Edmands, & Co, 1833), 2:696. 32 Andrew Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism, in Twelve Letters to a Friend, in Works, 2:561. 33 John Webster Morris, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Andrew Fuller (London: Lincoln & Edmands, 1830), 216–17. Morris is paraphrasing Fuller’s own words in the in-

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Apparently, this particular debate weighed heavily upon Fuller. Andrew Gunton Fuller, who wrote two biographies of his famous father, was convinced that the elder Fuller met his most worthy theological sparring partner in McLean. He claimed, “No opponent of Mr. Fuller ever gave him so much trouble to unwind his subtil [sic] distinctions.”34 John Webster Morris adds that Strictures on Sandemanianism required “an intensity of thought, [which] cost the Author more labour than any other of his compositions.”35 Fuller’s health was beginning to decline during these years, and Strictures on Sandemanianism, which appeared in 1810, proved to be the last significant polemical work that he published before his death in 1815. Strictures on Sandemanianism was structured as a series of twelve letters to an unnamed friend. Fuller’s first letter was introductory in nature. He began by noting his hesitancy to enter into further controversy with McLean. Fuller believed McLean misrepresented him in the latter’s earlier response to Fuller and was convinced many on both sides of the debate would agree with him on this point. However, Fuller also gave McLean the benefit of the doubt concerning his misrepresentations of Fuller and he claimed to harbor no ill feelings toward McLean. Fuller did not want the debate to become personal, a tendency he clearly sensed in McLean’s approach to polemics.36 Rather, as Thomas South notes, “The issues of the debate between Fuller and McLean were important because of the dangers Fuller perceived if the system begun by Sandeman was fully and consistently followed.”37 Fuller argued that he considered Sandemanianism a “system” because it affected every aspect of one’s spirituality and led to separation from other Christians. He was not interested in criticizing every point of doctrine the Sandemanians believed; indeed, he even conceded that he agreed with the Sandemanians in some matters. Rather, Fuller was responding to the accusation by McLean that Fuller had elevated the subjective over the objective in matters of faith. Unlike McLean, Fuller believed the unregenerate normally come under conviction through the preaching of the moral law. This initial spiritual awakening is an experience short of regeneration, though it often precedes regeneration and true conversion. Nevertheless, conviction of one’s sin is not the same as conversion, and those who equate the two are in danger of eternal damnation based upon a false hope.38

34 35 36 37 38

troductory “letter” to Strictures on Sandemanianism. See Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism in Works, 2:561. Andrew Gunton Fuller, Andrew Fuller (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1882), 184. Morris, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, 217. Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism in Works, 2:561. South, “Response of Andrew Fuller to the Sandemanian View of Saving Faith,” 112. Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism in Works, 2:562–63.

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For Fuller, the High Calvinists were the party that was truly guilty of an overly subjective approach to religion. He criticized them for their belief that a sinner must have a warrant that he is among the elect before he can believe or the preacher can press Christ’s claims upon him. He also reiterated the importance of the free offer of the gospel. Indeed, much like McLean and Sandeman before him, Fuller argued that Christians are too often drawn to subjective religion at the expense of objective spiritual truths. Fuller called for awakened sinners to look to Christ for their salvation rather than looking inward in introspection like the High Calvinists.39 Though Fuller was especially concerned with McLean and the Scotch Baptists, in the next few letters he focused much of his criticism on Sandeman himself, since Fuller considered him to be the principal shaper of Sandemanian thought. In the second and third letters, Fuller criticized the Sandemanian view of saving faith and raised concerns about its implications. For Fuller, the key to the Sandemanian system was its aberrant understanding of justification: The foundation of whatever is distinguishing in the system seems to relate to the nature of justifying faith. This Mr. S. constantly represents as the bare belief of the bare truth; by which definition he intends, as it would seem, to exclude from it every thing pertaining to the will and the affections, except as effects produced by it.40

For Sandeman, if any sort of inclination toward Christ is deemed necessary for one’s justification, then faith is rendered a work.41 Incidentally, Fuller conceded that McLean disagreed with Sandeman’s terminology that faith is passive admission of the truth, but he claimed McLean ended up arguing for the same position with different words. Though McLean did not believe faith is passive like Sandeman, he defined faith as intellectual assent without a change of the will or affections. McLean’s “simple” belief was more or less the same thing as Sandeman’s “bare” belief.42 Fuller countered the Sandemanian assumption that the mainstream evangelical view of faith makes faith into a work. He argued, “By works opposed to grace and faith the New Testament means works done with a view of obtaining life, or of procuring acceptance with God as the reward of them.”43 Fuller claimed the act of faith itself is not the ground of justification, but rather faith terminates

39 Ibid., in Works, 2:564–66. Haykin argues that Sandeman was right to push back against excessive introspection among some evangelicals, but argues that Fuller’s position was more balanced because it reserved a place for both the subjective and the objective. See Haykin, “Andrew Fuller and the Sandemanian Controversy,” 227, 230. 40 Ibid., in Works, 2:566. 41 Ibid., in Works, 2:569. 42 Ibid., in Works, 2:575–76. 43 Ibid., in Works, 2:571

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upon the perfect obedience of Christ in his life, death and resurrection.44 As South argues, “Fuller emphasized the object of faith over the fact of faith.”45 For Fuller, biblical faith entails more than intellectual assent: The belief of the gospel which justifies includes receiving Christ, coming to him, and trusting in him. Whatever shades of difference there be between belief and these “advances of the mind toward Christ,” the Scriptures represent them, with respect to an interest in justification and other collateral blessings, as one and the same thing.46

Repentance is compatible with free justification because repentance is an aspect of saving faith. Indeed, spiritual affections are not works of the law because they are not cultivated as a means of gaining acceptance with God or eternal life. The consistent testimony of Scripture is that repentance is prerequisite to forgiveness.47 In addition to criticizing the Sandemanian view of faith, Fuller also pushed back against some of its implications. For example, he claimed that Sandeman at least implicitly denied duty faith and, by extension, the universal call for all sinners to believe in Christ. If faith is not a duty, then unbelief cannot be a sin. Sandemanians were functionally no better than hyper-Calvinists, even if they arrived at their position from different theological presuppositions.48 Equally troubling to Fuller, the Sandemanian view of faith also implied that one can be reconciled to God, yet remain unchanged. Knowledge of the gospel is divorced from approbation of the gospel, and any attempt to argue for an understanding of faith that is more than intellectual was equated with legalism.49 For Fuller, Sandemanianism was morally deficient because there was no necessity for a transformation that redirects one’s affections Godward. Rather, Sandemanianism lent itself to a spiritual selfishness that focused on the benefits of salvation rather than the One who saves. As Fuller flatly stated, “The love of God as God is not in it. Conversion, on this principle, is not turning to the Lord. It professes, indeed, to love God; but it is only for our own sake.”50 In his fourth letter, Fuller provocatively identified the Sandemanian understanding of faith with the dead faith of demons described in James 2:24–26. He saw no essential difference between the Sandemanian faith of the Scotch Baptists and the sort of intellectual knowledge that demons have about Jesus and his saving work.51 As South argues, “In the Sandemanian system there is no room for 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Ibid., in Works, 2:572. South, “Response of Andrew Fuller to the Sandemanian View of Saving Faith,” 114. Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism, in Works, 2:573. Ibid., in Works, 2:574–75, 577. Ibid., in Works, 2:567, 578–83. Ibid., in Works, 2:566–68. Ibid., in Works, 2:568. Ibid., in Works, 2:583–89.

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‘nominal Christians’ because any mental assent to the truth of Christ is considered saving faith.”52 Fuller was concerned that an intellectualist view of faith comes perilously close to the dead demonic faith of James 2. In Letter V, Fuller teased out his own understanding of repentance and faith. A person cannot believe in the Savior without understanding that he or she is a sinner who needs saving. Fuller argued faith and repentance occur simultaneously, but claimed that repentance presupposes faith, and justification presupposes repentance.53 The relationship between regeneration and faith is theological rather than temporal, so the “precedence of regeneration before faith is not a matter of time but of cause and effect.”54 Fuller also contended that conviction of sin is prerequisite to repentance and faith, and he made a distinction between legal or natural conviction on the one hand and evangelical or spiritual conviction on the other. Natural conviction is sorrow for sin primarily because of its consequences, while spiritual conviction is sorrow for sin because it is an offense against God.55 Repentance is not just a change of mind about the gospel, but is being reoriented toward God through faith in Jesus Christ.56 In his sixth and seventh letters, Fuller drew upon Jonathan Edwards’s Freedom of the Will and Religious Affections to advocate an Edwardsean understanding of true spiritual knowledge. The scriptural understanding of spiritual knowledge is not mere intellectual belief, but includes approbation that produces holy affections. Spiritual knowledge is the opposite of spiritual blindness rather than spiritual ignorance. True spiritual knowledge is a spiritual sense of the divine excellency of the gospel, which is more than mere assent, but includes a wholehearted acceptance and treasuring. As Haykin observes, for Fuller, [K]nowledge of Christ and the things of God is a distinct type of knowledge. Knowing Christ, for instance, involves far more than knowing certain things about him, such as the fact of the virgin birth or the details of his crucifixion. It involves a desire for fellowship with him, a delight in his presence, a recognition that among all the beings of this universe he is truly the most beautiful.57

Fuller argued the natural man cannot experience this spiritual knowledge, though it is given to the elect through a special operation of the Holy Spirit in regeneration. Regeneration precedes faith, changing the affections of the unbeliever and inclining him toward spiritual realities, including repentance and

52 53 54 55 56 57

South, “Response of Andrew Fuller to the Sandemanian View of Saving Faith,” 127. Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism, in Works, 2:590–91. South, “Response of Andrew Fuller to the Sandemanian View of Saving Faith,” 142. Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism, in Works, 2:592–96. South, “Response of Andrew Fuller to the Sandemanian View of Saving Faith,” 136–37. Haykin, “Andrew Fuller and the Sandemanian Controversy,” 232.

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faith. No one can trust in Christ apart from the divine enablement of the new birth.58 Throughout this section, Fuller was echoing his earlier Edwardsean argument from the “Appendix” to Gospel Worthy. In fact, Chun demonstrates that letter six of Strictures on Sandemanianism contains the lengthiest quotation from Edwards that is found in Fuller’s entire corpus. The quotation is from Part 3, Section 4 of Religious Affections, in which Edwards developed his understanding of spiritual perception and its relationship to knowledge and affections. But Fuller did not merely parrot Edwards. Chun argues that Fuller also creatively expanded Edwards’s understanding of the “sense of the heart.” Fuller believed that true spiritual knowledge includes approbation, meaning that spiritual ignorance is “insensibility of the heart.” For Fuller, knowledge was not merely intellectual, but moral, whether it is saving faith in Jesus Christ or rebellious ignorance of the things of God.59 In his eighth letter, Fuller argued that the understanding of faith he had been articulating is compatible with the Reformation and biblical doctrine of sola fide. Fuller reiterated that the key differences between he and McLean was their understanding of justifying faith. McLean argued for justification by intellectual assent to the facts of the gospel, while Fuller argued for justification by “believing with the heart,” which includes both assent and acceptance and results in a transformation of the whole person.60 As South argues, “Fuller concluded that a sinner who has no holy affection toward Christ must be a hard-hearted enemy of God.”61 Holiness is essential to the nature of true faith; it is not something that is added to faith. Biblical belief is impossible where there is no conviction of and repentance from sin.62 As Fuller noted, “A holy faith is necessary to receive a holy doctrine, and so unite us to a holy Saviour.”63 This sentiment could summarize Fuller’s central complaint with Sandemanian faith.

58 Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism, in Works, 2:597–614. 59 Chun, The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards in the Theology of Andrew Fuller, 120–24. For the relevant section in Edwards, see Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959), 270–75. Chun also argues that Fuller’s use of John Owen is filtered through Edwards’s interpretation of the Puritan theologian. See Chun, The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards in the Theology of Andrew Fuller, 126–31. 60 Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism, in Works, 2:618–19. 61 South, “Response of Andrew Fuller to the Sandemanian View of Saving Faith,” 145. 62 Fuller, Strictures on Sandemanianism, in Works, 2:620–23. 63 Ibid., in Works, 2:620. For more on Fuller’s understanding of intellect and obedience in his doctrine of justification, see Peter Beck, “The Gospel According to Jonathan Edwards: Andrew Fuller’s Appropriation of Jonathan Edwards’ Justification by Faith Alone,” Eusebeia 4 (Spring 2005): 59, 69–70.

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191

Conclusion

Numerous scholars have argued that Andrew Fuller’s theology was closely tied to his spirituality.64 Fuller’s spirituality reflected the emphases of the emerging evangelicalism, though filtered through the lens of Edwardsean Calvinism and Baptist ecclesiology. Peter Morden is right to contend that the Sandemanian view of faith was profoundly troubling to Fuller precisely because he saw it as a threat to vibrant spirituality.65 John Piper puts an even finer point on Fuller’s critique: Fuller found [Sandemanianism] both unbiblical and deadening to churches. To sever the roots of faith in regeneration, and to strip faith of its holiness, and to deny its active impulse to produce the fruit of love (Galatians 5:6) was to turn the church into an intellectualistic gathering of passive people who are afraid of their emotions and who lack any passion for worship or missions.66

Though Sandemanianism was not the most famous of Fuller’s polemical opponents, it may well be the one with the longest shelf life, at least theologically speaking. To be sure, Deism, Universalism and even High Calvinism remained threats, but these errors tended to be found on the evangelical periphery. Not so with the Sandemanian view of faith. Though Sandemanianism as a sect had virtually died out by the early twenty-first century, in America the StoneCampbell Movement and modern dispensational proponents of “Free Grace” continue to affirm a view of faith very similar to the Sandemanians.67 As in the long eighteenth century, evangelicals, some Reformed and some less so, have challenged neo-Sandemanian views as a clear threat to healthy evangelical spirituality. Those evangelicals who hold to the more traditional view of faith do not see repentance as a legalistic work that undermines justification by faith alone, but rather as a vital aspect of the biblical understanding of saving faith. They do not understand holiness to be an optional benefit for those who are spiritually mature, but believe gradual growth in holiness is the expectation of the normal 64 Haykin, ed., The Armies of the Lamb, 23–53; Morden, Offering Christ to the World, 157–79; Keith S. Grant, Andrew Fuller and the Evangelical Renewal of Pastoral Theology, Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 36 (Crownhill, Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2013), 1–21; Nathan A. Finn, “Andrew Fuller’s Edwardsean Spirituality,” in The Pure Flame of Devotion: The History of Christian Spirituality, Essays in Honour of Michael A. G. Haykin, ed. G. Stephen Weaver and Ian Hugh Clary (Dundas, ON: Joshua Press, 2013), 387–408. 65 Morden, Offering Christ to the World, 176. 66 John Piper, Andrew Fuller: I Will Go Down If You Will Hold the Rope! (Minneapolis, MN: Desiring God Foundation, 2012), 43–44 (iBooks edition). 67 See Jack Cottrell, “The Role of Faith in Conversion,” in Evangelicalism and the StoneCampbell Movement, ed. William R. Baker (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2002), 71–90; Randall Gleeson, “The Lordship Salvation Debate,” Evangelical Review of Theology 27.1 (January 2003): 55–72; Michael D. Makidon, “From Perth to Pennsylvania: The Legacy of Robert Sandeman,” Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society (Spring 2002): 75–92.

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Christian life. In doing so, whether knowingly or not, they are siding with Andrew Fuller in the now broader evangelical battle over Sandemanianism.

Michael A. G. Haykin

9.

Andrew Fuller and the Fading of the Trinitarian Imagination1

9.1

Introduction

In the late 1740s, the American divine Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) described the intellectual mentalité of his day as an age, as is supposed, of great light, freedom of thought, and discovery of truth in matters of religion, and detection of the weakness and bigotry of our ancestors, and of the folly and absurdity of the notions of those that were accounted eminent divines in former generations.

As far as Edwards was concerned, however, the reality was there had never been “an age, wherein religion in general was so much despised and trampled on, and Jesus Christ and God Almighty so blasphemed and treated with open daring contempt.”2 Central among the ideas held in extremely high regard by “eminent divines in former generations” was the doctrine of the Trinity. Since its creedal codification in the fourth century at the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), Trinitarianism had been fundamental to Christian theology. The exaltation of human reason as the primary epistemological determinant of truth in the long eighteenth century, however, raised major questions about this foundational doctrine, along with other key aspects of the Christian Faith. A number of theological authors dismissed the doctrine of the Trinity as a philosophical and unbiblical construct of the post-Apostolic Church, and turned to classical Arianism as an alternate perspective, while others simply ridiculed it as utterly illogical and argued for Deism or Socinianism.3 This concerted and heavy 1 This paper was originally given as a talk at the annual meeting of The Evangelical Theological Society in November, 2013. 2 Jonathan Edwards, Humble Attempt in Apocalyptic Writings, ed. Stephen J. Stein (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 5; New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1977), 359. 3 G.L. Bray, “Trinity” in New Dictionary of Theology, ed. Sinclair B. Ferguson, David F. Wright, and J.I. Packer (Downers Grove, IL/Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 694. See the helpful overview of this era’s Trinitarianism and anti-Trinitarianism by Stephen R. Holmes, The Holy Trinity: Understanding God’s Life (Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster, 2012), 165–181.

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attack on the concept of a Triune God ultimately led to what Philip Dixon has called a “fading of the trinitarian imagination.”4

9.2

The Particular Baptists: a Trinitarian community

Now, throughout this period of the long eighteenth century the Particular Baptists in the British Isles had tenaciously confessed a Trinitarian understanding of the Godhead and so, while other communities, such as the Presbyterians and General Baptists largely ceased to be Trinitarian,5 the Particular Baptists continued to regard themselves, and that rightly, as a Trinitarian community. Their earliest confessional document, The First London Confession of Faith (1644/ 1646), had declared this about God: In [the] […] Godhead, there is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit; being every one of them one and the same God; and therefore not divided, but distinguished one from another by their several properties; the Father being from himself, the Son of the Father from everlasting, the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father and the Son.6

B.R. White has argued that this confession gave these early Baptists an extremely clear and self-conscious sense of their community’s distinct identity and raison d’être.7 And yet, as this specific paragraph also reveals, these Baptists were desirous of declaring their complete solidarity with the mainstream of classical Christianity that was rooted in the fourth-century Trinitarian creedal declarations and that also included the mediæval Western Church’s commitment to the 4 See especially William C. Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence. How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), 164– 178; Philip Dixon, ‘Nice and Hot Disputes’: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century (London/New York, NY: T & T Clark, 2003). The quote is from Dixon, ‘Nice and Hot Disputes’, 212. On the rise of Socinianism, see also Sarah Mortimer, Reason and Religion in the English Revolution. The Challenge of Socinianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 5 For the loss of Trinitarianism among the General Baptists, see the helpful overview by Curtis W. Freeman, “God in Three Persons: Baptist Unitarianism and the Trinity”, Perspectives in Religious Studies, 33 (Fall 2006), 324–328. 6 The First London Confession of Faith 2 in William L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, rev. Bill J. Leonard (2nd rev. ed.; Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 2011), 144. The spelling has been modernized. 7 See, in particular, the following publications by White: “The Organisation of the Particular Baptists, 1644–1660”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 17 (1966), 209–226; “The Doctrine of the Church in the Particular Baptist Confession of 1644”, The Journal of Theological Studies, ns, 19 (1968), 570–590; “Thomas Patient in Ireland”, Irish Baptist Historical Society Journal, 2 (1969–1970), 36–48, especially 40–41; “The Origins and Convictions of the First Calvinistic Baptists”, Baptist History and Heritage, 25, no.4 (October, 1990), 39–47; and The English Baptists of the Seventeenth Century (Rev. ed.; London: The Baptist Historical Society, 1996), 59–94.

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Filioque. The other major Particular Baptist confession of the seventeenth century, The Second London Confession of Faith (1677/1689), was equally forthright in its Trinitarianism—in the words of Curtis Freeman, its “words […] resonate with Nicene orthodoxy”8—and firmly linked this core Christian doctrine to spirituality. The “doctrine of the Trinity,” it affirmed, “is the foundation of all our communion with God, and comfortable dependence on him.”9 Throughout the long eighteenth century this community unhesitatingly maintained that this doctrine is, in the words of Benjamin Wallin (1711–1782), the “first and grand principle of revealed truth and the gospel.”10 In 1690, the London Baptist layman Isaac Marlow (1649–1719), for example, published a treatise on the Trinity in which he stated his conviction that of those elements of divine truth that redound most to the glory of God and best further the fellowship of believers, “the blessed doctrine of the holy Trin-unity is the chiefest.”11 Nearly fifty years later, the renowned preacher Joseph Stennett II (1692–1758) similarly affirmed that “the doctrine of the ever blessed Trinity, is of the greatest importance to his [that is, God’s] glory.”12

9.3

The threat of Socinianism

The major challenge to Particular Baptist Trinitarianism came from Socinianism, which was the leading form of heterodoxy within English Dissent in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.13 In large part, this was due to the vigorous campaigning of Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), whom Michael R. Watts, in his study of the early history of British Nonconformity, has dubbed the “Leonardo da Vinci of Dissent.”14 By his early twenties, Priestley was proficient in physics, 8 9 10 11

Freeman, “God in Three Persons”, 331. The Second London Confession of Faith 2.3 in Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith, 237. The eternal Existence of the Lord Jesus Christ considered and improved (London, 1766), iv–v. “To the Reader” in his A Treatise of the Holy Trinunity [sic] (London, 1690), [i–ii]. For a brief discussion of this work, see Freeman, “God in Three Persons”, 332–333. 12 The Christian Strife for the Faith of the Gospel (London, 1738), 78, cited Roger Hayden, “The Contribution of Bernard Foskett” in William H. Brackney and Paul S. Fiddes with John H. Y. Briggs, ed., Pilgrim Pathways: Essays in Baptist History in Honour of B. R. White (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999), 197. 13 H.L. Short, “Presbyterians under a New Name” in C.G. Bolam, et al., The English Presbyterians from Elizabethan Puritanism to Modern Unitarianism (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1968), 229–233. 14 The Dissenters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 1:472. For the biographical details of Priestley’s career, I am especially indebted to The Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley, ed. John T. Boyer (Washington, DC: Barcroft Press, 1964); Robert D. Fiala, “Priestley, Joseph (1733– 1804)”, Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals (Hassocks, Sussex: Harvester Press/Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1979), 1:396–401; Erwin N. Hiebert,

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philosophy, and mathematics as well as a variety of modern and ancient Near Eastern languages. During the 1760s and 1770s his reputation as England’s foremost experimental scientist was established by his publication of a weighty history of electrical experimentation and his discovery of ten new gases, including oxygen, ammonia, and sulphur dioxide. Alongside this illustrious career as a scientist Priestley was also a prolific and profound theological author. In fact, he regarded his work as a theologian as his true vocation. After his conversion to the Socinian cause, which probably took place in 1769,15 Priestley devoted much of his time to theological writing “with no other view,” he baldly stated on one occasion, “than to make proselytes.”16 “An unflagging and often pugnacious controversialist,” Priestley sought to establish his position not on nature and human reason, as did the Deists, but on a serious and rational investigation of the Scriptures and history.17 As a Dissenter he had inherited the Protestant commitment to the Scriptures as a sufficient source of religious truth. “Revelation,” as Martin Fitzpatrick has noted, “lay at the core of his religion.”18 This attachment to the Scriptures, though, was yoked to a deeprooted conviction that the “plainest and most obvious sense of the Scriptures is in favour of those doctrines which are most agreeable to reason.”19 In other words, the Scriptures do indeed contain divine revelation, but their interpretation is to be determined by what is in accord with sound reason.

15 16

17

18

19

“The Integration of Revealed Religion and Scientific Materialism in the Thought of Joseph Priestley” in Lester Kieft and Bennett R. Willeford, Jr., ed., Joseph Priestley: Scientist, Theologian, and Metaphysician (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1980), 27–61. Robert E. Schofield, “Priestley, Joseph (1733–1804)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., May 2007 [http://www.oxforddnb.com.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/view/article/22788]). Defences of Unitarianism, for the Year 1786 (1787) (The Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley, ed. J.T. Rutt [New York, NY: Klaus Reprint Co., 1972], 18:372). Later references to the corpus of Priestley will cite these works as Works of Joseph Priestley. In a lecture that Fuller’s friend Robert Hall, Jr. (1764–1831) gave “On the Spirit of Socinianism” in 1823, the Baptist preacher took note of the Socinians’ “zeal for proselytism” (The Works of the Rev. Robert Hall, ed. Olinthus Gregory and Joseph Belcher [New York, NY: Harper & Bros., 1854], 3:24). For Priestley’s threefold appeal to reason, scripture, and history, see his Defences of Unitarianism, for the Year 1786 (Works of Joseph Priestley, 18:350); An History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ (1786) (Works of Joseph Priestley, 6:7). The description of Priestley is that of Martin Fitzpatrick, “Toleration and Truth”, Enlightenment and Dissent, 1 (1982), 25. “Toleration and Truth”, 29, n.119. On the commitment of Socinianism in general to Scripture, see Klaus Scholder, The Birth of Modern Critical Theology. Origins and Problems of Biblical Criticism in the Seventeenth Century, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM Press/Philadelphia, PA: Trinity Press International, 1990), 32–38. An Appeal to the Serious and Candid Professors of Christianity (1770) (Works of Joseph Priestley, 2:385). See also J.G. McEvoy and J.E. McGuire, “God and Nature: Priestley’s Way of Rational Dissent”, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 6 (1975), 325–326; Fitzpatrick, “Toleration and Truth”, 4–5.

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Priestley did not deny that there were certain affirmations of Scripture which were beyond the grasp of human reason. He admitted, for example, the historicity of many of the miracles of the apostolic era, including the bodily resurrection of Christ.20 What he refused to countenance, though, were interpretations of Scripture which, to his mind, entailed a logical contradiction. This explains why orthodox Trinitarianism bore the brunt of Priestley’s theological polemic.21 Priestley was convinced that the doctrine of the Trinity not only had no scriptural foundation, but it was also a mathematical impossibility, “since three cannot be one, or one, three.”22 From Priestley’s perspective, if there is one divine being, there must perforce be one person and thus one God; if there are three divine persons, then there must be three divine beings and so three gods. Hence Priestley made “a strict Patrolatry…[a] central and distinguishing” feature of his theological system.23 The threat that Socinianism posed to Trinitarian orthodoxy among the Particular Baptists is well illustrated by three incidents taken from the life of the leading Baptist apologist of the late eighteenth century, Andrew Fuller (1753– 1815). When Fuller came to write the memoirs of his friend Samuel Pearce (1766– 1799), the pastor of Cannon Street Particular Baptist Church in Birmingham, he included a letter which Pearce had written to his friend William Steadman (1764– 1837) on February 1, 1793. In it Pearce mentioned that he had been “much perplexed about some doctrinal points, both Arminian and Socinian” through the close reading of the writings of Priestley among others. Happily, Fuller noted, his perplexity was but transient, and “by the overruling grace of God, [it] tended only to establish him more firmly” in Trinitarian convictions.24 On the other hand, James Lyons (1768–1824), the pastor of the Particular Baptist Church in what is now Kingston Upon Hull, became a Socinian in 1807 through the writings of Richard Wright (1764–1836), an ardent propagator of Socinianism. Despite the fact that Fuller sent Lyons a number of pamphlets to help him maintain a firm 20 An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782 ed.; repr. New York, NY/London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1974), II, 440. 21 Cf. Scholder, Modern Critical Theology, 40; Geoffrey Gorham, “Seventeenth- and EighteenthCentury Intellectual Life” in Charles Taliaferro, Victoria S. Harrison, and Stewart Goetz, ed., The Routledge Companion to Theism (New York, NY/London: Routledge, 2013), 129–130. 22 Defences of Unitarianism, for the Years 1788 and 1789 (1790) (Works of Joseph Priestley, 19:108). See also his Appeal to the Serious and Candid Professors of Christianity (Works of Joseph Priestley, 2:395); History of Early Opinions concerning Jesus Christ (Works of Joseph Priestley, 6:33–37); Letters to the Members of the New Jerusalem Church (Birmingham, 1791), 2. 23 Alexander Gordon, Addresses Biographical and Historical (London: The Lindsey Press, 1922), 276. 24 Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Pearce in The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, ed. Joseph Belcher (1845 ed.; rpt. Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), III, 374 and 431. These volumes will be cited as Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller.

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grasp on Trinitarian doctrine, Lyons became “convinced that there are no such doctrines in the sacred Scriptures as that of the Trinity, [or] the equality of Jesus Christ with his Father” and he subsequently resigned his pastorate.25

9.4

Edward Sharman’s attack on Fuller’s Trinitarianism

A decade or so earlier Edward Sharman (fl.1780–1800) had also been converted to Socinian principles. Sharman was originally a member of the College Street Church in Northampton under the powerful, though eccentric, ministry of John Collett Ryland (1723–1792).26 In 1781 he was dismissed to help found Guilsborough Baptist Church in Northamptonshire and by 1790 he had become the pastor of the Baptist work in the village of Moulton, William Carey’s (1761–1834) first charge. In the fall of 1792 he was one of the founders of the Baptist Missionary Society. Two years later, though, he was asked various queries about the Trinity by a day-labourer for which he was unable to provide a satisfactory answer. He later claimed that it was these questions that prompted him to search the Scriptures, to question his previous Trinitarian convictions and to come to the view that the Socinian perspective better fit the biblical evidence. When Sharman began to share his new-found views with some of his fellow Baptists, including John Webster Morris (1763–1836), the printer-pastor of Clipstone, Northamptonshire, and Andrew Fuller, he found himself in the midst of what he described as “a dreadful storm.” Some called him a heretic as he had “forsaken the only foundation of the saints,” while others like Morris considered him “a little deranged.”27 Sharman’s response was to publish a series of four tracts on the subject of the Trinity, in one of which he personally took Morris to task for remarks the latter had written to him in a letter.28 In another of these pieces he expressed the opinion that his differences with Trinitarians like Fuller was really over a matter “so very trifling,” though his subsequent argumentation reveals 25 H.D. Roberts, Matthew Henry and His Chapel 1662–1900 (Liverpool: The Liverpool Booksellers’ Co., Ltd., 1901), 204–206, n.1. On the career of Richard Wright, see Gordon, Addresses, 311–339. 26 For what follows on the career of Sharman, see John Taylor, History of College Street Church, Northampton (Northampton: Taylor & Son, The Dryden Press, 1897), 86; John Rippon, The Baptist Annual Register (London, 1793), 1:10; idem, The Baptist Annual Register (London, 1797), 2:10; idem, The Baptist Annual Register (London, 1800), 3:28; Timothy D. Whelan, transcribed and ed., Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands Library of Manchester, 1741– 1845 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 446. 27 A Letter on the Doctrine of the Trinity; addressed to the Baptist Society, at Guilsborough, Northamptonshire (London: J. Johnson, 1795), 4–9. See also Andrew Fuller, Letter to William Carey, May 2, 1796 (cited Whelan, transcribed and ed., Baptist Autographs, 446). 28 A Letter on the Doctrine of the Trinity, 3–13.

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that this was hardly a tertiary issue for Sharman himself.29 The final tract, published in 1800, was addressed to Fuller himself and entitled A Second Caution Against Trinitarianism; or, An Inquiry Whether that System has not some Tendency to lead People into Deism and Atheism. In a Letter Addressed to The Rev. Mr. Fuller, Kettering.30 In this piece Sharman did not hesitate to affirm that Christ was a “finite dependant character” and that only God the Father, being “the only one Almighty God and supreme Governor of all,” was worthy of worship. It was, therefore, shameful for Fuller and other Trinitarians to worship Christ, who was but a servant and “inferior messenger,” for they were guilty of “dethroning Jehovah from the government of his own world.”31 Far from being a man wise in his understanding of the God of the Scriptures, Fuller was actually ignorant of the Bible, for, Sharman argued, the “mystical plan that Mr. F. had taught me, to reconcile a trinity of persons with the scripture unity of God, I now found to be real polytheism in disguise.” In other words, the embrace of Fuller’s Trinitarian worship, “instead of deserving the name of promoting Christianity…will lead me into Deism and Atheism!”—hence the title of this final tract.32 To add insult to injury, Sharman argued that his new perspective on Christianity was the result of adhering to Fuller’s principle that “we must learn what is divine truth immediately from the oracles of God” and we have to “let what God has revealed be the only standard to determine what is right.”33

9.5

Responding to Sharman?

Four years earlier, after Sharman had published but one of his four anti-Trinitarian tracts, Fuller had written to William Carey that though “it be a blundering performance, it must be answered.”34 But Fuller never did get around to writing an answer to Sharman, for the simple reason that he was far too busy with other vital ministries. What might he have said and how might he have argued? First of all, Fuller regarded Socinianism’s denial of Christ’s deity as being akin to Deism and this could only lead to the total ruination of the virtuous life.35 As he 29 A Second Letter on the Doctrine of the Trinity (Market Harborough: W. Harrod, 1796), 7–9. 30 A Second Caution Against Trinitarianism; or, An Inquiry Whether that System has not some Tendency to lead People into Deism and Atheism. In a Letter Addressed to The Rev. Mr. Fuller, Kettering (Market Harborough: W. Harrod, 1800). 31 Second Caution Against Trinitarianism, 7, 9, and 11. 32 Second Caution Against Trinitarianism, 12, 24, and 27. 33 Second Caution Against Trinitarianism, 27 and 33. 34 Andrew Fuller, Letter to William Carey, May 2, 1796 (cited Whelan, transcribed and ed., Baptist Autographs, 446). 35 Calvinistic and Socinian Systems (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, II, 220–233).

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put it in a sermon he preached in 1801: “The person and work of Christ have ever been the corner-stone of the Christian fabric: take away his Divinity and atonement, and all will go to ruins.”36 Christ’s deity and his atoning work are “the life-blood of Christianity”; deny them and there is only death.37 Fuller would thus have insisted that without the confession of the deity of Christ, one simply cannot be counted as a Christian, for “the proper Deity of Christ…is a great and fundamental truth in Christianity.”38 Fuller probably would probably not have emphasized the divinity of the Holy Spirit, though he did believe that the Scriptures “expressly call…the Holy Spirit God” in Acts 5:3–4 and he did not hesitate to assert that “every perfection of Godhead” has been ascribed to the Spirit.39 While Fuller, like others impacted by the Evangelical revivals of the eighteenth century, had a robust understanding of the Spirit’s work and ministry,40 Priestley, Sharman and the other apostles of Socinianism focused their attention overwhelmingly upon Christ and not the Holy Spirit. And that is where Fuller would have defended the Faith. When Fuller on one occasion referred to the first principles of Christianity he believed were the focus of the Socinian controversy he listed the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and the atoning death of the Lord Jesus,41 not the distinct deity of the Spirit. Fuller’s defence of the deity of Christ and the propriety of worshipping him is therefore akin to the way that Athanasius argued in the fourth century. The Egyptian Church Father also spent most of his time and energy defending the full and essential divinity of Christ in the face of the Arian onslaught against Christ’s person. Only near the end of his life did Athanasius turn his attention to the Spirit.42 However, Fuller was also aware that the Spirit’s overarching new covenant 36 God’s Approbation of our Labours Necessary to the Hope of Success (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 190). See also Calvinistic and Socinian Systems (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, II, 183); The Backslider (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 637). 37 Christian Steadfastness (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 527). See also Calvinistic and Socinian Systems (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, II, 183, 191–192). 38 Calvinistic and Socinian Systems (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, II, 180); Justification (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 284); Calvinistic and Socinian Systems (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, II, 183, 191–192); Defence of a Treatise entitled The Gospel of Christ (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, II, 458); “Decline of the Dissenting Interest” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 487); “The Deity of Christ” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 693– 697); Calvinistic and Socinian Systems (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, II, 180). 39 “Defence of the Deity of Christ” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 698); “Remarks on the Indwelling Scheme” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 700). See also Letters on Systematic Divinity (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 711); “Mr. Bevan’s Defence of the Christian Doctrines of the Society of Friends” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 758). 40 See, for example, his Causes of Declension in Religion, and Means of Revival (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 319–320, 324) and The Promise of the Spirit the Grand Encouragement in Promoting the Gospel (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 359–363). 41 Socinianism Indefensible (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, II, 249). 42 See his Letters to Serapion, written in the late 350s. Athanasius died in 373. See further my The

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ministry is the glorification of the Lord Jesus—the “Holy Spirit is not the grand object of ministerial exhibition; but Christ, in his person, work and offices”—and this is a key reason why “much less is said in the Sacred Scriptures on the Divinity and personality of the Holy Spirit.”43 Finally, with regard to statements about the Trinity, Fuller would have argued that the Scriptures affirm the existence of three divine persons—the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.44 These three are never to be considered three separate beings, but one God. As Fuller put it: “in a mysterious manner, far above our comprehension, there are in the Divine unity three subsistences.”45 How they are one has not been revealed—and so to believe it steadfastly requires faith and humility.46 Moreover, this is a truth that must be regarded as being above reason, not against it nor a contradiction. As long as Christian theology does not make the mistake of the Socinians, which is to regard God as unipersonal, it can affirm this truth without fear of being irrational. In this Christians need to “regulate [their] ideas of the Divine Unity by what is taught us in the Scriptures of the Trinity; and not those of the Trinity by what we know, or think we know…of the Unity.”47 Fuller’s convictions upon baptism might also have been used to support his defence of Trinitarianism against Sharman. His main piece on this ordinance was The Practical Uses of Christian Baptism, a highly significant tract on the meaning of baptism. Fuller argued that since baptism is to be carried out, according to Matthew 28:19, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” submission to the ordinance entails an avowal of the fact that God is a triune Being. Well acquainted with the history of the early Church at this point, Fuller rightly stated that this baptismal formula was widely used in that era to argue for

43 44

45 46 47

Spirit of God: The Exegesis of 1 and 2 Corinthians in the Pneumatomachian Controversy of the Fourth Century (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994). Letters on Systematic Divinity (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 711). See Jesus the True Messiah (1809) (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 219); “Passages Apparently Contradictory” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 668); “Remarks on the Indwelling Scheme” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 700); “The Doctrine of the Trinity” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 707–708). In the last of these passages Fuller cites a catena of Trinitarian texts, including Matthew 28:19; 1 John 5:7; Romans 15:30; Ephesians 2:18; Jude 20–21; 2 Thessalonians 3:5; and 2 Corinthians 13:14. “The Doctrine of the Trinity” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 708). Nature and Importance of an Intimate Knowledge of Divine Truth (1796) (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 163–164). Letters on Systematic Divinity (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 708); “Remarks on the Indwelling Scheme” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 700). Cf. Walking by Faith (1784) (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 124–125): “It is one thing to say that Scripture is contrary to right reason, and another thing to say that it may exhibit truths too great for our reason to grasp.”; “Trial of Spirits” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 654).

