Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T13:22:43.347Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 13 - Jonathan Edwards and his Puritan predecessors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2011

By
William J. Wainwright
Edited by
Paul L. Gavrilyuk  and
Sarah Coakley
Paul L. Gavrilyuk
Affiliation:
University of St Thomas, Minnesota
Sarah Coakley
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Get access

Summary

Jonathan Edwards is known for his insistence on a ‘practical’ or ‘experimental’ religion that engages the human heart. At its core is a sense of God's excellence and loveliness or the beauty and splendour of divine things.

The savingly converted enjoy ‘gracious discoveries’ of ‘God, in some of his sweet and glorious attributes manifested in the Gospel, and shining forth in the face of Christ…In some the truth and certainty of the Gospel in general is the first joyful discovery they have…More frequently Christ…is made the object of the mind, in his all-sufficiency and willingness to save sinners.’ Recalling his own conversion, Edwards says:

The first instance that I remember…of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, 1 Tim. 1: 17. ‘Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen.’ As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the divine being; a new sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before. Never any words of scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was; and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up to God in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Spiritual Senses
Perceiving God in Western Christianity
 , pp. 224 - 240
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Goen, C. C.The Great Awakening, The Works of Jonathan EdwardsNew HavenYale University Press 1957 171Google Scholar
Walton, B.Jonathan Edwards, and the Puritan Analysis of True Piety, Spiritual Sensation, and Heart ReligionLewiston, NY, Queenston, Ont., and LampeterEdwin Mellen Press 2002 101Google Scholar
Baxter, RichardThe Saint's Everlasting Restabridged) (New YorkAmerican Tract Society 1840 www.ccel.org/ccel/baxter/saints_rest.htmlGoogle Scholar
Nuttall, G.The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and ExperienceChicago and LondonUniversity of Chicago Press 1992Google Scholar
Chamberlain, A.458
Hutcheson, FrancisIllustrations on the Moral SenseCambridge, MAHarvard University Press 1971 164CrossRefGoogle Scholar
1995
2010

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×