For this first entry in the Miscellany Mondays series, I thought it appropriate to begin where Jonathan Edwards himself began. The first entry of the first notebook. Edwards began writing these miscellanies in October 1722 while he was a supply pastor to a small Presbyterian church in New York City.  He would eventually pen just over 1400 miscellanies by the time he died in 1758, and these span a wide variety of topics and categories.  Some are no longer than a few words, and the longest could be its own treatise!

Edwards began by labeling his miscellanies as letters, only switching to numbers after he had reached entry “zz.”  This first miscellany, “Miscellany a.,” is on the topic of holiness and Edwards used parts of this miscellany in an early sermon on Isaiah 35:8 entitled “The Way of Holiness,” as well as his “Personal Narrative” of 1740.  That portions of this entry found its way into both texts shows the importance of this topic to Edwards and he would continue to flesh out his thoughts on existential holiness throughout his life.  Also of note in this entry are the early glimpses of Edwards’s thought regarding divine beauty and excellency that would also be a hallmark of Edwards’s later theological writings.  So, without further ado, here is the first entry of Edwards’s “Miscellanies” notebooks in its entirety.

a. OF HOLINESS.

Holiness is a most beautiful and lovely thing. We drink in strange notions of holiness from our childhood, as if it were a melancholy, morose, sour and unpleasant thing; but there is nothing in it but what is sweet and ravishingly lovely. ‘Tis the highest beauty and amiableness, vastly above all other beauties. ‘Tis a divine beauty, makes the soul heavenly and far purer than anything here on earth; this world is like mire and filth and defilement to that soul which is sanctified. ‘Tis of a sweet, pleasant, charming, lovely, amiable, delightful, serene, calm and still nature. ‘Tis almost too high a beauty for any creatures to be adorned with; it makes the soul a little, sweet and delightful image of the blessed Jehovah.

Oh, how may angels stand, with pleased, delighted and charmed eyes, and look and look, with smiles of pleasure upon their lips, upon that soul that is holy; how may they hover over such a soul, to delight to behold such loveliness! How is it above all the heathen virtues, of a more light, bright and pure nature, more serene and calm, more peaceful and delightsome! What a sweet calmness, what a calm ecstasy, doth it bring to the soul! How doth it make the soul love itself; how doth it make the pure invisible world love it; yea, how doth God love it and delight in it; how do even the whole creation, the sun, the fields and trees love a humble holiness; how doth all the world congratulate, embrace, and sing to a sanctified soul!

Oh, of what a sweet, humble nature is holiness! How peaceful and, loving all things but sin, of how refined and exalted a nature is it! How doth it clear change the soul and make it more excellent than other beings! How is it possible that such a divine thing should be on earth? It makes the soul like a delightful field or garden planted by God, with all manner of pleasant flowers growing in the order in which nature has planted them, that is all pleasant and delightful, undisturbed, free from all the noise of man and beast, enjoying a sweet calm and the bright, calm, and gently vivifying beams of the sun forevermore: where the sun is Jesus Christ; the blessed beams and calm breeze, the Holy Spirit; the sweet and delightful flowers, and the pleasant shrill music of the little birds, are the Christian graces. Or like the little white flower: pure, unspotted and undefined, low and humble, pleasing and harmless; receiving the beams, the pleasant beams of the serene sun, gently moved and a little shaken by a sweet breeze, rejoicing as it were in a calm rapture, diffusing around most delightful fragrancy, standing most peacefully and lovingly in the midst of the other like flowers round about. How calm and serene is the heaven overhead! How free is the world from noise and disturbance! How, if one were but holy enough, would they of themselves [and] as it were naturally ascend from the earth in delight, to enjoy God as Enoch did!

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 163-164.

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miscellany mondays, the miscellanies