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the doctrine of the Trinity.48 To relinquish the doctrine of the Trinity is thus tantamount to the virtual renunciation of one’s baptism.49 Fuller tied baptism to the Trinity again, and also to worship, in another small piece entitled “The Manner in which Divine Truth is Communicated in the Holy Scriptures.” He wrote: The doctrine of the Trinity is never proposed to us as an object of speculation, but as a truth affecting our dearest interests. John introduces the sacred Three as witnesses to the truth of the gospel of Christ, as objects of instituted worship, into whose name we are baptized; and Paul exhibits them as the source of all spiritual good: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.” [2 Corinthians 13:14]. Again, “The Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ.” [2 Thessalonians 3:5].50

What is noteworthy about this text is the refusal to see the Trinity as merely a “metaphysical mystery,” or as Fuller put it, “an object of speculation.”51 Rather, Fuller emphasized that the doctrine has a bearing on our “dearest interests,” namely, the truth as it is in the gospel, worship, and “all spiritual good.” The first item, the truth of the gospel, is supported by an allusion to 1 John 5:7, the famous Comma Johanneum, which Fuller evidently regarded as genuine.52 For the third point, “all spiritual good,” Fuller has recourse to 2 Corinthians 13:14 and 2 Thessalonians 3:5. The use of the latter Pauline text is fascinating. Fuller’s Trinitarian reading of it ultimately goes back to Basil of Caesarea (c.329–379), who employs it in his argument for the Spirit’s deity in his classic work, On the Holy Spirit.53 Fuller most likely found this reading of the Pauline verse, however, in John Gill’s commentary on 2 Thessalonians 3:5, where Gill follows Basil’s interpretation.54 48 The Practical Uses of Christian Baptism (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 340). The very same point had been made a quarter of a century earlier by John Collett Ryland. Also writing in a circular letter for the Northamptonshire Association, Ryland had observed that “the true doctrine of the Trinity” had been “kept up in the Christian church” by the ordinance of baptism “more than by any other means whatsoever” (The Beauty of Social Religion; or, The Nature and Glory of a Gospel Church [Northampton: T. Dicey, 1777], 10, footnote). 49 Christian Baptism (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 340). For other instances of Fuller’s Trinitarian exegesis of Matthew 28:19, see Calvinistic and Socinian Systems (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, II, 236); “On the Sonship of Christ” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 705– 706). 50 “The Manner in which Divine Truth is Communicated in the Holy Scriptures” (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, III, 539). 51 For the phrase “metaphysical mystery,” I am indebted to Stephen Holmes. See “The Quest for the Trinity: An Interview with Stephen R. Holmes”, Credo Magazine, 3, no.2 (April 2013), 49. 52 See his extended argument in Letters on Systematic Divinity (Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, I, 708–709). 53 See Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit 21.52. 54 Here is the relevant section of Gill’s comments on this verse: “The phrase of directing the heart

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It is with regard to the second point, the Trinity as the object of adoration, that Fuller mentions baptism: “the sacred Three” are described “as objects of instituted worship, into whose name we are baptized.” Fuller was presumably thinking of Matthew 28:19. The reason why doctrinal confession of the Triunity of God is vital is because it lies at the heart of Christian worship. Fuller clearly saw baptism into the name of the Triune God as not only the initiatory rite of the Church—what made it a “Trinitarian community”—but also the beginning of a life of worshipping the Trinity that would ultimately culminate in the beatific vision of the Trinity. Such might have been the shape of Andrew Fuller’s reply to Edward Sharman, his “once intimate friend.”55

to God…is not to be done by a believer himself, nor by the ministers of the Gospel: the apostle could not do it, and therefore he prays “the Lord” to do it; by whom is meant the Spirit of God, since he is distinguished from God the Father, into whose love the heart is to be directed, and from Christ, a patient waiting for whom ‘tis also desired the heart may be directed into; and since it is his work to shed abroad the love of God in the heart, and to lead unto it, and make application of it; and which is a proof of his deity, for none has the direction, management, and government of the heart, but God,…and in this passage of Scripture appear all the three Persons [of the Godhead]; for here is the love of the Father, patient waiting for Christ, and the Lord the Spirit.” (An Exposition of the New Testament [1809 ed.; repr. Paris, Arkansas: The Baptist Standard Bearer, Inc., 1989], III, 265). See also John Gill, The Doctrine of the Trinity, Stated and Vindicated (London: Aaron Ward, 1731), 198–199. 55 These are Sharman’s words for Fuller: see his Second Caution Against Trinitarianism, 72.

Scott Sealy

10. Church Authority and Subscription in the Synod of Philadelphia (1721–1741)

10.1 Introduction In 1706, seven Ministers met as the Presbytery of Philadelphia for the first time.1 By 1717 it had grown large enough to divide into three presbyteries forming the Synod of Philadelphia.2 The same year Benjamin Hoadly (1676–1761), Bishop of Bangor ignited a minor controversy in the Church of England over the limits of ecclesiastical authority.3 In The Nature of the Kingdom, or Church, of Christ, Hoadly took an extreme Erastian position arguing that Christ alone had legislative authority in the Church leaving “no visible, humane authority; no vicegerents […] no interpreters, upon whom his subjects are absolutely to depend; no judges over the consciences or religion of his people.”4 The controversy over Church authority extended to English Dissenters as they considered introducing forms of subscription as a means to guard against growing “Arianism.”5 This led to a division among London ministers in 1719 at the Salter’s Hall debate. It was the Non-Subscription movement in the General Synod of Ulster that had the greatest impact on the American Church. The Synod had required Subscription to the Westminster Confession since 1689.6 John Abernethy (1680– 174), minister at Antrim and the leader of a group of ministers known as the Belfast Society preached a sermon in December 1719 espousing the views of Hoadly and claiming that the Church has no authority over believers’ conscience 1 Minutes of the Presbyterian Church in America 1706–1788, ed. by Guy S. Klett (Philadelphia, 1976), p. 1. The first leaf is missing from the record book but most agree that the first meeting was in 1706. 2 ibid, pp. 29–30. 3 For more on Hoadly see William Gibson, Enlightenment Prelate: Benjamin Hoadly, 1676–1761 (Cambridge, 2004). 4 The Nature of the Kingdom, or Church, of Christ. A sermon preach’d before the King, at the Royal chapel at St. James’s, on Sunday March 31, 1717 (London, 1717), pp. 11–12. 5 Roger Thomas, ‘The Non-Subscription Controversy Amongst Dissenters in 1719: the Salters’ Hall Debate’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 4, no. 2 (1953): 162–186. 6 Records of the General Synod of Ulster from 1691 to 1820, 3 vols (Belfast, 1890) (RGSU), I, p. 34.

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and no right to exclude from her membership “by the rigid Test of an exact Agreement in Doubtful and Disputable Points.”7 This set off a series of publications debating “New Light” theology, as the Belfast Society’s views were soon labeled. At its 1720 meeting, the Synod arrived at a compromise known as that Pacific Act or Pacificum.8 The Pacific Act, while continuing to require subscription to the Westminster Confession, allowed ministers to “scruple any phrase or phrases in the Confession” as long as the Presbytery approved and judged his views “consistent with the substance of the doctrine.”9 The controversy erupted fully in July of the same year when the Presbytery of Belfast installed Samuel Haliday (1685–1739) to the First Congregation at Belfast, accepting a substitute statement of belief in place of his affirming the Westminster Confession. The dispute over subscription and the meaning of the Pacificum ended when the Synod reorganized in 1725, moving all Non-Subscribers to the Presbytery of Antrim, then in 1726, it expelled that body from “ministerial” communion with the Synod.10 News and publications from the debates over Church power and subscription in England and Ireland spread to the Colonies and the nascent Synod that began to debate the issues as early as 1721. The issue of subscription was one point of contention among the ministers, but the controversies also dealt with the question of Church power and polity that was behind the question of subscription, and the relationship between Church courts. This was especially the case in the 1741 Schism. The dominant view of the American controversy at least since Trinterud’s seminal The Forming of an American Tradition has been that the Synod of Philadelphia was a merger of different traditions, each with divergent views of subscription.11 There were certainly tensions between the different heritages represented in the Synod of Philadelphia, but attempts to reduce the American debates to a conflict of traditions paints with too broad of a brush. The preceding debates in England and Ireland show the lack of unity within those traditions.12 This chapter will examine the debates in the Synod of Philadelphia as a part of discussions taking place throughout Presbyterianism.13

7 John Abernethy, Religious obedience founded on personal persuasion. A sermon preach’d at Belfast the 9th of December, 1719. (Belfast, 1720), pp. 6–7, 35. 8 RGSU, I, p. 521–2. 9 Ibid. 10 Finlay Holmes, Our Irish Presbyterian Heritage, (Belfast, 1985), p. 66. 11 Leonard J. Trinterud, The Forming of an American Tradition a Re-examination of Colonial Presbyterianism (Philadelphia, 1949). But see also, Marilyn Westerkamp, ‘Division, Dissension, and Compromise: The Presbyterian Church during the Great Awakening’, Journal of Presbyterian History, 78, (2000). 12 Cornman, Thomas H. L., Caterpillars and newfangled religion: the struggle for the soul of colonial American Presbyterianism (Lanham, MD, 2003), p. 38.

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Since the issue of the origin of American Presbyterianism has been such a contested issue this will be reviewed first. The proposals forming the constitution of the early Church will be examined, first, in the adoption of four Articles that defined the basic understanding of Church government and polity, and, second, in the Adopting Act of 1729 which formally set the Westminster Confession and Catechisms as the doctrinal standards of the Church and required subscription of ministers and candidates. Also, a defense of the Synod’s actions in the trial of Samuel Hemphill which was published at its direction explaining the terms of subscription will be discussed. Finally, the role of Irish “New Light” theology in the Schism of 1741 will be explored.

10.2 Background of the Initial Presbytery While the dominant understanding of the colonial Church has assumed that the earliest Presbytery was a diverse group of ministers, a recent reevaluation has shown that the majority of ministers were of Irish and Scottish extraction.14 The “Father of American Presbyterianism”, Francis Makemie (1657?-1708) was born in Co. Donegal, licensed by Laggan Presbytery in 1681 or 1682 before arriving in Maryland in 1682.15 John Hampton (c.1679–c.1721) was also Irish.16 He was in London in 1704, when Makemie was there seeking ministers to serve with him in America.17 Glasgow born and educated George McNish (1684–1722) also accompanied Makemie.18 Fellow Scots included Nathaniel Taylor (d. 1710), John 13 The debate of subscription and church authority also took place within another, separate Presbytery of Charleston. 14 James T. Dennison, ‘New Light on Early Colonial Presbyterian Ministers’, Westminster Theological Journal, 60 (1998) 153–57; cf. Charles Hodge, The constitutional history of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia, 1839), pp. 78–97; E.H. Gillett, History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia, 1864), pp. 25–34; Leonard J. Trinterud, The Forming of an American Tradition: a re-examination of Colonial Presbyterianism (Philadelphia), p. 34. 15 Dennison, p. 154; David Stewart, Fasti of the American Presbyterian Church: treating of ministers of Irish origin who laboured in America during the eighteenth century (Belfast, 1943) (FAPC), pp. 17–8; Richard Webster, A History of the Presbyterian Church in America: from its origin until the year 1760: with biographical sketches of its early ministers (Philadelphia, 1857), pp. 297–310; John M. Barkley, Francis Makemie of Ramelton: Father of American Presbyterianism, (Belfast, 1981); Boyd S. Schlenterh, ed. The Life and Writings of Francis Makemie, (Philadelphia, 1971); James H. Smylie, ‘Francis Makemie: tradition and challenge’, Journal of Presbyterian History 61 (1983):pp. 197–209. 16 Dennison, p. 154; Webster, pp. 322–3; W. F. Marshall, Ulster Sails West, (Belfast, 1943), p. 66 17 FAPC, p. 10. 18 Dennison, p. 155; Webster, pp. 318–322; Hew Scott, et. al., Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae: the succession of ministers in the parish churches of Scotland from the Reformation, A. A. 1560, to the present time, revised edn., 10 vols. (Edinburgh, 1915–1981) (FES), VII, p. 664.

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Wilson (d.1712) and John Boyd (d. 1708).19 The origin of Samuel Davis (d. 1725) is uncertain, though the evidence tends to point to Ireland.20 Jedidiah Andrews (1674–1747) was the only New Englander among the original members of the Presbytery, born in Hingham, Massachusetts and graduating from Harvard in 1695.21 Incidentally, while Trinterud argued that the New Side was the party of those with New England Congregationalist backgrounds, Andrews remained with the Old Side Synod.22 Some congregations that had previously been Congregationalists later united with the Synod of Philadelphia, but they did so, not as part of a denominational merger, but as individual congregations that united with a Synod that had followed the practice of the Scottish and Scots Irish hierarchical tradition for ten years.23 Of course, denominational distinctions before the establishment of the Presbytery is difficult to determine, and it was common for Dissenting congregations to contain members with different convictions. While some of the congregations might have begun as Congregationalist; of the twenty-four ministers listed in attendance of the Presbytery before the formation of a Synod in 1717, only five were certainly born in New England, three were born in England or Wales, four were Irish, one was of uncertain origin, and one was from Holland, the remaining ten were from Scotland.24 Robert Wodrow (1679–1734), a Church of Scotland minister who maintained extensive correspondence with colleagues in England, Ireland, and the American Colonies, 19 Dennision, pp. 155–7; for Taylor see FES, VII, p. 665, Webster, 318; for Wilson see Church of Scotland Papers, National Archives of Scotland (NAS), CH 1/2/28/4, fol. 388; for Boyd see FES, VII, p. 662; Webster, p. 323. 20 Dennison, p. 155. 21 Dennison, p. 156; Webster, p. 312–8; John Langdon Sibley and Clifford K. Shipton, Sibley’s Harvard Graduates: biographical sketches of those who attended Harvard Colleges, 18 vols, (Boston, 1945), vol. 4, p. 219. 22 Minutes, p. 193 23 Trinterud, p. 33; William P. Finney, ‘The Period of Isolated Congregations’, Journal of the Department of History, XV, (1932–33) 8–17, pp. 8–17; W.A. Speck and L. Billignton, ‘Calvinism in Colonial North America, 1630–1715’, in International Calvinism 1541–1715, ed. by Menna Prestwich (Oxford, 1987), p. 266; Clifford M. Drury, ‘Presbyterian Beginnings in New England and the Middle Colonies’, Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society (JPHS), 34, (1956). 24 The members listed in attendence were Makemie (Ireland); Andrews (New England); Hampton (Ireland); Taylor (Scotland); McNish (Scotland); Wilson (Scotland); Davies (Unknown); John Boyd (Scotland), FES, VII, p. 662; Joseph Smith (New England); James Anderson (Scotland) FES, VII, p. 662; Nathaniel Wade (New England), Webster pp. 333–4; John Henry (Ireland), FAPC, p. 11; Joseph Morgan (New England), Webster, pp, 335–8; Paul VanVlech (Holland), Webster, pp. 335–8; Robert Lawson (Scotland) FES, VII, p. 664; Dan Magill (Scotland), FES, VII, p. 664; Howell Powell (Wales), Webster, p. 345; Robert Wotherspoon (Scotland), FES, VII, p 666; Malachi Jones (Wales), Webster, p. 346; David Evans (Wales), Webster, pp. 347–51; John Bradner (Scotland), FES, VII, p. 662; Samuel Pumry (New England), Webster, pp. 353–5; Robert Orr (Ireland), FAPC, p. 19; cf. Trinterud, pp. 34–5.

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noted that many American Congregationalists ministers inclined “to come nearer Presbyterian government, and to have judicatorys brought to their proper weight and influence.”25 The influence of Irish immigration supported this, as Cotton Mather (1663–1728) wrote to Wodrow in 1718: We are concerned with great numbers of our oppressed brethren, coming over from the north of Ireland […] but that which adds very much to our comfort, is that they find so very little differenc in the management of our Churches from ours and yours, as to count it next unto none at all. […] not a few ministers of the Scotch nation coming over hither, have heretofore been invited to settle among our Churches, and the Churches have joyfully flourished under their ministry.26

The evidence clearly shows that the Presbytery self-consciously followed the practice of the Church of Scotland. They were a Synod with subordinate presbyteries which were attended by lay elders from the beginning, distinguishing them from Congregationalists as well as the English and Dublin Presbyterians.27 Moreover they did the work of those courts in ordination, discipline, supervision of candidates, and oversight of congregations.28 As James Anderson explained in a letter to John Stirling (c.1654–1727), Principal of Glasgow, 1 August 1716: There are in all, of min[isters], who meet, in a presbytry once a year, sometimes att Philadelphia, somtimes here att Newcastle, seventeen, & two probationers from the north of Irland whom we have under tryall for ordination, twelve of which, I think, have had the most & best of their education at your famous University of Glasgow […]. As to our proceedings in matter of publick worship & discipline, we make it our businesse to follow the directory of the Church of Scotland which (as well we may) we oun as our mother Church.29

The Congregationalists brought a distinct background, but they united with a Presbytery – that is they did not form a denominational union or association similar to the Baxterian Association.30 While this does not mean that there were no tensions between groups with different understandings of polity, it does mean that the Presbytery and Synod from the beginning modeled themselves after the hierarchical polity of the Church of Scotland. 25 Robert Wodrow, Analecta, or, Materials for a history of remarkable providences: mostly relating to Scotch ministers and Christians, ed. by Matthew Leishman, 4 vols., Maitland 60, (Edinburgh, 1842–1843), IV, p. 1; Robert Ellis Thompson, A History of the Presbyterian Church (New York, 1895), p. 14; William Thomason Hanzche, ‘New Jersey Moulders of the American Presbyterian Church’, JPHS, 24, (1946) 71–82, (p. 72). 26 National Library of Scotland, Letters of Robert Wodrow, Wod.Lett.QU XX, no. 15. 27 Minutes, p. 2. 28 ibid, pp. 1–30. 29 Wod.Lett.QU, XXII, no. 116. 30 Charles A. Briggs, American Presbyterianism its Origin and Early History (New York, 1885), p. 95, 139.

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10.3 The Question of the Synod’s Authority At the 1721 meeting of Synod, George Gillespie (1683–1760), the Glasgow born and educated minister at White Clay Creek submitted the following overture: As we have been for many years in the exercise of Presbyterian government & Ch[urc]h discipline, as exercised by the Presbyterians in the best Reformed Churches, as far as the nature and constitution of this countrey will allow, our opinion is [tha]t if any brother have any Overture to offer to be formed into an Act by the Synod for the better carrying on in the matters of our Government and Discipline, [tha]t he may bring it in against next Synod.31

Gillespie had been licensed by the Presbytery of Glasgow in 1712 before moving to New England and being ordained by Philadelphia Presbytery to White Clay Creek in 1713.32 He had been concerned about the lack of sufficient discipline being exercised among the presbyteries. Earlier in the same meeting he had unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the Synod to reconsider a decision to suspend Robert Cross (1689–1766) from preaching for four Sabbaths for his confession of fornication—a sentence Gillespie found to be too lax.33 He would later write to Stirling, complaining of six “grossly scandalous” ministers who were insufficiently disciplined by the Synod.34 Besides Cross, these cases included Robert Laing whose deposition by the Presbytery of Newcastle for “violating the Lord’s Day by washing himself in a creek” had been overturned by the Synod on appeal.35 Earlier, Jonathan Clement who “had been [at] diverse time overtaken with drink and chargeable with very abusive language and quarreling and of stabbing a man” was suspended for a year.36 Gillespie’s overture appears to be in response to these discipline issues, and although it does not mention subscription it was obviously associated with it by some members of the Synod as shown by their response. Gillespie’s overture carried; however, six ministers, all from Wales or New England, protested.37 The protesters were led by Jonathan Dickinson (1688– 1747), the minister at Elizabeth Town. Dickinson was born near Hatfield, Massachusetts.38 He graduated from Yale in 1706 and was ordained to Elizabeth 31 32 33 34 35

Minutes, p. 51; Trinterud, p. 38. Webster, pp. 339–41; FES, VII, p. 663; Minutes, p. 18. Minutes, pp. 46, 50; for Cross see Webster, pp. 367–71; FAPC, p. 8. Wod.Lett.QU, XXII, no. 120. Minutes, p. 60; Webster, p. 377; FES, VII, p. 664, however this only refers to the Minutes of the American Church. He was probably from Ireland as the FAPC, notes a Robert Laing who was licensed by Down Presbytery in 1704, FAPC, p. 13. 36 Minutes, pp. 49, 60. 37 Minutes, p. 51. 38 Bryan F. Le Beau, Jonathan Dickinson and the Formative Years of American Presbyterianism, (Lexington, KY, 1997), p. 6; for more on Dickinson’s involvement in the controversies see

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Town in 1709.39 He joined with the Presbytery of Philadelphia in ordaining Robert Orr in 1715, then in 1717 was listed on the roll of Synod.40 Dickinson, like English and Irish Non-Subscribers, was influenced by Locke and believed in the natural capacity of human reason to discern divine truth.41 At the 1722 meeting, Dickinson, as the retiring Moderator, preached on 2 Tim 3:17. It was later published as A Sermon Preached at the Opening of the Synod at Philadelphia.42 In this, Dickinson shows that he is well acquainted with the debates elsewhere. Like the other Non-Subscribers, he claims that “no one thing had an equal hand in the any heresies, schisms, convulsions and confusions, which the Church of God has always laboured under, with humane inventions and institutions, in the affairs of God’s house.”43 He argued, as others, that the Scriptures, and Scriptural requirements for the ministry, are sufficient to maintain discipline in the Church.44 To add new Acts to what is revealed in the Bible is “unwarrantable Legislature.”45 He quotes a passage from Hoadly’s Nature of the Kingdom as “an excellent saying of the Bishop of Bangor, worthy to be printed in letters of gold, and transmitted to latest posterity.”46 Revealing that some must have held suspicions of the former Congregationalists, Dickinson states that he did not “design a dispute upon the controverted modes of Church- government”, rather he is convinced “that the Presbyterian government appears to [him] the most conformed to the laws of Christ […] [follows] the rule, as may be hoped for in this state of imperfection.”47 Notably, like the Irish Non-Subscribers, Dickinson sees it not as divinely mandated, but the best of many imperfect options. While acknowledging the usefulness of confessions “since the worst of heresies may take shelter under the

39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47

Bryan F. LeBeau, ‘The Subscription Controversy and Jonathan Dickinson’, Journal of Presbyterian History, 54, (1976), 315–35; David C. Harlan, ‘The Travail of Religious Moderation: Jonathan Dickinson and the Great Awakening’, Journal of Presbyterian History, 61, no. 4, (1983) 411–26; and Michael Bauman, ‘Jonathan Dickinson and the Subscription Controversy’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 41, no. 3, (1998), 455–67. Le Beau, p. 32; A.H. Freundt, ‘Dickinson, Jonathan (1688–1747)’, in Dictionary of Presbyterian & Reformed Tradition in America, ed. by D.G. Hart and Mark Noll, (Phillipsburg, N.J., 2005) pp. 81–2. Le Beau, Jonathan Dickinson, p. 17; Minutes, p. 30. Keith J. Hardman, ‘Jonathan Dickinson and the Course of American Presbyterianism, 1717– 1747’, (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1971), pp. 244–5, 250. Jonathan Dickinson, A Sermon Preached at the Opening of the Synod at Philadelphia, September 19. 1722. Wherein is considered the Character of the Man of God, and his Furniture for the Exercise both of Doctrine and Discipline, with the true boundaries of the Churches Power (Boston, 1723). Dickinson, Sermon, p. 1. 34. ibid, pp. 2–3, 8–11. ibid, p. 13. ibid, p. 16. Dickinson quotes Hoadly that Christ ‘left behind him no visible humane authority’. ibid, p. 14.

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express words of Scripture”, he denies that Church has the authority to keep from communion “any such Dissenters, as we can charitably hope Christ won’t shut out of Heaven: but should open the doors of the Church as wide, as Christ opens the gates of Heaven.”48 Later in the meeting the protesters brought the following four Articles of “their sentiments & judgments concerning Church government”:49 1. We freely grant, th[a]t there is full executive power of Church government in presby[te]rys and synods, and th[a]t they may authoritavely[sic], in the name of Christ, use the keys of Church discipline to all proper intents and purposes, and th[a]t the keys of the Church are committed to the Church officers and them only. 2. We also grant, th[a]t the meer circumstantials of Church discipline, such as the time place and mode of carrying on in the government of the Church belong to ecclesiastical judicatories to determine as occassions occur conformable to the general rules in the word of God th[a]t require all things to be done decently and in order. And if these things are called Acts we will taken [sic] no offence at the word, provided th[a]t these Acts be not imposed upon such as conscientiously dissent from them. 3. We also grant, th[a]t synods may compose directories, and recommmend them to all their members respecting all the parts of discipline, provided th[a]t all subordinate judicatores may decline from such directories when they conscientiously think they have just reason so to do. 4. We freely allow th[a]t appeals may be made from all inferiour to superiour judicatories, and th[a]t judicatories have authority to consider and determine such appeals.

These Articles were approved by the Synod, and the six withdrew their protest after which they “unanimously joyned together in a Thanksgiving Prayer, and joyful singing the 133 Psalm.”50 Notably, in expressing their views they expressly repudiated Congregationalist form of government, “the keys of the Church are committed to the Church officers and them only.” While disclaiming legislative power, the Articles acknowledge that Church courts have executive power and authority to adjudicate appeals and to give direction as long as the right of conscientious dissent is maintained. The extent of this right would be an issue in the passing of the Adopting Act as well at the center of the formal debates that in the 1741 Schism.

48 ibid, pp. 22–23. 49 Minutes, pp. 57–8; James Hastings Nichols, ‘Colonial Presbyterianism Adopts its Standards’, JPHS, 34, (1956) 53–66, pp. 53, 56. 50 Minutes, p. 58.

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10.4 The Adopting Act In 1724 the Presbytery of New Castle records the first known subscription in the Synod. William McMillan was licensed to preach in Virginia and his signature is attached to the following formula: “I do own the Westminster Confession of Faith as the Confession of my faith. “51 While Trinterud and others have claimed that this was “unqualified subscription”, there is no record of an Act of the Presbytery; this was subscription according to custom as had been the case in the General Synod of Ulster.52 One of the members of New Castle Presbytery, John Thomson (c.1690–753) brought an overture from the Presbytery of New Castle before the Synod in 1727 calling for subscription.53 Thomson had arrived in New York from Ireland as a probationer in 1715.54 He had graduated from from Glasgow in 1710 or 1711 and was licensed by the Presbytery of Armagh in 1712 or 1713.55 He received a call to the Lewes congregation and was ordained by the Presbytery of Philadelphia in 1717.56 His overture “wherein is proposed an expedient, for preventing the ingress and spreading of dangerous errors” began by stating that he “would be heartily grieved if [it] should in the event, prove an occasion of any heat or contention among us.”57 Pointing to the duty to “maintain and defend the truths of the Gospel against all opposition”, not only as individual Christians and ministers but also as an “organiz’d body politick” that is not subject to another “ecclesiastical judicature”, Thomson argues that the Synod should do two things.58 First, since the Synod had not adopted a Confession it should formally adopt the Westminster Confession and Catechisms as the public standard of the Synod as “an united Body-politick.”59 Although he proposes subscription to the Westminster Confession, he added that “it’s then the necessity of a confession in

51 52 53 54 55 56 57

58 59

Records of the Presbytery of New Castle, (1716–1731) pp. 86–88, unnumbered p. 178 Trinterud, pp. 44–5; Nichols, p. 57. Minutes, p. 98; Records of Presbytery of New Castle, pp. 128, 136–7; Nichols, p. 57. Webster, pp. 355–7; W.H.T. Squires, ‘John Thomson: Presbyterian Pioneer’, The Union Seminary Review, 32, no. 2 (1921) 149–61; John G. Herndon, ‘The Reverend John Thomson’, JPHS, 20, 4 (1942) 116–58, 21, no. 1 (1943) 34–59. Herndon, 20, p. 117–8. ibid, pp. 118–9. [John Thomson], An Overture Presented to the Reverend Synod of Dissenting Ministers, Sitting in Philadelphia, in the Month of September, 1728 And is Now Under the Consideration of the Several Members of the Said Synod, in Order to Come to a Determination Concerning it at Next Meeting.: Together with a preface, or an epistle containing some further reasons to strengthen the overture, and an answer to some objections against it (n.l., 1729), p. 25. ibid, pp. 25–30. ibid, p. 28, 31.

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general” that he desired for and was willing to accept another “of like kind.”60 Second, the Synod should require candidates to “subscribe or otherwise acknowledge” the Confession “and to promise not to preach or teach contrary to it.”61 While Thomson has been portrayed as a strict Subscriber his overture recognizes a need to deal with exceptions, “if any minister within our bounds shall take upon him to teach or preach any thing contrary to any of the said Articles, unless first he propose the said point to the Presbytery or Synod, to be by them discussed, he shall be censured. “62 And as he closed the preface: if there should be any paragraphs or clauses at which some may scruple, there are rational methods according to charity and piety, to have such scruples removed in a regular way, and it’s a pity to deprive a whole Church of the benefit of such and excellent Confession, for the scruples perhaps of a few, or for a few scruples about some particular and lesser points of religion.63

The overture did not make it to the floor in 1727 but was brought again in 1728 when the Synod unanimously agreed to defer the overture until the following year which it appointed to be a full Synod, having moved to delegated meetings in 1724.64 The issue was controversial; Andrews describes events in a letter requesting advice from a prominent Congregationalist minister, Benjamin Colman (1673–1747): We are now like to fall into a great difference about subscribing the Westminster Confession of Faith. An overture for it, drawn up by Mr. Thompson of Lewistown was offered to our Synod the year before the last, but not then read in Synod. Means were then used to stave it off, and I was in hopes we should have heard no more of it. But last Synod it was brought again, recommended by all the Scotch and Irish members present and being read among us, a proposal was made, prosecuted and agreed to that it should be deferred till our next meeting for further consideration. The proposal is, that all ministers and intrants shall sign it or else be disowned as members. Now what shall we do? They will certainly carry it by number. Our countrymen say, they are willing to joyn in a vote to make it the Confession of our Church, but to agree to the making it the test of orthodoxy and term of ministerial communion, they say they will not. I think all the Scots are on one side, and, all the English and Welsh on the other, to a man. […] Some say the design of this motion is, to spew out our countrymen, they being scarce able to hold way with the other brethren in all the disciplinary and legislative motions. What truth there may be in this, I know not. Some deny it, whereas others say there is something in it. I am satisfied some of us are an uneasiness to them, and are thought to be too much in their way sometimes, so that I think’t would be no trouble to lose some of us; yet I can’t think this to be the thing ultimately designed, whatever smaller glances 60 61 62 63 64

ibid, p. 23. ibid, pp. 31–2. ibid, p. 32. ibid, p. 24. Webster, p. 104–5; Minutes, pp. 64–5, 98.

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there may be at it. I have no tho’t they have any design against me in particular. I have no reason for it. … If it were not for the scandal of division, I should not be much against it, for the different countrymen seem to be most delighted in one another and to do best when they are by themselves. My congregation being made up of diverse nations of different sentiments, this brings me under a greater difficulty.65

This letter is the main primary source to which Trinterud appealed to argue that divisions were based on national origins. Tensions between the groups is undeniable, but it should be noted that Andrews expresses doubts concerning a Scots conspiracy. Further, as Bauman has pointed out if the Scots and Irish had been a “strict subscription” party they easily had the majority of votes in 1728 and could have enacted strict subscription had they wished rather than deferring the issue until a full Synod could be present.66 Wodrow saw the connection to the General Synod of Ulster. Responding to a report from Colman he concluded that “some of those that have come from Ireland […] have carried their heats […] to the Synod of Pennsylvania.”67 As one anonymous Philadelphian reported to Ireland, “the Presbyterians here were like as they have lately been among you to be divided into parties and under a sad prospect of being broken to pieces about subscribing the Westminster Confession.”68 Thomson published the Overture with a preface presenting the case for subscription. He stated that one of the reasons for publishing the work was so that all can judge the matter before the Synod, mentioning that it would give the members of the congregation an opportunity to judge the issue and allow ruling elders to fulfill their duty.69 As in England and Ireland, the laity played a significant role in pressing for requiring subscription and Thomson appealed directly to them. He argued that there was no reason not to subscribe something that one believes and considered true.70 Following a line of argument that goes back to debates among English Dissenters, he stated that demanding adherence to what is founded on the Word of God cannot be tyranny, it is simply “to impose what Christ in and by his Word hath already imposed.”71 He went as far as to argue that

65 66 67 68

Letter from Andrews to Colman, quoted in Hodges, Constitutional History, I, p. 142. Bauman, p. 464. Wodrow, Correspondence, III, p. 456. A Letter from a Gentleman in Philadelphia to His Friend in Ireland about the Subscribing the Confession of Faith, transcription in Wod.Oct.XLV, fol. 218. 69 Overture, pp. 4–5. 70 ibid, p. 13 71 ibid, p. 14. This was one of the arguments for subscription used by an English Presbyterian, Daniel Wilcox, in The Duty of Holding Fast the Form of Sound Words. Refer’d to the Assembly’s Catechisms, and Confession of Faith; and Fit to Bind with them to which is added, A List of the

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while the words of the Confession are “composed by falible men” and thus “falling short of that perfection that the Scripture justly claims” nevertheless “so far as they are agreeable to the infallible Word, are themselves infallible, as to the truth contained in them.”72 Dickinson again led the opposition by presenting the case against subscription in his Remarks upon a Discourse.73 In it he questioned the usefulness of creeds to fulfill the duty to “maintain and defend the truths of the Gospel” that Thomson was calling for.74 He pointed to the problem of hypocritical subscription, citing as examples the “Arians” in the Church of England and Marrow Men in the Church of Scotland.75 He also contrasted the divisions over subscription in England and Ireland with peace enjoyed by the American Church: The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, subsisted some ages in peace and purity, to the honour of their profession, and envy of their malignant enemies; and thus might have probably have continued, had not the fires of subscription consumed their glory; and this engine of division broke them to pieces, disunited them in interest, in communion, and in charity; and rendered them the grief of their friends, and the scorn of their enemies. And on the other hand, the Churches of New-England have all continued from their first foundation Non-Subscribers; and yet retain their first faith and love.76

Rather than subscription, which has no divine authority Dickinson claimed, the Church should rely on rigorous examination of candidates and strict discipline.77 He closed by saying that he will not object to others subscribing, but he would not do so himself nor insist on others signing.78 When the Synod met in 1729 they appointed a committee to handle the overture. It included six members with equal representation from both sides: two Non-Subscribers, including Dickinson, and two Subscribers, Thomson and Andrews, were joined by four who were not committed to either side, one of whom was Thomas Craighead.79 Craighead, who had been in Ireland at the time

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

Divines in that Assembly: The Vow taken by every Member of his Entrance; with a Word of their Character, (London, 1717). ibid, pp. 14–5. Remarks upon a Discourse Intitled an Overture Presented to the Reverend Synod of Dissenting Ministers Sitting in Philadelphia, in the Month of September 1728 (New York, 1729). Dickinson, Remarks upon a discourse, pp. 4–5. ibid, pp. 11–12. ibid, pp. 8–9. ibid, pp. 15–8. ibid, p. 32. Luder Whitlock, ‘The Context of the Adopting Act’ in The Practice of Confessional Subscription, ed. by David W. Hall, second edn., (Oak Ridge, TN, 1997) , p. 99.

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of the adoption of the Pacific Act, was the brother of Robert Craighead (1684– 1738) who had been on the committee that drafted it.80 The Committee proposed the following, to which the Synod agreed before adjourning until later in the afternoon: Altho’ or the Synod do no claim pretend to any authority of imposing our faith upon other men’s consciences, but do profess our just dissatisfaction with and abhorrence of such impositions, and do utterly disclaim all legislative power and authority in the Church, being willing to receive one another, as Christ has received us to the Glory of God, and admit to fellowship in sacred ordinances all such as we have grounds to believe Christ will at last admit to the Kingdom of Heaven; yet we are undoubtedly obliged to take care that the faith once delivered to the saints be pure and uncorrupt among us, and so handed down to our posterity. And do therefore agree, th[a]t all minister of this Synod, or that shall hereafter be admitted into this Synod, shall declare their agreement in and approbation of the Confession of Faith with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, as being in all the essential and necessary Articles, good forms of sound words and systems of Christian doctrine; and do also adopt the said Confession and Catechisms as the Confession of our Faith. And we do also agree, th[a]t all the presbyteries within our bounds shall always take care not to admit any candidate of the ministry into the exercise of the sacred function, but what declares his agreement in opinion with all the essential and necessary Articles of said Confession, either by subscribing the said Confession of Faith and Catechisms, or by a verbal declaration of their assent thereto, as such minister or candidate shall think best. And in case any minister of this Synod or any candidate for the ministry shall have any scruple with respect to any Article or Articles of sd. Confession or Catechisms, he shall at the time of his making sd. declaration declare his sentiments to the Presbytery or Synod, who shall notwithstanding admit him to the exercise of the ministry within our bounds and to ministerial communion if the Synod or Presbytery shall judge his scruple or mistake to be only about Articles not essential and necessary in doctrine, worship or government. But if the Synod or Presbytery shall judge such ministers or candidates erronious in essential and necessary articles of faith, the Synod or Presbytery shall declare them uncapable of communion with them. And the Synod do solemnly agree, that none of us will traduce or use any opprobrious terms of those th[a]t differ from us in these extra-essential and not- necessary points of doctrine, but treat them with the same friendship, kindness and brotherly love, as if they had not differed from us in such sentiments.81

The Adopting Act has many similarities to the Irish Pacific Act, and in the context, especially given Craighead’s involvement, it is certain that it served as the source for the Committee’s proposal. But there are noticeable differences that were probably responses to the difficulties in the Synod of Ulster. The American Act is a stricter form. First, it includes not only the Confession but also the Shorter and 80 FAPC, p. 7; FIPC, p. 94; Cornman, p. 64; Whitlock, p. 99. 81 Minutes, pp. 103–4.

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Larger Catechisms. In this they might have been inspired by Irish Subscribers who had considered trying to add the Catechisms to their subscription requirements but did not after Wodrow advised against it since it would give the Non-Subscribers opportunity to complain of “growing impositions.”82 Second, a major contention among Irish Presbyterians had been the fact that the Pacific Act gave authority to judge the scruples only explicitly to the Presbytery.83 When the Presbytery of Belfast had accepted Haliday’s statement as in compliance with the the Pacificum they had argued a presbytery alone had the prerogative to judge according to the Act. In response, the American Synod reserved the right for the Synod to judge proposed scruples. Finally, the phrase chosen was “essential and necessary”, while not pressing the point too far, I would argue that the choice of the wording “essential and necessary” rather than “fundamental” was significant. The Irish Synod had debated the distinction between these terms in a declaration on the Trinity issued in response to Haliday’s installation.84 That is, they were insisting on subscription, not to the Fundamental Articles of Christianity, but the doctrines essential to the system in the Westminster Confession. After the Synod reconvened the ministers proceeded to propose scruples to the standards. The issues presented were with “some clauses in the 20. and 23. chapters”, that is the Articles dealing with the power of the civil authorities.85 They “unanimously agreed in the solution of those scruples” and declared the Confession and Catechisms “to be the Confession of their faith” with the exception of those clauses which: the Synod do unanimously declare, th[a]t they do not receive those Articles in any such sense as to suppose the civil magistrate hath a controling power over synods with respect to the exercise of their ministerial authority; or power to persecute any for their religion, or in any sense contrary to the Protestant succession to the throne of Great-Britain.86

Later interpretations would divide these as the morning Preliminary Act and the afternoon Adopting Act.87 This has led to the claim that they only allowed scruples related to the Articles that dealt with the magistrate.88 However, in light 82 Wod.Lett.Qu XXI, no. 81. 83 Records of the General Synod of Ulster from 1691 to 1820, 3 vols., (Belfast, 1890–1898), I, pp. 521–2. 84 A Brief Review of a Paper Intituled A Letter from the Presbytery of Antrim, (1730), p. 55; and James Seaton Reid and W. D. Killen, History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland: Comprising the Civil History of the Province of Ulster, From the Accession of James the First: with a Preliminary Sketch of the Progress of the Reformed Religion in Ireland During the Sixteenth Century, and an Appendix Consisting of Original Papers, 3 vols., (Belfast, 1867), III, p. 137. 85 Minutes, p. 104. 86 ibid. 87 ibid, p. 141; George W. Knight, III, ‘Subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms’, in Practice of Confessional Subscription, p. 120–4; cf. Hodge, p. 187. 88 Knight, ibid.

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of the actual overture by Thomson, which stipulated the two needs, it makes more sense to see the morning session establishing the requirement and terms of subscription and the afternoon session as the formal adoption by the Synod. In other words, the Synod’s adopting of the Confession is distinguished from the requirement for subscription and later debates in the American Church have been the result of not recognizing the distinction. The “preliminary” or morning session is the only one to explicitly require subscription. Moreover, allowing presbyteries to judge scruples would be nonsense had the Synod intended to decide what scruples would be allowed in the afternoon session. Subsequent pronouncements of the Synod attempted to clarify the Act have only made interpretation more difficult. The minutes of the morning session began to be circulated apart from the actual adoption.89 A version sent to Ireland is an example of this quoting only the morning session, with a note suggesting that the Irish Presbyterians might look to it as an example.90 The publication of only a portion of the Synod’s minutes caused confusion and concern, especially among the laity. In the back of the minute book of the Presbytery of New Castle there is the note, dated 4 September 1730: Whereas divers persons, belonging to several of our congregations have been […] offended with a certain minute of ye proceedings [of] our last Synod contained in a printed letter because of some ambiguous words or expressions contained therein […] we being willing to remove as far as in w[hich] lies all causes and occasions of jealousies would to testify that we all with one accord firmly adhere to the same sound doctrine w[hi]ch we and our forefathers were trained up in. We the ministers of thee Presby of New Castle whose names are under written do by this our act of subscribing our Names to these presents solemnly declare and testify that we own & acknowledge the Westminster Confession and Catechisms to be the Confession of our faith being in all things agreeable to the Word of God so far as we are able to judge & discern, taking them in the true [and] genuine and obvious sense of the words.

While some have considered this an “unqualified” mandatory subscription, in light of the way Subscribers in England and Ireland handled questions, this is obviously a voluntary subscription similar to those at Salters’ Hall and Exeter in 1719 and in General Synod of Ulster in 1721, primarily to quell the fears of the laity.91 Again, there is no Act “demanding unqualified subscription” in the minutes.92 The Presbytery of New Castle brought the matter to the Synod, which noted in the minutes of their 17 September 1730 meeting: 89 90 91 92

Hodge, p. 183. A Letter from a Gentleman in Philadelphia to his friend in Ireland, Wod.Oct.XLV, fol. 218. Nichols, p. 60. Contra Trinterud, p. 50.

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Whereas some persons have been dissatisfied at the manner of wording our last years agreement about the Confession &c: supposing some expressions not sufficiently obligatory upon intrants; overtured th[a]t the Synod do now declare, that they understand those clauses that respect the admission of intrants or candidates in such a sense as to oblige them to receive and adopt the Confession and Catechisms at their admission in the same manner and as fully as the members of the Synod did that were then present. which overture was unanimously agreed to by the Synod.93

This has been interpreted to mean that the only exceptions allowed by the Adopting Act would be to the 20th and 23rd Article which were scrupled at the previous meeting.94 Some have taken this to be a simple clarification of the original intent of the Act.95Others, noting the absence of Dickinson and others who had opposed subscription from that years meeting, have seen it as part of an attempt to eliminate the allowance of scruples form the Act by a strict subscription party.96 It was seen by some contemporaries as amending the 1729 Act to take away the “too great latitude expressed in it.”97 And the laity in the Presbytery of New Castle were satisfied when the Synod’s 1730 statement was presented to them later that year.98 The difficulty is that this understanding conflicts with other statements from the Synod as will be seen in the following section. Further, there is no record of any protest by opposition. It is possible that “as fully as the members of the Synod did that were then present” could be understood to be simply in all “essential and necessary” articles as judged by the Presbytery or Synod. This continued to be the understanding of many in the Synod as revealed by events relating to an early heresy trial in which the method of subscribing was questioned.

10.5 The Hemphill Case Samuel Hemphill, not to be confused with an Irish Subscribing minister of the same name, was licensed by the Presbytery of Strabane in 1730, where he would have subscribed.99 He moved to America in 1734 where he was called as Andrews’ colleague in Philadelphia.100 He was admitted to the Synod with recom-

93 94 95 96 97

Minutes, p. 108. Hodge, p. 184. Knight, ‘Subscription’, p. 122. Trinterud, p. 50. John Thomson, The Government of the Church of Christ, and the Authority of Church Judicatories Established on a Scripture Foundation, (Philadelphia, 1741), p. 68. 98 Presbytery of New Castle Minutes, p. 173. 99 FAPC, p. 10. 100 William S. Barker, ‘The Samuel Hemphill Heresy Case (1735) and the Historic Method of

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mendations from the Presbytery of Strabane on 21 September 1734 at which time he: declared for and adopted the Westminster Confession Catechisms and Directory commonly annexed, the former as the Confession of [his] faith and the latter as the guide of [his] practice in matters of discipline as far as may be agreeable to the rules of prudence &c: as in the adopting Acts of this Synod is directed101

Soon after Hemphill began preaching, Andrews brought heresy against him.102 The accusations caught the attention of Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) who was well established in Philadelphia as publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard’s Almanac at the time.103 Franklin had previously attended the Church under Andrews’ preaching but found his preaching “dull, uninteresting, and unedifying.”104 Following Hemphill’s arrival he attended the Church again, this time pleased with Hemphill, who according to Franklin, “delivered with a good voice, & apparently extempore, most excellent discourses.”105 A week before the Synod’s commission was to begin proceedings against Hemphill, Franklin published “A Dialogue Between Two of the Presbyterians Meeting in this City” in the 10 April issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette.106 In “A Dialogue”, Franklin defended Hemphill and argued that the Synod should not silence a minister for disagreeing with a fallible confession, “has not a synod that meets in King George the Second’s reign, as much right to interpret Scripture, as one that met in Oliver’s time?”.107 Hemphill’s trial began on 17 April 1735 and concluded on the 26th.108 In May the Commission published An Extract of the Minutes of the Commission of the Synod, Relating to the Affair of the Reverend Mr. Samuel Hemphill, which included their decision “that Mr. Hemphill be suspended from all the parts of his ministerial office until the next meeting of our Synod” which was to then decide to whether his sentence should continue or be removed.109

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109

Subscribing to the Westminster Standards’, in The Practice of Confessional Subscription, pp. 152–8. Minutes, p. 121. Note the plural of ‘adopting Acts of this Synod’. Minutes, p. 121; Barker, p. 153. Barker, p. 153. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, p. 100, quoted in Merton Christensen, ‘Franklin on the Hemphill Trial: Deism Versus Presbyterian Orthodoxy’, The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 10, no. 3, (1953) 422–40, (p. 425). quoted in Barker, p. 152. Barker, p. 154; Buxbaum, LeBeau ‘A Dialogue’ is reprinted in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. by Leonard W. Labaree, (New Have, 1960), vol. 2, pp. 27–31. ‘A Dialogue’, in The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 2, p. 32. Barker, p. 155. An Extract, p. 2.

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In response to the Extracts Franklin published Some Observations on the Proceedings against the Rev. Mr. Hemphill; with a Vindication of His Sermons in July.110 The Commission responded with A Vindication of the Reverend Commission, primarily penned by Dickinson and published 4 September.111 This work helps us to understand the general view of the Adopting Act in the Synod, as it was published under their authority. The Vindication, pointed out that Hemphill had “solemnly declared his assent to our doctrines, and adopted our Confession as the Confession of his Faith” but had preached sermons that were not consistent with the “principles he profes’d.”112 He continued by enumerating how the charges oppose the Confession, notably including that Hemphill was teaching that faith is “but an assent to or perswasion [sic] of the gospel upon rational grounds” and that he “opened the door of the Church wide enough to admit all honest heathen.”113 Against Hemphill’s claim that “all he declared to at his admission into the Synod were the fundamental Articles of the Confession of Faith”, the Commission explained the Adopting Act: It was agreed that all the ministers in this Synod, or that hereafter shall be admitted into this Synod, do declare their agreement in and approbation of the Confession of Faith, with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, as being in all the essential and necessary articles, good forms of sound words, and systems of Christian doctrine; and do adopt them as the Confession of their Faith, &c. And in case any minister of this Synod, or any candidate of the ministry, shall have any scruple with respect to any article or articles of the said Confession or Catechisms, he shall at the time of his making said declaration, declare his scruples to the Presbytery or Synod, who shall notwithstanding admit him to the exercise of the ministry within their bounds, and to ministerial communion; if the Synod or Presbytery shall judge his scruple or mistake to be only about Articles not essential or necessary, in doctrine, worship or government.114

This shows that the Commission, which included Thomson, understood the Adopting Act, even after the 1730 explication, to allow scruples to “any article or articles” and not only those specified in the 1729 Minutes.115 Hemphill did not attend the September 1735 meeting of Synod, but sent a letter announcing that his Answer to the Vindication would soon be published and that he “despise[d] the Synod’s Claim of Authority.”116 He added a postscript 110 111 112 113 114 115 116

Barker, p. 155. Barker, pp. 155–6, LeBeau, pp. 52–6. Vindication, p. 4. ibid, p. 41. Vindication, p. 23. Barker, p. 161. Minutes, p. 130.

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“I shall think you’ll do me a deal of honour if you entirly excommunicate me.”117 The Synod unanimously deposed him and authorized the Commission to publish any responses to Hemphill “or his friends” that they find necessary.118 This implies approval of the previous publication and its explanation of the Synod’s method of subscribing. As the Synod was meeting, Franklin published a Letter to a Friend in the Country, Containing the Substance of a Sermon Preach’d at Philadelphia, in the Congregation of the Rev. Mr. Hemphill, Concerning the Terms of Christian and Ministerial Communion.119 In A Letter, Hemphill, rather than defending himself against the charges, challenges the right of a Church to impose any other term of communion than the belief in Scripture.120 Dickinson replied with Remarks upon a Pamphlet, entitled a Letter to a Friend in the Country in November.121 He showed that the Church had to avoid the two extremes of licentiousness and tyranny, being careful lest in the attempt to “escape impositions, we shall open a door to infidelity, and instead of charity and mutual forbearance, we shall make shipwreck of the faith as well as peace of our Churches.”122 While he denied any form of coercion or legislative power since “Christ’s Kingdom is not of this world”, he nevertheless claimed that every society has right to “adhere to their own sentiments whatever they be.”123 He also turned an argument against confessions by their absence in the early Church into evidence for their need; creeds, rather than a cause of division, were developed in response to divisive errors that had arisen in their absence.124 Dickinson based his defense of confessions, not in their agreement with Scripture and derived authority, but in the claim that individuals have a right to judge for themselves and reject error, and therefore communion with those who hold those errors.125 Since

117 118 119 120 121 122 123

ibid. ibid, p. 130–1. (Philadelphia, 1735); Barker, p. 156. Letter to a Friend in the Country, p. 9. published in Philadelphia Remarks upon a Pamphlet, p. 2. ibid, pp. 3–4. This follows an argument for the use of Confessions presented by William Dunlop (1692–1720), Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Edinburgh, in A Preface to an Edition of the Westminster Confession, &c. Lately Publish’d at Edinburgh. Being a full and particular account of all the ends and uses of creeds and confessions of faith. A defence of their justice, reasonableness and necessity, as a publick standard of orthodoxy, and an examination of the principal objections brought by different authors, against them, especially such as are to be found in the works of Episcopius and LeClerk, in the Rights of the Christian Church, and in the occasional Papers,(London, 1720). 124 ibid, p. 11. 125 ibid, p. 15.

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the Synod allows differences in non-essentials, the requirement for subscription can not be an imposition.126 We allow of no confession of faith, as a test of orthodoxy for others, but only as a declaration of our own sentiments, nor may this be imposed upon the members of our own society, nor their assent required to any thing as a condition of their communion with us; but what we esteem essentially necessary.127 In this we see how Dickinson, who had previously opposed subscription, came to terms with it as a method of ensuring an individual’s right to unite only with those with whom they are in agreement.128 Franklin published A Defence of the Rev. Mr Hemphill’s Observations in October which was followed by Dickinson, under the pseudonym ‘Obadiah Jenkins”, publishing Remarks upon the Defense of the Reverend Mr. Hemphill’s Observations in the 6 January 1736 edition of Bradford’s Weekly Mercury.129 The publications responding to Hemphill’s trial led to another explication which has been a further source of contention. At the 1736 meeting, from which Dickinson was absent, the Synod received a supplication from the “People of Paxton and Derry.”130 They were concerned over the official status of the Confession since the Commission’s Vindication quoted only the first section of the Adopting Act. In response the following declaration was unanimously approved: Th[a]t inasmuch as we understand th[a]t many persons of our perswasion both more lately and formerly have been offended with some expressions or distinctions in the first or preliminary Act of our Synod, contained in the printed paper, relating to our receiving or adopting the Westminster Confession & Catechisms &c: That in order to remove said offence and all jealousies th[a]t have arisen or amy arise in any of our people’s minds on occasion of sd. distinctions and expressions, the Synod doth declare, th[a]t the Synod have adopted and still do adhere to the Westminster Confession Catechisms and Directory without the least variation or alteration, and without any regard to sd. distinctions. And we do further declare th[a]t this was our meaning and true intent in our first adopting of s[ai]d. Confession, as may particularly appear by our Adopting Act which is as followeth.131

The declaration continues by quoting the minutes from the afternoon session of 1729.

126 ibid, pp. 25–6. 127 ibid, p. 26. 128 For the effect of the Hemphill trial on Dickinson’s views of subscription see Le Beau, Jonathan Dickinson, pp. 45–63. 129 Barker, p. 157. 130 Minutes, p. 142; Hodge, p. 188. The same year the Synod refused to admit a Henry Hunter, in part, because he had ‘his credentials from the Presbry of Antrim w[hi]ch has separated from the Synod of Ireland, and w[i]th whom we have no Communion’, (pp. 142–3.) 131 Minutes, p. 141.

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While this was taken as repealing the allowance of exceptions by some in the Synod, other contested this interpretation.132 As had been the case in Ireland, there was disagreement over what the Adopting Act and subsequent explications meant; it was interpreted and applied differently.133 But, unlike the Irish Church, there never was a “test case” comparable to Haliday’s installation at Belfast that would bring these differences into open conflict. In the Hemphill case the Synod of Philadelphia was united against him, if anything his trial brought the two sides closer in their understanding of subscription. As Le Beau has suggested, the Hemphill case convinced Dickinson of the need for limits to freedom of conscience.134 Furthermore, the Subscribers would have to allow that subscription was not an infallible guard; Hemphill had subscribed twice. For a brief time the Church found a way to be united, even if not in complete agreement over subscription. Although the manifest issue concerning the place of the Confession was settled, the core question of Church authority, especially the relationship of the hierarchy of Church courts, was not. Other points of debate would replace the question of subscription in the subsequent years leading to a further debate over Church authority and ultimately to schism.

10.6 Church Power and the 1741 Schism In 1740, Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764), preached his notorious “Nottingham sermon”, The Danger of an Unconverted Minstry.135 Tennent, nephew to one of the leaders of the Irish Subscribers, Gilbert Kennedy, had come to America with his father and three brothers in 1718.136 He had been educated in his father’s Academy, derisively called the “Log College.”137 Tennent’s sons and other grad-

132 Reasons of Mr. Alexander Creaghead’s Receding from the Present Judicatures of this Church, Together with its Constitution (Philadelphia, 1743), pp. iv–xi. 133 D. G. Hart and John R. Muether, Seeking a Better Country: 300 Years of American Presbyterianism (Phillipsburg, 2007),, p. 49. 134 LeBeau, Jonathan Dickinson and the Formative Years, pp. 45–63. 135 Gilbert Tennent, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry, considered in a Sermon on Mark VI.34. Preached at Nottingham, in Pennsylvania, March 8. Anno 1739,40. (Philadelphia, 1740). 136 FAPC, Archibald Alexander, The Log College, (London, 1968), p. 14; S.T. Logan, ‘Tennent, Gilbert (1703–1764)’, in DPRTA, pp. 257–8; for more on Tennent see M.J. Coalter, Jr., Gilbert Tennent, Son of Thunder (Westport, CT, 1986); C.N.Wilborn, ‘Gilbert Tennent: Pietist, Preacher, and Presbyterian’, in Colonial Presbyterianism: Old Faith in a New Land, Princeton Theological Monograph Series, (Euegene, OR, 2007), ed. by Donald S. Fortson, III, pp. 135–56. 137 For more on the Log College see David B. Calhoun, ‘The Log College’, in Colonial Presbyterianism, pp. 47–62; Cornman, Caterpillars and New Fangled Religion, pp. 67–84; James W.

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uates of his Academy were proponents of the Great Awakening and had adopted revivalistic methods. In his sermon, Tennent referred to the traditionalists in the Synod, or “Old Side”, as “pharisee-shepherds”, “unconverted teachers”, and “caterpillars [who] labour to devour every green thing”.138 His opponents were not simply opposed to the innovations of the revivalists; the formal conflict leading to the 1741 break stemmed from the Presbytery of New Brunswick’s refusal to comply with a series of Acts the Synod had passed in relation to more controversial aspects of the revivals: education and itineracy. In 1726, William Tennent (1673–1746), began his pastorate at Little Neshaminy Creek, Buck’s County Pennsylvania; his wife Katherine, was Gilbert Kennedy’s sister.139 The date is uncertain, but within a few years of taking the charge, he began educating his sons for the ministry and soon accepted other students as well.140 Tennent’s Academy was modeled on the Irish Dissenting Academies, but unlike them served as a substitute rather than preparation for a university education.141 Some believed that the education received at the “Log College” was inadequate and in 1738 the Synod enacted that any students who had not received an education from “some of [th]e New-England or European Colleges” would be examined and approved by a Committee of the Synod before a Presbytery allowed them to enter the ministry.142 That August, the Presbytery of New Brunswick violated the Act by licensing John Rowland (d.1747), a Welshman who had studied at Tennent’s Academy.143 At the next year’s Synod, the Presbytery of New Brunswick was rebuked.144 Another divisive issue was itineracy, or the practice of a minister preaching outside the bounds of their presbytery without the approval of the host congregation’s presbytery.145 In 1735, Donegal Presbytery sent a letter to New Castle Presbytery protesting the intrusion by some of the latter’s probationers.146 In 1737, Gilbert Tennent preached at Maidenhead without permission from the

138 139 140 141 142 143

144 145 146

Fraser, ‘The Great Awakening and new patterns of Presbyterian theological education’, Journal of Presbyterian History, 60, (1982) pp. 189–208. Tennent, Danger of an Unconverted Ministry, pp. 3–4. Calhoun, ‘The Log College’, p. 48; Webster, History of the Presbyterian Church in America, pp. 422–5; FAPC, pp. 22–3. ibid. Cornman, p.68. Minutes of the Presbyterian Church in America, p. 157. ibid, p. 164; Cornman, p. 73; George Ingram, ‘The Erection of the Presbytery of New Brunswick, Together with Some Account of the Beginnings of Organized Presbyterianism in the American Colonies’, Journal of the Presbyterian Historical Society 6 (1912), pp. 229–232; Webster, History of the Presbyterian Church in America, pp. 469–473. Minutes, p. 164. Anthony L. Blair, ‘Shattered and Divided: Itineracy, Ecclesiology, and Revivalism in the Presbyterian Awakening’, Journal of Presbyterian History 81 (2003) 18–34. Cornman, p. 89.

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Presbytery of Philadelphia, of which the congregation was a constituent.147 That year the Synod approved an overture forbidding probationers and ministers from preaching in other presbyteries without consent, reminding preachers and congregations that they “ought to look upon themselves, as under the direction and government of their respective presby[te]rys.”148 Tennent ignored the Synod’s prohibition preaching again at Maidenhead that October.149 The issue was brought to the Synod again in 1738 and 1740.150 In 1740 Tennent preached his inflammatory sermon. As will be seen, the interpretation of the Adopting Act remained an implicit point of contention, but it was the fundamental question of Church government that was the point of debate. As Thomson’s statement of the Old Side’s position in The Government of the Church of Christ made clear, the dispute between the two groups was “the vastly different and opposite Judgment and sentiments […] in relation to Church government.”151 Moreover he recognized the origin of the New Side’s views in Irish Non-Subscription, “I will add one general remark upon all our brethren’s arguments, viz. that they are all borrowed from the New-Light men, or Non-Subscribers in the North of Ireland; they are as like them as one crow’s egg is like another.”152 This section will show how that the ecclesiology and polity expressed by the Irish Presbyterian “New Light” theologians were adopted, apart from the question of subscription, by the revivalist ministers to defend their disobedience to the Synod on the issues of itineracy and education. Rather than being “definitely English Puritans in spirit”, as Trinterud wrote, the Tennent’s and the other Irish “Log College Men” were solidly in line with an element of Irish Presbyterianism.153 In 1741, Robert Cross, minister at Philadelphia, brought a protest before the Synod.154 Similar to the Subscriber’s in the General Synod of Ulster in 1726, the protest argued: that it is the indispensable duty of this Synod, to maintain and stand by the principles of doctrine, worship and government of the Church of Christ, as the same are summed up in the Confession of Faith, Catechisms and Directory composed by the Westminster Assembly, as being agreeable to the word of God, and which this Synod have owned, acknowledged and adopted; as may appear by our Synodical Records of the years 1729, 1729[sic], 1736.155 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155

ibid, pp. 93–4. Minutes, p. 150. Cornman, p. 94. Minutes, pp. 153–4, 161–3. John Thomson, The Government of the Church, (Philadelphia, 1741) ibid, pp. 113–4. Trinterud, p. 54. Minutes, p. 174, 186–91. ibid, p. 187.

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And “no person, minister or elder should be allowed to sit and vote in this Synod, who hath not received, adopted, or subscribed the said Confessions, Catechisms and Directory, as our presbyteries respectively do, according to our last Explication of the adopting Act” or Acts contrary to these.156 It concluded that the “protesting Brethren [scil. the Presbytery of New Brunswick] have at present no right to sit and vote as members of this Synod, having forfeited their right of being accounted members of it.”157 The action is similar to that of the General Synod of Ulster in 1726, the expelled ministers were neither tried nor defrocked, they were simply declared to have forfeited their right to membership in Synod due to their “anti-Presbyterial practices”. Along with the revivalistic practices, intineracy, and the education of ministers, Cross gave as the first reason for his protest: Their heterodox and anarchical principles expressed in their Apology […] where they expressly deny that presbyteries have authority to oblige their dissenting members, and [tha]t Synod should go any further, in judging of appeals or references &c. than to give their best advice; which is plainly to divest the officers and judicatories of Christ’s Kingdom of all authority.158

After the protest was signed by “several members”, the Synod declared the “New Side” ministers “had no right to sit” in Synod.159 After they withdrew the Synod immediately passed the following Act: Th[a]t every member of this Synod whether ministr. or elder do sincerely and heartily receive, own acknowledge or subscribe, the Westminstr. Confession of Faith and larger and shorter Catechisms as the Confession of his Faith, and the Directory as far as circumstances will allow and admit in this infant Ch[urc]h for the rule of Church order. Ordered th[a]t every session do oblige their elders at their admission to do the same.160

The “Old Side” saw the 1730 and 1736 explications as strengthening subscription. The extension to include the Directory as “the rule of Church order” shows submission to the Synod’s authority and the Presbyterial form of government as a primary concern. While subscription was not explicitly debated, it was a mark of the differences between the two groups. In 1745 the Presbytery of New York, who had protested the actions of the 1741 Synod, united with the excluded ministers forming the Synod of New York.161 Part of the “Plan & Foundation of their Synodical Union” 156 157 158 159 160 161

ibid, p. 188. ibid. ibid. Minutes, p. 174. ibid. A. C. Guelzo, ‘New Side Presbyterians’, in Dicitionary of Presbyteiran & Reformed Tradition in America, ed by D.G. Hart and Mark Noll, (Phillipsburg, 2005), pp. 175–6; Minutes, p. 263.

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was that “the Westminster Confession of Faith, with the larger & shorter Catechisms be the publick Confession of their faith in such manner as was agreed unto by the Synod of Philadelphia in the year 1729 […] and they declare their approbation of the directory […] as the general plan of worship & discipline.”162 The omission of the later Acts indicates an insistence on the principle of allowing candidates to scruple portions of the Confession. The Apology Cross had referred to was a paper presented by Tennent and later published with Remarks upon a Protestation.163 In these he offers an ecclesiology similar to that of John Abernethy and the Irish Non-Subscribers. He defined a presbytery as “such a number of ministers, more or less, with the elders of their several Congregations, as can conveniently meet together so often as occasion may require” stating that these “have full and complete power for ordering all the affairs of the Church within their Bounds’ including “a power from Christ to ordain.”164 Lower courts are to be held accountable to the superior courts “for error in doctrine or wrong conduct.”165 The rulings of the Synod concerning education and itineracy however encroach upon the rights of presbyteries and were based on the false idea that a majority in the Synod “have a power committed to them from Christ to make new rules, Acts or Canons.”166 While he was willing to accept “all regular subordination of judicatories to one another”, he denied the “superior judicatory’s assuming to itself a power […] arbitrarily to examine over again, candidates.”167 Against the Synod’s Act to examine candidates” education, he claimed for presbyteries alone “the power of ordering the whole work of ordination.”168 Tennent clearly accepted the propriety of a confession and subscription, “it is the duty of Synods to have a Confession of Faith, in which they ought to express their sentiments, concerning the essentials of doctrine, worship and discipline; which ought to be adopted by those they admit as members of their body.”169 But he uses subscription to defend the right to dissent from Synodical decisions: to suppose that a majority of that body […] are vested with a power authoritatively to make new laws or Acts […] binding the smaller number to obey them, who conscientiously scruple and oppose them […] so that they shall be excluded from Synodical communion, upon their conscientious dissent and non-conformity, is, we think, to

162 Minutes, p. 263. 163 Gilbert Tennent, Remarks upon a Protestation Presented to the Synod of Philadelphia June 1 1741 (Philadelphia, 1741). 164 ibid, pp. 48, 50. 165 ibid, p. 51. 166 ibid, p. 53. 167 ibid, p. 5. 168 ibid, p. 16. 169 ibid.

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signify, that the Confession of Faith and Directory already agreed to, is insufficient to answer its design […] as well as to open a door for continual oppressions, schisms, and convulsions.170

In other words, to exclude those who dissent from Acts of the Synod is to put every decision of the court on the same level as the Confession; every ruling is made a term of communion and subscription is pointless. Thomson, who had introduced the overture calling for subscription, responded with The Government of the Church of Christ.171 Claiming that the “New Side” were against the Synod and all Presbyterians, he ridiculed the notion that anyone should appeal to a body “which they are nowise bound to submit to.”172 He claimed that all societies have a right to rule and govern their members developing a Scriptural argument that the Church is not excluded from this general rule.173 This shows an awareness of the essential arguments against Church power derived from Hoadly whose thesis is that the Church does not have this authority which is vested in Christ alone as the head. Thomson appealed to texts such as: Matthew 16.19 the giving of the keys of the kingdom “to Peter in the name of all the apostles, and in them to the officers of the Church to succeeding ages”; Acts 20.28, arguing that the very term Bishop “imports authority of a shepherd […] which is certainly more than merely consultative”; and 1 Timothy 3.5 and Hebrews 8.7 for the use of the word “rule” applied to ministers.174 He continued to outline the traditional view of the authority of the hierarchy of Church courts and show that there were already remedies for those who dissent from the opinion of the majority, such as in the right to enter a protest.175 Finally, he pointed to the voluntary nature of the Church – if someone participates in the decision making process by voting, they are implicitly but necessarily submitting themselves to the result of the vote.176 He wrote, “When a person joins himself as a member of any society, his so doing doth […] imply a promise to comply and submit to the laws and government of it in all things lawful, and consequently must imply a giving up of his liberty.177 Moreover, any subordinate body has no right to participate in the superior assembly unless they are willing to be regulated by it.178 Thomson offered one of the best arguments for the rights of Synod

170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178

ibid, pp. 16–7. John Thomson, The Government of the Church of Christ, (Philadelphia, 1741). ibid, p. 56. ibid, p. 58. ibid, pp. 57–8. ibid, p. 62. ibid, p. 67. ibid, p. 81. ibid, pp. 53–5.

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to expect compliance with its decisions. He based the authority to govern on Scripture, but did not go to the extreme that others would. This division continued until 1758 when the two Synods united to form the Synod of New York and Philadelphia.179 The terms of union included the statement that: Both Synods having always approv’d and receiv’d the Westminster Confession of Faith, larger and shorter Catechisms, as an orthodox & excellent system of Christian doctrine […] still receive the same, as the Confession of our Faith … strictly enjoining it on all our members, and probationers for the ministry, that they preach & teach according to the form of sound words in said Confession & Catechisms.180 The authority of the Synod was addressed, stating that, when any matter is determined by a major vote, every mem[ber] shall either actively concur with, or passively submit […] [or] peaceab[ly with]draw […] provided always, that this shall be understood to extend only to Determinations, as the body shall judge indispensable in doct[rine] or Presbyterian Gover[n]ment.”181

It was a compromise that incorporated the views of the “New Side” and therefore the Irish Non-Subscribers. The Synod’s authority was affirmed, though limited to essential matters of doctrine and government, of which the Synod, not the individual, was judge. As to the issue of subscription, the reunited Synod stated: no presbytery shall licence, ordain to the work of the ministry any candidate, untill he give them competent satis[fac]tion as to his learning … and declare [his] acceptance of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and Catechisms, [as] the Confession of his Faith, and promise subjection to the [Pr]esbyterian plan of gover[n]ment in the Westminster Directory.182

The controversy in the Synod of Philadelphia came at a crucial point in the history of the American Church. By dealing with the issues of subscription, and more importantly, of Church power in the early years of it development, these discussions influenced the formation of the Church’s constitution as well as much of its later self-understanding. The Irish Church had a strong impact on the development of the Presbyterian Church in America in the modeling of the Adopting Act on the Pacificum as well the importation of the Non-Subscriber’s views of Church government into the American Church’s constitution.

179 180 181 182

Minutes, p. 339. ibid, pp. 340–1. ibid, p. 341. ibid.

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11. The Legacy of John Witherspoon and the Founding of Princeton Theological Seminary: Samuel Stanhope Smith, Ashbel Green, and the Contested Meaning of Enlightened Education

11.1 Introduction: A Seminary “Uncontaminated by the College” In his celebrated analysis of the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment on American higher education in the eighteenth century, Douglas Sloan claims that John Witherspoon, who was President of the College of New Jersey from the time of his arrival from Scotland in 1768 to the time of his death in 1794, “could hardly have wished for a successor more committed to his own religious and educational ideals than was Samuel Stanhope Smith.”1 Smith was the true heir of Witherspoon’s legacy at what came to be known as Princeton College, Sloan contends, because he “continued to broaden and strengthen the college curriculum, to insist upon a modern, well-rounded education for ministers, and to carry on Witherspoon’s program of harmonizing religion and Enlightenment rationalism.”2 Informing Sloan’s understanding of the continuity between Witherspoon and Smith is his insistence that Witherspoon’s conception of “ministerial education” was grounded in a distinctly modern understanding of “the ministerial ideal itself.”3 According to Sloan, while “the revivalist leaders of the college before [Witherspoon]” acknowledged that culture, “propriety and decorum” were “important for the minister,” they nonetheless insisted that the new birth was “essential” to true piety, and thus to the pursuit of true virtue as well.4 With Witherspoon, however, “a different set of priorities in the relationship between piety and dignity was beginning to take hold” due to his subtle yet no less decisive 1 Douglas Sloan, The Scottish Enlightenment and the American College Ideal (New York: Teachers College Press, 1971), 146. 2 Ibid., cf. 162. M. L. Bradbury concurs with Sloan, arguing that Smith was Witherspoon’s “direct heir,” in part because his work “may be described […] as a careful and sensitive unfolding of Witherspoon’s thought” (M. L. Bradbury, “Samuel Stanhope Smith: Princeton’s Accommodation to Reason,” Journal of Presbyterian History 48, 3 [1970]: 189, 193). 3 Sloan, Scottish Enlightenment, 131, 132. 4 Ibid., 137, 135, 132.

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accommodation of “the more man-centered ethic of the Scottish moral philosophers.”5 For Witherspoon, and unlike his predecessors at the college, Sloan contends, “it became almost more essential for the minister to be a man of learning and dignity than for him to have had an experience of the new birth.”6 Indeed, although “Witherspoon could, and often did, speak the same language as the revivalists in extolling the necessity for a new birth,” still “his ideal of the educated man in general and of the minister in particular” placed confidence in the moral competence of the unregenerated soul “at the heart of his theology,” and for that reason he came to stress the “moral side” of piety more than the necessity of “conversion itself.”7 In Sloan’s assessment, then, Smith was the true heir of Witherspoon’s legacy at the college because he, like Witherspoon, sought to prepare men for life in the new republic by providing an education that privileged the more moderate assumptions of the Scottish intellectual tradition.8 Even though Sloan acknowledges that Smith sought to unite piety and learning by exploring the various “modes” of the Scottish Enlightenment “with [even] greater consistency and breadth than Witherspoon had ever done,” nevertheless he suggests that Witherspoon laid the groundwork for Smith to do so by founding his efforts upon a “gentlemanly ideal” that was ultimately informed more by notions of virtue appropriated from Scottish Moderates than it was by convictions typically associated with a more orthodox reading of the Westminster Confession of Faith.9 So what are we to make of this assessment? Was Smith the true heir of Witherspoon’s legacy at the college, as Sloan would have us believe? Or did Witherspoon’s mantle in fact fall elsewhere within what Mark Noll refers to as the 5 Ibid., 135, 163. The Scottish philosophers most relevant to the substance of this essay are Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) and Thomas Reid (1710–96). William Hudnut argues that at the heart of Scottish Realism was the conviction “that experience and an observation of nature and mankind are the best doorways to a competent knowledge of the laws of the natural and moral worlds” (William H. Hudnut III, “Samuel Stanhope Smith: Enlightened Conservative,” Journal of the History of Ideas 17, 4 [October 1956]: 548). Jack Scott contends that Witherspoon “brought Scottish Common Sense philosophy to prominence just at a time when this philosophy fitted the intellectual needs of America […]. In fact, the key to Witherspoon’s influence was the way in which his thought coincided with the public mood of the day” (Jack Scott, ed., An Annotated Edition of Lectures on Moral Philosophy by John Witherspoon [Newark, N.J.: University of Delaware Press, 1982], 50, 51). 6 Sloan, Scottish Enlightenment, 132. 7 Ibid., 135, 133, 136, 137, 136. Note that the word “moral” in the phrase “the ‘moral side’ of piety” is being used in this sentence to refer not to the underlying character or disposition of the heart that is at the foundation of true piety, but it is being used more superficially to refer to the behavior that is typically – though not always accurately – associated with true piety. 8 For a helpful overview of the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment on American evangelical thought since the eighteenth century, see Mark A. Noll, “Common Sense Traditions and American Evangelical Thought,” American Quarterly 37, 2 (Summer 1985): 216–38. 9 Sloan, Scottish Enlightenment, 146, 137.

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“Princeton circle”?10 The forthcoming discussion is grounded in the contention that Sloan’s assessment is finally problematic for two distinct yet interrelated reasons. In the first place, it is problematic because it is based upon an assumption that is difficult to reconcile with occasional comments throughout Witherspoon’s writings that point to the likely epicenter of his theological understanding, including his unambiguous insistence that “regeneration or the new birth” – and not confidence in the moral competence of the unregenerated soul – “is the one subject in which all others meet as in a centre.”11 While Witherspoon certainly acknowledged that the unregenerate can obey the moral law and thus be virtuous “in a certain measure,”12 and while he insisted that the unregenerate can have a speculative understanding of what God has revealed and thus can have knowledge that is true as far as it goes,13 he nonetheless was persuaded that 10 According to Noll, the history of the college from the time of Witherspoon’s arrival from Scotland in 1768 to the time of Samuel Stanhope Smith’s death in 1819 “is the story of a ‘circle’ made up of the college’s leaders and students. The inspiration for this circle […] was John Witherspoon, but at its center for many more years stood Stanhope Smith” (Mark A. Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 1768–1822: The Search for a Christian Enlightenment in the Era of Samuel Stanhope Smith [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989], 3). 11 John Witherspoon, A Practical Treatise on Regeneration (John 3:3), in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, Second Edition, Revised and Corrected (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1802), 1:97. 12 Ibid., 1:109. In his Works, Witherspoon argues that there is a distinction between worldly virtue and Christian virtue. While there is “such a thing as a worldly virtue, a system of principles and duty, dictated by the spirit of the world, and the standard of approbation or blame with the men of the world,” this system is “at bottom, essentially different from, and sometimes directly opposed to the spirit of the gospel” (John Witherspoon, “Christian Magnanimity [1 Thessalonians 2:12],” in Works, 3:88). According to Witherspoon, though we can say that “There are some branches of true religion which are universally approved, and which impiety itself cannot speak against,” we must acknowledge that “there are other particulars, in which the worldly virtue, and the Christian virtue, seem to be different things” (ibid.). Magnanimity, for example, seems to be universally approved; yet apart from “true and undefiled religion,” it is “not only defective, but false” (ibid., 89). Indeed, real magnanimity “is inseparable from sincere piety; and […] any defect in the one, must necessarily be a discernible blemish in the other” (ibid.). What this suggests, then, is that while the unregenerate can, for example, be magnanimous “in a certain measure,” true magnanimity is grounded – as is all true virtue – in “the supreme love of God,” which is “the true source [or principle] from which all other virtues, that are not spurious, must take their rise, and from which they derive their force and obligation” (John Witherspoon, An Essay on Justification, in Works, 1:75). For related discussion, see note 87 below. 13 Witherspoon was persuaded that the classically Reformed distinction between a merely speculative and a spiritual understanding of what God has revealed is relevant not just to more explicitly spiritual or theological kinds of concerns, but to more “natural” kinds of concerns as well. On the one hand, it is relevant to more explicitly spiritual concerns because it acknowledges, for example, that “an inward change of heart” is needed before a fallen sinner can have “a view of [God’s] excellence and amiableness, as glorious in his holiness” (John Witherspoon, “A View of the Glory of God Humbling to the Soul [Job 42:5, 6],” in Works, 2:152). “It is one thing to think, and speak, and reason on the perfections of God, as an object

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because the soul is a single unit that always acts as an organic whole – because, in other words, the soul is not comprised of discrete faculties or powers but it is always the totality of “the [whole] soul or mind that understands, wills, or is affected with pleasure and pain”14 – both true virtue and true knowledge find their genesis not in the natural capacities of the fallen moral agent, but – as committed Augustinians in the Reformed camp have consistently maintained – in the creative work of the Spirit in the new birth. If this is the case, then it would seem that Sloan’s assessment is problematic because he mistakenly concludes that the “heart” of Witherspoon’s theology is not found in commitments that are classically Reformed, but in the “man-centered” convictions of the Scottish moral philosophers. In the second place, Sloan’s analysis is problematic because, by insisting that the heart of Witherspoon’s theology is found in the unrelenting anthropocentrism of the Scottish Enlightenment, it obscures what could be the best – as well as the most theologically precise – explanation for the founding of Princeton of science,” Witherspoon maintained, “and another to glorify him as God, or to have a deep and awful impression of him upon our hearts. Real believers will know this by experience. A discovery of the glory of God, is not to inform them of a truth which they never heard before, but to give lively penetrating views of the meaning and importance of those truths of which they had, perhaps, heard and spoken times without number” (John Witherspoon, “The Object of a Christian’s Desire in Religious Worship [Exodus 33:18],” in Works, 2:12; in this regard, note that for Witherspoon experiential knowledge “is superior to all other, and necessary to the perfection of every other kind” [John Witherspoon, Lectures on Eloquence, in Works, 3:563]). On the other hand, this distinction is relevant to more “natural” kinds of concerns as well because it reminds us that since “the glory of the invisible God […] shines in his Works, and ways” (John Witherspoon, “Glorying in the Cross [Galatians 6:14],” in Works, 1:396), we should never separate “the knowledge of the world from the knowledge of him who made and governs it” (John Witherspoon, “The Security of Those Who Trust in God [Proverbs 18:10],” in Works, 1:503). True knowledge of God, Witherspoon argued, not only “will direct a man in the choice of his studies” (Witherspoon, Lectures on Eloquence, 3:563), but it will also “purify, and direct into its proper channel, the knowledge [the minister] may otherwise acquire” (John Witherspoon, “Ministerial Character and Duty [2 Corinthians 4:13],” in Works, 2:559). While Witherspoon did not go so far as to insist that “all human science is to be found in the Bible” (John Witherspoon, Lectures on Divinity, in Works, 4:53), nevertheless he was persuaded that “There is no branch of human knowledge of which a Divine may not be the better, or which a good man will not improve to the glory of God and the good of others” (Witherspoon, “Ministerial Character and Duty,” 2:559). For related discussion, see notes 14, 16, 26, 56, 105, and 110 below. 14 John Witherspoon, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, in Works, 3:373. For example, Witherspoon maintained that “The connexion between truth and goodness, between the understanding and the heart, is a subject of great moment, but also of great difficulty. I think we may say with certainty, that infinite perfection, intellectual and moral, are united and inseparable in the Supreme Being. There is not however in inferior natures an exact proportion between the one and the other; yet I apprehend that truth naturally and necessarily promotes goodness, and falsehood the contrary; but as the influence is reciprocal, malignity of disposition, even with the greatest natural powers, blinds the understanding, and prevents the perception of truth itself” (ibid., 3:374).

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Theological Seminary at the end of the long eighteenth century. According to Sloan, even though we must acknowledge that Smith’s “love of speculative inquiry and of system building” pushed him “to entertain views that were, at the very least, novel for a Calvinist divine, and that appeared to many to give infidelity a foothold within the college itself,”15 nevertheless he was the true heir of Witherspoon’s legacy at the college because he shared not only Witherspoon’s understanding of enlightened education, but his approach to enlightened education as well.16 But did he in fact share Witherspoon’s understanding and approach in anything more than a formal or institutional sense? Did he really conceive of the call to unite piety and learning, in other words, in much the same manner as Witherspoon? This essay argues that he did not and that Witherspoon’s mantle properly belongs to those more conservative members of the Princeton circle who, following the lead of Ashbel Green, founded Princeton Seminary in 1812. In order to substantiate this claim, the forthcoming discussion builds upon the work of scholars who insist that an important impetus for the founding of the 15 Sloan, Scottish Enlightenment, 164. 16 Gordon Graham concurs with Sloan and argues that even though it was Smith and not Witherspoon who “turned to Reid and common sense,” he did so “precisely in order to realize more effectively the intellectual and educational vision that Witherspoon had brought to the college” (Gordon Graham, “Witherspoon, Reid, and Scottish Philosophy in America,” Princeton Seminary Bulletin [2010]: 52, 49). According to Graham, the vision that Witherspoon imported to the college focused on “enabl[ing] future clergy to be both ministers and men of letters”; this basic vision, Graham insists, was embraced not only by Smith, but by “the founders of the Seminary” as well (Gordon Graham, “Uniting Piety and Science,” address to Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and the Natural Law Tradition in America, Princeton Theological Seminary’s Bicentenary Celebration at the Center for the Study of Scottish Philosophy, Princeton, N.J. September 6, 2012). Noll also contends that the “fundamental desire” of virtually every member of the Princeton circle at the end of the long eighteenth century was “to enlist religion and learning for the cause of the church and the nation”; where significant disagreements emerged, he argues – and where Smith fulfilled Witherspoon’s “ideological vision” more faithfully than Green – was in how to apply the legacy passed on by Witherspoon (Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 257, 292, cf. 294, 299). “Where Smith gave attention first to science, Green, Archibald Alexander, and Samuel Miller turned first to piety. Where he cultivated religion as an inconspicuous given, they treated science much the same way. Yet, principles of harmonizing faith and learning and expectations for results were almost exactly the same. In their own pious way they carried on the heritage of John Witherspoon. In so doing they promoted more a variation of, than an alternative to, the intellectual vision of Samuel Stanhope Smith” (ibid., 283). But were Smith and conservatives like Green in fact attempting to advance the same basic vision of enlightened education, as both Noll and Graham contend? I would suggest we can conclude that they were only if we confound the shallowness of stated institutional purpose with the substance of educational vision and practice and insist that when all is said and done, neither the starting point for – nor the theological foundation of – intellectual inquiry will have a decisive bearing on how one conceives of and attempts to advance enlightened education. For related discussion, see notes 13 and 14 above, and notes 26, 56, and 105 below.

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Seminary was the growing awareness among influential members of the Princeton circle that Smith’s approach to “synthesizing faith and reason” had been shaped decisively by his abandonment of commitments essential to Witherspoon’s religious orthodoxy.17 Among other things, these scholars have made it possible to conclude that the founding of the Seminary was not an attempt to advance the more moderate interests of the Scottish intellectual tradition, but to recover an approach to enlightened education that was thought to have been compromised by Smith’s more wide-ranging appropriation of Enlightenment thought. But have these scholars offered a sufficiently nuanced account for precisely why Green and his more conservative associates were growing increasingly convinced that Smith had subverted Witherspoon’s approach to enlightened education? In the discussion that follows I suggest they have not, and that a more pointed account of the tension that led to the founding of the Seminary is in order.18 With this in mind, the remainder of this essay posits that the tension that was the immediate impetus for the founding of the Seminary is best explained by pointing to the religious and educational entailments of the philosophical psychologies of Samuel Stanhope Smith and Ashbel Green. It suggests that Smith was not only “wavering in his Calvinism, weak on the sovereignty of God in salvation, and shaky in defending original sin” due to his accommodation of Scottish Realism, as Noll has carefully demonstrated.19 More importantly, it proposes that he was conceiving of the educational mission of the college in a more robustly Scottish sense because he had accommodated a philosophical psychology that made it impossible for him to embrace precisely what Green and his more conservative associates were eager to recover, namely an approach to enlightened education that was grounded generally in Witherspoon’s more Augustinian theology and specifically in the religious and educational entailments of his more Augustinian understanding of the unitary operation of the soul. What the forthcoming discussion proposes, then, is that Sloan’s assessment cannot be finally sustained because, as helpful as it otherwise most certainly is, it lacks the theological subtlety to account for the discontinuity between the religious and educational ideals of Witherspoon and Smith, and for that reason it

17 Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 166. The scholars I am indebted to are Mark Noll and Charles Bradford Bow. 18 For example, while Noll acknowledges that Green had “serious doubts” about Smith’s theology due to the “unqualified approval” that Smith purportedly was giving to Thomas Reid’s writings on “free will” (Mark A. Noll, “The Founding of Princeton Seminary,” Westminster Theological Journal 42 [1979]: 100, 101), he does not explore how Smith’s accommodation of Reid’s philosophical psychology could have engendered tension within the Princeton circle. 19 Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 247.

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cannot account for the rising opposition of those “counter-Enlightenment”20 thinkers who came to the conclusion that Witherspoon’s more God-centered approach to enlightened education could be preserved only by founding a Seminary that was, as Samuel Miller put it in a letter to Ashbel Green, “uncontaminated by the college.”21

11.2 Smith, Reid, and the Birth of the “Princeton Enlightenment” In his unparalleled analysis of the inner workings of the Princeton circle in the early years of the American republic, Mark Noll echoes the standard understanding of the relationship between Witherspoon and Smith by insisting that even though Smith “was developing, enriching, and broadening the legacy of Witherspoon, […] still that legacy defined the content and direction of his thought.”22 According to Noll, when Witherspoon imported Francis Hutcheson’s intuitionalist moral philosophy to the college in the early days of his tenure at Princeton,23 he introduced an “aspect of Scotland’s Enlightenment” that “set in place a pattern of instruction […] [that] materially altered Princeton’s traditional approaches to ethics, epistemology, and the interconnections of knowledge.”24 While the “pattern of instruction” that Witherspoon introduced was not grounded in a “full-orbed” appropriation of the Scottish intellectual tradition, nevertheless it was amenable to a fuller, more systematic and creative appropriation of that tradition by more sophisticated thinkers, and for that reason it remained essentially unchanged when “the Scottish thought” was accommodated “with greater thoroughness” by “the next generation” of thoughtful 20 This is the phrase that Charles Bradford Bow uses throughout his work to describe those members of the Princeton circle who were opposed to Smith’s more progressive approach to enlightened education. For example, see Charles Bradford Bow, “The End of the Scottish Enlightenment in Its Transatlantic Context: Moral Education in the Thought of Dugald Stewart and Samuel Stanhope Smith, 1790–1812” (Ph.D. diss., University of Edinburgh, 2012), 6, where he defines “counter-Enlightenment” as “reflecting inverse views of a particular version of Enlightenment thought and ideology.” 21 Samuel Miller to Ashbel Green, May 10, 1808, in Samuel Miller, The Life of Samuel Miller, 2 vols. (1869; repr. Stoke-on-Trent, United Kingdom: Tentmaker Publications, 2002), 1:242. 22 Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 186. 23 According to Scott, Hutcheson “believed that the moral sense is a primitive, innate faculty given to man by God,” and he was persuaded that the “maturation” of this sense “is dependent upon observation and is controlled by reason” (Smith, An Annotated Edition, 35). Bow notes that for Hutcheson, this moral sense is a “natural ability of the mind” that exists “without the instruction of secular or divine laws” (Bow, “End of the Scottish Enlightenment,” 13–14). 24 Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 42, 43.

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Princetonians.25 Indeed, when later Princetonians appropriated the works of “the mature Thomas Reid,” that “pattern of instruction” – which championed “[the] ideal of intellectual neutrality, learning open to all and leading, with the employment of proper method, to truth supporting religion and undergirding the commonwealth” – was not fundamentally changed or transformed, but it became so entrenched “that there was no longer any room at Princeton for the influence of [more consistently God-centered thinkers like] Jonathan Edwards.”26 25 Ibid., 42. 26 Ibid., 42, 146, 43. According to this interpretation, the “pattern of instruction” that Witherspoon introduced was grounded in “a distrust of any philosophy or theology that placed in doubt the correctness of man’s perception of the objective world” (M. L. Bradbury, “British Apologetics in Evangelical Garb: Samuel Stanhope Smith’s Lectures on the Evidences of the Christian Religion,” Journal of the Early Republic 5, 2 [Summer 1985]: 184). Note that those who embrace this interpretation typically insist that Witherspoon abandoned the “pattern of instruction” that prevailed at Princeton at the time of his arrival in 1768 because he was a naive realist whose relatively unsophisticated appropriation of the Scottish Philosophy set him at odds with the idealist metaphysics of Jonathan Edwards. For example, Jeffrey Morrison insists that when Witherspoon arrived at Princeton, he “quickly laid the ax at the root of the idealist teaching at the College” (Jeffrey H. Morrison, John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005], 63), and he did so in order to excise the lingering influence of Edwards’s philosophical idealism from the curriculum of the college. But was Witherspoon in fact a naive realist who was opposed to the idealism of Edwards, as interpreters like Morrison would have us believe, or was he perhaps a more sophisticated realist who was opposed to an altogether different form of idealism, a form that was far more radical than that of Edwards because it denied the reality of a mindindependent world? The answer to this question is complex and is related to at least two important considerations. The first has to do with the kind of idealism that prevailed at Princeton at the time of Witherspoon’s arrival. Whereas Ashbel Green and Varnum Lansing Collins insist that Witherspoon was eager to drive out “the Berklean (sic) system of Metaphysics [that] was in reput in the college when he entered on his office” (Ashbel Green, The Life of the Rev. John Witherspoon, ed. Henry Lyttleton Savage [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973], 132; see also Varnum Lansing Collins, ed., Lectures on Moral Philosophy, by John Witherspoon [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1912], xxi), Morrison contends that the idealism that was in vogue at the time of Witherspoon’s arrival “probably owed more to Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Johnson […] than to Bishop Berkeley” (Morrison, John Witherspoon, 63). The second consideration follows from the first and has to do not just with the nature of idealism itself, but with the more immediately relevant question of whether the idealism of Edwards and the idealism of Berkeley were essentially the same. In his forthcoming analysis of the metaphysical entailments of Edwards’s argumentation in his dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World, Walter Schultz argues forcefully that the idealism of Edwards was essentially different from that of Berkeley, and he does so by building on Darren Hibbs’s recent survey of idealism in the history of Western philosophy. According to Hibbs, “there are two fundamentally opposed metaphysical traditions in the West that have each been labeled a type of idealism,” and these traditions must be distinguished from one another because of basic disagreements regarding “the ontological status of material bodies” (H. Darren Hibbs, “Who’s an ‘Idealist’?” The Review of Metaphysics 58 [March 2005]: 567). Whereas “mens-idealists” argue “that material bodies do not exist as extramental realities but only as phenomena within immaterial mind(s),” “residealists” do not argue “for the non-existence of material bodies” but claim instead “that

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How, though, could the “pattern of instruction” that Witherspoon introduced remain essentially unchanged despite the more extensive appropriation of the Scottish philosophy by later Princetonians like Smith? Noll suggests the answer to this question is related to Witherspoon’s at least implicit accommodation of the more man-centered theology at the heart of “what Norman Fiering has called ‘the new moral philosophy.’”27 “With Hutcheson, [Francis] Alison, and most other eighteenth-century moral philosophers,” Noll contends, “Witherspoon set aside the Augustinian distrust of human nature; in practice he denied that original sin material bodies cannot be the only type of entity in existence. Typically this involves the claim that material bodies possess extramental existence (at least with respect to finite, or human minds) but something essentially unlike matter must be responsible for the existence of the physical world” (ibid.). Utilizing these insights from Hibbs as well as insights from “realist versions of quantum mechanics,” Schultz argues convincingly that Edwards’s idealism was different in kind from that of Berkeley because Edwards was a “res,” and not a “mens,” idealist (Walter J. Schultz, “(Some of) the Metaphysics of Jonathan Edwards’ End of Creation,” JETS, forthcoming). He acknowledged, in other words, that material objects “are [not] merely phenomenal constructs within the mind,” but are “real in relation to humans” even though they “are ontologically dependent on God’s willing their existence, their properties, and their relations according to his eternal and perfect ideas of them” (ibid.). If Schultz’s analysis is correct and Edwards’s res-idealism is in fact “a [form of] realism” (ibid.), then a fresh assessment of Witherspoon’s relationship to Edwards and to the “pattern of instruction” that prevailed at Princeton at the time of his arrival is in order because we can no longer maintain – as interpreters like Morrison maintain – that all forms of metaphysical idealism – including the form that was embraced by Jonathan Edwards – hold “that the universe consists solely of minds and ideas, and that there is no such thing as mind-independent matter” (Morrison, John Witherspoon, 63). For related discussion, see notes 13 and 16 above, and notes 56, 57, and 105 below. 27 Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 43. For an incisive review of the significance of Fiering’s work, see Mark A. Noll, “Jonathan Edwards, Moral Philosophy, and the Secularization of American Christian Thought,” Reformed Journal (February 1983): 22–28. According to Noll, Fiering’s work is noteworthy because it clarifies the extent to which the convictions of early modern moral philosophers like Hutcheson resembled those of Puritan pietists like Cotton Mather and William Ames. While both Puritan pietists and thinkers like Hutcheson “had come to doubt the intellectualist foundation of ethics” (ibid., 23; for more on “intellectualism,” see note 76 below), they conceived of the central role that passion plays in moral activity in significantly different senses. Whereas the Puritans conceived of passion in terms of “‘regenerate passion’ and ‘natural passion,’” the new moral philosophers conceived of passion in terms of “‘natural passion’ and ‘environmentally corrupted passion’” (ibid., 24). Conceiving of the role of passion in this latter sense, Noll contends, “had far-reaching [and profoundly negative] implications for Christians. To accept affectional moral philosophy based upon general (as opposed to regenerate) human nature, and to base final conclusions about it on an empirical study of the soul (as opposed to the truths of revelation) was, according to Fiering, ‘ironically far more subversive to the older religious order than the former candid education in Aristotle and Cicero had been, when these and other pagan moralists were kept in compartments segregated from Christian truth’” (ibid.). For Noll’s fullest treatment of the relationship of the new moral philosophy to what he calls the “evangelical Enlightenment,” see Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 93–113.

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harmed the ability to understand and cultivate natural virtue; he regarded the achievements of science as triumphs of empirical inquiry more than as insights into the effulgence of God’s glory; and he pictured God more as the originator of material and moral order than as the constantly active creator of the world.”28 For Noll, then, even though Smith appropriated the Scottish intellectual tradition with more consistency and breadth than Witherspoon, he was still developing and not abandoning the “pattern of instruction” that Witherspoon introduced because Witherspoon had already “brought Princeton into the mainstream of eighteenth-century higher education” by advancing “the ‘new moral philosophy’ at the expense of an older practical theology that stretched back from Edwards through the Puritan William Ames and John Calvin to Augustine.”29 In short, the “pattern of instruction” that Witherspoon introduced remained essentially unchanged despite Smith’s more comprehensive appropriation of Scottish thought because Witherspoon had already provided Princeton with “a philosophical basis” that “gave less scope to the person, revelation, and agency of God and more centrality to the lot, science, and agency of humans,” and in so doing he “cut the college loose from the pattern of thought promoted by Edwards” and grounded in a more consistently Reformed appropriation of Augustine’s God-centered theology.30 But had Witherspoon in fact cut the college loose from a “pattern of instruction” grounded in faithfulness to the more God-centered assumptions of the Augustinian tradition? Was his approach to enlightened education really informed, in other words, by a commitment to “the autonomy of scientific procedures”31 and the more Thomistic approach to integrating faith and learning that those procedures entailed, as those who regard Smith as the true heir of Witherspoon generally contend?32 The recent scholarship of Charles Bradford 28 Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 43. 29 Ibid., 47. 30 Ibid., 47, 205, 44. For related discussion, see note 26 above. Interpreters like Scott are persuaded that Witherspoon’s accommodation of Scottish Realism led him to modify “the austere Reformed doctrine that emanated from Geneva in the sixteenth century” (Scott, An Annotated Edition, 108). While Scott acknowledges, somewhat curiously, that Witherspoon “remained faithfully in the mainstream of Calvinism until his death,” nevertheless he insists that Witherspoon’s orthodoxy was more imagined than real because “some of the basic tenets” of his articulation of the faith had been compromised “by the strong forces of intellectual change” (ibid., 38, 39). In particular, “Witherspoon’s view of man differ[ed] from that of high Calvinism – not on the matter of human depravity, but in the confidence he place[d] in the reason of man” (ibid., 39). 31 Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 146. 32 Note that the “pattern of instruction” that Noll associates with Witherspoon lies at the foundation of what has come to be known as the “scandal” of the evangelical mind. Cf. Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994). At the heart of this “scandal” is an approach to enlightened education that George Marsden refers to

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Bow offers a noteworthy alternative to the standard narrative echoed by Noll and in so doing suggests that a reassessment of Witherspoon, his approach to enlightened education, and his legacy could be justified. In his dissertation and subsequent published writings, Bow reinforces the work of scholars like Gordon Graham by arguing that whereas Witherspoon “reformed Princeton’s curriculum to reflect his value of practical knowledge that strengthened the union of reason and revealed religion,”33 Smith’s more creative development of the “pattern of instruction” that Witherspoon introduced did not stem from his “continuation of Witherspoon’s earlier thought,” but from “the ways in which he adapted Reidian themes.”34 According to Bow, while Witherspoon had at one time “endorsed [Thomas] Reid’s efforts in challenging David Hume’s mitigated skepticism,” he “did not […] share Reid’s enthusiasm for metaphysics in sermons or teaching moral philosophy […].”35 Indeed, he “emphasized a closer connection between Scripture and the intuitive faculties of mind than Reid had intended in An Inquiry into the Human Mind (1764),” and for that reason he was reluctant to ground either “his religious opinion”36 or his approach to enlightened education in an unguarded appeal to “particular philosophical themes in Scottish philosophy.”37 Samuel Stanhope Smith, on the other hand, “was far less guarded than Witherspoon in his later use of Scottish philosophy”38 – and especially in his appreciation for the philosophy of Reid – particularly in his efforts as a professor to groom “his students’ morality as potential leaders of the early republic.”39 “Smith’s religious publications,” Bow contends, reflected Witherspoon’s fundamental belief that ‘if the Scripture is true, the discoveries of reason cannot be contrary to it’ […]. Smith’s close relationship with Witherspoon

33 34 35 36 37 38 39

as the “method of addition,” which, he argues, is “a modern version of the Thomist synthesis of reason and faith” (George M. Marsden, “The Evangelical Love Affair with Enlightenment Science,” in Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1991], 131). See also George M. Marsden, “The Collapse of American Evangelical Academia,” in Reckoning With the Past: Historical Essays on American Evangelicalism from the Institute for the Study of American Evangelism, ed. D. G. Hart (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1995), 221–66. For a sympathetic yet critical analysis of Marsden’s discussion of the “method of addition” and its relationship to the “scandal” of the evangelical mind, see Paul Kjoss Helseth, “‘Congeniality’ of Mind at Old Princeton Seminary: Warfieldians and Kuyperians Reconsidered,” Westminster Theological Journal 77, 1 (Spring 2015): 1–14. Bow, “End of the Scottish Enlightenment,” 147. Ibid., 166. On Smith’s (and not Witherspoon’s) accommodation of Reid, see note 16 above. Bow, “End of the Scottish Enlightenment,” 187. Charles Bradford Bow, “Reforming Witherspoon’s Legacy at Princeton: John Witherspoon, Samuel Stanhope Smith and James McCosh on Didactic Enlightenment, 1768–1888,” History of European Ideas 39, 5 (October 2012): 655–56. Bow, “End of the Scottish Enlightenment,” 151. Ibid., 152. Charles Bradford Bow, “Samuel Stanhope Smith and Common Sense Philosophy at Princeton,” Journal of Scottish Philosophy 8, 2 (2010): 201.

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however must not obscure Smith’s enthusiasm for Reid’s philosophy in his published Lectures (1812). Smith’s moral philosophy lectures incorporated a sophisticated metaphysics which was clearly inspired by Reid. Witherspoon’s success in advocating the balance between Christianity and the humanistic perspective of the Scottish Enlightenment during his presidency certainly permitted Smith’s later devoted use of Common Sense philosophy. But instead of following Witherspoon’s example, as an educator, of avoiding a definitive stance on controversial philosophical topics […] by eclectically drawing on various positions, Smith assumed, like Reid, a common sense stance […].40

For Bow, then, it was Smith and not Witherspoon who was largely responsible for creating “the Princeton Enlightenment,” for it was Smith who reformed the curriculum of the college along more “secular” lines based upon his accommodation of “controversial metaphysical themes that were untouched or only marginally discussed by his predecessor,”41 themes that, among other things, led him to distinguish “his rational theology from his metaphysical philosophy” and thus to conceive of Witherspoon’s emphasis upon the “union of enlightened reason and religion” much differently than his more conservative colleagues on the board of the college.42 If Bow’s thesis is correct, it suggests that not only did Smith “not build directly upon Witherspoon’s ‘republican Christian Enlightenment,’”43 as those who embrace the historiographical consensus generally contend. More importantly, it suggests there may be grounds for concluding that Smith was not merely developing the legacy of Witherspoon by appropriating the Scottish thought with more rigor and enthusiasm than his mentor, but that he was fundamentally transforming that legacy by insisting that Reid’s more man-centered philosophy – which led him to conceive of “reason and revelation” not as “harmonious”44 but as “independent but related sources of truth”45 – “provided the essential foundation”46 for education that was thought to be enlightened. In short, if Bow’s analysis holds water, we may plausibly conclude 40 Ibid., 193. 41 Bow, “End of the Scottish Enlightenment,” 24, 248. According to Bow, while Smith was not responsible for introducing Enlightenment thought at Princeton, he did encourage “a new type of Enlightenment at Princeton” (ibid., 137). In this regard, Bradbury suggests that it was Smith who “admitted into the Princeton curriculum more of the radical themes of the Enlightenment than had earlier been allowed” (Bradbury, “British Apologetics in Evangelical Garb,” 194), themes that, as Samuel Holt Monk notes, were part and parcel of Smith’s “excursions into strange and unorthodox fields of thought” (Samuel Holt Monk, “Samuel Stanhope Smith: Friend of Rational Liberty,” in The Lives of Eighteen from Princeton, ed. Willard Thorpe [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946], 89). 42 Bow, “Stanhope Smith and Common Sense,” 202, 201. 43 Bow, “End of the Scottish Enlightenment,” 248. 44 Bow, “Stanhope Smith and Common Sense,” 201. 45 James Foster, “Scottish Philosophy and American Theology,” address to Common Sense Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment, the Annual Conference of the British Society for the History of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, May 8, 2014. 46 Bow, “Stanhope Smith and Common Sense,” 195–96.

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that the “pattern of instruction” that has come to be associated with Witherspoon may in fact be more accurately associated with Smith because it was Smith who embraced a “version of [the] Enlightenment”47 that secularized the world and separated what Witherspoon – whatever the influence of Hutcheson notwithstanding – insisted must always be united.48 In so doing, Smith transformed the college’s “overarching institutional purpose” by focusing not on “the diffusion of Christian principles and republican ideals” to future ministers of the gospel, but on “the perfection of the mind”49 and the training of future statesmen through the dissemination of “enlightened humanistic and liberal arts education,”50 or the kind of education that has less to do with the cultivation of a more God-centered or sacramental perspective on the world in which we live than it does with the development of a more secular understanding of the moral and natural worlds through “scientific reasoning” that is presumed to be neutral.51

11.3 Witherspoon, Green, and the Founding of Princeton Theological Seminary So does Bow’s analysis hold water, and if it does, how does it help to account for the tension that led to the founding of Princeton Theological Seminary at the end of the long eighteenth century? In my estimation, Bow’s analysis is particularly helpful because it lays the groundwork for concluding that more conservative members of the Princeton circle were growing increasingly critical of the “pattern of instruction” that Smith introduced not just because they found “his personal style of embodying” an “intellectual program” with which they basically agreed to be “objectionable,” as Graham has recently argued,52 but for “ideologically deeper” reasons that manifested themselves in consequential disagreements having to do with the subtleties of philosophical psychology.53 The place where 47 Bow, “End of the Scottish Enlightenment,” 248. 48 Cf. Witherspoon, Lectures on Divinity, 4:10. For related discussion, see notes 13, 14, 16, and 26 above, and notes 56, 105, and 110 below. 49 Bow, “End of the Scottish Enlightenment,” 31, 138, 248. 50 Bow, “Stanhope Smith and Common Sense,” 198; cf. 204–5. 51 According to Noll, “Scientific reasoning – which meant empiricism, induction, and rigorous logic applied to a much broader range of subjects than would come to be the case after the mid-nineteenth century – enjoyed privileged status in the minds of the Princeton leaders, especially Stanhope Smith. They believed in its power to ferret out the secrets of the world […]. They also believed in the power of scientifically derived knowledge, not only to enlighten the mind, but also to strengthen the will and inspire the heart” (Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 101). For related discussion, see note 64 below. 52 Graham, “Uniting Piety and Science,” 6. 53 Bow, “Stanhope Smith and Common Sense,” 203.

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Smith’s indebtedness to Reid and ideological distance from his more conservative colleagues is manifested most clearly, Bow’s analysis suggests, is in the psychological commitments that informed not only his decidedly unorthodox treatment “of causation, liberty and the moral faculty,”54 but also what Noll has called the “liberalizing disposition” that grounded his more progressive approach to uniting piety and learning.55 Whereas Green and his more conservative associates were sympathetic with the religious and educational entailments of Jonathan Edwards’s more “functionalist” philosophical psychology and therefore insisted that authentically enlightened education must be grounded in a believing commitment to the epistemological priority of the substance of what God has revealed,56 Smith’s more progressive commitments were based upon an 54 Ibid. On the unorthodox nature of Smith’s views, see, for example, ibid., 206. For a contrary view, note Bradbury’s insistence that although the larger concerns of more conservative thinkers at Princeton regarding Smith’s theology were “well founded,” Smith’s reconciliation of Common Sense and a more Reformed understanding of freedom “proved too subtle” for them to grasp (Bradbury, “Samuel Stanhope Smith,” 199, 201). According to Bradbury, while Smith’s attempt to reconcile Calvinism and Common Sense “made him strain the bounds of orthodoxy in the direction of Arminianism,” nevertheless his interpretation of Reid was “compatible with Calvinist doctrine” (ibid., 202, 201). 55 Noll argues that Smith’s eagerness “to present Christianity in the forms of the moderate Enlightenment required him to modify the content of revivalistic colonial Presbyterianism” (Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 206). According to Noll, Smith was “an acolyte of the Enlightenment” because he “followed the liberalizing disposition of the Enlightenment beyond the pale of the earlier orthodoxy” (ibid., 110, 207). 56 According to Bruce Kuklick, the mind for Edwards was “not so much an entity” that was divided into “a series of separate [faculties or] powers” as it was “a function, and there were two reciprocally related functions – cognition and volition” (Bruce Kuklick, A History of Philosophy in America [New York: Oxford University Press, 2001], 52). On the important difference between Edwards’s emphasis upon the unitary operation of the soul or mind and the faculty psychology of the Scottish moral philosophers, see, for example, Daniel Walker Howe, Making the American Self: Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 66; James Hoopes, “Calvinism and Consciousness from Edwards to Beecher,” in Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, ed. Nathan O. Hatch, Harry S. Stout (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 207; and D. H. Meyer, The Instructed Conscience: The Shaping of the American National Ethic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972), 51–59. Note that the question of how we should conceive of the soul or mind is relevant to the thesis of this essay because it has important implications for what takes priority not just in the pursuit of true virtue, but in the pursuit of enlightened education as well. In short, embracing a more functionalist philosophical psychology will result not only in “prioritising revelation as motivating moral actions and forming ‘a strong habit of virtue’” (Bow, “Stanhope Smith and Common Sense,” 204), but it will also foster an understanding of enlightened education that, as James Foster puts it, puts reason “under the guidance of revelation” (Foster, “Scottish Philosophy and American Theology,” 6). In this regard, note Noll’s contention that in their attempts “To nurture the rising generation, Green trusted piety attended by faithful learning, Smith the reverse” (Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 287). For related discussion, see notes 13, 14, 16, and 26 above, and notes 105 and 110 below.

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accommodation of the “faculty” psychology of the Scottish Enlightenment57 and thus upon an endorsement of the more secular and dualistic notion that “the exercise of the mind” – and not the appropriation of what God has revealed – is “the foundation for all branches of knowledge”58 not having to do with “salvation” per se.59 What Bow’s analysis helpfully suggests, then, is that it was the accommodation of the philosophy of Reid that set Smith on a collision course with more conservative members of the Princeton circle and precipitated the tension that led to 57 According to Kuklick, many North American theologians embraced the “faculty psychology” so that they could respond to Edwards’s work on the freedom of the will. “The Scots and their disciples in the United States,” he argues, “shifted discussion [on the nature of moral liberty] from the Edwardsean functionalist view of the mind to a three-substance view” (Bruce Kuklick, “The Place of Charles Hodge in the History of Ideas in America,” in Charles Hodge Revisited: A Critical Appraisal of His Life and Work, ed. John W. Stewart, James H. Moorhead [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2002], 72). This “faculty psychology,” Kuklick contends, held that “the mind had three functions, not two, and they were more clearly separated into ontological faculties. The understanding was not so much an activity as a substance that did the cognizing. So also the will, which was divided into a substance capable of affection, which might include sensation and emotion; and the will proper, which was the capacity for choice, or a substance that often clearly had what was known as a power to the contrary. Thus, in human behavior the reason (or understanding or cognition) set out goals; the affections provided the motives; but the will made action possible” (ibid.). Whether and to what extent the Scottish philosophers themselves regarded the faculties or powers of the soul as “distinct entities rather than different abilities or functions of a unitary mind” (Hoopes, “Calvinism and Consciousness,” 207) seems to be a topic of ongoing debate. While scholars like Hoopes and Kuklick are persuaded that the Scottish philosophers regarded the faculties or powers as discrete substances, others like Garland Brooks insist that for philosophers like Reid, the faculties or powers “do not operate singly and successively; they function in conjunction with one another, so that their effects never appear in isolation. Not only do the faculties operate jointly,” he contends, “but there is a tendency […] for the exertion of one of a class of faculty to influence the rest of that type to activity” (G. P. Brooks, “The Faculty Psychology of Thomas Reid,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 12 [1976]: 70). Precisely where the lines should be drawn in this debate is beyond the scope of this essay. What is immediately relevant, however, is the eagerness of those who accommodate a distinctly Scottish understanding of the faculty psychology not just to appropriate the language of faculties or powers, but to treat the faculties or powers as if they were discrete substances, and in so doing to deny the decisive role that dispositions or principles play in all forms of moral activity, including that which has to do with the life of the mind. For related discussion, see note 16 above. 58 Bow, “End of the Scottish Enlightenment,” 254. 59 Cf. Bow, “Stanhope Smith and Common Sense,” 201–2. “Similar to Reid,” Bow contends, “Smith believed that the perfection of the divinely inspired faculties of mind [through liberal arts education] fulfilled God’s intended purpose for humankind […]. This central belief heavily influenced Smith’s reforms of the curriculum, sermons at Princeton, and his lectures to the ‘Junior and Senior Classes in the branches of Belles Lettres, Criticism & Composition, Moral Philosophy including the Principles of Metaphysics, Natural Theology, the philosophy of Civil government, the Laws of Nature and Nations Logic’. He treated all of these subjects as mutually dependent upon the mind, and its exploration shed light on God’s intention for humanity, independent of revealed religion” (Bow, “Reforming Witherspoon’s Legacy,” 659).

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the founding of the Seminary in 1812, for it was the philosophy of Reid that encouraged Smith not only to regard “religion and philosophy” as independent rather than essentially united sources of truth,60 but even more importantly to advance a “pattern of instruction” that sought to synthesize faith and learning by deferring to “empirical science” rather than revelation as the touchstone not just of enlightened education, but of enlightened religion as well.61 In short, Bow’s analysis makes it possible to conclude that the “pattern of instruction” that Smith introduced was objectionable to more conservative members of the Princeton circle because in their estimation, it not only subverted Witherspoon’s more Godcentered approach to uniting piety and learning, but it also sanctioned the dissemination of “unsanctified”62 or essentially secular learning by embracing an approach to enlightened education that “undermined the importance of revealed religion”63 not just for morality and the life of the mind more generally, but ultimately for theology as well. But had Smith in fact subverted Witherspoon’s more God-centered approach to uniting piety and learning, as “counter-Enlightenment” thinkers like Green seemed to believe, or was he merely developing Witherspoon’s more secular approach in a more robust and consistent fashion, as the consensus view contends? Who, in other words, was the true heir of Witherspoon’s legacy at Princeton? The answer to this question – and support for the contention that Green and his more conservative associates were the true heirs of Witherspoon’s legacy at Princeton – is suggested by a careful examination of the philosophical psychology that informed Witherspoon’s eagerness as an educator to do precisely what Smith’s philosophical commitments prevented him from doing during his tenure at Princeton, namely to “guard against any thing that may tend to separate […] [piety and learning], and set them in opposition one to another.”64 From what I can tell, the place where the discontinuity between the 60 Bow, “Stanhope Smith and Common Sense,” 202. Bow suggests that it was Smith’s accommodation of this more dualistic notion of truth that “helped to precipitate his conflicts with orthodox Calvinism” (ibid., 196). 61 Smith was persuaded that, “The clear and ultimate perceptions of nature are the foundations of all truth and certainty in reasoning” (Samuel Stanhope Smith, Lectures on Moral and Political Philosophy, 2 vols. [New York: Whiting and Watson, 1812], 1:293). For this reason, he not only “reformed the Calvinist interpretation of biblical religion to compliment (sic) empirical science,” but he also “infused aspects of his metaphysical philosophy within his rational theology” (Bow, “Stanhope Smith and Common Sense,” 200, 201–2). On the “liberalizing disposition” that informed Smith’s approach to integrating faith and learning, see note 55 above. 62 Ashbel Green, “The Unity of Piety and Science,” in Discourses Delivered in the College of New Jersey (Philadelphia and New York: Littell and Henry, 1822), 10. 63 Bow, “Stanhope Smith and Common Sense,” 205, cf. 204. 64 Witherspoon, Lectures on Divinity, 4:10. While it is no doubt true that Smith was eager to unite piety and learning, his philosophical commitments led him to presume that uniting

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philosophical psychologies of Witherspoon and Smith is seen most clearly is in their pronounced disagreement over the extent to which genuinely free activity can be simultaneously determined by “inclination, appetite, or passion.”65 Whereas Smith’s endorsement of a decidedly Scottish understanding of the faculty psychology led him to oppose all forms of determinism and to insist that moral liberty “extends to the power of resisting our inclinations, of correcting any habits of thinking and acting which may be in opposition to our duty, interest, or pleasure; and in a word, of changing our moral dispositions,”66 Witherspoon was persuaded that there is a certain relationship between moral character and all forms of moral activity due to the decisive role that dispositions piety and learning has to do with synthesizing two realms of truth that are essentially distinct and accessed, so to speak, through different sources of knowledge and discrete operations of the rational faculty. In my estimation, this approach to uniting piety and learning – which is grounded in metaphysical commitments that deny – in practice if not in principle – the Godcentered nature of the world in which we live – gets to the heart of why we must conclude that Smith had abandoned the legacy of Witherspoon. 65 Smith, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 1:283. 66 Ibid., 1:293–94. For related discussion, see notes 54, 56, and 57 above. While space limitations prohibit an exploration of this point in the depth that it requires, note its implications for how Smith conceived of regeneration. Regeneration, Smith argued, is not “an act of [new] creation, which is necessary to pass upon the state and dispositions of the heart, before the motives of the gospel can have any operative and sanctifying influence upon it” (Samuel Stanhope Smith, A Comprehensive View of the Leading and Most Important Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion [New Brunswick: Deare & Myer, 1815], 399–400). It does not have to do, in other words, with a supernatural work in which “the heart is assimilated by the power of God, to the spirit of the gospel” (ibid., 399). Rather, regeneration “is a term entirely of figurative meaning” (ibid., 396) that stands, as Noll has expertly put it, “for the moral understanding that the Holy Spirit communicates to believers” through the means of the truth itself (Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 208). “In the moral changes of the heart,” Smith argued, “the blindness which hinders its discernment of the light of divine truth is cured [not by a change of heart or disposition, but] by the light itself” (Smith, A Comprehensive View, 400; cf. Smith, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 294–96). Note the intriguing relevance of this understanding of regeneration – which presupposes that “Powers still reside in reason and conscience, notwithstanding the deep corruption of the fall, capable of discerning in a degree […] the illumination of divine truth shining around them in the word of God, which may be perceived by every diligent inquirer through the concurrent aids of the Holy Spirit, that are now […] in various degrees, universally diffused in the church” (Smith, A Comprehensive View, 400–1) – to Charles Hodge’s later rejection of the “‘light system,’ which teaches that men are regenerated by light or knowledge, and that all that is needed is that the eyes of the understanding should be opened” (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1982; 1872–73], 2:263). On the grounding of Smith’s opposition to all forms of determinism in an endorsement of Reid’s notion of moral liberty, see Bow, “Stanhope Smith and Common Sense,” 202–5. For a summary of Reid’s understanding of “moral liberty,” see Charles Bradford Bow, “Introduction: Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World,” History of European Ideas 39, 5 (2013): 609–10. For a helpful discussion of Reid’s “intellectualist” understanding of freedom, see R. F. Stalley, “Reid’s Defense of Freedom,” in Thomas Reid: Context, Influence, and Significance, ed. Joseph Houston (Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2004), 29–50.

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or principles play in the unitary operation of the whole soul or mind. According to Witherspoon, while “The faculties of the mind are commonly divided into these three kinds, the understanding, the will, and the affections […] these are not three qualities wholly distinct, as if they were three different beings, but different ways of exerting the same simple principle.”67 For this reason, even though Witherspoon was reluctant to offer an account of precisely how the activity of moral agents can be simultaneously determined yet free, he still insisted that “the free agency of the creature” and “the certainty of God’s purpose”68 are compatible because he recognized that in some ultimately inscrutable sense, God disposes of 69 and determines “every event”70 by working through moral agents who cause their own activity by acting according to the prevailing disposition or principle that “constitutes the character”71 and governs the unitary activity of the whole soul or mind.72 Thus, while Witherspoon was willing to acknowledge that he “could never see any thing satisfactory in the attempts of divines or Metaphysicians to reconcile” the “certainty of the event itself” with “the freedom of the agent,”73 nevertheless he embraced an understanding of moral agency with deep roots in the Augustinian tradition, for he 67 Witherspoon, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 3:373. In his defense of Witherspoon’s Godcentered orthodoxy in the nineteenth century, Lyman Hotchkiss Atwater argues that “an inward moral disposition or principle means a state of the moral faculties, involving facility and aptitude for, and tendency to, a given sort of exercises” (Lyman Hotchkiss Atwater, “Witherspoon’s Theology,” Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review [1863]: 601). According to Atwater, then, Witherspoon’s theology was orthodox at least in part because it was grounded in the recognition that principles in the soul are “back, and causative of, acts whether sinful or holy” (ibid., 600). 68 Witherspoon, Lectures on Divinity, 4:91. 69 John Witherspoon, “Obedience and Sacrifice Compared (1 Samuel 15:22),” in Works, 1:484. For a brief discussion of how God’s disposing activity is related to the human pursuit of knowledge, see John Witherspoon, “The Success of the Gospel Entirely of God (1 Corinthians 3:5, 6, 7),” in Works, 2:573–75. 70 John Witherspoon, “The Deceitfulness of Sin (Hebrews 3:13),” in Works, 2:57. Note the larger context of Witherspoon’s use of this phrase: He is challenging the presumptuousness of those who would “excuse their sins, as being only the effects of the irresistible will of God, who hath decreed whatsoever comes to pass; some in a more artful and covered way; and some more openly and explicitly make use of God’s absolute pre-determination of every event, as taking away the guilt of their voluntary actions” (ibid.). 71 Witherspoon, Treatise on Regeneration, 1:112. 72 On the “real influence of second causes both natural and moral” upon “the whole system of divine providence,” see Witherspoon, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, 3:404. On the mysterious nature of “the bounds between the ‘dependence’ and ‘activity’ of the creature,” see, for example, Witherspoon, Treatise on Regeneration, 1:141. On our inability to reconcile “the certainty of events with the freedom of actions, or the imputation of guilt,” see Witherspoon, “The Deceitfulness of Sin,” 2:58. On the unsatisfactory nature of philosophical attempts to reconcile the decrees of God with the free agency of the creature, see Witherspoon, Lectures on Divinity, 4:88–91. 73 Witherspoon, Lectures on Divinity, 4:91, 90.

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maintained that the soul is an organic entity that always acts according to the underlying character or disposition of the agent precisely because it is the character or disposition of the agent that governs the activity of those faculties or powers that are themselves nothing less than particular manifestations of the psychic totality of the whole soul or mind itself.74 Among other things, this explains why Witherspoon was convinced that, “All mankind may be divided into two great classes, the righteous and the wicked, the friends and the enemies of God, the heirs of glory and the heirs of hell. These, though mixed together on earth, and in many cases not easily to be distinguished by men, are yet essentially different in their characters, and shall at last meet with a very different fate.”75 This clear commitment to a form of what Norman Fiering has called “Augustinian voluntarism”76 is evident throughout Witherspoon’s works in his un74 One of the important questions related to this study is whether or not a commitment to the unitary operation of the soul or mind requires a commitment to “the system of what is called moral necessity” (ibid., 4:89). In short, to what extent does Edwards’s understanding of moral necessity constitute the gold standard for how those who embrace a more functionalist philosophical psychology should think about the relationship between moral character and moral activity? John Witherspoon and later Princetonians clearly did not think that it does. For an exchange that demonstrates the contemporary relevance of this and related questions, see Richard A. Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and the Absence of Free Choice: A Parting of Ways in the Reformed Tradition,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 1, 1 (2011): 3–22; Paul Helm, “Jonathan Edwards and the Parting of the Ways?” Jonathan Edwards Studies 4, 1 (2014): 42–60; Richard A. Muller, “Jonathan Edwards and Francis Turretin on Necessity, Contingency, and Freedom of Will,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 4, 3 (2014): 266–285; Paul Helm, “Turretin and Edwards Once More,” Jonathan Edwards Studies 4, 3 (2014): 286–296. 75 John Witherspoon, “The Righteous Scarcely Saved, and the Wicked Certainly Destroyed (1 Peter 4:18),” in Works, 2:275. 76 According to Fiering, throughout the history of Western thought, “The most enduring and persistent antagonist to intellectualism” – which posits that reason is “the ruler of the soul” – “[…] has been the Augustinian teaching concerning the will […]. In this conception the will is not identifiable as a rational appetite […]. Nor is the will easily confinable to a particular operation of the rational soul; instead it comes to be almost synonymous with the inner essence of the whole man […]. The biblical term ‘heart’ was used almost interchangeably with will in this sense, and the terms ‘love’ and even ‘soul’ itself were also substituted for it. Augustine called a ‘right will,’ ‘good love’ and a ‘wrong will,’ ‘bad love’ and insisted that man’s salvation hangs alone on the quality of his will or love, or in other words, on the fundamental disposition of his heart” (Norman Fiering, Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard: A Discipline in Transition [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981], 113, 117). The notion that Witherspoon was an “Augustinian voluntarist” certainly challenges the consensus view that his thought was grounded in a distinctly modern form of intellectualism. For example, Daniel Walker Howe echoes the standard assessment when he argues that “If Witherspoon seemed […] to mediate between ethical sentimentalism and ethical rationalism” in his early lectures on moral philosophy, “in later lectures he came down unequivocally on the side of rational intuition as the source of moral judgements (sic)” (Daniel W. Howe, “John Witherspoon and the Transatlantic Enlightenment,” in The Atlantic Enlightenment, ed. Susan Manning, Francis D. Cogliano [Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing, 2008], 71–72). While Howe’s discussion is insightful, it leaves something to be desired

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ambiguous endorsement of the “old Calvinist” distinction between “moral” and “natural inability,”77 a distinction that is not without relevance to how the various members of the Princeton circle conceived of the call to unite piety and learning.78 Like other thinkers standing in the mainstream of the Augustinian tradition, Witherspoon was properly sober about the capacities of sinners apart from Christ because he recognized that the children of Adam – having lost “the moral image of God”79 when Adam fell – “are by nature in a state of sin and misery, under the bondage of corruption, and liable to the wrath of God.”80 Those who are “‘dead’ in sin” and “entirely deprived of [spiritual] life” can neither understand the things of the Spirit nor faithfully keep the commandments of God, he argued, not because they lack the natural faculties or powers that make understanding and the pursuit of virtue possible, but because an “inward aversion to God”81 – i.e., a corruption of “heart”82 that brings “disorder” to the soul,83 blindness to the understanding,84 “bias” to the judgment,85 and the subjection of the will to “the bent of carnal affection”86 – prevents those faculties or powers from functioning as they did before the fall, and this is the case in all of their activities, including those that have to do with the life of the mind. “We certainly discover in mankind,” Witherspoon maintained in his Lectures on Divinity,

77 78 79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86

because it does not consider how Witherspoon’s emphasis on the underlying character or disposition of the soul might be related to his understanding of moral judgment. Could it be that Witherspoon was persuaded that “probably both [reason and affection] are necessary” (Witherspoon, Lectures in Moral Philosophy, 3:374) in the making of moral judgments because he recognized – as the surrounding context of the quote makes clear – that the making of moral judgments is an activity that involves the whole soul, and not just individual faculties or powers working alone or in succession, as Howe’s analysis seems to suppose? On this last point, see Howe, “Witherspoon and the Transatlantic Enlightenment,” 71, 72. Cf. Atwater, “Witherspoon’s Theology,” 598; Green, Life of the Rev. John Witherspoon, 265– 66. For a clear example of Witherspoon’s endorsement of this distinction, see John Witherspoon, “The Yoke of Christ (Matthew 11:30),” in Works, 2:297–98. On the relevance of this issue to the question of starting point for intellectual inquiry, see notes 16 and 56 above. Witherspoon, Treatise on Regeneration, 1:157; cf. ibid., 144–45. John Witherspoon, “Man in His Natural State (Rev. 3:17),” in Works, 2:158. Scholars like Gordon Tait are simply mistaken when they insist that for Witherspoon, “we are not totally depraved or completely corrupted” (L. Gordon Tait, The Piety of John Witherspoon: Pew, Pulpit, and Public Forum [Louisville: Geneva Press, 2001], 54). Witherspoon, Treatise on Regeneration, 1:136, 216. For example, see John Witherspoon, “The World Crucified by the Cross of Christ (Galatians 6:14),” in Works, 1:410. John Witherspoon, “The Nature of Faith (1 John 3:23),” in Works, 1:330. Cf. John Witherspoon, “All Mankind by Nature Under Sin (Romans 3:23),” in Works, 1:280. Witherspoon, Treatise on Regeneration, 1:198. John Witherspoon, “The Nature and Extent of Visible Religion (Matthew 5:16),” in Works, 1:533.

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not only a disposition without restraint to commit errors of a gross nature, but in general an attachment to, and love of the creature, more than the Creator. It may not be improper here to consider the question, whether the whole nature is corrupt, so that whatever we do is sin. It will be, I think very easy to settle this point, if the meaning of the enquiry be clearly understood. If the supreme desire of the mind, and leading principle be wrong, then every thing that is directed by it must have the nature of sin.87

For Witherspoon, then, the inability that is characteristic of the fallen condition is not a natural inability that is grounded in an absence of those faculties or powers that are, as Lyman Atwater put it in his defense of Witherspoon’s God-centered orthodoxy in the nineteenth century, “essential to moral agency and responsibility, and belong to man, as such, whether unfallen, fallen, or renewed by grace.”88 Rather, it is a moral inability that is grounded in the character or disposition of the heart that governs the activity of those faculties or powers that human beings are endowed with by their Creator,89 and thus it accounts for why the sinner who is apart from Christ can be both seeing yet blind, and both free and responsible yet “do nothing but sin.”90 In short, the sinner who is apart from Christ can both see and not see and act freely and responsibly yet “do nothing but sin” not because of a “want of [natural] ability” to love God and keep his commandments, but because “the supreme and governing motive of all his actions is wrong, and therefore every one of them must be so, upon the whole.”91 Given this understanding of the nature of the inability that is characteristic of the fallen condition, where, then, did Witherspoon believe that hope for the soul that is dead in sin could be found? Again, like committed Augustinians standing in the mainstream of the Reformed tradition, Witherspoon was persuaded that “nothing is more plain from scripture or better supported by daily experience, than that man by nature is in fact incapable of recovery without the power of God specially interposed.”92 Without “the concurrence of superior aid,” he argued, “[t]he exercise of our own rational powers, the persuasion of others, [and] the application of all moral motives of every kind” will be “altogether fruitless” if the corruption that governs the fallen soul in all of its actions is not removed.93 For 87 Witherspoon, Lectures on Divinity, 4:97. Note that one important implication of this point is that “every action of an unregenerate man is essentially defective as a moral duty, because flowing from a wrong principle, and tending to a wrong end” (ibid.). For related discussion, see note 12 above. 88 Atwater, “Witherspoon’s Theology,” 598. 89 Cf. Witherspoon, Lectures on Divinity, 4:100. 90 Witherspoon, Treatise on Regeneration, 1:176. 91 Ibid., 1:215, 176. 92 Witherspoon, Lectures on Divinity, 4:103. 93 Witherspoon, Treatise on Regeneration, 1:135, 134, 255. According to Witherspoon, the corruption that is the consequence of the fall has to do with the loss of the moral image of God. For this reason, regeneration has to do with restoring the sinner “to the image of God,

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this reason, Witherspoon insisted that hope for the soul that is dead in sin could not be found in any imagined ability of the sinner to recover for himself the image of God that was lost at the fall.94 Rather, it could be found only in the “supernatural” work of the Spirit in regeneration, a work of “new creation” that Witherspoon, following Scripture, compared favorably to “the first formation of the world” in Genesis 1.95 “Regeneration,” he maintained, “does not consist in giving us new souls, new faculties, or new affections,” but “in having the image of God again drawn upon the heart” by the life giving work of the Spirit.96 It consists, in other words, in “the supreme love of God” “being implanted” in the soul and “obtaining the ascendency,” thereby giving “a new tendency and effect to those [faculties or powers] we had before” the Spirit intervened to raise us from our spiritual death.97 In short, it is the work of the Spirit in regeneration that is the only hope for those who are dead in sin because regeneration is that act of new creation that opens “the blinded understanding,” awakens “the secure and dozing conscience,” and bends “the stubborn will to the obedience of the gospel.”98 As such, it is at the foundation of every aspect of the believer’s new life in Christ because it has to do with that “change of heart and disposition”99 that is essential not just to saving faith and the pursuit of true virtue, but to true – and therefore robustly theological – knowledge of God’s world as well. Since the created order “carries on it such an image of its Maker, as the materials are able to bear,” it is the believer’s “duty,” as Witherspoon put it, not only “to look upon the world with reverence, and adore the glory of God in all its parts, from the highest to the lowest,” but also to engage the life of the mind with confidence recognizing that because “God [. . .] alone is independent” and “All other things stand in an inseparable relation to him,”100 “Every thing whatever that is the object of human knowledge, may be made subservient to theology.”101

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which, in a created nature, is but another expression for obedience to his will. He must also be restored to the exercise of love to him, and find his happiness and comfort in him. His habitual temper, his prevailing disposition, or that which hath the ascendency, must be the same that was perfect and without mixture, before the fall, and shall be made equally, or perhaps more perfect, in heaven, after death” (ibid., 1:145). Note that this recovery of the moral image of God “is gradually improved in the progress of sanctification, and shall be fully completed at the resurrection of the just” (ibid., 1:157). Cf. Witherspoon, Lectures on Divinity, 4:102–3. Witherspoon, Treatise on Regeneration, 1:134, 100, 137. Ibid., 1:167, 194–95. Ibid., 1:194–95, 157, 167. John Witherspoon, “The Righteous Scarcely Saved, and the Wicked Certainly Destroyed,” in Works, 2:279. Witherspoon, Treatise on Regeneration, 1:114. Witherspoon, “World Crucified by the Cross of Christ,” 1:410, 417. Note that Witherspoon characterizes the nature of the “inseparable relation” between God and “all things” by appealing to Romans 11:36: “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things.”

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Does all of this require us to conclude, then, that it was Green and not Smith who was the true heir of Witherspoon’s legacy at Princeton? Even though scholars like Noll are persuaded that Green’s attempt to recover the legacy of Witherspoon led him “to transform the Old Doctor into an image of himself,”102 we must still conclude there are plausible grounds for insisting that Green was Witherspoon’s true heir simply because he enthusiastically endorsed the essence of what Smith was unable to embrace, namely the philosophical psychology that was at the foundation not just of Witherspoon’s more God-centered orthodoxy, but of his more God-centered approach to enlightened education as well.103 He recognized, in other words, that the underlying character or disposition of the soul plays a decisive role not just in the positions that are taken on the whole range of important theological issues discussed above and with respect to which he stood shoulder to shoulder with Witherspoon,104 but in all forms of voluntary activity as well, including those that have to do with our ability to lay hold of the truth that is manifested both in God’s Word and world, which he, like Witherspoon, regarded as “a theatre of divine glory.”105 For this reason Green refused to regard religion and science as more or less autonomous sources of truth, as Smith had done, but he insisted instead, again like Witherspoon before him, that because the soul is a single unit and we live in a universe that is governed by God and imbued with sacramental significance, piety and learning “should always take counsel of each

101 Witherspoon, Lectures on Eloquence, 3:568. 102 Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 278. One of the ways Green did this, Noll contends, was by claiming Witherspoon as a partisan Old School Calvinist in “the divisive Presbyterian debates of the 1830s” (ibid.). 103 Evidence for this claim can be found in the theological positions that Green endorses throughout his works that presuppose a more functionalist philosophical psychology. For example, in his lectures on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, Green’s discussion of the doctrine of inability is grounded in an explicit appeal to Witherspoon’s discussion of the doctrine, which is itself grounded in a more functionalist understanding of the soul or mind. See Ashbel Green, Lectures on the Shorter Catechism, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1841), 2:264–71; Green, Life of the Rev. John Witherspoon, 265–66. 104 Substantiation for this point can be found throughout Green’s lectures on the Shorter Catechism. These lectures are particularly relevant to the thesis of this essay because they “were delivered in the winters of the years 1811 and 1812” (Green, Lectures on the Shorter Catechism, 1:381), when the tensions that led to the founding of the Seminary were reaching their final resolution. 105 Witherspoon, “World Crucified by the Cross of Christ,” 1:412; cf. Green, Lectures on the Shorter Catechism, 1:216. For examples of Witherspoon acknowledging that right knowledge of objective truth is grounded in what Charles Hodge later referred to as Spirit-wrought “congeniality between the perceiver and the thing perceived” (Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians [1860; repr. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1974], 44), see Witherspoon, An Essay on Justification, 1:72–75; Witherspoon, “A View of the Glory of God Humbling to the Soul,” 2:152–53. For related discussion, see notes 13, 14, 16, 26, and 56 above, and note 110 below.

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other,”106 and they should do so in a fashion that does not undermine the formative significance of revealed religion for every aspect of the life of the believing mind. Indeed, just as Witherspoon was persuaded that “piety, without literature, is but little profitable; and learning, without piety, is pernicious to others, and ruinous to the possessor,”107 so, too, Green was convinced that piety and learning “can never act separately without producing the most lamentable evils […],”108 for he was persuaded that the relationship between the two is so intimate that their union – given the fact that “a present God is recognized in all that […] [the discerning eye] behold[s]”109 – will “carry each to its highest point of improvement.”110 We may plausibly conclude, then, that the “counter-Enlightenment” thinkers who founded the Seminary conceived of the union of piety and learning more like Witherspoon than did Smith, for they endorsed an understanding of philosophical psychology that made it possible for them to affirm what committed Augustinians standing in the mainstream of the Reformed tradition have consistently maintained, namely that the eyes of faith – eyes that are given in the Spirit’s heart-changing work of new creation – are essential to seeing the substance of God’s world more or less for what it objectively is, namely glorious. It is this more sacramental or God-centered perspective, I would argue – and not that which is grounded in the prevailing assumption that it was Smith and not Green who was the true heir of Witherspoon’s legacy at Princeton – that offers the proper context for understanding the founders’ emphasis upon the union of piety and learning. The Seminary was designed, they maintained, not primarily to groom gentlemen for future service in the young republic, but for more explicitly theological reasons, namely “to unite, in those who shall sustain the ministerial office, religion and literature; that piety of the heart which is the fruit only of the renewing and sanctifying grace of God, with solid learning; believing that religion

106 107 108 109 110

Green, “Union of Piety and Science,” 11. Witherspoon, Lectures on Divinity, 4:11. Green, “Union of Piety and Science,” 11. Green, Lectures on the Shorter Catechism, 1:216. Green, “Union of Piety and Science,” 8. One of the ways Green may have gone beyond Witherspoon was in how explicitly he stated the benefits of “mingling the study of the Sacred Scriptures with all the other studies of a literary institution” (Ashbel Green, “The Word of God the Guide of Youth,” in Discourses, 410). “Among the means which are used to evangelize the world,” Green argued while referring to himself in the third person, “it is his belief that one of the most powerful would be, to evangelize the course of a liberal education; and he hopes the day is approaching when this will be generally seen; when the salt of revealed truth shall so heal the fountains of science, that all the streams which issue from them ‘shall make glad the city of God’” (ibid.). While I am persuaded that Witherspoon would have agreed with the thrust of this statement, I am not aware of any statement in his Works that states the matter so boldly. For related discussion, see notes 13 and 56 above.

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without learning, or learning without religion, in the ministers of the Gospel, must ultimately prove injurious to the Church.”111

11.4 Conclusion: A Word on the Enduring Essence of the Princeton Tradition If it is true that Green and his more conservative associates founded Princeton Seminary in order to recover an approach to enlightened education that was grounded generally in Witherspoon’s more Augustinian theology and specifically in the religious and educational entailments of his more Augustinian understanding of the unitary operation of the soul, then what, if anything, could that suggest about the enduring essence of the Princeton tradition? In short, it could suggest that the tradition’s essence is not found in an approach to enlightened education that was grounded, as is typically argued, in an accommodation of the more secular assumptions of the Scottish intellectual tradition, but in a commitment to the more classically Reformed conviction that because the soul is a single unit and the world in which we live just is the theater of God’s glory, the Spirit’s work of new creation is essential to seeing the inherently theological nature not just of religious knowledge, but of all knowledge as well. Whereas Smith’s appropriation of Scottish Realism led him to deny that “an act of [new] creation”112 is needed before fallen sinners can discern the objective significance of the truth that is found in both the moral and natural worlds, Green acknowledged that the unregenerate are “entirely dependent” upon the sovereign work of the Spirit “for grace and assistance to think, and will, and act aright, at all times and in every duty.”113 He recognized, in other words, that there is an intimate relationship between moral character and the moral ability to reason “rightly,”114 and for that reason he insisted, like Witherspoon before him, that “a work of [new] creation”115 is needed before the unregenerate can discern the

111 Ashbel Green, “Report of a Committee of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church Exhibiting the Plan of a Theological Seminary,” in David B. Calhoun, Princeton Seminary, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1994, 1996), 1:416. 112 Smith, A Comprehensive View, 399. For additional discussion of this point, see note 66 above. 113 Green, “Word of God the Guide of Youth,” 98–99. 114 For an exploration of the central role that the notion of “right reason” plays in the Princeton Theology of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see Paul Kjoss Helseth, “Right Reason” and the Princeton Mind: An Unorthodox Proposal (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R Publishing, 2010). 115 Ashbel Green, “The Nature and Effects of Regeneration,” in Practical Sermons, Extracted from the Christian Advocate (Philadelphia: John C. Clark, 1789), 42.

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objective, or God-centered significance of what God has revealed not just in his Word, but in his world as well. What this could suggest, then, is that despite what the historiographical consensus would have us believe, the enduring essence of the tradition does not have to do with an approach to enlightened education that regards religion and science as autonomous sources of truth that need to be integrated through the thoughtful efforts of believing scholars. Rather, it has to do with an approach to Christian learning that is grounded in the conviction that because human beings are whole agents and live in a universe that God has invested with sacramental significance, neither true knowledge of God nor of the world in which we live is possible without the eyes that are given in the Spirit’s work of new creation. We live in a God-centered universe, the most faithful followers of Witherspoon insisted, and for that reason authentically enlightened education does not have to do with merely adding the results of biblical/theological reflection to what are already presumed to be the “objective” conclusions of impartial empirical analysis. Authentically enlightened education does not have to do, in other words, with an approach to Christian learning that is perhaps best described as an academic form of special pleading. Instead, authentically enlightened education has to do with a way of seeing that is grounded in the God-given capacity to see the sacramental or God-centered significance of what God has made known both in his Word and world, which just is the theater of his glory. If this is the case, then why, we must ask in conclusion, is such an interpretation so anomalous in the historiography of the Princeton tradition? Why, in other words, are most interpreters persuaded that the true heirs of Witherspoon were more committed to a form of integration than they were to a more sacramental or God-centered way of seeing? Most interpreters draw this conclusion, I would argue, because they are persuaded that the true heirs of Witherspoon followed Smith and accommodated the more “man-centered” assumptions of a distinctly Scottish metaphysic, and for this reason their reading of the Princetonians’ work privileges not just a metaphysical, but also psychological and epistemic paradigms that are subtly yet substantially different from the ones that Witherspoon and his more faithful followers actually embraced. For example, near the end of his painstaking analysis of the tension that led to the founding of the Seminary at the end of the long eighteenth century, Noll suggests that the “pattern of instruction” that came to reign at Princeton was grounded in an approach to integration that betrayed not just an abandonment of a more explicitly “God-centered” understanding of the world in which we live, but also a form of cognitive dissonance that in a sense defied a final, coherent resolution. According to Noll,

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the presence at Princeton after 1812 of two tightly knit, yet still institutionally distinct, agencies fulfilled more exactly the vision of John Witherspoon than either a college or a seminary by itself could have done. Witherspoon had joined in his person a deep commitment to religion and the liberal arts, but he never succeeded in spelling out exactly how the two should relate to each other, without one being reduced to the other. […] Now, years after his demise, the coupled but separate institutions in Princeton carried on his tradition by linking in one place two institutions that were never fully integrated.116

While the notion that the Princeton tradition was forever compromised by an entrenched form of cognitive dissonance would be justified if Witherspoon and his more faithful followers in fact were naïve realists who embraced a philosophical psychology with a distinctly Scottish provenance, to what extent can such a notion stand if, as this essay has argued, Witherspoon and his more faithful followers in fact stood in the theological mainstream of the Augustinian/ Reformed tradition and therefore insisted that the eyes of faith are essential to true – and therefore robustly theological – knowledge of the world in which we live?117 To what extent can such a notion stand, in other words, if Witherspoon and his more faithful followers in fact were persuaded that authentically enlightened education has less to do with the efforts of believing scholars to integrate what would otherwise remain disintegrated than it does with the capacity of believing scholars to see reality more or less for what it already and objectively is, namely the arena in which the glory of God just is being displayed in all things? While a definitive answer to these questions is beyond the scope of this essay, they suggest a fresh and important line of research that is worthy of careful exploration.118

116 Noll, Princeton and the Republic, 289. Note that the demand for an explanation of precisely how the epistemological realms of faith and reason should relate to one another is grounded in metaphysical commitments that at least implicitly concede that these realms in fact are distinct. In my estimation, the most faithful followers of Witherspoon rejected such commitments because they were persuaded that we live in a sacramental, and not in an essentially secular, universe. For this reason they insisted that authentically enlightened education does not have to do with following an academic recipe, as it were. Authentically enlightened education is not the consequence, in other words, of following a prescribed series of methodological steps in a particular discipline. Rather, authentically enlightened education has to do with the aesthetic capacity to see reality more or less for what it is, a capacity that, while given by God and certainly decisive, nevertheless neither empties the academic enterprise of the mystery that attends any aesthetic undertaking, nor absolves the believing scholar from having to do his/her academic work. 117 For essential reading on this point, see David P. Smith, B. B. Warfield’s Scientifically Constructive Theological Scholarship (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 98, 118–19, 299–304. 118 I would like to thank Kevin DeYoung, Paul Helm, David P. Smith, and Donald Westblade for their helpful comments on the penultimate draft of this essay.

Robert Smart

12. Is Revival from God? The Great Awakening Debate Between Two Moderates

12.1 Introduction A “great and general awakening,” according to eighteenth century contemporaries, swept the British colonies of North America during the 1730s and 1740s from New England to Virginia.1 At its height the Great Awakening became “the revival by which churchmen and historians measure all others.”2 Measuring all others, however, may be done poorly if historians ignore the tendentious debate among the broader Reformed divines of that era – especially between the New Lights and Old Lights of New England. Although most every denomination divided in favor of or in opposition to the Awakening of the 1740s, two leading Congregational ministers emerged as the primary spokesmen for both sides of this theological debate that troubled all denominations. Jonathan Edwards and Charles Chauncy. In the historiography of the Great Awakening, these names have come to represent the two schools of thought on revivals: Edwards, the theologian of Northampton, defending the New Light position in favor of the revival, and Chauncy, the “Old Brick” of Boston, the mouthpiece of the Old Lights in opposition to it.3 Edwards emerged as a leading interpreter through the popularity of his revival narrative of the 1734–1735 Connecticut Valley’s “Little Awakening”, which he described in his Faithful Narrative. Although eighteenth century contemporaries did not commonly use the term “Great Awakening”, it soon became useful to 1 Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 26 volumes to date (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957–2005), Perry Miller, John E. Smith, and Harry Stout, gen ed., 7:154. Edwards referred to the 1740s Awakening and the Reformation as “great awakenings,” Edwards, Works, 2:287–288. 2 Alan Heimert and Perry Miller, ed., The Great Awakening: Documents Illustrating the Crisis and Its Consequences (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), xiii. 3 For a complete study of the debate between Edwards and Chauncy, see Robert Davis Smart, Jonathan Edwards’s Apologetic for the Great Awakening with particular attention to Charles Chauncy’s Criticisms (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011).

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describe the collective revivals and their novel qualities that occurred across transatlantic, multiethnic, and interdenominational boundaries. The “Little Awakening” appeared as a prelude to a “Great Awakening.” From the ripples of the 1730s came the flood in 1741–1742, and finally the ebb in 1742–1743. As Edwards began to publish and preach a moderate defense of the revival, Chauncy emerged as the Old Light leader and main critic of Edwards’s interpretation. Chauncy’s disposition to suppress the Awakening as soon as possible was fueled by both his willingness to defend Arminian clergymen and his aversion to lay criticism of the clergy and itinerant preaching. Chauncy initially undertook anonymous efforts to oppose the revival, but in 1743 his open critique of Edwards’s The Distinguishing Marks and Some Thoughts was published in his Seasonable Thoughts.

12.2 The Theological Nature of the Debate: The Central Question Ministers, like Chauncy and Edwards, “stormed heaven” for years requesting God for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Edward Griffin noted: “For years New England ministers, Chauncy among them, had stormed heaven with prayers for help, begging God to send his Spirit among the people of New England and awaken them from their torpor.”4 Seven years before the Awakening in 1733, Chauncy, in a sermon on the death of his good friend Judge Byfield, called out: “And as our aged and venerable fathers go off the stage, O holy LORD GOD, pour out thy Spirit from on high, upon the Sons of NEW-ENGLAND […]!”5 Initially the clergy gave a unified affirmation that their prayers had been answered for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but as the vitality of the Awakening was tested the central question was increasingly nuanced. It became less a question of the Awakening’s vitality and more a question of its legitimacy. Clergy wondered if this was indeed the outpouring of the Spirit they had prayed for. The concern changed from a religious awakening to a genuine religious awakening and from a work of the Spirit to a true work of the Spirit. By 1742, the central question over the Great Awakening’s authenticity as a work of the Spirit was open for debate. Boston ministers Colman, Sewall, Prince, Webb, Foxcroft, and Gee wrote in the preface to Dickinson’s 1742 defense of the Awakening:

4 Edward M. Griffin, Old Brick: Charles Chauncy of Boston, 1705–1787 (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), 36. 5 Ibid., 31.

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This is an Affair which has in some Degree drawn every One’s Attention, and been the Subject of much Debate both in Conversation and Writing. And the grand Question is,—Whether it be a Work of God, and how far it is so?6

According to Conrad Cherry, “The question, of course, that Edwards and his contemporaries were forced to answer was: are the revivals which are sweeping the colonies authentic works of the Spirit of God?”7 Kenneth P. Minkema, Executive Editor of the Works of Jonathan Edwards and of the Jonathan Edwards Center and Online Archive at Yale Unviersity, writes: We have biographies of both figures of the Great Awakening galore. Scholars trot out the published debate between Edwards and Chauncy on a regular basis as representative, rehearsing the main arguments and then moving on. More often than not, the focus is social and political […]. [However] social, cultural, and political concerns were secondary to theological, and in particular, pneumatological, issues, as both figures considered the nature of the work of the Holy Ghost.8

What began as a paper war in 1741 culminated in a clear division between those who believed the revival was, on balance, the work of the Spirit and those who did not. Regardless of how the indicators of a crisis of cultural authority complicated the central theological question, it was primarily pneumatological.9

12.3 The Four Main Answers to the Central Question “Various are the sentiments of persons about this unusual Appearance among us,” wrote Chauncy, dividing contemporaries into four groupings: Some think it is a most wonderful Work of God’s Grace; others a most wonderful Spirit of Enthusiasm; some think there is a great deal of Religion, with some small Mixture of Extravagances; others, a great deal of Extravagance with some small Mixture of that which may be called good; some think the Country was never in such a happy state on a religious account, others that it was never in a worse.10

6 Jonathan Dickinson, Display of God’s Special Grace; “The Attestation,” in the preface of the book by six Boston ministers is quoted in Edwin Scott Gaustad, The Great Awakening in New England (New York: Harper, 1957), 60. 7 Conrad Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal (1966 reprint, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), 31. 8 Kenneth P. Minkema, “Foreword” to Smart, Jonathan Edwards’s Apologetic for the Great Awakening, ix–x. 9 Ibid., 40–49. 10 Charles Chauncy, A Letter from a Gentleman in Boston, to Mr. George Wishart, one of the Ministers of Edinburgh, concerning the State of Religion in New-England. (Edin-burgh, 1742; Reprint, New York: Clarendon Historical Society Reprints, March 1883).

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There is always present the danger of interpretive reductionism. Chauncy’s four categories will help clarify the plurality in order ultimately to analyze the Edwards and Chauncy duality. There were four primary answers to the central question: was the Awakening an outpouring of the Holy Spirit? They are: all of the Spirit, mostly of the Spirit, little of the Spirit, and none of the Spirit. In the early stages of the Awakening, most ministers embraced the revival as the sought-after outpouring of the Spirit.11 Before 1742 there was no definitive radical New Light group, and criticisms from Old Lights remained anonymous. But after 1742 a critical division occurred among the revival proponents, which may be labeled “radical” and “moderate.”12 The latter began to take a more cautious approach to the Awakening, setting themselves against the radical separatists and itinerants. When the radical proponents promoted questionable practices such as receiving words from the Holy Spirit, the formal opposition to the Awakening started to coalesce. Since the radicals viewed the Awakening as a true work of the Spirit in toto, the criticisms from other New Lights appeared unwarranted. Radicals advocated lay itinerants, endorsed separatism, presumed to know the spiritual state of ministers, and offered retractions after embarrassments. The majority of those who favored the Awakening’s leaders and effects shared a moderate interpretation. They spoke out against radicals who relied upon the Spirit’s impressions at the expense of the Word, while emphasizing the positive effects of the Awakening overall through their magazines, narratives, and published sermons.13 In answering the central question of the Awakening, they affirmed that, in the main, it was a true work of the Spirit.14 Thus they conceded that the work was mixed with some undesirable practices.15 The Great Awakening, in other words, was mostly of the Spirit. Chauncy was leading the way for a growing number of ministers opposed to the methods and effects that the “great ado” was having upon the churches. Their opposition reflected a cautious and anonymous voice reluctant to embrace the 11 Gaustad, Great Awakening, 29; Richard L. Bushman, ed., Great Awakening: Documents on the Revival, 1740–1745 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 109; J. M. Bumstead and John E. Van De Wetering, What Must I Do to be Saved? The Great Awakening in Colonial America, (Hinsdale, IL: The Dryden Press, 1976), 90. 12 Bumstead and Van de Wetering, What Must I Do, 106–107. 13 Isaac Watts and Philip Doddridge expressed their concerns about Whitefield rising “above any pretences to the ordinary influences of the Holy Spirit” in his public expressions regarding the providence of God. Arnold Dallimore, George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth Century Revival (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1970– 1980), 1:342–343. 14 Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield (1842, Reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976), 296. 15 Ibid., 296.

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New Light interpretation. The leveling of clerical authority, the neglect of parish boundaries, and the open judgment of the state of the ministers and churches opposed to the revival leaders had convinced this growing, collective group that the “Great Awakening” was a “Grand Delusion,” with little of the Spirit. “Some think the Country was never in such a happy state on a religious account,” Chauncy wrote, “others that it was never worse.”16 The latter group did not formally meet as a convention to testify that none of it was of the Spirit, but they collectively and individually published sermons and pamphlets denouncing the work. They opposed the leveling of authority, the doctrine of instantaneous regeneration, and the apparent lack of reason. The radical proponents’ interpretation polarized itself to the same extreme its leaders experienced. After advocating and endorsing the controversial aspects of the Awakening, they discovered themselves presuming too much and offering retractions. The radical opponents’ interpretation was also an extreme position; by rejecting the whole, they rejected the primary work of the Spirit in salvation and a central tenet of Christian orthodoxy, namely, the doctrine of instantaneous regeneration. What was left for later generations of scholars to evaluate was the debate between the moderate proponents and opponents. What made the writings of the moderates on both sides more valuable was their realistic assessment of the Awakening and their willingness to concede that the Awakening was a mixed work. On the wave of modern scholarship’s attempt to answer the cultural, social, and political questions raised by the “tsunami” of research, the pneumatological question is over-shadowed by the historical question: Is the Great Awakening “historical fiction”?17 The historical debate indicates that, once a new set of questions developed into a “secularized political/cultural interpretation of the Awakening,” it was merely a matter of time before some historians concluded that the Awakening was historical fiction. However, by analyzing Edwards’s response to Chauncy’s criticisms, the two notions that the Great Awakening was a fiction made up by Joseph Tracy and his nineteenth-century revival proponents (Conforti’s conclusion),18 and that Edwards and his contemporaries forged a fictitious invention (Lambert’s conclusion) are seen as tenuous.19

16 Chauncy, Letter from a Gentleman in Boston, to Mr. George Wishart. 17 Smart, Jonathan Edwards’s Apologetic, 62–90. 18 Jon Butler, “Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretive Fiction,” in Journal of American History 69, no. 2 (September 1982): 305–325 . 19 Frank Lambert, Inventing the “Great Awakening.” (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

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12.4 Edwards’s Initial Defense, 1739–1742 “[S]o great and general an awakening being quite a new thing in the land, at least as to all the living inhabitants of it; neither people nor ministers had learned thoroughly to distinguish between solid religion and delusive counterfeits. Even many ministers of the Gospel, of long standing and the best reputation, were for a time overpowered with the glaring appearances of the latter.”20

By 1741 Edwards’s Faithful Narrative had become the model for the revival narratives on both sides of the Atlantic. His revival phraseology, theology, and narrative framework made a lasting impression on ministers both favoring and approving the events of the 1740s. After 1741—in the wake of the preaching and publication of The Distinguishing Marks of A Work of the Spirit of God— Edwards’s voice became more particularly identified as the moderate New Lights’ leading authority in the face of the question at the center of the crisis. By late spring of 1737, Edwards admitted to his congregation: “I don’t know but I have trusted much in men, and put too much consideration in the goodness and piety of the town.”21 It was at this point that he searched the Bible for interpretive clarity on revivals and genuine Christian experience for his congregation. In the late 1730s, his post-revival, which turned out to be pre-revival, activities were marked by three sermon series. Late in 1737, he preached from Mathew 25:1–12 on the parable of the ten virgins in which he distinguished between true and counterfeit grace. The next April he began a twenty-one-sermon series from 1 Corinthians 13 on “Charity and its Fruits,” showing that the conduct of loving well was the most reliable ground for Christian assurance. One year later, in March 1739, Edwards began a thirty-unit sequence through August on Isaiah 51:8, which became A History of the Work of Redemption. This last series displays his growing biblical convictions concerning revival taking formative shape, particularly regarding the central place occupied by revivals in the revealed purposes of God: It may here be observed that from the fall of man to this day wherein we live the work of redemption in its effects has mainly been carried on by remarkable pourings out of the Spirit of God…[and] the ways in which the greatest things have been done toward carrying on this work has always been remarkable pourings out of the Spirit at special seasons of mercy.22

The whole thrust behind Edwards’s sermons on the history of the work of redemption was to show his congregation the essential relationship between divine

20 Edwards, Works, 7:154. 21 Ibid., 19:677. 22 Ibid., 9:143.

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activity and revivals, and thus to present to them the historical scheme of God’s work of redemption. Thus, one may conclude that Edwards’s theological interpretation of revival grew stronger in the face of post-revival circumstances, and that it was his change in emphasis that shaped the morphology of the Great Awakening. In 1739, he preached with a high degree of assurance that God’s greater work of redemption would triumph by remarkable outpourings of the Spirit. As his efforts to promote revival increased locally in light of the news of revival in England, significant events were shaping up at Yale, his former school in New Haven. Edwards’s first formal evaluation of the Awakening since Whitefield’s arrival and the other initial and significant events of the Awakening would be made public in Yale’s 1741 commencement, and Edwards himself would be influenced by these events in a way that would make a great impression upon Yale’s faculty and students. For Edwards, two sermons would be left indelibly in the memory of his and subsequent generations, namely his Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God and The Distinguishing Marks of the Work of the Spirit of God. The former was preached both at Northampton and Enfield, Connect-icut. On July 8, 1741, his sermon at Enfield was much more effective than before. The latter was his first public defense of the Awakening given at Yale in September of the same year. By September 10, 1741, when Edwards came to preach, revival tensions had been high for some time. Soon after Clap’s installation as rector, New Haven was visited by George Whitefield (in October 1740), Gilbert Tennent (in March 1741), and Ebenezer Pemberton (in April 1741). An awakening on the campus occurred from October 1740 to July 1741. Student evangelism was taking place, led by students like David Brainerd. Yale leaders were favorable to awakenings up until this point, and may have invited Edwards to give the commencement address for the upcoming September for that very reason, but by the time of the address they were having second thoughts. The faculty and students may also have heard of Edwards’s powerful and recent Enfield sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and the subsequent revival there in July 1741. The district in which Enfield was located had apparently been untouched and unconcerned by the general awakening taking place in the vicinity, so the neighboring churches gave themselves to prayer, lest Enfield be passed by “while the divine showers were falling around them.”23 Edwards’s text, “Their foot shall slide in due time,” came from Deuteronomy 32:35. Eleazar Wheelock recounted to Benjamin Trumbull how the “thoughtless and vain” people were “bowed down with an awful conviction of their sin and danger” 23 Quoted in Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987),168–169.

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before the sermon’s end. Stephen Williams, another eyewitness from the Hampshire Association, recalled it in his diary that same day: […] And before the sermon was done—ye whole House—What Shall i do be savd—oh i am going to Hell—desist—ye shrieks & crys were piercing & Amazing—after Some time of waiting the Congregation were Still so yt a prayer was made by Mr. W. & after that we descend from the pulpit and dis- coursd with other people—Some in one place and Some in another—and Amazing and Astonishing ye power God was seen—& Several Souls were hopefully wrought upon yt night, & oh ye cheerfulness and pleasantness of their countenances yt receivd comfort—oh yt God wd strengthen and confirm —we sung an hymn & prayd & dismissd ye Assembly.24

On that same day, Edwards addressed a former parishioner’s concerns about the extravagant outcries and bodily effects so uncommon in his former experience when he lived in Northampton during 1734–1735. Writing to deacon Moses Lyman on August 31, he asserted the main conviction underlying his forthcoming sermon as follows: Concerning the great stir that is in the land, and those extraordinary circumstances and events that it is attended with, such as persons crying out, and being set into great agonies, with a sense of sin and wrath, and having their strength taken away, and their minds extraordinarily transported with light, love and comfort, I have been abundantly amongst these things, and have had great opportunity to observe them, here and elsewhere, in their beginning, progress, issue and consequences, and however there may be some mixtures of natural affection, and sometimes of temptation, and some imprudences and irregularities, as there always was, and always will be in this imperfect state; yet as to the work in general, and the main of what is to be observed in these extraordinary things, they have all the clear and incontestable evidences of a true divine work.25

He was confident, however, that in spite of the “Davenports,” the Great Awakening was, in the main, a true work of the Holy Spirit to document and defend. “If this ben’t the work of God,” he concluded his letter to Lyman, “I have all my religion to learn over again, and know not what use to make of the Bible.”26 The commencement address at Yale on September 10, 1741, was a significant moment for the Awakening’s leader to offer counsel. His text was 1 John 4:1, and his title The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God. His purpose was to apply the text’s recommendations to “try the spirits” in order to interpret the Awakening. His subtitle was: “Applied to that uncommon Operation that has lately appeared on the Minds of many of the People of this Land: With a par-

24 Murray, Jonathan Edwards 168–169; cf. Edwards, Works, 22:400. The diary is printed in Oliver Means, A Sketch of the Strict Congregational Church of Enfield, Conn. (Hartford, 1899). 25 Edwards, Works, 16:97. 26 Ibid., 16:97.

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ticular Consideration of the extraordinary Circumstances with which this Work is attended.” Edwards put the Awakening’s central question before his listeners: “Whether it be a work of the Spirit of God or no.”27 His sermon was divided into three sections. He gave nine “not-signs” to distinguish a work of the Spirit in section 1; he listed five “sure, distinguishing, scriptural evidences” with one objection raised in section 2; and, taking up almost half of the sermon, he preached a threepart application, “inferences,” in section 3. Edwards strategically placed the first two sections in order to prepare his listeners for accepting the emphasis placed on the last section. Edwards began section I with an effort to disarm those who would discredit the effects of the revival on the basis of epiphenomena. By admitting nine flaws in the behavior of new converts, he attempted to show that these could not be used to judge the Awakening as a true work of the Spirit: “negative signs; or what are no signs by which we are to judge a work—and especially, what are no evidences that a work is not from the Spirit of God.” These are signs that often do accompany a work of God’s Spirit but from which nothing certain can be concluded either way. The nine mentioned are: (1) that the work is carried on in an unusual or extraordinary way; (2) that it produces strong extraordinary effects on the bodies of its subjects; (3) that it brings “a great deal of noise about religion”; (4) that it induces lively impressions on the imaginations of men; (5) that it is promoted much by the examples of people under its influences; (6) that among the results is imprudent and irregular conduct; (7) that errors in judgment and satanic delusions be intermingled with it; (8) that some of its professed converts later fall into scandal; and (9) that its preachers insist too much on the terrors of God’s wrath. The effectiveness of his strategic logic lay in the way it disarmed both New Light enthusiasts and Old Light critics in one brief section. Both parties were obliged thereafter to argue their cases for or against the Awakening’s legitimacy upon other grounds. What then were the signs or marks of a true work of the Spirit of God? Edwards set forth five positive evidences, or “distinguishing scripture evidences of a work of the Spirit of God” in section II: (1) it raises people’s esteem of Jesus Christ as Son of God and savior of the world; (2) it leads to repentance from corruptions and lusts to righteousness in God; (3) it exalts one’s view of scripture; (4) it convinces people of the truths revealed in scripture; and (5) it excites people to truly love God and their neighbors. “These marks,” he concludes, “are sufficient to outweigh a thousand such little objections, as many make oddities, irregularities, and errors in conduct, and the delusions and scandals of professsors.”28 27 Ibid., 4:228. 28 Ibid., 258–259.

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The “Three practical inferences” that followed in section III may be considered the most provocative section of his sermon. The first was that “the present extraordinary influence,” causing an uncommon concern and interest in Christ, is “undoubtedly, in the general, from the Spirit of God.”29 He based his inference upon facts and rules. The rules came from the Bible; and one comes by the facts by comparing them with the rules of scripture through personal observation and the observations of others, preferably “elder Christians” experienced in the former revivals.30 The second practical inference starts with an exhortation to promote the work earnestly: “Let us all be hence warned, by no means to oppose, or do anything in the least to clog or hinder that work that has lately been carried on in the land, but on the contrary, to do our utmost to promote it.”31 His earnest reasoning, however, was what must have cut to the heart of Clap and others opposed to it at that time. Edwards boldly and plainly stated the three reasons why people may have rejected it, namely concern for their reputation, conceit in their reason and understanding, and the dishonor that comes from an exposure of their poor religious state. In two primary ways Edwards placed the blame upon the Christian leaders for opposing this new kind of phenomena. In his view both the silent and the outspoken antagonists were guilty. He was unfavorable towards the Christian leaders who remained fairly silent in regard to whether the Awakening was a work of the Spirit or not: “This pretended prudence of persons, in waiting so long before they acknowledge this work, will probably in the end prove the greatest imprudence” because they will “miss so great a blessing.” Indeed, he preached so plainly and earnestly that it would seem that no listener or reader could have dared to oppose the Awakening for fear that all opposition by omission or commission was the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit. If the first two practical inferences were directed at opposers of the work, the third and final practical inference was directed at “friends of this work, who have been made partakers of it, and are zealous to promote it.”32 Like Paul and Titus, they must be careful to avoid occasions for slandering this work (2 Cor. 11:12; Titus 2:7–8). In particular, Edwards outlined six dangerous practices that the friends and promoters of revival should avoid: giving too much heed to strong impressions,33 giving more emphasis to the restoration of extraordinary gifts of the Spirit than to love,34 despising human learning,35 passing censures on other 29 30 31 32 33 34

Ibid., 260. Ibid., 268. Ibid., 270. Ibid., 276ff. Ibid., 278–282. Ibid., 281–282.

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professing Christians,36 managing the controversy with opponents with too much heat and the appearance of angry zeal,37 and imprudently practicing the newest and uncommon methods of evangelism.38 The impact of Edwards’s sermon was disappointing for Yale leaders. Although Clap and the Yale faculty eventually got the warnings and application they wanted their students to heed, it came at the end of the address, after too many apparent concessions to the zealous promoters of the work. One by one, every argument raised up to oppose the Awakening was countered. The nine negative signs used to discredit the revival, argued Edwards, were insufficient to interpret whether the revival “be the work of the Spirit of God or no.” Not only were these disturbing phenomena no longer adequate to undercut the validity of the work, but also there were sufficient evidences that it was a true work of the Spirit, namely “certain distinguishing marks.” Although Clap seemed to have less tolerance of heterodoxy than Chauncy, he became an influential Old Light.39 Marsden emphasizes the publication’s impact upon New England, especially Chauncy’s Boston, as follows: Edwards, Cooper, and their allies were throwing down the gauntlet…. Edwards’s challenge, seconded by Boston’s evangelical clergy, forced the opposition into the open. For the next several years much of Edwards’s energy would be devoted to what amounted to a verbal duel with the Boston pastor Charles Chauncy, the most outspoken champion of the Old Lights whose honor had been impugned. After more than a century of maintaining an essential unity through many controversies, New England’s clerical establishment would be permanently divided between ‘New Light’ awakeners and ‘Old Light’ critics.40

Now was his opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff in essentially the same manner as his Distinguishing Marks, but with an even greater effort to establish a solid and judicious middle ground as a revival moderate. Edwards’s specified purpose highlights the central question in the crisis of authority: “Something should be published, to bring the affair in general, and the 35 Ibid., 282–283. 36 Ibid., 283–287; on the same day, September 10, 1741, Chauncy preached his An Unbridled Tongue a Sure Evidence, that our Religion is Hypocritical and Vain. A Sermon Preach’d at the Boston Thursday-Lecture, September 10th, 1741. And Publish’d at the Desire of the Hearers (Boston: Rogers and Fowle, 1741). 37 Edwards, Works, 4:287; Griffin, Old Brick, 76–77. 38 Edwards, Works, 4:287–288; Allen Story, “Promoting Revival: Jonathan Edwards and Preparation for Revival” (Ph.D. diss., Westminster Theological Seminary, 1994), 97–119. 39 Thomas Clap would change his support from Old Lights to New Lights after the debate shifted towards political rather than theological issues; see Louis Leonard Tucker, Puritan Protagonist: President Thomas Clap of Yale College (Chapel Hill, NC: Univer-sity of north Carolina Press, 1962), 210–211. 40 Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 237–238.

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many things that attend it, that are subjects of debate, under a particular consideration.”41 Thus he wrote his most detailed 378–page defense of the Great Awakening, Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England, And the Way in which it ought to be Acknowledged and Promoted, Humbly offered to the Publick, in a Treatise on that Subject, In Five Parts. The disproportionate length of the five parts of the book is quite evident. Part I argues “that the work [of the Awakening] […] is a glorious one” in fifty pages. Part II, “Shewing the obligations that all are under, to acknowledge, rejoice in and promote this work, and the danger of the contrary,” is thirty-four pages. Part III, “Shewing in many instances, wherein the subjects, or zealous promoters, of this work have been injuriously blamed,” is only twenty-three pages. However, in part IV, “Shewing what Things are to be corrected or avoided, in promoting the work,” the length increases to eighty-four pages. Finally, in part V, “Shewing positively what ought to be done to promote the work,” he cuts back to thirty-one pages. These headings signaled to the reader not only Edwards’s defense of the Awakening but also his remedy. But what is also very clear is that “the friends of the work” in part IV receive the most detailed and persuasive amount of admonition. “The error of those who have ill thoughts [of the Awakening],” began Edwards in part I, “(so far as the ground of such an error has been in the understanding, and not in the disposition), seems fundamentally to lie in three things,” namely an a priori judgment, an unbiblical judgment, and a misjudgment because the whole was judged by its parts. First, the Awakening’s opponents failed because they used theoretical reasoning. “They have greatly erred in the way in which they have gone about to try this work,” wrote Edwards, “whether it be a work of the Spirit of God or no, in judging it a priori.”42 It was a great error in the understanding, in his opinion, to judge it from the way it began. God is sovereign in the selection of the instruments, the means, and the methods used to carry it on. Rather, it should be judged a posteriori according to its effects, not its means He argued: To judge a priori is a wrong way of judging of any of the works of God. We are not to resolve that we will first be satisfied how God brought this or the other effect to pass, and why he hath made it thus, or why it has pleased him to take such a course, and to use such and such means, before we will acknowledge his work, and give him the glory of it.43

The second error of the Awakening’s opponents lay in their not taking the Scriptures as “an whole rule whereby to judge” the Spirit’s operations. As a result, their understanding was inadequate. Edwards charged them with neglecting to rely on the sufficiency of the Bible in this respect. Instead, their reliance was 41 Edwards, Works, 4:292. 42 Ibid., 294. 43 Ibid.

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grounded upon faculty psychology, medical knowledge, history, and Christian experience.44 The third error of opponents of the Awakening was, Edwards believed, that they judged the whole of the Awakening by its parts. He invited them to distinguish the good from the bad, the main substance from the things accidental to it. The “great weakness of the bigger part of mankind” in any new and uncommon affair was to be seen either in approving or in condemning “all in the lump,” rather than in wise sifting. His detailed rhetoric, utilizing approximately thirty-three scriptural references and half a dozen examples from ecclesiastical history, culminated with an appeal to accord with his thoughts on the Awakening. Of the approximately 122 rhetorical questions in the book, most are recorded in these pages. Edwards’s own sense of wonder in these matters was reflected in the way he set forth his wife’s experience in a lengthy narrative, while at the same time had her under a physician’s prescription in his home.45 Originally sixteen pages, this overwhelmingly personal account hides Sarah’s identity but not Edwards’s feelings. “Now if such things are enthusiasm,” exclaims Edwards, and fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be evermore possessed of that happy distemper! If this be distraction, I pray God that the world of mankind may be all seized with this benign, meek, beneficent, beatifical, glorious distraction! If agitations of the body were found in the French prophets, and ten thousand prophets more, ‘tis little to their purpose, who bring it as an objection against such a work as this, unless their purpose be to disprove the whole of the Christian religion.”46

In order to quicken their volitional response to countenance the work, he asked two primary questions. First, “What they are waiting for: whether it ben’t this?” In other words, they “ben’t” waiting more than could be reasonably expected. Second, “how long will they wait to see the good fruit of the work, before they will 44 “In short,” writes Conrad Cherry, “Locke is concerned to overcome that form of facultypsychology (often operative in Edwards’s theological harbingers) which annuls integrity of the willing and knowing human agent by conceiving the mental powers as separate, selfactivating entities” (Cherry, Theology of Edwards, 16, 220n). Cf. Paul Helm, “John Locke and Jonathan Edwards: A Reconsideration,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 7, no. 1 (January 1969): 51–61. 45 Regarding length, see Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 239–252. Regarding Sarah’s condition, a surviving medical prescription from the town doctor (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University) indicates that she was diagnosed as suffering from “an hystericall originall.” See Kenneth P. Minkema, “‘The Devil Will Roar in Me Anon’: The Possession of Martha Roberson, Boston, 1741,” in Spellbound: Women and Witchcraft in America, ed. Elizabeth Reis (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Books, 1998), 118. For an appreciation of how Edwards viewed prayer for healing, see Thomas Saunders Kidd, “The Healing of Mercy Wheeler: Illness and Miracles Among Early American Evangelicals,” William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 1 (January 2006): 149–170, especially 158. 46 Edwards, Works, 4:341.

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determine in favor of it? Is not their waiting unlimited?”47 For “there is no such thing as being neuters” and everyone must choose whether it be “a very great work of God, or a great work of the Devil, as to the main substance of it.”48 Part II, “Shewing the obligations that all are under to acknowledge, rejoice in, and promote this work, and the great danger of the contrary,” emphasizes the effects of ill thoughts concerning the revival for all members of society. “When God remarkably appears in any great work for his church and against his enemies,” cautioned Edwards, “it is a most dangerous thing, and highly provoking to God, to be slow and backward to acknowledge and honor God in the work, and to lie still and not put to an helping hand.” He prefaced his argument with the same premise: God had remarkably appeared and manifested himself in such a great work of late. Therefore, since this is the true premise, all were obliged to endorse it or face the danger of the consequences – “the curse of God.”49 Part III, “Shewing in many instances wherein the subjects or zealous promoters of this work have been injuriously blamed,” argued that the Awakening was a sovereign work of God’s Spirit and no mere human invention. Edwards put forth his “billboard,” which gave his three-point outline for the remaining contents of his “thoughts.” This “spirited retort,” to use Goen’s words,50 to the ten common criticisms of the Awakening was his most explicit defense against the critics. The first subset of criticisms – one through three, five, and eight – was aimed at the New Light preachers and preaching. This “new” preaching raised the affections, expressed such earnestness and vehemence of disposition, spoke terror to hearers, and frightened “poor, innocent children” with damnation. In response to raising affections, Edwards favored preaching that raised the hearers’ affections proportional to the worthiness of the truth preached: And I don’t think ministers are to be blamed for raising the affections of their hearers too high, if that which they are affected with be only that which is worthy of affection, and their affections are not raised beyond a proportion to their importance or worthiness of affection. I should think myself in the way of duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.51

47 Ibid., 342–344. 48 Ibid., 349, 344. 49 Ibid., 368; his sermon The Curse of Meroz, preached December 1741 is in Edwards, Works, 22:508. Judges 5:23: “Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord,…because they came not to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.” 50 Goen, ed., in Edwards, Works, 4:72. 51 Ibid., 385, 387.

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The next subset of four criticisms—the fourth, seventh, ninth, and tenth—were concerned with the nature of revival meetings. The opponents apparently felt that the subjects of the revival were meeting too frequently, allowing bystanders to view folks under great affections, abounding in too much singing, and permitting children to meet together without supervision. He also exhorted his readers “not to neglect the business of their particular callings”; nevertheless, to honor God is “the main business of life.” Indeed, “the country has lost no time from their temporal affairs by the late revival of religion, but has gained time.” The more time is saved from idleness, vain-talking, fruitless pastimes, and needless diversions, the more time was gained in the revival of religion. He estimated that “probably five times as much has been saved in persons’ estates, at the tavern and in their apparel, as has been spent by religious meetings.”52 He was essentially a moderate who desired both order and fairness: as he evaluated the opposers’ “unjust criticisms,” so he critiqued the promoters’ wrong principles. In the former, he sought to honor the Spirit by exposing the sins of omission and commission, namely, not acknowledging the Spirit’s work and speaking against it. In the latter, he aimed to affirm the Spirit’s work by restraining the sins of omission and commission, namely, not acknowledging the influence of the devil while presuming it to be the work of the Holy Spirit. Part IV, “Shewing what things are to be corrected or avoided in promoting this work, or in our behavior under it,” is a corrective to “friends and promoters” whose errors “are of such dreadful consequence.” Behind these “errors that attend a great revival” lie three sources, namely (1) undiscerned spiritual pride; (2) wrong principles; (3) ignorance of Satan’s advantages and devices. Under the heading, “wrong principles,” Edwards refuted the notions of receiving immediate revelation, drawing false conclusions from true premises, making inferences from religious exercises, acting on whatsoever the Spirit seemingly inclined one to do, justifying the lack of foresight of future consequences because it felt edifying in the first instance, misjudging apparent attestations of providence, disregarding the external order in the matters and means of grace, and assuming the same “style and speak” of Old Testament prophets. Having shown what needed to be remedied or avoided in the work itself and in behavior associated with it, Edwards concluded that the Devil had driven “the pendulum far beyond the point of rest.” Evil’s twofold mischief was to attack from without through the “cold in religion” and from within by pushing it to the contrary extreme. Edwards sought, therefore, to settle the work “in a proper medium.”53 52 Edwards, Works, 4:395–397. 53 Ibid., 494–495.

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The theme of Part V, “Shewing positively what ought to be done to promote this work,” was Edwards’s opportunity to disable the critics and to enable the promoters. Edwards then named five building blocks for readers in general, because he believed that everyone could promote the work by honoring God. The first proposal for a season of worldwide prayer he expanded in 1747 in his An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of All God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth. Second, there ought to be an increased frequency of communion. Third, there should be “proportionable care” given to loving people through the externals of Christian duties. Fourth, leaders should lead the Christian communities in renewal of covenants with God. He added: “One thing more, an history should be published once a month, or once a fortnight, of the progress of [the Awakening].”54 This was to come quickly to fruition in the appearance of The Christian History, Containing Accounts of Revival and Propagation of Religion in Great Britain and America. Thomas Prince of Boston first published it in 1743, and it spread revival narratives influentially throughout New England, the middle colonies, and Great Britain. The Awakening was expected to be a mixed work and, with cautious leadership exercising moderation, it had a reasonably bright future. One of the main aims was to persuade the decided opponents, undecided moderates, and potential opposers that he was as concerned as they were to put an end to the imprudence. He did so primarily by warning zealous proponents that they were in danger of harming the Spirit’s work. While Edwards succeeded in laying out a judicious middle ground with which he hoped to attract the majority in accepting his interpretation of the Awakening, he was also guilty of a special pleading by the disguised mention of his wife’s extraordinary experience as the main ground for his earnestness. In addition to occasionally giving the impression that his pleas were over the top, he distracted the attention of his readers by implying that the millennium would begin in New England. This statement was irrelevant to the central question, and was later used against him by Chauncy.55 The major problem for Edwards, however, was not in the way it was read, but in the manner in which it was advertised. On March 24 and again on March 31, the Boston News-Letter advertised Edwards’s Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival in New England, in Five Parts. The same pages, however, also announced Chauncy’s forth-coming Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England, in Five Parts. The week before the publication of Edwards’s treatise was announced in the Boston Weekly News-Letter, Chauncy, who must have seen an 54 Ibid., 529. 55 Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 263–264.

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advanced copy of the book, published the title page. In the next two issues of the News-Letter, advertisements of the publication of Edwards’s volume appeared just above the announcement of the forthcoming Seasonable Thoughts.56 Somehow or other, by March 16, 1743, he had read the latter, even though it had not yet been placed on sale, because on that day he wrote to his cousin in Durham: Mr. Edwards’s book of 378 pages upon the good work is at last come forth: and I believe will do much hurt; and I am the rather inclined to think so, because there are some good things in it. Error is much more likely to be propagated, when it is mixed with truth. This hides its deformity and makes it go down the more easily. I may again trouble myself and the world upon the appearance of this book. I am preparing an antidote, and if the world should see cause to encourage it, it may in time come to light.57

12.5 Chauncy’s Criticisms of Edwards’s Defense On March 13, 1785, Charles Chauncy mounted the pulpit for the last time in First Church in Boston, which bore his own nickname of “Old Brick.”58 As he looked back to October 3, 1711,59 when he witnessed the church and half of the city devoured by flames, he recalled also the fires of the Great Awakening.60 Born on January 1, 1705, in Boston, Chauncy had a chameleon-like theological career, beginning at the end of the Puritan era that included the leading of the opposition to the Great Awakening and ended with promoting universal salvation after the American Revolution. In this respect he was a key representative and agent of significant changes in the religious life of New England. Chauncy was confronted directly by the Great Awakening as it swept Boston in the wake of the arrival of Whitefield. From 1740 to 1743 the town was filled with the excitement of the revival. Whitefield preached in “old brick” on a Sunday afternoon in September 1740, “the house not being large enough to hold those crowded to hear him, when the Exercise was over, he went and preached in the 56 Gaustad, Great Awakening, 92–93. 57 Letter dated March 16, 1743, in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 10:332, quoted in Gaustad, Great Awakening, 90; Griffin, Old Brick, 75. 58 Griffin, Old Brick, 10; Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Clergy and the Colonial Churches of New England (Lancaster, MA: Society of the Descendants of the Colonial Clergy, 1936; Repr. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1977), 53, 88–89, 241. 59 Charles Chauncy, A Sermon, Delivered at the First Church in Boston, March 13, 1785: Occasioned by the Return of the Society to Their House of Worship, After Long Absence, to Make Way for the Repairs That Were Necessary (Boston, 1785). 60 Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953).

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fields to at least 8000 persons.”61 Needless to say, Chauncy did not care for this itinerant preaching in Boston. He wrote anonymously after Whitefield’s visit: “I deny not, but there might be here and there a person stopped from going on in a course of sin; and some might be really better: but so far as I could judge upon the nicest observation, the town, in general, was not much mended in those things wherein a reformation was greatly needed.” He added that the effect of the revivals among Whitefield’s recent tour was nothing more than “a commotion in the passions.”62 Chauncy may have read the times well. Further evidence came from a surprising quarter on February 12, when Gilbert Tennent agreed with Dickinson concerning revival abuses: “I cannot justify the excessive heat of temper which has sometimes appeared in my conduct.” Chauncy published it in the Boston News-Letter, July 22, 1742, and in the Boston Evening-Post, July 26, 1742.63 After a heated summer exchange with the over-enthusiastic Davenport, Chauncy prepared his Harvard commencement sermon Enthusiasm Describ’d and Cautioned Against, much of which was to be repeated in his Seasonable Thoughts. Chauncy offered his interpretation before Harvard’s audience: There is, I doubt not, a great deal of real, substantial religion in the land. The Spirit of God has wro’t effectually on the hearts of many, from one time to another: and I make no question he has done so of late, in more numerous instances, it may be, than usual. But this, notwithstanding, there is, without dispute, a spirit of enthusiasm, appearing in one place and another. There are those who make great pretences of the Spirit, who are carried away with their imaginations.64

By September Chauncy’s volume of 424 pages (compared to Edwards’s 378) arrived in this caustic context. In one sense, Chauncy’s volume was indeed more “seasonable” compared to Edwards’s volume. Writing to Robe, Edwards acknowledged that “the prejudices there are [against the Awakening], in a great part of the country, are riveted and inveterate.” People, he noticed, were so divided over the Awakening in America that “there [was] at length raised a wall between them up to heaven.”65 “This book,” writes Perry Miller of Seasonable Thoughts, “is a massive, Johnsonian, indignant work, a sourcebook for American communal behavior; 61 Boston Weekly News-Letter, September 25, 1740. 62 Chauncy, Letter from a Gentleman (written anonymously). 63 Ibid., 11. In his letter to Dickinson, Tennent wrote that Davenport’s revival practice, like “setting up separate meetings” based on suppositions of “Unregeneracy of pastors is enthusiastical, proud and schismatical,” and his “practice of singing in the Streets is a piece of Weakness and enthusiastical Ostentation.” Published in Chauncy, Letter from a Gentleman in Boston, 18–19. 64 Chauncy, Enthusiasm, 255. 65 Edwards, Works, 16:111–112.

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learned and dignified, it is monumentally honest.”66 Jones believes that in this “definitive and influential work [Chauncy] articulated the cumulative, resentful protest against the Great Awakening by its critics. Properly speaking the volume is an anthology – a collection of documentary, analytical, and evaluational materials, edited by Chauncy, indicting and censuring the leaders of the revival movement and exposing its errors and abuses.”67 Each element was strategic for Chauncy’s overall polemic. The preface was a thirty-page account of an historical crisis that had occurred a hundred years previously in New England. The number of pages given to the names of subscribers and to the introduction was an indication of their importance to Chauncy. The list of subscribers originally required eighteen pages to present a closely-printed register of hundreds of distinguished supporters, and the introduction is no less than thirty-four pages of dense explanation and purpose for the five-part material which follows. Even these sections, therefore, had an important role in achieving the author’s intended effect. Chauncy prefaced his book by harking back to a historical crisis which, according to his title page, gives an account of the “Antinomians, Familists and Libertines, who infected these churches, above a hundred years ago.”68 Chauncy’s brilliant opening not only unearthed the unsettled dispute of the Antinomian Crisis of 1636 to 1638 but also helped to provoke and shape Edwards’s response on the nature of true religion in his Religious Affections.69 Indeed, Chauncy’s preface clarified just what the two fought over. For Chauncy, the recounting of the cautionary tale of Anne Hutchinson was another way to associate Edwards and the New Lights with the “Antinomians” of the previous century.70 “Antinomian” literally meant “anti-law”; in theological terms, it referred to one who elevated internal, subjective experience of the Spirit over outward, objective obedience to the moral law. Chauncy believed that the language used in the 1630s was applicable to the 1740s: “If I had not spoken in language, part of which was in print fifty, and part eighty years ago, some, I doubt

66 Miller, Jonathan Edwards, 175. 67 Jones, Barney Lee “Charles Chauncy and the Great Awakening in New England” (Ph. D. diss., Department of Religion, Duke University, 1958), 68. 68 The “Familists” were a religious sect called “the family of love” which arose in Holland in 1556; they placed undue reliance on the impulses of the Holy Spirit. The “Libertines” had a double derogatory meaning, referring to those who indulged in pleasure without restraint and those who opposed Calvin’s reforms in Geneva. 69 Edwards, Works, 2:87, 287. 70 Dickinson, Display of God’s Special Grace; Andrew Croswell, Mr. Croswell’s Reply to a Book Lately Published, entitled A Display […] (Boston, 1743); Andrew Croswell, Heaven Shut Against All Arminians and Antinomians (Boston, 1747).

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not, would have imagined I had purposely gone into the use of certain words and phrases to make former times look like the present.”71 Antinomianism first emerged in New England with the immigration of Anne Marbury Hutchinson (1591–1643) in May 1634. In November, her husband, William Hutchinson, was elected deputy from Boston to the Massachusetts Bay Colony General Court. She soon began to hold meetings in her home to discuss the previous Sunday’s sermon, usually by her admired pastor, John Cotton. Hutchinson treasured the sovereign way that God’s Spirit regenerated, without mediation, whomever and whenever he pleased, and believed that human actions could not contribute to either salvation or assurance of salvation. This work of the Spirit she took as sufficient evidence to assure a Christian of salvation. She went further, however, by expressing her opinion that she felt the other ministers preached a “legal” religion, because they made a necessary connection between justification and sanctification, regeneration and good works. “Sanctification can be no evidence of a man’s good estate,” she argued,”[and] it is a souldamning error to make sanctification an evidence of justification.”72 As a result, Hutchinson’s pastor, Cotton, came under suspicion of fermenting heresy in Boston churches. On October 25, 1636, the ministers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony met with Cotton, Hutchinson, and her brother-in–law, John Wheelwright. “Mr. Cotton was present and gave satisfaction to them,” recorded John Winthrop, “So as he agreed with them in the point of sanctification, and so did Mr. Wheelwright; so as they all did hold that sanctification did help to evidence Justification.”73 Despite this apparent agreement with Cotton and the others, “the Hutchinsonians” revived the controversy. In December 1636 and August 1637, two more meetings were held with the ministers of New England. Questions were addressed to Cotton and Hutchinson; the former again was exonerated, but Hutchinson was placed on trial in November 1637. She held her own until her fateful claim that she had received immediate revelations from God’s Spirit, “of the Spirit and not by the ministry of the Word.” She was unanimously excommunicated from Boston’s First Church in March 1638. She 71 Chauncy, Seasonable Thoughts (Boston, MA: Rogers and Fowle, 1743), xxvi. For instance, Johnson’s Wonder-working Providence of Sion’s Saviour, in New England noted that “there was among all Sorts of persons a great talk of NEW-light” in the 1630s. 72 David Hall, The Antinomian Controversy, 1636–1638: A Documentary History, second edition (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 4–10; A. H. Newman, “Antinomianism,” in Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, ed. Philip Schaff and Samuel Macauley Jackson (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1989), 1: 201. For a simpler overview, see William K. B. Stoever, “A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven”: Covenant Theology and Antinomianism in Early Massachusetts (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1978), 34–70. 73 John Winthrop, “Journal,” in The Puritans: A Sourcebook of Their Writings, ed. Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, 2 vols. (1938; Rev. and Repr. New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 1:129.

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and her party were banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and left to assist the establishment of Rhode Island. She shortly thereafter moved to Long Island Sound, where she was killed in an Indian uprising in 1643.74 The 1636–1638 Crisis held an incredible sway over New England, and to associate any minister with the wrong leader or language would seriously jeopardize his reputation. Thomas Shepard’s Church of First Boston hosted the two significant 1637 events, namely the dramatic August synod and the November trial of Anne Hutchinson. During the crisis of authority, Shepard preached a refutation of Antinomianism in his series over four years entitled The Parable of the Ten Virgins. In his Religious Affections Edwards referred to these sermons in aiming to discover the difference between “wise virgins” and the “foolish,” the regenerate and the counterfeits. Unlike Hutchinson and some New Lights, Shepard emphasized that assurance of salvation was to be gained progressively through the right use of means and consistent Christian practice: “The Lord reveals not all of himself at once, there is a further manifestation of the Lord in this life to his people, not for, but when they, indeed, maintain such works before Him.”75 Where there was any witness of the Spirit given, “it doth most usually and firstly witness by means.”76 He disparaged a profession of faith, or a sudden claim of an assurance by the Spirit’s witness, where Christian practice has been either inconsistent or absent. John Cotton, on the other hand, stressed the Spirit’s work of regeneration taking place before Christian practice, using the striking image of divine light and stressing the passivity of the recipient. There was not, in his opinion, “any right to the blessings of the grace of Christ laid up in any promises, nor can we challenge any assurance thereof, till we can first hold forth and plead our assured union with himself.”77 In other words, this first work of grace rather than Christian practice as such becomes, then, the ground for the believer’s assurance of salvation. Quoting at length from these sources, Chauncy attempted to identify the Awakening as a second Antinomian outburst just like the first. Each 1630 type had a 1740 antitype. Consciously taking up Shepard’s mantle, he was ready to host again the Old Lights at Shepard’s First Church of Boston to judge the New 74 Winthrop, “Journal,” in Puritans, 132; Shepard, “The Autobiography,” in Michael McGiffert, God’s Plot: Puritan Spirituality in Thomas Shepard’s Cambridge (1972; Revised and expanded, Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1994), 67–68; Hall, Antinomian Controversy, 24–33, 173, 311–348. 75 Thomas Shepard, The Works of Thomas Shepard (1853; Repr., New York: Goerg Olms Verlag, 1971), 2:220–221. 76 Ibid., 2:78–79. 77 Hall, Antinomian Controversy, 92–93.

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Light “Antinomians, Familists, and Libertines.” Chauncy’s post at First Church, like Shepard’s previously, brought with it the task of addressing the political and ecclesiastical affairs of New England. “It may not be amiss to observe here,” he claimed, “as the church of which I am a pastor, was the only one in Boston, in the times I have been speaking of, so this was the church to which most of the grand opinionists belong’d.”78 Chauncy argued throughout that both the Antinomian and the awakened abandoned outward signs of sanctification for a new practice of judging men’s hearts based upon a sudden visitation of the Spirit. This Hutchinsonian way of judging “tends to nothing…but to destroy the peace of the churches, and fill the world with contention and confusion. We have no way of judging, but by what is outward and visible: nor are we capable of judging any other way.”79 From Chauncy’s perspective, Davenport and his followers stood for Anne Hutchinson and her company. They should be banished to Long Island Sound, therefore, for countenancing the seditious and rebellious, and for claiming to receive immediate revelations from the Spirit. For Chauncy this preponderance of “Children, young People, and Women, whose passions are soft and tender, and more easily thrown into a commo-tion,” and of “Lads, or rather Boys: nay, Women and Girls; yea, Negroes” – could only “portend Evil to these churches.” In other words, he was appalled that any “Anne” assumed the status of males or that boys preached like men and that black men undertook pastoral responsibilities as if they were white.80 If Hutchinson represented the New Lights and Chauncy the standing order of orthodox clergy, then Edwards’s type was Cotton. The issue concerning Cotton and Edwards was not that they truly were Antinomians, but that they both, from Chauncy’s perspective, apparently sounded like and associated with, Antinomians and incipient familists. While the reminder of the hundred-year-old cautionary tale served to impugn Edwards and the New Lights for Antinomianism, it also called attention to the centrality of language in the debate. The Hutchinson case “urges revivalists to beware of the language of Antinomian-ism because of both its theological implications and its social ones.”81 “A list of subscribers,” was printed across the top of page one, followed by the names of three prominent governors and two lieutenant governors. If word selection matters in order to classify theological truth or error, then names 78 Chauncy, Seasonable Thoughts, xxvii. 79 Chauncy, Enthusiasm, v. 80 For Edwards’s 1737 viewpoint and that of his successors, see Edwards, Works, 16:71–76; Kenneth Minkema, “Jonathan Edwards’s Defense of Slavery,” Massachusetts Historical Review 4 (2002): 23–60. 81 Lang, Amy Schrager, “Flood of Errors,” in Jonathan Edwards, Nathan O. Hatch and Harry S. Stout, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 161–162, 167–168, 170–171.

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represent sociological significance. Chauncy’s use of names was intended to fortify his argument against Edwards. There were over seven hundred names printed in alphabetical order with social, geographical, and vocational distinctions. The coalition represented most of the Standing Order of Boston and included over 140 ministers. “If one desires a roster of antirevivalists,” remarks Miller, “and also a social register for New England in 1743, he need only consult the list of subscribers to Seasonable Thoughts.”82 Chauncy felt that the Awakening’s leaders were credited with too much effectiveness because the talk of revival focused on questionable and sensational experiences without true changes in peoples’ lives. For, he reasoned and asked, There have been more numerous instances of saving Conversion, in the Years past, than usual: but it must be said, at the same time, that there have been more Disorders and greater Extravagances, than common. And what is still more dangerous tendency, han’t the great talk of a Revival of Religion arisen more from the general Appearance of some Extraordinaries, (which there may be where there is not the Power of Godliness) than from such Things as are sure Evidences of a real Work of God in men’s hearts?

Things appeared to be more than what they truly were, and people, it seemed to Chauncy, were either spellbound or unwilling to own up to the “truth of the case.”83 A true work of the Spirit, however, may be known by the following four marks. First, there is ordinarily a preparation of mind, i. e., conviction of sin and guilt.84 Second, there is a secret and unseen work within people, in their hearts, which must be evidenced by words and actions.85 Third, there is uniformity. Although there are a variety of instruments, means, manner, and degree, “this Work of GOD is the same at all Times, and in all Places.”86 Finally, there is an appearance of the fruit of the Spirit, as the “Appearance a Work of God will make, wherever, and in whomsoever, it takes place.”87 As a result, he was now in a position to proceed with defining and promoting true religion in the rest of the book. In the title to part I, Chauncy referred to the Great Awakening as “the late religious appearance.” Since he believed that the Awakening was more about religious appearance than reality, in part I he devoted almost all of his ink (77 percent) to “Things of a bad and dangerous Tendency,” 11 percent to obligating 82 83 84 85 86 87

Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (Cleveland, OH: Meridian, 1959), 175. Chauncy, Seasonable Thoughts, 3. Ibid., 5–6. Ibid., 3, 6–7. Ibid., 3, 8–9. Ibid., 21–34. Chauncy stated that as of 1743 New Englanders had not been taught how to distinguish the marks of the Spirit: “nor have people been so plainly and faithfully taught… what a Work of God is, or how to distinguish between those things which are undoubted marks of such a Work and those which are not” (Chauncy, Seasonable Thoughts, 3).

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his readers to suppress the disorders to be named in part II, 6 percent to how suppressers were injured, 2 percent to correcting opposers, and 4 percent to what he judged as the best expedients to promote interest in religion. The reason for his asymmetric content is difficult to understand, but it is noted in order to indicate where his emphasis lay. Part I contains a list of eight particulars, which he felt had a harmful and perilous inclination. They included itinerant preaching, terror, sudden light and joy, rash, censorious, and uncharitable judging, impulses and impressions, exhorters, confusion in houses of worship, and the prevalent spirit of error. All received a fairly equal amount of “just and true light” before his last twenty-five pages in this section, which were directly opposed to Edwards’s Some Thoughts, published the same year. Complaining often of his inability to confine his thoughts within a reasonable space, he specified one final dangerous fault, namely “that Spirit of Error which has gone forth into the land.” He summarized in seven particulars what he viewed to be the wind of error tossing the churches to and fro. First, many ministers were told that they were incapable because they were assumed to be in an unregenerate state,88 which led, second, to church separations.89 Third, there was an error of presuming to depend upon the Holy Spirit in a way that made people despise learning, oppose a diligent use of the appointed means of grace, and dishonor the bible.90 Fourth, people made assurance essential to conversion,91 and fifth, they connected the initial religious experience with the conversion itself.92 Sixth, the subjects of revival acted just like Anne Hutchinson and her followers. Finally, they stigmatized good works93 and decried sanctification as an evidence of justification: “a man must be a great stranger to the religious State of affairs in the land, who is unacquainted with the contemptuous Manner, in which good Works have been spoken of by many.”94 He gave an account of a sermon he had heard on his travels, which spoke of good works as “abominable, filthy, [and] cursed.”95 Many, who are zealous for what is call’d, in the gross, the glorious Work of GOD, [no doubt Chauncy had Edwards in mind] will, probably, be, “heartily sick” of the above representation: but if they are become “prejudiced (as has been publickly declar’d [by Edwards] against the very Sound of Imprudences and Disorders,” they may not be

88 Chauncy, Seasonable Thoughts, 242–248. 89 Ibid., 249–254. Both Old and New Lights initiated separations. 90 Ibid., 256–270. Chauncy’s point does not hold water: all the dissenters established new colleges for the clergy, often without state funding. 91 Ibid., 271–274. 92 Ibid., 274. 93 Ibid., 274–285. 94 Ibid., 285–94. 95 Ibid., 275 .

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suppos’d to be in a proper temper of mind to receive the truth: nor is it any wonder, if they have unhappily fallen into mistakes; justifying those Things, which, if they had seen in their true light, they would have condemned.

In other words, Edwards’s hermeneutical blindness was a result of his prejudice. “Nothing more tends to blind the mind,” wrote Chauncy, “than Prejudice.” It is so blinding, in his view, that the only way New Lights like Edwards would be brought to truly see all these disorders would be if “Conviction was forced into them, by what they saw with their own Eyes, and heard with their own Ears.”96 What was worse, according to Chauncy, was the way “the whole considered in the Lump have been excus’d.” While Edwards accused opposers of rejecting the whole lump because of a few irregularities, Chauncy blamed him for disguising a lump of irregularities as merely accidental effects of one generally remarkable work of the Spirit.97 Chauncy believed that Edwards accomplished this by taking the “bad Things of the present day” collectively and making them only accidental effects of a good work. “But,” asked Chauncy, “how do we distinguish between accidental Effects, and those that are natural? Is it not by the Frequency, and Uniformity of their production?… Don’t we speak of them as natural, and never as accidental only? Yea, is not the Doctrine of Causes and Effects wholly founded on this kind of Observation and Experience?” The only way that one could judge the bad things as merely accidental effects of one good cause, in his view, was to pretend that the many irregularities were “rare productions.” Edwards, Chauncy complained, “made use of more philosophy…than anyone that I know of….”98 Providentialism held that all events are, in principle, both “natural” and “providential” (i. e., concurrence and God’s preservation are sufficient to explain them). Edwards, however, was an occasionalist and may have dismissed Chauncy’s notion of “natural” altogether because such “causes” were merely the occasions for God to produce the effects. Occasionalism, for Edwards, affirmed the reality of God’s Spirit as separate from the exercises of pride in the hearts of people. Chauncy’s longest section, part I, referenced approximately eleven newspaper articles,99 thirty-three bible verses,100 four of Whitefield’s journal entries,101 fourteen letters written by New England ministers,102 and almost a dozen

96 97 98 99 100 101 102

Ibid., 294. Edwards, Works, 4:314–316. Chauncy, Seasonable Thoughts, 384. Ibid., 37–38, 41, 58, 68, 98, 106, 144–145,199–201. Ibid., 42–45, 48, 172–176, 224, 241, 253, 271–273, 284. Ibid., 48–49, 188, 242–244, 257–258. Ibid., 151–167.

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Puritans103 in order to prove that the “things of a bad and dangerous tendency” in the “late religious Appearance” were attributed to the emphasis on passions of its promoters. Throughout his Seasonable Thoughts, he may have deliberately made a selective word-change. For example, in the title of this section, “The manner of addressing to the Passions of people, in these times,”104 he not only used a different word from Edwards but also altered the meaning of Edwards’s word “affections.” Whereas Edwards argued that the affections were the main focus of true religion, he perceptively posed the main question in terms of passions: “The Question is whether it ben’t a plain, stubborn Fact, that the Passions have, generally, in these Times, been apply’d to, as though the main Thing in Religion was to throw them into disturbance? “105 Where heated passions are without light in the mind, they could not be owing to the Spirit. “Would this not be to invert the frame,” he asked, “to place the dominion in these powers, which were made to be kept in subjection? Can this be the Effect of the Out-pouring of the Spirit? It ought not be supposed.” In his opinion, “one of the most essential Things necessary in the new-forming of men, is the reduction of their Passions to a proper regimen.”106 Chauncy also questioned the absence of reason in religious experience, even though a great deal of affection was present. “ ‘Tis not enough,” he asserted, “that they have Heat in the Affections, but they must have Light in their Minds.”107 Whereas Edwards wrote in Some Thoughts of everyone’s duty to promote the work of the Spirit or suffer the consequences, in part II Chauncy emphasized the obligations upon all to suppress the disorders or embrace the great dangers that would arise from neglecting to do so. Chauncy, in part III, showed “many instances wherein” the opposers of “the disorders” have been “injuriously treated.” The thing that apparently troubled Chauncy, reflected in his long reply, was the injurious way in which they were spoken against as “opposers of the work of God.” He objected to such namecalling: But why must they be spoken of, in the harsh language, of Opposers of the Word of God? Is this their real character? ‘Tis true, they don’t think the work of the spirit lies in Impulses, visions, and Revelations…that Screamings, and Shriekings, and Swoonings, are

103 See Chauncy, Seasonable Thoughts, for the following references to Puritans: Robert Fleming, 88; Stephen Charnock, 110–113; John Owen, 114–116, 130; Richard Baxter, 116–128, 133–135, 138–140, 222–223, 237–241, 259–263, 281; Thomas Shepard, 131–132, 289–291; Samuel Bolton, 136, 236–237; John Howe, 137; Samuel Rutherford, 225, 277; John Flavel, 221–225, 231–236, 276, 291–293; William Gurnall, 227–231; William Perkins, 237–241. 104 Ibid., 301. 105 Ibid., 302. 106 Ibid., 324. 107 Ibid., 308–309.

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sure marks of a genuine conviction of sin […] that extatic Raptures are an infallible sign of saving faith: nor have they any great opinion of the Exhortations of weak, illiterate men, women, or lads, and other Extraordinaries, which are common at this day. And shall they, upon these accounts, be called Opposers of the Work of God?108

Part IV is by far the shortest section in Chauncy’s polemical effort, and it is much briefer than Edwards’s similar endeavor to offer corrections to his side. Chauncy’s expressed intention was to rebuke and reform those friends who had gone to extremes in testifying against the irregularities. In essence, Chauncy agreed with Edwards that some had spoken contemptuously of the Spirit’s operations “as tho’ they were nothing more than delusion and imagination.”109 Chauncy conceded that some “instead of entertaining an ill Thought only of that which is ill, may have condemned religion in the whole, as a wild imaginary Thing. An unhappy mistake this!—nor can it be too soon corrected.”110 In this opening sentence of part V, Chauncy offered irenic terms for reconciliation and peace between the two sides. He argued that if true religion had been revived by an outpouring of the Spirit, it would have manifested itself in these Congregationalists coming together in repentance and love for reconciliation. “But if retractions are made,” he pleaded, “it may be helped, they will be different from some that have been published of late, which seem rather calculated to qualify the persons who made them to do still more mischief, than to take the shame to themselves that is their just due.”111 When a systematic comparison between Edwards’s Some Thoughts and Chauncy’s Seasonable Thoughts is made, it becomes clear that Chauncy did not invalidate Edwards’s defense of the Awakening as a true work of the Spirit.112 Their approaches, structures, and aims reveal Chauncy’s aggressive attempt to win the debate. Whereas Edwards’s approach was to establish a middle ground between opponents and over-enthusiastic proponents, Chauncy’s aim was to prevent pointed criticisms of the contents of Edwards’s previous book. In other words, Edwards is defensive and Chauncy offensive in their separate approaches. The structures of both books revealed the nature of their aims. That of Edwards was more evenly proportioned between winning opponents by persuasive pleadings and suppressing excesses by cautious advice. His longest section by far undertook the difficult task of rebuking “pious zealots.” Chauncy’s structure, however, focused on attacking Edwards’s defense and on suppressing revival practices with a show of elitist names and an attempt to link the revival with a 108 109 110 111 112

Ibid., 392. Ibid., 405. Ibid., 405. Ibid., 409. Davenport’s Confession was first published by the Boston Gazette July 18, 1744. Chauncy’s brief exposition of the marks of the Spirit is not contrary to Edwards’s teaching (Chauncy, Seasonable Thoughts, 5–9).

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former crisis that led to banishment. The intent of Some Thoughts was to vindicate the revival, to confute opponents of their ill thoughts, and to restrain zealous promoters. On the other hand, Chauncy sought to criticize Edwards’s defense by reiterating the irregularities of the Awakening and to suppress Edwards’s work with “an antidote” designed to associate him with Cotton and the “new lights” of the 1630s. Although Edwards may be accused of long pleadings and exhaustive rhetorical questions, Chauncy’s aggressive approach was perhaps counter-productive in some respects. For example, his attack on popular and admired itinerants and his assumption that their reward in the afterlife was lost, were too harsh.113 His accusation that proponents were the cause of separations was unfair, his extensive research on Edwards’s historical references seemed only to prove the latter’s point about the occasion of enthusiasm in times of revival,114 his criticism of neighbors singing praises to God in the night upon ferry-boats was too subjective, his projection about Familism among New Lights was inconclusive,115 and his response to Edwards’s defense of inexperienced and younger men unprepared for revival excesses seems intolerant.116 Watts commented on his sorrow over the way the Awakening had turned, largely because of Chauncy’s polemic. “I am much grieved,” Watts wrote to Colman, “to hear of the great confusions that have been raised amongst your churches in New England, and that you tell me they are likely to remain and prevail.” Concerning Chauncy’s contentious conservatism, Watts added, “I am sorry he is so like his grandfather as you tell me, but still I think his grandfather was a man of serious piety, & is gone to a state of rest & happiness where there are no contentions.”117

12.6 Edwards’s Final Response to Chauncy’s Criticisms Edwards had already been preparing for print his magnum opus in defense of the Great Awakening, namely A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, before the publication of Seasonable Thoughts. Perhaps the title page, which quoted two texts, one aimed at the enthusiast and the other at the opposer, was an indication that Edwards himself did not feel that his previous efforts had succeeded in their aim to the extent that he had hoped. 113 114 115 116 117

Ibid., 46. Ibid., 88–90. Ibid., 222–223. Ibid., 316–318. Watts, “Letters of Dr. Watts,” 407; Letter dated March 20, 1744.

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I have known instances wherein, by heat’s coming on suddenly in the spring without intermissions of cold to check the growth, the branches, many of them, by a too hasty growth have afterwards died. And perhaps God may bring a spiritual spring as he does the natural, with now and then a pleasant sun-shiny season, and then an interruption by clouds and stormy winds, till at length the sun, by more and more approaching and the light increasing, the strength of the winter is broken.118

By March 1744, less than a year after Chauncy’s Seasonable Thoughts had been issued, Edwards was willing to admit that “the branches, many of them, by a too hasty growth have afterwards died.”119 Noticeably absent from the work is the kind of idealism that still remained among the more radical side of the New Lights. Those early days of revival were replaced with “captious, censorious times,” which dominated the sociological, theological, and spiritual issues in the Awakening’s hermeneutical crisis.120 His purpose in writing the treatise, then, was to warn “people that are engaged to defend the cause” to be “sensible to the danger” of the opposers and the Devil coming up “behind ‘em” to give “a fatal stab unseen.” In other words, he believed that the way in which New England interpreted the true nature and validity of the Awakening was still worth fighting over.121 Therefore, Chauncy’s criticisms of Edwards’s former defense of the Awakening as a substantial outpouring of the Spirit required a thorough and purposeful response.122 Although he was primarily addressing Chauncy’s criticisms, he also had his eye on the New Light radicals, the Old Light rationalists, and those who would carry on his legacy of revival leadership. Behind the hermeneutical debate among contemporaries over the central question of the Awakening were pneumatological assumptions about the nature of spiritual affections, experience, and assurance. 118 Jonathan Edwards to William McCulloch, March 5, 1744, in Edwards, Works, 16:134–142. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid., 2:87, 89. In 1745, for example, twenty-four New Light ministers in public testimonial lamented this change. Robert J. Taylor, Western Massachusetts in the Revolution (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1954), 48. 121 Foxcroft fondly recalled the noonday splendor mixed with a lesser degree of enthusiasm in 1747: “Upon an impartial review of the times which past over us, I am not able to form any other Judgment, than that some of these later Years claim, in spiritual respects, to be rank’d among the memorable Years of the Right Hand of the Most High,…by a more than common Energy of the Holy Spirit…” (Thomas Foxcroft, A Seasonable Memento for New Year’s Day [Boston: S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1747], 57). The New Lights valued “interpreters” of the former awakening. For example, when William Cooper died in 1743, the Christian History described him as “an interpreter” whom “multitudes resorted to…in the late remarkable Day of divine Visitation” (Thomas prince, The Christian History, [Boston: Kneeland and Green, 1744], 339). 122 Murray mentions: “With no references to Chauncy and comparatively few to contemporary events, the reader of The Religious Affections is apt to forget that Edwards was writing in the midst of a major controversy” (Murray, Edwards, 254).

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Part I contains Edwards’s exposition of 1 Peter 1:8, in which he explains the historical context and sets forth the doctrine: true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.123 He then expounds on the affections in mind and offers ten evidences for his doctrine’s veracity. After explaining that the affections are often mixed, he draws three inferences related to their importance in measuring true religion.124 Part II, “Shewing what are no certain signs that religious affections are truly gracious, or that they are not,” endeavors to distinguish among religious affections by stating twelve signs that are no signs one way or the other for judging affections. Part III, “Shewing what are distinguishing signs of truly gracious and holy affections,” is prefaced with qualifications. Signs of gracious affections will not give certainty, sufficiently enable an individual to determine one’s own estate, or enable one by way of marks or rules to determine the hypocrites from the true believers. Edwards proceeds, then, to give twelve signs as a means of preventing hypocrisy and of separating false affections from true ones. In order to defend the Awakening in general as a true work of the Spirit in light of Chauncy’s criticisms, Edwards addressed Chauncy’s criticisms in three main areas, namely the centrality of religious affections in true religion, the nature of Christian experience, and the Awakening’s controversial issue of obtaining an assurance of salvation in light of the appearance of New Light Antinomianism. In doing so, he formed a synthesis from each of the three issues.

12.6.1 Affections: A Synthesis from the Antinomian Crisis of the 1630s Edwards’s argument is simple: if the Holy Spirit is truly active in the lives of individuals, then their affections, the “more vigorous exercises of the intellect and the will,” must reflect this influence. The disagreement between Chauncy and Edwards stemmed from the seventeenth-century issue over the relationship between the will and the intellect. Whereas Chauncy stood for the more Aristotelian (and Thomistic) “intellectualist” tradition, Edwards aligned himself with Augustine of Hippo, John Calvin, and William Ames as an exponent of the voluntarist tradition of Western Christian moral theology.125 In conjunction with the Enlightenment’s new foundationalism grounded upon reason, Chauncy argued that the affections and will should follow the dictates of the mind. Edwards, on the other hand, at-

123 Edwards, Works, 2:95. 124 Ibid.,118. 125 For a comparative study, see Paul Allen Lewis, “Rethinking Emotions and the Moral Life of Thomas Aquinas and Jonathan Edwards” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1991), 110–131.

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tempted to defend the fading voluntarist tradition, emphasizing that the intellect, without true affections, was insufficient for true religion. Edwards acknowledged that “three or four years ago,” in 1741–1742, there had been a prevalent disposition to look upon all high religious affections as eminent exercises of true grace, without much inquiring into their nature and source.126 This, he admitted, was a mistake at the height of the Awakening: “to conclude such persons were full of the Spirit of God, and had eminent experience of his gracious influences.”127 Instead of esteeming and admiring all religious affections without distinction, he believed that Chauncy and the majority had gone to the other extreme in rejecting and discarding all without discrimination. For example, by 1746 the “prevailing taste” against lively religious affections “excited disgust” when any affections were expressed in praying or preaching.128 The result, as Edwards viewed it, was to dismiss the Awakening as something insubstantial and less than extraordinary. Edwards wrote: The prevailing prejudice against religious affections at this day, in the land, is apparently of awful effect, to harden the hearts of sinners, and damp the graces of many of the saints, and stunt the life and power of religion, and preclude the effect of ordinances, and hold us down in a state of dullness and apathy, and undoubtedly causes many persons greatly to offend God, in entertaining mean and low thoughts of the extraordinary work he has lately wrought in this land.129

Actually, the historical debate for Edwards was not about taking sides on the Antinomian Crisis of the 1630s. Rather, Edwards called for a synthesis. Whereas Chauncy attempted to position himself on the side of the intellectualist fathers, with Thomas Shepard, in order to pose as the restorer of order, Edwards would not stand alone on the other side with John Cotton. Rather, Edwards held both positions in tension, arguing that the new sense of the heart and the perseverance of Christian practice were both signs of the work of the Spirit and true religious affections. Although his quotations from Shepard account for over half of all his footnotes, the Cottonian influence is nevertheless evident in the use of terms like “light,” “taste,” and “new sense.” Edwards preserved the arguments of both authorities from the Antinomian Crisis of the 1630s in synthesis, while still warding off the Antinomians in the crisis of cultural authority taking place in the 1740s.130 126 At the center of this difference there was an epistemological disagreement. Edwards, Works, 2:281; 4:297–298; 22:46. 127 Ibid., 2:119. 128 Ibid., 122. 129 Ibid., 98. 130 Louise A. Breen, Transgressing Bounds: Subversive Enterprises among the Puritan Elite in Massachusetts, 1630–1692 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 17–56; Sean Michael Lucas, “‘What Is the Nature of True Religion?’: Religious Affections and Its American

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12.6.2 Experience: A Synthesis of External Behavior and Inward Experience Edwards was hard pressed to define which manifestations of experience were genuinely of the Spirit. He had previously offered naturalistic explanations for false religious experiences, along with supernaturalistic explanations of the Devil’s ability to produce counterfeit experiences. For example, in his Distinguishing Marks he argued that many of the visions or “impressions on the imagination” and bodily effects could be explained by natural religion and the Devil.131 He added, however, that the presence of visions and faintings did not rule out that the operation of the Spirit was the occasion of such extraordinary experiences. These effects, however strange, might have been accidental effects or indirect consequences, albeit not true marks, of the gracious operations of the Spirit. Edwards had explained in his Some Thoughts that high discoveries of God’s attributes by the Holy Spirit to true Christians “may be the occasion, or causa sine qua non of sin,” but “all sin is originally from a defective, privative cause.”132 Fanatical excesses in religious experiences were not sufficient evidence, therefore, that the Awakening was not a true work of God. Edwards sought to form a synthesis between external behavior and inward experience under the twelfth sign, namely Christian practice: “the degree in which experiences have influence on a person’s practice, is the surest evidence of the degree of that which is spiritual and divine in his experiences.”133 If the objection is raised that professors should judge their spiritual estate chiefly by inward experience as the main evidence of true grace, then Edwards replied that inward experience of the Spirit’s work must remain in a proportionate and suitable relationship to Christian practice. Edwards argued that inward exercises of the Spirit upon the affections are not the less part of Christian experience, because they have outward behavior immediately connected with them. To speak of Christian experience and practice, as if they were two things, properly and entirely distinct, is to make a distinction without consideration or reason. Indeed, all Christian experience is not properly called practice; but all Christian practice is properly experience. Holy practice is one kind or part of Christian experience; and both reason and scripture represent it as the chief, and the most important part of it.134

131 132 133 134

Puritan Context,” in All For Jesus: A Celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Covenant Theological Seminary, Robert A. Peterson and Sean Michael Lucas, ed. (Ross-shire: Mentor, 2006), 132–133. Edwards, Works, 4:278. Ibid., 464. Ibid., 449. Ibid.

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Edwards concluded his synthesis: “There is a sort of external religious practice, wherein is no inward experience […] and this is good for nothing. And there is what is called experience, that is without practice […] and this is worse than nothing.”135

12.6.3 Assurance: A Synthesis of Faith and Obedience Edwards also opposed the teaching that full assurance could rest on the premise that anyone who experienced the “new birth” would recognize the reality, time, and place of the conversion event as evidence. Assurance may or may not be obtained in a fuller sense by a believer, and many believers may experience regeneration at an early age without remembering the time and place. Edwards compared these New Lights to “the many wild enthusiasts that were in England in the days of Oliver Cromwell; and the followers of Mrs. Hutchinson, in New England,” and he attributed their overconfidence and presumption to Satan.136 Edwards was inclined to form a synthesis in order to avoid extremes and to explain them. In order to warn against false assurance, he cited Thomas Shepard’s two sorts of hypocrites, namely Legal and Evangelical hypocrites. Legal hypocrites, he explained, are deceived by their outward morality and external religion; many of them “are professed Arminians, in the doctrine of justification.” Evangelical hypocrites are those who are deceived with false discoveries and elevations, “which often cry down works, and men’s own righteousness, and talk much of free grace; but at the same time make a righteousness of their discoveries, and of their humiliation, and exalt themselves to heaven with them.”137 In avoiding extremes, Edwards was also concerned to stress the variations that exist in both one’s faith and assurance. Since faith is strengthened and weakened within a true believer’s lifetime, assurance will vary too. For Edwards, the hope of assurance is not the same as faith. Although true faith serves in obtaining assurance, the application of faith may occur without assurance.138 The twelfth sign, gracious affections have their exercise and fruit in Christian practice, is “the greatest sign of grace” to judge the sincerity of godliness.139 It is the most reliable 135 136 137 138

Ibid., 452. Ibid., 287. Ibid., 173–174. In his Faithful Narrative he wrote: “To believe is to have a sense and a Realizing belief of what the Gospel Reveals of the mediation of X [Christ] and Particularly as it concerns ourselves” (Edwards, Works, 4:176). In a 1750 sermon, he clarifies that the “application of Faith may be without the Application of Assurance” (Edwards, 1 John 5:1–4, July 1750, MSS, Beinecke). 139 Edwards, Works, 4:406.

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sign to read the Spirit’s work in the affections of the heart, not as a once-for-all experience but as an increase of assurance to be sought through ongoing communion with God. By thus forming three syntheses between Shepard and Cotton, outward behavior and inward experience, faith and Christian practice, and by distinguishing between gracious and common affections, true and counterfeit experiences, genuine and erroneous assurance, Edwards repudiated his association with seventeenth and eighteenth century Antinomianism. By 1751, Edwards was still confident that the Awakening was, in the main, a true work of the Spirit to be promoted. One of his last attempts to interpret the mixed effects in his own parish demonstrates how he thought of the work as a whole: However, doubtless at that time there was a very glorious work of God wrought in Northampton, and there were numerous instances of saving conversion; though undoubtedly many were deceived, and deceived others; and the number of true converts was not so great as was then imagined. Many may be ready from things that are lately come to pass to determine that all Northampton religion is come to nothing, and that all the famed awakenings and revival of religion in that place prove to be nothing, but strange tides of melancholy and whimsical humor. But they would draw no such conclusion if they exactly knew the true state of the case, and would judge of it with full calmness and impartiality of mind.140

12.7

Revival Apologetic Legacies and Conclusions

Chauncy’s legacy was shaped after the Awakening by his drifting away from the theology of those Calvinistic and Puritan sources that he used in Seasonable Thoughts. One aspect of this was his increasing emphasis on good works and natural reason at the expense of religious experience. In his response to a popular itinerant from Scotland named Robert Sandeman twenty years after his debate with Edwards, Chauncy preached a series of twelve sermons on salvation and justification. He concluded that justification was essentially a process of growth in moral behavior and the gradual infusion of grace, which is attained by attendance on the traditional means of grace available at church worship.141 Although Chauncy rejected Sandeman’s restoration of the primitive rites of worship like foot washing, he embraced the incipient form of rationalism and the aversion to experiential Calvinism in “Sandemanianism.” 140 Ibid., 16:384. 141 Charles H. Lippy, Seasonable Revolutionary: The Mind of Charles Chauncy (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981), 84–85. Chauncy, Twelve Sermons On the following seasonable and important Subjects […] (Boston: Kneeland, 1765).

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Chauncy’s subsequent theological drift was also to be seen in other areas. George W. Cooke wrote: “In his early life Dr. Chauncy was an Arminian but slowly he grew to the acceptance of distinctly Unitarian and Universalist doctrines.”142 His denial of Christ’s divinity143 and original sin144 and his incipient Universalism,145 placed him as an important figure in the beginnings of Unitarianism, liberalism, and natural religion in the visible church.146 Along with Ebenezer Gay and Jonathan Mayhew, Chauncy is regarded as a pioneer who would embrace the ideas of the Enlightenment and blend them in a balanced manner with Christian supernaturalism.147 The Unitarians trace their roots to Chauncy and the other revival opponents of Boston during the Great Awakening: “ The history of Unitarianism begins therefore with only one faction of opposers of the revival centered principally in the Boston Congregational Churches, those churches of the Standing Order that were originally founded in the Puritan migrations.”148 Although he remained a teacher of the bible, he greatly downplayed the experiential nature of God’s grace to people through an immediate and inward work of the Spirit.149 He concluded from his initial study (“the pudding”), begun in 1750, that Christ’s death was not propitiatory or substitutionary in order to avert God’s wrath from sinful mankind, and that Christ did not receive the punishment for sins in the place of the elect.150 Chauncy’s earlier sermons opposing the Awakening and his Seasonable Thoughts nevertheless remain among the best sources of revival criticism offered in the context of a general and great outpouring of the Spirit. Seasonable 142 George W. Cooke, Unitarianism in America: A History of Its Origin and Development (St. Clair, MI: Scholarly Press, 1902), 67. 143 Norman B. Gibbs and Lee W. Gibbs, “‘In Our Nature’: The Kenotic Christology of Charles Chauncy,” Harvard Theological Review 85, no. 2 (June 1992): 225–227; Norman B. Gibbs and Lee W. Gibbs, Harvard Theological Review 83, no. 3 (July – October, 1990): 266–267. 144 “Charles Chauncy, D. D.,” Evangelical Magazine and Gospel Advocate (1830–1848); May 29, 1830; 1, 22; APS Online, 172; Sydney E. Ahlstrom and Jonathan S. Carey, An American Reformation: A Documentary History of Unitarian Christianity (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1985), 56; Cooke, Unitarianism in America, 66–69. 145 David Robinson, The Unitarians and the Universalists (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985). 146 Conrad Wright, The Liberal Christians: Essays on American Unitarian History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 16–19; cf. Cooke, Unitarianism in America, 66–69. 147 Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology Imagining Progressive American Religion, 1805–1900 (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 2001), 1–5. 148 Robinson, The Unitarians and the Universalists, 10. 149 Chauncy, The Mystery hid from Ages and Generations, 2, 170–173, 343. Cf. James L. Adams, “Natural Religion and the ‘Myth’ of the Eighteenth Century,” Harvard Divinity School Bulletin 16 (Spring 1951): 26–27; Owen L. Norment, Jr., “Chauncy, Gordon, and Ferre: Sovereign Love and Universal Salvation in the New England Tradition,” Harvard Theological Review 72, no. 3/4 (July – October, 1979): 286–290. 150 Gibbs and Gibbs, “‘In Our Nature,’” 230–232.

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Thoughts would be influential in subsequent revivals in America, such as the Second Great Awakening. An anonymous writer in 1827 claimed that Edwards’s beliefs “are simply revolting, and sometimes positively disgusting.”151 Chauncy’s argument was favored by the author, who declared that “all were convinced” of both awakenings’ bad and dangerous tendencies because “Dr. Chauncy’s book was read, throughout the country.”152 Recent scholars have revived Chauncy’s Old Light rhetoric and interpretation by means of dissertations (Wohl and Gibbs), biography (Griffin), and other works challenging the validity of Edwards’s apologetic legacy (Conforti and Butler) and highlighting Chauncy’s original contention (Lambert). When Ezra Stiles, president of Yale in 1787, wrote in his diary that Edwards’s works “will pass into a transient notice perhaps scarce above oblivion,” he shared the perspective of many in New England. Bellamy reported to Edwards that there were “many books still to be sold” of his Religious Affections.153 Edwards’s legacy, however, was something more precious than his works initially appeared, and the contest for it proves this to be the case. When seeking to discover the true descendants of Edwards’s theological and apologetic legacy concerning the outpourings of the Spirit in revival, one discovers the tensions of a contested legacy rather than a clear succession of leaders and institutions.154 There are a number of possible reasons for this state of affairs. First of all, the generations immediately following his death were polarized over which leaders would truly take his mantle. The struggle took place primarily in connection with revival since “Edwards’s relationship to the Awakening was a key to much of the controversy that followed.”155 The methods used in subsequent revivals were a source of theological contention in the nineteenth century between three leading seminaries in America, namely Andover, Yale, and Princeton. The second reason for Edwards’s contested legacy was his premature death and the long delay in publishing his collected writings. For instance, it has been only recently that the Yale edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards and other 151 “We are not surprised, therefore, to learn that the revival now [1827] under consid-eration, should have been attended in the beginning with uncommon success.” (Anon-ymous, “The Revival under Whitefield,” Christian Examiner and Theological Review (Nov/Dec, 1827): 469). 152 Ibid. 153 Ezra Stiles, The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, ed. Franklin B. Dexter (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1901), 3:275. 154 Mark A. Noll, “Jonathan Edwards and the Nineteenth-Century Theology,” in Jonathan Edwards, ed. Hatch and Stout, 260–287; Noll, “Edwards’s Theology after Edwards,” in Princeton Companion, 292–308. David W. Kling and Douglas A. Sweeney, ed., Jonathan Edwards at Home and Abroad: Historical Memories, Cultural Movements, Global Horizons (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2003). 155 Noll, “Jonathan Edwards and the Nineteenth-Century Theology,” 262.

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collaborative labors have provided a greater opportunity for students of Edwards to gain access to his writings in order to achieve a comprehensive and integrated understanding of his views.156 A third reason for an unrecognizable continuity of legacy, at least in America, is the continuation of the interaction between the crisis of cultural authority and theological changes. Timothy Dwight wrote to Foxcroft in 1753 that “we are govern’d by the old spirit of anarchy still.”157 Eighteenth century’s six incipient elements in its crisis of cultural authority grew like weeds in the generations that followed Edwards. The multiplicity of Evangelicals soon not only became suspicious of New England’s intellectuals, traditions, and creedal orthodoxy but also saw “the incarnation of the church into popular culture.”158 The rise of Evangelical Christianity in the Second Great Awakening is, in a large measure, a story of the success of the common people shaping their culture with anti-Calvinistic convictions different from those of Edwards. If the publication of books is a reliable indicator, the interest in Edwards as a man, as a leader and defender of revival, as a theologian, as a philosopher, and as a preacher, shows no sign of abating. His debate with Chauncy has long been recognized as presenting an interesting insight into important aspects of the Great Awakening. An examination of the pneumatological debate between these two leaders in the Reformed tradition leads to a number of conclusions: First, the central question of the debate between Edwards and Chauncy was different from the issues that have been of concern to scholars two centuries and more after the Awakening. Whereas the modern schools of interpretation tend to debate the historical, cultural, sociological, and political questions raised by the Awakening’s relation to America’s independence and the democratization of American Christianity, contemporaries questioned rather the validity of the Awakening as a true work of the Spirit. Nevertheless, it was this question that lay at the heart of the four common interpretations of the Awakening in the 1740s. The six elements of the crisis listed have been the focus of much of the modern

156 The recent chronology of Edwards’s writings from the combined work of Thomas A. Schafer, Wallace E. Anderson, and Wilson H. Kimnach are laid out in Minkema’s compilation, “Chronology of Edwards’s Life and Writings,” Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards, xxiii–xxviii. Kenneth Minkema, “Jonathan Edwards in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47 (December 2004): 659–687, esp. 677. See also Sean Michael Lucas, “Jonathan Edwards between Church and Academy: A Biographic Essay,” The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards, 228–247. 157 Timothy Dwight to Thomas Foxcroft, June 6, 1753. Yale Manuscripts and Archives, Dwight Family Papers, B. 1, f. 1, #4. Addressed on the back of the letter: “ To the Rev[erend] / M[r] Foxcroft / In / Boston.” 158 Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity, 9.

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sociological and historical research, but they should not be discussed in isolation from what contemporaries regarded as the really important issue. Second, the central pneumatological question cannot be fully addressed without close attention to the two main contemporaries engaged in debating it in theological and biblical terms within its historical context. This specific focus and especially the significance of Chauncy’s contribution to the debate, is all too often conspicuous by its absence. By offering an exegesis of Chauncy’s rationalistic critique of the Awakening, this study seeks to recognize the extent to which the Awakening influenced his own beliefs and the degree to which he was able to induce Edwards to amend his position. Third, this study shows that Chauncy’s interpretation of what occurred during the 1740s is much more supernatural in its “rationalistic” emphasis than that of modern rationalistic and theological schools of revival interpretation.159 Chauncy acknowledged that the Spirit might indeed work in revival; however, his idealistic view of such revival and his intellectualist understanding of religious responses to the Spirit of God in true Christian-ity led him to reject the actual Awakening as a valid outpouring of the Spirit. At bottom, he was unable to accept that revival was a mixed work, comprising both spiritual and unbiblical elements. In addition, while he recognized the sanctifying work of the indwelling Spirit in the believer, he had little appreciation of the inward activity of the Spirit with regard to the affections, which Edwards identified as the essence of true Christianity and equated with the fruit of the Spirit. Nevertheless, Edwards was obliged to acknowledge the validity of Chauncy’s criticisms of various aspects of the Awakening, especially with regard to the excesses evident among some of its supporters and to Edwards’s own overemphasis on spiritual experience in his earlier apologetic works. Fourth, the historical debate between Edwards and Chauncy was significant in clarifying important aspects of the nature of revival and of religious experience. By attacking Edwards’s first three defenses of the Awakening, by identifying the indiscretions and excesses of its overzealous friends, and by raising the specter of Antinomianism, Chauncy was instrumental in raising the whole question of its validity as a genuine outpouring of the Spirit. While remaining an ardent supporter and defender of the Awakening, Edwards was obliged by Chauncy’s criticisms to adopt a more realistic understanding of revival, and to present his views in a more moderate, logical, and scriptural manner. In Religious Affections, for example, Edwards was brought to recognize that both an immediate, inward work of the Spirit and consistent Christian practice were necessary for assurance. This work, Edwards’s final response to Chauncy, remains a classic exploration of the nature of spiritual affections, experience, and assurance. 159 Gary Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology,1.

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Finally, any assessment of who actually won the debate must include both short-term and long-term considerations. Some may argue that Chauncy’s failure to respond with any public critique of Religious Affections, even after Edwards’s death, suggests that Edwards won the debate at the time. What is certain is that Chauncy’s Seasonable Thoughts polarized the parties because of its aggressive reaction to Edwards’s Some Thoughts, with the result that Chauncy and his supporters were never able to accept any victory that Edwards might have claimed. In Religious Affections Edwards implicitly acknowledged the validity of some of Chauncy’s criticisms and endeavored to present a synthesis that kept the focus primarily on gracious affections. This was intended as Edwards’s final answer to Chauncy and was highly valued by those who sympathized with Edwards’s theological position and revival apologetic at the time. However, as a result of the subsequent demise in New England of the Augustinian and voluntarist position on the dynamics of the soul and the consequent fading significance of the Edwards-Chauncy debate from the theological and cultural memory, any victory that Edwards gained was short-lived. Indeed, it could be argued that, after Edwards’s death, the synthesis that he developed fragmented.160 If Edwards won the specific debate with Chauncy, in America at large he was soon to lose the day. Nevertheless, over the still longer term, there is abundant evidence that his exposition of experimental Calvinism and the nature of true revival have been much esteemed down to the present day among those who consider these matters as vital to the spiritual health of the church. While the actual details of the debate between Edwards and Chauncy were forgotten or ignored during the generations that followed, the issues that lay at its heart are neverthe-less of abiding interest. Even today, the legacies of Edwards and Chauncy live on, as members of both academia and the wider community continue to seek to understand the significance and implications of their debate, not only in the context of the Great Awakening but also for the church at large.

160 Mark Valeri, Law and Providence in Joseph Bellamy’s New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Joseph A. Conforti, Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement (Grand Rapids: Christian University Press, 1981); Sean Lucas, “What is the Nature of True Religion?” 119.

About the Authors

Robert Davis Smart (PhD University of Wales) is Sr. pastor of Christ Church, PCA, Bloomington-Normal, Illinois. Douglas A. Sweeney (PhD Vanderbilt) is Professor of Church History and the History of Christian Thought, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. Daniel Cooley (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is an adjunct instructor of Religion at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin. C. Scott Sealy (PhD University of Glasgow) is Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Covington, Tennessee. Paul Helm (MA Oxford) Emeritus Professor of the History and Philosophy of Religion, King’s College, London Nathan A. Finn (PhD Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is Dean of the School of Theology and Missions and Professor of Christian Thought and Tradition, Union University, Jackson, TN. HyunKwan Kim is PhD student of Historical Theology, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Mark Jones (PhD Leiden) is Research Associate at the University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Michael A. G. Haykin (ThD University of Toronto) is Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky.

302

About the Authors

Mark A. Herzer (PhD Westminster Theological Seminary) is Lecturer in Systematic Theology at John Wycliffe Theological College in cooperation with North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa. Paul Kjoss Helseth (PhD Marquette University) is Professor of Christian Thought, The University of Northwestern – St. Paul, St. Paul, Minnesota. D. Patrick Ramsey (ThM, Westminster Theological Seminary) is pastor of Nashua OPC. Ian Clary (PhD, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein) is lecturer in history at Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario. William VanDoodewaard (PhD, University of Aberdeen and Highland Theological College) is Professor of Church History at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary.

Index of Names

Abernethy, John 205 seq., 229 Adam 9, 48, 55, 57, 82, 85, 113 seq., 162, 252 Agricola, Johann 15 seq., 22 Alexander, Archibald 225, 237 Alison, Francis 241 Allen, Alexander V. G. 89 seq., 100, 110, 195, 271 Allen, Paul. 290 Alsted, Johann 146, 150–152, 155, 164 Ames, William 241 seq., 290 Anderson, James 208 seq., 297 Andrews, Jedidiah 43, 58, 60, 62, 208, 214– 216, 220 seq. Angel, John 40 Annesley, Samuel 25 Apostle Paul 122, 151 Aquinas, Thomas 99 seq., 290 Aristotle 90, 92, 241 Arminius, Jacob 92 Arminius, Jacob 90 Athanasius 200 Atwater, Lyman Hotchkiss 250 Augustine 113 seq., 242, 251, 290 Backus, Isaac 177 Baillie, Robert 21, 152 Ball, Bryan 145, 148, 150 Bates, William 8, 25 Baukham, Richard 176 Bauman, Michael 211, 215 Baxter, Richard 22 seq., 26, 28, 34 seq., 38, 40, 152 seq., 286 Bebbington, David W 57 seq.

Beebe, Keith Edwards 84 seq. Beeke, Joel 40, 51 seq., 132, 141 Bellamy, Joseph 114, 116, 120, 296, 299 Bennett, James 24, 26 seq., 196 Bird, Samuel 116 Bissett, John 84 Blackwell, Thomas 46, 48 seq., 51 Blaikie, William 41 seq. Blake, Thomas 40 Boechat, Felipe 45 Bogue, David 24, 26 seq. Booth, Abraham 137, 141 Boston, Thomas 8, 43–45, 47–49, 51–53, 58, 60 seq., 71, 87 Bow, Charles Bradford 238 seq., 243–249 Boyd, John 208 Bozeman, Theodore Dwight 21, 145 seq., 170 seq. Bradbury, M.L. 130, 233, 240, 244, 246 Brainerd, David 267 Bramhall, John 105, 107 Breitenbach, William 110, 112–115 Brewster, Paul 183 Bridge, William 10 Bridge, William. 152 Brightman, Thomas 144, 147–153, 155, 159, 163 seq., 174 Brine, John 129 seq., 132, 134–137, 139 Brooks, Garland 110, 170, 247 Brown, John 85 Bunyan, John 28, 73, 137, 148 Burgess, Anthony 16, 19 Burroughs, Jeremiah 10, 152 Burton, Henry 39 seq.

304

Index of Names

Caesar, Augustus 156 Calamy, Edmund 24 seq. Calvin, John 16 seq., 38, 70 seq., 91 seq., 115, 118, 131, 135, 137, 242, 279, 290, 301 Cameron, Richard 78 Campbell, Archibald 62 Carey, William 198 seq. Carmichael, Robert 180 Caryl, Joseph 37, 41 Charles II 78 Charnock, Stephen 137, 286 Chauncy, Charles 12, 172, 261–263, 271, 277, 279, 294 seq. Chauncy, Isaac 8, 12, 15, 22–30, 34 seq., 172, 261–265, 271, 276–291, 294–299 Cherry, Conrad 263, 273 Christ, Jesus 17, 19–22, 29–34, 38–42, 46– 50, 52 seq., 59 seq., 63, 67, 70, 73–77, 81, 83, 111, 114 seq., 117–124, 127–129, 131– 140, 143, 145–148, 151–153, 155–165, 169–171, 173–176, 179, 181–185, 187– 191, 193, 195–203, 205, 211 seq., 215, 217, 220, 223, 227–230, 252–255, 269 seq., 276, 281, 293, 295, 301 Chun, Chris 184, 190 Clary, Ian Hugh 8, 55, 191 Clement, Jonathan 210 Clouse, Robert 144, 146 seq., 153, 164 Cocceius, Johannes 146, 167 Coffey, John 18 Colman. Benjamin 214 Como, David 16, 18 seq. Constantine 149, 151, 156 Cooley, Daniel W. 9, 109, 301 Cooper, William 271, 289 Cotton, John 10, 20 seq., 152 seq., 171, 174, 209, 241, 280–282, 288, 291, 294 Craig, William 42, 60 Craighead, Thomas 216 seq. Crisp, Oliver D. 23 seq., 95, 110, 114, 122 Crisp, Tobias 19, 22–24 Cross, Robert 210, 227 Culverwell, Ezekiel 38 Currie, John 65 da Vinci, Leonardo

195

Dallimore, Arnold 65, 264 Daughrity, Dyron 183 Davenport, James 116, 278, 282, 287 Davis, Richard 8, 23 seq., 26, 129 seq., 137, 172, 208, 261, 301 DeYoung, Kevin 259 Dickinson, Jonathan 210 seq., 216, 220, 222–225, 262 seq., 278 seq. Dixon, Philip 194 Dod, John 39 Doddridge, Philipp 168, 264 Durham, James 21 Dwight, Timothy 297 Eaton, John 19, 39 Edwards, Jonathan 9 seq., 12, 16 seq., 58, 72 seq., 87, 89–92, 94, 97–101, 103–125, 139 seq., 143 seq., 153–155, 160, 165– 176, 179, 184, 189 seq., 193, 240–242, 246 seq., 251, 261–279, 281–294, 296– 299 Elijah 75 Elliot, Richard 73 Emerson, Roger L. 62 Erskine, Ebenezer 9, 55, 58 seq., 61, 63–65, 75, 80–85 Erskine, Ebenezer and Ralph 8, 55–59, 61– 63, 65, 69–75, 77–79, 81–83, 85 seq. Erskine, Henry 58 Erskine, John 57 seq., 183 Erskine, Ralph 9, 55, 58 seq., 62, 64, 71, 73–83 Evans, Christmas 181 seq. Felt, Joseph B. 22 Field, David 28 Fiering, Norman 241, 251 Finn, Nathan A. 11, 177 seq., 191, 301 Fisher, Edward 8, 37–41, 52, 59–61, 64, 72, 113 Fitzpatrick, Martin 196 Flavel, John 19, 23, 286 Foord, Martin 17, 127 seq. Foster, James 244, 246 Foxcroft, Thomas 262, 289, 297 Franklin, Benjamin 86, 221–224, 296

305

Index of Names

Freeman, Curtis W. 194 seq. Freylinghuysen, Theodorus 68 Fuller, Andrew 10 seq., 128–132, 136–141, 177–193, 196–203 Gadsby, William 141 Gajendran, Isaac 45 Garden, Alexander 68 Gataker, Thomas 19 Gatiss, Lee 66, 73 Gaustad, Edwin 110, 263 seq., 277 Gay, Ebenezer 295 Gib, Adam 55 seq., 82, 85 Gill, John 10, 129–137, 139–141, 143 seq., 149, 153–165, 175 seq., 202 seq. Gillespie, George 210 Gillies, John 65 seq., 80 Glas, John 178 seq. Goen, C.C. 166, 174, 274 Goodman, Christopher 147 Goodwin, Thomas 10, 19, 23, 38, 52, 132, 152, 155, 163 seq. Graham, Gordon 237, 243, 245 Greaves, Richard 28, 148 Green, Ashbel 12, 24, 233, 237–240, 245 seq., 248, 252, 255–257, 289 Gribben, Crawford 144–146, 148–150, 152, 154 seq., 164 seq., 175 seq. Hadow, James 43, 45–47, 49–51, 60 seq. Haldane, Robert 181 Haldane, Robert and James 180 seq., 183 Haliday, Samuel 206, 218, 225 Hall, David D. 21 Hall, Joseph 152 Hall, Robert 139, 196 Hambrick-Stowe, Charles 110 Hampton, John 207 Harris, James A. 24, 90, 102 Hastings, Selina 70, 212 Hatch, Nathan O. 110, 166, 169, 246, 282, 297 Haykin, Michael 11, 13, 58, 146, 154, 179, 181, 187, 189, 191, 193, 301 Helm, Paul 10, 127, 251, 259, 273, 301

Helseth, Paul Kjoss 11 seq., 233, 243, 257, 302 Hemphill, Samuel 207, 220–225 Hervey, James 179 Herzer, Mark A. 10, 143, 302 Hibbs, Darren 240 seq. Hill, Richard 70 Hoadly, Benjamin 205, 211, 230 Hobbes, Thomas 90 seq., 97 seq., 100 seq., 105–108, 111 Hodge, Charles 114, 207, 218–220, 224, 247, 249, 255 Hog, James 43, 53, 60 seq. Holifield, E. Brooks 110, 117, 170, 174 Honeyman, Valerie 63 Hooker, Thomas 21, 39 seq., 45 seq., 49, 52, 99 Hoopes, James 246 seq. Hopkins, Samuel 16, 19, 110, 112, 114, 120, 299 Hornsby, John Thomas 178 seq. Hotson, Howard 144, 146, 148–150 Howe, Daniel Walker 246, 251 Howe, John 8, 25, 28, 286 Hudnut, William 234 Hume, David 57, 243 Hunter, Henry 224 Hussey, Joseph 129, 137 Hutcheson, Francis 57 seq., 234, 239, 241, 245 Hutchinson, Anne Marbury 20 seq., 279– 282, 284, 293 Hutchinson, William 280 Jacobs, Alan 67 James, Elizabeth 84 seq. James the First 218 Jones, Mark 8, 13, 15, 23, 71 seq., 84 seq., 118, 127, 129, 132, 141, 181, 184, 208, 279, 301 Jones, Martyn-Lloyd 279 Jue, Jeffrey 144, 151 seq. Kapic, Kelly 23, 127 Kennedy, Gilbert 225 seq. Kidd, Thomas S. 66, 68, 110

306 Killen, W. D. 218 Kim, HyunKwan 9, 89, 301 King George the Second 221 Knox, John 147, 194, 295 Kuklick, Bruce 246 seq. Lachman, David 38, 41, 44–46, 49, 52, 59 Laing, Robert 210 Lamont, William M. 144 Latimer, Hugh 144 Lim, Paul C.H. 18 Lincoln, Abraham 115, 185, 241, 246 Lloyd-Jones, Martyn 177 Locke, John 28, 58, 91 seq., 97–105, 107 seq., 211, 273 Lorimer, William 25 Lowman, Moses 10, 153–155, 167 seq., 170 Luther, Martin 8, 15–18, 22, 38, 118, 150 Lyman, Moses 250, 253, 268 Lyons, James 197 Maccovius, Johannes 132 MacLeod, J.M 41 seq. Mahaffey, Jerome 84 seq. Makemie, Francis 207 seq. Makhalira, Confex 45 Manton, Thomas 23 Marlow, Isaac 195 Mather, Increase 10, 152, 163, 174, 209, 241 Maurice, Matthias 130 Mayhew, Jonathan 295 Mayo, Richard 25 McCann, Hugh J. 105 McDermott, Gerald 99, 114, 154, 166 seq., 169 seq., 172 seq. McGowan, A.T.B. 41, 51, 58 McIntyre, David Martin 40 McLean, Archibald 180–187, 190 McMillan, William 213 McNish, George 207 seq. Mede, Joseph 10, 144, 150–153, 161, 163 seq., 167 seq., 174 Melanchthon, Philip 15–17, 22 Miller, Perry 153, 261, 277 seq., 280, 283 Miller, Samuel 114, 237, 239 Milton, Anthony 69

Index of Names

Milton, John 7 Minkema, Kenneth P. 263, 273, 282, 297 Molyneux,William 101 Mommers, Johan Mauritius 150 Moncrieff, Alexander 64 Morris, Matthias 117, 130, 185 seq., 198 Mortimer, Sarah 194 Muller, Richard A. 13, 70, 89–92, 94, 96, 99 seq., 106, 115, 131, 135, 154, 251 Murray, John 117 seq. Myers, Stephen 55, 59, 61, 65, 81–83 Napier, John 146–151, 155, 174 Newton, John 128 Noll, Mark A. 11, 114 seq., 179, 211, 228, 234 seq., 237–239, 241–243, 245 seq., 249, 255, 258 seq., 296 Noyes, Joseph 116 Orr, Robert 208, 211 Owen, John 23, 127–129, 137, 185, 190, 286, 295 Packer, J.I. 25, 66, 70, 193 Park, Amasa 109, 118–120, 122 Pearce, Samuel 69, 197 Pemberton, Ebenezer 267 Perkins, William 145 seq., 286 Placher, William C. 194 Poole, Matthew 168 Preston, John 38 seq. Priestley, Joseph 118 seq., 195–197, 200 Prince, Thomas 276 Queen Elizabeth

159

Ramsay, David 68 Ramsey, Patrick.D 8, 15, 97, 111, 140, 154, 302 Reid, James Seaton 218, 237–239, 243 seq., 246–249 Reid, Thomas 234, 238, 240, 247, 249 Relly, James 117 seq. Riccaltoun, Robert 46 seq., 53 Robertson, William 57 Rosenthal, Alexander S. 99

307

Index of Names

Rowland, John 226 Rudisill, Dorus Paul 118 Rutherford, Samuel 16, 19, 63, 286 Ryland, John Collett 198, 202 Ryland Jr, John 183 Saltmarsh, John 18 seq., 23 Sandeman, Robert 178–180, 183 seq., 186– 188, 191, 294 Satan 147–149, 157, 162, 170, 174, 176, 275, 293 Schultz, Walter J. 240 seq. Scott, Hew 207 Scott, Jack 234, 239, 242, 263 Scott, Thomas 177 Scougal, Henry 70 Sealy, Scott 11, 205, 301 Sharman, Edward 11, 198–201, 203 Shepard, Thomas 19 seq., 40, 49, 52, 281 seq., 286, 291, 293 seq. Sidney, Edwin 70 Silva, Asseruy 45 Simson, John 42, 49, 60, 62, 64 Skepp, John 130, 155 Sloan, Douglas 233–238 Smalley, Paul 40, 52 Smart, Robert 12, 261 Smith, Adam 57 Smith, John Howard 177 Smith, Samuel Stanhope 12, 69 seq., 153, 163, 178, 190, 208, 233–235, 237–249, 255–259, 261 Socinus, Faustus 34, 118 South, Thomas J. 178, 180, 183, 186 Steadman, William 197 Stein, Stephen J. 153 seq., 165–168, 170– 173, 193 Steinmetz, David 17 Stennett, Joseph II 195 Stewart, David 207 Stewart, Dugald 239 Stiles, Ezra 296 Stirling, John 58, 62–64, 209 seq. Stoddard, Solomon 111 Stout, Harry S. 66, 110, 166, 246, 282

Sweeney, Douglas A. 9, 109–112, 114 seq., 296, 301 Tappan, Henry Philip 87, 103 Taylor, Nathaniel 110–112, 207 Tennent, Gilbert 68, 75, 225–227, 229, 267, 278 Tennent, Katherine 226 the Antichrist 10, 146, 148 seq., 170, 172, 175 Thompson, Robert Ellis 209, 214 Thomson, John 213–216, 219 seq., 222, 227, 230 Tiberius 156 Toon, Peter 25, 130–132, 144, 149 Towne, Robert 18 seq. Tracy, Joseph 86 seq., 264 seq. Traill, Robert 24, 26 Trapp, John 40 Traske, John 19 Trevor-Roper, Hugh 57 Trinterud, Leonard J. 206–208, 210, 213, 215, 219 seq., 227 Trumbull, Benjamin 267 Turnbull, Richard 71, 184 Turretin, Francis 90 seq., 94–96, 100, 139, 251 Twisse, William 10, 132, 152, 163 Tyerman, Luke 65 seq., 70, 72, 77–82, 84 van Asselt, W. J. 146, 149 seq. van den Brink, Gert A. 23 van Limborch, Philipp 103 van Mastricht, Petrus 90 seq. VanDoodewaard, William 8, 37, 45, 59 Vane, Henry 20 Voetius, Gijsbert 91 Wallin, Benjamin 195 Watts, Isaac 264, 288 Watts, Michael R. 23, 28, 195 Wayman, Lewis 130, 132, 137 seq. Webster, Alexander 80 Webster, James 59 seq. Webster, John 185 seq., 198 Wengert, Timothy 16

308 Wesley, John 9, 67, 69 seq., 73 seq., 77–79, 84, 177, 179 Wesley, John and Charles 67, 69, 77 seq., 84, 179 Westblade, Donald 259 Westminster Assembly 21 Wheelock, Eleazer 267 Wheelwright, John 280 Whitby, Daniel 133–135, 153 seq., 164 Whitefield, George 8 seq., 55–59, 62, 65– 87, 179, 264, 267, 277 seq., 285, 296 Whytock, Jack 55, 63 seq., 85

Index of Names

Wilcox, Daniel 215 Williams, Daniel 8, 22–35, 168, 268 Williams, William 177 Willison, John 49 seq., 52 Wilson, John 171, 208 Wilson, William 64 Winship, Michael P. 20 Winthrop, John 280 seq. Witherspoon, John 12, 233–245, 247–259 Witsius, Herman 20, 22, 34 Wodrow, Robert 208 seq., 215, 218 Wright, Richard 197 seq.